HCSD BOE Meeting 10 16 25

001Okay, if I like to try to call the meeting to order. We're a little behind schedule. >> That's okay. We have a quorum. Takes five members for a forum. And I see we have seven. So constituted quorum. So I'll call the meeting to order. This is the October 16th, 2025 regular business meeting of the Horad Central School District Board of Education. Could we please start with the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance 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. >> Thank you. The first item on the agenda is for the board to adjourn to executive session. And this is for the purpose of discussing individual tenure reviews. We would anticipate returning to public session at

002approximately 6 p.m. Is there a motion? >> Any questions or comments on the motion? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. Any >> oppose? Nay. extensions. Okay. So, we'll uh stand in recess, go to executive session, and be back in about 25 minutes. Thank you. >> Okay. The board is coming back from executive session. We're reconvene to public session, please. And there was no action taken at executive session, just to be clear. So, the first item as we resume public session is the approval of the minutes. We have item 2.01, action vote to approve the draft minutes of the September 18th, 2025 regular board meeting. Is there a motion? >> Any comments or questions, discussion on the motion? Call for a vote. All those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? Nay. >>

003Any abstensions? I just reminds me I was going to make a point. You'll notice we do have two board members who are not able to make it this evening with excused absences. Under our policy on a on quorum 2351, five members is a quorum. So, we're fine. But then also it actually takes five votes to pass any given resolution. It's not simply a majority of those president, it's a majority of the board. So just so for example there the vote was six to one I believe. So it passes but I just wanted to everyone understand five votes is required to pass any any resolution that we may encounter this evening. And if you want a reference, look at policy 2351. Item three, community questions and comments. Uh this is the portion of the agenda when

004we welcome input from community members. And I there is a policy um that covers community participation. I won't read the whole thing, but I'll just there is a time period 5 minutes for individual speakers, 30 minutes in totality, unless the board votes to extend that to the extent necessary. And it is not intended to be a back and forth, but um just to listen and to take uh questions, concerns, and items back for consideration. and we remind you of the need to um you know not get into individual personnel matters or students other than the speaker's own um child. So is there anyone that would like to speak to the board this evening? If so, please go ahead and approach the podium. Thank you. [clears throat] >> Thank you. I'm Norma Quasnik, a graduate of

005Horetss High School and I drove school bus for Horses for 21 years but now retired 22. I tolerated no nonsense on my bus period. What I want to address is bullying. I got a call to go to the school at the high school with a student, a relative and uh I was in the office. We took care of business there. The student was sent out and I discussed with the principal there uh bullying. I gave him a suggestion what I would like to do and he was a little reluctant on my way of wanting to see it done by contacting law enforcement or said police uh state troopers the sheriff's department anybody involved with uh in Shimon County to get together to have an assembly for the whole high school so that those students can

006find out what the ramifications are if they bully somebody. I'm sorry, but I am I'm oldfashioned. I'm 86 years old and I do not tolerate that stuff. Don't tolerate it. None whatsoever. And I've gotten three calls in the past what three years of family members. Uh-uh. I don't tolerate it. I'm sorry. Excuse [clears throat] me. I'm sorry. But I think the school board needs to look into something somehow somewhere to have an assembly in regards to bullying and the ramifications and maybe u a student or two gets caught gets charged in some form or another. Maybe it just might wake up the rest of the students. And I do have to commend our luxurious governor, which I can't stand, for stopping cell phones in the school. Thank you, Miss Hokll. I I agree with that

007100%. If I had a student today or a child today, they would not get a cell phone until they were seniors in high school, had a job, and paid for it. That's money. Anybody have any questions for me? >> I would like to see the school board do something about that. >> Yes. Thank you very much for that uh for that suggestion and uh certainly something that we can take back and consider how that might be able to be possible. So, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for your service to the district. >> Thank you for allowing me to proceed. >> Of course. >> [clears throat] [clears throat] >> Um, first, uh, happy school board appreciation week. >> Thank you. Uh, my name is Bill Finity. I currently serve as

008the president of the Horsesense Teachers Association. And during the last week of September, the HDA conducted a survey that reflected the current morale of the teaching staff in the district and the feelings that those members had toward district leadership. It was a seven question survey with six of those questions using a rating scale of 1 through 10 with one being extremely negative or extremely ineffective and 10 being extremely positive or extremely effective. The questions were as follows. How would you rate the impact that the changes by the district this year have had on your professional? How would you rate the impact that the changes implemented by the district this year have had on your colleagues in your buildings? How would you rate Question number three, how would you rate the impact that changes implemented by

009the district this year have had on your students? Question number four, how effective has your building administrator been in leading the staff through these changes? Question number five, how effective have district level administrators been in leading the staff through these changes. Question number six, considering all stakeholders, staff, students, parents, and community members, how would you rate the overall morale of the district? And question seven was, if you could change one thing about the district right now, what would it be? And please explain why. I'm pleased to report that the HDA had over 72% participation in the survey that members had approximately one week to complete. The responses of our members reflected a low morale and genative general negative opinion toward the changes decision-m pro practice pro processes and district leadership. Many of our HDA members

010have been working in this district for 20 plus years and mentioned the decline in the public perception and reputation of the educational product coming out for as we were definitively the top graded and best school district of the year. In recent years, many feel that the perception of the district by the surrounding communities has diminished and that we've lost our shine and luster that we were so proud of. Many responses also echoed a sense of disrespect for our teaching expertise by the decision makers of the district as the decisions that have been made over the past couple of years that have had major impacts on the students that we are able to major impacts on the education that we are able to give our students have been made with almost no consideration given to our

011input expertise and previously existing data. We have been told time and time again that these decisions were administrative decisions and we would be told what those decisions would be when the time is right. We had over two years to prepare for the impending changes that many feel have negatively impacted our district and many feel that the district has been reactive to these self-inflicted problems rather than proactive in trying to find solutions prior to the emergence of these problems. Our staff perceives the morale of all stakeholders as being quite low with many community members, students, and families seemingly unhappy with the current state of the district. On the other hand, given the significant number of changes that have taken place or been enacted since the start of the school year, the staff responses reflected an overall

012appreciation for the efforts of building administrators as we try to weather these storms together. If any of you would like to discuss this survey or our findings further, please feel free to reach out to me and we can set up a time to talk. Thank you very much for your consideration and I look forward to reporting back to you in a few months after we rerun this. >> Thank you very much for presenting us with that information. It's very helpful to hear. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Tissy Palmer and I'm a fourth grade teacher at Big Flax. This is my 11th year in the district and I have been in education for 23 years. I'll be discussing the impact of the new 4day cycle on the fourth grade classroom

013with the purpose of highlighting the loss of instructional time and the disruption of learning. I'll start with the impact on science and social studies instruction. With the 4-day cycle, total minutes of instruction for science and social studies have been reduced and disrupted. With last year's six-day cycle, instruction in this area was consistently part of the schedule. There were no planned interruptions and the block was built into the master schedule considering 180day school year with 30 minutes of daily instruction has provided the opportunity of 5,400 minutes for science and social studies. With this year's 4-day cycle, instruction in this area is interrupted by a second special of the day two times in the 4-day cycle and a social emotional lesson one time a month. For a specific week example, this would look like Monday, day one,

014students learn science. Tuesday, day two, students miss science and attend course. Wednesday, day three, students miss science and attend social emotional lessons. Thursday day four students miss science and attend library. Friday day one students return to learn about the science. Considering a 180day school year with two days of this 4day cycle for science social studies instruction at 40 minutes each. This provides the opportunity of 3,300 minutes of instruction. This is a reduction of 2,100 minutes and an equivalent to 70 30 minute lessons or 52 and 12 45minute lessons. Specifically for this month of October, there are 21 instructional days. 12 are scheduled for library course or lessons. This leaves nine days to teach science or social studies. This does not include drills, career day, or picture day. It is important to note that we are

015helping to prepare students to take the New York State Science Assessment. Fifth grade impact on math instruction. The expectation for math instruction has decreased from 60 minutes in the 2024 25 to 50 minutes in the 2526 year. Last year with 180 school days of 60 minutes, students would receive approximately 2,800 minutes. This year with 180 days of 50 minutes of instruction, students will receive approximately 9,000 minutes. This is a difference of 1,800 minutes in the area of math. My daily schedule includes a math lesson instructional block from 2:20 to 3:15 p.m. Teaching math lessons at the end of the day is incredibly challenging. Students, especially those who struggle with math, are struggling even more to focus, keep up with the pace of instruction and practice. Energy levels, engagement, and simple excitement for math are difficult

016to sustain at the end of school day. Instrument lessons impact on instruction. Orchestra has has occurred in the past over three 30 minute lessons for a total of one and a half hours provided in the afternoon during recess and RT block with a 2526 schedule. Orchestra lessons occur on day one from 9:00 a.m. to 11:15. Individual students or groups of students are leaving classroom instruction for at least a 30-minute instrument lesson during science, social studies, and MLA instruction. Band lessons were offered to students during the first 30 to 40 minutes of the school day for the past 10 years I worked here. This provided students the opportunity to learn an instrument during a time when they were not missing new content and during instruction. This year, students are rotating through 12 separate band lessons groups

017during two days in the 4-day cycle. Specifically, on day two, band lessons run in eight separate 30-inute groups from 9:40 to 2:30 with a break from 11:10 to 12:20 for recess and lunch. On day three, band lessons run in four different groups from 12:15 to 2:30 p.m. Students are being pulled for lessons from all academic subjects, MTSS, and specials. Lessons generally run October through May, estimating that each month has five 4-day cycles. A student taking an instrument will miss classroom instruction for five instrument lessons at approximately 35 minutes each. This is a total of 175 minutes missed for one month and an estimated 1,400 of instruction for eight months. considering our shared goals of academic achievement. Here are some some suggestions for moving forward. Number one, the 4-day cycle takes away time from the science

018and social studies instructional block because of double specials in the scheduled lessons. We continue our expectation of academic excellence, but the time to work towards it is lost in this 4-day cycle. Because of this, consider a 5-day cycle where double specials do not occur or return to a six-day cycle. Number two, include teachers in the schedule development process at the district level. For example, I have taught math in the morning. For the past 10 years, and I know many of my colleagues have done the same, students were focused and engaged. I would continue to schedule math in the morning if I had the professional choice to do so. I would place a readaloud or an engaging science or social studies lesson at the end of the day. Number three, return students to taking band lessons

019before the start of the academic school day. For the past 10 years, students have done so. Thank you for your time. >> If if you had more, you could please You can have a special um I just said this was this provided students the opportunity to learn an instrument while avoiding the amount of time both from direct instruction and learning activities in all subject areas. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you very much for your [applause] time put that together. Would you be willing to present that document to the district clerk? There was great deal of information in there that I know the board would like to be able to refer back to and look at in more detail. So, >> that would be great. Thank you very much. >> Do we have any

020other members of the community that would like to present to the board or speak to the board? Okay. Then we'll move to the next item in the agenda here. Item four, report from our student representative. So, Miss Jefferson, please take it away. >> Hi, everyone. Okay, so Hoco week for the high school students is in full swing. So, we're wrapping up our spirit week. Tomorrow is Raider Day, so have your child come full swing. All the blue, all the white, all the things. Um, I want to let everybody know that tomorrow is the last day to get Hokco tickets. Today was not the last day, so it is $20 unless you're a varsity H. um member and you have done two hours of volunteer service for varsity H and you can get there during either

021of your lunch periods 3A, 3B, 4 A, 4B. And then our HCO game is also tomorrow. It starts promptly at 7:00. Halftime will be the Hokco core and the announcing of your king and queen. Um, we also have our pep rally tomorrow after school. And the ho dance is from 6:30 to 9. And that's all for Hokco. But I do want to touch on something else. It's called Yak, our club. And it is for students with disabilities and it runs unified sports, but there are more coming. We do right now we have unified soccer, unified bowling, and unified swimming. But we're now starting unified theater. Right now, there is just going to be at the final act of the play, there's going to be inclusions of unified people to be involved in. But for next

022year, we're hoping to grow the program and hopefully have their own separate thing from the green room players. So, if you are interested, please contact Miss Tenbus. And yeah, and hopefully we'll have Unified Cheer also running as well. And that's all. >> Thank you very much for that report and that really wonderful news about those great initiatives. Thank you. C can I ask a fun question here? Today was Y2K day. Did I get that right? Did I say that? >> Yeah, it was Y2K. >> What does that mean? What did you try to say? >> It's the year of 2000, so it's like lowrise jeans. I you know, like [laughter] like come on. >> You know, big jewelry, the whole thing. Wow. >> Yeah. I thought maybe you all went hid in a cave at

023because of what were going to happen at midnight on the New Year's Eve. [laughter] Everybody remembers that. It was a big nothing. >> Okay. Thanks, Trinity. So, the next item on the agenda are presentations under section five. We have the redistricting consolidation review to presented by Mr. Gil. Uh maybe slides behind us. >> Yes. >> Okay, we can >> Well, we think we can follow along on our >> Yes. So, we're going to give it a moment for the for the load behind you. It should be a no angle onto your face. So, it should be kind of a moment here for the public to be able to see it. There we go. Thank you, Jerry. So, tonight, uh, we're going to present some initial reflections on the 202526 school year. um six weeks into

024it. Um 15 months of planning, several years of background that has gone into this uh decade worth of information that led up to the this this school year. So uh when we talked about this today, really it's an initial. We anticipate ongoing reflections on what the process and all the changes. We understand there's been some pretty significant changes for a lot of people and what does that look like and how are we working within those changes? uh prioritizing and we're going to see that through this presentation. One thing that we had just want to give some historical context. Um, so the root of how we got here to today was optimizing facilities and increasing instructional time while facing decreasing enrollment. That was the crux of how this came to be and all the changes that

025came to fruition at the beginning of the school year. I'm not going to go into the weeds. Um, there is historically um, going back as far as a merger. There are many more tasks or items that occurred during this time. Um, like I said, this this conversation has been ongoing for quite some time. Um of particular note on 2017 1617 18 there was an elementary school day committee that came together charged to make a recommendation regarding the elementary uh teacher work day and ways to provide more student contact time and if possible more teacher collaboration time. Um that committee met for on and off for almost a year and a half I believe. I chaired it towards the end when I first joined the district. Um Karen Buri before me uh had started uh this

026committee and did a research based on how to use time during the day and best practices of time to increase and to meet that charge. Uh this came from a negotiated unit of heart with HTA. 14 teachers and eight administrators met over the course of that time and they discussed a variety of options including a 6-h hour 40-minute day, a 7-hour day with seven uh K through 12. Um they ended in their final report with a 7-h hour and 15 minute day for 712 and a 6-h hour and 40minute day for K6. So that study happened and came to fruition throughout 2017 and early 2018. Uh in part of that some of us suffered through a long um experience with a vendor to which we looked at transportation and how to optimize and again this

027is 201718 and there was a study at that time that mirrors the model that we ended up incorporating this year. So this was not anything new as far as conversations about how do we get more instructional time and it was rooted as far back as the 2015 conversation that led to this particular committee. uh the committee did not present to the board. His find findings were brought to the district as well as the HTA leadership at the time. Following that about the same time period knowing that change was coming and the strategic plan that we were using at the time had to be addressed both the capital projects and the utilization of our buildings as well as what has come to be our our very our main thing multitude system supports providing interventions appropriately to

028our students and and social emotional and academic and behavioral. The real spark of the impetus, the move to increasing the day though came with New York State Ed changing their requirement. Um, up until last year, we were still um in shaky ground as far as requirement, but knowing that we had negotiated a contract with a teachers unit that was going to increase the school day, we were able to meet within those hours. Um, so we were allowed to move forward um within with the our state aid and the requirements to meet that knowing that this year was coming into into fruition. Instruction is our main thing. We're going to start there. Um, you heard from Tacy who spoke to some of the issues that we continue to work through. Uh my team meets regularly uh

