Special Meeting: ESA COW and Consideration of Resolutions | June 10, 2025

001Hello Rochester community, Rochester parents, Rochester students, um, and everybody who is watching. Welcome to the ESA equity and student achievement committee meeting of the whole. Uh, there are no speakers tonight and so I'll start with the review and acceptance of the minutes from March 11th, 2025 equity and student achievement meeting. Can I get a motion? So moved. Second. Motion by Vice President Mallaloy, seconded by President Simmons. All all any questions or comments about the the meeting minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor? I. Any opposed? And the meeting minutes from March 11th, 2025 has passed. We'll also review and accept the minutes from May 13, 2025. Can I get a motion for that? So moved. Second. Uh moved by Vice President Malloy, seconded by President Simmons. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Thank you.

002And so both of those uh meeting minutes have passed. I want to remind the Rochester community that you can access any presentation or anything that is covered on tonight's meeting on board docs RCSD. repeat on board docs RCSD where you can uh access any of the the presentations that will be presented tonight. I will also like uh to give honor to this committee. This is the final ESA equity and student achievement committee uh from this board of education. And so the the committee will be suns setting at the beginning of July uh with with plans to continue covering uh the the information that is given through this equity and student achievement committee um but just in a different way. And so we we are excited to move down that path, but also want to give

003honor to this uh to this committee that has covered our our student achievement throughout the past few years. So thank you uh to the board who created this committee and also to all of our past chairpeople or person um of this committee. Just want to give uh my thanks there. Um our first presentation today, we have a presentation on science curriculum. May yes, I didn't hear a vote for the May 13th meeting. I we voted. We voted. It was all in favor. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um so we'll have a a presentation for the science curriculum. Um and it'll be presented by executive director of science Don Shan. Dr. Sean Kofi um with Dr. Ramos. Dr. Sean Coffee. I'm so sorry. We just talked too and I I got it wrong. Good evening and

004thank you so much and what a pleasure to be able to present to you once again from the last time when we did the um presentations of the adoptions of curriculum. I think you'll find with this PowerPoint that we did go over a couple of questions um or ideas that you wanted to make sure we presented so that you don't have many more questions coming our way. Um Dr. Sean Coffee will be here for any questions um at the end or or during the presentation anything that you have. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. We'll start and then with the second slide, please. So, so with all our curriculum, our promise and our commitment is to to ensure that we are aligning with the Rochester City School District portrait of a graduate, but

005also New York State standards and those buckets that they're calling to ensure that our students that are graduating can engage in career and if they choose to go to college four years to delay their career and then options that they also have the ability to do that. Next slide, please. Just like math and ELA um and social studies um science has gone through an evolution of the next generation standards as you can see and one of the biggest pieces is last year we did biology and earth and space is now the new name for earth science but one of the biggest changes of the next generation standards is that students become the sense makers of everything. So you're going to find that in curriculum and science, no longer is the teacher just giving um providing

006all the facts. What you do is you present a problem and you ask students to to talk about what they think the reason for the problem is. And then as a science teacher, you become that facilitator to be able to um discover that problem and figure out how and what do I need to learn and what do I need to teach so that we can continue to solve the problem. That's the biggest change. So let me put this in the terms of what Dr. Coffee said to me. You know how we all fight sometimes of people that don't read directions because we including myself want to open something and read it direction by direction by direction. The new science is get rid of the directions and try to figure it out on your own. And

007that would drive me insane. Right? But that's the way that we have to learn to teach science and be different about it. And so I think that's a great example and thank you for that Dr. Coffee because that's a shift. That's a shift of like this is the way we're going to go from A to B. It's allowing the students from A to B to figure out how we're going to get there and later the teacher can bring the list out and say hey how good we were with what we thought about very inquirybased. Next slide please. So, we started the selection process back in the in the summer and fall of 2024 and we're here in front of you and we just wanted to make sure that um once again the RFP process but

008also the curriculum review process is one that involves stakeholders and we are taking our time to be able to exhibit these pieces. So, if you go to the next phase, the next slide, phase one selection criteria. So, you have a pretty general rubric. What we did this time um in compliance with what you asked the last time is we did list all the vendors that completed the RFPs for both physics and chemistry. And the ones in red automatically did not meet the criteria, the simple criteria of phase one. The ones in green continued forward to phase two. And if you look at phase two and phase three, next slide please, you will find that um and this this these phases took approximately three months involving again different stakeholders um staff and we also had students

009participate in these phases of looking at and then a more indepth of that of that rubric and looking to see how many of these drilling down really met all the criteria that we wanted them to meet. And here you see the physics vendor for pure physics was met all the criteria and chemistry it was activate learning met all the criteria. The next step was and then to pilot these to see if what we saw on paper was actually going to happen in the classroom. Next slide please. So we piloted at Monroe High School, Padilla Edison World of Inquiry School in Wilson. Um, unlike other pieces, um, you're going to see we only had 32 responses, but let me let me put this in perspective. If a student is in an AP physics or chemistry class,

010they don't participate in this curriculum development, they have their own curriculum. If they are in a dual dual credit college course, they also have their own curriculum. So, we're talking excluding kids in AP and excluding kids that might be in dual language college credit classes. These are the students. And then in the classes that we piloted these classes and um we also had informal um data and we had a lot of feedback from teachers, administrators and students. So students truly participated in saying yeah this is what the rubric said and this is how I felt around it and here are some um acclamations to what they were excited about. And then in the next slide you have the findings. So once we piloted and then we reinforced what we had thought that the rubric was

011going to tell us and what we thought was saying to even more acclamations and declarations that this is these two curricula were meeting the standards that we were hoping to accomplish and that students felt that these were also meeting the standard. And so we have here the reasons why those these were chosen after the piloting. And then last slide. So our materials review um activate learning is going to be available in over a 100 languages because students will have the access through that and our um peer physics will be available in Spanish but also we'll have the translating functions. I know we always have questions from parents as to availability. um they can today go on to those links and see all the materials but we will be here right in the teaching and learning

012area have available um the materials for pure physics and activate learning and now I'm going to leave the microphone and have Dr. Shankoff come up for any questions. Thank you Dr. Ramos uh for your your presentation. I'm going to start off uh on our Zoom uh with our parent rep, Monica Graham. Do you have any questions? Good evening everyone. Um great presentation. Thank you so much. Uh no questions at this time. Thank you to Commissioner Lebron. Oh, to Commissioner Elliott. No, I have no questions at this time. I just wanted to thank you. Thank you. I cannot see the Zoom just to let you guys know, so I won't be able to see whose hands up, so I'll get to you as soon as possible. Uh, Commissioner Elliot, thank you. Uh, Mr. Chairman, um, question

013about if this is about the science. If this uh is it the state that is uh requiring to do inquiry based learning? Is that the state that's doing that? So the New York State Science Learning Standards have been really clear about the shifts from the 1996 standards until now. The 1996 standards were very heavy in just content and that's what you know most of us would probably have experienced as learners where the teacher just talks and the students have to memorize that stuff. The New York State Science Learning Standards has been really really intentional about students experiencing phenomena and then using like the process skills of science and the crosscutting concepts to make sense of those phenomena. So although they've not expressly said um you must do inquiry based teaching and learning the way they've

014structured the standards in a way that it would be hard not to. Then they say my question though is how are we teaching our children how to do inquirybased learning because if the students don't know how to do it that's going to be a failure from day one. So we need to make sure that they understand what inquiry learning is so that they have the perspective and that they can go into the work and do it. Yes. Correct. So that both of these curricula do that and are very explicit and upfront about the process of science itself and how the different uh aspects of the curricula they engage in um kind of lift that thinking up. Okay. I I I'm not clear about that because you seem to be going in a sort of different

015direction unless I misunderstand it. So you you're saying that this is inquiry learning. They're going to have to do it based on inquiring. Have we taught our students how to do that kind of learning is what I'm asking. So we we are we've been very intentional with those pieces since last year in elementary school. We've started mathematics numbers is all about giving kids the problem and trying to figure it out. We're doing it also actually in a in a debatable form with social studies also in elementary starting up and definitely in science. So by the time the students get to high school they will have understood um ways in which they are asked to learn and to and to express their learning because that's the biggest piece. It's not that they don't understand but it's

016a format and it's a way of expressing learning. Definitely it's it's a protocol. Um the ELA classes use the Socratic method and that is also an inquirybased where you bring out an issue and then they have to pull details and support their idea of thinking. We're doing that in ELA and we're doing that in social studies. So this year we have been very intentional as a team in teaching and learning to to give time so that teachers have time to inor in order to be able to use these inquirybased the next generation standards in every one of the subject areas ask them to do that and our priority standards that we presented to you and that we've continued to use this year or all escalate in the same format. I'm not I'm not convinced. I'll

017let it go, but I'm not convinced uh with the responses um because it it's just very important that if we're going to a different kind of um learning model that the students are aware of that. Now, if you're saying that that's what's happening, I don't see that in the academic performance. And um you know it I I hope it's going to work but um I just don't and I don't see that we have that there is um the um what's the word I'm looking for that the results are going to um the results uh will be realized uh and the and and what I'm also hoping is that an increase in this if we have not really taught them how to do the kind of learning uh the kind of learning that you need in

018order to or the excuse me the skills that you need in order to do this kind of learning. I think it's important that those skills be taught in terms of inquiry. You know what is inquiry? what does that do so that when they actually do the work they'll be su more successful at it and that's and I agree it's a shift it's a shift from the traditional way of teaching in all subject areas we have this year um overtly created models and in the classrooms to say dedicate this amount of time to giving kids time to figure things out. we've said to you all along if you're not seeing manipulatives um being used in math classes, they're not using the inquirybased method. So what we've done is we've done a long list of when you

019are using inquirybased methods, this is what you should see. In mathematics, you should see manipulatives. In social studies, you should see groups of peers of students discussing something and then coming together and doing a report of what their discussion was and what was that support. That's an inquiry. bascratic way of doing things. In ELA, we see it and we're we're trying to dig in deeper with the writing process because writing is huge for us to be able to deliver that inquiry minds, right? We want them to become authors. We're starting that in elementary very aligned to those standards. Um, and then in science, it's not only having teachers talk about something, but we want to see the artifacts of students that had they have created. And we're seeing we're starting to see some of these

020in the science classrooms and elementary. Is it a shift? Absolutely. It's a shift we have to consider continue not only in science but in every content area because otherwise it's going to be exactly what you're saying. If we don't practice it throughout all the subject areas and then we're not going to learn how to advocate and how to be able to to to say this is what I'm thinking and this is why I'm thinking that. Right? And that's what we want. discourse is huge. We can't wait until they get to 11th grade to do that. So it it is important. Is there documentation of where these students are with the kind of pre-learning I call inquiry learn as a pre-learning to can are we able to document that our students are becoming proficient in the

021area of inquiry based I call it inquiry based learning um because that's going to that's going to inform whether or not that they are successful in the actual science project or whatever subject it is that's going to be so we're novice we're not teaching that well they're going to fail. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and the professional development that's been going on is trying to shift these pieces in mathematics. I can tell you um after the manipulatives once they can write the justification of why they they did the math they did um and the way they did it and the reason for it if they don't have justification in writing they haven't really learned the inquirybased way. Right? So there's lots of ways that we are trying to look at it. When we did the regions examination

022in January, the director sat down and looked at those gaps and realized we're not really doing a really good job at point A so that we can do point B. This is the first year of biology and earth space um next generation examinations and um those examinations were very different, very different. So this is the first year that we're going to be able to calibrate if the professional development and what we're hoping to see more in high schools is happening. Um we you you're very aware that we have a lot more investigations than the 1,200 lab minutes that are supposed to be supporting um this type of learning is happening because New York State required us to do more investigations. That's another way of testing to see if the inquiry is working in in social

023studies, I mean in science. And for us in social studies and ELA is going to be the SAPs. If kids cannot pull and support their details and then they haven't learned how to inquire, how to think, and how to critically think, we're not saying anything different from what we said all the way. You know, inquiry methods is critical thinking. And so, um, are we right on task with with knowing, um, how to measure it all? We're hoping we are, but you're absolutely right. We're a novice right now. And this year we've been working really hard to make sure that it's not only in science, it's in every single subject. Thank you. I want to go to uh Superintendent Dr. Strickland. No, I just want to continue to echo everything that Dr. Ramos and Dr. coffee

024are saying, but just in in layman's terms, what you're now seeing in classrooms is that when you go into the class, there's a question that's being posed. And students need to go with their teammates or with their uh individual partners and actually go figure out those phenomena that are related to that question. In our middle schools, for instance, you the first project is about bath bombs. you know, the the the items that go in the tub and they explode and um they make suds, so on and so forth. And students are actually going in and figuring out what makes those uh what makes that work. And uh I have uh firsthand seen a shift in the way students are interacting with each other and also interacting with the skills that they need to be able

025to uh do well on those uh labs and those investigations that they have to follow up with. Uh like any curriculum adoption u it's going to take time. I would say that um the so in three or four years ago when I started that's when the uh curriculum actually began to shift. So this is actually right on time for those students that have been involved or engaged in that inquirybased model uh and they should actually be very familiar with what it is that they are going to experience in physics and uh andor chemistry. So, I just again wanted to echo everything that's been said by our chief academic officer and exe director of science. Thank you, Superintendent. Uh, President Simmons. Thank you, Commissioner Santiago. Um, when I was listening because when you started out, Dr.

