F-M BOE Meeting - Nov. 16, 2020

001two two two we are live okay thank you i will call the meeting to order please join me i pledge allegiance to the fight for the flag of the union of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right next on the agenda item 1.03 is approval or revision of the agenda for this evening is there a motion to approve the agenda for this evening okay a first from kelly a second from sherry any discussion of the agenda all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda is the oath of allegiance we are very pleased this evening to welcome our student member miss lucy fowler to

002join us this evening for her first board of education meeting and as part of that um clerk gridley is going to administer the oath of allegiance to lucy so welcome lucy we're very excited to have you and uh sarah will lead you through your oath of allegiance ms fowler do you swear and affirm that you are lucy fowler class of 2021 yes i do all right please raise your right hand and repeat after me i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states of america and i will support the constitution of the united states of america and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge and then faithfully discharge according to the best of my

003ability the duties of the office of ex-officio board member the duties of the office of ex-official board member of the faithful manlia central school district of the faithful manliest central school district congratulations welcome aboard thank you congratulations again lucy um and welcome to the board of education let's see excuse me next on the agenda is public comment i understand we do have uh several folks waiting to give public comment this evening sarah yes we had uh four people right in expressing interest three are so far in the waiting room i will admit uh sarah to begin thank you sarah are you with us could you please show your camera and unmute thank you very much welcome to the board of education meeting yes hi thank you thanks for um allowing us to comment tonight um

004i just wanted to say that i watched with great interest the presentations that were made last at last month's board meeting by um fm student alumni by current fm students and by dr sharon dodger and i first just want to thank them for speaking up about such important issues and for offering concrete steps that the board and the fn school district can take to create a more diverse inclusive and equitable education for all of our students and i really hope that the board seriously considers their proposals which were detailed and i think very um well-researched and very reasonable proposals and help and keeps us informed of what steps that the board will take next in their timeline for doing so what actions will you take on these proposals and what is your timeline and what

005is your mode of communication for letting us know what you will be doing to address their concerns i hope in particular that the board institutes an audit of the curriculum and institutes revisions to it so that it includes more diverse perspectives fosters important discussions about race and gender and offers a more inclusive sex ed curriculum i am my daughter goes to wellwood and i'm also a professor in the social sciences at syracuse university so i'm very concerned about the social science curriculum and i've seen some good things in what my daughter brings home but i've also seen some things that could really be improved we need to move the curriculum into the 21st century these issues have always been important but clearly the events of the last year have made these issues um urgent and

006we need to take action now thank you sarah thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to come and speak to the board of education i hope that you will stay for the rest of the meeting there will be an update under board development where we'll talk about a recent retreat related to our goals and give the community an update so thank you again for coming we appreciate it thank you sarah you may continue to watch us on youtube live okay have a nice evening thank you thanks again okay i will admit our next speaker mary good evening mary if you could please show your video and unmute thanks i uh show my video there we go okay there we go good evening welcome to the board of education meeting hi thank you

007you're welcome to speak to the board oh okay hi um as you can see my name is mary cunningham um i live here in fayetteville manlius and have had three grandchildren who've gone through the fm school district um so and i'm familiar with both wellwood uh somewhat fair fail but mostly wellwood and then the fm high school um and what i want to talk about this evening is that listening to my grandchildren talk we got together maybe a little less than a month ago in the middle of the covid pandemic we sat around a fire outside and were they were talking about school and every one of them felt that there had been this hole in their schooling and their education that didn't prepare them to really look at how systemic racism is affecting the

008country as a whole and how what part it has played they said that really in their experience um [Music] basically it was treated as well you know the 1960s and 70s took care of it all and it's been fixed and that there was really um very little look at what's happening in our own town what's happening in the country that does allow so much bias to continue um you know 150 years later after the civil war is over um so i think you know as i as an educator myself um who struggles with these issues i would really like to make sure that the school looks at its own curriculum looks at the way it teaches and the kinds of discussions it makes possible about bias and racism and anti-racism happening in the classrooms we

009clearly need a population of young people coming up that are more educated i think there's so many holes we teach a history that cleans everything and makes it look like oh things are kind of under control and we don't really teach an honest history that really talks about the depth of things like the wilmington massacre in 1898 to the tulsa bombing in 1921. things where we really know um there's been um just horrifying um forms of racism that continue so for example during um fdr's um administration the gi bill not fd well the uh for example many of the ameliorations during the depression were not uh available to black families after the war the gi bill was not available to uh black and brown families and so that just those kinds of things that let

010them know you know fayetteville the town we live in is the way we it is it's as white as it is it says mono uh culture as it is um because there's systemically been uh a lot that has supported uh making it look and act the way it does so i think i would like to see the board and the teachers begin a much more public uh investigation of themselves and then of our our schooling so that we have a better educated set of children and citizens who really see themselves in an active way i'm sorry go ahead no no i i thought you were finished my apologies you know i i i at this point i think i could say more but i think you get the gist of where i'd like to see

011further meetings about this and the board facing these issues um and bringing them up on a regular basis so they can be addressed i do have one other one other issue which is i've understand there's something called personalized learning that is being investigated but it sounds to me like it's more um computerized learning and i don't see that necessarily as personalized but i'd like to i hope that will be made more visible and with more detail as to what that really what does that mean the words sound good but sometimes words are euphemisms for something that we mean no we're we're talking about computer instruction as opposed to uh human instruction so those are my those are my two things thanks thank you very much mary for coming to talk to us about those two

012different things uh personalized learning is something um dr tyson our administrators will be keeping the district updated on as far as what the district does in that regards and as i mentioned earlier the board is going to update the community regularly in regards to our board goals which center around diversity um thank you very much for bringing this perspective i actually never heard of the wilmington massacre before i wrote that down i'm gonna look that one up um so thank you very much for um uh taking the time to speak to us tonight but rest assured the issues are very important to us and we are going to be focusing on those this year as part of our board goals yeah i'm hoping before they uh institutionalize something like personalized learning there's a little more

013discussion about what that might mean for our children okay thank you so much mary we appreciate it have a good evening and i believe we have a miss uh de la garza is that correct that is that is correct i'll admit her to the meeting now hi miss de la garza if you could please unmute and show your video you are currently live with the board of education hi this is a lot of technology for my 45 year old brain to handle here multiple mutes hopefully you can hear me yes awesome my name is kate delegars i'm a parent here in the fayetteville district i have a kindergartener at fayel and a fifth grader at wellwood we've been here for five years since my oldest camilla started kindergarten at mott road and then we moved

014and so echoing the other comments tonight i just i just wanted to share my thoughts first of all i wanted to thank you the board for hosting the presentation last month from the students the current students the alums dr dodger um to address anti-racism and anti-bias in the fm school district you know i felt like i felt like the kids sorry i called them the kids the kids you know were exactly i think what you know we want from our students which you know was brave and smart um you know presented very well um exhibited pretty amazing allyship to uh their other students and friends from marginalized backgrounds and and i think a heightened level of awareness of you know what it really means to not be in the majority here and so you know

015i thank them for that and i thank you for hosting that um discussion for us to learn and hopefully um there to be continued learning um i think uh i just wanted to echo the other comments and say that i support all of the recommendations they made but in particular i think the idea of looking at our curriculum our policies our events you know in a in a you know a comprehensive way that looks at anti-racism and anti-bias you know throughout the district would be really really productive um my family is you know one of the small number of lgbtq families here in the district and this work is very meaningful and would be very very meaningful for us and would it impact us and i think very tangible ways that would improve our experience

016here and so we're very hopeful that you'll take a look at that in addition i think one of the other things that that really uh struck me was the idea of potentially providing some really concrete training to teachers and administrators in anti-racism and anti-bias so that everybody has the same understanding and knowledge of how to approach different situations and um you know different things that occur here and so lastly because i don't want to take up too much of your time i i just want to say that i think this is a topic that's a both and topic and what i mean by that is that um i think we can both be an excellent school district with excellent education outcomes and at the same time be learning to grow our muscle and our understanding

017of what anti-racism inaction looks like i don't think acknowledging that we need to get better in one area means that we're not an excellent school district i think we can be both and i actually think that it exemplifies the things that we're currently teaching our kids you know fail i've said before to folks fail has an amazing kindness curriculum right fail teaches my children to have a growth mindset and i think this is a topic that puts um you know both of those things in action because we have to acknowledge that we could be better and we should be better and that kindness without action is kind of um meaningless you know so i just hope that we can continue to have a dialogue about it and um thank you marissa i think you've said

018all ms mims tonight you know a couple times that we're going to hear more about this and i really am excited to hear you know what conversations you all have been having and how we can continue to support each other in this work thank you for coming tonight catherine and i your your wife is marissa right marisa yeah okay she says she spells it the same way i do just pronounces it a little differently thank you very much for coming and thank you for sharing that compliment about the program over at fail that's nice to know but um you do raise a lot of great points and yes as i said earlier we definitely going to take all the um comments that we get or the feedback that we get from the public into consideration

