001my i'd like to call this meeting to order good evening everyone would someone move item 1.02 please are there any additions or corrections yes there are on the agenda for resolution 6.06 to appoint teachers we added the three names shannon gratch torrey zaran and christy desantis on resolution 6.07 appoint replacement teachers added georgia liberty paige noel and aaron welling and on resolution 6.13 appoint custodial and maintenance employees probation period was changed from 52 weeks to 12 weeks those are the changes thank you are there any other is there any other discussion if not all those in favor i opposed and abstentions past six zero zero i need to share with you our evacuation procedure in the event of an emergency we ask that you leave through the door back there or the door over here
002and please do so in a calm and orderly fashion so that we all get out safely would you now join us in the pledge to our club i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all this brings us to the public forum portion of our meeting and the first person signed up this evening is chuck somerville good evening all the first time i've been here chuck is the is it on there for you is it orange i don't think so i tried it earlier great and if you talk right into it everybody in the world will hear yourself all right well i normally don't have that problem i normally can broadcast well enough
003without the microphone all right thank you sir i'm not sure exactly what the forum is for this because the first time i've been here i guess one of the main questions that i have to start with is i understand that our most recently newly appointed governor now has made the mask a mandate yes and i guess it becomes a question as to what options the school has about the mandate because obviously any of you who have watched any of the network television programs and stuff realize that nationally there's an awful lot of objections to the mast and a lot of parents and groups are very much opposed to it and even our illustrious leader of the cdc can't seem to decide how many masks you should wear and when you should wear them and when
004you shouldn't wear them and i guess what options do we have as in my case a grandparent with the concern and health of my own grandchildren and children's well-being what options we have that we could address to the school board that's one of the main questions i don't know how we proceed with a question or an answer to that the other part of the question deals with the curriculum and again following that same scenario i've not heard of any of this regarding fulton school system but there's an awful lot of conversation again nationally about things like critical race theory and the 1619 project and i really want to know where fulton school district stands on these issues because those are things that i think are critical of what our kids are being taught and what
005the school district's direction is on that how you're instructing your teachers how you're monitoring your teachers i know that last year my grandson who was going to school here had an english teacher that was actually forcing them to respond to some areas and things that to me were very controversial and i what's that one minute left okay um okay so i guess the other question that comes into play is to be about the scheduling because we're going to go back to the full class schedule this year and because of these masks and anybody who knows about masks or what you've maybe seen about them there's a real health issue i think long term about wearing these masks and what they can do relevant to the fact the mask in fact has some breathing issues and
006talking issues i don't know how teachers can ever teach when they got to wear a mask and how well kids can do to have them there but the scenario the mask itself is going to hold moisture into it and all kinds of bacteria and when we expect our kids to go all day long with these masks on what's going to do their long-term health and what we as a school board or parents are prepared to deal with that issue going forward and i guess the last very bit of that which kind of follows that also comes along with the situation with the vaccination and where our school district stands on whether it's to be mandatory or not and if it does if there's a if there's a plan about what you're going to do when
007all the teachers and staff administrators who object to having the vaccination decide to leave and what your plan is to address those issues thank you thank you for your comments [Applause] mr paulino typically the board turns over the questions to the superintendent and he will respond to those questions i don't have your phone number do you have it or do we need to get it okay i don't know how you want you can just drive down to the end of the street i've been known to do that you're okay with that all right thank you sir all right next up is samantha kriego i remind everybody i guess out in the public when they're listening they actually can't hear us if we don't talk right into them so yeah i want them to hear you
008loud and proud so okay uh it's about the mass mandates um i've looked everywhere on the cdc websites for specific research statistics and data that have conducted for mass safety and effectiveness for children 12 and under and could not find anything so then i called the cdc and asked if they could send me this information the representative stated that they cannot answer complex complex questions and could not provide that type of information to me at that time they did email me the statistics on adult masking which is already widely available to the public but still nothing on children 12 and under i also did ask the cdc the new york state health department and this frugal health department how these mandates work when they get to the school district's level they all did tell me
009that the recommendation is the is the school district's decision at that point whether or not to implement them i don't understand how these strong recommendations for masking kids 12 and under become a strict role in our schools when the cdc and the schools themselves don't have any studies or data that shows mass for this this specific age group are safe and effective i don't understand how it is illegal for schools to deny an education into children who don't comply with the mask rule when the cdc and the school district don't have any studies or data showing that maths are safe and effective for this age group especially for the children like my son who have asthma specifically exercise and heat induced asthma and they're forced to run around in mass and gym class aside from
010that though there's no legitimate studies and research to support mass safety and effectiveness the american academy of pediatrics has already done studies showing the children are inefficient transmitters to the virus they've also provided studies that there are little to no hospitalizations or deaths for children with that specific age group also furthermore dr marty mccarry a researcher and professed uh professor of the public health policy at john hopkins has also conducted many studies proving that that specific age group are inefficient transmitters along with the negative health effects of masking children all these studies mentioned above were supported and funded by the national institution of health i i don't it's hard to hear when schools state that they're obligated by the cdc guidelines because as i said the cdc the new york state health department and the
011local health department have all stated that these are recommendations and then as school district gets them it's up to them it's their option um the masking of my six year child who has asthma more specifically again the heat induced and exercise induced who already had covet and now has a natural immunity should not be the decision of the school district but more myself and my and his father i respectively ask for the fulton city school district for reconsideration of mass mandates for children considering there is no studies research or data that the cdc or the district can provide for for these for the opinions that they have thank you so much thank you next up we have tracy dingman so i have an unusual situation here i'm reading a letter for a friend this was
