F-M BOE Meeting for Monday, September 13, 2021.

001too here's the response to the 1920s page two hey bill bill we're live i'll call a meeting to order thank you all for coming please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice first item on the agenda item 1.03 or next item is approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda this evening thank you sherry in a second from kelly any discussion of the agenda all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 1.04 oath of allegiance to our new student board member miss hannah fagle sarah please raise your right hand and

002repeat after me i do solemnly swear i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge and that i will faithfully discharge according to the best of my ability the duties of the office of ex-officio board of education member the duties of office of ex-officio office members of the faithful manly essential school district of the fayetteville manlia central school district congratulations [Applause] thank you and welcome hannah next on the agenda item 2.01 fm high school future future capital project update dr teice certainly thank you president mims as you know our facilities committee recently

003met last week on september 8th and wanted to in preparation for a potential capital project that we have talked about a number of times in advance of tonight that could quite possibly be put on the agenda for public referendum in early december we wanted to be able to answer any final questions that the board may have you will see that in your board docs that i have put the slide deck from the architectural presentation different individuals were able to reorganize their schedule to be here this evening so i certainly appreciate our construction manager lachaise had a dual conflict with another school district in central new york our architect king and king is here and certainly dr kilmer had other obligations and rearranged his schedule to answer any questions about programmatic updates that the board might

004have the reason the facilities committee and mr seidberg is chair can jump in here at any time the reason the facilities committee wanted to do this is if you notice in board docs under the vote calendar we have a pretty rigorous schedule coming up in terms of our communication plan that we met with our capital region boces communication team beginning with parent council on october 1st but as you can see for the bottom you have to take official action on the seeker at the october 4th board meeting and approve the legal notice so mr furlong has been working with bond council legal counsel to prepare that my understanding is from our district clerk the efa right the environmental excuse me eaf environmental assessment form just came back prior to the facilities committee meeting and you

005have to review that prior to the seeker approval we will have to hit the newspapers going forward certainly appointing the election inspectors getting ready for the absentee ballots and so forth so i think what caused the facilities committee to want to review this one last time and to make sure there was clarity among the entire board is just with the curriculum nights that are coming up the open houses a chance to put the easels that you see on the back of the room with the foam boards to get them out in public view a little bit cart before the horse we certainly can cover up the specifics for the vote until that vote uh takes place by the board again but i think the idea is to be totally transparent going forward and it's a

006pretty ambitious schedule between now and early december when the vote could quite possibly go to the public mr seidberg do you want to add to that sure so thank you um i mean that recaps most of what we talked about pretty succinctly but you know like dr ty said that there's a really short time frame between what would be the october meeting and the vote day and the thought process and discussion that we had was we know that this has been a very deliberate process that we've talked about internally for a very long time but we certainly in the in the spirit of transparency don't want to have it perceived in any sense that it's being rushed between october and december so getting the the posters out the information out about it even in advance

007of the october meeting lengthens this time frame of public discussion on this project and and you know that the vote dates are on the materials that are going out it's not been formally approved it wouldn't be probably until after the october meeting but we thought it would be best to put that out if something happens between now and october and the date changes we can always announce a change but that there was no reason to sit on this until after october it's it's moving forward it's been very deliberate and when we intend for it to continue to be very deliberate and certainly inclusive of the community it's a huge project we know that because we've talked about it but just to reiterate probably the most important piece of this project is the fact that the

008height it's all high school focused and the high school is the one building in this district through which every single student will pass so this is a project that will beneficially impact every single student that passes through this district now and for a great many of years afterwards so we want to make sure that this is being done openly transparently with as much time for public consideration as possible any other members of the facilities committee would like to add to that i know that certainly our construction manager architect dr kilmer talking about programmatic updates for any members of the board that may have questions i know mr furlong you handed out updated financials i mean current this is a work in progress as we keep moving forward so is there anything you wanted to share

009with the board so each board member should have a one page handout in front of them basically all we did was update our financials based on the most current information available since the board had adopted the tax levy this past month and since we had other information available to us we wanted to go back and take a harder look at the numbers so starting at the top the project cost is 52 million like we had talked about in the past the capital reserve though is a little bit higher than what we had talked about at 7.2 million dollars so the total amount that would be borrowed would be 44.8 million dollars the state building aid ratio has remained the same which is 80.3 percent so for those of you in the audience for every dollar

010we spend we get 80 cents on the dollar back not only principal payment but interest as well the bond percentage remained at 64.3 percent and the other assumptions that we had are listed below including the assumed interest rate the length of the bond issue which most of this is going to be renovation work so it'll be a 15-year bond issue we also based the estimate on growth in the tax base and in the tax levy so based upon those numbers we get to the bottom part and it is also important to note that we have a significant amount of debt falling off both in the 23 24 and the 24 25 school years it's about 375 000 a local share which helps offset the tax impact to based on this project so the bolded section

011is really the estimated tax rate calculation based on those assumptions above this is using the same approach that our financial advisor uses i call it a fair market value approach which basically they calculate what the annual local share is going to be and they divide it by the tax base to get a rate per thousand and as you can see that increase is 1.89 percent uh amounts to a little bit less than 48 cents per thousand and we've always taken a look at what does that mean on a hundred thousand dollars of taxable uh value and it's forty seven dollars and eighty cents a little bit less than what we talked about in the past the other estimate that is below that's not bolded is more of an estimate that i've used in the past

012and it's based on a tax levy approach it shows a little bit lower uh percentage increase of 1.53 or a little bit more than 38 cents per thousand and a hundred thousand dollars of taxable value that's 38.56 now for the sake of putting out conservative numbers we do plan on using the the higher calculation which is the 47.80 number but i think it's also important to note two things uh number one is that this increase is going to be spread over four years so if you looked at that being spread evenly we're talking 11.95 per year increase for a 52 million dollar project the other thing that's important to note is that this increase will not occur until the 24-25 school year so it's well into the future once this project is completed and we

013do anticipate that this project is going to take four four years to complete this board have any questions i know i covered a lot of financial information in a hurry some of it is very similar to what we've talked about in the past and some is a little some of it's a little bit different but if you do have any questions i'd be happy to answer them you probably said it it's 11.95 per 100 000. that's correct 11.90 cents per 100 100 000 in taxable value yeah we would probably issue the bond in probably most likely the 23-24 fiscal year so the first payment would be in 24-25 that's correct and to give you some background we you know we did a 25 million dollar note now right now interest rates are very low but

01425 million dollar note for a year was 0.16 percent any other questions thank you mr furlong our consultants construction management or architects like to say a word thank you gary bringing up my notes um one of the questions that came in your conversation was the methodical effort that board has gone through and this committee to get to this point and oftentimes getting to yes requires educating the community as to where you've been so it's a it's a long process as you as a board of education and committee have gone through and sometimes communicating that so that there's not an appearance that why is it all of a sudden if he will where are we going to vote you guys have been engaged in something for over five to six months that we've been a part

015of and prior to that even longer in that same time frame we've had a bulleted approach over 25 items that we developed early on with the committee as to the approach to get to yes to get to that vote section in doing that we've also developed a very methodical estimate that covers the cost of the project it covers a phasing and logistics plan that reflects the cost of today's environment those are the types of details that have taken months to come across and for everyone to engage in and if you will peel the onion a little bit and make sure we can coexist construction with the school district while you still provide education as we turn over and go to the voters and ask them to understand this this has been slowly looked at and

016very methodically looked at because education has to go on and you the district need to be able to provide to the students that will be there some of these children will be involved for a minimum of two years and it's going to have an effect on the things that they will be able to do at times so i think that that's the piece that needs to come out to the public the boards that you have are great to start to explain i know that there's been conversations of potentially a video or maybe another piece of media maybe on the website there's been times other districts where we've been involved with the architect just small smith bites where in the video the architect and us are describing the pieces that we know of that are a

017part of like the design or a part of the phasing and logistics that's another piece that we can see if we can do to add detail to your video i also think that it's important to know that board members and the people on the committee are the most important people to go forward into this community and advocate for this project no one does it better than you it's your project i stand here as a consultant to tell you that having been a board president somewhere else when we had to do it and no one is trusted more than the people that they put on the board so i can tell you that educating you and being here to support you when you go out to the public that's our job to help you but i

018also think that it's something that's really important to make sure that we coalesce and come together as a group and and be able to show that this is the reason why you need this project that's our formula for success um over the years the chase has had a 95 percent rate we do very well with getting positive votes and i stand by that we i think it's a good team effort that we have to look at you guys have done the right things you've taken the time you've looked at it the right way questions no one dr tyson nope thank you gary i appreciate it thank you king and king and dr kilmer anything on programmatic updates this is on so i have not prepared anything formal today um i really came to see if

019you guys have any questions about um the program or the upgrades that are planned for the high school i just want to say it's it's planned to be a very exciting project that is much needed at the high school um i i know myself it impacts me both professionally and at home i have children that will be going through the high school so i am invested in it on multiple levels um some of the major components just to kind of highlight it are the cafeteria work technology and major hvac upgrades throughout the building and this was really identified back when we were planning the wellwood project because we knew that these were the next infrastructure items that really had to be addressed because they were at the end of their serviceable life so there's some

020really exciting program upgrades in the building you guys take chance to look at the boards in the back if you have any questions let me know it is really the same information that we've presented at the previous few board meetings really just highlighted to look at the zones that the work is happening in and color coded for the type of work happening in that area so let us know if you have any questions and that's all i really got any questions okay but can i just if i i wasn't sure what we were going to do tonight in terms of presentation so so thank you all for that and i don't know i don't want to step on dr kilmer's toes if he has anything to add but i there's just a couple of bullets

021that we keep talking about as a committee and we've talked about all the way through and and since the community is engaged in watching these meetings regularly that i want to make sure get hit on tonight as as part of this um so if i can just take a moment on that one is we've talked about improving security at our schools for many years and that's obviously a high priority and that's a big part of this project as well the high school is as most know as a jo was it was it was a joining of two distinct schools and two distinct buildings and we still to this day have this situation where many students are going outside to go inside at the underpass to house one and house two and so a significant piece

022of this project is is closing that in and improving the security for our students and staff by doing so and in the process doing that with it with a really wonderful new collaborative learning space you know not just cafeteria expansion but a really great collaborative learning space that also turns that that whole outdoor area where cars are driving through the central kitchen into an enclosed outdoor atrium learning space that can be used by staff and students and and so the security side of it is really significant and ultimately everything has been driven by programmatic and programmatic impact and if you do look at the boards especially the one that's on the right up at the top almost every part of this building gets touched by this project of improvement of all of the classrooms and

023learning spaces across this building in addition to in a new addition that's being put on the building expanding the the stem and with new technology rooms so there is just it's a large project we know that it's a large dollar number project we know that but it's our biggest building that everybody's in and and it is touching almost all of it to the benefits of the educational program that our staff can deliver to these kids so i just wanted to touch on those two bullets quickly please thank you mr seidberg miss dr kilmer anything dad that again i was asked to be here just to kind of address any questions that people may have had when it comes to programmatic issues but so a couple of things there's not a single piece of fluff in