019as we look at this issue as a board so i really appreciate your coming i know you've got little children so that's a lot to come to a board meeting so thank you so much thank you for all the work you're doing i really appreciate it all right thank you very much so the fourth person did not come correct sarah that is correct okay all right so next in on the agenda is the president's report and a lot of the report that i would uh want to give i'm going to save for board development when we talk about the retreat i already welcomed lucy earlier i can't do that enough it's it's great to have our student board member with us this evening i did want to extend a thank you to pete um buckley

020and dr tice for giving the um board a tour of the construction um progress over at wellwood it is um just breathtaking um i mean it's not even i mean it's close to being well pretty close to being finished i guess in construction terms but you can see the skeleton you can see what it's going to be and wellwood has always been a jewel in this district and this is just going i'm just so excited i cannot wait to see i can't wait to see the community's reaction to that building when it's done so thank you very much uh mr buckley and thank you to dr tais for uh giving the board that tour but as i said i'll save most of my report on for under board development when we discuss our retreat next

021on the agenda then oops is the superintendent's report dr teice certainly thank you president mims under the superintendent's report we've put uh attachment under executive content and board docs under internal operations we welcome lucy fowler to the board of education welcome you may be getting that all night tonight so enjoy it we'll put you to work at the next meeting under community relations as you are aware dr lewin from children's national health hosted three town hall meetings to provide our community members with an opportunity to weigh in on the school start time study the question dr lewin left with us is whether or not we are interested in conducting a follow-up survey of the community stakeholders especially to see if their opinions have changed since the onset of the pandemic so to that end at

022the end of my report i'd like to engender a discussion with the board of ed about whether or not to pursue that study dr lewin and dr tempkin as you know still need to complete their final report to honor the obligations of their original proposal under administration i once again i'd like to thank our administrative team for their efforts to complete all the necessary paperwork that goes with the onondaga county uh so that they're able to conduct their contact tracing regarding the coven 19 exposures in our school oftentimes we hear from parents and guardians before we receive word on the actual positive test from the county this affords school district officials the opportunity to begin their work on the official report we then take those results and place them on the school district website along

023usually with the school messenger alert notification lately this work has been taking place over weekends so i certainly extend my appreciation to the administration for all of their efforts under non-instructional business operations you will note that i will ask you to take action on energy consortium resolutions which will allow us to participate in the ocm boces bidding process for electricity and gas service even though we agree to be part of the bidding process our school district is under no obligation to participate in this program even though it's been advantageous to do so in the past so i would appreciate your support later on in the agenda under personnel i've been meeting with union stewardship regarding the different colored zones that you've heard about such as yellow orange and red under the new york state cluster

024action initiative while a red zone classification will indicate a return to the type of complete shutdown that we experienced in the spring the yellow and orange zones represent a less abrupt transition to the stay-at-home order that we all experienced in march april may and june to that end the school district will issue correspondence to the staff alerting them to the expectations in the event that we end up being classified in one of those colors in the not too distant future in fact the state revised those testing even as late as today over a two-week period rather than a one-week period so i know the board of education has articulated that they would like our school buildings to remain open uh for students as much as possible and we are endeavoring uh to do so under

025students in spite of the pandemic students and staff members have been practicing the requisite safety drills to include fire and lockdown drills along those lines the school district will hold its annual go home early drill next tuesday november 24th before the start of the thanksgiving holiday it's just a slight early departure on that day and it honors our honorable obligations under that statute under instruction as you may be aware it's been become increasingly difficult to find enough substitute teachers to cover classroom uh four classroom teachers during the recent spike in covet 19. because of the length of the quarantine periods rather than the actual number of the individuals impacted we may soon find ourselves without the ability to cover classrooms in the hybrid learning model at that time we may be forced to shift a

026particular school building to remote learning platform much like we've seen with some of our closest neighbors even today and then finally under strategic planning and construction the wellwood middle school capital improvement project is moving forward at a good pace this has resulted in a revised phasing plan that will allow us to be in renovations to the wellwood library ahead of schedule similar to the work that was undertaken at the high school we will move the wellwood library to a temporary location to allow the renovations to be completed in a timely manner we expect the new addition that's under construction that you heard a little about a little about earlier tonight to be ready sometime in the winter and then the new library will follow and be ready in the spring that ends my report thank

027you marissa you're on mute talking um thank you very much dr ty so you mentioned in your report you wanted the board to discuss a possible survey in regards to where the community stands currently in regards to the change in start time yes we have some money still available in the budget that we did not expend as a result of travel and expenses because so much lately was done remotely and virtually so both dr lewin and dr tempkin offered because of the pandemic to adjust the proposal to include a follow-up survey because the money is already budgeted we would not go over the total amount that was awarded by the board of education but it would certainly allow us to see if stakeholder input has changed as a result of that pandemic they certainly are

028still obligated to complete their final report to the board of education and would join us at a future meeting the question is whether or not to go ahead with that follow-up survey which certainly they would need to do now before issuing the final report later in the year so i wanted to open it up and what is the pleasure of the board i promised them that i would talk to you and get back to them dr does the survey only have to focus on the start time because i was just thinking that i think there are a lot of things that may have changed a lot of priorities a lot of concerns that may have arisen during this time period and that may relate to start times and i would hate to see us just

029look at that in a vacuum without those other um issues the community communities pulse being taken on those other issues is there a possibility for the survey to be a little more broad or does it near really need to be narrowly focused on just the start time i think we could open it up by certainly dr loon and dr tempkin would analyze their part regarding the start times but we could take a crack at looking at the other items that you're referring to that have also impacted the district as a result of the pandemic for example i know the town hall meetings many of the individuals that joined us said that the earlier edition of the survey talked about different options such as sliding times flipping times or condensing times and as we saw from

030the survey results there was an overwhelmingly support for us to study this as a community but what we couldn't agree on where there wasn't consensus is how to solve the problem so certainly a follow-up survey would allow us to put together things like slide the times flip the times and condense the times options that i think maybe the original survey did not provide the community i just think that you can never have too much data and too much input and any type of a decision of this magnitude so i would definitely support a follow-up survey i absolutely agree with dan that it's good to hear from the community and also marissa that there's a lot that people want to say right now um i guess a concern would be the data that we got from

031the previous third survey uh was very broad and so a an ideal survey would uh give let's say few fewer choices so we could get uh more of a an idea on between two or three options what people prefer rather than giving them eight or ten options so i know dr tyson just mentioned the flip or slide or flip and slide as options i don't i just wouldn't want the survey to go into giving so many options that we can't determine what the majority of the community wants agreed i think it's time to narrow it down too yeah i think quite honestly um we should expect the overwhelming write-in to be let's just concentrate on getting our kids back in school full-time so while i think the survey is a great idea and like dan

032said the more data we have the better i would just limit the choices and maybe temper our expectations of what we get back on this survey agreed other thoughts mark spoke for me i just um i was worried that there was survey fatigue but that those of you who are parents don't feel it so why would i right but i think mark's right we do need to focus it more i i think just one thing that's really important is whatever communication goes out with the survey acknowledging that obviously everybody's biggest concern at the moment is not school start times it's how do we get our kids back in school and and that it's clear that this is not an either or situation but it's something that we're trying to complete in parallel i think the

033way that that's communicated is of utmost importance on any start time survey that goes out i do i'll just go oh i'm sorry go ahead jason go ahead i was going to say i just echo the you know i think daryl you have a point there about the survey fatigue or just the having to fill anything out or fatigue so you know again i guess i'm just echoing but to make it as simple and targeted as possible so that you know parents can easily fill it out and i think it should be open to the teachers as well i mean certainly teacher input is going to be critical in all of this so i agree with everything you're saying limit the number of questions and choices but it's going to be important to canvas everybody

034from parents guardians to teachers as well yeah i think i'd like to say i think dan put it eloquently but he's right you know the communication that goes out with the survey is important uh you know i get a wonderful survey every saturday thanks to the department of health letting me uh complete my survey so i can get practice at it uh letting you know whether or not the kids have been exposed to coven in the past week so yeah i would temper expectations but i think the communication that goes out with it is key other thoughts any other questions related to dr tyson's report i actually have a question is this survey open to um parents teachers no no students probably right exactly we did the last time we could do it as well

035we have a section with demographics so students could respond as well okay thank you it's a great idea 100 percent i had one quick question but i don't want credit mine was on a different topic from dr tyson's report so i just have that if if everybody else is done i i just take your test i was just wondering if if you could help clarify for me because i'm still a little bit confused on the the contact tracing process as to who is really doing that is it being done at the county level or is it being done by the school because my understanding was the school was providing reports and the county was doing contact tracing but the email for example that we received today hidden numerous references to this school district made a

