001Um, do I have a motion to go out session? So move in favor session regular. Um, I'd like to stand for the pledge of allegiance, please. 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. We don't have reports from um the boardio or the PSA. So, we're going to go right to item number seven, which is our principal's update. And we're going to turn this over. >> Say again. >> I can't do it. >> Agendas. There's no agendas. Well, Dian's away right now, so we've been online. >> Yes. >> Yep. Good evening. I'm glad to be able to be with you this evening. Um, I'm grateful for the opportunity you gave me to come
002here and work with a very amazing staff and uh 491 very deserving students. So, I want to thank you for that. As I begin, um, I'm proud to be able to share with you tonight a little bit of the direction of Alexander Hamilton over the next year and hopefully for a number of years thereafter as far as keeping this school moving in a direction like this. The district priorities are behind you. There's going to be a bunch of slides coming up behind you. Um, these are the priorities you all came up with. Um, we're going to be focusing on number one tonight. um and really be focusing on academic achievement. We'll start with um graduation rates. As you can see, last year we had a 95% graduation rate, a very respected rate. Um and um
003and you can see it it it maintains uh it's very close to the others throughout, but it's the highest it's been since 2022. But even with a a graduation rate of of 95%, I want to show you the list of schools. We're going to scroll behind you. Take a look at this list. On this list of schools, you'll notice schools that focus on engineering and math. There are schools in the arts. There are schools that focus on science. You'll notice private schools and state schools. There are schools that train for specific fields like culinary arts. There are liberal arts schools which provide a well-roundedness that some of our students desire. There are local schools as well as schools that are all the way across this country. All the way across the country. There are large
004division one schools and small personal division 3 schools. There are religious independent schools and secular state schools. The class of 2025 is attending these schools because of the opportunities you gave them. The opportunities that were provided by Holmes for USF team. Our teachers did a fine job preparing them and our guidance counselors did a fine job guiding them and packaging them. These achievements should be acknowledged, celebrated, and built upon. As I began the school year with the faculty, I began with a fable, a lesson with a specific message. Have any of you heard of the fable of the fox and the hedgehog? A hedgehog. The fox was a very cunning and clever creature, one whose main goal was to eat the hedgehog for lunch. He devised a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks on
005the hedgehog. And it seemed very probable that this fast, sleek, and craftsman fox would surely get his way. Day after day, the fox circled around the hedgehog's den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. When the attack finally occurred, the hedgehog, sensing danger, looked up and said, "Here, here we go again. Will that fox ever learn?" So the fox, excuse me. So the hedgehog rolled up into a perfect little ball, becoming a spear of sharp spikes. The fox, seeing the hedgehog's defense, called off the attack and retreated [clears throat] to the forest to calculate a new line of attack. Every day, some virgin version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox took place. And despite the greater plane of the fox, the hedgehog always won. This is what Jim Collins in the book
006Good to Great calls the hedgehog concept. He says that many organizations are like foxes. They pursue many ends at the same time. They are scattered, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying theme. Collins goes on to say that truly great organizations are like hedgehogs. They simplify the complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything they do. They reduce all challenges and dilemmas to simple almost simplistic ideas. Hedgehogs see what is essential and ignore the rest. We have to be like hedgehogs, focusing only on what we really need to do and do it well. There's a quote by Archilicus up there that says, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." That's from the 7th century BC. This is not
007a new [clears throat] concept. So, what is Al Alexander Hamilton's one big thing? Since January, I've asked teachers, I've asked the department chairs, I talked to administrators, I've talked to the Eastchester Teachers Association. And the question was, as I got here, where should we be spending our time? Where should we focus moving forward? What's our one big thing? I put together something I heard repeatedly by parents, by teachers, and by administrators, and I basically put it into one sentence. This is what I heard them say. I call it the Hamilton Promise, but this is what we're this is what we're looking at this year. We promise to prepare [clears throat] our students for a life of impact through an innovative and exemplary education rooted in scholarship and character. What's our overachieving what's our overachieving goal
008or overarching goal this year rather? to prepare our students for a life of impact to prepare them for life beyond Hamilton. So, how do we define life beyond Hamilton? For our seventh and eighth graders, we're actually defining that as getting them ready for high school, right? For our high school students, it's preparing them for college. It's preparing them um for work, and then it's preparing them for life in community after that. That's how we're defining a life of impact for them. Now, we don't want them just to live, right? We want them to be impactful. So, how do we define impact? It's not just personal success. It's personal success plus other things. It's not merely about our education or about our career or about what we acquire or have. It's also about how we better
