Middletown City School Board Meeting 04-22-2021

001oh good evening everybody we'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the april 22 2021 regular meeting of the enlarged city school district of middletown i now call that meeting to order and uh we will begin with the pledge of allegiance mr purino if you will honor us this evening thank you president williams i pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you [Music] thank you mr perrino uh mrs blumenow uh could you please do read the mission of the enlarged city school district of middletown my pleasure president williams 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

002reach their full potential to become lifelong learners and to be competitive productive members of society thank you mrs blumenow our district clerk mrs clark is having technical difficulties with her camera tonight so she you will not see her on screen uh but she is here and you will hear her heavenly voice um tonight so uh we're gonna ask mrs clark if she would please do the roll call thank you uh mrs blumenow here mr cresenzo here mr gomez yeah mrs hewson here mr lasineer [Music] mr perrino yeah miss tobiason yeah mr williams pastor williams here thank you karen i don't know if you've got uh john lanson here he is here yeah i can see him okay yeah he waved thank you all right thank you i would like to entertain a motion for the

003approval of our agenda tonight so moved second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed it so passes entertain now a motion for the approval of our regular minutes from our april 8 2021 meeting any discussion [Music] all in favor aye opposed so passes entertain now a motion for the approval of our special meeting minutes from our april 13 2021 meeting summer second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye i opposed it so passes uh in the interest of time because we do have a very full meeting tonight i i the board has consented that we would we would bypass our recognition announcements and community reports on this evening uh but we do not want anyone in the public to think that we do not recognize all the wonderful things

004that's going on we will come back and address them um at a later date but we have so much on this on this agenda tonight that we want to make sure that we can uh uh be as efficient as possible and make sure that we uh get everything in so uh thank you uh moving on our personnel action items if there is no objection i'd like to put our personnel memorandum 24a instructional and our personnel memorandum 24b non-instructional together may i have a motion for that please second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor all right opposed [Music] i don't believe there are any introduction of personnel tonight so we will move on um with our opportunity to address the board uh we do have um a number of letters on this evening um

005mrs tobias mr bison is going to uh read one letter and then we will uh move to our district kirk who will meet will read the remaining letters um mr bison first of all pastor i'd like to um thank the community as well as my fellow board members for the excellent uh opportunity to participate in the lewis ogden scholarship fund the letter i'm going to read is addressed to mrs rose tobiason and the middletown city school district board of education please find and close the check to be applied to the lewis ogden scholarship fund it comes from the warwick valley high school english department and may and is made with much love and respect for mr ogden and the ogden family mr ogden's son is our colleague and our friend and although only a few

006of us knew mr ogden personally we can all testify to the amazing character work ethic and compassion that we experience every day through our interaction with his son we can only imagine that such a beautiful soul must have been raised by a similarly beautiful one we remember mr ogden and honor his memory with this small contribution towards his memorial scholarship may this year's recipient and further recipients likewise honor his memory by pursuing a very worthwhile education in criminal justice and career and public service sincerely and on behalf of the warwick valley high school english department marilyn roziski smith english teacher and department chair thank you mr bison mrs clark if you would read the um the other letters that we have received okay um the first one hello to the enlarged city school district of

007middletown school board members care members are wondering if you have read and reflected on this quality improvement plan for the district which was sent last week and most especially the root cause report on pages seven through nine we would like a district-wide climate climate surgery done of students families and educators across the board to determine if the climate in the student if the climate in the school district is the same worse or better than it was in 2017 we look forward to hearing from you maria blonde care representative our second letter is from sam mcelroy change good evening superintendent del moro assistant superintendent created president williams vice president to buyeson members of the board and members of the community i would like to start off by thanking the superintendent board of education of this district

008for taking the concerns i raised in my previous comments into consideration and taking action today in commenting on the ongoing fight for racial justice in the country and the success of the nation in convicting george floyd's murderer it continues to be of the utmost importance that events like this as well as the impact they have on people are discussed along with providing an outlet for our thoughts and feelings regarding what comes on the news i commend the superintendent and educators for improving their response to current news events but i but know that this is the bare minimum we must be proactive in our efforts to create change not just appeasing the few loud voices calling for it one of the several ways we can move forward and improve ourselves and the district is to not

009only acknowledge the failures of the nation but recognize the faults of the middletown city school district and those which reside within each and every one of us professional development is the best way we can do this but it must be a continuing process and one that actually does something to resolve the issues it claims to fix i have heard comments from educators who are frustrated with the current training including the content of it and have to do these sessions in the first place i say this to every member of the faculty and administration it is not our job to hold you accountable your personal opinions on whether you want to do this aren't relevant we are suffering and i agree that the current model for training isn't the best it could be but we can

010improve it it doesn't help anybody if you kick and scream because you don't want to talk about white privilege i understand that these conversations are incredibly difficult and uncomfortable for people who have been blind to their own privilege to have yet that uncomfortability does not surpass the need for these discussions black people do not have the ability of being seen in society beyond their skin color they live with these realities every day and they have been fighting for their right to be seen as a human being since at least 16 19. those of us who are privileged to have been the perpetrators of the inequity and inequality that is still prevalent today we have a duty as people to help our fellow people not continue to whine and hold them back i will never know

011what it is like to be black i am privileged in that i will only ever learn about racism and people's experiences with racism racism while never experiencing it myself the importance of this kind of education cannot be overstated people are inherently against what they do not understand and through taking the time to examine one's own biases and privileges we can really start to make a difference and move forward towards a brighter future thank you sam mcelroy our next letter is from mark germain good evening i have spent 12 years of my life in the middletown city school district throughout these years for the most part i've never had a problem with this system until remote learning what i've seen is the ultimate self-destruction of not only faculty but students as well i keep hearing about

012how this district cares for their students and how you're personalizing education and not standardizing it yet when it comes to the mental and emotional well-being of my colleague colleagues it's looked over whether it's giving your students in elementary middle and high school a sense of false hope for going back to normal as well as trying to boost graduating instead of their own mental and emotional well-being is disgusting the following statements at this point there were many anonymous quotes in the letter um and to sum all those quotes up they stressed that students said they were suffering mentally emotionally and socially they felt uncared for and that expectations have been too high and that they wish faculty and staff were more compassionate and then back to the letter from mark bring back asynchronous fridays but make

013absolutely sure that no added work is posted that day let students use that day as the study hall if you want to see more mentally well students and more work being done whether it be on time or not it's better that than no work handed in at all and on the plus side the students that did do all of their work can use that day as relaxation day or mental health and physical wellness day and if we bring those asynchronous days back guaranteed more work will be done and better students will be more productive encourage teachers to lessen workload be mindful of it as well as stop forcing students to turn on their cameras granted for certain classes it's a necessity but not everyone's life at home is the same therefore if a student wishes

014not to turn on their camera or they don't respond after several minutes of calling them out arguably let it go and move on with the class and email said student if this keeps repeating if a student comes to one of the administrators about a teacher or faculty member listen to them and bring in action if needed i've been at the high school for almost four years and i've had my fair share of encounters with self-indulging veterans who believe that nine times out of ten that they are right always in the right in certain situations and for some teachers to even call out a student in the middle of class when they could have pulled them aside can be absolutely damaging towards students when they put their pride and ego first instead of the student's reasoning

015or well-being finally cancel all finals and regions the last thing these kids students need is something else to overwork and over stress themselves about if we're being completely honest these students haven't really attained anything all we've done is work and not learn school is no longer about learning or bettering yourself it's turned into getting pointless assignments and meeting the benchmark to create to gain new funding which puts more stress on low-income families as they are being used as a tool to increase their earnings within the district i am presenting these situations to you because it is not my job to come up with a solution it is your job it is the reason you hold the seats you were elected for to represent the community and help support the students in any way possible treat

016your students like real people instead of members in your system the next letter is from aaron schmidt my name is aaron schmidt i'm the mother of trent schmidt who is currently in the second year of the two-year kindergarten program at presidential park i just wanted to take a moment to send some praise because it is definitely due trent currently has susan glennis teacher i just wanted to say how wonderful she is this year has been challenging for us navigating a pandemic having someone who has an immune issue and bringing trent's new brother ann into the world future midi and having to make the hard choice to go remote for our family and she has been nothing short of a delight she is so caring about the kids i watch how she interacts with the students

017and how she works so hard to encourage everyone and it's inspiring we had to go promote due to the new baby and my husband's medical condition and she includes trent in everything she treats him just as well as she treats the kids who are physically in class with her she balances how she works with the remote kids as well as the in-person kids with such grace i wish that she could be his teacher for the rest of his elementary school career can she be his first grade teacher lol we wish i've worked with customer service for a long time and i know how much praise can go a long way and i just wanted to say thank you thank you for having her as a teacher in your district she is one of those teachers

018that you'll remember all your life and trent is so blessed and lucky to have her as his educator also the ais teachers brenda grammer and arielle bing and ot teacher lisa marrer are equally as amazing they work so well with the kids with the extra health i'm thankful we've had the opportunity to have them as well in our learning process thank you for taking the time to read this and i hope you have a wonderful day aaron schmidt the next letter is from neville langey my name is neville lamey and i'm a sophomore at middletown high school as well as a track athlete i am writing this letter to inform you that i nor my team are pleased with the two-week suspension our coach miss hammer received miss hammer is one of the very few

019people that i know that puts her athletes and students above herself as well as always making sure they revive as many opportunities to be successful in life it is unfair as well as unacceptable that miss hammer receives suspension from coaching for doing her job which is to provide her athletes with more opportunities and more exposure from colleges coach hammer is in no way deserving of such action she's always made sure we're on top of our schoolwork before anything else miss hammer is the most genuine person i know and i am disappointed that she received suspension for doing her job i would recommend reevaluating your decision due to the fact that she abided by all the rules and did what was best for her students thank you respectfully yours neville made me and the last letter

020is from shauna strengthell good evening my name is shauna strenfeld my husband tim is the varsity football coach i am writing to you today beaming with pride in how our community came together in support of the middletown high school varsity football team as they geared up to take on port service in the annual fury bell game what started as a thought painting the town blue inspired by the racine family and their window decorations at the storefront of any old thing turned into a community coming together in ways i never expected little did i know this idea would snowball into a community-wide celebration a week-long celebration of midi pride i'd like to start by thanking nicole sorakis and the mayor's youth council for creating and dispersing flyers to each business in the school district thank you

021for the businesses in the district that decorated your storefronts we often drive through downtown on our way to one place or another driving up south street seeing go middies beat port on the marquee of the parana paramount theater starts the smiles on our faces as we turn down west main street or continue down north street it was a sea it was a sea of blue midi pride mediums streamers balloons etc filled the storefronts of so many businesses thank you to each family who joined in the fun and decorated their lawns as well the sense of pride was undeniable in the weeks leading up to the bell game i received so many calls from businesses and community members that wanted to support our team i'd like to take this opportunity to thank them as well thank

022you qb ball tapped in the elks lodge for hosting viewing parties so our fans could gather safely to watch the game when coveted regulations prevented them from gathering at the stadium thank you family farm ice cream for hosting a fundraiser that night before the game money raised from this event will go directly to the football program thank you rita's italian ice for hosting a midi pride event on game night complete with a blue and white gelati thank you pellegrinos and sun pizzeria for feeding our athletes wednesday night before the game thank you lou and gracia along with the town of walk hill and city of middletown for organizing the drive-through parades to cheer our athletes on the game finally i would like to thank the pto and building administrators for hosting a district-wide spirit week

