KCSD Board of Education Meeting 3/18/26

001So, why would anyone take this as a beat? That's the real question. Why would anybody have to deal with these fools? Um three Then I'm a And him, too. Yeah, why do you take both of my words as a beat? That's what it When was the last time I said the R word? Oh, you watch them all on YouTube, you Um I got into my school He loves his job. I'm hoping I'm hoping against 9 minutes Okay, 7. The board has returned from executive session. Are we ready to begin? >> Yes. If you could please call the roll. Mr. Spicer Here. Dr. Collins Here. Ms. Anderson Here. Mr. Ryder Here. Ms. Corsones >> Here. Mr. Lamb Here. Ms. Kerns Here. Dr. Bernabei Here. Mr. Jang >> Here. And Ms. Collier is excused. I pledge allegiance

002to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Just a note, um our superintendent is joining us remotely uh tonight, so you may see him and hear from him for sure. Um we have no action coming out of executive session this evening. And so, I will ask for a motion to approve the minutes from March 4th. So moved. Any discussion on the minutes from March 4th? All in favor? Aye. The minutes from March 4th are approved. That brings us to our public comment session. There have been several people sign up, so good evening, everyone. We are about to enter the portion of the meeting where we welcome public comments. Although state law does not require that

003we hold a public comment period, we feel it is crucial that we hear from our community about their concerns. The board is here to listen. Your concerns and questions may be addressed at a future meeting of the board, or you may be contacted by the appropriate staff member or administrator. If you have prepared a written statement and do not have the opportunity to present it, please leave it with the clerk of the board who will see that all trustees receive it. Each speaker will have 3 minutes, and this public comment period will not exceed 30 minutes in total. It is important to note that state and federal privacy laws and collective bargaining agreements prevent us from discussing certain topics in this venue, including specific employees or students and pending grievances or negotiations. Any speaker who

004does not adhere to these posted guidelines will forfeit the remainder of their time. Thank you for your adherence to the rules and your interest in the continuous improvement of our district. Christina Pokorny Good evening. Thank you for the chance to speak tonight. I'm a mother of two children, one at Edson and one at Bailey, and I'm speaking tonight as part of the Kingston Schools Green Team. The KCSD Board of Education's sixth goal is a commitment to promoting and supporting sustainability in an effort to address the climate crisis. However, currently our school district falls well short of these goals. With approximately 6,500 students and 1,100 employees across 11 schools, KCSD is not only the largest school district in the in the county, it's also one of its biggest polluters. A Kingston High School project conducted by

005students found that 80 lb of food per day is wasted just at the high school. Our district falls short against other neighboring districts in this use or lack thereof of electric buses, renewable energies, post-consumer composting, recycling, etc., etc. As you likely know, last week the Board of New York Board of Regents implemented a statewide learning requirement on climate education, which will go into effect in the coming two school years. The timing could not be more relevant for our district to prioritize climate action so that it is practicing what it will soon be preaching. The Kingston Schools Green Team proposes the creation of a new position at KCSD of a district sustainability director. In recognition of the time it may take to establish such a role, we propose in the interim establishing a to school sustainability

006and climate education leader stipend role at each building, paired with the formal adoption of a sustainability plan. Both are, by the way, requirements in New York City schools. And accompanying procedures embedded within the district school improvement framework. In addition, and concurrently, we propose the reallocation of job descriptions of current staff members to incorporate district-wide sustainability efforts. We found that currently the lack of a singular overarching sustainability plan and leadership means that any efforts in individual schools become siloed and therefore far less effective. There's very little accountability and progress is extremely slow. A dedicated staff person can oversee, amplify, and align green initiatives. Data has shown that for US school districts that already have a sustainability director, there's significant cost savings to the district over time from their initiatives. We appreciate your consideration of this proposal,

007which I'll hand out uh right now. And I'd also like to ask for a show of hands for those in the room who support a creation of a sustainability director role and formal sustainability plan for our district. All right, I will just pass that to you here. Hugo Dual Hola, muy buenas noches. Can you all hear me okay? Hello, everyone. My name is Hugo Dual. I am a taxpayer here in Kingston, and I'm also a volunteer with the Kingston Schools Green Team, and I'm here to ask that the board consider the creation and retention of a sustainability director position that can implement a sustainability plan to help eliminate use of plastic in our schools, implement clean energy projects, fleet electrification, and promote sustainability in all of our classrooms. But I'm also here to offer support,

008because I'm fully aware that something like this will become a team effort. I myself have been working in clean energy since 2007. I have graduated from the Bard MBA in sustainability. It's pretty much what I do on a regular day job, and I'm very excited about the possibility of contributing to this initiative. Thank you very much. Indie Heidecker Hi. Hi, my name is Indie. I'm in second grade. And one thing I love about Edson is all the nice teachers. And one thing I want to improve is that in the wintertime at Edson, we don't get to go on the playground, but we did in my car because we had snow suits, and I know that we have a lot of people that in sizes at Edson, but maybe every winter school could send a letter

009saying to bring a snow suit. And if you did not have a snow suit, you would either walk some or stay on the blacktop. But another thing I love about Edson is field day and all the fun activities. Daniel Woodham Good evening. That's That's That's a hard act to follow. Um so, my name is Daniel Woodham. I'm a part-time caseworker with the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network, trying to represent a little of the people that aren't here, and there are lots of reasons for that. But I'm mostly here to represent myself as a graduate of Kingston High back in '82, in case any superintendents remember that year. Um and proud to be in Kingston, proud to be in this school district, and just coming to find out about a green team. There's nothing about it on

010the website. I didn't see anything about it on the Facebook page, and I'm like, wait. This town is so rocking and so great, we could be at the forefront of this move to greenify, work with climate issues that, by the way, are existing. Um and I'm just interested in being part of that, and I would love to be able, in my bilingual capacity, to promote this among the people that I work with who a lot of them they don't have anything about recycling or green anything where they come from because it's not something that those municipalities those governments deal with. But my pride in this Kingston City School District and by the way thank you for all of that you're doing and including the high school representative rocks my boat. That this is a possibility.

011We could push this forward and become known as a municipality not just for greatness and all these other ways which we are. But by the way this is something that's lacking. I'm also an organic vegetable farmer. By the way that green part of me wants this already yesterday. So please with your help I think we can do it. THANK YOU. KATRINA WILLIAMS GOOD EVENING. Thanks for having me. My name is Katrina Williams. Um uh my daughter Josie is in the third grade at GW and I'm also a member of the Kingston Schools Green Team which is not a district affiliated group but a group of concerned um you know community members and some staff and faculty as well. Um this is obviously an area that matters deeply to our community including the young generation of

012learners who will be you know uh impacted by climate change more than any of us. 80% of parents want education on sustainability to happen at school and now we we've learned that it'll be required soon but the vast majority of teachers have not had the requisite training to do so. Kingston will clearly benefit greatly from having staff competency to match our community's goals. Then no one knows more than teachers and admins who are some of the hardest working people in our community that when something is not part of someone's job it's simply not going to get done. There's simply too much to do. Implementing a sustainability plan will not only allow us to be clear about our shared goals and vision but clarify our expectations establish accountability and provide a framework for district-wide results. I'm

013here to support the proposal for a sustainability director and plan. Thank you. Karen Miller Yes, good evening. First I want to thank I don't have to do a lot of details because the previous speakers have done a beautiful job with that. Um Karen Miller a long time Kingston uh City of Kingston resident and as a senior who makes the practice of sustainability a priority I strongly support incorporating district-wide sustainability efforts and and to have a director of sustainability um so important for our for our climate education leader for all of the Kingston schools. Thank you. Lisa Gray Good evening everyone. My name is Lisa Gray and I'm here this evening as the parent of a child in the second grade at Edson and as a founding member of the Kingston Schools Green Team. Our growing

014advocacy group was forged out of necessity out of deep concern that Kingston schools are failing to model and adhere to the same level of environmental stewardship that we would expect from the otherwise environmentally progressive area in which we live. And that's despite the board's stated commitment to sustainability. Outside of our homes the schools are the number one place where our children spend their time and it should be a place where they are shown how to be responsible stewards of the earth. Sadly this is too often not the case. With no dedicated sustainability minded staff within the district our students are witnessing some pretty dismal practices when it comes to single use plastic usage recycling efforts composting the list goes on. How can we expect our kids to rise up to the challenges they face as

015terrifying ecological collapse unfolds all around us if we are not showing them the way. It's no wonder that study after study has shown that our youth are suffering from crippling anxiety surrounding climate change. As parent volunteers we can only do so much. There has to be systemic change here in Kingston. We are bracing to hear that there's no money for a sustainability director role despite the immeasurably high cost of inaction. While we may be short on cash we are also short on time. But there are creative solutions that can happen right now. After many thoughtful discussions with various stakeholders in the school district community we believe that we can start seeing results quickly by looking to a shared responsibility model and by working with the human resources that the schools already have. One highly doable

016solution is to reallocate the roles of existing staff to incorporate sustainability work. For just one example in the cafeterias couldn't lunch monitors and or janitorial staff be tasked with overseeing composting efforts? We've heard that's working in Chambers right now which is apparently the only school in the district that is doing some type of composting. Additionally some of our allies at the Kingston High School have proposed establishing a school sustainability stipend role at each school building. In this model a paid representative sourced from existing staff could work as the sustainability department head to provide clear internal leadership in each building and to support collaborative sustainability goals across all schools. We are here to ask you to prio- prioritize dedicated sustainability staffing because the problems as is are simply too big and too important to ignore. Thank

017you. SOPHIA SAGAN HI EVERYONE. First I want to say I work at Kingston High School and I am so proud to work for this district. And I also want to say that I am so thankful for the opportunities that I've had in the seven years that I've worked here to be able to grow my own interests in the environment and also students. I am the co-advisor of the student-led ecosystem advocacy group Hudson's Tomorrow which Benny is our president and I have also worked over the past seven years with the Department of Environmental Conservation to grow our citizen science project of Eel Project where I take students every Tuesday down to Black Creek and we work with baby eels and we help those populations. Um I'm here today in support of the Green Team and I

018would love to see more sustainably minded things happen in this school. I understand that we may be a little fiscally stressed so I do have some fiscally friendly suggestions where I think it would be great if we could have a district-wide sustainability PTSO. It's very clear here and I also want to say I'm so thankful that there's so many parents who are here and community members and stakeholders. I think it's fantastic and I think we're sitting on the precipice of something amazing that we have so many people here who are interested and care. So I would love to see a PTSO which from my understanding I think might be free. Um >> [laughter] >> Um and then also as was said earlier some sort of a liaison position where there's one staff member at every

