001i'm sure you're okay yeah i'm fine all right so we're going to start thank you great we're good all right so welcome to tonight monday november 15 2021 to the regular business meeting the board board of education 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 great thank you all for joining us those that are here live and those that are watching us stream it's always an exciting night when we have students right in front of us and we get to see what they're all about so we appreciate that before we begin just remind everyone that there is two exits at the rear of the auditorium as well
002as exits at each side of the stage i'll just quote quickly across the dais all the way to my left we have trustee tasnimeiji then we have trustee lynn hirsch we have trustee david keefe we're board vice president bob fellerino on board president mark hamburg to my right is dr elaine kanis our superintendent of schools and we have dr daniel gately our deputy superintendent of schools we have miss diane castanwe our assistant superintendent for business john sheen is the district council and adrian cummings is the district clerk who's standing at the podium so with that i am going to turn it actually i have a student student representative here tonight yep great come on it's a good thing you leave i can't even see you back there okay good evening everyone so we're beginning to
003wrap up our first quarter of the year which is great and i think everyone's settling into the new year well we just ended our fall sports season with the girls soccer team as well as the girls and boys cross country team going to their respective state championships so those seasons ended well our winter sports are also starting with fencing basketball winter track and bowling so that's great and we've had some lovely sales going on recently for for like eac club for tri-m and we've had some more student activity going on and we're preparing for our icu day so luckily that's happening again this year so we've all been working for that and we're with the student government and student senate we're working towards helping with funds for haiti and causes towards that so it's a
004great start to the year so far and we're looking forward to great things happening so yeah that's it fantastic thank you so much thank you [Applause] so before i turn to the superintendent's report i just want to mention to the public there's an agenda item that i'm going to pull and there's a replacement item that we're going to walk on for that agenda item it's item number 3.16 i'm pulling the entire gender item and if anyone wants to see it and has any questions on it it's over on the piano with copies of the walk-on are available so with that i'll turn to the superintendent okay and i'd like to begin by telling the board that you've received a letter which we will be posting on the board website from governor holcol and governor holcol
005has written to recognize school boards across new york state and our school board she didn't quite make it for school board recognition week but she really wanted to take the opportunity to thank school boards across the state and our school board for all the hard work that they do so that recognition was shared by our governor so thank you again for all you do thank you for sharing that thank you and then you have another one and i have something very special um we have with us today a student presentation and um our robotics team the 9th to 12th graders pat hurley their advisor will be telling you about it but they earned first place this recently in the half hollow hills robotics invitational and they did just great and i just want to take
006a a moment to just really you know recognize the efforts of mr hurley and the robotics team and the stem you know in the stem initiative from the district and mr chemnitzer and everybody involved all of our stem teachers stem was really a strategic plan priority in our original strategic plan and remained one in our second one and i think the robotics team is a great example of you know all the work that everybody has done you know to try to meet the um the district's needs and the community's needs for stem so um i won't say anymore but pat mr hurley come on up and everything dr khanna said is right but we really want to see what that thing on the stage does okay it does good things does it matter so first
007first and foremost thank you uh thank you for having us today um or tonight we really appreciate uh showcasing what our program has turned into um since i've come uh come on and help the team you know this is just a small sample size of how many students are actually involved in this program we have about 30 35 students right now that are eager to learn about robotics you know we have it's multiple levels of learning you have young members and you have senior members which you're you're sitting in front of right now this is team 2872 we are a first robotics team in the new york region we compete on long island there's multiple regions in new york that compete to go to the world's games and we took first place in our first
008robotics tournament in two years so the robot that you see right here is a pre-pandemic robot we were building that robot just when covid was a thing and unfortunately the last two years we were shut down so this was the first time that we were able to showcase our skills and and what this robot can do so uh it was a great win for our program it's also a great one for the community and also the alumni that are now often mechanical engineering and coding you know pursuing coding mechanical engineering all different kinds of uh stem career paths in college so um as much as it is for this these young men and women that aren't here right now it's also you know for the alumni that are now on and uh and doing big