023leading up to the game it was a great seeing pictures of children from each school participating in the same event uniting our schools for the first time i can remember henry ford is quoted as saying coming together is the beginning keeping together is progress working together a success this is only beginning of middletown coming together and working together let's continue to join forces come together and show our children we are on the same team we are middletown thank you middletown shawna streadfell and that's all the letters i have thank you mrs clark i i do have uh one other uh letter and recognition that i'd like to read uh this is from the best communities for music education in large city school district of middletown music education program receives national recognition this year marks the

024seventh straight year receiving this prestigious designation education had a different look during the 20 20 20 21 school year but the enlarged city school district of middletown's music program adapted to these unprecedented times and earned a familiar distinction middletown has been honored with the best communities for music education national designation for the seventh straight year from the national association for music merchants foundation for its outstanding commitment to music education it is awarded to districts that demonstrate outstanding achievement in efforts to provide music access uh and education to all students despite the challenges of this past year middletown k through 12 music coordinator antoinette de pasquel said our music educators have continued to provide students with quality instruction and experience experiences in a variety of ways middletown spent most of this school year in a hybrid

025model which meant its music educators often simultaneously taught students who were learning in person and learning virtually through a computer at the same time despite having no public in-person concerts since march of 2020 our educators created virtual presentations with the help of our supportive families who not only provided audiences from their living rooms but technical support to help our students receive instruction and guidance through a laptop laptop or a phone screen we are proud and fortunate to be a part of a community that believes music is an important part of a well-rounded education d pascual said nobody could have predicted what we've all experienced for more than a year but we believe music provides students with ways to express themselves to unleash their creativity to be uplifted to relax and to relieve stress and tension

026to qualify for the best communities designation middletown answered detailed questions about funding graduation requirements music class participation instruction time facilities support for the music program and community music making programs responses were verified with school officials and then reviewed by the music research institute at the university of kansas middletown offers a comprehensive general and vocal uh component in the elementary grades and incorporates choral band and orchestra offerings offerings in grades three through twelve the district offers a variety of electives including sound recording technology modern band jazz ensemble choral groups and an award-winning marching band our programs prepare our students to participate in districts county regional statewide and national music events music adds tremendous value to a student's educational experience d pascual said teaching them to be great listeners leaders and teammates uh and and and that's

027all i have and so congratulations to um uh the middletown uh music department on this designation uh continue to go continue to do what you're doing you've been doing it this is seventh year straight thank you moving on [Music] um let me just make sure moving on it is time for our our superintendent's report and so i will turn you into the hands of our superintendent uh mr richard del morro it's in your hand sir mr del maro you're on mute oh he's doing that okay thank you pastor williams president of the school board and also vice president mr bianson board of education members and equally important is our school community yesterday i put out a letter expressing my thoughts and feelings about the recent verdict of mr shobin and as a result of the

028murder of george floyd it's up on the website on facebook page of our district and i feel compelled tonight to express these thoughts in a public session to add to that letter that i sent out yesterday to the community at large the murder of george floyd had a profound impact across the country and was particularly heartfelt in our own local community we all watched the video of the incident in horror and waited anxiously for the legal proceedings to run their course on monday april the 20th 2021 the jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts the full impact though of this verdict remains to be seen in our view there's still much more hard work to be done to heal divisions and adorate the vestiges of systematic racism as a district we will continue to

029have a full and open dialogue with our community and with all of our students we will also continue to refine our programming and policies to address intolerance it will take united effort on all of our parts to finally realize dr martin luther king's dream but with the continued support of our students faculty staff and community i know and convinced we can make great strides towards achieving his goal and become our goal thank you for this opportunity the next part of the superintendent's report is a a summary of our budget proposal and i say proposal because our board of education will vote on it this evening it's the budget adoption evening as we had put in our budget calendars way back in early winter as we moved toward super tuesday may 18th which are school budget

030votes and any propositions a school district may have voted on by the local school district community next slide please as we've been discussing the adopted budget for last year was about 199 million almost 200 million and the budget proposed for this year for the voters to vote on is clearly an increase of about five percent five point eleven percent to be exact and in there we've broken down for your review as we went through each line item inside the administrative program budget of 15 million 770 000 the program which is the instructional and you'll see it as the largest portion of the budget because it includes all of the salaries for our instructional programming our materials and resources or all inside the whatever is necessary for direct instruction 124 million the capital is all about

031the the the building costs and and the resources and machineries and things of that nature in the capital part of the budget and of course because a great deal of the budget is with salary since we are primarily a service organization health and benefits portion inside the school budget totaling of 210 million 221 thousand dollars 201 dollars it's an increase of about 10 million plus as i mentioned a 5.11 increase now remember although this is a summary slide throughout the winter season during the present presentations each one of these components to the budget was delineated and opened for review and posted up on the website for your review next slide please a proposed capital project is a hundred thousand dollars for a capital outlay and basically it's for the twin towers masonry repair as we

032know that's one of our oldest facilities in our school district a beloved icon in the community as well as the around the region and we continue to repair so that it is a safe and healthy environment for all of its inhabitants adults and students alike next slide please so as i mentioned an announced last board meeting we're able to present this 5.11 increase from last year's budget with absolutely no tax levy increase on your school budget zero percent in the last three years i've been asked by the board of education when we would put a one percent increase how much and i would reply one percent now please understand that we although we're very very pleased that we can offer especially during this pandemic time especially with all of the economic hardships that each and

033every family and community member has faced during this pandemic this one percent of not providing for you but zero percent at this time is a direct result of the increased aid that we received from the state of new york and i was not going to come to the public with an increase so it's a zero percent no increase in the taxes this year please know this that next year's budget at this time i cannot guarantee that this will be each and every year this zero percent increase is directly as a result of the increase of foundation aid in the state's honest and genuine effort to replace the money that has been promised to the school districts by state formula by the judicial system indicating that they need to provide the districts with that formula that

034this year and every year is a separate year based upon aid and expenses i cannot promise each and every year there would be a zero percent increase or no increase on the taxes but this year we're able to do it and i am very pleased to offer that for your review to vote on the budget on may 18th next slide please [Music] the school budget itself the 210 million dollar budget is proposition one proposition two this year is to create a reserve fund a 20 million dollar reserve fund uh for capital projects so that we're planning for the future this 20 million dollars does not mean that we need to put 20 million dollars in this account if you do approve the account it all in one time or this year it would be money

035from different accounts that were unspent because of good budgeting in terms of the fact that uh an item may be come in for our expense less than if they told us a little each year this will not have any impact on your taxes matter of fact previous communities voted on one that we had that we were able to use some of this money so that there is no increase in the taxes on the current building that would just took place at over the last 18 months at the high school and there was and also will occur in our schools this summer at monhagen twin towers uh twin uh malaya may carter all the projects that are being done presidential park with the new um grades three through five playground we were no increases partly not

036solely partly because of a capital reserve that was established so we're coming to the end of that month use of money and we want to replenish it because of future needs right so we need board and voter approval to spend this money when we do want to take money out of this account to pay for a capital project again this will have no impact on increased taxes so zero tax levy increase this year this proposition two will have no impact it will still remain zero this will not cost any additional money to do next slide please okay so here's our budget calendar tonight the the board of education will vote on the budget hearing will take place at our next board meeting which is may 6 and as i mentioned a couple of times this

037evening super tuesday school budget vote day in the state of new york will be may 18th and remember we have to have because we're a small city school district we must buy legislation vote on the school budget within 24 hours so our next board of education meeting will be on wednesday may 19th because of that requirement so here is the the budgets for this school year again i cannot emphasize more than i would like to zero tax increase and remember really as a result of what took place in terms of additional state aid to help us close the gap between our expenses and revenues and therefore again there will be no tax levy increase as a result of the additional aid now in the presentations previously we talked about a contingency budget in the event

038that a school budget is denied approval if the voters do not approve the school budget then you go into a contingency budget and that has some negative impact such as the revert back to the tax levy from the previous year you are required to charge for all of the use fees of facilities to your community who is seeking to use the facilities you are not permitted to purchase any materials resources that are not safe and healthy related furniture equipment cannot be purchased we cannot fund any school trips hopefully we're back to normalcy in terms of school trips in a in-person mode as opposed to just virtual school trips that are taking place now these are the components to a contingency budget so i think it's important for us to know what would be happen i

039i get questions well what happens if the voters do not approve your budget well these are some of the things that i'm talking about but our community has been very responsive to the school district because we are very very prudent on how we spend the money we think this that although there's a great deal of money here we look at each expenditure as if it's coming out of our own personal accounts so again i'm very very pleased and excited to offer this this year and i would hope that everyone comes out to vote as you see fit thank you do i have any questions from the board of education any questions mr gomez yes no i just want to say i want i do want to express my uh my uh satisfaction as a trustee

040of the community uh with the uh the budget being presented to tonight and i will commend uh superintendent del mora and his administration not only for this year's budget but for the last few years or the time period i've been here which began in the last two years of uh superintendent eastwood our district i believe has shown when it um has established a model for fiscal accountability and by that it means it means three benchmarks number one putting our children first giving priority to the funding needed for quality education having a strong reserve we've kept a fund balance that's strong does allow our district to be able to meet different needs of different levels including capital projects and the third one given um the utmost consideration to our taxpayers our homeowners which are among the

041highest and over taxed in the country and i think this this is a model that i wish state government would adopt and uh it is my hope that we could continue uh having a tax levy of zero or minimum uh and uh i do take at heart uh the concerns that the superintendent of the moral has expressed for future years i do believe that uh the approach with the present that we established we showed all ways possible try to continue to carry it forward even if it means looking at different innovative methods of budgeting down the road but i think we've had we have a good budget and i think i can our children will continue to benefit especially in september when they re with when i is my hope and prayer that we will

042be full-time school for everybody and at the same time our homeowners know that maybe they don't they don't have the support they wish they could have and other levels of government but here in our district we are responsible and when we say uh read my lips no new taxes we've meant it we've kept it okay so thank you mr delmoro uh and uh uh mrs creedon and again uh as i always say mr tuttle if i ever were to serve in a higher capacity or any one of us he should be helping the federal government with the budget or the state government i mean i hope our future president will uh have his name on their resume list or their binder [Music] you can't take them away no no no [Music] some years down the

043road thank you there's no other questions we're going to move on to our to our budget vote i can't see everybody on the screen okay i okay there we go if there's um any other any other no other questions right we're going to move on to our to our our budget actions now at this time um uh we've had plenty of time to review this to look at it we've we've gone over this over and over again the superintendent has made presentation tonight we've seen all of the details and so now i i would like to entertain a motion for the adoption of our 2021-2022 budget as proposition number one any discussion all in favor bye opposed it so passes entertain now a motion for the approval of resolution for proposition two so [Music] second

044moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed it so passes now i'd like to entertain a motion for the approval of legal notice regarding annual district meeting and elections don't move second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye opposed it so passes it so passes thank you thank you so much everybody at this particular moment what i like to do uh let me just see all right let's let's let's go let's go um let's go forward with one more um one more presentation at this time and then what we're going to need to do um shortly is uh as you can see there's some technical difficulties and some choppiness that's happening um tonight with this meeting uh we're gonna do one more presentation and then what we're gonna do is

045we're gonna have to drop out of this real quick uh and and come back in so we're going to do one more presentation and then we will we will drop out there is a link that has been emailed to you to come back in you'll see it from vesh once we drop out but not yet i'll let you know when um but um i'm gonna uh uh back to the superintendent at this time uh and we'll do one more presentation and then we'll we'll go uh from there we'll make the moves that we need to make you're muted again mr del maro to help everyone out with their audio here thank you uh president uh williams uh as we've been hearing uh over the last week or so or two weeks or so about the