026Ramos and you said, you know, no more directions. It's going to be kind of figured out. And you know what it took me to? Kind of scared me. I have to admit it made me think of Lucy Caukins, right? It made me think of how we moved away from the science of uh well science of reading or actually phenomics because it's it was not called science of reading at the time but it became like the balance literacy and these site words and kids had to figure it out and here we are across the nation where kids are not reading well. So when you said figure it out, that scared me. Um but I do understand a bit around the um inquiry based learning around the curiosity, the deduction and the questions that come up naturally

027and it really helps to enhance critical thinking. But my other question for you is around how that uh works in a competition with or in alignment with experential learning which is more uh you get the skill, the knowledge and the hands-on approach. Is that part of this curriculum at all? because that's the one I kind of, you know, lean toward. Yeah, absolutely. And I think most of what we talked about in terms of what the inquiry learning looks like and experiential learning, they go very much handinand. So, just for example, in one of the um units that the activate learning um group that we piloted there um the entire unit was about just the chemistry of water and what that looks like. In in a traditional classroom, you might have students taking notes on like

028electron dot structures and learning about pH and things like that, but that entire unit was structured around um oysters are dying off the coast of California. Why? And so students have to go in that from lots of different vantage points. Um they're bringing their own lived experiences to the table to try to figure that out. And the teacher is kind of guiding that along the way. So it's really student driven when it's all said and done. and they're drawing from not just the experiences of themselves, but of the the class collective. Um, and then within the context of the the problem that they're trying to solve. So, let me dig just a little deeper. I might be in the weeds and then I'll I'll jump out of them if I am. But you said lived

029experience and we know that lived experiences look different across pathways, right? And so, um, and oftentimes our curriculum misses those unique lived experiences. So, how does this curriculum um not necessarily pigeon hole our students because you need to see broader and different experiences, but how does it also honor their lived experience? So, both curricula do this in slightly different ways, but with really similar protocols and that is when they begin each unit, they just ask students what they know about certain things and ask them to bring their own experiences to the table. And the very first two days of each of the units is just about students talking about things that they've experienced themselves in the context of the problem. And then it'll bring them into other world experiences. Okay. Yep. Thank you, Commissioner Malloy.

030Thank you. Um, great presentation. I know this isn't anything new in New York State. Um for the past 10 years we've watched the state shift towards an inquiry based model and um I I think this is wonderful um great opportunity for our students and it's going to be a shift for a lot of teachers. Um it's always uncomfortable to make those shifts. Um I know it was for me in teaching social studies. Um but I think this looks like a great program. I love the fact that you brought up the students as part of that pilot, which I'm assuming happens with all of our pilots. Um, if they liked it, I I think we're in good shape. But yeah, inquiry based expeditionary learning all the way. That's that's where it's at. So, thank you so

031much. Thank you, Commissioner Patterson. Yes. Thank you. My allergies are acting up, so I apologize. Um thank you for the presentation both of you. Um it's very good. Um personally I like um going forward into the future as far as futuristic thinking and learning and teaching and and things like that. So anything that'll you know assist our students and grasping the information uh much easier especially when you're talking about hands-on you know lifed experiences and and bringing those into the classroom. So thank you very much. The only question I have is um you talked about um pilot programs and um I'm on slide number seven I think uh pilot data collection uh for the audience. Um out of the schools that were piloted you said Monroe Upper Podella Edison and uh Wilson and uh what's

032the other one there? Pardon me? Inquiry. World of Inquiry. Um, you said there were only 32 student responses. That's pretty low. Is there any way in the future that, you know, whoever collects this data can make sure that more students participate. So we have a better um understanding or data collection you know of students who either like the program or don't you know 32 is just a little bit short I think. Yeah and I agree with that and I certainly would echo that too. The more student voice we can you know integrate in there uh would be the better. um as we move into, you know, actually like actualizing the curriculum for students, we will be running focus groups and things like that just to ensure that we're hearing as many voices as possible. Yeah,

033I think maybe if you whoever is running the programs, whether it's a teacher or not, maybe they could pass a sheet around and make sure that you know the students who are participating, you know, participate in that. So yeah, absolutely. It's something that we've learned a bit from in integrating the biology BSEs curriculum. this year and the Earth and Space curriculum this year for the very first time. Um and so one thing we did recognize when we were implementing those is the need for more student voice. And so we went out and made sure that we got as much of that as we possibly could even into the actualization year. Yeah. Because this board talks a lot about student participation but here we don't have it. So if we can find a way to drive

034it, thank you very much. I don't want to beat it too bad. Dr. Yeah. So Oh, just one more thing real quick. So just I know that 32 student responses seems low. um there were only three physics and three chemistry classes piloted. So it was already a relatively small sample size. And generally we see the sciences tend to decrease in enrollment as you go from 9th grade to senior year. So we'd be seeing two of the lower enrolled classes when we were doing that. Just for context. All right. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's that's Thank you. That's a good point. And definitely hearing that afterhand there will be focus groups. Sometimes you have to to sample, you know, who who's who's uh giving the feedback, but you know, do hope that more students are

035able to see it before it hits the classrooms. Quick question, what what are we doing, let's say, on the middle school and on the elementary school level to prepare and uh Commissioner Elliot was touching on this a little bit earlier. Um, but I I'll love to hear actual things in place that we're doing to prepare our students for this type of learning. um what what are things that we're changing both in the middle school and the elementary level? So, first and foremost, we adopted curriculum K through 10 at this point. Um that feels very much the same as this. Uh it's they're all NISLS aligned and they do the same kinds of things. So, from K through five, uh well, starting, you know, in kindergarten, a student's going to get the same types of experiences

036just scaled down, um as they would, you know, in an older grade, just scaled up. So, K5, we use Amplify. It does the exact types of same types of things, you know, very student driven. Um, lots of space for students to engage in phenomena and make sense of things. Um, and then lots of space for student discourse. In grades six through eight, we use open sedource platform and actually activate learning leverages a lot of the same exact materials at the high school level. Um, and then for 9th grade, we use biology BSCS. Again, the structure of it really, really similar and many of the same writers compared to the other curricula. And then for 10th grade uh for earth and space science they use stem scopes and again very similar many of the same writers.

037So the vibe is really really similar year to year in terms of the types of thinking that students have to do. Um and so for students who are going to be getting this junior senior year um they would be having they would have had to experience this type of thinking in the ninth and tth grade year if not before in middle school. Right? And so by the time that this is implemented, every student that's taken this class should have already taken some iteration of it before they take this class. Correct. Correct. Okay, that that sounds good. And so then also for for activate learning, can you give me an example of an hands-on, you know, whether it's inside of the lesson plan or if it's a group project, can you give me an example of

038some hands-on activities that our students will participate in while um learning this curriculum? Yeah, so just back to that same unit we were trying to figure out before. Um, so students were trying to figure out why oysters are all dying off off the west coast. And one thing that they kind of figure out along the way is that the pH of the water changes. And so they actually go and get to test a lot of different substances around in the local community uh as well as ones that were prepared in the lab to figure out how the pH actually affects life forms in the water. Um and so that's the kind of thing they'd actually like to be taking things from their community as well as you know looking at prepared substances to compare and

039contrast. And how about for uh pure physics? Yeah. So for pier uh you know the very first unit that they piloted there was the waves unit. Uh they just looked at how like waves impact sound um among other things. So, one thing they were looking at is like I believe the the opening phenomenon was there's a video of a speaker and they turn up the bass really loud and then they have a candle about 3 ft away and as they play it the candle flickers in and out and they have to figure out why on earth that's happening. Um, and so when they do it they create lots of different waves. Physics is a little bit different because they have to use a bit more complex machinery to do it. Um, but they're actually engaging

040in those practices with their hands and their minds right in the classroom. And last question, how much parent involvement was not parent, teacher involvement? I do see that there are parent and uh youth and student involvement, but how how much teacher involvement definitely around uh this department of the district um was in the decision of this, but even if they weren't part of the decision, what are we doing to ensure that they are ready for when it's uh implemented into the schools? So, moving forward from here, um, we've got summer work planned that would kind of bridge the gap between a lot of the prep work that we did over the past 18 months, uh, and then moving into like how to actually engage in the curriculum and teach it with, uh, effic efficacy, um,

041and fidelity. But then throughout the year, we'll be doing lots of in-class visits to provide feedback. We have professional learning scheduled throughout the year. We'll be doing focus groups with teachers uh, and students. Um, and we just generally try to collect as much possible data from as many possible voices as we can to ensure that, you know, we're bringing as many voices in as we can and make sure it works for everybody. Yes, we do also have uh teacher leaders in the buildings that we lean on for a lot of this work, too. Really, last question now. If there is if there's Yeah, I I got you. Uh, Commissioner Elli, if there's criticism from from teachers, uh, students or parents, what are these will be decided, these will be chosen, uh, by the time that

042that's, you know, that that some of these things are rolling out. And so, how how are we finding ways to get our teachers on one page even if there is criticism because once this is passed, this is what it is. And so, but we need everybody on one one page if this is what's going to be passed. And so, I'm just wondering what what are you guys' strategies around that? and then also ensuring that it is being taught in the classrooms. So we learned a lot about how to engage that the way you're asking about it uh with the roll out of the bio curriculum this year. Um and so one thing we were noticing early on is you know teachers had confusions and questions about different aspects of it. And so we began a

043monthly meeting, opened it up to all bio teachers, and we met every single month from October until June um where teachers would bring different issues they were having to the table, different successes they were having to the table and different bright ideas that they'd have to the table and we'd discuss all of those. We were able to use most of the bright ideas and actually build them into our science website and link it to spaces where um you know, other teachers who are teaching this might be able to see it and be like, "Oh, that's a that's something I can definitely do." and we leveraged a couple different protocols for um just trying to solve solution or you know make solutions for you know the issues we were seeing. It's still a work in progress

044but um again one thing the science department has tried to do a lot over the past few years is just bring in as much voice as we can um and so even if there's issues there are avenues for those issues to be addressed um and so that everybody can make this as um you know beneficial for students as they possibly can. Thank you. Uh for our last question, Commissioner Elliott. So this question really pretty much um uh Mr. Chairman goes in line with what you're just saying. My question was going to be uh the accountability piece. How do we ensure that uh this inquiry based learning as I call it um is going to be done um with efficacy? How do we hold people accountable? Uh because that's the issue that we have in the

045district. we have these great programs and they're wonderful. Um but somehow uh the the accountability piece is missing where they're not doing it. And so um and that that happens that tends to happen a lot in this district that and in in many all the years I've been here for the uh pretty much that an issue within our systems is the accountability piece. And so yeah, that's my question. I think you sort of answered that, but um it's good when you're talking to us at the board level. Unfortunately, when it when it's being done within uh the district, um somehow there's a a disconnect between what you all told us on the board level than what actually goes on in the district. Yeah, and I agree with you. Um, one thing that we've had success

