001Good evening everybody and welcome to the Thursday, June 5th, 2025 school board meeting for the Enlarge City School District of Middletown. A very special evening tonight. It's tenure night here as well. Uh before we get um started, I also want to introduce everybody to um who's going to be our newest school board member when we do reorganization in July. So we want to welcome to the table Dr. Patricia De [Applause] Jesus. So unfortunately until she takes her oath of office, she can't vote on anything. But his um tradition here at Middletown is when we have a new school board member, we do sit them at the table so they can begin to experience what uh school board meeting is all about as well. So, at this time, we'd also like to remind everybody as we
002call the meeting uh to order that this agenda was prepared in advance for tonight's meeting. The final agenda for tonight's meeting is subject to change at the time of the meeting and any changes will be noted at the time they're made and again after the meeting on the public board minutes which are available on the district's website. And Mrs. Romero will do the same thing in Spanish for us. And we'd like to remind you remind everyone that translation and interpretation services are also available during this meeting. If you needed assistance, please let us know and we'll be happy to accommodate you. M Romero. Thank you, Mr. Romero. Mr. Parino, do we have a moment of silence today? Not today. Okay. So, at this time, if you could please rise or remove your hats and face
003the flag as we do our pledge of allegiance led by Mr. Moore. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Moore. And now, the mission of the Enlarge City School District of Middletown, Mr. Curtis Rat. We strive to provide fiscally sound educational opportunities in a safe environment that continuously supports our diverse student population. We will enable all students to graduate to reach their full potential to become lifelong learners and to be competitive, productive members of society. Thank you, Mr. Rat. Roll call. Miss Monerie. Mr. Estrada here. Mr. Moore. Mr. Parino here. Mr. Lat here. Miss Romero here. Miss Tobias here. Mr. Freddy Williams here. Pastor Williams here. Mr. Mitchell Williams here. Thank you.
004Thank you, Mrs. Mer. I need approval for tonight's agenda. Moved by Mr. Tobias and seconded by Mr. Rhett. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. We have everybody here today. I need approval for the regular meeting minutes for May 21st, 2025. Moved by Pastor Williams, seconded by Mr. Mitchell Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. I need approval for special meeting minutes from May 29, 2025. So moved. Moved by Mr. Mitchell Williams, seconded by Pastor Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. I need approval for personnel memorandum 23A number one. Moved by Mr. Rat. Second. Seconded by Mr. Freddy Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. I need approval for instructional personnel
005memorandum 23B numbers 1 through 13. So moved. Moved by Pastor Williams. Second. Seconded by Miss Tobias. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. I need a motion for non-instructional personnel memorandum 23C numbers 1 through 12. Moved by Mr. Tobias and seconded by Mr. Mitchell Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. Now, I know we're going to have a celebration in a little while, but I think we need a nice round of applause as we just approved all of our tenure recommendations as well as our retirements for all those in the audience. So [Applause] congratulations. So we're going to finish up our action items and a couple of board member recognitions and community updates and then we're going to get to our tenure celebration as
006well. So I need approval now for our financial memorandum 23D numbers 1 through 33. So moved. Moved by Pastor Williams. Second. Seconded by Mr. Freddy Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries 90. I need approval for special services memorandum number 22E numbers 1 through two. So moved. Moved by Mr. Mitchell Williams, seconded by Mr. Moore. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries 90. I need approval for change order 17F number one. So moved. Moved by Pastor Williams, seconded by Mr. Rhett. Uh, Bill, can you give us an update on what change order that one is? Yes, certainly. Tonight's change order for your consideration is to provide aluminum fence in lie of vinyl fence and to increase the concrete slab thickness as specified. Thank you, Bill. Any
007questions or discussions? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries 90. I need approval for the extension of the superintendent's contract for an additional two years. So move. Moved by Mr. Parino. Seconded by Mr. Tobias. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. Congratulations to our superintendent, Miss Amy Creden. I need approval for the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instructions contract for an additional year. So moved by Miss Bison, seconded by Mr. Mitchell Williams. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries 90. Congratulations, Miss Camila Dome. [Applause] I need approval for an extension of the contract for the director of personnel. Moved by Mr. Moore, seconded by Miss Tobias. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. Congratulations, Miss Crawford. I need approval for
008the SRA resolution. Does that need to be read or no? No. So, I need an approval for the secret resolution, which is our our takeover for the environmental portion of the work that needs to be done here at the high school. Moved by Pastor Williams. Second on that. Seconded by Mr. Parino. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries 90. I need approval for the Middletown High School interior alterations. Moved by Mr. Rap, seconded by Pastor Williams. Uh, Miss Ceden, would you like to give us an update as to what those alterations are going to be for the high school? Sure. So, we've had a really successful program run by um Dr. Woods, an administrator here at Middletown High School called our at Promise Micro School, and we'll be expanding that program
009um in the 2526 school year and um bringing it during the regular school day here to Middletown High School. And so we'll have an opportunity to do some um construction to the interior of the high school to facilitate um you know operations of an expanded program. So really exciting step for the district and meeting the needs of every young person. And I want to thank high school administration um uh executive principal Billy Danahue, associate principal Kate Shidi and dean um Dr. Pat Woods for their work on this really um incredible program. And we'll continue to have more updates on that as the program progresses. I know Miss Tobias's been uh over the last couple of years definitely been looking forward to a program like this. So, is there any further discussion? All those in favor?
010I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 90. Going to hand it off now to the superintendent for our some of our recognitions uh this evening. Great. Thank you. I have um our my brother's keeper um coordinators and fellows here this evening. if they could come on up um for some recognition and information sharing about their program. So there might have been a little miscommunication that we'll try to figure out for you. So we'll move on to number two. And um something that's uh brewing something that's brewing in the city of Middletown with involvement from uh the gentleman to my left. So, I think we're going to call up our athletic director, Mr. David Coats, for the introduction of our next program, and we'll ask the um parks and recck team to join Mr. Coats at the mic.
