001pleas stand for the pledge 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 liberty and justice for all good evening everybody do we have any agenda changes we add some additions to Personnel thank you that brings us on this lovely sunny evening which I'm ridiculously excited about um to board president comments and I wanted to take a moment to recognize that we are in the midst of Music in our schools month which is one of our favorites because we're at that point of the Year where people are stressed people are tired it's often gray um so it's really nice to be able to ground ourselves and Center ourselves as a community into a whole month where we can really
002work on fostering inclusive and supportive environment within all of our schools and in our community here in Gage cha I had the pleasure of going at the beginning of the month to one of the band events where we have our fifth grade district band where members from all of our Elementary fifth grade bands join together and I think they only have like five practices and then perform together on stage which to me sounds terrifying but they were awesome and then we have bands throughout our Middle School and High School playing as well so you get to see that progression of skills and different types of music and environments kids get to play in throughout school and watching them cheer for each other is a really cool thing because you have kids all the way towards
003the end of their elementary school and all the way up to the end of high school supporting each other also wanted to recognize that throughout this month some of the different pieces that are impacting people's lives whether it's something that's part of your life or not they all make us who we are um so we are in the midst of Ramadan and also women's history month so pieces of learning about different members of our community and how they support each other is really a focus in all of our schools as well do we have any points of interest okay that moves us forward to report of meetings have we had any meetings since our last meeting here together Dr Richards good evening just um to let everybody know the ad hot commit had a wonderful
004meeting on Monday evening and we're looking to forward to our next book study um as board and administrative team thank you and we had that opportunity to really go through our last book and different parts of being a solid board member and how you can work through and problem solv so it's very helpful for our learning as well um did we have any visitor comments no okay that moves us forward to our reports we have our human resources update good evening good evening president coffee vice president Dr Richards superintendent daily members of the Board of Education my name is Michaela pra I'm the assistant superintendent for human res resources and labor relations and I will allow my esteemed colleague to introduce herself my name is Tanya jerson I'm the coordinator for recruitment hiring and retention
005so as you all know much of what we handle in Human Resources is behind the scenes um a lot of personnel and dealing with some complex issues um but we do have an exciting update for you tonight to talk through some things related to recruitment hiring and retention that we're working on um so uh just a brief overview our team includes myself Tanya uh Patty Palmer and Glenda Gonzalez who are our support staff in Human Resources so again um all of the different areas that we cover contract management recruitment hiring onboarding uh District uh staff Staffing and attendance unemployment um management of employee information investigations and conflict resolution retention management contract negotiations um all of that so getting into our historic demographics and where we are today in terms of our applicants so um back
006when we started in our new application system which is not so new anymore um we had the opportunity in that system to start to more accurately track our applicant demographics um and we are excited to see the growth that we have been able to accomplish um over the last five to six years uh especially regarding our um recruitment of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups that better represent our student population um so as you can see when we started tracking this um more closely in 2019 in the 201920 school year at that point um we had 10 point 6% of our applicants coming from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and um you know steady increases over the years um and this year so far of the 643 applicants that we've had for our various positions in
007the district 37.6% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups so we're very um proud of the Outreach that we have done um to try to make sure that our staff population more accurately mirrors our student population so I'm going to be talking about the interview and onboarding data that we have so so far for this current school year we've had 73 interview sessions and 143 onboarding sessions those interview sessions could sometimes have multiple people just as well as the onboarding sessions could have multiple people so recruitment events today where I've been so I've been trying to get out to as many places as possible so in August I was at the gate summer celebration actually I was not hired at that time um we did the gate summer celebration um September I went to the
008gates Town Hall Community Fair September did Rock The Block as you can see I've been to some of the different colleges and universities as well I've been going to universities and having informational sessions with some of the different classes um that they hold we did Fall Fest in November and I've been doing Mach interviews as well and as you can see coming up we have Western New York teacher recruitment day uh Nazareth university has her spring career fair I am doing a virtual HBCU job fair in April there will also be an in-person one that I'm looking forward to going to in September but there are going to be more details to come for that so I'm trying to go to as many places as possible within the city of Rochester but also within the
009gates and the child eyes communities I'll be taking a look at the different town calendars that each um town has just to see what events are coming up so that I can get out more we currently have a new offer in onboarding process so this is something that we develop to make things more streamlined instead of having individuals come in for multiple different appointments so the first appointment is 30 minutes and they meet with me they get an overview of the contract uh fingerprinting taking a look at the different calendars going over the employee handbook and then they just get a brief overview of payroll and benefits they also have their photos taken for security badges and the GC bio next they come in for an onboarding appointment and that can last anywhere from four
010to six hours depending on how quickly they get through things uh what's going to hold them up the most would be doing the gcn trainings and that in itself will take three hours we just want them to get those done and out of the way new hires are also paid for this that day they will get their badge they'll have their email setup they will set up accounts in windcap and Frontline and they will do electronic forms they will also meet with our payroll um benefits clerks to go through their paperwork and this is a look at what our new onboarding area looks like so we have four different computers set up uh with all the different School logos and then we also have a snack area because we figured if you're going to be
011there for four to six hours you might get a little bit hungry we are also working on a new employee handbook we're reviewing the handbook to ensure that language is respectful and acknowledges all employees experiences inclusion of up-to-date information and policies inclusion of maps of District facilities and resources will be included from The Substitute handbook so that we don't have a lot of different handbooks out there go back just one one quick um note about onboarding um so first of all thank you so much to the district and to the board of education for supporting us having this space um for many many years we have tried to manage with um very limited space um and that has caused our new employees to probably not have the best onboarding experience that we could provide to