046with this past year, you know, at the district level, we get out into buildings as much as we possibly can, but like you said, we don't get to see it as often in every single buildings as we would hope. So, one thing we learned this year is that we had to lean a lot more on the building level coaches. And then moving into next year, one of our goals is to lean more on the assistant principles in each building, too. We're kind of finding that, you know, building level administrators need to learn about these, you know, just as much as the teachers do in many cases because otherwise, how do they know if what they're seeing is making a lot of sense? And so, that's something that we're planning on doing this upcoming year is

047just having a lot more touch points with the building level administrators to make sure that what they're seeing is, you know, what we should be seeing, too. Obviously, at the district level, we've got our walkthrough tools that we use. Common assessment data can often tell you a lot about um, you know, the integrity of what's being done in the classrooms. Um, but I think where we want to really go is leverage more of the human capital that we're seeing right in the buildings to make sure that that's um, you know, being done like you said. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Coffee and Dr. Ramos for your presentation. Uh, we appreciate you guys and again to the public. You can access all of these presentations on board docs uh, RCSD. Next up, we're going to have

048the continuous improvement and receiverhip presentation by executive director Daniel Hurley. I hope I said that right. Good evening, commissioners. Thank you. Pleased to be here to uh discuss receiverhip and continuous improvement, provide an update. Uh the work of continuous improvement is supported by the office of school innovation and I'm the executive director of school innovation. Um and happy to give you these updates. So we do have all of this of course the the work of continuous improvement and the work of improvement within our schools is sorry is in service of the mission and vision of the district and the board goals which is the next slide. And if you move to the next slide, this is um may look familiar from last year u because these are the accountability designations for all the schools in

049the RCSD. Um this is the same as it was when I presented to you last June. Um, there has not been movement within these designations this past year and there actually will be no movement in across these designations next school year either. Um, and there's a reason for that. Uh, the pandemic disrupted the accountability system for New York State. So, they have um been rebuilding that accountability system over the past few years. and we are now moving into a phase called reimagine. And during that reimagine phase, um next year is kind of a bridge year for schools to um kind of get used to the new system and there's some new metrics. There's a new metric for attendance and um the growth metric which had been taken out of the system um after the pandemic.

050the the metric for student growth will be back into the calculation for designations. Um so we won't we won't see any shifts for the next school year in these. But what we will find out next year is based on um the tests that the students just took um in the spring for 3 through 8 and the upcoming regent exams based on um those testing metrics there will be new accountability designations coming from the state that will begin in the for the 2627 school year. So this is kind of um static for now. Um but we do look for next fall um to be to start hearing about what the uh next round of accountability designations will look like. Now along with accountability designations comes um requirements from NISED for continuous improvement planning and um so

051each level has different requirements. All of our schools in the RCSD do continuous improvement. They all write school improvement plans. Um we do use the state's required SEP template for our plans and that's required for all schools that are CSI, TSI, and ATSI. We also use it for our LSI or good standing schools. Um our process is grounded in the data wise school improvement process. Uh we have over the past few years been building capacity in our leaders, teachers um and administrators at the buildings at CO in order to um utilize this process. And you know I I do want to celebrate that data wise has been something that's been consistent over the past five years or so in the district. And I and I think that um you know that's an indication that schools

052do see value in data wise and and how it helps to um set trajectories for improvement. This is uh uh one of my favorite slides tonight and I just want to highlight um the enhanced collaboration and coherence that we as a district have had over the past year with between our buildings uh central office and the state. The state has um two offices that kind of support improvement. um office of innovation and school reform which supports receiverhip and a field support office that supports our uh CSI schools. And um you know we meet weekly with them and we work together um with the building principles and those offices from the state to do the best we can to support our schools in developing and progress monitoring um improvement plans that are based on data based

053on the needs of the students and the community. Um so I I really want to highlight that and and we start that with progress monitoring throughout the school year um with early progress early implementation uh benchmarks. It's where schools have have identified their key strategy. What does implementation look like? We monitor that um along with NISED. Um and then we look at mid-year benchmarks. what student outcomes are, how student outcomes are being affected by the key strategies that the schools have identified and then um our endofear targets. How is the school um how how are those student outcomes compared to what we said we thought they would be at the end of the school year? Um, so we have that process in place and we take that information of monitoring throughout the school year and

054we use multiple sources of of data, student interviews, um, obviously our testing data, our I Ready data, common assessments, um, student work. We we pull all schools pull all those through the data wise process and then they are they use that to identify a learning center problem and that tells us what's the area that our students are having trouble with. Um and then from there we look to a problem of practice. So, so if our students are struggling with this, what are what are our teachers and and our adults kind of doing right now in service of that that area? And we identify a problem of practice. And from that problem of practice, the the school then identifies here's a researchbased key strategy that's going to address this learning center problem and our adults problem

055of practice. Um, this key strategy is going to help shift instruction um to address those those issues. Um, so, so it's really nice to see that and and work together with the state and the buildings to do that based on data and based on student voice. Um, and so this is kind of where we're at and you're going to see these plans coming to you next month. Um because the first step of implementation is really um having approval from the state and from the board of education and then and then the school will take it from there and uh implement their key strategies and and monitor their data as the year goes on. Now receiverhip schools receiverhip schools are under a quite a microscope. Um they are laser focused on demonstrable improvement indicators that the

056state has provided um to which are uh incremental targets that will help them increase student outcomes. Um, and so this slide right here is the results of the 2324 school year for our receiverhip schools and how they performed on their demonstrable improvement indicators. You can see there is a line set that's across that 67%. Schools that make 67% or higher of their demonstrable improvement indicators have are considered to make demonstrable improvement and therefore will continue in in receiverhip until um the next opportunity for the state to um review designations. Um so you can see the performance of our current receiverhip schools right here. Um, I do want to note that East Lower is is not on here even though they are considered one of our um district receiverhip schools because currently the uh the reporting

057goes to the EPO. Next year we'll be getting that that information to the district. And then um as as in the past the receiverhip progress monitoring like I said they are under a microscope they uh receive performance reviews um virtually there's two on-site visits for each of those schools and they possibly every once in a while they add additional visits um to the schools to gather gather more information. Um, and you know, that's that's important for them to see. Um, because sometimes the metrics don't tell the whole story. And so for our um, state colleagues to be able to come to the schools and really see what's happening in the classrooms and talk with students and talk with leaders, um, it it it gives a little more to um, what's happening at the school. So

058they can really see that rather than just the the metrics that are coming out. And so here we are um for next year our receiverhip schools are 16 28 33 Monroe Edison and East Lower. Um again I've said this in the past making demonstrable improvement. So meeting these indicators does definitely shows progress but it does not mean that they will exit receiverhip. Um, and the next opportunity for schools to exit receiverhip will be June 30th of next year in 2026. And that will be based on the tests that were just taken this this spring. And then I did say 23 24 and 2425 because that growth metric is now um included. So that's kind of um taking last year's tests and this year's tests for that growth measure. Thank you, executive director. Um, and I

059also want to uh give a shout out to the schools who have uh made improvements um including uh Dr. David and Ruth Anderson Academy School. Dr. Strickland, do you know who the the principal is over there at at that school? Uh the principal currently is um Mr. Ryan Claire. However, that was the school that was led by um Miss Lisa Geral, who's now at school number 33. Yeah. Well, I just want to uh give a shout out to to all of our our schools who have made those improvements, to the principles who have uh led the school into making those improvements, to the teachers who do the work, and to the students who show up at the schools. I'm going to start off um on the DEAS. Um going to my right, uh Vice President

060Malloy. Thank you, Mr. Hurley. Thank you so much for this presentation. Love that we're talking student outcomes. Um, but this is really great. I love to have a better understanding of of SEP and just progress monitoring in general. So, it looks like we have a very robust um progress monitoring plan. Um, and I I love that you've highlighted the not just demonstrable improvement, but looking at that performance index as a measure of progress. So, all in all, thank you for the presentation. I can't wait um to use this data and have discussions with the board about our students progress. So, thank you. Great, President Simmons. Thank you. Um, looking at slide number four, recognizing that change is incremental. Unfortunately, if we could just solve world hunger in a day, it would be done. Um, but

061that's about third almost 40 schools, 40 schools listed here and some iteration of performance is a concern. Can you and I and echoing uh Commissioner Santiago, I'm I'm happy to hear about schools that are making um progress and I know that there are folks that are working hard, but there's 40 schools sitting here. Do we have any schools we can list and say that they are not on this list? Yeah. So, so this is this is a comprehensive list of all of our schools. And if you look to the left, the local support and improvement, those schools that used to be called good standing. So those are the schools that are um you know in good standing. They're they they aren't they have less requirements of the state um as far as the state's ESSA

062plan um goes. So, so those schools certainly, you know, are not in a in a I don't want to say a negative status, but right um haven't been cited for any of their any performance issues. Right. So, those mean that they have state determined local needs. Explain that to me in layman's terms. Yeah. So, so basically the the uh accountability system as we know it we have comprehensive support and improvement which is CSI and that means that um when you trying to simplify I just want the LSI I know what the CSI TSI I'm looking at all those and that's concerning LSI is more state determined yeah LSI it basically means where they fall when when all of the performance index and the asometrics are ranked They don't fall in that bottom in as a

063as a level one. They're in level two, three or four for each of their met for their metric areas. And do we have any schools that are not on here? Those are them. No, just real quick uh to further support uh Mr. Hurley. Thank you. LSI LSI school. So basically when the accountability system changed, the state was determining that in some way, shape, or form, every school needs some type of support. That's why they changed the name from good standing to local support improvement which is what um it's saying like there's still if you look at our schools there are still things that have to uh continuously be worked on. But what you will notice is that these schools have uh their subgroups uh that are in good standing for the most part in terms

064of ranking throughout New York State. So that's why they are LSI. And I just want to add further information. Uh what the state did with our new middle schools that opened up last year was made all of their subgroups good standing or LSI. Um but designated them as CSI in order to get us funding to help uh with the professional development and kickstarting our district's reconfiguration. So, it was sort of like a favor, but at the same time, it does have this rough look. Um, but um we also know that there's there's funding that is attached to TSI, ATSI, and CSI. And that that's why you also hear a lot of LSI principles saying we don't have money, we don't have money. But the state is expecting that they are building sustainable systems within their

065school communities in which they are able to have these practices that don't require additional funds. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for No, that helped me out. And that's what you were trying to tell me that LSI is good standing and it's new interpretive. I just didn't catch it. I called it a a long walk around the park, but I got there. So, thank you. Yes. So, so just to because it it can be confusing, you know, with this. So, you already explained what LSI is, which is good standing, but all of our schools, you know, all of our young people need extra support and we have to be able to support our young people. TSI means Yeah. So, so which is the second the second I'm actually the school's under. Let me start with CSI,

066comprehensive support. What that means is when they do the metrics, um, there are subgroups, right? And I I think we're familiar with subgroups. There's one called all students, and that's basically exactly what it is. It's all students. For the schools that are CSI, the all students category has fallen into a a one, which is generally the bottom 10% in the state. Um, for TSI, that's targeted support and improvement. that means there's one or two subgroups. So specifically um students with disabilities or English language learners maybe maybe that subgroup of students has fallen into a one and and I'm when I say one I mean they rank one two three and four um in the state and so um if they score a one then that one subgroup it's targeted so so those schools are working

067to target that specific group of students for to improve and then ATSI is um basically that targeted group has been struggling over a longer period of time over more than two years. Okay. Thank you. So just to be clear, there are only six schools in the RCSD that are actually in CSI receiverhip. Uh these the rest of the schools are are needed for supports in specific areas. Thank you, Commissioner Patterson. Sorry about that. Um, thank you again for your report. Um, I'm going to be quite honest. Uh, this is a lot for me to take in. So, I'm going to ask the superintendent, um, you know, to allow me to either meet with him or meet with you or someone to fully explain this at a later point in time because I do have a