009things so um without further ado i'd like to introduce um sean killian and matt tempkin they're gonna come up and you know lead you through the uh the experience [Applause] as really introduced i'm sean killen i'm the co-captain of the wheatley cybercats and i essentially write the software for it to move around i learned that software in the pltw classes for computer essentials and then i moved on to java a which is our ap coding class here and i was able to learn java the basics there and then apply them to the robot and then i learned uh library usage with the robot and then here's matt hi uh i'm matt tempkin uh i've currently been doing robotics for around eight years uh everywhere from two years junior fll to uh now in first robotics
010competition here and first tech challenge over in queens um i'm the build uh captain here on the wheatley cybercats i handle everything from physical fabrication of the robot to helping the computer-aided design team um figure out how the robot's going to look like before we build it that way we don't waste any resources or materials that don't have to be wasted uh i want to quickly just introduce first is a program designed to help the stem initiative which is something that a lot of schools are pushing for now it helps introduce kids to uh some ideas through the art of sports everyone loves a baseball game everyone loves the football game they take that they try to make it into something that people can watch it's a spectator sport and then you just have people
011build robots that compete in them instead of people so what you're about to watch is what they release to the world every year welcome to the 2021st so this is an animation around january 2nd to 4th that they will give this to the world china india england america brazil everybody's waiting to see this video and this is going to give us the ideas that we need to pursue a design and a strategy for the next build season so this was 2019's video that's the bot that you're looking at right there this is the video that we saw and then we designed our bot for that video using the line of droids planetary citizens collected store power cells while traversing the trench run and boundaries to ensure maximum protection with an operational shield generator joint start
012of an initiation line and may be pre-loaded with up to three power cells drawing shot range autonomous rays are in the first 15 seconds an attempt to store power cells into any of their three available power points while every power sail deposited equal charge to the shoe generator higher power ports earn more points drivers then control their droids for two minutes and 15 seconds of telling operating time power sounds are collected from one of the five shoots in the loading day and then driven across the city to be stored in the low outer and inner horse troy's must store the required number of power cells to activate sections of their shields generally and then either rotates their control panel a specified number of times or position it to a specific puzzle [Music] near the end
013of the match drawings right to their running viewpoint to make their shield generator operational alliances are awarded bonus points for a level so immediately after we watched this video which was in january we got straight to work on prototyping and designing the mechanisms that we would use we don't get a guide we don't get a lego set you know you have to make everything yourself so hurley helps us with the fabrication figuring out the ideas but it is mainly student-led designs that are on you know that end up on the robot so this is us testing a prototype shooter to shoot into that high goal there's me there's matt there's our alumni james marini and daniel kiki and then there's ainsley who is also one of our captains she can make it tonight unfortunately um
014so this would be the start of the longest season in team history there was two reasons for that recently first to change the rules originally you would only have six weeks to build this robot but they realized that teams who were you know smaller resourced or had smaller teams of six maybe wouldn't be able to field a robot in six weeks so they dropped that they said you can build and tell the competition and then you just show up with that robot and play but the bigger reason that we had a longer season was of course code um so pre-covet we had a very new team our team had gone through a lot of changes uh a lot of the members have were seniors so we had a lot of new members stepping in we
015had a new programming captain which would be me we had a new driver which would be matt we had a new mechanical captain which would be chance to rainy and then we also had a new design philosophy when we had gone for more complicated designs in the past such as giant scissor lifts and very very complex mechanisms we could build them and we could cad them but they weren't the most effective we went for a let's design a simple thing that works which is the engineering mindset of a lot of people and you know we work with engineers from orcs which is a food robot industry makers and they they come here and so you know we talked to them and they were like one of our biggest philosophies is keep it simple so we
016we took a step back we said all right let's keep this year's robot simple so we went for a low goal shooter who would be fast and be able to climb um so the pandemic struck us and we had you know like everyone a hard time adapting we took a break obviously people needed to be with their families i personally uh my family works in healthcare so big struggle there so you know a lot of us took a break but when we came back it was the beginning of the 2020 school year and you know we had to figure out how do we continue this club this is a great club i love this club i would hate to see anything happen to it so we figured out how can we switch something that is