029with building and um grade levels and they're on a tour nearly since the beginning of the year to hear what's happening and to prioritize and to start making uh thoughts to how to better do what we do by keeping the main thing the main thing though. First task is we have to meet this requirement. You're going to see a chart later on that's going to detail this further. a priority of increasing elementary school time because they were the ones that were short the amount of time compared to the other buildings. Main thing the main thing tier one, tier two, tier three instruction in our MTSS system. This means protecting core instruction in time, not pulling out students for um that you might have uh RTI or require a resource room. There's what I can't emphasize

030enough is that a system is built for the majority. There's always outliers. It's best. You can build the greatest system in the world, but there's still going to be outliers that need to be addressed. But guess what? Our focus is just that. We're going to meet students where they are. We're in a system. We, you know, created a process and a a system to which we're committed to doing this, providing core instruction uninterrupted and having an intervention and uh enrichment times. We also appreciate our our um the music the music that is in historically in this district and the the great work that they do. So yes, we had to confront the ideas of lessons and dance schedules and rotating teachers that go between three or four different buildings. How to optimize their time and

031how do we do it? 712 had a model that may be familiar with a rotating schedule. that same schedule was applied down to fourth grade. So the student was never pulled out by the same setting on the same day. That it wasn't before the school day when they might not be able to take advantage of the program because they couldn't get here, right? So we wanted to make sure we we music's important in this district. We want to make sure we gave it its time. Could we further tweak it? Of course. We're six weeks in, but we we have a pretty decent plan in order and we're looking to further optimize this. we'll be very much fine and he'll type those you know are that wind block the what I need now the idea of

032a you know addressing students and the needs that they have um in the academic behavioral social emotional you have yet to find a school district or too many that actually meet the PE requirements in the elementary level you're darn close to it there is a requirement to meet every day recess is usually the go-to to fit that model but because we the the board the movement to add a PE teachers in their elementary and to that rotation. Um we now have the appropriate amount of physical education time stizing increase special area times across grades K. Um this not only had the the benefit of creating a schedule that maximized but it also set priorities to say you know what music's important library is important physical education um why this art are all priority areas and

033they deserve the appropriate amount of time for students to spend in those rotations had an ancillary effect of course of also providing uniformed uh preparation time for staff. We do have anomalies when you have a fifth section in rotation. Things get a little weird in the schedule when you have five sections of fourth grade or some similar um second grade, but for the most part now it provides special area teachers and grade levels with uniform prep time. Um something that was sought after in the the community that was formed in 2016 and establishing consistent recess and passing times for elementary schools. This has also been a difficult transition. We had staff, you know, going from building to building as we consolidated in elementary. Some had routines and it was a matter of let's get everybody

034on the same page so that we're not hearing when to go to a, you know, have our conversations with our different unions like, well, they're doing this at this building and they're doing this at this building. We really had to get some things in line so that everybody was on the same page and just say, okay, we hear you. this is we got to make the best decision about all these individual um items and this is um this was one of them. Let's make sure there's recess time which is a New York State initiative coming this year. We're going to have to report on a recess time. We're ahead of that now as well as passing times ensuring that's in the schedule. So, um elementaryaries clearly have time to transition. That's an ongoing conversation just

035this past week with uh um in our labor management meeting with the teachers to talk about the situation that came up there and how do we better that. So we constantly have feedback loops and we have to prioritize the changes and the impact that they might have. This one was uh half and half. You're going to see later there was a goal at the outset to address schedule alignment with CTE Bosey's AM and PM classes. You solve one problem and caused another. Be honest with me that's what happened. You know best intentions to go through and say okay we think this is going to help the schedule and this is going to benefit it and in the end the reality didn't play out that way. I can tell you in hindsight by our coordination and

036conversation to Boseis in making sure we have that we are now. I know Chris Earl speaks constantly with the um principal of the CTE and I myself have reached out and spoken to the directors and the superintendent about these issues to make sure we're all on the same page and we're working for the same goal of student benefit and they are we all are transportation. I'm going to Rich is going to stand up and go through some of these goals momentarily. This has been another topic that we've been working through. um bestlaid plans in the works for 15 months to create the schedule we have now and the runs. Uh he's going to run through a series of slides, but what's important for you to realize is you everybody to hear is that transportation were

037given a parameter to work within right and I said what can you do because this is what we're looking to accomplish and given the instructional day and the increases how do we make this happen most importantly with the resources we have. There were models back in 2016 says you could do this, you can do this, sure, but it's gonna you're gonna need 20 more buses, 30 more buses, 40 more buses in one instance of a scenario. Not realistic. So, we had to look at was reality within the capacity that we have and how do we create a system um around the instructional day that was changing to meet the state at hours as well as accomplish a whole host of goals that were important to our students. So, with that, I'm going to hand it

038over to Rich to go through these goals. Thank you all very much. Again, just to reiterate what Mr. Gil had said, the comment that we used in transportation was transportation did not drive this project. The project drove transportation. I can't tell you how many phone calls, how many comments we've got from the from the community on, well, why did transportation start this project? We didn't start it. Our job is to support it. The next one that obviously we started this conversation a while ago was trying to get our ride times especially general ed in this particular case at 1 hour or less as Mr. Gale said, "Using our current resources, looking at the existing staff levels, the the existing vehicle levels, how can we support the instructional day and still not have all those additions

039that he had mentioned. We also had that same similar conversation with special needs at that time. I'm reluctant to say is that our special needs runs were all over one and a half hours. And we're going to address that in a slide because of the specific nature and problem. I don't want to say problems, uniqueness of special needs runs. We did have some problems last year um with some of our arrival times. PM, as many of you know, our afternoon high school runs. Those buses should have been get to the high school at about 3:05. They were getting there 3:25 sometimes later. Um, and that need that our goal was we needed to address that. Same thing with the with the morning ones. Our second tier, our buses were supposed to be getting into the

040elementary no later than 8:15. They were getting there sometimes 8:15, 8:25, 8:20, 8:25. not significantly late, but still late that it had to be a goal that we had to address. ISMS emergency evacuation. This one I want to kind of explain a little bit. This was the emergency take-home plan and we use the word emergency, but it's for a nonlifethreatening event at the school. So, they don't have any power, so they have to go home early. The water man is broke. So there's no water again under SED. They can't use the school. We have to then take them home. There was no plan last year per se to deal with the ISMS as a whole. If there's no power or heat on the IS building, chances are it's not on the MS side. So those

041two schools from the transportation standpoint were considered one building and we had to take them all home. Last year we had different routes for elementary, intermediate versus a separate tier structure for middle school, high school and they did not overlap. So you could have one high school or high school middle school bus that would travel to big flats and then pick up is elementary intermediate elementary and then go to Breeport. So that was a concern that maybe does not happen very often and it's rare, but we would have to come with a good concrete plan to address that. Transfers. There's a list of reasons why in the transportation field you don't want transfers. Everything from timing, child accountability, approved locations, and so on. So the game plan was trying to eliminate as many if not

042all transfers as possible and streamline our routes in order to try to combat some of our ride times. What you were looking at is maybe a a elementary run that would travel down a road to drop off an elementary student and then an is intermediate run that would travel down that same road and a high school middle school run. So there were some roads that were seeing three buses dropping off in the afternoon which just needed to be streamlined for effectiveness. That was the list of the goals that transportation was given as part of trying to uh participate in this project. >> Thanks Rich. And I think some of those goals were ongoing goals you also had that was I mean in conjunction like these are things not only the parameters of the school but

043we always talked about the idea of the transfers and how we better that that's an ongoing conversation I know we've had the evacuation needs you know twice in the last 15 years I think we've had to do that there and what would that look like so certainly some uh combo of goals that go beyond just the 25 26 changes but take an opportunity to make some shifts now and optimize given the different um bus roads we put together from the facilities and operational goals side really just the the underlying current was the optimizing of the occupancy of our facilities. Um this is more going to be a strand of conversation when it comes to capital project in months to come. So it's not one but that was an underlining thing that happened here as we

044went through the consolidation and um recently um and then ensuring timely and safe pickup and drop off patterns on school grounds. I cannot emphasize enough, you know, you've heard it from members of the community coming to the board in previous meetings. Um, but the work we've done in conjunction with the village, you know, county with the SRO's, um, you know, and our school principles and the work that they've done to make sure that we get the the cars off the road and have and and coordinating with Rich and um, Mike Coglin. Um, really some strong adjustments made in a very quick amount of time. So kudos to that group for the work they did to make this happen. This next set of information was um handed to me to say okay here's some information that

045was requested um to some extent. So I'm just going to put it up there kind of go through try to understand it within the first six weeks of the school year. There was a question that was wondered, have charty or attendance rates been affected by the changing of the school day? Um, this was data that just cleaned up and I believe this uh today uh you'll see some this is represents the first five weeks of school year to year. So the first two columns are attendance for the first five weeks of school. no discernable differences in our three elementary schools when it comes to tardy rates or attendance rates or uh referrals of any kind. Um my goal was at some point to try to limit those referrals to specifically to attendance, but really they'll

046not do they don't exist that really. So those are referrals just in general for any code of conduct violation. Normal es and flows. Nothing that was alarming to to affect from uh reason from a year-to-year change in the system. Again, just a data point to to work from. Not the end all be all. Similarly, we have the secondary. You'll see similar trends. The one I will note that we do have an explanation of it is the middle school. you'll see a uptick in the first five weeks due to um and that is only because the warning system they've used prior for cell phones they are documenting it in the system now as a referral just to keep track of um when a kids been spoken to. So part of that uptick from the 65 last

047year to the 94 for the same five weeks is due to just making sure there's a stronger tracking of cell phones due to the new uh policy and and state law. So yeartoyear not uh nothing to to mark from this data set as a change. There was a question do we see students that went to homeschooling because of the change? Um pretty constant since co uh es and flows depending on families that come in and out to have to report to the district and go through the process ahead. So again nothing nothing cleaned there. As far as the instructional day, um, speak about the the the year-to-year difference that we see. I'm going to put up a pretty confusing graph. It's it'll be on the website for you to look at to really get into.

048I'm simply going to go through the columns and I'm going to highlight one particular column that's relevant. Um, there's a document that each year that uh, Dr. Douglas has this event regarding the amount of times and has very specific requirements. the Excel document that uh we submit for state aid purposes. It breaks down our buildings and it requests this this very specific information to be to be shown. So this is from last year 2425 instructional day and it outlines the student day recess how much time your lunch transition times arrival dismissal and your student instructional day and then multiplying all those numbers to get your 180day student calendar. So it shows the amount of instructional minutes. It's not just the student day that the state wants to know. they they're asking about instructional minutes to

049hit that 900 power line. So, we've always it's been said that our middle school was always in good shape. Our high school was in good shape. And there's a there's a point of of clarity that I I think it's important. It's not a bar to achieve. It's a minimum to achieve. Right? 900 hours is a bare minimum. It's not a bar like, oh, we've made it. No, that's it's like saying proficient. If you got the right amount of hours to get your state aid, good for you. It's not a mark to say, okay, we can stop short now. You know, if we value the instructional time and the and the work we do with students, then 900 is not a magical number. It's very minimal. You can see in that first column, the most relevant

050thing has been bolded, and that is the hours that we've been short over the course of the last several years. The high school was in some um difficult shape in previous years because of activity period not having been assigned a supervisor that was adjusted last year with conversations between the with the unit um and um the district to make sure that we define that so that we can gain those hours back 2425 for the high school. That's all the note presents. So the most important part of this that last column that multiplies everything out and shows you how close we are to that 900 hour and the 990 minimum in comparison. This year you'll see the same information put out with the current structure and what we have to report and um in the end

051how many minutes and where we are being the 48 hours over for our K4 and the 48 hours for our 56 does permit us um opportunities when it comes to the concern of heat and when we have to close for heat. We lose those hours. Those are hours we have to reduce from that 48 but we're still about the same number. So, we're still receiving the appropriate state aid. Uh, if I remember right, uh, if we were to be one day under, right, uh, our our state aid, um, so one day at 900 hours, hours, 99 change. Um, that would be a reduction in our state aid of 1 day out of 180, which would be 154,000 reduction loss in state aid if we were to be beneath that number. I think I got the

052numbers for the whole population. Yes, thank you. It'd be prrated based on the number of students in that particular building that was affected if they were to be under. So that just represents the whole district. So if the K4 came under only, it would be representative only that population being under. We have a nice padding of the 48 hours above the minimum requirement. K6 if they were to fall under a day would be 82,000 losses daily. So we're in a comfort zone. We're just have a little bit above that we could you know whether we the state allotted snow days are there if additional snow snow days are needed. We have options. If heat days are needed we have options without going to a remote learning plan. I'll say that again. We have options so

053we don't have to go to a remote learning plan. Here's the the one that the sailing piece the the side by side right here's the number of minutes from year to year 24 25 to 25 or yeah 25 26. So again, very close to what we um was talked about for going back nearly eight years now as far as a goal to achieve in our elementary minutes. This is just a graphic of the previous school day. This represents the 2425. I I can I remember Dr. Douglas and others talking about well here's your elementary day and then you know outside of that here's your your your other day and they're they're stuck within each other the high school and the the middle school book you know kind of create this outer force and the intermediate

054and elementary are stuck in the middle and making any adjustments to transportation would give a headache and then it's just it was impossible without addition of a great change to happen and that's what you see when you see the staggering of that 50 minutes we've always talked about to allow for the appropriate drop off times and people to uh students to be um and to get our you're going to see later all the benefits that came from going to this in our transportation model and our instructional model. So I'm going to hand over for Rich for a couple slides to go through some transportation topics. The first slide is a reflection of the data data data information like Mr. Gil said regarding parents that register their students for busing versus what that percentage is to

055the total enrollment we have at those schools. So that's just information. I think one of the things I would like to not point out about the chart but about historically that we just this is the third year we did this prior to we didn't know what children were going to ride the bus. So we knew students were assigned to this bus ride and we prepared on day one to pick them up but how many times would we go to a stop and go to a stop and go to the stop and not have anybody there? The other item is that we knew there was a percentage of those enrolled versus in school versus those that would ride the bus. And we kind of estimated that. So on a basic run, when we talk about putting

056putting the route together, paper and and pen, we would assign approximately 80 or 90 students to a bus that had a capacity of only 65, thinking that the general percentage would keep us under that. And if it didn't, then we had to scurry around on that day to come up with another bus and another plan. This really had helped us down the road, including today, in better efficiency in our roots. Roll times versus ride times. So, as as has been said before, and we're going to address this today in my slides, um, with the effort of transparency, I want to go over three terms real quick. The one one term is called roll time, and that's a new term that we've put together under this project that talks about when the bus is rolling with

057students on it, but they're not getting delivered at home. Basically, what you're looking is is that roll time is from middle school, intermediate school when kids are on the bus rolling to the high school to pick up the high school students. We sometimes use the word transfer in the past when we talked about that, but the term we're using is roll time. Load time. Load time is the amount of time that we have students on the bus and loading at another school. So in this case, we have intermediate students, middle school students on the bus and we're sitting at the high school loading them on. So we're calling this load time. And then the final term, which we talk a lot about, is ride time. That's the amount of time that students are on the

058bus from their school getting delivered at home. In this new redistricting though, we're picking them up at high school, interc middle school, intermediate school, then taking them to the high school, and then from the high school, the run starts where we calculate the ride time. And I have some charts to to talk about that in a moment. But when you look at the graph like Mr. we built had before. We've also extended the ride time and load time and unload time. And just the general essence that I'd like to point out about this particular chart is in order to make this process successful from the transportation side, look at the staggering. We had to stagger start times. In this particular case, you're staggering the intermediate middle school, the high school, and then the elementary school.

