001I SP andice not really I I all right we are live it is 7:00 and we have returned from executive session we enter into the public segment of our meeting with um roll call please Miss Jordan here Mr Spicer here Dr Collins here miss Anderson here Mr Ryder here miss fitzg is excused Miss coron is excused Mr Fitzpatrick Mr L here and if we could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Al to plag of the United States of America and to the Republic which stands one nation under God invisible liberty and justice for all we have no action pertaining to Executive session so we will move to a special feature tonight we have a student recognition Dr patalino thank you Miss Anderson um something we're going to start doing regularly at our board meetings
002is student recognition whether it be for athletics academics the Arts uh just so every every um twice a month we will have students here for us to really highlight why we're here and why we do what we do and um really to show what Excellence we have in the kingas city school district so today we have our September athletes of the month and I'm going to hand it over to coach Clinton Johnson to introduce them to us thank you Dr P boy good evening um it's my pleasure here tonight um uh on behalf of our I guess I can talk I can talk L of our Varsity Club so I'm one of the advisers at KHS so myself Rachel Myers our athletic trainer Coach Joe kahill the last coup we've uh kind of um restarted
003our Varsity Club and our goal is to try and promote um and really um help our athletes uh number one uh be good citizens all that stuff that comes with being athletes but then also uh to promote all the good things that they're doing so um I always say you know it's school's cancelled school's closed and um you know our AES are up at 7 o'clock in the morning still having practices when all their uh classmates are in bed sleep um I know a lot people different things but this is one of the things that we try and highlight um you know we get back in the bus 10:00 11:00 at night go to sleep get up in the morning come to school all those things so uh one of the things that uh we
004were fortunate enough to do is um with the help of the athletic Council um and also the Varsity Club which is a student run Club um to highlight uh athletes of the month so this is our first kind of time doing it um so we have just two athletes here so uh these athletes were um nominated by their coaches so all the coaches got an opportunity to nominate their a uh and then that went to The Varsity Club and then um also our athletic Council has works with our athletic department um and they got a little blurb about the athletes coaches um club members submitted who uh they voted for athlet at a month and then we get the opportunity to present them so we have two people here tonight two students both grade students
005so first um an 11th grader play soccer um as you know our soccer team last year had a great season historic season so this year in September um our of our athletes here um Kean Oxford uh scored seven goals in six games um this was a couple weeks ago through October now so 321 I think their record's better than that now um he's got 11 goals on the season um he's a great addition to the team and I actually have him in phiz class he's awesome student uh athlete so our first person we're n um honoring uh is Keegan oxer as okay then uh then our next um athlete we're honoring actually a 10th grader um oh I'm sorry so those quotes from um ke was from coach Hof the soccer coach uh so our
006next athlete uh of the month is actually um a sophomore um so uh Rory trar and during the month this is from coach Salmons our swim coach during the month of September Rory compiled 19 first place finishes four second place finishes and a third place finish in six different meets um the athletes are allowed to do four individual events per meet so she finished third out of 68 swimmers in the 100th pre and fifth out of 91 swimmers in the 50th pre at the c valy classic Invitational so I don't have Rory in class I don't know that well but tremendous um accolades and we're excited to present Rory TR happy she's actually break from practice congratulations thank you very much thank you congratulations to our student athletes we look forward to those um monthly
007presentations our next order of business is to approve the minutes from the September 25th meeting if I could have a motion second any discussion on those minutes all in favor of approving the minutes from September 25th any opposed so the minutes pass that brings us to our public comment session we do have a few people signed up so 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 it's crucial that we hear from our community about their concern concerns the board is here to listen because we do take your concerns seriously we won't have time to process and research issues your concerns and questions may be addressed at a future meeting of the board
008or you may be contacted by the appropriate staff member or administrator if you have prepared a written statement and do not have the opportunity to present it please leave it with the clerk of the board who will see that all trustees receive it please note that state and federal privacy laws and collective bargaining agreements prevent us from discussing certain topics in this venue the guidelines are posted on the boardroom wall thank you for your respectful adherence to the rules and your interest in the continuous Improvement of our district we ask that you please honor the time of three minutes the clerk will provide timing reminders uh Jean Jacobs okay good evening Dr patalino word president Marie Anderson members members of the Board of Education and my community at large here this evening I stand before
009you tonight I'm going to read something but PR prior to that I firmly believe and have for the last 40 some years safety is first and we must recognize the importance of safety as a priority therefore I speak before you tonight on something that was acknowledged by the state boards State School Board Association I'm not asking for a response but I want to bring it not only to your attention but to the members of the of the community at Lars this evening this is from the New York state school board's Association more than 50 New York state school districts will be able to upgrade their technology and security this school year thanks to the state smart schools Bond act this was this wases back to 2014 but this goes this was noted on September 19th
0102022 the two billion smart schools Bond Act was approved by state voters in November of 2014 governor Kathy hopel announced School allocations worth 24.8 million in May the state schools Barn act reviewed board approved project plan submitted by 45 school districts new technology I won't get into reading all of that but it had to do with purchases supported by the bond act include computers etc the area I want to address this evening is the pandemic laid bare the digital divide in our state and as we continue to recover from the pandemic we are seeing an increase in violence amongst young people said State education commissioner Betty Rosa this latest round of smart schools funding prioritizes these two critical areas by expanding the number of devices for students and providing money for school security infrastructure when
011our students are safe and able to engage in meaningful learning we begin to see the true potential of our children therefore no child should go to school in fear and sit at their desk and be and learn and I read something and I'll leave you with this and I hope you listen to what I just said here this money has been allocated for safety within the school system and we have been talking about this since two years ago when board members spoke to the public at KHS and said that there were metal detectors being considered and that our safety coordinator was going to Newber to uh review all the stats and the cost that's two years ago or more okay thank you if you have something I'll take it and I thank you very much
012for your time I appreciate that Franny Newman hello everyone um can you hear me okay hi um I um I'm also here to talk about um metal detectors I'm a parent of a sixth grader at Bailey and last week um I was at a great presentation about the Safety and Security uh p uh components that are going on really about the different kinds of uh uh uh drills and um PR measures that are happening um that have to do with people on the ground taking care of each other um so thank you for that and um I actually felt pretty good after leaving that and then I saw that metal detectors were something that the schools were considering and um I was surprised because it's known that um research it's really really there's not a
013lot of research that says that metal detectors actually do anything to prevent school safety in fact there are times where school shootings actually in um 2005 there was uh school shooting in Minnesota where um a student arrived and shot the person operating the metal detector and then continue to walk into the room and um I read some awful interviews before I got here tonight um um people uh interviewing students who were perpetrators who shot up their schools who repeatedly said metal detectors would not have deterred them from their actions at the time it's also known that uh Studies have also shown that students often feel less safe with the presence of a metal detector so the perceived safety of students is actually also not um moving forward um key stakeholders have found that their use
014is overly time consuming and expensive an overall disruption and an overall disruption to the learning environment and um it is known that there are racial disparities and discriminatory practices associated with the use of metal detectors which is to say that in places where there are not only are metal detectors more frequently in uh schools with higher populations of students of color when they are more frequently leading to um other invasions of privacy of students of color than of white students so I'm hoping that um either tonight you will not voting on this um because there was not really a lot of um forewarning to the community um as far as I know I didn't know about this at all and I was in person at a meeting about security just last week um and if
015you do vote I hope that I encourage you to um vote not to put money towards this measure Safety and Security but to really invest in our community um and the people that are um taking care of each other and our students including my daughter thanks thank you next Elana Burger hello uh my name is Alana Burger um I have two daughters in the school district one at baile in sixth grade one is a sophomore the high school she's in the band I'm very proud of the band I love the band and they're amazing um and before I also here to talk about metal detectors but I do want to say one thing on the side because you've gotten so much feedback on this I just want you to know I love the Yonder pouches
016I love the kids not having their phones um I know my kid is doing way better in school I know that the kids are engaging with each other and I think it's a hugely positive thing so I know you've gotten a lot of grief for but there's a lot of parents who really love it and I think my kid even would sort of admit that she likes it um about the metal detectors yeah I also just heard about it I find it shocking that a resolution that came up like two weeks ago is potentially that would involve like millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment could be voted on and decided tonight so I hope that's not the case because that's really scary um I think I mean I it's your
017job not my job to do this I took like an hour on the internet and every single study I found showed exactly what Franny said that metal detectors have there's no evidence that they've proven to be effective at stopping any kind of violence in schools and in fact they do have potentially negative impacts where kids it is more Scary For Kids it increases the feeling of fear um and so I I just don't think it's a positive thing to do right now in the schools and it's certainly at the very least merits a lot of research and study before something big like this moves forward given that there is a lot of research out there that does not actually support doing it so I actually looked at a bunch of studies on security in schools
018and one of the studies I came up with from the learning policy Institute talks about the existing evidence shows that there's two common approaches to improving school safety increasing security and building supportive School communities so the strategies intended to increase physical security like metal detectors have grown Over time however the evidence based for most of these is not robust instead and what I would Advocate is investing in the types of strategies that build supportive School communities that actually prevent Violence by giving the kids in the schools the support they need to thrive so and I have a lot of friends who are teachers and social workers and I talked to them about what they think the schools need it's more Tas and paying t a decent wage it's bus monitors it's transport it's more bus
019drivers it's more social workers that to me is an actual investment in the security of the school and the children um there's another study I read that talked about security theater and to me like moving to do some kind of metal detectors when no evidence suggests they're helpful and it seems to really be just respond to a lot of angry voices in the community rather than a response that actually makes any sense so I think I'll just end by saying our kids particularly now are going through a really hard time covid was devastating for their mental health and their social skills um the world is kind of a scary toxic place in a lot of ways right now these kids are amazing and resilient I think the last thing they need is to walk into
020a school where they feel like they're either being accused of being a criminal or they're being reminded of this constant threat so I really really hope you think about this seriously don't vote on it or if you're at all or if you are going to do it vote now thank you that's all that signed up but I feel so there's no one else signed up one person who like to speak right so it she signed up but it was already okay that's all right no that's all right hi my name is Malia Cordo I'm a District parent I have a child in Miller Middle School and a child at Chambers I understand that the board is considering a proposal Boe 26 to introduce metal detectors into our district I have a number of concerns about
021this for example in addition to the actual metal detector units there would be additional expenditures such as multiple personnel pration training equipment maintenance repairs and the future replacement of outdated units Boe 26 suggests reappropriate funds but what funds the district currently can't afford to grow like the already successful but limited student supports that we have such as school psychologists or guidance counselors or social workers or team building field trips or deeply personalized assistance for troubled students not to mention the things that we don't yet have have like smaller class sizes or buses so that all students can participate in extracurriculars like School sports how much additional time would be required to get hundreds or a thousand students through the screening and into class on time without disrupting educational time students often carry metal water bottles
