F-M BOE Meeting for August 9, 2021

001oh [Music] i [Music] is [Music] oh happy okay oh okay oh what are you doing uh thank you so much one nation next item on the agenda item 1.03 appointment of a clerk pro tem is there a motion to nominate dan seidberg is the clerk pro tem for this evening thank you jason second from kelly any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i am opposed or stating next item on the agenda item 1.04 approval or revision of the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda this evening thank you daryl in a second from jason we do need to make one switch right off the bat which is item 3.09 the uh district safety plan we're going to switch that with 3.10 the um spo officer agreements so 3.10 will become 3.9

002and 3.9 will become 3.10 any additional switches changes all those in favor please indicate i i when opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 1.05 public comment we do have a large number of people who have come for public comment this evening so i'm going to keep you to your three minutes when i hold my hand up you have uh you're halfway through and i hate to interrupt people but i will actually i'll hold up a sign let you know you have one minute left and then i will let you know you have no time left so please we have about 25 people who want to speak this evening so please keep your comments to three minutes and if someone has said made your point um you can just second that without giving a

003lengthy statement okay the board does not always respond to comments during public comment but if you have a question we will get back to you with a response alright so we will start this evening with kelly ward all right there's a button um of the goals there we go now can you hear me i thought i'd have a minute to prepare but that's fine um hi i'm kelly ward i'm a resident and a taxpayer in the fm school district and i've lived here for 30 years we've had five children go through the fm school district the first one graduated in 2008 so she started school in 1995. yes i'm old and the youngest graduated in 2019. so um you can say i've seen a lot of changes in pedagogy over the years um having that

004length of time here but i can say without hesitation that my children received an excellent education and excellent formal education at fm but just like everything else in life there's positives and negatives and there were positive and negatives to their time here and as educators i know that you are all aware that formal education doesn't hold all the wisdom that one might need to lead a life of good citizenship in this country so i'm here to voice my support for the new york state's board of regents initiative to advance diversity equity and inclusion in schools across the state i believe that to provide a first-rate education in 2021 and beyond means making sure our students know that there are many stories that can be woven into the story of our country and i think it's

005past time to listen to them this is what makes us who we are as americans i truly hope that fm takes its call to educate its students from a culturally responsive framework seriously we already know that what we lack in diversity in the demographics in the fm area that fm is very homogeneous we can't make up for that in classroom lessons alone but we can hope by taking seriously culturally responsible curriculum topics we can give our students an education worthy of the world we all live in i would love to see fm be an example of how the values of diversity equity and inclusion can inform our students learning experiences make them better citizens and enrich their lives thanks thanks for listening to me thanks for listening to all the other 24 people that are

006coming behind me thank you thank you kelly bill braun in the july 22nd board dei committee meeting superintendent twice favorably referred to the erie 1 proceeds policies and procedures and to the book five practices for equity focused school leadership on the erie 1 boces online policy manual section 8330 is the title objection to instructional materials and controversial issues i quoted here controversial issues may be started as part of the curriculum and teachers will present these issues in their classrooms in an impartial and objective manner teachers wishing to call upon outside speakers in the presentation of controversial issues are required to obtain the approval of the principal we will keep in mind the obligation for presenting opposing views as well and who will inform the superintendent prior to the presentation if parents or citizens of the

007community believe that unfair and biased presentations are being made by a teacher the district superintendent or designee may provide for a hearing so that both parties may fully express their views unquote i question the impartiality and object objectivity of this book is a potential controversial source being brought into this district and its classrooms it claims that systemic racism is deeply rooted in america and its schools four levels of racism are described historical which is of course true and tragic structural which refers to current socioeconomic differences institutional which refers to entrenched laws rules and procedures and processes that also result in socioeconomic differences and lastly individual racism all individual racism should be vigorously condemned but here i challenge the author's evidence for socioeconomic differences that result in systemic racism and education they give the example of

008pto in a wealthy area that raised 65 thousand dollars and bought equipment for an after-school program the pto in a nearby economically disadvantaged area was only able to raise fifteen thousand dollars which they used to pay for a part-time teaching assistant they cite this fifteen thousand or sorry they cite this fifty thousand dollar difference as key evidence for national systemic racism so i did some local research fm's budget for the coming year is 93 million for about 4 200 students k to 12 or 22 000 per student over 80 percent of the fm students are white the syracuse city schools budget for the coming year is 481 million for about 21 000 students or 23 000 per student which is one thousand dollars more per student than at fm 80 of syracuse students are minority

009and 80 percent are considered to be economically disadvantaged 75 of the syracuse school budget is funded by new york state aid and perhaps this equity can occur because new york is the highest tax state in the nation the institutional process of democratically electing representatives by the people of the state brought this about so it seems to me the burden is on the board each of you to give objective evidence for the need to correct the supposed global structural and institutional racism at fm the authors write some people will be deeply opposed to your equity work and will work hard to ensure its failure and in a similar context they ask of school leaders do you need to learn more about racism white privilege and white fragility the implication is that those who are opposed to

010you i hate the intro but your three minutes are up thank you madeline i don't i'm hopefully i won't mispronounce your last name malgerie madeleine malgerie hello my name is madeline malgieri i'm a rising junior at fm and i've lived in this community for upwards of 13 years i spent my time at fm learning what it means to be a subservient citizen to the united states of america i've learned to be civil and i know the states i have been taught how to equivocate and how to write op-eds i participate in school elections i socratically state my points in my history classes yet i falter in knowing just quite how to see things in different worldly perspectives we stand for the flag at fm but we fail to recognize all the flag bears we state

011the pledge and a tron obedience i can understand why i must attend parades and celebrations but i live in a community where that is all we can manage to do do you speak with the accented man at the local restaurant and assume automatically that you must modify yourself and your language in order for him to properly understand you have you passed absently the columbus statue downtown and do you listen with tech eternity to the boys talk about the girls and how they move in launch room and when you walk into a room what else is there to do but to follow suit of this categorization you have built your entire life around we students are so entirely corrupted and plagued by our individuality at them that we feel to recognize how we may have been

012doing something wrong to begin with and this issue wherever whatever it is is nurtured and not in our nature diluted speeches about inclusion that facilitate around talking about diversity but not really have soiled what we as students can begin to understand about the world we are taught niceties but not how to purge harmful biases or stigmas or what these harmful biases and stigmas could be we just don't quite know how to locate the cause and thus we cannot understand the tension and to see through another absent comment about racial justice or to entertain limb content surrounding inclusivity and morality is a continuation of violence against the student body we are owed a proper education which must consist of dei thank you for your time thank you gail maddox this is my daughter or granddaughter mackenzie

013i'm here as an early childhood educator on behalf of my grandchildren all children first concerned mass these are my granddaughter's own words last year i was scared to go to school because it was really hard to breathe with a hot mask on my face i just wanted to stay home because it was scary to go to school no kids should be scared to go to school it's not fair because school should be a safe environment for us i was yelled at for pulling down my mask to get some air if any parent wants their kid to wear a mask that's fine but they aren't any safer when they aren't wearing one i witnessed first hand my granddaughter's anxiety at drop off masking our children is child abuse we do not know the long-term psychological effects

014and harm of mask wearing covet survival rate for children ages 0 to 14 is 99.998 percent and between ages of fifteen to forty four it's ninety nine point nine nine three one percent our children are not responsible for our health we are responsible if we get sick so they should not have to worry about that so why are you masking our children a study published by the journal of the american medical association found that german school children who are forced to wear a mask all day long are inhaling at least 300 percent more co2 than is legally allowed putting them at serious risk of hypoxia or oxygen deprivation the mask wearing children who were elevated or evaluated as part of the research reported irritability headaches and reluctance to go to school i have a report

015with me if you'd like me to leave it we are failing our children schools used to be a safe haven for children and now they've become a dangerous environment second concern dei again my granddaughter's own words dei stands for diversity equity inclusion but i believe in diversity equality and inclusion they make you think you're saying the right thing but no they flipped it when i went to school it felt like they were trying to make us feel bad for the color of our skin it made me feel like i did something wrong but i didn't no one did anything wrong except for the school doing this to their students this did not hurt me because i ignored it but other kids may have been hurt the school did not think about these things when they

016do them no kid should feel bad for the color of their skin finally in the words of nelson mandela our children are our greatest treasure they are our future those who accuse them tear at the fabric of our society and weaken our nation thank you and please do the right thing for our children [Applause] thank you um mrs braun uh i'm sorry i want to mispronounce your first name um chen lon brown hello hello we all gather here for something very important our children they are our biggest treasure and responsibility because they are the future of our country after pandemic our way our life turned upside down our school worldwide had locked down it never happened in human history even in world war one and two it's heartbreaking to see of a teenager's depression and

017the suicidal rate is historically high of kids suffered deeply from this lockdown i hope the new school year will be better but my heart became heavy after i saw the dei signs in my neighborhood i read this book mr thais recommended i can see the big wave coming to our school district to me dei and crt are very similar it sounds so loving but in reality it's america marxism it will divide people in our country let me make it simple dui is saying america is a racist country and white people are the oppressors and other colors like black yellow or brown are the oppressed that is not true i came to america in 2002 with 500 in my pocket and with my broken english but i felt more welcomed by americans than in china this

018country blessed me and the people like me so much my first job was washing dishes in a french restaurant i worked hard and enjoyed learning from co-workers from different races i never experienced any discrimination in this country asian americans are hard workers and we are thankful for all the opportunities that this country provides for each one to grow and succeed now i work as a federal employee i love this country and i love my job america is the greatest country in human history because of its freedom and democracy millions of people on this earth are dreaming to live in america when i hear people see they are ashamed to be america and even want to burn the flag it concerns me deeply i have many white family members and white friends they are the nicest

019people i have ever known in the year 2000 a white missionary couple came to china from california and shares god's love with me that's the best thing that ever happened in my life we all are sinners and fall short of glory of god each life is wonderfully made all life matters and each race is special we should encourage and learn from one another we all know each wrist has good guys and bad guys most white people are not racist skin color should not be the focus school should teach good characters and i also want to ask the school board here ydi and what's the purpose of it at fm do you know the chinese communist party has an ambition to take over america xi jinping told biden china is going to own america in 2035

020many second graders in china can do our fifth greatest american mess how do you expect our kids to compete in the future in other countries kids are working hard on science and math here school are busy with agendas bathrooms or people's color water streams mrs braun your three-minute survival thank you thank you christopher mckee did i say it wrong makai it's mickey okay i didn't realize this topic would be this uh controversial but um so basically i'm here to not discuss dei or masks or anything else like that but rather a civics class instead of worrying about dei class let's focus on civics in fact we started our meeting with the pledge of allegiance we stated under god under god was added in 1954 to fight communism wasn't even in the original pledge but most

021people here don't even know it i bet you if you ask most people anything past the second amendment they can't tell you but the 19th amendment um prevented discrimination based on sex for voting the three-fifths compromise in our constitution allowed states to count slaves the american disabilities act protects children such as my own who has autism civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of both expanded civil rights capabilities and voting rights while teach dei teaches certain values that we should all distill in our children teaching compromise and healthy debate through civics classes i believe would help even further having worked as a correctional officer in the 90s i've heard saw firsthand the results of the violent crimes act as our institutions and corrections filled to capacity so again i believe that teaching

022through a civics class will get dei out of it thank you joseph dunaway my name is joe dunaway some of you may know me as coach dunaway i've had the privilege of coach many of your little league baseball players and now pop warner i am a husband and a father of four some of you may even know my son joey and jackson dunaway here with us today i am also an underrepresented taxpayer a stakeholder of this district i have a voice and a right to taxation with representation i am als state commissioner of health uh dr zucker sent a letter to new york state residence on june 4th 2021 at the time i was elated to hear that masks were no longer required indoors for students though strongly encouraged a district that dragged their feet

023on every decision throughout this entire pandemic still hung on every word and recommendation from governor cuomo and his staff this letter came from the top so i was hopeful we were finally done with masks so i wrote a letter to the school june 6 12 58 pm per the attached letter i will be sending my kids to school without a mask if my kids are forced to wear them i i'll be filing a discrimination lawsuit against the district there is a great number of other parents that feel the same exact way best regards joe dunaway june 6 3 53 p.m dear joe thank you for sharing your frustration using the let's talk communication portal while i understand and appreciate your frustrations surrounding the issue i cannot in good conscience can condone any insubordination insurrection or