024this project every part of this project will have a direct impact on students so let's talk about the largest the hvac component is going to improve ventilation heating air conditioning house one house two you have two entirely different systems different vintages that are completely different and so every single classroom will have a benefit there but and what mr cyberg addressed briefly is what we're trying to correct is the problem with the building from the very beginning which is we're trying to create a unified school after working in a school that is really two buildings joined together so from the most basic of trying to bring all offices into a central location so parents and students can find a central place to connect with all services needed you're talking about mental health and counseling services putting

025all of our council services in one area we have counselors psychologists family school liaisons scattered throughout the building this project will help bring them all into one one space connecting the building with that large addition not only improves instructional spaces provides us a larger learning support center that will support students throughout the day improved broadcast journalism studio that we have really been operating out of a basement space since the inception of broadcast journalism here at fayetteville manlius but more importantly creating collaborative spaces that will provide the opportunity for fayetteville malia's high school to finally meet the needs of all of its students you know i think we just talk about eating in a in the cafeteria right now our cafeteria can accommodate 200 students even if i wanted to give every student a lunch we

026would have to start feeding students at 8 30 lunch i would need to have seven it just it's not practical so some of these pieces make us make decisions about our schedule about our process that isn't necessarily most conducive these improvements will help to address those my hope is is that many of these improvements will also lead to changes in how we approach the the basic master schedule this will allow us to incorporate lunches for all students universally by making some slight changes within the master schedule where everyone could ultimately have a break possibly moving the enrichment period to the middle part of the day if we can make some changes with with transportation allowing every student to have not only access again to lunch but also the extra help uh and access to their

027teachers during that activity period along with clubs so every aspect of this project will have a direct impact on every student that walks through those doors and the conversations have been based on not only our current but also former staff but more importantly our current and former students this has been informed by years of conversations about how can we make fm better and i'm excited about a project that could ultimately truly make fm much better questions and i could just add to that i can attest to the fact that you know personally i think the lunch is perhaps one of the most important things for our children because i know firsthand our three kids did not have the experience of having a lunch period and it's through no fault of uh the school it's the

028building and the amount of space that's involved and we talk about mental health which is extremely important but physical health the ability to feed our engines our bodies and uh i think this is one of the key points to this capital project and again the nice thing about lunch is so for someone who's not new to fm so we have an eight period day there are 40 minute periods and students are allowed to choose what they would like to take throughout that day so students have a choice sometimes as to whether or not they want to take a 40-minute lunch or whether or not they want to take an elective and i think it's really important for students to make that choice for themselves as to what type of downtime do they want for themselves

029who am i to say lunch is more important than taking music or taking art a project such as this allows for us to create much shorter lunches and so not making students make a choice students would still be able to fill their schedules with electives that they love again one of the great benefits of a fayetteville manlias high school program is the rich elective programs that we have developed and so this will ultimately support that and support access to our students to take even more electives should they choose so i love that this project seems to will touch every student but seems to touch like every academic area and i was just wondering if you could expand a little bit upon the stem wing project and also what the new learning support center programmatically would

030entail sure so let's start off with the learning support center if you're not familiar with the learning support center that is a program where we have teachers from a variety of academic areas that are in the learning support center and available to support students in homework or projects whatever help they might need and so if they have study hall they have lunch whatever it might be they can go to the learning support center and meet with whichever teachers are there to try to help and support them that is a program that was started a number of years ago and has just grown in popularity and so we're excited about expanding that having a space that's much larger that i think will accommodate more students what was your first question oh the stem wing thank you

031so a big improvement is the addition of the technology wing that would be on the front of the building if you walk into those spaces now those spaces were designed 60 years ago for a typical shop class that no longer exists we have principles of engineering we have aerospace and design even automotive we have a number of different curricula that is being forced to be taught in a facility that does not allow it to reach its potential and it also limits the potential expansion of curricula that can be taught moving forward and so we're really excited about improvements to provide a facility that better meets the curricula that our students want to take and our teachers want to teach moving forward other questions any more questions thank you very much dr kilmer we appreciate it

032well again as you heard if there's any other questions from the board i certainly appreciate everyone here rearranging their schedules on short notice to be here even in spite of other conflicts they wanted you to be comfortable as you can tell they are comfortable from the facilities committee all the way through that this project they do know like the back of their hand they didn't prepare remarks tonight the posters were set up over the summer we are ready to go it is my recommendation to release those posters again not to put the cart before the horse it's out of total respect for the entire board of education and i think i can speak for the facilities committee too we just wanted to bring that to the entire board because we didn't want to be seen

033as being over anxious as excited as we are about this project but that certainly we will await your official action on october 4th but i believe the entire facilities committee doesn't want to hold back we want to get the word out on the street i will direct our communications department to do a follow-up article based on tonight's conversations and so i think that will keep it in front of the public until our formal communications plan starts on october 1st with parent council and runs all the way through to the projected vote date in early december i think that's a great idea and i also want to thank our architects and chase and everyone for coming out and how much work you've all have put into this project and christine and nancy of course for their

034work um as well so thank you all very much your wife have a good evening next on the agenda item 3.01 public comment we do have some folks for public comment tonight i would remind everyone you have there is three minutes per person um difficult for we're gonna have people come down to the podium so it will be difficult for people to see a sign so i will just let you know when you're at your halfway mark and then when your time has is over so just one second and i apologize if i do mispronounce anyone's name melissa whips just one second before you start please okay all set okay thank you um good evening dr thais members of the board members of the community thank you for letting me just take a couple of

035minutes to come and speak specifically in support of the district's dei work i was very happy to see the information that came out and the policy that came out i think it's a strong policy and i'm very much in favor of it i am the parent of two well wellwood middle school students but i'm actually here tonight as a 20-year professional in higher education i want to speak a little bit to preparing our students i know that one of the things that fm does so well is prepare our students for college and to prepare them for the world and we're so proud of that and how well they do academically and i can tell you that being in higher ed for 20 years that landscape has changed it has changed dramatically and drastically and we

036do our students a disservice if we don't prepare them for it every school that our students will go to every single one right now has a dei policy most of them have a cdo a chief diversity officer universities are prioritizing this they're interested in it and our students need to understand where those universities and where those institutions are coming from or they're going to run into trouble that they don't even they don't even anticipate and i think this is true for the working world as well i went on a couple websites today google dei policy pricewaterhousecooper lockheed martin it's hard to find a company anymore that isn't saying this is important for jobs now it's not unusual to have to write a dei statement or to be asked how do you support diversity equity and

037inclusion in your work [Music] it's important when you work in teams no matter what industry you're in the world doesn't look like it used to look and the workforce doesn't look like it used to look and with most universities coming at 25 to 30 percent underrepresented minorities they don't look like what they used to look like either there are programs and majors at syracuse university right now that have 75 international students we need to prepare our students to go out into that world and to succeed and to thrive and if we don't teach them how to do that here starting in kindergarten um then they're going to be really confused when they get out and they're going to be behind because every place they go is more diverse than fayetteville manliness and most people they're

038with will have grown up in a place that's more diverse than fayetteville manliness and if we can't you know we're not going to snap our fingers and change the the makeup of our community and i'm not saying that we should but we need them to at least prepare them to succeed in that world so if i have any time i seed it and thank you for listening to my comments thank you very much peter capers good evening members of the board dr teis members of the community thank you for allowing me to speak today i'm going to echo a lot of the comments that were just made our community really here is not all that is pretty homogeneous when it comes to diversity you know but the colleges our kids attend are not the places

039they're going to work or not and to the point just made we're really going to need to prepare our kids to be part of a bigger broader community than our own that means attracting and retaining a more diverse set of teachers and staff that means helping our kids to see the world through the eyes of others but it doesn't mean apologizing for who we are the concepts of diversity equity and inclusion in my mind recognize that each and every one of us is different has something to teach others and has something to learn from others it's this approach to dei that i believe this administration is seeking to pro to pursue i wholeheartedly and firmly support your efforts thank you thank you rebecca sheriff good evening let me begin by saying that i understand firsthand

040the difficult task of being a member of the school board because i served a term sometimes we have to make decisions that we may disagree with but we know are in the best interest of the district the recent decision dr teiss made to reject the mental health resources being offered by the county is not one of those times this decision is not in the best interest of the district and certainly not in the best interest of our students or our counselors a 2020 survey by the american foundation of suicide prevention found that 56 of students said they were moderately very or extremely worried about their mental health half of all students reported experiencing anxiety one-third had depression and almost a quarter said they knew someone with suicidal thoughts since the pandemic began and the data

041that is readily available by local pediatricians specifically dr robert draker confirms the current trend is disturbing antidepressant and anti-prescript anti-anxiety prescriptions are at an all-time high among our youth and suicide rates and attempts are climbing this epidemic among kids is the reason the county has dedicated over five and a half million dollars to mental health resources for school districts fm has lost students to suicide either while still at fm or during their college years anxiety is now one of the top issues our kids and pediatricians are attempting to cope with according to dr draker kids are much more likely to seek help if those services are readily available and accessible in school rather than having to rely on a parent not all kids have that comfort level with their parents and sometimes it's the parents

042that are contributing to that anxiety and depression sometimes it's a genetic vulnerability other times it may be due to academic pressures unstable home environments eating disorder sexual assault identity issues or bullying which unfortunately is rampant at fm dr teice recently sent out an email stating that we have all the resources we need as far as mental health services for our students including counselors and other health professionals he also went on to give reasons as to why those resources were rejected some of which were disingenuous as best i happened to work for the county and asked my colleague anne rooney the deputy county executive for human services and the one spearheading this initiative for clarification on the information presented by dr tice in that email apparently dr thais must have misunderstood the information they presented or

043misrepresented the information to parents anyone can call the county and speak to anne about this initiative and get more information about it she is happy to answer anybody's questions the counselors at the high school are viewed as academic counselors by most students they shouldn't be expected to wear the hat of both academic counselor and mental health therapists they're already spread thin it's unfair and unrealistic to ask this of them rejecting these services only adds to the stigma already associated with mental health issues most of you up there have kids rebecca they're still in school three minutes thank you very much imagine having to bury your child three minutes not due to disease or a motor vehicle accident but because they were in such a dark place taking their own life was the only option they

044felt they rebecca where is everyone imaginable thank you sarah is it prowl probably probably sorry thank you hello and uh thanks for serving your community on what no doubt is has been a very stressful time i appreciate it i'm speaking tonight to also voice my support for the dei initiatives that you've announced and to express my interest in learning more about your implementation plan i grew up in a small very homogeneous town not unlike fayetteville in new hampshire on the shores of lake winnipesaukee the lake was named after a native american tribe but i never really learned about that tribe or really any others in my social studies classes and as much as i loved those classes they left a lot out fortunately i had parents who were very eager to teach me about the

045good the bad and the ugly about our history so they helped to fill in some of those gaps for me but it's a job of public education not just parents to expose our children to the complicated history of this country to encourage them to ask tough questions and to give them tools for living in a diverse society after all we are training democratic citizens in addition to preparing our children for their careers some of the people who have voiced concerns about the dei initiatives in the last several months have suggested that our children cannot handle the truth about racism in this country they worry that the white students will feel guilty or shamed and to them i would say please have more faith in our children they can handle it many in fact are eager

