KCSD Board of Education Meeting 11/19/2025

001Sir, >> I feel like what what do you what do they call you in your >> stupid like whatever it needs to be. As the board has returned from executive session to our public session, if we could please call the role. >> Miss Kurts >> here, Mr. Fitzpatrick >> here. >> Miss Corsome >> here. >> Dr. Collins >> here. >> Miss Anderson >> here. >> Mr. Lamb >> here. >> Mr. Ryder >> here. >> Mr. Spicer >> here. >> Dr. Bernaby >> here. >> Mr. J >> here. >> Miss here to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have no action coming out of executive session and we now will approve the minutes from

002the November 5th meeting. Have a motion to approve the minutes. >> So move second. >> Any discussion on the minutes from November 5th? >> All in favor? >> I. Any opposed from November 5th are approved. That brings us to our public comment question. 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 we 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

003it with the clerk of the board who will see that trustees receive it. Each speaker will have three 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, impending grievances, or negotiations. Any speaker who does 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. Our first speaker. [clears throat] >> Hi board. I am Lee Bonvasudo. I'm a parent to a third grader at George Washington Elementary. And thank you all so much for everything that you do to protect our children and keep

004them safe. It's been very interesting right now to witness on the national stage a corrupt authoritarian administration protecting people who have abused children. Just like we're seeing here, an administration that has protected people who have abused children that you have known about. And just like nationally, we're seeing this on the local level. We need administrators who will protect children instead of ch child abusers. We need our leaders to be more beholden to children and not the stakeholders that they say they serve. We need a board who is holding the administration accountable and who is now failing to protect children by not doing so. And the administration has been silencing voices and stopping out efforts for democracy for years. This will not be tolerated nationally and it will not be tolerated locally either. So, I want

005to leave you all with a quote, and you can all decide if you're okay with what I'm about to share with you. The quote is from an eight-year-old who recently told his mother that when he was four, Principal Loiano hit him. >> I thought that's how a principal was supposed to act. >> Cannot. >> Understood. >> And so, can decide who it's choosing to protect. Thank you so much. Anna Jacobs. >> Uh, yes. Hello. Hi. My name is Anna Jacobs. Um, I live in Kingston School District. my face may becoming um familiar to you all as I have um continued to come to school board meetings um to talk about what Kingston School District is going to do to advance um protections for immigrant families. So, uh, I appear before you again in part. I

006know that, um, some weeks ago, um, a letter went out to families, um, about, you know, um, regarding this, but have heard or seen very little since. This is an issue that I um you know think is very important for you to continue to speak about and speak on very publicly. Um as we've seen perhaps you all saw what's been going on across the country. Uh when I first came here, I think the biggest concern was for the possibility of um family members being taken, the adult family members being taken by ICE and federal agents. Now we are seeing uh federal agents entering school grounds and school areas and taking young children across the nation. Fortunately, to my knowledge, that has not happened in Olter County. But to keep it from happening, we need very

007strong and clear policy. And we need to make sure that every single teacher, staff, we're going to keep insisting a person in this school system has know your rights training, has reviewed the policy, understands how to implement the policy. um should federal agents attempt to come onto any of the school grounds in the in the district. I just want to say the impacts of this are huge. Over 40,000 students did not um did not go to the Charlotte uh public schools last week after there were ice raids. They stayed home because families were terrified to send their children to school. We cannot have this. We cannot have this. And I just want to remind you that um the uft president we garden spoke very strongly about the this right at the start in January that

008these actions are traumatizing that they will leave an indelible mark on our society on the families that are impacted and on all of our children. So please speak about this. Make your voice known and public. Thank you. >> Is there anyone else who would like to address the board? >> Moving on to the uh superintendent report. >> Thank you, Mr. Anderson. First on the superintendent report, we have the principal of chambers, Miss Bardi, and looks like several members of our team and a police escort. He goes where I go. >> Parking cars. >> I I always say I write a lot of notes. I don't even look at them. I'm just there for now. Really. Good evening everyone. I am so excited to come and present to you as I am every year. This is

009a really nice opportunity for me to brag a little bit about our school and our community because I feel, you know, other than my family, I am so immensely proud of what we have created at Chamber School. It gets me very emotional when I think about it. And I say we because I have some of my fantastic team here tonight and many of them on the camera at home. And I really truly feel we've created something so incredibly special, so incredibly unique, and something that's really dedicated. I started thinking about what words do we dedicate, you know, what words do we really root our community in? And words like perseverance and dedication and grit and love come to mind. But even more than that is care. Because without care, we can never do great things.

010You know, care makes change. If we feel cared about, we're more apt to want to do something. You know, if someone if I would say like if you think about something like this, if you don't believe See, I said I wasn't going to look, but now I will. [laughter] Uh if you don't really believe that someone cares, you're not going to work as hard as you might work. So, we really work to help our students understand that we care about them. We help our families understand that we care about them. I help my staff understand that I care about them. and everything that we do is kind of rooted in that. So tonight I'll share a little bit about that with you and I'll share some details about our school. Um I've always been a

011big believer that the difference between something good and something great lies in the details and I pay a lot of attention to detail in everything that I do. Um and that is really what makes our school great. So hopefully you'll enjoy that with us. I want to start off by just sharing the portrait of a graduate. I'm sure many of you are familiar with this and uh New York State released our new kind of vision and mission of the state to really create a portrait of the graduate here in New York and kind of remodel our schools. Um really we learned about that at our leadership conference uh here in Kingston over the summer and I was really inspired by it because I love the fact that New York is really taking it seriously that

012learners are changing. So, I decided to kind of model tonight's presentation on a portrait of chamber school and how I'm really proud that we're already kind of aligned to a lot of the same things. Creative innovation, critical thinking, being academically prepared, being reflective and future focused, effective communicators, and global citizens. So, I'm proud of that and I'm proud that Chambers, as are all our schools in Kingston, really already headed in that direction. >> [laughter] >> So, Chambers is made up of 306 students. We fluctuate here and there. By tomorrow, we may have 30 307. Um, and we are proud to be a title one school, which you know, means we receive additional resources to to support our students success. We have a very diverse population at Chambers. It is a real melting pot and it

013is it is made up of so many uh different students and uh so many students of so many different cultures and heritages and that's something that we really pride ourselves on. 30% of our students are multil- language learners. That's a lot. We are one of the I think we are the highest percentage in all of Kingston. Um that's 93 students. Um primarily our students are Spanish speaking but we do have students that speak a variety of other languages as well. And this is something that our ENL teachers actually created last year and have continued to add to as we've got new students this year and had um just to kind of help our students. It's right outside our ENL classroom and it helps them to see the parts of the world that they come from

014and how proud they are. Um we have three ENL teachers and we have a part-time bilingual family worker who has really is amazing. Uh Maria Roas, she is new. Uh this is her second year. She is just so fantastic and has really helped create positive amazing relationships within our community. Um, and 83% of the classrooms at Chambers have multil- language learners. That's a lot. So, actually only three classrooms do not. So, uh, primarily, you know, our our teachers are all teachers of English language learners and they take that on and they they innovate, they are creative and they really love our students. uh 20% of our students are special education students. That's inclusive of two. We have one new class this year. So, we've always had a 1212. We also now have a 1211. So,

015we have more of a continuum and our students don't have to leave Chambers. It's because our population went down a little bit and we have a little more space. So, we had a finally chambers after all of these years has a extra classroom and we were able to then Dr. was able to kind of bring us on that continuum and I was so so happy because to to lose students after they leave from K1 is really difficult and we love having them there now. So now they'll be able to stay you know next year it'll most likely look like a K12 and then a two three four based on age and that's really great for our kids because they don't have to leave their building. Um we have integrated co-eing in kindergarten through fourth grade

016and 23% of our our classified students are actually related services only. So we have 20% of our students but many of them are just speech OT and PT. So we have a pretty low number of students that are classified um that receive consultant teacher services or small class services. Um our SEP plan this year includes three main goals. I usually create this graphic every year to share with families and students and teachers because we don't have a lot of time. that everybody has time to go and read the entire step and I totally understand that but I like it to be visible in the school and we have this on the announcements every morning. Um our three goals, we have two learning and then one community goal. Um an SEAL goal. Um so a comprehensive

017implementation of CQLA which you'll see a little bit about that later on. A comprehensive plan aimed at increasing math fact fluency and creating more automaticity. And that kind of comes from our um RA grant which I'm sure you've heard about here in Kingston. That was an idea that I got from our other administrators who were talking about, you know, that's the kind of thing they needed to do. And then our students also told us, we want to be better at math. Re, they called it real math. Um, which means math facts. And and that really stuck with me. So, we um added that as one of our goals. You know, when I shared that with with the staff in our set planning this year, they were like, "Yes, definitely. Let's do that." And then facilitating

018the implementation of the beautiful trail, a nature trail that is developed on our school property. It's amazing. Uh, it's built by the students and the staff. We have 18 stations, one per class an extra. It's really beautiful. We had a huge opening last year. Anybody can go to the property and utilize it. Um, it's it's um accessed by a QR code and then you can follow along on the map and there are movement or meditation um or learning activities at each station. It's really really fun and it's something for the our community to use, but really the whole community to use. I was there all summer and I saw people outside scanning it, going around and it's a really neat thing. So, it's something for the community, but it's also something that we use as

019a learning tool in our school. Uh, speaking of curriculum, of course, just like the other schools, we are very lucky to have CKLA this year. I adore CKLA. I think it is fantastic. I was a teacher for 10 years at Chambers. I taught fourth grade for a really long time. And CLA was the way I taught back in, you know, the early 2000s where students were really just immersed in learning content. and I know that it works from my teacher perspective and I'm seeing it now as as the principal and I just love it. Um these are some kids in first grade in Mrs. Benjamin and Mrs. Lcroyy's class um and along with our other two first grade teachers they all [clears throat] got together um and they did at the end of their um

020unit about the human body. They all had doctor costumes on and they wore like little doctor and said like their university hospital badge and it was just amazing. There's some kids doing an Apple project on the bottom. Um, and then some of our kindergarteners at the end and from Mrs. Feny and Mrs. Van Cle and Miss Fuko's class, they uh did a sensory like day at the end of their sensory unit. So, it was pretty amazing. I just I I can't be more proud of our school district for for making this decision. It really was one of the best things we could have ever done. Um, we also are jumping full steam ahead again this year into I Ready. I feel like it's great for the teachers because they've got their feet wet last year,

021some of them even the year before and this year is feeling a lot better. So, we're seeing the results. We're understanding the data a little more. We can look at it. We can we can really kind of tweak the things that we that that didn't make sense for us last year and make them even better this year. part of our uh set goal this year for our first our first goal which is a more like comprehensive implementation of CQLA. We each have these boards outside of uh our classroom. So, everyone has one outside of their classroom. I don't have a classroom. We all have them at the school and um they're whiteboards where uh students and teachers are encouraged to share what's happening in their classroom. That way when our leaders walk by or we

022have visitors to the school and anyone is stopping by our classrooms or even like Brendan comes to take a picture, he can walk in and say like, "Oh, I see that you're learning about fairy tales. What can you tell me about that?" So, it gives talking points to the visitors that come to our school and helps enhance the learning because the only way we really learn is by teaching others. So when the kids can get out there and start teaching the the people that are around them, including myself, when I walk by, you know, I can't always keep track of everything everyone's doing, but now I can because I can walk in and say, "Tell me what did you learn about fairy tales today?" And they do and they can, which is great. This is

023just some data. We don't obviously it's the early part of the year and we have a lot of room to grow, but it's really nice to be able to see our I Ready I Ready data so quickly in math. um we are we are still reaching levels you know where we need to get a little more proficient but that's the good thing about I ready it does work and we did see some growth last year um I hope to see even more growth this year same thing goes for reading we have growth to make but our teachers are working hard already uh we've seen a big shift in the science of reading things that the teachers are doing in their classroom especially our reading specialists are working kids are making more strides I'd say in

024this first quarter than we've ever seen them make in in any first quarter since I've ever been there. So, I'm pretty pretty proud of that progress. One thing I wanted to point out, we you know, I do things a little bit unconventionally and a little bit different. And I I'll tell a very quick story. Last year, we it was around this time of the year and we had a principal's meeting and uh Dr. Pina was he doesn't even know this story. I've never told him, but uh he was talking to us and he was really serious. you know, he really is passionate and and it's not just in front of all of you, it's in front of us, too. And really cares about our kids and kind of said to us like, "We got to