036determination of no exposures so so can you just talk through who's actually filling what role in that process certainly uh the district it's incumbent upon the district to complete the paperwork we often are contacted by staff members or families of the resulting positive covid test even before we hear from the county so the administration is busy along with the nurses putting together the requisite paperwork that being said as you know we have no authority to do to put anybody under quarantine as a result of that so when we get the official notice and oftentimes before we receive the official notice we send the paperwork in via encrypted email or through the portal to the onondaga county health department and they are the ones to perform what is called the official contact tracing so they are

037the ones in a sense that grade our homework and will assign a quarantine a q or a not quarantine an nq to everybody for what it's worth out of an abundance of caution and the fact that we want to do our due diligence we often put more people on our paperwork list than what the county actually ends up putting under quarantine we just want to make sure we're thorough the reason we do the paperwork and give it to the county to do the grading so to speak is because if there are common names we're able to see if craig tyson dan seidberg are in physics class but also in calculus class so we have the ability to add up the time as well or they may not recognize the names so we're able to provide

038some insight from our end that allows them to do their job but the county as you said is responsible for the contact tracing one final thought is we do foreshadow so a lot of our families or staff members will be contacted by the building administrator the nurse telling them that they may expect a call from the county so we often put those individuals at home awaiting that call because of the fact that we're often out ahead of the information so again we want to out of an abundance of caution and keeping everybody safety it is paramount we will send home a staff member or encourage a family to stay home until we hear from the county as almost a preventative measure rather than being reactive and then when the news finally comes in we will

039post the article or and or send out a school messenger alert typically the alerts are by email and or text as it was tonight uh when it involves a school shifting to remote learning that's when we do the voice messages using school message good question thank you thank you that's very helpful appreciate that doctor twice can we get since not everyone's going to be watching the meeting can we get something written up and send out to um the district staff explaining exactly those points and you know how buildings close et cetera that's a great idea i will do that okay any additional questions for dr tice maurice i i have one quick sorry uh dr just along with that whole um with everything you just said and i think it's part of the official paperwork

040but just to clarify um does the district send out an official notice to say if you haven't been contacted by the department of health that you're no longer under quarantine is that part of our process um you know my house received one of those calls and was greatly appreciated to get the heads up but i just want to make sure that we're closing the loop because obviously you're sitting on pins and needles waiting for the department of health to call or not call so i just want to make sure that we're closing that loop i i will check on that i do believe whether it's the administrators or nurses we are checking back for a while the county was behind and getting there just because of the surge of cases so sure ours what we're

041doing is the foreshadowing we're out ahead of it uh but we typically and and oftentimes families or staff members will call us it actually will uh they will make the initial call to us to say we haven't heard yet what should we do so we haven't been sending out a blanket form or anything like that we've been relying on the county to close the loop but certainly like i said they have been calling us to stay in touch in part when the county was just inundated with a lot of work over the course of the last week right yep no i think closing that part of the loop for those that aren't contacted by the county is important so that would be great if we could include it thanks thank you any additional questions for

042dr tice okay next on the agenda we have our committee and representative updates so audit committee met on august 7th and has not met since our last meeting community relations met on october 20th which i believe was after our last meeting um rebecca would you like to give an update yes so i think we met the day after our board meeting um so i guess of note a lot of these items are now dated because community relations is such a big part of what our administration is doing um every day so i guess the hall of distinction was something that we talked about um having the ceremony and the january 11th meeting and including a video that would unveil the plaques and i know that the administration and staff were tasked with beginning the planning

043process i don't have an update on that i don't know if there is one tonight that you could provide dr tais i'm sorry for the hall of distinction yeah looking at sarah on the screen yep sarah did reach out and you did make contact with everybody in terms of our plans for january correct correct yep everyone is available they're waiting on pins and needles for us they i'm working on a digital invitation so that they can spread that far and wide to their friends and family especially since it's going to be virtual so i expect we'll have quite a few people viewing our youtube channel that night um working on the blacks getting put together so that we can start our video production and uh with our nominators um making some brief from helping them

044have some brief remarks about their nominees thank you sarah you've made contact with all everyone correct that is correct thank you i mean we discussed the school start time town hall meetings which have now happened and i think we've really we've just covered that already um and then covet communications we just talked about kind of the transparency piece and making sure that parents and students and staff were in the loop and from where we sit as a committee feel that the communications have been clear and consistent and as dr chase just outlined there's a clear protocol of what happens when and what types of communication so i think great work on that front and we're continuing to monitor that as a committee and the last piece was the board retreat agenda which i think we

045will talk about in detail in our board development agenda item so that that's really it thank you much for uh very much rebecca one thing i would like to note is we have our next meeting date scheduled um but it's on a tuesday and i'd like us to take a look at um rescheduling that so that lucy can attend as our student board member because even though she's graciously offered to miss jim and i think it was physics i would rather try to find a time after school hours i was like you cannot miss physics so um if we could get another doodle out to try to find another maybe later that day or another time that week that would accommodate our student board member that would be fantastic if we could do that nice

046try lucy it looks like physics you can't miss a day of that okay all right next facilities met on november 12th dan so we did we had a very lengthy but i think production productive meeting you have the the minutes reports i just want to go through a few pieces of those and clarify them there's a couple of sections we focused in this meeting on eagle hill and enders road and as we've talked about before the thrust of the next project would be those two buildings plus the high school so we met with the principals of those two buildings in this meeting and then the high school is in the next round but i do just want to clarify from the minutes that there were a couple of places where it says what the work

047will include in the next project those are may this is all still very early stage evaluation with a lot of cost implications and a lot of infrastructure needs but everybody on the facilities committee and i would assume on the board as well is is committed to making sure that program needs drive the bulk of the projects even though we have the facility the infrastructure needs that need to be done programmatic needs really need to be the driving factor so so please understand in what's in the minutes that that everything that's discussed is what's coming it's it's a may and still under um discussion but but the principles of eagle hill and ender's road both went through um what their priorities are and and we're clear that all of their needs have been talked about and

048and put into play in in this next round of process um and one of the the pieces that's with that is obviously the discussion on on budget and mcas and and we did have a discussion in in in this last meeting again about there's a there's a pretty significant disparity between the current maximum cost allowance number we've been working under for eagle hill and certainly what was ultimately assigned by state adam wellwood and and so mr furlong had definitely suggested as noted in the meeting minutes that once we get this project zeroed in more that it's time for another road show out to statehead with the plans and to go through with them to really see what we can end up with an ending point on the mca especially for eagle hill because that number

049is is really quite low compared to what its sister school was with with similar actually with smaller population there is on the agenda tonight also an emergency project for um fail for the gymnasium that's a little bit later in the agenda um just just want to be clear that um there are safety considerations for that project that drive that as an emergency project but to be clear that it's not an imminent safety concern to any of the students or staff so just be so that nobody has any concerns about can't send sally or timmy to to jim it is it is not of that nature but it is of the nature that it needs to get repaired um much quicker than the ordinary process for for safety purposes um so just to explain what that

050is on what's coming um and the other part was you know as we've gone through budgets where we've talked about what the next referendum might look like in terms of total budget that was just keep in mind that as we're working toward that that's based on the mca's initially for all three buildings combined and it's not necessarily the cap before we end up but there's there's there's a lot left in this process of figuring out what this next project will look like but we have a lot of needs in this district and they they do need to get addressed and they can't keep getting kicked down the road so we're going to keep working through that our next meeting is tentatively scheduled december 17th that's contingent on some of the uh meetings with the architects

051and and dr kilmer um being able to get finished and get through the the process of really narrowing down needs and wants on that building and then we'll then we'll start tackling that building and more to come once we get to that so that's that's as far as we are right now thank you dan any questions on facilities okay next we have the finance committee which met on november 10th mark thank you marissa bill provided us an excellent update to the financial forecast for 2021. um current data indicates that you know we're still on track for that potential 20 reduction in state aid however we certainly don't know to what effect given that the majority of our aid comes in the latter half of the fiscal year so we won't know real numbers till we

052start budgeting probably march april to get a better handle on it and bill jump in if i'm saying anything that's off track here bill also provided an excellent first step in our long-range financial plan not only showing the current fiscal year but look forward to next fiscal year and subsequent fiscal years we will be [Music] taking a look at the budget calendar later in the agenda which will need board approval and then um also you will note that we've updated the clerks report and i i only say we it's bill and his excellent staff that'll be coming later in the agenda with subsequent reports in december as well that's it thank you any questions for a finance committee so i just had one so we we did all receive bills memo to the finance committee

053that went out as part of that could could we also see the just if you could share with us those same forecast documents as well if those could get distributed with those memos after your meetings that would be i think helpful to all of us sure bill you should be able to push that out right yeah i'd be happy to take care of that and just as a reminder uh this is very early in the budget process and you know that becomes then you know the cornerstone of the long-range financial plan so you still have a long way to go before we gather all the information we need to have a real solid picture of next year and beyond okay thank you very much uh thank you very much mark thank you bill next on