024sedition on this matter until it is resolved in the appropriate matter the loss of discipline and respect to the district code of conduct not to mention the material disruption to the school day which would take us away from our educational mission would be problematic for all students really insubordination insurrection these are the words of you or your legal counsel definitely not if i didn't know better these are the words of a tyrant a dictator not a ceo is this who you are the letter goes on to mention an incident where i refuse to wear a mask at a band instrument sale that's right i did and here's more what dr teiss had to say your behavior at the recent ban instant sale coupled with today's declaration of insubordination insurrection and sedition demonstrates a pattern of

025behavior that is unacceptable to the administration as such i have carbon copied the bill administration at eagle hill middle school in anticipation of your non-compliance you've woken the dragon you have my attention i'd like this opportunity to officially announce that i'll be running for a seat on the school board in 2022 i've served our country in the united states marine corps for eight years i'm a james dewitt and syracuse university graduate my degree is in accounting and entrepreneurship i have an extensive background in financial statement accounting as well as personal and corporate tax i am well versed in fund accounting i'm also the founder and ceo of a small startup i am now ready to serve the underrepresented of this community thank you for your consideration thank you [Applause] caitlin kriesel good evening i get

026really nervous speaking front of large crowds honestly which might surprise you but it's true my name is caitlin kriesel and i am a parent of two daughters here in the fayetteville manlia school district my family has lived in this community since 1998 with my sister my brother my two brothers and myself attending fm i am a graduate of the 2005 class when i made the decision to move my family back to manlius and to enroll my daughters in school here one thing weighed on my mind more than any other factor would my daughters be accepted here i asked hundreds of people this question and wrestled with it for years and years before finally committing to moving back to manliest is the mic like jankety or can you hear me okay is it okay why was

027i asking this question because my daughters are black my daughters are african-american as a graduate of fm i knew of the lack of diversity because i had experienced it firsthand there were only a few people of color in my graduating class and even in the entire high school it took me years of educating myself in college and years of being in a relationship with my daughter's father a black man to unlearn the lessons i was taught here while at fayetteville manlius racism is an ugly word but it's an important one just because we don't like it doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it i talk about the issues of institutionalized racism at home with my daughters because these are lessons they don't have the privilege not to learn [Music] soon after moving back to fm

028we were confronted with something that i wish was unavoidable on the bus on their way to my mom's house they were being mocked made fun of and they were called weird little brown skins [Music] to repeat that they were called weird little brown skins no children should be treated that way i had to call the school i talked to the bus driver and the principal and they handled it pretty well but the entire time i kept thinking are they trained to handle this situation or are they just doing the best that they can and what about the parents and the child who used these racist terms to confront my children who was going to tell them that these words were racist and that my daughters were made to feel unwelcome based on the color of

029their skin i'm going to skip a bunch because i am running out of time i mentioned earlier how i have to teach my daughters about racism at home because it is a reality that they will face why is it just the black children who have to learn about race as them in the realities of the world we live in why is it just the children of color who have to be sat down by the people who loved them and told the truth about their existence in this country shouldn't that be a lesson that all kids learn or are we not doing our children an injustice by pretending that these things don't exist brushing our country's history under the rug thank you caitlyn thank you so much [Applause] dr travis hobart hi hi everybody i'm uh

030travis hobart and i am a parent of a soon-to-be second grader here in fayettel um and i'm also a pediatrician and uh prevent a medicine doctor so that is to say i specialize in pediatrics and public health and so i'm just here to talk uh that i i've heard some concerning news media reports about what's happening in other districts in regards to school safety plans so i wanted to add my voice to um to to this meeting um to to emphasize that uh all of the organizations of uh the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics recommend that uh that schools undertake a a layered approach to safety from covid during um during the school year and that includes universal face masks that includes physical distancing that includes testing kids when they're sick and isolating

031them from the other kids to assure that they don't pass on covid and i i really just want to emphasize that i think these these are the right things to do and that i think we've done a great job in the last year and the school board and the schools have done a great job with with implementing those those safety safety tools and now isn't the time to let up we owe it to our kids to keep them safe longer they need to be back in school full-time and i think that's hugely important for them as a father and a pediatrician i think it's it's crucial but we need we owe it to them to keep it safe and if there are people in the school that aren't wearing masks that makes them much less

032safe and i think the other thing i wanted to say is that while we've been living with coronavirus for a year and a half now this new delta variant i think we should all think of it as something new and different and it's twice as contagious it seems to be more severe and the people most at risk are the unvaccinated which includes everybody under the age of 12 as you know um so i i i think we have to really we can't let up in terms of of keeping keeping our kids safe and making sure that everyone in the school is wearing masks because one other thing that that uh that this delta variant is is that's important about the delta variant is that it seems that those that are vaccinated can still spread the

033disease um and and spread it just as well as those that aren't vaccinated um so even the teachers and the staff that have uh in large part been vaccinated i think we i think they need to be masked too both for biological reasons and also because modeling behavior by by adults is how kids learn things and and if we have adults walking around without masks then kids are going to be less likely to wear theirs so and i know we're all sick of masks like believe me i'm i probably am sicker of them than you are so um but but there's no evidence i just want to correct something that was said earlier there's no credible evidence that mass are dangerous for children there was an article from jama pediatrics that was mentioned that has

034since been retracted by the by the editors of the journal because the methodology was poor the way that they measure the carbon dioxide wasn't really a way to measure it in children so um you know so i think i think that's important and then one final thing i'll say is that i think the logistics of this are going to be much smoother if kids are masked because if they're not masked more kids are going to get sick not from coronavirus necessarily but from other things they're going to have to go to the nurse they're going to have to get tested they're going to be out of school they're going to be quarantined and they're it's going to be very disruptive for the for the school year thank you dr hobart thank you laura patton [Music]

035my husband was going to speak too can we speak together at the same time is that okay you want to go one after each other you mean yeah sure no problem you want me to go first okay um my name is devin patton um i am a father of three girls i go to fm um my daughter goes to elementary school and my other two daughters go to um wellwood and i've watched them all go from my my oldest who's 13 go from a straight a student to not wanting to go to school at all my middle daughter she is not wanting to go to school either and my youngest is not wanting to go to school either before then they were straight a students good students loved school and the pandemic obviously created this

036issue but one thing that is giving them problems uh has con continued to give them problems with learning is the mass my young daughter who's trying to learn how to read is having a hard time work with the mask on understanding what the the teachers are saying and even feeling her own words coming out of her own mouth um i know what the cdc is recommending i know what the um what the state is saying even at this time but i'm hoping that we can approach week that you guys could approach this from kind of a caring standpoint and a common sense standpoint you know i when we go to restaurants we wear the mask to the building you know we go sit down at our table and as we get ready we take the

037mask off and we eat we're by ourselves we're separated from others maybe that's a way we can do this so that our children don't feel like they're confined with their with this mask on their face maybe when they get to school maybe they have the mask on you check the temperatures they get to their desk they're three feet apart from each other and they're trying to learn they're by themselves looking at the teacher let's take the mask off and and let them learn um i i mean i as when i'm from when i'm hearing other parents i'm not the only one here and i just think this is a just a common sense way to approach this so that our kids can learn and read my daughter started school you know you know first grade

038where she's trying to read and she's not reading well i mean if you multiply this and continue this i mean i hate to say it but what that doctor just said that pediatrician said it sounds like we're going to be wearing masks forever i mean we're i mean because there's always going to be a flu there's always this virus is not going to go away it's always going to be around and i think it's this is just one way to while we're in the thick of it because i think this is psychological warfare too with wearing masks but if we're going to wear masks if you're going to have kids wear masks come to school wear the mask they get to their place where they're alone three feet apart take it off and let them

039learn and but i think you guys are doing a good job in terms of watching them when they come in checking their temperature because the way i've been i've been doing the news for 20 years now the way viruses and infectious diseases are spread it's by contact touching the droplets if someone is coming to school and they're sick and courage continue to encourage families to keep their kids home mr patton your three minutes are up your wife can have her three minutes okay continue what i was saying [Applause] i get really emotional about this i'm not only a mother of three daughters but i'm a teacher as well and this year has been the hardest year of my entire life um he didn't mention that our two oldest daughters were diagnosed with severe depression they're

040on antidepressants now and this is because of the mask our oldest daughter we just moved into fayetteville a few months ago we're new to the district i didn't even know about this meeting until earlier today so i have nothing prepared but i felt compelled to come here and speak because this is important um like he said i'm not going to repeat everything but you know they were straight a students and my oldest daughter just suffers from severe anxiety from wearing the mask we she wanted a new bed spread for her new room i took her into target we were there for one minute and she said mom i can't do this and she ran out in the parking lot and i don't know she's claustrophobic or what it is but she can't handle wearing the

041mask now it has gotten a little better she's been able to wear it in school but she still she comes home and she's overly exhausted she's worn out she doesn't want her to do her homework and honestly the medication is not working very well this is not going to get better until the masks come off and these kids they do not deserve this it is it has been it's been proven there is a doctor who spoke at a board meeting um in mount vernon i think it was new hampshire i just saw it today i wish i i wish i could show it youtube has taken it down already yeah um he is a doctor and he has been studying this virus this virus has evolved because people are getting vaccinated it's becoming stronger and

042it's changing because people are getting vaccinated the smallpox vaccination worked on that virus because it was not um found in animal reservoirs is what they call it so or so the virus could only live in humans and that's why they were able to eradicate that virus this new virus covid it it can live in animals in animal reservoirs and that is why he said we will never be able to get rid of this virus no matter how many people get vaccinated the mask they're not doing any good it's not going to help because the spores go through the mask when you talk it's been proven they go through the mask all we are doing is torturing our children that's all we're doing and this this needs to stop and if that means i have to

043pull all three kids in my out of school and be broken you know move out of my house and get a cheaper house so i don't have to be a teacher this year because i have to homeschool three daughters now who also by the way are mixed and have also experienced racism at this school i'm not very happy right now um and it's happened it's from teachers teachers calling my kids out while they're just visiting with their friends in the hallway walking down to the bus stop and they got called out every day yelled at and my kids said none of my white friends get y'all that mom it's just me and my sister every day and my girls are the sweetest girls you'll ever meet so yeah thank you for your time [Applause] [Music]

044ed durant sorry i didn't hear my name at first um we've lived in a district for about five years we have three children in school at the moment first of all like to thank you all for serving our community and most of all our children this can be a thankless job i'm sure with a large number of different agendas to contend with particularly in this district your service is most appreciated in the past 18 months you've all been faced with a mountain of adversity that has nothing to do with education under the circumstances i think the district has done an excellent job of continuing to provide the high quality education that fm is known for the new school year brings these challenges back into focus it appears the state will not be providing specific covid

045protocols and is left up to the county and the districts to decide along these lines when it comes to masks i would ask the school board to consider leaving as many health related decisions to the parents as possible we are all being encouraged to follow the science while it is certainly difficult to do so and read everything that's out there i've actually done as much as i can and i've reached my own conclusions about the appropriate course of action for our children after reading the scientific studies and journals out there my family and i have concluded that mass are likely ineffective potentially dangerous we've also concluded that children are not at high risk for covid relative to other threats finally children are not good vectors of the disease to each other and to adults a

046cdc study published in may of 2020 concluded as follows on the effectiveness of mass in our systemic review we identified 10 randomized control trials that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published from 1946 to 2018. in pooled analysis we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face mass we've already talked about the jama study i'll skip that but in general our conclusion was the co2 buildup behind the mask is probably the greatest potential danger from the mass use the good news is that covet is not a particular threat to children a uk study found that for children under the age of 18 who tested positive for cova there was a 99.95 percent survival rate it works out

047to a mortality rate of about two per million considering the infection this compares to the flu which is around 4 per million the mortality rate from unintentional drowning is about 10 per million and the mortality rate from vehicular accidents is 20 per million so perhaps rather than requiring mass for our kids we should be requiring students to ride the bus to and from school thank you nicole miller elena bassett hi everyone thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today my name is elena de la garza bassett and i'm here to voice my support for the district's efforts to create a more inclusive welcoming community for all students teachers and families i'm an fm alumni a parent to two young kids who will be in the fm school district and an aunt two nieces

048who attend fail and wellwood i recently moved back to fm to raise my family and while i'm confident my kids will have the same wonderful academic opportunities they had i'm hopeful they'll receive a more diverse and inclusive education looking back at my own experiences as a student i graduated without a true awareness of what life was like for people different than me for people who face barriers to education and opportunity including systemic racism and discrimination as a straight white cisgender woman my privilege protected me from much of the hardship some of my peers faced at fm i recall numerous times when classmates with differences were made fun of ostracized or otherwise made to feel less than i've heard from gay and gender non-conforming classmates that they didn't feel safe sharing their true selves with others