068lot of questions and I see her that at some point in time, um, the board is going to review and approve, uh, of SEPs in New York State. So if we have to approve something and this board knows it that I always like to be knowledgeable before I vote on something. So if I could meet you someone at another point in time and you know go over this information so I totally understand it. I'd appreciate it. Yeah absolutely. Thank you. Thank you state monitor. Thank you. Uh just a reminder that school 19 was a school in receiverhip and last year they came off receiverhip. That's why you will see school 19 on local support. uh they are getting support from the district. The state is still coming in to visit to monitor the progress because

069uh we don't want the school to go back. So uh we want to give compliment to the former principal the staff for getting the school of receiverhip and making academic progress. Yeah, that was the best part about last year's presentation is I got to we got to do celebrate that and do Dr. Silus Lee was the principal at 19 back then. She's an awesome principal. She's over there at um she's over there at formerly Little Wilson um doing her thing. Dr. Strickland. No, I just also wanted to clear up a misnomer um with our CSI schools and our receiverhip schools. There are times where the expectations are actually um set higher for our receiverhip schools or they are reaching proficiency at higher levels than even some of our schools that are ATSI or TSI. It's

070all about the formulaic approach and actually looking at students and in subgroups which you know that's starting to get some uh rough traction. Um, let's not us forget uh let us not forget that chronic absenteeism also plays into this and that is somewhere where throughout the United States were actually plagued with which is one of the reasons why the state is actually deciding to shift some of the accountability metrics to understand that you know or acknowledge that there's a change after co and you know you have a sniffle you stay home because we don't want another pandemic starting and things of that nature. So, um, just, you know, as a former receiverhip principal that had extremely high expectations and my proficiency was higher levels than some schools in good standing, um, I do want to

071put that out there that just because you're in receiverhip does not mean your school is quote unquote bad or your your your students are not making progress. you just have uh more accountability, more uh oversight to ensure that you continue to push forward and that's exactly what we need to keep doing as a district. Yes. Let us let not us forget that. Uh Commissioner Elliot, thank you. Um I I'm not as um confident. Uh let me let me just say this. I I think that uh we have to look at who we have in front of our students, the processes, accountability, and I don't know how effective we have been with those things. Uh it's interesting that we have some um principles who can who've gotten us off of um receiverhip. We really don't acknowledge.

072We never we really we rarely acknowledge the work that uh school 9 has done uh in terms of receiverhip. Is anybody looking at what they have done to try to mirror these other principles who are uh in charge of these receiverhip schools to look at what they've done in order to be able to get off uh receiverhip there. There's this there's this sort of uh uh culture in the district where we can't do it or our children can't learn or they're in poverty and that's a reason why they can't learn. You know, we got to get off of that crap because our students can't learn. And I remember being in the a union meeting one time and say and they were presenting on well these kids can't learn because they're in poverty. No, you your

073job is to teach. And I'm wondering if we have uh if we are looking at it from that vantage point because, you know, we've got to teach these children so that they won't be out in the street doing the kind of negative behavior that dropouts do. I I don't know if we're taking this as serious and as um as ambitious enough as we should, as urgent enough as we should. Um because and and and these receiverhip schools in particular have more resources and we don't for whatever reasons don't seem to be able to do it. Um but I am um looking towards the fact that we don't have any of our children um on receiverhip. Obviously, it's not even about money because if it was about money, we got all the money. We got 1.1

074billion and we can't get these receiverhip schools out of receiverhip. Doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that that there's more to do with maybe their in people's inability to believe that they can learn our own processes. Um and there is some um you know in terms of absenteeism of the student but that's kind of loaf as far as I'm concerned because even if they was absent we could reach out to them and to say well what do you need in order for us to ensure that you are learning you know take some books home or whatever the case may be. I I just don't think that we are creative enough and that's why we lose our students to charter schools. And while in our budget there's $120 million that we're giving to

075charter schools because we don't seem to be able to do this work in a way in which we can uh get black and brown children um to succeed academically. So, uh I I'm just a little frustrated about that and I'm I'm being bold about it because we can't just continue to sit around and think this is okay. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Elliott. Absolutely agree. Uh there's some level of urgency uh when it comes to these things. These are young people um who will be in our district for a set amount of time and every year that we fail them, we're failing their their adulthood also. And so is important that that we uh fight this with urgency, which I'm sure our staff is doing their best to do. Um but it's also important that

076leadership uh is is strategically chosen to really push our students ahead. Uh let me say one other thing Mr. chairman and then to say that we're not making progress is that only because of the state that has changed uh these measures because even if the state changed the measures it would seem to me that there should be progress and and I don't know if I missed that but e even if the state changes you can't tell me that we should not still be expecting that there be progress even with the states changes and I believe mentioned measurements. I I'm I'm just not convinced that we're doing all we can do for our students. Thank you, uh, Commissioner Elliot. Next up, Commissioner Lebron. Thank you. Um I I just have to say um to similar to

077um Commissioner Elliott's sort of point um for me personally having been up close and personal with individuals and families and crisises and systems for a number of years being a parent in this system for a number of years reading Dr. um Alice Holiday Way's book um where she mentioned at the time that the district had schools in receiverhip, the district was failing students and that um it's part of why she advocated and pushed for urban suburban and at the time one of the presidents came down and was like acknowledged it was a really big deal. But in reality, um, where we're at in 2025 right now is that our children, regardless of what we do in this district, into this system, they are exiting us and going back into a community that is broken, that

078does not have the proper supports, where their own family members don't have the proper supports, where they're constantly moving, where they're constantly moving into situations where there's mold, pest control issues. um be evictions, moving from shelter to hotel, sometimes unfortunately being shuffled by the county, the very system in charge of upholding them and keeping them safe and having a roof over their head is often a part of the shuffling. And until we address those conversations, for me, and I just have to say that I think the majority of our staff, there's always bad apples in the bunch, but my experience in this district is that the majority of our principles, our custodial folks, our bus drivers, our food service providers, every touch point in the system are is made up of individuals who care but

079have limitations to this system of what they can do, knowing that they're trying to teach a child that probably did not get sleep or was out all night or was home alone all night or had to leave a shelter in the middle of the night to go to a hotel or like these are children that are constantly being shuffled and moved and they're the majority of our students. They're the majority. And we know that statistically we could literally do a DHS run and have an understanding of how many of our kids are getting DHS assistance and do a crossover with how many of our students are currently at RCSD. And it is the majority. And I'm just I just have to say this because we're gonna go hard on numbers and we're gonna ignore the

080fact that a majority of our students are coming from places and situations that's traumatic and it's not stable. And it is my belief that until we fully address both the city, the county, the district at the table, like this is how we're going to wrap around these services to the students and families because we're not going to be able to change this. And I just have to say this on record and I'm going to shut up. I've asked this question. I've gone to the library. I've done lots of research. I asked Justin Murphy this um question too in his book. When has RCSD ever been um on track with students? And the answer is never. Not compared to the metrics that the state continuously changes to. And that's another conversation that I don't even want

081to address today. that they're part of that metric measuring too moving the needle sometimes midyear for schools and districts. Um but again we've never we've never so I for people to be shocked right now or feel like oh we have all these schools when you join the board there were more schools in receiverhip than we currently have and the fact is that they have moved up and again the ch the state changed language they didn't do a great job educating people on it. So there are a number of schools not in receiverhip but we do have schools in receiverhip but we have never had this district where students were at level for reading, writing and mathematics. Never. That's it. And and I would just like to uh point out a couple of things to your

082point, Commissioner Lebron. Each of our receiverhip schools is also a community school and that community school model is is is there to try to wrap around those supports for the students and families of the school. So, um I I just I think that's important to know that our receiverhip schools and other schools that are community school models in in the district are are doing their best to do that. Um I I want to point out can I just highlight that yes and I've seen it in action and I want to commend that model and the staff that we you know how we do it with fidelity. I do believe that we are a district that does it well under the state's definition of a community school. Under my definition it would look very different. But

083that's one piece. But they also have limitations. Anyone at a community school worker who's trying to advocate might not be able to get a family place. They may end up having to sleep at the airport behind the Blue Cross Arena. We have found children. I'm telling you, my team and I have found families living like this. And so I I just there are more and more children that are becoming homeless with the entire family unit. And there are children and this is a long history, long cycle of the same stuff. That's all I'm saying. Thank you. Um yeah, thank you. and we we haven't been able to do it yet, but I believe that we can do it. I believe that we will do it. And I believe that we have to do it, but

084it's going to take the collaboration of not just this district, not just this board, not just one superintendent, but of everybody. Education in the crisis of education is not just the responsibility of the district but the responsibility of the family of the community of the government of our local government of all of our local municipalities to support the education of our students to support business to support the development of this city. And it takes all of us to do that. Um and and it's going to take some real change and it's going to take us to uproot things to change things to be innovative in our actions to meet the young people that we are here to serve today. But it is possible. We will do it and we have to do it because if

085we don't, we will continue to to fail our generation. So, um, I just want to drop that in there. President, can I say one other thing, Mr. Chairman? I'll be quick about this. Let me let me just say I'm from a different generation. And so, in my readings of the African-American community, I'm worried with that. We We've made a way out of nowhere. I'm doing that on purpose. It's okay. Yeah. we made a way out of nowhere and it's just been and so uh I understand that people that that families and people have problems. Uh but people in the African-American community historically knew if they were able to get an education that they could change their situation. That's history. And when you look at a lot of our black leaders, we know that they've had

086some struggles, hard times, but they made it. When you look at what Booker T Washington had to do, walking five and 10 miles or 20 miles to get to another state, for example, it was done. So, I'm looking at what we as a people, what my ancestors have been able to do over the centuries and made it in spite of everything that this nation has took them through terms of slavery, in terms of Jim Crow, in terms of all of those things that place black people they tried to place black people behind. We were able to overcome. That's my life and that's my history. And so I know that irrespective of the issues that um our families are facing today, we could and and we were in the church and we had God to help

087us. We were able to make a way out of now way. And so that's my paradigm when I look at um what my people have done and how we succeeded. We don't let we didn't let anything stop us mo overall. So I'll just leave it at that. So when I talk, that's where I'm coming from. Thank you. So even in and and let me just say this, even in this era of Donald Trump, listen, this is not nothing new for black folk. We've been here before. So he doesn't matter to me or or to our people. We see our people being on the sideline, not even really caring about what he's talking about. So that's where I come. So maybe I'm my history and and my um my experience um is is different from others

088and they think they can't make it. I believe and I come from a people that we can make it. Thank you. Thank you, President Simmons. Me. Oh, okay. Thank you. Um so what I was going to say when you called on me earlier is that um you know kind of done this stuff too, right? come from this community. We do know that poverty is not indicative of one's ability to learn. I have to agree with both colleagues who spoke. I read Dr. Hollis Halloway Young. I definitely read Dustin Murphy's book. Went on a little book walk with him and I have to say that that is true. When you look at the history and peel it back, there was never a time where we were performing. However, there's a time where that buck has to

089stop somewhere. And I think you touched on it a little bit, Commissioner Santiago, when we talked about uprooting because there are institutional, structural, and individual things that plague these spaces. Every space you walk into, you cannot get away from it. It exists. And so we do have to start uprooting and we have to come into a mindset where we start to say, if it didn't happen, then when when does it happen? When do we change it? We can't continue to fall back on what was. We have to imagine what can be. We have to adopt a progressive mindset. And I refuse to allow the children that we serve in this district to continue to be played with. Someone else touched on something earlier when they talked about how we show up in our buildings, but

090even how we show up here on this board. So, if we're serious about learning, even when we looked in Justin Murphy's book, his book talked about this board. He talked about the dysfunction. He talked about the the the rabbit hole of superintendent turnover. The same things we're seeing today, the same headlines you reading now, you were reading them then. So, how do we begin to change that? I agree. Uh, thank you. I believe that there's one more comment from Commissioner LeBron. This will be the final comment. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, you voted this board voted for another superintendent, the irony in that, but um I do want to point out I get uh where Commissioner Elliot respectfully is coming from, but this ain't that and this ain't the time. And all I'm saying is

091that yeah, you can be progressive and have you can be an ideologist, but the reality is that we are still stuck in a system that does not work for educators and it's certainly not working for our children. And year after year, we continue to have the same repetitive conversations about all of the changes. We all know what we the changes that need to happen, but it's just all talk. And it's going to continue to be all talk unfortunately until there are changes both at the state and federal level and just this whole entire structure of education. I'm just to the point where I see that this system is never going to work for our children. It's never really going to work for us. So that's all. Thank you. I forgot about our parent rep and

092my apologies, Monica Graham. Yes. Thank you, uh, Commissioner because I sure had my hand up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So, no, no worries. So, I will be very quick. Um, this is a a a big conversation um that needs to be had, but I'm going to speak to my parents. Um, Dr. Strickland had made a comment that a receiverhip school is not a bad school. So, I know there's a lot of things being said here and um I want my parents to know that your school is amazing. Your students are amazing and this is a very complicated subject. So if you need to understand what's happening here, what this board is talking about here, go to your school principal, go to your admin staff and say this board meeting, this particular subject, I need you

093to walk me through this and let me know what this means to me as a parent, to my baby in this school, and what I can do as a parent leader to help. And if you're not getting the answer you need, you come to one of our um district parent groups, plaque, CPAC, EMPAC, BEC, and we will get you the information you need, and we will help you understand this issue, and we will help you be the parent leader you need to be in your baby's school to help understand this subject and to help move the needle on this. So, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Miss Miss Graham. I'm I'm so I'm glad I didn't miss you because that that was important. Um and this whole conversation alto together has been robust.