019school who's kind of like the head at that school where people come to to work on sustainability related issues and then maybe once a month there's a meeting where they all get together and then they can come and discuss with the board of what types of improvements could be made. Um and I'm very happy to help in any way I can. I'm completely dedicated and again thank you guys for I've been here for seven years and I really appreciate all the opportunities I've had to grow here and I look forward to more growth. Thank you. JOANNE STEEL UH I'M A UH TAXPAYER. I pay a lot of school taxes. I got some properties in the area. Um I'm a 40 year member of Sierra Club. I chaired the Sierra Club for 14 years more or

020less in the six counties around us including Ulster. I got emails from all over the world from all kinds of people who are working in the Hudson Valley on. I knew that the oceans were terribly polluted. I know that we're dumping our trash in every poor country on the planet. Uh it's it's pretty obvious that it's either recycle or eat it. It's recycle or die. I'm 85 now and I'll be checking out sooner. And I just have to let you know that I'm glad it's going to be sooner and not a lot later. From what we've done our greed and selfishness you all are going to pay more the younger you are today for our having done that. And for our careless carelessness and refusal to take responsibility for living in this complicated multi plastic

021world. So, it's uh sustainability or die. It's kind of nice to have a choice. Is there anyone else who would like to address the board? Okay, that brings us to our superintendent's report. Superintendent Miller. Thank you, Ms. Addison. Uh first up on our superintendent's report is Mr. Miller and our entry on the superintendent's report. Good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for allowing me to have some time to share some of the really great things that are happening at Edson Elementary School. I'm really proud uh you know, to be here and to share these things. Also really happy to see some families here, some of my staff members, and um just the general community to hear what's going on at Edson. >> [clears throat] >> So, first I want to share, I don't think everybody's

022had the opportunity to see some of the updates that happened at Edson. So, there are just a few pictures here. So, these are some of the things that were happening this summer. You can see a lot of construction. And I'll go through some of the slides to share this, but you can see the construction going on and walking through with hard hats in the summer was a lot of fun to see where we were, what was going on, and thinking about what things would look like. The Edson office area in July 2025 is pictured on the top left. The totally reconfigured office spaces. The Edson main hallway in the August in August of 2025. Which at that point had had several of us wondering if it was going to be ready for the first day

023of school and low and behold the facilities team and the companies that we were working with had everything ready for our students to walk in that very first day. Our front entrance has a brand new ramp. You can see the beautiful new windows. There's new sidewalks across the front of the building and around the side. And there are other new accessible entries as well. There's another picture that shows that. And that's a picture of some of our students walking in through that brand new entrance. We have a new secure vestibule or a sally port or some call it a man trap. I prefer sally port. Um where families, visitors will come through and they're they're buzzed into the secure vestibule, vetted, and if they're having an appointment they'll they'll be able to be escorted to

024wherever they need to go within the building. Still have a few things left that are being put together here. It's not quite functioning yet, but everything is aligning for this to happen. Including a handicap button that makes it easy to get in and out once somebody is uh permitted to come in. We have a very brand new conference room, which is absolutely wonderful. It's used constantly. A beautiful bright space. And then I've got a brand new principal's office. We have a new main office and an accessible restroom. So, these are just some examples of some of the things that are in place in our new office suite. We also have a teacher copy room, a new mail room, a safe, and offices for our school psychologist and social worker, and then some upgrades to the

025nurse's office. Along with the windows and the ramps and the ventilation units. Really great things happening in our in our building this year. Here we have the recess area exit with the new ramp and stairs in the back of the building and we have other ramps that look like that as well coming out of the first floor. And new windows brighten classrooms. And new ventilation Sorry, new ventilation units I should say circulate air. And our school's demographic data. Here's a breakdown of how the families or during registration families are identifying as how they they fall into the different different demographic groups. Currently our white population is at 62%. I just also want to note that these are inclusive like the Hispanic population is inclusive of of these ethnicities as well. So, um depending upon where

026the information's drawn from New York State tends to report it with the Hispanic and then in our e-school um and in our educlimber all pulls from the same source, it lists Hispanic as a separate group here. So, 62% white, 15% multiracial, 12% black, 4% Asian, and 7% American Indian, Alaska Native, and many of those students who whose identification falls under that category are from Central American indigenous tribes. We have actually I can say now 55 ELLs. We have a new student who is starting this week. Um who we can add Russian to our pie up here for our uh well, for our languages. Um we don't have that up here, but we've got several different languages in our building. And Russian will be added to that. We have 72 students or 17% of our population

027has an IEP. And I also like to point out our students who are dually identified as ELLs with IEPs. I think that's something important for us because that population should have a similar percentage as our other students. But we have a 10% there. So, 10% of our 54 ELLs also have an IEP. Currently this year Edson is not a Title I eligible school. We're just below that cutoff. For our school comprehensive education plan for our CEP the goals and key strategies and accountability um here we are listed as a TSI school for the 25-26 school year as a result of the 24-25 test results and prior. We are Our TSI status is because of our Hispanic students, which is inclusive of our ELLs. Uh we are potential targeted support and improvement school um for our

028black students and multiracial students. For our key strategy one, this is an instructional strategy focusing on instructional strategies that are inclusive and supportive of students who are English language learners. And our implementation of this is a focus on those those instructional strategies. ELL scaffolds and lesson plans, for example providing and helping teachers with translanguaging resources professional development for staff through faculty meetings and through we've been starting Wednesdays we learn together with our different topics. Sometimes they're related to ELLs, sometimes they're related to other topics. We have collaborative planning time monthly for teachers during which time I have students from that grade level or multiple grade levels and the teachers have collaborative planning time. We have computer computer keyboarding on C days and fluency practice for math and reading on F days. We're seeing the combination

029of that with our instructional intensity helping to improve our scores. So, our student proficiency on the i-Ready reading moved from 24 to 46% from the fall to the winter already. I also just wanted to point out our ELLs. I um did update this, but it didn't quite update. I have um his our Hispanic population as well and you can definitely see those shifts from the fall to the winter moving in a positive direction. And then our student proficiency on i-Ready math moved from 9 to 30% from fall to winter. So, we're already making progress in less than a less than a year. Some other things that we're focusing on are we are intentionally aligning our work between the district supports for instructional improvement work that we're engaging in with our third grade team ENL uh

030an ENL teacher, myself, and a coach, Mike Cerci. And then our i-Ready math coaching. We are zooming in on the triads in math. Focusing on that productive struggle that academic press, that teacher press, and reflection. And I thought these pictures really showed like how this is carrying over from our teachers practicing and doing this work in a faculty meeting to how it's carrying over to students. And we have some kindergarten students here. You'll notice that one of the things that we're we're encouraging is standing. Standing engages everybody in a different way than it does sitting. And doing something collaboratively often in groups of two or three is really helpful. And working on, you know, writing something on a board especially if it's like a whiteboard, but paper works as well, too. On the bottom, I

031don't know if you can quite see, but they're working on on pairs to equal 10. And they're coloring in 10 frames for that on the bottom. So, they're struggling together. And we had some problems to help the teachers go through some examples of this productive struggle and working together as well. We also have our non-instructional strategy, which is really focusing on that social emotional learning part of school. So, we want to strengthen that for all of our students. And we do this through an integrated PBIS framework. We have student recognition through cougar paws and brag tags. Those are announced daily. Cougar paws are announced daily. We've got recognition at monthly assemblies. We have our PBIS staff handbook and our matrix, our PBIS matrix are reinforced. Classroom teachers have built in classroom morning meeting times. Grade

032level assemblies, as I had mentioned when I am taking students, the teachers are working on their [clears throat] collaborative grade level work. And very new, we are rolling out purposeful people, character strong, as um I kind of like a pilot for our district. We've had training for our PBIS team. There's somebody from each grade level that's on this. And we're just starting to roll this out. Starting to include some of it in our faculty meeting, at our whole school meeting next Friday, the students will really learn a lot more about it and have some experience with it. Some of the teachers are already rolling it out into the classrooms using some of the brain breaks, including some of the vocabulary, using a tree choice chart. There are a lot of things that many are really

033excited about using already. And already, each student has earned at least two cougar paws so far. And every class has had Edson the cougar at least four times now. I was checking that again today. This is actually Merlina. We had a a build a cougar mascot night. So, this is Edson's sister, uh Merlina. But on the picture of on the on the office, Edson the cougar, who gets passed from class to class, was sitting on the camera. Um we have a great reduction in behavioral referrals. I was looking at the data this afternoon. And it is almost 50% less from classroom referrals compared [clears throat] to what it was a year ago at this time. And last year at this time, we had 12 out-of-school suspensions. So far this year, there have been three. So,

034I think that the work that we're doing with our PBIS, we're really zooming in on those tier one supports at the classroom level. And um working intentionally with that has definitely helped some more of that the the teachers handling some of the problems that may have come to me in the past. And um gives me time to do more really wonderful things with everybody. Uh And then, restorative practices also are um something that's really important. I just wanted to share two examples of things that happened this year where I feel like the restorative practices really made a difference. I had a student who scratched into the cover of a Chromebook. And a restorative consequence for that student was to come and stay after school and help clean Chromebooks. There have been no other scratched Chromebooks,

035as far as I know. Another one, I had a student who was mad and was throwing people's backpacks off of the hooks in the hallway. And you can imagine that this time of year, especially with the warm weather last week, we have quite a large lost and found. Well, the child had to help me organize lost and found stuff. You know, just as a way to kind of pay back. They had to hang up everything back up. But again, they had to come back in and help me organize the lost and found. And I use it as you took my time away from me, now you have to give back to our community. And those are just some examples of some of the restorative practices that we're putting into place. So, for culture and climate,

036we've been collaborating with Dr. Kathy Salidi. I know she presented in January about some of the collaboration that's going on. I know she shared some of the school-wide book talks. But she's been working very closely with my staff and with myself. She conducted surveys and interviews with staff, students, and students' adults. She's been attending faculty meetings and sharing information about the portrait of a graduate, more information about the CRSE framework. And we are kicking off to do our next school-wide book project with Dr. Javon Hunter. So, we've been rolling up our sleeves, digging in. We are borrowing the book We Are All Going to that JFK used last year. We're actually going to do a book exchange. So, we're going to receive their books. They're going to take the book that we used last year,