009others as we walk through life. Words like purpose, contribution, relationship, and legacy define an impactful life. So, what do we teach and model in order for our students to become people of impact? That's at the end of that sentence. It's scholarship and character. Those are our areas of focus. That's the hedgehog. Those two things, scholarship and character. Does that sound familiar? Question for you. Do you know what that is? Knowledge is indeed that which next to virtue truly and essentially raises one man above another or in our case, one person above another. Does anybody know what that is? anyone. >> Thank you. As you go out tonight, look above the front door Alexander Hamilton. Etched in stone are those words. So the concepts of knowledge and virtue or scholarship and character are chiseled in stone
010right above the front door of the building. This is not a new concept. The hedgehog concept the 7th century BC. This is all what education has been about since that point and that's that's what our focus needs to be. We spent um the first few weeks uh with the staff defining scholarship and character. All of them participated in this conversation. All of them were part of this. There were a number of groups. They all put down what they thought scholarship and character were. We put it into the computer and AI helped us synthesize everything. and come up with that and these are the thoughts of the staff. The pursuit of knowledge through study, research and critical thinking. It involves deep understanding fueled and driven by motivation, continuous effort and curiosity. The great definition, we should
011copyright it and market it, right? It's a beautiful definition of scholarship. We've done a number of things thus far on the focus of our of on our hedgehog focus on scholarship. And before I get to that, I want to share with you a few statistics. This is on the previous year. It was 2023 24. And I can the bottom of that slide shows some data from 2025. All of the data is not in yet, but I can show you that in looking at the 3 through eight, English language arts results in grade seven and grade 8 were in the mid to high 30% range as far as um proficiency. And that's again in seventh and eighth grade. This this past year we were in the 52 to 53% pass rate um proficiency rate. That's an
012increase for us in grades 7 and 8. In math, in grades 3 through 8, we're basically holding between 35 and 41. This year, we're at 38. It's pretty consistent. Um, all of all of the data we're looking at. The question is, how can we do more? Right? That's going to be the question that's always asked, even if it's a significantly higher number, it's like how can we get more students um to that level? If you look at the regent exam in ELA, this is the regent level. Um, at the the previous year, uh, 2324, we had an 85% proficiency level. Um, that's that's passing the exam. This past June, uh, we had 72.7% pass. It's a decrease. Um, that's something we'll be talking about in a minute. That's something we're actually looking at, um, and
013have been looking at. If you look at the algebra one regents exam in June, um last year we were at 33% proficient. This year we're at 46% proficient. That's an increase of 13%. However, the question still remains, how do we continually improve on that? We started um taking a look at this concept of of scholarship and the first thing we looked at um so you know is there's an there's a new course catalog. This is something that you're going to have for decades. Um did that we did that over the we did that before the summer with the department chairs and with Miss Vardis. That's something that is foundational [clears throat] to any excellent school. You need that. We now have that and that's something that is going to be built upon and used year
014in and year out. Um, and it'll just take minor modifications as we go on. You'll see that in a new course catalog there are a number of new classes. We've added we've added a journalism class in the English department. We added Python and computer science. All of the engineering classes have been totally re revitalized and revamped. um a great great program that that our community has really supported. There are right now currently four new art classes that are running and two new music classes that are coming. When you talk STEM, when you talk STEAM, that's what you see um as far as our movement just in a year. Um and our and our teachers have been driving this based on their interest and based on their experience and their knowledge. and also the students are
015voting with their feet in choosing these particular courses of interest to them. So, we added new courses. You'll also see up there, these are the AP classes that we offer on the top of the slide. Um, opportunities for our students to excel. There are additional courses on the bottom of the slide. Those are classes that we don't offer in the classroom here, but some of our students have challenged. They took those last year. some of our seniors took those last year before going on to college, self-study and then take the exam. Um these the slide that you see up there now are classes that are offered for college credit. All of these classes now there are ATP classes those are not guaranteed credit for students. These are um some of them with the asterisk the