017so hands-on as building a robot into an online curriculum or an online um club there is no competition this year besides a at home competition which would use the same robot but a few driving challenges you'd have to drive in a certain pattern or you'd have to program the robot to drive in a certain pattern and then we'd also be setting up online meetings which i'm sure have been fun for everybody that has to have to set up online meetings um and we also had to say to ourselves how do we build parts you know we can't all meet and cut metal and you know have hurley teach us to use the tools in such a small place with mass when the school was you know struggling to stay open regularly right and we can't
018meet after school so we said all right let's you know take it upon ourselves figure out how do we do this virtually so what we did is we created lesson plans uh these are three of our biggest subdivisions they are coding and electrical which i have mechanical and cad which matt heads along with winston and julian who are sitting up you guys can come up so these two are our cat heads you guys um these two basically handled the computer design part of the design which is a lot of what our online work was you know we couldn't design a robot by hand but we could simulate it and we could simulate parts and they'll talk about more so uh how we could simulate you know things like that so you guys can sort of
019just say what you did on the cad team and you know how you work during covet so for the 2020 year which is right before the quarantine we were working on like new uh like a new um a robot like new designs like a new chassis for our robotics team and actually for this new year for robotics team we've been recently teaching a lot of the newer members some of like design like bring them up to skills that we would need for a robotics team things like that since there's such a big gap a lot of the seniors had graduated there would be like a gap in knowledge for a lot of the members robotics team yeah adding on to what when sin just said basically uh for the 2020 season we built a chassis
020that we're actually going to be implementing for this year's um competition and yeah we've been teaching the new members that we had like although it's a small team but then like it's easier to manage so we were able to teach them like the basis of candiding of like creating 3d models on the on the computer and yeah all right great thank you guys um and the cad knowledge that they got the basis which they based off all of it is from your pltw uh class of ddp this is a drawing design production they teach us autocad there and then we just take those fundamentals and basics and we improve on them right so this is really how people can expand more if they want to learn more into chat um so yeah we also restructured
021our work schedule we would have people meet for a smaller amount of time and we'd have meetings in places other than the school right and just sort of small meetings with two or three people uh you know co with code safety regulations in mind and just sort of working like that so we had to work smarter but we also did work harder we had to you know figure out where we could get parts because oryx was not going to help us because they were going through a tough time because every business was going through a tough time um each of these is a powerpoint we created uh coding and electricals powerpoint is about 63 and they all have very similar formats so it's very curriculum based and it's very i would like to say that
022the people who made them did a very good job okay so this year was obviously the change we went from you know uh being online and having online meetings to having actual meetings again and we were going to be preparing for our first competition which was the half hollow hills invitational this would be the first time the robot has ever competed with bumpers and a metal uh intake and so we had to do a few things we also sort of step back and when we're teaching kids and we were teaching with the online format we realized people learn a lot from this there's a lot to be gained and you know we wanted more people to be in touch with this i know personally i was touched by robotics when i was super young i
023did lego robotics when i was probably eight years old and then i've been doing it ever since so i know that kids have this interest and they love seeing the robots like this so for day of service we decided we're going to go to willits we're going to give a demonstration because i'm sure people would love to see this i love seeing this thing and when i came here in ninth grade hurley showed me one of the robots which was huge and i was encapsulated ever since and so we just you know we wanted to show that to the younger kids get them interested and it really did work we got a lot of those kids interested i have a few pictures from there so that will be at the end of the presentation um
024so quickly the half hollow hills invitational it is the first competition in two years the only member who's had drive team experience was me at that point i was drive coach back in when i was a freshman to 19. so that was a while ago and we only had four members with competition experience which was matt mead jaden and japesh oh no we had five we had ainsley as well and then we had low membership the day of the competition because it happened to conflict with a november sat which was nobody's fault but you know we only had eight members who came so but we did have the robot that we worked on for two years super hard and we've iterated on its design and we made it lighter and we made it quicker than
025it ever was so [Music] is playing the game that you guys saw at first and this is this is the finals match this is where we found out we won the whole invitational and we beat out teams like mineola bethpage and you know we were uh we had made a good robot which was really an exciting moment for everyone on the team [Music] mm-hmm my [Music] so more foreign [Music] i know [Music] so the score to that match was 174 to 94 with us in favor um that was probably i was super proud of the team hurley was super proud of the team i think everyone was super excited you know it was the first time we competed in two years and we came to win something that we'd always been so close to winning
