KCSD Board of Education Meeting 5/18/22

001don't forget to vote of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all yeah the first one is going to be we have two resolutions coming out of executive session before the jury agreement then resolved that the board hereby authorizes its president along with the superintendent of schools to execute a probation extension agreement with employee number 1629 dated may 16 2022 as presented to the board at this meeting a copy of said agreement shall be incorporated by reference within the minutes of this meeting second is there a second any discussion no discussion i'll call the question all in favor please say yeah all right proposed may immediately adopted eight to zero um bla 85 [Music] that was okay [Music] or else

002the kingston city school district began operating a pre-kindergarten program at the mahara school the fact of the 2019-2020 school year which program was considered quote child care called under section paren one of the new york state social services law and melbourne was under the jurisdiction of the new york state office of children and family services and while chapter 328 laws of of 2021 amended section 390 karan one to provide that a pre-kindergarten program operated by a public school district that is not located on the premises of an elementary or secondary school is not considered child daycare therefore being resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools that the board of education hereby authorizes the superintendent or designee to file the application and other necessary and proper paperwork with the new york state education department

003for registering the mahara pre-k center 21-1 coupe place kingston new york as a new school effectively 2022-2023 school year and therefore the result that the board does that the board designated that the new school will house the district's pre-kindergarten program for children who become four years of age on or before december first of a school year with a maps of a number of 125 students in such program and therefore resolved that the superintendent or designee is directed to transmit a certified copy of this resolution to the new york state education department and new york state office of children and family services may i have a motion is there any discussion so exactly you explained uh so we'll have a nice call we'll have a new budget number um so in the current situation where under

004the under the regulations of the office of family and child services because the old state law stated if we had a pre-k in a building that did not have other grades you would you could not have it would not be a school recognized on the new york state education department law they changed that law so we would and for consistency for us at the school district to have this be a school under new york state education department is much much more convenient for us and actually aligns with we're everywhere else where we're governed by you know education department law so now that was changed we'd like to move away from office of child family services and move into the state that is our governing body so when this is approved by state edu state head

005department we will have 11 schools in the district rather than 10 schools correct um and the other i think we moved to second right so any other discussion okay hearing none i'll ask for a vote all in favor of resolution ble-85 please say aye aye opposed nay hearing none it's an eight to zero unanimous vote thank you the next item on the agenda is budget and election results do we normally read this um well anyway so i would like to congrat we approve the budget with over 75 percent positive vote i believe right 75.4 or something like that as a personal budget so that was nice thank you community of kingston city school district and we have two incumbents that were re-elected uh this is ann jordan and stephen spicer and we have a new

006board member who will be joining us is not able to be here today so she will be joining us at our organization meeting on july 6th marie anderson who was a retired high school principal at kingston high school and an elementary principal at crosby so we will welcome her experience and thank you to the voters for their decisions and thank you for all of the candidates that participated in the election so um b71 budget and election results is on the agenda uh it's several pages long well one page long and a little bit at the bottom i guess i have a motion to approve b71 budget and election results let's move into second any further discussion okay hearing none all in favor please say aye aye opposed name manage the adopted eight to zero the

007next agenda item is public comment is any member of the public who would like to address the board mrs bowers thank you superintendent's report director of dr paul now thank you mr shaughnessy uh i too want to thank our community for coming out and voting uh improving our budget and congratulate mr spicer and ms anderson and miss jordan for their um election to annex another term two for another 101 for a first term sitting on the board of education and we're very important and then support especially after the last two years and the difficulty that everyone is going through currently so we look forward to moving forward with this budget and making sure that our community knows that we are going to be good stewards of the taxpayers money and for because what we need

008to do for our students and keeping our students using that budget so again thank you did want to add for that couple of things um we've been talking about our communications report for better part of the year we did have our final close to our final meeting with our consultants and our boces and our friends from boces regarding this report we've completed all the work we've completed all the compilation of the data we are uh we're now on a we have the recommendations for the goals that were the improvements that we need to make based on that so we are i'm working with both karen and jessica to go through and we are we were asked to do one last exercise of prioritizing the the things that we think need to need to be done

009first along with you know consultation with our with our consultant um and we will probably have this ready to present to the board um in june so it's uh it was a lot of work i think one of the things that sandy coakley our consultant said was you know they said well we were impatient and i'm sure some people were wondering what was going on we did it right you know in depth we really looked at it we good bad and ugly uh we took it all and we think we're going to be able to put together a communication plan and goals for our communication plan and tell your full two to three year overall um plan to accomplish those goals but that we did it the right way and we feel that we're ready

010to implement this and then we can it took a little bit longer a little more work but sometimes to do it right that's it that's what that's what it takes so i'm looking forward to sharing that with you with you um i know probably everyone reads the newspapers knows that we've had a increase in community spread in post-accounting we're running around 15 um infection rate but i do want to say here in kingston state school district with the data that we have our current positive cases of adults is below one percent of our employee population and our current active cases of students is below one percent that's about point five percent of all the kansas city school district so we aren't seeing necessarily that that big jump um doesn't mean we're not keeping our eye

011out on it we watch the data every single day and we are um my work with naomi stephens our program 19 director every single day um make sure that we keep on top of it and you see things hot spots where we have hot spots parts of our employees situations where the hot spots look to see what we have to mitigate that so we're continuing while i know a lot of people have moved on and a lot of people would like to move on i would like to move on we aren't we're staying on top and now i will move to our i'm going to reverse this order so we're going to go with which will soon be a real school bye all right well thank you for inviting me to speak today and share

012about memorial preschool um so i can't be there in person but i hope you do enjoy the presentation and hopefully there will be too many technical difficulties i'm just going to share my screen so just a little bit about our program we opened in september of 2019 currently we are ocfs daycare licensed and i'm very excited to soon not be and be a real school and part of the district we are a part of quality stars new york that will change when we become a school currently we have four upk classrooms and our enrollment is at capacity we have 80 students enrolled one of our classrooms is a dual language classroom and each classroom has three adults currently we offer free breakfast and lunch to all students and we have a full time nurse we

013also have before and after care that is provided by the ywca on site currently 30 of our students utilize the afternoon care while 15 utilize our morning care these are the current demographics of the program our race demographics align with the demographics of the district pretty much exactly it's very reflective as well as our hispanic population uh the district is currently at 26 um our school is at 24 so it's also very reflective of the district as a whole and then these are the home schools where our students will attend after they complete mahara preschool um we have pretty much stayed very similar the last two years i would attest the first year big little difference because we could offer transfer to each shape which is how we grab some students i think both of

014our students from the broader grades crosby area this is our philosophy of mohammed preschool basically we are a student-centered play-based program that fosters students independence creativity and imagination we currently use the creative curriculum it is a research-based state approved curriculum it is utilized in all of our upk sites except for gw which uses their monastery program every classroom has about 10 or more centers that students get to choose where they go throughout the day this is a list of what you would find if you go into the classroom and our curriculum has studies and every study the room is transformed to represent that study for example the students did a clothing study so as you can see their their sensory table or their sensory table is a washing station they created clothing their writing center