046districts um not responding to some of the issues that we know we need to work on in terms of disproportionality of suspension rates inclusive welcoming equity environments and obviously the district has been working tirelessly but needs that need to know that we need to continue working and looking uh ways to improve our delivery instruction uh creating a wholesome and welcoming environment for all students and to continue to have self-reflection in our professional leaders our classroom practitioners and in fact really all the adults that touch each and every child's life as they enter our campuses each and every day back in 2014-15 school year this school district was identified for disproportionate suspensions of students of color with special education needs this identification came from the new york state education department and each and every year in

047order to be compliant the years of which you're identified as non-compliant and that was the first time in may of 2014 that we were identified as was reflected in the communication from the community member last board meeting i think it's important for us to communicate again what we have done where we are today and equally important where we're moving in the future growth takes place each and every day but it starts with looking at where we are and how to address the issues that need to be addressed and equally to build upon our successes so tonight in our first presentation we're calling it responsive planning responding to the state education reports as well as responding to the needs to all of the children for all of the children each and every day there are days

048that uh work out better than others but it's a matter of keeping being honest moving forward and continue to work so i'm going to ask mrs creeden our assistant superintendent of instruction and also this is cara mcconey a current director of special education who've been integral parts in this planning most recently so i'm going to turn it at this time to kick off the presentation responsive planning miss creighton thank you mr del moro um pastor williams um president williams um vice president tobiason board of education and the community at large mrs marconi and i um along with mr del morro are really excited to share with you what we believe will be a historical document for the district in terms of um you know outlining for us how the district has been responsive in planning

049and continues to be responsive so tonight we are going to take you back a little bit in a journey in time from our initial identification and then bring you all the way up um to the work that we are doing today so i'm going to introduce now this is kara marconi the director of special education for the district and she's going to begin our presentation mrs marconi running board of education i just have the next slide so as you can see here on the slide that we're viewing the district was identified by the new york state education department in may 2014 for indicators 4a and 4b we were identified because we had a discrepancy in the rates of our suspension greater than 10 days for our students with disabilities as well as a discrepancy by

050race or ethnicity this prompted the district to conduct a self-review of our policies practices and procedures relating to the development and implementation of our ieps the use of our positive behavior interventions and supports and procedural safeguards non-compliance was identified during our self-review of our policies practices and procedures relating to the development and implementation of our ieps the use of positive behavior interventions and supports and procedural safeguards being the identification was connected to suspensions within the special education department we initiated a partnership with the regional special education technical assistance support center for training to support and support for our special services staff the 1415 school year was spent working through the identification status released in may the school year prior our team worked to understand the identification process and the specific components of non-compliance in our

051procedures and practices we also attended regional trainings to understand what it meant to be a district identified as disproportionate and develop an entry point to begin to address concerns we work to align our goals roles and structure in the special services department during the 1516 school year the new york state education department conducted a focused review with the district of our policies practices and procedures relating to the development and implementation of our ieps the use of positive behavior interventions and supports and procedural safeguards we identified non-compliance and developed corrective actions to address the identification of positive behavior interventions and supports and other strategies to address behaviors during our committee on special education meetings our recommendations for functional behavior assessments and development of behavior intervention plans are students with disabilities whose behavior impeded their ability to

052learn and our data collection to progress monitor the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our behavior intervention plans in short we were out of compliance on our processes procedures and supports for students with disabilities the team continued to attend mid hudson regional trainings offered to build knowledge and gain information to address our disproportionality additionally the code of conduct committee convened to add additions and revisions and focus on the dignity for all students act during the 1617 school year the new york state education department conducted another focused review of our district policies practices and procedures relating to the development and implementation of our ieps the use of positive behavior interventions and supports and procedural safeguards the district had taken the necessary steps to address the identification of positive behavior interventions and supports and other strategies to address behaviors

053during our committee on special education meetings our recommendations for functional behavior assessments and development of behavior intervention plans and our students with disabilities whose behavior impeded their ability to learn and our data collection to progress monitor the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our behavior plans while the district came into compliance there was still more work to do the team continued to attend the mid hudson regional trainings offered to build knowledge and skills as well as initiated a year-long partnership with the technical assistance center for disproportionality to conduct a root cause analysis report of beliefs policies and practices this process took one year to complete as we were eager to truly understand the issue and identify the solutions as you can see by the previous slides the first year and and the years that followed were spent

054um understanding the identification navigating the identification process as well as continuing to grow our knowledge as an organization around special education policies procedures practices and all of the essential elements that go into conducting a transparent process of data collection and analysis during the 2017 and 18 school year the disproportionality team which was district initiated worked to establish a systems wide approach a multi-tiered response this response was referring to disciplined data entry and reporting it was at this time when the district team came together to really curate the data process that that team worked in their buildings they worked as a team first and then spread the work out building wide to create a more aligned implementation of the code of conduct as well as a real understanding that they needed to work and support the

055development of positive behavior supports inside the buildings and interventions specifically targeted at students with disabilities at that time as a result of that collaboration between the team the disproportionality group developed k-12 behavioral expectations they generated a deep plan that launched in the school year 1819 the goal of that plan was to build a school culture that was clear positive and consistent and to do that the implementation of the behavioral expectations across the district a district-wide level setting on behavior expectations created memorable and positively stated classroom expectations they called it lovingly midi pride p standing for perseverance r for respect i for integrity d for dignity and e for engagement next slide please during the 1819 school year midi pride officially launched the building teams took this work rolled it out at faculty meetings they infused

056the terminology and the pride associated with the movement and the momentum into their faculty handbooks they developed school-wide reward systems created videos highlighting and announcing midi pride and generally tried to really work up midi pride across the district in addition this was the year that the district launched several wraparound supports and generated partnerships and programs with community partners [Music] it was this year in which the district brought in safe schools ambassador training at grades 6 through 12. it was also the year that the district used its general fund to initiate the my brother's keeper program additionally that year the student support room was created at middletown high school in addition for the direct response to create the student support room at middletown high school as opposed to an in-school suspension room the district created a

057position of student support counselor the student support counselor was put in place to provide guidance to students who would utilize that in-school support as a means to not have exclusionary discipline from the classroom in addition there was a creation of additional crisis interventionist positions at the k-8 level this was a proactive measure to support students we also partnered with the orange county department of mental health we have always been able to provide school-based counseling services to our students but have never had the opportunity to have in-house clinical counseling this unique partnership with the orange county department of health provided these support services to our families right where they feel comfortable and are familiar inside our school buildings in addition we created a partnership with cornell cooperative extension and hosted one of their really popular programs

058strengthening families [Music] that year we created our k jump start program which was our way of bringing our youngest learners into the buildings first before their entry into their most formative school year introducing them to our school our building and our academics and supporting them with needed social and emotional skill development as well that year we use the new york state education department's culturally responsive and sustaining framework in a light touch to support our curriculum iterations [Music] in 1920 we continued to build our knowledge and use a multi-tiered response to address concerns we kicked off 1920 by partnering with the anti-defamation league to provide anti-bias education to the entire faculty through the adl anti-defamation league's world of difference workshop [Music] team members from the disproportionality team and central office utilized new york state education department's

059exemplar recommendations and took a visit to schenectady city school district a district that mirrors a middletown in many ways it was during this visit that we had the goal to learn more about trauma-sensitive schools restorative practices turnaround spaces and how their code of conduct revisions positively impacted their school culture the team developed a proposal to consider trauma-sensitive practices and as a result of this thought partnership between schenectady and our district and the disproportionality team's work we established a session with dr melissa satan a very well respected expert in the area of trauma-sensitive schools she came to middletown and to a group of about 45 individuals provided a three-day exploration into trauma-sensitive systems this was the beginning of us learning about multiple ways that we are capable of shifting our work as a result of this

060work and this knowledge building a trauma-sensitive team was formed that team then used what they had learned on trauma and brain development to build out knowledge in the larger audience they took that training and turnkeyed it out into each of the buildings self-care was a priority in this work every educator following that training series was provided with a guide by dr satan as a professional learning resource additionally in 1920 we implemented social emotional learning at the kindergarten through fifth grade levels never before had the district embarked on creating a specific time in the day for students to engage in social emotional learning development this has proved very positive for our district as you know 1920 was also the year where we took the covid pause after a very challenging summer due to the multiple pandemics

061that were facing our nation [Music] and a challenging reopening process for planning we came back stronger the board of education unanimously passed a resolution condemning racism and affirming our commitment to an inclusive school environment for everyone this resolution this historic moment for our district was used as a capstone to professional learning experiences every educator in the district would participate in during the first quarter of the academic year the board of education resolution was used as a close read opportunity to continue to build the knowledge of our entire professional school community in addition the leadership team on the sel and swd continuity of learning committees came together to propose a 30-week equity challenge this challenge this powerful experience was designed to provide further understanding of power privilege oppression and equity the challenge has been adopted and

062adapted by organizations across the country and is designed to create dedicated time and space in organizations to build more effective social justice habits this winter the administrative team participated in courageous conversations the experience this was training to support the development of an inclusive work and study culture here in middletown this included fostering a more inter-culturally responsive way of working with students our colleagues partners community members and provided us with alternate ways of thinking about opportunities and the challenges and the systemic obstacles to inclusion that are currently facing us the administration team focus on the concept of race in your life and how this influences your work we supported the development of confidence and tools and having the courage to have courageous conversations about race engaging in anti-racism work what does it mean how can it

063be done biases the language concepts and how these influence us we also worked to develop empathy and compassion to foster better understandings and inform good practice we are in the process right now of examining ways of thinking about our own opportunities to challenge systemic obstacles to inclusion obstacles i apologize to challenge systemic obstacles to inclusion this year there were some bright spots in terms of opportunities that kovid presented us and never before have we been faced with um the curriculum instruction team came together and worked to provide a professional learning experience for educators directly rooted in the new york state education department's culturally responsive framework this framework works to create welcoming and firm environments high expectations and rigorous outcomes inclusive curriculum and assessment on and ongoing professional learning and support additionally on these professional development

064experience days for educators we had opportunities for them to learn about adverse child experiences resilience social emotional learning diversity equity inclusion literacy mirror math family communication language learner competencies culturally and linguistically linguistically responsive resource utilization and we use this document to make curriculum instruction changes to curate resources and materials to support diversity equity and inclusion in our district this year this fall and through the winter we were able to utilize our flexible schedules at the 9 through 12 level to implement social emotional learning as a specific segment of time we're eager to look for ways to continue to build that out in the coming years so that we can set aside that dedicated time in six through eight we're encouraged by the progress that the professionals in those buildings are making using the current social

065emotional learning curriculum additionally this year to connect in a different way with our school community the district partnered with a firm to complete an equity audit we're also completing a hiring inventory and an equity lens map the goal for this work which has been ongoing throughout the year is to uncover our blind spots and support our teams in better addressing any racial inequities within our district [Music] i do want to make a few comments before i open it up to the board of education for any questions that you may have this has been a very comprehensive and in-depth look at what has been going on in our school district looking at our areas that we've been identified by the state of new york's education department early from may of 14 to the current day and

066i'm i'm very proud of all the work we have done but make no mistake this presentation is not be constituted as a victory lap this is a as i've mentioned at several of our meetings this entire school term these are the beginning steps of a long and consistent journey forward in growing this community of learners this community of educators to understand the complexities of racism and biases and how it impacts each and every child [Music] and family in our school district we will continue to do the work necessary to meet the challenges to understand we have we have not been positive in what we've i try to accomplish not continue mistakes and move forward in a positive fashion we have the talent in this school district to accomplish this we have demonstrated that over and