094I thank all of our commissioners I thank all of our commissioners for uh their their comments um and the robust conversation that we had. Um but like I said, we can do it. Uh we will do it. We have to do it. And it's going to take uprooting. It's going to take collaboration. Um, but in order for that to happen, we need bodies and united bodies to make it happen. And so I hope to see that. Uh, for the final uh comment, for real, for real, Dr. Strickland, thank you. Um, I just wanted to point uh, commissioners to slide number nine where you see that um, all of our schools, including the one that's below the the the the mark, um, did in fact the commissioner determined that um, all schools met uh, demonstrable progress.

095Um, I had to have a different meeting uh, with Monroe regarding Monroe High School. uh however I feel that we are in a different space and we know how to um move forward uh in a positive way. But I want to mention that these schools met demonstrable progress and then in each of the categories their numbers that they have to meet for the following year are going to increase. And this is what I mean when I say that the bar is sometimes somewhat more difficult for our schools that are not uh labeled as LSI um or that they are in receiverhip and that next year they're going to have to meet even higher standards. And that is something that you will see is that some of the proficiency, some of the growth, the most of

096the growth with our our students in the district are at these schools. And I just again want to continue to uplift schools um all schools, but in particular receiverhip schools. Uh they are some of the hardest, toughest working principles uh that we have in our school district. And there's just a lot of different structural parameters that we need to really fix uh internally so that we also uh don't keep making it hard for our our schools. Thank you. And I'm sorry. I want to commend every commiss uh each commissioner uh with your outcomes focused conversations. Uh, you know, I'm a teaching and learning guy and I'm just in awe and uh I just want to say please continue to keep having these conversations about the babies and what they're doing in our schools and and

097guess what? You will make a drastic change. Thank you, Dr. Strickland, and thank you, executive director, uh, Daniel Hurley. Thank you so much for the presentation and sitting through that robust conversation. We appreciate you. Thank you. Um, next up we will have a presentation uh for the 2025 2026 academic and fiscal plan which will be presented by our state monitor Haimey Alysa. And as he's traveling to the podium, I would like to remind uh our community that you can access every presentation um and every report that's shared to the board on board docs RCSD. Um, and without further ado, I will uh turn it over to our state monitor, Haimey Alexan. Thank you, Chairman Santiago. Good afternoon, uh, President Simmons, Vice President Malloy, commissioners, uh, staff members, people who are watching us uh, this afternoon.

098want to say that uh great presentation this afternoon regarding science in the district and accountability. These are our kids. These are our schools and we got to do the best that we can to continue to improve student outcome in the district and that we can provide the best educational opportunities for the students in the district, supporting the staff, supporting the families and supporting each other because I always have said that as the school district goes, our city will go. So, let's continue to work together and continue to make a difference uh for our students in the district. Uh it is my pleasure to uh share with you the draft plan for the 2526 school year for the Rochester uh city school district. Again, this is a draft plan. Uh there's going to be a hearing.

099there's the opportunity for people to provide me or uh the fiscal consultant uh Dr. Potter with feedback so we can integrate that in the plan for the 20 2526 school year. As you know, Rochester uh school district was appointed a monitor uh because of academic performance and uh the fiscal situation that the district was in many years back. That legislation was in place for five years and this coming this past May the legislation was extended for two more years. So they will be a monitor and a fiscal consultant in the Rochester City School District until May 2027. Uh the monitor the responsibilities of the monitors is to serve as a non voting exofficial member of the board. assist the board in adopting a conflict of interest policy that ensures board members and administrators act in

100the district best interest and that was accomplished during the tenure of Dr. Jalo in the district to work with uh the board to develop a proposed academic improvement plan and proposed uh financial plan now better known as a fiscal plan for the district no later than November 1 in 2020 but to continue during the last four years. So uh the responsibilities have not changed. It's also my responsibility to provide a semianual report on the academic and fiscal operational status of the district to the commissioner of education to the governor's office and to the board of regents uh to assist in resolving uh disputes and conflict between the superintendent board and among board members. authority to disapprove uh travel outside of the state that is paid by the district. Uh to recommend cost-saving measures including but

101not limited to share service agreement and notify the board in writing regarding violations of the academic or the uh financial plan. The plan must include long-term goals and outcomes. Uh these are desired impact that will result for implementing monitor recommendations. The recommendations are the actions that must be taken by the district to continue to improve. And one of the things that the fiscal consultant and I we did, we align our recommendations to the strategic plan priorities and goals. I don't believe in having three four different plans for the district to work on. I believe in having focus and working together to address the needs of the district. Last year the in 2023 24 the district approved the strategic plan. So we took it upon ourselves to make sure that the recommendation that we are presenting

102to you were aligned to the plan. So you are not working with two or three different document because the district also has a consent decree that you're working on. There was a part 154 also corrective action plan. So we wanted to make sure that the work that is taking place is aligned and the we can focus on improving student outcomes in the district and the financial situation or fiscal situation of the district. If you look at the model that we use for the template, you can see that there are long-term goals outcomes and those were taken from either the strategic plan or uh feedback from our stakeholders. Again, that is aligned to the strategic plan and the recommendation again is aligned with those documents. There's a section for district evidence. So every quarter the district

103has to provide a report to the state a report to the state monitor on how much progress we are making towards meeting those recommendations. Again, the monitor began during the year 22 23 school year and that year there were 92 recommendations in the monitor's plan. For this coming year 2526, there are 44 recommendations in the academic plan. Nine are for turnaround leadership. Six are for talent development. 20 instructional transformation, four for culture shift and five for 16 system resources and structures. And we are making five new recommendations and those are the recommendations that we are going to go over or that I'm going to go over this evening. uh we made some revisions uh to the document to the recommendations but today we're going to share the new ones and some from uh the previous

104plan. The first one or a highlight is that the board of education shall support the new superintendent of school to ensure positive transition in leadership in the Rochester city school district. We heard one of the commissioner before talking about the transition in the district, a new superintendent. Well, this is the opportunity for us for the board to work together to support the new superintendent to provide the superintendent with feedback with the support that he is going to need to continue to move the district forward for the board to provide the superintendent with uh immediate evaluation and an annual evaluations. So the superintendent will know how he is working to achieve the district goals. The goals that also he's going to be shared with the board when he takes office next month. There's also the board

105should engage in professional development with NESBA and this is after consultation with the state education department consultation with NISBA about doing more professional development on how to deal with the interpersonal relations between commissioner of educations. We have seen what takes place during board meetings. We know that we are in charge of the education in the Rochester City School District and in the city of Rochester. We can or we shall not have expectation for our students, expectation for our staff and expectations for our families that we do not have for ourself or that you do not have for yourself. We need to be role models. So it is important that we collaborate, that we participate in this training and that we continue to put students first in the district uh during the year 202526. Also again

106these are very similar to the recommendation that was in the 2425. The addition to this uh recommendation is that all business meetings and a special meetings should begin with a roll call for attendance. We know we have seen that many times we have to wait for the commissioners to come to the meetings. When you ran for office, you knew that you were making a commitment for the students, the families, and the staff in the district. you knew that the board meetings started at 6:00 or 6:30. Sometimes you're sitting here, we're sitting here waiting for commissioners to come in so we can have quorum and we can and you can deal with the issues that we have that you have to deal for the students. So it is important for people to see who is here

107and who is not here on time. You ran for office. You want to make a difference. Let's show the community that you are committed. And I'm not saying that you are not, but let's make a commitment and let's show what we what you can do for our community. Another recommendations in the academic plan is for the chief of the upper school and east lower school to monitor the transition plan that is being put together between the district and the east EPO. We know that those two school will be back in a month back to the district July 1st. We know that the district has been working putting a plan together. We know that East Opera was able to get off receiverhip. There's a lot of good practices that are taking place in that building. So,

108we want to make sure that we monitor that you monitor the plan that was put in place and that you're getting quarterly report about the progress being made and that we can have a smooth transition back to the Rochester City School District, that we are not a district of schools, that we are a school district. Uh recommendation 820 is a revision. We know that this year uh the district did a lot of work for to address uh part 154 corrective action plan. Superintendent Strickland shared with you last month uh the feedback from uh the deputy commissioner regarding meeting three of those uh areas. But there's one area that we still need to focus on. And the state is not saying you need to close RIA. The state is not saying you have to move this

109or that. But the state is concerned about the amount of time that the students are spending in the program based on the law and regulation. Again, they're not saying close the program. the student needs support but they need they're saying that we need to look at the teachers in the program to make sure that they are certified that the program is available uh will be available to any non-English-speaking students because the district has bilingual program it has been shared with the state that Spanish speaking students are not allowed to go to RIA again that has been shared with the state. So the state wants to make sure that if it's a program for uh newcomers, refugees that English speaker students are also allowed and that the students in the program shall be integrated with other

110English- speaking students that there's the opportunity for students to go to art together, to go to music together, to go to physical education together, to go to other classes together. that is not segregated. Again, it's not about closing the program. It's about providing more opportunities for the students in the program. And uh another recommendation in the academic plan based on conversations that we have had during our visit to the uh schools in receiverhip and some of the other schools in the district is the need to conduct an audit of the bilingual education and the English as a new language curriculum to ensure that is aligned to the next generation standards. teaching and learning has been coming to the board doing presentation about ELA, CKLA. Today you heard about uh science. So we want to make

111sure that our students that are bilingual and the students that are participating in the ENL program, they have a curriculum that is aligned to the next generations. I'm not saying that the district is not implementing a curriculum, but the standards were aligned and the district the state has been realigning uh the standards in 2016. So let's revisit the bilingual curriculum and the ENL curriculum. And the last one that I'm going to share to well two more is the district administration should continue to adhere to all the provision for the CAP administer to the district office for special education. It's an area that the district continues to make progress. But we can set aside the recommendations. We have to continue to focus on student with special needs to make sure that uh evaluations are done and

112that everything is done with the uh the time allowed it by the state. So it is important that we continue to do that. And the next one is a recommendation that the new superintendent should reorganize the district to promote alignment and implementation of best practices to increase achievement. That we focus on the department that we have our department of or our division of teaching and learning all working together. the division of operations working together that we can focus on the standards on the curriculum and that the expectations are shared with everyone in the district in the building. Again, if we want to continue to improve student outcomes, we need to be a school district, not a district of school. We need to work on a curriculum that is aligned and we need to have expectations,

113same expectations for everyone in the district. Sorry for doing a lot of talking. The fiscal plan uh again uh has been active implemented from 2022 to 2023 and that year there were 54 recommendations. Uh next year is 33. So this is an area we have seen significant improvement uh three new recommendations uh for this coming year and when we look from 54 to 33 we have seen a decrease also in the number of recommendations. This is an area that the state recognizes that the district has made significant progress, significant growth that the district has a very nice fund balance and again giving credit to the board to the staff for the work that has been done. But there's some other areas that we need to continue to monitor. And in this area we have three