022and have metal lanyards rides would there be x-ray machines or would staff do manual checks of bags what happens if a student sets off the metal detector would they receive a pat down that seems like it could be very problematic what about after school hours would the detectors be turned off then or still in operation how would you account for non-school Affiliated activities like sports clubs or the polling sites what if people bring in weapons to hide when the metal detectors aren't running let's look at the results of the annual School climate questionnaires that are given to our students um at Miller for example for the last two years a majority of students answered that they do not feel that our their school is a welcoming place and that they do not feel a sensive
023community at school and as Alana said researchers have found that when metal detectors are use in schools students are more likely to perceive violence and disorder at their schools and that students report feeling less safe in schools that have metal detectors that seems counterproductive to me do we want to be a district that finds money for metal detectors but not for growing our already existing solutions to the underlying personal and social problems at our schools that are in influencing the violent threats how exactly would having metal detectors actually reduce the prevalence of threats I ask you all to either not vote or to vote no on Boe 26 today thank you thank you is there anyone else who would like to address the board Mr Denny good evening board members hope everybody's well tonight unfortunately
024as we know uh this issue has become the safety issue has become quite contention contentious and I personally would like to say UPF front that any aggression sh I apologize for that I'm passionate about it I'm passionate about safety I'm very concerned about our youth I'm very concerned about I have a 5-year-old grandson that goes to Kennedy School um and also I'll eventually have another one in a couple of years that'll be here as well um to to these people's comments about the metal detectors I think it's only fair to the board that I do point out that a lot of people are probably misguided because there's not a lot of information out about the metal detectors so I think it's important to note that they only would be detecting guns or knives per se
025it's not going to pick up on a thermos and you're not going to have a child against the wall so I think you should put that to rest real quick anyway so I think we lose sight of the fact that we're just as vulnerable as anybody else in the community as a school district and um back in 2005 and it's a long time ago people sometimes our memories are short we had a mass shooting in the Hudson Valley Mall which is still recorded as one of the worst mass shootings in the history of the United States so the Community is not un vulnerable from such an attack my one of my bigger concerns also is that there's so much dialogue about this even on social media as we know and back and forth so at
026the end of the day people who are bad people read these things so I think right now we could be seen as a very vulnerable School District um one of the other things I want to notice I noticed that Kathy hokel her Governor she is in complete support of increasing the amount of sro's in schools I'm sure you folks are aware of that um right now I had found out today I don't know if you are aware of this as well just in bosies alone in Port new they have two armed SRO so again I understand this concern about guns however at the end of the day if you have armed SRO they don't have to be seen those those weapons don't have to be seen they can carry concealed my biggest fear is the
027elementary schools that's why I have have a huge fear because when we look at the high school God forbid there were an attack at least those children are big they're big people they have the ability to maybe fend off somebody but the but the young children don't have that ability um so finally I just want to end with this today I did speak in length with a security company at length and I'm going to ask the board to consider this it's a security company that currently is serving um over 30 School r s they have they have many officers they will offer a wide array a huge array any choice you want if you want plain clothes they don't have to show a weapon you'll think the guy is an IT guy I would like
028to see the board support allowing me to invite them here I spoke to them in depth toight to at least offer a presentation to the school board I think it's really important I hope that you'll support that thank you thank you anyone else to address the board the one more hi hi thanks for can you guys hear me weird sorry it's very weird uh no it's fine it's for the it's for the live stream it's not for you're oh got it okay great um my name is lindsy Stern I have a sixth grade son at Miller um I just want to also e some things that were already said just for the record Yonder pouches have been amazing um so I don't know it sounds like some people have not liked them I think they've
029been really great for the community and less distracting in the classroom um I also want to say that um I have a son who has anxiety has 504 and I think having metal detectors I just want to reiterate I think would make him it certainly makes me feel less unsafe and more on guard and I think for that is a known thing it's already been discussed I'm concerned about that I think that there are other avenues to explore and where to spend our money I'd be more inclined to be excited about things that would build community rather than having something that feels like it's for show um with metal detectors so I'll just say that I'm I'm on the side of not putting them in the building um I think there's just other things to
030discuss I only found out about this today so I was like I have to come over and hear what's going on um but I just think there's other things to explore and have more discussions about and I would encourage us not to put money in this because it feels to everything Malia said um pretty extensive expensive for a longterm investment and I think there's other things to invest in thanks thank you one more hi good evening Jolie Dunham I just moved back from two years in Florida and I will tell you that violence in schools is just as bad down there the threat of violence I just want to support what Scott said about the security company I think I know in Florida they have some different ideas where teachers actually wear an alarm it's
031not just their their security badge but they have a button in the event that there's an issue they can push the button and that works very well in a lot of the schools there it's not as threatening to the kids but there's a high safety element to it I understand the concern about metal detectors but I also know when I've done a lot of performances and i' I've sung for the president we went through metal detectors you go to a prison you go through a metal detector and I understand certainly the concern with the with the moms here about that and you're in a rough position it's a thankless job any of us who have served on the board as I did 20 years ago know that but I think maybe checking with a security
032company and having them come on board and doing a presentation to see what might work best I think Yonder pouches were a great idea I was applauding it all the way from Florida to hear because as a former educator a retired educator that was the biggest concern in the classroom in terms of learning so I think you're doing some very positive things but I can't speak enough for sro's in every school my grandson is now in Miller I worried about him when he was at the elementary school I spoke here two years ago about that I think elementary schools are very vulnerable and you often have retired veterans and police officers that are willing to work as SRO on this school so I think your job is difficult not saying it isn't I think it's
033very tough but I think Scott's idea about bringing on a security company and letting them do an evaluation of the vulnerabilities of our district which we were dealing with 20 years ago when I sat on the board doors that wouldn't locked an issue so I I would ask you to highly consider that I think it's reasonable and I understand everybody's perspective on this but you guys have the hard job of making the choice for the district so thank you thank you that ends our public uh comment session and moves us into our superintendent's report thank you M Anderson just just before we go into the superintendent report I just want to clarify something that that the resolution that's in front of the board tonight is a resolution directing the superintendent to provide them with more
034information it's not a resolution to say tonight the board is going to put metal detectors in our schools it's a it's a resolution directing me to bring bring them more information so I just want to make sure everyone knows nothing that's happening here tonight is going to put a metal detector in our schools tomorrow morning um so just so everyone knows that um so want misunderstanding on that um and just as far as a security company we do have a security consulting company we working with for two years called our teris they're a nationwide uh security company run by former school resource officers from across the country and across and all over our region as well so we do have um you know we we're listening to experts the board is actually going to ask
035me tonight to bring back more information regarding this there's no vote happening tonight that's going to say yay or name to um M detectors um so I will hand it over to M Gerald and Sh Valley mpal preservation Karen you got that timer going yes am okay so um I have a history of running over a little bit so I have been uh threatened just just kidding um 15 minutes I said give me 20 so first thing fair enough the first thing I would like to do is introduce my amazing team you all know them Mr Mark K Yeti he is the assistant principal for fifth grade and e8th grade this year and my amazing Miss um Shel Kia she is the AP for six and seven grade this year so we are just going
036to um first of all thank you all for giving us the opportunity to share the amazing things that we are doing here at ba and as soon as Paul put that we ready to go my clock is ticking here okay now if I have technical difficulties it does not go against me all right um I just introduced everybody okay so every year as most of you know we have to develop a building plan we have um we make this year we made three commitments uh and our first commitment is to make sure that every student in our building has um engaging uh instruction curriculum in front of them so they are enjoying their learning how are we are going to do that we are going to give targeted professional learning for teachers we are doing
037data analysis and we are doing schoolwise assessment Audits and we are doing instructional walkthroughs so I'm going to just back up a little bit because I just notice this when I say schoolwide assessment audits once um at the beginning we had said the teachers are always complaining there's so much testing there's you know what can we do about this so with everybody's assistance we really did take a look to see what we could cut out there are certain things that we just need to do and you know it's it's quarterly they have to happen so um the audit was there we did what we could do but there are certain things that our hands are tied with and we just have to follow our state regulations commitment two we want to make sure that all
038of our students always feel safe in our buildings that they are respected and that they are supported and Mr Spicer that they've got trusting relationships with the staff commitment three is going to be we want our students this is Bailey's goal every year we want to make sure that our students have a voice and that they are being heard and giving them the opportunities to um become leaders we're going to do that through our student Le conferences this year and of course our student government and Leadership activities all right one of the great things um that we got this year is we are partnering with anchored leaders as you all know we are a TSI school and um with that we are getting assistance from the state so with the assistance from the state we
039also get funding that comes right to us and and we have certain things that we can use to make um things better for our staff and for our students and I'm going to go into that so anchored leaders they are supporting us they are helping us I like to call it my person everybody gets a person in the building ah the principles don't I finally got my person and her name is Angela so September and October our outcomes with the anchored leaders are they are helping us with our walkthrough process um we are doing a book study and we um have data chats I want to just go through our walkthrough process real quick once upon a time before covid we did have walkthrough forms all right we would take in addition to our aprs
040we would um take our check our our check sheet and go into the classrooms and just like a five minute visit just check to see you know if everything's going you know what we see is you know what we want to see and then um so that's through our walkthrough process our book study I have to tell you this is an amazing book we've got this through um Dr aror arburn is the um group that we use um for our L students they had recommended a book I wanted to do something for our staff they could kind of connect with what our L kids go through this is such an amazing book and I'm I'm going to suggest if you have the opportunity to read it and I meant to bring copies I was going
041to be Oprah and hand them all out to you but I forgot them um but this particular book shares the story of the author his Memoir it he tells the story of his Journey when he left his grandfather his grandmother his aunt to go on the journey to the United States to meet up with his mother and his father who had already come over into Los Angeles to make a better life for themselves and to eventually bring their children over um so it shares the Journey of what he went through and I have to tell you there is not one staff member has not come up to me and said Dev this amazing book it really hits home and it shares what our students have gone through um and our data our data Guide what
042we are doing is during our common planning time we are also doing our data chats or not our data chats our um uh data analysis in our uh uh common planning time that when we have an assessment we go through we look and see what questions the kids miss we um analyze why did they missed it and we adjust it go back we teach things like that how am I doing summer Retreat real quick um because of our anchor our partners with anchored learning they helped us put on a retreat for 60 staff members it was held locally at the venue Kingston and um during that Retreat we um focused on thyself we were building working relationships all right we had a staff member who passed away over the summer Mary Elizabeth Palo I was
043really hesitant on doing this Retreat because it happened shortly after her passing I did not know if it was going to be the right time um Angela my person said let's do this the first thing she did she gave everybody a puzzle piece and they had to write something that reminded them of Mary Elizabeth and when it came all together um we put it together and it's going to be displayed in our building in memory of mar um the next thing we did everybody did a dis assessment even for the staff that did not come to the um Retreat when we got back in September everybody got to take the dis assessment why did we do that because we wanted to know what our personalities were so we could um discover things about oursel and