015became a looming practice for fine motor their art center became a weaving paper center and they were learning to string beads their light table had a dress a person for blocks they were able to build a clothing factory at their math sector they practiced number cards with buttons um and their dramatic clay center which is you know in the kitchen that was set up and transformed into a laundromat to give a closer look on what a study would look like in the classroom i have a short video from one of our teachers who put this together for parents to view on teams after our building study was completed [Music] do [Music] so don't [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so that is a an example of what a study looks like in

016the classroom and studies lasted about six weeks and we normally have a culminating event at the end where we invite parents in as you saw the pictures with the parents and their and guardians and their children they were we were using all recycled goods and they were creating their own building and currently we are in the reduce reuse recycle study so as i mentioned earlier we are part of quality stars new york it reading and um system for childhood programs in the state they are going to be mandating that all programs day care programs and pre-k school programs are part of quality stars currently all of our upk's are on board and are participating what it entails is about 70 objectives that you have to provide evidence for in which you are rated on and

017then you work with a specialist monthly on areas that you have not scored well in they assist you in improving uh currently we it's a five-star program it becomes public knowledge currently we are at a high three and the only things we have not received points for um are things because they're not in place yet and they're in process because we are so new but we are um they are looking at us to become a spotlight program for quality stars because of the wonderful work the staff is doing our dual language program currently has 10 native spanish speakers and 10 native english speaking which is perfect um everything in the classroom all visuals are in both languages all correspondents go home in both languages we are fortunate enough in addition to our bilingual teacher we

018have a monitor in the classroom for five hours a day that is also bilingual and which at the what we have is that every other day is taught in spanish and obviously um the whole language is reinforced when when needed so apparently the morning meeting is since you know spanish one day and in english every read aloud book that she reads she has in both languages and it's really incredible to watch the students pick up a new language and build confidence in using that language and then after this year's students will have the option to continue the dual language program at edson try to have families come in we do a lot of family engagement we try to have them in every other month obviously the past couple years we've covered was difficult but we

019haven't made them and they're very excited to be part of their child's preschool experience this is a typical day the majority of the day student led during centers or outside of students are outside for about an hour and a half to two hours every day um regardless of the weather unless it is below 20 degrees which you know leads me into a big part of our program is to become one of our main initiatives at mahar which i didn't really didn't know going into this is forest education we have teamed up with montreal she owns the acorn boulder school in edward um david bronstein from wild earth connected us because she received a grant from nova which is her neighboring tree project grant and her purpose of this grant is to work with public schools

020and other schools where students do not have the opportunity to be outside and experience everything the outdoors has to offer so she has teamed up with our staff for the past couple of years and has provided professional development she has been able to give us access to appropriate gear um you know her saying there's no bad bother just bad beer so she has purchased through her grant all of our students snow suits rain boots rain pants snow boots um snow gloves waterproof gloves and staff as well so that we have for 80 students enough you know they are outfitted so they are prepared to be outside every day and her staff continues to work with our staff they come three times a week to work with them in the forest and they also meet with

021teachers weekly one-on-one and meet with me monthly and it's very very exciting i have a video from last year last year excuse me that a teacher made about what the forest looks like through the seasons [Music] just just let go your thoughts a little more [Music] we don't [Music] proud [Music] no good [Music] now [Music] a little bit about the forest we definitely have grown our offerings out there this year we've added two zip lines and a couple of slack lines and some hammocks and swings so it's a very exciting place uh students really get to utilize their gross motor skills out there and they love going outside these are some of the benefits of forest education and we are also really looking forward to working with jfk kindergarten teachers we're going to be expanding

022our knowledge of forest education and working with their kindergarten teachers to work with them in the fall we also have been fortunate enough to have been working with mrs barton and writer's workshop this spring at mahar currently miss bart is working with our other elementary schools on our writer's workshop initiative and she has been able to come two times this spring to work with our teachers on pre-writing activities and simple things they can do in the classroom to get students used to storytelling and acting out stories and it's been really wonderful having her and we hope to continue our work with her in the fall we also have joined with hudson soil collaboration this year along with the acorn waldorf school and we have been composting in the cafeteria students have learned through an assembly

023what composting is and they have been learning you know what goes in the bin for breakfast and lunch we also have taken on thermic composting which is worm composting so we have a warm bin that travels throughout the classrooms um that they've been feeding and taking care of and make a richer soil that we can use for gardening we will be looking for a home for these worms come summer if anyone is interested and although we don't believe in you know drilling and formally assessing our students daily we do informally assess them every day to make sure they are kindergarten ranges right it is you know what we do it's our purpose um the centers are engaging and students are learning and they don't even realize the skills that they they are learning amongst you

024know being able to transition and sit for more than a minute and you know walk in the hallway so they're doing all of these things that when they get to kindergarten they will be ready to learn this is the report card that goes home two times a year i collaborated with uh first steps upk in woodstock to create this report card it's based off of the curriculum that we currently use and it's a little more in-depth than the assessment system the curriculum provides us with so these are all the things that the teachers are looking for while they are informally observing throughout the day last year i surveyed parents i asked what their favorite thing about your child their child attending mahara was and i just made a little simple word cloud the things that

025came out the most um so you know obviously the having the bilingual language classroom the outside you know the teachers we have amazing staff that work together so beautifully and are really on board and dive into everything we do at lahar one last video that the kids made this year about their favorite thing [Music] so we're gonna [Music] is [Music] um having lunch and go to the field outside and i left um [Music] um [Music] that's right um [Music] okay and thank you everyone i can't see so i don't know if anybody has any questions what are you talking to the microphone okay maybe that's better can you hear us yeah no no why don't i just you can ask yourself um so i i love the nature based programs and i'm really excited to

026hear about all of that and all the time outside and then i'm interested in how the dual language program works if there's like is there a waiting list or how does that enrollment work for that program uh so so currently um there if you know every classroom has the capacity to have 20. so currently the classroom is full um we would like to ideally have spanish speaking half english speaking to be most effective so currently this year it just worked out that we had exactly 10 native spanish speakers request the dual language and we had over 10 native english speakers so we just you know picked pretty much out of the hat to who what english speakers would get into the program and at the way it looks like we are looking like that's going

027to happen again for this year where we're probably going to have just the right amount of spanish speakers and have to lottery the english speaking can i i'd like to ask a question about this the dual language program um so we have 10 native english speakers 10 native spanish speakers i presume at the beginning of the year they don't understand each other very well what is it like at the end of the year at the end of the year they seem like so i mean obviously the students are more comfortable speaking in their language and they pretty much use um a lot of spanish speakers have some english i think out of the ten only two were are just strictly spanish but most have both and then so and they're able to understand more than