012them um simply because we didn't have the space which me they were sometimes coming back three times for various meetings um with different Personnel in district office now that we have this space we are so much more streamlined um and I I do want to make sure that we also thank our partners in getting us this streamline so Miranda berer Roger th um and Eva Petrino really have helped with us um digitizing a lot of our onboarding process which is new as part of this transformation now that we are in in this space and people have access to a computer that's dedicated to them while they're with us they are able to not only do their Global compliance and get all their annual trainings out of the way before they start with us which takes
013something off their plates and ours um but in addition to that many of the paper forms that they were filling out are now ready to go either email to them electronically or Tanya's working on uh that with them when they're when they're in the space or Patty Palmer is working on it with them um so we're not chasing people like we used to be for various pieces of information it really is that once they're done with this they are ready to go and start in their new position with us um you know we send them on their way with the resources that they need to be successful and they don't have as M as many things left on their plates to tackle in a new position which is already a lot so thank you for
014your support in getting us this new space as well okay questions yes have you guys had the opportunity to have many people utilize the new space and process yet yeah so it's it's only been uh about a month about a month um but I would say pretty much on a daily basis there's at least two people going through that space um it's a it's a hop in area um it's nice it's nice to have new hires out there for a little while while because we also have the opportunity to get to know them a little bit better too before they start so thank you great any other questions thank you both okay thank you so much thank you all right next we have our Education Foundation update we had a meeting last Wednesday and uh
015again they're advocating for community members to join the Education Foundation board they're looking for some new members to help keep it going also they decided that on April 10th we'll have our annual volleyball tournament amongst the M uh elementary schools here at the high school Fieldhouse at 5:30 you can get in uh for five bucks and a can of food or I'm sorry a can of food and two bucks and then five bucks if you don't have a can of food that will donate to the uh food cupboard here thank you all right that moves us on to our consensus agenda can I have a motion to approve the cons ensus agenda Miss kais miss serowski any discussion all in favor the vote is unanimous can I have a motion to approve consensus items C
016through L can I have a motion Dr Richards Miss Jennings any discussion all in favor the vote is unanimous that moves us on to action item can I have a motion to approve the resolution for the 2025 2026 bus purchases can I have a motion Mr long Miss kais any discussion all in favor the vote is unanimous that moves us on to our superintendent's comments so it was a Civic sweep last night as Gates Charlie middle school students buzzed through the Monroe County Civics B 13 students took part tackling important topics such as Substance Abuse Prevention elderly dog adoption and anti-bullying they walked away with the first second and third place priz prizes and Dante capalo who are in first place is qualified to compete in the state level B in Albany later this spring
017congratulations on a job well done another big congratulations goes out to high school student Ben coffee who won States for Deca again Ben will be traveling to the National Deca competition represent Gates Chilai well done Ben he has a very proud mom sitting next to me tickets are now on sale for the gates CH High School mu musical theater performance of Mary Poppins featuring a talented cast and crew of Spartans this enchanting production will bring the magic of Cherry Tree Lane to life with Spectacular music dazzling choreography and Unforgettable storytelling at the gates Charlie Pac from March 21st to 23rd go to Gates ch.org tickets and this month we're also celebrating music in our schools you can enjoy two more Coral performances by students on Wednesday March 26th that's a district byde concert and on
018Thursday March 26th I'm sorry Thursday March 27th for the High School Coral concert both events will be in the GC pack and kick off at 7 p.m. a quick update and some really good news related to our annual upk Lottery this year we have received a total of 127 applicants for the 138 available spots which means they were able to offer every applicant a spot in their preferred program as a result tomorrow's live virtual Lottery will not be live because it's cancelled the wait list for this program is expected to be up by the end of the day on Wednesday March 19th so last week we had our first budget ambassadors meeting of the Year Dr ball his team and I spoke with the ambassadors about our District's expenditure budget our next meeting will take
019place next week and will cover revenue and again at the end of it they will complete a survey to give us feedback on what they believe we should do uh with our budget heading forward which we'll then share with the board at a later date last week Dr ball and I had the great opportunity to attend the nisus conference in while in Albany we had a meeting with state senator Jeremy Cooney we discussed the future of Education funding and sustainability covering critical topics like state aid challenges and Foundation Aid funding we also also discussed the need for stronger Provisions supporting clean energy projects like the ones we are working on here in Gates trii collabor collaboration like this is key to advocating for our students and our schools thank you to Senator Kun for the
020time and the impromptu tour of the state capital so one house budgets were due this week and last night and early this morning they came through in Albany among the issues we were looking to get some more feedback on uh both uh sides are asking for additional state aid between 1 and 1.1% more uh they've talked about increasing funding for career and technolog ucation in both bills they also have agreed between the two of them right now to propose the extension of the exemption for retiree earning limitations they've also uh had some different takes on how uh the governor's smartphone ban could be implemented or not implemented at all and both has some language in there about changing to the zero emission bus mandate uh some talking with extensions some eliminating all together so it'll
021be interesting to see as these negotiations begin where the budget goes but the encouraging part was uh the aid that we uh the formula they used to come up with the aid we've been offered originally with the governor is not changing and so that would be very good news for Gates cha our families and our kids and finally I want to W finish my remarks tonight by congratulating principal Tim young and assistant principal Kevin Whitmore after combined nearly 60 years in education they have both announced they will retire at the end of the school year we thank them for their service to our district in addition I want to thank Mr Rob banzer for guiding Florence brasser for the last six weeks while I'm also excited to welcome Dr Danny Dean to finish the year
022as the interim principal at brasser that is my report ma'am thank you sir all right I would now like to ask for a motion to ajour our meeting Mr long Miss kais any discussion all in favor the vote is unanimous the meeting is adjourned have a good night