001okay here mr johnson here here okay we'll rise for the pledge please i pledge allegiance to the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay we had uh executive session at six o'clock and we have two resolutions coming out of executive session first one is boe 58 settlement agreement bernie bus service inc be resolved that the board hereby authorizes its president to sign a settlement agreement with bernie bus service inc dated january 19 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 may have a motion for this resolution okay we have two two motions on a second uh any discussion yes so um we have an
002agreement we have we've settled with all of our bus companies now uh with payment going back to the beginning of the pandemic in march of uh when we had no bus service for the for the remainder of that school year uh and then um we had many many days in 2020 2021 where there was no bus service and we've agreed to uh a settlement with the bus companies who have contracts with us uh that we are paying 40 percent of the settlement of the contractor is that right and so bernie was the la bernie bus service is the last bus company to agree to that settlement and they've now we have that uniform settlement with all of the bus companies that we contract with so is there any just further discussion about it okay all
003in favor please say aye aye opposed nay unanimously the oe 59 separate the pages here employment related agreement be resolved that the board hereby authorizes the superintendent of schools to sign a unemployment related agreement with employee number 2006 january 12 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 may have a motion [Music] uh any discussion on this on this resolution it's a personnel matter so we can't identify any more about that all in favor of boe 59 please say aye aye opposed may okay unanimously adopted also we have approval of minutes of the december 8th 2021 board meeting i have a motion mr lamb are there any uh corrections or questions them all in favor please say aye
004all right closed name okay so that's the minutes for december 8th approved and the minutes of january 5th 2022 you may have a motion to is this here mr michael okay any uh any corrections or questions regarding uh the january fifth minutes okay hearing none all favor adopting the minutes of january 5th please say aye aye opposed may okay you managely adopted public participation is the next agenda item we have six letters that have been submitted and mrs siri will read them our first letter is from lily thompson a student at kingston high school on monday january 10th i walked into my fifth period lunch and ate anxiously the lunch period had all grades now in the cafeteria before we were rotating between the auditorium and the cafeteria the lunch was all combined due to
005students who were supposed to be in their class instead skipping to go to the auditorium unfortunately that didn't solve anything the cdc recommends that students are six feet apart during meal times while eating yet desks are right up against each other and aren't even three feet apart with the state's new recommendation that kcsd has accepted with student and staff who are not fully vaccinated and positive for clovid 19 they must isolate for five days until asymptomatic no good test upon arriving back to school is required though and we know based on studies someone can still be asymptomatic and have and can have and spread coded also because of the omicron variant it can spread even quicker in this cafeteria this cafeteria is a super coveted spreader and most kingston high school students and i feel
006unsafe and anxious in this cafeteria environment and since kcsd will not turn hybrid we want the kingston city school board of education to step in and make this cafeteria situation at kingston high school better thank you our next letter is from jennifer biesmer good evening my name is jennifer habernick biesmer and i am a third grade teacher at robert graves however i am writing tonight as a parent of a fifth and seventh grader at bailly school as we are coming to the end of the second quarter in the middle of another challenging year i would like to take the time to commend the bailey faculty and staff after a year of being hybrid last year both of my sons adjusted well to the demands of in-person learning this school year i truly believe that this
007is because of their wonderful teachers and staff at jwb my fifth grader is a member of team chiapas and comes home from school excited to tell me about his day his teachers have gone above and beyond to make learning fun and engaging i appreciate the friday folders with feedback on assignments updates on curriculum and other important school news he's also enjoying being a member of band and is participating in the after school beams program when he was quarantined last fall his teachers communicated with him what was expected to be completed during that time just like he was in school they made the experience so positive overall my seventh grader has exceeded the high expectations of his grade level and made the high honor roll for the first marking period this achievement is the result of
008the guidance and support of his wonderful teachers for example an advanced math his teacher keeps parents updated with emails through teams we are also thankful for the parent and student portal so that we can see his grades in real time as he was recently quarantined his teachers messaged both my son and i through teams explaining what assignments needed to be completed i could tell that they genuinely care about my son not just with academics but his physical and mental health as well finally the support staff and administration who are all working harder than ever always respond to my emails in an efficient matter manner with a clear response my husband and i appreciate the friday videos recorded by ms fitzgerald and the text blasts have been very helpful daily school is a wonderful school and
009for that i am grateful our next email is from hillary fuller in light of the current surge of omicron cases in our area and the fact that many students are not vaccinated i request that the board suspend the requirement of swim class or please consider an option where students may take a swim test to opt out of swim class in order to limit unmasked exposure to the virus thank you for your consideration in this matter our next is from malia cordell while there are several layers of safety measures in kcsd we are seeing sustained high levels of community and school transmission and it is past time to increase the level of protections here are four things we can do to keep our staff and students as safe as possible one add individual air cleaning devices
010to every classroom covet is transmitted through the air reducing the amount of virus laden aerosols in shared spaces will reduce the spread dr patelino has said that the current hvac systems in our district cannot accommodate hepa filters so how about adopting corsi rosenfeld boxes which are highly effective and cost efficient there is no downside to filtering out air two provide students with better fitting and more protective masks many families cannot afford to purchase and 95k and 95 kf 94 masks so the district should provide them furthermore too many students are wearing ill-fat barrel fitting masks three encourage students especially those aged 5 to 11 to get vaccinated as of december 26 the rates of new york children who are fully vaccinated are low ages 12 to 17 62.1 percent ages 5 to 11 perhaps work
011with the county to arrange for creative outreach solutions four the opt-in testing option should be changed to opt-out or required testing according to dr patalino only around 250 families have opted in there is precedent for opt-out services within the district such as the photo release waiver so why not do something similar for something as important as covid testing we all know about long covid but we are still learning about long-term effects for children such as correlation to childhood diabetes who knows what else might be waiting it is the district's responsibility to keep our children safe our next is from christina hill i would like to know if the doing away with masks is being taken into consideration since they are not proven to work cause both psychological and physical harm to students this should be
012a parental decision as we see sickness including covet is quite common this time of year carbon is no more dangerous to our kids than the flu get rid of the masks they serve no purpose but to interfere with speaking breathing and socialization also is critical race theory being taught in our schools and our last submission for the evening is from eric dovikin first i want to thank the boe and dr patalino for lowering the quarantine from 10 days to five days also the way it is explained on the website is much easier to understand thank you i would like to get an update on the test to stay program lastly i would like to thank all the employees of kcsd because of your hard work our schools have remained open my kids have been doing
013so much better this year than last year they love being in school and enjoy all the extras music art sports just to name a few thanks again to all those who are working so hard to keep our schools open and that's it for tonight okay thank you um we move on to the superintendent's report dr patelino thank you mr shawnee um first thing we have on our superintendent report is is two firsts we have our first uh principal's report virtually and also um ms nelson's first principal's report because she missed last year due to the um due to coven so um i'd like to introduce our principal at meyer elementary school is aaron nelson good evening hi everybody i prepared a video report on our commitment for meyer elementary school miss theory are you prepared
014to show them so if you if you expand it down at the bottom on your right-hand side under cloudy is is no well that's the video that's so uh it's been a very quiet board meeting [Music] oh that's a good sound something's coming you guys can see that yeah yes good evening my name is erin nelson and i am the principal of meyer elementary school i am proud to highlight the important work we are engaged in this year and to share our success in prioritizing our students social emotional and physical health as we continue to successfully navigate teaching and learning during the kobit 19 pandemic our students are happy engaged focused and excited to come to school every day during our may 2021 super attendance conference day we collaborated at the building level to establish
015our focus for the 21 22 school year although all of these priorities emerged and are embedded in our work this school year tonight i will highlight our extended recess initiative 76 of our faculty and staff felt strongly that this initiative should be our top priority as part of our school comprehensive educational plan also known as the staff we commit to deepening connections among students staff and the community as a key strategy we have expanded opportunities for students to engage with one another through extended recess which is built into our daily schedules our goals and objectives for extended reasons for our students to provide every child adequate time to engage in free play this is a priority of ours following the remote learning and isolation that many experienced during that time another goal is to build
