001my god [Music] i feel like i have to say thank you to pta i see these these gifts up here so i want to thank you for your your recognition for your support thank you very much and did the pta want to just come up and say a few words thank you to the board of education for your leadership and commitment to our students staff and community we appreciate your efforts in leading us into the future thank you for all your dedication hard work for our school district thank you thank you thank you so much teachers union we thank you as well we looked on both sides thank you i thank you thank you very much in our school board recognition we'd like to say thank you to the past and president of each school
002board of education members the countless hours you have volunteered to formulate the good goals consistent with the needs for our children please accept this small token of our appreciation thank you very much thank you thank you so much i just wanted just to make a remark about homecoming and thank anybody and everybody who had anything to do with homecoming was certainly a nice celebration out in the middle school field under the tents the football game and the bands and the subsequent hall of fame ceremonies following saturday it's always one of the nicest celebrations in the district to recognize people who have contributed in some small way to long beach life long beach culture we recognize five people or six people and first responders it was a wonderful saturday morning and just a good time was
003had by all but this time i turned the meeting over to the superintendent thank you dr ryan and um tonight was originally supposed to be a work session we did convert to a business meeting with some um you know a small number of personnel items and tonight we are going to hear from our director of english and literacy dr odis about our literacy program it's also our student showcase on student writing and dr aziz will actually end with that so you'll hear the words of our students on their writing to kind of bring to life what she's done in her presentations so good evening everyone i'm really excited to share with you the work that we've been doing in the area of writing over the past year and i'll start with the elementary grade so
004last year was our first year with the teachers college writing unit study implementation and our initial goals focus primarily on process writing volume and of course supporting our teachers with the implementation so this year in year two we are continuing to work toward those year one goals especially with the transition year and then have done some strategic planning to emphasize the importance of conferring and small group work during writer's workshop so i'm going to share with you some of the nuances and the highlights of what it's like to be a writer at each grade level and i'll start with 8-2 so writers when they start their journey in kindergarten first and second grade they're going through the writing process very quickly and very often and they're writing in booklets that are kept in a writing
005folder throughout the week and in kindergarten many writers enter the writing process through composing with pictures and then labeling pictures with initial sounds students learn many strategies for planning and oral rehearsal like touching and telling across pages and using sketching as a plan for writing at every grade level there's an emphasis on partnerships partners are really important in writing workshops so students are sharing their work with peers daily um besides partnerships with peers writers also form partnerships with published authors through the use of mentor texts so writers from the very beginning are studying the craft moves and the technique from published authors with hopes that they emulate those correct moves and techniques in their own writing you can see some examples there we also are placing an emphasis on the importance of conferring between teachers
006and students one-on-one so that writers are working on individual writing goals and then also small group instruction during writing workshops so that sometimes writers are grouped together by similar need and teachers are supporting them in their individual process moving on to grades three to five there are some differences at these grade levels so for example students are moving from writing in multiple bookbooks a week into a writing notebook they have opportunities to compose in both print and digital spaces and they're not going through the writing process as quickly they actually slow down and they spend more time in each stage of the process learning certain strategies for those stages of the writing process so for example here you see writers practicing multiple strategies for the early stages of the writing process like generating ideas and
007planning students can pose in both print and digital spaces many of our units of study give students opportunities to collaborate and write together students practice multiple strategies for revisions and we introduce peer feedback as a formal form of giving suggestions for revision throughout the writing process so students read each other's work they give targeted feedback based on what they've learned during instruction and then they use that feedback during revision stages of writing so usually they're very happy to share with their peers and at the end of every unit of study at all grade levels there is a celebration and teachers and writers have been working really hard to come up with creative ways to celebrate at the end of each unit so they have themes publishing parties they share their work with family members school
008community members town community members uh writers from the class put their own books into classroom libraries and students really see the value of writing for a specific audience during this time so here's an example of a second grade class last year you know we didn't really have a lot of visitors in the building so um the class made the invitation on the right they sent a zoom invitation to family members and they were able to have a publishing party and share their work one third grade class at the end of their opinion writing unit invited todd mission to hear their ideas writers are putting their own books into classroom libraries uh writers are sharing their writing with their peers almost like a book talk at barnes noble to really celebrate authorship and our schools have
009become celebratory spaces of writing so if you walk in our classrooms and our hallways you're going to see student work that reflects the work they're doing in writing workshops in a first grade reviews unit students wrote reviews based on local businesses and then shared that writing with the business which was very exciting for them and then yoga maps were a very hot item last year so both in our virtual school and in our physical uh in-person construction students wrote letters to mr epstein here here's an example from a virtual class uh in their opinion writing unit showing all the reasons why they should get yoga mats so mr epstein came to that virtual class he granted them their yoga mats and this also happened in our school buildings so students were super excited to receive
010their yoga mats and it actually shows the power that writing and your voice can have to maybe get what you want um so that's what happens during instructional time in writer's workshop and we really hope that that working writer's workshop translates into authentic experiences so for example this year some students are entering a fiction storyworks writing contest last year fifth graders wrote letters to their teachers um third grade class wrote their own version of an i survived book memorializing their experience of learning through a pandemic and i survived is a very popular series with the upper elementary grades and they're able to do this because we have so many tools during writing workshop that supports writers through their process so if you were to walk in our classrooms you see anger charts that look like
011this that serve as artifacts of learning and they're also resources that students reference throughout the day as they work and you can see that teachers add scaffolds and modifications to these charts on the left there's a demonstration text on the bottom on the anchor chart on the right you can see that there are scaffolds to make sure that we're meeting all the needs of our students in the class our classroom spaces are designed for workshops so teachers have kidney tables document cameras tools visibles for writers to see and our teachers are tools for our students so daily uh students are seeing teachers do demonstration writing so that they can see what writing sounds like through think aloud and also looks like in on the board as teachers right in front of them we have many
012paper choices for writing as tools all of our units are attached to checklists that help students with reflection and revision all of the adults in our classroom support our writers and then of course as i mentioned they have each other our teachers are developing systems and routines for workshops like think cloud and modeling and then developing systems for writing conferences on the right hand side there all of this work happens through a very collaborative effort so we partner with teachers college and receive staff development from them last year that was virtual on the top but now our staff developers are coming into our buildings and working with our teachers we're very excited to actually meet them they kind of came to life this year we regularly as administrators have reflection meetings to talk about how