059And that's how we can get this to work again with that with that term that I had written down before existing resources. This was one of the few ways that we can make this work without any additional buses, without any additional bus driving staff. And that was a key component when we were trying to set up our our goals on this. the afternoon you're looking at um basically the reverse staggering in the PM and this is the chart that specifically you can see in the lower leftand corner designates that roll time that roll time of picking up these students at MSIS and that roll time that we're factoring in and not factoring in we'll talk about that to get to the high school to then load those students And again, this is all done and

060and I think it was talked about before is with the understanding that we would maybe have a cost savings but would not have to add staff or add or purchase additional buses. That was a key element of when Mr. Gil says we had to stay in our parameters. Transportation had to stay in that parameter to try to make this successful. This chart is going to need a little [laughter] bit of explanation. Um, and bear with me. Um, two quick points to make. First, this we put together in the essence of transparency. We know that conversation's out there. We know people have talked about it. So, I would like to address it. Number two, when you look at it some of the time, say 33 minutes, 39 minutes. I did this on an Excel spreadsheet with

061the sheet with the thanks of of Haley helping me and I couldn't break the timeline any smaller than five minutes. So some of these lines would probably be a little over a little bit but I can't get the breakdown into two 3 minutes. So we just kind of put it to the to the closest line possible so you can get the visual effect. So what you've got here is you've got blue. This is our afternoon runs where that is our roll time. So our roll time is showing pro is showing 15 minutes that we're going from ISMS to the high school. This is significant this year because it's 37 buses. It was different when a bus could go from one, go to the other, pick them up and go. But now it's a school as

062a whole. So now you have to accommodate that time. Red is our load time. That's a that's six minutes that the bus is sitting there with children from another school loading the high school students. And yellow is our ride time. And this is the one that I just kind of want to spend a little bit of explaining. The far left column shows the number of routes. 22 routes. That very first line is delivering 1,058 students. All those students are have a ride time of 35 minutes, way under an hour. But when you factor in the roll time, the load time, they are still under an hour. That's the good part. That's the success of our story. But what you'll have is you'll have parents that are on the parent app and and we know this.

063This is not a secret. that's going to say my child's on 1 hour 10 minutes, 1 hour 15 minutes. Well, does that contradict the goal that we have? And it's it's a mixed message. If you look at the next line, there are two buses that transport a number of students, but of the number of students have 13 MSIS students that are on the bus for an hour, but their ride time is still under an hour. We never really talked about total bus time. So what you look if you look at the bottom line for example, you have two routes. You factor in their roll time, their load time and all that yellow. There are students on those two buses that will be home in way under 56 minutes. And you will have some students that

064will be under will take up to 56 minutes to get them home. But if you look at the second to the right column, if I'm confusing you, clear as mud, that the the total amount of time that they are on the bus is 1 hour 23 minutes. And that's the conversations that we've had with parents on and it shows up on the parent app. So it's it's not a secret. It's nothing that was hidden, but that's the reality. That's the trans transparency of what we're faced with with the parameters that we have now. You could say potato, you could say potato, but yellowwise, everyone from the time that bus leaves the high school till they get home is under an hour. But yes, there are 59 students that will have will be on a bus

065when you factor in the load time and the roll time 1 hour 23 minutes. And this this is presently this is as of now. This is not the beginning of the school year because our staff, not just our dispatchers and our office staff here, but all of our drivers were tasked with coming in to dispatch, finding a way how we reduce this time for children. There's a hundred people in your department all working towards this goal and we have been tweaking and we have been adjusting from day one and we're still doing that trying to find ways on how to reduce these numbers for the betterment of the students. I just want to provide context for some people that are looking and don't know the concept or the visual behind it. This is referring to

066in the PM we just in case just be very clear we have students that get on at the ISMS the bell ends and the day they they get onto their bus and they the roll time they go to the high school to which now they park and wait for high school students cuz it's a 512 run. So that's the representation of the blue being their roll time from the ISMS where they've loaded and now to um the high school and then they're going to sit on the bus but the high school students get on and then they're going to ride home total time. If you look at the last column yes from district property to home 100% of our students get home in less than an hour. If you were to take into account from

067their place of origin, you have to add in their roll time and their load time. And then we have 59 students of the 10 thou, you know, 1,100 change, whatever it is. Um, those 59 students, 13 on those two runs, 21, 11, etc. Maintain for additional amounts of time, past an hour as noted for a total bus time. Again, it's a celebration. Uh it's it's as you're going to see in some stats coming up and some um upcoming um graphics. Um a lot of hard work done to get to this point. The next the next chart kind of joking around is the only reason I agreed to stand up here with Mr. Gil or else I was going to walk. If you look at the under one hour time frame and compare where we were

068with our older students and younger students last year versus this year and again we can't go tier one tier two because remember tier the the older group of students was high school middle school this year it's middle school is in high school so there there is a you can't can't quite compare apples to apples so to speak last year under an hour was 65 55% of our older students, 45 46% of our runs were under an hour for our younger students. The one that is the proudest of all is is 2025 2026. 100% of our elementary students get home in under one hour. No roll time, no ride time, just just excuse me, no roll time, no load time, just ride time. That from our standpoint in and of itself is a significant achievement from

069where we were one and two years ago. Going at our older students, 98.7% are under an hour. I only have one run that has a ride time and that's in the morning over an hour. And we're not done yet looking at how we could address that. When you factor in that previous chart that just shows all the yellow, disregarding the roll time and the load time, we are at 100% under an hour and a half. Like I said, that is significant from a year ago. year ago. If you were part of our refresher training last year, not this year, last year, I put up a slide for our transportation staff that says pupil transportation like you used to know it no longer exists. Everything got changed from how we do the runs, when we do

070the runs, what's the order, how you deal with dispatch. Everything, including how the runs were structured, they're all new runs. They all had to be rebid to stay within the contract. We went from a topdown approach of changing everything so our department can meet these goals, these numbers. And that's why I think they gave me the microphone because I I'm not quite sure I can take Tony, but it would be a good fight because we have 100 people in our department that are proud of this and yet we still take criticism on why we do what we do. It's difficult, but they're very proud of trying to achieve this. And this not me. This is bus drivers saying, "Rich, I did this. I did that. I got these kids home. I got a better idea

071to shave four minutes off my talk to dispatch. Let's get this worked out. You can shave 4 minutes. We're going to do it. Special needs. I have somewhat of the same type of enthusiasm on this as well. Last year, a board member respectfully, Rich, we got to work on this. I I need you to focus on this. All our runs, all our runs for special needs were over an hour and a half. I can't give you a percentage. Some of them were under an hour, some of them were under an hour and a half. They were all all over an hour and a half. We have been able now to take almost 60% of them and put them under an hour. and we've taken all of them and they are now under an hour and

072a half. And that's 48 runs encompassing 12 buses. One of the ways we did that is we created a two-tier system for special needs buses. So that means we pick up some kids, we take them to the schools, we then go pick up some more kids, take them to another school. You also have to understand when it comes to special needs, the left box. We're not taking just to our schools. We're going to Bosey's Bush campus. We have a couple buses going to Southport on the other side of Elmyra. Just figure the transit time alone. If you started from the high school and went there is probably 20 25 minutes. How about you pick up one student in Aaron Breezeport on the top of Terry Hill? You're looking at an hour just to pick up

073one. Special need students have disabilities that sometimes cause more time to load them on the bus. Wheelchairs take time. They're not like a general ed bus where you tell the student you've got to be at your pickup 5 minutes before you run. Wait out there, the bus pulls up, you jump and go. You cannot do that with special needs students. all that into cons configuration and they say well that's why it's okay to be an hour and a half or maybe an hour 45 or why we said 2 hours would be acceptable but we said no like Tony said that may be the minimum standard but we've got to do better and we did and those are the numbers to show that the next one is turned over to Tony Air Force So I don't

074think we're um this is a slide to provide to look at later for those that are interested. It'll be posted. It is um just to clarify what exactly happens when it comes to our CTE according to what our transportation working with Rich and Chris Earl about exactly what happens. What's the logistics? What did we monitor? And this is as of like today like this week. We've tweaked our numbers and continue to to find efficiencies. We even have more conversations coming about to change um this current school year and make it even better and trying to uh adjust. Um you can see in 2425 I bolded at the bottom the most important piece uh to to note and that it was a problem that we had seen over the years that when a student came back

075from CTE in the afternoon they would come down and for a variety of reasons that bus might not come in a time loop they'd get out and they have to get to their book end their 10th period class which is only 40 minutes that runs all year not a very efficient use of staffing something we also corrected with the new schedule but more importantly it it impinged on student instruction time in that 40-minute class. On paper, they were supposed to arrive in enough time to get off, you know, be picked up, get down to [cough] 10th period. Practice showed us that didn't always happen and it was affecting their last period class with us. So we set forth with an adjustment and in September of 24 there was a decision made and a conversation with

076the board about what does that look like and when should the start times be and the the model that was shown actually did show we should go back to what it was 20 years ago whatever it was with it 725 start right so that's a consideration that's out there that I'll get to later because that would adjust and would have fixed both issues inadvertently the attempts and what has changed we've shifted a problem for our afternoon students to a problem to our morning students. That stated, I'll talk more about it in in a moment. We have worked very diligently to shorten those times and weekly principal Chris has contacted and just checks in with students about um academics and making sure all is good and we've monitored when other buses are also arriving up there.

077Um not usually, Boseis is assisting Sudan with who um when other school districts are arriving and are we within a certain um range that's acceptable. We still want to push back that time. We still got to get those kids there earlier. So that is a conversation that is ongoing as we prioritize what are the short-term and long-term changes we need to make to this large system. So again, one problem in the previous year thought we corrected caused another problem in the following year. So when we think about what we try to accomplish, you know, Richie went through all these pretty thoroughly. I'm not going to spend more time on them. You know, the idea is that we we feel good. The only one you're going to see is the last one and unfortunately it's covered

078up by the slide deck. Um it'll it says reduce/eliminate student transfer sites. That's a work in progress. WID um that's something that we still have for our parochial and our our private schools still do transfers in the current system but all other transfers correct have been removed as a long-term goal that we finally achieved. Now what we're going to admit we still would like to tweak that and see if we could do that better. It just presents itself very different problems when dealing with nonp uh non-pubs. But we'll still look at see what we can get back academically, instructionally, not the those minimum requirements. We increase the student time uh educational time and you see a work in progress that better alignment with the CTE both these AM and DM classes as well as the

079students the six students that were affected with the new visions AM that we know board meetings what does that look like we work with those families and to get model like I said one more so works in progress let's talk about that the high school first period ends at 8:55 the CT beginning at 9:00 a.m. at Bush campus resolution as of right now, as of today. Um, Rich has added another uh bus to transport students. We've assign students to a bus based on the program location, but what's happening is they they might just load where they want, but if that bus has got a drop off in two different buildings up on Bush campus, that's a delay to the whoever's getting last. So now they you get on this bus because this bus is going

080to this building. So an efficiency not having a delay drop in one unloading and then a second unloading. So it's an optimiz optimization that happened to get close that time. Um discuss where we load at the high school. We can avoid a couple more stop signs. We will we might say shave a minute off again. I mean we are really looking as Rich said to the minute to try to address this. And I can't emphasize enough, you know, maybe it is a a fault of the past, but something to that we get better with improving our conversations with the most administrators to ensure instructional times. So ongoing, working on it, new visions, same situation except they're not just going to Bush campus. You remember from the conversations of the board uh student board on Del

081College working with them. Chris checks in, her staff checks in with them to ensure they they have been getting what they need and they're supported. Um I think there was academic concerns of course with these families but certainly social emotional and we are we do care about that. That's that's the core of our work right now, right? Social emotional, behavioral and academic are all important. Matter of fact, the board has supported us adding those social workers ongoing to the system to address that particular aspect of our tier one work. So, and what does that look like in a delivering to assist our students? So, it's not just the academics making sure that they can be there on time and they're good here and there. It's checking in on them to make sure they're okay. And

082I want to make sure we continue those conversations, looking ahead, six weeks of implementation, right? We're going to have an ongoing conversation. We're reflective in our practice. We're passionate about what we do. We got into this business because we love doing what we do with students and trying to benefit and do what's best for them. So, we're going to continue that work. I'm not reflecting. We we have growing pains. You have a huge system change, right? It happens whether the communication and other issues could have been done. Absolutely. We got to be reflective in our practice. What can we do better moving forward? So, large change comes larger problems. When you make a mistake at our level, the ripple's larger, right? monitoring elementary school um students that early drop off usage. You remember that we

083offered if eligible for students to come and take advantage of prior if the circumstances of the home needed because they couldn't get on the bus. We we do have a number of students that are taking advantage of that families. We're monitoring that. there was a conversation at some point. Does that end or should we be continuing through the year? So, we want to make sure we monitor that and figure out what comes next as we we set a deadline in December and January and revisit that and how that might look. But, we are definitely looking at it now. We're not going to wait. We have constant feedback groups. We meet regularly um when union issues arise with any of our unions as well as a standard meeting for for a couple of our units. uh

084we outstanding monthly meeting we have engaged and my team has been amazing with their work that they've done and regularly Joe Tiffany and Kelly kudos to them and working with building principles and going and doing site visits and working through the instructional changes that have happened have [laughter] been and optimizing the schedule and how the schedule is supposed to work and what's best for it when it's the main thing to assist. So, we're going to provide a range of uh supports to staff is professional learning and other to continue or just being there to hear what their idea is. No different than what Rich was referring to his driver coming to him saying, "Hey, I got an idea to shave off four minutes." Our my team is approached with ideas and we have to see

085what we got to prioritize. We have toident identify as a short-term and a long-term adjustment to the system. There's there's there's course adjustments. It's a huge system. We just got to figure out what can we do now and what might be something we want to prioritize later. So that's an ongoing conversation. We're six weeks in. We're developing these these ideas. And that is all I have. Um myself and my team are welcome to answer any questions you might have. >> Eric, go ahead. >> Thanks, Mr. Gail. And uh Rich, thank you. Um, that bus time is impressive. I know how much work you folks have put into it and it's really impressive and deserves a round of applause. It's not true. So, [applause] >> I mean, it it's impressive. Um, Tony, I have a question

086for you. Um, how many students are currently participating in the early morning drop off? I do have that number. Um we had um 20 students were originally eligible and signed up for the program. Currently we in attendance um I don't have one buildings um but I'll add all eight of them together. We have 23 students participating as as a best guess >> across all three buildings. >> Yes. About less than less than 10 per three of three buildings. All right. Okay. >> I I have one further thought of it. I'm very pleased that our district is doing this for parents and I'm even more pleased that you were looking at this earlier with a possible continuation through the end of the year. I feel it's really important that we help these parents out the best

087that we can >> and know in addition to that we constant communication with kids world and devsky about the is opportunity to provide that that's an ongoing conversation >> little state ed or um office of family whatever that organization just some issues we're dealing with them to make get that opened up and ready I think that might be launched but um and seeing the interest there to support the is families as well >> that's really Right. And I know there was conversation surrounding how we were managing that staff-wise. Can you share a little bit about how we are managing that early morning >> TA support? Yeah, TA >> TA support. So are we flex timing or paying? I believe it's paying. >> All right. Thank you. >> Correct. Others with questions from Mr. Go. >>

088Has it always been a practice of transportation that when the kids get to school, they sit on the bus for a certain amount of time before they're dismissed? >> There's established times at all different schools, different times that we can release the students. So if a bus route is has a release time of 7:00 and they get there at 6:55, they are required to keep those students on the bus till that 7:00 time frame. Each bus may have different problems, different issues. Some will get there a couple minutes before 7. Some will get there 7:05, 7:10 in which then they pull up and they can unload immediately. So each bus is unique in itself, but they're all targeted with that unload time. They can't unload. So if they get there early, they have to hold

089the kids until that. Sometimes what we try to do as staff and say, "Okay, how do we adjust that bus time instead of that bus getting at that school at 6:55, getting there at 7:01 to avoid that?" Because when they're sitting on the bus, they also become a student management item. And that helps to eliminate that by the least amount of time on the bus, >> right? Cuz I notice I drop off in the morning, I notice buses sitting there with the kids on and dropping our students off, they go in the cafeteria and sit. So it's like three sit. Um that's, you know, it's how the schedule is, but it just like >> it has been and we had that last year at the high school that was and it depends upon the bus.