016problem solving and coping skills lastly our goal is to maximize instructional time when students are in the classroom by improving their focus boosting self-regulation abilities increasing concentration and decreasing the time needed to manage behavior recess represents an essential planned respite from rigorous cognitive tasks it affords a time to rest play imagine think move and socialize after recess students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively in addition recess helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not acquired in the more structured classroom environment our faculty and staff were surveyed to determine which of the following positive outcomes associated with recess were observed the most based on this survey 60 percent of our staff are seeing evidence of social and emotional development the most children learn social skills fast through real life scenarios
017and play opportunities with their peers they quickly learn that whining doesn't work with friends and that they don't always get what they want children need plenty of opportunities to freely engage with other children recess if long enough offers an ideal environment to practice these skills it takes time for children to figure out who they're going to play with what they're going to play what everyone's role will be and finally to execute their plan if recess lasts only 15 to 20 minutes the children are just figuring out who they'll play with and what they'll play before they're called in and recess is over many times this allows for few if any imaginative play opportunities doubling recess meant making scheduling adjustments to accommodate 40 minutes of recess time means that teachers have an additional 20 minutes of
018planning time they currently use that time to develop differentiated reading resources to support our reading program in order to fit all recess times within the allocated hours of our monitors we have grade levels engaged in recess at the same time due to covit we co-work by grade level and cohorts must not mingle we have plans to accommodate and ensure students receive recess daily regardless of income and weather in order to ensure adequate supervision we needed to hire an additional monitor and support additional monitor hours we solicited this from the district over the summer we are having an audio problem so we're gonna try to troubleshoot that for a second apparently no one outside of our this room can hear i don't know if they can hear me why they can't hear that can yeah um
019mrs nelson has offered to present and share her stream if that's if that makes it easier i don't think we can do that i apparently no one outside of this room can hear she can hear me but they can't get a presentation which doesn't make sense i don't i don't understand how that could be but this is nothing you're showing how patient [Music] sure karen absolutely while we're while we're waiting if everyone would mute we can hear you're not muted please mute okay all right i planned for this so i'm ready to go in case this happened so that video will be available if anyone wants to watch it but i'll give the presentation the traditional way in a non-traditional setting here we go so good evening my name is school i am proud to
020highlight the important work that we are engaged in this year and to share our success in prioritizing our students social emotional and physical health as we continue to successfully navigate teaching and learning during the covid19 pandemic our students are happy engaged focused and excited to come to school every day next slide during our may 2021 superintendents conference day we collaborated at the building level to prioritize our focus for the 21-22 school year although all of these priorities emerged and are embedded in our work this year tonight i will highlight our extended recess initiative which emerged as our building's top priority for this school year 76 of our staff felt strongly that this initiative should be our focus as part of our school comprehensive educational plan also known as the staff we commit to deepening connections
021among students staff and the community as a key strategy we have expanded opportunities for students to engage with one another through extended recess which is built into our daily schedules our goals and objectives for extended recess for our students are to provide every child adequate time to engage in free play this is a priority of ours following the remote learning and isolation that many experienced during that time also our goal is to build problem solving and coping skills and lastly to maximize instructional time when students are in the classroom by improving their focus boosting their self-regulation abilities increasing concentration and decreasing the time needed to manage their behavior next slide recess represents an essential planned respite for rigorous cognitive tasks it affords the time to rest play imagine think move and socialize after recess students
022are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively in addition recess helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not acquired in the more structured classroom environment next slide our faculty and staff were surveyed to determine which of the positive outcomes associated with recess were observed the most based on this survey 60 of our staff are seeing evidence of social and emotional development the most next time children learn social skills back fast through real life scenarios and play opportunities with their peers they quickly learned that whining doesn't work with friends and that they don't always get what they want children need plenty of opportunities to freely engage with other children recess if long enough offers an ideal environment to practice these skills it takes time for children to figure out who they're going
023to play with what they're going to play what everyone's role will be and finally to execute their plan if recess lasts only 15 to 20 minutes the children are just figuring out who they'll play with and what they'll do before the bell rings and recess is over many times this allows for few if any imaginative play opportunities next time scheduling required some scheduling was a hurdle and it required doubling our recess time and making scheduling adjustments to accommodate this means that teachers also have an additional 20 minutes of planning time that they currently use to develop differentiated reading resources to support our reading program in order to fit all recess times within the allocated hours of our monitors we have grade levels engaged and recessed at the same time due to cobit we co-work by
024grade levels and cohorts must not mingle we have plans to accommodate ensure students receive recess daily regardless of inclement mother for supervision in order to ensure that we have adequate supervision we needed to hire an additional monitor and support additional monitor hours that was requested from the district and approved over the summer we are so grateful coverage for absences is accomplished utilizing substitutes support staff or even myself as needed to ensure the students receive this important time for equipment we carefully selected it with safety engagement and fostering creativity in mind for both our indoor and outdoor spaces we've been able to add the equipment we've already owned through donations and fundraising next slide the society of health and physical educators known as shape america is an american organization that provides support to professionals in health
025physical education recreation and dance using their evidence-based strategies and resources along with resources from the cdc we developed recess guidelines that include detailed information in all of the areas illustrated here copies of these guidelines have been provided to the board of education for review and each of these components will be explained briefly during this presentation in addition to playing on the playground our students have access to the following items the scoop balls cub walkers cub catchers etc but on the next slide karen you'll see that running around is one of their favorite things to do and play with the playground walls these are what the staff observe the most excited about so here you can see our recessed zone maps they illustrate how we divide up the space when we have access to both of
026our fields students engage in different activities depending on the zones they're in and movement between zones is at the will of the students who are free to mingle with their grade level cohort peers next slide in her recess during inclement weather takes place in the lobby pictured here and in a special area classroom which is letter day dependent each area has similar equipment and activity choices and since the special area classroom varies based on availability due to the latter day a rolling cart with materials is brought to the room with supplies for activities students enjoyed playing with the giant connect four indoor balance beams and rocks particle coloring craft table and games indoor balance beams and rocks and the giant connect work are the indoor activities our staff observe most excitement about a picture here
027you can see the indoor balance beams and rock walkers that are a big hit with the kids next slide students in grades k through two were nominated by their teachers and students in grades three and four were selected following submissions of responses to the writing prompt why would i make a great recess leader recess leaders and i need to develop goals share experiences and ideas for improvement and to learn ways they can assist with conflict resolution specifically research leaders are trained in stop fit try and waste to help their peers resolve complex during morning announcements and reviewed with the recess leaders the stockton try strategy is illustrated using scenarios from the stanford harmony website and students are asked to consider how they would apply this strategy in real life recess leaders monitors and other recess
028supervisors remind students to stop think and try as a way to resolve conflicts positive behavioral interventions and supports pbis is an evidence-based three-tiered system for improving and integrating all of the data systems and practices affecting student outcomes every day during morning announcements and grade level meetings we review recess expectations from our pbis matrix using the acronym soar which stands for safety ownership achievement and respect we also explicitly teach sel strategies derived from the stanford harmony resources such as stopping track students are taught mindfulness strategies in the classroom during morning announcements and later in this presentation i will highlight the common cards that students will soon use that include mindful activity choices to calm down when needed increasing student leadership opportunities is important to us and creating the recess leader program is an additional leadership opportunity
029at meijer that meets this goal each initiative shown here overlaps and they all work together to form a strong foundation of our program ensuring ongoing improvement is a priority and is accomplished through recess leader meetings analysis of staff perceptual survey data which has been embedded in this presentation self-assessments using the playworks recess framework rubric and observational data our meyer safety committee and vlt utilized the recess framework rubric to self-evaluate in the areas of safety engagement and empowerment and will use this data in our pursuit to continually improve our program faculty and staff shared their views on the most positive outcomes of our extended recess program to date some of their perspectives are highlighted here increased social interactions and development reduced disruptive behavior and improved focus in the classroom are the highlights along with the overall
