001motion to resume public session dr richards and ms coffey all in favor the voters unanimous we are in public session please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands for one nation under god indivisible with liberty mr daley you have some awards yes sir so the national school public relations association's annual digital media excellent awards recognize outstanding education publications e-newsletters digital media programs marketing materials videos social media websites and more this year an award of merit is presented to eva petracino director of communications and anthony paleo both these two video production specialists for their work on the gates challenge strategic plan for equity video in this video more than 30 staff members and students from across the
002district came together to tell the story of gates charlie's journey to equity thus far the award-winning video may be found at www.gatestriley.org equity so congratulations [Applause] superintendent agenda changes yes sir there's an edition of art bid update to personal actions and support materials an interim principal agreement and approval of policy number 3460. okay thank you very much for those changes on to board president comments i just wanted to take the time to thank everybody for continuing to keep up with the ever-changing landscape and getting our kids back to school i know that things are changing on a daily basis and i truly appreciate your attending to consume those changes and make sure our kids are ready to go back to school as soon as possible thank you very much superintendent daily thank you moving on
003points of interest just misconduct um so my son has been participating in one of the middle school summer activities he's been doing the staff camp and he's come back every day positive about it and having fun which is a huge deal for a kid who's very quiet on his own all the time so that's been a great experience thank you very much any other items okay thank you moving on to report of meetings mr moscato um this this week i'll be participating in a zoo meeting with senator gillibrand's staff we think another chance to talk to them about some of the issues surrounding the pandemic also about the issues of staff shortages in terms of teachers i know the president has suspended payments for student loans but that doesn't help because eventually they're going to
004catch up to them so we're still asking them to consider some kind of forgiveness are those who go into education so i'll follow up with that at the next meeting thank you very much mr moscato any other reports of meetings okay thank you very much we have no visitor comments this evening any visitor comments nope nope nope moving on to open the hearing do you have to have a motion to open up the hearing yes okay motion to open up the public hearing on our code of conduct motion please mr moscato and dr richards all in favor the voters unanimous we are now in a public hearing well good evening everybody uh we met over the summer with representation from the administration staff and students to alter our code of conduct and character with some
005updates to start the fall on page eight of our code of conduct visitors outside food may be brought in for a parent guardian's child only prior to this they were not allowed to we are trying to adjust to that for families that stop in and but it would be for their child only on page 14 we would update the dress code to remove restrictions on tank tops with less than one inch wide straps and bandanas and allow head coverings other than hoods following the start of the day yes that does mean hats can be worn at school page 15 with electronic devices we are adding the school is not responsible for securing personal electronic devices that are brought on campus for each building it was on one of our buildings it was not on all
006that so we wanted to make sure that it's declared for each building any questions so far okay no as far as packs and handbags on page 15 were added to backpacks book bags rope bags and or extra large purses larger than eight and a half by 11 inches are allowed during the instructional day that worked out extremely well last year with allowing them it reduced the need for a lot of the kids to go to their lockers so that the they decided that let's keep that again for this year as we piloted last year during our hybrid time on page 16 under conduct that is disorderly or disruptive we are removing making unreasonable noise to define that was pretty wide out there and we wanted to make sure that it was not being used unreasonably
007ironically so we have removed that as a conduct under conduct that is disorderly or disruptive on page 17 under conduct that is insubordinate we are adding should a student have a medical necessity not to wear a face mask documentation from their physician must be provided and approved by the district health official any questions okay under page 17 conduct that endangers the safety health or welfare of others change message boards to social media in the using social media to convey threats derogatory comments or post pornographic material social media covers it more than just message boards and on page 19 conduct that endangers the safety health or welfare of others remove carrying backpacks book bags rope bags and or extra large purses is allowed until lockers are assigned once assigned these items will need to be kept
008in lockers or designated areas during the instructional day unless authorized by the billing principle or hazardous knee so in other words we're allowing backpacks so this was put in last year on anticipation eventually going to the lockers we're removing it for this year on page 22 under behavioral responses we're adding restorative practices teacher mental health staff assistant principal principal and superintendent could assign that that was not previously listed in there and on page 23 suspension from transportation ad director of transportation may suspend riding privileges those are the topics that were recommended at this time and i remind the board that this year starting out in november we have contracted to have someone come in and work with a committee of constituents to take a deep dive into our code of conduct that would then be