067over again when we put our minds together in a collaborative manner and we will continue to do that in an open and honest fashion this current administration came into the leadership roles in the [Music] late winter of 2018 and as you saw from the slides and you will see them they'll be posted on our website the work we've done to address the areas that need improvement one might identify those areas as blind spots or areas that need to be rectified part of that important work is in our next presentation the code of conduct that has been mentioned several times in this particular presentation as it is wetted as is melded together in many many components so at this point in time i would like to thank both mrs marconi mrs creden and all of the

068staff that's behind all what was said because all of that work isn't done by two or three or four people here at central office that is simply not so not accurate so all those who may not be presenting tonight in this report i want to thank you for your professional diligence and recognition of the areas that we are working on and will continue to work on again this is the first leg of a long long journey [Music] i'll open up the floor to our board of education thank you mrs creeden this is marconi mrs blumenow thank you president williams thank you mrs creden thank you mrs marconi and to our administration for presenting what has been an ongoing um over the past couple of years goal uh goal plan to create equity uh in and

069and really understand the differences um among our students among our staff and it this is um i feel like as a as a part of this district i've been watching um i've been watching these changes happen for so long and um and now to be able to put it all really out front and show the community what it is that our district works on on a regular basis and what we find important and what are our what our priorities are in this district it is our it is our students it is making sure that we they all have an equal and equitable opportunity and opportunity for education um so thank you really for all of the work that you've done and especially through this through this difficult time of uh bringing our teachers together and

070i guess our pandemic really allowed us to as you said allowed us some time that we might not have had uh had our teachers been working on other things so and and being focused in you know in the classroom on a regular basis so um i thank you so much for making the best use of this pandemic time to uh make our you know make our district better and that's what we do every day every student every day thank you yeah i just want to take one minute just to make sure that um the board of education and the community at large know what an undertaking it is to put together a really rigorous and quality professional development program for so many educators we are an enormous organization with almost 700 professionals and the district

071um curriculum and instruction team as well as each of the administrators participated um you know the curriculum instruction team did the heavy lifting and the administrators really came in as integral supports um to those professional development opportunities and the really the applause goes to all of those individuals for really providing our district with quality professional development over the last several months or a very very critical topic any other questions mr gomez thank you um please have a couple of questions uh you mentioned in your presentation some of the uh programs our district started and i think around 2018 uh the my brother's keeper uh i will mention uh three of them which i i particularly like a lot my brother's keeper the cornell cooperative straightening families um okay you give us a little detail um

072maybe a little little bit more as to what are those programs currently doing in the school district i mean i would i think it would be a good idea maybe for the future not just for the board but maybe for the parents as a whole a little summary and as to each program so that we know what's going on how and the benefits that the district is saying are being raped but i would like to hear a little bit of my brother's keeper which i know is something that's also been dear to president william and myself and the cornell family stranding families i remember when they came before the board about a couple of years ago this is great um yeah so the um cornell cooperative extension partnership um which began with the strengthening families

073program which was an excellent opportunity for um families in our middle school um and into high school uh to come inside our school buildings we hosted it at middletown high school um in the the awesome downstairs collaborative space um and uh those families came and um they did a little bit of everything we had a meal together because of the science and research behind what coming together around food um does to a group a unit we worked to provide them with literature and access to resources and then they did um more team building and family building activities and partnerships and then the amazing staff at cornell cooperative extension um jaleeka von stacklenberg really takes the credit for this she does an amazing job she split the um families into adult groups and youth groups and

074provided them with counseling and support and mentorship around those formative years in middle school and early high school so really well-received programs lots of fun each of the nights and and really um wonderful to see um families come together around a meal and um you know enjoy commonalities that they had with other families in our community that may have never had the opportunity to have that experience before through that partnership cornell cooperative extension has been a fabulous partner to us they um partnered with us um in our professional development um series this year and did multiple sessions for us um they did a session on adverse childhood experiences for staff uh resilience um developing resilience in yourself and others um and so they've just been a really um great community resource for us has been

075very well participated in those professional development series and staff always really speak very highly of them my brother's keeper i'm sure i'm not going to be able to keep john from sharing a little bit at this but this year uh really exciting that um under the leadership of tracy sorrentino at the high school um anthony williams and omar perez are really taking um you know that program and sort of elevating a bit and so they're doing a wonderful job we are very lucky that um because of the connections that they have made and the community partnerships that they have made we have a wonderful set of mentors working with a group of our boys this year and they're doing um fabulous work um supporting our um young men here john anything you want to share

076about that in particular oh i i'm not gonna say too much i think it's all been it's all been said uh this this particular program that my brother's keeper program has been something that's been extremely near and dear to my heart um from the moment that i i learned of the program uh uh i do wanna i do wanna make sure that i acknowledge that through this my my brother's keeper program the last couple of years uh and even if we just go back to uh last year that um all of our all of our our mentees all the young men that were part of that program last year graduated uh and and so we've had great success great success uh even over this time with with with covet and uh and all of the

077different things and struggles that we've had to face the program has had great success in connecting with uh with uh these these particular young men as well as we've had some of our our former former mentees who graduated have come back have come back to even share their thoughts and their success and and where they are now because of this program and because of the um the relationships that have been formed between mentors and between uh mentees and so um it's very near and dear to my heart i'm very grateful that the district has done this has done this and uh we didn't wait we didn't wait to receive a grant we went full head full steam ahead uh using using general funds and uh in order to make sure that this program would be

078uh would be uh put in place and i think that's uh that's a testimony to the to the direction and the and the um and the uh uh commitment to uh to try to move forward to try to move forward and i know many things have been said and you know many things have been said many things have been have been um you know uh pointed out however i i'm very proud of the fact that uh we're making steps in the in the right direction so much much work to do much much much much more work to do uh even with the things that we've talked about in this past week i shared earlier with with the rest of you earlier before we came into the meeting uh is that this was not even with

079the the the derek chauvin uh uh uh verdict uh verdict is it's not really a time for uh celebration although we do we do uh we do have a sense of hope but it's more of a time for reflection and i think that we're taking this time to reflect even as we're continuing to move the work still got to be done no matter what so i'm very proud of the work that's being done and i'm confident that we're going to continue to move forward and and do what has to be done uh regardless of anything else so thank you i do have sort of three more questions but i just want to add to a pastor william said from the members of the board that where the but my brother's keeper was actually a program

080thing that was founded by former president obama but has won universal support by by fellow citizens who identify as progressive as well as conservative because it emphasizes empowerment a message for our young people that the future is there they could seize it it can involve the independence of confidence and as one across the political spectrum a lot of support and it's been affected community empowerment and uh and it's wonderful to see our young people strive my other question is the k jump start program i remember when miss creed and actually took the initiative of putting this together and and and uh it was very great i think the the the corbett paul thing came the year after uh where are we heading with this do you think we'll be able to start to have it

081again this summer or what's is there anything plan what's what's the strategy yeah i mean mr gomez is too kind of you but i really can't take um the credit for it it was um you know thankfully uh with the support of the superintendent um an amazing team um the instructional um leaders um the director of literacy and the director of mathematics uh mrs buller and um katherine yaya whaley williams along with some really really outstanding um early childhood kindergarten teachers throughout the district came together and put together an amazing opportunity for our students and so we are super excited that mr del morro has given us the green light to not only hold the program again this summer um but but grow that program and we've learned so much since we have offered it

082um and we're really looking forward to take our learning and you know putting together a really outstanding program this year okay and then all right thank you so much great to hear that i look forward to seeing it growing for all our newer young children entering then the presentation has something i remember there was a phrase there uh power privilege and supremacy oppression what what do we mean here when we say power privilege supremacy and of oppression what are we looking at here exactly i think it was one of the last slides second to last yeah i think what you're referring to is um some of the um global um concepts that were inside the courageous conversations experience that the district attended so that was a it was a three-day training that district administrators attended

083it was three half a days and we came together as a group um to learn more it was really about foundational knowledge building for all of the administrators in the group and we will now um continue on our journey actually tomorrow begins um an additional phase of that training for us to understand a little more deeply on how we can use a cultural and linguistic lee responsive lens to not only make it would eventually lead to making sure that our resource allocation our curriculum follows the new york state education department's culturally responsive framework that we are thinking about our families and communities and our communication methods that we're putting out appropriately termed communication using being responsive to language um so it's sort of a training that encompasses lots of different components okay so we break

084that to the classroom here's my last question how will that connect with let's say with reading writing arithmetic for parents who might be looking and saying what about the three r's for the elementary school or the junior high how would connect that with that so i think that you know as a new york state education department public school district you know we are required to follow the new york state education department's standards and on the culturally responsive framework has been adopted by the new york state education department and districts are required to use that as their lens as they work through curriculum so it doesn't mean that we are um um not doing those things it just means that we are doing those things through a culturally and linguistically relevant lens [Music] thank you that's

085all my questions i'll leave it for the rest of our colleagues and thank you for the time and work are there any other questions all right mr purino thank you president williams amy uh could you uh just uh maybe two three sentences because i know people we know about the jumpstart program but i'm sure people in the community are wanting what does exactly mean nothing long just a couple sentences sure the kindergarten jumpstart program was an opportunity for us to have um you know we traditionally have summer school um and that's offered to students who are already part of our instructional organization and so this kindergarten jumpstart was an opportunity for us to help ease the transition between our youngest scholars as they make their entry way into kindergarten so it was offered to um

086students who had um who were you know four or five coming into kindergarten that september it was held in july and august prior to their entry into school and we did um a little bit of movement and the social emotional development eased their transition we provided opportunities for them to see what it would be like to be in a classroom have lunch explore letters sounds and numbers and um dan higby was wonderful and partnered with us and even offered us opportunities to um have the students experience the school bus and all of this was done so that we hoped that those students and it worked we hope that those students that attended the kindergarten jumpstart had a much more natural and smooth progression as they began kindergarten with us in the fall thank you so

087much right any other questions before we move on if not thank you very much uh mrs creed in and and uh and and miss mcconey we thank you so much uh for your presentation what i'd like to do at this particular time um uh we we have been in front of this screen many of us have been in front of the screen since five o'clock it is now 8 36. uh we do need to we do need to sign off um and come back in because we are experiencing some technical difficulties and this particular link is glitchy and so i i want the public to be aware we are we are going to sign off of this connection but we will be coming back in in 10 minutes uh we're going to take it we're

088going to take a intermission if you will uh so that uh everybody that's here my colleagues and even you that are watching uh will have an opportunity to uh take your eyes off the screen i do not have blue light glasses and so my my eyes are watering as i'm sure some others are uh and so uh in the interest in the interest even with our young people we're experiencing we're experiencing what our young people are have been experiencing and so we want this this helps us to be uh uh even more empathetic to what they're dealing with so let's take a break the link has been sent out to you for the new meeting and so um let's take 10 minutes it is now 8 37 i will see you back here at 9

089what and we will continue the meeting at i was going to take a nap you you messed it up um we just had all the administrators with set sail just like a what we'll see we'll see we'll see you at 8 47 uh uh in in 10 minutes all right thank you everybody we will sign out at this time public we will be back in 10 minutes thank you foreign my well thank you everybody for uh allowing us to take a uh much needed break as i'm sure that some of you that are are watching tonight also needed a uh a little bit of a break we now will continue uh this was just a pause well now we will continue with our april 22nd uh 2021 uh regular meeting of the enlarged city school

