Special Meeting: ESA Committee of the Whole

001good evening everybody uh today is june the 8th 2021 on behalf of the rochester city school district board of education our superintendent uh and our independent monitor welcome and good evening we really feel blessed and honored that you would choose to be in front of your monitors when you could probably be doing something probably just as interesting if not more interesting but this we all would agree is very important and we're very glad that you have joined us this evening but let's get right to the business so that we all can get to those other important matters of course we begin by calling the meeting to order and i have done that the time is now 5 37. uh we have i think one speaker is that right and no written comments correct correct to

002president white okay so i'll begin by bringing in our one and only speaker it is in french and she will be addressing the board regarding community um contact communications so um ms french is gonna join us now miss french welcome hi thank you okay whenever you're ready you have three minutes okay thank you it's critical for the health of our district to equitably provide for our students learning opportunities that they want and need as we accomplish this we must clearly communicate to the public these offerings if our district leaders truly want to retain the current students and families we have as well as increase their enrollment then we need to be more creative with our community messaging there are charter schools actively trying to recruit our students by sending mailers displaying ads in public local

003publications billboards and on front lawns and literally going door to door rcsd will be writing a 98 and a half million dollar check to fund charter schools this upcoming upcoming school year this cannot continue if you want to the district to flourish investing funds and advertising for our district more readily is necessary if we want the public to know what we have for our students rcsc registration flyers should be available year round throughout all neighborhoods and places such as church halls neighborhood stores rec centers libraries barbershops salons restaurants and banks even though our district has a long way to go with opportunities we provide for our students we can at least highlight what we do and will have when the public visits the rcsd facebook page they're met with pessimistic and incomplete description of our

004district i'll read a portion of the message found under the about section we commend employees who go above and beyond in doing all they can to help students do well in school but we need help many of our students are not reading at grade level many of our students miss too many days of school if you can't read you can't learn if you're not in school you can't learn we ask all parents to read to their child every day children can also read to you if you know families that are struggling with language or reading or anything else there are numerous community resources available to them in monroe county we must work together and focus on the areas that we repres that we are responsible for in order to ensure that all our students have

005the tools they need to succeed in the classroom and in the workforce so that's the description on the facebook page end of quote i challenge this board to have a different description created and it shouldn't be the responsibility of one person it should be a collaborative effort perhaps in the description the following programs can be included the school 16 partnership with center of the youth the school 19 arts integration the school 25 steps speech program school 29 test club in the gem program the interact social communication classrooms throughout the district the diverse language learners throughout our school active restorative practices in our schools such as soda and the world inquiry east high tli courses and the list goes on so let's intentionally invest the increase in state funds and the federal stimless money into sustainable

006courses programs and activities for our students and proudly advertise it to the public all we have to offer i mean the other option is to have district leaders deprive our students and publicize exactly what you're doing i personally like the first suggestion better so thank you for listening and considering these ideas thank you miss french we appreciate your comments tonight thank you president white that is it for this evening in terms of uh just remind those folks that happen to be with us tonight uh what the board or the board staff requires if a person wants to speak at a future board meeting sure so members of the public who are interested in addressing the board at board meetings or committee meetings may do so by uh emailing the board of education at board of

007education at rcsdk12.org by noon of the day of the meeting to sign up to speak um you may also call the board office as well to do so uh you must provide your name uh your affiliation so whether you're a community member parent student or um staff member you would need to say that and then also the topic that you'll be addressing once you do so a member of board staff will reach out to you and provide you with the zoom link so that you can um can join the board meeting and if you'd also like to submit public comment you may do so by also emailing the board email board of education at rcsdk12.org by noon of the meeting and those will be posted on the website as well as disseminated between all the

008board members thank you very much ms wade we appreciate your providing that valuable information and the board of education really does encourage people to speak up uh share your criticisms your concerns or if you have the opportunity or the insight even your compliments about district staff and things that are going right we encourage those as well because as much as a criticism a compliment can sometimes drive positive best practices so moving on to our next item on the agenda we're going to have our vice president cynthia elliott introduce a and preside over a very critical ceremony that we're going to have which is the recognition of our student leaders vice president elliot thank you i'm gonna introduce tony jordan uh who will um begin the program and then i'll come in later uh with some