025do something different. Like, we really got to move these kids." And I took that seriously and I really took it to heart. And I went back to my office and I started thinking like, I can't just stare at my computer and really feel like I'm on top of this data. What can I do? So, I created this big wall in my office. If you stop by, you'll see it. Uh it's a big wall in my office and every single teacher is listed along the top and every single student is listed underneath and everybody has a blue card and a green card. Blue card is beginning to get there. Green card is good to go. So at a glance I can look over and know exactly where each student is and that helps me because it's

026in my face every single day and I can't avoid it. So I have to really look and say like why why okay why is that still green? We have what are we doing? How can we change? So, thank you for that wonderful inspiration and it really has made a difference. And this is their teacher. So, the encouraging part is that when the teachers make that growth with their students and they get to the green, they come down and flip the card because it's a moment for them to celebrate all the hard work that they've put in and just to really share that. So, this is just a couple pictures I have of them flipping their cards over. Most of our students take the uh state assessments. We have got our data back and it did

027make me smile but it is embargoed so I'm not going to share that with you tonight but I will say things are looking up for chambers and um we did have a lot of students take the test only four refusals last year um in in total so I was really proud of that [clears throat] uh our attendance is pretty much where it was at this point last year slightly better um right now uh you know attendance tends to be a little bit lower so if I were to report this in May, the number would probably be a little higher because we still have a lot of students that are outstanding in the beginning of the school year that have maybe moved and haven't transferred. They're moving to another country, moving to another state. So, a

028couple of those bring our rate down, but if you look, 90 to 100% of our students um have uh I'm sorry, 79% of our students are here 90 to 100% of the time. So, that's a really good number to look at. Um zero 7.6% of our students have that lower lower number where they're still chronically absent. uh we have very few referrals. Um these are referrals for this year. So not really uh that many at all. And we you know it's actually more than we probably had last year but that's because you know I am encouraging the teachers to make keep a little bit better data on behavior things. So even though they're small little incidences um we do like to have them in e school so they show up quickly. So uh we really

029focus a lot at chambers on preventative practices. So, a lot of people like to talk about restorative practices and I do too. But I also really have learned that preventative practices often help even more because the more you can prevent, the less you'll have to restore later. The more you can think ahead, the less you have to do in the end. Um, one of the biggest pieces is our daily affirmation. And we wrote this a few years ago. We live by it. I say it every single day on the announcements. And then I say, and I've said this before, sorry that I'm a broken record. Uh, it's not enough to just say it. You have to live it. Sometimes I go into more detail about ways you can live it. But that is what I

030say every day because it is not enough to say words. You cannot just say them. You really do have to live them. And our affirmation really does touch on learning kindness and being your best self. Our theme this year is this is me. Uh growing my confidence all year long. Um and it's really important for me to have a theme for the year. We've done it for the past several years because it helps us to tie everything together. SEAL can seem very fragmented, but when you have a theme and you bring it all together, all the details match and everything seems to start to make sense to the kids. And we talk about it every single day. And the reason we chose confidence this year is because students don't have confidence. CO has changed children

031and we've talked about this before but the level of confidence and the looking down and the fact that like my own children right when you they walk past you and I see it in our young young kids they don't want to look up they look down they're nervous they're scared they're anxious they're used to a screen so we really thought about like what would be the best thing for us to focus on this year and I said yeah definitely confidence let's focus on confidence and how confidence can make you an even better person so you can put more good into the world. So this month's theme is I am thankful, right? So we're trying to even tie thankfulness with confidence because it's possible, you know, and like being thankful. One of the things I keep

032saying over and over this month, every day on the announcements, I read a different quote or talk about something different. And I, you know, if you're thankful, you actually can't be unhappy. And if you think about it, it's really true. When you when you're feeling thankful, you actually lose all all feelings of anything other than unhappiness. So, um, each each theme is really important, you know, to the way the year works together and and I think it'll really help us make a difference. I've already seen a difference in the kids. You know, we do like little things like keeping your head up and, you know, every month it's like a different little idea. So, those have been really helpful. Some other preventative practices, we do mindful walking. So, if a student is having a hard

033time during the day in class, they'll come down uh during lunch period. either they'll eat in the cafeteria, usually they come and like to eat with me out in the hallway or in the hallway. We have like a little table. Um so they have a little bit of a quieter space where we'll start talking and then we do this little bead building. So it's like a little um string. Our greeter, our door monitor, Lisa, she built this box so we can hold them on and they walk down the hall, they come back up the hall and then when they pass this box of uh beads, they get to pick one and they put it on their little necklace and then they do it again. Sometimes they walk with a friend, sometimes they walk alone, sometimes

034they walk with me or Mrs. Potter. You get they walk with someone and we talk about why are you here? What was happening? What was your learning kind of what disrupted your learning today? Or what did you do on the playground yesterday that really caused you to like not be able to really be out there today? So, we're still exercising. We're still moving. Sometimes we could go outside. But a lot of kids choose to do mindful walking because we allow them to do it whenever they want. They choose to do it because they love it and they also don't want to go outside when it's cold. So it's a really um and when it rains they all do it but it's a nice thing and then if if two students have a conflict they come

035in and walk together and they make the little uh beaded necklace for each other. So what that they are done doing mindful walking when the necklace is done and they can exchange them and then they have a reminder to be kinder next time. Um we use a lot of affirmative language this year. We started something called a bug and a wish because kids if you're like oh you have to use an I statement. They're like what? I can't I can't remember what the I statement is. Like, oh, well, you have to use your I don't know. They, you know, so if you're in that moment, it's really hard to be a five-year-old and say like, I really feel like you're hurting me, you know. So, we So, a teacher in first grade, Miss Gillan, passed

036on this idea about a book called The Bug and a Wish. So, it's a little bug, a ladybug and a stick and a one of those flowers you blow. It bugs me when you I wish you would. So, it helps them remember it because it's something tactile. And then we have a new peace pole courtesy of the Rotary Club as well who are amazing. And I'll show you something else they gave to us, but they installed a peace pole. We had a peace assembly. It was really nice. The kids played some bells. It was great. And now we've got a peace pole for kids to meet at when they have conflicts on the playground. We do weekly community meetings, which I know I've talked about before, but it's, you know, they're consistent. Every single Friday

037from 9 to 9:45, we have our community meetings. It is a great time. It's a way for me to put out all that SEAL stuff that I want to put out and we all get the same message which is the most important thing. Um daily morning announcements which you know sometimes we get a little preachy with me on there and um also things like our RST process which is our MTSS. We still call it RST because the teachers still call it RST and I kind of go with that. Um but it is MTSS and our process is very um very detailed and very organized and it works because we really created a brainstorming team led by uh Mrs. Potter who is our RST chairperson. We have a brainstorming team. We solve problems. We don't just

038meet so we can like figure out how to let's classify this kid. No, we meet so that we can brainstorm and figure out how to solve the problem with the team that we already have, not just as an avenue to classification. Um and we you know generally work together at Chambers. We have a fantastic group of people um that work in our school and we all work together and that's what really works as a preventive practice. Some family community collaboration. We like I said we collaborated with our friends from the Rotary. Thank you Dr. Padalino for sending them our way and thank you Dr. Feliso who graciously allowed me to raise my hand and say I'll work with the Rotary. Um but but Dr. and I went to one of their breakfasts at Dicings this

039summer and we got to share a lot about Kingston City School District with them and share some of the goals and the things that we really found uh you know that we wanted to do. And then I had this idea for these math and motion bags and once they heard about our idea at the breakfast they were totally behind it. So they funded the project entirely. It was close to $3,000. Um and each student in our school now has a take-home math bag. So, it's a little mesh. Supposed to bring one today. A little mesh bag. You can see them in the picture there. Um, and inside the mesh bag is a calculator, a deck of cards, a little board that you can like an LCD where you it erases um dice and one more

040thing that I'm forgetting. Dominoes. Yep. Dominoes. Yeah, they're right up there. And that and the kids then take them home and you can on the outside of the bag there's a little QR code. they can scan it and then it's like a little app that I created that has games and activities that they can do with those pieces. So, you click the dice and it gives you all these games you can play with the dice. You click the, you know, you click the um uh calculator, it shows you how you can like come up with like this, you know, how old you are on the calculator. So, it's a cool little thing and it's a great tool and a lot of kids use it and it helps them practice their math facts which is our

041set goal. So, we're meeting our goal. Um, another thing we've done with uh is collaborate with Land toLearn this year. We're very lucky that Edson was getting a lot of um construction this year. So, Land toLearn came to us at Chambers and I was very very happy. Gardener Meera and Gardener Mea are wonderful and they um come every week and do garden time with the kids. They love it. We also work really closely with Nette Warner from Cornell Cooperative who is amazing. And I'm very proud of our own Joe Beans and the fresh fruit and vegetable program because it is phenomenal. And every week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, we get all these great vegetables. So, here's one of our students this year eating her kale giant. We have a little Chamber's garden corner in our weekly

042update. We try to share what's happening in the garden so parents can understand what their kids are doing when they come home and say, "I was at the garden." So, now they know. Uh we've also created a care closet recently this year through a partnership with the White Eagle. They were so kind and reached out to us and said, "Hey, we've got some money. Do you want to create a care closet like JFK's?" And I said, "Anything Mrs. Jameson does, I would love to do." So, yes, I would love to have a care closet. So, we were so fortunate that White Eagle was able to help us out with that. We created a care closet for our students. Um, as well as uh recently we also created a a food closet for our students. you

043know, we recognize the need for food and we get our Friday food bags, 40 of them from our kitchen and and Joe um here in Kingston, but in the interimm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we realized our kids need kids needed more food and they needed access to food, easy access. Um so we've got a new food closet staffed by pretty much our staff, our students have been dropping off, you know, other families have been dropping off food. We've kind of just put out the word to other families, but mostly our staff who have come and just stocked it with food and then our students can come down pretty much anytime they want and take home like Hanford bags of food. And it's really nice and it's just little things that they can take when

044they need it to kind of get them through those periods of time that are really hard for them because we know how hard things are for people right now. Um, other things, our beautiful trail here is our big opening last year. We had a really successful back to school night. Mr. lamb. Miss Barones were there with Dr. Bellisello there in the corner. It was really successful. We have hundreds of people that usually come. Um, and it's a really great night. We get people to come. Um, the awesome students at the Kingston High School from the National Honor Society came and helped us out again this year. They're really great. They do a night meeting with our students. It's just a really great time and it's a great way to get parents excited about the school

045year. Um, coming up soon we have an ENL family dinner. So, our ENL department partners um with the rest of our staff and we put together an ENL family dinner. Um we're having it again very soon actually. So, these are some pictures from last year. Um Potter Brothers donated and and 686, which is a local clothing company, donated lots and lots of coats, gloves, hats for our students, which was amazing. We did a little performance. So, somebody came and did some music. It's a really nice way for our ENL population. Now, over half of the students, um, over half of our families are Spanish speaking at Chambers. Um, so we have a very, very large population. Um, and this is like, uh, we were talking about earlier in the public comment, it's a very hard

046time. And I've seen it firsthand. And I have to say, I have never felt more supported by our administration. I fully expect if I ever needed him in the moment, Dr. Palino, Dr. would probably drive up in the same car together and be there in two seconds because I feel, you know, we really are supported and I and I and I feel empowered to protect and and and serve our students and make sure they feel safe because I see it in their faces. You know, it's different. It's this year is different for them and I and I and you know, I love them all so much and but I feel confident in my abilities and I feel confident in our district's abilities because I know that we are ready if if and when something like

047that were to ever happen and I feel good about that. Um, and so, you know, a lot of schools, we we talked about, do we want to have our, you know, email dinners this year and we said we do because we feel confident and we feel good and we we want to do this for our students and our students wanted it and their families wanted it. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud that they feel comfortable and I'm proud that they feel safe in the Kingston City School District. It's really important. We had a family engagement night last year and we're having another one coming up. We focus on SEAL stuff. Um, and I think that's what we will focus on this year as well. So, that was kind of those were our themes. We're