009recommended next spring for approval going into the following year so this this is the one for this starting of the year but that we will be uh doing this going forward that is our presentation okay thank you very much superintendent daley is there any public comment on this at this time hearing none moving to motion to re-enter public session dr richards miss coffee all in favor voters unanimous you're back in session temple improvement update okay thank you very much dr ball moving on to good evening everybody superintendent daily president potensky and other distinguished members of the board of education communications touches every corner of the district so it is my privilege to be able to highlight our communications efforts for you this evening so who are we well my name is eva patricino and i'm
010the director of communications also on our on-site team uh but unable to join me tonight is my colleague lindsey rudig lindsey and i are your boots on the ground uh we oversee the day-to-day district level communication and advise on building level communication we also have an offsite team at boces who supports our work through the printing and graphics and video services communications is a pretty broad term and we all do it every day but what does that actually mean in a school setting so what is it that we actually do to put it really simply we tell the stories of the gates chile central school district every newsletter every calendar every video letter robocall you receive tell the story so it's through these important messages that we're able to communicate and inform staff and families
011and the community about important issues and news from and about the district now communication is a support function so our mission and vision has to support the districts we serve the community's need for clear concise and consistent information our goal is to earn and to keep our communities trust the values that we abide by directly reflect our spartan way values authenticity and clarity translate to respect accuracy and timeliness are our responsibility fostering community community and inclusivity is how we show compassion and through creativity and collaboration we exhibit hard work as i talk through the different realms of the district that communications interacts with you'll see many opportunities for these spartan ways spartaway values to be reflected so now let's discuss how that mission and vision actualizes into the day-to-day stories and messages that you see
012or hear around the district i mentioned we support many departments and programs and as i began to think about how best to break down all of the ways in which our communication team supports district i was able to settle on 10 areas so for the purpose of today's exercise we're going to call them buckets now um beginning with the macro the more tangible buckets along the top there social media website print digital publications budget communication and video production and the more macro buckets which is event coordination branding marketing recruitment public relations communication counsel and training and then crisis in strategic communication and although there are 10 buckets the really important thing to remember is that the water from these buckets is constantly flowing from one bucket to another back to another and back again through
013our work with many departments and school buildings all of these buckets are constantly coinciding and crossing over which is why consistency is so key because there's a lot of opportunity for inconsistency with all of those moving parts so now i'd like to share just a snapshot of each of these areas to give you a better understanding of our work let's take a closer closer look at our social media bucket as a district we run more than 25 official district accounts and when i say official i mean district level or building level or district sanctioned accounts like athletics when i came on board in january 2019 we had no official district level social media presence school buildings ran and still run their own accounts but nothing was consistent now we have more than 5 000 followers
014across the various platforms and we're pushing out content to our staff our families and our community every day in that time we've also pushed for more consistency which if you're counting i've said about four times already in 2021 school districts must have a social media presence our students our parents our grandparents other family members they are already on social media we are taking our messages to them and we're meeting them where they are honing in on facebook as an example since january of this year close to 42 000 people have seen our facebook posts again this doesn't include district level instagram or twitter or any of the other building accounts that we manage taking a closer look at facebook specifically a third of our facebook followers identify as women ages 35 to 44. now we
015can deduce that those followers are likely district parents and guardians so we're able to provide them important information on a platform that they're already engaged in the next major tangible area is our website we actually have seven websites with more than 1400 pages communications department handles the content management portion of those sites now our website is a hub of activity anything from accessing email to business office forms to requesting alumni transcripts we get an average of about 12 000 views a month and a really important important piece to managing the website is maintaining web accessibility under the americans with disabilities act we're constantly working to make sure that our website is accessible and when i say accessible i don't mean access to the internet i mean things like is our website easy to navigate if