030perspective that the students are happy and enjoy their time tremendously last slide next steps our next steps include implementing the use of our calming cards and conflict resolution cards common cards are laminated cards on a ring which will be given to frustrated students and used to help them choose an activity designed to re-regulate this coincides with the stop think components of stopping try common cards include ideas for mindful activity students can try in order to calm down such as defrosts counting to 10 squeezing attention ball and reciting the meyer promise conflict cards are made of card stock and will be handed to classroom teachers at the conclusion of recess indicating which students experienced unresolved conflict and may need to check in with a service provider before they can resume learning when a conflict card is
031given to the teacher he or she will assist the student in addressing their unresolved concern or reach out to our social workers psychologist registered behavioral technician trainee or myself to assist training has been offered to monitors and supervising staff in the form of meetings and collaborative planning times in an effort to improve we are seeking professional development opportunities through playworks and shape america both free and virtual training that involves costs are being considered and explored we have short-term project and long-term project committees at meijer that formed at the end of last year the goal of our short-term committee is to bring painted pavement to our school as you can see picture here and our long-term project committee is committed to bringing an entirely inclusive playground to meijer that will enable all students to play together
032regardless of physical or cognitive ability thank you for the opportunity to share the workforce with the community for implementation of this important initiative and to highlight some of the ways we are thriving and not just surviving as we educate our students during one of the most challenging times in the history of public education this concludes my presentation but i'm available for questions we're back are there questions for us for miss nelson i'm getting an echo my speakers okay is my echo gone i think it is i don't hear it i'm sorry about that i don't know how it happened but it did questions for mrs nelson mr sheer you're muted i was very happy to read this meeting so um wonderful presentation and i do firmly believe and i i think we all do that
033exercise is wonderful for children and also the skills that they've learned on the playground it's like you know you hear people say everything i really need to know in learning kindergarten a lot of the social skills that they've learned they learn through play and we all know that so i'm happy to see this i'm also very happy to see the the piece with the stop thinking try um it reminds me of what we encourage older kids to do and this is very good practice for that for really support the painted pavement and the inclusive playground equipment i think that sounds absolutely wonderful and thank you very much for your presentation thank you norah dr gilberts i believe your hand up was next thank you um thank you for that presentation mrs nelson um i love
034this and i love the expanded recess i think it's so important to get kids outside running and playing and learning through their own experience can you um you've been so deliberate about it the student leaders all the different pieces of it and really kind of helping to transition kids from the outside to the inside once learning begins again which i think um the intentionality i think is impressive but um can you talk a little bit more about the schedule and how you made this fit um i think you said all of the directions at the same time how did you make it fit logistically for your school that's a great question so we typically have monitors for two and a half hours for lunch they monitor the cafeteria and they also supervise recess so in
035order to make this work with the 40 minutes we have we had to hire an additional monitor for supervision and we also needed an extra half an hour a day so within a three hour window of time we get move on students through lunch which is 20 minutes and recess which is 40. so to make that work we have to have two grade levels experiencing recess at the same time due to cohorting we can't mix grade levels and we co-work every level at meijer so while one group is outside for the 40 minutes and because the weather is has produced snow our it has rendered our backfield unusable so right now we're in the hybrid model um during nice weather times we have one group on the front side of the building for their full
03640 minutes and the other group is on the back side of the building so there are 40 minutes the way we strategize to make it work with the snow in the back is we have one group in the front fully outdoors for the full 40 and the other group is split and when i say group is grade level into the two indoor spaces but we want them outside every day every month so enable in order for that to work they have the two indoor spaces utilized and each indoor space is associated with an outdoor space so for at least 20 minutes every group is outside but during these winter months we can't have all three minutes outside for all of our students because of the space constraints i hope that answers the question we do
037have a multitude of scenarios for instance um i mentioned the two we have the hybrid recess model for 48 and then we have the traditional recess for 40 which is using both sides building but also there's inclement weather schedules and um indoor 20-minute schedules for infinite weather outdoor 20-minute schedules for when there's a tour delay and we still can use the outside so we have a lot of different schedules um dr collins i believe i'm sorry is that your any more question miss jordan thank you i just wanted to say that i think that everybody has agreed that coming back and folded into school has really shown that our kids had a lot of anxiety and a lot of difficulty dealing with this covid especially in the remote model and we've all talked about it
038but i really loved um and i think as dr chilton said the intentional use of play and making sure that you attended to that as a priority recommending the entire building you and the staff and faculty for recognizing it but also really doing something about it so i really appreciate uh okay dr collins um i think your hand up was was the next up sure thank you and thank you mrs nelson for that presentation as a parent of an elementary child i can imagine that this is appreciated by the children and um one thing i really liked about your presentation was that you also articulated at least one way that it seemed to be benefiting teachers and that it allowed for some time for them to develop differentiated reading plans which i think is really
039a nice um a nice very well executed and targeted plan if it can benefit everybody um kind of wanted to follow up on a doctor around scheduling in the sense that if you're expanding recess i am kind of curious where the extra 20 minutes came from in their schedule um so yeah i'll start with that yeah of course so at the elementary level teachers create their schedules when they teach math ela writing etc um so really they there's 20 minutes that were added to their planning time and taken away with students in front of them time so each teacher developed their schedule around that because they were invested in this process so to say where it was taken from is really difficult thing to articulate since each teacher decides when they teach writing or reading
040or math that makes sense yeah that does thanks and probably allows a lot of autonomy and teacher choice in that so that sounds great um i wonder too if you had any just suggestions for how this kind of plan might translate to a campus that doesn't have quite as much space or flexibility i know it's sure to spend a challenge just to sell on your campus but if others were listening do you have any suggestions for um you key into it space is a huge consideration the time you're allocated with monitors the amount of the number of monitors you have ensuring adequate supervision um developing a duty schedule because it's not just your monitors for providing the supervision the whole grade level outside at the same time i didn't feel comfortable having one person out
041there supervising and i don't think any of us would so we have at least two people out there it's a monitor plus a teaching assistant or a social worker or a psychologist so there's two people out there um so i think one of the reasons i developed the guidelines of course because it's a great guided document but also because if other schools were interested in doing it these are the things to consider so when you're doing that guidance document other schools can consider all of these aspects and see how it would work within their limitations of space and people in time thank you i would like to thank you for your also want to presentation you for stressing the importance of mental health for our children and the importance of the extended research time in
04210 20 years extra day is very beneficial for the development so thank you is that it mr michael yeah okay this is lao yes thank you i would like to thank you also mrs nelson i thought it was a great presentation and i'm so glad that you have this extra time with the kids and also the inside activity i agree with everything thank you okay so i have a couple of questions and observations so i started i read the american academy of pediatrics paper first and i spent a lot of time trying to understand structured versus unstructured recess um and and then when i went to your presentation i had a hard time determining whether it would be what the allocation between structure and unstructured was and perhaps you can help with that but i
043also noticed that in terms of the activities that the students liked the most uh running outside and playing on these rocks or walking walk rock walking i mean those are definitely the the unstructured activities are the most popular with the students it seems and can you comment on that absolutely so structure recess in this article from the american academy of pediatrics which was provided to all the board members it really speaks to the structure recess being led by an adult so an adult is specifically teaching the students again leading them through it and guiding it instead of children creating leading and developing their own rules and structure so it's really interesting because when you have a very structured recess that's led by the adult and not the students um there are some benefits to that