028speak the language but it definitely lays a really good foundation especially if they are going to continue the program just the exposure so they do under i mean they can't understand the other language by the end of the year i mean i think that's important certainly yes they can understand it they understand what what they are supposed to do in the classroom you know they're the simple vocabulary like the morning meeting simple songs so yes and can they carry on conversations with each other and one in spanish and one in english probably very i feel like very minimal this is our first true year of being in person all year so i will have a better answer to that come come through june what kind of really looks like because our first two years we

029were not here the whole time right okay dr collins okay can you hear me um yeah i if i understood correctly um next year is the first year they may transition to edson i was curious about what proportion of students might be transitioning into the edson program for kindergarten so we will survey our parents for interest we have six out of the 20 whose home school is asking so then they you know will naturally have the opportunity to continue if they're interested and the other you know families would have to provide transportation if they wanted their child to continue but we do plan on sending a survey um soon last year we had we think there's about four students that were in our program that continued to exit because it was their home school so

030far we haven't had any students um that parents were providing the transportation thank you mr spencer okay can you hear me miss conte yes okay i don't have a question just uh uh a statement a comment that i've seen your hands on leadership the calm welcoming learning environment you and your teachers foster i've read to your children they're brave they're bold they're brave collective they know they're safe they know they're loved and your dual language program puts kingston city school district again at the forefront of pre-k education and i wanted to thank you and and i want to thank you for the wonderful welcome the way i i felt when i understand oh thank you thank you very much i just had one question miss county i was watching um the students on the zip

031line a little while back i was wondering will that handle a larger person i think so i mean the hardware is just very scary okay thank you i'll be out there i tomorrow a question for dr paolino can we put a proposition on the budget next year to borrow a forest somewhere right they don't take taxes on it maybe they will a little coming into taxes that's amazing that was really nice next we have our director of diversity inclusion and equity issues people people don't watch it there we go all right hello everybody i am kathy saletti the director of diversity equity and inclusion we don't usually say diversion and diversity inclusion and equity because that spells die so that's why yeah just to not just correct the superintendent so i just want to go

032over um what what we mean when we say when we use these words um this is a metaphor it's not mine it's been around um i looked for attribution i can't find it seems to be a lot of people use this so i can't really say who came up with this metaphor but do we think about a party or a dance and we can think about what these words actually mean so diversity is being asked to the party conclusion is being asked to dance when you're at the party belonging is the next step where you feel like you're comfortable asking other people to dance at the party and then equity which is ultimately where we want to get is you're involved in choosing the music so it's a matter of um getting more and more

033power as you go down the line more and more power shared among the people around as you go down the line so those are the ideas of diversity equity belonging inclusion all of those words how they go the kingston city district is really really good with diversity we have a very diverse population um we are getting better with inclusion and we want to get even further into belonging and equity um and we'll talk a little bit more about that um what i've been doing i've only been in this position for about two months so i haven't had a chance to do a whole lot been a lot of um just figuring things out and then i spent a long time with some students which we'll talk about in a little bit but what i have

034been able to do over the course of the year is attend an online cohort through sami's with um dr devel brown and he wrote a book called culture of love which i strongly recommend to maybe even the entire district i strongly recommend that book it was recommended to me by a certain member of the celebrities central school district um very very very good read um i've also been visiting with the elementary in the middle school um i've been in high school for the last five years so not to visit them i see them every day but visiting with the elementary middle school principals just to get a feel for each of the different buildings um what it is they are already doing what it is they would like to continue to do how they can

035best utilize my services we're still all in the process of figuring that out because because of a lot because they're trying to finish up their school years um we're trying to plan for next year and um you know as i said i just got this position i think it was about the middle of march um so we're looking at the groundwork for summer and some are planning so some of the goals i've been thinking about um you want to shift policies and practices and procedures to make them truly equitable and then of course how are we going to know when we're successful with that i want to we're going to be looking at as a committee the policy committee so i think we need to you know develop the policy policy drives the culture of

036the building so that's something that we have to look at there there is no dei policy on folks at this moment is that correct correct right so we have to figure that out put it out there and as i learned from dr lavelle brown policy drives the culture of the school of the district of the entire district so um we need to look into curriculum and the delivery of that curriculum so make sure that it is inclusive that it fosters belonging um for all of our students um and the curriculum in and of itself is just the static thing without the professional development uh the delivery of that curriculum could be you know could be harmful to some of our students so we're going to continue to look at all that stuff just to continue

037to make kingston um a better place for all of our students again have that diversity how do we get all those kids to feel like they belong all of our students um a huge thing for me is the increase in student voice i really want to have student voice and involvement in everything we do it was really great to see what jana has her kids doing if we can continue that kind of stuff right through from pre-k all the way up to 12th grade that would just be incredible um yeah i had an incredible opportunity with students again i'll talk to that in just a few minutes but how will we know we are being successful with that i think we just need to look at the patterns of participation and in all of the

038sectors that we have i have not gotten that data yet i want to look at that over the summer so we can see who is participating in sports who is participating in what sports who's participating in our great music programs who is participating in our great performing arts programs who is not participating in those programs and and why is that our academic programs um who gets access to what classes who gets access to what program why did that happen discipline i know the district has been looking at for a long time attendance um so we've been looking at some of these things for a long time not a lot has changed yet so we have to get together figure out what do we need to do to change it ultimately when we get these reports

039i think we need to figure out ways within our policies and our procedures and our practices to look at the reports continuously to make sure that we are doing things differently so that we get we want to get the same results we just keep doing operating but we don't that's why we're wrong so i want to spend more time talking about the student presentation that recently happened because i think they speak to on the need for the position the need for um the changes within the district which is not to disparage anybody here there's been a lot of talk there's been a lot of progress there's a lot more going on here in terms of increasing equity than there are in a lot of other places but we still have a lot a lot more

040to go and these student presentations really drove it home so we were at the high school and um some students got very upset about something that happened this was sometime in mid-march and they they wanted a stage a walkout they went to their teachers their teachers spoke to them like what is it that you really want to accomplish if you do a walk out what's going to happen with that and students spent a long time talking about that and realized a walkout would make a statement but that would be it then they could be in violation of the jefferson code then they could have discipline and then they're they are not heard at the end of the day so they came into my room um i had well there was also some students about eight

041students who wrote an email to the building administration and to dr patelino so i was able to reach out to those students as well as others i had i think it was about 14 students in my room for two whole periods they were all black students talking about their experience and you know they're very strong solid students who had heartbreaking stories to tell over and over and over and over again and um they were incredibly magnanimous about it they just had so much to say they were very appropriate about it and it just was was that real there was no way that it could be ignored no way that it could be ignored so we worked together and and they led this they took it it ended up being a total out from that 14

042students 10 stayed on and did this and they worked for weeks they worked 9th periods they worked together on their own after school you know face timing or teams messaging i should say with each other getting these things together they felt very strongly that they wanted to present they wanted to present to all the students and to all the middle school students um did not let us do that they set themselves on they decided 9th and 10th grade students because those students they wanted to do it for two reasons one they wanted to show support for their other students of color the other thing is they wanted to inform white students what they go through as students of color that's really really what they wanted to do and they wanted to make sure that they