044how we could relate to our colleagues and most importantly how we can relate to our students just FYI I came out dominance we did team building um some of the great games that they played barnica what that is is they play a game that everybody is familiar with but then other people come in the game they rotate and they're changing up the rules and playing different ways so now the other players need to figure out what is going on and how can they adjust it and the same thing with the magic stick the helium um you know the staff had a plan as to what was going to happen and when it wasn't working out they had to figure out how to fix the problem all right one of the other great things one of
045the other great things that we have is um we have an amazing coach that um the state has provided uh with us and some of you may know her from being in the building um um before you all retired uh Kristen juu she is an amazing educator she was a fifth grade teacher at B she still is technically a fifth grade teacher um and she taught our L students our L students which integrated into her class and um we have pulled her out of the classroom this year and what she is doing is she is working with our sta to enhance their instruction so what I basically said in faculty meetings is look this is your opportunity you want to do a project that you've always been afraid to do didn't have the courage didn't
046know how to begin use Kristen she is the person to help you what does she do what is she she is a resource provider she's a data coach she's an instructional specialist she's a curriculum specialist she's a classroom supporter she's a learning facilitator a mentor a school leader a catalyst for Change and most importantly she is a learner and um we were only supposed to have maybe 10 staff members sign up pretty much my whole staff is by so the problem is timing all right um the other thing real quick and then I'm turning it over is we all know that our babies that are in now they were all Co babies they missed all the phonics and everything else that went into learning how to read so as Dr Alto and her team has
047um talked about the science of reading we are bringing that into the classrooms this is from when I used to teach and I'm really excited about it because we are going back to the basics of teaching our kids the sounds of the letters what a th the other words that they need in order to read so um for grades five and six grades five they have their win group uh third period and grade six they have it six period And I just went through why we are doing this okay here you go Mr I'll try to earn you back in time do I still have a job um so last year I We believe We presented on this we started our data chats in connection with the I ready program our data checks essentially are
048a way for students to actually see what they're doing how they're scoring and to reflect on that and it's possibly one of the most important pieces that happens in a school and unfortunately often times is not happening typically because the test is given layer stents get it back they see a score they reflect on that score maybe personally maybe throw it away maybe bring it home but that typically is where it ends because then you have to move on to the next thing this is slowing that down and looking at very specifically the areas where they did well where they need to grow and then coming up with a plan for how to grow and I I can't stress enough how incredibly important it is uh the wonderful Jackie man started that last year in
049our school She's again working through that and it's incredibly impressive because it's true meta cognition for our students teaching them that it's not just a number it's not just something you get over but looking at it thinking about how we got to there how do I get higher how do I get higher and that's the biggest thing and one of the things I've always try to stress with students don't measure yourself against others measure yourself against yourself this is where you were before strive to get farther even if it's a little bit you can always look back and say you've improved and this is giving that opportunity for seeds and it can be incredibly dis heartening and and mood killing for a student to see a low score now they can see it and go
050this is where I'm at just that even if it's the smallest bit of improvement that does wonders for your ability to feel better about yourself to feel like you can continue to grow and and it's a huge piece to that so those are continuing I incredibly happy that they are going along with that and hopefully I hit the right button I did very hard to see and I apologize for that but right now now we have started to track our data that we are getting from IR ready so last year was our first year using it in Bailey right there what you see up there is our cohort tracking so I do not have access to the fourth grade scores yet we're working on getting that but right now you see students who were fifth
051sixth and seventh grade last year what they scored last year on the first assessment what they scored this year keeping in mind that we are now a year higher different grade level different material and what you'll see is that the numbers are fairly consistent that's a good thing we are not seeing a drastic backslide everyone has heard about the summer slide we are not seeing that in a lot of cases students are maintaining the advances they made last year and are picking up in a good spot to continue that growth the second piece though I think really helps the showing because it puts it a bit more into perspective and I tried to break it down to where students should be and where we want to pick them up from so in the green there
052that represents students that are one grade level below all the way up to two or more grade levels above and the reason why I'm including that in the green students are being tested on what they need for that entire grade year but they're doing that test in September they haven't learned that material yet so it is the expectation that they would come up one year behind they are fourth graders coming to fifth grade fifth graders going to sixth grade done the sixth grade curriculum so we would expect them to be at that part they haven't gotten that material so we are in pretty good shape with where our numbers are we have actually increased the amount of students who are in that spot right now and that's an awesome piece the next piece to look
053at is where do we go with our second assessment that'll be in the winter last year we saw an average of eight percentage points growth into students getting on grade level and above so this year with all of the new programs we have principal Fitzgerald spoke about several of them the Wind Block and everything we have a lot of new pieces in there to support that one of the other pieces that's going to be a big piece of that is what principal assistant principal gr is going to talk about with the social emotional piece that plays a massive part in these numbers as well and I feel fairly confident that given these new programs we're going to see more than the 8% percentage Point CH the last piece in there just for explanation math always
054shows up lower and that has to do with sequency again they're being tested on the entire Year's worth of stuff geometry comes up in eth grade they do geometry towards the second half of the Year towards the end so math will always skew lower on that first one even with that though we're still in in a good place and I think we are primed to have uh some really impressive growth and now that we have these tools we can actually track and look at the tools that got us there and are helping us hopefully back and so of course everyone have their glasses on and I don't so okay so we're GNA talk about the social emotional learing component of you know B and so if you look closely and I'm going to do this
055fairly quickly we last year we spoke about our work study program and how we had our students um going over which is right street from us and it's so fulfilling for them they're excited about it um we thought the best way to teach our kids how to adapt and contribute to society not just only when they get to high school but also at the middle school level um the students you know there's a job posting We post just like if you were back in the day everything is online but we have it right on outside of the office the kids are able to during transition see what jobs are available and they apply and even though for us this seems like a simple application that any of us should be able to fill out some
056of our kids actually have issues with out they don't understand the questions I did you know this year I was back I picked up a application and I asked you know we character refence and so when I saw the character reference it says Sandy and SpongeBob so this is this is from our one of our seventh graders no eth gr s that's like you know SpongeBob SquarePants so I got I said what did you think this meant and he's like you know characters that you thought about and so but that's how you know it's important for our kids to start as early as possible to get familiar with stuff like this what a character references you know just know how to answer some of these questions as much as even writing your put their first
057name what's your last name and so it's really important for them they go through a process where they apply for the job they get interviewed I check I check the references check you know Sindy from bikini bottom but um you know but they go through that process of you know applying for a job and actually you know being responsible to get to that job on time they're doing dur do they are attending their jobs during class so it's not like it's taking them through their course subjects or anything but the kids love it and they don't get paid and they still go you know so um sometimes you know I'll have little you know prizes and gifts for them but they actually love to do it and it makes them feel good especially when they
058get the feedback from a teacher or um whatever staff member they work with they really feel good about it they show up on time um they might be late for a class but they show up at their job on time because they see how important it is it makes them feel seen soal through you know our work study program helps with self motivation um time management communication problem solving you know I'm sick I can't go to work how do I communicate that to my boss um could I send him a team's message so the kids are doing that they're sending their a messages unfortunately I'm sick today I can't be here so and then also wanted to incorporate just B should be we just started this world affirmation and positive feack so happy notes so
059this you know sometimes the kids may feel a little bit embarrassed to the teacher give them praise in front of students may have anxiety about that so now the teacher can fill out a little happy note slip it on their desk or slip it in their locker and so the kids when they get this they excited like wow I know my teacher noticed that I was actually helpful um that you know I was on task sometimes you know no and so it's good to help them know so I thought may you know what this is that for the adults I fed one out the first one I gave it to was Mr C and I was like take put it in my mail and my mail the whole time but you know this is just
060for morale and culture in our building you know the kids feel good about themselves and the staff feel good about themselves and it helps with the learning environment they feel like they can trust you know they feel safe um they know that their teachers are notic CL and they feel good about they feels sit ass and just overall feel safe so the benefits of affir building confidence developing positive outlook improving academic performance and set and achieving goals and thank you questions comments yes Miss Jordan well I just want to start by saying that I am very impressed with your plan I'm very impressed with the follow up from other years where you talked about things and you've obviously grown and and evaluated what you've done and moved forward which is wonderful but I do have
061to say personally I was privileged to come to your open house as a board member and the culture of that building was so positive and so um there was so much camarad between all of the staff members that I was able to view and they were just engaging with each other in a very positive way with the parents the parents all have Smiles on their face of course they haven't gotten their report C but um but I just was thrilled to just feel the wonderful positive energy in that building so thank you very much thank you for being there my pleasure Dr Collins uh thanks so much for um the presentation and I you know I'm a big fan of that large structural changes like when I think that that is really um spreading the
062effort to help all students broadly and I um I'm really excited to see how that's going to impact academic um in community building quite frankly for those students across the year I'm same with the coaching I think it's all great uh I just had a couple of questions one the first one was around the the walkthrough process is that um is that mostly that peerto peer or veterans and newer who's doing those walkthrough we are yeah it's just an additional piece of of um aprs where you know we're just checking in it's just a tool that we can use there sort of a low stage fortive and the feedback loop then comes back inside the formal process and when we have our post conference it all comes in there great um and then my other
063question was about the SE so the work study that all great two questions one is What proportion of students do you think are involved in that particular so it's open to all of our students the graders um I kind of some of the jobs like Havey mark C so they can't go you know back to and be a math Tut would seven and E graders especially kids that have behavioral issues and they may feel hopeless like okay big problem you know right they don't feel like you know what I'm just a badid you know they feel good about it so I I'm very intentional with the jobs I try to you know what do you guys need what do you want to see some of the jobs like you know in the cafeteria being the
064person but there you know they're they're looking at the high States you know you have kids that are um Runners you know they go to different classrooms you need to deliver stff and it makes them feel good about themselves they're not just in a or like they have to do they always have something to do but kids will tell you they have to do but now and you know I had Aid that conly in my office and to saw walk my students like yeah you can you know this is the process you go it's been a great so it's open to all grade but then like just obviously a subset of students it's open to all students it's open to all students each job is is made for so like easier jobs are for our