090Sometimes they're going to get there early. Sometimes there's an anomaly that they get there early, but that, you know, we see it in the morning at the high school for the last 17 years, bus parked waiting for doors to open, >> right? And I'm sure it's always been an issue, but I just noticed it that it seems like there's a lot of sick time. Just like your example, your five, six kids get out at 2:00 or whatever. They sit on the bus for 10 minutes. Then the middle schoolers come out and load and that's another 10 minutes. Then they drive over the high school and they sit for another 20 minutes. So you know that's a lot of restless time for students who've been in a school building. They then they get on the bus

091and you know having more discipline issues with all these kids you know I mean cuz that's like 30 minutes before they actually start driving to the destination. We're collecting data on student management right now. So, I don't have an answer. I mean, I very much like to have the data. We collected all the writeups and the parent complaints and and the principal issues last year. So, we have one complete year of data. So, now we want to base it this year, you know, on a couple things. Some of the buses just have more students, >> right? you. So, um, we're in the presence of collecting that and analyzing it yet, but I just basically have the month of September and that's that was a short month for us. So, I can't quite answer that just

092yet. >> Right. That would be a concern that I would have because you have one driver and say 35 kids sitting with Yeah, definitely kids. please. >> Okay. Is it working? >> Um, okay. Um, I didn't know if transportation keeps track of how many kids are actually on the bus, so they would know for the next year, you know, maybe this bus could take more kids or, you know, the combined runs. And then the other thing I look forward because I'm an employee at Boseies, so I'm a pretty big Boseies advocate um for students at Boseies right now. I'm excited to hear that you guys want to try to get them there a little bit earlier. On the flip side, with the new schedule, I've noticed both AM and PM both students sit on the

093bus for 20 to 30 minutes, whether it's at BOS's or at their either on their afternoon bus to leave for the day if it's P.M. or allowed to be back in the school. So, I think that's kind of a waste of the students time that I don't remember ever having before. Um, so if you guys could maybe look into that. So there's a pretty good amount of time where the CTE kids sit on the bus both A and A >> up at Boseies. I want to make sure I'm clear of what you're saying because we've been in conversation with Mr. Der about what the times are. >> In the beginning of the year, the students would leave and go back to horses and sit on the bus for quite a while. Tell me >> and

094it was both A.M. and P.M. But now I've noticed the buses sit at Boseies for a bit. So say it's 11:15, >> then they sit there till about 11:30, then they go back to Horsets. And I think they're allowed off the bus of course at like 11:45 11:50 whenever the okay >> next period starts. So I just wondered if cuz that's kind of a waste of kids time. So to me I just want to >> Yeah. >> I mean it's just a lot of >> I think in the beginning it's clear there there was yeah I agree some some issues with that. I didn't think it was that drastic but certainly we can look at that. Mr. Donner has been great about providing us information about when our buses are there and then Rich's drivers

095as well to figure out how long they're waiting. I know the this the one in the schedule that's substantial, not substantial is uh several minutes is the end of the day when they come down PM and they arrive down here. It's on the chart and then they have to wait for the 235 um dismissal. So there's like a 8 to 10 minute, I can't remember depending upon the day and how fast they get down here um sit time. Um I can also tell you that seeing those buses in action um they're fine with staying on the bus cuz they can use their cell phone. So we've seen that as well. Okay. Yes. Odd oddity of me. Yes. But regardless, still an issue to be able to look at or disagree with that. I thought I

096didn't think it was that drastic, but certainly people get into the details. So, I have quite a few questions and comments. Um, my first comment that I want to um, say, and I did send this over an email to the president and vice president. Um, I appreciate this presentation. Being able to access it in advance to be able to write down questions and to review material is really important and tonight is the first time I'm getting to see this. And so, I tried to write down my questions as quickly as possible. But having it in advance, especially when we talked about this a couple of months ago, would be a really big help. So um going starting from the beginning um you were talking about the 2017 and 2018 is when you guys started to

097talk about all of these different things and the models and you talked about um the specific committee that was charged to come up with um the hours and the structure in the day for the 6 hour and the 40minut day and and you do talk about how there's 14 teachers and eight administrators. Um, so after that committee, how many times was this brought forward to the rest of the teachers? Because, you know, you're talking about 8 years ago, so you're going to have new teachers that are brought on, different people with different observations. Like, how were people kept in the loop from then until now? >> Yeah. So, it was um there was a feedback loop over the course of that year and a half um to monitor both from from the district's point of

098view. I can speak only because I'm not I can't speak from the HTAGS on what their feedback loops necessarily were but to which we we talked veteran teachers on it well experienced um they were charged with a recommendation like to make a recommendation. It was recognized that we had to do those things, right? Extend the day, what ideas do you have, how do we do this, the point of research. So after which it was presented and it was to go into contract negotiations after that. It wasn't something that um so it laid there as a recommendation to both the district and to the HDA to consider for future negotiations to which it did finally did come into fruition and made it into the contract to go live for 2526. So yeah, there was a delay

099between that um as a priority to make this move. 2018's changed by New York State really was the impetus to get in the contract to make a change. >> Okay. And when was the board informed of this is the model of the school day and this is what was going to happen. Were they ever in the feedback? >> I can't speak to that. Okay. It's a good point. >> Okay. Um >> and I should clarify that I do recall writing a board updates at that time. I just don't recall what they were, but certainly it was major work of the district. So I I do I can't speak to a board update that was sent at a fruition um in late 2017 was >> okay because I do remember at some point in time when

100I was reading over the board um jobs what we're supposed to do is I believe we are supposed to set the hours and for the school day and to kind of have this overall as one of our board goals and to have you know the objective in mind what's best for our students. Um so and then I had another question about um the movement to cut out recess you mentioned and to increase >> cut out recess standardized recess >> standardized recess to make sure Okay. And then I wanted to make a comment on that because um my experience my child's in fifth grade right now and his schedule says lunch ends at 12:05 and recess begins at 12:05. So you can't possibly be in two places at one time. um and it's just labeled on

101the back of his thing. So, in the end, he's having a hard time with it. And the teacher who came tonight and spoke about the scheduling. Well, for fifth grade in his book, he's had this social studies paper for what he's supposed to learn for the States of America. And he said, I'm like, "How come this is still in here? You have had this in here for two since like 2 or 3 weeks now. Why isn't it completed?" and he said, "Well, because we don't have time yet in social studies because there's not enough time in our day." So, that is the feedback that I got, which is the same as what one of the teachers presented. >> So, I do, you know, I do want to speak to that. That was the conversation as

102we built this schedule to you to see where the science and social studies would fit into it with respect to the other work that was being done. There was even a model to which it specified social studies and science within it. I don't know if that was maybe it's the final uh because of teacher discretion on when you can do those things. Um Joe, I don't have to recall the models that were sent. >> So for fifth grade, they have the social studies. >> I think this is an important point. We should make sure that we're clarifying. >> So Katrina, I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. Fifth grade was your question, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah. So for fifth grade, the way their schedule was built in in terms of so

103they have 90minute blocks where they have a math and science combined block and then also a 90-minute block where they have BLA and social studies combined block. And part of the thinking from from working with the building level administration there was wanting the ability for teachers to have flexibility within those blocks to know when is a day where I'm maybe giving a little more time to ELA versus social studies. specific to that to those content areas. There's been work on the curriculum side to the extent possible to start to integrate social studies into the ELA units as well. So there's sometimes where there's a clean match and that 90 minutes is really important there. There's others where it's not such a clean match and they may based on where they are in their units get

104more time to one or the other, but the 90-minute walk together was to get the teachers flexibility done on that. >> Okay. Thank you. So it's it's I can I understand um you know like the thought process and everything behind it and then going through and seeing the execution and saying okay well now we have to shift and change things or you know maybe this isn't quite working out exactly how we wanted to and how do we help the students right now because I feel like that's you know like we're going to have meetings and talk about things but like we have to help them >> right now we can't we can't wait for this stuff to >> What are the drastic issues that you're you're you that we should be looking into that need

105immediately change? >> That would be a much longer conversation that I'm allowed to have on my 5 minutes and I want to try to be able to um to get through some of my more questions. >> Um so when we were talking about the transportation um and you were saying the hour that's just for PM runs only, correct? what you were showing us does not include a full day h so a student could have a halfhour run on either end so that's a combined hour correct of of ride time per day I'm looking at ride time per day not a.m. p.m. >> The data was just to the P.M. or just to the A.M. It was not a combined time on the bus. >> Okay. So, when I look at this and I look at

106the picture as a whole, and I say, okay, we've got kids with a 6 hour and 40 minutes school day and it's longer for the intermediate school kids, correct? Just make sure we have the data in front of us so we're not making assumptions that trust information. So we have 316 minutes is the instructional day. >> Okay. So they are essentially the same. So it's a 6 hour and 40 minute and then if in the best case scenario maybe a half hour on either end if that's the quickest drop off time but I'm curious about like what the other half is. So let's say an hour. So that's like a 7-h hour day. You add an hour, that is an 8 hour day. And so New York state labor laws for people who have an

1078 hour day, they get an hour break in like 220 minutes. And these kids are getting it looks like middle schoolers get a 20-minut break for lunch. [snorts] And kids that are younger are getting a half hour break for lunch. I feel like in general just looking at the big picture and not all of the details, this is a really not good thing. >> I got to understand something. Yeah, there's a halfhour lunch, but our our teachers are more than understanding know when students need particular breaks within the day as Joe said to adjust appropriately to meet their needs. So they get snacks, they have wiggle breaks, they they do things other that's the professionals that understand how to manage those students during that time. We just we trust them by just putting a block

108of time and saying please use this appropriately given the needs of your student. >> Okay? Because the feedback that I get from my own children and um from a lot of different parents on all of this and teachers is that this has been very difficult especially for the younger kids. They are having a hard time focusing. They're having a hard time adjusting. um my my fifth grader and I I can only speak about my children and I and I do because I'm honest and it's not they're I other parents come to me and tell me these things. My oldest son never told me he hated school. He loves his teacher. This year he tells me he doesn't like it for the first time. And that's heartbreaking. >> And then my youngest, he says the same

109thing. And it is not the staff. It is not anybody in this district. It's not the bus drivers. It is It's not the administration. It is nobody. It is. We made decisions. We thought they were going to pan out. It's not panning out. We have to pivot. How quick can we pivot to make sure that we're meeting the needs of these kids because every >> we are meeting the needs of the kids. I want to be careful in how we say that. You know, there there is an instructional day. We have the average GST Boseies instructional day is 6 hours and 39 minutes. There are three districts that are outliers. Waverly Corning Painted Post and Elmmyra at 620 each. So we are well within the realm realm even there's preker students in the area that

110goes 6 hours and 40 minutes. We do not do that. That is not appropriate. So we are well within the range of what's been uh established in many other districts at 6 hours and 40 minutes. So I want to be careful on this idea of a disservice to our students because we have amazing people that do amazing work. So if there's very specific things we need to address, then let's do that. >> It's so like I said, this is in general because here we are just in October and this is the initial feedback that I'm getting that I'm getting from kids that I see that I'm getting from my own kids. I'm being honest with you about the truth. It's not something >> Well, that's why I want details. I want to understand exactly what

111it's it's horrible to hear that our parents have a bad experience. That's not something we like to be able to hear at our level. We want to make sure we're addressing what those issues are and and at the building level of course first and with the teacher. Um because if students feeling that way, that's no way. That's no good. We need to we need to address that, >> right? And I think that what it is is it's a compiling because yes, they get wiggle breaks. Yes, they get snapped. Yes, they get other things. But when you're in lighting like this and everything is completely structured and how much free time do they get to just go build blocks or interact with their peers where they're hanging out playing kitchen set. I mean I remember my

112kindergarten days were spent dancing around 100 people for like hours on end. you know, there was just so much more unstructured interaction where kids get to be kids and and I I do I specifically ask my child and he's very specific and he tells me that these things >> Yeah, I am. I got to keep going on my questions. So, um it's >> play is happening in our prek. It's wonderful work that Joe's been doing. Our kindergarten teachers, I believe, have gotten wind of it, are interested to see what that looks like. It's not just unstructured but intentional play for social emotional behavioral. >> Okay. So I think that >> excuse me. >> Yes. >> You're at your five but you know if no one else has under our rules you get three additional minutes.

113So unless anyone else has a comment they want to make we can okay and then we can come back to you. So >> I think what's happening like with the bus, so for an example, a family I know chose not to use the bus because their child would be on the bus at 6:45 or 7 or whatever and their elementary day starts at 8:30 and then if they rode the bus home, they get home at 4:30, 4:45. So these kids are putting in longer days than what some of their parents work. That's that's the combination of kids need time to not be structured and to be able to play even as fifth graders, even as sixth graders, even as eighth graders, they want to be out. So I mean the kids who come to us,

114they get home whatever 3:30, they don't even want to eat snack anymore. They just want to get outside and play. It's like, well, you need a drink of milk. You need to do something. Well, I did that at school, you know, because it is different. It's not anything against the staff or what they're doing. It's the child that needs the play time. It's the child that needs it. It's different. And it's long. I mean, going to school at 7:15 in the morning, their parents don't even have to. To me, that's way too It's just it's and I know that people work on all these things and everything, but >> you know, as you said, we're in this business for doing what's best for all kids. >> And that's what we have to do. >> And

115yes, they need playing. Yes. >> Yes, they need play in first grade. >> I'm from the old school. I'm not 85 yet, but I remember Norma when she was in our district, but you know, I'm I mean, we might have playtime when we're adults, but we're making these kids. It's a long day. It's nothing to do with the instruction. It's it's to do with the time that they're there. I >> I love this concept of this recess and and um play based learning throughout our grade levels. It's this is not that's not a this year issue. If we were to use the stats from last year and look at the beginning of the day and the end of the day and talk about those long runs, even within the shorter day last year, they were

116on the bus longer. We just switched off some busing for instructional to which they have the opportunity for educators to do playbased. So I think there's an opportunity and I love it Sue of Yeah. playbased um you know just being kids and learning from being kids in the social emotional behavior. >> But you hear your staff saying that we're losing instructional time and the way it's set up and why is that? I mean when we were presented that we're gonna got to change the times because of the Boseis kids they needed what we were presented didn't work didn't happen and you know we were told that Boseies was going to it would be better for the Bosey's kids and as it turned out it's not so >> switch the problem >> right so we have

117issues really that we have to address that's affecting our kids that is affecting our staff Because, you know, I heard from another grade level, not four, it's younger, and I try to teach math after lunch and takes the kids 15 minutes to go to the bathroom. Then when I'm trying to teach them math, they're like, they're done. They can't even focus because it's 1:30 in the afternoon, they're they're done. They're done. And that's a tough subject. It can't be done. You need to learn that. >> Well, they're all tough subjects and it all depends on the kid, right? So I do believe that emphasizing the intention we didn't have this windblock time to address the needs of each individual child based on their own data sets that hasn't existed universally prior in this district. That's