044for sure but that's that the sacrifice in my opinion of the students having that unstructured supervised break that belongs to the child and it's where they would make their personal choice between sedentary physical creative social options and kind of freely move between them at will so um you know we do have community partners like um you know who come in and work with the students the name is escaping me and wilder and they can come in during recess and they can work with students and i think that's something for us to explore moving forward you know what would be the benefit of having them come in certain days or for a portion of the time but to make the entire recess fully structured led by an adult we shied away from that okay and then
045just as a follow-up you know so doc the doctors to cover with some collins talked about the 20 minutes so taking away time from academic time for recess might be counter intuitive to some people but what is the res the net result of what advantages of the increased time in recess how does that make the decreased time in academics more effective and what's the overall balance it's a great question so when students lose and you're saying lose but they're really not losing they're gaining because you might take 20 minutes away but that might be a transition or another activity that's planned where students might be distracted or unfocused um during the time because they're fidgety and antsy and have a difficult time paying attention so i truly don't see it as a loss and my
046hypothesis is that our students assessment results at the end of this year will be higher as a result of this lost 20 minutes which is truly a gained 20 minutes because i feel like the student's time is spent much more effectively when they are in their seats it's a false sense of progress um to plug through material when students aren't focused and paying attention to absorbing it so i think it's a it's a true game in the end and i think our assessment scores will also show this i did think about it it came to mind when i was looking at your presentation a book i once read called fidget the focus which can be effective for some kids who need it uh dr sorry i know i've collins spoken but i just wanted to
047add one um one note of appreciation um and that's that you you speak so articulately about the ways in which this plan was based on data and i really appreciate both the way the idea was conceived but also how you're attempting to follow through and really show the specifics of not only how it's affecting the students social and emotional well-being but also going as far as saying which ways which tools which toys that are playing with them and i hope you're right that we see um those games also academically i suspect and i hope that we do see those but i really am appreciating your not just the faith and the idea that it will work if that's a good idea but to follow through we'll really see if it does thank you for that
048thank you are there any other questions um well thank you very much this is nelson uh a wonderful presentation uh i also like the idea that you um you put a lot of pride into the way you were presenting it to us so that if other schools want to incorporate it into their program they'll have a a guiding map on how on how you do it and that was very thoughtful on your part to do it that way so thank you thank you all for your support thank you mr nelson appreciate that and thank you for being so prepared when the technology didn't work out as well very nice thank you our next um next we have another presentation from our director of recruitment retention and equity is angela armstrong and she is okay good
049evening everyone we'll try this again no you don't see it do you see it i do you switch over when you like so um i see it there look good seems so good evening everyone i'm angela armstrong director of recruitment retention and equity so i'd like to just tell you a little bit about me i'm a black woman of african candidate and invasion descent i'm a ross native raised in the berkshires i'm a proud mom a little black stuff he was a hampton alumni i am a child of a god a daughter a sister a lawyer friend and educator i have a bs education from michigan state university i have an m.a in human resource development from american international college and i have a certificate of advanced graduate studies and educational leadership for massachusetts college
050of liberal arts i've been an educator since 1984. physicians i have a special education teacher a middle school assistant principal coordinator of special education city school district and assistant principal high school for 11 years an adjunct professor at studying impulse in the department of lab studies and now my current position as director of recruitment retention and ethics next step so in this new position i'm focusing on five goals one of them is to increase the number of educators of color in kingston city school district to develop an educator of color network to build collaborative relationships that will influence what i'm trying to do influence and enhance hiring and recruitment systems in kansas city school district and collaborate with the executive director of diversity equity inclusion today i'm going to address the three highlighted in red
051and the first being to increase the number of educators of color in kansas city school district and while it's necessary reflection with everything as you know internationally both public and private businesses are consciously and purposefully recognizing the importance and value of diversity amongst their staff and the need for and benefits of culturally responsive practices in the organizational structures to let's apply this concept to education in kingston city school district did you know one teacher of color by third grade it increases their chances of graduating by black students who had just one flat teacher in third grade were 13 more likely to enroll in college while those who have two black teachers with 32 percent more likely this done foul these families are a continuation of the 2017 study that found that a low-income black student's
052probability of dropping out of high school is reduced by 29 if he or she had one black teacher in grades three through five this was a study done in johns hopkins university in november 2018. in 2019 our total enrollment was six thousand three hundred and eight students came through twelve twelve percent for black 25 percent hispanic nine percent multicultural two percent asian which is a total of 48 percent children of color and 51 white i think that number has gone up children of color um in the last few years but that's what it was in 2019 so for purposes so for the purposes of this display i want you to note that the eoc educators of color these statistics consist of ktf members teachers guidance counselors social workers psychologists aspa the administrators tas clerical and
053binaural family workers so those are all people who are included in this educator of color population so in our school district um out of 19 administrators five of them are of color and you can see the percentage of that i need to read them to you um you have four bilingual family workers and four of them are of color we have 17 guidance counselors three are of color we have 16 school psychologists of which to our eoc um only five secretaries in the district um i don't know exactly how many secretaries there are um the three of them um speech pathologists two are of color we have 19 social workers three of color we have 500 approximately 570 teachers and of those 570 only 40 teachers of color comprising seven percent um we have approximately
054150 tas and 13 are two years in color we have one person of color in the iet department we have no i'm the director of the department of transportation coordinator of safety and prevention director of recruitment and retention and equity and maybe or perhaps the director of equity and exclusion so again please note that the numbers are approximations um so this is the breakdown of our educators of color by school as of december 2021. so chambers elementary school has one person of color crosby has four edison has four grades has one ta gw has eight um two are teachers jfk um has six people of color one is a part-time teacher maya has none the preschool program at meyer has three and in secondary schools jay watson barely has nine people of color no middle
055school has 20 11 of them are teachers and kingston high school has 19 and 12 are teachers my second goal is to develop an eoc network which stands for again educators of color and we've done that so why do you need an educator of color network so what i did is at our first meeting i gave them a survey that asked the question why do we need an educator of color network my reason for appointment is i recognize that many of us may feel isolated and or unsupported in our positions and we appreciate more camaraderie amongst our peers for many years it has been my dream to create a network where our educators of colors can congregate to meet converse network and support each other that's why i thought we needed an educator network why
056others thought so i gave you some results of the survey we need kids to see themselves in us being a person of color can be difficult at times due to lack of cultural sensitivity it is important to support each other and our students another said i've been looking for this to happen forever educators of coloring support as they navigate a predominantly white workspace it's time our voices need to be heard people in my ability assume i was only hired because of my skin color another person writes because i'm tired of feeling like applying the milk because the ratio of students of color to teachers of color is unacceptable so i formed this educators of college network we need monthly and um and we use the network to just for discussions we use it for professional
057development networking social um gatherings and as a means to support each other so we've only been at it since september myself and so we had our first meeting in october and we had a kickoff reception and then in november our discussion was around microaggressions in the workplace dr peterson joined me in the presentation and we have discussion um we get a mini um pd around it and then we have a discussion about it i feel it's important that each time you meet the people who are in attendance have a chance to talk about whatever it is the subject is so can have a dialogue and then in december in december we simply have holiday potluck and different people brought cultural dishes and we just sat back and enjoyed each other's company um and yesterday we
058had our fourth session and we continued our conversation about microaggressions in the workplace and then we talked about encountering it and i have to give a special thank you to season delicious owners tamika and martin duckweed because they have allowed us to have our meetings there monthly at no cost to us and they've been an amazing host and we really enjoyed the space so the next goal was to build collaborative relationships so what i've been doing is reaching out where i can um meet people in the community and also try to build relationships as ways to get students of color who graduate into our school district or even promote student teaching from their schools into the district so that little kids get to see more people of color and we get more familiar and hopefully