026but just never there and this year we were um so that was super exciting for us and you know there's a score there's all of us after we're all really excited you can see winston there's pumping his fist and you know while we did win as this team with only eight members it was so many more people so so many people have added onto this robot our alumni that have worked on the intake the drive train the chassis all of them have contributed so much and you know it'd be a lie to say that it's not all also theirs this robot has been with us through many years and um i'd like to say that i'm i've grown very fond of it and uh even though it's given me some trouble and it's given massive
027trouble but it's it's been a winner for us so we hope to keep this going with our new robot which we will have to design this year to a completely different game and that's a that's going to be an experience that i think we're up to the task for and now so the plans for the future of this club um with that whole educational going to day of service it helped me realize something and helped the club realize something that you know this program of first is so much more than just you know competing it's about the learning experience it's about the connections i formed i mean i think when i came here i was uh i was completely new moved here in ninth grade and i found a family within this club and i
028wanted to be able to open that up to more people so what i hope to do is i hope we hope to establish as a team an fll junior team which is essentially a uh lego version of robotics it's non-competition-based it is presentation based and helps kids that are very young k through four um you know get introduced to stem in this sort of exciting way of they could make a robot but they could also make whatever they want out of legos so that's that for uh 438 is where we have our first competitions of first lego league now yuga uh willets and north side both have lego league teams so that has already been implemented um but one of the biggest things i want to implement is the first tech challenge the first tech
029challenge is really the intermediary between the first robotics challenge and the first lego league right now we have kids who come up from willets having uh lego experience to automatically being fabricating huge 3x3 panels right and while that is not completely uh you know unrealistic i did it matt did it it'd be a lot easier if you went to the first check tech challenge first which is a lot more fabricating parts they're smaller robots than what we make but the team's budget is also uh smaller than ours and it creates this new opportunity of you create uh programming codes in python most of the robots coded in python and or java um but it creates this opportunity for younger kids to get a head start right whereas they would be coming in with block coding
030which is something that honestly i think a lot of the kids in well it's showed so much interest that they could feel the ftc team and they could field a really good one too um so next we're gonna go to the day of service uh oh this is quickly just that's about it um so ftc has 93 of the members end up creating a part of the robot 92 helped build it um and you know i like 100 teamwork one because it does create a very strong uh sense of teamwork and you know there's 87 increased interest in doing well because the better you are at math the better you can do the calculations to you know get the right parts and so quickly for day of service what we did is we traveled to
031willits um okay so um i'm gonna take over for the next couple of uh slides um we went to um willits road uh for day of service this year um it is a new event that we just this year planned on doing and um it was a really great experience it not only gave us the ability to give kids an insight as to what their future could be in robotics but it also gave um we it gave us an experience of seeing how we get to where we are as being kids from a more you know third person perspective and it was a really great day um we drove the robot around for the kids we uh taught them about all the different aspects of robotics and how you can really express yourself not only
032in building the robot but encoding the robot and being a part of our business uh part of robotics which helps with the graphic design as you can see there's an r2d2 head on the robot graphic design um merchandise design um team collating between different teams in long island or new york even um and it was a very great great way to see how kids were interested in robotics because usually in frc it's a very busy build year you know we uh are very droned in on making the robot and getting it ready for competition um safety you know um tensile strength will it hold together if we you know like you saw in the video rammed it at 15 miles an hour against the wall um and here we really got to take um a
033step back and we got to see um how we can engage our community in different types of events um so yeah that was a very good event for us and so uh here are some pictures of us at that event here's uh sean giving a really great code presentation to the kids um it was uh another great experience to learn how um to teach kids not only in language um how to talk to them and use different words how to present and use body language and project your voice and really be confident about what you're saying um because not a lot of people realize but robotics is also a lot about confidence you know whenever you're driving the robot you have to be very confident in what you're doing you have to cooperate with teams
034really well um and it's a lot of social skills as well of being able to really be able to coordinate with other and so here's one of our newer members john cornacchia he's currently giving a design presentation um on the robot and how he has currently been learning more about design and computer computer fabrication or cad and how he's been recently learning autocad a lot more both from me and hurley and [Music] um and i think that's the conclusion to our president uh questions and anything that you guys have that you guys may want to ask um and just yeah we when we went to willett's we really got a pulse of like this community has a great stem initiative and a great you know uh stem foundation for these kids they need somewhere to