090district of middletown uh when we left off we left off um with a with a report of our responsive planning we will now move into uh the superintendent's report with a code of conduct i put you back uh into the hands of our superintendent mr richard richard delmar you're muted sir i'm sorry thank you president williams vice president uh tobiason board of education members and of course our entire community and our patient presenters tonight uh as we have still more uh presentations for the community uh this evening as i mentioned earlier what we were doing our responsive planning uh presentation that muted very very closely to that work is the work inside the responsive planning which is the code of conduct although the code of conduct is required by the state education department to be

091reviewed and adopted annually the work here that we're doing uh with our code of conduct the iterations that we're doing mirror much of the revisions to how we're approaching uh infractions inappropriate behavior and more importantly trying to improve the antecedents in terms of interventions preventative work in terms of all of the positions and programs that we are currently in place and improving on and also moving forward with potentially maybe new programs as we look at different ways to ensure a safe and healthy and wholesome environment so that the teaching learning promise will be enhanced and will be a welcoming and supportive environment for all of our students kindergarten and inclusive all the grades up until grade 12. so uh as the assistant superintendent of instruction has been directed by the superintendent uh to uh facilitate

092a review of the code of conduct with a number of administrators i then turned this next portion of the board uh minutes to understand our code of conduct mrs creden thank you superintendent del morro i'm president williams vice president of bison board of education in the community and my colleagues this evening it's really exciting to be able to come to you this evening to share with you the progress that the code of conduct committee has made tonight i'm going to be sharing a presentation along with my colleagues who are just a few of the members that are a part of the full code of conduct committee i believe that this code of conduct is an opportunity for us to work together to set forth a vision for our learning environments where we support every young

093person in reaching their full potential our code of conduct should first emphasize and advocate for every young person to be treated with dignity and respect we should underscore the importance of preventative and positive approaches to discipline sending a positive message to send to shift disciplinary practices away from exclusionary discipline at all times except when there are health and safety needs and towards a system of supports where every student's needs are met so tonight i'd like to introduce our code of conduct committee i have with me this evening um ashley merchant who's a dean at monhagen middle school anthony williams who's a dean at middletown high school karen marconi who's the director of special education and tamika harris who's an assistant principal at maple hill elementary school so without further ado i'm going to let my

094team go ahead and begin good evening everyone i'm going to be presenting to you our why we believe our stu our schools should be warm welcoming affirming and safe environments for all students and staff the code of conduct is used to communicate the principles and practices to promote a system for positive actions and positive school climate we also believe in our why that the review ensures the document and implementation are responsive to our specific school community in addition to all districts are required to review and adapt their code of conduct annually so this is our why we are reviewing the code of concepts so what you have in front of you here are what we believe are opportunities for growth as a code of conduct committee we came together and looked at multiple years of

095data and disaggregated that data in a variety of ways what you have on this slide in front of you is three years of data and because there was little to no change over the data for three years what we did was take the data and come up with an average a cost across all three years so what you see here is that while black students represent 23.5 of our student population or enrollment they represent 38 of our suspensions hispanic students represent 57 of our student enrollment but represent 49 of our suspensions white students represent 14 and a half percent of our student enrollment and represent 9.8 of suspensions so when you're looking at this data again this data is three years of data and it represents all exclusionary discipline so any type of in-school suspension

096or out-of-school suspension over the three years indicated so with that data i want to take you back to where we started our why knowing what we know and where that data is and the work that we have to do we want to reaffirm that we believe our schools should be warm welcoming affirming and safe environments for students and staff we believe that the code of conduct should be used to communicate the principles and practices to promote a safe system with positive actions and a positive school climate we believe that this review that we are undergoing right now will ensure that the document and then the implementation of that document are responsive to our specific school community [Music] who have we partnered with for this work our code of conduct review is being completed by a

097team of collaborators comprised of members of the board of education district administrators building administrators educators and community stakeholders a team approach is the foundation of our work we have been charged by the superintendent of schools to develop a guide to promote equity diversity and inclusion grounded in our district beliefs what you hear what you see is the priorities guiding our work to provide educators and students the tools to build positive safe teaching and learning environments with this goal in mind we will work to continue to reflect on our current attitudes practices and beliefs and use these to guide our next steps on this journey build capacity and implement with fidelity our existing interventions and behavior supports and a conscious attempt to reduce the number of suspensions and respond to students social emotional and academic needs

098grow and learn as a community of educators ensuring our spaces our environments where all students have the opportunity to be lifelong learners so just to take a moment here to review the milestones of the code of conduct committee this year in december through february the team worked together to identify middletown's opportunities for improvement and focus areas for our work in february through april we worked to build a foundational understanding of our why through a review of our current code of conduct district data and a review of new york state education department code of conduct exemplars we will work through august to continue to disaggregate data and begin revisions and additions to our current code of conduct by developing draft segments of each of the components so as you can see we have much to be

099proud of but still have much work to do and our work moving forward we believe that we will use the following school community agreements to build both human capital and social capital to create an awareness for our current needs to foster school community fluency using a common language to establish responsive policies practices and procedures to build capacity to implement the code of conduct with fidelity what's the accountability directly related to our mission statement we strive to provide physical sound educational opportunities in a safe environment that continuously support 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 and we wanted to end our um committee update just by sharing that we really believe which has been echoed

100here tonight by the superintendent and the board of education is that when you change the world um and you've done it change it again so while we realize that we have much work to do we are proud as a committee of the work that we have done to this point i'd like to open the floor if there's any questions at this time [Music] mr williams how you doing i would just like to hear from um any administrator either in the building or on the ground uh what can we do right now to start or stop currently what's going on to promote the changes in the phone of course uh the code of conduct right now like what can we start or stop currently to help promote the changes in the code of conduct well um

101you bring up a good point and we have come together as a committee um and pastor williams and vice president tobiason um sit on that committee and support us with the work and as a committee we have looked at some things that are bright spots in our current code of conduct as well as areas where we know we have to grow um so during this academic year we're still sitting with the code of conduct that has already you know been board approved and what we're doing now is really taking the time to learn we teased out new york state education department defines exemplars and we really did a dive into three different exemplars and those three districts really do mirror um a district like middletown in both sides and demographics and so it was a

102great learning experience to read through those documents and get a better understanding of the supports that they put in place um to be um proactive and positive so that students um are not provided with exclusionary discipline so what i would say is that we are hopeful that we will come to a place where we can take the good work that our previous code of conduct committees have done we have a solid document but are very well aware that there are adjustments and iterations that we will need to make to the document moving forward so that next year when we come together as a team to um implement and to roll out that code of conduct um i think one of the keys that mr del moro has driven home is intensive professional development around the

103implementation to make sure that um in one building the implementation doesn't look one way and in another building the implementation doesn't look differently hope that answered your question that was good thank you can i uh answer that question as well um i you know one thing you know i would just say one thing that you know i can do now is just you know and i think we all can do is just make sure that you know moving forward these are not just words in a presentation and we lift these words through and through and i think that the code of conduct team got off to a really good start um you know um i also you know believe that to school the prison pipeline is real so we're not trying to be you know

104soft on kids we're trying to save lives so just with that you know moving in that direction and having that perspective i think we all agree that you know um there's some changes that you know needed to be made so um you know i appreciate you know the work that you know we started off with this year so thank you thank you i can add a comment also i'm sitting on the committee and when you first look at our present code of conduct um it's it's very uh punitive in one sense it's not a friendly document at all and when we looked at the exemplars from the state uh basically um schenectadies uh yonkers and my mind went blank on the third one but you see a more friendly document a document that's more student

105oriented although there's the rights and responsibilities there's also a way to put in a a positive framework the violations and how they will be handled but it's not that it's it's not the severity that we see in our present one um you don't realize that until you do a comparison between the two dot between our doctorate doctor doctrines and the doctrines of uh the three exemplars and i think that was the biggest thing that i took away from our last meeting was to see how it was more student oriented and a not a real harsh slap on the hand yes there is punitive matter measures if you don't live up to the code of conduct but the it's it's a much easier reading document um for the future so let me rest all of you

106to be assured that this committee is definitely working on um a code that i think you'll see a huge improvement in thank you mr bison mr president mr president yes sir thank you yes uh what strike me was the statistics that you shared about 49 of uh hispanic children 39 of african-american 38 percent of african-american children sorry representing the i mean the percentage that they represent suspensions and uh one thing that concerns me and i'm not going to the point of awareness that you're listed um [Music] have either our district or we looked at other districts looked into why is that the case are there what are the circumstances many of these children are looking at i know that over 50 years ago the late daniel patrick moynihan future united states senator uh studied poverty

107particularly in the african-american community i think the same would apply to the hispanic community and found the absence of a father figure the breakdown of the family uh is that something that is their correlation uh where there are homes where one parent in many instances the father the male figure may be absent or you have homes where you have father and mother but they're dysfunctional because they are afflicted by domestic violence children that might have had the trauma of cps engagement have we looked at that because i think if we have awareness of how those factor plays in will also help the school district when it comes to discipline policy how to deal with those children because sometimes as we know when as a parent as a former teacher when students or young people sometimes

108act certain ways and maybe they're trying to help okay and you may see a student may want to put a strong front a deep inside maybe a little boy or a little girl crying for help and it may have to do with situations outside of school so uh i just wanted to know how we looked into that or uh we looked at other districts you know ms creden mentioned um one of our districts to the north of here as far as addressing that so can can i can i can i give a quick answer to that since since i'm also on this on this team uh i'll give a quick answer to that uh you heard mrs you heard uh mr bison allude to the exemplars those those districts that uh were are used as

109examples by the state of new york uh those being uh yonkers schenectady which we which we took a team to schenectady to examine their trauma-sensitive schools as well as i believe the other exemplar is the buffalo school district if i'm not mistaken um uh and so uh we we examined we examined uh those code of conduct we examined some of the things that are happening in those particular districts i also want to allude to the fact that this particular data is it is it is what it is it's the real and we're we're not hiding from it uh because we need to be able to address it uh i think that we understand too that this is a surface this is surface uh surface when we begin to dig a little bit deeper into the

110data i'm sure that you will find out if there's a certain degree of recidivism uh you'll find out too uh one of the things i'm sure that the superintendent the superintendent knows very well that for the last five years i i have have asked and been on top of data concerning concerning some of the some of the particulars behind suspensions throughout the entire district as it relates to as it relates to uh the incidents incidences um the number of days whether it be five days or under or or five days and over uh i've looked at i've asked for uh data concerning the concerning where where are the suspensions coming from who is writing the referrals is it is it is it certain individuals that uh that are repeating the same behavior and i think

111that sometimes it's it's it's important for us to know that uh the work continues to dig deeper into the data so that we can address it you make a great point mr gomez uh make a great point in what you said you took the long one you took the long way around it but uh the truth of the matter is the truth of the matter is is that this is some of the things that the code of conduct is addressing as well as some of the framework that we talked about a little bit earlier that the team presented a little bit earlier even in addressing trauma-sensitive schools we sat in the trauma and sensitive training with dr satan and and those are some of the things that the district is working toward in order to

112be able to address um all of the issues that we face and and i think that it's important for us to to make sure that we we we put up these numbers because i'm not pleased with the numbers i don't think anybody here is pleased with the numbers but we have to look at it we have to we have to acknowledge it and we have to we have to address it which is what um which is what i'm very proud to say is being done right now if i just may uh jump in in the dialogue here uh as i was going to mention some of the um items mr williams just mentioned because we were talking about this not only earlier today but as he mentioned several times over the last couple of years

113however we have to look at um what's behind that data as we disaggregate the data um what are the infractions where are they occurring right repeat these numbers are aggregate numbers it doesn't this could be a single person who may have four or five different suspensions in a current year therefore knowing the fact that there are certain uh of our students that fall into this category uh based on this data how can we help them uh we have put support personnel in place uh and i'm to that end i'm thinking very seriously i've mentioned this this is not any uh news uh breakage here um like for example all all of our k-8 schools have another high school two crisis interventionist that may imply that this person or persons intervene when there's a crisis which