059segway into job opportunities for them so some of the relationships i built remember i've only been doing this for us um is with the university of albany um suny newcast um black and brown community conversations i was invited to be participate in that actually we have meetings today at six o'clock um men teach is out of new york city um which has been with us for about seven years now and i also was one of the people who helped bring that to the district we've grown that program over the years um today's teachers to model students that will be active again we just they just hired a new program director shall hopefully build it up and off the ground again um i've been doing a lot of collaboration with dr peterson who's come and worked
060with our eoc network the minister's alliance sweden called black lives matters past schools is an organization that i'm just connected with um black history month kingston and black school of administration brown so that's where we are thus far um with my collaborative relationship so upcoming events but i am going to be attending the hampton university spring virtual career fair i'm going to be doing a spring career week at new albany and the students will call teacher recruitment day as well and we're also in the beginning stages of planning to host our own university job here for kingston city school district provided we don't have too many issues but that is the point and that that's what i've been doing in a nutshell okay thank you very much we have questions i'm sure am i echoing
061again i didn't touch anything okay okay mrs jordan this is jordan did you hear me mrs jordan yes thank you um thank you so much for your presentation in this restaurant it was wonderful to hear all the promise you've made in such a short time and i know that as a board member we have discussed how much it means to us to increase graduation and it just highlights you just highlighted for us with the data the easiest way for us to do that amongst our children of color would be to hire people who have similar backgrounds and experiences and so i really commend you for the report and especially including that data because it's still important for us to keep that in mind thank you so much um dr jacobowitz thank you um mrs armstrong
062thank you for your presentation um we were all very excited when this position um was being implemented and to have someone filling in and doing the work and as miss jordan's accomplishment so much in a short time it's really exciting i also really appreciated seeing the research from johns hopkins kind of juxtaposed against what our schools look like and it really shows a compelling need and i think that's really important so i appreciated that context and i also appreciate the need for i mean we've talked a lot about recruitment and making sure that we can hire teachers of color but the support network that you're creating is also important so that people stay and that this is a comfortable place for people to be and to thrive and create a home here so i'm really
063excited about the event to learn about the upcoming events and the improvement that you're doing and you talked a little bit about a kingston specific job fair and i wonder if you could talk for a minute or two about your vision for that and what that will look like um well in all transparency abby um had planned to do that um a couple of years ago and then coded it so i'm gonna be picking up with where she started to um and we're gonna meet and we haven't had our first meeting yet it's not that's me but my goal would be to um to get educators of color to want to come and interview learn about the district um to provide like flyers or pamphlets that enhance what's special about the district and what may
064be appealing um to come to kingston and to come to live here and to work here um and hopefully look at what our anticipated openings are and then provide opportunities to um to either interview them and then be able to submit them for interview when we get ready to do them or to be able to say this is a person who i think we should hire and and go from there so it's the it's the best way i know to um to try to make a real direct correlation between having availability and getting people on board because one of the biggest things um that i talked about that i proposed this was kingston has a um is good at posting for positions but we don't recruit for positions and there's a big difference in posting
065and recruiting and so that's why i'm trying to do this work now uh mrs lau yes i would like to thank you mr mr this was a great presentation was great and i must say that tonight has been very exciting to be at the board meeting to have two great presentations finally in person kind of but you did such a great job in the past four months that you've had this position so i appreciate all the data that you have given us thank you so much thank you the thing that i hope really sticks out is if you juxtapose the information from johns hopkins university and then you look up the makeup of our elementary schools we have dire there's a crisis and we need to really start addressing them you know hey uh mr
066lamb um mrs armstrong i just want to thank you in again agreeing with everyone else and looking at the data and the executive job was written for you um you've really grown and developed this so quickly i'd like you to speak to the fact that miller and kingston high school seem to have a higher percentage of teachers of color now is that because of it's a younger staff or are the people with us for a long time are we retaining i think it's just by virtue of the fact that they have more teachers in general i mean they're bigger than bigger schools i know that uh mr schieffer has been purposefully um trying to recruit and increase his number like he has a whole plan around this but kingston hospital i think it just looks
067bigger because there's more it's a bigger staff but when you look at kingston high school there's only 12 teachers of color and there's probably over 150 teachers so i don't i don't want you to think that these are numbers when you look at percentages there's a whole different kind of pattern all right i just i look at bailey and miller which bailey's the bigger school and the fact that miller is where it is is a much a better place to be in and as you say our elementary buildings we have a long way to go i don't know if there is if that's a area that we are there aren't as many out there um i'd also be interested in our arts teachers if you could do a comparison on where where are arts departments
068because there are a lot of people of color in in those fields and i don't think we have any music teachers um you would and dr collins do you have another question yes i just wanted to echo my colleagues presentation and we have a lot of work to do that is clear you've made that um therefore it's been reading them but the numbers are so helpful um i also am excited about your position in general and you in it for the purpose of retention recruiting is so important but if we can't maintain our teachers and administrators that are colored then then we're not really improving our community in the ways that we want to and with that in mind that you're building i think that that community is so important for our teachers and administrators
069i am curious about the ways in which um through your surveys and in your discussions with colleagues in this network how other aspects of identity have come out and been expressed in terms of gender identity or ways in which that intersects with other aspects of identity and if there's need being felt by our teachers administrators and students for more support and diversity along other lines other than just racial minds well i think that embedded within teachers of color there are other um black forever categories that also can be covered but the idea right now is that teachers of color who also cross other categories that that's not the hindrance is at the moment just teachers of color you know so it's not limited to any particular teacher just that they have a more ethnic background
070if that makes sense it does thank you i'm just imagining for when i look at the graduation rates for students of color um that that intersectionality that we've read about often that can make graduating even more challenging for those students and therefore having mentors and role models and that fulfill multiple definitions of identity is really important so i was curious just the degree to it to that was being raised in conversations by the people in our community it hasn't come up as a separate issue because it's really inclusive of everyone it's just the the biggest difference is having teachers of color in general so it's you and also i was the principal of a school that had no black teachers either so i i wish i had access to educators of color roundtables microaggressions are
071real and that outlet can be debilitating and negatively affects productivity and good mental health i mean we all experienced it so jeff dealers thanks for all you're doing plus this i also love the data knowing where you are informs your actions going forward it also supports the board's larger request for a district-wide diversity inventory and i appreciate how your presentation reveals the usefulness of such data so thank you you kind of gave us all a dr king holiday gift with mr michael you have your hand thank up mr charles i would like to thank mrs for the great presentation you make and what i present me more is uh i would like to anchor dr collins talking about retention and that's i believe this is very important i'm happy with you reaching out for supported
072collaboration from all of us all all of us other organizations i say hiring will be easy i'll be another step of retaining those pictures so i hope you have a plan for it it means the spicy sir micro aggression is probably the most biggest after movie for the new teachers so as i said tonight we make definitely a big steps towards our goal you're welcome and i think i i hope what you take from this too is that you know hiring teachers of color is one step but we also need to do the step of looking at our structures and our curriculum and making sure that we're being culturally responsive and we're adding that piece as well so it will be very helpful once we get our diversity equity and inclusion looking at those pieces
073in conjunction with what i'm trying to do and knowing that we're purposefully trying to integrate our curriculum to be more effective and more diverse will also be something that will draw educators of color to be here and want to be here and to stay here um okay um mr spicer is your hands still up or is it it's up but i don't know if you want it to be up okay i have a question um so what percentage of the educators of color are participating in the network on a regular basis um well that's a that's a pretty that's a high percentage for any program i think um right and usually when we if we've had lower percentages it's been due to conflicts and people will write to me and say i can't come i
074have a great level meeting i can't come i have to do talks i can't come i have nights you know so people are actively um trying to stay as involved as they can when they can so even when they can't come they still want to know what's going on and i've even had i have a group of teachers there's about eight of them who haven't been able to attend the meeting because of child care so they've really asked me to figure out a way that they can um participate so we're working on it so you know there are other factors that keep everybody from participating but the interest has been you know i've had a lot more people reaching out with questions concerns things they want to talk about so it's kind of working because