043changed the community so that it was a better place for everybody around they also felt very strongly about presenting teachers um they were very adamant about making sure they could present to the teachers so they made up two very similar but slightly different presentations where they spoke about privilege um including the privilege of learning their history in school um one thing that was that was stark to me there was several times during the student presentations where they asked questions to the audience just raise your hand if you're comfortable most students participate you can see half the students raise their hands three quarters of the students two-thirds of the students raised their hands for this question that question when they asked do you feel like black history is well represented in school over the course of

04422 presentations two students raised their hand starting the whole time so every student who saw that is aware of the fact that they do don't learn a representative history this happened to be the question about black history but we can make it about asian history we can make it about hispanic history we can make it about lesbian gay history history they recognize they only learn volcanic um they talked about microaggressions to the adults and to the students they gave story after story after story of the story of their own experiences with microaggressions with the students they asked students who would be willing to volunteer to tell stories about microaggressions many students shared um it was very emotional and emotionally taxing for for everybody who was in there they talked about slurs with the students not

045so much with the adults we just kind of assumed that the adults aren't using slurs they talked about aave which is african-american vernacular english with the students they spoke about how it's not okay to appropriate aage if you're not a black student with the adults they talked about being denigrated for using aave and how that cuts them culturally because that's the language they hear at home that is the language of love for them and when they are told that maybe they sound ignorant when they speak that way or that's not proper um they talked about how that feels now that's not to say the students understood and said that there's there's times that you code switch which is the next thing they talked about code switching there are appropriate times for code switching but they

046just talked about the constancy of having to face tough times and tough um comments from the adults around i've done it myself i've done it myself correcting students but maybe they don't need to be corrected the students spoke eloquently about being made to feel stupid often times when they used aave in what in ways that they thought was appropriate so we all i think learned a lot from what these students did if you look at these numbers here 9th and 10th graders it was about 900 students and about 150 adults that's over a thousand people so these kids spent a week and another four periods with the teachers presenting this information to over a thousand people and i think that's pretty huge and that speaks a lot to them to how important this was for

047them is to the community um it was just an incredible effort on their parts to do this this is just the page a couple of slides from their show this is what it started their names were under there i didn't speak to every student to make sure they were okay with their names up there so i took their names off sorry this was their purpose statement um they came up with this all on their own um i mean i'll read it out there for for the folks at home our purpose today is to share our individual experiences and concerns within our school district on microaggressions unnecessary privilege and the lack of representation of african american culture and the classroom in society it can be extremely difficult for people of color to have a voice and

048feel heard as well our intention is not to offend but to raise awareness of black culture experiences and history we are speaking to you as human beings with unique perspectives we ask that you keep an open mind while listening after hearing our statements we strongly believe you will have a better understanding of our everyday lives i read that at the beginning of every single presentation to try to set the stage okay um and still when they put it out there it was very emotional very taxing it was a lot of work that the students put into this um with the student presentations students were able to leave those index cards on their chairs they were able to write on it if they chose to leave feedback in a box this is just a smattering of

049it um there was no negative feedback in there i know that there was you know feedback that came back from other people we spoke with folks who you know felt different ways about it which was fine um there were also students who um left their names on the comments and asked for um ask for conversations with the students and that has been happening so there's been correspondence happening between students and between students and students um through this but i just feel like these are really good um i feel like i've learned more in this 30 minutes than my entire 16 years of living thank you for sharing presentation was very well done and long overdue um i'm not black but i'm also a minority and i appreciate you guys doing this even though it's not

050the same i feel like i'm being heard and there were just like i said many other comments that were very very similar to this as far as the teachers this was a thought exchange we did with the teacher i got tremendous amounts of positive feedback from the teachers too this is a thought exchange so the question on the thought exchange was that i reminded everybody of the mission we inspire educate and graduate all students all the time and with that what are some of your takeaways and what are some of the most important takeaways from this presentation so this word um cloud what the size of the words has to do with the number of times the words appear in teacher's thoughts so with thought exchange you can type in you know your thoughts and

051feelings the number of times the words um appeared and the ratings the star rating so the bigger the word is the more it appeared and the higher rated it was that's what this word does so brave valid the experiences important aware impact education these are some of the things uh that the staff came through a lot of staff indicated that they didn't really have any idea of how we come across so often when we say things and do things particularly to our students of color or black students in particular um a teacher i got her permission to show this sent an email um this is just part of her email but this she said she asked me to get this to the students so first of all thank you thank you for being brave thank

052you for bearing the emotional weight of the many presentations you conducted thank you for wanting to make a difference your presentation helps me to think about race and the adversity you face in totally new ways you helped me discover ways i can not only improve myself but also ways that i hope to use to transcend the role of advocate and ally to become someone who can actively fight racism in our community so i think that's pretty much the crux of what we want to get to and i think that if we keep these kinds of thoughts and the fact that we have these 10 students put themselves out there like that to show us where we're messing up and where we need to do better i think that's what means to guide us to to

053do things to fulfill our core values um to make sure we make the changes that we can make as quickly as we can make them that balance between um you know dr patelino talking about we have this communication plan it took us a long time to put it together put it together right and get it out there once and the balance of we're boycotting the race because we can't use our beams we're changing the world tomorrow right so we have to you know damp that dance all the time that's it wow here so my i hope you can hear my brenda vicara voice but um this is so timely for me personally after what happened in buffalo uh this week and i hope i don't cry but i have been thinking really hard because i

054heard a lovely woman i don't have her name but she's the poet laureate of buffalo and she talked about how it's not enough to be buffalo strong we have to be honest and i kind of feel like this is the time that we have to as board members as community members as teachers be honest and these young people are just a shining star that can help people reflect um because if you don't know you really can't do better and so i kind of feel you know i spoke to a couple of my colleagues last night i kind of feel like the board has really attempted to to be more sensitive and be more aware of racism and try to dig it out of our policies and those kinds of things but i kind of feel

055like we've been so insular that we really haven't made the changes that we should be making in the community the school community but the community at large and i kind of feel like we could be more honest and we could try to include that community so for instance this book that you recommended the culture of love that would be a great place for us to start instead of having these insulated book studies where we all try to be more empathetic and more knowledgeable where we expect that our community wants that too and make these things available and these discussions more public and i just really want to thank dr patalino for leading us to a dei you know coordinator and to leading us to this point but i kind of feel like it's time for

056us to really be honest about how much impact we have or have not had in these private discussions and so i would like to be as brave as those 10 students and i just really thank them for doing that yeah and it was tough work for them we owe it to them to go beyond the discussions right the discussions have to happen the odyssey has to happen but we have to make the changes and like i said we owe it to them at this point they put themselves out there you saw they were there was motion in there and they did 26 of these and they're going to do it again at miller on monday so you know they are really they really have been willing to do this work that really we should be