012written by sarah fay she was unable to make the meeting today so she has given me the letter it's all of her own thoughts all of her own words and her experiences dear school board members i am writing this letter as a concerned grandparent parent and former teacher in the fulton city school district i am unfortunately out of town this week and cannot attend but felt i wanted to reach out to express my concern over the growing number of parents trying to overturn the mass mandate vote for our school district i'm in favor of the mask mandate for one reason masks save lives the science and the professionals have more than proven their point on this over and over again we want our children to return to school safely then we must follow what some
013are calling extreme measures to do so i am all for following extreme measures if it saves even one life i often hear the word choice in some arguments against the mass mandate as parents you may choose what your child will eat what they will wear what route they will take to get to school these are choices this is a communicable disease we are talking about a choice you make that will affect other children's health that is when choice becomes a false argument when it affects others i spent one year teaching from home and juggling schedules for four grandchildren and know firsthand how this was not a healthy environment for many i would also like to add that during that year i transported my grandchildren and other children to and from school daily i never heard
014once from any of them a complaint about where about them wearing their mask i don't want our schools to return to virtual learning it is not healthy for our students state of mind not to mention frustrating for our parents teachers and our grandparents it also puts our students behind academically but this is what will happen if we are careless in our decision if we don't mask up we run the risk that the one student sitting next to our child will come from an unvaccinated home and will carry the code variant it only takes one and then the spread begins are we really willing to sacrifice a school day wearing masks over another year of virtual classes and no sports please continue to make great decisions for our students and staff and please keep in mind
015all votes and decisions will not please everyone but some decisions will save lives i wholeheartedly support your vote for the masked mandate for our district thank you for your time signed sarah faye thank you next up sarah van patten hello how are you good how are you good sarah i need to ask you to put your mask on okay i am pregnant so if i get too hot i'm going to take it down okay so you can take a mass break yep okay so in oswego county alone this is on the school mass mandates the evidence points to a death rate of 0.079 percent according to the population of oswego county of 117 plus thousand citizens i just looked at the data today so this is slightly wrong from last week but 94 confirmed covet
016related deaths in 18 months is 1.1 of the active one percent of the active cases diagnosed we have to take that the survival rate of 95 to 99.99 in the general population has to be taken into consideration our world we have enough data after 18 months to end this now the virus is behaving much like any other virus that has entered the world our world will not be without sickness or death or pain and to infer that we can play god and control life and death by the hands of an elect few is that it is a dangerous precedence the school mastering dates are one of the many examples of unnecessary restriction to the residents of oswego county children are at the least at risk of hospitalization or death from coping 19 and they need
017to be breathing fresh air masks are a medical device and if you're not a medical professional we should not be harassed bullied or stocked implied consent is not informed consent this needs to be parental choice children and youth are at virtually no risk of dying from copin 19 or transmitting it to others but the deaths and injuries to children and youth have already incurred in the cobia 19 injection clinical trials children have already been exposed to unprecedented amounts of fear instability shaming psychological trauma and segregation through these covenanting measures and are therefore even more suggestible than their developmental stage should would usually entail it is the job of parents or legal guardians not a principal teachers teacher assistants school board executives or other adults with influence on children to make medical decisions for them i
018do not base my fear i do not base my prevention in fear-mongering propaganda or by people who are not in charge of my individual and my family's health remove yourself from my medical care my family's medical care by taking a stand against medical coercion and forced mandates now i do not consent thank you for listening thank you and so i would ask all the speakers uh mr summerville you made an invite but if you'd like to leave your phone numbers i'm going to put this up here if you leave your phone numbers it would facilitate superintendent um all right would someone move item 1.06 please any discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 are there any questions regarding the upcoming committee meetings in board of education meetings in september all right i'm
019going to turn the meeting over now to superintendent colvina thank you and good evening and good evening everybody thank you for coming this evening and sharing and i will reach out to each one of you uh this evening i'd like to start with the school readiness one i'd like to start by saying and correct me if i'm wrong miss geithner i believe we had how many this morning 47 and for some reason 47 is in my head we had 47 new teachers um support staff teaching assistants uh that came to today's event which was our new teacher orientation this morning it was exciting as they were here with their mentors so it was quite a morning here and especially to see that much new enthusiasm and energy and knowledge and experiences coming to our district
020i'm looking forward to meeting all of them and i'm looking forward to all of you uh hearing about all the new things and maybe your kids or relatives may have them in classes down the road here but it was an exciting bunch and of of a new group of educators joining our district so it was a great way to start our day today and anything you'd add to that miss geithner or is that that they were a very enthusiastic group of people with a wide variety of different experiences and i also want to thank our veteran teachers and staff who volunteered and agreed to be mentors to this new group of teachers and student support staff as they navigate being new to our district and some of them new to the profession so our administrators
021did a great job of recruiting and interviewing and the other staff members who volunteered to be on those committees really did a great job in preparing us for this year the other thing that i'd like to point out ms geithner did it before i was going to do it this morning was the number of former fulton graduates that stood up this morning when asked to do so um it was what a quarter of the room probably a quarter of the room between our mentors our veteran teachers and the new teachers it was amazing to see they're coming back home to educate our kids so i was very impressed so i wanted to share that our readiness um visitations are wednesday september 1st so next wednesday evening we'll start promptly at 5 p.m we'll start at
022volny and then we will go to lanigan and then grb so we'll start at balny um if you're running late or something just text me or call me on my number i think you all have it if not we'll make sure you have that and we'll get started balinese looking absolutely amazing if you haven't driven by it looks it's all painted up and looking pretty sharp so excited about to show you a lot of the work that's been going on as well as all the work going on in those schools and then on the next evening on the second we will start at the fulton junior high school then granby then fairgrave and then we'll get to go over and see the education center we will start at the fulton junior high school and they
023were actually putting the final coat on things today the top coat uh and laying the last lengths of cement on as well so doors were being done just an amazing things going on in all of our schools so i look forward to sharing those things as far as um so there any questions about the school readiness very good we seem to be on on our final stretch looking good we seem to be on a good pace so hopefully we'll keep that way over the next week finance year-end summary if kathy miss nichols and um mr lisey if you could just provide a brief update of where we're at at this point i know we're in the audit process we're drawing to closure but i just wanted an update please we do not yet have a