118a huge win. I'm not sure we it's been realized. You see what that looks like in action and what we're trying to accomplish there with if a child is struggling in a particular area, there's an opportunity for, you know, engagement or enrichment in what they're doing. That's that's a a key part of the schedule that had not existed to the extent it has done now. It's academically um appropriate and it it also has the behavioral and social emotional aspects too. That wind block is certainly something that we should be celebrating and figuring out how do we use that best. My other question too was um I've heard that library used to add have had extra programs uh K through 4 and art used to have enrichment times but because of the 4day cycle the art

119and the music aren't able to do that this year. >> So yeah there was um it wasn't universal it wasn't in every building. >> Okay. >> So that was a topic of concern. Uh and speaking with the art department chair last year, there was a request to see could we uh add an art teacher to the elementary to do enrichment across and get them some of those programs. The problem was it was only found in one elementary at the time and what would it look like to extend. Yes, we have had conversations with the librarians and what their load looks like and how that's been different. again meeting with department chairs andor the just the um feedback loops of what their support needs to look like the library clerk and other things are going to

120be part of our budget conversation no doubt to make sure they're supported so it's on the radar >> okay because now those are issues that I know with the 4 cycle >> can't hear you >> um okay with the 4day cycle that seems to be an issue too with our end Um, way back in the day we used to have a gateways program and I think that was math and all of them. >> Is it difficult to change your 4 day cycle to a 5day cycle or a six day cycle? >> Yes. >> So, how did we come up with a 4-day cycle versus a six day? >> It was to um the how many different you wanted to offer PE every other day. You wanted to optimize your traveling teachers. So in a fiveday

121schedule offering the PE every day kind of starts to mess up related areas and special area teachers and those that that travel between buildings. 5day cycle is kind of difficult. You you lose your Mondays often for for breaks. Um so these were all talking 6 day cycle. The continuation of that and what that would look like was also discussed 3 four years ago during some contract negotiations if not longer. Um so the 4day was landed as uh the best way to approach the changes that were we seeking to ensure that core instruction time. You have to remember that prior a student would go to um would be pulled constantly from initial core instruction to attend or go to get RTI support or go to resource room. That's what used to happen in this district because

122the time was limited. You had to pull from somewhere. So you're you're pulling a student that needs help in just initial instruction. You're saying, "Yeah, we know you're doing math right now, but we're going to pull you out to resource room to review the stuff that you're now additionally missing." It didn't make sense. The extended day and the wind block offering a rotation in such a way allowed for this allowed to address students better. I can't emphasize that enough. I think I hope next Tuesday you're all going to join us and we'll we'll take a look at some of this action and what what we're trying to accomplish and what the end goal what the vision of this MTS work is in tier one and we don't want to pull students out of core instruction.

123We need to protect that. We need to have our educators working with students and then identifying the help that they need and supports in the wind block and enrichment as you referred to earlier opportunities to excel their learning. Previous model didn't open ourselves to that. You're pulling kids out initial instructions through remediation. Did it make sense? >> You want to come back here? >> Um, two out of my three children were in RTI and it never interfered with their regular classes. >> Good. >> Yeah. >> Oh, I think Word still wants to talk first. >> Go ahead, Mr. Conlin. I I would just like if the um presentation by the big pots grade school teacher is accurate and there's a loss of science time in the classroom and there's a loss of social studies time

124in the classroom then I think you should look at it and I don't need a response. I just am concerned in in today's world if they're not getting science and they're not getting social studies but they're getting other things. I don't know what it is, but it should be looked at. >> No, no, no. Former social studies teachers myself. I agree. >> Hey, sorry. Go ahead. Um, and then, uh, I just thought about this, and it's not to throw anybody under the bus, but a lot of times my, um, one son, because he is also in the RTI programs, and he did get bugged in elementary school. Um, but this year he wants to be in Windblock because Windblock is when he gets to play on the computer and do things on the computer, which

125is fine, but I'm also a parent who is like, I want to limit the amount of time that you're on a computer and I want to make sure that you are doing XYZ. So, um, there was there's that. So, I mean, I guess to me, I don't want to keep asking questions back and forth because that's not tonight isn't going to be able to solve anything. But I think that what we need to have happen is even in all of these conversations that, you know, you were talking about with curriculum and everything else. I didn't ever hear that parent feedback was involved because what a kid comes home and tells their parent is important. and what parents see within their kids and their learning ability and what they're able to achieve is important. This feedback

126to be able to give because it's just a conversation of okay, everybody's here because we all want to do better and we need to help and we're going to improve things. That's that's our goal. We all care about that the most. Um and then when I'm I'm still confused about the PE and the push for PE to replace recess. So if we didn't have the extra PE instruction, would they just have recess instead? >> No, it wasn't that that that's not No, PE was previously not we didn't have enough PE time in our schedule. We added the additional PE teacher non- elementaryaries and put it on the rotation to allow to meet the PE requirements in New York State which we weren't meeting prior. Recess still occurs. >> Did recess ever count towards that PE

127requirement? I think at some point there was an acronym for it when I first started. I don't remember what it was called. Did I What was that called? Louis >> Kids of Action. >> Yes. >> Yeah. I mean, I just kicked it back 10 years. Sorry. There was a program to which it was overseen by PE teachers or something that worked out with New York State um that fell by the wayside. This allowed us to uh ensure we're meeting the requirements and also provide uh recess ensuring recess across the building. >> Okay. And so like I said, I think that this needs to I think we need to look at this. I think we need to have board members on it. I think we need to figure out some sort of a way that we

128have better communication between all of the branches to come up with a solution because what I hear from teachers and staff is a drastically different picture than what I hear from administration and is also different from what I hear from parents and nobody's at fault. Like I said, nobody, you know, it's it's hard when you're working hard and you know, you feel like somebody's attacking you. I don't think anybody's attacking anybody. I think we're all like everybody had the best intentions. Things are trying to work out, >> right? It's we need to pivot. We need to make some quick. We need to make some changes. We have to do it quickly because I mean, especially for intermediate school kids right now, my heart goes out to them the most because they lost kindergarten and first

129grade. They lost their foundational skills. Nobody's fault that there was a pandemic, but they lost that. And now they're struggling again. And it's somehow they got the earliest time slot, which nobody really knew was going on. And nobody really knew that it was two-tier going to be a two-tier system instead of a three- tier system. And that communication, it didn't happen because I'm not sure why it was. So, we need to fix that. And that's that's what I think we need to do going forward so that we can get into the specifics. And I don't know if that means that we have a committee that create that sits down and does this. I don't know the exact solution, but I know that it can't be tabled. It can't be put off anymore. Action needs to

130be play take place and it has to happen quickly. And I think because everybody cares so much about all of the kids in the district, I think it can happen because everybody's heart is in the right place. >> Thank you. Are there any other final comments before we move on agenda? I just will say that I'm very thankful for the presentation. I know a lot of work went into putting that together and so thank to the team that did that. Thank you very much. Uh you know it is true we're only 6 weeks in and already we have seen improvements being made and things like weak flats ridge road uh pick up and drop off the Bosey's time as we talked about and it's clear to me that everyone's working to try to make improvements

131as we're and particularly the rich thank you for what you said about the transportation and the really significant pro progress there and how you've empowered your team to feel energized and to make improvements. Uh all of that is a really positive thing. So I know we have more work to do as was laid out in the presentation, but thank you for the time this evening and sharing what you did. So with that, we'll move to our next item in the agenda, which would be is there anything Mr. Gill you have for >> Terry has something? >> Okay. This would be item six, superintendent report. Dr. Douglas is um away at a funeral. So, we'll have u Miss Clark. Tom asked me to um give some comments about the nature of his family. Thank you. wasn't

132able to be here tonight. So, so this year has brought with it a series of difficult decisions, changes to school start times, end times, the closure of one of our elementary schools, and the reality of a tight budget that has forced us to all stretch resources further than ever before. There are not these were not easy choices and have understandably stirred strong emotions across our community. Yet, through it all, I've witnessed your unwavering commitment to doing what's best for our students. You've listened. You've debated, made decisions with care and courage. You've faced this with grace, and remained focused on the long-term health and sustainability of our district. We thank you for showing up, for staying engaged. Your service is deeply personal. It affects families, teachers, staff, and most importantly, the children you're here to support.

133Thank you for your dedication, your time, and your heart. And then now, so um what we wanted to point out, what our lovely students have provided, there are many cards. Um, I don't know if you guys could see the the banner that some of our students made thanking you. Um, some of I hope you've gotten the opportunity to read some of the cards because they're lovely. Um, you'll also see each one of you got a magnet and Haley was in communication with our students and asked them to provide a word that they thought of when thinking of the board. So, those are all student driven words on their magnets. Um, you'll also find on the back thing here that basket was from Gardener Road. Um, we all have certificates for your service and dedication. You

134know, it can't be an easy job, but we certainly are appreciative and thankful that you show up each and every day. Um, the book that's there, I believe, was mentioned through the board. Um, it's the inches generation and again, thank you so much for everything you guys do. I know it can't be easy sometimes, but we all appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Terry. This is this is best part of being a board member right here. I mean it. >> Um, okay. Okay. So, we will move to the next item on the agenda, finance items for action. And I'm going to need my glasses. We have there's no audit committee report. So, then we have an action vote on item 7.03 through 7.11. Is there a motion? comments, questions, discussion on the

135motion. Is that >> Yes. I just had some questions on the change orders 711. Um, what is the AV storage split system? Could you explain where you're reading that from so I know where to reference >> the highlighted portions on the change order log. >> When you scroll down in the change order log, it was an owner request to switch the AV storage split system. Yep. So page three under big flats, correct? Um yes, if that's under big flats, it's cut off at the top. If that's a continuation from there, I don't know. >> Um so yes, this is a cooling system that was put into a um a um storage closet that holds a host of AV equipment. Um the equipment within this closet due to the quantity of the equipment in this closet

136was generating more heat than anticipated. So to protect that equipment in this closet that's what unit was installed for the owners. Okay. And that is a similar is that similar for the second um $2,200 charge cuz there was two of them. Um the ones towards the bottom that says service item. >> Uh it's on page I think it's the four page four. >> Oh the 2200. >> Yes. That's related. That's for the control systems. >> That is the same one. Okay. And then um the area one lighting for that $13,000. What was that for? It was an omission, I believe. Uh yes. So this was to uh tie in some existing lighting in the high school gym. So the lighting um where the um existing corridor that's there where the the existing structure was torn

137down uh to tie the lighting back in um there was an issue with the panel um to tie that lighting back in. So there's some extra work that had to be done to the light back into the corridor. So yes, the O is an omission um in the design work to tie that in. >> So I have a question, you know, like for when these omissions happen. Yes. >> Does it always just fall on us to cover it? Like if the engine if if they omitted it and it's not really 100% our fault. Do they ever help cover some of that cost? >> Um it depends. So this is work that would have actually be done anyway to tie this lighting in. So it would have been in the drawing at one point or another

138to have this work done. It was caught in the scope of the construction. So once it was realized that this component was missing in the the drawings group pivoted came to a decision how how to solve it and the work proceeded with this change order. Um so the work would have had to proceed one way or another. Um the conversations really come into play with with when they're coded as errors as far as who's going to cover the cost. So, those are pretty in. >> Okay. And then I had my um final question on the owner request for the area C floor finishes. I move So this is at Ridge Road. Um this is to um make the flooring match um in the existing uh what's called area B. So the existing center of the

139of the Ridge Road footprint to um or what was the center of the um of the Ridge footprint to the north wing of the Ridge footprint where the staff is now. Um owner requests to have the flooring match for a better finish. So flooring. >> So if we chose not to do that, what would happen? The flooring would not match. um for um so with the >> you were talking about the entrance entrance to the >> Yeah, there was work done in connecting the the two to the Kwing and off to the other excuse me off to the other wing and >> B-wing. Thank you. And um when they just a decision was made on the wall that's going to go where the gym is and the music room. There was a floor and some

140floor base and a transition that went from the current Turzo to the new Turzo. We did this at parts of the high school as well where we cut out spaces to better uh match it. Now is the time to do it cuz once we put some walls up, it's going to be a long time before we can touch that particular area if I recall correctly. So it was a matter of now's the time to make the match. Otherwise, it's going to be like that for quite some time until that particular uh corner will be addressed. Like I said, that wasn't likely to happen again soon. >> A long time or a better given the scope of the work that's being done. >> Can I just add on to that for a second? Um, so when

141we're looking at these additions, we also have subtractions along the way that play into either the monies that are there are or part of our contingency budget that we put aside for issues such as this. So that contingency es and flows depending on the scope of the work that's being done of of now that we have the walls apart or this apart or that apart, we decide we don't need this anymore. So that money goes back in and we do need this unforeseen thing. It goes in. So that account often times es and flows. So my question would be where is that contingency budget now? And that may not be something you can answer right now, but you know, where where are we with the usage of funds for that? >> Um, well, I can't

142answer it completely. Right now, the project is um progressing um on time and on budget. It's actually um performing very well. Um we're expecting it to all this um hopefully under budget. So, we don't take these decisions lightly. When we look at making decisions like this with a $22,000 change order, we do look at the funds available. We look at the futuring of the project to make sure that it is a a reasonable decision to make. >> So, in making that decision, we what you're saying is that you do not have a concern that contingency budget is coming. We're coming too close to you know using all of those funds. So, we're in a good place financially with contingency budget even though you don't know the number off the top of your head and this

143is part of the flow of these projects. Yes, that is correct. >> Mr. G. >> So, I'd just like to make two comments. Number one, on the flooring, I think the real issue is do you do it right the first time or do you not do it properly? And unfortunately, this is going to sound really harsh, but in my experience here in Horetss for years, we squeeze a dime to get four nickels out of it. And now we're trying to do it properly. And I think you walk through the the these buildings that have been completed and they're magnificent. So, these are the people we hired to give us their professional opinion. And I don't think they've disappointed us in any construction I've seen. So, the question is fair, but I think the the real

144issue is do you want to do it right or don't you? And as for the contingency issues, um, every building we never exceeded the contingency budgets in construction. And as a matter of fact, um, there was money left over from projects that were allowed us to buy alternates for the ranch project. So, the contingencies have not been a concern to date and um from our last meeting, we're not near um having a problem and a concern about contingencies on either the Ridge Road project or the high school gymnasium project. >> Yeah. And I just want to add to that for the benefit of the board. um having served on the facilities and grounds committee for many years and I know some other folks have too we actually get to see that contingency um reconciliation in

145that meeting setting and that's what Mr. Clunk was referring to but I and I've stated to Dr. about this. I think it would be helpful if the full board as part of these change order logs also saw that roll up and that compared to the overall budget so that we have the context in which we see this spending occurring that overall is well within the budget and within the contingency. So, it's my understanding that he's going to they're working on a way to better portray that and um and I'll remind Dr. Douglas of that. So hopefully we'll see in the next board meeting uh something that's a little bit more in depth and we'll answer some of these questions proactively. Are there other um questions or discussion points on the motion pending? So call for

146a vote. All those in favor of 7.03 through 711 say I. I. Any oppose? Nay. Any abstensions? I'm abstaining on 7.11 because I do feel like we should be having that information so we can get a full picture before we make a vote on it. That's why I'm choosing to abstain from 7.11 only. Everything else is a yes. >> Okay. Thank you. So with that the motion carries and we will move to item eight personnel items for action. We have one 8.02 02 the HR recommendations for action. Is there a motion? Is there a second? >> Comments, questions on the motion. Go ahead. >> I just wanted to recognize the teaching assistant who's going to be retiring um in April. I thank her for her years of service to our district and hopefully she has