075you're reaching out to ask me what should i do about this this is what happens and i've been going around actually meeting people and visiting schools and talking to people one-to-one just to get my faith out there because a lot of the veterans teachers know me but i don't know a lot of the newer educators of college that i've been going from school to school and spending time and meeting them and talking to them as well i would imagine that with a robust network that it would be it'll it'll help both recruitment and retention over the long run i want to echo mrs lao's comment that we've had two presentations tonight on uh increasing uh play time and and educators of color and uh you know i think we we've known over the years that
076the elementary students that by the end of the elementary s years you can identify a pretty big percentage of the students who will not graduate and so we need to we need more educators of color in the elementary schools and we have to let the kids play more and we'll get to that 100 percent goal is i spoke to them about i broke down for them the different jobs that are available in kingston city school district but then i tried to give them information on how you get those jobs you know a lot of people don't know that a lot of our non-professional jobs are um requiring that you take a test that you take civil service tests so when i've reached out to people in communities that are very surprised to find out that
077so i'm also really trying to help educate the community on how to obtain a job in our victory and what do you need so that's been another facet of my outreach with the community okay well thank you very much for your presentation thank you ms armstrong um lastly for the superintendent's report i was just giving a brief overview of the overview but just a brief coping report um there's going to be more extensive communication out with our community in the next couple of days as you all know because i've been informing multiple sets of guidance have come out in the last two weeks new york state department of health and nelson county department of health have discontinued their contact tracing program to focus on case investigation and management we have changed our quarantine procedures in
078line with the newest recommendations with the five-day quarantine adopted for kingston city school district and we're working on further changes we expect to be rolling out several of these things next week including a different um a different kind of test to stay maybe not what we had originally planned the change in the quarantine days made us kind of change our plans as well as the contact tracing information so we're we're working on a larger communication that will be out and for the week beginning of the beginning of next week at the latest of how we're going to move forward given some of the changes in the guidance and the changes in the way the state and the counties are handling of copin copic 19. currently right now in our schools we have just under 300
079students who are who are active positives which is 4.6 of our student body and we have 46 adults who are positive active positive we've received about 4 000 more test kits today and we're putting a plan together for distribution of those so far from the state and the county we've received close to 20 000 test kits so we are getting them out but we are also keeping some back for ourselves for our test to stay program which we hope to be put in place as soon as we can next week um so that's really where we are with coped right now um again keeping moving forward i know a lot of districts have had staffing issues and have not been able to had to go remote we have not experienced that we continue to add
080to and stick with our multi-layered uh mitigation measures and uh we're you know we're like we're just like our community was there's the community seeing increase we're seeing it increase and as the community sees decrease we'll see a decrease ulster county saw a decrease of about 150 today we we've been finding double-digit student cases every day today we only had five so we're seeing greasy maybe that that dip come for here in the district as well but we're gonna uh let's say keep moving forward add to our layers add new different strategies and we'll be again there'll be a larger communication coming out in the next few days dr collins thank you firsthand i'll get to everybody's set okay or how suggestions for how they should or could be used so i'm not talking about
081the instructions to take the test i'm actually thinking about more if the student tests positive in their home it's a little more clear what their immediate action is but then can they at that point is that useful to the school or do they then have to go to the county or what do they do with that information if they're positive or negative yeah so that's a really good question and in the past the positives were reporting directly to the county and that's one of the things that's changing and that's one of the things that we're working on to communicate with parents now that that is no longer an avenue um so in the past they would take the test they would go on to the portal and put their put it there for positive and
082we would get that information so we're we're now working on a different um kind of a different flow chart of how that those kind of results and information that we need will get to us so can i just so will it be um maybe you can't answer this right now or maybe you're planning the next day or two on a public statement but then i guess i'm just curious what um what a test result how that can be used to either allow a student back to school or keep them in school is that result alone worth something or is that what they're still and that's still something that's a little bit under debate um so you know when we first received the test kits a positive test was accepted as positive but a negative test
083with a home kit i should say a positive test the home kit was accepted as positive but a negative test with the home kit was not accepted as a definitive negative so if you were still symptomatic the expectation was you were either going to a quarantine or b get tested with the pcr test though that that thinking is changing in some of the new guidance that we have and we're trying to incorporate that and figure out how that flow will work for us again now that there's a little bit of a change in in the structures and function of the county and state health departments so we're trying to kind of rebuild it here within our district mr lab um are parents still filling out the forms each day for students for their students yes
084and what happens oh with that well right now what we do is we check to see who is and isn't filling out and we contact parents and remind them to please fill that out um really it's really a self-check for as much as a check for us is check self check for parents uh we don't exclude students who did not fill out the fill out the form but it really it's been used as a self check as much as anything for for parents and that is one of the things in the guidance that was recommended that we that is now being kind of phased out so i think as we as we develop what we're going to be doing over the next weeks and months ahead i think that may be one of the other
085tools that we've decided to not use anymore and really we want to see our i would like to see our focus get more around our testing protocols and testing procedures within our schools i think that's where the that's where the difference can be made keeping our kids in the buildings um again working with our working with our lead nurse working with our medical director and and trying to create something that's going to be effective for kingston high school kingston city school district i should say um within within the guidance but using um you know but also using some of the latitude that the audience gives us there thank you it's jordan thank you i was wondering since there still seems to be some confusion about what is effective and what is not and in light
086of what dr collins mentioned the usefulness of the test i wonder if it worked while asking our medical director if he would just come up with maybe top five things that would be true you know in terms of the efficacy of vaccination the efficacy of mask wearing how best to utilize the tests that come home from the school if um you should should you use it if your child is not symptomatic should you save it for a time when they are i just think that there's so much you know you've gotten different guidance every day and i think for people who are trying to figure out how to keep their families safe if we could provide something that is based on fact and data yeah and i agree i think one of the really tricky
087parts about this is that things that were fact and data two weeks ago are now disputed um as facts and data so we're seeing ever-changing um you know recommendations we went from a cloth master's way to go to now know a cloth mask is not a way to go so we're now we're looking to see where we can find kn95 masks or you know the first students because that we we invested in regular masks um you know i've got thousands i understand that things have changed but there are certain things that are still true and i just think that if we could get our medical director to just make recommendations around test the use of the test kit um that everybody agrees would be the best use of it because we're never going to be
088able to provide enough uh for families and i just um i just wish that we could come up with there are certain truths that haven't changed and you know even though the five-day quarantine is different it's still the omicron is still with us and um hopefully there won't be another one but i i just think it would be helpful to hear someone that looks professional that we can rely on that to be true even if it's the best information at the time and that's what science is you know so i would just appreciate it if we could maybe have it either available on the website you know or maybe a presentation is an explore meeting something like that thank you dr jacobowitz thank you um i do appreciate the focus on testing i think you're
089right i think that is an important place to go and i also appreciate all the tests that have been handed out um i think those are good tools um and i do understand that we could have some guidance on and you just mentioned it actually um do we have masks to hand out what kind do we have what what's the status of that and where are we with it yeah we have actually i've just got an inventory again we have thousands of cloth masks to hand out we have fabric we have thousands of um certain you know the paper surgical mask to hand out as well but we don't have thousands of kn 95 or n95s we do have we do have n95s um the n95s that we have you know are you know extremely
090tight extremely uncomfortable they're not the type of mess but you're going to see people wearing um you know teaching or or our students are going to keep on their faces so now we're looking to see where can we find the k n 95 masses but that's not where we were told not that wasn't where we needed to invest so we didn't invest in those areas so we are we're trying to source those which is which is a struggle right now as far as looking to get students and the other thing is you know the k n 95 mass aren't to be worn over and over and over and over again it's not a hundred you know it's not a 180 day mass so um we need to find a source where we can get a