024draft audit uh the field work is complete um on the audit work and i did speak to our audit firm today and they'll be getting something to us in the next couple weeks so just to give you an idea of where we are with the 2021 audit the we understand our budget as we've discussed before um primarily due to our self-funded health care uh having a better year so that uh we ended up 1.5 million under budget for that the rest of the we were under in other areas we were pretty fiscally conservative this year with everything that was going on we had put a spending slowdown in place back in february so when you look across the budget there's a lot of areas where you can just see that we were much more thoughtful
025and careful in our spending whether it was uh supplies or for example instead of buying um three truckloads of uh copy paper i bought half a truckload you know and and we seem to make do with that so um so i think just overall it's it's lend itself to underspending our budget and then on the revenue side because if you remember last year where the governor said he would be withholding 20 percent of our state aid we did have with health about 700 000 in aid that actually belonged to the 1920 school year so although it was happening uh last fall back into the prior year because our audit was not left yet closed for the prior year so when those funds came in actually materialized this year we had to book it as current
026year revenue so that was a 700 000 swing just due to timing so it but it makes it look like we have so much more surplus as a result so we'll have more information or if you have any questions we'll have more information in the coming weeks we've asked mike um to give us an update with respect to when that draft will be done then we'll get an audit committee scheduled as soon as we can so we're getting a tentative timeline from him because i want to get the book i want to get the audit committee on everyone might not know who mike is oh i am sorry the audit mr dabats from the um from the audit firm that does our auditing i'm sorry should be clear than that so yeah so the good
027news is we're yep we're in we're in good shape and i think one of the things that's an anomaly um our healthcare being at 90 of budget i mean we've we've done an excellent job here i think in the number of years that i've been here we've been very consistently under but we also had one year where it was much higher and that then balances the premiums and and miss geithner and her team along with miss nichols and her team set those those rates and whatnot so this was a good year for us and and again you hope you have those back-to-back but with healthcare you never know nationally that tends to be an eight to ten percent eight to nine percent for us we've been blessed uh this year and um that's allowing us
028to do some things and we're gonna monitor things very closely but cases can change anything you'd add to that ms geithner does that capture the essence okay thank you any questions with respect to the finance or the auditing so we'll get a we'll get an audit committee on as soon as we hear from the audit firm when we may be getting one i like to get it on the books so that we can have some discussion so we can really take it in and make some decisions about where to place that money and where to place those monies and for the benefit of our new colleagues the audit committee will receive the um preliminary results and then it will come to the entire board for the entire board to review okay uh the reopening update
029um this afternoon around 3 p.m i'm not sure if everybody had the opportunity um but this afternoon our new governor had a press conference i'm not sure if everybody had the opportunity they were they were doing some things highlighting on the news this evening but our reopening update has not changed from august 11th however this afternoon the new governor did say a couple of things and those areas that she talked about which she is going to work with and direct the new york state department of health that there will be a universal mass mandate in all schools pre-k through 12. and so waiting to see what that guidance looks like there's also that we will be very clear that we're we're going to be getting guidance she called it cons clear concise um and uniform
030guidance that we should have received months ago was her words actually today and i appreciated that that was guidance that were 10 so we're looking forward hopefully the latter part of this week from that guidance from the department of health in the new york state and how that may come what we will do with then is match up with what we have in place make any adjustments we will then convey that to our board of education and then soon after that we will convey an update to our staff and to our students with respect to that i would imagine a piece of that guidance which really was never adjusted was the quarantine quarantining guidances which is one of the concerns that i've had you know just as recent just recently we had a situation where
031there was approximately 14 people in contact i have right now five staff that are on quarantine in the and meaning that they are staff that's helping prepare buildings get open and so this is just a very small microcosm and so we're really looking forward to this guidance any adjustments and we will work with that i will um and i've done it right along um i'm very proud of the work that our staff and students accomplished last year we were in more days of session than many districts larger than us and i'm very proud of that and i'm proud of the fact that we had kids in here from kindergarten pre-k through 12th grade from day one and there are districts out there in proximity to us that did not so and that happened because we
032made a commitment to cohorting we made a commitment to masking we really tried to follow all the rules if there's anything we try to do here in fulton is we really try to to toe the line that center line to do what's the best for our kids and for our staff and for our community so i'm looking forward to this guidance from the governor to see once and for all what do we have to work with here and then we'll move forward there's also um there they're going to be exploring looking at vaccinations in schools with school personnel with the option of testing that was something that she alluded to today as well so there's a couple of different things that are out there and i think there are different ramifications for those things as
033well and effects and impacts on staffing so there's a lot of things that we need to work through as we digest the the information that comes out through the next couple of days and a couple of weeks and we're two weeks out just over two weeks out from today we start tomorrow or yeah two weeks from tomorrow with our kids so we've got a lot to get done hopefully we can pull things together i think she also mentioned today that there's she has an expectation that the state health department is going to be more involved than they have then that is the the impression that i have the impression i i received but again it was uh i i thought she did a very good job in her first i guess the only reason i
034mentioned that is we don't know what's coming yet correct if another you know another organization entity becomes involved it could mean changes there not i don't know yep so we will be taking information just like we've been doing all summer um from the different uh medical professionals that are out there and and as all the um speakers this evening i i've been trying to look at all different perspectives and i truly understand and respect every person person's perspective on this um from my seat i look at 3 200 and you'll see the number right up there just about 3 200 kids little over 640 staff or so and all the families and people associated with them they are indirectly they're impacted by any decisions that we make as a school district so i'm trying to
035make the best decision for the middle of the road to make sure that all of our kids are here each and every day and my goal is if we can get back to where we were in january of 20 our data was in a very unique and special place and we were just about to go over the top with our literacy and i want to get us back there as fast as we can because that means our kids would be reading by the end of third grade and that's what we need to be able to get to and we need them here to do it and then obviously a lot of our programs that are going on we have amazing things going on pre-k through 12 and we need our kids in front of our