016classes um that you can also have dual enrollment with Westchester Community College. So if they pass the class here, that's an immediate three or four credits at Westchester. All right, that's on that's on assuming transcript that can go anywhere. Um and a lot of our students are taking advantage of that. The um that's that's one of the things we've done in relation to scholarship. Another thing that we've done in relation to scholarship is our last superintendent's conference day. um as as I said to you in looking at the statistics there's always the question of what else can we do right that has to be that has to be a foundational question of any successful institution you want to do more and you want to do better um what we did on the professional development day
017is we focus as a building by department grade 7 through 12 in looking at our region's results from June we have access to those results through the Department of Education. Our department chairs led conversations with the teachers specifically about the questions on each exam. They were able to see which questions our school did well in percentage-wise. They were able to drill down to see which questions our school didn't do well on percentage- wise. They were able to go further down and and look incrementally at each individual student to see which questions they got right, which choice answers they chose. And the departments were able to start formulating ideas of where did our kids do really well, where didn't they do well, why didn't they do well, what can we do as a staff to change
018that. Incredible start. Now, that wasn't just the teacher that's teaching a regent exam. That was the entire department. Because the thought is it's not the it's not the objective or the responsibility it's not the responsibility of that particular teacher to get that particular student to pass the exam. It's all of our responsibilities. So how do we give them the skills starting in grade seven and the [clears throat] content starting in grade seven, building upon it in grade 8, building upon it further until the year that they have to take the test. and the teachers had such rich conversations on that and they're all pulling in the same direction. Those conversations are going to continue to help our students um get where they need to go. Another thing um that has happened is we we're additionally
019looking at providing support classes um beginning very shortly um because what we're going to be doing is helping some of our particularly seniors who need to succeed on the on regions exams in January. We're going to be offering classes for those students with teachers who have experience in teaching those classes or preparing for the exams to help those students get to the point where they're succeeding on the tests and then consequently graduating. We're we're going to um work really hard at that. that's in process and um we'll be in place in the in the next week or so um because now is the time to start that uh conversation with students and start building momentum for them through preparation for the exams in January. Another thing we'll be looking at related to scholarship this year
020is um there is a new portrait of a graduate. Um what is our graduate going to look like? How are we going to define it in the next few years? That's another conversation that's occurring at the state level. It's starting to occur at district levels. Um to be honest, districts are waiting for a little bit more guidance from the state because they just sort of plot the not notion on districts without much guidance. There should be more coming out um this year in relation to that. The first hedgehog concept is scholarship. The second one is character. And the values that are listed there include honesty, kindness, fairness, accountability, trustworthiness, resilience, respect. I love the last line. This is this is what the teachers came up with. It's [clears throat] doing the right thing even when
021no one's watching. Is that not what we want? Um, how do we do this? see and I'll I'll share with you something that I have shared with students. This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. Um it's by Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, the second president, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. Um I would say that she was smarter than both of them and at the time would have been president had that been something that was invoked. She said this to her son John Quincy right before he was leaving college. She said, "Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value in small estimation unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them." What is she saying? Doesn't matter how
022smart you are, unless you have virtue. That's what is said on the top of the building. Right? We have lots of people in this world that are smart who add very little to those around them. We want our kids not to be like that. We want our kids to be impactful. And how do we do that? The best way to build character is in conjunction in conjunction with the home and with the parents because that's very important is for teachers to model it is for teachers to nurture it. Um, it's also built really well outside the classroom. It happens tremendously well in athletics. It happens tremendously well uh through our clubs and activities. That's where they really learn a lot about character. I'll show you an example of it. You may know that guy. He's
023not here tonight. Um, that's our class president. Um, this is an example of character after our homecoming dance a couple weeks ago where we had over 80 students in attendance. From what the kids have said and the the adults have said, it was the biggest dance we've had here. When I tell you, and I've done this a long time, it is the best high school dance I have ever seen. The kids loved it. They enjoyed being together. They enjoyed being with the teachers. Um, they transformed the cafeteria into something I've never seen in a school before, right? And let it be said, I hate high school dances. This was amazing. When it all was over, when all the kids went home, everybody was gone except student government. What did they do? They swept the floors.