057doing on their own not only are they kids they're people of color and most of us are white adults right and it took them saying it out loud for a lot of us to be like oh that is true you know but i kind of feel like we have to meet together you know we have to communicate in our community yesterday that we are all in this together and we're all committed to it and we have the power to make the changes ourselves okay thank you for our mouths you so much for sharing that um and i just want to commend you and your leadership in this process and definitely commend the students for coming forward and being so incredibly brave um i can only imagine that it was transformative for not just the community

058in which they're situated but for themselves and so i'm kind of curious when you played so much or you showed us some quotes from their peers but how what are the next steps for these students this i'm curious what what the next step for the bulk of these students is college they're they're seniors they're two juniors they're seniors but there has been talk among other students and among teachers about moving this work forward next year not in the same way not putting kids on display to talk about their pain but to do more multicultural love club diversity cadre there are different names there's different book studies that students and teachers want to do tonight periods you know again to begin those conversations yeah i was wondering because i mean understanding um empathetically hearing and listening

059and understanding the experiences tears is definitely an important start to us equipping people with language and strategies and um understanding the next step so i was kind of curious where where that falls in to the picture so yeah you know and i think that this is high school stuff that i'm talking about right now i'm going to be working with the district so i certainly have been in contact with adults at the high school who are very interested in doing this with students next year and the students have been reaching out um to get those things in place so yes the work has to continue the middle schools will hopefully continue the elementary schools are doing it on their level so yeah we have to do the work and again we have to change the

060policies of the system to start the culture doctor chicago um thank you for this presentation and also um it just is occurring to you you really hit the ground running i mean you kind of came right into this so um could you speak into the microphone so that audience can hear i i didn't think i had a soft voice but i guess i do and i'm just saying that she hit the ground running and she really kind of got right into it from the very start um it sounds like a very powerful experience my children went through this my daughter's both um and they came home and we talked we had many conversations about it they thought it was very very powerful um and i really like also that you work with teachers and i'm

061hoping that you'll work with teachers at the middle level too on some degree i mean i think that it's it's an important conversation and it doesn't just start in one place and so i think that that's important i'm also really encouraged that you are thinking about the continuity of this because especially with the school cycle it's a very easy kids one week you can move on you forget that we gather the next thing and so but um this is an important conversation that needs to continue and so i'm glad that you're thinking about that was this sure yeah um refer to the policy and changing policy you know is the way to drive the change as rapidly as we would like to you know because once once you're through that's going to become the law

062of the district um so you uh we'll be joining the policy committee yes well this running yes i want you to know that years ago and you may already know this um we as a board we're discussing um you know equity being present in all of our policies and i had occasion at the time i was an officer to contact the state policy advisor and say was there was there some group up there that was actually vetting policies because they give us sample policies for equity and they said i know you know so it's wonderful and it could be groundbreaking though i mean it's it's what's best for all of our students and again students who are not black gained a lot from this as well there are a lot of you know white students

063and students again one you know i'm not black but i am a student of color so thank you so much for doing this it's best for everybody so i'd like to thank you very much for this presentation i know there were some people we got the board got some letters from parents who obviously had no idea what was going on and criticized the district for whatever it was i think that you said that there were no negative comments from students that participated students had index cards on their chair and they had an opportunity to have a golf pencil and an opportunity if they wanted to fill that out and put it into a suggestion box none of those were named which is not to say students were not upset by it's not to say students

064didn't go and talk about it or tell their parents wrote down something negative and put it in the box but they could have done that anonymously they were really upset so they may have gone home and maybe their parents misinterpreted what they if i can monopolize a little bit one thing i would like to suggest to dr pauline owen to you and to karen is to take this segment of the video and send it up to newsbook because i think this would make a great presentation at the misfit convention to let people let others districts around the state know what can be done and i think that it's important that this came from the students they were compelled and then they were allowed and and they did this and it was my experience and i

065i got a bunch of phone calls you know i fielded some phone calls cohort offices sent parents to me understandably so because i knew most about what was going on as soon as they said this was created by students they're just like oh okay okay this is not my agenda this is students talking about what's going on in school and that that was huge that's where student voice is huge what more what does anybody get into education for besides to have students lead the way and tell us what they need and what they want and what's going well for them um they worked again they worked tirelessly on this where you know and many of you have been educators in here you know sometimes it's hard to get kids to do their work these guys

066did it they did all the extra work they were into it and and they created something powerful a thousand people they presented this to a thousand people yeah i just think it's really important that we let this get out and maybe you can look into it second thing is that on the way over i was listening to npr news and um i mean you know ten to six or whatever maybe two minutes after six hours late the united states tennis the united states soccer association announced today that they have reached an agreement between men's soccer and women's slacker um but starting in june they will there will be equal pay for our players they will have equal facilities they will have equal travel arrangements they are they will have equal accommodations um and want to

067significantly the payments they received from the world cup and the world cup last year for the last time it was the women's world cup received 30 million dollars uh worldwide and the mass world cup teams received somewhere between 400 and 500 million dollars worldwide and the united states soccer league the men and the women decided and especially the men they're going to share it with the women and i just think that's remarkable um and everybody should know that that happened mr spicer i'm going to say i've said it before but i'm going to say because it's just true that diversity is the gift our community has given to us equity is how we best serve them and then i also want to add a number of things one is the most and you already said

068that it was a powerful moment but one of the most beautiful things you did is when a segment of our student body said i'm hurting i'm hurt you said why what do you need what can we do what do you want to do now the whole format and the whole program that was created that allowed them to share this expression needed adult supervision adult uh mentoring to perfect the program and that was your end of it and i i just wanted to say because any person of color sitting in this room has been through what those children have been through and the usual response is that's not really happening you you're all right they didn't mean it you're okay sit down that's the usual response that that we all got your response was how do

069you want us to go forward how do you want us to deal with this and you gave them a voice you empowered them and then you did one more thing when you give children of color this type of opportunity to share everybody gets enlightened and all of our children become more prepared to deal with the larger world because they they they are given eyes to see and ears to hear and and i i do want to thank you and your faculty just just well done you've changed these children you changed that thank you thank you for sure i think one thing that you didn't say is they need about permission too because too often adults would not give children permission to do something they would tell them to sit down well they were going to

070do something they were either going to walk out because they were at that space where they were gonna take this they you know also said okay let's let's see what you're gonna get and they they chose this path which i think was way more powerful and i think they understand too that was way more powerful and way more taxing would be much easier for them to walk out and save the day in iss and you saw the moment and facilitated it that that's the beautiful part of it that you didn't let it go and you help them through it and you help the whole school to grow by the moment so well done well done so uh so can i one more thing that came up today yes today yesterday and today you an article

071in the washington post that around the country there are school districts that are being attacked for these sel curriculum and there are school districts that have decided that they're not going to have an seo curriculum anymore because it's being criticized that it's a subterfuge to [Music] introduce critical race theory or some other bizarre comments into the into onto our children and that was disturbing for me because we've spent a long time in this district um promoting social emotional learning but really it's social emotional health and mental health and that's what that's become a priority of ours and it's being actually become a priority in new york state i believe um and then today i was driving down to the mall area and i was listening to um the commonwealth club on on wamc and the