011And I think we'll just start really quickly with um the video presentation. [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Sorry, I had my gym voice on. Sorry, I got goosebumps on May 8th when we first went to uh the ribbon cutting and I got goosebumps again tonight. uh Superintendent Cedan, uh President Strada, members of the board, uh Railin uh ais or I'm sorry, Rayen Berthoff, uh has um created a vision and uh it's just amazing what has uh come to fruition over at Middletown Parks and Recre with the boxing club and under the guidance and leadership and expertise of the coaches, Coach Williams, Coach Marcato, Coach Hinson, and Coach Gonzalez,
012there is amazing things happening. ing in Middletown. This is the This is the latest program and the greatest program. There are so many amazing opportunities in Middletown. I hope the kids recognize the uh the opportunities in Middletown and uh reach out to the Middletown recreation and try it. Try and and um the boxing program because it's special. And uh if you want to be part of something special, get down to Middletown Parks and Wreck, join this boxing club because it is something special, something to behold. Once I walked in there that evening, the place is totally transformed. It's a wonderful place to train. And people that are in there that created this and are coaching are so serious about what they're doing. Um and it's just incredible feeling once you walk in. um all the
013branding, all the opportunities for training to get better as an athlete and a boxer uh or just to get healthy and uh fit. Uh this is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. I'm really so proud uh to be able to be at the ribbon cutting, but also to be able to help promote. Uh we were recently uh pitched the ideas to Mont Hagen and Twin Towers and the high school and there's been a lot of interest to start an inter mural program to go down to the boxing club in the afternoons. I know you have a bunch of kids already but uh we want to we want to pack that gym even more. So I'd like to uh hand it over to Raylin Berthof and her staff because um they did all the heavy lifting here. Thank
014you. Good evening everyone. Uh thank you for having us here tonight. We're truly honored to be able to recognize our Middletown scholars uh tonight and some of our past graduates. I'd like to introduce Nicole Sarakis who's the assistant to the superintendent who currently oversees the boxing program. Hello everyone. Good evening. On behalf of the City of Middletown recreation and parks department, I would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the enlarged city school district of Middletown for recognizing the city of Middletown recreation boxing club, especially our Middletown, our current Middletown scholars and our past graduates. I am the assistant to the superintendent and is it is a position I treasure and behold. It is both an honor to have been involved and witness to the incredible renaissance that this program has recently experienced. Our participants
015continue to show remarkable promise and skill, reflecting the dedication and talent of our professional coaching staff. With recent updates to our facility, we are more inspired than ever to support our youth and foster growth through discipline, athleticism, and community spirit. Thank you for your continued support and recognition, and we look forward to future collaborations with administration, staff, students, and families of the Lard City School District. At this time, I'd like to thank our lead coaches, Coach Randy, Middletown Board Member, Coach Mitch, Coach Danny, Coach Jose, Coach Jonathan, and Coach Mark for everything they have done for this program. I now invite Coach Randy to come up to announce the names of some of our boxers who are able to make it tonight. We'd also like to ask uh Coach Mitch to come up as well
016um and stand with I was trying to get him to go up and he was like, "No, no, I'm glad you did it. You can't always hide." So, I can't be the bad guy. All right. So, first we'll go ahead and we'll announce Carlos Castanita, [Applause] Julian Fost. [Applause] First, Miles Galloway. Moose. Latrell Lamont, [Applause] Denza Martinez. [Applause] Dell Morales [Applause] G. Caleb [Applause] Morgan, Tyrese Smith, [Applause] Rex, Joshua Suarez, Flaku, [Applause] Elijah [Applause] Henson. And that concludes uh the list of members that we have here today. [Applause] I do want to thank all of you and this is another example of the cooperation between the city of Middletown and the school district um in trying to provide our young people with as many resources as they can in order to succeed. And I think
017is Mitch going out there for a picture? I just a quick question Mitch. So, you see a lot of young people here, but there's going to be opportunities, I believe, at the club for the adults to get involved as well. And I I think at one point they even had the ability for partners, couples to go out and box each other. So, you know, your wife my wife wanted to take a shot, but I see Clarice over there and like I'm like, you know, I think she could take you. But in addition, opportunities for maybe a superintendent conference day to a little a little cooperation. We have our tenure teachers. Maybe tenure teachers versus non-tenure. What do you think? our workers comp attorneys would probably think differently. That's why they make waivers, you know. So,
018congratulations once again and and let's hear it once again for the boxing club. So, while they're getting our pictures, we'll continue the celebration indoors and I'm going to hand it off to Superintendent Cream for our tenure recognitions. Great. Thank you very much. What an exciting night. We are so honored to have so many of um our educators here with their families and their loved ones who are their support system. So we congratulate you tonight on um the tenure accomplishments for your family member as well. And I'm looking forward to the presentation provided by Mrs. Adma and Mrs. Crawford. Good evening. We're President Estrada, Vice President Williams, Board of Education Trustees, Superintendent Ceden. Tonight we celebrate an important milestone in professional journey of educators. The awarding of tenure. Tenure marks the end of a sorry the
019tenure marks the end of a probationary period but in no means is a finish line. It is the beginning of a deeper commitment to your professional growth and service to our scholars and community. During new education orientation, I shared the story of the starfish about a child walking along the beach, tossing starfish back into the ocean, making a difference to each one. Like the child in the story, you may not always see the reach, the full reach of your efforts. I ask that you recognize the power of your actions that they have in making a difference on the lives of each of our scholars. I want to congratulate you all. I want to congratulate all of our tenure candidates and look forward to continuing to serve with you. It is my pleasure now to welcome
020Mrs. Suzanne Driscoll, principal of Maple Elementary, to introduce our first set of tenure candidates. It's actually easier for me to see that the old lady eyes. Good evening. Um, we're so happy to be here and recognize some of our tenure candidates. I would like to invite our candidates up to stand to the left when I call your name. Lee Hornbeck, please join us. [Applause] Bridget Kennedy, Maria Lava, and Nicole Rae. We're also recognizing Laura Managat this evening and Susanna Rivera. Unfortunately, they could not be with us tonight. So, thank you. So, these folks um have done an amazing job. They work with some of our neediest learners. Uh Lee is a kindergarten teacher, so she's setting the foundation. Uh Bridget and Nicole are ENL teachers at Maple Hill and Maria works in our dual language
021program teaching on the Spanish side. They have all been incredible additions to Maple Hill. Really hardworking. Their scholars absolutely love them and they are providing the absolute best instruction. We're super proud to call them ours. And I'm so um proud of all of you for all your hard work. So thank you for everything you've done to make Maple Hill amazing. Congratulations. So, what we'll do is um after each uh school does their tenure, they're going to go out to the lobby. They're going to take pictures with Mr. Wit. And then um there'll be an opportunity um during our refreshment period after all the schools are done for family members to take pictures as well outside. All right. Next, we have Mrs. Santino with Maple Hill in it. Good evening. Good evening everyone. Um I have
022tonight Christine Dum up for tenure. Unfortunately, she couldn't join us. However, I'd just like to take a moment to recognize all of her contributions not only to Truman Moon where is wherein she is our speech one of our speech therapists who works in our co-taught classrooms our 812 classrooms but is also our speech language department chair for the district works tirelessly with our scholars and is a part of our um special Olympics team which we'll be recognizing later this month as well as our sensory inter murals and is totally dedicated ated to our learners. Congratulations, Christine. All right. Next, we'll have Presidential Park with Principal [Applause] Lester. Good evening. And I would like to introduce presidential parks uh tenuring teachers this evening. I have Pavey and Toui. Oh, Richard [Applause] Espazito. Maria Ferreras [Applause] Alicia
023Gonzalez, Don [Applause] Martin, Jeffrey Nulan Shereekica Phillips Holloway, Wendy Ring Cone, and Christina Vasquez. These individuals represent the kind of passion and enthusiasm Middletown is known for. They have the ambition to be lifelong learners and grow with every challenge they face. These educators are dedicated to our scholars and families and have gone above our expectations to support our students and activities that excel and de develop their talents and interests. These educators put learning first and work to meet all the needs of our students. My first year as principal of Presidential Park, I've had the opportunity to get these get to know these educators outside of their classroom through our light leader and me lighthouse team members morning interals and clubs. Extended Day Institute, grade level collaboration and celebration planning, sharing personal stories of our families,
024walking club competition, and connecting through students. I am so happy to see each of these incredible educators have found a home in Middletown and at PBE. Thank you, Mrs. Cedon. Thank you, Mrs. Adom. Thank you, Mrs. Crawford and the Middletown Board of Education for this wonderful evening. and for hiring some pretty awesome teachers. Congratulations. Wow. All right. Next, we're going to welcome Mrs. Jensen and William A. Carter. Congrats. Congrats. Congrats. [Applause] Good evening. It is with confidence and pride that I introduce to you our tenure recipients. Uh we have Miss Trisha, Mrs. Trisha Cronin, Miss Mary Abrahams, Miss Monae Williams, and Presidential Park and William Carter Sher Pavani, who is uh conducting our orchestra concert tonight. So she's conducting her concert and receiving tenure. So congratulations to her. Next we're going to welcome Mr. Rodonia
025for Monthagen Middle School. [Applause] Thank you. Good evening, Superintendent Creed and Assistant Superintendent Adma, President Estrada, members of the board of education. Monthagen Middle School is thrilled to recognize the outstanding contributions of the following educators and staff who are earning tenure this year. We first have Miss Olivia Vanine, who's not here this evening. Um, she's a special education teacher for science and social studies. um does a great job but couldn't make it this evening. Um we have Miss Dearis Heredia, a teaching assistant. Dear here, Dearis is an amazing teaching assistant who works with our kids in English and Spanish and everybody fights over her because she's really good with our kids. Um Miss Francesca Carluchi who is here this evening. Miss Carluchi is an orchestra teacher who fills our auditorium with creativity, rhythm, and joy.