048also going to focus a little more on CKLA this year. Um, but they're really great nights to get parents out and doing make and take so they make something and they get to take it home. Uh, culturally responsive practices are kind of woven into everything that we do. Our ENL family dinner, we have a a whole BLT sub team about CRA. We celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month really big at our school. Like I said, many of our students um are Spanish speaking and and and we really celebrate their cultures and countries. Uh [clears throat] we have a lot of increased uh outreach to families to come into the school and share their knowledge. That's something that's led by our family engagement team. Um and then integrating cultures and heritage into at least one schoolwide meeting per

049month. So I pretty much usually integrate into all of them, but always at least one. We do a lot of social emotional learning. Like I said, we've got themes and uh yearly themes, monthly themes, and then chambers is getting a big facelift this summer. So, one of our nice and supportive initiatives is that we are the next to come on the capital project, and I'm very excited about that, and I'm already getting myself organized. So, um thank you all so much. I'm I'm very appreciative of the board, of course, our superintendent, our assistant superintendent, uh our students. Thank you so much to my wonderful faculty and staff, all of our wonderful families, which I love so much, our community partners, and of course the whole teaching and learning team. You're all fantastic. If you have

050any questions, I am here. And I would like to share one thing with you. If you don't mind, I will end here. Um, I did make a little uh just like a little something for you to take home if you can pass them around. Um, if you're interested at all in learning more about Chamber School, you could scan that QR code or you could scan the one on your little folder there and and you're welcome to do that. And if you have any questions, >> questions and comments, Mr. Lamb, >> first of all, you you walk the walk and your your leadership skills are so incredible. Your staff would do anything for you. I mean, I've seen it at open house. I've seen it lots of places. And you're just the building is alive. It's

051a fun place to go. It's a fun place to learn and it's a safe place. And at open house, you had all your families there. I mean, it was just amazing. And I thank you. You park cars at at beat stadium. You cook at you cook at the concession stand. There's not something that you don't do. and you don't ask your staff to do anything that you wouldn't do first. And I thank you for your leadership skills and what you do for our kids because I think you're amazing. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. THAT WAS >> DR. COLLINS. Thank you for the presentation and the breadth of information you provided. I wanted to just also highlight um that I'm really appreciating the the concrete really tangible ways that you've attach strategies

052with those set goals and you have maps with your map goal and conflict resolution exercises and mindful walking for and I just think um that these are these are tangible and potentially measurable and um it it just makes me so hopeful for the future. So I know it's now but I also really really thoughtful and intentional and deliberate step forward. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Bern. >> Hi, I'm Erica. Nice to meet you. >> Nice to meet you. >> Um, just so grateful that you um take so seriously the love and care in the building. Um, especially knowing what some of the our Spanish speaking and non-English speaking families are going through right now. And we heard we've heard that data come into this this ward room um throughout the a couple of months and

053just to know that it's reciprocated on that side that you feel supported and also to continue to share with obviously Dr. P who will then share with us what else is needed. Yeah. >> Um as you hear from families and the young young people but just so grateful to hear the words love and care coming out of your mouth so many times because a lot of times we keep sort of a distance from sort of our people and it sounds to me like you're fully embracing all the people in our district. So thank you for that. >> Thank you. Thank you. It is. It is really important to me. And then you go ahead. >> Oh my good. Good. >> Well, good evening, Principal Morati. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Um, your data is

054outstanding. It's a blinding flash of the obvious. You can't move children where you need them to be if you're not using data to know where they are. >> So, just outstanding. Because I sit on the teaching and learning committee, I know your history of learning rigor and engagement. But I wanted to add something special. I feel your ENL dinner isn't just an event. Because of the times we're living in, it becomes a gesture of healing and solidarity, a reminder that the school community stands with all of our families during these times when they may feel vulnerable. So, and and and we could all feel it, not just in your words, but we we could all feel even in this meeting what's happening in chambers. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you, >> Mr. Ryan.

055>> I I sent you a thank you when you first sent it out, but I just want to do it publicly because not everybody gets the newsletters, but when we're having issu Well, we're still having issues with SNAP, but when the SNAP issue came along, and you weren't the only school, but thank you for sending out the information for local food pantries. Um, and I do think that that shows uh the care that you give. Um, you know how I feel cuz you or my kids >> I know >> not first principal but one of the first principles but um [clears throat] >> and just the the I hope that the food closets can expand and grow to other schools. I think that that's a great idea. I know some others have the care closets

056but especially right now um hopefully that catch on. So, thank you for all you do. >> Thank you. Thank you, >> Mrs. Um again, thank you. I echo uh what everyone has said and as you mentioned, Mr. William and I were at open house. So, what we could see was even in these challenging times, how comfortable parents and kids were to come out to be part of that. So, thank you for that. I actually have a question because you know me um >> with um you've got a lot of initiatives going um and as a former teacher and actually former literacy coach you know how challenging it is to implement new instructional practices. So what do you think some of the um challenges are in the CKLA and what can we do to support staff

057as they make that shift? I I think they're doing an amazing job implementing it. But I will say it the the lessons are long. They're very long, you know, and and they are tedious and the topics are engaging, but it's a lot. So, I think, you know, I think teachers definitely need they need some time to absorb it and talk about it because that's the best like I think I said this before, the best way we learn, right, is by teaching others. So, almost like that time to talk about it. And I think we're doing that. Like I think we're spending grade level meetings talking about it and we're spending time. But I think the more time we can spend that, you know, more grade level meetings that we have and and spend that time

058talking about it because they do need to talk about it. They do need to digest it. It's a lot. It's a lot to take in. I I've looked at the manuals a couple times just because I had some thoughts and ideas and I wanted to try them out. But um I think that's what they need. You know, we spent this last faculty meeting um implementing something that we did at our cabinet meeting which were like utilizing these white books that we had and I just tried to give some small ideas, little tiny tidbits of information that the teachers could use and I you know apologize in advance. I said I'm sorry I'm giving you more info but like I'm just trying to give you a way like because one of the things is with CKLA

059the kids sit for a long time >> and and and because they kind of have to because you're doing a lot of reading to them and reading with them and um So, we need some tools to like how do we get up and move? So, I was just trying to give them some tools and ideas of ways to get the kids up and moving. >> Great. Thank you for doing that and taking the time to do that. But you're right, teachers learn best from other teachers. Creating the opportunities for them to have dialogue. >> Absolutely. Thank you. Anyone else? >> I was just >> I was uh I was in a meeting with Joe and Mina earlier and they were uh saying how cool your your birthday cart was. >> Oh yes, the party cart.

060Yes. Yes. We have a party cart with two party carts in the office. They're like little mini shopping carts and they're all filled with like birthday stuff like a seat cover and all this fancy stuff and a birthday cake singing to you. And if students choose not to bring in a sweet treat for their birthday, they can get the party cart instead. So it's a sweet treat, which is fine if you we don't want to totally, you know, we don't want to. We got to give parents the option. But if they don't bring a sweet treat, they can pull the party cart and they get to sit next to their desk for the whole day and they can use the chair cover and they can sing happy. You get like a stuffed animal and a

061seat cushion and like there's like cool pens and markers in there and it's encouraged students to not have so many cupcake days. Um We've also found that in in talking about the times that we're in, >> that's right, >> parents don't have that extra money for cupcakes or cookies or even juice or anything. So, no one has to feel excluded on their birthday because you can just get the party cart and you don't even have to say, "Oh, I don't have cupcakes." No, I just didn't want cupcakes. >> I'm just getting the party cart. So, we have two and they're great. They're really cute. >> They're really cute. Yeah. >> Sophie or Benji, anything to comment? >> I think the I think party is amazing. implement that in more schools. >> I think we should

062bring that to the high school. >> Oh, the high school. It's like a little >> No, I think that's fantastic. >> And [laughter] I I'm just really glad to say that hear you guys say how you're focusing on making kids confident because I think that is a huge issue right now. I think so many kids are scared and they're looking for support and they're not always finding it. And I'm glad that Shavers is a place where that can happen. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> I think I counted five or six community partners. >> Yeah. >> Um I could congratulate you for that because if we go back to it takes a village >> to raise a child and that's just a reminder that there are people in this community that are more than willing

063to work with the schools to to take care of her kids. >> Absolutely. And that's extra work. >> Yeah. >> But it's it's time well spent because it makes a huge huge impact. Huge impact. And I have a really good team behind me that take on a lot of that extra. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you very hoping you'd show the picture of Dr. Olivetto dressed up like a doctor that was in that. That would have been fun to see. Um, >> I was a grace for something. I'm sorry. I thought it was that. >> Okay. Next up, we have Miss Bonville and our communications team. Good evening everybody. Um, very appropriate that we are presenting on the same night as Mrs. Barardi because our team likes to tease Brendan a little bit.

064You can be sure that if there's an event going on at Chambers, Brendan is covering it for Mrs. Barard. So very our kids know who Mr. >> So one of our we love all our schools of course um everyone is amazing and but school as you saw tonight is one of our favorite places to be for sure. So great job on that. So good evening everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight um on behalf of the communications department. Tonight, we're going to review our current communications plan, which all of you um have in your in your library, your board library, share key data that reflects our progress, and outline upcoming goals designed to strengthen engagement with our students, our families, um our staff, and our community. We want to be sure that our

065focus remains on transparency, accessibility, and innovation. ensuring that every stakeholder feels informed and connected. We look forward to your feedback as we continue to align our strategies with our vision and with our priorities here in Kingston. Before we dive into the details, I'd like to take a minute to introduce um the amazing members of the communication team standing behind me. We're all going to be tag teaming tonight's presentation. So, you'll get to hear from each of them who make this work possible every single day. Each of them plays a vital role in ensuring our district stays connected. I'd like to first introduce um our two senior communication specialists, Christine and Shaina, who lead strategic messaging across all of our platforms, ensuring consistency and clarity in how we communicate with our stakeholders. They also oversee our

066major campaigns and provide guidance on best practices to keep our district's voice strong and unified. Next, I would like to introduce Mr. Brendan, as I guess he's called now, the digital communication specialist. Um, Brendan manages uh our social media as well as our website and ensures timely updates across all of our platforms. They actually all do very many things, but that's um aligning with their official tasks and their official titles. So, Christine and I are going to tag team this slide just a little bit. So, So, this is um for like the new members. Um some of you were here with us when we first started to kick this off and some of you may not be familiar with why we have a communications plan. Um so, in June of 2021, um we had talked

067about like how do we improve the communications department? Um getting the word out and the communications and things like that. And so, we sat down with uh Dr. P and said like I feel like we need to get more information and maybe even have a plan like we need to know what the future is going to hold. So we did sit down with him and we did some primary research. We actually hired a outside consultant um who then did a scope survey. A scope survey is a uh highly recognized uh and it's a national survey that's school communication performance evaluation. Um and so and that was very thorough. Um so we did our primary research and we like what do we need to work on? And then we started to have the actual survey go

068out and there were focus groups that went out. >> So I was actually a part of a member of one of the focus groups as were many of my colleagues um to my to my left hand side over here. Um we had a total of 10 focus groups with a total of 85 attendees within those focus groups representing staff, parents and um community partners at that time. Um and then once that survey was done then we started to create the actual communication plan and that was presented uh to the board on March 16th in 2022. The plan was adopted in the spring of 2022. Um I don't know we didn't have an exact date for that but then the implementation of the plan then took place. It was supposed to take between three and four

069years uh to complete because there was a lot of information that we garnered from that survey. So we had to like work out like the little things and then continue to build ahead. So all right. So why uh Kingston City School District created a communications plan? The purpose was the district needed a clearer, more concise way to communicate with staff, families, and the wider community. feedback from the scope survey, uh the interviews, the focus groups showed that our communication did not always match maybe our mission um or reflect the strengths of our schools and we wanted to build trust, reduce confusion and ensure that everyone here is accurate information at the right time. So what we learned, our key findings were that um and these are the strengths, a strong sense of community pride and

070connection to Kingston City School District, a respected superintendent and staff who valued face-to-face communications, effective crisis and emergency notifications, solid uh relationships with local media and many community partners, and a communications team with a strong local ties, skill sets, and the capacity to grow. So, the opportunities for improvement included, many families and staff described communication as maybe a little inconsistent, hard to find, or maybe not always timely. The scope results resulted uh the scope results uh placed us below the national average in nearly every category measured. Internal communication gaps often led uh left staff without the information that they needed. uh messaging tools varied widely across all the schools the school buildings creating confusion and some uh for families and the website needed to be clearer uh more structured and more frequent updates limited two-way