013we can support the work moving forward i meet with teachers at the beginning of every unit to go over unit goals and then this past summer i taught an optional class for teachers that was focused on teaching writing in small groups to work for that goal of putting an emphasis on small group instructions over the past year we've also refined our system of organizing writing as it travels through the grades with students so that teachers have an organized portfolio of student writing that they can view to start the initial goal setting process last year when i presented on the literacy work i had shared that we were piloting patterns of power um to explicitly teach groundwork conventions so that went very well so we've added patterns of power to our scoping sequence and we've done
014a little bit of work with connecting with pre-k just to introduce some of the tools like paper choices and writing utensils so that when students in prepaid transition to kindergarten they have seen some of the routines of writing workshop we have the sierra transition to using the teacher's college reading units of study and it's going really well um our first unit is actually coming to an end this week and we've set some initial goals we are raising time for reading workshop every day we're following the reading workshop model and then of course supporting our teachers with implementing these new units of study knowing that we were going to make this transition last year we did a lot of work as a team to prepare for the launch in september at the end of last year
015so we have staff development from teachers college this year we made sure in our master schedule that we were dedicating instructional time to reading workshop every day and then also a small group instruction period every day we are um placing extra support on our readers in their early and emergent reading phase in kindergarten by pairing a reading teacher with every kindergarten class in some cases we tweaked our ais reading schedule to make sure that students are based on needs so that they can get targeted instruction and reading teachers are working with all grade levels at the beginning of this year teachers were very excited so we're students to receive brand new classroom library books new book bins and every child received a book baggy to go back and forth between home and school to make
016sure that they had books to read in bold spaces and as i said we are wrapping up unit one this is a very exciting time to actually share this presentation with you last week i had the pleasure of attending some kindergarten celebrations and i just wanted to show you that you know even through masks you can see like the big smiling faces of kindergarten students and then their school community cheering them on in their end of unit parade and celebration so moving on to the secondary level um last year our primary goal was to add in writing units of study that were reflective of the next generation learning standards so we did that and this year our goal is to really work on the implementation of those units and really focus on writing as a
017process in sixth grade we are in our year one implementation of the tc writing units of study and in grades nine through twelve we did put a comprehensive research experience into um our units of study and i'll share that with you in just a minute or two in grade six we followed a similar process as our k-5 rollout for the tc writing units our sixth grade teachers have been collaborating so much in these first weeks of school to make sure that they are supporting writers if they enter middle school and then in grade 7 through 12 as i mentioned really working on writing as a process with multiple rounds of provision and we also created a new writing portfolio that's digitized that students will have with them in their drive and they're going to collect
018artifacts with their writing that are outlined in the by the new york state standards that they'll have with them and here are just some images of the writing work at the secondary level getting started this year and here's our new research trajectory that we put in our curriculum so we designed very intentionally this path from 9 to 12. in english 9 the reading focuses that students are learning to read in read for research and informational tests and then they're going to write an annotated bibliography and do a formal presentation of research they're going to have a contrasting experience in english 10 where students are reading to research fiction in short story clubs and then they're going to write a formal literary argument paper these two contrasting experiences will prepare students for whatever path they take
019in 11 and 12. so you can see that whether a student is in english 11 or hl1 they're going to read to research opinion or argument and write from sources and then senior year no matter which course they're in is more is a culmination here where we put these skills together um in english 12 we have a community research project hlc we have our higher level essay and in super writing research skills are applied throughout that course we also talked as a team a lot about how this foundational work in english can support students in their content area classes as well because they are engaging in the research process in other classes so we're hoping that that supports students in other classes at the middle school in the high school we have new electives that
020are focused in the area of writing so in the middle school we have a graphic novel writing class and in april of last year jerry craft is the first author to ever win a very choreographic novel actually visited the students taking that class and talked to him about his process as a writer and here are just some student reflections about their first year in graphic novel writing a lot of them focus on the appreciation for the multimodal nature of the course and how they learned other skills like time management because they did work on a graphic novel publication over time you know which takes a lot of stages and work in that process this year we have a new journalism course where students are simulating a publication career and in our curriculum we've created many
021opportunities for students in the class to connect with other areas of the high school like the yearbook the new studio we're in the early stages of a partnership with students writing for the herald so that they're getting a really diverse experience in the area of journalism we did do a little redesign to our approach to academic intervention services through creating a writing seminar course and this course gives students more time in school for writing under the guidance of their teacher and in our planning we saw that many students recommended for writing seminar or english language learners so we're in the early stages of a partnership with nassau community college in the area that works with elves at nassau and we're talking with them about what's done in remedial courses at huntsville community college that we
022can remedy at the high school level so that students don't have to pay for courses that are not credit they can enter college and begin taking credit bearing courses immediately our students and talented writers continue to earn scholastic art and writing awards for their achievements and then last year during the pandemic as an english department we continuously checked in with students many different ways using a survey was probably our most popular way to get data to see what students were thinking how they were feeling and they they gave us such powerful powerful reflections um and we put those together an educational leadership magazine actually recognized the the power that our that our students voices had and they published a piece about them in september this year called student perspectives on a pandemic and shared this
023in a national magazine for educators to share it which was pretty powerful so everything that i just described here fits wonderfully into our new profile of a graduate so things like being hard-working self-management skills perseverance that's all part of writing workshops and writing as a process instead of only approaching writing as a task so we want students to be able to sit with their writing engage in a process get feedback from others and work on something over time and independence is that is the purpose of engaging in a workshop model so i'm going to let the students finish telling you this story about what it's like for them to be writers in long beach public schools [Music] right or of colombia schools have been developing their writing identity they have embraced each stage of the