024They took out the trash. when they thought nobody was watching because they were showing care for their school and they were and they were giving honor and respect to the custodial staff. That's what we want for all of our kids in every aspect of life. How are we trying to do this? Um through our one of the ways is through our clubs and activities in the high school in in in the school right now rather. It's actually 7 through 12. There are 18 clubs and activities and we encourage our students to get involved in at least one to get a connection to school and to build on what we're talking about with this hedgehog concept. You'd be happy to know that this year our charge to each of the clubs and activities is to perform
025some type of benevolent activity for the school, for the community, or for younger grades. This all leads to character. Um, Miss Vargas is overseeing this whole process. Um, she developed a club and activity guide um, which is rich and was given to the kids at the beginning of the of the school year. We had a club fair at the beginning of the school year in order to get and encourage students to get involved. Um, and she's also working closely with the adviserss to build their mission and support our students. As as I close, I I want to I want to tell you this is going to be our focus. It's totally on scholarship and character. Anything other than that is outside our purview. Anything outside of that is not is not where we should be
026spending our energy. If we do this well, our kids will thrive. If we do this well, our kids will become people that are um appreciated by others. Um thank you for the time tonight. It's I really appreciate the ability to speak with you and as I said to you before um I really appreciate the opportunity to work with our children here at Alison Hamilton. [applause] Thank you very much. I really appreciate that presentation. U hopefully everyone else did and whoever didn't see it, hopefully they can go on the website and certainly look that because um I think that's a great mission for our kids to look forward to. Um character is something that I think everyone should display and should come from the house. I agree. um coordination with our school district. Um it's just
027one of those things that you know I don't think anything else matters if you don't have virtue of car to go along with it. So thank you very much for the presentation. Uh I hope the president's comments on the uh on the program and the pathway I'm really impressed and you know it makes me proud as an alum to see the direction the school's going. So, thank you for all your work and your team and all the teachers and everyone. Just one thing I didn't notice up there that I was wondering if we're working on is uh an internship program for the seniors. I know some student some schools have that as part of their senior uh curriculum and I think that really helps get people ready for the workplace. So, just a question. >>
028I can answer that. Um yes. Um it's it's something that we will be discussing. It's It's not um I It's something I had in my last district and it's very very very worthwhile. Um I will say this is going to take a lot of planning and a lot of small steps. Um we want to do it and we want to do it well and we want to do it the right way. I I would say I would say it's a couple steps down the road um because there are some other things that have to come first. Um but yes, it's it's definitely something that we have to work toward and we will be. >> That's great. One of the things has working for it, we do have a number of large corporations, uh, offices, companies
029that are really within reach and could really catapult uh, success for our students if they're, you know, in introduced to that environment. So, I'm glad to be working. Another thing, it's not just the big companies though. A lot of it is the smaller companies in town or in the local area because if if if there are individuals that are able even able to take one student if it meets an area of interest for that student um it's something that can be very powerful. Yeah, it the internship program and internship possibilities um if the students are ready for them academically then that that's something that's something that can be really explored and really blown up. It will take some time though. >> Great. Ready? >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, we're going to move to uh
030number eight, superintendent reports. >> Thank you, Dr. Kawano, for your presentation this evening. Uh I have quite a few announceers. I'm going to embed between uh our student government president who's also our exeicio of the board, Angel Codalgo, could not uh join us this evening because they have an event uh for the football team. So, we're going to miss Angel, but he also has given us a couple of updates as well as we have updates from the PTSA. So, I will be trying to do both and I hope I can do a decent job. So, we had a great day of learning and fun for our Grady students. uh staff from Regeneron participated in the company's day of giving and visited the school and shared some great fun artistic inspiring STEM activities from the Westchester