046to engage with these issues and i know this because i teach public policy at syracuse university and have seen firsthand how thoughtful my students are really becoming around issues of race i did an assignment last year and many of them both black and white students chose to look at policy problems with that had unjust racial impacts they wanted to learn more about racial injustice but they also wanted to do something about it they were eager to get their hands dirty to try to find practical solutions to fix some of the problems in this country so let's help them get there by giving them the foundational education that they really deserve and that they need i'd like to close by saying that i support all the dei initiatives that you've listed but i'm particularly interested in

047the curriculum audit that you will be conducting and i have some questions about it that i hope i can get answers to at some point who's going to conduct the audit and how transparent will that process be will you ask from in for input from parents students curriculum experts and others how will the results of that audit be shared with the community what is the time frame for conducting the audit and proposing curriculum changes and implementing those changes i hope that the audit process is rigorous and that it results in real substantive changes thank you thank you heather heather i was hoping that i wouldn't have to go first and now i'm like fourth um anyway uh thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you tonight it's nice to meet all of

048you um i want to thank you for being a school board that promotes diversity equity and inclusion before the school year started i'm very grateful i was able to read the statements by dr tice and see the steps being taken to learn how the district can better serve the community as a whole um sorry my twins just started kindergarten at enders and this is my first experience with school ever i was homeschooled out of my parents fear the fear of me learning anything that went against our extremely conservative beliefs i was raised to be racist essentially i was taught that families who believed and looked like mine should have as many children as possible so that we could remain as the majority in the u.s because a diverse majority scared us i was taught and

049i quote from my homeschool curriculum in a democracy such as the u.s has become the balance of representing god and constituents is destroyed by the concern for majority rule and minority rights for too many years i believe this i believe that as a white american i had all the answers then if everyone would just follow the rules and worship like i did their problems would disappear my privilege was blinding and still working to overcome my own bias having this lack of diverse education i had a mass culture shock when i became a paramedic and realized dei affects every aspect of my job i didn't know that my attitudes behaviors beliefs and actions or lack thereof were dangerous learning to change that mindset is uncomfortable and i get it i had to unlearn an entire lifetime

050of education i was taught to refuse to acknowledge gender identity and treat love outside of marriage between a cisgendered man and woman as a sin my two sisters-in-law are trans i was raised to hate the woman women i now call my sisters and i thank you for giving my children a vastly different outlook on the world my daughter came home yesterday thrilled because her class made crowns and the teacher let anyone pick any crown not just assigning kings to boys and queens to girls my daughter said she wished auntie mallory could have had gone could have gone to a school like that because then she wouldn't have had feel bad about who she is for her whole life although this district's taken many steps towards dei it's clear there's still a long way to go

051i had my dei and my in this house we believe et cetera et cetera signed stolen from my front yard last week so hatred still exists all around us but i'm very grateful to begin my twins and my school experience in a school that believes that the world needs kindness so thank you for fervently implementing dei into this community thank you for doing that thank you anne marie [Laughter] how do you say it emery janina okay i'm going to read from this and i have cognitive issues so just be gentle with me thank you school board dr thais for letting us all speak i'm going to be speaking about the mental health clinic i want to start this off by saying that i'm both a mental health advocate i am employed by nami national alliance

052of mental illness and i sit on the board of the american foundation of suicide prevention i'm trained in crisis assessing risk level and the fact that i'm about to say are all based on those organizations 130 people will die today by suicide one in a thousand of them are children from the ages excuse me one in one hundred and thousand of these are children from the ages of 10 to 14 die every single year by suicide suicide is the second leading cause of death among children from the ages of 10 to 25 in the united states of america 11.8 percent of young adults aged 18 to 25 and 18.8 percent of high school students have had serious thoughts of suicide high school students with significant symptoms of depression are more than twice likely to drop

053out compared to their peers students aged six to seven with mental and emotional behavioral concerns are three times more likely to repeat a grade fifty percent of all lifetime mental illness begins at age fourteen and 75 percent by 24. lesbian gay bisexual youths are four times more likely to attempt suicide than the straight youth the overall suicide rate in the u.s has increased by 35 percent since 1999 and we don't know the ramifications yet of what covett will play into that saying we haven't have this space puts value on how we're prioritizing mental health this statement perpetuates the stigma sends a direct message to the kids yes i'm not naive parents have the responsibility to be proactive in their kids mental and physical health but as a community so are we it's our problem together

054we need to be educating teachers administrators staff and a whole on how to use safe language and what to do in a crisis every person that says i want to kill myself needs to be taken seriously the kids need real tools and solutions to help them and their friends we all talk about warning signs but what about those kids who had no warning signs as depression deepens and takes over the body and mind the pain of depression becomes overwhelming the chemical imbalancement and steep despair can lead to the brain telling you that the only way to end this pain is through death this is when suicidal thinking begins depressive illness can distort thinking such that a person can't think clearly or rationally the illness can be thought of hopeless and helpless which leads to suicidal

055thoughts educating people about depression as an illness and anxiety helps understand how to we can get to the solution these kids need a place that they can rely on with trained professionals using the correct language for my own work i can tell you that i've interviewed plenty of fm students and local schools abroad and everyone has said to me they were never taught what to do if a friend is in crisis or if they are that's an epic fail for our community our educational system and our society on an extremely personal note memory we're at three minutes okay can i leave with one last comment i'm also speaking from experience i'm a two-time suicide survivor that never had any help at school i can't see another kid funeral thank you very much landon is that

056correct oh okay two fairly easy syllables uh i'm nagesh nagesh rao and i'm a father of two my oldest son has just joined kindergarten at ender's road very excited about that and my younger son is going to be going through the school system as well so uh first of all thank you members of the board and uh community members letting me speak here i'm here to speak um like others have in uh in favor and support of the dei initiatives um but most of what i wanted to say has already been said so i'm going to i'm going to try to keep my comments relatively brief to talk about one aspect of this that i find quite uh difficult to understand when i hear from community members on social media or you know in conversations

057and so on the idea that um dei initiatives and you know the the current sort of bogeyman critical race theory uh would somehow make white students feel ashamed and guilty and so on i want to speak from my experience as someone who's been teaching students teaching at the college level for 20 plus years 30 years now and i want to talk about how anti-racist education is empowering not just for students of color but for white students as well when when students enter my classes um not having had any exposure to anti uh to a robust anti-racist uh education it's telling and the tell-tale signs are a sort of almost a sense of despair or no paralysis really when it comes to talking about issues of race and racism and so on because for most of

058them they don't for those who haven't had a good anti-racist education uh uh the the prevalence and the persistence of racism appears as a kind of mystery as something that's um that's unsolvable uh because it's unexplainable they're not able to actually understand why it exists and and and so on so they resort to [Music] explanations that reinforce racism they resort to explanations that either presume that prejudice is somehow inborn inherent or that the you know the the oppressed status of the other person is somehow a result of their own inborn inherent traits which is replicating race uh racist thinking and racialized thinking on the other hand when they are exposed to theories and histories and and an understanding of the of racism as coming out of you know a complex history which has established certain

059institutions and structures and society that perpetuate these forms of oppression and discrimination it's actually empowering even to white students to understand a that these are structural not natural and therefore they can be changed and b that if you actually look at the history anti-racist struggles have involved people of all colors that white people have actually been involved quite vigorously in anti-racist struggles that can be empowering to people sorry professor and so i think that's that's a piece that i think we need to keep in mind um when we're talking about this thank you very much all right next on the agenda item 4.01 the board president's report they have a board retreat coming up on september 20th the agenda for that is to finish with the superintendent's evaluation and goals and if we do have

060time to do board goals at that time that's september 20th location to be announced high school lgi thank you sarah um yes six o'clock i'm sorry okay we are still looking at our dates and time for the book study um the equity book study that's still something that's being worked out so we'll we'll have dates for that later on um you know we have received a number of emails from members of the community and we obviously had some folks who spoke tonight in regards to the mental health issues and the mental health funding through the county so the um i did want to address that the board is has read all of those and we are planning to have a presentation at a upcoming board meeting where we discuss the services that we do provide

061um i think it would be helpful we go back and review the emails that we have received to make sure that questions that have been brought up or addressed and questions that have been brought up tonight i know you meet with the county folks on a regular basis so if we can uh get something from them as regards to specifics in the program regarding the program what they're offering school districts that are participating i think it would be helpful also to have information from our folks as far as what services that they see that we do need to that they would like to have that we may not be offering and i would also be interested personally and i look for feedback from the rest of the board is my understanding is about five million

062dollars and i don't think the county intended for a one-size-fits-all as far as school districts because school districts are all very unique so i'd be interested in hearing whether or not the county executive would be willing to allow school districts to use some of that funding within their districts from mental health specifically for mental health but in ways that they feel work best for their particular community because i i just don't think that was the intention for it to be a one-size-fit-all so that's that's what i would like to see as far as the presentation i mean i know board members have um sent questions to dr tice but if there are anything topics right now that people would like to see in that presentation or that you think of we can send those to

063doctors heist ahead of the presentation so we get those answered and certainly if there are more questions that come in from the community we'll make sure those are included you know someone did mention we did have a very tragic loss of an alumni over the over the weekend and that's something i'm sure it's wearing on everyone's heart and you know those of us who've had our own personal struggles with this area um we definitely understand and are very sympathetic to the parents who are reaching out to us and we would want to say that if there are parents in the district who have children that they feel need to be connected to services to please reach out to their building administrators and the counseling offices because we want to make sure those children do get

064connected to services um so they can receive the support does anyone else have any thoughts in regards to that mental health presentation at this point rebecca yeah i would just add that we have a really thoughtful intelligent group of mental health professionals as well partnering with our administrators so to the extent we can hear their voices um you know the headline is the headline of rejecting funding but what is all the work that is being done and where are there opportunities for growth because that's really what we're all working towards we're all rolling in the same direction we're all aware of the impacts potential impacts of kovid it's top of mind what can what can we do but what are we all what are we currently doing which i know marissa you already mentioned thank

065you others dan so my question obviously i i i was one who had requested that type of presentation because i i know we had one a few years ago and i will readily confess that i i don't have a comprehensive understanding of all of the services that we have and who's providing and what the qualifications of each are so i look forward to that my my question that i'll pause on in a moment is is when that will be my intent was not for that to take the place of a curriculum presentation rather to be an additional presentation much like we did with facilities tonight because obviously the curriculum presentations are important as well but i i will close this very simply saying that though we offer a great many mental health services in this

066school district we should always try to do better even if we can sit on laurels and say that we have the very best mental health services available we should always strive to be even better we talk about being a student first district and nothing is more important in this district than our students and a great many of our students are struggling deeply so we should never sit and say we're great we're awesome we have everything we need because there is always room to improve and we should always endeavor to do so other comments from board members or questions from other board members well we will look to get a presentation at upcoming board meeting and make sure that that is something that we advertised to the public since there is special interest in that particular

067area any additional questions just want to make sure we're okay to move on well just for me i mean i think we do embrace that feeling of continuous improvement and i think the question for a lot is and you heard a little bit about of it tonight do we take that county money and implement what the county says we should and i just sent you the proposal that was dispatched from the county in may especially after being called the liar this evening the proposal from the county is the proposal from the county we reviewed it we made a decision on the services that we're offering and as president mims indicated if the county wants to pass through the funding to support initiatives we put in place ahead of a lot of other school districts we