037My Father Rides a Motorcycle. And we're building projects around this. So, we're really excited. I don't want to give away too much, but we've got a really big thing planned for our lobby that's really going to connect us around how we are Edson, we are Aguinaldo. We are also she's also working with me and my and Joe Begantz with our monitors and kitchen staff. We had a great meeting earlier this week to make sure that everybody's on the same page to support our students in a very kind and caring way. There were some questions that both the monitors and the kitchen staff had of each other that helped clarify quite a few things. And um so, it really show showing that group and collaborative effort. We have a lot of PTO events and I've got

038some others listed on another slide. But we are These are just some pictures that are in from some events that we've had throughout the school. You'll see more as we go along. But we are because we are a TSI school, we do get some additional support. And these are some of the things that we're working on with that support. So, our DSII, the distance the district systems for instructional improvement with the coach Mike Cersei. We've attended workshops in Albany, in Rome, New York. Today, we were online. We've got one coming up in New York City. And we have one in Kingston, as well. So, we're working very closely with our with um the the team from for the state and then also with local coaches and with support at not support at um the ed

039leaders, Anchor Ed, uh to help us roll this out. We also worked with an i-Ready math coach. And as I mentioned before, we're really targeting my third grade right now since it's the first year that they're doing the math testing. But also bringing what we're learning into the faculty meeting so that all teachers are exposed to this content. We're also just starting to work with the district literacy coach, Amy Coral. We have for our dual language, we have the American Reading Coach American Reading Company, the ARC coach, Melissa Vasquez Morales, who has been huge. And every year as we are building our dual language team, we're getting a teacher who the last several years has happened to be a brand new teacher. So, it's really been great to work with this coach and to have

040the rest of our dual language team support new new team members as they come along. I mentioned the character strong purposeful people program. And something else that we're really excited about that I think the students will really like is the Wild Earth guided resource. I love that. All right. So, we have Wild Earth staff members coming on Thursdays. They took a little hiatus in the winter, but they're just they're starting to come back now. And whether we're outside or whether due to inclement weather we're inside when it's raining, um or if everything's really covered in snow and ice, they're working with the students. And they're also helping my monitors. And they really had some really great things to say about our monitors, that the monitors are so enthusiastic and love working with them. And they

041asked them questions or asked them to show another game. And they're And then, I see the monitors carrying that out to them. And that's exactly what's supposed to be happening with that. So, we're really excited about that. For curriculum, we have our core knowledge language arts, our CKLA. We're seeing really great results. And I'll show you some of that coming up. Our American Reading Company Core for our dual language program. i-Ready math for everybody. Smithsonian science for the classroom and the Putnam/Northern Westchester social studies access. And here we have some second graders in our STEM lab learning about the effects of um erosion on on like on dirt and soil and soil and dirt and other other things that they're going to find in nature. So, they had a lot of fun with that. So,

042as I mentioned with our data, here we have a comparison of the fall on the top to the winter on the bottom. The fall, we don't test kindergarten for the i-Ready in the fall, but they start in first grade. So, we have our our power bar here for our fall. The green on the left is students performing at the higher level. And those with the hash marks in it are mid or above grade level. The solid green is grade level. Yellow is one grade below. Two grade belows is red. And red with the hash lines is three or more grade levels below. So, you can see we've got a quite a few students in the yellow. And then, our red and green are a little bit smaller. But you look at the bottom, this is

043inclusive of kindergarten. And notice how much that power bar has shifted to the green. And that red power bar has shrunk for i-Ready reading. So, that's really something to celebrate. And here's math. Very similar picture. And we had very few up at that higher ends of the math. And we're already shifting. That that green line's growing. And the red line shrunk a lot. And for our current fourth grade students, I wanted to zoom in on how they performed on last year's assessments cuz this will be the first thing that I'll look at when I get to see the assessment results after students take the test when those scores are released. So, as you can see for our 2024-2025 school year for ELA, overall for like all of our students, we have only nine students that

044performed at those proficiency levels and 46 below. And then, you can see how it it's broken down by demographics. Math is a little bit stronger, but we still have a lot of work that we have to do. So, we're zooming in on this. This is why part of the reason why, too, we wanted to focus in on math as we do that DSII and that i-Ready coaching work, as well. And then, our subgroups, we definitely want to shift all of that up to those higher levels, as well. And then, this is the overall third and fourth grade test results from last year's for for ELA. And then, I wanted to show on the bottom, this is the i-Ready prediction if students achieve typical growth. So, if this is aligned to what we saw, we can

045totally we can totally shift this big time this year, too. So, cur like if we have that 47% of the students that are predicted to get proficient, get proficient on this year's test, we're going to see a big difference up on this chart up here where we have 100 students that were below. And then here we would have only 53 students that would be below, so. That's what we're hoping for. And then same thing for math. You can see that we have we're still bottom heavy as far as those level one and twos across the board for all students and then for our demographic and if the students achieve typical growth in math, we will get just over 51% proficient. This is what we're hoping for. And the teachers are putting in the work to

046try to make this happen. And I'm really proud of this. So for the 23-24 school year, we had a actually 24-25 school year, we had a um refusal rate of 75% and then for the 25-26 school year 24-25 school year, we had a 98% participation rate for ELA and 99% rate for math. And I can say that so far I've had just one parent reach out to opt out and I've already mentioned to that parent that we'll be having a conversation about that so I can find out a little bit more about why they want to do that. And for every refusal that I had last year, I did make that phone call. And there were some circumstances where somebody just wasn't going to be able to do it, but otherwise we had very high

047participation rates. And I've sprinkled in some pictures of events on the bottom left. If that's Dr. Alvaredo being during our world read aloud day. On the right, we have students in kindergarten working on studying studying some seeds. I wanted to zoom in on our dual language results as well. So [clears throat] for our dual language, they take the Erla, which is the independent reading level assessment in addition to the I-Ready and they also take the annual, which is the Spanish version of that. And I wanted to share this chart because I think this is important to see. Our fourth grade cohort is our first cohort that started in our dual language program and they're listed on the bottom. And you can see that we are either green or yellow, meaning that on the Erla, there

048are no students in the red emergency zone. That same group, you know, you can see kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, there's some more red, but we're shifting to the green. I wanted to highlight that for our dual language fourth grade cohort, that top bar was that group in kindergarten. And we had red and yellow, which is emergency and at risk. That's shifted to proficient or above or at risk, two students. I compared just that cohort to the I-Ready data to see that comparison and it's fairly closely aligned. We have one student that's three or more grade levels below according to the I-Ready and otherwise we do have more students at that green and then our yellow bar here is a little bit wide, but we want to shrink that down. Our fourth Our

049fourth grade cohort every year had a teacher that was brand new to the program and out of their four years five years, three years they had a teacher who was brand a brand new teacher. And um you know, so we're excited as these teachers become more experienced to see as these other cohorts that are here, we're excited to see how they progress as well. We do have work that we have to continue to do in Spanish for our students in the dual language program. However, you can see that this this is just again the current grade level so kindergarten on the top and then by the time we get to third and fourth grade, we are starting to see students in the green. So that's exciting, too. Our attendance attendance at Edson is positive and

050I was also comparing attendance to last year at this point in time and our attendance has has improved, but 87% of our students have a 90 to 100% attendance rate. And 12% of students have an 80 to 89% attendance Five half percent or two students have less than 80% attendance rate and we are working very closely with those families and many of those families that are on that cusp and that 12% as well. So we're really proud of that. Just showing events that's where students are showing up. We had picture of our fall festival. This is one of our like one of our assemblies. And kids gathered [clears throat] around in small circles with staff members and the kids like to be there. We have a lot of family and community collaboration. We have a

051robust volunteer list with 150 adults on it that are parents and community members that come in and do everything from picture day to popcorn day to our the on some month vegetable taste tests, field trip support, coming in and volunteering to read with students in classrooms. There's a wide variety of things. Picture day, I didn't say that that parents and other community members and adults come in to volunteer. Sometimes it's grandparents that are coming in and doing that. Our wellness committee has really as you've heard from some of the members of our green team are part of our wellness committee, but they've really worked hard to help cut down some of the waste. One of the big things that I know I'm proud of, too, is they're helping getting the removal of plastics like disposable

052plastics from the cafeteria. They've helped to replace those little plastic sleeves that have a the plastic cellophane on the outside outside of spork on the inside and a straw and instead now we have actual spoons and forks that are metal and we don't have straws. So that's a huge reduction in what's going into the landfill. We're also have an initiative so some of the parents have also asked if we can help focus on some of the holidays like Valentine's Day to help cut down on one the sugar and two packaging waste. So we're already have an initiative going to start looking at alternatives for next year. Um we've got the fall festival. Earth Day's coming up on April 24th. We'll We're celebrating on April 24th on actual Earth Day on the 22nd, we're doing our

053math test. And then we're also working closely with the Kingston City Council. We are um they've they are working as a result of at the wellness committee and the green team improving access via sidewalks and I met with with Sarah Pasti and our facilities team last week. They already have plans in place for a sidewalk along Berolina Avenue. They're in the process of doing studies. They'll have to do easements. It's going to take some time, but that is already there. Sarah also updated us to tell us that the city is working on getting a grant for extending the sidewalk on Lucas Avenue, which I know is huge. That'll provide a lot of access for a lot of people. We have other events like our international dinner for our dual language and ENL families, our dual

054language meet and greet and then just some ways that families can communicate with the school other than just talking that like sometimes our teachers will talk to parents at the end of the day, but through surveys, email, phone calls, teams, other ways that teachers share as well. Another picture of our world read aloud night where we have families come in. We have family members read to our students and we had arts and crafts going on. It's one of our favorite one of my favorite nights of the year at school. Some of the other culturally responsive practices that we have are just keeping those lines of communication open and and being accessible to families that might not speak English. We have a lot of supports for our families that speak Spanish. I am bilingual. My bilingual

055family worker has built relationships with the family. I have several staff members who have varying levels of proficiency in Spanish and our families know that and they know that they can call and they'll have somebody who will be able to help them out. I have our Edson Den Edson Cougar Den staff daily updates that go out that share information with teachers everything from what's coming up, coverage for the day, events of the day. And then I have a weekly kind of starts off as a monthly framework for newsletter that's shared electronically with families and then it gets updated weekly and sometimes if things change during the week, it gets updated and I'll just send something out to parents check it again. Just was updated. And I know that's been received very well. Other school events,