036teachers getting the best of the best of the best and that's no critique to anybody else but the best of the best here at fulton so are there any questions and as you know i will get that out to you as soon as we get things you'll have it in your hands as well so you can digest and have that information um upk and the k12 enrollment numbers mr wilson can you pop those up there please oh can you put them up there mr carroll well just one moment so each year at this time of the year for the board just to give you an idea we like to give you an idea what our enrollments are at this point in time so we pulled the figures together um take me up to the top
037there so what you're going to see is the district enrollment overview right now we have 120 it's a test uh pre-k total so we have 126 seats in our pre-k and right now we have 114 kids that are enrolled we also have a few in the hopper where we have partial information and so we're considering right now we we believe right now we can get to 126 very easily this time of year is always the time of year we start to contemplate how many more kids are out there so with the 10 that we got that we're possibly aware of plus the seven that are still in the hopper that adds 21 possibly so we are strongly considering opening another pre-k class we often do that right now we have seven classes they're half day
038there are 18 students in a class to give you an idea what that means so um that's something that we're we're strongly looking at what we're doing is we're doing another blast out i'm just saying hey we're here we're doing pre-k registrations um and we're going to take another look at this data this friday and and then we're going to go from there i think in all probability we're leaning toward that direction we recognize that our pre-k program and the other piece that last year our numbers topped out at 114 but in part i think that was due to the covid um situation where parents may have had some concerns about sending we also didn't have transportation when we ran transportation uh two years ago we were running 152 kids so we have shown that
039transportation makes a difference transportation is built in this year so that's our pre-k k-6 we're at 16 16. our junior high is at 518 and we'll share a little breakdown on the next page here grb and i often look at 9 46 and say wow wait till you see the size of the 8th grade class coming a year from now with 265 kids so just right now this setup of classes which you'll see in in a moment is at 9 46. so we have a pre-k uh 12 total of 31.94 and a k-12 total of and eighty so next slide please sure yeah make sure yeah do you know what the ratio is teachers students on the next slide i can give you a little bit better idea i think that'll help me here in
040a second but yeah i'll give you that in a second so on um let me turn on my next legs i can't see that far all right so what we have and this goes to your question uh what you see here is at kindergarten in 2122 we have we have five sections what we do is we break them into east side west side so you're looking at fairgrave and volney on the left you're looking at lanigan and granby on the right and as you said you can see the seven sections of pre-k those are half day programs good for pre-k for our kindergarten right now i'm a little bit concerned we're at 181 kids total in kindergarten however if you look at the data over the last four weeks literally 20 more each week i
041don't know why that number but we've added 80 kids 20 kids literally a week for the last four weeks so we're hap we're hoping for a little bit of a push over the top i'm anticipating a 220 225 number that would be in keeping of kind of our numbers as of late brian can you share this i can't read this from here i hate it's probably me robin i'm going i'm dropping it in right now right now yep um for our for our first grade you'll see there are five sections on the east side so we have two sections just to to remind the board there are two sections at each grade level at valencia elementary school and we have three sections at fairgrade that's why you're seeing five sections at each grade level on
042the east side and you're seeing six sections three sections each at lanigan and granby on the west side so it gives you to the right there jess or miss papillardo you'll see uh to your question uh we're averaging a class size 19 to 20 on the east side schools and you're seeing a range of and the 14 is an anomaly a little bit i think the kindergarten let's not dwell on the kindergarten too much i think those are going to push up but you're going to see a range on the west side anywhere it's between 18 and 22. so you're right around there always been a little bit larger on the west but this goes actually if you look at over the last four or five years one year it's the east side next year
043it's the west side it kind of goes back and forth does that answer your question okay great yeah okay thank you and then the next slide secondary enrollment mr capani uh this year at the junior high has two very large classes he has a 265 in seventh grade he has a 253 at eighth grade there's ten ungraded students so there may be students in some of our specialized programs for 518 kids so there are two teams at each grade level so we're running pretty full anywhere is right around that 25 26 range you we have to remember this time of year we also have kids that are transitioning to other school districts we may have not gotten their requests yet but those are a little bit higher numbers than than we've had for the junior
044high in a while these are two larger classes right now so we're watching those very closely um i talked to mr capani probably mr carroll and i on a daily basis we've been talking just he's been keeping a pretty good eye on this i think we're okay at this moment in time for our junior high and then at the high school as you'll see right now there are three grade levels that are relatively small compared to that 10th grade class which was 278 kids riding at 10th grade right now but we have we go from 219 in our senior class right now 220 in our junior class 278 in our 10th grade class and 229 in our ninth with a result of 946 kids so it's one of our smaller whole numbers but i think
045in a year when we're coming back and getting on our feet this is actually a very good strong number for us here um and looking forward to getting ourselves righted because we've got some larger classes on the horizon um as well any questions about those enrollment numbers i have just a question i'm not sure what an average classroom looks like but being a middle school teacher i know that 25 26 kids it's a lot of kids yep and coming off of such a crazy year last year managing 25 26 kids in a classroom with all different range of abilities personalities all of that stuff considered do we have um set numbers of like teachers assistants in the classroom to help out is it consistent across the board like what did what does that look like
046so i'm jerry if you want to speak that i can speak to the one here at the junior at the junior high if you'll start there i can speak to the junior high i knew that mr capani has placed we have a teaching assistant assigned to each of the teams so each of the teams has a full-time teaching assistant and he is there are ways that he's utilized that we've also really worked on setting up the rooms looking at space as well and then we also have aids i'll let jerry speak to a little bit about i don't know all the numbers but if you want to speak to that jerry that's a good are typically question assigned to classrooms except in a special class situation or a special am i not a cheer i
047don't know if you're on sorry i'm sorry about that can you hear me now all right aids are typically not assigned to a classroom unless it's a special education need at the middle level but we do have that scheduling format where students are also going out for elect special area classes and for academic intervention sections so they're spread out across more than just the core four core area classrooms on each team so each team has four teachers one in each of the core areas plus a teaching assistant and then we have art music family consumer science technology and our academic intervention sections that also absorb some of those students so four four classrooms one teaching assistant and basically wherever that team of teachers feel that teaching assistant would make the most difference at that point