054the agenda policy policy committee met on november 17th um dan or sherry would you like to give an update i know elena was not um able to attend that meet understandably i'd be happy too um look you have the minutes for this this was actually probably or this i actually i know it's not probably this was our shortest policy meeting that we will probably have um i think which everybody was appreciative so it's it's everything's laid out in the minutes as far as what transpired during the course of that meeting if anybody has any questions happy to answer those but there's a couple of short items on the agenda for later today that or tonight that flowed out of that meeting okay thank you very much um there are no questions in regards to policy

055we'll move on to the fm education foundation sherry we did meet on october 21st um it was uh an outlook through the year because it's something that it's a unique year so fundraising and uh grants will all work differently and uh this discussion revolved around how that will be handled um for the grants the discussion said that uh usually there's a fall deadline for grants and a spring deadline for grants um and this year there won't be deadlines it's an as needed basis and the rubric will be expanded that uh it's easier to fill out and there the teachers will have more opportunities to fit their needs into the rubric especially for any coven related supplies things related to distance learning or or safety um for fundraising we also said it would be hard to

056do a dining week you know eating out at restaurants so there is brainstorming about how to do fundraising um and the main thing that the you know they all circle back to is that the fm education foundation uh is looking to support and uh you know give outreach in any way they can to the district so that was the meeting thank you sherry next on the agenda legislative liaisons uh rebecca did you want to give an update in regards to the nisba business meeting and the resolutions yes so we met the delegates met for the 2020 annual business meeting of nisba there were over 225 delegates on zoom there were 27 resolutions considered 19 were recommended by the resolutions committee and eight were not recommended and all 19 were adopted so i'll go over those

057in a moment and then the delegates also elected a slate of nisba officers for the 2021 year fred langstaff as president peggy zugiebe as zoogeeb as first vice president sandra sandra ruffo as second vice president and thomas nesbecka as treasurer so we as a board had decided that there were three recommended resolutions that we wanted to vote against um i ended up voting against all of them they all did pass some with some amended language so i will just kind of give you a snapshot of that um one concern we had was the language around the digital learning resolution and i'm just trying to find it which was amended so it now reads resolve that the new york state school boards association support proposals to provide resources to local school districts to expand opportunities and

058capacity for online learning and then what was added was provided that they increase student opportunities and do not decrease current levels of instruction um i i think that makes it better but it you know it still we still found it redundant and not as effective as the other resolution but nevertheless that was adopted and then the other resolution that was adopted as amended was around parent advocacy training so the way this resolution now reads it says resolve that nisba seeks to support legislation that would provide funding for suggested and then in parentheses not mandated state training and certification to provide parents with knowledge and resources to support their advocacy work for parents and students in their attendance at cse meetings and hearings so um just showing that it was not mandated training was the parenthetical

059added and that did pass otherwise there was really nothing that um very notable it was a four-hour meeting on halloween morning um but it went smoothly and these resolutions will now be positions of nisba for five years and the resolutions committee will continue to um you know government relations part of nisba will work towards advancing those proposals that require legislative change to be implemented any questions so rebecca the the third one the the loser pays resolution in special ed hearings that was adopted yeah there was a good deal of discussion on both the second and the third which hold on a second which were sort of in the same vein um around recovering attorneys fees and loser pays they were both ultimately adopted without really a close vote that's unfortunate any additional questions for rebecca

060in regards to the nisba meeting okay thanks for doing it rebecca sure my pleasure next on the agenda our student board member lucy fowler um so i have a few comments from mainly i got when i asked people like what i should talk about this meeting i got a few comments from people about online schooling and i got a couple from fm truth so to start off um a few people came up to me and asked about wednesday workloads um people who are taking more like classes with some more like rigor in it and you know like ap whatever people tend to get a lot more work on wednesdays than they normally would during the normal school day like on for me like thursdays and fridays since i'm cohort a like it's just about equivalent

061even though it's not meant to be like that um i also got a few comments about synchronous learning so the days that you're not in school many people came up to me and they're saying it's not as effective being on zoom meetings in class synchronous they can't pay attention their electronics are distracting them there's no one to stop them and um i thought that maybe someone could present like a in to keep people more focused you could require people to keep their screen on or somehow enforce a no cell phone policy something along the lines of that and see how people can pay more attention on alternate school days in several different ways like just present a couple ideas and then i got a few statements from fm truths group um a few students have

062asked me about the um how the retreat went and what we can expect from the board plans to further the release statements on the website regarding diversity related issues throughout the district um i know they said the the facilitator was going to be dr um lavelle brown i think and people would like to hear what they had learned from him during the retreat as well and then also more about fm truths um many people are waiting um for the board's response about the plans and so again when can we expect the information to be released um and that is oh i also had one more thing obviously the cases are going up right now for covid and i had two three questions on how are we gonna stay on our are we going to how

063are we going to receive our work in papers if we go online for the next few weeks are we going to have to look at our screen 24 7 how can we get ourselves off our computer a little bit more than we are now thank you very much lucy those are very good questions um dr tyson or anyone would you like to can we respond to some of lucy's questions on behalf of the student body at this time thanks michelle jump in um so lucy i'm assistant superintendent for instruction and it's really interesting several of your comments and questions we just talked about today at high school instructional forum uh particularly uh or specifically the wednesday workload and trying to balance that and uh trying to sort that out the screen time synchronous learning the

064distractions with synchronous learning uh so the good news is we're on the same wavelength i would encourage you to if you have those comments to also just touch base with dr kilmer i will share but uh as many as much feedback from students as possible is is really really helpful so i appreciate that very much thanks and i cannot go what dr coughlin just said i met with dr kilmer and the assistant principals today along with our director of counseling uh ivy green and there that's something that they are taking a look at and then lucy um the fm truth group had some questions regards to the retreat which we'll discuss under board development um in a little bit so thank you for bringing those very good questions thank you for taking the time to

065get perspectives from a lot of different people to bring those to the table great first report thank you oops all right so next on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the october 19th regular uh board meeting is there a motion to approve the october 19th minutes thank you sherry in a second for mark any discussion of the minutes all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining education approve the following personal actions is recommended by the superintendent uh first from daryl second from jason all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 3.03 approval of the budget calendar is there a motion that the board of education of the fayetteville manly essential school district hereby approve

066the 2020-2021 budget calendar as presented thank you mark second from jason discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 3.04 approval of the retention and disposition schedule is there a motion that the favorable manly central school district that retention and disposition schedule for new york local government records issued pursuant to article 57a of the arts and cultural affairs law and containing legal minimum retention periods for local government records is hereby adopted for use by all officers in legally disposing of valueless records listed therein thank you kelly in a second from sherry discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda is item 3.05 policy revision is there a motion of the

067board of education of the fable male essential school district upon the recommendation of the policy committee waves first reading and approves revisions to policy 1000 and the exhibit to policy 1410 in second reading thank you dan and a second from daryl any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda is item 3.06 annual policy review is there a motion that the board of education or the fayetteville manly essential school district has completed their annual policy review upon recommendation of the policy committee thank you rebecca in a second from dan any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 3.07 resolution real property law section 487 rescind is it resolved that the

068fayetteville manly essential school districts opt out of the tax exemption made available by real property tax law section 487 for solar wind or farm waste energy systems is hereby rescinded and such exemptions shall be applicable within the boundaries of the fayetteville manly essential school district first from daryl second from sherry discussion yeah so i i just pulled questions on this before we you know it's more related to the to 3.08 but before we vote on 3.07 is regard to the pilot that's actually being proposed on what i understand to be this residential solar project and i just want to be clear because it didn't appear that way to me in the resolution that the 15-year pilot at a dollar a year is only with respect to any increase in the assessment on that property that

069is specifically attributable to the solar energy system that it is not a pilot that removes that property from the school tax rolls and it is not a pilot that is in lieu of any increased taxes that would stem from any increase in the assessment on that property over the course of the next 15 years that's separate and apart from the solar project so i just i just want to make sure i wasn't clear from the wording of the proposed resolution that that's actually what we're resolving to do but i also haven't seen the pilot agreement so so i don't know if bill if you can speak to that or clarify that that would be appreciated yeah i'd be happy to um you are um you know the exemption only applies to items that qualify under

070section 487 so in this particular case it's solar panels that the homeowner has installed they would only this party would only get the exemption on those solar panels and quite frankly if then this party wanted to add more solar panels say next year or in the future they would have to come again and you know ask for another pilot agreement this is a one-time thing that only applies to you know a certain level of additional solar panels and it once again it does not apply to any other property outside of the solar panels so it doesn't give the party any exemption on their house or their garage or anything else and you know over time that assessment could change uh depending on you know what the local assessor determines did that answer your question it