091significant number of these masks for students to wear them if they will wear them but at least give them that option but that's a that's a you know again when we were told to buy masks we stocked up on masks we were told cloth masks and the surgical masks were the way to go and now we're being told that's not the way to go so we're you know we're trying to make the changes but we've already made the investments um and so it's a it's a it's a moving target all the time okay thank you so the tests that we do have they're not being sent home with students are they we've sent we've sent about half of them home with students um at the elementary level you have parents to let us know if
092they would give us permission to put them home put them in bag in their backpacks if the parents who did we put them in the backpack so most of our elementary students did get them taken home in their backpacks our secondaries did drive through in the handouts okay are there any other questions for dr patelino um okay so that will be the end of the superintendent's report uh thank you very much dr patelino thank you um we're going to move on to the board it was a long one it was longwood yes uh uh and we had one uh one presentation that we dropped uh postponed through for a meeting also uh and now we're going to move on to the board of education and we have uh two reports that i think will be
093interesting as well we're going to start with the facilities committee uh with mrs scheer okay thank you very much mr shaughnessy um the facilities meeting was coming on wednesday january 12th and the minutes of the december 15th facilities committee meeting were read and approved and are off in the library this week i drafted the 2021-22 board of education building inspections report was distributed via email and corrections editions and photos were requested of committee mr platform was asked to provide a list of work requested by building principals and head custodians that has been completed since the date of this year's inspection these notes will be added to the draft to create a final annotated report for in addition to report on fire inspections that were taking place at the time of our um january meeting and
094the accompanying notes and photos will be archived in the office of of human resources and business operations so once the annotated report is done it will also be put in a board library the draft is there okay and people who are meeting who are elsewhere on the board have an opportunity to take a look at it and weigh in and i've only gotten two corrections today so um suggested facilities charter were discussed and approved by the committee to be forwarded to the board for discussion and approval and they were also noted in yellow interacting with the board this week in the library now it's not imperative that the board entertain a motion to approve the charter this week but next week i would think we would have had an opportunity to look and question anything
095all the changes amendments were in yellow in the draft and um there's a smaller committee that redefers and then we discussed it at the facilities meeting so please you know take the next couple of well you have until we have to send out the next agenda and and do it and ready forgotten uh consultants we have quite a few guests listening um and uh forwarded the notes with their names to mr curtis kingston city school district in 2021 that was completely released this platform is called copies of the final energy audit results thank you technical and financial analysis to analyze potential savings and to make recommendations for conservation among these are led convergence mechanical controls building rubberization with insulation replacement boilers seat narrators and plentiful controllers our just received confidence will continue this group is
096done especially in consideration of potential energy performance contract mechanical engineer with their team next up is discussion of eastern high school pool project led by jeff andrews from dbl he's replaced mike delena magdalena has gone in fired and anticipated and the posted information was relayed to the district a meeting was requested by donald olson and margarita margarita answered questions pertaining to if october 2022 due to the time required for the stp review and current supply chain delays the district is exploring alternatives for swim team practices at this time that are slated to be air conditioned and that's uh library the separate units come with virtually additional costs and supply chain problems nationwide and timely approval return by scd coupled with timely deliberate materials there's therefore should be the discussion about potentially postponing the product until
097the summer of 2023 something that should be entertained the next week um dr chikubowitz i'm sorry mr chair it's actually kind of hard to hear you in some moments i don't know if that was just me um so i actually have two questions because i just uh january 7th the plan always was that they will go offline second semester and and be ready for these summer practices the specific practices but um because of the well they have to have the discussion of increased the demands and also alternates that were recommended in the plan and mr olson can speak to them i don't know if they've had their meeting he and margarita wanted to meet with bbl and sit down the case used while they go through the increased bids and also the alternates and and
098asked any questions that they had about that but the std has been very slow to [Music] review plans and get things back to districts so that they can begin a project and so it looks like the pool would remain offline into the fall semester okay okay thank you i just did a medicine here yeah october that yearly sometime october that it would be back online and i understand that mr silverstein is looking for alternatives for practice places for the swim teams and um how much over were the bids how much more expensive were they it was another 500 000 and then the alternates might add an additional amount to it and i don't know whether mr olson got a citizen answer to their questions that they have about that well uh did not give us
099any sense that the pricing was going to go down based on the conversations that he and the bbl representative had with the vendors so i think we're talking about pricing which we're not used to which is over our estimate attention and it's in long term there's been some long-term effects from that so it's worth you know getting it done right so um and then the other thing i didn't care mr share was about under the air conditioning something about during summer 2023 there is a plan in the board library and it shows sketches of the schematic drives of what the units look like that was a request on the part of the steering committee last month at the december meeting that we get a sense of how much space they would occupy in the room
100because they manufacture the manufactured unit ventilators at one point in time had a system of converting them so they would also provide air conditioning however they've stopped manufacturing that and it recommended instead a stand-alone unit for the air conditioning so it's another you know amount of space that would be taken out however many of them could be ceiling mounted and that was good news to us it depends upon the the space that they're air conditioning whether or not it will be appropriate through a ceiling mounted unit and they could feed i think it's up to five units five to six units into a roof unit so that they wouldn't have the huge electrical drop they put in individual air conditioning units in each turn so but again they were very concerned about the timeline because
101we're already close to february and the plan would have to be submitted to state ed provide time for comments and uh questions and answers that reform and uh then you know there's still our supply chain problems nationwide so if it doesn't look likely that without going to great expense to provide overtime and off the time you know off schedule hours they could get a project done for the fall of 2023 actually rather it would have to be um it looks like it would be prudent to postpone it but again mr closer can jump in here so we were hoping that this would be done this summer um and because of the issue that nora has just described which is um probably none of you are familiar with uh crown speech ventilation system but crowd street
102had the unit ventilators in the rooms and they provided heat and they provided air conditioning because they had a hot loop and a cold loop running through them and that is what they hope to do at the high school in the main building and now that's off the table and unfortunately um because it's because we haven't been this yet uh it's very late to big and hope to get good pricing for the summer so but so even if we do this next summer which is what they are which is suggesting at this point again another topic that was discussed today in our meeting he thinks it's going to be um 600 000 or a million dollars more because of the difference in equipment that we are going to have to have so you know another
103case of uh things not working out exactly as planned but i asked a question too though um it was my understanding that we are very far under um in terms of the completed project at kingston high school and that we have money left that we will be able to facilitate these projects where or am i you are absolutely correct mark so um so another question i have is because time is of the essence uh in terms of the full project are you satisfied that there is no um the chance that we would receive any bids that will come in any lower because these were the lowest bids and they were pretty much equal to one another we're back to the pool um no i i'm convinced that we are where we are with those bids
104that we probably would not would not obtain any advantages um you know unless we waited a year which we're not going to do so i'm afraid we're probably caught in a um not only is it unfortunately a fitting environment but also this is highly specialized work with a limited number of contractors that actually do it that the work we want to have done at the pool so the pool of bidders is very very shallow no pun intended um but so so we don't expect a better uh bid waiting out you know six months a year or whatever amount of time this is probably the best we're going to do considering the work and considering the environment considering the time that the being of the essence as you said mr sheer we we really think we
105need to move forward so what your recommendation be i mean i made the motion that you need to accept the recommendation of the um you know the physicist and move forward because i think i think we'll have the proper documentation and the proper resolution for the board at the next meeting and we can present them okay but in the meantime it's still it's still part of uh what's left from the bond and we came in how many millions of dollars yes how many millions of dollars what not there that was approved for the work at the high school um it appears to me today that will probably come in at least 12 million so if this would be a difference of a half a million dollars and that's full uh but and potentially a little