068believe in that model of continuous improvement in fact mr gordon has been working behind the scenes to try to bring tier three services to the district we by as my understanding we had similar type tier 3 services in the past so again it's what's within our control versus what people perceive as free money and then we're supposed to implement it with fidelity is what the county is offering that's what we rejected we rejected the micromanagement we want to do what's right for fm and i don't want that to get lost in this banter and discussion i understand where people are coming from i understand emotions are raw but at the same time we have always embraced continuous improvement and we've tried to deliver that at fm what's best for fm and sometimes that means putting

069our money behind it rather than accepting an outside donation to do something they think is right and maybe for a lot of other school districts but to implement it with fidelity we can't we're already ahead of the game in terms of student engagement specialists and i don't regret that we've added to it and like i said we continuously want to add to it as well so i do take exception with comments that were made tonight that somehow it's great to have that and if the county proposal would have filled up fit our needs i would have been happy to argue on that behalf but we did review it as a team and certainly i get the responsibility as superintendent but again it just isn't the superintendent making the decision we reviewed it for all the

070pros all the cons what are the advantages for our students and i think there was a lot of thought put into the decision the optics may be difficult for some people to understand but i think when they see what kind of things we have available with that presentation maybe they will understand that we have customized it for fayetteville manliness thank you dr tythe and those of us who work with you know that you would not intentionally misrepresent information um in that in that way if that information that you share with the board which it sounds like i haven't looked at it but it sounds like it's the actual proposal that was sent out if you if if that's something that you could post on the website so people can see that and unders and actually

071compare that to what we've sent out i think that would be helpful as well unfortunately you know public comment we have people and they come and they share their opinions but we um we need to make sure that we respect the integrity of our administrators staff and teachers who work so very hard for this district so thank you for that clarity dr thais and we will look forward to that presentation at a future meeting all right that concludes my report uh it's on to you dr tice superintendents report if you look inside board docs in terms of school reopening i'm pleased to report that it was a wonderfully smooth opening to the new school year i'd like to extend my sincere appreciation to our administrators supervisors faculty members nursing counseling professionals clerical staff support personnel

072transportation department employees cafeteria workers buildings and grounds everybody for their efforts for such a smooth opening well done curriculum nights our elementary schools will begin to host virtual curriculum nights this week for grades k-12 and will continue next week for grades 3-4 the high school and middle schools will be hosting their nights or open houses in the weeks ahead under new york state department of health guidance as mentioned before we're working to comply with the county executive order 22 which requires that all school staff get vaccinated and or submit for weekly testing this was reinforced with the recent new york state department of health guidance of september 1 which mandated this as a statewide initiative so as you may be aware we're in the process of instituting our own testing and providing this to our

073employees in fact mr gordon ran the test kits around to the different buildings today and last but not least and as i alluded to in the thursday letter surveillance testing as mentioned earlier onondaga county is collaborating with local area school districts to conduct random cova testing of students employees at periodic intervals without question no students will be subject to testing without the consent of their families the county has released a parental consent form which you see attached and board docs here and we will communicate that to families the article's been ready to go since friday with more information about the testing cycle because they're looking to promote 10 percent participation every week in an effort to encourage participation in this research it's our understanding that the county will also provide on-site symptomatic covet tests for

074ill children and again for those who were consent has been previously given who may be exhibiting covet related symptoms while attending school and who may need to be sent home unfortunately the downside to all of this even though that's the advantage is it really depends on the interest of our families within the community the parents and guardians who provide consent may be volunteering their child for weekly testing you kind of think that 10 percent would mean every 10 weeks or so my child would be tested well if we do not get full participation there may be students among the 12 in a particular pool excuse me that will be tested weekly so again one of the downsides is students who are in that pool of 12 the saliva pooled saliva tests that test positive must

075wait for those results and for the follow-up reflex individual testing which will confirm whether or not somebody in that pool is positive and you may have read an article in today's post standard to that effect as well so to that end i'd like to engender a conversation with the board tonight as i indicated in the thursday letter whether to pursue this partnership with the county the county has given us authority to put the samples together such as students and staff so for example if 12 adults staff members were put together and that pool was positive those individuals in a sense would be in pre-quarantine we run the risk of closing a building or needing 12 subs at the drop of a hat so we argued the superintendents did through central new york to be able

076to put the pools together ourselves which means we could put two adults in a pool of 12 along with 10 students but that still means that if somebody in that sample of 12 is positive that 12 should be on pre-quarantine bless you pre-quarantine until the reflex testing results are confirmed sometimes 12 to 24 to 48 hours later especially if it occurs over a weekend is what we were told so i think it's it's again the county is meaning well the county is trying to conduct the research to check the spread of the virus especially with all students back in school it is the right thing to do but it does not come without some reservations on my part and i think the other administrator's part that there's advantages and limitations just like we talked with

077the mental health funding there are advantages and limitations and what is the the best decision so it makes sense to do the research but i again struggle with if we don't get a turnout if parents don't give consent it could be the same children being tested week after week after week after week and they're the ones who run the risk of being on quarantine just by dumb luck again with the reflex testing i worry that we're going to be putting students and staff out on pre-quarantine until the results come back there might be a way again just like the mental health do we try to do it ourselves with the rapid testing to try to test do we split it do we do the pooled saliva for students do we do the rapid test for

078staff is there a way to try to limit the potential collateral damage in terms of quarantine because i think the county wants to keep everybody in school we want to keep everybody in school so i think we want to be smart about this so dr tyson so if we don't reach the 10 percent you mentioned students being tested over and over again that's something that parents can say you know i volunteered in my child for so so much i mean if we and not i mean they don't have to do that correct i mean they could say you know what we're sorry you didn't reach your 10 but i'm not going to have my child test it every week intuitively that makes sense i can ask about the process for withdrawing one's consent yes i

079think that's something that if we didn't reach that number that parents should be told that that's that their child would be tested more frequently then i was trying to when you said that um so if the pool comes back with someone positive i do like the idea of us being able to select how those pools work so that would have it would mitigate how much it affects our buildings but would we be able to do the rapid testing then within that pool so that perhaps they wouldn't have to go on quarantine uh they would do the test so they would break out the pool test individually could we do it quicker is what i'm saying because you're if we were probably there for us to do it quick no our day is friday just for

080the fyi that they gave us which means that friday morning in six buildings we need six teacher aides to hire for four hours each and we need some a nurse i need to hire a part-time nurse to oversee this project and then friday afternoon they go off to the lab so we have between 8 and 12 to get this all done every friday then it goes to the lab we don't know if we get the results monday morning or if there's some call that dr receives on sunday or whatever it is and then they immediately start to the process of reviewing and remaining they go back as my understanding and look at each swap individually we just don't know the time frame you're getting those results back so i don't know if that would be

081any quicker plus if that's a pcr test i don't know that doing a quick test after a pcr test necessarily is the right way to go by which you're probably by the new york state department of health as we talked today we have to offer testing on site what that testing may be is it through the county is it of our own volition mr gordon dr kilmer kim welling and myself participate in a conference call with the county as they're still trying to work out the details and as was indicated pool testing is recommended it's not we don't have to do it but we do have to do some form of testing and offer some form of testing to try to track the spread of the virus internally craig do you have a administrative recommendation

082before any discussion ensues is there a recommendation on this is there a recommendation we have to offer some form of testing i think the county plan is fraught with issues it is less expensive as mr gordon has indicated no matter what we do we're going to have to hire additional staffing our day of the week is friday i believe it happens to be the eastern suburb day of the week other districts in our area quadrant bio sciences is the laboratory at the center for human performance downtown that will be doing the testing that we either have to get the samples to the boces courier or to quadrant to do the testing once the consent form comes in we then release the link where parents can register on the quadrant site so to answer your question

083there's a lot of work here there's a ton of work but i can see that and i'm sure that you've discussed other options as well but i think it's difficult to give your opinion on what we think about a lot of pool testing when we don't yet understand what other options were that were discussed availability of testing what that means to the student body the staff i mean i would think that our goal would be to keep everybody in school for as long as possible but is there a method that we can use that we meet our requirement by which we end up accomplishing that i don't know i haven't looked into all the different areas myself but i'm certain that you probably have in terms of availability we've tried to get the rapid tests

084which are becoming increasingly difficult so if we're looking at ease of availability of testing the county proposal would be the way to go it would be nice to start there and then to cut bait if we're able to provide a side rail that also can meet the standards i'm just worried we're going to lose too many students in the pool testing so i'll get yelled at that we didn't do the mental health through the county then i'll get yelled at we did the pool testing through the county because a lot of parents are going to be upset their children are going to be home because a sample was positive yet the entire their child may not be positive so i think the county proposal is great for quick research but it's fraught with collateral damage

085correct so i'm sorry so if we is it possible i mean if we're if we're trying to keep the kids in school i mean i i certainly like maybe the idea of splitting it up in some way um but is it possible for us to i know it's possible does it make sense for us to put out the you know to call to parents to have them sign up and see what our numbers are and if we're not getting a big number you know we're not asking anyone to anticipate they would love 10 random sampling return you know in terms of the random sample with replacement and i think that would help them conduct the research study to better understand it but i just worry that so many families will self-select out saying i you

086know it's bad enough household contacts everything else sports everything we deal with i don't need to volunteer for my child to run the risk of accidentally being in a pool with a positive test so yes i'm not adverse to starting this as a sample it may defer we can't start this week maybe not the week after but we can certainly with availability of testing materials definitely the county is the way to go okay craig you mentioned something i guess i'm just unclear on it so you mentioned today that you were on a call with the department of health that's saying that we are required to offer testing i guess i'm confused in that i thought it was only for teachers but now we have to offer something for the students as well the department of

087health call was at the end of last week with dr kilmer and mr gordon participating in that what i said is i'm sorry if i wasn't clear new york state department of health guidance which kind of superseded the county executives county executive order took that testing statewide so either the employee school employee must show proof of vaccination or submit to the weekly testing so the pool testing at first was discussed not replacing the weekly testing that would have to be something else that's what mr gordon distributed to each of the locations today so the pool testing would be above and beyond for students and staff approximately 10 percent of the population it would be done by quadrant biosciences to be able to understand the spread of the virus in central new york okay and we're

088required for both students and teachers to conduct some form of testing correct in terms of the the research and certainly what the county has put together one would think would make it a little bit easier for a lot of districts to go forward with that so have we explored other options that would be driven by the district that would reduce the self quarantining or the pre-quarantining because that is going to be a huge deterrent to families um have we have the nurses had any idea i'm just curious what other options are on the table where we could be creative with our own program because i really feel like the pre-quarantining is it's just not going to be it's going to be incredibly frustrating to students oh we envision being yelled at you know from families

089just because they don't understand their child may be negative but yet just happen you know with dumb luck to be in a positive pool as far as other options we've just tried to check availability of rapid testing those kits are very difficult to come by so even if we could come up with a plan b finding the test kits would be problematic so it sort of sounds like there isn't another option is that what you're saying or a hybrid option to try to because again looking at last year the students were not transmitting the virus as much as the adults i'm just speaking in generalities the adults were showing the spread of the virus so could we do rapid tests with the adults the children just do the pool testing yes you might have an