071it it does obviously the devil's in the details on on the wording of the pilot agreement itself but as as long as it is consistent with as you've just explained it then then i'm fine with that i know the person who has written the agreement has a lot of experience with these type of pilot agreements so i think we're pretty safe there any additional any additional questions okay we had a first and a second all those in favor please uh indicate i i you want to posed or abstaining next on the agenda sorry item 3.2 residential pilot agreement is there a motion that it be resolved that the board of education of the fayetteville manly central school district authorizes the superintendent of schools to execute a payment in lieu of tax agreement pursuant to the

072term set forth above and in the form approved by legal counsel is there a motion thank you daryl luther a second thank you mark discussion so i i'm sorry because there's three of these mine actually relates to the one that we just did so i hate to go backwards but there's a date in that first resolution of august 15 of 2019 which was the resolution we were rescinding that by my notes was on august 12 2019 not august 15 2019 so that rescinding resolution may just need a correction on the date thank you dan any further discussion all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining okay thank you next on the agenda i am 3.09 resolution real property loss section 487 opt out oh we didn't get this any shorter did

073we sarah okay is there a motion that it be resolved that no tax exemption made available by section 487 of the real property tax law shall be applicable within the jurisdiction of the fabled manly central school district with respect to any solar or wind energy system or farm waste energy system constructed subsequent to the effective date of this resolution no tax exemption made available by section 487 of the real property tax law shall be applicable within the jurisdiction of the fayetteville manly essential school district with respect to any micro hydroelectric energy system fuel cell electric generating system micro combined heat and power generating equipment system or electrical energy storage equipment or electrical energy storage system constructed subsequent to the effective date of this resolution the superintendent of schools is authorized to take any other necessary

074and proper action to implement this resolution is there a motion thank you sherry is there a second thank you jason is there discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 3.10 resolution emergency project is there a motion that it be resolved that the board of education has determined that the reconstruction of the walls of the gymnasium is a type 2 action under the regulations of the state environmental quality review act requiring no further review the board of education hereby finds pursuant to the education law the reconstruction of the walls of the gymnasium is necessary to preserve the health and safety of students and staff for the protection of school property and that the emergency project is an ordinary contingent expense the maximum

075estimated cost of the emergency project as determined by king and king architects the school district's architect is approximately 88 the funding source for the emergency project will be the general fund balance and to the maximum extent possible state building aid the superintendent of schools and all officers and employees of the school district are hereby authorized and directed to take all steps necessary so reasonably necessary or appropriate to complete the emergency project to carry out the extent of this resolution to apply for any eligible state building aid and to recover any available insurance proceeds is there a motion thank you kelly is there a second thank you dan any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining next on the agenda item 3.11 resolution new york state school

076and municip municipal emerging energy consortium natural gas oh my goodness is there a motion that it be resolved that the that this board hereby determines that it is in the interest of the fayetteville manly essential school district to participate in the uh that nismik and authorizes and directs superintendent of schools to sign the agreement and our billing schedule an agreement for natural gas on its behalf and be it further resolved that this board authorizes the administrative participant as defined in the agreement to prepare advertise disseminate and open bids pursuant to the general municipal law and to award execute and deliver binding contracts on behalf of this board for the purchase of natural gas delivered to the city gate of the local utility distribution company for the participants facility or facilities on a firm basis for

077this participant the lowest responsible bidder as it is determined by the administrative participant at a price for such commodity natural gas not to exceed 0.583 cents per therm for a term of at least one year and no more than three years commencing may 1st 2021 and terms and conditions all as may be determined by the administrative participant or to reject any or all such bids and be it further resolved that this participant agrees to advertise said bid as may be directed by the administrative participant and be it for the resolve that the officers and employees of this participant are authorized to execute such other confirming agreements certificates and other documents and take such other actions as may be necessary or appropriate to carry out the intent intent of this resolution is there a motion thank

078you jason is there a second thank you mark any discussion i almost feel like after i read all that there should be something but that's okay all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining i'll just give you a well done i'm reading all of that this is a fun meeting with all these resolutions i think it's the last the last one though so that's good all right 3.12 resolution new york state school and municipal energy consortium electricity can i just say ditto but let's see be it resolved this board hereby determines that it is in the best is in the interest of the fayetteville manly central school district to participate in nismik and authorizes and directs the superintendent of schools to sign the agreement and our billing schedule

079an agreement for electricity on its behalf and be a further result that this board authorizes the administrative participant too much water she froze she did freeze sherry would you like to pick up where she left off will do uh i believe she said uh the general music municipal law and to award execute is that what she was to award execute and deliver binding contracts on behalf of this board for the purchase of electricity delivered to the delivery point of the local utility distribution company for the participants facility or facilities on a firm basis for this participant to the lowest responsible bidder as is determined by the administrative participant at a price for such commodity electricity not to exceed 0.736 cents per kilogram water kilowatt hour for a term of at least one year and no

080more than three years commencing at may 1st 2021 and other terms and conditions all as may be determined by the administrative participant or to reject any or all such bids and it be further resolved that this participant agrees to advertise said bid as may be directed by the administrative participant and before the resolve that the officers and employees of this participant are authorized to execute such other confirming agreements certificates and other documents and take such other actions as may be necessary or appropriate to carry out the intent of this resolution do i have a motion got an atta boy mark and that's how you pass the baton thank you kelly and thank you sherry and my internet went out there for me you just seamlessly going right in there thank you okay um item three

081point thirteen destinations we didn't get a vote on that last one we have a motion and a second but no vote oh i'm sorry i thought we didn't have a vote on that um all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining okay thank you next is item 3.13 designation is there a motion of the board of education of the famous man leah school district make the following designations as presented thank you rebecca and a second from there all my squares moved when i logged off um any discussion all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or stating okay next on the agenda the ocm boces nomination so there is it's blank right now so um i think we could have some discussion before

082we make a nomination so i did email the board earlier this week or late last week in regards to the oc and boces board nomination to just detail the process and what that is so the ocm boces component districts some have a shared seat some have individual seat fm has a shared seat with james dewitt and with the passing of anne wright the ocm boces assistant superintendent contacted our district that we can fill would like us to fill that seat um beginning for now for their december meeting we would have to nominate someone um in the spring for a full three-year term so this is to serve on the ocm boces board through june 30th and after which time the person who was selected by the board in the spring would serve on the board

083the board can nominate a board member they can nominate a community member who lives within our jd i believe nfm school district this is the first time that we have been able to nominate someone for the seat and as i indicated in the email the assistant superintendent i guess based on her interactions with daryl and i um thought one of us should um fulfill the seat and i did expressed an interest in doing that so open that up for discussion before we get any nominations just a point of clarification the board would still have to vote uh december's meeting uh for both season then our representative would be able to participate okay marissa you did in the email indicate your interest um and the recommendation was you or daryl daryl do you have any interest

084i have an interest in marissa fulfilling this role well said so i think that if that is the board's um if the board is okay with that then in probably march we should have board discussion about how we want to fill that seat whether we want to solicit um people from the community who may be interested whether it's a board member or how we want to proceed with getting um figuring out how to nominate some or who we want to nominate for that seat but we definitely probably should do that march to give us enough time to figure out the parameters of a selection process for for that seat i guess my only question is why are we not doing that now this is this is as you mentioned the first time in many many

085years that fm has been able to put forth somebody to serve on that board and it it seems to me that this is the type of thing with transparency that we try to an endeavor to do as this board that we should put out some notification into our community and canvas within our community whether there is anybody else that is interested in filling this position so that we can make a determination as a board based on knowing who all may or may not be interested in filling the spot it may be nobody else or it may be some people that would be very qualified and appropriate to represent and speak for our interests in this and i just think given the the the opportunity at hand um i don't feel as as rushed to do

086it and i think that it's something that we really should canvas our community and see if there's anybody else in our community nothing there's nothing to do marissa with you or daryl and the way that it was presented to you i just think given the opportunity that that's something we really should properly be exploring and dan i agree with a lot of what you just said i do think um because this is going to be the first time we get this seat it is important that we really do give a lot of consideration to how we fill it but that consideration and the the level that i would like us to give to it where we look at um all as people from all parts of the community to fill the seat is going to

087take several months that's why i suggested march when we have to make uh that nomination i believe actually we need to do some february because i think the nomination is in april that we have to do so actually we need to do this in february so that we would have time to send out notice to the well we have to talk about this first see if we want to send out notice to the community to solicit solicit people who may be interested um and how then we would want to as a board to vet all you know because we maybe we may get a lot of people who are interested or you're right we may get no one else who's interested i certainly don't even know if i would want to consider um doing this

088after june 30th um so that's a lot to look at and the oc and boces board would like someone to serve on this in the seat beginning in december so i just think with that in mind and giving deference to that board i'd like to move forward now and then as a board starting in actually i'm gonna say february if we have to nominate march and considering that we'll be in the middle of um budget season in the spring um move in february to have meeting discussion at each board meeting so that we can agree as to a process to fill the seat i just don't think that we have enough time right now to do it i think if we started doing it right now and really put what you've said we need to