147a wonderful retirement. Susan Fario Deasi here. Any other items? Um, I was just noticing under section C, we have 1, two, three, four, five, six transportation resignations. Um, two of those are people who were just starting to drive. Three of them, um, one of them is a dispatch and three are regular drivers. And then when you go further down, there is an additional driver who is going out on leave. So, I believe that makes eight. Um, having been a former bus driver, I feel like that's pretty significant. Um, so I'm a little concerned about that. I kind of feel like um when you see that number of resignations and where we are timewise that that could be telling of um morale maybe within an area possibly or um I mean I feel like when it's

148that many we should definitely be getting some sort of an exit survey to find out the reasoning behind it because that's a big that's a lot of d that's a lot of drivers trying to get bus drivers is a hard thing. That's a lot. That's a big number. So, that was my concern that I wanted to bring up on that. >> Thank you. Anything else? Okay. Call for a vote. Uh all those in favor of 8.02 say I. I. Any oppos? Nay. Extensions. Okay. Motion carries. Item nine, appointment of officer for action. We have 9.02 appointing Stacy McCaulay as deputy treasurer. Get my computer there. The uh the action that's recommended is that the board of education appoints Stacy McCauley as deputy treasurer for 2025 through 2026. Is there a motion? >> Second. >> Thank

149you. Comments or questions on the motion? Call for a vote. All those in favor of 9.02 say I. I. Any oppose? Nay. Extensions. Motion carries. Item 10, miscellaneous items for action. We have three, sorry, four, item 10, 10.02 through 10.05 05 for action. There a motion. Okay. Comments or questions on the pending motion? Seeing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor of 10.02 through 10.05 05 say I. I. Any opposed? Nay. Any abstensions? Okay. Motion carries. Moving to item 11, board policies. First, we will start with the policy committee report from the October 2nd meeting. Um, Mr. Conflin. >> Yes. So, we um have uh two first readings and one second reading. And I wanted to take a couple minutes and talk about policy 6231 which uh is title one PSN programs

150and services. Um the committee recommended to totally delete that policy and it's there that it says be deleted in its entirety because it's not required by law and because of advice to council. But I think more importantly than those two issues is PSEN is not a vocabulary word we even use anymore. That word was around when I started teaching in 1976 and it went out of vogue maybe in the late 80s early 90s. All of the legal references in the policy are from 1987. So all of these schools with special educational needs, the law has dramatically changed since 1987. So the policy is just purely outdated. So that I think is the more important reason that it should be deleted. It's in its entirety and that was the conclusion of the committee. Thank you very

151much. So in terms of the agenda, there's one policy that has come up for second reading and therefore approval. That's 11.03. So we'll first deal with that and then we there are two for as Mr. Compton just made reference to first reading for discussion but not action. So is there a motion for the approval of the proposed changes to BOE policy 6230 federal funds and 1103. Okay. comments or questions on the proposed changes? >> Um, I just wanted to say that I'm voting no to those changes on 11.03 because I had stated that at the last meeting. I didn't think that we should delete the whole um policy. >> Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. So, call for a vote on 110 11.03. All those in favor say I. I uh we have any oppos? >>

152No. >> Any abstensions? Well, we uh we have five yes votes, one no and one abstension. So, that will carry. Uh board policies for first reading, no action. Mr. Conklin just explained uh specifically the 1201 edits, but are there any questions or comments from board members for the consideration of the policy committee? Miss >> Zarski. Um, yes, I understand what Warren is saying about the Title One and the PSN, and maybe that's not language that you are um that you use, but I feel like Title One is something that's still around. So, maybe we should have a policy that is addressing Title One and how that functions. Am I incorrect on that? Doesn't title one still exist? Yeah, it's following another policy and the the way we spend it is um dictated by and has

153been uh audited in 2017. Um the language here um is not applicable. We would follow what through our New York State audit title one funds. So there is a separate policy I believe on title title funds. >> Okay. I'd like to know exactly where that policy is so I can review that. >> Just so everybody heard 1900. >> Any other comments or questions for the consideration of the policy committee? Okay, let's move to the next item on the agenda, which would be item 13, the board president's report. And so there are several actual agenda items we'll take separately here. Uh first just a couple of comments from me and we already said this, but again, thank you very much to everyone for the board of education recognition. um cards and and all the other things

154and it is incredibly appreciated. Um those those are extremely sweet and touching. So, thank you for that. I I wanted to mention that uh I do appreciate we've had some members of the community who have utilized the horse's board of education mailbox I talked about in a prior meeting. And uh so those emails all get read. There are several that um are pending for it. It's been my goal to because as a president I'm the sort of spokesperson to respond to them on behalf of the board and I've been trying to do that on a weekly basis. I was out of town for work two days this week and there's a couple I still need to get to. So I apologize for the responses being a little bit slow but I want everyone to know

155that they are read and uh and responded to as you know reasonably quickly as possible. I wanted to there were a couple that related to the petition that was delivered to the board in the last meeting and I just wanted to comment on that briefly. Um you know that was appreciated and that's something that uh has was shared with the board and is we have as a point of reference as we consider the where we are thus far this year with these changes and and what additional actions may need to be taken. There was some reference and emails received that um suggested at least as I've read them that the board had some kind of legal obligation to to take action because we had received a petition and I just want to clarify that that's

156not the case. I mean, of course, it's a good as a board, we're interested in what the community thinks and and so that represents the viewpoint of those who signed the petition and certainly that's um good and um information to have as well as all the other information from various stakeholders that we take in. And so I don't I'm not for a second suggesting it's not something that I think that we would consider, but it also only represents, you know, 10% or less of the potential population, the school population, right? So what are the views of the other 90%. And that's our goal is to try to hear from other people and um get as much input as we can as we consider what we may do. So rest assured that is something that we

157have taken in as well as the other input that we receive. But I just there's no formal sort of legal requirement for the board to act on it and to the extent anyone had that um thinks that that's the case. I'm happy to talk with them further but I I wanted to clarify that because there was I think some misconception in the emails that I saw. Okay. Okay. So then I'm going to move to 1302 board of education goals. We talked about this in our last meeting. We had an initial draft of our board goals for the year. These were sent out to the board members by email for their, you know, consideration over the last couple of weeks. And I'm, it's my understanding, I think, that there was no additional feedback received. So, I'd

158like to see if we can agree upon these this evening. But first, I'd open it up if there is discussion that anyone has at this point on the draft that's contained in the public content section of 1302. Go ahead. >> Um, yes. So, I do think that um number one, the focus educational the presentations on the performance level of the students. So, I'd like to kind of shift that presentation word, right? Because we get presented information, but we as the board aren't necessarily having a lot of discussion about the performance and what we want specifically to happen and the direction we'd like to see things go. And I think that that's very important because we are the community's voice for what they need for their kids. And I think that it should be more geared

159towards what we need um what we need to do about performance levels where where are we having assessments how do we know that we are effectively getting correct feedback what are those tools that we're using how do we you know I feel like that has to be like the way that we get presented things and then the timing of how we get stuff it makes it very difficult to actually ever accomplish anything I guess is one or change things or like really have like meaningful dialogue because it's it feels very one-sided if if that makes sense. So I feel like that should be shifted. We want the performance levels but I we we need more than just we need to have like a work session maybe is is what I'm thinking. not just a presentation

160like a work session where we really sit down for a couple hours and look at this is how things are managed. This is how we administer things and have like real being able to have real dialogue back and forth. Being able to ask questions in real time, you know, I think that has to be more of a work session than a presentation if that makes sense. Well, I I would um suggest if you look at goal number two, it talks about conducting additional retreats during the school year. One of those could focus on what you're talking about. >> But with retreats, we could be losing other feedback. So like, you know, tonight we got feedback from staff directly. the end when you have well work sessions, you may not always have dialogue back and forth,

161but it's trying to bring more people to the table or like make people aware of the conversations we're having so that they can see exactly what it is and the more specific questions, you know, and the back and forth because then they can see like, oh yes, that specific questions was asked and it was answered in this way and this is what we're doing and they can see that. >> Okay. Do you have some specific language you'd like to see? This has been, you know, over a month now that we've had this draft out for feedback. And so, um, do you have some specific wording you'd like to see reflected in number one that you want to offer or if we're not ready to prepare to prove these this evening because you need more time

162for that, I suppose we can table it, but you know, we're trying to move to where we can I and I'll just add I mean, these are overarching goals, right? Like within the scope of a goal, we could then talk and say we want to drill down and do A, B, and C. So, it's not like this somehow boxes us in. Uh, it's setting overarching goals that we then have the ability to to flesh out as the year goes on. But I um, you know, I frankly I'm not sure exactly how you want to modify that based on what you're saying. >> No, I just wanted to be able to give you feedback with like how I'd like to see us working through that. So, I would say yes, I agree with this goal. I

163think that student performance is really important, but the functionality of how we work through um the discussions and things like that. I feel like, you know, it could still be a presentation, but it can shift. Does that make sense? >> Okay. I misunderstood. I thought you were wanting to change it, but you're just no >> clarifying what you think the presentation should actually how it should function, how it should be structured. Okay. Thank you. Yes, please. >> Katrina, if I'm hearing what you're saying, what I think possibly you might be asking for is like a an interactive data presentation. So, are you talking about like us receiving data prior, being able to prepare questions, the team presents to us, and then we can present questions that we have during that time. So, are you talking

164about more of an interactive presentation? >> Yes, I would definitely like to have a more interactive. So, like, you know, tonight was kind of hard cuz we're writing down our questions as they're moving through the slides. So, to be able to have our questions that we can write out in advance or like being able to have more of a back and forth and not being constrained to our eight minutes of discussion because student performance is a really big deal to me. So it's I'm just trying to think of language for this. So focus educational board of education presentations on you know I I think what you're looking for is data with interactive review maybe I mean I'm okay with how this is I'm okay with how this is fun like Dan said I'm okay with

165this this is the big goal and then we can still talk about like more like what's going to happen but I just wanted to bring that forward forward cuz we're talking about it now. Sometimes after we have meeting, I forget. I go home and I don't send my stuff over and you know, so that's why I'm just talking about it. >> So you're you're good with the language of the goal you're looking for in the process. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> that's a very helpful clarification. Thank you. Are there other uh goals or discussion that folks like to have or members would like to have on what we have in front of us as the draft? Is there dare I say a motion to approve the goals? >> Second. >> Any other comments

166or questions on the draft? All those in favor say I. I. Any uh nazs or abstensions? Okay, great. Thank you. I honestly appreciate the input and uh I will um we'll finalize these and then we can flush it out and make sure that we fulfill the goals and and the implementation guidance. Uh it's very helpful. Thank you. So, >> is there air conditioning on right now? I don't know. >> I think it's all computerized. Um, so the next item under the president's report 1303, it's just stable that labeled as board communication, but let me explain what this is. So, I referenced earlier the uh board mailbox that we created and put on the outward facing website that allows anyone to send an email to that mailbox. Then it comes to all the board members um

167simultaneously and then as I explained you know we to avoid open meeting law issues we don't get into a back and forth but the board president can respond accordingly. Uh there was discussion at the last board meeting um that she had brought forward that she had raised previously and still wanted to discuss whether in addition to that should know each board member here we have a horsesdist.com email address that gets utilized for our weekly updates and and other you know board related communication and the question was should each member's ored's address also be available under their name to the extent anyone in the public would want to utilize that. Um, so because we there was a a request to discuss that, I wanted to make sure it was on the agenda for discussion. So, do

168you want to sort of since you had asked for it, would you like to say anything in favor of the or speak to the issue? >> Okay. >> Uh, thank you, Dan. I still think we should have our own individual email. Obviously the whole district available for the public if they want to in individually email us and I do agree with Dan being the one responding where we would forward our emails so everyone can see them and then still have Dan respond but for the public to be able to access us as individuals and then obviously pass information I think that's important. Thank you. So um I realized so it there is a board policy 2710 I believe that talks about BOE BOE use of email. I made a note of that. Yeah. 2710 board

169use of email. So I think to the extent the board is interested in doing this, we could have a motion to modify policy 2710 to include posting the board members individual district emails on the board of education district website. Is that the motion in line with your desire? Okay. Does someone want to make that motion? >> I'd like to make the motion. >> Is there a second? >> Okay. Comments, question, discussion on the motion? >> Please. So, I'm not sure I understand that a community member would feel comfortable emailing an individual board member and then the board member from what I'm hearing must not may must forward it to the super or uh the board president and then the board president responds. So, if we had what we currently have, which is a board mailbox,

170the argument that I heard last meeting was members of the public would be afraid or would be, I don't know, afraid's the right word, but would be unwilling to communicate to a a a collective mailbox box, but they would be more than willing to communicate with an individual person on the board. And I guess my question is is is if the issue was that important to the individual in the community, they wouldn't they would drop an important issue. If they were forced to send it to a community mailbox versus an individual mailbox, I find that hard to believe. If it's an important issue and I don't understand what the purpose of the intermediary step is, an email goes to an individual board member who must then send it to the president and all other board

171members and the individual board member can't respond. So I I doesn't seem to be an important intermediary step when we're to get the information to us. Thank you, Mr. Conklin. Does anyone else want to speak on the motion? I think um sending it sometimes a person might have to send it to Dan because he knows Dan and they might send it to you Warren because they know you. They might send it to me because they know me and and then it goes to the board president. It's just a way of saying to the community who elected us, yeah, if you have a concern, reach out to us and no, we can't respond. We're not going to respond. We're going to send it to the president. But I don't think it's a bad thing to have

172all of our individual contacts up there. It's not I don't I know other districts do it and I don't think it's a bad thing that people can contact us directly. I mean, if we're out in the public, they're they're going to come up to us and say something to us. They do if they see us. Um, they come up and say something to us. So, I don't think it's a bad thing to put it out there. But, I guess it's just a preference of And we haven't done this before, but I I in our mailboxes, are they all set up the same way? Like everybody has the folders in their mailboxes >> of this uh of the board general address. >> Yes. Yes, should be. >> Okay. It's not just you and me. Everybody has

173>> No, no, it's all everyone has equal access. I think it's just who can I think there's a who can respond system doesn't allow everyone to respond. >> Right. I mean, I didn't get my board email until last week. So, I didn't I didn't get to I mean, I've read them now. I've caught up, but I didn't have them. >> Okay. >> So, but I do know other places have, you know, their emails out there. I'm not opposed to everybody out there. >> Anyone else? Matt, please go ahead. >> I think we're just talking about general sentiment and trust uh with the community. We're going to talk about you can email us at any time and you should just email us at any time and we will be responsible board members and forward it to

174the proper authorities to make sure it gets where it needs to go. But if we're talking about community members who often say we can email you if we want to and we should I think you should. I mean, I I get it's an extra step and it is a little redundant and I agree with you, Warren, in that respect. But if we're just talking about the general trustworthiness of the community and trusting us as their representatives, elected representatives, see what's seeally, professionally >> others train. >> Yeah. So, I'm in favor because I I agree too. It might seem like it's a small thing, but I think that sometimes people do just want to reach out to you because they know you and they feel comfortable and you know that they know that you're going to

175handle the situation and let the board president know and then the president is going to be able to make like determinations on how to manage and you know respond to the issue. Um, but also talking about that folder, the how the folder thing works because when I did get in the email, I think that we should have some training. Now, this might sound silly on how on how to use the folders because I was like, these emails are disappearing. And I where they where did that email go? Because I was reading I saw there was an email and then I didn't get to read it. So, I went to go try to read it and then it wasn't there. And I'm like, what? And then I was like, "Oh, there's different folders." Because I don't

176do that stuff. And I know it sounds silly, but in the future, there could be a board member like me and we may not all be here. So maybe we should make sure that we put that somewhere to make to help people understand how the email process works and like the board president is going to put them cuz I like I like that idea of okay, I've read this one check. I get I get the processing of it and it makes sense. I just didn't know it was happening. >> Okay. Can I just Yeah, I'm happy to um go into more detail and but essentially just in order to make sure that we are responding to Terry and I on a weekly basis are are moving them to either a you know have responded to