048yep it just differs it could differ week week by week month by month and often times they'll also be assigned to specific supporting specific small groups for specific interventions is there a separate like is there separate ais teachers yes it's not just that one teaching assistant being shared upon no there are reading interventionists and math interventionists at the junior high also her like grade level for one for seventh one for eighth i just imagine those numbers are going to be sort of high this year we have three reading interventionists and two math interventionists thank you and you'll see a similar type of thing at elementary um and and then the high school it's a little bit different we can spread them in with the numbers a little bit lower they're a little bit uh more
049balanced so the middle school is definitely the area we're keeping a pretty strong look at what's going on there and it's kind of it's good because we're in that building so i actually get to interact with mr copania on a pretty daily basis he's keeping us informed so okay and then on the final slide just one that we wanted to share with you was the homeschool enrollment overview because some school districts are seeing a bit of an up and a down but based on the numbers we're seeing you can see we were really consistent 18 19 19 20 21 22 a little high 2021 or yeah 20 21 so we're back to right where you'd expect us to be at this point in time there are some districts that are seeing a little bit of
050an increase in this area mr carroll this is in your area is there anything you'd add to this sure it's it's just a number that nationally um this year is going to be an interesting one to keep an eye on certainly there are a lot of issues related to school and the pandemic some of which are enough for families to choose homeschooling so it'll be interesting mr probably pointed out right now we're back to normal but this is something that we'll want to watch as the months go by and potentially new mandates and protocols come into play yeah so it's an area we're looking all the districts as i've reached out everybody's seeing a little bit of a pop here but i was surprised ours was kind of flat um at this point in time
051but as mr carroll pointed out as things become clearer for families and as they have to make decisions for themselves and their and their children it'll be interesting to see where this where this number lies and where it rides brian yes to jen's question do we have anything in place in case we're going to need to up junior high as far as when you meet help as far as supports what we would do is if if we see those numbers increase what i would say is we would look at obviously our american rescue plan funds go over four years so we have an ability to move that anywhere if we needed to reach out if we had staffing issues i mean obviously that's an area that we can always look at if we needed to
052increase any needs or staffing so that's one of the things that we always do with all of our principals is really to get a very good idea of what the needs are and if we have a situation where we need to add supports we can do so if necessary as far as additional staffing things like that okay does that answer your question yes thank you okay thank you any other questions with respect to the enrollment just to give you an idea i believe and i don't have it on the bottom of that sheet that i sent you dan was our beds number 31 49 um the year before 32.49 so the beds number is the number from pre-k-12 that they actually base all your funding and things on so in october like the first wednesday
053in october of our number was 32.49 pre-k through 12. that's what drives your funding so right now if we were looking at those figures i have to look back here i'm sorry right now we'd be looking at 3194 and if you remember i've spoke before we seemed to reduce about 50 students per year so what oh it's kind of right so kindergarten's not that so i want to just point that out that we've had a trend over the last six to well the five to six years you'll actually see if you go back to i wish i had my wonderful slide i think i have a slide that goes back during budget time goes back to like 2010 and it'll show we had almost 800 more students in this district going back and that's a
054phenomenon in this county this county about eight years ago nine years ago had about twenty six thousand kids in the most recent which was about a year ago we were just dropping below twenty thousand so we've lost about seven over seven thousand students in the county our numbers if you look at that over time we've been averaging losing about 50 a year but as mr carroll pointed out this year that kindergarten number we don't normally have that low a kindergarten number normally it creeps up more towards 200 right now so we're a little bit low right now so it'll be interesting to see what happens over the coming weeks um as that number but if we do what we've been doing on a weekly basis i think we're going to get 40 to 50 more
055and where's that put us puts us right at the right about where i think we should be that that that would be our trend that would be very consistent and that would bring that overall number up so that would be good news because we wouldn't lose our traditional 50 that we seem to be doing so i just wanted to draw that because that does impact funding you know whether it's title funding whether it's state aid funding but it's our enrollment that has been going down and i believe that if we as we strengthen offering all the different programmings and the opportunities and from pre-k with all of our literacy work right up through our offerings in our high school um i believe that people choose to come here i truly believe that if we offer
056the range of of that opportunity of for kids that's what's going to bring families to our community as well so any questions with respect to the enrollment okay thank you um capital project if you could put the slide up there um could you have that one dan or can i it's in board docs all right let me pull that up for you are you looking at the epc yes we're gonna look at the epc uh project and you're going to put it up there as well tim wright for the community they'll have theirs and we'll get ours on the screen in here so this is exciting news i often have been talking a lot about the capital project and i just want to extend to this board and to our community um the ratification a
057couple of years ago with respect to this capital project you just need to drive by our schools especially balney and lanigan and um and the junior high and you will see the beginnings of some amazing work uh and on next week when we you see the complex the lights the brand new led lights are now up and working at the stadium they were lit this morning every one of them was working so i look forward to seeing what they're gonna look like when it's actually dark and and the impact they're going to have you're going to see all the poles all the bases went in across the complex over the last two days so it'll be lighting all the way across the complex all the way to the junior high so now it'll be much
058safer so that'll be a great opportunity so things like that so i'm going to run through this but these are some of the things on the on the uh energy performance contract and um that we don't really talk we haven't talked a lot about but this is one where we've averaged a lot of savings over the years with previous projects so this just gives you an idea of the things that are completed so when you look and when you're walking through the hallways for tonight after the meeting just look up and you will see there's brand new lighting in every hallway in every classroom so it's substantially complete at grb the junior high has been substantially complete we're talking every fixture in the buildings have been changed out fairgrave they were getting started i was
059over there just today so they're getting going lanigan granby and volny are on the docket and this is only about six months into this project so we've really made great headway so we're doing great work in that area it's not exciting it's not you know but it's stuff that will make big impacts not only um in the classrooms in the lighting but also fiscally we save a lot of money through these projects so oftentimes we end up in the end actually making money on a four million dollar project just through our energy performance and you'll get presentations from siemens uh generally in the middle of the year each year the stadium in the tennis court lighting is as the completion was this week for the stadium the tennis court lighting will start next week i