089which i agree into it we wouldn't fill this seat until february which again the the time the turnaround so that would be my concern i also think that it's a good opportunity to kind of to learn about the boces board and i can bring about information to the board as to how they operate and that's information that will be valuable to us as well as we determine who we might want to have in this seat long term for three years because it is a three-year seat and it's not something that's voted on by the community it's strictly voted on by the board most board members do serve pretty long terms on the boces board so that would be my suggestion is that we fill it now and then in february we really start taking an

090in-depth look at how we want to move forward with it for three years it's just a practicality at this point dan i think um they need someone at the board meeting on in december and then the ballots come out is it april sarah when the ballots come out for all of the candidates so by that time we would have the opportunity to bet and find a candidate for a three-year term i i do not have the dates from the ocm boces district clerk at this point but the vote is in april usually the third monday so we would need to have something in place before march right right so just for this meeting and and the june meeting but then we'll get to work to find a candidate for three years so it's just a

091practicality no i and i understand that i just i think you just don't know until you know and you know it we could just as easily put out a communication through the district about what it is and what the position entails and and know by our next meeting in december that either there are other people interested or there's nobody interested and if there's nobody interested well then then we know that candidate pool is coming from those people that are on this this call now um and if not then you know it becomes easy i just i just think it's you know it's it's a position that's to be appointed from the community and i think it's this is the first time that it's come up it's the very first discussion we're having about it and

092and if it's a position from our community and we haven't even communicated out to our community about it i think we're i think we're missing a step on that so if we were to put this out to the community now right and we can solicit names before our december meeting so we would have to prior to that december meeting agree as to a process to vet those folks and figure out how we're going to fill the seat so that would not enable us to i mean unless we're going to commit to additional meetings in december and again i agree with you this is something that we really need to look into and that's what i'd like to give us time to do to make sure because those served on the bose cc right now are

093not all school board members some of them are current or former school board members but they do have a lot of different people from the community so it is an opportunity for the board because it isn't something that's voted on by the community it's voted on by the board and then pursuant to the gentleman's agreement the other component districts honor the board's wishes so it is an opportunity for us to really explore it but again i just don't think we have the time considering all that we have on our plates now to truly seek people from the community who may be interested and then come up with a process to nominate someone well marissa i think that we would be doing our due diligence however if we did reach out to the community history has

094proven that once you put a position that an individual in that position excuse me it's very difficult to get them out of that position and if we truly as a board want to be transparent about this process that is now this this opportunity has now presented to us and for decades we have not had that opportunity and i would much rather be willing to hear from the boces board president or the board itself as to whether it's going to truly make a huge difference on the work that they have to do whether we feel that slot for the december meeting or the january meeting so um with that said i just just would feel much more comfortable that we're at least going through a process versus just having an individual serving that term until the

095next election because chances are highly likely no matter what anybody says that whoever's in that position will continue in that position once april comes and that's how it's been so um i would just feel better that we've done our duty to our community and fulfilled that responsibility since that's what that seat is for it's not specifically for a sitting board member or um a board member who has served in the past but also that seat is an opportunity for a community member and without even asking we don't know and as dan said maybe there won't be any interest marissa in which case we certainly can nominate somebody that has the interest to serve on the board you know elena to make it easy for you um i will agree to serve as a placeholder and

096not seek the seat after june 30th if that makes it easy for the board to see that they will have full opportunity to vet this my only interest is getting um fill in the seat right now because that's the wishes of the board the oc and boces board the the boces superintendents do not speak without the authority of the board so again i can see myself as a placeholder in this and it is at the pleasure of the board both these board members have to be nominated every may and if that is the concern then i will certainly serve as a placeholder and allow the board to bring whoever they else they want to do i'm only interested in following the wishes of the boces board and having our district represented in a prompt matter

097so if that means not continuing um i hadn't thought about continuing after june 30th in a lot of regards so um i you know i mean i know if that helps but um not it's not this has nothing to do with you or daryl or if i were interested or anybody else on the board it just for me it goes comes back to process and what is the process that we should be following and it's you know i know we really try to have a discussion on items and then vote not at the same meeting but at different meetings and you know i i i just don't really see how one more month is going to truly make that much of a difference and marissa we may land where we are right now and have

098you be the only person that's interested in in doing that so again this is this is not about you being interested it's just about making sure that we do our due diligence so eleanor we would you would have us not be represented in december correct could we make this resolution say uh that we nominate someone to temporarily serve on this board and then the benefit of that is that person could then come back and give a little window into what goes on at these meetings and what a community member would be doing as a representative um and it gives us a little background into how we could go through the process to find a community member to do so now i'd rather have us represented well i guess that was my next question i haven't

099read through their bylaws and processes and so there's a new opening they have a meeting coming up we're either represented at that or not i would i would trust that boces as a board it's not going to say hey fm and jd aren't here let's let's quick show this through right that's not going to happen um but do their bylaws and processes allow us to temporarily designate a representative so somebody would be at the december meeting but give us until say january to do this community betting and canvassing so that we we appoint then somebody for the balance of this time i just i'm just i'm just on the side of we ought to be involving the community i understand there's a need i don't know what the process is of whether we can temporarily

100fill that need or not the answer is no you nominate someone to serve the remainder of the term which ends june 30th um i mean the boces board has reached out and expressed their what they would like us to do um to fill the seat ask the rest of the board how they feel i think we're spending too much time yep i just wanted to say i'm okay with the appointment through june and i think it would give us enough time to go out to the community and give the community some time to process more than just you know until our next board meeting so um i'm okay and i would i would nominate marissa as am i i agree do i yeah i'd agree nominating marissa and then doing a full vetting when we're

101ready for the next session okay is there a motion that be resolved with the board of education of the fayetteville male essential school but school district hereby nominates marissa mims to serve on the ondaga portland medicine board of education yep thank you kelly would be the first is there a second from daryl any further discussion well i just think we just need to clarify the resolution that it's for the balance of the remaining term just yes it is for until june 30th [Music] all those in favor please raise your hand indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining we have an abstention i'm not agreeing with the process so opposed um there we go yeah right so we have it i just don't i don't agree with the way we've done this and how it's been

102put in our laps within days of having to vote without truly understanding what our other options could have been so um [Music] i'm gonna vote no so one abstention and one no thank you well mine was not an abstention mine was also not oh two no's and that's it all right next on the agenda item 4.01 board development so this is an opportunity to revisit our retreat that we had with dr um louvelle brown from the ithaca central school district um obviously as we heard earlier quite a bit of community interest in how our retreat went earlier in the school year the board approved two different goals and i just want to read them here again for the interest of the public first board goal the board will strive to better educate itself about diversity

103equity inclusion and the impact of discrimination in the fayetteville manliness school district and engage in a board retreat and other discussions to evaluate how the board may support the district administration and further embracing acceptance and action against prejudice and discrimination of all forms second goal the board will examine ways the district will promote a healthy climate when addressing student discipline and how restorative justice practices can be incorporated into policy and our code of conduct so we met with um dr brown um november 5th i believe it was and the retreat opened with board members talking about their own personal backgrounds and cultural experiences to give us a sense a better sense of who we are and how our own personal how we've grown up our our ethnicity our religion how all of that filters how

104we see our community and ourselves so the board shared a lot of personal information about our backgrounds and we talked about equity we began to form a definition as to what that is going to mean for our district what does equity go look like what are expectations for equity for our students in our district we talked about inclusion and how we want to approach that as a district inclusion meaning that everyone um is able to participate um in our district and what it means to the difference between equity and equality we also talked about anti-racism the book that everyone that we're reading this year as a board and the cabinet is also reading how to be anti-racist and we had the board at least we've read most of us has finished the book but we

105also focused on the policy part of the book we talked about what it would mean to have what's racist policy we talked about um some historical aspects of racist policy and how you know things that we may not even have considered to be racist or bias have um been a part of public education um and then we um to finish up what will this look like for the board when it's done um and i'm not what do we anticipate well how do we want our district to look and feel for everyone from various backgrounds in our district as we move forward so this first retreat was really just getting our feet wet from my perspective and just getting everyone's pulse as far as where we believe we are you know now as a district and

106where we want to go um moving forward we talked about how this is going to be very difficult work and we are um may not have everyone with us as we move forward to to examine this work um and you know we've already you know there's already been some emails and and there's been supportive ones and not some supportive ones and we talked about you know that as a board we're committed to our board goals and doing this work so that we understand that that may be the case but we are going to move forward um with our board goals and looking at ways to make our community a better place for people from all religious ethnic racial um sexual orientation gender etc so we know it's going to be difficult work and i hope

107everyone had an opportunity to read the article that was in the um was on syracuse.com probably was in the print edition as well where vera house talked about the work that they're doing very similar work and some reaction that they've received very great article i reached out to their executive director to find out who their facilitators were and get a little feedback from her and she was very gracious enough to respond to me and i'll share that with the board at a later time but i thought it was a very good first step and um just the beginning so um moving forward and how we continue to keep our momentum going um i have some suggestions for the board before i open the floor for people to give some of their own feedback and their