114may be the case but most of the time there isn't a crisis so what preventative work they can do because of the issues if you see individuals that are constantly being in this situation where not adhering or having uh to be involved in some infraction what's the cause of that the root cause analysis of that and that is what we're looking into right so to answer some of the question could that be an issue certainly we have social workers we have student support individuals whether they're administrators or counselors or earmarked to do this type of preventative work to find out what is it if you look at all the work that has been done over the last several years on restorative practices right it's talking about basically not just the consequence but how can we

115work with the individual to reshape their inappropriate behavior to shape their thinking and that takes time but we have put these type of positions in place we have to maximize their their ability to do that and that is much of what this code of conduct coupled with that responsive planning work together that's why i'm going to say it more than once i said it several times this evening that those two work works are not in silos matter of fact there are several people purposely or intentionally put on both teams so that there's a continuity of direction so that we can really get a handle on this when i've asked the team to go up to schenectady to look at examples to come back with what are some of the ideas that have worked for them

116one of the things that says it takes time now i realize and appreciate mr fred williams comment though what can we do now obviously that that's what the charge is now to put in to look at to see what we have what can we do to maximize personnel program and what's missing to put in but we have to look at the data not just look at the data as a flat entity what's behind that data and that's what this aggregating data is talked about also the continuity between all of the administrators and consistently applying that same theories and belief systems not only within a school but high school has several administrators dealing in this arena but principals and assistant principals and deans in our other schools also the teachers let's face it the children meet

117the teachers and touch base with the teachers more than they with administrators they're in their their their time frame their classrooms for 45 minutes or in the elementary larger blocks of time if we really think about the minutes that a child spends with the teacher as opposed to an administrator there's no comparison so we have to have our educators the leaders of learners understanding and be passionate as we are here tonight so the work is out there it's good work it's hard work but we welcome it and so um that may be an area in looking at that do we need to bring in for example i'm not suggesting at this time but what a response to be what you brought up mr gomez big brother big sister you know those type of programs no

118we have all pieces here putting it in place but we have to be singular in our purpose always thank you all right any other questions for the team for any for anyone presenting in the code of conduct yes mr perino [Music] thank you could we go back to those statistics for a moment sure hey again could we have them on the screen is that possible yeah let's get those on the screen okay but the question is has anybody or has a committee looked at the facts of suspensions of white students black students hispanic students for the same offense for the same infraction in other words are more is there an unequal suspension rate for black students hispanic students for the same offense than white students have we done that have we pulled the uh have

119we pulled the slips on all of these students and examine that i i i will defer that specific question to mrs creighton but to my understanding they have not got to that point although it's been part of the charge that i have given uh mrs creden uh who then charges the committee to look at who is offending how often what are they and then from there to look at all of those issues that you are talking about in terms of that's the deep dive of the data now please understand that this is the first presentation we will be asking the code of conduct committee to return what the things that we are talking about in in relation to the deep dive a recidivism the points that you're making uh john in terms of comparison to

120each of the uh groups in the similar fractions that is going to take a great deal of hands-on work and trying to use our digital student management system as much as it could give us to do that that'll take some time they know what's in front of them and it's part of the deep dive please understand that no way know how we're saying that this is the end of the presentation regarding this very critical work similar to the response of planning we will be returning to this when the code of contact committee will convene periodically to do this type of work and we will report out to the community and the board thank you this is just the beginning of a great deal of work to be done here these are all excellent points being

121raised but not that the committee hasn't articulated as part of their own work agenda that the list um is increasing because uh when we start to really look at how to make these major shifts in an organization such as uh our school district which is very large we have over 7 000 students and they are different needs for different groups um early ed middle uh elementary right middle school whole different set of issues different than the high school and the high school different from everyone else you know as i read um the discipline issues that come to up to the superintendents is very very different uh of the issues that the high school uh staff and administration are working with our children in that age group then let's say over at one of our early

122childhood centers classroom or mid elementary classrooms very different issues thank you welcome does anyone have it on the board have any more questions for the committee i just want one more thing i just want to follow up mr de morrow mentioned the importance of the the the training uh the teachers here i think that's very important sleeping from my own experience from when i taught high school uh you you always may find a scenario where you have a student that is constantly getting suspended left and right from different teachers yet there is one teacher that somehow that student so does exceptional and i think it's important that that conversation take place and it reminds me when i started teaching in the bronx i gave a writing assignment and i commented on the student's paper once

123to a young lady's paper that she had her writing skills are identical to what they expect in law school um this student then did another homework assignment for me and she was insisting mister that you have you read it mister have you read it i follow him that the read it and she wrote an essay where she said all her life everybody was writing her off every teacher wrote her off and finally someone said something to her that saw a potential that nobody ever had and now she's determined to follow what i i suggested so i think it's important if there's a teacher that's that somehow has that connection with the student that that teacher interacts with those that that may not especially if you have newer teachers that may not know how to cope

124with the classroom management or how to deal with because that can make it or break it for the students so or in their other classes absolutely uh mr gomez uh i actually we had a um during our equity challenge session today one of the topics was restorative practice and we watched our spark we watched a video of um you know some teachers using restorative practice and we we used it we used quite a few in the student support department at the high school where they talked about listening with your heart and um being able to you know connect connections before content and creating they had this particular school the video we showed they had um they were meeting with students every morning and they would have something that they would they called the zone and

125what it was it was circles it was like restorative circles but there was no power structure in those circles you know everybody was participants in those circles to get to know each other to check in to see if he was okay but and then after they you know as as the time went on they got deeper and deeper and you know address certain behaviors um when you create that safe space you know you know those connections you know happen naturally and then you know you decrease you know what we're talking about now you just you decrease some of those behaviors because behavior you know you know behavior you have to teach that as well so i think that you know we we're on the right track i'm i mean we we we are uh using

126restorative practices a lot um and i think that we're gonna see um we're gonna see some of that you're going to see we're going to reap the benefits of that moving forward our students are going to reap the benefits of that moving forward but we have to build on what what is working so um i agree with you totally um that connection those connections and building those relationships is is important you know um it's hard for to teach a student about a specific subject area whether it's math english science when you know uh you know they have a lot going on or they experience trauma so you know we have to build those connections and create that safe space so thank you i just wanted to say if i may okay yes i just wanted

127to say one of the points that you made um previous to the last um uh board member gomez and to mr williams was the fact um in looking at some of the exemplars that the code of conduct reviewed i liked very much how they did break it down by grade level the younger that it wasn't cut and dry document that you could see different grade levels and the the punitive um response for an action to me it was that made for a better document than the present one that we had that i said right now if you look at it um and at the time and i believe i was on that committee at the time we thought we had a great document but it it's very wordy it's very stiff um there's there's nothing

128user-friendly i want to use that word about it there it's it's it's a document that does need overhaul and i'm sure by the time we finish our work you'll have a document here that we can also be proud of and perhaps even the state will use as an exemplary but um it does need work okay thank you absolutely all right let's move let's let's go ahead and uh continue to move we still got a lot of ground to cover and uh we want to be cognizant of everybody's time tonight so thank you everybody for your comments okay thank you members of the code of conduct committee appreciate your work uh and uh anticipating all of the perspiration in front of you so i'm going to thank you in advance because there is a great deal

129of work to do and certainly tonight is not an endgame it's the uh how should i say the preseason of a long work in front of us in front of all of us and but it's good work and it's needed work and important work thank you [Music] all right so now uh if i continue in our superintendence report this evening uh is a very exciting part of uh what we are going to present to the community uh tonight now i do know that mrs sorrentino in her parent meeting a few days ago last week did some preliminary very preliminary work with the parents as to what would be if you will they say in an english class foreshadowing what will be presented this evening basically you see on the agenda tonight set sail what's this

130all about right it's really explaining what additional experiences our high school students can attribute to when they enter in a classroom in high school additional courses a reorganization if you will in terms of our academies most of them have been in place some are new you will see that i do not want to steal any thunder from the committee but i'm very excited and very proud of this work and this too is the beginning of our journey continuing always to meet the needs of our students whether it is in a technical sense whether it's in a career focus and whether it's setting the tone for continuation in a traditional sense beyond graduation night in terms of our education whether it's a two or four year school in learning basically it's going to give our children

131some exposures into areas that they believe they have interest in or do have interest in and it's going to be very exciting very informative and hopefully will capture the passion of the children after this very difficult time of 18 19 months in a pandemic environment so i'm going to push this off to mrs creedon our assistant superintendent who then will have our high school team explain in more detail mrs sorrentino uh mrs mcconnell mr connell mr donohue here are going to talk about set sail what is this all about well it's a continuation of what we started to do several years ago and build upon our robust curriculum offerings for our students in many different areas yes we will buy the envy of the county but i also think the purpose of all of this

132is to meet our students needs wherever they may lie mrs creeden thank you i'm going to try and keep this brief um so as you know our district believes in providing students with a myriad of opportunities choice-based choice based academics and programs to enrich their high school experience as a part of the high school program development the high school be using naviance as a platform this platform includes an interest inventory that students will complete in grade eight this unique tool helps counselors understand students interests strengths and needs having this knowledge as a high school team will provide them with critical data in the development of future programs with this student interest inventory data the district can individualize support to help students sail toward their goals so without further ado i'm going to introduce mrs sorrentino

133and her high school team to dive into the new course descriptions that you'll be approving this evening or we're looking for your approval this year sorry [Music] thank you very much and amy well said mr del morrow um president williams members of the board thank you for hanging in there mike and bill karen hard chargers we are um we had theme music set with this that norvel and i chose that hopefully when it gets on the web the theme music can go back in there but the fact of the matter is this is a culmination of several years actually of putting this program together um in seed thought piece by piece as richard had shared when we say set sail we're looking for our students to choose their path um we're looking to take our

134academies and norville and billy have done a phenomenal job or bill i'm sorry um always billy to me will they have done a really robust and thorough dive into how to take students from freshman year to senior year and beyond what we're looking to do is meet students where they are that could include preparing them for college graduate school medical school school that can mean associates degrees that can mean vocational work that can mean workforce and the military it's their choice it's not ours um all we want to do is to provide them the opportunity and the tools and that's what amy was referring to naviance is a um a tool that we have it's a pretty comprehensive package and the students and our district staff our teachers our counselors between both middle schools and

135high school working with them in order to let them explore and and choose what they want now i'm asking to advance the next slide and i'll give you why we chose set sail if thank you um set sail came out of um trying to actually make it an acronym to make it a comprehensive look of what we offer communication and fine arts norville will go into those pieces our fine arts program we do offer currently communications will go into our new broadcasting space which will come online um before summer school in terms of the physical infrastructure on being completed um we have our engineering program our technology and computer science which norvel will go over how they weave together our biomedical program and our science offerings um our accounting in our academy of finance and

136marketing which now we're broadening um our industrial arts our c-tech students them having the opportunity to engage in coursework not only at orange ulster boces but here at mhs that gives them the um opportunity to also explore potentially business courses for those children young adults that want to go into being business owners utilizing the trade they're learning at boces and then our newest um venture a law education and public service service academy which for us in design speaks to really looking at our humanities side of the house and our students who are looking to go into the field of law but also we've mentioned several times in meetings of late um our need to really support our learners with um students that are um really aware and know our kids no one better to teach