024writing process have been making choices about writing topics and have explored the idea that writing gives us a voice to share about what we are passionate for come join me as we travel through each of the buildings starting at west school and traveling east to hear from writers themselves about the work that they have been doing let's go [Music] what other sounds do you hear um [Music] beautiful job [Music] i fell what are you doing as a writer [Music] i [Music] then what did [Music] so we played some soccer with my cousin [Music] is [Music] one day me and my friends were playing in a fort and then we play with our dolls and then we entered these houses the [Music] people i care about where my brother is my mom and my dad places
025i've lived in and visited puerto rico uh long beach and manhattan we're working on our second story after winning so many baseball games we have we have to face the best chance of the league the gold's full states i was so nervous i couldn't say so bad that happened to you yeah we touched the blank paper and we told our stolen story [Music] what we're doing is we're basically annotating on a student's writing to see what they did on this writing checklist whoever is mark circle and now we're working on finding something about description action as needed i don't really think she did this because most of the [Music] dogs so one way to generate ideas is by thinking of first time blast times or times that like owl was remembered and so my first
026idea was my grandpa's 80th birthday my whole family was there all my cousins it was like so much fun but i didn't choose it because there were too many things going on and then i did a splash which i've only gone there once and it was my first time it was so much fun and that's like that was definitely an easier one to write about hello my name is [Music] sure [Music] well today we are learning about how pitbulls affect the united states and today you guys are not so right now we're taking notes on whether you believe should people's events or should they not be banned so we took a debate in class and we all agreed to do this with learning how to create a future night journals and it wasn't their time
027high school overstory or real life this class i like this class because we get to learn how to use these new technology and like storyboard and get to express hi my name is anna i'm a member of taunton writers and my goal as a writer this year is to both learn spanish and english and to develop them in the writing that i do every night my name is ryan i'm in 11th grade i'm taking journalism right now we are doing an interview i chose to interview my soccer coach leo palacio he's a pretty interesting guy he's had a long career in sports and now in coaching he's pretty important to the school what i'm doing now is i am writing down my questions to ask him which i'll be interviewing tomorrow friday and right now
028i'm just ordering the allen one's interview and i'm pretty excited to use the funny guy this is when i was back in mexico and i would go get the groceries with my mom and i was it was my first time trying grasshoppers so i really enjoyed them and i decided to start taking them to snack time for school in elementary school and everybody you know everybody's faces will be like right now in english we're working on personal narratives um so this is an excerpt from my memoir it took me barely a week after getting the instrument to learn of its negative history fuels are unpopular unpopular enough that there are pages online dedicated to viola jokes that have been accumulating since the 1700s that's 300 years at the bottom of the musical hierarchy and you
029keep a meal from getting stolen put it in a viola case i wrote my college essay and i titled it little miss talk a lot i decided to do this because throughout my whole life everyone has said i've talked a lot and i wanted to write something that was different than most people and also something that i've lived through my whole life so this is a little bit of what i wrote so to conclude it i wrote conversation is not something that should be stifled it is good for the heart it is good for the soul it is good for humanity the art of talking has brought me closer to so many individuals allowing me to gain insight so many different perspectives in life wouldn't the world be a better place if people would just
030stop and have a conversation i've been writing since eighth grade and writing fiction and poetry but over the past four years my writing has advanced and um i went from being sort of uh i loved to write but i was inexperienced i didn't really understand um the creative process or sentence structure and that kind of thing and through the talents writers program and english class my writing progressed and actually won two scholastic art writing silver key awards um so i'm just going to read a short example from a poem i wrote that one a silver keyboard called babylon a dolphin soul god drunk on sweat from battle collapses a black horse starts by his salt-filled eyes and light runs out from his neck the news travels to abdallah's father leaving the queen's after a win
031sultan an ancient man from nineveh falls to his knees in the rain under an olive tree he sustained his best stretching the wine dark sea but today he is draped in black slipping in and out of consciousness my college i think is about a big life-changing event that happened to me a few months ago that kind of sparked a period of personal growth i had started with something that i previously written and was inspired to expand on it um but in the beginning of my essay flipping through the pages of grace and yuri i paused to think about naomi vision character how her life is suddenly filled with gowns and fancy food and beautiful terraces yet she feels cold and empty and done so our sister is torn away from her and she has no
032clue if she will be okay however gone inside of her lungs for the life she once had and i think to myself i understand hi i'm samantha audio and i'm going to be talking about navigating um in english class you learned how to reflect on life experiences and how to write based on our life experiences and how it allowed us to grow as a person in my college essay i wrote about a teacher mr spitz who really taught me how to become the best math student that i could become he inspired me to want to pursue math in the future and he taught me how to incorporate math in my life and also to make it fun um after his passing i was really touched and i wanted to continue to make him proud even
033though he's gone um in the future i want to continue doing narrative writing because it allowed me to express my feelings and to grow as a person i hope you enjoyed all of the work that you saw to help bring alive the writing process and help our students develop as writers so we look forward to the next stages in our development as a group of writers [Music] so hopefully the students brought to life a lot of what i had shared with you in the presentation and in honor of the recognition week for the board of education i want to thank you for all the work that you support in our areas of reading and writing thank you [Applause] [Music] wow thank you so much for a wonderful presentation especially where you love the way you
034entertain students you should really see their engagement how excited they were to share all of their writing with you on the camera and as well as with your peers so i was actually looking at your last year's presentation the literacy landscape and i can see the progression and i know that it took a lot of work on your part than with our teachers so i would like to publicly thank you for that i know this does not happen in a day it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort so thank you so much for all of that um i just actually have just a couple of questions do you feel that first of all the reading books and the writing books do you feel that you have enough of the resources that
035you need to support the program for the the reading years right yes so you were talking about the book bins yes yeah so we we did that work um we ordered new picture books i think i was flying last year and then we did the classroom library update um each year classroom libraries you know should be updated so that's definitely a continued resource that you know we look forward to adding to our classroom libraries but to start the year um our classrooms are they're beautiful they have so many books um kids are are so happy with them the book baggies are working out great so to start the launch is we're in a great place um and i look forward to updating those libraries each year for the the continued work okay okay great yeah
036um how much how much time a day do the students have to participate in their writing program i'm sure it varies per year but right about 45 minutes a day so it's a period of writing workshops and depending on the high grade level you know younger kids we might start out with 30 or 35 minutes and we're filled our stamina to 45 throughout the year but average you know we work up to that i'm sure you've seen a lot more changes so do you have like another big thing that you can share with us what other positive changes have you seen from the writing and reading programs since going to tc i think student voice like to talk about their process they have an identity as a reader i mean just watching that celebration last