108thoughts about the retreat and where we move forward we have two contingency board meetings coming up one on one in january january 25th and the second one i believe is march first i have that date right and i'd like to use those as um follow-up board retreats for the specific board goals and there was a great idea that was presented to me about a subcommittee to do some of the fine detail work in preparation for those retreats some of the planning work for those retreats and i think that's a really good idea because if we simply just have those two retreats there's a lot i think that we won't be able to get to that we could if we have a subcommittee working between now and a january retreat and then in between january and

109march and then lastly i think it would be really helpful to us if our student board member participated in our work moving forward to um whatever extent her schedule allows um i think that student perspective you're not missing physics um so i think her perspective would be very helpful um she obviously has got you know very connected to the student body and i think that having lucy participate would be really helpful to us moving forward so i've spoken enough to kind of recap what we did at the retreat and with my suggestions that we move forward with two retreats and a subcommittee and i want to open it up to uh the floor for some board discussion other people's thoughts on the retreat and ideas about moving forward as a team on this issue i

110do have my first main thought that i have is it was so valuable to have a facilitator at that retreat and i think that's something we should strive to always have in that we as a board can get into long discussions but to have someone who can keep us focused and use their wisdom from their own ex from their own facilitating background to keep us on task and to redirect when necessary i think that should be something we strive for on any any of these meetings any of these retreats we do um a second thought that i think it's a bigger picture thing um when we were speaking with loubelle brown he said that he sometimes he as a superintendent sometimes goes against what nisba would recommend the board is doing and his board uh

111goes along with that so um it's something we have to face as a board that we may we've always tried to fall in line with nisba but we this may take us a little bit away from their path so those are just two thoughts that i had the the main two thoughts that i had after the retreat i thought that dr brown was an outstanding facilitator i mean not only as a facilitator but as really a leader in the fields and he's doing this work in a really progressive way in ithaca so to hear examples really concrete examples of the work he's doing and his board um was just very helpful to hear kind of how a board put some of this into practice i'd also say that i think nisba is putting out some

112great content for in terms of webinars in terms of sample policies today i uh attended the equity webinar which i'm sure will be recorded and the materials which i'm sure will be made available with sample policy new policies that they created in conjunction with niscus so it's really a partnership with superintendent um and and the school board association to put those sample materials forward and are worth looking at and considering and as well as the nice culturally responsive document that is has some very specific pinpointed concrete areas that board members can get engaged and the subcommittee idea was my idea and i think my thought there is just to try to help move some all the work we did forward into agenda planning for and possibly even maybe it's not the work of a subcommittee

113to draft sample policies but you know policy making seems to be an area where um we should start or consider starting as one of the places and so i just think that there could be a lens of a subcommittee that could help move this work forward as opposed it's very important for the to be the work of the full board but like any of the work we do um i think we can be more efficient and effective by um kind of siphoning it off and having some work sessions in between board meetings um i guess i i just echo i guess what people have said so far that dr brown was an incredible facilitator and clearly a leader um as superintendent in you know discussing issues of diversity equity and inclusion it was a really

114i feel like everyone was pretty vulnerable during the discussion and it was i think we all came to a vision for you know or at least started to come to a vision for what we'd like the district to look like in the next you know five years as he ran us through that exercise so um you know while i think it'd be great to maybe look into you know additional perspectives from other facilitators i would love to see dr brown come back and work with us at least one more time and as for the committee you know i i agree with what rebecca said that you know clear this is obviously the work of the full board however i do think that because there's so many things going on it might help to have um

115a committee focus on this and i i would be happy to serve on that committee i would i would certainly agree with all that's been said about dr lavelle brown i thought he was excellent and i would love to have him join us once more at least the visioning protocol was fascinating talking about beginning with policy that would never have occurred to me but it makes most sense and like rebecca i've been doing the webinars with nisba and they're also very helpful and again that partnership between niscus and nisba i guess should have happened probably a long time ago but this is important work that to do it together is is a great thing so i'd also be happy to serve on the subcommittee why are we not just having policy committee be the foundation

116of this subcommittee since we're dealing with policies or potential policies i mean that definitely occurred to me as well it just i also know that there's some of this work might be cr writing and drafting sample new policies and i know that there's a heavy agenda with the policy work you do so maybe you can speak to that is that something that you could tack on to really focus on with all the other work that you do in your meetings we still don't have that first version of of review through nisba so currently today i could not comment on sarah i don't know if you've received anything to date um but you know we can set our pace with regard to the policy review um cycle with nisba um to a certain extent i do

117believe um according to at least how we went through the process last time so you know in in terms of policy writing and new policies as well um we would also have guidance of nisba throughout that process as well and we would have to have administrators involved in that process as well so i'm just trying to not expand it too much you know perhaps maybe even bringing some more on board people that are interested i'm not suggesting certainly strictly the policy committee but we could certainly expand that you know for these purposes um and and that might be kind of nice that makes sense to me yeah i think that yeah there's a lot of work the policy committee needs to do but there's some planning work just in general for the retreat to figure

118out what our next steps are so um i don't know if this is two different things and maybe it's the planning committee and the work to you know decide what is it we want for our next retreat are we looking at getting data what information are we looking what next steps are we considering eventually it's going to have to if as we're talking about policies it's going to have to get referred to policy i don't know if that's where we start right now um as far as moving the discussion forward um for our retreat i think in parallel the policy committee or a slightly expanded version for that purpose could look at as we do for our other policies the nisba materials that have been put forth on this topic that could be an agenda

119item you could even have a extended um team for that meeting but i don't see why we can't do those two things in parallel because it's in no by no means is it where we're gonna land but it's just a starting point that could be helpful as we start to think about what's in our current policies perhaps having a separate policy on this issue that is overarching and addresses the main points of what we're doing i'm looking at each policy through an equity lens right well that's definitely part of it as we both as we go through policy yeah i also feel strongly a little bit with regard to planning next steps this needs to be a board discussion and not a discussion of any subcommittee whatever that subcommittee may look like so i think

120that as a board we need to have the healthy discussion with regard to where are we going next so we need to come to agreement so then you can more thoroughly plan what you do next but you know i would rather see that coming from us as a board and not from a committee so then what we could do um is have uh on the december agenda um discussion about or even now um get some feedback as far as next steps i think one some of the details are one that we would agree to have those two retreats um in january and march we've already said we're going to discuss this at every meeting so if it's not a subcommittee that's meeting to discuss it then we need to figure out what shape the discussion

121that we're going to have at each board meeting moving forward i would i would really um hope that we don't miss that we don't wait to do some of this work and i mean that in terms of some of the smaller things that we can do sooner rather than later i mean there's a lot of long-term things one of the things that um i can't remember which group it was i think it was the our current student group uh brought up the idea of a welcoming statement on our webpage which to me is a more shorter term thing that we can discuss so however we choose to move forward i'd i'd like us to see see us making decisions and showing some progress and not just you know doing things in the long term um

122i did want to share with the board um the anti-racism policy that the syracuse city school district adopted i thought the language in this was really um very good and it says the syracuse city school district is committed to establishing and sustaining an equitable community that achieves the school district's equity mission to end the predictive value of race and ensure each each individual students and staff success the board of education and the district reject all forms of racism as destructive to our mission values goals and practices i thought that was really well written um just wanted to share that with the board as we um had our discussion tonight so i'm going to sound a bit like a broken record at some point saying this but but you know we we're looking at what's wrong

123we're looking at what areas that need to be approved improved and there are for sure but i still believe that one of the next agenda steps is learning a little bit more about the historical path that has gotten us to where we are today to use that to help inform where we may be going in the future i think that it's important to learn about learn from all aspects of the past so that past efforts aren't duplicated past mistakes aren't repeated so that we can have a better understanding of the efforts or initiatives that have been undertaken at fm in the past that might not have worked or efforts or initiatives that were studied and considered but ruled out for implementation at fm i think an understanding of how we got to where we are

124today can be very informative to moving forward and and i think just one of the many areas where that's important is you know we've heard from the presentation that we got we heard prior to that presentation we've heard again tonight in public comment about various aspects of curriculum and i think it's very important not just for us but for our community to understand what athens curriculum in is and and why it is what it is i i you know i i think dr coughlin and all of our instructional specialists have been extraordinarily mindful in the development of our curriculum over the many years and there's every area of our district that can see improvement um but it's also not things that have just been thrown together hastily and without thought as well and i think

125we need to be mindful of that and one way that we are more mindful of that is to have a more complete understanding of how and why we got to where we are today and and i would really be more comfortable in these discussions if that's one of our next agenda items is that that historical walkthrough of how did we get to where we are today so that we're really starting on the same understanding plane of you know some of us have been in this district for a very long time some have not same thing with our community members that we're hearing from some are very recent here and and bring perspectives from other areas and and many have been here for for a lifetime and i think understanding that historical pathway of you know