016you are using a screen reader or can you read the text on the background is it the right color is there enough contrast websites used to be a catch-all basically a virtual filing cabinet for anything and everything about the district which made it hard to navigate and really mucked up the experience for the end user so last year we began a cleanup of our website to streamline some of that information for our prospective and our current families to be able to find what they're looking for that work is ongoing but we've already made great progress and this will be a welcome change for anybody visiting our website i also want to mention that although it's not a requirement under ada our website can be translated into more than 100 different languages for our enl families
017to publications each school year the communications department produces many newsletters brochures print and digital flyers and i'm proud to say that our district newsletter seen there has been recognized at the state level by the new york state school public relations association all of these publications are critical tools that we use to communicate important messages but we also do quite a bit to aid in the consistency of our day-to-day work here in the district the purchasing manual is one example of that type of publication printed recruitment materials also play a key role in recruitment of high quality candidates digital publications increased in a huge way throughout the coven 19 pandemic so that coupled with that need for consistency that was a major driver for elementary branding project which i'll touch on in a few moments one
018of the most important things that we communicate to our school community each year is information about our annual budget vote and board election this information is distributed through print and digital formats and while we've always showcased our gc pride in this very important budget issue we've taken it up a notch the last couple of years by showing a return on investment this includes everything from important social emotional curriculum to how we maintain our buildings and grounds to ensure a safe school environment and of course anytime you communicate financial information the name of the game is transparency right that's why this past school year we launched a new video series called a bit of budget with dr ball you may have seen it a time or two the goal was to introduce what can be a
019very complex topic in a fun way to educate our district taxpayers about the different aspects of the budget and how they all work together and then speaking of video production oops the use of video to communicate important messages is only continuing to grow as you saw a little while ago we were recently recognized nationally for distinguished achievement in video by the national school public relations association i'm also proud to say that we've been recognized at the state level for our work in this bucket and while lindsay and i do our fair share of shooting and editing boces 2 video production specialist tony paleo is really the master behind the camera for some of our best work including that award-winning equity video one of the biggest stories of the past year and longer was the kova
02019 pandemic during those early months of the pandemic mr daley put out weekly videos to keep our school community informed more than 20 videos with nearly 14 000 views total in about 72 minutes in all we are also honored to facilitate coordinate and assist with many special events that make gates tyler such a warm and welcoming place from student events like graduation and the 5th grade track meet to staff events like tenure and our recent job fair our role varies depending on the need but we're always eager to celebrate the successes of our school community sometimes our advocacy efforts require special event coordination and i'll touch on that in a moment when we cover public relations but moving back to that special event coverage in a time before covid we would cover photograph or you
021know write write up a little article upwards of about 35 student events each spring across our six school buildings during covid we saw many of these events move virtual and while the coverage may have looked different the need for support was still there for example we live streamed many of our award ceremonies and several of them were compiled into pre-recorded video format you may have also noticed that our brand has become more consistent a consistent brand experience builds recognition loyalty trust promise and ultimately employee pride we've seen this come to life in our recruitment allowing us to hire the most talented applicants to join our team retention just as important as recruitment and i'm proud to say our employees are taking more gc pride than ever working against thailand we saw that come to life
022this past school year when we were named top workplace this recognition is helping us to continue to build a positive culture in our school community now earlier i mentioned that our increased use of digital publications brought to light the need for consistent high-resolution artwork and we partnered with a recent graduate of gate's gates twilight nick capisteno who created four original digital illustrations of our paul rhode panther our neil armstrong star our florence brass reveal and our walt disney dragon these fun new additions to our spartan family have been a great way to build community and consistency and for the first time ever i would like to introduce you to the newest representation of our spartan pride for use at the elementary level it's charlie's very own spartacus as an illustration again artwork by gchs alumni