106bit more because i don't know what the questions that you have to be about in terms of alternate yeah i think the i think the alternates they felt in their conversations that the alternates were not going to work out in the way that they hoped so or else we're also going to have um a million dollars more in the air conditioning so you know it's but that's yeah that's going to come out okay one thing that we discussed at the boces facilities committee last week was buying some of the equipment to have owner supplied contracts uh where we and i think this would be my maybe for the uh air conditioning uh project if it's not going to be done until have the um have the district by the uh buy the equipment perhaps off
107state bid and then the the contracts for the vendors would be installation only rather than installation and purchase and that might give us time to uh so that we don't come up against uh supply chain issues in the spring of two thousand and yes and the idea was in postponing it for a year we would have time to do all the submissions and all that back and forth questions and any alterations we needed to do the plans and um you know not have to get into a labor environment where we pay a lot of overtime hours to try and do it when students are not in building we can't that doesn't make sense so i think we have we have um by first pointing it we have time to consider some of those things generally
108when we did in the fall for the next summer work we've had much success because uh vendors haven't typically filled up their uh dampness cards yet so postponing you will allow us to probably do it next fall and hopefully have that kind of success okay are there any other questions from mr sheer or mr olsen yes mr michael it doesn't um me of the money and we have invested already so much money for the pool and i hope this is the last work that the pool needs and would be a long term solution well um we certainly hope so in the presentation that we had um was that this would would be certainly um good for the next 50 years at least that would be nice so i think the pool was built in 1978
109or something like that so it's over 40 years old uh so this would take us in the next 40 years 45 years um and that's what happens um and we have to keep at it yes preventive maintenance okay thank you mr shear and mr olson and our next board presentation is the policy committee mrs jordan thank you mr schulze the policy committee met on friday january 7th we had postponed so we finally got together and the minute of the november fifth meeting were approved in our premier library thanks to mr pyramid um as well ladies we have thoughtful discussions on all about policies that were brought before us for update and those suggested scientists there was a policy suggested by nissa on student learning standards and instructional guidelines but we uh discussed it and decided
110that most of the recommendations that they have made were already embedded in policies that we had approved last year and recently on over in terms of equity and uh diversity and all of that and those were approved by you last year and it didn't seem to us to be helpful to just have another policy because the last thing we need to do is make our policy annual longer so we were satisfied that the goals that that policy had suggested were already embedded in our existing policy so we passed on that one um we also talked about um well since mrs bowers actually she seamlessly combined two policies for us one from the from this one of our existing promises real change in prohibition against meal shaming policy and um she worked that in with what
111mr has suggested to our existing policy and we'll have that for you for our first reading after it's reviewed by your attorney so you'll have that to read next time and we also uh mr and i are working on reworking the agenda preparation and dissemination but mostly really um the policy about public comments at board meetings and so we're trying to make that work better for the community and for the board so that we make sure that everybody who wants to have a public comic on the agenda titans or other things is included and we're reworking and rethinking excuse me time limits those kinds of things so we're going to have that hopefully for you at the next meeting as well and i just want to thank everybody because they're really so good at really
112trying to think of how to make these policies useful and it's not always here we really want to try to make them so that they're a good communication tool so that our our whole school community can look at something up and be assured that we're really in the right direction but we don't have anything for your approval tonight we will be meeting again on february 4th and um [Music] any questions for mrs jordan okay thank you mrs jordan for your presentation and your report um okay we're up to the consent agenda are there any resolutions that a board member would like to have pulled from the consent agenda any resolution to pull twice three times i have a resolution to approve the consent agenda as presented okay we have two two motions in the second
113so that covers us any questions about any of the resolutions okay hearing none all in favor of passing the consent agenda please say aye opposed may okay the consent agenda was adopted and i think there's a donation um dr collins can you help us out there sure there is a donation school um i don't have a list of the books here but the selection included both fiction and non-fiction books and they are aligned with the eastern city school district curriculum so thank you to the chambers uh pto thank you so i think we had a resolution of getting rid of a lot of old books at chambers so we're filling up the library again with donations okay so we've passed the consent each other now we're up to old business so we're going to have
114a board retreat on february 9th and the topic will be financing of capital projects and i don't know yet if it will be virtual or in person and i'm not sure yet at the time but it will be that day uh dr jacobits you have your hand up yes i have two points of new old business um i think they're all business um the tnl charter was in our library is it okay for me to move that for approval tonight um has everyone did everyone read it has everyone had a chance to review it it's pretty much it's been very much the same as it has been in the past year i would say or certainly from last year so the big change for this year is that we've included the director of the dei
115director who we hope and once that christmas card will serve on this committee but otherwise it pretty much remains the same as last year so can i do that now or should i wait well you can do it now i mean if we move it and be second and we'll any discussion and we can vote on it okay here's no discussion um all in favor of approving the revisions to the tnl charter please say aye aye opposed nay okay uh they've been approved dr douglas thank you thank you and then my next point of old business is that i currently serve on the district wellness committee um they meet quarterly on wednesdays um my schedule has changed and i can no longer meet wednesday afternoon and so i was wondering um if there was a
116board member i think there are other board members who are on that committee but if there are other another board member who will step in and take my place on that committee yes i want the committee and also this is love so unfortunately i won't be able to make the next vision because it was the most problem thank you thank you very much i'm going to continue to work with them on the policy because that can happen at a different time so that will kind of be coming up and this is jordan i know i reached out to you about that the wellness policy needs to be revised and then approved again this year so i'll continue to do that work but okay is there any other old business new business is there any new
117business okay hearing none we'll move on to board member comments board member uh well we don't have since it's a virtual meeting we only have one uh public participation so we're going to skip over item 12 agenda item 12 and move on to board member announcements are there any board member announcements mr michael taking the um tonight to say that uh officials go face to face sometimes during the holidays was hacked and uh they have been in there all my course things that all the newspaper tributes about the kickstarter only and they have also given my personal picture so i guess like i say i touched on them the past year since we voted against the kickstarter so during the holidays i gave you some thought about whether she wrote for the election so i'm
118going to make america okay thank you mr michael uh mr spicer yes i think i think i'm not moving you're not you're not muted my comment though is even though it just passed i want to wish everyone a happy dr king day i also want to thank the board for all of its initiatives striving for diversity and inclusion diversity and inclusion are not high in the sky concepts adjusting long standing practices of any institution to recognize and support the cultural needs of all of its existing and emerging constituencies is a serious and extremely complicated undertaking both actions like drafting and adopting an anti-racism resolution and paddling an sro committee supporting the brothers and fraud mentoring programs creating a diversity equity and inclusion position instituting a top to bottom district-wide diversity inventory which should be near
119completion constantly reviewing our curriculum to increase areas of cultural competence instituting restorative justice to hold our children responsible for their behavior and also reducing our suspension rate which over the years has disproportionately affected children of color creating a bilingual pre-k program making sure all of our children have equal access to academic programs services and supports and board retreats that foster honest interpersonal relationships that help us recognize our commonalities empowering us to set an example of acceptance from the value each of us brings to this collective work i'm proud dr king's dream has a tangible home and a future with this board and our district and on a personal note i'm grateful to all my fellow board members who have made this person of color feel so supportive and welcome at this leadership table thank you
120all and happy dr king dad thank you mr spicer um there was an interesting article in the new york times on monday i believe it was in the new york times about um so martin luther king senior and martin luther king jr were both originally michael king jr and senior yes and it was an interesting article martin luther king senior attended the was the universal baptist conference in berlin in 1935 and saw what hitler was doing and came back in changed his name and his son's name um and and actually brought the universal baptist convention to atlanta where where they live so it was an interesting article that'll be my board member announcement i guess are there any other board member announcements okay there's no need for a second executive session so i'll ask for
121a motion to adjourn and a second second okay all in favor of adjournment please say aye aye opposed we're adjourned thank you for participating uh we had a very good meeting i believe that's why i was trying to figure out how my my speaker got turned on i didn't touch anything in it just didn't buy