037week in kindergarten was the best moment of the year you know they have identities as readers and writers um you know when i walk into a classroom and i talk with a student you know what are you working on as a writer what are you doing in reading workshop today they're able to talk about their process and i think for students to have ownership of that work is absolutely incredible and that's because teachers use that language to talk to their students daily so it becomes just what the community is working on you know that's wonderful i just have one more question you mentioned um briefly that if welcome to nasa community college about some real courses what what areas do you see our students needing more guidance in so when we looked at not only
038in the context of writing seminar um also we're gonna do this work in our english 11 and 12 classes um we started talking with representatives from representatives from nassau community college about what they see writers needing english language learners when they take remedial courses and we want to work to you know attend that at the high school so that students don't have to take courses in remediation as much at the college level so we looked at some of their writing prompts that they give in those remedial courses we looked at some of their evaluation tools and we want to kind of emulate that and take some of that work and implement it into our programming so that they feel more ready in the area of writing once they enter college um this is kane dr
039diese and i participated in a meeting yesterday with um nasa community college's english chair and professor because we're actually trying to align our english 12 course so that our students could get six unique credits for taking the english 12 course um which would be a tremendous benefit at a very low price for our kids and they commented that we've already done so much the alignment work that it will be a pretty short cut to get us to the point where we'll be able to give our students credit for that that's what that's great thank you and i'm also very happy that you mentioned that you're engaging with students in the writing process and that you're teaching them the perseverance that they need to be a writer and i do think that's very important and i'm
040so happy to see that you are sequencing this so appropriately throughout the grades thank you thank you thank you so much [Music] just to stick with the nasa community college aspect permanently so are we only doing that with respect to our ell learners are we doing that with respect to all of our students all of our students in english 12 um to align with english comp 101 102 in the context of writing seminar it's all students who are participating in that but we did identify that there are a number of english language learners in that seminar course so we want to support them in their language development relative to their writing development because i seem to remember and this is a few years ago now i seem to remember some crazy statistics that like 50
041of students nationwide had to take remedial courses when they got to college but i i also have a friend who is a professor who teaches freshman writing and she says she's a fall so i'm so thrilled to hear that i know for my own son that he knew how to write that he got out of multitasking so i i know that it was already good and since i said here that we're doing even better than that is thrilling because i would hate for any um a couple of reasons so the contrast um the the dark marker on the white paper also pencils could be very distracting with erasers and writers become fixated on erasing you know what they perceive as errors so we want to really concentrate on the thoughts getting the ideas on the
042paper and then work on some of those editing strategies later uh so that's why we do flip things and then we cross back over to english i hope they are uh i was thrilled for thrilled to see that we were including grammar as more than a pilot yeah um i i can't tell you how how how important that it is but i'm glad that we're finally making a concerted effort to work on this grammar just and i ask this question every year please don't leave me out nope are the kids starting cursive writing yes they are it started two weeks ago and what grade sir and then is that it they have it in third grade and then that's it they're formally taught in third grade and they have materials for it okay um okay
043i think it's great i think what we're doing is great um oh there was one thing at the end oh could you send us a chance and maybe put on the on the website this article that you're referring to at the end of your presentation sure absolutely uh educational leadership yeah absolutely right i would love to meet them that's it thank you so much thank you i appreciate it thank you for just having such a nice grasp on your presentation it was clear um to me i know it's not easy to get up here and present and you just did it with such queries and it just shows that um not only you're comfortable with the information but you're really kind of living it with the students so i appreciated your presentation thank you um
044one thing i noticed that i loved um and also in here is the peer um uh reflection you know that they share with each other and they're able to take it in business we do that all the time and it's a skill um that if you don't know when you're young it can be intimidating you know to go to a co-worker um so i just think that that's a really great thing that i haven't seen done often but overall just beautiful presentations of course having your children um it's one thing for you to present it but when we can see them moving in and i love that you scanned all the grades and it started with the little kids which are just so adorable with them all the way up you know to our seniors
045who are in these you know high level classes just did a beautiful job and thank you for sharing with us thank you i appreciate that great presentation thank you for the uh spotlight as well uh quick question how we uh preserving the higher level grades uh not needing to rely on computerized typing and texting and shorthanding and using autoforex spell check before using it mostly trying to figure out how are we preserving the tangible skill of writing without automatic relying on technology that's a great question the the teachers in the english department actually embrace print still um so for example they may do like an on-demand argument piece hand written right and then maybe at the end of the year they'll see it you know on the chromebook so there's definitely in general a mixture
046of print and digital composition larger pieces are composed most often on the chromebook but there is an integration of print work as well they really value that especially in the revision yeah i just do appreciated your sentences go through pre-heated twelve and twenty minutes which was wonderful that's right i had a few concerns first was i i expressed doubt about the columbia program not necessarily the intent of the program but offering it during colbit and i thought that our experience might be compromised because of covenant because of the virtual experience so having gone through the year and through kobit where we compromised in terms of what we did we maximized the columbia contribution despite setback i think we did um just to speak to the staff development they were extremely instrumental in helping our teachers
047learn the units learn the goals learn instructional practices and then teachers it was it was actually a bright light you know a lot of that work that was shown the images was from last year with the publishing parties and kids celebrating so i definitely think that writing still flourished last year but also considering the challenges that's why we are working on those year one goals this year as well just to continue to support teachers make sure everybody's comfortable so we are conscious of that my second point is just the notion of a short essay i've also raised in the past that now the academic areas introduced beyond the multiple choice and beyond scantrons a short essay that not just be writing in english but then be assured as a history test or science test or
048something on the side of writing are you seeing particularly at the upper grades in the secondary when this is in fact happening in content area classes yes um i don't know on the day-to-day to be honest i know that they are part of regents exams and students need to write to demonstrate their understanding so you know i'm sure teachers are supporting students with that work i hope that you and your departmental meetings are asking your colleagues in those academic areas to include that i know it might be tough to grade but i do think the kids need as much writing experience as they can across the different disciplines the third part i'd like to take you back to mrs veroner and that was my concern with spelling grammar potter's speech and those kinds of uh
049fundamentals i guess for once in another word so there's a little girl a little less and she began the essay excuse me me and my best friend so when would there be a revision of that little girl's essay in terms of proper use pronouns and how long would that go before she would be asked to revive or be corrected would it be some kind of feedback in terms of content in the case of that writer probably a day or two after that when i filmed that video so she was in the initial stages of the writing process she saw that she had her sketches and her approximations she practiced the touching and telling and as far as her small moment that she was working on that you know that was a comprehensive small moment so