056we've mentioned the monthly assemblies and grade level meetings, world read aloud day. We have our first talent show in the time that I've been here at Edson coming up and I know the students are really excited about that. A couple of the teachers are spearheading that and the kids are getting really excited. Lots of field trips. Some examples of PTO events. Our PTO is very very involved and it's really wonderful. Trunk or Treat, bingos, stuff a cougar. We had a school dance a week and a half ago. Lots of fun. And then other celebrations for our school as I mentioned the school of innovations, the dual language program, staff and students who want to be in school as is evidenced by our attendance rate and our very active PTO. So lots of exciting things going

057on at Edson. Here's just some other events. A grade four spelling bee, school dance. We had students who participated in a count about the learning about wolves and took a field trip to the to South Salem to the Wolf Conservation Center. We had the nutty scientist. We have the fourth grade chorus. Just some examples of all the wonderful things going on. And just some other pictures of the joy that you see in our students as they're participating in school related events. >> [clears throat] >> So thank you very much. GRACIAS POR SU TIEMPO. AGAIN, THANK YOU TO OUR BOARD TRUSTEES for allowing me to share all these wonderful things. To Dr. Madaleno, to the administration team here, our students. We've got some examples here and faculty and staff and families, community partners and our teaching

058and learning team. Thank you very much. Questions or comments? From Ms. Wolf, Dr. Thank you so much and thank you for presenting today. It's amazing. And you've got so much good stuff happening at the school. I actually well, one thing that stuck of the many good things um that stuck out to me that I really appreciate the way you're intentionally building community among staff members. with a real eye for both the internal dynamics there, but also working with um Wild Earth and other partners that are recess that I think we aren't always as cognizant of the immense sort of influence that those staff members have on our students and on each other and I think I appreciate your eye for that. Um I with really had a question around um the dual language program and

059I was thinking I couldn't take in all of that data all at once really in the way. I'm happy to see I can see more green, right? As we as those kids are getting older, that's great. Um I was mostly thinking around about the fact that our newest curriculum in the district is really based on phonetics and I'm wondering about how American curriculum is deals with the emphasis or lack there of on phonetics and and also sort of the knowledge base that's coming with CKLA and in what ways our dual language program is getting to um build those skills also. Well, there's a lot of knowledge within the American Reading Company too. So, a lot of the uh the resources that the students are reading does does include a lot of broad knowledge and it's

060exciting. The kids really enjoy reading about it. For example, like insects in second grade is a pretty in-depth and really wonderful unit. Yeah, so the insects unit and um phonics is incorporated, but I do think that's an area that we need to look a little bit more deeply and I think that some of that is um is evidenced in what we're seeing as far as our dual language reading progress. I do think that's an area that we need to zoom in on a little bit more. Are there any extra compensatory sort of push-in or or reading coach activity or anything that helps those students in along those lines and to maybe supplement that curriculum given that I think we're sort of embedded in that curriculum for a while at least. Sure, absolutely. We have the

061the core um phonics program that our reading specialists are using and helping and I think our ENL teachers also are using that with our students in the dual language programs who qualify for some extra support services. You're getting support through that. Some support through that core program, core phonics. Thank you. Sure. Um Mrs. Quasney. Thank you for the presentation. Um just to try to understand or unpack a little bit of the data. Um I noted when you did indicate that uh we have 10% of our ELLs that are also dually classified. I'm assuming those are are they in co-taught situations, self-contained, so they are not part of the dual language program. Is that accurate? It really depends upon the students' IEP. We do have some students who are dually identified who are in our self-contained

062program, others in our integrated co-taught and we do have some that are in our dual language program depending upon their needs. Okay. Thank you. And then to feedback also on the dual language program. Now that we've had a cohort that's gone through, have we had the opportunity to see how the our ELLs that are part not of not our non-ELLs, but our ELLs that are part of the dual language program have um progressed relative to our ELLs in the district that are not part of the dual language program. I do have I actually had an update to the slides and it didn't quite link up that way, but I did put a slide in there that shows the progress of the ELLs compared to not necessarily I do have one that does a little bit

063of that comparison of that the ELLs in the dual language program and not in the dual language program and then also comparing that to the overall grade level. So, I do have a slide. I can share that slide with you afterwards. >> That'd be great. Thank you. >> Absolutely. Are there any questions or comments? Mr. Ryder. Just on that, do you have a slide that has the non-ELLs comparatively as well? Maybe you did. That that just has the non-ELLs without the ELLs. Sure, >> I can add that in there. I'll add that in there before I share that. Cuz I think it's both important information, right? Yes. I do have to say that I am really enjoying all of the different um access that we have to different tools that allow us to examine our

064data in a lot of different ways. I'm having a lot of fun exploring our new Educlimber and comparing that to our i-Ready like taking a look at at all of that together creating some really interesting graphs and putting things out in an interesting way. So, that's been a lot of fun. Awesome. Cool. That's the comment. I know you're going to stop me, but I just have one more thing to say and I just realized that also my notes I did um I'm appreciating the real drop in classroom referrals for referral students as well. So, whatever's happening in your school [clears throat] community um seems to be really positive stuff for your teachers and students. Thank you. Mr. Quasney. Just want to thank you again, Principal Lowell. Presentation was impressive and comprehensive as always. And I

065I really am so grateful that Ethna's using the Purpose Purposeful People curriculum. It teaches respect, empathy, cooperation, responsibility, perseverance, courage, gratitude, honesty, and creativity. And they're all the world considers them soft um soft talents to have, but in in in the coming world they're all vital because the top Fortune 500 companies require besides the basic knowledge that you're coming with to the interview that you have top communication skills, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and teamwork and and it starts right here. And I also appreciate what Dr. Callender just saying that immediate the immediate the immediate results from from the Purposeful People curriculum is a reduction in behavioral referrals, reduction in suspensions, and then also uh better use of restorative practices. So, it it it it goes far and now we're some years away from all of the

066distance learning that we had to do during um during COVID, but we're still teaching a whole generation how to live and work together, which also uh adds to all of our success later on. So, thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you. I I'm just curious about your um you're the first elementary school to have your facility upgrades. And what has the response from your school community been to walking into basically a brand new Yeah. I think it's so many people like will first come through the front door and realize that we have this whole other entrance that isn't quite in use yet. It's not fully up, but it should be anytime. I imagine we come back from spring break, I think it'll be all set. Um but that's exciting. Um people have commented

067like even just people that there's a lot of families or a lot of people that walk around the school grounds like you know, just take walking for exercise and they stop they've stopped me and I'm sure they stop other people and comment on how nice things look and how they have we have the accessible ramps and the windows look beautiful. So, it the school has does have a brand new look from the outside and the inside. And then people walk into the office and they're just like I don't remember it looking like this or this looks brand new. Where is this? Where is that? So, it is really exciting. People are very very happy to see it. That's good to hear. Thank you. Thank you very much for your report. All right, thank you. Dr.

068Pedallino is back with us. I didn't wait. Um I just wanted to do a quick follow-up. Uh next I am starting to do a quick update on our budget process. Good evening. I have very brief update uh more pictures than than update just to to give people a snapshot of where we are and the different things that we've been considering. I do have some um hopeful news that came out um last week, so we'll get right to it for the sake of time. Uh for those who have not been privy to this, this is just a flowchart of the traditional budget development process, rolling over our current budget year that we're sitting in, estimating our revenues, which we spoken about at great length, looking at salaries and benefits, all of our fixed costs, and making

069those adjustments and projections. And these yellow boxes coming up, looking at line item expenditures, looking at our existing programs, prioritizing our enhancements, and looking for operational and programmatic efficiencies. And this yellow section is what I've now started calling wash, rinse, and repeat because of the I call this a two-year process that we've undergone starting last year in terms of looking at our district in light of our uh shifting funding um sources and how things have changed also within the district. Um this has been an ongoing process that we're continuing now. Then adjusting revenue estimates once the New York State budget is passed and that's where some hopeful news has come. And then when we round out next month, balancing out our expenditures and our revenues. So, we're right here in the middle continuing our work

070that we uh discussed two weeks ago. Just a highlight and for a recap for certain people of our new normal, I call this part two because we started this conversation last year and last year, if those who are watching will remember, I did say this was step one last year, so we're part two now. Looking at our class sizes on the elementary level, uh they decrease over time. So, we have to continue looking at the best ways to to strategically realign things. Looking at our foundation aid formula changes, as we know, um we've been getting the bare minimum for the past 2 years, uh counting this executive budget. One piece of uh good news is that with the one-house budget passing or being released their proposals last week, um there's a consensus that's very likely

071that the bare minimum will be 2% instead of 1% for Kingston City School District, that's $1.4 million total instead of just $700,000 increase in foundation aid. Um but there were also uh proposals in the one-house budget. And for those who don't know, the one-house budget is where the uh state legislator leg- legislature, excuse me, they put forth their proposals um together. And they did actually put forth a proposal that includes recommendations from the Rockefeller study that were proposed to balance out changing um poverty measures. Also using other weights. So, they did do that in their one-house budget, which is hopeful. Um our lower reimbursement for expense-based aid categories such as transportation, special ed, and BOCES services. And then looking just at separating apart from inflation, the cost of transportation services, um special ed services, they've

072increased significant significantly over the past 3 years. And then COVID relief funds, even though they ended, I mention it now because as we all know anecdotally, those the needs are still there. Um our incoming kindergarteners are children who were born during COVID. And just anecdotally in talking to different people in education in different spaces throughout the country, we're seeing different supports, different uh adjustments that are needed. The good news. So, with the one-house budget, um we're going to focus on the top row, the foundation aid. I included everything because we all are interested in various um aspects of the budget that affect schools, but foundation aid. As we know, the executive budget only calls for a 1% minimum increase in foundation aid. But the assembly, their proposal puts forth 2%, but on top of that,

073uh an increased weighting for our homeless um students and our foster students, which we do have a significant population of students who are uh challenged with housing security. But then also a weighting the increased weighting for our ELL students, which our district also we're blessed to have a significant population of students whose English is not their native language. And then eliminating the cap on the pupil needs index. But these changes uh would be significant for our district, actually more so than the change from 1% to 2% minimum increase, so that's very encouraging. But what was even more encouraging was looking at the Senate proposal. It also, in addition to the 2% minimum increase, included um weighting for homeless and foster students as well as the the same ELL weighting um in the formula. So, we'll