137our kids than our kids um and really help address the the very big drought in education and then public service at this point i will um go to um mr connell who can go over our study of communications and fine arts who's going to really be succinct yes i will be i certainly will but thanks to sick yes yes absolutely good evening members of the board thank you miss argentino mr del mora mrs creed and mr toddler i've really this has been awesome because we get an opportunity to build something that's real to continue building on something that's real for our students something that will connect and take them into a 21st century economy the bureau of the bureau of labor statistics um actually show you the amount of jobs that will be available in

138these fields it's tremendous in the next five years so we want to start with the the academy of um communications and this will live in the new facility we're talking about imagine in your heads a state-of-the-art studio right and and and a production studio where you have people that will be writing scripts producing um producing news um commentating on and sports game then you're gonna have people working behind the scenes learning the technology how to move the camera how to edit films doing all these different [Music] parts that is what this these these courses and communities already have and you will see that it's a phasing process that the courses will come in um as we as we go through right now everybody will start in ninth grade in a foundation in media arts and

139then eventually it will go to a senior project where they're either doing a a capstone in communication writing or they'll be doing the technology piece but then a student will get to choose will i be in front of the camera or behind the camera and i think that's an important choice if we could go to the next slide please you so these um so this is our our academy of um fine arts and here one of the things that we is all these courses are already offered so if you notice that it's highlighted in blue these are things that we already offer in district and students will actually be able to access these even from before but what it is it's just an opportunity that we know put them together so they'll have a complete

140resume when they go they'll be they will this will make them a lot more attractive for colleges and a lot more attractive for employment and now and i'm very prepared to be successful for life after um after high school um let's go to the next slide please all right so we continue with um and for the fine arts and performing academy what we'll see here is that all these courses are already offered the only thing that will be new is that it will all these will end with a capstone in the final final year and that's giving the students a chance to build portfolios that will make them much a lot more attractive for um for college and career all right let's go to the next slide please then we go into our our academy

141our engineering academy and here you'll find we have uh we have five course a five course offering um in partnership with project lead the way and students get the opportunity to earn at least 15 college credits from rit the college credits as soon as they enter 9th grade and you're wondering how can they be prepared for this well the truth is we have a very great pro program in the eighth grade that prepares them to be ready so the eighth grade technology program which is the only one that's mandated by new york state is one that we have revamped several years now um by the request of mr del morro we had actually rewritten that program to make sure that when students get to ninth grade they're actually ready to be successful in our engineering

142program uh let's go to the next slide please now this i think is probably one of the pride and joys of middletown it's one of our our newest programs what it is it's um we we if we talk about the bureau of statistics oh in 2026 they're estimating that there's going to be 305 000 new jobs new software engineering jobs that's just one field in technology 305 000 new jobs that will be open and this this program captures both side of technology on the left it's capturing um it's capturing all the aspects of networking which include hardware and software and the right it's capturing everything about computer programming students can do one or the other or in some cases some students can actually take on the rigor of doing both in this program students will

143be able to actually earn three um professional certifications and they will actually graduate with um 10 college credits from siena college one of the things that siena colleges communicate is that if any of these students ever end up attending siena college they will finish their degree in three years which i think it's really pretty much a really great offer but a student that has mastered both both of these areas will be very very marketable and probably one of the most lucrative and most um almost one of the most fast-paced growing um part of our 21st century economy which is computer science all right let's go to the next so the biomed program along with our science offerings environment is probably one of the most highly demand program in our community um a lot of our

144parents know about it um so many students have actually gone on to become to do different eras in medicine um from this program and it is constantly growing and what this program offers is actually um it actually offers 12 12 college credits from um from missouri state or stevenson and then it also and in line with that it also offer um it goes well with the super program which offer another i think approximately four to six credits through university now the way this program works is that students just like the engineer program will come in at 9th grade they will actually start taking college level classes and then by the time they get through their 12th grade year they'll have finished um a cohort of four different courses but alongside that they can they will

145be able to take syracuse university courses which will actually enrich and build their resume and the truth is many of our students come back and said we've skipped an entire year of school or a year and a half of school because of these courses that we've taken and parents have written letters thanking us because the students have skipped a complete year of school they have saved their money in their pockets all right let's go to the next slide so i'm going to invite mr donahue because yes and i will and if we could just uh hit that again i guess uh we have some of the animations on here just uh hit it uh one more time i believe one more time thank you um so currently we offer you know our academy of finance

146and and basically based on feedback based on you know some of the things that mr cottle talk about obviously preparing you know our young our young adults really for the uh you know workplace and you know college of the future we wanted to allow to capture some of that interest so we're looking to expand our offerings from academy of finance to really a full slew of um really kind of that that could be chosen so uh really developing out our accounting program our business program uh and as ms sorrentino was referring to really geared towards entrepreneurial studies small business ownership finance and something also that is really emerging as a fast growing field that many many of our young adults have a lot of experience in i was just talking to someone today uh who

147has a friend uh she's 24 years old and her full-time job is social media marketing for a roofing company i believe um so really pursuing that and and um as you can see from some of the course design analytics to the marketing side of things so you're also seeing some some real interdisciplinary type of offerings uh similar as we as we kind of morph in we're not fully into some of the humanity side you'll see a similar structure starting with strategies for success and really instilling those good habits um that'll be utilized all throughout any academy um and then we hit a survey level course in sophomore year and moving up similar to a collegiate model uh whereas you go up to 200 300 level courses a little more specificity um so that is our

148accounting business finance and marketing um i don't know if you want to add anything mr connell and if you can move to the next slide i just want to say one thing that this is a perfect mix of a mix of stem and humanities um the idea is that it's highly mathematical there's a lot of rigor and what it does it gives those same skills that are makes our students a lot more marketable when we go into industry so i just want to add that piece [Music] okay industrial arts and seatac um like i shared earlier our goal with the ctec program is to really provide the students not with their ctec in addition to their ctec courses but opportunities to grow their resume portfolio and um really opportunity to leave mhs and this is

149for all of the academies with comprehensive exercises and exposure linked to going beyond their high school years as you can see from the right hand side they can and should um in addition to their ctec courses take varying levels of courses that are core and non-core including foreign language so that is our c-tech program if we can move to the next slide which um i will pass things off to mr donohue okay and again i apologize we had some animations on here um so if you just hit down i think one more time perfect thank you so much um so this is our law academy um something we're very excited about um and what you'll see here again is this very similar structure if you look at the left our sequence so as we work

150through um in ninth and in our 11th grade year uh the core sequence again starting with strategies for success moving up into a survey level course that covers all aspects of law we want to give uh students exposure to the multiple types of law out there not all law uh involves criminal defense um you know there's there's real state law there's environmental law tax and bankruptcy and down the line um junior year will actually be two semester civil law and criminal constitutional law and then uh we are looking to have an internship uh set up in this summer following the junior year that is obviously based in the industry before senior year where we offer a full slew of electives um again our elected offerings really foster you know good reading and writing habits but

151also allow for opportunities for students to again explore um other opportunities and other subjects and and some of the other offerings that we have um you know as part of that journey so that is our law uh academy and we can advance onto the next slide and we might have oh no everything appeared at once great right uh so this is and as ms sorentino said um the beginning of really looking to establish a a pipeline um where our students back and and teach and as someone who's sitting here in that boat i can the uh richness of that experience um being able to work in the community um that i'm from and and so that has been very rewarding and and and i would hope that it has been rewarding for my students as

152well so uh we are looking to create that so again very similar structure moving up throughout the courses uh we see an internship again in the junior summer of the junior year um where we'd like and we're still building that out what that is exactly going to look like but again we modeled this uh similar to what you would see in a teacher preparation program and again in our senior year we offer a wide variety of elective offerings um where students can pursue interests um you know or pursue courses that really are interested so that is our academy of education so public service public service involves our current naval science program or rotc program understand they do an amazing amount of work integrating with our community and serving our community um especially in life pre-covet

153um we are really looking partnering with the other academies to do combined projects with our naval science program and really a lot of our stem and our law academy classes do dovetail nicely with our naval science curriculums um so we're really working toward giving students every opportunity that we can think of and they can think of to really explore their future it expands our college credit offerings on campus um in our partnership with siena as well so we're very excited um for the potential adoption of the coursework tonight so we may adjust our sales and move our boat in the water so to speak those courses um would be our new proposed courses for the 21 22 school year up for adoption the supa creative nonfiction which is part of the communications academy broadcast media

154again part of communication the law class part of law finite math is another math college credit offering through siena college um it really expands our college credit opportunity in our math program to include those students who would really be focusing the rest of their study on the humanities side of the house um however then when they go off to college it would be as a transfer student in mathematics and already have three college credit opportunities issues in contemporary american american education the education academy again a partnership with siena college who's very excited to begin their to expand actually their journey into the humanities side of the house with us rhetoric and communication um again part of the education academy and law academy and then software development is our next step in the siena journey in

155our computer science program so we are very excited about this um this work as we move forward and we thank you for your time at 10 pm [Music] you're muted mr damar yes yeah i keep i'm concerned about everyone's uh ability to uh have audio keep forgetting to put it back but thank you very much um high school team mrs sorrentino mr connell mr donahue mr sorrentino and of course uh mrs creedon for this presentation i realize it's very late at night and i i say this in all earnest that we had to get this out tonight so that we can get this in front of the parents uh i i made the decision so everyone can bring their tomatoes that are over ripe to my office uh because uh the issue here is the

156timing i realized the length of the the program the other two i felt how to be connected to one another and certainly the anchor of our program here is the really exciting for all of our kids um i will do this um if if if um you want to hold your your questions you know to briefly we'll answer them briefly the fact of the matter is that we can bring the team back uh next board meeting to answer any more questions that you may have in depth uh but think about this the the last slide were the courses that are in red that are new for the 21 22 school year that really needs your review and hopefully we seek your approval for tonight and you have those course descriptions in transmetal since last week

157right now if you have questions about 20 uh 1 22 or 22 or 23 year if you could hold those questions off to uh maybe next a board meeting we can answer them because you're not voting on any of that this evening right and i say this only in in light of the hour it's 10 o'clock and we still have other agenda items uh to take care of this evening so i'm going to i'm going to stop talking and leave it to any of your quick questions that you may have about the courses for next year mrs blumen now thank you thank you very much i do have two questions um i'm really excited about um the presentation that you just made um in our high school staff uh that you just made i'm very

158excited about it i have two questions the first question is how easy or challenging is it going to be to fill the positions for some of these course some of the courses that we're going to be offering are there teachers out there ready to move into or or are they going to be filled with our current staff that's my first question and the second question i have and you can decide who wants to answer it is how are we going to communicate i understand we're going to be talking to our current high school families now but knowing that this is going to be progressing for the next few years and apparently you know and and the goal is to have this be ongoing how are we going to really um determine and engage the families

159into um taking advantage of some of these offerings now and how many students are planned to um be slated into these academies how what's the percentage of our students that will be geared into these academies i'll answer if i get all the questions questions there i'll do the best and then defer some to uh mr sorrentino and our team or mrs green as far as the staff is concerned um for example the new courses at siena we um put forth resumes of and uh credentials if you will of our current staff if they would be eligible to teach these courses before we would offer the course obviously we were working from our current staff before thinking about additional staff remember we've been working on this uh for several months this school term uh putting together

160what we have seen tonight and therefore we were working under the premise of no new staff uh based upon what we were hearing from uh the governor's office and the reduction staff and so on and so forth so the courses that we're offering for school term this september is utilizing the current staff we're not looking to add staff right now now that's not to say in the future uh that we may need a new staff member for a particular course as we move forward as staff changes all the time so in terms of that but our first endeavor into this for this school term is what we're using at this current school staff matter of fact this school budget doesn't have any new staff in it new staff remember what i've said last week that