072it was an interview i didn't know that i don't know i'm not very culturally aware or entertainment-wise aware um i don't pay a lot of attention to it there's a guy named terry crews c-o-e-w-s because he was a football player and he's a tv star and he hosts american gut count now or something like that so this was an interview about a new book that he wrote that was just released on april 22nd called tough my journey to true power and it is a and i'm going i started to write it up today to distribute it to board members to ask them to watch to listen to the 65-minute program it is just really really powerful and he starts out by the first part of it i heard was his experience as a football player

073where everybody has to be a tough guy that's the main criteria and you and these football players they really get destroyed by that attitude in the national football league because those aren't his words not mine um that you have to prove you have to prove to be successful you have to prove that you're the aqua dog with every teammate as well and uh and people come into it and they and they wait for an opportunity for for one of their teammates to get hurt because that gives them the opportunity to get into the lineup and so that's what i heard on my way to the mall on the way back from the mall he talked about reconciliation and how he reconciled through this experience with his wife with his children with his parents um it's

074just a really powerful program to listen to and you know and and i think it's important for educators i mean we're educators and we want to we want to promote sexual emotional health among our children and i just think that i recommend this to you and i'll send it out the link to it so that's that's my momentalization of your presentation thank you board of education uh teachers and teaching and learning committee dr grobowitz yep um the teaching and learning community met on april 4th the purpose of that meeting was to review the winter 20 data and we did that we compared it with spring 2019 2021 and fall 2021. um so overall so i'm just going to give a report about what that what the data were generally and kind of what we discussed

075um so basically we're seeing the learning loss that has been part of the national conversation that will not be news for you i'm sure um there's been a lot of conversations about that and we are seeing that in our district um looking first at the elementary grades we saw a drop in the percentage of students reading on the on grade level from spring 2019 to fall 2021. reading levels were in the mid to high 40s pretty convenient and they dropped to the mid 30s on average in the fall of 2021 and then came back to about the low 40s in the winter of 2022. we saw some clouds off and then some bounce back for math and elementary grades pre-pandemic those above and on grade level rates were close to 60 percent they dipped to

076the low 30s during the pandemic and have bounced back only to the upper fours upper 30s low 40s for middle grades in reading and math grades five and six the percentage at or above grade level in reading was pretty stagnant actually pre-deposit pandemic so we hovered around the lower low 30s so those means we're reading at an above very level um before the pandemic during and after for grades seven and eight in reading we saw at or above grade level in the mid 30 percent we dropped to the mid 20s and we kind of stayed there now in 2022 likewise for seven and eight and math we saw at our above grade level in the low 30s pre-pandemic dropped to the mid-20s and we're fairly stagnant in testing in the winter 2022 um so it's

077not a pretty picture um math and elementary grades pre-pandemic was really showing some strong outcomes which were pretty proud of but those some of those were lost in the pandemic but we're really struggling in the other grades and even pretend on the field so we spent a lot of meetings talking about strategies to address these this is not a new conversation we've been talking about this for a long time and the tnl team has talked a lot about the interview innovate interventions that are part of the federal funding and how we're going to really address our learning loss and reach those really lofty goals that we set for ourselves um some of those interventions include for the elementary grades deeper fonts and strengths instructions foundations writing workshops and other reading programs including orton gillingham fast

078forward with the company professional development i think we heard from the gw principal a few weeks ago about the success that they're having with our fundations program she was very excited about that if you remember um and also even with it it was off to a slow start because there were supply chain issues and we couldn't get the materials but even with the late start she was really encouraged by what she was seeing so i'm hopeful that that now that we're we've got that program up and running in those grades that we'll really start to see some of our results bounce back um we also have additional staff reading teachers math teachers at both the elementary and the middle level and those are providing important support but clearly we have work to do and we

079have our work cut out for us um the tnl team has decided that we'll look at the end of year data over the summer so that we can come back and revisit this and see where we are once we've had this full year of instruction and once some of these interventions have been able to really be implemented given the delay that we faced and we have some law people that were set by the administration to really get our kids um to 100 i think it was 2024 so um we'll be tracking that and making sure that we're headed in that right in that direction so it was it was a full meeting as always thank you are there questions for or anybody else who wants who is there want to add anything i just wanted

080to add one thing across the district on the elementary level they've also they've also switched to a more pushing model than a remove model because they were saying saying that that saved a great deal of time and added to education and then on a personal even though i'm on the committee i wanted to say thank you to dr dakota because you can't make policy and you can't make intervention strategies without solid data and this community does a great deal of that so thank you okay any other questions or comments when miller was on the list back years ago they added we added two or three english teachers and instead of studying halls our kids had an extra section of english every other day is is there something we can do like those scores are never

081where where they should be and and it got us off and then they took away the english teachers and they're right back where they they were so is is that something we should be looking at giving kids i mean a study hall does no one good it doesn't do this at the middle level and you should absolutely jump in on an additional literacy period and an additional math period so there is extra time and there's um and there are christian math and literacy teachers at the middle level i mean we struggle middle level is difficult that's what mrs bond building to add anything yeah i mean we have the math and the reading block at middle level like you talked about robin um so and this year with you know all of your support and

082the art funding we were able to add those additional rti teachers so now rather than just having the additional block we also not only have the instruction but we also have the additional support during that instruction for that so but with this is the first year with the additional rti so do we have no setting also we do have some we do have quests as we call them and they're not really study halls there there are some goals for that period it isn't just you know like the days when we were in school where we just walked in and did our homework it isn't quite structured in the same way um but but yes there are there are periods that are very similar to the study rather those are really only and mostly in eighth

083grade they're the same you would get a few in seven three but not each different thing and the difference is the same difference we've had that extra reading and extra math in the schedule for three or three years now i mentioned and the difference between now and then is now we've had the funding to hire the actual reading teacher so before it was just the classroom teacher teaching their class more you know and now we brought just now we have the funding we brought the specialist the math specialist and the reading teachers into those blocks to work on the skills and the weak points that our students might have so we think that the time is one thing but now the time with the expertise isn't something you know much better okay any other comments

084or questions thank you dr jacobowitz um next item is the next board report is the facilities committee this is sure okay the main meeting of the facilities committee was held on teams on wednesday may 11th and it too was a very full agenda the minutes the april 6 meeting were read and approved with two minor corrections one a decimal point and the other clarification that building principles were recommending microsoft forms not microsoft docs to input and rate building conditions annually a prototype should be ready before the fall next on the agenda was report from energia and esg tom clapper our director of buildings and grounds introduced mike carlson who's a principal in energia who explained the energy performance contract scope of the work recommended and a project needed to address that he explained that energya