060mentioned the walkways being done the envelope the zero draft what is that that's basically when we go around and we seal up everything on our windows and our doors and we make sure that there's no drafts going on in our homes it's called the envelope of your of your building or your room it's basically sealing up everything make it tight make it weather efficient so that's what that's about and siemens um is actually at that process with that's all the schools are 95 percent done and they're getting ready to do the client punch list so in other words they're in the final stretch of that work so that's great work to have done um the hvac controls are well underway we're installing new field instrumentation here at the senior high controllers the junior high more
061instrumentation electrical pieces there again i'm not going to read all those but you see we're about 70 percent in each of those areas so that's exciting we're getting that work done my understanding is they fired up the the boilers this morning at volney um they're working so we put brand new boilers if you remember we were down to one so all now we're up to capacity with that so the everything is done there 90 percent done as i said they fired them up this morning everything works so they'll be tweaking things up and finalizing that project at the junior high the units installed we did not have a backup we literally were running on one and so siemens figured out a way to get the backup boiler so we have a brand new backup boiler
062um at the junior high so now i don't worry if one goes down we'd be out so that's great news so that's uh they're working on the ductwork ductwork and the electrical so that's up steam traps those are all being done the 95 percent fairgrave lanigan the ed center so those are our steam buildings uh predominantly so that's all helps us with our efficiency so it's not exciting work but you can see a lot's being done in our building the pool cover at granby is beautiful it's there it's it's all working and ready to go and the new heating element um is is on its way here for the pool if you remember our heater went down at the granby pool although somehow it's been maintained at 76 to 77 78 degrees all summer so
063it's been used our kids were in it as part of our summer programs and i know our community has been using that pool as well so that's great news the cooling tower upgrade at the junior high materials ordered delivered and as soon as the cooling season is over and appears to get a little warmer this week but as we get into late september early october when the weather turns that's when they'll do that work on that tower and get it ready and then finally and hopefully next week we can take a tour in there the grb auditorium lighting and the carpet the carpeting is in the lighting on the floor is in and then we made some adjustments uh on the house lighting so those aren't in yet but that was the idea behind that
064is actually eventually we're going to work on the stage lighting as well and so we made an adjustment to the house lighting which will make it more in keeping with the work that we want to do with the stage so i wanted to highlight that we haven't talked about this really much at all it's it's um but it's it's a project that keeps on giving for the next 18 years these are 18-year energy performance contracts so it's just um we hadn't really talked about it and there's a lot going on in our schools when you start to add this up so something's happened at every one of our buildings this summer so i just wanted to draw everybody's attention to that and thank you for your support of our epc projects and our capital projects
065they truly are what keep our buildings going over time are any questions and then finally the safety patrol officer the our mou is currently been reviewed by our attorneys however it is now with the city of fulton so it will not be going as a resolution this evening however we may want to i've talked to the chief we want to have our officer start on the second we may want to add a special board meaning i'm looking to get their feedback there really wasn't much but they wanted their attorneys to look at it as well um so that's the process we're in right now it's just a question of logistics um and then we'll go from there we've hired the person but i'm not ready to i just want to make sure that we have
066our mou and everything in place but i don't think there's any issues but when one attorney looks at it we like the other attorney wants to look at it so that's the process they're going through right now and that's the conclusion of the superintendent's report and i look forward to sharing a walk through the buildings next week thank you would someone move item 4.01 discussion any questions all those in favor i opposed and abstentions past six zero zero item 4.02 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600. item 4.03 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 item 4.04 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero item 4.05 any discussion this is a roll call vote mrs perry if you do the answers mrs lyons yes
067mrs papillardo mrs alvegore mr crandall this excuse me mrs maynville yeah and mrs griffin yes thank you mrs perry and robin that needs a signature yes thank you item 4.06 any discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero item 4.07 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 item 5.01 is there a second any discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero i'm wondering if my colleagues would like to batch item 6.01 through 6.10 any discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 6.11 please discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 501 item 6.12 please discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 items 6.13 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past 600 item 6.14 discussion all
068those in favor i opposed abstentions past 501 item 6.15 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero item 6.16 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero item 6.17 discussion all those in favor i opposed abstentions past six zero zero this brings us to the board forum uh mrs abellor would you like to start this evening i'm so sorry i'm never gonna get used to this okay can you hear me um first i'd like to thank all the parents and grandparents who came in this evening to speak with us um i appreciate their voices it's not an easy topic we all are definitely thinking about what's best for our children our grandchildren i know that our district is always putting the safety and health concerns at the
069top of the list for our students and i just hope that you know i i'm not loud enough nope brenda avalor's not loud enough can you hear me now there we go okay um so i just hope that we can stay in um constant communication with all of our community members parents along with brian um for what's best for our kids i'm super excited about the school readiness walk through it's always exciting to see all of the cool things that are in place for our kids and how shiny those buildings look and to be able to have all of our kids come back this year it's just exciting i'm always more excited about our district opening out than the district i'm working in but it's just great things going on here it's so very exciting
070i don't know if anyone had the opportunity on august 17th there was the school indoor air quality webinar that was put on by the new york state and the department of health brian i just have a couple questions because i don't want to assume anything but are we all set with our air quality and how i mean i know you did some things last year maybe because they were talking an awful lot about the way the air moves through and the possible movement of air through for those who might be sick not using fans in the classroom which windows can be open making sure that nurses offices are not sharing the same air venting circulation systems as other classrooms is that something that we're on top of do we need to look into any of