009uh words of congratulations and all that good stuff so mr jordan will you start the program for us please yes i will uh good evening everyone and i'm very excited and very very very proud to uh be able to um recognize these young people um you know the news does not cover these young people you won't see them on the headlines tomorrow but they are well deserving uh you all get to see anaya frequently at our meetings but we have many more nayas in our district and these students represent those students who have excellent leadership skills great citizenship commitment to learning and to their future so i get a chance to hang out with them and it's the most humbling and rewarding um one of the most rewarding parts of the job that i have

010so um just a little bit about the student leadership congress before i start i'm not going to read the mission statement but i will read the vision statement the student linger student leadership congress members from the rochester city school district provide positive leadership powerful voice outstanding service to the rochester city school district and community they work with the student body district administration the board of education and the rochester community to force foster positive social and academic outcomes for our csd students um and and they do a a fabulous job they meet um often with our uh leaders lengthy meetings that um you know require them to really have great attention to detail and what's going on so these students throughout the year have discussed our budget they've discussed facilities they've discussed wellness of their fellow

011students in regards to kovic 19. um they've taken on some serious challenges throughout the year um so some of what their role of the slc members are to represent their school at the meetings monthly and to report back to their school to keep their school informed and relevant citywide and school and community issues to advise the school-based planning teams and a board of education as a part of our decision-making processes and to work with other policies and projects that slc members develop throughout the year and you know oftentimes things uh that really affect youth pop up and they stand up for those uh challenges and issues i'm similar to what happened last summer with the black lives movement our students were very active in the the the process to you know have justice and peace

012in our community um they attend and host weekly meetings at their school they represent their school at monthly slc meetings we kind of talked about that um they also participate in training uh and develop their own personal skills uh in public speaking leadership and community organizing uh they work on real important issues we talked a little bit about that but some of those issues are equity racial equity student rights responsibilities um school discipline and others so our at this time i'm going to announce the students in their schools that they represent uh first school up is uh east high school and from east we have maya adams who is a seventh grader who is a powerful young lady who is out there at a young age doing some great work we have desiree garrett who

013is a highly involved student on her way to university of rochester uh we have uh ray castiano he's a 12th grader over at leadership along with michael ford the 12th grader at leadership devonta jackson and justice presley these four gentlemen are also our new york state mbk fellows um and these gentlemen did something that is uh unique and exciting they went out on a home visit attendance visit for students who had been absent this this is one of the issues that our students take on and the results of that was amazing because they could connect instantly with their colleagues their fellow students they encouraged two students to return to school um and it was just amazing to see the conversation that took place with these four young men and these particular students who have been

014absent from school uh from northeast high school we have amariana curry uh up and coming young leader we have rayne powell 11th grader and mamadou saul a 12th grader at school of the arts we have amara anderson we have tiernan haley ernest jaff anessa's brother malik you the board members who were here uh a few years ago may remember malik he was the uh student rep a few years ago uh we have alexander powell you might recognize the powell last name and alexander came to us at a very young age and has really you know paid a great debt of service over many years we have jade rodriguez and nathaniel schoonover and i'll go back to jade real quick she's uh going to be entering a career in military and you know we talk about

015the different um challenges the students take on she's taking on the challenge of helping students understand what a career in the military really would look like a world of inquiry uh we have mr javin cruz uh he's also a highly involved he's a part of the mayor's youth advisory council we have aylin delahante aiden has been with us he's one of those students who started very young and um i've got to watch him grow up uh through the process um jasmine henry uh robert ruth is another one that came to us from uh 58 school at a young age you all know anaya simmons tatiana spencer was a former uh advisor and uh student rep on the board as well um and we have syree ware and for medicine we have justice anderson and at

016early college we have stephen simmons and you never know you know how small rochester is and how large it can be as well but steven comes from a great uh family um history and community involvement and engagement uh and i won't tell you at all but uh we have a rec center named after his grandmother and his uh great grandfather was very involved and one of the first uh gentlemen involved in the negro league from the rochester area so uh we just have some exciting connections within our group of young people uh school without walls we have layla mcfadden and from wilson we have beautiful ford a 12th grader uh finally how do students join the slc they can visit us at our website and complete the interest form um they can log on to

017our instagram page we got young folks that uh have instituted the instagram page which is exciting because i'm not social media savvy um our next meeting will be june 13 and the location and time is tbd uh that is a sunday i believe because the students are very busy this time of year and really voted to commit to meeting on a sunday we had our first sunday meeting last month um and uh we had a fabulous turnout and it just kind of says how committed these young people are and i want to just take my hat off to our superintendent she has made most meetings this school year and uh you know i i can honestly just say we have not had a superintendent make most meetings or any meetings during my tenure as a