114highlights through recommendations. Again, there are more in the plans, but we're going to highlight the new ones. And the first one is based on my uh conversation with uh the incoming superintendent is to have the chief financial officer and the budget director appointed no later than October. We know that the budget process begin at the end of September, October. We want to make sure that we have a person or we have two people in place in October so we can begin the process on time and that we can continue to focus on the finances of the district. Commissioner Elliot said mentioned a budget of $1.1 billion. That's a lot of money and people sometimes see the district like you're wealthy. But we have to put a plan that is aligned with the academic needs of

115the district. And we got to make sure that there's an understanding on how the money that is coming to the district whether is from the state federal money from the city is going to be allocated to continue to improve student achievement in the district. The other uh highlight is that for the department of human capital to continue to work with the finance department and the department of information management for the implementation of a true position control system in the district. We have talked about this for the last two and a half years that I've been in the district. I know that this is also something that uh former state monitor uh Dr. Jallow also share. We want to make sure that every employee in the district is accountable and accounted for that we are not

116using two uh one position for two people in the district and that there is accountability in the h in the district especially that we're moving into Oracle. The district is making a big large investment in Oracle. So we got to make sure that you know we understand the system that we can use the system and that the system is going to provide benefits to the district. And the other recommendation is that the district administration should continue to monitor the allocation of federal funds in the event there are reductions in different funding sources. In the event there are reductions, the district should develop a plan to reallocate local funds to continue to provide services to the students. And this is based on the feedback that we have heard at board meetings regarding what is happening with

117the new administration in Washington. Are we going to be able to continue to get the funding from the federal government? Is if not, how are we going to use the funds available that we have that you have in the fund balance and that we again that we are included in those discussions. Again, no later than December 31st, 2025, the district should submit a monthly analysis of the vacancies report to the executive cabinet, fiscal consultant, and the state monitor. For the past three years and especially the last three years that I have been involved in developing the plan and the fiscal consultant, we have heard about the number of vacancies in the district. Are these true vacancies? For the past three years, we have used some of the funding for this position to balance the budget.

118So, we need to make sure that we keep track of this position. And I know that human capital is doing some work in that area, but sometimes we call a position in this district that is vacant, but we have a substitute in the position. So for me, if there's a sub, the position is not vacant. So we need to make sure that we can keep good track of this uh position. If there's going to be a revision on the budget, the fiscal consultant and myself need to be included uh in that discussion. and again to continue for the board to monitor the development of the uh facilities management plan. There's a lot of work that is going to take place. I know uh President Simmons has been attended, former President Elliot has attended, but this

119should the whole board should be notified and knowledgeable about what is happening with that plan. that plan that is $475 million taxpayers money that the district is responsible for. We want to make sure that our student have state-of-the-art facilities. So, let's work with the poor uh FMP board and let's make sure that we are that you they are using that money in a productive way. Again, this is a draft. There's going to be a public hearing on June 26. But before that, uh it's included in my PowerPoint that parents, staff, uh the board, you have the opportunity to provide me with feedback. My email is there and we will be coming back with uh to do a public hearing and a final plan for the board to approve at the business meeting in July. I

120believe that's the end of my presentation. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm here to take any questions that you may have for me. Thank you, state monitor. I'll start to my right with Commissioner Patterson. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for um just a very thorough report. Thank you for the reporting you did on the board. It's very important that we adhere to some of the recommendations. Um, so I applaud you uh for your entire report. It was very thorough. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, President Simmons. Thank you. Um, lots to unpack here. I'm looking forward to additional conversations. Um, I'm trying to exercise wisdom. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So, I'm exercising wisdom right now. Um, but I'm I'm looking forward to unpacking some of this. I would

121like to dive into the FMP um conversation, but um, as far as this report, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you, Vice President Malloy. Thank you so much for your report and the recommendations and um, thank you for your tenure here in in Rochester. We appreciate all that you do for us. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I agree with what you were saying revolving around our involvement with the FMP. Um, I'm not sure and I and I could be missing um could be missing emails, but I don't believe that I get the invite to to the meetings or even know about what's going on with the FMP uh besides what's presented here at the board meeting. So, definitely would love to get involved in that more often. Um and and FMP is a special legislation that

122it was uh developed for the big five school district that we depend on the city city hall to uh borrow money. So this was a special legislation to give uh the opportunity for the districts to renovate uh the schools and uh in order to do that a board was established. But that doesn't take away from the board of education working together with uh the joint school construction board and for you to be aware of everything that is happening uh regarding the facilities in the district. Yeah. Because I would love to see some of that money go back to our students and back to our community. Um you know, they could definitely beautify our our hallways and even outside the school. We have a lot of artists in this district, so I'll definitely love to to

123give some insight um and some feedback there. Commissioner Elliott. Thank uh thank you. So let me just give you some historical background um before I get into my question to the state monitor. Um let me just go on get on camera. Um that legislation was developed by uh the great uh assemblyman uh dean of the delegation David Gant. And the intent for the board for independent board was because uh they weren't able to trust uh the district nor were they able to trust the was David able to trust the city. So it became its own entity. And so it is not for the beautifification of any of our schools per se, but to renovate uh renovate schools and and um so there and there may not be money need uh there in order to do

124that. What some of the things that you're suggesting? You could certainly ask, but I think the plan has already been developed and they're operationalizing uh the plan at this point. Um, and so you may even want to just have a meeting with Chairman Riches about that 101 so that you know as you go into those meetings you can know what's allowable at this point and what is not allowable. remember there's only $475 million and with the rise in cost of equipment and I was going to ask uh the state monitor you know about these tariffs and how the tariffs can impact um the resources that the FMP have and just in our own capital uh improvement projects. So, um I will u ask you uh state monitor any any has there been any conversation around

125the president's tariffs and its impact on our ability to be able to um um uh do the renovations with the 475 million or are we going to have to cut back given given the tariffs? Yeah, there's some discussion uh Commissioner Elliot regarding uh the amount of money that was allocated for phase three for the renovations. Uh what is happening in Washington, what is happening with the uh tariff uh with uh the prices for materials, the availability of some of the supplies that sometimes when you buy the supplies, they're not available until two, three or six months later. Uh we know the aluminum is going up and all that. So there is some discussion about that. There's also some discussion about to try to uh get legislation to see if there's going to be or we

126can get a little more money available to cover those extra expenses because this legislation was from 2021. So we know that four years later materials cost everything is more expensive now. So there is some discussion about that. Thank you. And then my last question is um about the Oracle project. As you know, I'm real concerned about the Oracle uh project. Uh I understand, you know, the superintendent is saying that we can get it out on July 1. My concern is the inner workings of that and the fact that, you know, we're going to have to um there's another resolution that's coming up to pay these people um money. Um you know, I would like to be able to negotiate that. However, um my concern is is that is it going to be as operational as

127we need it to be? I understand that there's been some resistance to the project and that's been delayed. And I I just want your take on this whole Oracle thing and um of how we um what's your recommendation in terms of um getting this on track and getting it done with fidelity. And uh Dr. Strickland, I believe he's going to provide an update later on. There was a meeting this morning and uh that was part of the discussion. I think that there's a need to really have a plan of what is going to happen between now and June 30th and what is going to happen between July 1st and the first paycheck and then July 1st and the second paycheck because there's some concerns out there. There are a lot of work that has been

128done but people need to be honest. People need to be transparent and to share the information. Uh some people feel that yes, we can move forward for July 1st. Other people still have concerns. So I know that uh Superintendent Strickland is going to be sharing some information, but that whatever the decision is is going to be a district decision. We got to make sure that uh if the system that the system is going to be ready and is going to provide the or meet the needs of the district, it is an expensive system. It has been a very expensive system and I just want to remind people that that at the end these are taxpayers money. These are taxpayers money. So make sure that we are doing everything that we can to implement the system

129with fidelity. I know that similar to people's soft there's a lot of changes that need to be made to the system because this is a business system. This was not developed for school district, but they have sold this good that the school district can use it. So, let's make sure that we are doing everything that we're supposed to to have full implementation of the system. Well, I'll just ask this last question, but it may be directed to the superintendent when he reports about what was the original cost of this project and how much additional money have we paid uh in this project. So, if you can't answer that uh state monitor, I'll wait and hear that answer from the superintendent. Yeah, this the rest of this conversation is going to happen in the next session

130um where it will be covered in presentation. So, if we could say we'll we'll make sure that they answer his question. I have it on the agenda for the special meeting this evening. Yep. So, for the special meeting, um we we'll finish that conversation. Commissioner Elliot. Um All right. Thank you, Commissioner LeBron. Thank you. I'm trying to press these buttons. Um yeah, I just want to um Haimey, I know like this is a big lift and a lot of work to put these recommendations and proposals and do the alignment work. So I want to thank you for that. I do want to oppose A20. I want to pose it now on record and I do want to state that I've already gone to the regions um and through the regions to the commissioner to reconsider

131not just this recommendation but that of Deputy Alvarez. And I'm going to name names because um I will say this that we are in a time when the federal government is attacking our immigrant families. And and then I so before I go into that rant, I just have to say that the law does not require newcomer programs to integrate English- speakaking students. That is not a requirement of that particular and that what the state views as the um best practices or regulations and laws 24 months the best practices at 12 months and what we was negotiated prior with President Elliot myself was 18 months. That was the number that we landed on. Um, so it's really disappointing to see the state once again bring this up again, but to bring it up at a time

132when the federal government is intentionally attacking immigrant families and newcomer families and families that are at RIA, like these are the families that are under attack. Um, and so I want to be clear that I know for a fact that this community will not stand by and allow this board nor the state to try to um disband RIA. And what the state is asking is that we do move from an 18 to 12 month which would essentially uh devastate the school and remove at least more than half of those students meaning that it would reconstructure the entire thing and destroy the program. And I would want to remind folks that the newcomer program accepts siblings as a whole and that's part of it. You have families who have struggled to get here. Some who have

133lost family members along the way to get here. some who don't even know how to hold a pencil because they were coming from a refugee camp and the trauma and the things that they seen and we want to throw them into our schools and our schools not being properly set up and supported. This is the very reason ARA was formed and founded in this district. And so yes, the the recommendation and the request right now is that the state back off and leave us alone about RIA because this is not the time for there's a million and one things actually that the state could be focusing on especially around the attacks with Trump but for the state to come right back and again a conversation that President Ellie and I had the minute we became

134in leadership. This was something ongoing. Even before President Ellie and I, you know, were uh previous president, vice president, this was an has been an ongoing issue. Um, but it really really bubbled up when a certain deputy commissioner came on board. And I, you know, I don't hold back. I have receipts for all of these conversations. There are emails. president of previous president Elliot can tell you she was at many of those conversations at that table and and has her own receipts and documentation around this. So yes, I want to adamantly oppose it now. I'll adamantly oppose it at the hearing. Um but I will be continuously following up with both the commissioner and the regent and if we as a community have to go to war then we are prepared to go to war

135to stand up for our families. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, parent, do you have a response to that? No. Okay. Parent rep, uh, Monica Graham. Yep. Thank you. So, I want to thank Haime, um, for your presentation, but I also want to thank you for always being intentional. Um, every meeting I've been in, you have been intentional on explaining what we're discussing, so that way as a parent um, and a caregiver, I can understand. I appreciate the way you explained um your presentation today so that way our parents and our caregivers can understand what's going on and what is needed of us. Um I guess my question would be you had mentioned a hearing on your last slide. Thank you for giving us your direct email. What are the options for parents and caregivers um

136to attend that monitor's hearing in I think it was June 26. It will be June 26 right here at the boardroom. But if there's a board a parent meeting and you would like to invite me to go there and listen to them also, I'm willing to do that. Okay. Thank you. Now, now be careful because you know we're going to ask for you to come. Except next week I'm available. Yes. No, I used to participate in all the remote meetings. So, it is an an honor to talk to the parents and to listen to them. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, state monitor, do you have any closing statements? Again, this is a draft document. Uh, I know that there's a lot of more a lot of more work that needs to be