071those areas and i don't know if you got a chance to listen into that last week i did not uh watch that however what we do we have upgrade all of our filters were upgraded to nines last year what does that mean normally the state requirements are 8a or 8b we are at nines in other words it's the largest filter that you can put into something without hurting the equipment or 13s so we have maximized in everywhere we could go all of our filtration systems we've also made sure that we have a regular schedule for changing all filters and so there's a maintenance schedule now that's in place the other thing that we're doing is in some of the capital project work when we pulled the reins back if you remember last summer we kind
072of we were last winter we pulled it back we redid some of the work and the focus areas we're looking at the air handlers in all of those buildings or all the buildings we're taking a look at the work that can be done with our hvac systems you heard me talk about some of the hvac work this evening we're dealing with older buildings so one of the things that you know we continue to to look at is are there ways to look at windows in buildings things like that as part of do we look at some of that work as part of our american rescue plan the biggest challenge is is that the work in some of these places is going to be two to three years out because of one lack of resources but
073also the companies there's just not enough people out there to do the work so those are a couple of the things that that were we're looking at mr crump and his team who is our director of facilities continues to explore those and oftentimes in our conversations at our capitol project meetings i know robin's there tim's starting to come to those as well we talk about all the work that's going on and those that's a good place to ask those questions too uh as they're working because king and king who are architects have been going through our buildings we're also due i believe and if al was here i would ask him i believe it's within the year we're due for our five year building over building inspections that we do those building reports that really
074done every five years they drive our capital work we are coming up on that date and one of the areas of emphasis that we've asked them to look at is air quality air purification types of things as part of where what is the where are we at with those in our schools and what should we be considering in future capital projects as well okay do we have a plan put in place for our teachers and our students who are going to be in some of those extremely hot classroom invite environments um maybe in the next month i mean if we're not allowed to use fans to circulate air um are we going to allow them maybe to take their classes outside which could then give them mass breaks as well as not being in those
075environments what's our plan yeah we will we obviously we always look at those things we can get them outside move them around go to different spaces in the building if we needed to i think the other thing is that um so those are those are the main things that we do we're making sure that we're opening up the rooms very early in the morning to get all the cool air you know in we often open them up at 5 30 6 00 in the morning pull fresh air into the buildings things like that and we're going to build in our mass breaks we're going to be doing more work with that there was some guidance that we talked about that we want to make sure that we because there was some question out there where
076they consistently be done all the classrooms so we want to make that more uniform and providing that guidance so that's one of the things that my team has been talking about so we need to make sure that that's part of the docket for our meeting tomorrow just to make sure we come back around to that i'll put it in here right now for that too for tomorrow we have our normal wednesday meeting tomorrow so okay good questions seeing some of the hot rooms when i used to work in the district really i'm concerned definitely in the next month you know we can get some seriously hot days so i just want to make sure that the kids get a break i also listened to that um myself and didn't we don't we have air purifiers
077here in our school no we do not have a highest we have a few but we don't have a lot not to my knowledge we have a few well we have uh don't have our air passing through uh like an air exchange yeah i mean we have air handlers and air exchangers but i thought you might be talking about like classroom air purifiers individual air purifiers for at-risk rooms in the at-risk yes and yes in the and we have a lot of air conditioners in at-risk rooms or rooms where that are housing students that may have a medical condition so for example if we receive a medical in we will put that air conditioner in there if it's a doctor saying something oftentimes our 1214s definitely do um you'll see that if you walk around
078any of the building we're walking around uh later this week take a good look when we're at lanigan volney you'll see it granby you'll see a lot of air air con area listen to me window air conditioners uh available in those classrooms you'll actually see that as well and we change the filters in those as well that's my understanding and we're also going to focus on our yep we're also going to focus on our cleaning for health that's something that we've always done here in full time for many years and we'll do that too so we're continuing that as well so that kind of goes along with that that's making sure that we're on our maintenance schedules and all of those pieces as well thank you very much and one last thing i just want
079to wish reagan a really wonderful senior year good luck to you and all your fellow students jess okay so again yes thank you to the parents who came out um and voiced their concern i think that's really good for them to be heard and community members to be heard and i had really good feedback today i had a parent reach out about a student that was coming and transferring into the district they were a little bit concerned about placement they had some issues with their last school district they were concerned that the administrators weren't really listening to their concerns and this morning she had reached back out to me and she said we were heard we you know made progress and we're really looking forward to our kid you know coming into the district so
080that was that was really good um how did the stuff a bus program go today so the feedback i got was that we didn't hit the numbers that we we have in the past so one of the things um we had in the 60s um i received a text and we did do a blast out we're trying to figure out why it didn't get more publicized you know we knew we put it out a few weeks ago but again there probably should have been more blasts so we did do a blast and it did pick up uh significantly but it didn't hit the numbers and and one of the benchmarks we used was a couple years ago when we did the haircuts and all the different kinds of things and the clothing and the there
081was just so many things i believe and i don't know i believe the number then was over 400 i'd have to confirm that with uh the teachers uh uh union that works on there absolutely amazing and i'm sure they were frustrated that they didn't get the numbers that we traditionally get today but the blast i talked to a number of families i happened to be over there i talked to a number of families out in the parking lot soon after we did the blast and they were so grateful and so pleased and they had forgotten you know they knew about it but they had forgotten that it happened so the blast reminded them um unfortunately it was around 11 o'clock this morning when they received that but um more than i'm so grateful to our
082to our teachers that that spear that and do such a great job providing that opportunity for our families yeah well that's good yeah i got the robo call and i was like oh sure you know um and then one last thing i just wanted to bring up um a concern and i know that it's nothing that can be changed this year and i'm sure there are lots of reasons um for this happening but i and i'm not sure if it's with all of the elementary schools or just volunteer in particular but the pre-k or the kindergarten the bus orientation and the actual kindergarten orientation are on two different days and i think that that's i'm wondering if there's any way that we could work that so that we could do it on the same day
083so that parents aren't having to take off multiple days i think that kindergarten is pretty you know a pretty important time for kids to need you know a parent around for getting on the bus or you know going to school in general so just something to consider in the future all right but other than that good luck to the teachers going back our students going back and looking really forward to having a good year thank you when well i also want to say um uh um there we go start again yeah i think it's yep um i i was talking about um the mask wearing and i am thankful for everyone that showed up tonight to voice their opinion on it and i too have um a feeling on it i have grandchildren in the