031Children's Museum. So we thank um Regen for this wonderful opportunity that they provide for us every year. We also want to uh just note that we had a wonderful holiday Halloween parade and we thank especially uh Mayor Bob Williams and police commissioner Steven Foster who are master of ceremonies as well as the police fire uh EMS and village council for supporting this annual event. Um, we thank also our SRO's uh Kaldi and SRO uh Rajarski who was also a part of this parade and we had such a great time. All of our kindergarten through sixth grade students celebrated with festive costumes and we thank all of our staff who shaped and have participated in the parade. We also have another special event that happened. We had a Dixon guest reader and that guest reader was
032our own parent David Bwell who read portions of his book Ruthie for the people saving friendship um tree and we thank Mr. Bwell for sharing this book and reading to our students. We also want to uh just say that uh again we want to acknowledge Angelavo and the entire student government for the annual homecoming dance and I was there as well as Dr. Capuano and uh we thank all of our um chaperones who were there that evening as well while um and we want to just say that this event is an event where students have an opportunity to really celebrate in many different um different ways but we also had a wonderful homecoming activity studentled activity day as well that was wonderful as um on this day we have upcoming um as well as we
033want to acknowledge today that Alexander Hamilton High School had their annual Hispanic heritage celebration assembly that was organized by the Beach Club and it started with a parade of flags and original piano compositions, bilingual poem that was original as well as history of flags from different nations. Uh a guitar and bass performances, art presentations, chorus and dance presentations. And we thank our many students who coordinated and presented a thoughtful and celebratory assembly. We especially thank Mrs. Orisa Vargas um who's here this evening, Dr. Jeff Papuano, Mr. Brown, Madagar, Miss Doolittle, Mr. Molina, Miss Balden, and everyone on our staff. I'm sure I left someone off who contributed to this wonderful day um activity day. We also want to mention that we have the annual Thanksgiving food drive that is being coordinated by Mrs. Mazinski at
034Grady Elementary School and the students of the National Honor Society are working to bring healthy non-p perishable food donations so that we can have um items that we would request are donated such as rice, soup, beans, canned vegetables, stuffing mix, canned gravy, and all of these healthy non um non-p perishable food donations can be dropped off at Brady from November 12th through to 24th. and they will be used to um create wonderful gift baskets for those that are in need. We also want to say that our Ellsworth PTSA is having their annual turkey truck and they're asking you to dress up like a turkey and shake a tail, father, on Saturday, November 22nd from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Alice Era. Um the event will have feature raffles, cake crafts, a hot cocoa bar,
035and a coffee station for all. and you can register just for $10 or $35 for a family of four or more. Um, we are also asking that you bring canned and box food donations which we will have at the Turkey Trot and every contribution helps make a difference for our community. Uh, also we have a book fair, a scholastic book fair that's being led by the PTSA at Alice Grady and scholars will have a chance to explore and read uh many many books that are being offered through this fair. We thank the PTSA which will be happening Wednesday, November 12th uh through Friday, November 14th. Uh we really encourage families to participate um and there are flyers and uh and e-wallet flyers available. We also have another opportunity for parents on through uh the PTSA
036to contribute to the Dixon PTSA delicious Cory's pickle fundraiser. So pickle purchases will help fund a sweetheart dance at Dixon in February. And this is an off an opportunity to also um pick up items that are pickled by the court. pickled vegetables in glass jars, sauerkraut, beets, you name it. Um, and make sure that you have that back by November 25th. And these are the updates for today. Thank you. Thank you um for that. And everyone go get your pickles. Um, all right. So, uh, let's move on to number nine, approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Second. All fosion carries. Um we're going to have recognition of the audience. It's a 20 minute session, 3 minutes per person. Um and uh we'll open that. There's nobody here.