071communication left families and staff unsure whether their feedback mattered communication with non-English-speaking families needed to be more consistent and timely and district branding and messaging lacked shared standards So moving forward, um what did the plan aim to fix? The district-wide goal was to provide proactive, consistent communication that strengthens trust and supports the mission to inspire, educate, graduate all students all the time. And you said that in your your uh your um presentation. Thank you. So, how are we addressing the gaps? Moving from reactive updates to a planned approach with clear messages. Uh, that was key and we've been working on that continually and that that things like that will always continue to grow as you learn how like maybe things were mistakes or you've learned from that or you gotten better and that'll continue to

072grow. Ensuring staff receive important information before or at the same time as families. staff wanted to know ahead of time like when things were going on because sometimes they weren't even being contacted. So they wanted to know ahead of time like when things were going to go out so that they knew what their families were going to be expecting. Standardizing building level communication tools so families receive consistent updates across schools. Improving the website and creating a centralized district calendar. Developing a district-wide brand guide. Strengthening outreach to non-English-speaking families. enhancing opportunities for two-way communication, including town halls, parent councils, um, and advisory groups, expanding professional development for leaders on effective communication practices, and highlighting the good work happening across the district more regularly. Hold on for one second. So, the bottom line for the new uh

073board members was the plan gave us like a roadmap to communicate more clearly. It helps the district to reduce confusion and increase transparency through our communications. The work is ongoing and requires partnerships between the board, the superintendent, district leadership, schools, the communications team, and sometimes and occasionally parents as well. Many of the initiatives you you will see that have taken place this year, centralized calendars, clear messaging, standardized tools, stronger staff updates, come directly from what our families, the staff, and the community told us in that survey. Up next, it's Shaina Barnes. Hi everyone. Um, so I'm going to start with some of our implementations. As we stated before, we're nearing the end of our plan timeline. Um so a lot of work went into these implementations. We're very proud of them. Uh we'll start with

074our prioritizing enhancing staff communications. So right now our current protocol is if um for example there's power outage at an elementary school or an incident where emergency services need to respond. Um our office, our team emails all KCSD staff members and notifies them of the incident before families are notified when lead time allows of course. Um, so that that way our staff is hearing directly what's happening from us. It really prevents like the rumor mill from turnurning. They're hearing from us first. Um, they're not hearing secondary information. Um, we know Kingston can be a small town, so things news travels quick, right? So, we get ahead get ahead of the ball um following that protocol. And really, it's really building trust across the district. Staff know they know if something's happening, they're going to hear

075from us. and until they hear from us, you know, it could just all be hearsay. Um, so we've gotten excellent feedback on that transparency. Um, we also meet with uh new teachers. We do a lot of staff training. So every summer, every new district hire during the new teacher orientation. We have a communication seminar for them. Um, so what we do with that seminar, we introduce ourselves to our to the team. Um, they find out all the district communications protocols, right? So they hear from us how how they're going to news um what their place is in that. Um so everyone knows exactly how it works from the get-go. Um and along with that, we also our team has pretty robust actually training materials for our mass notification system um and how to update school

076web pages for the appropriate staff across the district. So principles, office managers, um they are all equipped with how to operate the mass notification system at the building level. Um so we are ensuring that they know how to communicate to their parents as well using our system. Um and I also want to add how we prioritize and enhance our family communication as well. Um our protocol for that um our protocol for that is if there is a district message um that email will come from us and that that's going to be from messages for the superintendent um you know updates on district happenings like parent info night parent night information um things like that text messages those are reserved for emergencies only so school closures early dismissals things of that nature. Um, you know, that

077prevents message fatigue. Um, so parents know if they're getting a text message from the district, it is important information. I'm going to read that text message. Um, by having this criteria criteria, excuse me, we're providing clarity and consistency. Parents know what to expect. They know what kind of messages um to expect when they see KCSD uh in their inbox. Um, so we're building trust with our community in that in that fashion. And also too, I also want to add on that we uh every message sent out from our office is also sent in Spanish as well. We have a translation tool. So if you are signed up for Spanish messaging, you are getting texts and emails in Spanish as well. Uh secondly, our branding. We're very proud of our branding internal and external. Um we're

078going to start with letter heads. Uh, previously there was no real consistent letter head across the district. Um, there was, but there wasn't, right? It was kind of uh, you know, people had different titles, titles that didn't match their like real titles, things like that. Um, so now every administrator, department leader, principal, they all have this template with their appropriate information. Um, everyone in the district has this. Um, if we ever not using their letter new letter head because it still kind of is new. They hear from us right away. Hey, where's that new letter head? Uh we don't let anyone off the hook with that. Um so yeah, our our new letterhead, this is strengthening public recognition, our district's identity, credibility, professionalism. It looks great. Everybody has the same letter head. Um we're we're

079so proud of that. And the same thing with our email signature. Um this was actually deployed uh at the beginning of this school year. So, if you have a Kingston City School District email address, this is going to be your signature right here. Um, so again, same thing. We have that district identity. It looks clean, professionalism, credibility, and also we're very proud to say that is ADA compliant. So, if there is a person that needs to use a screen reader, they are able to read uh the letter head and the um email signature as well. Uh you probably informed that the state education department is coming um is moving strongly with their uh ADA compliance uh initiative and K is ahead of that curve. So, we're happy about that. More on branding, our awesome presentation

080template. You saw Kari, we have this little logo right here. If you see this logo in the corner, probably looks familiar. Um we have a presentation template so you know that it has our, you know, sign sealed delivered. It is a Kingston City School District presentation that you are seeing. Um, yeah, we love that. And also our graphics. So these are social media and website. This is our brand kit. We have a bigger brand kit. This is just an example. If there's anything designed from our district, it is following a color scheme. We are using specific logos. We are using specific font. Um, all of that we have method to that. you know, if you see something, you know, you know what's official from our district. Um, because we're following this brand kit. Um, so,

081you know, that brand recognition, it it plays a vital role in strengthening the trust and professionalism and credibility, all of that. Um, and this is something we're actually working on making available to uh district employees. And lastly, our implementation, the rhythm of the school year. Uh we have a very in robust internal calendar that our team works off of. A lot of work goes into it. Um we create a standardized calendar for the school year. Um it's based on categories um such as school announcement, holidays, staff appreciation days, awareness campaigns. Just yesterday we had a post on Facebook for our school related professionals day. Um, as we were saying stating before, uh, you know, this really helps people expect what's coming. Our our teachers, our staff, and our community as well. Um, you know, just

082like it says, a rhythm of the school year follows a rhythm. Um, so we prioritize uh what we're going to to cover based on the equity across our district. So we want to ensure that all schools are getting even coverage. And that also applies to departments. So, athletics, performing arts, um you know, we cover a lot of CKLA as well. Um all those stories we love to highlight. So, equity across the district and and what we're highlighting as a communications team is very important to us. Um so, we have this calendar. It's internal. You know, we don't let a lot of people see it because we're very we're very proud of it. It's it's not it's not private, but it's ours, right? Um We communicate that with the appropriate stakeholders and from there that's where

083our content creation process begins. Um so we we identify what we're going to cover and then we reach out we coordinate coverage. Uh so we schedule it. A member of our team will go out like we're out on chambers a lot with with a camera. Uh we check photo permissions of every single student that we photograph. Um and then we write content. We create artwork. We'll go back and forth sometimes with the teacher or staff if we need more information. We have that proof read within our team as well and then we schedule it. So I think it's we really wanted to highlight this because anytime you see a post on Facebook there is a considerable amount of effort and teamwork that goes into it. Um it's much more in depth than just you know

084writing it from your phone because we certainly do not do that. and I'll turn it over to Brendan. >> Hi guys. So I'm just going to look through some of the website and social media statistics. So this is from the last year. So 2425. So if we're looking at our Facebook demographics just so you can get an idea of, you know, the driving force behind who our content is getting seen by and our audience. So we can see 35 to 44, 45 to 54. That's pretty much our biggest ranges there for pages of our social media content. So this our Facebook reach just how many people that our posts have reached um in the past year. So starting from September 1st, 2024, we have reached 388,000 different people. So you know this is from family

085shares and just the algorithm of our posts. We do two posts daily scheduled at um exact times really to get that algorithm out. And it kind of just goes to show that Facebook really is a strong way of us communicating with our community, with our stakeholders, with everyone in our district that needs to see stories, what's happening behind the school, you know, days off that are coming up. Pretty much just important information that they might not see on the website or somewhere else. Um, and our content interactions just, you know, just something to see that how many people liked, commented, shared our posts in the last year. over 100,000. And if you look right to the left of that, we can see views. Um, so this is something that we're kind of trying to go

086with the social media evolution here. So, you know, you probably know what Tik Tok and Instagram reels and everything are. Um, really how content has been um, consumed by people really is evolving and we're going to try to stay with that and adapt with that evolution. So over the past year, our views of videos posted are up 88%. So we've really tried to get more video content and um hit those audiences that might not just see a text post, but might consume content in the video. Um this is just our visits to our Facebook page. So, um, yeah, those >> domber. >> Um, and now we're looking at the website. So, the website was new as of last year. Um, so we only have September 1st basically up from last year up to this point.

087So, we can't really compare it. But if we're looking um, we have 42,000 active users, which seems like it's, you know, tenfold our district, but When you think about it, people have multiple, you know, you might have a phone, you might have an iPad, you might have a computer at home, all the school computers, you know, so these are all active users. So, the website is getting utilized um very much. And if we're looking over at the engagement time, if you look up there, it says four minutes. That is something um a number that we're trying we're striving to keep low because when you think about it, the quicker you're on a website, the easier you found what you're looking for is. So, we're really trying to up our navigation, up the efficiency of our

088website, so people can go on and know exactly what they need to do and where they need to go to find what they're looking for. So, we're trying to keep that low and four minutes is the average as of as of right now. And this is just something else that might be interesting to look at. Um, it's our top 10 visits per page. So, these are the top 10 pages that people have visited over the last year. So obviously the um the homepage is number one where everyone goes and then clicks off that but when you're looking past that you have calendars. So each school has its own digital calendar and then you have the district printable calendar on the website um for staff and for students are under that. So these are just the

089links that every day students and staff click on and off while they're using computers in school outside of school. You know has all their links to their email to their learning softwares. Um, and then under that we have the high school, athletics, the human resources page, the two middle schools, and then food services. So, lunch menus, breakfast menus, stuff like that. So, this kind of just something interesting to look into statistical wise. And something else that's new this year is the KCSD app. So, this just launched this past September, and it's kind of mirrored from the website. Um, and if you can see down there, there's multiple different tabs. There's a couple of them, and those tabs are kind of used from the information we got from the last slide where we're looking at the

090most used pages. So, um, you can see the lunch menus are down there, the letter day, the calendars for each school, the news stories for each school. So, pretty much the top um, used pages are on there. And the app is really just for efficiency. You know, you need to check something on a calendar, what time the concert is tonight, you can look without having to type out the whole website. Um, and then some information about that, it's just it's available on the app store and the Google store. And since we've launched in September, we have 4,700 updates. So, we previously had a KCSDC app that was a little bit outdated. So, 4,700 people had that and have updated to this new version and then 173 new downloads of the app. And this is just

091a graph showing um so as launched at the very end of August. Um you can see all of the automatic updates happening on people's phones. And then when we did a big press push for it on our social media and website um midseptember, you can see another big push for updates and downloads there. And this is just some of the sample of the district uh social media page that we have from this past year. So just some of the posts that the type of posts that we put out, stuff that people might not know about or might not see happening in the district. um you know, you get an eye on everything here. So, on the left we have um the video of Kingston High School choir singing at the 911 memorial. And this is

092something like I was talking about earlier where we're trying to do more videos. you know, photos of the kids singing might um it might hit home, but if you really see a video and you can hear the kids and see how somber everything is and how everyone's just looking at each other, you know, video is just a better way of content um capturing that content. So, uh we wanted to do that and that did pretty well. We had 800 likes and 70 shares and a bunch of comments. Um same goes for you know this is um congratulating seniors senior athletes on their collegiate signing um in that. So and then one of our KHS students who got a really cool scholarship for music actually um a post celebrating him as well. So and then this