049for fear of ridicule and lack of support i witnessed defensive jokes and comments being made about students from different racial ethnic and cultural backgrounds students of different physical and mental abilities students of lower socioeconomic status i was wary of sharing my mexican heritage with others i didn't think that difference would be celebrated when i was in high school some of my close family members experienced serious mental health challenges and the stigma of mental health was so strong that i didn't feel like i could talk about our struggles when my friends and i experienced sexual harassment and assault we didn't even understand what we were experiencing so we stayed silent as an adult i wondered why i hadn't been taught about our country's history of injustice whole chapters had been omitted i hadn't learned about covert

050forms of racism and bias that were pervasive throughout my experience at fm hearing the powerful presentation made by recent fm graduates at the board of ed meeting last october showed me that fm schools continue to lack in diversity inclusion and mental health education and support i worry that my kids identities and abilities as they evolve they may not feel accepted i worry that my nieces and other kids with same-sex parents may feel excluded i worry that teachers and students may knowingly or unknowingly perpetuate racism as a clinical psychologist i work with diverse veterans who've served our country i now understand the long-term negative consequences of discrimination bullying and oppression the disproportionate impact of those experiences on black indigenous people of color and lgbtq plus people in our community is undeniable leading to huge disparities across

051domains of life research shows that we can reduce those disparities and create a more equitable society by starting early and teaching kids about diversity racial social justice by affirming each student's identities by destigmatizing mental health and mental illness providing adequate mental health support and empowering students to connect with understand and respect another thank you so much for all you're doing to further diversity equity and inclusion and to strengthen our schools and our community thank you william nicholson good evening and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to address this board i'm a parent of an alumnus and an alumnus myself all eight of my siblings are alumni meaning that there have been members of my family in these halls since the late 1960s with vast experience and without hesitation i can say that this district

052will only benefit from a more conscious and deliberate adoption of dei standards historically this district has been slow in adapting with evolving social and cultural norms diversity equity and inclusion these have unfortunately become buzzwords with messy political heft but i would argue that this community is not really in conflict over dei standards opponents have stated repeatedly that they are for a diverse community and i take them at their word on this equity has been misunderstood and conflated with equality over and over again but i would argue that opponents are also in favor of equity uh if you believe any academic support services belong in schools at all you believe in equity for example where this community seems to be stuck in conflict and struggling is with the inclusion piece with who is welcome to live

053fully and freely in public spaces there's a cruelty in this tacit exclusion the cruelty of indifference the cruelty of denying the history and experiences of non-dominant cultures of refusing to adapt public systems to accommodate the broader common good i accept here that here today these may be completely unintended cruelties but they are harmful nonetheless we witness now factions calling each other racist un-american and worse we do not want to be here as a community we have families members of our community telling us that they are hurting and we have this opportunity to begin to alleviate their suffering we simply cannot turn away from this moral responsibility we deprive our children the resiliency that life will demand of them beyond their hometown borders in the real world where their success will require navigating differences cooperating and

054collaborating in relationships both personal and professional opponents are succumbing to the binding power of a generalized fear of change we must not allow that our mandate as people is to choose love over fear i'm a deeply religious man myself willing to reason with any faith tradition but at some point we have to admit we were wrong about something be an adult and move on sometimes we get it wrong humans are fallible beings it is not unpatriotic or unamerican to examine the actual factual history without limiting it to whatever version our sentimentality or traditions might prefer not only that at the end of the day it's just the kinder thing to do it is the christian thing to do to choose love over fear thanks for your brief attention this evening and i wish you good

055luck in your decision making thank you marta and i'm really gonna miss you is marta here thank you good evening my name is martha kupczynski i am here to talk about the new safety plan for reopening for the new school year as i am aware you are trying to make right now there's a lot of issues we can talk about today but i think we should concentrate today on the reopening for our children [Music] the cdc issued new guidance for schools for schools recommending the use of masks for the upcoming school year based on what data what did the cdc base its decision on definitely not science do masks reduce covered transmission in children believe it or not there is not a single study on this question there is data from last school year though

056there hasn't been any difference in covet transmission between schools who mandated masks and schools who had masks optional we have been told to wear masks since the beginning of the pandemic even though all scientists agree that this virus spreads by aerosols which particles are so small no cloth mask can stop it no cloth mass is going to save you here yet this huge push for masking keeps going and going even after 70 of new yorkers age 18 and above are fully vaccinated where does this end it's just a mask it's just six feet it's just few more weeks it's just so you can travel it's just until we have the vaccine you know etc etc covet 19 is here to stay like it or not we should not be concentrating on taking steps back we

057should learn to live with it just like we live with cold and flu viruses did we make the children wear masks during flu seasons in the past years i know this has already been mentioned today but i'm going to read these statistics again about children age 5 to 14 annual debts per 100 000 cancer 2.1 car accidents 1.9 suicide 1.5 homicide 0.7 drowning 0.5 flu 0.3 covet 19 0.005 do you drive with your kids every day [Music] do you take them swimming i'm sure you all do any child who wants to wear a mask should be free to do so every child who struggles with a mask should have the same exact freedom to not wear one thank you very much all we ask is a choice [Applause] jennifer is it welsh jennifer no jennifer

058okay um jim bruhl brule sorry thank you daryl thank you for this opportunity my name is jim berlay and my family has been has lived in this community for 35 years our daughters went to public school here launched successful careers from the strong educational platform and each of them is carving their own path to make this world a better place in unique innovative ways in reviewing the strategic plan for the fm school district i noticed that a priority support goal is to support student inquiry innovation and collaboration these are highly laudable pursuits that deserve widespread support throughout our community in my experience with working with individuals organizations and communities locally and worldwide i've discovered that the true learning and growth occurs most reliably and endures most effectively when we encounter differences that are not immediately

059familiar or comfortable to us this applies to every form of human endeavor science history literature economics international relations there can be no inquiry innovation or collaboration without encountering that which is different and new we know that physiologically our animal natures react to strange and different with fear and guardedness a reflex we must learn to overcome in order to able to be learn grow and care for each other in recent weeks there's been much controversy about the efforts to attend to these differences in a productive and ethical manner submitting to the fear aroused in some by words like diversity equity and inclusion robs each of us and our community of the opportunity to innovate and collaborate to learn and to grow in fact these words invite us to encounter the differences between us and ensure that

060we are all able to benefit from them i suggest that each of us would benefit by engaging in a careful inquiry of what deeper fears these words evoke in us and finding a way to collaborate to ensure that we as a community can learn and grow to be even better than we are perhaps one way of doing this would be to invite people of diverse views to safely and openly share their concerns in a setting designed not to coerce but instead to listen such an undertaking would it seems be supported by the school district and lead to a truly beneficial outcome for everyone thank you [Applause] michael neck i'm so [Music] sorry good evening thank you good evening um my name is michael barfnick i have three children in the district we moved here in

0612019. fortunately within the first year moving in the school was shut down due to covet as parents we learned to be patient through this new normal but let's just fast forward to today it's been a year and a half since the lockdowns and here's what we know we know that the virus is not a risk to our children we know that school environment for children is not a super spreader event we know that mass do not work we know that suicide and depression rates in children are higher now than before the lockdowns and just on a side note when did mental health get put on the back burner of school priorities this has always been a high priority and now we're just shrugging it off because of covid we know that there are large psychological

062and social effects for children wearing masks long term so why are we now still considering masking our children again for this upcoming school year i mean we've lost all scientific logic in common sense here last year one of my sons was in his lunch period eating a lollipop and his teacher ordered him to cut the stick off as a lollipop and put it back in his mouth and put his mask over it because it was too much of a risk about a virus where only point zero four percent of kids under 18 require icu care and where only one in one million children will not survive these numbers state how incredibly rare a life-threatening case of covid19 in children under 18 is and so here's just some quick interesting new data recently released from the

063cdc's website out of 626 000 deaths of covid only 321 deaths were of minors under the age of 17. that equates to .05 percent now according to the cdc's reported adverse events due to vaccination website there have been 6 000 reported deaths after vaccination 42 of them have been 17 and under that equates to 0.7 when you compare these percentages to each other that's a 300 percent difference that means there is a higher risk of your child dying from getting vaccination than from getting covered life-threatening the science proves that mass for children do not work and have major social and psychological repercussions the risks surrounding vaccinating our children are significantly higher versus getting your getting life endangering cases of covet in your children as parents enough's enough we will not sit idly by letting these

064things happen these are our children no one has the right to decide these things for our children but us parents for your parents and for you parents watching this you need to start making your voices heard we can't sit back and let this happen we are letting school boards decide children our teachers unions decide and it's time for us parents to have a say in what is going on in our kids schools as parents it is our choice whether they are vaccinated it is parents choices whether or not they should be masked it is our right to as parents to teach them what is right and wrong in regards according to our beliefs not according to far-left political agendas and let me just end with this we moved to this district because it was supposed

065to it was considered to be one of the best in the nation if you ignore the science you mask our children you mandate vaccinations as a board you are showing that you don't care about the welfare of our children thank you very much [Applause] michael chose honorable members of the school board friends and neighbors my name is makiel chosi i'm a father to two children in the fm school district i'm addressing you to express my support for increased diversity equity and inclusion training and programming in the district for school staff and students like all of you i want the best for my children as an educator on the college level i've seen how inequities and biases even from those with the best of intentions can have profound and long-lasting impacts on a student's success i've

066also seen the negative impacts on shelter students who struggle to understand the differences of others and relate to them in meaningful ways the efforts proposed by dr tice and our students to increase dei are both welcome and needed in our community we want to help all our students have the best chance they can be happy productive and successful members of our society that requires an increased understanding of inability to work with people of different cultures and backgrounds increased diversity programming is a great first step we are a strong community and we don't need to fear difference and we certainly don't need to fear learning about it embracing and learning about the differences around us can only make us stronger and more unified and if i have another minute or i'd like to make an additional

067comment about masking i will take the former speaker's advice and speak my mind as a parent and say i want to keep my children safe when i put them in the car i put seat belts on them if we go on the lake i put a life vest on them if they're going to be in school with delta and lambda and all this stuff i want masks on them so thank you for your time thank you [Applause] grace pearson so hello my name is grace pearson i am an fm alum class of 2020 and i'm here today to support diversity equity and inclusion i moved here five years ago just in time to start my freshman year my first few days i noticed something that i hadn't seen in any of my previous schools it

068was incredibly white the walls the floors the people in my spanish class that year i was talking to the girl next to me who was also new to fm i mentioned that i wasn't used to the stark whiteness and she replied by telling me how strange it felt being one of the only black students in this school and that conversation has always stuck with me no one in the hallway knew that i was new or gay but they did know that i was white i blended right in white privilege i spoke to that same girl last night and tonight i am using my privilege to stand in front of you and tell you that not all students feel welcome or safe our black students don't feel like they are allowed to grow here fm's culture

069doesn't give them a space to learn and live it is toxic this country is a wretched one for black youth to grow up in my senior year i took a class called rhetoric of race which is the most informative class i took during my time at fm one morning we discussed police brutality and tamir rice i remember the sick feeling in my stomach a sick feeling that has always stuck with me and as i turned to my friend and said he was our age i am 35 years 35 days older than tamir rice he should have been a high school senior alongside me stressed over college applications and counting down the days until graduation instead he was shot dead at 12 years old history isn't as long ago as people think it is when there

070are people opposed to diversity equity and inclusion in schools it's important to remember that the people who protested integrated schools are alive today through your grandparents age your parents age and maybe even your age you're standing at the forefront of history and it is up to you to decide what side you're on i went here i knew the students and i saw what they were truly like i heard the slur shouted in the hallway the snickers during black history month assembly that were always followed by why don't we have a white history month the threats and microaggressions we are living in a segregated district purposefully divided by i-81 the whiteness and racism in fm is no accident it is the reason that this district so desperately needs dei we need to learn that this country

071isn't perfect and for many it is traumatic dei isn't propaganda it is the truth and if that scares you it is only because you fear losing your place and power in white supremacy the best history teacher i've ever had would always tell us that a true patriot is someone who wants to make their country better rather than blindly devote themselves to it when you call yourself a patriot i want you to think about that fm has a long way to go but diversity equity and inclusion is the first step it is our only hope thank you simeon sheldon good evening of fm community my name is simeon sheldon i've been in the sister for 11 years and i never thought i'd be where i am for you today it takes courage for all of us