026Your dedication to building students confidence and passion through music is truly inspiring. Thank you. We have Miss Kristen Fatherhill, who's a seventh grade math teacher. Kristen literally has math in her DNA. If you know her family story, you understand that. um great math teacher who has a passion for problem solving and helps students grow in not only their skill but their mathematical confidence. Great job. Um we have Miss Stephanie Stum, a physical education teacher. Miss Stum makes an absolute positive impact on our students well-being and development in physical education classes as well as the coaching realm. She's a huge coach in the Middletown district. Great job, Steph. Congratulations. We have Miss Samantha Bundalion who is our student support counselor. Samantha has the absolute calmst demeanor um even when a child is in crisis and she
027started a really valuable program this year called Empowering Emotions for our female students which has been wildly successful. So great job Samantha. uh 10 years of well-earned recognition of your hard work and professionalism. We thank you for everything you do in making Mhagen a better place and Montagen is so proud to have you as part of our team. Congratulations. Next we'll have Mrs. Brookkins for Twin Towers Middle School. You will Good evening. Good evening, President Estrada, Vice President Williams, the esteemed members of the board, Superintendent Crudin Credin, Assistant Superintendents Tuttle and Adma, my team and I are excited to talk about these wonderful educators. I have the honor and privilege of introducing them to you tonight. So, starting off with Deborah Alverson, lovingly known as Deb. Come on up. Deb is our trauma coach, but
028she's so much more. Counselor to scholars and a helper to all who get to know her. She's wonderful. Next, we have here tonight Nick Feric. Come on. Nick Furick is one of our social studies teachers, loved by all. We also have Kevin Galante. He is our health and financial literacy teacher. And then we have Leanne Laara, our ENL star. come on [Applause] up. And our sixth grade teacher extraordinaire, Miss Paige Manuso. And not here tonight, but in our hearts, Vanessa Clark. She's one of our school psychologists. So, I could go on and on about these individuals over here, but instead of you hearing from me, I want to share some words from our scholars. I had the opportunity to speak with them to hear what they wanted me to say to you all tonight. He
029makes school exciting. He encourages me to do my best no matter what. She's basically everyone's school mom because of how she cares for us as much as possible. She's always so sweet with me. She listens and tries to help every day. She always sets the bar higher, encouraging us to be creative and to have variety in our choices. He's good at connecting with the class. He's funny and puts a smile on people's faces whenever you walk into the classroom. He makes people happy and I know that she cares about me. She shows me when she listens to me. So based on those endorsing words, how could I not recommend, highly recommend without reservation tenure for all of these talented individuals? Thank you for what you do for our scholars each and every day. [Applause] And
030next we have Mr. Donahghue Middletown High School. I thought you wanted to guess which one was nice. A lot of tenure for high school, huh? They got a lot of teachers though. All right. Good evening, Superintendent Creed, President Estrada, board trustees, the Middletown community, everyone here tonight. I am honored and humbled to introduce a truly remarkable group of educators earning their tenure tonight at Middletown High School. So, I will read them and then I have a few words prepared. Uh, some are here tonight were able to make it, others are not, but I'm still going to call them all up. But if you come stand up here, we'll start with Miss Rashelle Andreda, Sarah Bellnap, Beatatrice Brown, Melissa Dunlay. There she is. Anna Gonzalez, Lette Gonzalez, Jasmine Gray, Patricia Hartley, Sana Lutley, Katima Montinez, Courtney
031Sarvis, Diana Saunders, Wayne Scalpini, Ezra Silverman, Taylor Van Djk, and Miss Janessa [Applause] Balez. So, I believe I was part of the hiring of many of the educators here tonight. And during that interview, I made it clear, as I do in every interview, if you're just looking for a teaching job, there are plenty of those available. If you love our kids, come to Middletown. Day in and day out, the group you see before me has demonstrated that commitment, not through words, but through actions. Through personalized instructional design, making strong connections with our scholars, and an unwavering willingness to go the extra mile, each of the educators before me have proven that they are on board with that mission. I sincerely thank all of you for your dedication, your passion, and for making a lasting difference
032in the lives of our scholars and our school community. Congratulations to all and midi pride. There you go. Nice job, everyone. Congratulations. Yes. Yes. Yes. [Music] Let me Let me let me Last but not least, I am pleased to recognize our outstanding leaders who have demonstrated dedication to our scholars. staff and community. First, I want to call up Mrs. Brookens, Mrs. Naga Asaka, Mr. Fred Merritt, Mrs. Nicole Minton and Mr. Dwayne Whitaker. [Music] We are grateful for your service and proud to celebrate this milestone with you tonight. And congratulations to all of our team recipients. [Applause] So, next we're going to recognize our retirees. So, I'm going to call up Mrs. Jillian Crawford. How's this? Good evening. I am honored tonight to celebrate the 2425 school year retirees. This year we have 33 retirees from
033the district. And that's right. If we combined all of their years of service, we would have 683 years of MIDI experience. I have and two of our retirees are on or about 38 years of service in district. Wow. To all of our retirees, congratulations on a welldeserved retirement. The district thanks you for your commitment and your service to our scholars, our school, and our community. And for all the retirees that are here, I'm going to call your name and then please stand over here to the left, but I'll read everyone's name just to celebrate them. So, we have Elizabeth Rodriguez, Bruce, normal formerly known as Dan Becker, Greg Bennett, Rochelle Bird, Lenny Cologne, Patricia Conroy Hwitt, Shirley Frank, John Gerice, Nancy Hullbrook, Anne Igo, Ann Lee, Steven Marzigleiano, Barbara McClaw, Darlene Melendez, Virginia Miller, Mariela
034Vega, Evelyn [Applause] Escobar, Melanie Jacuboski, Bernardet Murphy, Katherine Navilio, Christine Giaki, Brenda Pickle, Joanne Embro, Embro, Marisol Reyes, Lidell Henderson. As you can tell, he's one of our 38 years. Ron Hickeyi, Dave Vega, Mildred Brown, Laura D. Pascal, Joyce Brewer, Laura Penny, Joan Capria Price, and Jeannie Palazano. Thank you all for your service. [Applause] very [Music] much. You know, we got lot Congrats. At this time, we're going to have an intermission out in the hallway. We have snacks available for everyone and opportunities to take pictures with our tenure and retirees. Let's go celebrate. Midies. [Applause] We always got to get curt. I know is like the kid that you got We want to thank everybody. Well, welcome back. We've cleared out the house. I think we went from an SRO crowd of about a couple
035of hundred to our our regulars. and we thank our regulars for being here. So, nevertheless, we'll get started. We're going to hand it off again uh to Miss Ceden for another uh recognition. Great. Well, I'm going to um take this opportunity to invite Mr. Everton Brown um to the microphone. He's going to share some um updates on our My Brothers Keeper Fellows program. I feel bad we had a bigger crowd for you earlier, but we'll get you again. This is the biggest crowd I need right here. Hey, thank you everyone for having us here today. Uh just bringing greetings from my brother's keepers. Um just thanking you for the program and keep on pushing us to do better. We actually went to the symposium about a month ago and we inducted two new fellows for
036the upcoming 2526 year. Uh Kendall Surprise and Kyle Williams. There are two new fellas, two two great young men that are uh upcoming leaders in the school that we look forward to working with. Actually, we they just went with uh 18 other uh students, I mean scholars to Na uh Niagara Falls. We went to University of Niagara in University of Buffalo to visit like was it last weekend? So we went from Thursday to Saturday. That was a great great trip. A lot of the students never I mean scholars never been to Niagara Falls. So they were able to see it and it was like you know it was like dear in headlights. It was like such uh a pleasure seeing the pleasure that they took for being there. Um they they actually had fireworks that