093is just some of the sample media coverage. So when we do go out to schools or go out um covering an event we sometimes will send it to the media the local And this is just another avenue of getting this information out there. So, you know, someone that might not be actively looking at our website, maybe their children have already graduated or they're a grandparent, they moved away, they're not looking at our Facebook, this is still something that uh is a way of getting that content out to those people. I'm gonna pass it over to Becca. >> So, one of the things that we felt was important um and we presented on this last time that we presented here to all of you was to create departmental goals for us every single year. So, last

094year our goals um this is what this slide represents. We've created three goals. Um and we successfully I just want to report out we feel that we've done a really good job on hitting these goals. And then the next slide I'm going to share are our goals for this coming year. We successfully established a standardized safety and crisis communication framework that ensures clear, consistent, and timely messaging across all of our channels. And this improvement enhanced preparedness, reduce confusion during emergencies, and strengthens trust among staff and stakeholders like uh we talked about earlier with alerting our staff and our faculty first as one example. Our second goal uh we fostered early collaboration to anticipate concerns and build trust through consistent transparent communication. This approach strengthens relationships and ensures that our stakeholders are informed and involved. And

095one of the things we wanted to highlight for this goal and it's a collaboration with these wonderful people again over to my left uh working together with Dr. and Lynette um building our parent corner that was a really big um goal of ours and I it's a work in progress continue to tweak it certainly um but we get a lot of we get a lot of hits on that on that page people are going on there we feel that it's important to have a kind of a one-stop shopping for our parents a place that they can go where everything can be found all things parent nights parent forums um important links we curricular information on there from the TNL department and we felt that that was really important. I also want to they're going to

096be mad because I'm embarrassing them but um I also want to say we're so happy to um have these ladies uh with us because we meet with them regularly. We have conversations about the website um and about things like the parent corner. So, it truly is a collaboration. Um, and we're able to really make those updates and Sha help us make those updates in real time. Um, so parents are informed constantly. And then lastly, as Shaina discussed earlier, the third goal from last year, we successfully established a clear and consistent rhythm of the school year like you heard about creating predictable cycles for planning, communication, and key events. And this structure improves alignment across departments and reduces that kind of last minute change helping staff and families feel more prepared and engaged throughout the school

097year. So for this year our uh 202526 goals um we wanted to increase communication regarding school safety by meeting with the KCSB safety team bi-weekly. We actually met with them this week for the first time, Mr. Corva and Mr. Parker. and create monthly goals, reminders for our district that are communicated to all stakeholders. We also want to create additional opportunities for purposeful exchanges and visibility between the district and the community. And our last goal for this year is strengthening connections with school buildings to enhance transparency, engagement, and to show showcase success. So rather than us hanging out in chambers all the time, we want to make sure that we're spreading the love and sharing uh sharing with all of our students. And really, I kind of the I wanted to add about this slide and

098about our goals. Um, I do meet with this team. We meet every Tuesday at 10 o'clock. It's our standing meeting. Um, and as you all know, we also uh oftentimes meet with Mr. Silverstein. So, we have them on a rotation. Mr. Parker and Mr. Silverstein are kind of every other week. Um, [clears throat] there are two departments that to talk to a lot and we need to collaborate with. And like I said, we can always jump on with TNL or we can jump on with Mr. house or whoever needs our attention. Um, and that happens. But our real vision for this year is to um create a culture that is proactive and transparent because of everything that is going on. We want to make sure that we're putting the Kingston City School District has put

099forward and where every message is timely, clear, and accessible to all stakeholders. And by leveraging consistent systems and structures, we want to build trust and ensure that stakeholders uh conversations, safety and school or student accomplishments are communicated seamlessly. So that's a really important vision for us. We talk about that. We have talked about it in our in our weekly meetings and continue to talk about that. So that will be really be our guide for this upcoming school year. And I think okay Congratulations are in order for Kingston City School District. Drum roll. Can you please give me a little drum roll? >> In September, we submitted the website to a statewide uh contest. And two weeks ago, the district's website earned an excellent rating, which is the highest rating from the New York State School

100Public Relations Association. So they said that there the transparency, the ADA compliance, the colors, the pictures, the verbiage. Congratulations to all of you. Job well done. She didn't know that we were going to do that, nor did Dr. So congratulations. So in March, they will actually um do like a presentation um and I forget where where it is this year. that turning stone. It's that turning stone and so's team um will probably go and receive it and to bring back the award. So congratulations. I think downplaying text messaging is a major mistake in the fact that when I'm teaching, I can look at my phone and it says KCSD and I know that when I'm done with that class, I can move I need to check something. Notice that at the end of class, I

101know that I could now this would be sitting on my piano because I need it for tuning. Um, but I don't look at email during the day. I look at email at 3:30 in the afternoon. I don't look at all the other I don't look at Facebook during the day when I'm teaching. I'm if if you need to get a hold of somebody who's at a job. They need something to vibrate in their pocket to tell them you need to look at you need to look at the phone. >> So, I will say this that from the survey, we found that parents said enough of all the We need it to be emergency related. So for emergencies, >> I haven't got a text message from Kingston City School District in over a year. Are you

102signed up? >> Yes, I'm signed up. I have not gotten a text message in over a year from the Kingston City School District. So, we may need to maybe figure that out if if like there's something because I know that we went through an issue where like if there's one thing wrong like in your like if it's your name andor your telephone number like it's going to hiccup. So, we need to just double check on that. So, maybe at some point we you connect with the communications team and we can definitely check to make sure. But for emergencies, yes, we are sending out We were getting into it where we were sending out text for, you know, the bus is going to be 15 minutes delayed, then the next day, oh, it's 10 minutes delay,

103the next day five minutes. And parents were like, I I can't do it. And it worked. And parents were opting out of messages >> and because that's an option. So when they were opting out, when school when there was a snow day, they weren't getting the text message because they opted out because they were getting slammed with text messages the previous month that they were like, "This doesn't really apply to me anymore. I bring my kid to school. I don't I don't live on that bus route. So that's what that's what the data um provided us. >> But can't we'll check >> can't our system if if it's bus route 12 or whatever whatever they are. Can't our system tell that and just send it out to those parents? It doesn't need to that doesn't

104need to go out to every parent. It just need to go out to the parents that are on that bus. >> That's just an example. >> It can. It's just very complicated. Um I just know with the transportation department they said to have that many lists and how kids may be getting dropped off at dad's house this time but then maybe getting dropped off at mom's house. So now like how do we where do we put that child and how we're going to reach their parents kind of thing. So it's it is complicated. I've just been told that to have all those lists for just the bus routes is monstrous. Dr. >> I'm really excited by your goals for this year. I think they're right on. I think they're going to require all of us

105here, you all, and other parts of the leadership. Um, but I think they're really good and clear. Um, I think they touch on a lot like they feel um timely. They feel like they're from now. They're not old goals that were recycled. They feel really good. And I'm just really excited and for us to collectively think about how we'll know we're succeeding, right? Because, you know, of course, you all are are we'll do a good job of self-reflection, but it I I do see them as connected to our board goals. I see them as connected to your goals, and I also I'm sure Dr. P sees them as well. So for me, these are really good goals and I think we could um support them by adding some performance measures um that will that are

106not just quantity but also something about the impact of what we're able to accomplish in a year. I think I just think they're really excellent though and then um thank you for the presentation. I think it's clear, concise, good. Um can you explain so both goal two from last year goal two for this year talks about kind of a proactive approach or proactive interaction and when I hear that I think about a back and forth. So what are the ways that we really sought input from families, community members last year to exceed the goal as you said and then what are the ways that in the coming year we're going to use this proactive interaction to solicit input from. >> Yeah. So some of the things that I thought about um when I crafted two

107was really about some feedback for example where we have members giving us information back some of our information feedback that we're receiving um that was a conversation that all collaborative things should defin the main but certainly there's other venues as well. And then in terms of this year, I think we need to do more of that. I think it's about expanding that reach a little bit just beyond um that there's anything wrong with having and utilizing the parents and the committees you already have in place, but maybe looking for other ways in which to do that and have that reciprocal. That was a word that you all have talked about a lot. So that kind of reciprocal relationship >> and if I could just follow up and just and maybe the trying to find the

108parents that maybe aren't comfortable going to the PTO meeting or the >> DT, right? >> Okay. >> Great. And even our recent meeting with our um bilingual family workers can gave us some feedback to build on to work with some of our families that that maybe we don't they don't show you know they're not into PTA meeting or they're more you know they're not who are in our regular communication avenues. >> We're just the families who are working all the time, >> right? It's it may not be out of fear because of what's going on currently but working two like you know. >> Good point. [clears throat] Thank you so much for your presentation. I know all the nuances that go into running the communications department and it's very data driven but also very forward

109facing and public communication and that is a really rare brain to have both sides. So I really appreciate what you've done. I've also been able to see the trajectory of the communication improvements over time and I do really appreciate listening to some of that feedback for some of the more simple tasks that were hard to achieve in practice but that were really earned for by families including just having the days on the the homepage that is why we go to the homepage I will say that for me and most of the parents um there's a couple of things I just wanted to the presentation that was sent does not match this presentation. >> So, yeah, it would be great to get the complete um presentation um so that we can have that to reflect on

110because I'd like to still dig into it. Um I do urge you to follow through with your instinct about developing some sort of committee or direct parent engagement for those who can give really solid helpful feedback about the experience because the experience in a communications tool improvement is so essential and I that being a missing link sometimes is that when you're really innovative and moving forward with all of these lofty goals, sometimes you lose sight of just the experience that parents are having and some things that are just lowhanging fruit and easy opportunities. The bus one is one of them. I definitely would like to advocate. I get that it's complex, but to me it's just having those parents on both bus routes, right? Just duplicating the data so that they're receiving both alerts for

111both buses. Um, so I understand the complexity, but it it it it does fly in the face of the intention because I'm mostly getting buses that are not my children's and that is really the text fatigue that we're experiencing which isn't solving what your intention is of limiting the texts. So I just wanted to give a little bit of that feedback. Um um there's one thing >> we meet pretty regularly too. come from the transportation department. So that's something that we would have to really work with. >> Absolutely. I think that collaboration would be really well placed because it touches on safety, it touches on communication. Um and just, you know, overall for for especially for working parents, if your children are riding on the bus, you want to make sure that you have everything

112you need. Um yeah, I guess I just and I also want to applaud your small team. This is a big task, a big undertaking, and I think communications is often overlooked. Um as sort of a side, you know, experience of an administrative workload. To me, it is one of the most essential practices of our administrative team. >> Share that. >> How dare you? [laughter] >> She's always available. >> I will say just on a smaller and my responsib are here. This is a monstrous district. Um and um Dr. P, I would would say is like just has a lot of things on his plate that he has to do out, you know, and stay on top of all the other things that are going on. Um I do know that sometimes my head spins and

113I go, "Oh my gosh," and he's already moved on to the next thing because he doesn't have time to stop. So I do know and um what a big responsibility and I that all of you know too is that it's a huge responsibility to get out the communications to do a post to do the website to do the Facebook to change the email address to who's hired who's been fired who's been let go the contact it's just every day >> and I had one last thing which is um uh I think it would be really helpful to have um a contact list or a generic email for requesting certain changes Um it sometimes even just like a um a simple address change or a removal, you know, of something from the communication tools, it's not

114really clear the pathway. Um I myself have had to do it through a couple different people and it got removed on some materials but not all materials. So I'm just wondering if maybe there's a way to evaluate, you know, different instances or circumstances that people may have in order to update their information because I get that's a huge lift. I mean, people are changing things all the time and moving and all kinds of things, but it would be great to either centralize that or to make it really clear whose responsibility it is. So, everything pertaining to a student can be updated across the board with all communication materials. >> So, we do have a communications form. >> I completed that and it didn't update. >> It updated some things but not others. >> Yeah, I