074wait we have to wait and see what happens with the final enacted budget, but it was very encouraging to see that proposal put forth. Um they are listening, they are looking, so hopefully negotiations will go well and those changes will be implemented. Unfortunately, we can't budget those changes, but it is very hopeful. I just hope the budget passes on time. Also including UPK funding, um language about zero-emission buses, but we're very far away from there. And one thing that you may have heard about um about prior year aid claims. If the state owes school districts money, there's a pool and it can really take up to 20 years before a district gets its money. However, if a district owes the state money for any reason with aid, it's deducted right away. And for the past

075several years, I think we're now in the fifth year, the state stopped funding the the bucket of money used to pay out those claims. So, the executive budget has no funding. Happily, the assembly and the Senate do propose um that pot of money to be funded. The last time I checked, uh our school district was owed about mm $300,000 at least um going back more than 10 years. Just a graphic that you're all familiar with for anyone who is new to the conversation, we've been talking about changes in foundation aid. This is just a graphic of how our foundation aid has shifted over the past several years from the 19-20 school year to um this year. And then if we go to 2026-2027, the executive budget is pretty flat. This yellow is when we were

076when the prior formula was fully funded before everything shifted. So, just to give background in terms of the things that we're looking at and the landscape of uh decisions that have to be made and the work that is being done and why this is a 2-year conversation. Enrollment. We all know anecdotally that enrollment has been shifting in our district. This graphic just shows us from 2020 to the present year our downward decline. Um it has not been a cliff like some districts, but there is a significant difference from 63, just under 6,400 students in the 2020-2021 school year to this school year. And that's something that has to be addressed regardless of the foundation aid situation. Then looking at our elementary enrollment summary, [clears throat] this top section is our current year enrollment by school.

077So, in total our elementary buildings, we have 2,153 students currently. Our projections for next year, excuse the typo, we're looking at just under 2,100, 2,074 students. So, that's a decline of 80 students. The reason why I highlighted kindergarten in yellow here is because we don't know um and it's been harder and harder, as Dr. Felton can attest, to even ascertain or guess how many kindergarteners we're going to have. So, this projection just includes rolling over where we are now, but it could very likely be a lower number. So, just looking at this. You've heard me speak about transportation special education. This is how our expenses have shifted over the past 7 years from the 19-20 school year to present. So, going to from pre-COVID during COVID slight raises, a significant increase in the 2023-2024 school

078year. This is the year after most of our contractors had gone out to bid for the first time in several years, which reflected their need to um adjust their salaries to the current market and address the bus driver shortage. So, since we are partners in their costs, it resulted in a large increase for us as well as the changes that we had to make in the district to um try to alleviate some of the issues with our transportation due to the bus driver shortage. Then 2024-2025 school year, even more of an increase. We had more students going out of the district. In addition to that, we still needed to make further adjustments to our um to our service in order to smooth it out. If you remember from years ago, we had several delays on

079a regular basis, many challenges with the bus driver shortage, so 2-year fix. And then in this current year, these are projections by year end. The orange categories the orange bars, excuse me, are the tuitions that we pay for our students who are placed outside of our district boundaries, including our um BOCES special education programs. So, there that too has been a significant increase. And in the 2023-2024 school year, the rates for our um for our schools where we send our students, those rates increased sharply. Um that was my first year here. And then significantly going up from there, including our numbers of students going out of district. So, in terms of the things that we look at, that we analyze, these are uh major cost drivers. This slide I put in just as a recap

080so people can really know because many of us, we live in this district, we work in this district. Many people are unaware of things that happen within our school community that are very significant to our students. So, some of the priorities that we are committed to maintaining for our students, smaller class sizes, but relative to the declining enrollment, balancing those out. Multiple pathways to graduation, a variety of AP and honors and enrichment classes at our secondary level. Robust music, arts, and athletic programs for our students. Social-emotional supports, robust supports for our students. Bilingual elementary program at Ezine. In-district universal pre-K program. One-to-one Chromebooks. Transportation. And our we transport over 98 square miles for this district. Significant investments efforts we've heard a lot about, which is wonderful, for math and reading. Professional development for faculty and

081staff to support these efforts and to make sure if they're trained and supported. And operations and maintenance for 11 buildings, which is just under a million square feet. And this is not everything, but the highlights and examples. So, our next steps. We are continuing to look at class sizes, retirements, and various supports that are necessary to realign our class sizes district-wide. Review and assess what I call legacy programming. Um in legacy programming, I use that term because we've made such significant curricular investments over the past 3 years between i-Ready, CKLA. We had initiatives and programs in place before then that are ongoing. So, looking at all of our programs and what we do to identify places that we can create synergies, be more how effective those programs are. Um can we tweak them to be

082even more effective? Are there things that have shifted that we um don't know about and then we can real- reallocate resources elsewhere. So, that's an ongoing conversation that we've been having and continue to have. Continue to analyze projections for the areas that I've spoken about, transportation, in our in-district programming for special education as well as out-of-district, and our BOCES general education programs and services. We speak a lot, we think a lot about uh CTE and special ed, but there are a whole host of programs and services through BOCES, uh which are significant that we're also going through and looking at. We will continue to identify opportunities for strategic shifts for next year. And I say strategic shifts because we do have to find ways to save money. We do have to cut things. But, we

083have to be strategic because we're balancing the our fiscal needs with our mission and mandate to educate all all of our students all the time and support our staff as well. So, the only way we can achieve that is to be strategic and think about things differently. Um we have to One word I've started using is reimagine. So, instead of we have wonderful professionals and a community of team members who've been here a very long time and we have a well oiled machine going on in many ways, but because our demographics have shifted, um our key drivers have shifted, our funding has shifted, we kind of have to shift our thinking to reimagine how we're going to get the same things done differently. Um and there has been quite a bit of that going on,

084people stretching themselves, communicating more, um and coming up with ideas and solutions. And then reevaluating finally our revenues and reserve allocations um when the budget is passed. That's it. Mr. Spicer. I I I I do believe I speak for most of my trustee colleagues when I say, Assistant Assistant Superintendent Carbon, we are so lucky to have you. With all these years, I mean, great work. But, our backs are up against the wall now. So, we're really lucky to have such a competent professional with you going going to bat for us. And I I think I can also sum up your budgetary priorities with three words, children, children, children first. Just outstanding. We're just so lucky to have you. And I just had two questions. With the rising uh gas prices, is that going to force

085us to to um is that going to affect our contract bids? Do we have to renegotiate our busing contract or do they absorb that? There are >> [clears throat] >> uh there are options for pricing that includes fuel and those that don't. Our contracts where the fuel is included in the price of which I believe is most of them since we rebid, we don't absorb that cost. Um but, the for the contracts where we are buying fuel, we may see an adjustment. But, I if I'm thinking about them correctly, there are so many at this point. >> [clears throat] >> I do believe most of our contracts, the fuel is included. So, and we're extending, we're not going out to bid this year as we had in previous years. So, those extensions are just a

086a percentage increase, which is driven by New York State. We just won't get that rate until May or June. Thank God. And then my last question is, when do we normally expect uh an on-time budget? It never happens. But, when do we normally expect an on-time budget from the state if they were on time? It would have to come through March 31st. March 31st. Thank you very much. Mr. Lamb and then Dr. Burnaby. I have a couple of questions, but I also have a request. Can we get this in our library so so we can go through this? What is the cost of living that we increased this year? It had the actual cost of living increase? Roughly. What are we What are we We're talking like 3. I've heard ranges. I haven't heard the

087final number, but I've heard from uh 3.4 3 and 1/2 to 4, but I haven't heard the final number that New York State is using. If we were roll over everything that we have in our current budget and we we fund everything, what is the increase in the the budget going to be? Do you know? Yeah. Roughly. Will you I could not give you that number at this moment, but I could follow up with you only because certain adjustments have already been made from that number, so I don't want to misquote a number. Misquote the number. It's over the 3%. Well over the 3%. >> And we have a state government that is giving us 1%, maybe 2% plus a little bit. We need people to say to the state, we can't do it. We

088can't continue this way because eventually it's going to hurt children. Yes. And schools are in the business of children. And if we have to cut one program, it hurts some child. And we need the public to get out and start banging on doors and saying, "We're not reelecting you unless you do something now." Because it's it's going to be too late. Once we cut positions, they never come back. As a person that was in a department that cut positions, they never came back. And we cannot allow that to happen again. So, I'm asking the public to do something and I'm asking the public to start making themselves miserable or making the lives of Albany miserable. A governor that has no idea of what she's doing to the children of this state while she's paying for

089a football stadium in Buffalo. And I'm tired of it and I think we have to take action. Thank you, Dr. Burnaby. I just want to say and then Dr. >> I just want to give one answer. While I can't give you the overall budget number to help you help me with this conversation and thank you, Mr. Lamb. As an example, benefits alone, health benefits, the initial uh projection that I had was 15% increase on a $50 million benefits budget. That number has since come down, which is an an example of but just to to answer at least part of your question in the way that helps this conversation and give people a flavor of the things that we're looking at and what you're talking about when you're asking me about inflation, um they've been significant.

090And you were wonderful. I'm like I'm not being critical. >> was directed to me. I I think we could be in a lot worse situation than we are today, but I I think we need the public to start helping us. No, your questions are very helpful and I thank you, Mr. Lamb. Dr. Burnaby. Thank you so much. What a good presentation. I'm a bit of a budget nerd and you are just so talented at just just describing the situation in plain language. So, thank you. Um I just wanted to compliment you because, you know, we sit here and we think of the budget as a moral document and nowhere in your presentation did I hear anything other than the humanity of our community. And so, I just want to honor that cuz sometimes we can

091talk about numbers as if they're just numbers. And every time you talk about them, I hear the people. So, thank you for that. And the other thing I really appreciated about your presentation was this word reimagine. I really love that because what it requires is all of us to be sort of creative and open to what's possible. Not And And throw things around and, you know, whatever is called blue sky things. I really appreciated that mindset um and I think it's a rare one. So, thank you. Thank you. And I have to say, our team has been doing that. This is the second go around. It can be painful as I'm sure you all know it in your personal lives, but that's the work um that everybody's been committed to and has been doing. Fantastic.