037night that we were there. So they saw the fireworks. I mean if you any of y'all follow those kids, you'll see they posted they posted a lot of videos and just the joy in their faces. And even at the colleges, the college visits that we had, they asked so many questions. Like I was so like elated the questions they were asking because they were very important questions that sometimes our students I mean I mean to say scholars uh our scholars you know don't usually ask but they were asking them and it was you know it was a joy to be there with them. I'd like to thank our principal right here, Mr. Donahghue, that gives us the opportunity to run the program and also, you know, always checks in and make sure this is going
038well. Thank you for having us tonight. Have a good night. Awesome. Thank you. And I think I don't know, uh, Billy, did you want to add anything? Or Freddy, I know you were on the trip, I think. Right. Okay. All right. Uh, any questions before I uh take my car out of the legal parking spot I have it out there? Mr. Perino has his hands up. No, I I just wanted this is related kind. I just want to congratulate you publicly for the nice job you did with the scholarship award. Oh, thank you so much. Coordinating that you kept the program flowing and uh uh it was a very nice evening. Thank you. Thank you. Also, real quick, actually, we started a scholarship that for the that the young men that are seniors that want
039to give to their peers, their classmates that we were given two scholarships every year. This this year was the first annual scholarship that we gave. Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. and maybe at the start of the next school year we can invite the fellows. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Um, so, uh, we'll go on to our board member community updates and I promised Mr. Freddy Brown we'd start over on his end this week. Thank you. Um, just wanted Yeah, Freddy Brown, right? I thought I heard that. I was like, I was looking around. Yeah, it was the ice cream. It was the ice cream. I thought I thought I heard it, but it was getting late in the night, so I was like, I I'll give him a pass. It was It
040was the ice cream. I have ice cream head rush, you know. Uh I want to I want to start by um acknowledging uh our tenurs and and uh retirees and just congratulate them on a great job. Uh well done. Um, I have a couple images that I sent over. So, now this starts with the trip, right? So, the MBK trip to Niagara was last Thursday. We left out of here in the morning. Um, what time did we leave? About 8. And we hit a traffic and some hit a couple hurdles. It took us about I think we left here around 8:30 and got to our destination around 4:30 or 5, something like that. But it was well worth it. The kids had a great time on the bus and and the creating the brotherhood um
041you know on these trips is just awesome um that the kids can you know they they always see each other but they don't really get to build with each other you know in passing or in class or something like that. Um so it was great. We started the day. Uh we got there, checked in the hotel. Um and then we made it over to Niagara Falls. Um a lot of kids first time. Um I was grateful to have my son with me. He's an MBK, uh junior, uh chapter, uh in middle school. Um so it was myself, uh director Everton Brown, and security Shawn Bunch. And he was able to bring his son also. He's MBK, uh 8th grade out of Manhagen. The experience was awesome. Like Niagara Falls, I think I was there as
042a young kid. don't really remember it, but to be able to, you know, um, experience this with the with with all the young men, I think we had 20 in total, it was just awesome. Like Mr. Brown said, they had the fireworks going on. Uh, there's a lot of people out there. The weather was decent. You know, it was just a really good experience. And that was on Thursday. Friday, the University of Buffalo and the University of Niagara, the kids uh got tours on. Um, once again, uh, the brotherhood was formed and you see it. And I'm just sitting back and I'm very observant listening to the conversations that were going on and um it's just so uh it's such a pleasure to see and witness this with our young uh men. Once again uh
043very similar to the DC trip that we took in March. Um the kids were well behaved and they represented Middletown in a in in a tremendous way. Uh tremendously good way. um MBK it's just you know this year has been amazing with with all the uh the trips and the the meetings and the speakers and it's just been a really good really really good run this year and um you know I can't the bar set high so I'm I'm super excited about next year and um you know it's growing we have more and more kids uh attending the trips and um and it's also an incentive you can't just go on the trip if you're just in school just lagging you know what I mean you got to do your work. You got to stay
044out of trouble. And uh you know the incentive really I think it really helps these kids to have something to look forward to and experience. A lot of these kids, you know, they don't really get to go too many places, you know, based on their maybe financial status or their home uh you know, home environment. So um it was great, great trip. Can't wait till the next one. Um you know, big salute for to Mr. Evton Brown and uh Kenneth Ward for uh organizing and putting it together. And a special thanks to the district for also supporting uh this program. It's super important. I mean, I I know the program exists in other schools. I don't really look and investigate what they're doing, but I know Middletown is doing a lot as with with our
045MBK program. I'm really proud of that. Um so, I had another picture of the basketball team and this is um myself and Mr. Brown, we co-direct uh Middletown Youth Sports. This is our uh eighth grade national team. We uh took a trip to Ocean City. We doing a lot of traveling. So I did Ocean City before um the week of Niagara trip the weekend before we we did Ocean City. Went down a Memorial Day um weekend and and once again the travel was it's supposed to be at about a 5 hour and 20 minute trip and it took us about 7 hours to get down there. So, um, but once again, the kids are talking and they got their headphones and phones and and you know, so it was, uh, it was probably a quicker
046trip for them, you know, than than than the adults, but it was good. We made it down, um, and we actually, uh, we ended up going 5-0. We took first place and uh, we took the championship down there. That's this is probably my fifth trip down Ocean City. This is the first time we won it. So, these kids did a really really good job. They work hard. I wanted to acknowledge them. We have uh two kids out of Twin Towers, Nate Pierre and Jordan McGriff. And then we have four kids out of Manhagen, Donovan Williams, Troy Valencia, Aiden Wallace, Jason Baskerville. And then we have a two out of district, we have um out of Circleville, Tyler Cox, and out of um Minisync, we have um Lenny Otto. I want to make sure I got
047his last name right. These kids, they just played lights out. I mean, victories by 14, eight, 17, 21, 20, and then our biggest margin of victory was in the championship against a team from, I believe, Delaware. Um, and we beat them by 24 points. We held them to the final score was 40 to 15 and we held them to three points in the second half. Like, these kids were really, really engaged. They really locked in. Super proud of them. Um, and you know, we're just excited that, uh, you know, we're able to to thrive and, um, you know, and succeed. And once again, special thanks to athletic department in Middletown, um, Superintendent Cedon and your staff for opening up these doors, Mr. Mitchell Williams with a a crazy push, right, to to to make all
048this happen. And and this is the result. You know, we get kids working hard and we go to other states and we bring we bring the trophy and medals back home. So, I'm I'm very uh proud of these guys and I want to thank the district once again and you know, thank these young men keeping me busy and uh you know, lost my voice a couple times, but it was worth it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Freddy Williams. And I want to talk to you afterwards because I think I want to help you guys out a little bit next year. Mr. Romero, congratulations to all the award recipients and the tenure candidates. A very heartfelt shout out to Principal Brookens, a compassionate and dedicated leader who leads with heart purpose and presence. She's passionate, she's