035outlet it and i think that robotics is the perfect way to outline it so any questions that you guys have open them up to me they can be to any members we have business members here cad members here so pretty much all aspects of the team are here and you can just ask what first of all thank you great job really i mean amazing to see the video and hear the details appreciate you you're giving a shout out to your entire team because obviously everyone couldn't be here but we know we've seen these presentations before that it involves a lot of work uh some people on the front scenes some people on the behind scene but at the end of the day it's everybody involved in it so thank you and also thank you for
036acknowledging the coursework that got you there we appreciate you giving a shout out to the various courses that got you uh extra engaged in wanting to do this so really i don't have any particular questions but it's really fun to watch this i didn't go to this year's competition but i went to one the last one i went to was probably four years ago i think it was at hofstra maybe or yeah competing in hofstra this year again we're doing a full week this time sppli one and two so that's going to be march the week of march 21st so that entire week we're going to be competing and we do have a little bit of information on this year's game this year's game is going to be called rapid react and it's positive that's
037just a lot of fun to see and i don't even know how the competition kept up quite frankly the way the robot was picking up those balls and jamming him into the front and center hole so really congratulations to everybody it was really a job well done so thank you appreciate it um can i'd like to say my son used to be on the team before and so i've watched the progression of robotics over the years and kudos to you all i'm so impressed because i know so many times you're so close to winning but you didn't quite make it so to finally have a win is just i'm just delighted with it i'm really really happy because i've been watching the progression for so many years and i can't wait to go home and
038message my son and tell them they finally won he's going to be so happy i was going to say it but he knows right yeah i know it's it's very exciting to see you know how hard you worked and how the steps it took to get there because it was it was a lot of of work over many years of you know experience learning how to do competitions learning how to you know recover from losses all that kind of stuff and fundraising i know was a big problem too so it's really amazing that you figured so much of it out and won [Applause] and that concludes the superintendent's report thank you again so much all right so with that we are going to school board a school board report we don't have any items on
039the agenda this evening so i'll move straight into open time is there anyone that has any questions from the board thank you again mr hurley anyone aj no thank you okay seeing the questions of your district clerk i'm going to move straight into the information items we have a first read tonight on 2120.1 and 2120.4 20.20.4 is a read to rescind that's the existing policy as it is so consider that read rescinded in first read uh policy 2120.1 any comments from the board yes i would like if we could mr sheehan to incorporate some of the good language from 21 20.4 into the new 2120.1 the channels of communication especially because when we wrote when the policy was written way back when email was not a major source of communication and now it is general
040communication has to be included from the language with regards to campus of information and i also would like to make sure that we include the language about the polling places 100 feet and banners and pamphlets and things of that nature and also on the day of election any other comments from the board i believe that encapsulates the discussions okay so mr sheen if we could prepare those comments and then we'll post it as part of a second read that'd be great are there any questions from the public on the first read on 2120.1 21 20.4 see no questions that closes the first read thank you i'm going to move into the action items i'm going to group action i'm going to group items 3.1 to 3.4 may i have a second ballerina discussion singing and
041hearing no discussion and call for the vote all in favor show of hands 5-0 thank you i'm going to take item [Applause] 2.5 to 3.6 together and i have a second [Applause] ballerina discussion on just i just want to thank on 3.6 the volunteer coach uh anthony sporacia who already volunteers a ton of time for this community as the east wilson little league president and now i see he's given even more time back to this community by volunteering for this coaching position so i just want to give a shout out to him and thank him for giving back to the community any other discussion on 3.5 to 3.6 see no further discussion and call for the vote all in favor items past five zero thank you i'm going to take 3.7 by itself may i
042have a second discussion scene and hearing no discussion i'm going to call for the vote all in favor item passes five zero thank you i am going to take items 3.8 to 3.14 3.8 to 3.14 discussion i just want to on item number 3.13 i want to again thank roslyn for participating and sharing this program with us so that once again we're able to work very hard to provide opportunities for all students so thank you for that any other discussion on 3.8 to 3.14 seeing no discussion call for the vote all in favor items past 5-0 thank you i'm going to take items 3.15 and 3.1 uh excuse me just 3.15 by itself [Applause] this is all this year's covert related about the coveted expenses from the end of 1920. covert money right and we're