092Mr. Brenner. Jumping back to the one house bills. Um there was something there about Can you Yeah, can you actually pull that up? There was some I I can't read it, but um so, what is the change in the one house bills for the zero emissions buses? That they vary um earmarking up to $100 million in both places Okay. uh from the sustainable futures program for infrastructure. And then the Senate went on uh to talk about providing building aid for infrastructure costs required for storage, charging, and operations. And there's no changes to the mandate, right? No. So, what are our transportation partners as the amount of money that we pay them continue to go up, what are their plans to meet the zero emissions mandate? Different contractors have taken uh different steps to look at

093options. One challenge though, um which I know you're well versed in, at the heart of it is the infrastructure and and we're in Central Hudson territory, so the commitment to make make it a viable option. So, each contractor, they're in different spaces in in their journey. Um we've had at least one contractor raise their hand trying to get grants. So, the the mandate's not being ignored, but there really are significant logistical challenges that are real that make the implementation um more than challenging. Okay. At the end of the day, though, the state comes back to us. Mhm. Right? And so, if we don't have a plan for them that they're going to meet the mandate, what is what is the consequence to the district if We don't know yet, and there are um not extensions,

094but waivers um being put out uh by SED to address the fact that there are real um logjams and and issues that are that we don't control. So, the mandate hasn't changed, but there has been a waiver program that's been uh recently implemented. But, the district is also engaged in a study on our own uh to help us identify what can be done and what's viable with the contractors that we have. So, even though I haven't been speaking about it um publicly, I know Dr. Patalino mentioned it some time ago, it is it's not being ignored, uh but also without certain things being addressed, there's we're at a point where it's still exploratory uh more information even comes from the state. So, there hasn't been a lot of answers other than the mandate pieces that

095would guide to school districts in making informed decisions that will actually work. So, things are just starting to loosen up because to be very honest, Albany is just now listening more intently that this isn't just school districts complaining and being resistant, but by the same token, it's been made at least to me very clear that the mandate's not going away, definitely not, and the date's not moving, but at least there's been more forthcoming. So, this is the first time anything about building aid has come to pass because it's one thing to even if we can get it in and up and running, but that's hard enough. The actual funding pieces, and one example of what I mean um in terms of some of the challenges, one question that hasn't been answered yet because I don't

096know who can answer this, as you all know, buses or you may not know because we contract out, but if a district were to purchase a bus, um it has to be put on the ballot. So, if the voters vote down buying this electric bus that the state is mandating, the district has no recourse to buy this bus and meet the mandate. So, just an example of some of the real questions that have been raised that still haven't been fleshed out yet, but we're not ignoring them. >> for that. We've never put that choice for that. We've never put that choice to the voters. >> And we don't have to as a district because we contract out. Just using that as an example of some of the questions, the real issues that districts are facing

097in in meeting this mandate that have not been addressed, and it's hard to move forward without certain answers. But, like I said, we are moving forward in terms of the study that's um been engaged, and then our contractors are at various stages, and then taking advantage of the waiver program because the reality is I don't know too many districts that would be compliant by the deadline um throughout the state. But, people are moving forward. Are there questions or comments from the board? Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you for your work. Thank you, Mrs. Carter. Just a couple of really quick things before we move on. I just want to remind everyone that the I know there's there's been some questions about this. The Monday after Easter, which is April 6th, we will

098be in school. So, that's important to let the So, that's important to let that's the update to the public, and we'll get it out there uh you know, to all of our principals and to our parents, but that Monday we we have one over on our snow days, so we don't have that Monday as far as a break day, and um that's really that's that's the last reminder I have. I do again want to remind everyone that we have our um musical this week, tomorrow tomorrow, Friday, Saturday at 7:00, and then Sunday from 2:00 p.m. matinee, and um yeah, and then it turns back over to Mrs. If there's any questions for me. I think Mr. Rider has a question. Yeah, and to you, Dr. Patalino, or to whoever about Can we please put a

099text communication out on the spring break piece? I People have asked me specifically, we are not not via email, but via text. Not everybody reads their emails. People don't have email notifications. Something this important that is People are very confused about still. You see it on Facebook and other places. People are asking to get texts on this. So, I'm >> out. Yes, absolutely. We'll get the word out. Thank you. Any other questions or comments for Dr. Patalino? Thank you very much for the updates. That brings us to our student rep. So, I'd like to start with some thanks. I want to thank the whole green team for coming out here and discussing their new initiative, and I want to thank especially the people who have stayed here to listen to my short speech. I'll be

100blunt here. We as students are blatantly ignorant. We as students >> [clears throat] >> We as students Uh I'm sorry. We as students have been blatantly ignorant. So ignorant to the fact that we've adopted a new mindset. A mindset that if what we can't see doesn't affect us. We apply that to trash. And we've been so blatant to the fact that we think the trash and pollution and our environmental effects and what we do to the environment has no concern or no effect on us. And even more blatantly, we have stopped that sight. We have stopped caring, and we've stopped looking. To the point that even our campuses at Kingston High School is littered with trash from my old peers. To the point that me and my club have established a monthly trash pickup. And

101over the last five trash pickups, we've removed 30 lb of trash. 6 lb per cleanup. And I just want to say even if we have in 2 years this new Regents curriculum, and we and it's established, students won't change. We can't expect students to change and to protect the environment if we're raising them in an environment that has plastic-covered apples, that has trash and plastic and every sort of environmental Is that the right word? Environmental waste in our cabinets. I'm not saying this as the president of not as a student of KHS, but as part of the generation that has to live through and has to change our environment. And I know we have a lot of financial strain. The district district has a lot on her hands. What I'm asking is that we start.

102We start an initiative, and we continue to progress one step at a time. Thank you. Okay. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. WELL SAID, BENNY. WELL SAID. THANK YOU, BENNY. Thank you. Benny, questions or comments for Benny? All right, that brings us to our consent agenda. Are there any items that trustees would like pulled from the consent agenda? Hearing none, if we could have a motion to accept the consent agenda. So moved. And a second. Second. Any discussion? All in favor of accepting the consent agenda? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? So, our consent agenda is passed. There actually should be a little discussion. Like we're giving tenure to Right? Yeah, we're giving tenure to what? Assistant principal? Administrator. Um Dr. Patalino, would you like to comment on that? Just want to congratulate uh you know, Mrs. Patalino for

103his for his work in the district, and congratulate him on his tenure. I don't think he's in the audience, but we'll extend that to him. Thank you. Thank you. We do have a few donations that we need. Yep. Um the Board of Education of the City Kingston City School District hereby accepts with grateful appreciation the following generous donations to E.R. Crosby Elementary School from Connect Kids to Park Field Trip Grant Program, an award of $1,600. Thank you so much. And to Kingston High School from Connect Kids to Park Field Trip Grant Program to award the a sum of $2,560. Thank you so much. Finally, to Kingston City School District Athletics Department from Robert Alexander, KHS Class of 1980, the year I was born, a donation of football jersey and letterman's jacket. Awesome. Thank you so

104much for that. Thank you. Our Board of Education Policy Committee Okay, policy is putting first readings up and um we're first reading a 502 5020.3, students with disabilities pursuant to 504. I'd ask that you really spend some time reading that and looking at that carefully because that's all new. It is new requirements from the state and the language is basically the language that was given to us from the state. So, however, please spend some time with that. Next, we have 2220 for first reading, which is board board officers. We have 3140, off the already in the absence of superintendent. And some of these have not been looked at since 2000. So, it's time to start looking at those. Yes. Can I ask a question on that? Why is the change being made from shall, which

105is mandatory, like delegate in absence to is authorized to? I mean, it just seems like I don't know. I think we would want that. We'd want the superintendent to delegate to another administrator in his way. Is authorized to just means he could not They could not. But, no. I was going to skip to the third policy. I was still on the one before. 3140 is what I'm reading. I I mean, I remember it was discussed in the meeting. I'm familiar with this. I'm just trying to figure out how to phrase this. Yeah. Well, no. I don't know. There are certain things that I do know. The superintendent only superintendents are able And sometimes if there's an extended period of absence, I'll I'll do it in the inverse because the language speaks to that because a

106very brief absence from the district, he's authorized, but he may not feel he needs to. Um and then there would be the question of the ability of the board to appoint an acting superintendent if there were an extended period of time, but this is dealing with unexpected departures from the district where there may be a need to have action taken that can only be taken by someone designated the superintendent. So, it's for the day-to-day operations. Anything that would require legal authority would be board designated. I guess I mean, that doesn't really answer my question, but like It was more of a You're You're giving him authority to appoint someone versus what must happen legally. Right. Right, because prior to this change, it said he shall delegate somebody else, not the board. I'm not looking to

107take that role on as a board member, but previously it said the superintendent of schools shall delegate to another administrator, which to me is a stronger language than is authorized to. I believe it was switching from the shall being more regulatory, whereas authorized being more of a board policy directive. So, because it's simple in nature, it needed to have language that was more about a direction and an authorization based on board policy. He would not generally, absent of policy like this, have that authority, which otherwise defaulted to the board. I also understood at the meeting that if I thought if if he's an odd man for the day, he's he's not here. Do Do we need Does the superintendent have to assign somebody to make those decisions? He is he he's reachable by the phone.

108He was That's not necessarily the case. I think it's what I mean, there's it's not necessarily that you would have to. I'll also pile on that shall is something we're getting rid of in all the policies and will does not work in this circumstance. You wouldn't say superintendent will delegate, but they're authorized to delegate. So, shall is all coming out in in absence of a shall is authorized to is probably the most appropriate way to phrase that. Shall has legal Yes. terminology and I don't know that we can just wipe it out in all policies. But, we should check it out because we've wiped it out of all policies. I've said I've said it all like I I This is the first time I've heard it too, BUT I DON'T KNOW I DON'T WE'RE DOING

109IT. OKAY. AND WE'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS. There is All right. Shall we take a vote? No, we're not. Our next policy for first reading is policy 3200, administrative organization. You'll notice there's a lot of shalls being removed in that. Don't pick on him, though. Um in policy 4 4010, um equivalents in instructional staff and materials. And you'll notice that this is getting updated because some of those the the terminology in this doesn't even exist anymore. It's um it goes back to previous administrations in Washington. Um and then the last one for reading is our first reading is policy number 4311, display of the flag. And that is all the policies for first reading. The next um meeting is April 10th, 9:30 in this room for policy and we will continue moving through the

110policy manual and getting it a little more current. Any questions for Mr. Lamb? Okay. Um we don't have any other committee reports. We did have um Mrs. Curtis attend the code of conduct meeting today. I'm not asking you to give a report, but if you would like to comment on it, that might be helpful. Yes, I take my role as board delegate very seriously. So, I am ready to report on that high level um from that meeting. I want to thank them for the meeting for welcoming me. Um I served in the role that we had talked about in public session in the past about the board being a listening body in that particular instance. Um I made one joke, but that's pretty much it. Um the there's a lot on this committee's plate. So,