065younger kids and obviously the more involved jobs are for our older kids but any student can apply for them and I just want to speak up because we're talking I had two eth grade students last year one of which was struggling incredibly with anxiety not it was the best superpowers you have he started coming because he knew he had to do he felt that role I had another young man he's now in high school came outles did not himself as valuable not himself as as capable that young man when he got thatr going to read it was unbelievable he completely different to me the kid was walking with his head down had his head up high as he went to Ed he was smiling telling us about and it was such a change for him
066and he's got a young sibling still Ino Mom dropped off she it was through this thisr so the the other the other thing that I want to mention is that you know um our younger kids they they also have the opportunity we have TV studio so the kids are in charge of the announcements so we've got you know they come in they do the morning announcement and those you know we have kids that are running the cameras they're running the editing uh software so the older kids are doing that piece but our younger actually doing the announcement so you've got the younger and the older kids working together as well oh it sounds great and I for all the kids that are involved and I hope we can get as many as possible um I
067guess I was also just curious about sort of the widespread SEO are we curriculum and sort of how we're addressing all students even though that program so are there other ways that are through curriculum or other programs there are there are many there are many different pram that we have I know that we the district is looking for a social emotional component but in the meantime you know we're working with Aster we have an aster person there who helps us with our social emotional pieces um we've got uh my mind just went BL um the wayfinder I don't know if anybody had a chance to go to the Woodstock uh Film Festival weekend but there was in a movie that won awards it's called um we can be heroes and it is the wayfinder uh
068group is role playing so they come our school and they work with our ungraded students and our ungraded students actually get to act out stories that they verbally you know create and then they they go into their r and then they like work on their story as they are active if that makes any sense and it's that program we cannot say enough about what they have done for our kids and then the other piece for social emotional his his uh uh career in touch with KH you know him and his team do amazing amazing things with our ath careers and the great this year that he's brought in a female component for us so we've got a female who's working with 10 of our at risk females um to uh get them you know ready
069for the high school and teach them regulation skills uh working with other people and things like that so we've got a lot of social emotional pieces all over the place um do we have one social emotional curriculum yet thank you very much and I also just have to say that I appreciate the metacognitive perspective on the data and I was recently playing a game with my son who told me that I had reached my stretch brog I was like the I ready is like [Music] deepor other questions or comments from the board Mr Spicer I want to thank you all for your presentation after three comments uh your commitment one of educational relevance we know is self-motivating enforces engagement increases productivity attendance attention achievement and is a major component of inclusive School culture so thank
070you for that it's it's it's huge uh your commitment to empowering the children gives them ownership of their own data of their education and is the beginning of making them responsible lifelong Learners they feel like they own their own data and their their own success so thank you for that and lastly I am so proud your school's book study is celo and an El Salvadorian El Salvadorian boy diary of his migration Journey to the US and demonstrate your sinc a commitment to relevance and growing your facult cultural competence when I found out you were reading that book as a community it really made me feel like all the rest of your goals are sincere you really you really mean it so did you read the book H did you read the book no I want
071to you got to read the book I'm sending your book Thank you anything else any other comments thank you very very much great appre 22 minutes and 5 Seconds 22 minutes and 5 Seconds that was very good some of that was my fault no I did not count the question that was not an accurate accounting at this time she didn't include the I didn't include the questions and answers okay thank you m Mel next up we have our director of University e inclusion Dr Cy hello everybody um thank you for welcoming here welcoming me here tonight um just want to talk about some of the initiatives that I'm working on this year and I appreciate very much the board's commitment to diversity equity and inclusion as well as superintendent's continued commitment to this work um
072here's just a list of some of the initiatives I'm working on there are many of them they're varied in scope and as they should be because the work is very complex when it's done correctly in other words when it's not a checkity things can't be done in one Fell Swoop or a one and done kind of training um as I've said multiple times so the work is actually in changing paradigms and that's always going to be slow-going and complicated work if it's going to be done authentically we just heard a lot about a lot of work that's going on at Bailey Middle School for an example that's that's working on changing a lot of these paradigms um I like to keep all my initiatives grounded in these two documents from State education on the left
073is the CRS framework um on the right hand side is a States document on De Dei um as a reminder the metaphor that they have at the bottom there I know it's a little bit um blurry but at least it's blurry from back here um they contribute this to to Cynthia Oma although I've heard it in many many different places diversity is being invited to the dance inclusion is being asked to the dance Equity is allowing you to choose the music so I really want to focus on the the equity and inclusion pieces um this points to how deep and complex the work is and and i' like to highlight the quote from Pablo Picasso there that uh it says quote the only uh there is only one way to see things until someone shows
074us how to look at it with different eyes so this is the work of equity all right it's creative it's imaginative I like to bring in the work of Adrian Marie Brown It's emergent strategies um it helps us to ensure that all means all like I think it was Einstein who said we can't solve the problems with the same thinking that created them so that's something I always like to think about so the first initiative um in no particular order the journeys to Montgomery the trips to Montgomery was rethink um we sent so far two cohorts of 10 people each that they attended the immersive trip to Montgomery Alabama cohorts one and two were district and building administrators and we have one more cohort that's going in the spring um Dr Pino and I have
075been in conversation about who exactly will be on on that particular trip you can see the objectives here um building a strong leadership community building a shared awareness of the manifestations of racism other forms of Oppression while simultaneously authenticating interracial relationships among our leadership teams the trips to Montgomery are designed to ski and are designed excuse me and skillfully facilitated by the workers at rethink um when people really attend these and are present at the sites and present at the facilitation meetings um as well as doing the homework there it becomes very difficult to deny how our systems have been designed they've been designed from jump to Advantage certain groups while disadvantaging other other groups um I'm going to show some participant feedback on this in in a minute but our student outcomes at Kingston
076schools reinforce that our systems are working the way that they've been designed so we really need to take a look at what we're doing looking at everything with fresh eyes with new eyes to ensure that Equity inclusion access belonging Justice that we can again fulfill our mission of all students all the time we went in Montgomery to the the Legacy sites the Civil Rights Museum and down to the they call it the memorial of and Justice which is um a bit of a euphemism um but the overall strengths of the session there there was surveys that were given by the rethink folks to to the participants after it was over these are some selected quotes from the surveys um The Prompt for this was the overall strengths of the session and these um Quotes come
077from members of cohort one and cohort 2 so our team needs to continue this momentum this trip has allowed me uh time to stop and think about how urgent it is that we truly begin to take action change is necessary um in order to be successful we have to address our own biases that exist within ourselves and our school Community hope and the desire to approach work with greater intentionality come through as key aspirations indicating a focus on purposeful actions moving forward so these were just some responses to what were the overall strengths of the session you can see that it helped our participants see uh where some of our our issues are and some ideas about how we can move forward to address the biases and ourselves and in our systems and to be
078intentional in our work and the work is urgent and necessary how does the work collect uh excuse me connect to Kingston so 100% of the respondents in both cohorts which is 20 people total either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement quote I was able to connect aspects of America's history of race to my own work in Kingston the quotes here are a selection from some respondents um when they were asked to elaborate on that statement so to build together a commitment to do is needed to move our students forward I want to be part of the change and acknowledge that it hurts in order to do that help me to realize even more that there is a lot of work to be done regarding equity and justice for the quote unquote hard-to-reach and teach
079students looking at our curriculum and evaluation systems making high standards training teachers it made very clear the interconnected mess between America's historical journey and our current reality and seeing the veil of quote it's not like this in the North clearly reputed with the imagery and data from Kingston um and then there was another quote that I didn't put on there because it made the the font too small and good thing because this is broken over here but it said um Kingston likes to think it's quote unquote different but the data and outcomes look the same as the rest of the nation all right I just again a smattering of some of the quotes that I think are very important to draw out um why why we have been doing this work and it's ongoing um
080it's ongoing work so I'm I'm very grateful that we've been able to do this and grateful that we'll be doing another trip and hopefully continuing work with rethink and continuing work among those of us who went there um next initiative again these are in no particular order supports for transgender and gender expansive students um in two 2023 excuse me New York State education put out this document it's very robust if I recall correctly it's 54 Pages um it's also linked on our website it's uh you can see legal update and best practices so what we've done um as a way to ensure that all of our students feel that sense of belonging you heard them talk about social emotional learning um both in our comments and from the Jay Watson Bailey presentation to ensure that
081all of our students feel a sense of belonging um at least about five years ago um we made the ability in echool uh for students to be able to change their names their gender their pronouns uh we are actually ahead of echool in a lot of these changes I have to give great thanks to Gary tomsic and John Burge who were the original folks who worked on this um um echool is is catching up to us with this um as more and more students are coming out as trans and gender expansive we realize that we need a more systematized way of providing support for our students and I want to be clear that issues around transgender and gender expansive Youth and all lgbtq plus youth is a systemic one right it's not an issue with
082those children it's it's a systemic issue we as the adults in the institution are um in many places still operating in outdated and outmoded ways which excludes and authorizes certain students um additionally um outside messages seem to make it okay to dehumanize lgbtq plus youth people in youth in particular these days um I also just want to be clear I don't want to complate sexuality with gender that's a whole different presentation but there is a history here as to why that's the umbrella term so there's just a few things that I wanted to put out there to be clear okay the supports that I've put in place here are for Trans and gender expansive youth um in particular so the process of coming now um is what we're trying to support here it's different for
083every single student who needs to come out uh what we did was starting last year had a workshop presented to all of our counselors social workers psychologists from Rob conin of glisten um he came out and did a three-hour training with those support staff again I don't want folks to think that transgender gender expansive students have um that it's a mental illness or they have a specific need for counselors but there are needs in school and coming out in school and sometimes different needs needs that that these youth have where they have to have somebody who can help them navigate the coming out process which is usually happens multiple times with multiple people multiple places so our counselors who are trained in that kind of work and trained to work with students and families and
084students and teachers and students within their um I know the social work where millu um that that's why we thought it was important to have all the social workers and counselors trained on this also particularly at the secondary level that's often a place where the students will is to their support staff the Elementary staff it's very often going to be the School nurses or the school teacher or the principal right so um the nurses and and principles have been trained as well so you can see all the building District administrators had a 45 minute information session um to ensure support for our trans and gender expansive students particularly when they come out nurses were given the information session at the first department meeting this year um and every school building has a team of professionals
085to assist when a student comes out as trans gender expans all right we've been doing a lot of um consultant work I thought when I had spoken with Miss fitgerald she said she was going to talk a little bit about Jess leblan so um I'm going to do my best to F in here he's working with Jay Watson Bailey School he did um focus groups with students last year he and I did focus groups with students last year and actually even Kristen JJ was part of that work since she was mentioned as a as a coach she is phenomenal um so we collected responses from over 200 students talk to them about how they like to learn what works well for them in the classroom what they struggle with in the classroom and it sounds