072to come speak at this meeting sure but it's a different kind of pain when you're a 16 year old kid you should be enjoying this summer the divide between our community as we know is something mysteriously powerful fear some of you fear change change that will force you into a new world that you just don't and can't understand however my fears are much different they involve the isolation a child feels when they look around in their classroom and no one looks like them they involve a young black girl who will come home from school with a newfound hatred for her natural hair they involve the enraged feeling a boy has when his teacher tells her students she doesn't trust people that look like him because they eat their pets they involve the audacity of a

073white teacher who encourages her students to say the n-word in her classroom they involve the self-hatred that i simeon sheldon student of the fm district for 11 years was told i was the first culprit of a crime that was yet to be committed by my own teacher all these examples are based on true events in fm schools but they aren't just events to me they aren't just memories they are seeds seeds and students minds that will grow and fester until they become a tree of self-doubt and insecurity the fear that made me be here today is the idea of any child going through half of what i've been through in this more than capable community what has me so bemused is that these examples are what di is trying to avoid and we are divided

074there is an argument against whether or not diversity equity and inclusion is a negative thing for our district as if that's something this community would not want to pride themselves in i'm not here to tell you how to live your lives i am not here to point fingers i'm not here to burn the flags i'm here because i am tired there is no better word than tired to express how i feel so exhausted but no time to rest because it's a different kind of pain when you're a 16 year old kid speaking to people having to sleep their whole lives i thank you all for listening and have a great day [Applause] thank you [Applause] layla abdul malik hello i'm layla abdulmalak and i graduated from fm in 2019 and i honestly loved going to

075school here which is why i felt i needed to speak tonight i wouldn't really care about this school if i wasn't here fighting to make it more progressive and equitable for everyone going to school here i was one of a handful of black kids in my grade and usually the only one in my class i watch as my classmates and close friends my close friends even get away with being problematic whether i was being blatantly racist or saying the n-word and making passive jokes or comments that i used to let slide it took me going to college and reflecting on all the things that i tolerated to realize i had a lot of leftover hatred for myself for allowing so much to happen and that's the problem most people don't even realize that what they're

076saying is ignorant they don't know any better and dei is about preventing that ignorance i've had so many people close to me say in the past year say that i'm sorry i didn't realize that what i was saying to was racist or problematic and that's just it they didn't know any better because they were never taught people like to say that teaching dei is teaching that white people are oppressors and that they're a huge problem and that's not really the case fm is a huge diversity problem diversity and inclusion is about representation for example for the 12 years that i spent in fm i did not see a single poc teacher until my junior year when a black english teacher was hired and i didn't even have her besides officer golden it's hard to grow

077up the only black person in your circle and to not even feel like you have teachers or staff to talk about what you're going through maybe if i had a black teacher they wouldn't have let those comments people used to make to me in classes slide maybe we wouldn't have debates or talk about the pros and cons of slavery maybe we wouldn't be taught that mlk was good because of peace and malcolm x was bad because of violence maybe if we had black people in administration the black history month assembly wouldn't be optional or ignored or dismissed or ridiculed every year so i recommend starting with that being more inclusive with the adults that essentially raise us for 40 hours a week for 13 years of our lives by just hiring more black and poc

078teachers and most of the people speaking out against dei are white and you are not the ones being affected by lack of dei you're just scared of change it makes you uncomfortable and i personally know that my fellow students of color at this in this district would feel more comfortable if they felt more welcome here at the last board meeting someone said to my mom that if she wanted more diversity she should move to the city it's very easy to not feel welcome here and all i'm asking is for you to just put your potential discomfort aside discomfort for change aside and help everyone in the community here feel welcome and also i wanted to address the mask thing really quickly sure your kid will probably be fine and not die from covid do you

079not care about your own health or your parents how bad would you feel if your child gave their own grandparent covid what if it continues to change and get worse and there is a variant that does kill children how would you feel then it might be okay for now you would seriously regret not taking it seriously now before it gets worse that's it thank you thank you christabel sheldon good evening school board members parents and concerned citizens i am grateful for the opportunity to speak i stand here in support of the implementation of initiatives that foster diversity equity and inclusion at the fm school district and i applaud the efforts highlighted in superintendent isis email in early may as a parent of two children one a graduate of fm and the other rising junior at

080the high school i'm deeply disheartened that we have members of the community who are against such principles but i am not surprised last month my courageous sister friend stood at this podium and expressed her sentiments regarding her experience in this community in summary she shared her perspectives about the sense of belonging and the treatment by others as an outsider shortly after after her talk she was accosted by a dei opponent who boldly stated if you want dei move to the syracuse school district as a product of that district i take no offense however the disdain and the audacity to tell an active member of this community that her interests do not align with those of this community is familiar but a painful one my husband and i moved into this district about 19 years ago

081aware of fm's academic reputation academic attainment has long been at the center of my parents sacrifices to leave a country with a rewarding career their home and everything familiar in pursuit of better opportunities for their children in the united states today my siblings and i make great contributions in the fields of law military healthcare research and education but no matter our degrees or accomplishments privileges or contributions we are not shielded by the acts of racism bigotry or intolerance my sister friend and her husband who are also tax paying citizens have made great contributions to fm and the syracuse communities their children all have also done the same in and out of the classroom on and off the athletic field together they have brought recognition to this district and this community but on that day in

082that moment in fact on many days and many moments our contributions are deemed irrelevant and our courageous acts in these spaces are invalidated and or inconsequential and we are often left with this burning question did we sacrifice our children's mental wellness in pursuit of educational attainment when we moved into the district we were concerned about the lack of diversity so we built a diverse network with families in this district most of us are immigrants and are of minority populations all of us tax paying professionals who simply want better lives for their children who wish to build the characters of our children to become compassionate productive citizens to build our children's self-confidence as they navigated these spaces where they are often in the minority these dismissive acts these acts to silence our voices and or disregard

083them have been sewn into the fabric of my children's experiences at fm tearing at the very fabric we have carefully and intentionally crafted the truth is that the principles of diversity equity and inclusion have long been on the fn platform in the words of dr tice no one within our school community should ever feel less than because of such factors such as race gender gender identity religion or physical or mental abilities and i may also include sexual orientation and ethnicity i do not wish for any child to ever feel less than in fact that has been my work at syracuse university for the past 30 years for the last decade or so i have worked with first generation students to prepare them for success in graduate school to make this goal possible it is critical

084to build community christopher and we have done so thank you very much i'm sorry to interrupt you thank you thank you [Applause] mary did you wish to speak still or mary cunningham are you still here are you okay okay we're good all right well that will conclude public comment thank you all for coming out to share your concerns with the board of education we do appreciate it next on the agenda is public hearing for the district safety plan is there a motion to open the public hearing for the district safety plan thank you jason in a second from kelly discussion all those in favor please state i i anyone opposed or abstaining right so we will have public comment now related to specific items in the safety plan okay do any board members have any

085comments related to the safety plan yeah i just have the same question that i had last time about it's the way that it's configured it's page 1 through 37 page 1 through 32 page 1-33 and i i thought that was going to be reworked to uh it's it's got multiple tables of content embedded within the middle of it and it's just a little bit confusing i have a note for you from sarah it's that way because it's multiple documents that have been combined together um and that's why it's the numbers are not in sequence so they had to put it that way because it's different documents it's not one continuous document it's multiple documents that have been combined together and they need to keep them separated okay and then just the last thing is it

086it does include the cyro and spo agreements but it's missing one of the spo agreements um officer i i'm gonna mispronounce it milik the most recent one the most recent one is out that's in the later in the action because it's because all the others are in this that right just need to be added he was the last minute and edition as you know through the interviews yep and then this actually comes up multiple times so just bring it up now in the spo agreements each of those in section one it lists the dates as the 2020-2021 school year so those each would need to be corrected yeah we can update we work with the town of analysts police department on that but we can it it's weird in the same sense it has the

087right start date and end date but it references the wrong school year they send them to us but we'll check into it thank you any other comments from the board questions from the board is there a motion to close the public hearing on the safety plan thank you kelly second from daryl any further discussion all those in favor please indicate i i you were opposed or abstaining next on the agenda the capital project update dr tice certainly we have members of the oacm team here this evening to talk about a proposed high school renovation project in addition i'll turn it over to the architect good evening everybody um you guys i think mostly know me i'm erica civitella with king architects we have bob here as well from the chase bob marketta we just wanted

088to give you guys a little update on where we are with the capital project planning for the high school um we're also going to kind of represent some of the scope work that you've seen before to make sure everyone is familiar on what is involved with this project so as you're aware we are looking at a potential project at fm high school um the school is in much need for renovations which were identified before we were working on wellwood as the next highest need so part of the project we're looking at some main main components which is safety security learning and program upgrades throughout the building part of the program upgrades are the cafeteria expansion and addition really this is meant to be a collaborative space or a student commons that combines both house one

089and house two physically and visually as part of this renovation there'll be a physical connection between house one and house two so the bridge that you currently see that goes between the two sides will be gone and that is where the addition will be placed for the cafeteria as part of this will be a another elevator in the building which will be more centrally located at the near the main entrance also the items in green at the bottom are other program upgrades we're looking at a technology edition as well as a learning support center new learning support center auxiliary gymnasium renovations wellness center renovations photography lab renovations student services classroom finish upgrades in house 2 counseling suite renovations and auditorium acoustical upgrades as well this is a visual of the second floor um we are

090looking you can see the existing cafeteria is actually being expanded on so we're building out the addition and the new cafeteria space off of the existing so in addition you'll see that there is some areas on the second floor of house two where we're creating new program space um where the main office used to be and i apologize i forgot to mention on the first floor another major component of the project is a main office consolidation uh currently there is two separate offices one in house two one in house one um we're looking at centrally locating that for security purposes um adjacent or near the front entrance so just take a minute and kind of zoom in on this area and knuckle the building you can see i'm going to try the pointer okay this

091is the area of the main office consolidation this is where your central kitchen was located auxiliary gym and some other support spaces the area in green indicates the extent of the addition where the bridge used to be lo would potentially be gone and you can see the x here indicates where the new elevator and the lines are the new centrally located staircase to connect house one and house two on the second floor the existing cafeteria actually ends about here so we're looking at expanding this way and then creating a new addition two-story addition where students and people can visually look between the two levels and also um physically walk between the two levels in those areas so that's really meant to be the hub and the kind of student commons of the school um right

092in the hub of the between house one and house two you can see located here is a new broadcast journalism space house 2 renovations this is where the we're looking at the technology edition you can see it's located off of the science wing of the building two new large technology classes this classrooms this is intended to create like a stem wing of the building it's also strategically located for automotive access for in program upgrades um with the automotive program it's a little hard to see in this i apologize for that but a majority of these all these classrooms in here on both the first and the second floor are typically colored a little bit gray you can't see it but all of those are getting new finish upgrades and mechanical upgrades so new ceilings floorings

093and select rooms are getting new case work as well this is the second floor of house 2. this is where the main office used to be located so those will be new classroom spaces new program spaces last thing to mention as you can see the where the technology classrooms are going to be located provides a nice opportunity for raised ceilings so that different types of program can also um use that space so a huge component of this project are the mechanical electrical and plumbing upgrades in this building so i've i've talked through some of the exciting program upgrades but this is is a huge huge portion of the project just to try to put it into perspective everything colored in gray will be upgraded in some way as part of this project so these were

094this was really identified as the highest need early on um for aging infrastructure so that is one of the main goals of the project is to upgrade all of um the aging system so a couple details in here we're looking at house 2 hvac replacement house 1 air handling unit replacement electrical panel replacement house 2 boiler replacement lighting replacement ventilation system upgrades as well as areas of aging rooftop unit replacement okay so i'll turn this over to bob we've done a lot of work working with the construction manager le chase on the budgets for the building hello robert marquetta robert marketo with lachaise we're the uh the cm for this uh pre-rough proportion as uh erica stated we uh our um estimating group worked very closely during the development of the scope uh with king

095and king and um kind of collaborated on to get an understanding of exactly of the uh the intent of the of the scope of work um at the same time we worked close with the um the district itself on the phasing portion there's a lot of work that's going to have to happen so it was really um we really needed to identify how we can get it done um in an efficient and practical manner uh while maintaining the function of the building um so through through all that collaboration this slide here is what came of it um looking at a total project of about 52 million uh that's construction soft costs that's that's an all-in price um and the duration of about uh 44 months uh the key thing to note though is that the