050the next step would be and there are sessions in our units of study that focus on spelling and editing to teach her some of the more conventional skills of writing but that happens over time you know especially in india too you know i'm certainly dating myself but seven and ten years ago you've gone to every elementary class you'd see the sandwich and you see the model of writing and yes every class that went into it was the ela hamburger so i'm happy to see that i didn't notice a hamburger at all and many of the videos that were up yeah to me that alone is progress in terms of writing within conceptualization if you had anything to do with the elimination of the burger i'm particularly grateful thank you for that i guess my last
051piece is just concerning the evaluation of language or english whatever we call it through the grades in writing or is uh creative writing or expressive writing or just writing in general a separate category four for children three to twelve so at the elementary level there are indicators that there's really an indicator that matches for each stage that you kind of saw in the video um and it is evaluated on a one to four scale and then in the secondary level we we talk about this all the time you know because so much of the emphasis is on process work but we still live in a zero to 100 world you know grading at the middle school high school um so we use rubrics we use checklists for evaluation and we you know we work together
052as grade level teams to use those process tools to convert to grades and my final question is concerning law the application do we feel that our best students are getting enough opportunities in terms of writing within the lock program within writing within when they're in yeah writing a substantive part of that program or is it more a theme writing is integrated into um i don't think it's thought of the way that it is in writing workshop but it's definitely one way in which students express themselves right once again thank you for the presentation thank you student organization announcements okay questions or comments from the public on the knights of gender only they have approval of minutes for executive session and regular meeting of october 12 2021. they have a second second discussion no discussion with
053space he said yes okay yeah oh yes yes conway yeah thank you ryan um first we'd like to uh i asked the industry to be the resolution regarding an appeal of the student suspension he resolved the board of education of the long beach city school this year by denied the appeal of the suspension of a student identified in confidential attachment a dated october 22nd 2021 and authorizes the board of president to notify the parent of its decision in writing thank you okay do you have a motion you have a second okay space yeah so yes i just like to ask what is uh the chase love formula choose love yes so that's uh the piece of our sel program that we rolled out um at our elementary middle and high schools um so it talks
054about things like gratitude and passion going through all those different parts of the choose love program and working with students to you know incorporate that in their own lives and we feel that's a significant offering for after school in terms of the day in terms of the program yes so um that's really just the vehicle you know to go through other different activities you know students will be able to use the juice love formula to also participate in different uh writing activities reading activities different stem activities so it's just going to basically be the vehicle in which they complete those other activities i just wanted to raise maybe this time maybe it's kind of a new business but i i was just concerned when we talked about i call it the guided money it's just
055the money that's coming in terms of covenant and code relief that we're trying to offer programs for kids to help them to reach school but i was just concerned about band and music because in the past i know we talked about the academics i know we talked about reading we talked about seo things social emotional learning things but it may be me i don't quite remember any kind of conversation around music or music enrichment and i was wondering if it could be possible between now and the allotment of this money that we consider offering whether it's instrumental or particularly elementary level the kids have lost valuable instructional time with their respective instruments some kind of remedial or enrichment or compensatory whatever we want to call it programs along the lines of this because i think
056that would be a substantial offering for many of our kids we certainly can do that by growing the first round of our elementary enrichment clusters um you know we allowed teachers to kind of identify within the girl goal of advancing learning um the things that they wanted to offer but as we move on through the year we could make some additional suggestions for things that would fit that i certainly think um you know music lessons and even our lessons are a valuable part of that as well any other discussion okay the solution b so we're voting on two now right yeah that was a conversation on one of additional reads and the adoption of advised policy publication school facilities and again we i just revised this and went through the revision process a few weeks
057ago we did add something just to clarify the fees that we charged organizations and make sure that was referenced any devotion well it's that's because of the policy okay uh the our second emotion of your discussion excellent question um the reason i had brought this up was because there was the discrepancy between the the form and the positive what happens to the money that we collect is it going to align do we break even when we when our buildings are being used from early morning until late at night like what happens financially with all of that yeah it's generally just to cover our expenses because uh that this is anything to add to that yes so the revenue goes into the general fund and there's a code um you know these um things like this
058many speeds are a code like that and it does cover our additional costs so for example if there's some sort of a use of a room and we would have cleaned it in the morning and we don't have to clean it before the use there's no additional cost here but it's something in the way that something's being used that musician before and after that that's something we would go for and that revenue goes into okay together any discussion i have one question on what is super software stars that's using our facilities is that a local organization i believe it is this is i don't have that think it's nice to foreign other school districts using our pool so what a great resource we have within the district community and for others okay thank you mr
059pace yeah yes board of education additional to her ole miss penny first of all last time we had a meeting i was asking mr devito about the route to high school and my frustration really was that the leakage of the route not anything that mr devito had done so you know i'm sorry if i came across this taking frustration out on you i didn't mean to do that but um since it is raining how it is as you would have liked so as you may know back in 2014 we had a part of the roof done in anticipation of the majority of being done through the energy performance contract and last night or over the last night you know the heavy rains this morning that showed that there's still some leaks even though the pet
060roofing contract has come over the last few weeks but the good news is that we've been then able to identify better we think resourcefully so that hopefully that will help a contractor who's still under warranty to come and address the concerns of you know over the past several weeks we've had a lot of progress we've been really experiencing and i've learned that it also depends on how the wind is blowing how the rain is coming in in terms of where actually we're seeing some more penetration but what we are seeing in terms of a pattern is that the water is coming through the stair tower so it has something to do with the way the tapping of the roof was adhering to some of the the wall of the stair tower walls so hopefully we're
061getting closer to identify the source of the problem it's a real source of frustration and disappointment to the facilities department because we were really counting on the new roof that was done a couple of years ago to really solve all of our leak problems but we'll keep working on it and it's all fixed and again we have these companies under warranty and we'll keep having them come until its office okay um is anything damaged this time i know that it comes in and it creates a situation where you can see it coming down a wall where you can see it dripping down from the ceiling maybe there's a ceiling tile that's damaged but that's something major that could be replaced but i didn't hear about any specific items that were damaged i just saw some