111I just want to share that there is a lot of movement, a lot of really deep discussions on various areas of conduct. Um so, I entered in with an understanding of the committee's agenda that has been ongoing. Um the uh proposal that you shared, um Mr. Writer, was um certainly acknowledged and discussed. Um no formal decisions were made, but all of the discussions predicated on the timing in which the code of conduct is put in front of the different bodies for review and ultimate adoption by the board. So, I do want to say that that is sort of the timeline and goal in terms of discussion and that um there are quite a few things that are up for discussion um including determining level 5 behaviors, um the review of vaping and wearing that lens

112um in in terms of the offense in the code of conduct. Um certainly a discussion about how code of conduct is communicated to the community was a really beautiful discussion about how that's done, how it can be done better, acknowledging that students don't sit and read it and constantly refer to it um and may have a different intention versus what is written in the behavior outline. Um and yeah, that's that's a pretty tight summary of what was discussed. Thank you. And thank you for representing the board. My pleasure. And thank you for asking. Um Mr. Spatola, I just want to be sure that the board is aware that all of our building reports have been Were you going to say that? I was, but Yes. In in in old business. Oh, okay. We can go

113to old business. Okay. Then, I I just wanted to express my gratitude to all the trustees who toured our buildings to do the inspections. They are complete and I'm waiting to meet with President Anderson and Karen to produce the compilation for the final document that we need to produce. But, just great work, trustees. Great work. Did we do Anna Devine? Don't Don't for the 5-year plan, we have to do Anna Devine. Do we? I don't Dr. Pelley It's about buildings. Do we do Anna Devine as well? Yeah, as far as, you know, the board business is not necessary, but we do it as far as our architectural review. I don't mind. I just didn't know that we do Anna Devine. I have a meeting scheduled with BOCES also to talk about their maintenance around that

114building for next week. Are you wanting that, um Mr. Lamb? Are you wanting that? I don't think it would hurt. It's been a long time since we've been in that building. I mean, we closed it how many years ago? 14? But it's still >> But it's being used. I thought it was part of BOCES. It's our building, but but we're responsible for the upkeep of that building and it's it's on our And it's part of our capital. It's part of our Yeah. Mr. Ryder. It's part of our review. Through our lease, we share the responsibility of the upkeep of the building, but the major projects are a different conversation, but yeah, it's still our building. We're still responsible for it. If the board wants to tour it, I mean, I think that'd be fine, but

115um we do include it in our architectural review. I wouldn't mind. So, then uh let me float some dates back and forth with President Anderson and we can we can get on with that. And and I assume since Mr. Lamb proposed it, it'll be part of the team to tour it. Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Lamb. Mr. Ryder, did you want to I I was just going to say I don't think it's I mean, I I thought it was a part I don't think it's appropriate for Yeah, it's a There's a BOCES program being operated in there and I it's part of the five-year plan and we'll have an architect go in there and determine I don't know why a bunch of board members would go around with our facilities team in a building that's

116currently being used, but not by us and we have a lease on. I As a member of the facilities committee, I'm not supportive of it and I won't join it, but if if you want to do it Then I'm I'm not making that definite yes now. I would say um I never I never thought about it because I know BOCES runs that building, but why don't we just then have a discussion uh with uh the president and and and I and Dr. Pelley, you know, and see if this is something we want to go forward with, okay? I'll leave it at that. The superintendent of BOCES to let them know. Yeah. And I'll leave I'll leave it at that. I think that's the most appropriate thing. Thank you, uh Mr. Lamb and uh Mr. Ryder.

117I I'll leave it at that. Other old business. I just want to uh request Yeah. Oh, old business. Mrs. Kerns and then Dr. Brunell. Old business. Uh I had requested some information uh since um I want to cite the people who spoke about the climate education request. I know that we're not required to roll that out at the middle school and high school until the 2027-2028 school year. However, we are required to roll it out the personal financial educational instructional request as of the 2026-2027 school year. Although as a district, we have a lot of flexibility. Um I know we've got a T&L meeting um on Monday. Perhaps at that Monday meeting, we could I know they're long, but I think we could just have a brief update on what we will be doing because

118it is required at the middle school band and the high school band effective September 2026. So, that was the old part. That the new part was the climate. But we've got another year for that. Okay. Um Mrs. Kerns and then Dr. Brunell. So, old business is um uh bringing up the proposal from ETC that we received for um a retreat um for the board. We received a revised version. Um I reviewed it in detail. I didn't have one question reach out to get an update, which was regarding the phase two um for uh so, the week of April 17th, but April 17th is a Friday. Um so, um we have communicated that she meant the week of April 20th. So, in terms of scheduling and dates, this is rather soon. Um it's working around um

119timing limitations, but as a reminder, this has been delayed and it's our second uh revision of this proposal. And our due to work is part of our board board goals to do retreats. This was going to be the nature of our next retreat, which serves both an internal purposes and developing some norms um for the future um trustees and how we operate um in a healthy way as a strong board and team. Um Mr. Ryder, then Mr. Lamb. Um I'm feeling negative tonight. Uh just going to a lot of comments, but I I I personally don't support moving forward with this. We I know we're delayed and there's a lot of reason we're delayed, but we are right around the corner where only five of you will for sure be on the board including like

120myself may not be. There there's There's four new members coming in. I think we're at a time of year where we're trying to rush because of the consultant's personal timing and then also not including, you know, almost half the board will be new potentially next year. So, I'm not supportive of moving forward especially given like where we are in budget and we're going to be asking our taxpayers where we're going to be looking at at programs for next year. I I I think I would prefer not to spend this money and I'm not from reading the proposal, it's unclear to me like was there a total or it's just guessed on hours. So, I think >> rate based on the scope of work. So, there was like a half hour with each of us. So,

121that's at least um 4 hours, so a little over a thousand dollars and then whatever the other time. To me, this is not a regular retreat that we fund. And so, I I'm not I'm not supportive of it. I also have had time to kind of reflect on like do we have norms? Like we have a we have a rules of order now and before that, we were kind of using Robert's Rules, but I I just think we have norms that are set and um I don't support moving forward with this. May I respond to those items? Uh I think it's appropriate for you to respond. >> Okay. And then we'll go to Mr. Lamb. Um the first thing I just want to clarify, the consultant is not at all pushing us or um uh

122utilizing a schedule to rush this whatsoever. In fact, we even talked to re-engage. >> She's actually been very very calm. >> Yeah, very calm. very flexible, open on timing. Um the other thing is I just want to clarify, we we were not using Robert's Rules of Order. That is coming up as I'm using profit. We did very clearly we have not been using Robert's Rules of Order, but we developed our own parliamentary procedures because it felt like there was some gray area. I just wanted to reinstate that because that has been a very big topic and I don't want to confuse the language on that. Um I I do understand where you're coming from and I certainly did think about the fact that there is we will be seeing a lot of but I feel

123like the um the old idea of putting the mask on yourself first before you help your fellow passengers is really relevant to doing something like this to strengthen the board structure regardless of who's on it. And as we're building out other norms and our um board handbook and all of these things that are really putting us in a better position to onboard, which frankly was not a great smooth experience and smooth landing, I think we are well positioned to do that better and I think there will always be need for improvement and growth in that area. Um and there are many other roles in which our communication needs to be strengthened and it feels like this is a good avenue to do it. I'm very open to alternatives. Mr. Lamb. I will not support it.

124We are right now going to put a a speed bump freeze on all spending in the district. We are going to individually look at every item in the budget before an expenditure has not been already um a appropriated for something is going to be looked at. Every hiring is going to be looked at. We have norms. We as a board, we don't even follow our own norms that we have. We put out an email with a um with a calendar being device that we have been told by technology and by the board for numerous times we are not to be using, but yet we put out that in an email within our own system, which is not following the norms that were discussed at this meeting. I will not at this time look at expanding

125norms until we follow our own norms and that we're in the business of children and I'm sorry, but if we're cutting one dime from that budget, the first dime comes from us because we are not the business of the district. The business of the district is children just as I stated before and I will not vote yes on spending one dime on this board until every dime has been appropriated for the children. Dr. Brunell. Um I support uh Mrs. Mrs. Kerns proposal. I um I work with organizations that have unhealthy norms all the time. And a perpetuation of unhealthy norms is not the same thing as supporting positive norms. And I think that the board has growth that it needs to make in terms of what healthy communication looks like, what respect looks like amongst

126board members. And we have differences of opinion, and frankly, we don't all have to agree. But to just assume that the current norms are healthy ones, are functional, is an assumption or a per- or perspec- perspective. Um and I'll I'll also just say that um Sorry. Oh, got to hurry up. He's trying to get in. Um I'll also just say that um we've been talking about this for a really long time. So, if we had just gone for it in November or December or whenever it was and had got it scheduled, we we had multiple opportunities to do it. And we've chosen not to. So, the fact that the timing is no longer perfect means that then that means we'll be doing it in October or December. And what that means also is that the

127same norms that aren't working now will be passed on to new board members, whether it's us or not. So, again, I just want to support building a system that respects people, that welcomes people, that makes people feel like um mutual communication is important. And I'll just say again um sometimes you got to clean your own house before you tell and your and serve the the public. And this is an opportunity for us to make sure our house is really nice and clean and tight so that people who enter from the public um whether it's through the public comment or any other or new board members, frankly, um understand what they're walking into and can fully participate. Mr. Spencer. I agree with Miss Kerns as well. And uh Miss Kerns, your example of put your own

128oxygen mask on before you try to save other people is is really valid here. And for all of the challenges we're going to face, trying to back up and and revisit cohesion and communication and proper procedure in the middle of the battle that we're about to face is going to be too late. It's going to be too late. We need to build this family now. This is as peaceful as it's going to get. W- We're heading into storms. And this this is as good as it's going to get. So, so I agree. If if there's a time to to build cohesion, build um patterns of communication and conflict resolution, it's now cuz we're we're paddling up the the whirlpool anyway. And your mental health is better than mine. Than mine. Mr. Ryder. I I just

129you know, I I think feeling like we have norms that are broken is also a perspective, um which I'm not like it's not necessarily the right perspective or the wrong perspective. So, I I hear that, you know, whether we believe the norms are correct or as they should be or whether they need improvement, those are all perspectives. I I think that we can improve, and I've always said we can improve our communication. I've spent a lot of time talking to others at who sit on other boards around the county, and actually been generally we do a pretty good job of communication. Um talking to them like I think we actually do um some more communication, have a second public participation period, things that not all school boards do. And it's not a school board's role