137done that uh a final document will be done. I have heard about the conversations with the state before. Again, as I said before, the state is not saying get rid of the program. We need to make sure that we continue to provide services to our students. So, uh again, financially, the district is in a good position. I heard the board the before talking about uh receiverhip, school in good standing, the old term. So, we're here. And when I say we, I include myself to work with you, to work with the community, to work with the schools so we can continue to improve student achievement in the district. Student outcomes, our students should be in first grade only once, should be in second grade only once. Let's make sure that we have a curriculum that is

138meaningful, that we have the staff that is trained, and that we're providing them with the support and that we focus on what we need to focus, student outcomes, student achievement. This business is about education. Do we have to deal with finances? Of course, we do. But we have to deal with finances. we need to deal with other issues in the community because we want to focus on student achievement. Thank you, uh, state monitor. And for the public and for our board members, we have a report, the 2025 through 2027 district special education plan. Uh, to the community, you can access that report through board docs, RCSD. To board members, please check that plan out. Um, don't forget to complete the commissioner uh board meeting survey survey. Um, and lastly, I would just like to say

139that this is the final ESA committee meeting. Thank you to everyone. Thank you to our parent rep, Monica Graham, who has been at every preview meeting, who has been at every meeting here publicly. Thank you to Dr. Ramos, who has given a presentation almost every meeting since I've been chair. Thank you to our chiefs. Thank you to de to superintendent Strickland, but formerly Deputy Superintendent Strickland who worked handinhand with this committee, this committee. Um, and thank you to the Rochester public students, teachers, parents, uh, for watching these meetings and focusing on our student achievements, which is the foundation of what this board should be working on. The focus is our students and ensuring that they are ready for this world, ensuring that they are ready to to be successful as they leave our district. And

140this was an opportunity and a committee for us to focus strictly on student outcomes, which is what this board uh should be doing and is pushing to do more often. And as this meeting uh started or in the middle of this meeting, I said that we can do it, we will do it, and we have to do it. And I believe that together as a community, that together with parents, with students, with commissioners, with the board, with administration, um, and with our local, u municipalities, that we can accomplish greatness, that we can truly achieve, uh, equity inside of our districts and we can continue to see, um, our student achievements uh, go higher and higher every meeting. And with that being said, can I get a motion to adjourn this committee? So moved. Second. Motion

141by Vice President Malloy, seconded by um President Simmons. All those in favor? I I. Any oppose? And with that being said, that is the end of the ESA committee. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening everyone. This is uh the Rochester Board of Education. We are now transitioning into our special meeting to convene for considerations of uh resolutions. Today is Tuesday, June 10th, 2025. Uh at this time, I'd like to call the meeting to order and uh we do not have any speakers listed. Uh, and actually I'm going to move that we move the meeting into uh, recess into executive session to discuss matters made confidential pursuant to federal law, state law, excuse me, and to receive the advice of general counsel as permitted by section 105 of the open meetings law. Motion second. Motion by

142Vice President Malloy, seconded by Commissioner Patterson. All in favor? Any oppose? All right, we're going to exit into executive session and we will return, folks. Thank you for your patience. Um if we have a viewing audience, but those that are tuned in or going to be looking at this recording, uh we are reconvening for our special meeting to convene for the consideration of resolutions. At this time, uh, I am looking at our, uh, resolution consideration for action items and would like to entertain a motion to bundle resolutions 718 through 729. So moved. Motion by Commissioner Patterson, seconded by Vice President Malloy. All in favor? Okay. Uh, and resol um, entertaining a motion for resolution 718. We've already Oh, 418 through 729. So moved. Moved by Vice President Malloy, seconded by Commissioner Patterson, open for discussion.

143Um, and as we open it for discussion, I do want to go to resolution 729 actually on this list. Um, we have quite a few um things happening here. But one that is standing out for me is it resolution 729. 28. 728. Forgive me. I was like, "Wait a minute." Um is to the right of me. And so I just wanted to acknowledge um Superintendent Deario Strickland. Dr. Strickland, you became doctor while you were here. Um and we just spent a lot of time talking about some of the work that you have done right just now. And um I want to commend you for your tenacity, your hard work, your dedication to Rochester. Um Rochester is not an easy district and we're not an easy board. Um but you showed up and you also demonstrated

144your desire to do something here in Rochester. I also want to celebrate that you will continue as a superintendent and will be doing great great work. Um and so I want to open up the uh deis to my board colleagues to share any expressions and I'm going to start to my far um left. I can't tell my sides now with Commissioner Santiago move into Vice President Malloy. Yes. Uh, Dr. Strickland, your what I have to say about you will happen at the business meeting, so it won't happen tonight. But congratulations to you. Definitely proud of you. But I also want to give a shout out to uh Dave David Dorsy who's uh retiring. He was my principal in middle school at Wilson Middle School back when I was there. I'm sure I helped him lose

145a couple of his hairs. Um, and so I just want to congratulate you, um, Mr. Dorsy, on your retirement. Um, very welld deserved. Thank you, Commissioner Santiago. Vice President Malloy, thank you. I want to say congratulations to all of our retirees. Um, but I'm so happy to have worked with you and you are an amazing superintendent and Mount Vernon so lucky to have you and um, thank you for your advice, your counsel, um, wisdom and your constant hard work despite some very adverse conditions at times. Thank you. And of course this is not a formal we we'll be doing something else. Um and so um with any no further discussion all those in favor of resolutions 718 through 79 29 excuse me. I I I got you at the board business meeting too. Any opposed?

146Okay. Motion carries. Okay. Moving forward into resolutions for summer school. A resol uh entertaining a motion to bundle resolution 730 through 775. So move. Moved by Vice President Malloy. Uh seconded by Commissioner Patterson. All in favor of bundling. I. Any opposed? Um motion to approve resolution 7:30 through 775 at this time. So moved. Moved by Vice President Mallaloy, seconded by Commissioner Patterson. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion. Um uh motion carries. I have a question. You have a question. Okay. Yeah. Wait a minute. Your your mic went out. Hold on. She's muted or something. Oh, can you hear me? Sorry. Yes. Yes. Sorry about that. 7:30 and 7:31. So, I don't know if you like and we're voting, but are we vote I know we voted to bundle, but are we voting on the

147resolutions already without opening the floor for discussion? Um, I may have missed the discussion piece. I'm probably Yeah, I might have missed that piece. Go ahead. So, for 7:30 and 7:31 because I just want to point out as we enter summer school, um, that we're going to be entering into another contract with St. John Fischer College and I just want to put it out there on record and I want the administration and our auditor she's watching to be mindful of this contract because we've had issues on the district end with of meeting our obligation um because it got stuck on someone's uh desk and I just want to point that out because this is going to be the third year in a row and I don't want to have to intervene again. It is really

148frustrating when we don't do our part internally to make sure things are moving smoothly for our students. And so, and I want to make sure our staff get paid on time for summer school, too. So, whatever we need to do now, I'm glad to see the resolution coming all the way in June. Um, and coming before the board business meeting, that things are in place for summer school, that staff are getting paid on time, and our vendors and contractors are as well. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion items for 7:30 through 775? I do have Commissioner Santiago. Um just just when it comes to for 7:30 for revolving around St. John Fischer, I remember last year they made they did make a promise uh to to both board members and I believe the administration

149of last year um saying that there there were plans to either collaborate in the cost of this of of of this summer program um whether it was cutting down reducing bills or even um you know putting money into the summer program. What was that done this summer or was it not? So that will have to be added to the question log. I can't specifically ask that. I do know that last year some of my asks were to be included in the cost. Can we get our students perhaps the ability to stay overnight for a few days or really get the college experience uh so that they understand what it's like to be on a college campus. Um and the dean was very amendable to that. Uh, but I just that I'm going to be honest.

150Uh, that's something I have to uh continue to follow up with. We can add that to the question. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Santiago. All in favor of resolutions uh 7:30 through 775. I I Any opposed? Resolution carries. Moving into discussion items. Uh motion to approve um the student leadership congress bylaws. So moved. Um open for discussion. Motion by Vice President Mallaloy. Second by Commissioner Santiago. Any items for discussion? Any opposed? All in favor? All in favor? I. All right. Motion carries. Okay. Look, looking at uh discussion item 5695, student and personal electronic devices. General counsel, I believe you're taking that on. Uh yes, thank you uh President Simmons. Thank you, board. Um and so just give a a kind of quick overview of why the board is seeing this. Um included in the recently

151passed in this in the in the recently passed state budget was a requirement um a new requirement uh education law 283 for all school districts and bosis to adopt a policy by August 1st 2025 banning the use of internet enabled devices during the school day. Um generally use is not permitted during non-instructional times. Certain exceptions are allowed uh you know pursuant to disabilities, medical care emergencies um and things of that nature. Um the policy must include methods for on-site storage devices and methods for parents to contact the children during school day. Um and um you know parents, students, employee bargaining units and so forth must be uh consulted in um development of the policy. Um there was a sample policy forwarded by uh NISBA u and that served as the basis for uh you know

152what the board sees before. There was input sought by uh parenting groups and I believe there is a public hearing scheduled in July as well um to garner additional input. Um it is being a little expedited but it is uh going to go through a couple readings before it is uh formally uh adopted by the board. So there will be uh opportunity for you know again feedback input through pursuant to that that public hearing and from the board um you know for any kind of recommended changes. Um what you're seeing now, the version you're seeing uh comes uh after input I believe from uh some parent groups and from the um executive cabinet. Thank you for that uh explanation. Were there any questions around that, Commissioner Santiago? Yeah, I just wanted to to ask and

153also just give out precautions. So, I I was in school. Um, there wasn't legislation yet to ban uh cell phones, but it was still something that was uh banned inside of the schools around that time. I just want to just provide some caution when it says uh students must turn on their phone and it's put into a storage container because I believe that that that also um limits ways that we can uh have the cell phone band within our school. So, for School of the Arts, we had yonder pouches, which were actual pouches that we carried on our person uh that locked and could be unlocked by a um by by administrator. Yeah, administrator. Thank you. But saying or magnets, that's what it really was was magnets. But um saying like storage containers might put

154some you know constraints to schools that may want to do yonder pouches which is a little bit more innovative. Um you know seeing that we want them to be following our policy but this is very strict to how phones could be you know taken or holding on to. Um thank thank you very much commissioner. I actually have um a little bit of feedback on that. that was actually uh specifically kind of considered and contemplated and the language was chosen was specific. It's a appropriate and designated storage container. So that was intended to be broad enough because different schools are going to have different ways and different uh uh mechanisms by which they want to do that. I think we've heard from uh the the the cabinet that some are believers that yandere purchase could work

155could work pouches could work at some schools but maybe not at others who have different systems. So, um I think the policy was was written or or edited to give a little bit of flexibility for how each individual school uh would would would do it. And so, also my my second question, when it comes to the cost of this, let's say it's the yonder pouches, which is a cost, or even when it comes to the envelopes and the storage spaces and things of that sort. Um are we receiving money from the state or are we providing money to the schools or are we expecting them to pay for it through their title funds? I think the superintendent is going to chime in on that. No, there was a a specific allocation that came with the

156uh passing of this legislation. However, when you're talking about amongst the entire New York State, um you're not talking about a significant amount of uh money that is going to be able to go to this. And the one thing that I would uh you know caution us about uh yonder is it it there is cost uh that can be incurred uh if a student loses or damages and you know this is this is something that we've been really uh going back and forth with with our legislature uh around really trying to have this as a local decision because now also suspensions are tied to this uh the responsibility of if we lose lose the phones is tied to this. Uh there's so many different layers that uh that are here. Uh the fortunate thing is

157many of our schools are in a great space where they take phones and they do it every day and it works. Um there are some districts that are way behind and haven't even started that process. So I I would say, you know, we would sort of keep things at the school level. you know, what is going to work best for that school community is just making sure that we follow the mandate. And you know, maybe one of your recommendations is just to loosen up the language a smidge uh so that schools do have some autonomy with but at the same time following the law. Yeah. U of what works. That is my recommendation. Thank you. Comment who's running the meeting? Uh President Simmons. I'm sorry. Yes. Did I have my comment? And I'm going to