161because of the additional foundation aid we were able to fill the spots that were holding that it will that were in this year's budget right this current year's budget um [Music] so um to answer that question second question is is our expectation that all of the students 9 12 will will get will be in an academy uh because of their interest finders of what mrs creed mentioned the beginning and mr sorrentino talked alluded to it in her comments regarding naviance is a interest finders inside what the children's interests are this getting back to your last question how we're going to really is going to begin the discussion in middle school with parents because we want to make we're bolstering that's what uh mr connor was talking about putting pre-engineering prerequisite courses in engineering so that

162they have basic understandings based on uh skill level developed to get into these courses in ninth grade so uh although no one is going to be chatted to one of those academies let's say at ninth grade they pick a couple of things but could they get into a different academy the answer is yes obviously as they move up the grade level get into 12th grade and if they've been in let's say a humanities academy might be a little difficult to get to all the engineering courses in a given year so at some point they're gonna be by any gift of time limited uh as they move up into the grade levels but in the beginning of their experience in high school will be flexibility mrs sorentino do you want to add anything to those uh

163quickly to those points that um he did fabulously mr tomorrow mrs blumenau i hope that that captured the the answers and please understand all of these courses are high school credit courses so if a child decides no i want to change they never lose those credits so it's a win-win for everyone thank you does anyone have any other questions uh mr perrino thank you not so much a question to comment great program great effort and it took a lot of work to get this going and develop these programs i want to complement the administrative and and the instructional staff of the uh building for contributing to this program it's just wonderful it's amazing i don't know the programs of other high schools i only say i know our program and it's uh this is going

164to put us in the stratosphere believe me yep you know and and it's not so much that that's our issue our issue is what can we offer our students preparing them for the day after graduation exactly good job we can't lose sight of that okay again uh i appreciate your uh holding back your questions but believe me i promise you we'll ask the team to come back uh to do uh any other further deep dive you have and the slide deck uh you have the course descriptions um it's an ongoing process this is not the end again this is the beginning but we needed a timely fashion here crunched in between budget and this and that and i appreciate uh your uh again undivided attention here it's already it's a very late hour i know

165uh i want to thank mrs sorrentino mr connell mrs mr donahue and of course mrs creden for all of the work they've done with this uh and it's an attribute to their hard work and quite frankly their dedication to student needs at the high school thank you very much no we'd like to thank all of you um we appreciate it and good night good night thank you thank you thank you very much good night everybody uh well we're going to move on move on we're going to try to wrap up this meeting um as soon as we can i do want i know that it's been a long night uh but i i do want to i want to serve the reminder that this doesn't happen that often and um that the majority of what

166we have talked tonight has been very positive and so i i i can deal with the positive aspect of things as opposed to being here with a whole negative night so uh we're going to move on um to our action items our action items uh i want to entertain first we have a number of action items and uh um i want to entertain first a motion for the approval action item a motion for the approval of contract addendum for professional services was solely in health incorporated may have a motion please still moved second is there a second rose is seconded any discussion all in favor opposed is so passive like to have a motion for the approval of contracts for professional services for courageous conversations leads seminar so move second moved and seconded any discussion

167yes sir i have the opportunity to look at this and i just am concerned that i think i'm not the only one here uh the uh this particular item does include or incorporate the the critical uh the critical race theory and my concern that i have about that is that uh when this has been implemented in other schools or the school districts it's i think done the reverse of what many have perceived for it to be intended it's supposed to be intended to address i think the wrong of racism but has been found to kind of promote promote racism or ideas of racism or judging people by their race so i will not feel comfortable supporting this and i think that other members might want to share that do you have data that proves that

168point or is what is hearsay uh it's not i i don't have hearsay i mean there is data but i think it's late in the night if you want to table it for further discussion so we could address it wouldn't have a problem there is plenty of people the fact that you know i heard that i have data i did research and homework on it since um just have to pull it up here but it is like i would probably rather just say that i'm not comfortable voting for this either um i'm not in agreement with i think it's well intended very well intended and i do agree with parts of it but i do not agree with all of critical race theory so i i wouldn't be voting for it either even if we

169were to debate it it wouldn't change my vote i i've found an article debunking it if you want me to read it but it's very lengthy no i'll tell you what we can do with any other discussion what we'll do is um everybody has the right to to vote the way that they want to vote um and and um if if discussion is not going to change anybody's mind i think that we ought to go ahead and take it to a vote and without what i what i would do is a point of order i'll call for a roll call vote so that everyone can log in log in um whatever their particular uh vote is uh in the in this particular matter um john lawsoner had to drop out i just wanted to let

170you know yes i know thank you so so so um we're ready for the we we've had the discussion uh uh roll call vote mrs uh clark would you please take the roll call vote mrs blumenau aye mr presenza aye mr gomez hey mrs houston birthday mr purino hey miss tobiason yes mr williams hi pastor williams hi thank you so passes five to three and uh and so we'll we'll move on thank you uh approval of contract for professional services for somas uh by link what is that battling i don't i can't pronounce it right by learning my language language linguist bilinguals my linguist that's it it stands to reason that that the the half puerto rican guy can't you know thank you second uh any discussion all in favor opposed so passes approval of

171amended school tax warrant for the city of middletown they have a motion please don't move second move to second any discussion are these four folks that have not paid their taxes yeah originally yeah sorry rose uh originally we had you approve yeah what was not paid and then there was a new settlement and some of the um it's over at the railroad yard there there's a couple properties and her assessment was lowered so the actual value of collection was lowered this seems to be a little bit higher than normal this year and i'm not sure with the pandemics some of the cause or what's going on so then that basically means that amount of taxes we have lost at the no we'll gain it back the default of the city then to the county and

172then we'll get the money next year yeah so it's basically unpaid taxes yeah that's exactly what it is yep okay thank you yeah every year the hour's late the mine isn't no problem we've had the discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed it so passes um uh action item e i entertain a motion for the approval of acceptance of the rit project lead the way many grants second moved and seconded we ready for the discussion all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed it so passes rose is there an earthquake going on at your house no why you bumping around well i went to the ipad i'm gonna go and it keeps slipping and falling down all right yeah it was late vince i'm sorry for approval of special services member random number 20.

173so move second thank you seconded any discussion all in favor opposed it so passes action item g approval of adoption of resolution orange ulster boces administrative budget 2021 2022 so move second thank you moved and seconded any discussions all in favor aye aye aye opposed it so passes motion for action item h approval of election of two members to the orange ulster board of cooperative educational services eugenia pavick and michael bello so move second thank you moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye they're gonna name buildings after these people it's the only names we know [Laughter] motion for approval of a resolution with southern westchester boces so move up second moved and seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed it so passes uh motion for action item j approval of

174change orders uh brief brief discussion is there a brief explanation of change orders mr perrino thank you and uh i want to thank uh uh mr bartlett also on these change orders and mr scott uh basically that to provide power for the card reader uh that's additional power was required because it it was in the media center and uh it was just an electrical uh an electrical issue uh provide interconnect safety device on kitchen lift doors a safety issue providing a new power fee for stereo video board again an additional power supply was needed because the configuration of the video board had changed so these are all legitimate change orders to me they're necessary thank you sir you've heard the discussion uh all in favor aye opposed it so passes uh uh entertain now um

175action item k wow okay um approval of 2021 2022 board of education meetings second second seconded any discussion all in favor aye aye opposed it so passes i i do want to remind the public we do receive all of this information ahead of time and it is incumbent on each and every one of us as board members to make sure that we review it and any questions that we do have we can address the administrations prior to these meetings and so um uh that's what we've that's what we've always endeavored to do and what we'll continue to endeavor to do uh we are not just rubber stamping we are we are really looking at it and so um i appreciate all of you uh for uh getting us to this point um quickly committee reports

176we have a fair funding committee uh needs an approval to send a letter to legislature mr gomez can you please give us a brief synopsis of what you're doing oh this is well i was gonna ask to move it to the next meeting since it's so late whatever you want me to give us synopsis i'll do that quick just very quickly yeah we uh the fair funding committee has drafted a letter that we are sending we're asking the district to send on our behalf to our different elected officials i asked the board members to review it a couple of weeks ago which basically we're asking to consider comprehensive reform in funding uh and for funding which will both address the need for equitable funding particularly for small city school districts in the mid hudson and

177northern regions of our state at the same time addressing the issue of uh unfunded mandates uh and and with that uh empowering our local school districts at a local level with uh more flexibility in um being able to the use and disbursement of funds i think long term that that will benefit us and uh and so i've shared it with the members and i will ask for an approval so that uh of course the district could post it in the website it was and we can send it to our elected officials and the elected officials are listed are primarily those that represent orange county or our school district and the key members uh senator martucci uh state senator shelly mayer chair of the education committee assemblyman benedetto chair of the assembly education committee assembly woman

178elin gunter that represents uh about 95 percent of our district and that's delivering colin schmidt that does represent a small portion of our district in the huawei honda region thank you thank you mr gomez all of you have had the opportunity to review this it's been we've had it for about the last two weeks or so and we've had the opportunity to review it so i will entertain a motion photo [Music] man you guys are quick i like that well you got to go home um um so we had that we've had the um we've had the the discussion uh all all in favor and i want to thank all the members of our committee ms houston linda hansen and as well as miss glickman and uh jeff berkman uh we haven't been all together

179at the same time but they've all evolved and they've all been very uh rewarding to have and share their thoughts and vision for our school district future uh as well as our former member former board member keisha zucks in the time she served here thank you for all the difference you made mr tunnel of course the man of the hour always mr bison then i have one statement to make and we're going to get out of here mr bison um the hour is late and perhaps when i was having computer problems do we need to uh adopt a resolution for the six set sale curriculum does it need board approval and do we need to vote or did i know that what what you need an action item on the set sale you will be

180voting only on those course descriptions which then become part of the cost offerings high school credit for the 21 22 school year now i need to do it tonight yes the questions i didn't think we did it and as i said i might have missed it with computer problems here was it part of our yeah no no i just want to make sure if you need a vote on it we do it before we adjourn correct we need a vote on those course descriptions so so may may i entertain a motion i want to make sure i word this right so that when we go into may entertain a motion on the particular course descriptions for the set sales the new courses that'll be introduced uh for the set sale program [Music] been moved and

181seconded uh you want to put the years in there too as part of the moment 21-22 school year yeah right 1 22 school year again we've had the motion and we've had the second we've already had plenty of discussion surrounding this it's all in favor opposed it so passes thank you everybody thank you good good uh good catch uh mr biasin uh i uh our next meeting will be on may the sixth thursday may the sixth we look forward to seeing everybody i will be reaching out to everybody to discuss the need for us to have a our uh our meet the candidate board forum i am looking at the date and i will discuss it with mr bison and the rest of the board i'm looking at the date of of tuesday uh may

182the fourth and so uh we'll be having that discussion over the next few days so that we can get it out to the public and to the rest of the candidates in order to make sure that we have our board forum meet the candidate board forum this year um do we know how many candidates there are not yet no the the the last date when is the last date to turn in petitions the end of 28th wednesday the 28th we'll we'll not make will not make the make uh solid that number until the 28th when all the petitions all the petitions have been turned in or not turned in whatever the case may be and so then then we'll be able to make those determinations so thank you everybody may have a motion for motion

183to adjourn thank you thank you everyone take it a second and you have to try to beat them i didn't get a second did i get a second okay thank you all the finger aye all right i'm not even everyone thank you everyone i know it's played but thank you everybody thank you all done you