177folder or to no response needed folder. We actually get quite a bit of spam in this mailbox. Um, and so the intent is though not to delete them so that they're still available. It's just a way of tracking whether or not they've been addressed. But sorry if that wasn't I didn't explain it. I I deal with email quite a bit. Well, I'm going to say something that maybe has a little bit of a different perspective, but when we're talking about transparency, I actually feel it's a lack of transparency to have a question from the public come to just one board member and then go to Dan to decide if we see it or not or if that's the process. I I find that to be divisive between us. Um I feel that as a board

178we act as a collective. So if something's going to come to us, it should come to us as the board rather than to an an individual email because then it's like, oh, Aaron got an email. She knows something that, you know, Cara and Katrina and Matt don't know right now. And I see it as a leveling that if it's a collective email, we are a collective board. It comes to us collectively for our review. We can then collectively have conversation, you know, as as need be when the time arises and know all of that information at the same time. So, I would not be for um us having our individual emails out there because um you know, I I like the idea of having a collective email where we're all on the same page at

179the same time. >> Yes, of course. Uh first I just want to thank you for your time because um just to explain more Warren um a couple months ago when I brought this up maybe two months ago we didn't even have a board email where we could get email from the public and then the fall was there where we had the general I I think maybe Aaron you might have misunderstood. I think everyone should see emails that we all individually get. Absolutely. But then we just know we don't respond. We're that you know if we're present is the one responding. So, I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. >> Um, and maybe in other school districts when they send an individual's um email to a board member, would it go to the the we

180have a collective? Would it go to that person, too? Like would it be attached like my email attached to the one we have now? >> I think that just be made you know could probably set up different ways that um >> right >> I'm not sure. >> I mean in the end everybody would see it. I just wondered if it would I because I'm not in the >> So just so I can understand if this comes if we discuss this further the logistics. So the suggestion if it's there and it says your name and they want to click on it somehow that message goes to you but also at the same time is sent to other board members is that or to that to the generic address >> right that's when it you know so

181now it's out there that it's known it's being sent to that as well as because we're talking about an open session right now so there's a yes we could do that but it would become apparent on the CC line or some other way that oh yeah someone else is getting I think it should just be individual. We're all responsible enough to pass. >> Well, the motion is individual. So, >> yeah. >> Okay. I just wanted a step at the end, >> I think. Okay. >> Sorry. Sorry. >> Um, but there are I I have talked to a couple of other uh board members, other boards, and I asked them how they they did it. They do things and they have both. They have their individual and the collective and they said, you know, we have

182it and it's not super active. I mean, it's been active for us lately because there's more concern. They're like, sometimes it's really active and sometimes it's like not that active. But it's just a, you know, the olive branch of we're here, communicate with us any way that you feel comfortable and then we all, you know, we're all going to bring it to the table. So, they they have both. A lot of places have both. That's >> I thank you. I think everyone has been heard on the motion. I'll just offer my comments briefly. I think it's an I'm glad we had the opportunity to talk about it. Thank you for asking for it to be on the agenda. Um I respectfully tend to agree with um Miss Shioone. I think that as board members, you

183know, the the one of the things that drilled into our heads is we only have any kind of authority or role when we sit as a board. You know, individually we have no authority or role and so I like the idea of a to the extent someone wants to communicate that it goes to that the board as a whole. Now, I'm not saying I have complete faith that if it went to one individual board member, they, you know, we could have a process for forwarding it on, but it just seems to me that that is, it's kind of was stated, just a, you know, a multi-step duplicative process of of what we're trying to achieve, which is allowing the full board to be able to receive input from the community. So for that reason, I

184would be in favor of maintaining what we currently have unless and until we realize that it's not adequate for some reason, but doesn't seem to need to be the case at this point. So with that, I'll call for a vote on the motion. All those in favor of modifying the policy as we discussed to include individual email addresses on the corsets district website say I. >> I. We can we can vote on it again. >> Well, it it fails anyway. So, I mean there's if there are four in favor, then it doesn't carry because you need five, but we can certainly talk about it again at the next meeting. That's totally totally fine with me. So, okay, let's um let's move then 1304, the last item under the board president's report. Um it's labeled association

185comments and this is in response to the comments that the um Mr. Trinity uh on behalf of the HDA and other bargaining units in the district brought forward at the last meeting requesting whether the board would consider having some regular time on the board's agenda to receive reports from bargaining unit leadership. And so there was a request from several board members to have this on the agenda for discussion. So I wanted to make sure to to to do that. So, uh, I would open it up to anyone who wants to speak on this issue and then we can see if there's support for a motion, um, you know, one way or the other. So, does anyone want to be recognized on this question? Miss, >> I am absolutely in favor of our teachers and all

186of the other um committees being able to approach and have conversation with the board. Um I think it was shared with us that there's a number of 21 associations. Is that it? >> 10. Okay. >> So, >> okay. So, 13 13 groups of individual employees. um 10 of them that are recognized as bargaining units, three that are not, but still we're talking about 13 different groups. Where did I get 21 from? Anyway, um 13 different groups. So, as I was ruminating on this and thinking about it, I would like to share um that I think this is a wonderful idea. I think that we I would like to see a policy surrounding that that would bring this to fruition. In saying that, there needs to be protocols and regulations of course as part of this.

187Um, and so that we're able to represent all voices that may want to share. And I would like to state that I think it's appropriate just as it as we as a board have items that are put on the agenda for discussion under each bullet point. I think it would also be appropriate for these groups to submit their bulleted agenda items of topics that they would like to share during this time um with a cuto off date prior to our meeting. So we generally as a board Dan um and the and Sue and the individual board members that contribute per per month have these conversations about a week prior to our board meetings to establish an agenda for nights such as this. So my my thought would be that uh different the different groups 13

188representatives of each group could funnel their concepts and their ideas and maybe we not don't have anybody for a month maybe we have a few people for each month but they would funnel their agenda topics through to Terry um that would then be combined and shared over to uh Dan and Sue as part of the um agenda creating process, but it would need to be timely, right? So, um at that agenda meeting, creation time, those requests would be here and then of course there would need to be some kind of a time limit. I mean, as we've seen, our uh representation can come to public open time. However, if there is somebody from each one of those groups coming every single time as we, you know, as part of discussion, they could essentially take over

189the public comment section right in in timeliness of that. So, I think this would be a great addition to that uh to allow teachers and I keep saying teachers, but I mean all 13 groups, sorry, teachers keeps coming out first. um all staff members to be able to present um but in a structured way. I think that would be a great addition for us to hear the wonderful positive things that are happening in the district. And that's all I have to say. >> Thank you. >> Who else would like Mr. Conklin? [clears throat] >> I'm all right with the any unit having a time to speak, but I think we have a public session. So any unit right now has the time, a representative of any unit has the time to come and speak and

190individuals within the unit as we saw tonight. Teacher from Big Flats uh came. I think I'm more in favor I'm not opposed to this, but I'm more in favor of a committee of board members and the superintendent and whoever he wants to select. It's he because we have a male superintendent and um representatives from since the hta asked, I'll use them as an example because the questions I would have on what Mr. said tonight, we couldn't ask. I'd like to know what the breakdown was by building. I'd like to know what the breakdown was by grade level so that we as a board would have more information. We we are not going to get that in the setting we're talking about. They can give us the information in the public setting which they did but

191if we want which I think they probably want to give us the nuts and bolts but they can't. So the better approach to get those nuts and bolts would be once a month, once every 6 weeks, whatever uh you as president and Sue as vice president think is appropriate to set that up. So I'd be more in favor of that because it would get us more information, which I think is the goal. >> Thank you, Mr. Fiverr. >> I agree with Warren um when it comes to getting information. However, adding bargaining units as a line agenda item every single month further legitimizes their importance in this district and what they offer to all of us as employees. Um, however, if the information were submitted beforehand and put on the agenda for the board members to

192have before the meeting, we'd be able to ask those questions that Lauren was bringing up. Um, I have to say I completely agree um with the way Aaron stated her opinions and I uh couldn't have said it more eloquently than she did. So, thank you. >> Thank you very much. Um, so let me look to this end. Katrina, >> um, I really I Erin, you said it wonderfully, Warren. I think that you are absolutely correct in this. I think that a committee is definitely necessary to even dig further into it. Matt, you are also right. I am just echoing my support in the fact that um I think it's really important that the board establishes the committee. It is a committee of the board, not like a superintendent ad hoc committee because I've noticed that

193when the board sets the goals and we we have a little bit more control over what's going on, those specific goals get met. You know, we saw it with how we redid our survey. We saw it with how they chose to create and do the norms. Like board set the goal. This happened. It happened in a quick amount of time. We were able to get to some solution. So I feel like that's why it's really important to have that direct communication and then going back with the president and I would really love to serve on that committee if it is formed. So I wanted to make sure that I throw that out there. Um but yeah, I'm I'm in big favor of all of this. So, and I'm glad that you put it on the

194agenda. Thank you, Dan, because you said just email it to me, and I did, and you put it on here, and I really appreciate that. >> Glad you were able to do the email, get it over. >> Sorry, >> Sue, please. >> Um, I agree that we should do both things. Um, I think we should have policy. if they'd like to come. Anybody? And I also strongly think we should have a labor relations council that the board organizes the board. The board runs. So, I don't know if we have to make a motion. Um, well, I'll I'll speak and then try to maybe put a motion out to see if this there's a someone wants to move it. But so I um I think I agree with what you said Aaron. I mean it's a

195it's a positive opportunity for input and feedback. I think that's always a good thing. I think there do have to be just like with public comment. We have parameters, right? We have time limits. We have subject matter guidelines, right? So this would be the same sort of thing where and I have complete faith and confidence in our unit leadership that they would have no problem staying well within those guidelines. But so to me the next step would be um consideration of a policy that could just like we have a policy for public comment at board meetings, we'd have a policy for I don't know call it association comment at board meetings or something to that effect. And it sounds like um there's general consensus amongst those present to have something like that. Um I'm also

196in favor of a labor relations committee, council, whatever you call it. I I don't know exactly what the there may be some rules in and of that that implicate the collective bargaining agreement that we'd have to kind of figure out. So, I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I think we could have a motion that the board resolves to create a policy to allow for association comments at board meetings and or the creation of a labor relations council, both of which will be further determined following passage of the resolution. Is that our folks? Is that consistent with what I think it's kind of what I'm hearing? I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but >> yeah. Um but an agenda I think you had said um communication, but I think

197also it has to be uh agenda placement, adding the something to the agenda. I know that might be worked out later, but I don't maybe I didn't hear you say that. >> Yeah. Well, I'll restate. I meant to say that if I didn't say but so the motion would be for the creation of a policy that allows for or sets the conditions around association comments to be a regular item on the board's agenda for business meetings and for the board to look further into how it can create or sponsor a labor relations council. SL committee >> second. >> I think we need a vote. Someone has to move that. I'm sorry. >> Second. Okay. Any other discussion on that? And and it would be I'll discuss it. It would be referred to um the policy

198committee for action because what we're talking about here is the next step is the policy creation. Okay. All those in favor of that motion that I just said um say I. >> Any opposed? Nay. Any abstensions? Okay. Unanimous. Thank you. With that, we will move to item 14, board member comments. And before I open it up, I'm I just want to we had a little discussion in the last meeting and I I know I said some we've had some debate maybe if you will about like board member comments and what the intent of those are and we there isn't really a policy that specifically says what the intent is. But I did, the point I was trying to make is that to the extent we have items that the board really wants to discuss and

199act upon, I would I would much prefer we get them on the agenda so that everyone knows they're coming. And it seems like that worked well for this meeting. So I continue to encourage that. But there is a policy 2342 that talks about you know once we have set an agenda that it is possible that I'll read two sentences items of business not on the agenda may be discussed and acted upon if a quorum of the members agree to consider them during the board comments. So it is certainly possible that under this policy someone could come up and say I really think we need to talk about X and you know propose a motion and if there's a quorum that votes for it so be it. So so that does exist as an option and

200then if there is something that you think should be on the agenda and it not it says board members may also introduce potential future agenda items during the board comment period for the full board to consider. Each meeting agenda will provide a brief period for board members to offer comment, share information, or raise an issue to see if it is the will of the board to consider the issue at a future meeting. So, in summary, you can offer comments of whatever type you want. You can see if a quorum of the board or majority would like to add something to a future agenda, or you can propose a motion of some sort for something that wasn't on the agenda. again if a quorum is in support of it. So it's kind of the landscape of

201um what can happen during board comments. And with that is there anyone who would like to comment Katrina >> and I am going to keep time. >> Okay, that's that's fine. It's a quick comment. So um I brought it up the last meeting and everybody said it was too premature. We had to wait for the presentation to talk about the start times and whether or not we're going to have a committee like the people who put the petition out has been asking us to do. Um, and we have had emails from people, you know, asking us to continue to look into this. Um, you know, there were teachers here tonight talking about the scheduling, all that stuff. I think that this is a very big thing. I think we do need to have a committee

202to look into it. I think we need to figure out the best solution moving forward and I don't think some of my questions didn't I didn't get to ask them or really um put it out there but like this has to be revisited and the board has to look into it and we have to come up with a solution and it can't just be you know we're working on it and whatever like a committee has to be formed. Our public did come. They gave us that this is a petition. I understand what you were saying, Dan, like, okay, it's only 4:25. There's still a whole bunch of people. But feedback I've gotten from staff was like, it was a petition I would have wanted to sign, but I couldn't sign because I'm nervous about I

203can't sign a petition because I work for the district. I mean, that could have been another 400 people, which would be right around the,000 people, 1,500 people that come out and vote for our things. I mean, I do want to hear back from as many people as possible. So, I think that a part of that committee's job would be to actively seek information on all sides. But, we definitely this is something that has to be addressed. And so, I wanted that motion like I had made from the last one. We got our presentation on all the on the start times and how things are going. And I think that we do have to create this committee to look into it. >> Okay. And I'm there is a board policy 2250 talks about board committees and

204it is possible. I think what you're referring to would be an ad hoc committee of the board. There's a section that talks about special ad hoc committees of the board which is like what we had when we updated the board. uh evaluation document and what it states in the policy is that when appointing a special ad hoc committee of the board, the board president provides the following guidance via a resolution of the board that will and it goes through all of the different things designate the committee uh chairperson membership role etc etc etc and then the board votes to approve the purpose composition and role of the committee. So we can talk about this but I think to the extent there's a support here what I would say is we would vote to say that

205the board wants to move forward with the creation of an ad hoc committee and then under our policy it would be you know my job in consult obviously in consultation with everyone else to come up with the criteria and then we would formally approve that at the next meeting and then we would be you know that board would be in that committee would be in effect and it would start to operate. So those would be the steps I think to the extent there's a desire to move forward with that. So do you want to make that motion and see if there's a second in discussion? >> Um yes I thank you for outlining those steps that is after the presentation tonight. There's still like I would like to make that motion that we that you

206create you go through make the resolution create the guard rails the accomplishments what what our goals are what's going to happen but I mean then we are really recognizing our constituents and doing our due diligence to you know you know what I'm saying you know what I'm trying to say And I so yes, I think that this is a very important thing and I think we have to do this. So I make that motion. I need a second. Please second. >> Any comments or questions on the motion for the creation or to to direct the president to create the criteria for an ad hoc committee of the board per policy 2250. I'm just thinking briefly I don't need a long do you want it would uh >> to focus on the concerns. >> Yeah. [clears