090occasional pool sample come back positive but one would think if it's students and students only without any adults in there chances are would be lower than having adults as part of that sample pool so i think what's worth exploring given the availability of the tests what the county has at their disposal already is there a way to split it between adults and students i mean i don't see statistically how if we do not get a high percentage of consent forms the 10 percent pooling would make any sense whatsoever because a low pool wouldn't statistically give them any data that would be useful to indicate how the covet is spreading so i don't see how we're able to make a decision on pool testing without knowing what percentage of our students would want or i shouldn't

091say the students the parents would want to participate in something like this and i don't know it seems pool testing just doesn't seem to make sense to me at the present time now since we are required to that you just said we are required to have something in place and we're all in agreement that the county uh isn't ideal i have read that possibly tests may ramp up the uh rapid tests may ramp up they may ramp up production i don't know where i read that it's just off the top of my head if that happens can we change can we say thanks county for getting us through the first few weeks but now we can provide our own or is this a commitment i certainly can check into that i mean i think we

092would have some latitude i mean they're going into it with the best intentions just like the mental health but i think your point's well taken what fits for fm does it fit our needs and i agree with mark i mean if we're not getting the survey back that it's i mean because the county is looking at it as a research study it's statistics 101 sampling with replacement they want to be able to sample 10 every week hopefully a different 10 yes there will be occasional replacement with the same people being tested but if they're not getting if they're only getting nine percent of the fm families saying yes it's going to be the same 10 over and over again and that's where i'm scratching my head on this so i'm just looking at it sorry

093dan i didn't mean to interrupt you you're way down there um i'm just looking at it a little bit differently in terms of what is best for fm from a public health standpoint and what is the sampling we're looking for so that pooled testing for families that are opting in maybe a very small we're kind of anticipating it maybe a small group if families are consenting to our district rapid testing on it maybe twice a quarter or some small number [Music] i mean it's still i understand it would still be a lot of work but it sounds like we have to test and hire no matter what families would have a lot more incentive to opt into that testing if they weren't part of a pooled sample because they're not there's not running the risk

094of the pre-quarantine it's just they're being quarantined if they get a positive rapid which can happen it can be a false positive but that's what i'd love to see and i know that really hinges on having a lot of available rapid testing kits and i'm sure that i'm just i i'm really not an expert in this i'm sure there's schools that have been doing this for the last year successfully um maybe private models but just seems like there might be a way and maybe it's not right away um where we could look into doing it what works better for us and also hits more of our families so we get a better sense of is it spreading in our school just a better snapshot of that can we back up just a little bit so

095in in your report dr i want to make sure i understand that the county options and proposals so one of them was this issue of pool testing but before that you'd said that the county will also in an effort to encourage participation the county will also provide on-site symptomatic covet tests for those ill children who have consented previously so i wanted to start with that sure that was originally the proposal was just to do the research the superintendents in central new york argued that without an incentive to incentivize the research that families might be reluctant to have their child you know to consent to the testing because it isn't necessarily a positive effect is going to come out of it you could get a quarantine so the incentive was to provide the symptomatic testing as

096a way to say if you've consented to be part of the research study then we will also provide symptomatic testing should your child exhibit symptoms in school so so i understand that that's being presented as an incentive if you do x and y then we'll give you b is there any opportunity to avail this district of the county's resources to provide on-site symptomatic testing without opting into the whole pool saliva testing piece of it i can ask that question but i think the availability is the pool testing i think the rapid tests are in short supply because obviously it would be in our students best interest faculty as well if somebody is symptomatic and the district has available testing on demand essentially for those then that saves lots of steps in time and and travel

097to go get tested find a place to get tested get tested await the result if jeff's raising his hand so maybe jeff can answer this question if someone is symptomatic according to the state if you're symptomatic you look at the flow chart you have to get a pcr test so a quick test isn't going to do much of anything and by the way i don't believe pregnant democratized they're not offering their human resources to give those tests they're expecting someone in the school they're just offering to send a box of because they hold all the quick tests in a warehouse and so they're offering to send us a warehouse some shipments they're not offering us any of their people to come and do those tests so if someone is symptomatic according to the everything we've

098read from the county from the state that's when they have to go get a bcr test anyway so getting a quick test isn't going to do much it doesn't absolve them from going and getting a quick uh pcr test and waiting for those results so so what is this piece then so this is the incentive the incentive is if you participate in the pool testing and and you end up symptomatic we'll do on-site testing is that pcr or is that rapid because as you just said jeff rapid would make no sense in that instance my understanding it's a rapid test just to be able to direct parents go you know to your health care provider go get the pcr test the idea was it gives them a heads up on what they might be dealing

099with it's not the pcr test okay so what sounded good perhaps in your report doesn't sound so good to me um on the on the pool test i just want to back up to definition because i'm hearing a term tonight that i'm not familiar with pre quaranti what is pre-quarantine if the original pool test of 12 comes back positive they have to do what they call reflux testing they can use the same samples as my understanding but they run them individually as 12 separate samples to try to find out which of them one or more ended up being positive in the original pool sometimes there's a faster turnaround sometimes there's a longer turnaround if there's a weekend involved but the idea is is they now have to do the follow-up testing so if you read

100the article in today's paper between syracuse city there's a question of what happens to those students and originally talking to the county they said they're in limbo we said what's limbo they really shouldn't be with others in school but it's a school district's decision to put them out that so visions of families getting upset at school officials saying your child is in limbo or in pre-quarantine until the official results come back the thought is that they should not be mingling with the rest of the population so if we have a student who's in a pooled test on a friday morning and the pool comes back positive then that student is in theory put on the shelf for the weekend and for however long until the individual testing comes back i i i think correct i

101think if we go back to your recommendation on masking before that became a statewide mandate the biggest factor that you said in in moving forward with a universal masking policy was to limit quarantine as much as possible this would seem to be something that goes in the exact opposite direction of of that so i i obviously like to hear more on the other options but if if the options and information are as and to the extent we've been provided today to this point i would not be in favor of availing ourselves of that and that's where a lot of us have landed so i hope you weren't hoping for a debate back and forth that's what we are struggling with as well it is well-intentioned i understand that as a scientist that's they're trying to

102do good research to track the spread of the virus but the concern is that there's just it's fraught with like you said the pre-quarantine putting on the shelf limbo there's just too much liability out there if we're trying to keep kids in school and kids are already going to be pre-quarantining with a runny nose or a stomach ache they're going to go out and they're going to wait for the pcr test which can take two days so it just adds on to that so what are what are you thinking in terms of what other options we can look at and what is our kind of timetable for looking at those they would like to start this friday i think that's going to be a little problematic i like kelly's idea to send the consent out

103and we can try to frame it as much as possible you see the draft letter here we can outline all the advantages and limitations so sarah and i can work with our communications department tomorrow as priority one dispatch this just to see what kind of numbers we get and if it looks like we have quite a few i think we go ahead and i think a lot of people seeing the advantages and limitations may not register and we'll have our answer right there while we try to investigate other options because we have to offer something what that testing is is up in the air the county just offers this as one opportunity and it's recommended so if if that consent goes out as a as the quote unquote survey to see what the numbers are

104that if that goes out as the survey to see what the numbers are that we would have for participation purposes i have two questions one is what's the threshold that you would be looking for to move forward and second is can we make a modification to that consent form so that a parent has the opportunity to say i do consent for my child once a month or once every two months and not sign that risking putting their student into weekly testing yeah that's something we can investigate i haven't thought about a particular number because i just imagined it being less than ten percent but i just i mean i think if we're going to go forward with that we we ought to have some idea of well what because you said what you said was

105if there are enough we'll go forward i i think we ought to have some agreement or understanding as to what's that threshold and and i think parents signing on to it should have some understanding because somebody may consent to this if they know that it's going to result in numbers where their child might get tested once every three months but they might make a very very different decision if it's going to subject them to testing every other week so i think i don't know where that number lands but i think it's important that we have some idea of what that number or percentage looks like when it gets sent out if it's a random sample how do you determine who's going to get tested i mean you could say i only want my child to

106be tested once every three months but it's it's a random sample so unless their research is junk how could you limit the research sample it just statistically i mean i'm not great at statistics but i know that you can't you can't limit a random sample just based on well i only want john to be tested once every other week my daughter could be tested every day my other son could be tested once a month it's just and we would have to keep track of that i i just don't i don't see it so very well put i don't know what else to say well dr thais don't you have to also do that with the staff as well because you need 10 of the teachers so you have to get them yeah the county proposal

107is hoping it was an entire school population staff and students they're trying to get a better understanding of the spread of the virus so they would need to be informed as to it would depend on how many staff we have that agree and the article on syracuse.com there is some concern as far as how if people are quarantined whether they're using their sick time or what time they're using and i think that needs to definitely be something that we're very clear about for people whether they would have to use their sick time or or that 14 days that there's some confusion as to whether that not that covers people for any amount of time they would be quarantined craig agreed in terms of potentially doing a survey though i think it we need to be

108extremely clear with those people that we're administering the survey to and it would be i would think staff and community members as well families or students what the pre-quarantine is i understand that there's a little paragraph in there but i think we need to make it very clear to them so they understand exactly what the consequences will be for the entire group if it comes back negative initially and it doesn't give a time frame in here with regard to will it be 24 hours 48 hours it could be longer than that and i also don't know i mean if i were looking at the survey as a parent answering it unless i knew what the options were i wouldn't even know how to really be able to answer it it wouldn't be informed enough to

109really answer it i would initially think that we'll you know perhaps i wouldn't want to participate or my child to participate in the pulled slava testing but then what are the options we are required to provide testing so you know do we know that we can like if we have more adults in the sample than children then to mark's point it's no longer a random sample so i think there are a lot of questions with regard to the process that they will use and we need to have a backup plan so that if we we honestly think that this is not in the best interest of our staff and our students then we need to have another plan that we can fall back on and i was saving this to the end because it was

110brought up as the administrators know from our principals and instructional staff especially at the younger buildings i mean these students will need to be escorted down in terms of if their number is called randomly as mr veslowski said so it's lost instructional time so again i'm accused of not wanting to collaborate with the county and a lot of things i understand why they're doing this i think it's important but our principals and faculty are concerned that especially for the younger ones they're going to have to get escorted from the classroom down to the testing site and there's just going to be a loss of instructional time because of the process the older children not so much but at the younger grade levels it's disconcerting so we really have looked at this i mean we want

111to be sports we want to play along but we're concerned and we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't look at the advantages and limitations so hypothetically if we just tonight say no thank you to the county um what would our next step be we we are required to do something yeah we'll start researching then this tomorrow knowing of course the availability of testing is problematic hand staffing mr gordon is this where you'd like to add anything i mean it's going to be difficult it was going to be difficult to pull it off with the county you know i'm not a medical expert so i don't want to speak as though i'm a medical i'm not a medical expert hi everybody um but that is a long table um no you come on you're

112i'm the old man here the um the pool testing you know first of all if the question is what could we do we're going to need staffing either way that's going to happen either way because we cannot the county and others seem to make a lot of assumptions about our school nurses for one thing they seem to assume that our school nurses don't don't have full days prior to covid which they do as you know if you've ever gone in to pick up your child then we add covet related issues on top of that and they have to be the eyes and ears of the building for that for those issues as they come out then the county comes out and says that they have this great plan but they're not providing any support so