043using it for the supplies and things of that nature okay thank you right so this was part of the 2.6 that the board decided to hold in the under unreserved designated fund this is uh more of the continuing to be able to spend it any other discussion on the 3.15 see no more discussion on call for the vote all in favor item passes 5-0 thank you so as i mentioned earlier i'm going to pull remove item number 3.16 as it was posted and adrian i'm just going to ask to make sure the minutes uh note that accordingly that was pulled as posted and i'm walking on item number 3.16 a in its place which is a correction on the uh dollar amounts i'm going to ask for a second mr hirsch discussion uh mr stoneway
044if you can just confirm this is once again what this board of education asked central office to do a number of years ago to firm up these teacher codes in the beginning of the school year as opposed to the end could you please clarify for the public yes that's correct so from the time god bless from the time we prepare the budget in march to the time when we settle into the new school year um there's staff that move lanes that receive longevity that haven't received it in the past that move possibly positions so this is the final represent this takes into account the final representation of where all the staff is and puts them in the proper budget codes for the proper amounts all right we appreciate you're doing that and continuing to do
045that because the board felt very strongly wanted to true up those budget code numbers as early in the year as opposed to the end of the year so thank you for that any other discussion on 3.16 a i see no discussion i'm going to call for the vote all in favor item passes 5-0 thank you 3.17 by itself may i have a second mr hersh discussion scene and hearing no discussion and call for the vote all in favor item passes five zero thank you i'm gonna group items three point one eight two three and three three point one eight to three 3.20 together and i have a second miss maggie discussion scene in here no discussion i'm going to call for the vote all in favor items pass by zero thank you i'm going to
046take item 4.1 by itself may i have a second miss maggie discussion scene in here in your discussion and call for the vote all in favor item passes 5-0 thank you i am going to take item number 5.1 by itself may i have a second mr keith discussion certainly would not let uh miss uh kachiki nurse kachiki leave this district without a big shout out and a thank you all our staff do such wonderful things for our children but you know our nurses certainly work equally as hard maybe a little bit more during covet and all the extras that came through those doors so we want to thank mrs kachiki for sticking through us and really what was the early part of the covert certainly hasn't gone away but we appreciate all that she did
047during her 23 years of service with the east wilson school district so we thank her for that any other discussion scene and hearing no discussion quote for the vote all in favor 5-0 we wish you the best thank you i'm going to group [Applause] i'm going to group items 5.2 to 5.6 together may have a second just keef discussion seen in hearing no discussion will call for the vote all in favor items past five zero thank you take uh 6.1 by 6.1 by itself may have a second miss maggie discussion scene in here no discussion will call for the vote all in favor item passes five zero thank you i am going to take 7.1 by itself may have a second just keef discussion scene in here no discussion will call for the vote all
048in favor item passes 5-0 thank you i'm going to take 8.1 by itself may have a second discussion seeing in hearing no discussion call for the vote all in favor may item passes five zero thank you i'm going to group items 9.1 to 9.6 together may have a second [Applause] ballerina discussion seen in hearing no discussion call for the vote all in favor iamb's past zero thank you very much okay that brings us to the second open time would anyone like to approach the board scullyama yeah yes sir good evening i have a curriculum question if i may sure so this past election education was a pretty big deal in this past election and among the points within with within education was critical race theory and i was and it just got me thinking do
049do we teach critical race theory and and if we do how do we present it and what age groups i was just curious what our school district did since it was such a big part of this past election okay um their critical race theory has become a a catch-all phrase defining it so they're the new york state standards for social studies or any of the curriculum in new york state there is no critical race theory um critical race theory was something that um was at a hall it was at a college or a graduate level in el in elementary middle school and high schools there's no curriculum that's critical race theory so it's a term that's that's been bandied around and so it's not taught the social studies framework is taught in terms of american
050history as you know new york state has an initiative that's called culturally responsive sustaining framework and we in the district are looking at it through our committee of parents and teachers and students that look at an affirming environment for all students and all community members who attend and and how that translates into the curriculum that we share the environment that we create um but um the discussion about critical race theory that's out there in the country is is laden and loden with um with things that aren't really part of curriculum or really part of not necessarily any official curriculum or anything that's taught you know in our school district thank you any other questions nope any no further questions i am going to make a motion to adjourn may i have a second thief discussion
051see no discussion on call for the vote all in favor 5-0 wishing everyone a healthy and safe thanksgiving break enjoy your time thank you very much you