096those signature portions that archer was talking about you know the main office consolidation the the cafeteria expansion or all those those larger projects would happen within the first 30 months the mechanical work is very very extensive and again having to work through the phasing kind of in a small chunks of work while still maintaining uh the function of the building is what we really would we're dragging out that additional 14 months to get all that done that's pretty much it [Music] so project financials i'll turn that over to bill [Music] good evening everyone really from the last time we reviewed this information it remains unchanged with the cost of 52 million dollars we are expecting at least 80 percent in building aid for all the costs incurred in this project we're looking at a bond

097percentage of about 64 percent we do plan on using seven million dollars in capital reserve fund we were able to close out the year and currently in closing the books we feel that we can uh you know fund the capital reserve up to that seven million dollar level so in doing so we're estimating that the tax rate and this is really based upon the current tax base that does not take into account any growth in the tax base is estimated to be a 1.91 tax levy increase so on a hundred thousand dollar uh taxable value home we're on a hundred thousand dollars of taxable value we're looking at an increase of forty eight dollars and sixty six cents [Music] any questions on the financials [Music] thank you let's see pre-referendum schedule we've come back a

098few times and presented you guys presented to you guys you can see a lot of this was a review of what you already know everything in gray has been completed the project is currently at sed and they are reviewing it if all goes well we're looking at a september board resolution to approve the project so we are still you know it is at sed so we're hoping that everything goes smooth there and we're looking at a vote in december december 7th i believe is where we're honing in on so a couple other things that didn't make the slide that i just wanted to let you guys know we are currently working with your i think public information specialist nancy cole on the pr campaign so to make sure that everyone is excited about the project

099aware of the project understands the impacts and the program and you know mechanical upgrades that are associated with it so that is something we're currently working on of we've nailed down a couple public meetings and parent council meetings that we plan to attend to make sure everybody can answer any questions and ask any questions so i think that that's pretty much everything do you guys have any questions no i don't really have a question erica or bob but i don't think we can state often enough that the mechanicals in this building are as old as the ones in wellwood that we felt we had to replace so it's you know it's important to keep them it's not just for state of the art it's a necessity yes very much so i just want to piggyback

100one thing on that and then one question erica the other is is what should be obvious but isn't always to everybody is that this is the building through which every single student in the district passes and this building has a lot of needs this building was identified as having significant needs back before the wellwood project that took priority because of some other needs at that building so just just just the recollection of every single student's coming past this building my question is real simply on the sed status uh is that also involving the um review of the mca or is that is that or is that being done separately or just what's the status on that so we didn't formally request them to reevaluate the mca because there has been some history in the past

101where they could actually lower it so we didn't want to run into a situation like that here but they may come back with questions we're not quite sure what to expect from their review so i just asked that because we did in wellwood and it actually that went the other direction obviously as we know so yeah just what the comfort level is on the current mca if we're not going to have a review i'm just like to hear a little bit more the project does exceed the current mca um so that that is why you're seeing some tax impact associated with the project um but we did go through king and king went through and rechecked the mca as well and weren't really recommending you go to them and ask for them to re-evaluate it

102all because we're not adding too much program to the building and we've just seen some history of them potentially reducing your mca because yeah as the board knows we've updated the facilities needs assessment the instructional space review we had the regional associate sign off and we completed a new enrollment study so as eric indicated they may very well ask additional questions but at this point everything is submitted and we're trying to keep this on target erica and i think 2023 we're due for a new mca right automatically what happens when you're mid project does that alter anything well that's the bc that's the building company that's your bc yes yeah right so this would be a time if they they feel that they should reevaluate it they they would right and actually mcas don't get

103locked in until the general contracts are signed so hopefully the construction cost index will continue to increase which will help out the mcas bill i just wanted to mention the tax increase that in all likelihood wouldn't happen all in one year that would happen over a number of years so we're stepping up to that increase yes that is correct that would probably be phased in over a couple different years and it is also a good point to mention that it's probably five years out from today okay you know it's gonna be out it's not gonna be like it's gonna be next year uh it really will result in when our debt payments start being that the construction schedule is four years [Music] you might even be talking six years out and it's also important to

104note that this is probably the best way a community can bring state dollars back to their community in such a large amount i can't think of any other effort in which the state would give tens of millions of dollars to a community rather than building rebuilding 81 but that is a very valid point to raise right thank you any additional questions or comments from the board i i'm just going to say for those who are here tonight and seeing how hot it is in here the classrooms in this building temperature especially fall and spring are greatly in excess of this because of the needs for improved mechanicals in this building so this is but a tiny little flavor of what our students go through and our teachers and staff go through every day um so

105you know really mindful that we just we just have serious needs in this building and this is a project that is addressing both the mechanical needs and some very significant beneficial programmatic and security-based needs well said thank you any additional questions comments okay thank you very much erica for coming thank you as well um thank you all right next up next on the agenda item 2.02 special services report making her debut miss amy evans our new assistant superintendent for special services hey amy welcome good evening thank you um good evening board of education and dr tais thank you for the opportunity to speak with each of you tonight about the special education programs in the district the creation of the district plan is a new york state ad regulation and it is something that we

106are required to update every two years have the board of education review and it has to be kept on file and the do for public review if anybody would like to come and take a look at it so the specific requirements of the plan are listed on page two of the document you have with you this evening and typically this would be presented in june in conjunction with the special ed update from the year but this year i was fortunate enough that miss dineen presented half of it and i was able to work on this part and being my first year put some personal touches on it and it really gave me the opportunity to take a tour of what's available in the district and get to know the programs and i've begun meeting with

107teachers and stakeholders so it's been a very wonderful opportunity for me to get to know people in programming so i hope you don't mind as it's getting hotter in here tonight i keep reducing my presentation so i'm going to keep it short it's pretty hot so um on page 3 you're going to notice that there's a beginning of the descriptions of each of the programs offered in the fm district fm offers the full continuum of services mandated by new york state ed including integrated co-teaching which is a robust optional model and it has proved highly effective for all students across the state i'm going to quickly as i said walk you through a very brief brief description and share where those options are offered in the district so related service you're most likely used to

108hearing that call there's things like speech occupational therapy physical therapy amongst other options and those are available at all schools to any students that need those services and those are offered in a group size of no more than five either in the classroom or outside the classroom in a therapy room consultant teacher services are often also offered in all buildings in the school district and that's really where a special education teacher is pushing in to the general education classroom to support students with disabilities by providing specially designed instruction and providing accommodations and supports to students so they can access that gen ed curriculum there's also something that's not as well known that we do offer called indirect consultant teacher and surprisingly that's not offered to students that's a service offered to the gen ed teacher

109to help provide those supports to the student with a disability in the classroom and as i mentioned before integrated co-teaching is a model that joins a special education teacher with the gen ed teacher in the classroom to deliver instruction to both a group of students with disabilities and non-disabled peers both teachers are responsible for the instruction of all students and it does allow for small group differentiated instruction within the classroom currently this model is offered at wellwood and eagle hill but by the way the special education teachers are staffed and scheduled it is something that could be offered in all buildings in the district we also have resource instruction which is offered in all schools it's a group of five and it's a supplemental service that really works with kids in the area of disability

110to offer support related to their need so fm also offers different models of special classes and by definition a special class is defined as a class consisting of only students with disabilities who are grouped together by similar instructional needs currently fm offers 12-1-1 which is divine defined as 12 students one teacher and at least one teaching assistant and that is at wellwood and the high school as well as all of our elementary schools some students attend special class just in the areas of reading and math to provide specialized instruction at a slower pace and deeper in their area of disability at mott road fail in wellwood i know you all had a deep presentation on the vis program and i'm so excited to get in the classrooms when the kids return and get to know

111some more about that programming and those programs that those schools are geared towards students with moderate to severe communication disorders the high school 121 program consists mostly of students who are working on significant modified curriculum with a large degree of individualized programming there's a focus on life skills and the students are typically alternatively assessed which means they're not taking regence exams we also have a 15 to 1 program at the high school and this this program students are working towards a regents diploma and it offers a prioritized curriculum in each designated subject area on the iep a prioritized curriculum matches the gen ed curriculum but it goes at a slower pace and it hits deeper in those very meaningful concepts that are on the regents exam so it's about 75 percent of the gen ed

112curriculum at that slower pace the students in this uh this setting are often working on the career development and occupational studies certificate that should complement the region's diploma and would tell employers in the community that they are entry level job ready and we have provided them with those skills to enter the community along with that region's diploma we also host a variety of not host but we utilize a variety of non-district options if we are unable to provide something for a student whose needs may be outside of that gamut currently we have 25 students in boces programs in the district that is actually a very low number for a district this size which really speaks to the inclusive programming at fm so the remainder of the plan outlines our responsibility to allocate appropriate space which

113i just heard dr tice talk about the regional associate approving the the renovation plans approve policy to ensure that we follow special ed regulations to support students with disabilities and it provides you a very small snapshot of the grants and the budget that supports all of these programs i've also included a listing of the 25 current board policies specific to special education so please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you have any questions now i'm happy to answer them and i appreciate your time and i am looking forward to working with each and every one of you this year and again very excited to get into the classrooms and meet the kids thank you any questions no questions but amy was a great report oh thank you so much i was

114impressed thank you thanks have a great night thank you amy okay item 2.03 president's report just a few quick housekeeping items if you have not completed the board self-evaluation please make sure you do that um i think we have some challenges over the summer with scheduling um it's just the nature of summer with people taking vacations but if everyone could please make sure to reply promptly to doodles that are sent out to schedule meetings particularly our committee meetings because we're trying to get those up and going and that was it for me i'll have a few more things later on but that's it under president's report dr thais superintendent's report item 2.04 thank you president mims under strategic planning as mentioned a second ago our capital region boces communications department is busy working on the

115second edition of our annual report and the third iteration of our strategic planning poster in addition to updating the student handbooks for each of the buildings and as our architect mentioned with the wellwood middle school construction project in the home stretch and the proposed high school capital project out to facilities planning for initial review our communications team is working on the conceptual plans for a video to share the results at wellwood as well as showcasing the infrastructure needs at the high school and anticipation of the public referendum under the area of covid planning and school reopening as mentioned at the board meeting in july we are planning for the full reopening of school in september as there will no longer be a virtual remote option for students and families we are anticipating following the recommendations

116and guidance from the onondaga county health department with respect to mass mandates and social distancing i've been checking my email as this meeting progresses as well as the local media it appears that the county executive released some information today regarding temperature checks for schools again recommended not required and other guidance will be forthcoming later this week at this point in time and given the fact that quarantines will still be a reality i am recommending at this point that we begin the year as we concluded with masks being required inside of the school buildings and masks being optional outside of the school buildings furthermore i am recommending that we revisit this guidance every month or so including the month of august in an effort to ensure that we are congruent with any local regulations and in

117compliance with any state mandates in spite of the differing opinions on whether students should or should not have to wear masks i err on the side of wanting to limit the number of students placed in quarantine because we will not have a virtual platform students in quarantine will be provided lesson materials either in print form or via schoology similar to when they were out sick for an extended period of time prior to the pandemic finally it will be important for families to remember that if remote instruction is mandated as an option for the school year which in all likelihood from the commissioner to the governor we have heard it is not and even the county executive in today's press release said there will be no mandates it will be provided by the ocm boces instructors

118even though this past year was less than ideal for everyone involved the school district was able to provide for all of our electives in the hybrid in-person and remote learning models i suspect this will not be the case in the autumn when the ocm boces will be in charge of the virtual platform for all of their component districts while some have been critical of this direction and correspondence to me i'm grateful for this collaborative effort uh boces between all the school districts to find a venue for our most medically fragile students it'll be important to remember that the ocmboces model will have to be a one-year commitment since we are purchasing seats at boces there won't be no ability for families to switch back and forth as there was last year under school safety and

119educational climate reports during tonight's meeting i'll ask you to approve the district safety plan and the respective contracts for our cyros and spos with the town of manolis police department in addition to listed as attachments to this report of the school safety and educational climate surveys in accordance with policy i'm providing them for your edification please be advised that they have been submitted to nicer in advance of the statutory deadline under foil requests as many of you know the school district has received 11 foil freedom of information legislation requests the freedom of information legislation makes it a comment upon a public entity like the school district to provide those requested materials in an effort to ensure transparency and accountability nevertheless i would like to take this time to clear up some common misconceptions first there's

120a prevailing assumption that by making a foil request it will make more work for dr dice i have been told that some individuals make foil requests out of anger seeking to keep me busy as retribution for some of the decisions i have made i do not know if this is true but i can confirm that i am minimally involved these requests are processed by our records access record management officer mr william furlong along with our legal counsel while mr furlong will keep me informed about the status of these foil requests he works with school personnel to gather the requested information before submitting the documentation to the school attorneys for a final review the lawyers will then vet the material to redact any information to which the requester is not entitled in accordance with the law