113obviously i'm in human resources so i am concerned about the human resource aspect of either of these plans we have to do it it's clear we have to do it the state's version is very short it just says that surveillance testing must be offered it doesn't give any specifics beyond that but one can assume that because you're talking about surveillance on asymptomatic individuals that that's where the antigen or what we call the quick test um would be able to be used assuming that we could get the supply and we may be able to do that having said that i don't think it's a bad idea personally to send out something and get the parents feedback uh because they may really want pool testing um and understand the repercussions and if they do then we will

114go forward with that and and do it so the the pre-quarantine is a really interesting question i'll just mention that briefly since we brought it up both dan and mercy brought it up as it relates to staff i just read the article that came out and where the confusion is and this came out in our meeting on friday is a pre-quarantine is a made-up word normally under the law to use those 14 days you have to have an order from the county stating you are under quarantine or you were in isolation isolation being you have coveted quarantine meaning that you were in close exposure and your results aren't back yet and so you're under quarantine by law that's where that's 14 that they call kova days come from and by the way they don't start

115over every time they run out pre-quarantine is the issue that has us all scratching our heads a bit the county said we strongly recommend that everybody stay home until you get the results back because one of those people has coveted but they weren't able to go on record and say that we're ready to put put out an order to these people requiring them so they said well we said well who does that they said well the school will do that well that puts us in a very difficult spot now doesn't it so that's convenient on the one hand for the county but it puts us in a very very difficult spot which leads to the question if you if the county isn't giving the quarantine order can you use the 14 days by law no

116you cannot use the 14 days then so that's a whole different matter but i thought i'd just try to clear that up as best as i understand it but that's not the bigger issue the bigger issue is when the child's teacher is out for two days waiting for the results or one day and we've not been given a time frame on how long it will take to get that second test done maybe it'll be really fast but we've not they've not been able to give us any answer any time frame so that makes it difficult to make decisions having said all that we'll find the staff that we need to do whatever we need to do we'll make it happen we're not in the business and not doing that here at fm we will make

117sure that we have what we need if we were to go to quick testing let's say the results came back and the parent survey showed that a very small percentage of parents want to be a part of pool testing if that's the case and that may very well be the case then at least we have a reason to go back to the county and say look we're just not getting enough buy-in here and we're going to go a different route so i think it's worth at least examining that having said that then i could hire probably hire a nurse temporary for the year perhaps or for a semester and i could set up a schedule where they are in different buildings throughout the week and it would be one person doing the the uh the

118antigen testing for those parents that consented to it um how many we could do that's a question that we i can't answer yet because it depends on supply and depends on time certainly depends on how many parents want it i don't think that the same parents would want their child test every week under that either but interestingly enough last year as you recall the county came out many times during the year and brought people out and we gave them some of ours and they they brought in some of theirs and we did that very same testing last year and that's the way they did it last year they had we had antigen testing occurring every few weeks or every month they came around back to us and we had parents sign up and we did

119it again and again and again and by the way those results yielded almost no i believe correct me if i'm wrong dr teich i don't believe they yielded any or maybe a very very very minuscule number of students who tested positive we could put something like that in place but i you know for what it's worth i think you're on the right track here i think letting the letting the community let you know what they think about it and and even if we start with it because we get enough students and then after they find out how this works they may very well pull their child out of it and i'm sure they have the right to do that um but we'll we'll find the staffing although staffing is obviously an issue this year we'll

120we'll find the staffing to do what we need to do if it's the pool testing we're just going to need a few more weeks because there's many many more people involved thanks so one last thing that i'm thinking if if we have to do this as a mandate by the state has have we at all talked to our state representatives about the issue we're having that this is not a straightforward like sure we'll just test a bunch of our students i mean i can't imagine they don't understand the issues but i'm just wondering if the you know how tuned in is the state you know in the whole change of administration all the you know stuff that's going on there in terms of the actual logistics of getting this done and is there a way

121that they could you know in recognizing the the the issues that and the challenges that this presents and if the goal for the state is to keep kids in school then it just you know i'm just curious if we could could or have reached out to our state reps to kind of explain what the issues are and maybe get more guidance from the state about the actual mandate thing just to be clear as a county we're the only county that i know of that's doing full testing well this started early in the spring if you remember back in may that's doing the pool testing but you're right in the documentation that was just released near labor day it was the state put this in place i mean things are evolving quickly at the state level

122we were complaining last year getting every all the guidance in mid-june mid-july here it was labor day and it was still coming off the presses so yeah i guess i'm thinking if we're having issues if there's supply if pool testing offered by the county is just not doable for what you know our parents don't want to do it or you know whatever the the fact that we might have to quote pre-quarantine all that stuff you know it seems like you know to whatever extent if the state understood what those issues were and the logistics around the availability of you know rapid tests and things like that you know i i just think it can't hurt to at least make sure the state is aware of these issues and i understand the reasoning behind it and

123i'm all for the research and all that but at the end of the day i think we're all trying to make sure our kids get the most out of their in-person time this year so just a just a thought my question was along similar lines just with respect to the county and the superintendents is this hard and fast determined is there any opportunity for superintendents to push back as a group on this and try to revert to the the testing that was done in the spring that jeff referred to that was the antigen testing the county received a federal grant uh to be able to do this so i think they're the ones who contracted with quadrant they're trying to make the most use of what money they received so this was a way to

124service all of the school districts in onondaga county so it isn't a matter of pushing back even at the webinar or conference call zoom on friday they said it was recommended um so i mean it isn't like they're foisting it but they really they really crave the data to be able to track them i just meant to change gears but it sounds like they're they've already gone down this path of pool yeah craig so what we've been discussing this i've had a chance to read the document from the county um that you attached in board docs and i'm not sure if that's available for the general public or if it's just for board members but in there there's a couple of sentences i want to read to the group and i would ask that you

125go back to the county and get clarification on this and what it says is is that as we were discussed the pool sampling it says this means 12 samples will be run together and onondaga county health department schools will know when a a pool is positive in 24 hours the individual results will be available in an additional 12 hours since we are on a friday before we send this out to parents can we get clarification from the county if they will notify us over the weekend or biometrics lab or whomever or whether that communication's not coming out to monday i think it makes a huge difference for for parents right because the worst case scenario you call me friday afternoon at five o'clock from biometrics to let me know that my kid participated in a

126pool that's positive um is that 12 hours meaning i'm gonna get a phone call saturday morning or is that phone call means when quad you know when this lab comes back on monday morning that we're going to get an answer i think that would be really helpful to know before we send the survey out to the parents thanks thank you good point additional questions for dr tais so you're going to check into what jason just asked in regards to notifications then we may be doing a survey out to parents and updating the board after you have that information as to your next steps anything else any other additional steps that i missed in there or things that you're going to be doing interim nope i think that's the start okay any other questions for dr

127tyson any other items under his report all right so next on the agenda we have committee and representative updates just looking at the time is there any chair who has a report that they need to give this evening we did talk about doing the nisba resolutions today all right so we'll do those um hannah there's a student board member report but i'll i'll talk to you about that and so that you you'll be able to do those and i also want to let you know that we know that you're very busy so as you need to leave please feel free sometimes we go a little long so don't feel like you have to stay with us until until the end we respect your time all right so um not hearing from any other chairs we'll

128go into the legislative leave on report dr dr linders i'll give you a phd look at that it's great that you can confer that upon me um i do want to start by saying that the um the actual meeting is proposed or will be held on oh shoot um the sa on october 18th which is the same time same night as we have a board meeting scheduled the meeting should start at 4 p.m um and from my experience it takes two to three hours so i would be late so if that's okay with the board then we will go ahead with this discussion if not then we don't have to have the discussion because we won't have a representative there before we do that do you think we could have a couple words about it

129yes it will oh if it's all right with you marissa i didn't catch any of that i'm sorry my microphone was off so we do need to have a brief um presentation from the audit committee mr uh mr furlong is going to update the board and then we'll go back to sherry and i will keep this very brief this evening one of the action items in new business is to accept the internal audit from the 1920 school year along with the corrective action basically this audit was reviewed by the board and adopted well over a year ago we actually submitted this audit to the state education department back in april of 2020 a couple weeks ago we were notified that the audit in their view was not covering the right time frame basically what we

130were having audited was the high cost aid that we receive in the 2019-2020 school year but that high cost date is based upon expenditures and actual costs the year before so when they looked at the audit they felt that we were auditing the 1819 school year when we should have been auditing the 1920. we believe that the person out of the state education department is fairly new and doesn't really grasp the the how high cost aid works because it's truly an expense driven aid meaning you have to spend the money in one year to generate the cost or the aid in next year so um we did contact our internal auditor and they said that they have seen a couple other instances within their firm where audits have been kicked back for the same reason

131so what we did was we worked with our internal auditor to slightly revise the audit report and slightly revise the corrective action report which is before you this evening basically to try and inform the person out in state education department that you know we're really looking at the verifying the high cost aid in the 1920 year that is based upon expenditures in the 1819 year we also have other audit reports that were done previous to this one that also looked at the year before and they never raised any issues at that point in time so i hope i explain that briefly and succinctly but basically it's the same audit report just trying to lend some clarification to the personnel state education department so they will see fit to approve this audit but once again we

132submitted this on time back in april of 2020 they just looked at it a couple weeks ago and determined it wasn't adequate enough any questions and your comments from audit committee members thank you okay thank you very much mr furlong sherry will go back to the legislative liaison report now all right are you guys okay with me arriving late at the 18th meeting on the 18th where i'll be on a virtual meeting from four until it ends i think that's fine all right then we will move forward in the past sometimes what i what we've done is just gone through res one resolution at a time um or if you all are prepared i can just say the number and you can just give me a yes or no if you want to discuss it

133so does anyone have an opinion about how we do this tonight okay um so resolution number one is a sun setting which means that it's five years it's been five years since it was approved um it's just general tenants for the uh for nisbet to follow um any comments on that number two is also sun setting and it's about um supporting proposals that are uh program related i think in the comments so we'll support that uh number three is about students with disabilities so we will go ahead and support that with no comments um number four another sun setting um about uh is school meals support okay um number five uh is let's see um proposals that generate new state revenues within the with the dedicated purpose so they'll support any proposals that will generate

134revenue and i would say we would support that um number six um was about uh votes that our that coincide with religious holidays um allowing people who celebrate that holiday to get a mail-in ballot i think we can support that uh number seven is about audit stuff so this isn't my strength but the uh it the nisba does recommend we support it all right number eight uh oh number eight and nine are both um about conducting open meetings um eight is just allow allowing someone to participate virtually without having to disclose their remote location yeah and number nine is that and a few more things about um about allowing virtual meetings to go forward as they have over the past 18 months so yeah i think that we can support that because we've used it

135very well uh number 10 deals with a child safety zone statute if you read the rationale it's a very specific thing that applies to croton-harmon about picking up children on a bus within three-tenths of a mile or something but i think kelly was the one who pointed out last year that we as school board members should support resolutions that help other schools so i have no opposition to this um resolution 11 uh what is this about oh facilities improvements so yeah i think we can always support money for facilities improvement um let's see 12 is student nutrition shifting financial burden away from public schools which they've done a bit and we i think would support them continuing to do that 13 is about foundation aid making it clearer and more up to date which i