115can share that. >> Dr. Thank you so much. Um, having taken the original scope survey attest to some of the changes that are really manifesting now. And I even then when there was the peak of sort of frustration of wanting to fix things immediately, recognizing now how long it takes to chip away at some of these things and how they've now really started to manifest as really gratifying and I know there's a lot of hard work behind it. Um I was curious I had a couple of questions and one was um sort of springboarding up other people focusing on this second goal that you have for6 which is around like creating additional opportunities for principal exchange and visibility and I just wondered if you given that we're halfway through the year [laughter] I wonder if

116you just might be able to speak to some of the strategies that you might be using to move forward with particular goal. >> Yeah. So, I mean like I talked about during the presentation again that parent corner is going to be a huge thing to leverage because it is that one stop and what we're trying to do is really drive the traffic for some of those questions that we get from folks to that corner and that really is I know Dr.ingum kind of web page that is constantly evolving and constantly changing. Um definitely still but again we need to really start to dig in and others. So I yeah I was curious if if there's been any other um efforts that I don't know if you can embed aspects of the thought exchange or the

117survey tools or anything where you might be able to um garner more information somehow in the website or open it up in a person comments on particular topics. I'm just thinking about the listening site the reciprocal right that the website is very forward facing in really positive ways but at the same time I know that people are looking for avenues to express some concern and a website can service that with proper guard rails I think so one of thinking about that um I also wondered if um two things one around um it's it's interesting to me that well first of all a huge compliment around on the special ed page there. I'm looking at the web page and the presentation, but like the FAQs like basically like if what is a 501, what how do

118I deal with this if I have a child that I'm interested in getting assessed? Um there isn't necessarily a sort of chain of communication anywhere on here where just for a broad question, where do parents start? seems like they would still have to kind of comb the website for particular things and I wondered if there was ever a time we could manage something. Sorry. So we we do have a chain of communication. We're actually like reworking that and it is to just give direction on if a parent has an issue with the teacher like reach out to the teacher. If the teacher doesn't get back to you, reach out to the principal. If the principal doesn't get back to you then the next steps. So we do have that and we actually just met with

119Dr. not too long ago and you're going to update it because there have been some changes and some movement. So, we need to just update that and then that will go out posted on Facebook so that people are familiar with it and then it'll get posted to the website. It's probably taken down from the website. Like I said, there's been changes and stuff. So, okay, that's great. I didn't know if I had never seen it on the website. Um maybe it existed for a while. I hadn't seen it, but I just know that sort of one-stop shop at this point people have to go for like if I'm having trouble with my bus route, where do I go? sense that they would probably find the transportation page, but at the same time there's probably a

120clipote version of that that might make it really easy. Um, and I guess my last point was I'm curious um about if you're talking and working with security around messaging for the eyewitness um sort of click on the website to think of it purpose and power in a positive way. So if there's a concern um is there large scale messaging around how to use that particular aspect of our website? >> Yeah, we we definitely uh that we should be promoting that just saying like this is where you can go in one click to record something. Um so yeah, we can definitely work on on that. That's suggestion and I feel like we've tried to do that but then we get distracted and do other things. Yeah, like you're asking about promotions of it >> a

121a little bit. I'm thinking of having gone to NISMA and gone to a session where they were really thinking about using that as a positive space for concern. And so it wasn't a a I am reporting and policing kind of thing. It was a I'm concerned about myself. I could you know my own health um in terms of self harm or I'm concerned about someone else and how they're taking care of themselves. But ways in which to invoke a basically your response and so it was less around so it it was a more well-rounded message around the eyewitness equivalent for that was presenting at the the conference and more around community care and I think it meant that there was it was preventing lots of conflicts that were arising at least it was presented that

122way from the district that sharing it um because it was again not or punitive or even fear based things so much as a emotion of concern >> but it's something that's very doable and I want you to stay tuned and go oh that was my idea I shared it and >> it was someone was not my idea that I appreciated it very much and then it's very measurable about whether or not people are using it in that way and it might become tool Just two more things. I think uh Dr. Collins mentioned something. I don't know if it was exactly what you were saying, but I uh the the idea of lots of districts that other districts have sort of formats that are sort of where legal guardians can be verified that this is a

123parent within the district or a legal guardian within the district and then there can be like a survey that's put out or or a tool that's put out for people to provide not fully an anonymized what's the word an anonymous uh data because it has to be verified that it's someone within the district but if there were some form of of that that could work in that way. That would be awesome. The second thing is just I know that the law says that it's really the next after English it's the next language which is Spanish in our district we have to do translation for. Um we know especially with your goal one that the catchy speaking community is also under attack. We also know there are a number of catchy English catchy translators within the

124community. So if there's ever an opportunity whether it's through one of the Facebook stories or even if it's not consistent at this point but just an opportunity even through your relationship to UI DN or any other source just to say that like when we have I was saying how um applicable your goals are to this year they feel really fresh like you've actually they have meat on the bone or tofu in the you know but this first one when we talk about school safety there are of course the regular safety concerns that Mr. Parker and others are are are thinking about. And for me, this piece on safety is also with communication. There have to be ways for us to include the catchy speaking community. Um I don't know what our budget is for it.

125I don't know. But the truth of the matter, I think there's some very small but like initial steps we could make um for those folks as well. >> Yeah, it's an indigenous language. So it's it's not related to Spanish at all. So it's like when you languages. >> Okay. Ki is is not always a written language spoken language. >> That's what I was thinking with the videos and things like that. There's an opportunity to do more storytelling and to also obviously do it orally. Um of course that wouldn't be on you might be on public missard instead. But the at the end of the day going into some of the schools I was in one of the open houses there were there was no translation available for that. Not that it doesn't exist in the

126community. Not that it's your specific issue, but just to note that that community is is really at risk at the moment. >> Mr. um I have two things. I I I was at the uh the wellness committee earlier today and uh Rich Dette um and Joe were all uh remarking that they didn't know where the wellness section of the website was and they talked about it in a way that it seemed like maybe there once was. I don't know. So if there's not them, they want to have somewhere all the fun stuff that they're doing. And then uh the second thing, um I spend quite a lot of time on government websites. I like them all. And uh now that I'm I'm really glad to hear that like you guys got an award. And when

127when I start thinking about it, it's like yeah, you guys definitely have one of the one of the best ones. I would like to second that the the wellness area they're doing some incredibly good things. Um we're already touched on that in terms of um you know the nutrition and everything. So that would be a really great area to highlight. >> Thanks. >> I just want to absolutely applaud you guys for all your work. I feel like the way you kind of redesigned the whole website, redesigned the whole logo, made everything look more organized. It makes me feel so much more pride toward my school. I I show like if I go to co or when I go to college, I'm going to I want to show like, yeah, this is the school I went

128to. You see this? And I'm It's amazing. I feel like everything feels more professional. I I feel more respected or more respectful towards the whole district as a whole. I love the motto you guys created, but I do just want to mention one thing. Um, and that's kind of particularly towards me and Sophia's student report and it's revolving around kind of the Kingston High School page where the different classes and you have all the different names for each of the different teachers or different um roles and like all the faculty depending on what you're searching for, but it doesn't really tell you about what rooms they are. like if you're looking for a social worker, like where do you go for that social worker? How do you know exactly where? And it's just maybe if

129that information could be provided on the website that would be great for people to, you know, easily find these resources. >> Any other questions or comments for our communications department? >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Okay. So, we don't miss the 11 o'clock news. I'll be quick. Um, uh, just really quickly to finish up my report, I don't have anything really to else to add except for just a reminder for everyone at home, everyone here. Um, next Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, there is no school. So, happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And the second thing is the only other committee meeting we have next week is on the 25th which is audit and finance right here at 9:00. And that is all I have for you. >> Okay. >> Does anybody have any questions for Dr.

130Okay, that moves us to our student reps if they have anything they'd like to share or ask. >> Yes. Okay. So, I think we're all aware we're in this epidemic that recent generations are they're more anxious, they're more stressed, they're more scared and more depressed and we're kind of more focusing on the mental health resources at our school, especially Kingston High School. And I'd say it's it's kind of hard to or I didn't even realize there was like a social worker or there's a psychologist and I didn't know where to find and I think most students tend to really flock towards their own guidance counselors and really we don't know if they're I I don't know if there's any established training for guidance counselors to handle students who are going through mental crisises or if

131teachers are trained for you know where to to redirect students or what to do in those scenarios. So, that's kind of just a question I want to lay out first. >> Yeah, to build off of that, it's a lot of students I think the resources do exist. Yes. I just don't think students are going through the proper channels to deal with them because it is not properly told to them or broadcasted. People don't know where to go when they're faced with challenges. And I believe this is a problem at every single district school in our district, not just um the high school. I think we have these resources. I know we have psychologists. I know we have social workers. I know we have all of these resources, but students don't know where to go for

132them. >> Yeah, I think that's a conversation that we're going to have with our building principles. That's that should not absolutely not be true. You know, at the high school, even even when they as to where they go to I mean, we we we specifically have the cohort model. So, you have the same assistant principles and the same guidance counselors and the same social workers in that one suite for four years. >> Wow. >> So, well, like unless they retire. Yeah. But we try to keep those teams together. They retire early. They leave. You're right. We try to keep that, you know, that consistency for you. So, you know, hey, and we make them move every year, which you probably know that, too. So, you know, they don't like it. But we make them move

133to the floor wherever they whatever their cohort goes to every year. So, there there it should be, you know, a a really good a really strong communication with all of you from your building levels. I think we'll I talk with um both Dr. Williams and Dr. Fel about how we can make sure that our students are you know very aware because we do you're right we do have the resources we have significant resources in each building including some community partner that are in our buildings as well you know we have mental health clinics in seven of our 10 buildings Dr. six of our 10 buildings, you know, with ASER. So, we have I mean there the resources are there and our guides, counselors and our social workers should know where to to, you know, point

134even though student in that direction, but we're going to just you asking that makes me think we better double check and make sure and really reinforce that. So, thank you Mark. But they should be going to their cohort if if someone is is needing that type of they're in a crisis or they should they should go to their cohort and their and their social workers there with their guidance counselor. I mean because when >> when people think of psychologists I don't think they think of school psychologists as much like but so you should be go like your social worker's in that wing with your AP and your guidance counselor. So anybody listening, that's where you should go and then if you need other assistance, they'll steer you in the right direction. >> And even during

135our superintendent's conference day last month, we this month, this month, um you know, we had mental health first aid for almost every one of our faculty and staff presented. We we brought in presenters through a through a grant from a Kingston resilience project is what we call. So we're working with them throughout and they continue to work with us out of Sunni Newport. So there's we are providing training. we have the resources, but just that you're saying that that all students are going to get there means we need to reinforce that and we will >> and you can be our ambassador as well. So if if somebody is struggling with how to find help, direct them to the AP's office and they that that crew there should be able to help them. >> So thank

136you. >> Thank you. >> Anything else to share? I hope that's brings us to our consent agenda. >> Are there any items that trustes would like pull from the consent agenda? Hearing none, we have a motion. >> So move >> to accept. >> And we have a second. Any discussion? All in favor of accepting the consent agenda. >> Any opposed? So our consent agenda is approved. That brings us to the board of education. We have just one committee report and that's policy. We have several policies that are listed um to be approved. So Mr. Our first policy to be moved um is policy 2320 which is a special board meetings which we have discussed last board meeting a little bit and um I'll make a motion that we pass 2320. I'll second >> any discussion.