018part of the student leadership congress and i wouldn't be able to uh you know say congratulations to the students without recognizing our adult advisors uh we have rahima winn who you all see on the screen we have stephen lamorte uh who is in our grass department now we have mercedes you i never tried to do mercedes last name uh she's in our communications department and we have jessica norquest who is uh a counselor social worker over at northeast high school and she actually leads their leadership team on their student leadership team so i thank you all for recognizing our students for the students that are on we will be delivering um certificates uh signed by the board to you and once again my humble and sincere thanks you are an awesome group of young people

019we should be very proud that um our district has these kind of leaders coming out and will be out when you all step aside they will be ready to step up they're actually going to step up before y'all get out the way so they coming and uh at that point i will just say thank you and i'll turn it back over to um commissioner elliott uh thank you uh tony i really do uh appreciate that and um you know um unfortunately because of um a lot of the negative things that are in the district um you know we don't get an opportunity to really focus on the good things that go on in our district and you know we see a lot of things that are going on in the community a lot of killings

020and you know um shootings and just overall violence one of the things that i have learned when i see that kind of stuff happening god is doing something else good and when you see that that kind of negative uh something like this where we've got these students doing great work uh within our district and in our community and they're just getting started in their career it just leads me to believe i now look at the negative things in a positive light because god is behind the scene doing something great and i think that with all of these students that are working within our district and working within our community that they're gonna do great things my my concern is tony is that i hope they come back to the rochester community once they graduate from

021uh from college and work within our community i know new york and chicago and d.c atlanta looks looks good but we need you here we need you to take the the reigns and become leaders in our communities and so on behalf of and i'll let president white say a few words on behalf of the board um we just congratulate you we love you we thank you we appreciate all that you do within the rochester city school district to make it a great place and i'm believing by faith that because of your efforts rochester city school district will be one of the greatest um educational institutions in the world so again congratulations and i'll turn it over to president white uh for him to say a couple of words president white thank you vice president elliot

022uh let me just say you know the best evidence that this district is doing its job at least in many corners and buildings of this district are the students um and the best witnesses to that are many board members i mean i for example can testify that um last week i think it was tony i had invited martin luther king's classmate uh and lifelong friend to rochester and he wanted to speak to students of the this community who did i call i called the superintendent and the superintendent uh and dr nelms and i said i need some students to hook up with uh dr bache at the university of rochester uh in their le chase building and those students did us proud then and they do us proud tomorrow and they will do us proud

023yesterday and each one of us as board members those names are not unfamiliar those names are very familiar to us as board members because each of us have had contact with them in in some instances they are the children of board members in other instances they are just young folks who are doing their things going to great colleges these are the stories that the media doesn't pick up uh and and thanks to tony and the superintendent and the adults that support this good work these young folks are and of course these young folks these young folks are out there spreading the word i'll use your analogy or your commentary vice president spreading the gospel that this district is doing its thing and and and and shame on those folks who only want to talk about

024those young folks and they're they're in the minority that are having problems because a good number of our students are out there doing their thing just like any other student in the surrounding suburbs so thank you tony for giving them the opportunity to do what they do thank you superintendent for giving tony the flexibility to do what he does and it's such a unique and powerful way and we pray that they will continue to be able to provide that best example for this district uh commissioner i see your hand up thank you i just wanted to say thank you to president white for having arranged the wonderful enrichment opportunity at u of r uh two weeks ago um thank you so much for opening up that up to students from across the monroe county area

025but thank you also to tony for bringing students there and just providing that enrichment for our for our youth they showed up thank you good they did okay i'll turn it back over to you president white uh i should tell you all that dr basha uh has advanced degrees he's from egypt uh he is 94 years old and he's seen a lot uh he's got his doctorate i think in psychology and hung out with the best and the brightest including dr king and he was extremely impressed by the dialogue that he had with those students the questions i will shut up but he asked them on a scale of one to ten where do you think we are as a nation that's what he asked them this don't think because he's 94 years old he

026ain't got it and don't think because they're like 70 years younger than him that they ain't got it the answers that they gave were chilling but thoughtful and insightful and as vice president says we can all expect that given those answers and all the things they're doing they are going to be the next leaders for this district so again thank you tony thank you uh dr meyers thank you dr nelms uh uh thank you amy uh for bringing those students out for brighton uh because we had it allowed us to have a very diverse crowd all right uh is there any other hands being raised uh let me go to this participant screen no no okay all right uh next item on the agenda is um we're gonna need to go into executive session uh