121as you might expect some of these requests take quite a bit of time because they're voluminous in nature secondly it will be important to remember that the school district is obligated to provide documents that exist and does not need to create any documents that do not exist for example a recent request by mark a asked for athletic spending so he could compare one sport to other sports as you might be aware the school district does not track the data by individual sport but rather codes it by interscholastic athletics in accordance with the governmental accounting standards that being said i would like to note it took 12 hours of our accounting department's time to provide three years of the overall athletic expenditures which we had but yet the individual spending for a specific team was not

122a record that we kept and we did not have to surrender that third it's important to understand that most communications received by the district may end up as public documents i worry that a resident may have written to a school official sharing some private and personal information and now finds their correspondence has been shared with others either electronically or otherwise for example in a recent foil request scott r asked to review correspondences from stakeholders who may be in favor of masks because on the spirit of transparency that this information needs to be shared with the community community that being said the school district is in process of honoring the foil requests in the event that this information is shared with others for the sake of transparency if that's what ends up happening it's important to

123remember that the school district surrendered the material in accordance with foil and that any other individuals are responsible for then sharing that information publicly fourth it is worth mentioning that we only have to produce our own documents for example a recent foil request by kcm among the nine others that she submitted asked for correspondence between the fmta president mary petrulis and the nicest president andy palada we scanned for email correspondence on our server and found no such documentation that being said i'm assuming that there may be correspondence between those two aforementioned individuals using another corporate server which does not belong to the school district accordingly the school district does not have access to those correspondences because they are not our documents finally and in spite of the fact that the aforementioned individuals may think that

124i'm calling them out on their foil requests i bring this to your consideration because we've been informed by legal counsel that many school districts across new york state are seeing an increase in the number of foil requests ironically some individuals who make this request may be anti-dei anti-vaccination or anti-masking while others could be pro-dei pro-vaccination or pro-masking it appears that everyone has their opinion and assumes that the other side does not necessarily have an opinion in other words the number of foil requests could increase exponentially while we will endeavor to comply with all requests in a timely fashion we will continue to push forward with bringing all of the students back to the classroom this autumn that remains our top priority that being said we will also started to track our legal expenses and staff

125time dedicated to these foil requests since foil requests are public documents they themselves would be subject to foil and we may have to provide that information as well as the costs associated with these requests under jewel laboratory lawsuit last but not least i'd like to engender a discussion as to whether the district would like to enjoin in a class action suit against jewel laboratories this is to recoup the monetary damages for past and future costs related to the vaping epidemic as you may recall i provided a copy of the opinion letter from our school legal counsel for your review and consideration thank you president mims that ends my report okay so you've given us i believe if i count it correctly three major topics why don't we start with um mask vaccines reopening schools and

126see what questions and discussions we have with board members in regards to that topic and then we'll go into the other two topics but i want to start with that one so you're coming to us with a recommendation that students and staff were amassed at the beginning of the school year and then you're going to reconsider i'm sorry reevaluate that each month um oops yeah as you know the we everybody was waiting for the new york state department of health to release guidance that appears not to be forthcoming in that vacuum the onondaga county health department has agreed to provide that guidance and so the county executive and the local county medical director indicated that would be forthcoming this week so i know with our meeting tonight i want to give you where i'm leaning

127but at the same time i am open-minded to whatever that guidance says in particular as i shared with the board the contact tracing guidelines are antiquated in terms of what we were using at the height of the pandemic so we have asked as chief school officers to have new contact tracing guidance so that's one of the reasons i'm leaning towards that just not not leaning towards masks just not knowing what the new contact tracing guidance would look like along the lines of information from the county executive someone brought up mental health issues or actually a number of people brought up mental health issues in general and related to the pandemic can we get information out to the community about what we have available and what we are doing to support mental health with our students

128and i'm sorry if i should remember this but i know the county executive has set aside a large amount of funds for mental health and perhaps how that may or may not tie into what we're going to do to support students yeah we can get that word out and we'll make a note of it to do so as you know we have home school liaisons unfortunately a local area school district pilfered borrowed one of our school psychologists so uh in backfilling that position we have an opening in the recently hired position so we added yet another homeschool liaison as you know but now we're in the process of trying to fill that position in addition as you said we've partnered with the county and have let them know that uh with their three layers of

129funding we would certainly take the level one funding to not only fund our current homeschool liaisons but add more we are invested in the level two funding which provides for a help desk hotline and then the level three we respectfully declined because that would have been turning over a portion of our square footage which is already at a premium for them to house a therapeutic counseling center so just looking at space needs since we decided to avail ourselves in terms the grant of levels one and two so [Music] first on vaccinations um do we have an update as to the percentage of teachers and staff that are vaccinated we do not is that something that there's i can't recall where we landed on this i thought that there was a willingness to share that we

130can ask yeah okay um my concern on the the masking is less about starting the year based on what we know today but obviously the year starts almost a month from now and as we've if we've learned nothing else since this started we've learned that things can change very quickly whether it's guidance whether it's science whether it's studies we don't know where we'll be when when we get to that but what we know at the moment is that this has been kicked to local decisions and my understanding of that is local meaning us not state and not county so there's a choice ultimately that needs to be made at the district level as to what if any recommendations we're going to follow whether it's a specific entity county health department as an example cdc is

131a different example whether it's a blending of them or whether it's something else whether it's just strictly internal and and and guidance from our from our own our own folks that we've worked with since this began so i i just really want to know first of all what the processes that you're recommending today understanding things can change of where you intend to look for that guidance since it's just recommendations and there's great inconsistency as it exists today for example between cdc and county health department so what is your thought as to what you would be looking for to base recommendations on was i indicated updated contact tracing protocols are paramount because what we are currently used in the last school year and even through the summer as i mentioned is antiquated so i think that's

132the key the reason i said that i'll err to the side of putting masks on inside and leaving masks optional outside is because i am worried in terms of how many students are put out on any particular quarantine we had an incident this summer where i expected the path or the swath i guess as you referenced to be narrower in terms of its radius and ended up being larger just because of the way tompkins county health department read it as opposed to the onondaga county health department so we need clarity on the contact tracing guidelines that being said and coupled as the board knows with no remote or virtual option next year gives me pause for concern i heard what the parents are saying today there's advocates on both ends of the spectrum and i

133think the elephant in the room that people haven't realized is there is no flexibility going back and forth between hybrid in-person remote like we had last year this year will be totally different than what last year was we may be still in the midst of the pandemic but there will not be that flexibility to go back and forth so that being said i worry about the 10-day quarantines and that swath that you reference that radius so i need to know what it looks like right now to bring all the students back and you know where i'm headed we've got to put them two in a seat on a bus as somebody indicated use busing we are it means they're crowded in the cafeteria three feet uh in terms of social distancing in the cafeteria and

134the classroom so they're going to be packed together as if we're returning to school and depending on what that contact tracing says i just worry that we're going to have chunks of students 10 days at a time being put out on quarantine and their only program will be either print materials or information on schoology from the teacher as if they were sick for an extended illness prior to the pandemic there is no synchronous remote option to go to our teachers are going to be busy bringing all the students back into the classroom so there's not a metric if that's what you're looking for that's a longer answer than you wanted but that's they're what i'm juggling so so i and and i appreciate that and i it i understand there's a balance here obviously we

135we want all of the students back in the school and and that's what's happening just for clarity for anybody listening this is full five day learning and i know there's for some reason still some confusion about that but that is that is that is all that's going so there's a balance between having them all back and as safe as they can be which is the district's responsibility for all students not just some students and in the in the effects of quarantining sending a student home for 10 or 14 days without a remote option and putting them out of school and for some students last year it happened that they weren't just quarantined once but they were quarantined twice or more times than that which was one thing when they could fall back on a remote

136but i i understand the impact of that and i think we all need to but my where i'm looking at on this and still have a lot of confusion on is not knowing what the county is going to do on their updated contact racing but just working off of what we have from them today and the cdc has a very different contact tracing requirements and an exclusion specific exclusion for k-12 students and which is to me one of the reasons for masks because the way that it reads is if an infected student and those others in the classroom are all masked then there is not a quarantine there's testing but not mandatory warranty which is much better in terms of keeping the students in the classroom than what the county had for that last year

137so again really my my question is let's just say the county comes out with new contact tracing guidelines recommendations that are different than the cdc we have a choice that we're going to need to make about which do we follow and and i think we need to be very clear for the community about which we're following and why and stick to that so that it's very clear this is what's going to happen and this is why i know there were multiple times last year that i mean there was this misperception of moving goal posts we didn't have an option but to follow state guidelines and you know i know some people wanted us to deviate from them but we didn't have that option but now when it's local decision making which is what it appears

138it's going to be i want to make sure that we and this community have great clarity of what are we following why are we following it and and truly yes what are the metrics i mean right now we're talking about this indoors because onondaga county is in in this substantial spread category well if this were to drop to moderate does that change it if this was to were to drop too low does that change it and i think we need to be very clear about what those metrics what those protocols are going to be so that it's what we changed and here's why we changed as we said we would change based on x y and z so so that's that's my ask and i know you know that's that's ultimately a i believe a

139collective decision to be made by the governance team of what are we following and why is it cdc is it county health is it something else and you know we don't have a lot of meetings between now and the beginning of the school year but but that is something that i firmly believe needs to be flushed out very clearly before the school year starts and and i'm just i'm hopeful that that's the same direction that you're rowing in as well i agree and i i would like to know to dan's point if the county comes out and says that school districts have to have do a do we is that optional that we follow the county is it between what we decide in the county or when they say local decision does the county have

140authority to you know that we have to follow what they're saying is that i mean it says optional but i want clarification as to how optional it actually is my understanding is their recommendations that as mr seidberg said that will fall to us that does not preclude the fact that somebody a county state can supersede with guidance or closure depending on what the infection rates look like so i think you know they will be recommendations and the best i can offer is to start conservative and i stress start conservative and then be willing and open-minded to fluctuate depending on what that guidance looks like and what the local rates are it doesn't have to be a sentence for the entire year yeah dr tai said i agree with what you're saying and i think dan

141makes a very valid point as a governing team we need to know exactly what we're doing on whose authority but can i just ask you this are the school chiefs continuing to meet every week um and will that i guess my my wonder is is there agreement among the school chiefs about what protocols to follow i mean that would be very helpful if everybody in the boces districts were doing it that would you know give us some clout but if we're out on an island by ourselves that's that's tricky yeah we're continuing to meet on a weekly basis in fact a number of us will be meeting with the commissioner in saratoga tomorrow afternoon so if there's any more guidance i'd be happy to fill all of you in and i give her a lot

142of credit commissioner rosa for drafting the letter that she's done and has been an advocate for having clarity as far as the local districts most are in agreement there's one or two that are doing something different but for the most i think i think they're playing it starting the year as we ended it just to see what we have if you remember last year it started quiet and then ramped up as october and november approached to the point that onondaga county issued new contact tracing in november then we dealt with the holiday the post holiday surge if you recall that everybody was worried about new contact tracing guidelines came out in early february that i shared with the board and then stayed there and then during the late winter and spring as we saw numbers

143dropped off the table to the point where people were feeling very comfortable to revise the guidance but yet not the contact tracing so i think we rolled with the flow there the tide benefited from the results and whatever we saw with respect to the virus but now as things ramp back up i think it's just giving everybody a pause right now to be conservative to start and let's see if the pattern continues or we're going to be dealing with a new pattern to uh build off of what you just said craig so i i don't know if there is a distinction but i i know the county i i watched the press conference today that the county executive gave um and he he said that this these would be recommendations they would not be you

144know we would not be have to follow them but that being said contact tracing guidelines are those county health department protocols that that we must follow that are separate from any other guideline i just want to make that if there's a distinction there there's one thing to be said what has to happen in the schools of mask and all that but if we are if we have to follow the county's contact tracing guidelines then it's not our decision on what contact tracing guidelines we follow whether it's cdc or whatever if that so i guess i'm asking is that as you understand it those we have to follow correct and we've been deputized and have been for quite some time the building administrators have done a remarkable job uh with the contact tracing and we enter