084florida school district who are losing out right now because people are testing positive 22 teachers are taken out because they are positive so they can't go in the classroom so those classes cannot be taught because they don't have people to fill in five fifth grade classes are all in quarantine i just want to commend our school district for all the work they did last year to ensure the fact things like this didn't happen and our kids got to go to school so thank you for that um i too wondered about the mass breaks that was on my question and you're going to discuss that tomorrow apparently yeah we need to finalize our process to make sure we update that and i wondered is there a way to find out how many people listen to us
085at these board meetings virtually thank you okay um and thank you everybody i'm done thank you reagan um i as well would like to thank all the community members reagan i can't yep i can't hear you can you hear me now yeah yes thank you um i would also like to thank all the community members for coming out and sharing their opinions i actually have a question for mr paul vino it's regarding the reopening update so say a child gets quarantined how will they continue to participate in class and learn if there's no option virtually so right that's a great question reagan what we're doing for the quarantines we're in the process of really looking at a couple of different possibilities that we're working with our our different bargaining units and things like that um
086you know obviously there are there are things that could include you know virtually coming into the class could be a possibility again we're exploring that type of thing there is another district that i know is doing tutoring after hours online you know with teachers that type of thing so there are a couple different things that that we're looking at obviously my goal is i hope we have no quarantines but obviously i have to be realistic seeing as miss lyons had indicated i watch very closely nationally as well and there are spots where there's quite a bit of quarantining going on and we're not in school yet and i did allude to during my report tonight we have some staff right now that are quarantined and it's impacting so it's a great question there'll be more
087coming out we're still trying to work through that i'm hoping that one of the pieces of guidance that i'm hoping gets actually does match the cdc is the cdc's guidance on quarantining is is actually less stringent than the new york state current guidance which was never adjusted so i'm hoping that's an adjustment which will help us as well reagan so it's a great question thank you um thank you and i guess i have one comment and that comment is i am very excited to be going back to school so thank you all right tim can you turn on your mic tim thank you they can't hear you out in the world if you're not talking into it that's why good to okay jeff i hope you're ready i figured you worked school looks great over
088at land again i'm glad they cleaned up that area around the trees that looks a lot better less maintenance all the other schools look great stopped over at the junior high tonight there's a lot of work going on yeah thank you and chad um i too would like to thank all the parents and community members that came out and spoke tonight um i really feel like the more involvement that we have the more informed everybody is going to be with correct information and when you actually asked a great question how many people are watching and about 30 so if we can just work together get more people here get more people watching so everybody is on the same page and everybody realize realizes that we are here ultimately for the kids we want what's best
089for the kids we want to see them i mean involved in everything that is possible we're not here to limit what they can do the mask thing is hard but we can't control that and i think that some people are misinformed about that we have to go by what the state is mandating we can control what we can control we can't control what they can control but the more people that we have involved together with the same information we can help problem solve and make a better situation for our kids so i'm happy to see that there were more parents here tonight and community community members because i think that's going to help our kids in the long run for sure so that was i'm really excited to see that um i don't know who's
090uh it's been here for a while but i just i haven't said this whoever's responsible for that f with the flowers with the fulton f i love that isn't it what a great way to like walk into the building and be welcomed it's just gives you such a great feeling walking inside a beautiful building that we're working so hard on so whoever did that that's just great and of course me being me sports are in full effect that was really great to see all right we have the kids working hard they're setting the president like right now they're together they're working hard creating a culture um and pride entering our new school year so that was really exciting to see so that's part of our competition for people being here you know [Laughter] so i'm
091thankful for that good things are ahead for sure very good thank you but i mean that as i drove in tonight you know it's seeing the kids out and and how active they are and yes we compete that's part of uh what we compete for our audience is our audience a lot of them a lot of potential audience members are very busy with our students and other activities outside of school so which is also a very good thing people are pulled in a lot of directions when they're parenting i was i'm grateful that people came tonight um to speak to us but i'm i'm really grateful that um they did so again with um civility uh i i've watched around uh the state and it's not been that way in other places so i am
092really proud and grateful this evening that we were able to have and listen to and have a discourse you know people can have different opinions and that's okay so that was heartening for me this evening and especially because we have reagan down here and i want her to see that we adults know how to conduct ourselves in a civil manner i don't really have anything else at this point other than to add to mr palvino's comments with regard to the capital project and the siemens project the energy performance there is a lot going on a lot of good improvements that are not only going to help us save money but create safer environments for our kids safer environments just getting in and out of buildings getting in and out of parking lots safer for the
093parents and again always looking i i'm thank you brenda and lynn for bringing up the air quality question that's a long-standing issue in this district and it is something that we've had our eye on but we should always keep our eye on and i too would echo the concern about what are we going to do on the hot of the hottest days i have been in classrooms and i'm just i have to admit i i'm amazed how the kids and the staff keep on going in some very uncomfortable situations so if there are any are things that we can do to improve especially the air quality on those hot humid days i i would be most grateful that we pay heed to that okay so now we have our second public forum so anyone in
094the audience that would like to address the board on a topic jermaine to tonight's agenda now is the moment and the audience of two no one's jumping all right now move on then to item 7.03 please any discussion all those in favor aye opposed and abstentions past six zero zero um we're going to take a five minute break and then we're going to enter into executive session we will come out of executive session back to public session and at that time we will close the meeting um you're welcome to rejoin us at the when we return to public session for those of you who are that are viewing we thank you for taking the time to join us this evening we hope you come back we're back in session with someone please move item 7.04
095any discussion all those in favor aye opposed and abstentions past six pass are you messing with me mr crandall okay would you change that for the public's benefit yeah you're a yes past six zero zero thank you very much have a great evening you