027i know it sounds strange for folks out there watching usually we do at the end of the meetings but our superintendent i think is irrationally and reasonably request that we go into executive session for the purpose of discussing a particular person or employee early on in this meeting so i'm looking for that motion been moved by vice president elliott seconded by uh commissioner powell all is in favor of going to executive session for the purpose of discussing a particular person or the terms and conditions or employments indicate by saying aye like the eyes have it those folks watching we will be back very shortly okay um surprise surprise the board of education uh we're back i told you it would not be that long we had some matters that had to be discussed in executive

028session and so now we're at that portion of our agenda where we are going to take some votes on a vote on those executive those matters that we were discussing in executive session that those matters happen to be entitled resolution 849. so i need a motion from one of my colleagues to advance for discussion resolution 849. second commissioner malloy seconded by commissioner uh clark um any questions or comments regarding resolutions 849. i know commissioner lebron yep thank you i just want to welcome um the two new principals and i won't say names but um i'll let dr meyer smalls name names but i just want to personally welcome them especially to one of the schools that i'm the board liaison to and just want to state on public record that i fully support both individuals

029and have seen them up close and personal and their work and commitment in the district over the years at different school settings um so i do think that they are both amazing candidates and i just want to commend the superintendent as well for her final selection thank you um superintendent unless i'm missing and i could be because the screen is looking strange any other board member want to make a comment all right superintendent um i believe you were going to sort of formally introduce uh these newest um potential well actually we're going to take a vote first yeah we got to go first all right all right um there being no further questions or comments it looks like we're ready to take a vote uh so let's go and do that all those in favor

030of resolution make sure your camera is on and indicate by saying aye aye hi any nays it seems madam clerk the eyes have it and now um you can do your intros great so thank you so much president white um good evening again the first individual that i'd like to ask come on screen is miss rhonda neil she is um was just unanimously appointed by the board as the principal incumbent to wilson foundation rhonda previously was in our school district and served a year in the buffalo city public schools and she has an extensive background in career and technical education but when she was in her district she did spend time as an assistant principal at uh wilson foundation academy i've known rhonda actually a long time when she was the in the administration program

031at st john fisher but i when i interviewed her um she came across incredib incredibly passionate very knowledgeable about the school and i feel very confident to uh to recommend her and thank you for affirming her as the next principal at wilson rhonda welcome and i wasn't sure if you had anything that you wanted to say well thank you commissioners and thank you superintendent maya small for this wonderful opportunity and i look forward to working with the families at wilson foundation academy our students our families and the staff so thank you for this opportunity and i'm very happy to be back in rcsd welcome thank you thank you the next uh candidate or uh incumbent principal is corey hepburn um corey was at another one of our big five schools syracuse where he currently is

032there and he worked in our district previously he has such an extreme passion for scholars and if you go on social media you'll see corey has even though he's very loyal to syracuse he has been very actively involved with happenings in rochester still lives in rochester and um just as enthusiastic excited passionate knowledgeable about school transformation and i can't be more thrilled to introduce to the commissioners to our staff and to those on facebook and youtube mr corey hepburn welcome and congratulations corey and if you had a few things you wanted to say please feel free to do so now i'll just say uh thank you all for trusting me with this huge responsibility to do the very critical work uh that surrounds impacting change for our community for the student scholars we serve and

033for our teachers and staff uh believe me and i can assure you you won't be let down thank you corey with that i i turn it back over to president white thank you thank you uh superintendent myers on behalf of the board of education we want to thank the hr chief uh and the school chiefs and everyone involved in these selections that you've made over the last a month or two or since you've been superintendent you've brought us some excellent candidates and the votes have not been difficult because you brought us quality candidates and and of course thank you superintendent for leading this uh effort um and and on behalf of the board i want to welcome rhonda and corey i also want to admit that at my age sometimes you don't remember names but

034you remember faces somebody say amen to that uh i i could not for the life of me remember what rhonda looked like or what cory looked like but when i saw their faces on zoom i immediately remembered what committed caring professionals in and on behalf of the entire board of education welcome back thank you for coming back and bringing your passion your your love for our district and our students and our families so welcome back on behalf of the board of education okay um unless there are no further comments we'll move on to the next item on our agenda uh commissioner powell we're hoping you can get us through these the readings of these first readings of these various policies sure um the uh written is bringing up the list now we did just discuss