145it into the portal and in a sense they grade our work they evaluate it they finally determined who ends up in quarantine and then as i indicated this summer it was a little ironic with the mixed bag incident without delving into too many details to have two county health departments tompkins county and onondaga county playing tug of war you can see there's we talk about school districts staying together there's difference between the counties as how they process it so in some ways tompkins county was more conservative or restrictive than onondaga county was going to be so we were it's incumbent for us to follow it we're deputized we enter that information they end up scoring it grading it getting back in touch with us we have contacts at the local onondaga county health department level

146and many of us attended refresher training our school nurses were on the webinar as i was as dr montgomery was on her own volition and time this summer mr gordon reached out to her today to get ready for the start of the new school year and we also have liaisons from new york state department of health that stays in contact with bad choice of terms that stays in connection with us in terms of household contacts so yeah we act as the third part of the triangle with onondaga county department of health and the new york state department of health so we have we follow the guidelines there's sort of a triangulation so if we are required to follow those contact tracing guidelines i just want to back up to your main argument for starting the

147year with universal masking is is that there's possibly depending on what the guidelines the contact tracing protocols look like from the county an upside where there will be less disruption to the school year if there's universal masking but we don't know yet um is that correct correct we do not know as mr seidberg said and i he said you know if they're both wearing masks nobody has the quarantine so you got to catch the preface there so that's the cdc guidance so again i'm willing my recommendation and you can all overrule me is to start conservative and then loosen things up if the metrics weren't yet to start the other way i just worry that too many kids will be out on quarantine and we do not have a remote option and the fact that

148there isn't a remote option i believe is the elephant in the room that most families have not processed there will be no flexibility going back and forth in order to bring all the students back we are all in in terms of this play so dr tyson in terms of coordinating this with other superintendents in other districts is there discussion as far as like athletics because if this is a if it becomes a local school by school decision as far as what mask you know masking etc is has there been discussion about how that might affect the athletic teams who are going to different schools most have said masks outdoors optional so again starting the year as we enter and yeah for basketball any indoor sports that is up for debate but right now the idea

149is outdoor masks or excuse me are optional for outdoor sports in the fall to start i'm just curious if dr montgomery is going to be weighing in on this decision or helping us or a medical advisory panel i mean because it really is truly a local decision so i completely agree with you that the contract tracing and the disruption to the school year is a vital piece but i think that the health and safety of our students is an equally vital piece and so we've heard varying thoughts tonight um study citations you know we've all been reading as much as we can about how this is changing and what the delta variant looks like it is all depending on what you read and what you kind of how you come to conclusions you know it

150is a new is a new situation that's evolving and there's definitely studies out there that say that student that children are getting sick from it and more children are getting sick but it's still new um so i guess i just don't want to leave off the table that we're going to come to a decision that has to be both you know based on education and public health and we just we have to just draw a line in the sand and make the decision but we're and we can't just rely on you know the state to tell us this year what to do so that has discussion has to happen whether it's tonight or in a few weeks when we have more information so i agree with everything that's been said so far i guess dr

151tice the ask i'm going to have before you come back to us and make a final recommendation because it sounds like that's the path you're headed is i would like dr montgomery to weigh in i mean we did hire her for this specific purpose to help us navigate so i would value her opinion and would like for her to speak um before we come back to the table on this and then secondly i guess i would i'm gonna ask the question now because it sounds like we're headed this path um what are the elementary teachers doing or not the teachers but the building principles to work on setting up outdoor learning space right so we're gonna if we're you know we've heard from constituents tonight that they're very concerned about kids in math so what

152are we doing to ramp up what we can on the outdoor uh learning arena as far as starting with your questions in order as far as dr montgomery that's one of the reasons mr gordon reached out today to see if she will be interested in continuing uh in the position so certainly the balls in her court at this point i don't want to speak for her but certainly having her expertise was invaluable last year and going forward it's up to her given all of her professional and personal responsibilities that she has to juggle secondly outdoor learning spaces that's something we can talk to the teachers and the principals about as they prepare to return i know a lot of them availed themselves of that last year for no other reason than mass breaks but you

153also have to remember we live in upstate new york as you know and so we have to plan for worst-case scenarios such as being inside during inclement weather so the building principles are already returning to the cafeteria lunches will not be served in classrooms so students will return to the cafeterias with the partitions they will be three feet apart but the idea is to try to return to pre-pandemic levels getting all the kids back right no agreed now you understand that the weather here is definitely not conducive to outdoor learning come winter time but i just think that we know where we are we know that more likely than not we're going to have some sort of masking policy indoors so i guess you know with a month to go can we get a month

154in front of this and try and help them however the principals and teachers need support for outdoor learning space whatever we can do as a board whether it's authorizing funding or whatever it is can we you know can we start those conversations if they haven't already been had certainly we can broach that subject if it's the pleasure with the board i know like i said a lot of them avail themselves of that and we certainly would want that to continue going forward so what's the drop a date for us to make a decision on this or to have the board come to consensus i should say our last meeting before the start of school is august 23rd we have to approve a plan for our federal funding it's not necessarily what we had to submit

155to the state last year on july 30th but we will have to approve the plan it could be the 23rd it could be another meeting that we set up prior to the start of school i just felt i needed to tip my hand today so people could plan accordingly but we can make a decision on the 23rd we can make set up another board meeting it's certainly the pleasure of the board i was just trying to hopefully get the guidance and then buy us enough time to take a look at it the meeting on the 23rd that's a special meeting in the morning right supposed to be a very quick meeting i don't know if that's uh that would be ideal um and i'm not sure how many people are actually even going to be

156able to be at that meeting i know we had quorum but i was quorum but i think maybe like five people who are going to be at that meeting so we might need to well we should look at an additional meeting then too but this is the only item on there and prior to that getting any additional questions into dr tyson maybe if dr montgomery is going to continue with us having her available for that meeting um as well any other thoughts on another meeting and who should be there as many board members as possible and as close to letting the parents know what's going to happen i mean i think we're going to have to push this to the limit to get the best information to make the most informed decision and i think

157it will be important to have dr montgomery provide us information and also to know statistically if we can how many teachers i think what's kind of getting lost in the discussion of masks is kids don't drive the buses kids don't teach the kids and kids don't maintain the schools so we have plenty of other adults that could be affected by a spread so it's just not the kids wearing masks that's not the issue we have to look at the big picture so um i think it's the latest we can have a possible board meeting the better so just to echo that and mark that's a great point remember that there were times last year that we were near about to shut down schools because we didn't have enough substitute teachers because we had so many

158teachers out and and and so i mean that's obviously a huge point so what i'm looking at is is first day of school september 9. you know the 23rd is a special meeting and building tours this obviously is far more important to me than facilities tours as as nice as it is to see those but i think that we should be targeting certainly a meeting right before school starts to have a final plan for opening day and probably again prior to that assuming that there will be further recommendations out but but to follow up on what rebecca said uh you know as much as i certainly value and respect dr montgomery's views and opinions on this last year when this all came about we had convened a medical advisory task force by a wide range

159of incredibly talented intelligent local specialists in this field which frankly none of us are and and i would advocate as strongly as i can that if we could reconvene that with as many of them are still willing to to serve and fill in with any others that aren't on that that are willing to serve that i think it would be incredibly informative for us in decision making to hear this from actual public health specialists actual um infectious disease specialists and and not not those that are not specialists in this field not you know everybody's opinions are entirely valid and informative and important but i would like to hear it from that group if we're to make a local decision going forward so it sounds like that group would need to meet to have some discussion

160and then come to the board so i think reaching out to them tomorrow to that group that met before to see when we might be able to get most of them together and then planning a board meeting after that date i believe we're looking at next week as we can send out a doodle for next week to have a special board meeting in the evening to discuss reopening and then we can um what's cool the first day is the seventh i think no eighth the ninth okay so labor day is six uh rosh hashanah is on the seventh so i think we would need to have another one if there's change in guidance um hmm well the first i'm sorry i've got my school my other school calendar this one mixed up um are there

161staff development days on the first the second on the first and the second i mean as mark said pushing it is late to get the information but at the same time parents are going to want the information as soon as possible so we're caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of getting that information out and mr seidberg may be right um i mean it may not be the full committee it may be whoever's here in town um so why don't we try to get those specialists together um as soon as possible maybe even this week couldn't be by zoom for their yes any way we can get them together we're experts in this this week might be ambitious but we will try to expedite it as many of them as you can

162get and we just had another physician today so maybe i'm not sure if you can get everybody but there may be other folks that you can bring together maybe dr montgomery knows some some specialists that could could come in as well we can't get that same group and then the week of the 16th we'll put out a doodle 4 board meeting and then also um the first and the second for the final update so we'll put a doodle out for the first and the second to see which date works best for everyone sound reasonable just for the record i would vote tonight for masks i heard today and i think it was a reliable i think it was nbc if that's reliable but there are many children in louisiana hospitalized um and very sick so

163i don't know why anybody would want to chance it with our kids i i think just and i'm sorry i dr you said it to me i've said it to you but i just want to just say it for more clarity that this you know though there are families who would advocate that some students should wear masks and some students shouldn't wear masks and and and and they're all again valid viewpoints and valid opinions and i i really value hearing from all of them as they come to these meetings the the potential quarantine issues are huge as much as we heard all last year and know about the effects of masks on students the larger more detrimental effect that we heard on the mental health of our students were those who were at home and

164we were forced into a remote enforced into a hybrid situation where they were learning from home and to have an increased number of students quarantined at home with no virtual option is in my view even more potentially detrimental to those students and as at least the contact tracing regs are written today cdc which is the most lenient included if somebody is in a classroom unmasked who tests positive that entire classroom is going to be under a mandatory quarantine as opposed to if they're masked potentially no one ends up quarantined other than the student who tests positive and so i think we have to be mindful of the fact that although every family is is rightfully going to advocate for the very best interest commendably of their own children that that we're tasked with the safety

165and best interest of all of the children in the building and if there are steps that we can take reasonably that keep all of them in the classroom and not resulting in entire classrooms quarantined that's a step that we have to very seriously consider for that reason and the last thing i think any of us want is certainly as a parent with kids in this school is kids at home under mandatory quarantines that could have been avoided and same thing goes for teachers you lose a teacher for 14 days um those are really equally if not more so detrimental impacts on our students that we just have to be very mindful of so so i i agree as we stand today with the statistics that that is the likely course of action but again i

166just i think if we do it we have to do it with very clear specifics of what are we basing it on what are the metrics what are the steps so that the goal posts are not getting moved at any point of of our doing of our doing if others impose requirements on us not recommendations but requirements that's outside of our control but we need to be very clear in what we do and where those goal posts lie so i'm also kind of back to the medical advisory committee i just want to also say that our whole there's many there's infectious disease experts in our community that don't live in fayetteville there was a prominent physician who did an faq in the post standard on sunday and and so i think we should look to

167those experts as well to help guide us because we're being tasked with a public health issue really in a very different way than we were last year so it might be reaching out to our medical advisory committee to ask who they know or also maybe inviting a guest infectious disease expert from upstate or wherever we think might make sense and then the other thing i think is kind of back to the rationale behind how we form our decision i think it would be helpful to you know cite evidence and data that we're relying on to make these decisions i think we need to be really transparent about that just the way people are citing their own data i think it's kind of incumbent upon us at the end of the day to give the rationale

168behind our decision such as the contact racing and the the medical piece um the public health piece so i don't think it needs to be a treatise but i think it should be all very transparent on the covet landing page so that our stakeholders understand how we made our decision and how we're standing by it and then the third thing i'm thinking about is we did hear a lot about some children having a lot of difficulty with masks and they affect every child differently but at the extremes it's very sad to hear the challenges of masks and so i'm just wondering you know jason mentioned outdoor learning spaces i'm just wondering what else can we do this year to provide different kinds of mass breaks or check-ins with students to see how they're doing with

169masks and i i assume the teachers are many many that they're doing all that but i'm just thinking at our level i'd just like to know what we're doing to help children with the masking because it does sound for some to be very difficult so those are my thoughts anyone who hasn't spoken have any questions or comments on that particular issue okay all right so we will file with the board regarding those meetings next in your report you mentioned the foil foils that we've been receiving one question or request that i would have is that in some of those requests there were particular individuals whose information whose content was requested and i just think we should make sure that those individuals are aware that they were included in the foil and that they get copies

170of whatever is sent to other people i would hate for someone to you know be online one day and see something i understand that people have a legal right to it i just want to make sure that anyone who is affected by that is aware of it although i know there's a there may be a lot of people because as you said like the let's talk there's tons of those um i'm referring to people who are specifically named in the foil their information but i think it would be good to have something similar to your report online to let people know you know this information was foiled so if there is a concern um by anyone that their information might have been shared as a result of the parameters of the foil they're aware of