137Um, I received multiple emails from NIPA saying that we cannot do this, but we David told us this several weeks ago. Can you look at it? >> Uh, David. >> Yes. >> So, what is your special policy? >> It's the special meeting policy. The way the way This is written it requires three board members to agree that before special meeting can be called. >> Yeah. So um whatever information you receive about general provision in the common school district6 which applies in the absence of consistent provision in the empowerment statutes for a particular kind of school district. So for a small city school district there is section which specifically states that in a small city school district there could be a law to determine how a meeting is called. That means that the small city school

138district is not bound by the provision in the common school district law. I think you may have received information from school boards which wasn't really focused on small city districts but the general provision in63. So in our opinion, this policy is written. >> I also had a conversation with the attorneys from NISA and um they cited the same information they sent to you, Anthony, but they advised that we follow the direction of our attorney, >> Dr. Bernov. Um can someone from the committee share the reasoning? >> The reason for the >> change >> um discussion was led and we discussed the fact that every time we call special meeting we incorporate the entire cabinet must be there. It takes time from them and if it's not an urgent matter, if if it's an urgent matter,

139we discussed that it'll be easy to get three other people or two other people to come to the call of calling a meeting. It you have to have a quorum to have the meeting. So to have three people of support that we have the meeting will give you more of a likelihood that you'll have a quorum and we can and actual business will happen instead of just having people show up for our meeting that doesn't happen. >> Mr. Ryan >> can I mean this was a policy that I wrote and then got changed at the policy committee. So, it's different than that for me. Um, because as I had stated in the meeting prior to me submitting this resolution, the way we're actually doing things is not actually proper. Um, not that we're not trying

140to, but a school board member under our current policy could just call and with 48 hours notice or 24 just say there is a meeting at this time. Now Karen thankfully tries to check around to see if there's a quorum but that is not required and if a school board member under our current policy wanted to force that that could happen that means that members of the administration have to be here even if there's not going to be a quorum and potentially security has to be in the building I has to be in the building there's a great expense to having this and you don't see it in other necessarily really small city school districts. And so I think this was a way this was much different than my policy, but I support it and

141I think it it widens the ways that a single individual can, you know, just get two members. I I think I was calling for a majority of the board supporting it. Um but I'm open to this change. >> Thank you. >> Any other discussion? So we have a motion and a second and discussion. In favor of accepting um policy 2320 special board meetings >> I personal privilege. Uh can we have a roll call vote? >> Sure. >> Mr. Spicer. >> No. >> Dr. Collins. Yes. >> Miss Anderson. >> Yes. >> Mr. Ryder. >> Yes. >> Miss Jones. >> Yes. >> Mr. Fitzpatrick. >> No. >> Mr. Lamb. >> Yes. >> Miss Karns. Yes, Dr. B. >> No, >> that is 63. >> Our next >> the next policy is 2110 board member authority. If this

142passes, we'll also abolish 2110.1. that that policy basically was just put into the other policy because it repeated the same verbreach as the um as 2110 >> but we still have to do it separately. >> Yes. >> Okay. I'm sorry. >> Approve this one and then >> I'm sorry. So I make a motion that we approve 2110 board member authority. >> Any discussion? All in favor of board member authority. >> I oppose. >> No. >> The next policy. Do you want to do the abolish one or do you want to do the >> I would >> Okay. The next policy is 2160 school district officer and employee code of ethics. I move that policy. Second. >> Any discussion on 2160? Mr. >> Um, the last time when we had a first reading on this, um,

143I had a problem with section 127. um where it says that after termination of service or employment of the district um officers can't appear before the board in relation to any action or proceeding in which they participated in we didn't have time to revisit this in November What line are you referring to? >> 127. >> It's number five. >> So it's just after termination, right? It's not any separation. >> I'm just asking the question because I'm not So this is after a termination and not just a separation. >> Termination is separation period. Correct. David, what would you think that that means? The they're we're discussing the the we're discussing termination versus um separation in that line. So, termination mean are removed or does termination just mean their their period comes to an end? >> It's

144on page three. I don't think it carries a conotation of wrongdoing but just >> a question >> not on that point. So different different >> I I do have a point. >> Yeah. No, no. I'm not I'm not on that line. So I'm a Yeah. Can I ask what the why we're adding that language in? I mean, it seems like we've had board and I know this isn't just about board members, this is about employees, but we've had board members violate this policy in my time on the board. >> I think that was added based on um attorney's re um recommendation that 345 They're all in red. >> I mean, not that it was great that they did that, but they did that. I mean, I'm just trying to understand like or if a teacher

145retires, then they can't come back and appear in front of the board in relation to any action, proceeding, or application. So, if a teacher is on the on the negotiation team for the KTF and they retire and they were in the middle of the negotiations, they're not supposed to come up to our to our to hear talk about what was negotiated. I mean, that's what I thought about when I read it. >> But it's any action pursing or application >> in which they personally participated >> under active consideration. >> Yeah. Under their active consideration. thoughts of why that was put in, David? I mean, is that >> I I I think the addition of this is to avoid a sense that someone is going to benefit in some way from carrying forward on an action

146they were actively involved with still in the employee or on the board. overtones of impropriy to it. Other than that, there's a disconnect from their actions when they were here and then what they may be doing. Dr. >> Yeah, just a question. Um, on line 140, that red paragraph I think I've asked this before actually, so my apologies. Um, when you say uh something about a charitable charitable organization which has a relationship with the district, does that mean a financial relationship with the district or just any relationship of any nonprofit? Like we're supposed to give a list of all of the nonprofit organizations that we volunteer with in the entire county. And then is there a financial is is it about a financial relationship or is it just any relationship >> board member officer or

147employee >> right but it's a a volunteer officer employee in a chair. So, for example, if I volunteer with the Boys and Girls Club or if I >> you may do that >> and then you only have to Yeah, it allows you to >> if you're an officer that should be >> if you're an I didn't see the may. Thank you. >> Oh, thank you. >> Any others? >> Yeah, you know, back to My problem with this is it seems it seems to limit hearing from people in such a broad way. Like I kind of understand what David was saying, but like this doesn't exactly say that. If you want to work here and left, we don't want to hear about that you touched while you were here. It's kind of how I seem like

148we need that. I I'm I'm just following the advice of the attorney there. It's to protect the district, I believe. And that um that is why that was added. So, this is a little awkward because we're in public session, but can I ask our attorney a hypothetical just for my own personal so I know which way to vote on this hypothetical? So, like I was part of the board as a member to which voted and made the motion to eliminate monastery program in the school district. I am My term ends at the end of this year and if I'm not on the board next year, but a new board is seeking to reinstigate the monastery program, am I prohibited then by this from coming here and speaking publicly about it. >> Because the way I

149read it, yes. >> And if that's the case, then I don't want it that I would not be supportive of this change. Not that I think that's ever going to happen, which is why it's a hypothetical. Or maybe it would, but like you never know. >> As a school board member, >> that this line says that you can do that. >> But I cannot he can't come back and talk about his >> that I cannot share my opinion at public comment. >> I just heard it. You know, I I I think you're correct in what you as a hypothetical, but I think the appear carries with it a conotation that you may be paid for your advocacy. >> It needs to be >> I read it as I I'm on the board. I know that

150the bids have gone out on a project. I own a heating business and I know that the bids came back too high. So, we refuse that. I can now go resign from the board. If that is not there, I can I know what the bids are going to come in at. I can bid and I can make money from the district which I should not be able to do >> is how I read that paragraph. I think that paragraph is very important to protect the financial aspect of the district for prohibits that >> I think it just the language is not clear. I'm not saying that the purpose is not valuable. I think the language is not clear. And then if the language does what Mark is saying where Mark is no longer allowed to

151have an opinion on something in the district, then we would vote or I would also agree with Mark. I would not vote for that if it's more about what you're talking about which is like not being able to financially benefit. But those are slightly different and I think it needs to be rewritten. So perhaps we should vote and we'll do a roll call. I mean, okay. >> Is there so we have to go instead of just suggesting it go back to the committee for that clause to add a couple of words. >> It would go back to the committee to look at that. Obviously, that would be the paragraph we would be looking at. >> Turn it down. >> I I'm just not sure. >> I'm not sure how Okay. >> The the the person

152that comes and if Mark did his hypothetical thing, how that benefits him individually >> and I don't think I don't think >> I think I think to Dr. Bar's point that it's actually not the language is what is confusing. It's not the um >> yeah the idea or the goal of this. I think I don't think that any of us so far have disagreed necessarily right before I think that is not clear. I actually completely misinterpreted this because I was thinking of termination as in they were someone was fired and didn't therefore come back to the board. So we've all interpreted this different which to me suggests that the language could be clarified. >> So that's >> it's a required policy. So if you vote no, we're just going back to the policy committee anyway

153and bringing it back. So voting no or tableabling it are the same thing, >> right? >> Well, I except for I'd rather just make a motion to send it back to committee because I'd rather not vote against the board of the >> board of ethics, the school district officer and employee code of ethics. I'd rather not vote against that. I'd rather just send it back to committee, but if I'm forced to vote no on it, then I will. So, we have a we have a motion to table >> and send it back to committee. >> All in favor? >> I 2160 will return to the policy committee. >> Okay. Our next ex um policy is 2310 regular board meetings. I'll move it. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> All in favor of 2310 regular board

154meetings. >> Any opposed? >> 2310 is approved. The next policy is 9215 nonaligned employees. >> I'll move it. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion on favor? I >> I >> now by moving 2110, we need to abolish policy 2110.1. So I will move that we abolish that school board access to reports. I'm not putting him in as >> he can come back and vote like he can come back and give you votes if he wants to, right? >> I don't have a second. >> Any discussion on abolishing 2110.1? All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> We also >> 2110.1 is abolished. >> We also need to abolish policy 2382 broadcasting and recording of um board meetings. >> Move it. >> Any discussion? >> All in favor of abolishing 2382. The most important policy

155of the day is to review and vote because this is a first reading but we are moving it 1900 parent family and community engagement. We needed to change some verbiage for the state of New York and that verbiage is controlling when we get funding for our title one. So, um I will move policy 1900. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Dr. B. >> Does the word natural parent is it required by the state? >> The term natural. >> Can I speak to our discussion for this? >> Well, I'd like to speak first about it. they they accepted our policy minus certain verbiage that they wanted specifically in it. If we change one word of our current policy that we had and don't just in into that we go back into the review process and we're

156going to to postpone our payment by however long it takes the state of New York to review that policy. Um and I I get what you're asking. We can we can discuss that again. This policy it's it's a working policy. We can come back to this after we pass it, but it's very important that we pass this policy. >> So, I'll come back. My question is, is the word natural as a natural parent required by the state? >> 15. Um [clears throat] we had a very robust discussion about this policy and had a lot of edits regarding the existing language. Um it was positioned by administration in that meeting that the best course of action for the timesensitive nature of it was to let the things that had been reviewed sit with no edits and

157just add in the state's required language for compliance. We have committed as a committee to returning to this to reviewing those details. Um we talked about many terms and languages throughout. I don't have an answer for you about that because we essentially abandoned that conversation for the sake of pushing this through. Um but it I will say it was the most robust lengthy conversation we had and we all agreed that there were many things in it including some things the state had issued that even had some errors in it. Um we did change those errors to reflect accurate language. Um but it was something that it seems there's a microscope on to get it right for compliance purposes only. So I I guess the the short answer is we didn't even dive deep into it

158because our agenda was getting it passed for compliance to get funding. >> And and on top of that, Dr. B, I I find what you're asking us about, yes, we we do need to go back and look at every word of that policy. Um because there's a lot of things that we all strongly felt but we really need to get this on the books so that we can get our funding >> Mr. Spicer. >> Well my question goes to Dr. Bundy because in the same line is every single kind of definition of a parent. parent refers to natural parent and also legal guardian and also other parents standing in lure of parents and also logos parentes. Every definition of a parent is there. I mean I would I would I would have I would share

159your concern if that was all there was >> but every kind of name for a parent also follows that. So what >> Yeah, I appreciate you. Um, I'm not saying I'm not going to vote for it, but for the record, um, I I feel myself on I feel very sensitive to this as a member of the queer and trans community and it's very offensive language and I don't know if it's legal language or not. It doesn't it actually doesn't I was asking about it being a state requirement because um then I'm going to take it up with the darn state on the legislative action committee, right? That's like the next thing. Um, I want the I want the school to get its money. Um, that is not what my intention is, but I'm like struck

160um when I read it when I reviewed it. Um, I would say the same thing if I saw something really offensive language about any um any community. But this I mean again there's like a lot of language legal parent there's all kinds of language and then there's also and I appreciate what you're saying which is like the local parent legal responsible all kinds of structures of families that don't include um two people who have biological relationships to kids. I'll just say it's a very offensive language for the record. Mr. Mr. It's my understanding that um we could in in our policy we can call that however we want to and this is something that comes up across all the policies and there's definitely opinions not not related to this specific one that's definitely something that

161needs to happen across our entire policy manual to I I just want to point out and maybe I'm just arguing at this point, but like I don't actually think that this the the language after natural parent covers every relationship because it's not just if you're not a natural parent, you're a legal guardian or local parent. It there there are other parents and so like yeah, I I would support 100% as soon as we pass this tonight like maybe you just call policy committee at 10:30 and uh joking but like yes I think I support passing it but I think it would need to we need to get back to work on it. >> Sure. >> Yes. >> Dr. Catalino, would you like to comment? >> No, I don't. >> I think I think set it

162perfectly up. >> Dr. I'm just sort of curious because I I agree actually as an easy fix, but there was one a while ago. I thought we went through policies and changed things to rel back in it. I mean, >> okay. >> Well, then I just I just want to my understanding of what had happened because I feel like we had gone down this road a little closer. >> Okay. Just just um for the record since I deal with title one and title one applications in New York state on a regular basis this is what we are required to pass to get our doesn't mean it can't go back to the board which we all like and legis I'll call the All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Abstension. >> Oh, I'm sorry.