035these at the policy committee uh this is the first reading and it was suggested to me that um i didn't need to pause for each and every one of them to wait for questions or comments if if anyone has a question or comment about any of the of the policies in front of us um we can we can call out those individual ones uh commissioner elliott i do see your hand is up but let me just talk through the four that you see here policy 4216 which is transfers transfer students with disabilities policy 4217 identification and registration of students with disabilities policy 4218 section 504 of the rehabilitation act policy 4219 independent education evaluations policy 4220 special education mediation policy 4221 impartial hearings policy 4222 adopted credential options for for students with disabilities and 40

036to 40 wandering and elopement so this is the first reading we will have another reading at our next special meeting and then by our june business meeting we'll be ready for a vote so commissioner elliott your question or comment i didn't have any question about the special education policy but about the 5100 the attendance policy okay well we'll take that up i'll i'll make sure i call on you then okay um if there are no if there are no questions about this block this is the third block of special education policies we've already been through um first and second reading of the uh and so all of the readings of section of sort of batch number one and two and um so this is all that remains of these special ed policies uh in our

037wholesale review i don't see any hands for questions or or comments so that concludes the special ed review we have two others we have the attendance policy that commissioner elliot just mentioned the the change to this policy is uh to update it in in response to online learning having lived through the covet experience we now know that there's a lot more we can do with online learning than just the um uh or remote learning rather of rather than just um like computer-based uh um instruction courses so this policy is updated in this section um essentially capturing lessons learned in our coveted world commissioner elliot your question commissioner yeah i was muted my apologies in reading the uh overall policy not with regard to the additions that are being made but just in the policy itself

038for example it talks about uh satisfactory attendance and that doesn't seem to be measurable you know what does it mean and and how would our community interpret what it means to have satisfactory attendance per a market period that's what i think the language um says and so um i just tend to believe that that language and there needs to be more specific and i and i'll um ask the uh the district to respond um to that um that inquiry rather than taking a guess in response i i would ask that we put that in the question log okay sure that it gets answered uh in time for the second reading okay and share the answer with everyone so that so that everybody um feels comfortable with that answer okay all right let me and i

039have a couple of more commissioner powell that could be in the uh question log uh of what the guidelines um for withdrawal and there were uh some bullet points that was in that um policy i just want to make sure that the district is adhering to that that we're actually um adhering to what those guidelines are in the policy and if um if the district can get back on that and then when there is counseling that uh occurs with our students are we preventing them when we're talking about they wanted uh wanted to withdraw a dropout are we counseling them to remain in school and and what could be some of the reasons that if they are um participating in this counseling what are some of the reasons that they um are um communicating that

040they want to the reasons why they want to withdraw so um if you got that we could put that in the question log and you all can get back to the board about those questions okay very much very well i i'm sure that if rahima didn't take good notes she can review the tape and uh we'll we'll get it down into the question log for you okay thank you cooper any other questions on the attendance policy commission yes oh just before we move on from attendance um i just want to remind you that this um update was only in regards to the addition of the online distance and remote learning portion this policy is still slated for full review um in the students portion of the policy manual update well yeah thank you for that

041hopefully um hopefully your answer now will allow us to move this forward regardless of what the answer isn't if folks are uncomfortable with the with the answers given to commissioner elliot's questions we can take those aspects of the policy up when we do our full review as you say okay now i think the last policy we have up for review is our code of conduct again this has been years in the making a great deal of public engagement and we've had our required public hearing on this so this is uh first reading if you will of the full code of conduct i will not attempt to read notwithstanding that it says where it's a first reading i invite anyone who isn't already familiar with the work that's gone into this that they go to um

042our website our board docs has a track changes version it has a powerpoint presentation that shows a summary of of the big changes involved in this effort and i am looking for hands for questions and comments and nothing is showing up yet so uh commissioner adams so i just i just need to make the comment that um this is a long time coming um a lot of work was put into this and i am just um i'm just honored that the board is able to move this on at this time and i just needed to say that all right thank you for that remark commissioner adams i see no further questions or comments so i'm going to turn the floor back over to the board president thank you commissioner powell um really thank you for