086like Bailey is already incorporating a lot of this into what they're doing with the social emotional learning we just wanted kids to feel um that they had a voice and that they had a way of learning this also fits in all of the work that Jess is doing fits in with each one of the um pieces of Deb's set plan Excuse Me Miss Fitzgerald's set plan this year what he's doing um is working with the teachers he's going to be doing teacher focus groups to hear from the teachers about what it is they notice about how students learn what are their expectations of students um and the goal is to marry these two findings into to be solution Focus so that students voice is then heard and again that relates to the set plan around
087relationships with students around student voice around students having classes in teaching that is relevant to their needs to what they want and it's always grounded in that um culturally responsive and sustaining framework which is ensuring high expectations and rigorous instruction for students all right and um I know it was last year but when we spoke with the students and did those focus groups they were um very clear about what it was they liked and how much they wanted to learn and how curious they were I mean it was just it was a really great experience I would love for us to be able to do more and more of that we're continuing our work with Dr Javon Hunter and the critical inquiry projects um teachers who are new to the work are doing a book
088study as we have done in previous years and then they're going to work on transforming one of their lessons into the critical inquiry project um which again would be aligned with with the crsc framework um the elementary teachers are doing Goldie Muhammad's unar and joy this year the secondary teachers who are new with Dr Hunter are doing Equity by Design again the work the teachers who were new with him last year in secondary did the same book but it it's that good um teachers who are who have worked with Javon hunter in the past two years with him can continue to work with him we have several teachers who are doing that um we have Elementary and secondary teachers doing that and I also wanted to highlight we have two KHS teachers who worked with
089Dr Hunter over the summer um they went to Buffalo to work with him and they're actually going to be part of a book that he's publishing with his with critical in projects that that they've done and I've been a little remiss I have to go find those teachers and talk to them more specifically about what they're doing but he just told us about that so um if you recall last year when we did this there was a student showcase so again to go back to what um Mr Ed was saying with Bailey when when those older students go down and work with the younger students they they just love that when we did the student showcase here um and we did it in Maris two years ago the older students seeing what the younger students
090were doing just like everybody was lit up by that and when the younger students get it they came to the high school last year everybody was really excited about that so we're in discussions about how we can make that work again this year what that would look like how we can make it work and then most excited uh I am most excited about this he's doing a schoolwide um critical inquiry with two of our elementary schools with all of JFK and all of exit and so um principal Jameson and a group of her teachers um chose this book I AMU a book about auntu by uh refalo Mahi excuse me illustrated by zela McDonald at Edson principal LEL and teachers chose the book called uh my poppy has a motorcycle by Isabelle Pinto um and
091illustrated by Zeke Peña um the teachers who are involved in this who are leading this they're going to be teacher leaders of this um this whole project they're teach whove worked with either directly with me um and or Dr hunter in the past and they're part of the the building leadership team in each of those buildings um or at least the CR part of the BLT so both schools are at the very beginning stages of this project and um they met with Dr hunter in early October they'll meet with him again in November December January and hopefully in Spring they're going to roll out whatever the project will look like we're not exactly sure it's going to look different in each School obviously because they're two different books but the idea is that all the
092classrooms all the faculty staff all the lunch monitors the Food Service workers custodians bus drivers if we can of course parents and families are going to take part in the same critical in inquiry project whether you're in kindergarten or whether you're up in fourth grade all based on the same book and it would be happening um pretty much simultaneously right so within a few weeks span so I'm very excited to see what that looks like then we have um Beyond diversity inclusion and belonging in the classroom through a culturally responsive and sustaining lens um with SLE Thompson um they are a local community member a parent of student in the district live very very close and um actually gave training to our administrative staff last year very engaging um very very good work so this
093this particular work that he and I are doing is a series of four workshops that focuses on uh investigating our personal biases through the use of the Intercultural development inventory I know many of you if not all of you in the board took that um it's being administered by me um and that's coupled with Lee's go beyond diversity training um and the four eyes uh the trouble with the good bad binary and how power and oppression functions and how that can affect our um our expectations of our students so we have 25 teachers taking the IDI now we're going to go over the group results next week when we see them um using the Intercultural development Continuum and then the work with Lee and the Four Eyes of power privilege and oppression are the ideological
094the institutional the interpersonal and the individual um we have we clustered it purposefully that we have three trainings that take place in October and into early November then we send the participants off to practice and notice what it is they've learned um plus they're going to be working on their Intercultural development plans and when we come back in early March they're going to finish up and work on next steps and so then um at that time we're going to have the results of the IDI that they have taken a second time so we can do a pre and a post and see how this works see what the orientation Gap is and most importantly see um how they see things differently in their classrooms for their students with their students then we have Handover research
095um the educator Learning Center staff were given a survey in June of last year um the respones indicated that there was a desire and a need for um these four core areas that are on the board there support for specialized populations culturally responsive and sustaining teaching social emotional learning and multi-tier systems of support um so the CRS teaching library is a direct result from the equity and Action Group all right that's what they decided and also um an informal survey of the educator of colors network from that last year um both groups indicated a strong need for more anti-bias and CRS training for our teachers um the survey from June mirrored the need plus the desire for training on the support for specialized populations the other groups that are up there um so what's happening
096is these trainings will be put into my learning plan in the coming weeks teach teachers can sign up for the training earn ctle hours as as indicated up there um there's assignments associated with each library that teachers will have to do and submit to make sure that they're um actually doing some of this work and to get credit for taking the courses um also excuse me I had on the first Slide the survey I took it off um my presentation because I only had a chance to talk to Dr Pino about it this morning districtwide survey that we were hoping to do with Handover research he just looked at um we're trying to work with Handover research to do a districtwide deib survey so it's uh diversity Equity inclusion and belonging survey I feel like
097that's one of the better tools that they have because especially in that belonging Piece Will capture how effective we are with our seal work once we get that up and running um those curricul up and running the belonging piece you've heard everybody our community here speak to it you heard the Bailey folks speak to how important it is for students to feel like to have a place in they belong and I do want to point this out and I say this Dr pedalino all the time Dr he's now he's surprised again what are you say Dr patina love um gave a webinar she's she's fabulous if you do or don't know her you should check her out but she says if we just doal curricula without doing it through a Dei lens she calls it
098white supremacy with a hug so I want to make sure we don't do that so I want to make sure that we're doing actual you know the Dei deib work with our SEO work to make sure that that we get that done so that's not up here but that is again Dr Panino and I just got that into Works um with Handover research and the survey I do want to say to they will provide us extra support they will help us with more focus groups they will help us with projects they will help us to analyze the data because we did give that my opinion a really good survey in Spring of 2023 but what I then found out was we we didn't have the capacity to analyze that data in in a really strong
099way we just don't have the people to do it so Handover research will provide that with us they'll provide us with a dashboard they'll provide us with a public facing dashboard if that's what it is we want so that's one of the reasons we decided to go with hand for that so I apologize that there's not a slide about it but there it is lastly is um the KHS Ela department is doing a book study on this not light but fire um this came up again last year with with the several people in The English Department actually I should say from middle school through High School wanting a desire for something like this so we started with the high school School Ela Department um the Lee teacher Sarah Sho sent out a survey to her
100staff around their current level of comfort their desires in doing work like this um the Comfort level with leading these kinds of difficult conversations whether it's with their students whether it's with their colleagues and then The Bard mat folks who are um Jamie Alves and Cassandra Taylor are differentiating their work to tailor it right to this um specific department and the people in it the individuals with in it um they're going to be working with the ELA Department eight sessions over the course of the year and the department meetings um and then ideally we would take this and move it to the middle schools next year and then whoever else wants it needs it because the book is really great I don't know if you guys are familiar with that but more books for your
101reading but it actually he does um Matthew K does a very nice job of walking through how to set up a classroom that is comfortable for folks to bring their full selves into and to lead these conversations that come up whatever conversations may come up at any point in time so that's questions comments thank you wow questions or comments from the board Dr Collins I mostly just have a comment um that uh first of all there's so much great work going on so much great work not just so much going on but um I mean from work with faculty and administration to surveys to training programmatic strategy I me pretty much going through from every layer and every angle which I'm it's wonderful to make it visible here thank you for that and um I'm
102really appreciating the support you're providing for our trans and gender defensive students um the critical inquiry projects are very exciting and I can't wait to see the results of the schoolwide I just I hope we get to see that as some end of your celebration I hope so that's that's the idea that it we that the work begins with everybody in Earnest for spring so that it would be something towards the end of the year I have to make sure that the testing you know April testing away so but yes that that would be the idea really exciting thank you very much okay Mr rer thank you this is a great presentation you are doing a lot of great work um I know last year you worked with the equity and action committee and there
103was a decision to kind of roll that into teaching and learning this year and so I just want to ask how that is going and you know I if if there's really andbe question not just be with Dr if there's enough time in that committee to really report out all of the good work that you're doing um as opposed to having a standalone EI or like similar to equity oh I see yeah so your your the equity and action committee many key m have gone into our district leadership team right so that that's one piece of it maybe it would maybe it did roll into District leadership and not right okay so reporting of data is within DNL yeah okay so the district leadership is that I mean there's a lot of work going on
104in that committee as well and and so I just I don't want all this good work to get lost and not get kind of reported back out to us so that we have a a good lens on where it is one of the key pieces of the DLT is taking each one of the goals in making sure that we have a Dei lens on each goal now de isn't something over here that we do on the side you know that is that is part of the DNA of every one of the goals that are that are in our in our district leadership team in our district um School improving plan our district comprehensive in improving plan and really the having the members of the equity and action team and Dr there helps us mold that
105create that focus when we when we go through each one of those goals when we develop them when we put our action steps in we who's responsible and how we're going to and how we're going to um you really look at our evaluate our achievement of those goals just a follow I I think it's it's incredibly important that the district leadership team look at everything with a de Dei lens I'm just not sure that that is enough I that's a further conversation so one one of the things that's in the DP is that that survey piece that all the surveys get done and reported out and I think that Handover can help us a lot with that that would be the only way it gets St but you know the Handover research can help us
106a lot with that and again um the the survey itself um having I've already seen the instrument but the deib in the survey should help to keep us um focused on what it is we're doing especially the the first year is going to tell us a lot of information the second year will tell us if what we're doing works you know and the third year will tell us even more but and that's one of the things that han han that Handover does is um taking the results of the survey and help to focus and guide what are some of the targeted strategies that can be done with that so I'm hopeful that that one piece can help continue to keep it keep us honest but we yes we do have a lot of the Montgomery
107trip is powerful and we're in the middle of how powerful that can be or in fact I want to say at the beginning of how powerful that can be um I didn't get into it but we have we met the cohort one has met already to develop certain tools cohort to um we'll be meeting again in another couple weeks a plan after that is to get both cohorts together and we're sending a third cohort right so it's a lot um it's a lot and I appreciate you wanting to make sure that we stay focused Mrs Jordan I'm exhausted for you um but I'm so impressed by your commitment and energy to this important work one of the things that strikes me in what you're talking about changing the whole system I just wonder if there's