163I'm okay. First readings we have policy 8630 computer resources and data management computer use instruction acceptable use policy and 4526.1 internet safety and our technology department has been through those um and basically given us their recommendations and they're there in that those policies. And you need three readings, right? >> What? >> You need three readings or two readings? >> You get two readings. >> Two readings. Okay. >> And this is the first, correct? >> This is the first. >> So if we have questions, we can send them. >> Yeah. And that's it. Our next Oh, I'm sorry. Our next policy date is >> December. >> Thank you. December 10th, >> 7th, sorry. 7th at 9:30 in this room. >> Thank you, Mr. That brings us to old business. >> Sorry, I just want to edit.

164It's December 5th. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> Sunday. >> Yeah, December 5th. 9:30. >> No. [laughter] >> Old business. Okay. So, I would like to implore the committee, excuse me, the board to come up with a date for our communications and transparency retreat. We had our date. We didn't find a facilitator in time. Um, my initial request was on October 2nd. I was asked to be open to a later point. So, I asked for it to happen by the end of October, but again, I was out. So, I appreciate that other people were doing the labor to try to organize that and I wasn't available for that. Um, however, I do believe that we owe ourselves and our goals and our community that retreat. So, I'm curious if we can take out our calendars now

165and find a date. Um, because I'm afraid that we will find another ourselves in another six week period of finding another date. And I just this is this is very important to our community. And we even had our communications uh report out today. And it it's we have to show up. If our district is going to show up, we also have to show up. Um, so I'd like us to look at our calendars and pick a date. Um, the other Oh, sorry. I'll do that one first. I I don't have my family calendar in front of me. Like all I have is my work, so it's half a picture for me. I I would pref like a doodle poll is not ne possible. Um, but like some kind of software that we can just see

166dates and respond to, I think would be extremely helpful. >> Yep. Calendar is that tool that we use, but I will figure something out. Just know we can't do a doodle poll or any kind of poll like that. It is not I want to be compliant. So, we cannot use those within the school district. We are working to see what school district tools we have that we can use. >> Can can Can I just ask >> about >> Can we use exchange? >> We can use my >> It does. It still has to be >> sorted for you. >> But can we use Thought Exchange? I know you are all way better at than I am. Thought Exchange do something like that. >> I don't know >> because they've added a whole They've added a

167lot. Well, if we call Nicole tomorrow, she'll tell us. She She'll answer immediately. >> So, my So, that >> But that's I thought too deep with >> my goal would be for us to be able to meet before the December 9th board meeting. That is my request. Now, that would be two months plus one week from the time I requested this retreat. And it is a time-sensitive situation in in our work. So, I'm really hoping if it's even if it's December damn 8th, excuse my language, sorry, December 8th, um I would still whatever it looks like. Um and I'm also asking for board members to I've been respectful of the request to not try to push it through. Um and I would really like to be able to have that retreat. >> I cannot do

168before the h before Christmas. I have like almost every night So if I could just share um in trying to identify a facilitator, I did reach out to two community um people. I did not hear back from the Good Works Institute, but I did have quite a conversation with Eva from TMI. Thank you, Mrs. Karns, for making that recommendation. and she enlightened me and kind of confirmed for me that we were not ready for a retreat because she asked several questions and the one question that I wasn't really able to answer clearly was what are the expectations from each and every board member in a communication retreat and her feeling was and she hasn't committed to do this yet. She's still kind of u considering it and I'm hoping to get a proposal back from

169her or an answer back from her by the end of the week. She thinks that it would take several weeks to just make sure that each and every board member is surveyed and has an opportunity to state what it is that they would expect from this kind of retreat. So, and and I tend to agree with her because I've done many staff development sessions and you know, if you're not if you're if you're not prepared and you don't know why you're doing it or what you're doing, um it could be a disaster. So, Dr. just a question, a process question maybe for those of you who've been doing board work for far longer than I have. So, I was asked pause and make a board retreat. My goal was to begin that conversation so that

170we could have a deeper conversation. I really am looking for a phase one conversation um to explore exactly the question you're asking. So if the purpose so I keep feeling like I feel like the the the thing itself is getting bigger and bigger and the needs around it are bigger and bigger before we've even been able to have a chance to define the problem. And that was my purpose of calling a meeting on October 2nd was to have a conversation about what we're seeing and what our priorities are so that we could do some deep work on it. Now it just keeps going. It's like this thing I can't catch. Um and I somewhat regret saying we needed a retreat when really what I wanted was a d Sorry sorry I keep saying dance. I'm

171tired. My apologies. Um a conversation. So I um I respect that person. I actually know I know that person in the community. I definitely respect both of the recommendations. I feel like I would love for us to imagine multiple ways to have conversations um and and collect data that can allow us to move forward as opposed to this is how it's done. It has to be this way. It takes three hours. And I agree, we need to have some data before we ask a consultant to come in and help us. And that was merely what I was trying to do. I wasn't trying to have like a resolution conversation. I was trying to open a conversation to get a perspective so that we could have a resolution conversation. Um, and that's what I'm asking for.

172And if that means that's one hour that people can do that or maybe not one hour, 90 minutes to two hours instead of three hours and we'd save our three hours for EVA, I just think we're all adults and we can have a conversation about the things we're hoping to get. Uh, and I would be happy again to propose that in addition to the retreat. [clears throat] >> So, we have retreats scheduled for January. And perhaps that conversation could take place in December without it being a um >> a retreat. >> Can I propose that we try to take a look at 5:00 on the night >> for that convers uh sorry 10th whatever day it is? >> September the 9th. >> It's I said the ninth. Sorry. >> The next board meeting. >> Next

173board meeting is 10. >> So from 5 to 6. >> Oh, I see. Okay. >> So everybody show up at 5 instead of six. >> But I can do >> that's fine. >> I can do that. >> Okay. >> Can that side of the room? >> I can't be here then, but I will put in writing what my expectation would be. >> Great. >> Thank you. And then the second one is just um is uh the board was asked to produce a resolution around our stance on immigrants defense in our community. Um it was it went to the policy committee. I'm looking at all of what you've had on your plate. That was clearly not at the top of the list. However, um in my conversations with community members, it's still on the not the

174top of their list, but it's like number three. So, I'm bringing it back up because it's important to them and therefore it should be important to us and we don't have to talk about it tonight, but I'm putting it back on the list even if it's down a couple chits. Um, I'd still like to come back to it. >> Mr. Can I recommend like I did with special meetings that you >> draft I mean maybe you sent over the template policy which is >> but like >> you can as board members submit kind of resolutions as policies and then it's not like the policy committee >> creating it out of the blue. >> That was >> sorry in the conversation I was I was proposing that then it went to the polic committee somehow but

175I'm glad to take it back if that's more helpful and do it. What would be I think the most helpful just from sitting on the policy committee is to give some um context to the reasoning behind that resolution being either a solve or a confirmation or whatever it is >> that is really essential to our conversation that were to go back to policy >> purpose and if not I can just come here >> I thought Marco was working on wording >> a statement the statement that we were >> sure yes >> is that >> okay >> so these two things can happen concurrently Margot can do that okay great thank you >> we we haven't totally abandoned that was >> didn't she have one that was relatively short from >> yes that and she was

176working on making it >> for us it was it was the nice >> um statement and >> yeah, >> which was more appropriate for us than than the federal one. And she was working on making it match our district and fit within our policies. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> Any other old business? >> Mr. I'm not sure whether this this is new business or or announcement, but uh the facilities committee discussed the board's interest in conducting building walkthroughs. To move this forward, the committee chair, the board president, and the vice president are going to meet to develop a schedule plan. Once finalized, the opportunity will be shared with the full board for participation. >> And I know and that's my business, right? And I and we will um have walkthroughs in all of the

177buildings. Um we'll put special focus on those buildings that have issues that have been reported through the principal's survey. >> We might even try and start those in December. >> That would be great. >> Mrs. I'd like to request that the facilities committee do a review of the um theater spaces in the buildings um including the ones that have been more newly built. There are certain functions that are not working and they serve for more than just our students. They're rented out very frequently and unfortunately they do not have the capabilities that they should have. Lighting, there's lighting issues I know at Millerum. serious lighting issues and things that have been requested for a while to be looked at. So, um it's my way of kind of indirectly being on the facilities. [laughter] >> It

178was a very detailed um agenda item. Can you text that to me, please? And and Karen and I'll just add it to the next agenda. >> It'll be on the minute. >> I mean, okay, you're not required to as long as we we have it clearly written down because your your request was very detailed. I like that. >> Thank you. >> [laughter] >> You were first. >> You can go first. That's fine. >> Um, >> Mrs. Anderson, I failed to um do the new business of the donations at the right time. May I do that now? >> May I read these now? >> Yes, you may. >> Thank you. The new business of donations. Okay. The board of education of Kingston City School District hereby accepts with very grateful appreciation the following generous donations to

179the Graves Elementary School from the Kids Connect to Parks field trip grant program. A grant in the amount of $1,000. Thank you so much. And also to the Kingston City School District's Mackenzie Vento program from St. James United Methodist Church. A donation of hygiene products valued at $750. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Just very quickly on the building walkthroughs, I'd also like to really concentrate on the buildings that are going to go up this summer like chambers so that we're we're sure that all the things are being addressed that need to be those designs. Anything this summer, the plans are done. >> The plans are done. So you're not going to make changes for this summer work. It takes months. >> Will the will the district plans be done like for are like

180the stuff that's done by the district won't some of the work is done by us and some of it's done by contracts and yes so I think we we can't change we can't change our building project. I mean that >> no but we can we can make sure that there was something there's two things going on at the same time. Number one if there's something that our people can do that's one thing. The other thing is we're about to we're about to go into our five-year annual building survey that's required by the state. When is that? When are we starting that? >> Sharifa. >> Next month. So, so this is our year to do that. So, that will set the stage for whatever is not happening in $167.2 million is $2.7 million. um that set

181the stage for that next step for for something that we may somewhere in the future go down and bond on. But that's how that's kind of the point of having that fiveyear review. We break it in gears and to into kind of need, you know, red, green, yellow, whatever you want to say, whatever. So we'll So we do there's two avenues down that and I'm I'm very surprised to hear what you had to say because >> the principles many of the principles >> and one that that you're speaking of is on the facilities committee. So I'm a little [laughter] >> I'm a little and we are >> sorry and I I I'm >> so so no we're going to look we're >> Thank you. You don't have to email them just right. I'm going to

182find out tomorrow what's going on. >> Seriously, I really do appreciate it. Thank you. >> But is the concern coming from community groups or is it coming from the principles? Okay. All right. >> All right. Um, new business where we can move on. I did we did put on the agenda under board member announcements any reports back from the um the convention. We thought maybe there would be an opportunity um but without advanced warning could we put that off to our next meeting convention I only have Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. the same thing. Do you want it right now? >> 30 pages. Did you say did you say 30 pages? >> Don't scare everybody. >> Is that okay? >> Sure. >> Any other board member announce? >> Uh the Sunday before last I attended the

183um TMI film day and it was it was Yep. It was a great film. It was, you know, great to see our students and our students after they're all grown up and and everything. And in addition, I want to say that the auditorium is a extremely wonderful movie viewing experience. Somehow >> never I was there too. It was really good. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> Any other announcements? >> Brings us to public comment. Any public comment? Well, [laughter] >> I have a motion. >> To adjourn. >> Yes. >> All in favor? >> Happy Thanksgiving everyone. >> You as well. Okay. All right. Fine.