136know bill has always wanted it to happen 14 is about let's see public health law oh this was interesting that um that have requiring immunizations for all staff that are required of the students to enter the school schools that one i thought we might have comments but i guess we're all in agreement on that i'm just curious if mr gordon has any input on that i mean that's a great hr issue yeah that'll be 19. we'll get to number 19. um okay so number 15 uh established guidelines um i think it's about uh needing data oh um client having to do with climate change when you do any um any changes um that we should include data with climate having to do with climate change when we're making any changes with our budget i think

137we can support that number 16 abolish state school level expenditure reporting and that one i don't know about it's just the rationale is just that it's it's difficult and it doesn't improve transparency i saw they'll give a thumbs up on that so we can support that number 17 as as state aid eligibility for oh and i'm not familiar with this do we districts that are obligated to pay tuition reimbursements for unilateral private placements to increase the state aid okay okay now comes the ones that nisba is saying that they would not recommend supporting um so if we are in agreement with nisba we're saying we're voting no on on these um and the first one is about this annual meeting that i'll be attending um somebody would like the it to to make the dates

138set between a certain dates and nisba is saying no let's just keep doing it when it works for nisba we will usually have someone who can attend no matter when it is um 18 and they say no to um having to disclose psychological testing on a background check and the rationale is that it's not actually part of a background check so we shouldn't push for that and i'm good with not supporting that number 19 is where i asked jeff prior to this it is they they would like to the newark school board said that they would like to ease and streamline these teacher certification process for teachers from out of state nisba is saying no thank you to that we want to keep new york state teachers to the high standard that we've always had

139um but jeff sent us a memo early early on last year about how not only is it hard to hire teachers it's also hard to get teachers from diverse backgrounds because coming from other states it's hard to get a new new york certification so jeff asked us a year ago or more um that we should support this and i personally would like to go with jeff's recommendation yeah do you want to say anything i think we all agree uh no i won't take a lot of your time but as i understood what uh what was told to me was that they were not in support of easing restrictions we have a very difficult situation in new york state we have a shortage of teachers so let's just start with that we have a shortage teachers

140everywhere in the country but we have a very big problem in new york state that has nothing to do with diversity we just have a shortage of teachers and then new york state makes it infinitely harder than any other state that i know of to get a certificate here even if you have a certificate in another state so and if you went to college in another state and wanted to come here to teach they make it exceedingly difficult right out of college to come here and work so we may have students of our own from fm as an example who went to universities outside of new york and they don't realize how difficult it's going to be to get back here to teach they make it very very difficult so obviously the the level of

141easing the restrictions is real really where you determine whether or not you're really making a difference in terms of the quality but at the time right now when you have a shortage of something it doesn't seem like the time to be insisting on keeping the keeping it hard to get in the gatekeepers are very difficult in new york state and when there's lots of lots of supply that may be a great thing but when supply is low uh it seems like not a time to be fighting back and saying we need to keep it higher you just won't have the the the staff you need i just have a quick question on that just because the committee is referring to you know processes that exist that allow you to hire pending you know new york

142state certification is it the case that you know or i don't know if it's in our our experience or that you've heard around that where you have been where people districts have hired but the process was still so onerous that they ended up not being certified that's happened that happened earlier in my career and that's why at fm we don't i can't even offer jobs to those individuals unless i know that they've met all the requirements which are there are exams and they're only given at certain times so when someone's graduating the university that's pretty well taken care of we know especially locally which is why we hire a lot of people from locally in new york state we know that they know the process and so if you're graduating from new york state they've

143signed their students up for the exams they have all that so that's not as scary because once they get the the universities have a direct relationship with albany and they send in a recommendation for hire and they show that they've done everything that's a very quick turnaround but when you're coming from out of state it's up to the individual who graduates in may to know the system and know when they have to sign up for the exams then you have to wait for the exam scores to come back and that's where it gets a little concerning and that's why we generally don't try it it does affect our ability to hire people from out of state because unless they have a certificate in hand we don't know how long exactly it's going to take for

144them to get a certificate and there were a couple of times earlier in my career when i was burned on that so um there are districts that take a chance you can take a chance but it is risky that you lose the person who is certified uh that for the person that's not certified and ends up not being certified so it is that is the biggest problem it's the speed in which they can turn things around it's the number of exams they require it's their inability to say you know what you got a certificate in maryland so we're going to give you a temporary certificate for a year here because you've met maryland's criteria and we're going to let you start working here they don't allow that if you've taught for several years in maryland

145they do they do have a mechanism for that now which they didn't have a few years ago and that's been somewhat helpful but they still have to have several years of teaching so all those college students who come out from another state can't come and immediately start to work in new york state and that's that's difficult thank you so i will make an attempt to speak on this one to let them know our rationale for wanting to pass it rather than to reject it all right moving on to 20 21 and 22 um all of them nisba their one of their rationales of not supporting it is that the delegates voted last year and shot it down and these people are just coming up with the same resolution again so i would think that we

146would go with what we went with last year again um so on to yeah these are all of these are all know um that is best saying we should not okay then number 23 um is our legislation oh it's about 10 year tenure review asking that teachers have to have their 10-year renewed every five years throughout their career and nisba does not think that this it would be a create a burdensome burdensome process for it to do it every five years so they're saying no on that proposed resolution number 24 um it's about spending with it within boces promote alternatives for school districts when purchasing non-instructional services that do not give the boss give boces an unfamiliar unfair competitive advantage and if you skip down to the explanation of the resolutions committee i don't remember

147this uh explanation purchase similarly oh is it also nearly identical resolution okay identified oh you're right you're right so then to number 25 is the last one uh allow uh non-excuse absentee oh this was just that everybody can um to make it so that everybody can vote absentee like they did last year and the committee said that this is a statewide it's not a school board concern this would be a statewide concern all right so with the exception of 19 we're going along with resolutions and now i can end my little presentation there you have a mic we're now on 5.01 approval of minutes from august 9 2021 is there a motion to approve those minutes thank you mark thank you from daryl any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i

148i you're opposed or abstaining uh 3.02 approval of the minutes from august 17th 2021 special meeting is there a motion to approve the minutes thank you kelly second from jason any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand and indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining 5.03 is our motion to approve the minutes of the august 23rd special meeting thank you rebecca a second from daryl any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i you want to pose you're abstaining abstaining we have two abstentions i believe kelly and elena uh 5.04 is there a motion to approve the minutes of the september 2nd special meeting thank you mark and a second from daryl any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining

149all right 5.05 personal actions is there a motion to approve the following personnel actions as recommended by the superintendent thank you daryl second from dan i don't know the favor please raise your hand can't i i anyone opposed or abstaining all righty um here we go item 5.0 marissa i'm sorry i can't approve the meeting minutes on august 17th i raised my hand in there i'm sorry i was absent i need to abstain and now looking at that i'm also august 9th i was not in attendance august 9th item 5.06 reserve resolutions is it is there a motion that will be resolved that the board of education approved the following revised reserve resolution do we need to read that are we good okay is there a motion thank you mark second from daryl any discussion

150all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i am an opposed or abstaining next item [Laughter] um item [Music] [Laughter] free quarantine for you um all right uh okay 5.07 adoption of district welcome statement is there a motion that be resolved the board of education of the fayetteville malley central school district adopt the district welcome statement as presented is there a motion thank you sherry is there a second thank you kelly board discussion i just wanted to thank the staff and administrators for for all the work that they did on it i personally i i appreciate it and i think it's succinct and a good starting point i agree the success is important but it says everything we needed to say so once we approve it it can go up on the web

151website tomorrow than docker types and then the other areas that it's intended to be certainly okay although the same no i have questions i want to go ahead could someone walk me through this process like how did who presented these eight draft versions and i never heard what the administrative recommendation was and i apologize if i missed it all i heard was what the dei paul dei committee's recommendation was of the eight versions nine sorry nine versions what your recommendation was so did did cabinet draft each one of these nine statements as a group yes we jig jigsawed at the convocation and came up with different ones and then we looked at it and recommended number four okay thank you which the dei committee affirmed because i almost feel as if this is more limiting

152than what we already have in our vision and mission statement so i just think that we should really just read it carefully very carefully and and and i know that this was just an example that you gave where it's bolded but um i don't know why we just can't say honors and affirms diversity and experiences um so that we're really referring to all diversity i think we should um because it has been carefully vetted by cabinet and the dei committee i would suggest keeping it as it is because it did go through a process of coming from the administration to the board committee and then i believe this was on the aboard agenda last month as well with this very same verbiage and we had quite a bit of discussion at the dei meeting um

153regarding each one of these drafts so i would suggest that we do keep it as it is written and approve this this evening so i just i wasn't part of that discussion because i'm not on that committee and and i'm gonna hearken back to one of these retreats that we had with dr brown um which you know he several on the support seemed to you know be encouraged to follow what he was suggesting to us in that retreat and one of the things that he had said in that retreat that he was that he was very much not in favor of welcoming statements because welcoming statements merely invited an opportunity for people to disprove what was written in them and so that they were more counterproductive than productive and you know when i look at

154this in the context of our existing mission statement which talks about a focus area on positive school environment with character education and citizenship inclusion and wellness those are very general terms which incorporate all of what i understand we've been trying to work toward on dei and then i look at this welcoming statement that says that we are doing this by connecting by affirming cultural and racial identities fostering relationships and recognizing diversity as an asset for teaching and learning i when we call out specifically cultural and racial identities as those that we are affirming then to me in a critical i will put on my lawyer hat on this when you call out specific things that you are affirming you are inherently saying that you are not affirming other things because otherwise you would have included

155them in there so i don't see in here where we're affirming religious identities i don't see where we're affirming gender identities i don't see where we're referring where we're affirming uh sexual orientation identities and and an entire other host of and i think when we start naming out those specifics that we are affirming without including all of the others we're actually taking a step backwards from what we're trying to do as a district and as opposed to what's in our mission statement today which is you know point c on our second uh priority area is inclusion that says everything this welcoming statement to me says something and that's very troubling to me and there's a reason that i just genuinely can't get behind it because i think it's counterproductive to what we're actually trying to

156do any other discussion from the board based on the fact that we do have our mission and vision that include everything that you just covered um since our we've had the discussions in with the committee and with our administrators that they see value in this statement i would support this statement it's not saying this is the only thing that we only group that we welcome or the only thing that we live by in fm we still live by our mission but we want to directly speak to these these definitions darrell oh i'm sorry i thought yeah i mean i when i read this version again and i am on the committee i was thinking along the same lines of is this inclusive enough and so i googled around a little bit for cultural identity and

157what it means and the meeting is varied but i found definitions that include everything from race gender sexuality inability nationality ethnicity religion education it's it's a pretty broad definition um i think it you do get into a danger zone to some extent when you start specifying types of identities so that would be the one place that i did want to maybe reflect as a board as this are these the two words that we want to associate with identity or not um but i did take some comfort in finding that the definition in some places was was inclusive of many different kinds of identities i guess just just just to that point to me if we were to go to go forward with this draft four i would feel more comfortable with it if cultural and

158racial identities was simply replaced by diversity just connected by affirmating diversity among our student by i mean parse that out however you choose to but i just i'm very concerned about calling out because we're having this debate right now i think that you know sherry may interpret it one way i'm interpreting it another way rebecca did research into what the definitions are that she found about it if it's not clear enough that we can't have clarity sitting here tonight then i think it's a trouble zone to walk into could we make it all identities instead of diverse identities only because we use diversity in other places in the sentence if we're going to make that change we could also just say affirming individual identities which covers everything would that be acceptable can you repeat that