158keep this short because it's late, but we know our kids are failing and we know that technology, especially phones are part of that issue because they're their minds are thinking about, you know, the next text or the next post or something, you know, looking at that. I think it's very important that we do things that are uniform, not allow each school to do whatever they want to do. I think it be should be uniform across the board and that these honor p um pouches, I don't have a problem with that. I think if students are obeying it and they're seniors or whatever, you know, we should honor them with something like that. But I don't think that each school should be allowed to set its own rules. I think the rule should come from central

159office and this is the way it's going to be and you won't run into all these problems from school to school or principal to principal. So thank you. Um thank you very much. I I just want to add um one comment. There's a lot of um there were some comments specific to phones. This is not just phones, right? It's internet enabled devices. So it applies to smart watches and and anything any device that essentially can can connect connect to the internet. Um and and and you're right there is um I think what's going to follow is probably some guidance from from the state as different places start implementing and um so there'll there'll probably be even additional guidance on kind of kind of setting the the groundwork for what they should look like you know

160for the the storage device thing you know how much flexibility do they intend for you know uh people to have with that that language and so on so forth. Okay. Yes. Okay, thank you very much, Commissioner Leon. Yeah, I just um Adrien, how are we going to be communicating this with students? Because I know to Commissioner Santiago's point, you know, kids at Soda, my kids at Soda, she has a yonder pouch, but to your point, she definitely has a smartwatch and other devices that even though the phone is in the yonder pouch, she's still communicating throughout the day. So, like how is that like I'm I'm curious about how this is going to work too or what the you know views are around this. Um, Commissioner, well, um, that that tells us that some folks

161might have to go back to the the drawing the the the drawing board in terms of how well those pouches are working, which is one of the concerns we heard, right? We're talking about appropriate and designated um, you know, kind of storage containers and what that what that means. Um a and again I think there will be um pro maybe a little bit of trial and error in terms of in terms of um letting people know. I mean that's why it's going through the process. It's going to be a public hearing. Um you know this is going to go through a couple readings. I'm sure you know questions and comments will coming from from from the public and and constituent groups. Um and the the board would have an opportunity to to advance you know

162kind of recommended tweaks and changes to the policy. And it's it's it's part of your the district's responsibility to um to let uh you know employees, students, parents know about you know important policy um changes. Um and part of how that's done is through the kind of public hearing process. Superintendent. No, I just also want to mention that uh we we did discuss this today at executive cabinet and once this policy is sort of shaped uh the communications team under the leadership of uh Chief Monaceel Ramos Lopez uh is going to have a communication plan that we are to follow so that we ensure that students, families, uh stakeholders are all aware of what the expectations will be uh moving forward. If I'm all good, if if I could if I could just add though,

163I I do wonder and this is just as a a board as a b a body of the board. I'm sorry it's late y'all. Um on having conversations on possibly seeing even with our legislative agenda, you know, how can we advocate about, you know, legislation like this? And I say that because I believe that there's ways that we have to find to implement today's technology into our schools and to teach with that. And it's not, you can't teach a kid how to read and take the book away from them. We can't expect our children to know how to balance the life of a phone, you know, and still, you know, education by just taking it away from them because what happens is once they leave high school and go into college, they they're in a

164struggle to figure out how to balance the life. And so I I just wonder as a board if we could put this on our our legislative agenda. And of course that's a deeper and further conversation, but um and then also even possibly seeing if the district, you know, if we are trying to move in a uniform, as the state monitor always says, we're we're a school district, not a district of schools. You know, I I would love to see, you know, the possibility of us partnering with the yonder the yonder pouches. They do have new and approved pouches. I knew how to break into them when I went to high school, but I believe that they're more approved now. And so, um, I think if they're not, then maybe we should find another company. But

165either way, I think we should find a uniform for the district that we all could follow. Yeah. Well, there's a will, there's a way. Well, there's a way. They gonna find it. Um, and you know, I like I thank you, Commissioner Santiago. like what you said about um innovative or just other ways of of considering it that I had a conversation about that um as far as opening our minds to social responsibility when it comes to cell phone etiquette, how what we're accessing, how we're getting information, all that good stuff. And so I appreciate those comments. Um were did you have something superintendent? Just really quick. Um I believe uh many of the legislature legislators are actually aware of this. This is actually one of the reasons that delayed this the the state budget um

166and that's why we got got notification or the passing uh extremely late um is because of the push back around uh these internet enabled devices. So it is something that you know I would suggest if you all are going to put on your legislative agenda that it you know be a concerted effort amongst all of you to really think about what that looks like because it didn't work. I mean obviously now we're creating a policy on it. Thank you. Um, with no further discussion, all um in favor of moving policy 5695 forward to the the June 26 business meeting. Motion. Motion. Second. Motion by Commissioner Santiago, seconded by Vice President Malloy. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. Um, what I was going to do is close out these um pieces. I just want to

167get one kind of um a little bit of form or shape around the the work session that's next on the agenda. So, we're not going to unpack this, but we are going to try to touch on two things. One of those being for this is um board policy manual 2300. Speaking in um in alignment with the work sessions, things we want to consider is the fact that we did sunset our committees and uh those committees comprised of parents and um potentially student adviserss was something a direction we were going in. So just wanting to get an understanding of where the board falls on that with our work sessions. Do we desire to have uh parent and student advisors um taking as part of our work session or is that something we need to unpack at

168another time or where y'all at? I would like make a motion to move it to our business meeting. Can y'all not ready to talk about that? Well, can you answer this then? Um Oh, what was the other thing? Raima speakers, you're correct. Oh, yeah. Speakers because we at our committee, for example, we had an ESA this evening. If there was a speaker that signed up and um and they had something in alignment with Commissioner Santiago's um committee, he that he or she would have been able to speak. Um with these committees being sunset, um that speaker piece goes away. There is an opportunity to consider speakers for work session. Again, we want to push that into a different time. No, I I will actually make a recommendation of possibly uh setting up a speak to

169the schoolboard day uh separate from our meetings possibly. Um I don't know how the open meetings law work if that's a possibility, but there's other bodies, you know, who allow speakers, you know, days um before and then that allows them to focus on anything we're covering in the month, you know, whether it's about whether it's about literacy or anything like that. And so that's my recommendation of possibly doing a separate day of speak to the school board or something like that. Um if possible. Um I I also do see the importance of people being able to speak before meetings. Um but it might just be a little bit more effective for us to hear them for them to cover everything that they may want to talk about within that month for us to have a

170separate day for for listening. Yeah. And that that kind of aligns kind with the board listening sessions. Not so much that format, but that opportunity. So it it seems like it aligns with um some of that governance that we're getting. Commissioner Patterson. Yes. Uh we're obviously paying the council of great city schools for some of this advice. So why aren't we reaching out to them asking them how we should proceed? Well, this is under their advice and so we are actually this is based on our conversation with council for great city schools. They actually um gave us the advice of moving from committees and suns setting them which we've done under their ad advice. And then what they've asked us to do is go into work sessions which we are doing under their advice. Now

171they need some additional direction and feedback from us is around our appetite for parents or students present. They do want as um Dr. Hart and Cindy have expressed for us to take ownership in the work that we're co-creating with them. Um so this is them asking us to where we are with this. But it doesn't sound like you may have an answer. I don't have one this evening myself. Um, so I just wanted to see if there was an appetite, Commissioner or Vice President Mallaloy. Yeah, that makes a difference just knowing that this was their recommendation. I wasn't I thought that we were just looking at private to it either. Yeah. So um I would agree. I would actually like to whatever their recommendation is and if they recommend um parent and student involvement at

172these work sessions, I would be in full support of that. I think it's great to have all voices at the table. Clerk, when did you you seem um like you have an Olivia Pope moment. Would you like to level set the understanding? Um if I if I can just for a moment and then ask for clarity from Commissioner Santiago. Um yes, you were right. President Simmons at CGCS did recommend the sun setting of committees um because of a lot of things and issues around them. Um, it wasn't per se that they said you should have work sessions over this, but that there was still a need to have a space where you discuss board business and stay focused in your business. Work sessions was the next space that we typically do that. Um, and so

173we moved to that and transition to that. In terms of the involvement of parents or others, um, they have not weighed in to my knowledge on that. Um, but as you have heard them say many times, they make recommendations. You are the board and you know your community and you need to make your decisions based upon that. The other thing I just want to get clarity, Commissioner Santiago, are you suggesting that we add an additional meeting day or that we start meetings earlier to accommodate the speakers? I just want to get clarity. No, I I think that that that would be up to conversations with the board, but I think I think um it is it would be nice to have, you know, that that separate time. I I thought the conversation was about speakers

174at the meeting, but it sounds like it's just about No, there's two there's two pieces that need to be discussed because they impact um 2300 and as you currently have it set up, you would not you would only have speakers at your business meeting. If I can add um Commissioner Lebron has her hand up online. Yes, Commissioner LeBron. Thank you. I just want to add um I would I'm in support of parents and students both on work sessions if that's the path that we go or any committee format or meeting format because it could be a special meeting on a special topic. It could be a shortterm sort of committee that sunsets as well on a special topic. So I'm in support of that. And I also think that if we um what was the

175second piece for him that you were just discussing? Um speakers at your meeting at the work session. Speakers at the work sessions. I think the alignment can still be there because the work sessions I'm sorry you guys I'm outside. Um, I think that the work sessions could accommodate speakers for special topics because we have to still supply a public agenda and they can still have the same alignment. It just moves it over. However, I do want to support Commissioner Santiago's suggestion of like a speak to the board like they do with speak to council and speak to ledge and other bodies um including state ledge that is separate to commissioner Santiago's um Santgo's point. It allows individuals to also give us feedback and also time before we have to vote on these decisions because we

176may then want to go back and have conversations with the administration about things our community is bringing to us and give us more time than we sometimes get when we're doing it on the same exact day and we hear concerns live. So, I just want to put that out there that I support. Thanks. To go to Sorry about that. if you don't mind to go back to my to to my point, it should be a separate day because I think Commissioner Lebron brought up a really good point on us having time in between listening to the community and our vote. I think that that that will be uh you know a little bit more effective and we're able to actually give actionable items to the community who we work for. Um and then also for

177for student and parent uh representative I think that that's extremely important. we took the committees where they where they had a a spot specifically for them whether it was three, one or two. Um, so I think it it will be important. I'm 100% behind that, but I think there has to be deeper conversations on how would those students be chosen, how would the parent be chosen? Uh, maybe on specific topics, maybe speaking to our advisory bodies and finding people who are, you know, uh, specific to that specific topic. So I that's a deeper conversation, but I do agree with student uh and parents being part of it and I do think that a separate day for speak to the board will be uh helpful for this board. So thank you for the discourse, the comments

178and and the alignment. So what we do know, what I'm hearing um clerk is that we have an appetite of course to hear from our community being parents and students and educators. Um, we do want to see these things exist, but this evening we are not going to be able to identify what that's going to look like just just yet. So, um, we would probably need to forward this into what the next the business meeting or it could these be items for discussion at the work session once we get it scheduled or something of that nature. Yeah. So, your first work session is on July 8th. The work session itself could be an agenda item in some of these um things. just know that you won't have any speakers um because they're not allowed currently.

179Yeah. And if we want to get this going before July 8th, we would need to vote you could vote on it at the business meeting. You'd have to just suspend 2410, which requires the readings, and just accept it. Okay, sounds good. So, uh at this time, just you guys direct me, you know, I'll be needing a little help. Um, am I just mo motioning to move um items D, E, and F to the board business meeting? Motion. Second. Motion by Commissioner Santiago, seconded by Vice President Mallaloy. All in favor? I. Any Okay, we already had our discussion. So, all right, motion carries. Any opposed? Okay, those moving and I believe that concludes our special meeting for this evening. Uh motion to exit motion the meeting. Uh Santiago and Mallaloy. All in favor? I. Any opposed?

180Good night.