085has completed 125 successful energy performance contract projects in new york and their job is to evaluate district needs an rfp request for proposals was sent out in the winter of 20 2021 by energy on behalf of the kingston city school district and esg was selected to perform an in-depth analysis of the district that was completed over the course of the next year next doreen hamilton from esg gave a very thorough presentation of the types of things which would be included in upgrading building energy management systems so some of the things only some of the thinkings among these were trailer replacement building sub metering sync aerators plug load controllers weatherization insulation and led lighting updates these are all aimed at reducing our carbon emissions and generating positive cash flow over time i think the first year

086it will pay the district something like 60 thousand dollars should it be approved um ms hamilton and mr carlson were joined by two other deaths and a thorough presentation was given to the committee and will be given to the board at the first june meeting the plan has already been vetted having been thoroughly reviewed by our business office and the esg's financial personnel mrs hamilton announced that there had just been a change on may 10 the day before the meeting to the required threshold for solar projects and that a couple of our buildings may soon qualify however a solar project is not currently part of their energy performance proposal after a loudly discussion of the potential savings the facilities committee reached consensus that a resolution pertaining to the proposed energy plan should be brought to

087the board of education presented after ms hamilton gives her presentation next month following the esg presentation the committee was informed that the board of education had passed a resolution through may fourth meeting of the board to continue with phase one of the smart schools bond act plan next armen quadrini of ksq gave an update on the khs school project the removal of the mechanical room has begun and will continue an unfortunate revelation was that the northwest corner of the pool subgrade below the pool deck was by 14 to 16 inches one or more of the pool systems were likely leaking over decades a structural engineer was brought into to evaluate it and the design team had to look at it architects and contractors had a meeting on may 10 and contractors were made aware of

088conditions and strategies for addressing it were discussed the new pool liner is still unscheduled to be installed later in the summer and there's likely to be some additional cost associated but will probably be presented as um progress on the edson phase 2 project was reported by jeff anders of bbl paint samples have been selected jsa sas electrical is there abatement work is ongoing and mr cracker has met with mrs lowell the edison principal and she has asked her staff to pack up their rooms so they can proceed with the painting it looks like this project will be moving on on schedule district administration ksq and bbl are continuing to work on matching and sequencing needed building repairs and renovations to available building aid units they will keep us updated um miss mr lamb forwarded photos

089of some areas of concern at khs to me on april 28th and i promptly forwarded them to mr klepper who immediately sent mr peppers who's our roof whisperer but sent mr peppers over to investigate one photo involved what looked like a bridge trim fault failing but turned out to be clips improperly installed they were reinstalled and bridge term is fine another area was carpet tiles lifting off the floor in one of the music spaces mr clapper explained that our staff installed it wasn't the contractor and that these will be replaced um and all will be addressed by our next meeting a discussion followed about the lack of ada bathroom facilities on the bottom level of the music wing mr quadrini will evaluate options and report back to the facilities committee next month mr joseco principal

090khs then inquired about the grass in the courtyards between the wings of the new student entrance last year it was re-seated we replaced with topsoil and reseeded if it doesn't come in soon the contractor will reseed it again the next meeting of facilities committee is scheduled for june 8th at 3 30 pm and will most likely be on teams any questions can you address the the the the finding of at the pool that that what did you say northwest corner or whatever the northwest corner apparently there's a space underneath that they weren't anticipating where the the substrata there has disintegrated but it's probably been worn away or eroded over time with leaks and so what is the implication of that in terms of completing the project does that need to be addressed it has to

091be addressed in terms of filling in that space it's a bigger space than they were anticipating but they don't seem too concerned about it it's been evaluated already well i don't know but the board hasn't heard about it that's what i'm saying i mean we talked about it i just heard the meeting you know to not understand you know what it what the implication is uh well the implication is they'll have to address that more with more material than they were planning to fill in the space they were anticipating a space but not one that loud okay and um they seem to think everything will remain on schedule okay good yes it was installed i don't know whether it was an adhesive issue but it was installed by our own staff it might be the

092moisture issue but they're going to address it within the next couple weeks it'll be done before our next meeting i know whatever so mr lam you made a comment to me about carpet in the music room what the reason was well according to the banned people but according to the they they put in the heat adhesive and then we have this problem with people being out so the adhesive sap for two weeks or three weeks and then they came in and put the carpet cows down that's why they feel they're coming up and moving and people are tripping over them but tom said they will well the thing that you told me was that you know having having carpet in the oh i'm not i'm not a fan that's that's a personal thing i'm not

093a fan of carpeting in a band room because you're blowing spit out on the floor but that's always said that but yeah well they're not taking it out at the high school but they will repair it yeah okay any other questions from mrs chair thank you mr schumer the next item on the agenda is consent agenda are there any resolutions the board member would like to have pulled for separate consideration about uh p90 and p9d4 otherwise kind of a motion too okay so this is the consent agenda less p90 and p94 any questions okay vote all in favor of the consent agenda without those two resolutions you say aye aye opposed nay unanimously passed eight to zero um so i'll move p90 and p94 for consideration at the same time second so the reason i

094pulled them delta power so a lot of these appointments are for summer school and so we're done in this situation where the uh where the school kingston city school district is going to provide its own summer school across all grade levels is that right right so can you just describe that a little bit i mean how that's changed from what it was when boces did it especially especially at the secondary level it's you know summer school secondary level for the most part was especially the high school level was all about religious review and getting kids through the reasons now we're offering basically you know electives different social emotional learning opportunities different activities for students so we really have almost a full day of school going in every one of our school buildings this summer k

095through 12. so last summer i think i thought we had about 1500 students on our campuses and we will have probably about that again this year so we're all doing those same things so again there's there is there is the opportunities from regional or students who need to pass the readers exam there is there are obviously elementary through eighth grade we do have our um you know our students who need to get ready to get into the next grade but we also have community partners and they're doing social emotional learning community partners doing different activities while they're cce so a lot of those groups um and going back towards looking at uh last year we had driver's ed so we're still working on that kind of thing um different offerings agriculture and we have a

096lot of opportunities for students to be here and and again now a social emotional input academic so addressing both of those areas of loss that we that we you know experience during the um during copenhagen so we are able to use our recovery funds to expand and extend that summer school program so we're excited about that and kind of if you look at the secondary it's really our summer nine model but throughout you know for all of our secondary students our elementary has always been a pretty robust um more effort even more so now um just because it is the way the elementary work we're gonna we're excited to have our summer schools running again and we'll have more special students with disabilities summer school program running we do we did um have a homeless

097student summer program was running in our district last year so we have students we'll have students all over the place next year this year this summer doctor clowns i actually if i follow up with a question just about summer school it's not directly raising the consensus on the first day but i was curious about enrollment i was actually going to ask that during the business if if we're getting as much response for summer schools this year as we did last year that actually i don't know that yet but i will refer to that responsibility we just started to enroll our students um at secondary so the registration link just went out and the guidance counselors were looking at their caseloads or looking at how many courses um a student was not successful in getting them