062photos this morning and i had some conversations with the facilities group to see how we can further adjust the problems that we saw from the storm well i'm sure you will be very diligent on making sure that our work is fixed so we don't have these issues anymore yeah thank you it's something that we really are working towards because it's something that's a priority for us and you will keep us updated i'm sure yes thank you also the girls bathroom of course when we have a deadline for a deadline we have a timeline for renovation yes so um we've been trying to do the short-term fixes by adjusting the doors every day we did order new uh these are the girls locker room toilet partitions over in the gymnasium we ordered the new partitions this
063should be here by the end of the week and they'll need to be fixed when we don't have school and session either on election day um or sometimes soon thereafter but we're shooting for something soon against the contractor and can come in but the items should be on thank you also some happy news this weekend i was able to go and watch some of the badminton from nassau counties that we had at our gym i have to say everyone was so happy to be there the students the thrills there are many boy bag making teams out there but we do have and our students really have a wonderful time they play great we should have some sportsmanship i heard so many positive things about our students that it would just just really make my heart
064flag and then also on saturday i was able to go to a volleyball game at volleyball tournament prophecy in anthony's that our varsity team participated in and i just want to say i i was so pleased to see um not just the sportsmanship of the parents and the students but the bus driver hourglass driver came and cheered on our kids like he was one of the parents he was absolutely absolutely amazing and i just thought that just showed how much our long beach staff cares about our kids so i i thought it was just a really wonderful way for the girls the girls that we're all one family um i just have really one more question just to follow up on last week we heard anything from the state about any is that right i
065said one thing on new business uh sentiments earlier about the wall of fame and homecoming was a great weekend i also want to give a shout out to um leto parents uh and the pta and the administration there for what i heard was an awesome caller i wasn't able to make it because it worked but i heard it was off the bus does that make any sense but yeah great job everyone else i have a couple things um so at the last meeting we had talked about the national school board association letter and the fourth author i speak to research that um i just want to give you a little of the results of that of my investigation uh even though we know that everything has changed since then i did speak to the executive
066director of lisboa which is our state school boards association who indicated that that no input had been sought and that the letter and the and the the relief sought by the national school boards association from the department of justice was not absolutely new york state that um that these are state our new york state people has done a survey and that 80 percent of supreme board members felt that there weren't any problems that were disrupting meetings to the extent that that letter indicated they also said that no of the mr schneider also said that no states were asked for input that this was an internal management decision on the part of the national school boards association so my question to him was well what does what do they do for us because if they're going
067to do things that without asking for our input um and because then well since then some friends that has been watching are now watching national school boards has distanced themselves from the letter they said they're sorry they sent it they didn't mean it and they don't really think it's they think that safety of school remembrance is an issue but that they shouldn't have set the letter out the department of justice who responded immediately to the initial letter has not correspondingly said that their efforts are going to be shut down so we don't exactly know i think that that might be resolved tomorrow um but but mr schneider at the school boards association did indicate that uh national school boards does a lot of lobbying on the campus school districts on a federal level in terms
068of idea e-rates mandate relief those kind of those kind of bigger issues because i have seen since then in the news that there are states that are withdrawing from the national school boards association so um new york state has put the national school boys association on notice that they are going to review their membership at the end of this year's ask to make sure that their needs that the needs of new york state school boards are being met by the national association before they are going to review their membership so i think that we as a district are a member of national okay so keep an eye on on the news because the department of justice is talking to the senate tomorrow who's allegedly going to ask them if they're going to stop going after
069parents who want to see what's good um i um i do know that we were supposed to have the meeting tonight at west school it was our originally scheduled location that is meeting we like to get around into the district once a year for other buildings for meetings and i understand that because we've covered in social discipline this is the biggest space so we want to stay here um but i would i would hope that at some point in the spring when we're when we're back to normal if you will if we would be able to reschedule that area westfield of course of course okay um i see that the high school drama is scheduled in is that going to be a live production it is is it also going to be streamed or yes
070we're going to do both for those who can't okay beautiful great thank you um and the last thing i had asked about the uh work at the westside community center is and you said there were supply chain issues is that job now or should i forget about that for a while ask about it later um but i think we should just talk about that next one what we need to talk to you about that offline oh okay um okay any word on our operating stat operating surplus deficit for the 2021 school year sure so the um financial statements have not been finalized by the external order yet but we do have a pretty good working number that it seems as though we will be able to do the transfers that we had arranged to do
071uh last spring or test the regular megaperson excuse me july 1. the board passed the resolution to transfer approximately five million dollars back into the capital reserve fund and approximately 1.1 i think it was in the teacher's retirement fund retirement system reserved fund and we'll still be able to have the three million dollar buffer uh for fema reimbursement that we've had in kept um the past several years the four percent and an additional 3.2 million dollars that we'll be able to do at some point used to um appropriate to the tax code for the following year as well as put some money into other reserve funds holy moly so in addition to the four percent yeah six point one and forget the three million with the second three million now so in addition to that
072we have 9.3 million dollars in addition to the four percent well it's six point one plus three points so that's nine point nine point three plus four percent plus four percent well we we should be turning a lot of that money back over yes well in theory it would be great to do that but if we don't so let's say for example the tax level is 100 million dollars but next year if we appropriate three million to that so that we only ask for 97 the following year right we pay we need 102 million and if we only ask for 97 then that means we have to come up with 5 million which the most part is going to be a spike in the tax loop so instead of returning the bulk of that 3.3
073i would say that we can appropriate a nice portion of it just so that we don't have a spike the following year but i wouldn't necessarily put the whole thing okay so so then but then what happens because already the auditor says okay you can have your four percent plus you can have your extra three million because we haven't resolved all the sandy stuff with fema yet but when they see another nine plus nine plus million dollars in there they're going to say or the or the new york state is going to say you got to get rid of that money well as long as you know this this was really unforeseen i mean when we went into covert into the year uh last year knowing that we were going to be dealing with a
074lot of code expenses we increased the budget i think it was over four million dollars we did a budget modification in anticipation of having a large amount of atypical expenditures we ended the prior year right 20 2020 right ending in 2020 what if you recall you know a large amount of an operating surplus at that point we could have put it into reserve fund which is what we typically would have done and appropriate a certain portion to offset the following year's tax limit but we decided to hold off on that because we wanted to take that surplus and use it to modify the budget of last year because we anticipated more staffing or expenditures related to token as it turned out part of it is the reason because we got a lot of extra revenue