171that i just think that yeah we can look into the legality of that but uh certainly that's as i indicated where i would be mortified because i think some shared things with me saying personal family you know concerns or fragile health issues that some of you alluded to tonight and so then you're right to find their information out and about i think would be a shocker or to think we did it voluntarily anything else on the foil part though just go backwards for a second because i thought we'd split that up just to mask because i thought we were coming to vaccines afterwards oh i'm sorry i thought i was all in the same way but wait is there anything on foil before you go backwards okay we'll go back to vaccines now sorry so

172obviously we have many students that are not even eligible for vaccines we we don't have that case for most of our staff so i think just again one last piece tying the vaccines to masking is is we really have two two separate things that we need to be talking about one is what we're doing for masks with students and based on what guidelines and what milestones and metrics but the other is for staff and particularly unvaccinated staff so you know i just i think in this local determination whatever it is to be that we make that unvaccinated staff it needs to be very clearly treated in terms of masking requirements that may or may not be consistent with what we're doing with students at that particular time um so i mean these are these are

173choices that have been made and you know we have obligations that we need to make you know to the students and to the other staff so i just want to make sure that that's on the list of things to be considered and that's even something that you're probably aware of that nice had responded to you know mandatory vaccinations versus a declaration of whether you've had the vaccine or not and then would mask and test accordingly on a weekly basis and sorry the second component of that is i know a lot of school districts are going to weekly or bi-weekly testing for unvaccinated staff so i don't know if that's something that's being considered that we will consider but i think it's something that we should be considering the hard questions fall on the attorneys because

174now these become legal issues nobody stated with any clarity yet we whether we are legally allowed to mandate employees to a tell us their vaccination status that has not been concluded people are doing it the county is doing it but there will inevitably be a lawsuit and that's when it will be decided whether it's legal or not so that's one question we really need to get a legal answer to the second question is if we can do that you know then can you take it a step further can you mandate all employees at this point when it hasn't been approved fully by the fda yet even can we and even after that point can we mandate the vaccine for all staff that's another question we have and then the third question is what you just

175brought up if we are able to know their vaccination status then can we require them to be tested if they are unvaccinated so those are all really good questions we need desperately need help from the legal minds and scholars in this country because everybody's throwing it around like it's an easy thing to do but we need to know so i'm actually awaiting those answers if you know them right now that would be great but the thing is jeff is that thank you is that it's not going to be conclusively determined by any court by the time school opens there's there is none so what what my understanding i know you know this as well is that that many are doing is requiring say weekly testing of all staff that you can opt out of if

176you choose to disclose your vaccine status and then it's a uniform application and just just as an example of what's being done in it's a some locales that we can require people to get testing i didn't know that that was something that was being done in schools required testing which school district is doing it okay i know they're offering a lot just curious as to which school districts are able oh wasn't local yeah because i'm just curious maybe they can tell us what their legal rationales and where they got that ability okay all right so anything on maths and vaccines oh okay we did foil the last thing was the um the jewel laboratory lawsuit you're gonna be okay party to that class action lawsuit so do people have where what are the sentiments of

177the board as far as joining that is there cost to the district to join i mean what do you any questions from the board thoughts about it it's not litigation we're going to undertake on our own we're not going to take on that expense so what's the possible downside and i'm aware of none if there is some i'd love to hear of participating in that nothing that i'm aware of i mean the fees are all the contingency fees i i support the litigation joining the litigation i think it's a worthy cause it's something that's affected our school directly um and i'd be happy to join the lawsuit be proud of our district joining i we could have a motion in second just so it's formalized for the minutes thank you all right is there a

178motion that the fayetteville manly essential school district join in the class action suit against the jewel laboratory thank you for backing is there a second thank you elena any further discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right thank you okay i'm going to try to move things along a little more quickly because we're about an hour behind schedule right now um let's see we are on item uh 2.05 reports committee updates so let's see we do not have one from audit stop me if i get it wrong community relations no report right now the diversity equity and inclusion inclusion committee did meet um we have not elected a chair yet that is on will be something at the next meeting i believe that we're going

179to get to um some takeaways from that and i think rebecca kelly and daryl you were there as well so please feel free to add anything so the administrators are reading dr theo harris's book um some of them are are reading dr theo harris's book and i'm looking for the title dr teich can you save me on that one uh the title of his book in terms of what's the title of it the title of the book in terms of what the title is i i am brain freeze here you did um i just have that email and i love okay thank you yes so some of the administrators are reading that book um as you know we usually read the same book the administrators read um so they're reading that book by dr theo

180harris and other administrators are taking part in um work with a the national creek is it national curriculum association what's the the national group the other administrators american association of school administrators they are have doing a training through that organization so we do have um copies of the book for the board we did discuss at the meeting the possibility of having a series of retreats or retreat with dr theo harris in regards to the um book and that was something that the committee wanted to bring back to the board for further discussion um what else anyone else i'd like to add from the meeting i mean we talked a lot about the district welcome statement yes do you want to talk about that so there were multiple versions of the district welcome statement that have

181been um have been developed and i believe we landed on um we're still we're on landed on number four i have number four in front of me though but that should be in the minutes that were sent out to everyone um so there was a version that we were we thought would be suitable along with policy that's being worked on so i believe sarah sent that to everybody i'm in my email nope you just have the reports okay so we will send that along to everyone then the different versions that have been considered and the um the one that the committee thought would the committee and administration thought would be the best one and the notes that the committee preferred for and i just want to make sure that as i'm certain we would that

182there's a recommendation coming first from the administration before the committee either agrees or offers up a different version because it's just not clear in the minutes of the meeting okay so we will first get a copy of that version out to the rest of the board and then at maybe our september one of our upcoming meetings we will have the recommendation from the administrators in regards to the welcoming message along with that version anything else from the meeting that we should cover like i mentioned the landing page which seems important yes do you want to talk speak to that rebecca the landing page i was talking about the coveted landing page but oh that's fine we're also going to be working on our communications teams working on a dei landing page um so that's where

183policy the welcoming statement and other materials would live as well as updates on what we're doing as a board and our what our administrative team is doing just so that everything we're doing is really transparent and interconnected as we said so to elena's point the welcoming statement recommended would be the introductory paragraph for the policy and then would tie into any modifications to the mission and vision statement regarding our strategic planning in order to memorialize it the last thing is i don't know if we specifically covered this in the meeting and i was having some tech issues but we also talked about participating in some of the dei training that our administrative administrators have participated in and to me that seems like low-hanging fruit that we should try to schedule out for the fall so

184i guess we can talk about it at the next meeting or something perhaps dr tyson marissa you could look into but it just seems like a no-brainer to to move that forward right number of them are participating in the book study with dr theo harris and then some of them have done or all of most of them have done the ocm boces training yeah the metro center training so that's something we could look into down the road certainly we want to bring the teachers up to speed on it as well but certainly dr theo harris of which he's one of four authors on that book i think would be a good starting point as you indicated okay um facilities we we've got a good update today i can move on thank you um finance i

185know you met tonight but is there anything pressing that we need to get updated on right now from that meeting everything's coming up roses thanks thank you um policy we do have some policies on the agenda uh but i don't think we have update from the policy committee no elena okay legislative liaison sherry did want me to make sure everyone was aware that the resolutions and nisba resolutions will be on the agenda for our next meeting so as soon as those are made available we'll get them out to the board so that we can have discussion about those at the next meeting and see if there's any that the board you know how the board would like the um her to vote on those and i also did see um that there is a zoom

186meeting for the legislative liaisons on the 17th with congressman catko and student board member we'll get one soon all righty um next up then item 3.01 approval of the minute is there a motion to approve the minutes from the july 6 reorganization meeting thank you mark in a second from rebecca any discussion all those in favor please state i i am unopposed or abstaining next 302 approval of the minutes of july 19th special meeting is there a motion to approve the july 19th minutes thank you um kelly in a second from jason any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i am opposed or abstaining to abstentions okay pardon right one two um okay personal actions 3.03 is there a motion that the board of education approves the personal actions is recommended by the

187superintendent thank you daryl in a second from mark all those in favor please indicate i i i would oppose abstaining abstaining abstaining thank you one abstention can we just have that just there was just one typo in one of those recommendations that just needed oh the fall coaching recommendations right it should say winter it should say fall it says winter it should say fall yes so noted thank you um [Music] item 3.04 confirmation of tax rules is there a motion that the board of education of the fayetteville manly central school district approved the resolution of text roles as presented thank you mark second from kelly discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i imposed or abstaining and 3.05 approval of the tax levy is there a motion that it be resolved

188that the board of education of the fatal manly essential school district approved the tax levy in the amount of sixty six million three hundred twenty four thousand two hundred and sixty four dollars in the library tax levy in the amount of three million three hundred one thousand eight hundred fifty three dollars which makes a total tax warrant 69 million hundred twenty six thousand a hundred and seventeen before star reimbursement for the 2021-22 fiscal year zero motion thank you mark a second from elena discussion all those in favor please indicate i i am opposed or abstaining item 3.06 is there a motion that it be resolved that the board of education of the fayetteville manly central school district hereby designate its intention to serve as lead agency for the secret coordinated review of the instant unlisted

189action and shall circulate its intention to act as lead agent to un i'm sorry to involved agencies per the resolution as presented to their emotion thank you kelly is there a second thank you rebecca any discussion all those in favor please indicate i i you are opposed or abstaining item excuse me 3.07 policies in second reading is there a motion at the board of education of fatal manly central school district that the nisba zeros series policies be approved in second reading is there a motion thank you daryl their second thank you kelly any discussion i just sent my email i know sarah's not in town but um about some of the gender neutral language that needs to be added so we're approving it with those gender pronoun corrections thank you for catching those and thank

190you for bringing that topic up originally all those in favor please indicate i i am opposed or abstaining item 3.08 policy in second reading is there a motion at the board of education of the fayetteville manly central school district hereby approves the revised policy 3220 on service animals and therapy dogs in second reading is there a motion thank you mark is there a second thank you rebecca discussion all those in favor please indicate i i am opposed abstaining item 3.09 resolution for special patrol officer and school information resource officer agreements is there a motion that will be resolved the board of education of the fabled manliness school district hereby approves the special patrol officer and school information resource officer agreements as presented thank you dan in a second from jason discussion just for those changes

191that we discussed earlier right we'll change make sure the date is correct thank you dan all those in favor indicate i i ain't opposed or abstaining item 3.10 resolution district uh safety plan is there a motion that the board of education of the famous manly essential school district hereby approves the 2021-22 district safety plan as presented with the addition of the with the additional um school resource officer included thank you um kelly and a second from mark any further discussion all those in favor indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right item 4.01 we've kind of covered uh oh wait sorry is there a motion that would be resolved the board of education of the favor melee central school district approved the participation of sherry lindarz marissa joy mims and daryl wheeler in the

1922021 nismo convention and that mrs lindars is designated to represent the district at the nisba annual business meeting is there a motion thank you rebecca for a second thank you uh jason in a discussion all those in favor please indicate i i anyway opposed abstaining all right uh working agenda items i'm saying nothing potential considerations for future meetings nope but um future meetings calendar we will check your email uh when we give you my information out to you soon dates to remember same and opening day is on the second jason we uh is that 7 30 it usually starts 7 30 7 30 a.m there's coffee and are they all going to do it the same way is ever going to be in here are we in theory right now pursuant to any changes in

193guidance yeah that might be a good idea because there's usually not much empty room um yeah so just so you know on your calendar it's like 7 30 and it's the doctor tyson does the opening remarks and introduces new staff so it's always a nice event and there's always there's usually a nice performance by our students on that day as well not this year nothing recorded bummer okay all right just to put that out there all right um that's the best part of it i mean your speech is good um okay so first day of school um [Music] all right so then we got oh well wood ribbon cutting and community tours on the second okay um oh we're still trying to figure out what we're going to do as far as the um like

194the legislative breakfast dinner thing we usually we've done before we're still that's still up in the air sorry i should have mentioned that under legislative leave on report all right consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as president thank you dan second from daryl all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right um now executive sorry is there a motion second to adjourn to executive session we have four individual building safety plans the superintendent's year in evaluation and we will also have an exempt meeting with council is there a motion to adjourn to executive session uh thank you rebecca and i'm second from jason jason did i see your hand up there okay thank you any discussion all those in favor indicate i am opposed or

195abstaining all right so this is going to conclude the public portion of our meeting we're going to go into executive session now thank you you