098involved in the program so we have a deadline set up at secondary for um two weeks actually in the next two weeks we'll have our we should have our more definitive numbers and at elementary we just began the registration process last week as well um it's open through we're trying to have registration completed by june 1st so that we can prepare for our staffing and make sure our class sizes are appropriate and then we have the support personnel okay thank you so doctor so i just wanted the community to have an opportunity to develop what the summer school program is and how it's been expanded and and what their tax payer dollars are going for in terms of giving our students every opportunity that we can provide to them so uh there's no other questions

099i'll call no other comments i'll call the question on these resolutions all day right my opposed may enough adopted eight to zero okay i better put my glasses on i can't see do we have any we have there's a donation somewhere i thought right well dr collins you're going to be disappointed because you only have two more meetings where there may be an opportunity for you to thank like terminators yes old business i mean so all this is i have one old business item so con mr president can you refresh us our board members on when our evaluations superintendent evaluations and board evaluations are due to you i was hoping by next friday okay so that's friday you want them in your june packet the superintendent evaluation is due to you yeah not this friday

100not not this friday [Music] before yeah day we don't have them yet now we have our old we have our old ones self self evaluation okay and dr paulino you had myself about you will have myself evaluation by monday that's what you did yeah okay so i lost track of where we were what our responsibilities were last year for self-evaluation online [Music] no ours never went up no and and i have i have another peaceful business if we're going there okay so that's how i'm at we know when that's due right now can you would you mind just sending us an email with the i see it now it's on may 4th so can you send some emails with those and then also with the dates get what they're doing so yeah we can have

101it in front of us again thank you charlie and okay um yeah i i had a question about we were going to uh put the uh rules of context for public comment up and and hasn't gone up again although the text has been ready for yeah and i did lose track of that and i will i will follow up on that too i took a note of that okay i just mentioned yeah you know it got adopted in the middle of this before every public comment period i should be reading that but i think that mrs knows what the rules are okay information about the reasons this year and a flexible appeals process for the next few years and so i just wanted to raise that and mention it and i think my understanding from

102what i read is that i'm sure people are aware that there's some flexibility in regions but usually only one if a student has fallen below their failings and for certain only for certainty the students have gone below the failing grade they can appeal for and if they're buttons they've passed in the class they can appeal and they can um is that that appeal process will now be open to everyone for for the next two years on any exam multiple agencies that if you get between a 50 and a 65 then you can appear any possible class you can you will not necessarily appeal graduating in these two years so a few of us let's say you have a ninth grade or now in the 10th grade or next year those that allowances will be for

103those two years which will then apply for their graduation once they graduate um which so you know we had two years without reasons because we had this weird um you know crazy teaching year where students were in a class and it wasn't for in and out of school and there was an inconsistency and in some ways this is a little bit of a middle ground so there's some acknowledgement that there has been some destruction this year and that has not been quite a normal year and so there's some more flexibility um so i appreciate that if we're going to have to take the reasons i appreciate that um the one other thing that i found pretty interesting in this document was that it it said over and over again that the state department of education

104thinks does not think that even in a regular year that region score should be part of a student parade and i think that we do have student scores that's part of the grade we do we do and so um you know in a regular year they think that it shouldn't be in especially now and so i'm wondering what your thoughts are about reconsidering that policy i guess it's not a healthy job practice practice there are a couple departments currently that are that are still instituting that practice we actually had a lead teacher meeting yesterday and we discussed the document that you're referring to as well as my team's very hard push for the last two years to remove regents exams as part of the final exam i think we reached a really good um place

105with with our departments so um we're gonna we're gonna move that forward um you know there was there was agreement in the room that we probably should not continue that practice in those couple of departments okay so the so the regions will no longer factor into the student's final grade that was the conversation of the conversation okay so will you can you update it just a question isn't grading uh isn't that part of the duties and responsibilities of the school board under state law what the grading policy look into that um that was new business right um oh so uh so no business i have an item i'd like to bring up so at the agenda meeting on last friday i i grab up uh if that it would be nice i think if when

106we have board committee reports if a written copy of the minutes were available in the board library because it's very difficult for me especially you know to remember what you know what was said now and i also want to say that in novice rules of order most do not have to be approved before they can be distributed so yeah mr schultz i don't think there's anything wrong with those summaries the way we've been doing it i mean but the other thing is that it's not it's not we don't get it in writing you do it to the agenda the minutes from the previous attached to the agenda with any other with any other items like facilities if i'm if she's got i've just got a report that i attach it to the agenda the minutes

107from the previous meeting the same with audit and finance with the treasurer's report is the audit and finance minutes from the previous meeting sometimes the minutes aren't ready yet for me to attach but if they've been approved by that you know that next meeting it's attached along with any other reports okay to review it for myself what was in the committee report and i said i think dr palona said well you're probably the only person that does that but what i would like to ask is that everyone in this room who speaks at a board meeting listen to a video and see if you can be heard if see if you can hear yourself what you're saying because oftentimes it's very difficult to hear on the video what is being said by a board member

108or by anybody else and what's the point of having a if you can't hear what's being said so just a request it doesn't need to be any it doesn't need to be resolution uh public comment this is [Laughter] okay um i just wanted to say how much as a member of the audience i really appreciated kathy sletty's report i thought it was really excellent and i also loved what suzanne jordan had to say about that report and some of your thoughts on what's been going on the book that she recommended the culture of love i think was the name of it and i think if i understood you right suzanne you were talking about maybe making that a book study for the board i would like to suggest that the board take a leadership role

109in the community maybe over the summer and make it a community read that would be my suggestion i think we have to get out of our little books and there's i know there's organizations aauw the good work institute tmi there's so many organizations that are interested in that kind of work that would partner with you and help you market it and have discussion groups about it and so that would be a suggestion i would make and i'd be happy to help anybody on the board with that and i probably have 28 minutes left so i will see that to any of the audience who would like to come um could the district provide copies of that book for the board members thank you the culture of love can i suggest though before we do that

110i really would like um maybe some people to consider a strategy for how we can make that more of a community event instead of a what we've been doing as board retreats i think that's you know it's like a metamorphosis the board retreats around book studies have been very useful but i think we're at a different point of time whereas as they say be honest how much impact have the book studies had on the community the school community and the community as a whole and we can't pretend that the issues that were laid horribly bare to our state you know fellows in buffalo are not our issues too and and i just feel at this moment we have to be braver like the students were and do more and so i would suggest this i

111mean we can get books but i would love to talk to barnes and noble um to talk to the library to talk to the groups that mrs bauer is connected with and say can we do a summer read as a community that's that right and really create some energy in the community around being honest and coming together so that that's what i would like to do well i think that's a great idea but i think we should still i mean we can still get the book and read them ourselves before we but i um overlooked a moment of silence at the beginning of the meeting uh for the tragedy and buffalo so i could we observe that now thank you so if there's are there any board member announcements that have been made and i'll

112entertain among a motion to adjourn