049committed, and um she inspires excellence through genuine care, consistent support, and her tireless drive to uplift others. She's a true example of what it means to lead with integrity, and it is a pleasure working alongside her, and I want to thank her for everything that she does. Um, Twin Tower updates. As the year comes to a close, Twin Tower scholars are preparing for their endofear finals. They finished the ELA and are now on to the math final. In addition to their finals, many classes are working on their performance task to demonstrate everything they have learned during the fourth marking period. Some scholars are working towards their first step in achieving their seal of civic readiness. Um, how exciting. while others are focused on the upcoming regions exams which will garner them high school credit while
050in the eighth grade. They are also looking forward to celebrating the eighth graders as they are preparing for high school. That's what I have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Romero and Dr. De Jesus. What we do is um and it'll happen with the new school year is we assign buildings to each of us. So that way since there's what do we have seven or nine? nine school buildings. No, seven school buildings. Um that way not every board member has to go to all seven and all the events that are with that particular school district. So each of us have a liaison to a specific building that we report on each meeting. Pastor Williams. Um well, first let me um congratulate all of those who earned their tenure on tonight. Um well done. Um and I
051say earned because that's what they did. they earned it and and so um every last one of them that uh stood up here tonight and even those that weren't able to come tonight, they earned it. And so I I applaud them and their diligence over the last over the last four years, working hard and uh and loving our kids. That's the most important part. Uh to the retirees, congratulations to all of the retirees who are stepping into the next stage of life. Um you know, getting getting a chance to to rest and move on. move on from their uh their labor. Uh so I congratulate them. Uh I didn't I was not able to go um to the Buffalo trip because we had other obligations. Uh but I do want to go back and revisit
052um because Mr. Brown talked about talked about the symposium last month and I did have the opportunity to go up to to the symposium as I do every year um to support and to see our fellows um walk across the stage and so it was a great event um the my brothers keeper program and I think everybody here at the table knows that how dear the my brother keepers program is to my to my heart um it was one of the things that I advocated for um from very beginning all the way back to 2015 uh I advocated um for my brother's keeper program and and so I can certainly say that I am very very pleased about how it has um grown um and and how um uh the the gentlemen that that are
053directing the program right now that are are taking care of the program um are doing our our children are worth it. They're worth the effort. their worth putting these particular programs in place um so that um they will know that they're supported and that they are recognized. And so um uh congratulations to to them and the success of this year. I look forward to bigger things and greater things. There's a lot of things that's going on over the course of the next couple of weeks. And so um you know some things we'll be able to make, some things we won't be able to make. Uh last night last night uh we had the scholarship awards. Uh I was not able to make that because last night was also uh the annual meeting and dinner for
054Orange County School Boards Association uh and uh at Cosmos last night. At the same time, I want to thank um Mr. Bison uh for coming coming and representing at that meeting as well. Um uh just as a point of information, I I was uh elected for one more year, one more year to serve as the president of the Orange County School Board Association. So um you know, a lot of responsibility dealing with uh Orange County School Boards and then as well as being the area 9 NISBA um director. Um but I enjoy it. I enjoy I enjoy what we do and uh I continue to serve here and love what we do here. So, uh, with that being said, as we approach the end of the year, um, let's finish strong, let's continue to push.
055Let's continue to do, um, uh, what we do and, uh, celebrate celebrate all of these amazing scholars that we have. Our, our young people are absolutely amazing, and I don't even think we get the opportunity to really showcase everything that they do. Um maybe one day maybe one day we'll really be able to to showcase them even more so um than we have already. But um congratulations. So thank you. That's all I have for now. Thank you, Pastor Williams. Miss Tobias, I would like Sure. Mitch, I'm going to ask you to join us. You know, a pastor can speak from the cuff, but I need my little notes. Last night, Mitch, um pastor and I were at the Orange County School Board Association's annual meeting, and at that time, you were recognized for your contribution
056to the Middletown School District as a board member. Mitch, to say you will be missed as a board member is an understatement. You always spoke your mind. You always asked innumerable questions, night or day. and you were never afraid to acknowledge that you needed to know the why or the what of a given situation. I think what amazed me the most was if we didn't agree. You always moved on with respect. We could laugh, we could joke, or we could seriously engage in district matter discussions. I Mitch, I'm going to miss you desperately, your inquiring mind, but most of all, I'm going to miss the com camaraderie and the friendship. I would like to present you with the certificate acknowledging from Orange County School Boards a certificate of appreciation. So, so it says it says
057Orange County School Boards Association certificate of appreciation presented to Mr. Mitchell Williams, Middletown and Large City School District. uh middle middle town in large city school district in recognition of dedicated school board service. It's signed uh Oxford President John C. Williams date June 4th, 2025. Congratulations, my friend. Do you want to thank you want to say anything? Pastor, do you have anything? I won't. No, I'm not going to say nothing now because we got one more meeting and we're going to say we're going to say we're going to say whatever we got to say. Thank you, Mr. Bison. Did you have anything else or Okay, Mr. Rhett. Good evening, everyone. Um have several things here. Talk about what's going on in the community as well as um I want to first start by um doubling
058back with talking about MBK, you know, the program. um this this year I wasn't on the road as much. Um and I'm so grateful that we had some people to um get out there and do that leg work cuz I know um we um um myself and um a couple of your other guys, you know, we've been on the road doing quite a few bit of that work. But again, I want to also acknowledge um Everton Brown and um Kenneth Ward and taking um the baton and really taking that program to another level. Uh we talked about that at length before, but again while Oh, he left already. Okay. Well, just wanted to acknowledge him with that and we wish for continued success with that program. Um moving right along, I believe I have a
059couple of u visuals. Um couple things going around town, city of Middletown events. Um there's a schedule full of things going on through June and July. If you need any more information on it, um you can always uh reach out to um our clerk um over at the district office and um she'll provide any feedback or some additional information of some of these events that are going on throughout the city. Um, also, uh, my association, my association with the YMCA, you guys know, um, that's part of my passion. And, um, this year again, we're doing a Junth celebration at the Galleria Mall, you know, it'll be a lot of music, dance, poetry, you know, so, um, if you come out and support that, that'll be something nice to bring the family out to as well.