159individual identities mercy you said we had a discussion on this previously i mean we really as a board did not discuss this in any depth and what i found out was that i mean process is that a committee makes a recommendation and it just seems as if this was okay number four we're going with number four and we never really had an opportunity to be able to go through these draft versions as a board you know then it appeared on the agenda as an action item but we we have not i mean if the committee has spoken to the administration that's wonderful but we have not heard from the administration with regard to where they are on this and how they got to this point and we because of the fact that we don't even

160have everyone here we don't even know what they feel about our comments with regard to this statement i think dr thais just spoke to the fact as to how i know you weren't at the dei meeting but no i'm just going back through the process so at the dei meeting we did discuss in-depth how they came to these how these different versions were discussed and this was on the agenda of our last meeting so i do think we have an administrative recommendation um if we want to phrase it that way this is the administrative recommendation i have asked if the board would be willing to change it to affirming individual identities which is less specific but actually more more broad so um i believe we do have an administrative recommendation and dr tice has said

161this is something that the cabinet weighed in on so i would like to call the question on this and ask the board for a vote with the amended language to say affirming individual identities so i would like to call the question and ask for a vote at this point so that would be all those in favor of passing the welcoming station with that change to say affirming individual identities i called the question so there's no further discussion until after we voted well you know what i can get a no vote and then we can have further discussion all all those in favor proving the welcome statement please please indicate i i i if we raise our hands a little higher and how many i have there oh we got all right those opposed and emini

162abstentions okay thank you next on the agenda under sorry my glasses are now fogging up of course under item 5.8 resolution special patrol officer agreement is there a motion that will be resolved at the board of education of the fayetteville manly school district hereby approve the special patrol officer agreement as presented is there a motion thank you kelly second from jason any discussion this is the last and final spo hire for the district all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 5.09 internal control audit and corrective action plan is there a motion that will be resolved the board of education of the fayetteville manly central school district hereby accepts the clarified 2019-20 internal control audit report on the stack submission process and approves the clarified 2019-20

163internal audit corrective action plan is there a motion thank you darryl second from sheri discussion on the the first one that says response to 2019 20 to 20 stack audit there is a typographical error that's missing half of the sentence um is that something that we are are we approving this document are we proving the other one the response to the 2019-20 yeah the the second page under the word finding the last sentence says however it does not appear these discrepancies but if you go to the full the the document the other document on page six it's all there the full sentence is there so just add the rest of the sentence no problem yeah thank you sherry additional questions comments from the board all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or

164abstaining next under board development so we will have the retreat in the 20th working agenda items something there right now potential considerations for future meetings so we will be scheduling the mental health presentation with input from the board i think what we could do perhaps is get perhaps like a overview of what that would be and just to make see if there any questions from the board or any additional information the board wants included in there before we have the presentation that'd be great um let's see future board meetings marissa yes just under well actually let me make sure that i'm going to be doing this in the right spot before i interrupt you [Music] i just really want to be able to speak to before we go on to it was back for potential

165considerations i would like more clarity as a board really how we feel about public comment i was under the impression that if we had a large number of community members that wanted to address the board that is when we would limit the length of comments and if there's a manageable amount that we would not limit the comments so i am in favor of not limiting comments unless we know that we have 20 25 30 comments that are being made in one evening and of course that hinders our ability to finish the work of the board um by no way is an indication that we're less interested in what those individuals have to say um i feel that our community does understand that if there's a large number we do have to do something to make

166it go a little more smoothly but i was very uncomfortable with cutting people off this evening when there were not that many people that were willing to speak to us it is that i i and i you probably noticed it's really hard for me to do that i don't like interrupting people when they're up there because they have taken their time to come the board has set a three-minute limit and i get it it's and it's hard to manage because we could have five people here and if each one of them spoke for 20 minutes you know so it's and i don't want to say to one person you have 10 and you have it it becomes very difficult so i'm open to whatever the board would like to do you know especially if it

167um if it means that i don't have to interrupt people i mean if we put a timer on the mic or something so that people can see that in front of them but as you saw tonight i mean you can gently say it it's it's i don't like interrupting people especially when they're sharing their personal trauma and their and their stories with the board it's very difficult i try to be fair you know there's a couple times over the last few meetings that i you know i've forgotten to look at the timer and some folks have gone under and and you know it's it's difficult so i'm open to whatever the board would like to do there um to be fair to people who've come and spoken to the poor come to speak to the

168board so however you'd like to do it um you know especially as i said if it involves me not interrupting people when they're up there i'm more than open to it i was just being consistent with what our current um i want to say policy but our current practices so thoughts from everybody else on the board so i i appreciate um eleanor's thoughts but i respectfully disagree i don't want an opportunity for somebody to filibuster for hours on end on a topic when we can get the gist of what they're trying to get across in three minutes or less i think there's plenty of time for people to comment through emails plenty of time to get their views across in three minutes in a public hearing and i certainly would not want to take our

169time which is extremely important in making rash decisions by having a period where somebody could speak for an indeterminate amount of time i don't like interrupting people but in my experience in various board meetings that i've been throughout the state whether it's county village town school district the vast majority limit the amount of time i appreciate elena's suggestion as well not cutting people off i mean it seemed like most of the people who spoke wrapped it up within 10 seconds after the three minutes which made me wonder if the limit was four minutes or five minutes would that have allowed them to get everything in um i think we need some limit i agree that we can't i don't think we can have an open-ended time and i think from an equity perspective it's not

170really fair for people who show up to a meeting that's sparsely attended to be able to speak for 20 minutes when someone happens to show up with 50 people they're cut off at three minutes so i think we need a guideline i'd be open to slightly extending the time if we think that would help people be able to say their whole piece having been on the other side of this as some of you remember years ago i spent time tailoring my comments for the three minute which was actually good for me to be able to distill what i was trying to say down to the important points so i am comfortable with the three minute limit i absolutely agree that we need to be equitable it shouldn't to rebecca's point that it shouldn't matter what

171meeting you show up to you should have the same amount of time as everybody else the community you know should also be aware that that this is not the only way to [Music] present an issue to the board um you know there is email then obviously contacting the district and the appropriate parties within the district through the chain of command and through the let's talk is also an opportunity to um you know because a lot of the issues that come to us end up being referred back to the district um to handle and and i think it's important for us to hear from the community but um this is not the only the only um method to do that so just the you know this is a meeting in the public not a public meeting

172um and i i so i'm comfortable with the way we do it now i know that puts a huge burden on you marissa and i apologize i think you've been respectful and trying to handle that as as best as possible but i do think the three-minute limit is fair and i think it should be applied across at any meeting when people sign up for public comment if i email you do we send them something back i know it's written in our like if it's on the website somewhere but when they sign up for public comment can do we reply back to them we confirm but do we say make sure they understand it is three minutes and any other any other thoughts well just marissa that it's not new it's been our rule on the

173board since i've been on the board and i know it's difficult for you but i think that it's appropriate and i've attended a webinar and a legal conference and they're encouraging us to do even more in terms of managing um public comment but i i thought it went pretty well and i think you know as rebecca said some people would go on forever so we i think we're doing just great i did just open the public comment registration form from tonight's agenda i don't see where it says there's a three minute limit i know that it's many in many other places but if we can edit that it would help yeah thank you so i do a lot of public speaking and there is to me a very significant difference between what you can coherently

174and concisely but yet completely say in four to five minutes that you cannot do in three and when people have been cut off generally speaking it has been quite clear that most of them are quite near the end of what they were intending to say in any event so what i would suggest is that we entertain moving this to four minutes and see how that goes for a period of time and see if that has resolved the cutting off of people and i mean i'm certainly not in favor of to mark's point of people coming and filibustering and talking for an hour and i don't think most people would do that and i think the likelihood is very slim but i am not proposing in any way to leave this open-ended but i i would

175feel more comfortable of let's try for and let's see if that can help eliminate the cutting off of people in my over 20 years of board service not one time has someone in the public taking advantage of public comment session so i'm just trying to be equally as respectful whenever we can so i would be in favor of extending the limit and let me just go back to say that all i was suggesting was that we put this under future consideration for future potential consideration which is i did bring it up in the right spot and i don't know how we sarah go ahead thank you okay so why don't we think about this um until on this point she wasn't requesting any action on this at this point so why don't we just keep

176this in mind and um maybe after the next board meeting so yeah you know have another discussion and see what we'd like to do there okay uh where am i i think i am on consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you rebecca and a second from a second from daryl all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right so if you have a question on the consent agenda so um when we look at the form and for surplus miscellaneous equipment yeah i'm sorry i thought i could discuss it after so pull so i want to make a motion then to pull it out because i need clarification on something so 8.05 all right so is there a second to remove item 8.05 resolution surplus

177miscellaneous equipment thank you rebecca any discussion all those in favor indicate i i you are opposed or abstaining all right so we let me get another motion to approve the consent agenda as presented i've moved that item out so we're not approving that one thank you rebecca a second from mark all those in favor indicate i i you want to pose for abstaining all right now we're on to item eight point or that'd be 9.01 9.01 resolution surplus miscellaneous equipment is there a motion to approve the resolution thank you sherry and a second from kelly discussion so bill can you just explain we've got all the school buses listed out and i'm assuming these are all the buses out of service right it says one is going to auction but then the other ones all

178the other buses are listed as pending why and what are we doing i guess what are we doing i just assumed we would have as a district sentimental auction yeah to uh to a certain extent our typical process has been to send them all to auction over the years we've found that those uh basically we get more money that way from them than trade you know given the pandemic we wanted to hold some buses in as spares in case we needed to you know spread more students out on the buses providing we had the bus drivers to do so as well but that's kind of why we're we're kind of holding that off for now but typically you know what we've been getting the most or most value for those buses that are taken out

179of service has been selling them at auction so if we're holding them off to the side are we really disposing of them i guess i i guess that's where my confusion is i don't understand yeah i see what you're saying we're trying to take them you know part of the disposal process is also um you know in time we will take them off our insurance as well not yet because they're not you know disposed of but uh there's a whole process here i can get you more clarification too if you want yeah i guess bill is just by my background i guess in my understanding that if i see something on an equipment disposal form right and it we talk about you know approving it here at resolution tonight i would assume that we're disposing

180of it so if we're just holding it and taking it out of service but with the potential to be put back in service i just wouldn't have expected to see it on this forum i understand where your confusion is coming from and let me see if i can get a better round or a better response for you okay so i mean i guess do we if by approving this form and it's saying the method of disposal is pending i mean what are we exactly are we approving then i guess is my question yeah yeah and i once again i i would need to get a little bit more clarification on what exactly that plan is so can we just pull that item for today yeah you want to pull that that's fine yeah we can

181pull that one and bring that back in or the next board meeting okay thank you bill now moving on to item 10.01 is there a motion to move into executive session for the purpose of discussing the employment history of a particular individual thank you rebecca a second from jason any discussion all those in favor indicate i i anyone opposed abstaining all right that will conclude the public portion of our meeting and we'll move into executive session and adjourn from there thank you thank you all for coming those of you who stayed till the end wish we had a price all right