023campus daniel this fun caricature of spartacus will introduce our elementary audience to everyone's favorite spartan you will begin to see cartoon spartacus alongside his bear panther star dragon buddies in elementary school publications this fall our next bucket is public relations at its core public relations is about providing information here in gates chili we ground ourselves in transparency by keeping our families informed about important news and events we also share news with our media partners who help us to disseminate things regionally when appropriate we also coordinate visits with our greater rochester community leaders to share the wonderful things happening in our classrooms every day this past year we hosted assemblymember meeks and shared a community circle a virtual learning opportunity our updated facilities and a stem activity training on a variety of communications topics is another
024one of our buckets our communications department has been tapped to present to other local school communicators in our area across the state and for a national school communications audience in the next few weeks we'll be leading several presentations for staff members who are new to the district and just last month district tig coordinator angelina pound and i facilitated a presentation with our leadership team about crisis response and communication this helped us practice that quick and consistent response to various scenarios which leads me to my final bucket crisis response and strategic communication when we are presented with a crisis no matter how big or small it is our responsibility to communicate in a timely and accurate and a clear manner again going back to that public relations piece that's pretty heavily embedded in this bucket too
025the other part of this bucket is strategic communications and i'm proud to play a role in the district's strategic plan for equity as a member of our equity leadership team strategic planning and communication is key to ensuring that our intent matches our impact our visual identity helps to create an inclusive welcoming environment too making sure our students are seeing themselves in the books and the curriculum is important but so is making sure they are seeing themselves in the posters and the pictures hung around the district and then of course our biggest crisis of the last year and a half by far has been the kovid 19 crisis and i couldn't talk about covid without showing this video of mr daley one more time new information constantly streaming from albany washington most of the time we
026were learning the information at the same time as the general public that made it and still makes it very difficult to provide an immediate local response but we always manage to communicate things as quickly as possible in fact over the last 18 months we communicated via more than an hour's worth of video messages as i mentioned more than 100 district level emails and about half as many robo calls this doesn't even include all the information that came directly from the buildings one thing remained constant though and that was that need for consistency to make sure that we are all sharing one unified message does anybody have any questions thank you [Applause] moving on first rate of policy three four six zero diversity equity and inclusion in the district discussion this is a new policy that
027erie one recommended and then we met uh with our equity team and made sure that it was tailored to our district and our policy committee uh discussed it the other night and recommend it to the board any other comments points of discussion on this item hearing them moving on to consent items motion to approve the consent agenda motion please uh mr bailey and dr richards questions or comments all in favor voters unanimous thank you very much motion to approve consensus items c through k motion please mr moscato and miss coffee questions or comments all in favor unanimous thank you very much moving on motion to accept resignations of miranda fire his interim deputy district clerk defective as of august 10 motion please mrs coffey and dr richards questions comments all in favor the boat is
028unanimous thank you very much motion to accept the resignation of dr mitchell ball as district clerk effective upon his appointment as deputy district clerk for the 2022 school year's lotion please ms coffey and mr bailey questions or comments all in favor the vote is unanimous thank you very much motion to appoint dr mitchell ball is deputy district clerk for the 2021-22 school year as part of his regular duties motion please miss coffee mr bailey questions or comments all in favor unanimous please take the open office hi mitchell paul do you swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of deputy district clerk according to the best of mindset thank you very much congratulations motion to
029appoint condesa g brown as district clerk for the 2021-2022 school year as part of her regular duties coach please ms richards mr moscato all in favor vote is unanimous thank you very much please take the oath of office that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duty of district court according to the best thank you [Applause] congratulations and welcome motion to approve john unsend for appointment of district-wide math league advisor promotion please dr richards and his coffee questions or comments all in favor the voters unanimous thank you very much motion to approve policy three four six zero it's been like disappointing i'm sorry we need a motion to waive the second reading first thank you i'll make