060Um again, this is a blood drive going on. Um it's in the community. This is a young lady. Um Dr. Jennifer, uh she's um starting a practice and working directly with um this family health program. So there's a blood drive. So, anybody interested in doing some um real give back to uh the community, um that will be going on um June 26 from 4 to 7 p.m. Okay. Um what else we got? Again, there was a wonderful um awards ceremony yesterday. I have to say that um each year gets larger and larger. Um there's so many people receiving awards and recipients of um um so many different um opportunities that they can take advantage of and particularly financially. You know, there's it's not there's more than just the award. you know, there are some contributions
061that will really help children continue to um move forward on their journey to college and um we just look forward to that continuing to grow and um children taking advantage of those opportunities. Uh what else? Um again, I want to congratulate all the um tenure recipients and retirees. You know there's two things in education that is most important to you and that's receiving your tenure and then of course when you retire um you know the tenure represents that you know you covered a certain amount of work and that you're comfortable and it's going to be very hard for you to be um plain and simple fired but um you know it gives you um that job security and then again um it helps you to move on towards your goal of retirement. So I think
062that's about everything. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rat. Mr. Pino, thank you so much, President Estrada. Firstly, I believe I I uh congratulated at the last meeting uh Mrs. Debias, uh Bishop Bo Williams, and I'm going to congratulate Dr. De Jesus for uh joining the board. We act as a team here and uh sometimes we disagree but we're never really this board I don't believe that we really been disagreeable when we disagree. So congratulations to everyone. Yes. I also like to recognize this evening uh uh Dr. Jessica Lebron. She uh achieved her doctorate. Uh I spoke to her and she uh she is an administrator at Manhagen. Uh she is down. She would have been here this evening, but she's down uh to the ceremony in Naples, Florida. I believe it's Naples. Um continuing on,
063one of our uh instructors at Middletown High School, Malo Yormans, who is the part of the Y and Y team, as I call them, Yormans and Yman's. They've uh they're on the they have the National Honor Society, but I want to congratulate Mallerie for being elected to the Menaceync Board of Education. So, best of luck on that. No Kid Hungry program. I I I checked with Mrs. Foglia. We now have 116 students in that. We provide food during the weekend. and uh uh Mrs. Fogalia obtained a another $5,000 grant. So again, congratulations to all involved. It's more than Mrs. Fogalia because actually the packs have to be assembled. Uh so a number of the a number of people involved in that uh program. I believe Amy at one time packed up items for the program
064and uh uh a number of us also uh were involved in that. I also want to thank the food service. I want to thank the uh technology department and uh Victor and his GET staff. The reason why I'm doing this, as you know, May and June, starting at the actually end of April, May and June, it puts a lot of stress on these departments uh because there's just so many events, but they're always up to the task. I've never heard them complain. You saw the food service here uh this evening. They had to actually uh during the day feed our students and they do just so much along with the other departments at tech department. Um uh next week I I'm almost out of time here, but I want to start off with Memorial Day
065because we have some uh uh we have some photos of Memorial Day of the of our NGOTC and some of our other groups. President Estrada, I have those two images pretty quickly. I just wanted to show um and this see which one goes up first. All right, great. So, this actually is is is is pretty pretty exciting because I got an inquiry from uh Mr. Williams about a couple months ago and his advocate work to be able to see that, you know, we have the Middletown Fire Department uh fire department here within the school to be able to present the opportunities for our young adults. And today was one of a couple of days that they was able to, you know, come to the high school. And since then they have over 21 plus of
066our young adults here uh inspiring to be um you know volunteer firefighters. So that was pretty special to see all come to fruition today. Uh I have one more um as Mr. Rhett mentioned this is one event that's coming up as well with many of our local um business owners that's in the district um for Junth. And these are just some of the um opportunities and festivals and events that's going to be taking place on on Junth uh this coming year. And I just want to also echo uh my colleagues as far as the appreciation to all of the teachers who received um tenure and the administrators as well and um continue all the grid work and we looking forward to a successful um closing of this year. It's already June to, you know, can't
067believe it, but um looking forward to it and definitely looking forward to seeing everyone at graduation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moore. Mr. Mitchell Williams. Um yes, I want to start out by just um commending all those who are tenured uh this evening as well as the those who retired. I think that there was it's it says a lot about the commitment that they have to our district. And with with those things happening, it really makes me think about uh Miss Jillian Crawford and the job she's done. Leadership is about putting the right people in place for the win, you know. And I and I commend Amy for putting Jillian in the in the place because the hiring practices that she has put on has been putting excellent people which it trickles down to our
068kids. So, I wanted to make sure I acknowledge that you have to acknowledge people for what they do and know, okay, they're not just winning for no reason. You know, it starts from somewhere. So, uh I commend Camille for the contract and Jillian because I've seen the work that they've done and you could see the difference with the attitude, with the motivation, with the excitement of our educators, which trickles down to our kids, you know. So, I just definitely wanted to highlight you because like I said, it made me think about you and we just recently had a um job fair. It's not something that I had seen before, but I heard about it in the community and which is big, you know, all that stuff. I pay attention to these type of things and
069I have to acknowledge that, you know, it's so important. Um, as far as with the boxing program, I want to thank the district for all your support, been supportive of our boxing program from the beginning. um donating equipment that we might need for it. Just being there for us and just acknowledging the pro program tonight was big. You know, those kids, they were really excited about it as well as coaches. So, I want to thank you for that. Um also with the MBK program just doing great things and the program, I want to highlight Mr. Freddy Williams. Mr. Freddy Williams, I look at him as my brother and one of my best friends. And I ain't seen him in about three weeks. because he's just out. That's why you're still friends. Yes, cuz he's out
070doing things for the kids in the community. So, I haven't even seen I'm calling, "Where you at?" "I'm in Niagara Falls." N Oh, you mean Mr. Freddy Brown? That's like wow. You know, it's an incredible job that you're doing, uh, Fox. I mean, and I commend you because I see what you're doing. It's like, wow, it's so incredible. Um, a lot of people on this board are doing incredible things. You know, not just a lot of people, everybody on this board, excuse me. This is an active board and I really appreciate being a part of this team as well as the cabinet. Excellent job. Thank you, Mr. Williams. And uh yeah, you can call me Eddie Brown now from here, but uh I'll I'll have my words on my vice president um at our last
071school board meeting. So, you better be here. You better make sure you're here. I don't want to hear no backouts um on here. So, you must be here at our next meeting, which by the way, ladies and gentlemen, because of the Junth holiday, it will not be on a Thursday. It will be June 18th, Wednesday, uh the day before when we'll have our school board meeting. Um want to congratulate again uh as many of you have already done um for our tenure recogni uh recognitions uh this evening. Um you know and and Mitch touched upon it that you know we just we don't hire teachers here. We hire mentors and teachers and individuals who are committed to our students. And um I began the school year at teacher orientation this year. And the message that
072I had to our new teachers coming in is that um kind of what somebody mentioned earlier, you could be, you said it, I think earlier today, you can be a teacher anywhere. Somebody mentioned it. You can be a teacher. Billy mentioned it. Billy. So, I want to give him credit for for the quote, but you can be a teacher anywhere, but it takes a special kind of person to teach in this district and what our expectations are to get involved with the lives of our students because, you know, some of them don't have it easy. A lot of them don't have it easy. And so, we expect a lot more um for those and and you will be richly rewarded if you commit to our students. So, congratulations to our tenure folk and to our
073retirees. Um, I must be getting really old because now some of them I'm recognizing and you know, big hug to the gentleman who probably got the biggest um cheer today, Lidell Henderson, who graduated with with our class. And um, Lidell, even from when he was in high school, was the most unassuming individual, but the person with the biggest kindest heart. and he maintained that throughout his 38 years of service to our district and let's not forget was a custodian of the year in the country, the national custodian of the year as well um for a good reason. So congratulations to all of them and shout out to the schools on the liaison for Maple Hill in the annex over at Truman Moon and their tenure teachers as well. Congratulations. This without a doubt has been
074the the best year in the history of our school district when it comes to women's athletics. We've had three section nine women's teams take home a title this year. I think in the past we've had a couple, but I don't think we've ever had three. in addition to the individual medals in wrestling and in the the uh tennis team as well as our track and field team which hopefully we'll have some of them performing next week at our state championship meet as well. So in continuation to that, unfortunately our softball ladies lost the earlier today down at Monroe. They lost to Corning Painted Post. That's a team who won the state championship last year. So they didn't lose to um you know Trump change, they lost to last year's defending state champion. So it was
075a great um year for them. Uh commend them along with their retiring and you saw her name up on the board, Nancy Hullbrook um for uh decades of service to the school district both um in in in the classroom as uh physical education as well as on the field as a coach. Um, and our flag football team. It's only the third year, I believe, for flag football. And our ladies, who were undefeated going into the state quarterfinal game down at Tapenzee over the weekend, took on a Scarsdale team that was 19-0 and was undefeated last year in the regular season. And I think when they went in, our young ladies thought like, let's not get blown out. And our young ladies lost 19- 18. They had the ball in the last minute of play driving
076for the winning touchdown. And unfortunately, we had an interception at the 15yd line, but they came that close from beating an undefeated Scarsdale team. So, congratulations to both. Congratulations to our athletic director. uh we continue to see that improvement in our athletics here, but only because it goes handinhand with the academic portion. You know, I think I've said it before at the table that um for many years I used to get people or brethren from other districts say, you know, you have so many kids, how come you're not as great on the athletic field? And I used to tell them, you know, we play by the rules here. You know, we're not the most perfect, but we really try to adhere to our academic standards and our attendance policies when it comes to our athletics.