075with some of the federal money that came in we thought we were going to be experiencing cuttings david we got additional federal money our expenditures were not as great as we thought it was going to be and we were playing um in september i think you know we did the budget modification but if you take a look and i can show you you know just like a a very simple table that the surplus is really from two years ago you know that we had just put over into last year so that we had the extra money so when talking to the audience about this they're aware that listen you know we did our best to try to plan for what we thought were going to be a lot more expenditures in a kobe year and
076although it's not recommended to have more than the four percent they understand why it's not typical for us to have something like this and you know next year we'll deal with it like i said we're certainly inappropriate more than what we have to make sure that the tax fund is as low as we can and then we'll put some of that in reserve funds which is what we would have done two years ago if we didn't think we needed that money to cover last year i i i do seem to recall the board the specific trustee asking several times you know where were these expect you know to to kind of delineate what these extra coded expenses were going to be throughout the year yeah we did a presentation on that but then they never
077materialized no that's and that's and again part of it is the additional revenue so part of it is the fact that these expenditures were not as great as we thought they were going to be and part of it was we received i think it was two million dollars more revenue than we thought we were going to receive based on some of the federal government a lot of money so you know it's not like it's going to waste you were actually you know efficient in how we spent our money and we ended up the year with more than we thought i might just jump in on this too we've often talked about capital projects and not having enough money for some of the projects that need to be done so it's nice to have the scriptures
078shrimp the second point is i saw that hertz just ordered 100 000 new electric cores and i've been asking the last couple of years but we would certainly explore buses in terms of that it's something that i think as we move into budget time you might want to give some thought to that as well as a group so i just wanted to put that on the table any other discussion um we had talked over the summer we had talked about uh decreasing falling places to three um i i'm not sure if um if if we decide enough if you voted on that is that set yeah you did this we did pass the resolution that night there went down east and the middle of the complex um with the board so we didn't do that
079so that the point is going to have to do i think before the end of december to decide what we're going to do and press funding back in the election districts are we going to decrease election districts proportionally or are we going to do away with election districts if the school district entirely won't have any more specific places so there is a follow-up conversation i don't know if that has to be a resolution or a procedural council on that but we did okay so if we're if we're going to need to decide something and we need some information about that we'll get that information and and we put it on so i just don't want the district clerk to end up in a position where she has to start putting election notices together sure without
080having yeah okay great you have to give the public certainly do notice in terms of where they would be voting if they chose to vote right excellent okay beautiful thank you that's all i have to do it's okay i said one question but michael when you get the chance um regarding i read to me if papers get next year and the years forward there's going to be a change in how the distribution of foundation is going to be going through the state and how they're going to be funding more for the districts working on equity et cetera um can you just let's do a follow-up with us about how that's going to impact the district sure i'll try to get some information to you and explain it thank you anybody else lastly i just thought
081i wanted to ask a quick question dr gallagher last year our students participated in numbers and i know we brought it up at a different meeting but i don't recall us discussing if the video that the students shot last year was going to be integrated or utilized this year at all yes it is in fact mr myers has the link from the organization he have to get permission from them to use it and um our social studies teachers will be using it at obviously at the appropriate curriculum when they're discussing great and then the only other comment i wanted to make was i believe our girls swimming uh the season ended and i feel like i've read that they won the conference so i just wanted to congratulate them and the coaches i didn't see
082it anywhere on the district website but i feel like i read it somewhere on facebook so i wanted to congratulate them on that that's all any questions or comments from the public yes sean fastuch 428 west market i wrote it down so the first first thing i want to say is um maybe i just don't know where i'm supposed to be looking and that could be a main problem but i would love if it could be easier or if someone could treat me like a student who's a tutor how to find when these meetings move how to find the things that dr gallagher you and i are emailing you about that you see are on the website i found out this meeting moved to here when i went to west school and the general told
083me i'm i i lived everywhere we're okay i'm just i've heard it so it wasn't a big deal i just would love to be able to find the things that you're saying are readily available online so i'm actually working on a little template for you know mostly for you're a relatively new parent because if your kids are young um i think you can take for granted that everyone knows where it can happen on the website um i just haven't finished it but it's coming and it'll clearly show the links where things can be found um and explain a little bit more about the process of where the test is and you know when i imagine minutes are on there as well from these meetings okay um the next thing is i i want to thank
084miss conaway or miss i think it's miss conway who mentioned the uh national scuba association stuff i think it's a really good example of i don't agree with you when i come in here on a lot of things and i've always felt welcome to come in here and talk to you about those things and i appreciate that i think that it's a uh it's it would be a mischaracterization of anybody who sits in the audience to think of you in a general term with a larger group of people who maybe don't represent all of your thoughts i just wanted to share that with you so i appreciate that um i also want to thank you for bringing up to dr gallagher whether she's heard back from the state or the county or not i don't
085think it should be a surprise at all that you haven't we have numbers for what is proficiency what is competency what are the reading levels what is the temperature a kid has to have to come into school how tall should it be how heavy should it be but uh no numbers for when masks can come off eventually i'm hoping you guys get as frustrated about this as i am um along those lines it's going to be getting cold outside and we're not going to be able to have the kids outside anymore and i'm hoping that you have a a plan a thought in mind for what we do in the state in the county because i assure you you are not the first person to send that letter i've asked administrative people from other districts
086to send that letter and they've gotten responsive that they don't have those numbers so i'm hopeful that you will be able to do something from the winter time given that we have people packing into nba stadiums concerts comedy baseball football shoulder to shoulder and it doesn't feel like the ball is falling apart and that's it that's all i got here thank you boulevard i think that's working okay um i just have a couple of questions about erin's law and how it's going to be implemented in the classrooms first i'm just going to rattle off a bunch of questions that's okay first what is the curriculum going to look like second when is the parents workshop going to happen are the parents going to be notified about what topics are going to be covered who is
087going to be leading those discussions and what are their qualifications and are the schools partnering with the local child advocacy centers or are they working specifically with psychologists that deal with child sexual abuse um in the community and how are those curriculums being developed sure i'm happy to answer that um so uh for those that don't know about aaron's law this was a law that was passed in new york state to talk about child abuse and reporting of child abuse and it's taught in schools it's uh there is a grade level dance for kangaroo on our website if you go into the office of curriculum instruction i added an aaron's law section there uh that actually includes a parent letter that i sent home just about the law and it actually includes now our full