207throat] >> Okay. It it would be to continue to evaluate the uh you know the start times, the the length of day, all of the other elements that you know have been items of concern or of interest thus far and to evaluate whether there are further um modifications that should be considered at some point. uh to t you know in response to the various feedback and input that we've received. So it it deals generally with I think scheduling, busing, transportation, length of day, start times, those issues. That's what I would say. Is that >> Yeah. So th this will be brought back to us after you create the parameters because I had serious concerns about some of the things you might come up like are there going to be no limits they can direct administration

208to do what I was the way the process should work. So if if there's a favorable vote, then I would come back with the proposal, you know, that lays out the elements, the scope, the composition, all those things. And then at that point, the board would vote on whether or not to actually create the committee. >> Yeah. >> Other comments or questions on the motion? Now, I I just would say I would be in voted in favor of the motion um with the presentation from the HTA tonight and the fourth grade teacher and the petition. There's a lot of concerns about it even though we're only 6 weeks in or 10 weeks in here. Um so, yes, I would be in support of motion. >> Anyone else want to be recognized? Okay. I I'll just

209say in I think a lot of effort has been made um that we everyone's focused on trying to do the right thing. I think we have heard quite a bit of you know concerns raised from different sources and some of that is I think you know part of what happens when there's significant change but I think a group cross section of stakeholders considering these issues and thinking about options isn't a bad thing as long as there are the right parameters on what will be considered. I mean you know, I I don't think we can flip a switch and and change, you know, things that take months to be able to put into place. And so I would be in favor of it, but I think it has to have the right kind of scope, parameters,

210understanding of what is possible, you know, and and timelines and all those sorts of things which would be fleshed out in the resolution to be considered. So go ahead. Yeah, >> just thinking about this and uh providing a little historical context, right? So, I was here when Brasher closed. I was here when Sync closed. I was here when the intermediate school was created and we saw a lot of change during that time. The things that I'm hearing in our community today are identical to what was being said 20 maybe more years ago um as I was an educator here and living in this community. These are not new things that I'm hearing. If you were to talk to people today who have their children in school, they don't know anything different than what it is

211in the last three or years that they may have had children enrolled. They don't remember being at. They don't remember being at Sing. They don't remember not having an intermediate school. But I will say that these comments that are we're hearing today are identical in in scope to what uh is in relation to change. Right? So, I'm just trying to be fair. In saying that, I definitely am in favor looking at a datadriven approach to reviewing um what is working, what is not working, what can be tweaked. Again, and I know I've said this at previous meetings, it's a part of change management and systems that we have put in place. I think it's appropriate when we have a change as significant as we had and have continuing today [clears throat] that we look at

212the data that's provided that we're not just looking at specific subgroups, right? Or subsets of what our stakeholders are. We're looking at everything collectively. There is very there are very vocal people that are sharing to to make changes. But I also want to acknowledge people that have reached out to us and there are who have said do not change things. We like things the way they are. So I think it is a balance right and I think we do a disservice to just listen to one subset of people. And I have in saying that I am in favor of a committee that would review this so that we have all collected data, all information to be able to make a wise decision moving forward. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. And I would agree

213and I think right like I pointed out earlier we have heard we have seen the petition for example but that that represents less than 10% and and there are many folks who may have benefited from some of the changes that we've seen or or think that they're positive in different ways. So getting a full cross-section of input and finding different ways to do that uh I think is important. Certainly something that I would want to see in any committee like this. Sue, >> I um I served on the school board when we um made the intermediate school 5A. I served on the school board when we did um block scheduling with Dr. Green. But we never after we made those decisions did we have people come with us come back to us and have all

214these concerns. Um yes we clo the way the teachers were divided. Yes there were issues but um that was back in the '9s. Um, but we didn't have the HCA come or a teacher come and say now we've lost minutes or we didn't have OC's come and say that there are things that need to be looked at at this big change. >> I don't disagree. >> So, um, I just think that >> again I don't I don't disagree with that S. I think there are a lot more vehicles in which to communicate uh thought and uh upset than there were back in the '90s. Right. So maybe we're not we're hearing more today because there's more vehicles in which to communicate that dislike. Right. >> Um possibly. Right. I'm just being fair. Right. But um

215you know I still hear people today who say black scheduling was the worst thing ever. I love black scheduling. I love teaching under the block. Um but you know I I still hear it today. So um it's true. Yeah. I mean it's it's true. There's going to be people on either side of the fence and I think we just have to be equitable in hearing from all. Mark, I just want to refresh my memory. I vividly remember the president of the HTA and the vice president of the HTA bothiferously speaking out against the intermediate school. So to say that there was no dissent when the K through 4 and then 5 through 6 program was being proposed. The HDA both viferously spoke out against it. So I I just want I think Aeron's more online.

216The comments are similar today as to what they've been in the past. I want to bring us back to So there's a pending motion. Does anyone else want to be heard on the motion or else we'll have a vote? And the and the motion to recap would be for to direct the board president for the creation to propose the creation of [clears throat] an ad hoc committee in accordance with board policy to look at the issues that we have you know that I talked about. Okay, I'm going to call for a vote. All those in favor of the motion say I. >> I. >> Yes. >> Any opposed say nay. Any extensions. Okay, that motion carries. Other board members have comments that they'd like to share during board comment period. Aaron, sorry I'm super chatty

217tonight. Um, I wanted to say thank you so much for sharing this book with us. This was something that I had brought up at a a few board meetings ago and I'm incredibly passionate about this in the anxious generation and how uh cell phones, technology, social media, etc. have impacted our children. So, I wanted to say thank you so much for sharing this with us as a board and I hear through uh Mr. Gil that there may be some professional development surrounding this book study. Awesome. I'm super excited in saying that. I'd also uh like to I'm curious, right? I'm curious about data that supports uh what we're doing. So, I would challenge the district and ask to see if you can do a a data comparison of um you know, and this might not

218be now, right? This because this is so much in its infancy. This might be something that we take a look at in June, right? But I would be interested to see uh referrals from 2024, 2025, even a subset of a few years to give us a collective, you know, trend average. Yes. In comparison to what we're seeing uh just from 2025, 2026, right? So, you know, yeah, categorized. I I know within the school tools system, you can utilize your your conduct forms to um you know, create topic areas and hierarchy of subsets, but I would be curious to see that data um from years past versus when the cell phone uh in effect. Just a curiosity. Thank you. >> Yeah. And I also um look for their unfavorable opinion. Um, I think that within the

219world of we prepare our students for what's next, our portrait of our graduate. The reality is everybody at this table has a phone in front of them right now. >> Oh, this one here. Dan's got two he made up for you. part of the policy and part of the uh the you know the um the law talks about educational purposes use and I think we do a great disservice if we don't prepare students for the appropriate use of cell phones outside these doors. If we if we can if we approach this from a complete ban point of view I think the reality of what comes next would smack them in the face of all the unfunded mandates that New York State has given us over the years. You know, this is one I would have

220accepted that a technology standard strand be brought back to say here's a vision appropriate use of handheld technology and what does that look like in a vertical alignment of our building. So, we're preparing kids for what comes next. I don't want kids to go into the workplace and all of a sudden be on the phones all the time because we did not establish some norms and appropriateness of professionalism of how to use a phone appropriately. This is different than the idea of of social media. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm just talking about educational purposes or workplace importance, how to manage your calendar, how to look at email on it. There are some things that we all do as adults that if we we have an opportunity in an educational setting to think about

221that practical. So, it might be unpopular opinion, but I think it's worth looking at. >> No, I I think that's a fair that's a fair response. Uh, Mr. Gil, I think this is more of a of a collective thing. I I will be very transparent when I share this in that um you know I come from a technology you know I was a technology integration specialist right I pushed into schools and I assisted teachers with utilizing the correct uh you know how do we use this tool here in school right but it has snowballed into something that is ugly and even myself as as a mom, right? As a mom, um I did some things really really well. I did some things really really bad, right? And what I would like to encourage is us

222as a community to come together and do things very much better so that we don't have so much bad. Maybe we're moving to okay and maybe collectively we move to we're helping our kids, right? It's it's not just in school. It is a greater mindset that we have to get ourselves around to use as adults as well, right? You look at the time sucker that phones are in the corporate world. It's a time sucker. It really is. You know, so I'm just I'm I don't disagree with you as in everything. It's a teaching process, but we have to come together as a community to decide, are our children worthy of having their childhoods back, of being able to focus on school and each other instead of being on the phone the whole time, and it

223needs to change that. Thank you. >> Thank you. Other board members have comments they'd like to share. Matt Um, I'm going to completely switch gears. Although what you said was on point, so thank you for that. Um, I I just really wanted to thank us sitting here for 4 and 1/2 hours. Um, I wanted to thank Tony uh and Rich for that amazing uh presentation this evening. It was an immense amount of information and I learned a lot and there were things I wasn't aware of. So, I wanted to thank you for it because I got a lot from it. So, thank you very much. Um, I also wanted to quickly thank uh Dr. Douglas and Mrs. Kim Malone who is the intermediate school president. I brought up comments last month about kids world about

224a supervisory period lacking at the fifth and sixth grade level and I received an email as a parent over the last couple weeks actually received two emails from Mrs. along over the past month saying that in fact Kids World is in the process of being established as a supervisory thing for fifth and sixth graders. And I could not be more happy to hear that. I'm not sure how long it'll take for it to take effect. And if my child as a sixth grader misses that opportunity, it makes me feel just as good to know that future fifth and sixth graders will have that opportunity. So, thank you Dr. Tom Douglas. Thank you Mrs. Kim Malone and whoever else was a party to organizing this so quickly. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, >> Cara.

225>> Uh just quick since we're here kind of late. Um it was brought to my attention, Mr. Gails, you can look into this that fourth grade swim is no longer and when it was brought to my attention, of course I asked questions because that's what I do. And now they say it's moved to fifth grade. But is fifth grade really a good place for it? because you know as kids get older they get more nervous when they can't do certain things. So could you just look into that maybe? >> No, I'm I'm fully aware of it so I can give you a brief response. Um the impetus really um started with the um lack of during construction of PE spaces at the high school this year and we didn't want the current fourth grade to

226go without that experience but there was no way that we could take up that PE space when they lost the the north gym or the south gym. So it was like so how do we continue this experience and make sure that that cohort gets it and so we need to incorporate it into fifth grade so we don't lose a cohort. So that's what started it and it also provided a lot more logistical ability to pull from one building and coordinating amongst three elementaryaries with the high school staff to use that spot. Now it's a very much cleaner coordination between just the PE teachers BMA school and the high school teachers. So, it started with we don't want to lose this this, you know, we brought it back in 2017, I believe 16 after a hiatus,

227and we hold it tight. We want to make sure it's a lifelong skill. So, how do we make sure this fourth grade does get it? And the only way to do it because of the PD is spaces at the high school was moved to fifth and then the coordination was better with one building to one building. >> I think it'll stay at fifth grade. I mean, we'll talk with PE teachers and this was part of their conversations. Um I think where um the the failure was was in the the timeline of communications to the appropriate people and that we recognized as a as a as you know we made some things we had the right conversations with the right people at ground level but you know school year got away from us and other things

228happened and now we did find out about this I think last week it was Joe and I were talking about this and like yes we need to communicate that I believe he's working with Damen to put out a um a district-wide message to go out talked about it yesterday. I'm not sure how far along we are. Today, it is. >> Yeah. So, a message to go out from Damian as the uh director of athletics and PE um to the principles to share with families and staff what happened and how it all played out. Just don't want to make sure that fourth grade cohort does get this. It's just can't happen this year. Please. No. >> So, just to piggyback on that, the fifth graders will not get that this year. There'll be no swimming. >>

229Okay. So, there'll be no swimming at all for elementary. >> Okay, >> Katrina. >> Um, yes. So, I just wanted to bring up because you guys were talking about the whole cell phone ban and um I you know, Tony, I honestly don't disagree with that. Um, there's a fine line. >> There's a fine line and that's why I thought like the yander pouches were a good idea and I think that like that's why Julie was a proponent of that is because you can go into a classroom, unslide it, utilize it for an educational purpose, slide it back in, and then they're, you know, they're able to function with it. And I think that's another reason why I was really pushing hard for being able to have cell phones that are disabled from social media because

230the law is very clear that if the phone doesn't have the social media on it, you can still use it. that they do make phones that are smart that you can't have social media built into it. So, that's why I kind of wanted that policy because I I felt the same thing. And um I I do have to bring this up because I did and and this is not to be like in a vicious malicious way in any way but in the anxious generation because I did bring this book up when we were discussing the start times and I think that this is another reason why it's very very important is because in chapter 5 it talks about four foundational harms and that is the so social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and then addiction

231and the sleep deprivation there is a lot in here about that And it talks specifically and I brought it up in the meeting when we were talking about start times and I asked the question I said how is it going to impact the kids who are going through puberty because those are the kids who have to be the latest. It talks about it in this book and those are the kids that are now in the school the earliest. They should be the latest developmentally. And I know that we want to gather the research and the data from the different points to see. But what data we can never collect is the potential of one child. We will never know what that child could have been if they had better circumstances to function under. So we

232would never know that if a child was getting more sleep that they were going to do better in fifth grade. You know, it's you can't compare apples to oranges. We have the data, the research to say this is the sleep. You know, they have a push in the law right now to make it so no school starts between before 8:00 a.m. or 8:30. You know, we have different countries around us where worldwide that have shorter days that have different structures. And I think that, you know, when you were talking about not going back and people, you know, there was the banter and then nothing happened. Well, maybe that's because people just got used to having a bad system. And that doesn't mean that it's the right system. It it just means that people got used

233to it and didn't want to come out and keep trying to fight it. And um it doesn't make it right. It just means that people got used to it. And I think that we need to start coming from the perspective of being more progressive in how are we the leaders to make sure that we're changing things and always having students because the one book that I did want everybody to read was create on their behalf. And the one thing that he talks about is if student performance is not 50% of your agenda at every meeting. Yes. If it is not yeah if it is not on your then then the students performance will not be there and unless adult behavior changes student performance will not change and so I I'm very passionate about this and

234I think that we can really make really big strides but our focus has to be on the students. So um that's what I want to say. I want to say um thank you to everybody. I want to say thank you for the community who's coming out to talk to us. Thank you to the administration. Thank you. I think we're all going to get through this and we're going to work to better everybody and I look forward to it. And I and I especially want to say thank you, Dan. I think that you have conducted a wonderful meeting tonight and I really appreciate it. >> Go ahead, Sue. Um because October 26, I don't know how many people are aware of the Badabachi program that takes place. Um we had a student come here in 1996,

235Yoshio. Um and he and Yo stayed with us each I don't remember how long. And then he emailed us back and said, "I'm coming to stay with you for another six weeks in the summer." We actually took him cross country with us. He is one of the adults that are coming in this um congregation and starting October 26. And um Katrina actually wrote me into having two boys stay at her house from October 26 to Friday morning because they for some reason couldn't find somebody else's horses to do it. >> She would be the three. >> So here we are. But I'm very excited. Um, if you have a chance, they have a welcome party here on the 26th of October and then actually the Sarah party is the 28th because there's actually 10 adults

236coming, but seven of them are leaving on Wednesday morning. Um, so if you have a chance, I think you go to those things around. But, um, yeah, it's a exciting time. So, just want everybody to know about that Japanese program. So, we have >> Thank you. Thank you, Sue. And thank you, uh, Katrina, for your comments. I I'd like to just thank my fellow board members. I do think we had vigorous debate, but all in a professional, positive way. We made some solid decisions, and I'm glad to see the board um functioning like we did tonight. So, thank you everybody. Thank you for those who are still here and stuck with us. And with that, I would see does anyone want to make a motion to adjourn? Second. >> All those in favor say I.

237>> I. Any oppose? Nay. Abstensions. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you.