077And if you don't follow the rules, you don't play. And that's okay because it is a privilege to play sports. But now we're seeing scholar athletes, we're seeing scholar athletic teams and our programs, you know, with larger enrollment coming in as well has helped obviously, but um you know, I commend everybody, but this has been by far, in my opinion, since I've been on the school board in 22 years, um one of the best um female athletic years uh in our history. Congratulations to all our scholarship award winners yesterday. I think we had like 60 organizations or something to that effect. Almost 70 organizations. They gave out $175,000 worth of scholarships last night, but the total between uh grants and scholarships, $5.7 million our seniors are taking away this year. So, um, congratulations to everyone
078and Everton and his efforts in the financial aid office as well. Um, a reminder to um our board members to keep an eye out for emails from uh Mrs. Montrey regarding your measurements for your robes for graduation. That should be coming fairly soon. Um, so if you can answer her as soon as you get those emails, it would be appreciated. Um uh a reminder to our community at large, lacrosse, the state semifinals for lacrosse are going to be on our field on Wednesday. Um so it will be jam-packed. Both fields I believe one, two, three there, three games on each field or two two and two on each field. So two, four, six, eight teams represented from throughout um New York State. So, we'll have a pretty good contingent here. And then Friday and Saturday,
079and teams are going to start getting here on Thursday night. Um, Friday and Saturday will be the largest sporting event in New York State, which is this um track and field um championships right here. You know, an event that normally is only housed by big schools up in Syracuse or Rochester or Albany. We're probably the smallest school that hosts um a track and field championship, but we'll have probably at least well the the stands will be packed, so there's going to be at least 4,000 fans and then there's 2,000 athletes on top of that. So, the hotels will be bustling. Stay away from the restaurants this weekend. Uh if unless you have patience next weekend, right? Did I say this weekend? No, my apologies. The 13th. The weekend of the 13th. So, be prepared for
080that. And then I I do want to acknowledge that um and we'll have a moment of silence at our last school board meeting for him, but um unfortunately we've had a in my opinion a very successful school year with the exception of one glaring um issue for us and that is that uh we've lost five students this year. I've never in all of my years of service on any school board have I ever experienced so much loss in one specific year. I think maybe two in one year. But um we lost another student, a junior last week, Juan David Loisa Garcia, um after a long illness. Um I feel for his family because it was a time when we thought that uh we would lose Juan uh right before the holidays and so um he
081stuck it out for his family. Uh beyond that, but um he becomes our um our fourth actual student that we've lost this year. One of our educators lost their son in a car accident who was a Mining Valley student. And then we also did lose a Maple Hill uh substitute educator as well. So, we've had a lot of loss. Um we've kind of um been lucky enough to have the folks from crisis management throughout the county help us out, both our staff and our students. So, um we'll keep them in our thoughts as well as we move forward. So, that's all I got uh this evening. We'll move on to our public participation. The board will designate a portion of its meeting agenda for public comment for a period of up to 40 minutes. Each
082speaker will be allowed up to four minutes. The public's not permitted to discuss any topics under matters involving specific individuals and speakers must sign in prior to speaking. Speakers are not permitted to seed their time to other speakers. Mrs. Romero Thank you, Mr. Romero. Um, I don't think we have any, but I'll say it out loud to make sure. Do we have any takers? Seeing none, uh, Mrs. Monry, do we have any letters to post? No. Uh, superintendent's updates. No updates this evening. Um, Norma could not be with us tonight. She has been a busy young lady. She took part in a uh, panel discussion with the dairy association over at the Barnett Villa Vanetsia the other day or yesterday. It feels like the other day, but yesterday with Miss Ceden and myself. Um, she
083was the hit Everybody had questions for her, none for us. Uh, but we want to thank her for obviously her time and I'm sure she's uh going to be busy for the next couple of weeks as a graduating senior. I would like if possible if we can get a report on June for our June 18th meeting on progress towards um our student rep for next year because we did want Norma to be part of that um discussion as well. Um, any board member reports that anybody wants to do because I know we just had community updates pretty good. John, Yep. Go ahead, John. Oh, your microphone. Yeah, we could do it. Do you have your microphone on? No, I do. Thank you. No problem. Uh uh J and I uh attended that uh and we
084attended that via Zoom. Um was a good conference. The advantage of the conference was it kind of validated many of the things that we're doing in this district. The disadvantage was that it was a long conference. It went from 8:30 to 2:30. So you had to virtually tie up the whole day there. So, but anyway, um the factor of of that conference was the executive director of small cities, Robert Burden uh Stein, and I don't know him and I hope I pronounced his name right, but the first session featured uh the commission of education along with uh two of her executive assistants. Now, here it is. the uh uh the budget, the state budget and the aid. I got the impression that there was a feeling it was okay. Not great, but uh just okay.