108a piece of this project that can inform the parents the community draw them into it because I fear that it's slower going and it's more difficult if kids are um if we're we're trying to ATT all of our kids needs but their parents and caregivers and people who love them who came up at a different time with completely different imprints who are hearing a lot of noise um I just I guess my wish would be that the whole Community could could at least be given information maybe through Community Partnerships or you know I don't know how to do it I'm not that I'm not as smart as you but I just feel that that it's a piece and an important piece and I just don't know if the programs that you're involved in have that
109I I feel like the the best way that will continue to happen is as we center student voice which is you know hear what it is we're trying to do and then the kids go home and they tell their families and they tell their parents and then if for whatever reason folks hear things and there's push back they come directly to the students and the students are going to say this is what we want this is what we love this is what we do while we're holding them to you know high expectations and rigor from the crsc framework I think that's the best way that um the the word gets out there and that is work as you you heard is happening in throughout I just hope that there are resources that come along for
110the people who want to support and be allies and want to help but I it can't happen in a vacuum yeah and I mean like I said you're you're hearing I don't believe it's happening in a vacuum but it is slowo it is entirely Paradigm shifting and it takes a while and sometimes it's so slow going that we don't even realize we've made progress until we actually look back and go oh actually we are doing things better thank you it's it was it's just so important it's almost like too much Mr Spicer it is it is a good deal and a good deal of work only because it this change is cultural and when you're making a cultural shift personally you're you're forcing yourself to look into a mirror and make a change when you're
111talking about changing the culture of an organization you're talking about as M Jordan was just saying changing and thinking of hundreds of people and everybody else they know so it does take a while I want to thank you for your presentation Dr cetti it speaks to our District's dedication to enh ing a supportive culture of diversity this past Monday Dr palino and I attended the small City Schools meeting at the New York State School boards Association conference at this meeting we presented data supporting how crucial diversity culture is to a district achieving its Dei goals they're two different things they showed how your most aggressive Dei initiatives in training with Recruitment and Retention will eventually fall off they'll die if your District doesn't have a culture that supports Dei your talent will leaves or not
112come or not stay and I learned your work and this presentation is vital to the success of our project of our progress over the next 5 to 10 years we're changing the whole culture of the whole District which means in 5 to 10 years when we're all gone it'll go on without us because of what we're doing now and it's not just hiring here or hiring there it's changing how we all think and also what Dr sweedy said about how when we all belong we all belong so thank you thank you other comments or questions for Dr STI thank you very much okay just quickly a few more things that I wanted to give just some quick updates uh first of all we kind of left out a bit the congratulations to the tiger marching
113band this sat this last past Sunday they were we had the fall Fan Fair which thank you to our band organizers and our boosters for just putting on an unbelievable show and making very organized as always and our tiger Maru band a score of 87.1 and we're rolling nicely into Syracuse to see if we can bring home a state championship um also worth talking about the kingst N football team have a historic win on Wednesday for the first time we'd be Minal Woodberry since 2006 I think um and uh and we were massive underdogs they were ranked in the state and we were not um so so we had a very uh very nice win and I think a lot of people were excited about it so it was just kind of just a fun
114evening and thank you to the Kings and fire department who escorted our team down back to the high school from the city lines um in with the Sirens going to celebrate the the giant upset win so just fun both those events are great to for our kids and so many kids involved in both those activities it's fantastic um quick really quick on facilities just give you update there phase one um notice to bids is out on the street so we're excited about that that's work we want to get started in the spring our energy performance contract is pretty much all all done really we're just hitting some of the um punch work uh punch list work over the next you probably be completed in the next week um it was the smart schools Bond back
115was mentioned of those 45 schools that were that were approved last year we were one of those 45 school districts so we have made um a lot of different done a lot of different things with that work say we're about 90% done with that work that work really revolved around replacing old cameras replacing old intrusion alarms replacing old um fire alarms U so we did a lot of work a lot of um kind of using that for what was used for for the for the nuts and bolt C security things that we that we purchased um so we approved that maybe three years ago so it took a long time to get that through the process but we're almost done playgrounds are we just just waiting on the surfacing at Miller and B so they're
116almost ready to go punch list almost completed all the elementary schools we're in very good shape after a very long time of waiting but our playgrounds are are in use um except Bailey and Miller they will be once the surfaces go down uh we're wrapping up our lead sampling this week so um as soon as that's done Dylan will bring that or Mr Bogart will bring that information to me um had a couple problems in couple of the bathrooms King in high school and was mentioned a couple weeks ago those have been taken care of they all all fixed and ready to go obviously we know we had some speakers here last week about the diving board at the pool so we have been able to put a temporary fix in for the diving board
117it's not the permanent fix that's going to take place in November but right now we have a temporary fix in place so it can be used for um it is a competition height we missed the competition season but we do have postseason and sectionals and so our girls our divers can practice at least at a you at our pool uh just quick important dates for you to remember October 24th um is the evening parent teacher conferences pre-k through 4 October 25th is a half day for our students prek through 4 November 1st is our homecoming football game parade and all the things that go along with that homecoming event and on November 5th we have superintendent conference day no students will be here but our teachers and administrators will be here and you will be
118out voting um early in office I also just quickly I may have stepped over my line at the beginning of my superintend report that's the the interpretation of this resolution is up for the board for discussion it's not not for me to editorialize so I apologize that's up for you and when it comes up for vote that's it for me okay any other questions or comments from the superintendent I don't know if you were going to comment on your diversity no I guess we that because I didn't I know I didn't give all of you until two hours ago so I apologize but I but it's it's motion complete and we'll be ready for next we okay good thank you um that moves us into the um committee reports Mrs Jordan we have several policies
119to we have several policies we've been reading policies like crazy um they've been you have seen them for almost a month and I didn't get any comments so I'm just going to offer them all for um acceptance tonight for so for number 015 HIV related illness I move that we accept that policy any discussion all in favor of 0 one50 any opposed next is 0310 board operational goals and self evaluation there was only one minor change in that um I move that we accept that policy I'll second any discussion all in favor of 0310 I any opposed next number 0320 evaluation of the superintendent I move that we accept that policy I'll second that any discussion all in favor of 0320 any opposed number one50 annual district election and budget vote I move that we
120accept that policy second any discussion all in favor of one50 any post number information program and there were just a few little changes I move that we accept that policy any discussion on one one0 all in favor I any opposed and lastly number 110 School and media Productions I move that we accept that policy I'll s any discussion all in favor of 11 one0 any opposed so all of our policies have passed yes we'll just be reviewing um trying to revisit the policies we've looked at from the beginning of the year and anything that we have to look at and then you'll be getting another bunch of policies to review and give the old ones that we're just reviewing um to make sure that they're up to date and then you can give me any
121feedback for those would you have a little time off that's it thank you Mrs Jordan that brings us to our consent agenda are there any items that trustees would like to hold from the consent agenda hearing none if I could have a motion to accept the consent agenda so move second any discussion all in favor of the consent agenda any opposed so we consent agenda passes and Dr patalino I do we have a um new hire in our mids we do have a new M Malo who's in the back here would you stand up please be recognized you would be our new assistant principal at Kingston High School taking over the 10th grade thank you very much for joining us and welcome congratulations and we do have a donation who's reading the donation Mr lamb
122Mr lamb I did the Board of Education of K City School District hereby accepts is grateful appreciation the following generous donation the Chambers Elementary School library from chambers PCA donation of 15 new library thank you thank you and that brings us to Old business any items for old business Mr Spicer I um just have one piece of old business I want to thank Dr patalino for the diversity High report he sent to us today the presentation of the data looked elaborate and appreciated I am fine with further review time for the data and the later Board review but I would please like to make the progress and Report easier for board consumption by just updating the report you gave us last year it was great I did enjoy the new data graphs but the raw
123year on-year data is easier for me at least to compare and understand our areas of progress so the the report you gave us everybody's going to if you haven't gotten a chance to read you'll see it man it's wonderful and a lot of graphs and bar graph and things like that um I I like the year on year on data just the raw data just the facts it um uh if if you were just a recommendation also as well and then uh one other question not related is tomorrow facilities no no the 29th Tuesday the 29th everyone the there Tuesdays we moved moved I see okay I got it any other old business that brings us to new business to take other I mean if other people have other new business I can wait I
124think this is depending n this okay all right um so I'd like to make a motion that we move for for discussion Boe 26 weapons detection system research second and discussion Mr Ryder so I I last meeting I had let school board members know that um I was going to be bringing this resolution forward uh at this meeting um this is something that was important to me before I joined the board and spoke about during that process um nowhere in this resolution we you see the words metal detectors um technology has moved past that and and these just for Schoolboard member awareness what I am looking at implementing here in this resolution is systems that are Gates um many of you I I believe probably this year walked through them at the school board Association
125conference um I definitely walked through them last year when I went to the Schoolboard conference in Buffalo you keep your backpacks on you you you don't remove any metal you walk through it identifies things that are more than metal so a plastic flare gun for instance um would be screened and you're you're brought aside for secondary screening the there are various companies but um one company that I've done some resch search in says that for 2ou one gate can get 2,000 people through in in an hour so obviously that's the size of the high school but we have five entrances and so you would have far more gates than that um you should be able to get all the high school in uh in a 10 to 15 minute process um happy to kind of
126read through this but I I do think it's an important step you know in in the resolution I highlight all the safety measures that we've taken as a district and I think this is just one additional layer um this is recommending that we Implement a pilot Pro program for just the high school and that we look at the feasibility of adding it to the middle schools and then in future years um if the pilots make sense to add it to any additional schools other yeah Mr I am in support of this and I worked in District that had this metal detector technology because that's what was up to date at the time my sister taught in my high school which is the only school that actually had an administrator or actually a teacher who was
127shot um by a student who entered in East Green Bush he presented at the conference and I actually got to watch that presentation um he has not stepped foot until last year back in that building he's now a superintendent of schools in another District which happens to have this technology I I would like to propose two um there actually three amendments to this and my three amendments are one um in the one two three fourth paragraph the third line I would like if feasible mov for the middle schools most of our most of our threats have been or our threats have been direct at the middle schools I feel to do the high school not the middle schools at the same time there's a mistake I would like the next paragraph totally removes which is
128the justification for putting in the Middle School the next year and the second the last paragraph also remove because that's more of the if we can't do it once in the High School Middle Schools I would like to see us move forward and asking the superintendent to to look at the high school and the two middle schools and imp at this and that would be my um proposal for a change Amendment Dr Collins so when you presented this um a couple weeks ago Mr writer you uh you and Dr Catalina had some sense of some costs at the time I mean I know this proposal says it's about research but it actually is about implementation yeah the title is the title is a little misleading to what's in the document so I'm curious if you