088curriculum of lessons that we'll be teaching in the classrooms the way that we develop that curriculum was developed in-house so it's not a canned curricular number received from your state i was developed in-house with one of our district health teachers and also one of our district guidance counselors um they went through each of the grade level bands and tried to make the most age-appropriate lessons as possible with the age level bands um and uh you know we we reviewed them as administrators we actually had a meeting with all of our uh health teachers and pps staff and administrators from across the district so that we could talk about uh the law and implementation of classes mr epstein and i were able to collaborate with all people in that room we actually have a paranoid that's
089currently being planned it will be within the next few weeks uh we'll make sure to announce it to the whole district uh mr beltry and miss golden who did the staff workshop are also going to do the parent workshop but they'll be administrators on hand from pds myself will be there mr epstein so we can talk about the curriculum itself and also how we're going to support students there um many of the lessons are lessons that we had previously addressed in our health curriculum you know across the district but there were some areas that were new that we put into the curriculum writing so i would just um say for myself personally for you or any other parents that are interested um to attend that parenthood also preview the curriculum and if there's anything in
090there you know that you have questions about it or want to talk about it's all there anything to do in class you can reach out to me or we can you know talk further about it but it's all there on the curriculum instruction website for everybody to see so are you expecting during health that that's where that's that curriculum is going to take place with the health teachers well it depends on the levels but yes at um at middle school and we also know we have incorporated our elementary guidance counselor to go into some of the classrooms at the elementary level as well you know to support that and support um teachers in the classroom so we're that's pretty much the planet a little bit different each level but we will outline the exact uh
091delivery uh method that had that fairness okay thank you hi i'm ken gasman west country um dr gallagher and i have been engaging in an email conversation and i just wanted to make the board aware of some of our conversations the high school conferences are a few days away middle school conferences less than two weeks away an elementary school conference is shortly after that we are informed that that to school night would be in person and parent-teacher conferences would be virtual virtual meetings by definition are a type of collaboration technique where people from anywhere in the world can share their ideas using audio video conferencing screen sharing and webinar the communication about how conferences will be run this year has been disjointed and last minute to say the least we received notification last week that
092parents feature conference sign ups will take place this past saturday and would be conducted over the telephone only on the very last sentence of the email it states that a parents may request an in-person meeting requested through their child's guidance counselor since then i personally reached out to guidance and the high school administration and was told that parents could always be able to request an in-person meeting when there was a problem well the problem i and other parents face over the years regarding was google classroom and the use of school tools if teachers were entering the grades into these applications in a timely fashion it would eliminate the guessing game for parents on what their child's grades were and what they're assigning for last year with the implementation of hybris virtual models google classroom was
093completely used and it was honestly one of the best years i had was seeing my child's grades and their assignments that were missing let's fast forward to this year some teachers have gone to the traditional way of pen and paper and therefore some of us parents do not see some of their classwork in our brief parents are now going into conferences on monday completely got blind for some of their child's um grades with lack of information before their conference if google classroom and school tools were kept up to date consistently throughout the school year it would create for more engaging transparent meetings not only between the parents and the teachers but between the parents and their children why does there seem to be a lack of transparency and proactive communication with how and why conferences
094are being held certainly this year and what seems to be very little parent input or based on input of a survey taken in the middle of a pandemic and in the survey did it state that answers to these questions would be used to provide upcoming events for this upcoming school year why are we limitating authentic interactions between parents and teachers when we know the importance of parent involvement and school home connection wouldn't it make sense to have more in-person meetings for parent-teacher conference give a zoom option to parents who don't feel the need for in person rather than the reverse how can we move forward with giving parents a clear option of in-person meetings without feeling that they're being forced to have forced into having a phone conference with being told if you don't have
095a specific problem this seems like a huge disservice to many parents who look forward to face-to-face meetings and the opportunity to see students work besides convenience what is the end game here i know i've learned a lot from covenant and how some things work better to make things more acceptable but this doesn't seem to be like one of those things it doesn't seem to benefit the whole it doesn't seem to have all stakeholders best interests in mind thank you announcements excuse me did you have another comment i did all right please are you asking i didn't see anybody i just want to thank mrs ackerman because i was it's great to bring that to light because um as an educator and a parent i know how important it is for parents to be in the
096building to see the student work hanging up that we get to see the evidence of what has been happening and i just really feel that we should have access to the building to see not only the staff but the student work and really see the culture of what's happening in the building so that's important thank you thank you announcements national teachers i mean excuse me eta classroom teachers association let's start off evening by thanking the school board uh our school garden this week as an organization it's extremely important that we give back to the community and community organizations that provides us with so much so i said i think most keep up the year with the fundraising for making strides against breast cancer this year we were able to raise over 67 to date in
097addition to that this year something that's really amazing is that a group of students you know seeing this came to the stretch statements and the teachers at the high school and uh wondering how they can get involved as well these students put together an amazing event that's happening this saturday at the high school football game they're having a high school football pickup where the highway school football players and cheerleaders will be wearing pink in honor of making awareness and raising funds for making strides against breast cancer that's a 2 o'clock game they've created t-shirts they're raising a lot of awareness funds raffle baskets fundraisers and uh it's really amazing experience to see it's just the one small thing that uh so many of our children are involved with them i apologize for not highlighting all
098of what the students do uh navigating ranks and awareness for many causes but this one certainly is something that we're having involved right now it's amazing to see that i want to make sure that i was aware of that that may happen at 2 o'clock thank you thank you mr arvi supervisor of pbs group lbsa teacher association group b wants to congratulate the high school student government on a wonderful homecoming and congratulations to dr newman and dr moran uh on their efforts and to thank them for their work on homecoming um and also just to thank the board of education for all you do for our students in our community uh in recognition of celebrating leslie thank you thank you what this means is that we had some business to talk about probably concerning personnel
099so we're going to convene and come out subsequent to that meeting and adjourn the meeting officially you can wait indefinitely in terms of the adjournment of the meeting but uh for all intents and purposes the practical meeting is over so we're going to uh go into executive session where i don't know how long and then come back out and turn the meeting thank you for coming thank you all right i don't know