085Uh not a lot of optimism about federal funding. The uh Association of District Administrators pointed out that uh 16 billion dollars in federal spending, the cuts in 2026 2026 budget uh includes uh K to2 cuts also includes uh a possible 15% reduction in uh the money allotted to the US Department of Education. So the implication for us is that uh we're going to have to be very very careful when the next budget uh comes along. Um fortunately uh uh thanks to central administration Mike Tuttle, we have a healthy quote bank account, meaning our reserves are good, but uh they can be depleted pretty quickly. Uh some of the programs it was pointed out facing elimination title one part C title title three teacher and school incentive grants uh supporting effective education development grants. So uh
086there it is. Um the uh district has a an obligation to our students and uh we must fulfill those obligations regardless of how difficult it's going to be. Um so uh we've been in a situation sometimes and this is another problem. And this was pointed out when the second half of the first of of the fiscal year of our fiscal year of funding has been pulled. And I think you probably remember that Ed. um going on for this. The a couple of other things I got from the uh uh session with the uh commissioner and the executive aids very much in favor of realiz re regionalization in other words sharing resources uh uh among the districts. Now, interestingly enough, years ago, and maybe some of uh uh folks here who even were in high school
087at the time, remember we had distance learning with other districts. Uh it it was not through computers because the uh the personal computers not uh very well known at the time. We did it through TV. It was coordinated through Orange Subosis. And you know there were some advantages of that that we were offer courses were able to be offered that uh uh could not be offered by one district some of the exotic language courses history courses and so on. So that that worked out actually pretty well. The other thing uh from the commissioner and the aids alternate paths to graduation that's what's coming down the pipe and tomorrow evening we're going to have a couple of those possible paths the seal of b literacy and the seal of civic readiness. So we're going to hear
088more about that in the future. It appears that the regent exams from what I got, they might not be totally cut out. They might be optional somehow. I don't know uh yet. Um uh going continuing on here, uh there was an introduction of a couple of the uh outstanding students of small cities throughout the state. Interestingly enough, uh the session on Ignite and that concerned the uh reading promoting reading and reading programs. Uh the one the person was there, Dana Britt and Rebecca Leone. Uh and Miss Leone is a director of curriculum at the Dunkerk City School District. Now what I got from that session is that very they're using phonics which we're studying which we've started to use now phonics program very intensive tutoring very intensive tutoring one-on-one and providing uh materials multidia materials
089and a goodly supply of print materials for students. and they've had s they've had apparent success with this and that's some of the things we're doing here now too. Um the final thing I'll talk about uh there was a session on architects and engineering and the person uh who spoke about it a a uh principle in an architectural firm uh talked about designing buildings and the way to design buildings he recommended was to have a wide participation which we most definitely did with uh Twin Towers. John was president then and uh uh John was on the committee and since I knew the building very well, I was on the committee and the teachers pretty much the teacher the staff teachers uh administrators custodial staff, cafo staff, nursing staff, they pretty much got what they wanted
090to get. And we uh previous to uh this we did the same thing with Presidential Park. In other words, have as many of the stakeholders involved as possible and uh be futuristic. Think of what you're going to be doing with curriculum and design the building around uh around those needs. So, it was a good conference. As I said, it was a little lengthy and uh but uh we got through it. And Drew, do you want to say anything else again? No, we pretty much covered everything. Yeah. Good. And thanks for sticking with it, Drew. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Okay. Can I can I just tag on real quick real quick on something that John touched on when it talking about the re um regionalization um and and you don't know because my because I'm the
091area 9 director for NISB, but I also sit on the um on NISB's um diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. And I know Mitch is ready to go, but I'm going to hold him here until he's done at the end of the next meeting. Um uh but I'm sorry this is just going to be one of those nights. Uh but that regionalization just for everybody's information especially the list listener the biggest impact that regionalization will make is in rural schools. Oh yeah. That that don't have that don't have the resources that um you know bigger school districts especially small city school districts have. And so um you know looking how to how to consolidate their programs. Another district might have a program that would benefit their kids. And so even as a part of um talking
092about DEI, which has become a bad word in certain circles, but um we're still fighting it fighting the good fight. um uh uh really looking at how at how um that can make all of those particular regional um regional schools and those rural schools um have equitable um outcomes for their students and programs for their students. So, um that's the big thing right now. Regionalization all over the state is what they're talking about. So, John, thank you for bringing that up. Well, thank you. And as Andrew saw, nobody keeps nobody takes notes like Mr. Parina does, right? and he and he it's not shorthand either I don't think I think he writes every word down so thank you John motion to adjourn we have an audit committee oh we have an audit committee report my
093apologies miss Tobias and that's what happens when I hand over the remaining agenda to for shred to our district clerk ahead the audit committee met last night at 5:' um before I ask for your approval of the minutes um our account uh I was going to say account our auditor uh Andy Harris from um the accounting firm was there to review his entrance interview um along with Mr. tuttle. We had discussion about our reserve funds uh and we also had our weekly claim reports from April 30th, May 14th, May 21st and May 29th. And we also approved the treasures report for March of 2025. What I need to ask from the board is approval of the minutes that were included in the board agenda for April 7th, 2025. I'll make the motion. Motion by Mr.
094Estrada. I need a second. Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I. And our next meeting will be October 7th to review our audit um at 5:00. Believe it's a Tuesday. I'm looking. October. Geez, we're already talking October. Um any other committee reports? Anything from policy? Nothing. Last week, we visited Twin Towers capital project site and it offered a valuable opportunity for us to see firsthand the great work completed and provided a preview of the continued process and I just want to say great job to everyone involved. Mitch, I want to say to you, I don't know what I'm going to do without you. I'm going to miss you so much. Got another meeting with him. I know, but still, you know, and um Dr. So they hast welcome. That's it. Now
095I'm done. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Romero. I think I've reached a German, right? I just wanted to mention about last night and the the meeting. I'm sorry. Say it again. May I speak quickly? Yes. Sorry. Go ahead. I was going to ask him something. Um, as I previously mentioned, the Orange County School Board Association held their annual meeting and the guest presentation was done by four students from Warwick, Goan, Marlboro, and Washingtonville. Washingtonville and they shared um what it was their experiences as a school board member. And I think the point I want to make that every school had a different way of appointing their members and the roles and responsibilities of the memb members. The students were extremely articulate and shared with us uh one of my questions to them, what was your
096expectation versus the reality and they really were very honest and came forward and told us what they thought. Interesting. Every district seemed to have um a different selection policy. uh one district they had they rotate between two school board members because the one gentleman was in track. So when he had a track event the other gentleman would take place. Um the interview process was very different within the districts. Um, a lot of the districts and I realized of the four that were very large district compared to the other districts there, they would go to other buildings in their district and not only report what was going on in their buildings, the high school, but what um was happening in the district. The young lady from Goan is a junior. in order for her to continue,
097she's going to have to reapply to be the board of education representative. Very, very informative. And John, you need to express um you know, my thanks for the informative presentation. The kids were really good. And congratulations. John is again president of I will I will say go is new because didn't they didn't we sit on a panel where we spoke to them about how we went through our selection process? No, that was Monroe. Oh, that was cell phones with goan. I'm getting the two go. Once that happens, that means we're at our end here. So, did you have something? Yeah, real quick. Real quick. It it has been our practice and um Dr. De Jesus wasn't here at the at the last meeting right after but it has been our practice to allow um the
098the the on incoming I did I I did ask her she did not want to she wanted to be a listener today she asked she said maybe the next meeting correct unless she wants to change her mind which is you're good all right no problem motion to adjurnn so move before before I call somebody else Freddy Brown moved by Mr. bias and I need a second. Seconded by Mr. Moore. Any discussion? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? We'll see everybody Wednesday, June 18th. Thank you.