129and Dr Kino could just share what we know so far because if I think I you might have been talking off the cup at that meeting so I just you said 3,000 per month per setup so for Five Doors we're talking is this right to lease so to lease it's 2 to 3,000 so it depends on and but I believe there has been have there been quotes rece I mean this the re I just want to get like you know what scale what order of magnitude because we have public speakers millions of dollars thousands of dollars hundreds you know and there are systems that are for leased right so you're not talking about millions of dollars of capital funds being spent um I believe you have a quote is that correct yeah we have we
130I we have several different quotes from a year ago when we so when we have this conversation so obviously there's changes in that I mean I would be reluctant to to give you know publicly the exact price because I think then the conversation would be well that's just the materials what about the support that needs to go with it so I think those are a package deal but I think yes that probably $3,000 a month for a lease I that's go I'm going to go on the high side just because this was a year ago or something we talking about so let's say $3,000 a month um in a lease type process so you're looking at 15 per set per setup and not including the Personnel to take care that set that's not looking at
131again that would be a little more conversation with our security team about what exactly they would need um for that but uh um the other thing is I mean one thing positive about the lease is you don't end up with old technology you just roll it over if you if we do continue to keep it you know there's tech technology dances we up the our lease this is what we do with our technology here we lease another piece of equipment this District that we own we lease all of this um so yeah I think that's that's probably what you're looking at but I we didn't really talk I didn't really look at the high of the middle school that much I'd have to talk more with with Miss Fitzgerald Mr she see how many doors
132they would want to cover on that because I know like right now Bay has a lot of doors that students can in bail only has a couple so then just to get an idea of the GES there but let's just say if we had I the high school would probably need five or six right so six probably looking $5,000 $18,000 a month a month so several FTE worth of I mean um kind of yeah I two yeah I would say one three yeah yes um suan I'll go after you I'll you it was going to change with a totally different type I I'm a little uncomfortable because I thought that we were going to discuss it I was wasn't really prepared to make a decision uh in terms of any implementation and so I'm I'm
133not feeling comfortable I'm als because what i' really like to also think about is compared to because Dr patalino and I had a conversation about the IDS that have the alarm where every teacher has an alarm in the district and that could be for a medical emergency or any emergency it would indicated right away um I'm also not convinced that this makes any students safer I think my concern of I I mean I prefer this to a metal detector but my con I have a couple of concerns that were voiced tonight one of them was not though and that's the full sense of security because I just feel like when an when an actor comes with ill intent whether it be to a school a supermarket a theater a ball game a concert there is
134nothing that will that this will not stop them and my concern is that we won't be doing the things we need to do because the research that I have seen everybody kind of says that those people involved should have been known or were known and they are not dealt with and so I'm I'm I'm conflicted about this because I respect everybody I I don't believe there's a person in here who doesn't want to keep every students safe from every every kind of problem that they have that that is just a given and I'm not going to debate that with anybody because I know that everybody feels that way my concern however is is that there are students who need help they cry out for help they don't get the help and then it results in
135some tragedy and so I I'm conflicted about supporting this the way it's written as an implementation already rather than looking at what are our Alternatives and what is the best alternative that's just where I am uh Mr rer and then Dr Collins yeah and I I get that and I don't want anybody to think this is where we should stop right and so I'm supportive of adding additional security Personnel if it's available out there I'm I'm supportive of adding you know an SRO or two to the district but um I I will say we've had incidents in the schools this year that this would have stopped and so and and I think we're all aware of those incidents and and and having a weapon to section devices would have stopped an individual at the door
136and this is talking about the high school it's talking about also looking at whether it makes sense to go in the other schools you know I I'm not necessarily supportive of Mr Lamb's amendments to the resolution right now because I want to see it in the high school where I know we've had these issues I'm not putting this forward because I think it's it's going to stop someone from bringing an AR-15 into our schools one of which I have a student at the high school and one at Bailey and so that is important for me to stop and I think we've done a lot of security measures to stop those hand and with the locked you know doors and and greeters at every door and and the the programs that we've put in place like
137the Raptor we've done things that that have helped there and we can continue to do things I just think that this is an additional layer that will help issues that we already have and and just from last year's School Board Association we were at dinner with one of the school board members from Newberg who has you know currently melod detectors but other devices and you know they believe this is someone who is is on the the same perspective as um many of us many many members of the community they they work with My Brother's Keeper initiative and Mentor students in Newberg and they're a school board member and they say it's you know it has stopped weapons from going into Newberg and I I know we're not at the point where Newberg is now but
138they thought that it was it was vitally important to be at their school and I I think it's important Dr Collins um I just want to springboard a bit off some of what Miss Jordan had been saying around kind of and ask ourselves the question so who who are we protecting our students from and I asked this question in light of the fact that I just got back from the nisma state conference of school boards um Association and I went to a really fascinating program on threat detection and this program was led by the chief of Us Secret Service National threat assessment and the associate director of school safety for the US director Department of Homeland Security and um they gave some really compelling evidence and their key result like their number one finding was
139that most so they were reporting on a study of all targeted violence events in schools since cine their key result their number one finding was that most of these events were preventable 94% of the attackers had communicated their intentions to somebody before that attack happened um sometimes years before sometimes imminence was two3 of those had been communicated in terms of the actual timing of the event so the number one solution that was proposed by these Federal safety leaders people who are in charge of keeping our federal leaders safe was behavior-based approaches that identify the people who post risks and identify interactions and they were talking about 67 cases that were thwarted because of people reporting now I I recognize that it has been it's scary to hear people reporting on eyewitnesses and when we get
140emails that say something happened and um so you know the sro's and Dr Pino are following up on it in my mind that actually says it's working people are watching out for one another and those are the reports that actually seem to stop the in the the student attackers that um are largely responsible for many of the events we all desperately fear happening in our schools um and I think that recognizing that if we're interested in protecting our students from a student attacker we know our our most of our 10th 11th and 12th graders have been with us for 10 11 and 12 years so we know them our teachers know them our family knows them and so these are not strangers to us I think if we their suggestion was um and their key
141solution in districts where they had thed attacks was that there was a positive culture set around care concern and intervention and Reporting in a positive way so I thought that that for for fearing an attacker that was an internal student I found that incredibly compelling just as an audience person if we're fearing Outsiders coming in that are outside our community of school kids that we do know and we know our teacher staff and our school kids then um something like a weapon detection system may may not work with someone who's really ill intentioned right they may do what they want to do but it makes sense for us to me for us to Target the situations where we have lots of outside community members or people outside our community rather um coming through our doors
142and so in my mind if we could imagine instead of this sort of um proposition on the table amending it to pilot one system that we use maybe at a highly charged sports event in the winter where we have we don't have control of who's coming through our doors like those to me feel like a different type of threat than than our school community that we know um I would be much more supportive of that sort of proposal I feel like moving forward on something like this when the research suggests that there are much more effective ways than the illusion of safety that weapon detection systems are going to give us um especially some of those the Evolve system that is often talked about think we in our class action lawsuit because people have come
143to expect that they will detect weapons and then they get sued because those weapons were not detected so I think that that false expectation that comes with um a company is is something that if we rely upon I think going to miss the the thing that we hope never happens but we would be able to detect so I'm struggling to imagine ever supporting this in its current form um but I'm interested in imagining that in situations where there's High densities of people we don't have any control coming of who's coming to join our community at a highly charged Sports b or something maybe we that's to where we pilot it uh Mr Patrick and then mram as I was going around I stopped at quite a few security places it down eventually it seemed to
144work in a way that if you had like different meod of it in your bag that's one of the things that would pull you aside for it would it has a couple different things that could be like wrong with your bag that would flag it tell the person is another person guy tell me that you know you have good comp people do a person likeing so it it was definitely people and and um a lot of the security uh people had like different softwares on before like Evol like machine that you aot on my way out of New York I tried to go Library the name the things that are happening in our schools for the most part are not happening at the sporting events they're happening during the school day I our job is
145to keep our staff and our students safe I was severely against medal cheors when they went into the building I taught him would I not would I teach today in a building that did not have a some type of system it's a backup it's not it's not want and I can tell you our attendants went up enough that we got off the list for the state we didn't have enough attendants to get we had 80% attendance on average you had to have 95% once they went in we went to 95% we got off the list all right so they can say what they want about research and the woman at the conference also said we have stop saying it's not going to happen here Newberg is a different kind of place everyone one of those
146schools where happened is very different from Newberg newberg's low socio economic all the ones where it has happened have been middle to Upper socio economic where we are we are different than new I get it I just I feel that we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to keep our students and staff safe and I can't in all conscience not if something happens I'm thinking we everything we can and it's trying it if if this doesn't work if it really if we find it if we have put this in and it doesn't work or we don't think it's worth it we have it leased we don't own it all right we don't own it we can get rid of it at the end of a year if it's not working but if we're
147not doing everything in our power then shame on us Mr Ryder then Dr Collins I just wanted to respond to Dr cins point and say that if it was the evolved type system or a system similar that the gates are mobile so I think the idea would be that if we had a event at the Fieldhouse and we had this at the high school at a different entrance you can shift them for a sporting event to the Fieldhouse so this would be I mean I get that it's larger you're looking for but you could at least take one of those Gates and you would do exactly what you're looking to do Dr Collins um yeah I understand which is why I actually was thinking just trying it Fus there I mean I gu you put
148it in front of the high school DET trit as well but it's that the the considering what problem we're trying to solve I think is part of the question we should be asking ourselves and the second is um actually Mr lamb reminded me and I forgot to say this is that I am I am very interested in what our faculty staff and students think and want and I think that not having our community be part of this conversation is is wrong I think we need I would like to table this this proposition right now to be able to ask our community and whether that means suring our our staff faculty and students they are the ones in the school it Chang your mind once you were in the school I am not in the CL
149building as much obviously so um I can't speak from the perspective of a teacher and I would like to know what our kids are thinking are you making a motion the table I am second there's already a motion you can you can make a motion table in the middle of the motion and the motion is been made in second now you have to vote on the motion to table well first we have to I have yes yes and there should be dis there should be an opportunity for discussion on the motion to table on the motion to table that's right so I haven't spoken yet um and um I think I have to support the motion to table just because I don't think we have enough information and we have made this mistake before we
150move forward with something very quickly and then we have to backpedal to try and figure out what went wrong I am not opposed to investigating um security measures as a matter of fact I think we have a responsibility to do that but to go into a pilot program without even knowing some really basic information I think is a little premature Mr lamb that's this is asking the superintendent to do is to investigate so I'm it's asking for a pilot program to begin this year right investigate and implement impl the pilot program at the high school and then investigate further right it's an Implement uh yes yes we we this has been a discussion for I left District 20 years ago metal detectors were being discussed back 20 years ago all right I I don't see