030a motion to waive the second reading so do we have a motion to waive the second reading mr and ms coffey all in favor that second reading is waived motion to approve policy three four six zero caution please dr richards his coffee questions or comments all in favor voters unanimous thank you very much moving on to superintendent comments well uh president potensky we have an award here from the monroe county school board association it affirms that nicole littlewood of the gates charlay central school district board of education on june 12 2021 completed six hours of training in board governance as required by chapter 388 of the laws of 2010 and officially signed by sherry johnson executive director congratulations [Applause] okay uh fall opening update so uh with the governor and the new york state department
031of health saying they would not offer any more updates uh we began planning or continued our planning that we've been doing since the spring and then today we had two different organizations come out and say they're going to give us guidance on how to reopen the first being the new york state education department announced that they will be providing guidance to districts for the fall since the new york state do agent governor will not then this afternoon we learned that the monroe county department of health will also be making recommendations by august 20th the one consistency between the two groups is they will be recommending that we consider cdc and aap guidance so our plan as we've been preparing to put in to start for the fall continues to be that our students will be
032back full time five days a week in person in school when we are not in substantial or high infection zones masking will be parental guardian decision though recommended in all school buildings staff will also be able to choose as well if vaccinated when in substantial or high infection zones though as we are currently masking will be required inside all buildings for all students staff and visitors currently as of today we are in the high category which means that it's over 100 per 100 000 and then substantial is when you are 50 to 99.99 so currently in our buildings we would be if we were to start school today masking would be required for all students staff and visitors upk 12. we will be requiring masking on all district buses for all students and staff this
033allows us to have full buses and meet that standard masking outdoors on campus is not required physical distancing of three feet indoors were possible when not able to max we will not require vaccinations for clovid for our employees or students however we encourage them to do that we are hopeful that when it is when the vaccination is made available for children under 11 the families will choose to get the vaccination uh we are hearing currently it should be coming in early fall our daily screening application that uh was not very popular with our community we hear you uh we are trusting our parents and guardians will be expected to keep their students home sick uh just like prior to covid same expectation for staff there will be more clarification on this coming next week music
034and pe will have three feet minimum distance when performing so this allows us to have our pe classes and music classes again if parents choose to not send students to school in september they will need to choose to home school we hope that all choose to send their students back to school that's where we want our kids in cafeterias we'll have assigned seats to allow us for contact tracing during the day and allow us to minimize the impact if kovid were to become a problem in any of our buildings we will continue the outstanding job that our cleaning staff has done and and and the same way we ended the year we will continue into the fall and we previously announced that we'll have a public forum for families on wednesday the 18th at 4
03530 p.m with what could be finalized plans of course we announced that prior to learning today that the county health department may not issue theirs until the 20th we will proceed in preparing for this and believe that we'll be able to have no problem opening five days a week for our students come fall i'm excited to announce that our board meeting on the 31st we will have summer graduation so students that did enough over the summer to become august graduates it will be at 5 pm in the high school mezzanine prior to our board meeting that is why we have announced that we'll be switching our meeting from here to the high school mezzanines so that we can celebrate our august grants our support stop staff job fair last week was a mammoth success we
036had 98 people attend many already completed an application or participated in a screening interview right now we have more applicants than open positions which is a outstanding problem to have in august we had great participation by district administration and staff who shared how great it is to be a spartan major kudos go to our hr and communications department for planning the event and getting the word out to bring in a massive amount of quality candidates to say it was a success is an understatement the campaign that they put together to get the word out on us having it was repeatedly cited by those candidates that came we had candidates that live in town as well as at the other side of rochester that came after hearing about it whether on the radio or through social
037media so the efforts of our communication hr department clearly paid off very excited uh is you're starting to smell the grass getting caught and it's starting to get a little colder not today but it has we've had some cold days uh fall athletics are coming best time of the year we are getting ready to welcome our athletes uh as they get ready to return so our varsity and jv start on august 23rd our modified football begins august 30th and all other modified are on september 9th it's an exciting time as we get closer to welcoming back all our spartans we already have 350 kids signed up and it's early yet and there'll be obviously many more that do but we're excited to welcome back our spartans for some competition this fall also tonight uh we'd