126from where we were to where we are is very important to any determinations or discussions about where we go from here that's a very good point we talked a bit in the retreat about data that we might want to get and also um as we did here presentations there was information that we'd like to make sure the community is aware of uh because um you know the the presenters have a one perspective but there was information that they were not aware of there's definitely information that we need to correct so when looking at that historical walk through i think we need to look at our data and look at the issues that have been raised and you know see discuss what we've done and how we'd like to move forward so i i agree with

127that um perhaps we're shaping up our next retreat then with looking at how we've gotten to where we are um i'm not sure how to put that into a neat framework as far as the historical um background rebecca go ahead i'm sorry i mean i i definitely hear and appreciate that it just sounds super daunting to me that's what it what is a historical path statistics on students diversity perform you know those pieces is more clear-cut but a historical path is largely could be subjective it also could really really burden our administrators trying to tell that story right now for an early january meeting so i think we need to drill down a bit more on what are the key pieces of evidence that we need and get as specific as we can either in

128this meeting or again is that the work of a subcommittee you know is that some work that can be done on the side to try to come up with more of the particulars of what we need so we don't burden our administrative staff rebecca i guess i'll throw in one item that i don't i hope isn't too burdening for our staff but i think i'd like to see for either the december meeting of the january meeting is what do we do currently uh for our not only our administrators but our teachers right so what trainings are mandatory what trainings are mandatory versus optional i guess in terms of when we have these staff development days also these wednesdays now that are all asynchronous what um what are what is the district doing currently so i

129know dan that's not necessarily the historical but that can at least tell us where we're at now i i agree with you dan i i would like to understand historically more i i'm fairly new to the district and that i've only been on the district seven years um but i think for that that hopefully something easy that administration can pull together i think for me i mean because we focus this you know to rebecca's point um you know we focus this at the board level i think it makes sense for a lot of reasons but also because of you know making sure we didn't have that administrative burden this year um i think for me what i would like to talk about maybe next it's just an understanding of you know since our our our

130purview here is policy just an understanding of what it means to have policies that are anti-racist or racist that um dr brown you know touched upon but i i just wanna i think there's you know there can be the tendency to think that just because a policy doesn't talk about race or you know that it's not a racist policy and i think i would like a more clear understanding for what it what that actually means across all of our policies or at least policy categories you know like what does it mean to have racist policies in in each of the categories that uh we have in our policy manual because i think some of them might be not as obvious as others so for me that is something i think that we could focus on

131in a more global way as a board because i think you know we until we understand just what it means to have racist policies across the board i think it's going to be really difficult to drill down and to recommend things to policy because i feel like then we're going to be too we're going to be too narrow so that's something that i would like to to discuss soon to piggyback on that kelly i if i remember correctly at the retreat uh dr brown said that they had done that with his district and uh he had a blueprint or some sort of background that he could share with us is that something that does anyone else remember that and is that something that we've received yet yeah there were a few follow-up materials kind of

132on his to-do list isn't that right marissa you were connecting i reached out to him and he didn't have anything specific to share with us but i do recall him mentioning that there was some sort of a blueprint that they had followed and i can certainly go reach back to him he is willing you know very open and wants to help and and find out exactly sure is a blueprint for their policy review what was it i think he called the protocol didn't he they're proto okay i'm looking in my notes i'll let you know if i see it okay yeah i have it in my notes he called it a policy protocol and document with a checklist policy protocol and document he said he could send it to us okay i can ask for

133that um the other thing everyone's talking about is code of conduct we can't do it all in one year but that's another place that districts need to really consider you know how we're meeting out justice okay so a lot of uh good ideas here on the table and uh let's start with are we in agreement that we'll have those contingency meetings be retreats is there anyone who's just okay so we've got those down and marissa so that's fine i'm just telling you now the march 1st i have a conflict that i can't change um so it's fine to go ahead and have the retreat that night i just i'm not available on march the 1st okay well i would really like to have you participate so uh why don't we take a look at a

134shot well we hold that date for now but let's see if we can find something right around that time that would allow all nine of us to be there because i think that's really important that all nine of us be there if possible may not work out but let's take a shot at seeing if we can find another date right around there okay president mims i believe that would involve a change to the budget calendar as well i believe that's scheduled to be a budget workshop yes that's where i was just going with the ninth what was the other date then i'm sorry there was a second retreat date that we were looking at january 25th was the first one then there was a second one that we talked about in agenda planning and i

135thought i wrote down it being the march first one but that's on the budget calendar so what was this 25th one is on the budget calendar about the january 25th one okay because there were two dates that we had in uh march eight march eighth okay and then was there one in january mark uh january 25 would be the first budget workshop okay so we can and this and and this piece and then march 8 would be a second budget workshop and retreat potentially our march one was the open contingency date correct so march one is available so january 25th okay that's on the budget calendar there is no other meeting i'm sorry i don't have the screen open right now in january then because of the agenda plan we talked about january 25th that's

136why i had that in my mind so um then i guess we would have to to put out a doodle to find a date in january for a retreat if we want to have a retreat in january which i think would be sarah am i understanding you that we could do the budget workshop and then go into a retreat on the same night of january 25th i don't see any reason why not if we think there will be enough time to do that that's how that's how it is right now and then same thing with march 8th would be only budget workshop not full meeting and then go right into retreat correct i would defer to mr furlong on the content of the workshops and how much time he would need uh probably the most

137time available be the january 25th meeting because we would be only looking at the revenue side of the budget which really has you know two large items but you know the rest of it would be um not that much detail to go through when we get into march is when we be looking at the expenditure side of the budget which could be more time consuming january 25 was also listed as enrollment and hiring all right well then what we can do is get a doodle out if we are in agreement that we'd like to have a retreat in january and see if we can find a date in january and then we can um also look at march i think those would be good times frames to have two different retreats is that board okay

138with that all right so we'll get doodles out for those now for the december i just i just want to say one thing we really are going to need a skillful facilitator for the next meeting whether it's dr brown or someone else and i also wanted to hear dr tyson's thoughts on whether you know who he might like to see but i'd want to make sure they could participate i know we're a ways out so we'll probably be fine with scheduling but just to take that into consideration especially if we're focusing where kelly was suggesting um on that lens of looking at policies through that lens i think having different voices is prudent i was impressed with dr brown as well i think at least another meeting with him to help chart direction but we

139certainly can bring other facilitators in that can help us refine and give a different perspective i would also recommend february 22nd take a look at that it's the monday after the february break but it would keep us on two week intervals between february 8th and on the 22nd then to march 8th if the first is going to be problematic just something to consider for the doodle [Music] does the board want me to check and see what dr brown's availability is for um a february 22nd retreat or to get maybe some dates from him that he may be available that we can see if we our schedules line up yes i say yes okay all right i will do that and then for december what do we want to have on the what do we want

140to discuss in december what information do we want to have as a board so that we can uh for our discussion in december do we want some data do we what what ex what would the board like to have so that we could have a discussion in december on our board goal i mean i think it starting perhaps with what we're currently doing would at least be do i don't want to speak for our administrators that seems like it would be more doable to start what the counseling you know there's been a lot of work done on these issues and currently being done and what's happening now and to the extent there can be a look back i'd be interested in what we're currently doing and for me it's not just what we're currently doing

141in regards to race so i mean we sometimes the conversation comes back to race and i think everyone means the broader issues of diversity but i just feel the need to point that out sometimes because i want to make sure we're inclusive in looking at all of those different groups who may be affected or who have concerns in our district but i do think that if that's possible and again i would um ask dr tice um to about what is doable in the next few weeks for our for staff to bring to us as far as what we're currently doing we can brainstorm as a district office administrative team it's going to be tight obviously so we may have to take some baby steps or break it down into more manageable segments okay and we

142wouldn't need a facilitator for that obviously the next time we need a facilitator would be for february okay so again after you have a discussion with the the team let you know in one of your thursday letters let the board know what you're thinking about as far as um information to bring to us in december okay certainly yep no problem and um lucy definitely please continue to bring us the student perspective on this issue greatly appreciate it yeah totally any other um comments or questions from the board okay thank you i just have one more thought which is in addition to the presentation we have received communications from from community members and that we're somehow once we get to the point where we can consider and take a second look at those that they're in

143one place so i'm not really tasking anyone with that i guess i'm just flagging it to to make sure that we are considering all community concerns whether they were a presentation format or any other thing we've heard it's a great idea thank you anything else okay oops next on the agenda working agenda items i'm not seeing anything there potential considerations for future meetings uh i've kind of discussed our december meeting future meeting agenda so our next board meetings that we have coming up and dates to remember miss having dates to remember consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented thank you kelly second for mark all those in favor please indicate i i anyone opposed or abstaining all right next um so is there a motion that the board move

144into executive session for the purpose of discussing the employment history of a particular individual thank you rebecca in a second from jason any discussion all right so we'll take a few