130to have a lot of external communications with the public. Um that's the district's role. And then as kind of board members, if we independently have communications with our constituents, that's one thing, but again, I I just whether it's the timing or not, I don't think that we should be spending money on this when we are in the financial situation that we're in and looking at next year. Do we know what we spent on the last retreat? The presentation was molded into like an agreement or was that a separate cost? It was in the budget. It was in the budget. Yeah. And there was a fee. Yeah, there was a fee. Yeah, I'm just curious what it was. I can look it up. I can get back to you. Sure. I should have asked for more

131thinking. >> [clears throat] >> Can I also just ask for clarification? Uh Mr. Lamb, you said that this money wasn't appropriated. It was my under- I As you all know, I'm very worried about funding money. But it's my understanding it actually may have been appropriated because it's budgeted for, but it's not covered. Is that It was the the right I used Okay, thank you. I used the wrong word. Thank you. Dr. Bernabei, I have another um old business. So, I didn't know if you wanted Can we let's finish And this we did we never had a motion to vote on this. We had only the discussion, but not a motion. Um I I Um so, I think we should come to a conclusion here. So, um Mrs. Kerns, would you like to move? R- Okay,

132I'd like to make a motion that we accept this proposal and move forward to to our next retreat to develop the portal. I second that. Any additional discussion? Dr. Cohn. Um I think the only thing I really want to add Well, I think there is value to building future resilience at any point in time. So, I think that there's always merit in having us come together and talk about our communication. And I think there um there are instances that we can all think of that are probably the right I'd say something simple of why this might be a good idea. Um but I will say I'm worried if we don't have 100% buy-in in it, how effective this will be. So, that um is something I was just putting out there is that it seems

133to me a space where we want to come together and maybe um be vulnerable in the way that we both are. And if we don't have 100% buy-in in it, I don't know if we'll make the progress we need. Dr. Bernabei. I think that I don't know how much money we're talking about. $3,000, $4,000. I don't know how much money we're talking about, something like that. I'm guessing based on the proposal. Okay. Um I I'm curious if $2,500, something like that. I'm curious if the district does professional development for administrators. And I'm curious if there's a value that the district has found in bringing your folks together. Um what I know to be true, having been do- having done policy work for 25 years, it's literally the only thing I've ever done, is the difference

134between policy development and implementation that actually sticks and doesn't is relationship. Not just between us and the district, which I look over here and I know I I'm excited by the humans. Um but also between the people on city councils, on and executive teams. And I will say as a new board member, and I'll only speak for myself, this has been a not easy board to join on a lot of levels. And the two new board members are asking for something. And and and Mr. Spencer, thank you, Mr. Spencer. And it's just a real like it it feels like a smack in the face a little bit. I just wanted to name the feeling to be like no, these are the norms. No, versus how we're going to communicate. We're not going to spend $2,500

135on board development. And also um if you make a mistake and and we you know, you're it's it's just not the tone that I think is a really welcoming tone for new people. And I'll just say when there's new board members that are running now, um I would love to be able to say we take you new folks' needs and ideas seriously. And yes, it is an opinion. It's not a fact that I think we need this. But I do do this as a job, and I do understand what healthy culture looks like. I'm telling you for me, it's not currently a healthy culture in terms of communication. And I'm I just want to name that. I just want to name it and uncover that. And that if that's how we actually feel, I'm thinking

136about Miss Kerns' comment about reimagining. Like we're not doing that thing here. And I think that if we are actually doing the job we say we're going to do, we have to actually put the work in as well, and not just the district. Mr. Lamb. First of all, just so you have an idea, I was the choral director at Miller. $2,000 is more than I had for my yearly budget. It was more than I had for 3 years' budget to spend on 800 kids. All right? Just to put that in perspective. Next, I will tell you I thought that what you did and what we at the last meeting and retreat was just as valuable as anything we're going to get out of that for $2,000. I would rather continue the free conversation cuz it

137was conversation. It was healthy conversation. That happened here and it didn't involve spending a dime. And and I I I think if we continued where we left off, instead of spending money and going in a another direction, cuz some of those things that were in that proposal I don't feel were necessarily things that are going to help the communication. I I thought the open communication at the last retreat that we did were Excuse me, it wasn't a retreat. It was a workshop. The last workshop we did was more valuable than we're going to get for over $2,000. And I I'm You didn't even say it. So, I'm I'm I'm sorry, but I because it was it was open conversation. So, I would support doing something like that, but I will not support the spending. Dr.

138Barnaby and then Mrs. Kern. The irony is that all I've been asking to do since October 7th, excuse me, 6th of 2025 is to have more of that conversation. The email I sent Right, I did the wrong thing with the calendaring app, but generally speaking was a continuation of that conversation. And the inability of this board to communicate about communication is the thing that we can't get over to be able to do the thing about communication. So, the internal communication is actually in the way of the external communication. And yes, I am happy to do the thing that I do for my regular day job in this board and and you know, I've spoken to um Ms. Anderson about it because I'm like, use me. Please God, use me. Like, please use the skills that

139I have. Just like we have a lawyer on the board and we have a community leader on the board and we have a choral director on the board and we have a nonprofit leader and we have a scientist and we have a schools expert and we have we have school principal. I mean, like we have all these tools, but the coming internal communications is preventing us from actually doing the thing that we all could be doing really, really well. So, I'll just say um I it wasn't my idea to do an internal communications retreat, but it's clear to me that we can't do external communications without internal communications. We can't. We physically aren't doing it. Otherwise, we'd be doing it. I greatly appreciate the advocacy for saving money. I do and I and I and

140I feel that's at the heart of like your kind of restricting the spending forward. I very much respect that. I think that it's not that black and white. We've already had a retreat. We already committed to another retreat. I think having another Nisbet presenter who's not in our community, who doesn't know about what we're doing is not a way to solve that. Um and frankly, I thought that was a waste of money in that experience. I did not get much out of that. Um maybe it was the timing, maybe it was other things. It just did not feel very productive to me. It felt like a checklist. This I feel this approach is a different approach. It's trying something new. It's engaging someone who's deeply embedded in our community. Connected to many community leaders. Really

141understands our system. Very fair pricing considering what they'll be doing. Um and something like this I think is reimagining the way that we work together and the way that we see things. And I I think that the amount of money spent on this would be extremely valuable. And it doesn't diminish how much we value how money is spent in our district. It just means we're completing the commitment we made. Cuz I don't think we can abandon that and I don't think we should cheapen the experience based only on dollars and cents. Um like I said, I'm very open to other ideas. I'm open to other things. This is the only thing on the table right now. And I I feel like that's continued to be an issue where we bring things forward or resolve things

142or come up with solutions and then we're met with resistance or unwillingness. That's fine, but I would like to next see your proposal for how the retreat is done. Because we are at an impasse and we have very limited time to achieve our board goals. And we do have a retreat another retreat in our goals. We're not in this for the vote. Yes, we are. Let's call the vote. Can we do a roll call? Yes, yes. Ms. Anderson? Yes. Dr. Barnaby? Yes. Dr. Collins? Yes. Ms. Kerns? Yes. Mr. Lamb? No. Mr. Ryder? No. Mr. Spicer? Yes. What about Ms. Corson? Ms. Corson? Yes. She even got her hair done. Yes. Six to two, the motion passes. So, we will be in touch with uh with uh Eva. So. Dr. Barnaby. I just wanted to um

143just as a part of old business um mention that um we all know that trans um people are under attack in our country. Um we have seen it in the news. Uh it's always been the case, but right now in particular through many not New York state, but other states' laws and the federal government, trans communities are under real attack. And um we also have policies and practices already in place in our school district, but I'd like us to at some point reopen the conversation about making sure that all of our faculty and staff are as prepared with developmentally appropriate materials for their classrooms and for their requests being made by students. Um I know this came up by the public a number of meetings ago. And we've received also a number of emails and

144things like that regarding other issues that um gender and not uh trans the trans and non-binary community of students um are facing. Um and I think this is an opportunity for us to just get even stronger than we already are. So, this is again not a um critique. Um but it is um we know that 23% of kids under 18 are identifying as LGBTQIA+ now. Which means we don't know exactly how many young, young people are non-binary and trans. Um but we do know it's a substantial number in our district. And so, um I would love to just hear more about what kinds of community partnerships we can we can build. Um what kinds of things are already underway. Um and for us to take a really clear view of getting ahead of the emergency,

145um which is already an emergency, but it's going to continue to get worse for our trans and non-binary students. And to make sure we're prepared and that we have our our teachers especially have what they need. Um The violence that our trans community and non-binary community um is facing at the moment is pretty unprecedented and that says a lot considering um how at risk our community is. And it's not just about materials, it's about also about the trans and non-binary students. It's also about the other kids in the classroom. We know that some of those students have have reported to us that the teachers and the other students don't understand what gender neutral pronouns are and don't understand what what non-binary means. And we understand I understand that that's not part of everybody's uh family

146life, but that that the violence of that does to kids is pretty is pretty stark. So, thank you. Thank you. Uh new business. I just have one We do have one new business item. We have to um nominate an individual to be on the board of education board. And then Jordan was nominated by us to fill in this one year. Um it is No, I'm not. You're not. I think it's just Suzanne. Yes. Um do we have an indication that she might be willing to Yes. continue on? So, um if it's okay, I will approach her and are we in agreement? Yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. While we're on that, the the one thing I would ask is that we have all these committee reports and it was very important for us to put Mr.

147Spicer on as our nominee and I don't hear those committee reports very often. And so, if we could just have that on the agenda from time to time Okay. so that the rest of the board is apprised of what your board work is at. Sure. That would be great. That would be great. Perhaps not monthly, but maybe >> No, it doesn't Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When there's important updates. Yeah, there's great updates. Dr. Collins. I don't know if this is the right time or place to kind of respond to what Dr. Barnaby had just Sure. Well, I it just occurs to me that um that we may be able to address this rather than later within the context of T and L. Um that may be a space in which we can have a conversation at

148least about some of the training and materials. Um so maybe Dr. Melina and I can talk about that at some future time. >> Fantastic. Um we have a main meeting that Thank you. Great idea. Board member announcements. Public comment. I think our public is left us. And so that brings us to a motion to adjourn. >> So moved. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you, gentlemen.