038like to welcome lisa mcgary to central office mrs mcgarry will be serving our youngest spartans as administrator on special assignment for cpsc and special projects in this role which begins tomorrow she will support our upk population and various special projects throughout our district her expertise will help us transition many of our youngest students district wide back to school effectively and successfully we'd also like to welcome mrs liz konar mrs konar will be again the interim principal at neil armstrong next monday she comes to us as a retired uh principal from pittsford and has done multiple interim principal positions since retiring she will be with us until we hire a new principal for neil armstrong we will be posting for that position shortly and hope to have a permanent candidate in place by november dr ball
039uh had some very good news this afternoon our tax rate going into the fall our tax rate per thousand for both gates and chili is 24. 0.045637 last year it was 24.56 for gates and chili was 25.58 so that is our tax rate approved by the county today all right and last but not least i would like to welcome to our board mrs conda brown she has been a huge addition to to our office we're very excited as she serves as our board clerk and executive assistant to the superintendent her vast experience is going to really help us continue to get better she's hit the ground running and it's been great to see our team in the administration building helping to step up and get her indoctrinated into our spartan way but we are thrilled
040that you have joined us and look forward to learning with you as we go forward so welcome and that is my report sir thank you very much we did have our report earlier for our capital project update we could do now if we can do an agenda alteration to allow for it motion to approve the agenda alteration to hear the financial facilities report the capital project report frank mr moscato i would rather have been here good evening 1.5 um masons have finally left we've been talking about block and brickwork for months the masons have left they actually um yesterday put the top cap around the chiller building block walls demolition the old auditorium is complete that beam we had a problem with is fixed everything in there is good all the work up on the
041scaffolding minus the painting if you scroll down there should be some pictures of the scaffolding so that's standing on the scaffolding at the lowest point you're about six feet from your ceiling if anybody between now and the 23rd would like to go up there give me a call because we're going to start taking the scaffolding down on the 23rd of this month it's pretty cool to be up there looking down just like it was from the catwalks you can see the catwalks to the left they're just a little bit higher than the scaffolding ductwork is ongoing roofers will be back to finish up the edge metal metal stud framing is ongoing in the old auditorium which is the two new nurses or music suites right now and um blacktop of the bus loop that will
042be complete before school starts probably everything else beyond that will not be um you can see they're working on sidewalks they're gonna pour sidewalks probably for the next week they've prepped uh this week right in the very front of that picture the bottom right all that's a heated sidewalk out front just like you have it um walt disney neil armstrong like we did at paul road also so that's going to be installed in the parking lot if they had coming up the rest of this month all the blacktop will be finished at both buildings all interior renovation renovations at walt disney and neil armstrong will be complete i've let the principal know at neil armstrong and mitch that um you're missing a few interior doors we made some changes there's gonna be a few doors
043we're gonna hang some temporary ones but we'll work on that in the punch list in september i don't see any problems with them to being done before the start of school told lisa mcgarry that she can have all of her rooms on the 23rd actually this month so she's planning on moving in anybody have any questions for that some projects we will be meeting this thursday giving mitch a financial update you guys should be happy we got quite a bit of money left over so questions comments and i do apologize i didn't catch it was a somebody sent me a text a few minutes ago and said you didn't know it was a six o'clock start i do have one question just for posterity because the andy's not here so somebody's got to i just
044had to ask that right i mean you were expecting that job frank i did i did how did we fix the beam yeah the engineering team picked a beam that was 53 feet long 5 eighths of an inch thick three foot tall at a cost of twenty two thousand dollars brought in in two pieces mr roberts could you share with the board the issue related to the beam so i think they all saw it on tour when we were in there right they were the old mezzanine hung over um the webs up top and them trusses had cracked at some point years ago because they were rusted i mean they've been cracked a long time we didn't want to leave it like that something was broke we gotta fix it so that's how we fixed
045it it's done i just wanted to share it i find it interesting because the original theme was like that it was pretty much ripped and you're saying we replaced something way bigger don't have pe on my hard hat not an engineer no you're absolutely attracted a running joke out there is we went to a bridge and stole it from somewhere because it's the size of a bridge yeah i saw some extra activity about 390 maybe that that could have been right but seriously if anybody wants to get up on that scaffolding before the 23rd uh give me a call i can take one two or as many as wants to go great thank you very much thank you very much thanks guys have a good night all right motion to adjourn miss coffee and mr
046bailey all in favor the voters unanimous we are adjourned