151where where rushing ahead with something this has been an ongoing discussion in the district so I am not going to support motion to table Mrs Jordan I I hadn't even thought of um what Dr C's brought up and I I'm ashamed of it but I think she's absolutely right I would like um Dr skorka to have an opportunity to create a survey for her staff and students and give us that kind of information and I also think that one is not exclusive of the other there are many things we all need to constantly think of what can we do better to ensure safety and um I'm not opposed to this I am opposed to implementing comparing it to what other things we might be able to do as as soon as this year you know
152so if it's more guidance counselors or social workers or more monitors or I don't know what it is but I think we have an obligation to also look at what the costs are and what we have to give up to get and maybe we'll all come back to this and feel comfortable but I can't comfortably vote on implementing it tonight without having some of those answers so I support the table not for a long time but I would like by you know by the end of November to have more information that we could Bas that Mr Ryder so I joined the board in in May of not 204 but 2023 again it was something that I I campaigned on um we can go back and look at those results to get an idea of what
153some of the community feels um what I will say is I think I've been pretty patient I was on the Safety Committee all of last year these conversations were being had but never got moved the reason that I decided that I needed to put forth this resolution was I don't feel like there's been action taken I'm not going to be really upset if board members are more comfortable if we table this for a short amount of time um I believe the research has been done I believe Mr Parker has has gotten has done research this has been discussed in the Safety Committee I haven't seen a lot of action in this realm and um you know I know we've done things to make our schools more more safe and secure but this is again an
154additional layer um I don't think that that setting up a lease for these in in one of our buildings is an expense that's inalterable um so I will be a no on the T the motion to table I hope that this is an a motion to table um to continue the discussion from 10 years ago when the thought of metal detectors was first brought up I I hope that we're looking at this um you know in the very near future in in the next meeting or the next month because I don't think there's that many un unanswered questions any other call the question I okay which to vote on so all in favor of tabling this resolution i i i opposed I I I needed right so I do think that this resolution should back
155to us in the near future I would hope that um maybe some of the points that were brought up tonight can be answered I'd like to see a really um healthy discussion at safety and I certainly would want to see some feedback from the schools I don't know if you can manage that without a formal resolution yes I can can actually can I ask this one really quick I just make one other quick point and I appreciate the suggestion to survey staff and and students and we all want to hear I I just want to say if there would have been a survey of students whether we should implement the Yonder pouches which I'm now in favor of and supportive of we would not have Yonder pouches in our schools and so I I think
156as decision makers sometimes we need to make decisions and not just leave it up to popular opinion and I'm thankful we did that with y PES over my opposition would say the faculty is key and you know the faculty would have voted for but I appreciate it maybe maybe not no but I really appreciate I want to say that I want to really thank you for bringing this out of the Safety Committee to us because I think it's an important conversation and I think um I want it continued I just felt like I I'm not ready for this okay but I I would like to get it done during November any other new business do we only have one meeting in November no so that brings us to our second public comment session is there
157anyone who would like to address the board Mrs Donham thank you thank you for bringing this out of the committee I got on this board 20 years ago because of Safety and Security issues at baly 20 years ago and here we are in 2024 folks I stood in front of the board I think when Jerry gretzinger was superintendent and I was off the board and to try to get them to close the campus it was all we had to have this big commune about what so everybody gets on board listen folks it could happen tomorrow and I agree Dr Collins in the best world scenario we want to have eyes on our students I knew my kids I knew my students who were in crisis or in a threat but sometimes the red tape gets
158in the way and that's a perfect world this could happen tomorrow with my grandson in a middle school while you're all having committee meetings and surveying students there students be the adults do the research Dr Pina you mentioned a year ago this was a conversation what are you waiting for thank you for bringing an out of committee it doesn't have to be one or the other yes you teach your faculty how to recognize the threat signs and yes if you do a pilot program and you have metal detectors and things get better well yay it's not a false sense of security you all fly on airplanes you feel a little bit safer when you go through a metal detector before you get on a plane yes but that's not the only thing there are people
159that are watching that are looking you need to do everything you can do and please put a deadline to it if you say November Miss Jordan I think that's good then it's November you make a decision you can let parents in the district no but you I've said where you have been and gotten that Weekly packet with things the public never hears about that used to tear me up I lost 25 pounds being on the board because I was so sick over security things and students being baiten and gang things at the at the cemetery and crawling back to the high school and we know more about it as a public I know you know more than we know please don't waste time on this because it could happen tomorrow we can Kum by all
160we want about keeping our eyes on students but it really is aggravating to know that this goes on and on and on do every do the do the security buttons do the metal detectors this is a rough World we're dealing with with kids that are disenfranchised and it's not going to fix overnight but you have to do everything you can do like you said am I doing everything I can do so you have to look in your your soul and get it done and get it done quick please it could happen tomorrow thank you uh I think we have two this gentleman okay M Jacobs okay I'm going to go back to the evening when this Dre came up just like I am here now when Emily Johnson was president of the Board of Education
161back in 1995 96 get the right year and I was a trustee at the time so count the years and I sat there listening to her in the long purple coat of what happened to her son and how he was beaten I as a board trustee at that time will never forget that as long as I live even Al although I've been involved in the last 24 years and instrumentally involved totally involved in writing the safety plan the project save legislation back in 1999 because Governor decided that if we can save one child with Mar vano that that law had to be instituted and for 24 years we have been following that law and I have totally so we're talking while children are being murdered in schools I urge all of you I go back
162to that night I witnessed it her speaking before the very board and and and again I'm johnon and I I come trustees and we we have not come that much ladies and gentlemen board members I want you to listen carefully to add to move forward here thank you very much thank you sir it's nice to see the board thank you for being here thanks for everybody else for being here um I'm relieved that the decision has been made to table this for the time being um as further research is done into what the most appropriate way to handle the safety concerns that everyone in our school Community has are um I do know and this can can piggyback nicely on the airport security analogy um TSA screenings are about 20% effective in detecting weapons the
163the presence of that whole security theater makes people feel good makes people feel safe it does not make them safer and feelings as certain folks like to say are are not facts um I spoke with my high schooler earlier tonight I said do you want metal detectors in your school would that make you feel safer he's a young black man right he's 15 and he said no it's it's a it's a hassle every day and if you if you do even a little bit of Light reading um the the necessitation of staggered start times because of delays with students passing through these weapons detection systems um it it has a tremendous impact um students by and large do not feel saf they feel like they're inside of a panoptica um we've got student resource officers
164we've got uh support Personnel right more social workers earlier on more social workers uh you know later on is really the key um so creating a more welcoming environment rather than a more hostile environment will encourage people to feel part of a community thanks thank you thank you Mr Denny and then miss Bowers so to be brief because it is late so I think it's about it was about two years ago we had the um backpack situation excuse me and I don't really know what happened to that but it ended quite quickly as far as the the metal detectors are concerned I think the reality is once you're taking the human element away I'm not saying they're a bad idea not saying that but what I can tell you this if any if the bad
165guy is coming whoever it may be whether it be a student or somebody from the outside there's not a metal detector in the world that's going to stop especially if they're armed they're coming through and I think you really I I think it's the right thing to do to table is and revisit it um I I personally like to know who the company is you're looking at and whether or not the board has done research and looked at different estimates because once you sign a lease having come from the car business you whether it be a twoyear three year four year lease even if you decide to abandon you're responsible for those payments so if it's 5 6 7,000 a month whatever that number is and you decide to stick them in the corner you're
166still going to have to pay the lease off so I just I think but I think there should be a decision within the 30 days that should be done thank you thank you morning Bowers and you've had some very intense and important conversations and I wanted to change the conversation to the book selito because one of my big issues is book and Bannings and I congratulate the district and the board for supporting the reading of that book it is not a band book but there are Rumblings in some Corners that it could become a band book so I hope that the district stays strong with its protocol on reviewing books so that no individual or unilateral decisions are made to say that a book is not appropriate because I think this book is I have
167not read it but I know about it I think it's a strong book a strong choice and I think that the more we become aware of what books are being banned the stronger we may become in challenging that one of the books and I may have mentioned this before that's banned is Charlotte's Web and my granddaughter who is almost eight was very excited to read to me to show me how well she was reading and she picked the book off of her shelf and it was Charlotte's Web well I was shocked if horde wanted to throw it into the fireplace not really I was excited for her and figuring I would ask her what because one of the issues is that children should not think that animals can talk to each other well so I
168asked her I did say do you know that these animals are not really talking to each other the way we talk to each other and she looked at me like I had 10 heads and she said Grandma are you kidding she said of course they're not talking to each other so she thought I was the fool but I think when we hold those books away from our kids we're teaching them not to be creative or to believe and to be lifelong Learners so please stay strong against the book bands that are happening in the country and thank you for bringing solo to the district and I hope that um more of us read the book I think it's a great choice thank you thank you that brings us to um board member announcements I'm going
169to ask that I I know some of you might want to share your experience at the conference but if we could put that off until our next meeting um and if we could maybe coordinate who's going to speak to what issues rather than everybody saying the same thing um we do have two two committee reports they're not board committees but they're committees that boards serve on um Jen is not here but I did attend that meeting so I can give a very brief report on that the health and wellness committee met on October um 2nd the facilitator is Nanette Warner she is a member of the Cornell Cooperative Extension there were many many um representatives from the district she covered the purpose of the organization is to look for optimal optimal health for students in
170terms of their nutrition their physical activity um their mental Wellness um the much of the the meeting was about the nutrition aspects and our food service program the um big apple crunch crunch day anybody know about the big there was aun um and the schools that participated the uh fresh fruit and vegetable um program in in terms of making sure that um our children are getting fresh fruits and vegetables there's also October is a big month on on nutrition um there was definitely recognition on the quality of our food service program they um let's see I'm trying to the national school lunch week was last week with a pirate theme I don't know if anyone got to witness the pirate themes um did not Ser [Laughter] problem um the wellness policy uh is has to
171be reviewed every three years they are going to to coordinate in that committee that policy review and then make recommendations to our policy committee um and and then they had a sharing out of what different schools were doing so that's good meeting safety is our other one I don't know Anthony if you're prepared to to report on that if not we can put it off to the next no not really okay so we'll put it on the agenda for next time any other announcements briefly Dr mentioned the um B goes to norch on Saturday they have one more competition um before they go to States on Sunday um and 87.1 is the highest they've ever had at at this point um for Fan Fair and they normally that you top out your performance before so
172hopefully they will even have higher going into the stat so it was wonderful it was a very first of all the weather was perfect um and all of the performances were really good it was a a great day so okay that brings us to like a TW minute um executive session something that that was not need to be asked um are you making a motion that we don't I'll make a motion we I will guarantee five minutes the most well because I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to to ask the question but there is something that we need to ask do we have a second what happen in five minutes all in favor of going into executive session hi request a roll call we can request a roll call Miss Anderson
173I Dr Collins I Mr Fitzpatrick I Mr lamb hi M Jordan hi Mr Ryder hi Mr I hav't hadena yet but I say I okay so the meeting will not be adjourned but our our guests can leave