043your work and chairing our policy committee you have diligently moved us forward at a at a speed but yet uh carefully and thoughtfully reviewed all of our policies and i should also thank steve i know there's a team of people doing the steve rahima and other members of the superintendent's team that have gotten us to the point where we have a policy we will have uh before you are done commissioner powell i am sure you and rahim are done we will have a policy manual that is completely that has been completely reviewed and it is up to date so thank you for that work we truly do appreciate that because that is almost like year-round work rahima i'm back for the board really thank you for your diligence you you came on to this position

044how many months ago how many you're muted oh in late october late october and you've done all this great work i i said this before i didn't know that anybody could match uh deborah's deborah flanagan's due diligence and i'm not comparing but rahima you are definitely stepped into some shoes and and made them your own so thank you for that work all right uh next item on the agenda is for me to turn the gavel over to our vice president vice president elliot thank you mr president um before we get started uh i just want to make sure rehima the standing committee time um for the chief academic office is not 6 30 to 8. is it is that for the entire meeting the time frame correct that's for the entire meeting okay all right

045thank you very much um good evening everyone thank you for um um coming to the excellence of the equity and student achievement committee um our agenda includes an update from the chief academic officer an update uh from the state uh monitor with regard to the academic plan and then we will have a presentation by the superintendent uh regarding the quarterly state monitor update and so before we begin i'd like to get a motion to approve the minutes from the um may 11th um equity and student achievement committee of the whole i'll move it okay all those in favor all right all right thank you the motion care thank you the motion cared um agenda the minutes are approved and so we will have a presentation now by dr kathleen black um who's our chief academic

046officer dr black good evening commissioners um if the powerful can come up so our updates hey dr black ma'am before you start i just got a message that uh our parent rep is waiting and she's in the waiting room can we bring our parent rip in please yes we just let her in the room all right thank you i'm sorry dr black go ahead and make sure i had in in better background um so good afternoon or good evening commissioners uh i come to you this evening with a brief update as per our committee needs i will name on the front end that our superintendent will be producing and providing some updates as well so you may hear some information that is expanded and or duplicative which demonstrates alignment of our efforts this evening next

047slide so as you know everything that we do in service of academics in our department is aligned to our strategic plan namely our efforts around engagement and providing high quality learning experiences and around leading however everything that we do is aligned to our priorities next slide so the three update areas you'll hear this evening is a brief overview of the division as a request to just highlight the wonderful team that i get the privilege to support um and the efforts that we have oversight over an update around our summer programming and some wonderful initiatives that we are bringing forth to well round out what we're giving our students and then some deliberate updates around teaching and learning namely around our curricular development efforts and our progress around developing an assessment program for the district next

048slide so just an overview of our division the division of teaching and learning and or the team that i get the privilege to support is inclusive of our core content area directors our essentials area directors the office of professional learning the office of school innovation which has oversight over our tsi csi receivership school efforts as well as our community schools and our expanded learning programming and as of july 1st the department of multilingual education um formerly known as doan will also be coming into the division so as an aside the people that i get to support the folks who are on the team have oversight and influence over all of our academic initiatives so your core content areas again the things that support core content your specials or your essentials we take care of professional

049development for the district overall we give specific attention to our schools that are in different accountability statuses we think about time both inside and outside of the regular school day we oversee some of our provisions around our community schools and again coming into the division will be the work around our bilingual education programs our enl programming and our world language so that's the division that i get to support and serve and the members of my team next slide so updates on summer programming you've heard every month we've come to you with an update around summer school in the traditional offerings of summer school at last update we shared that we were in the midst of our programs in the midst of registration i am pleased to share that our 2500 seats for our receivership and

050our elementary programs are fully enrolled and that we are eagerly anticipating our enrollment of our commencement students at the end of next week so we'll be able to serve our full comprehensive number of about 3 500 students in our summer school programming in addition to our summer school former programming we are working hard to think about and provide for some city-wide rcsd sponsored events you might hear them in other places called rca rcsd takes so we are looking to provide admission entrance and provisions to citywide attractions and things that our students typically might not have access to over the summer as in some sporting events um some athletic and entertainment events and access to some of our museums galleries um and or the zoo and finally we are working with our citywide partners including the

051city the rec centers and the libraries to cultivate some more intensive summer wide programs and partnerships so that if students don't have access to an engagement with summer school as is traditional measure they are still being tapped into um and poured into for the summer as a result of multiple ways for us to partner and provide additional opportunities next slide please our instructional updates and so i want to share in our curriculum efforts that our scope and sequences for all of our corsante areas inclusive of our essentials will be updated and ready to go for some for school year 2122. so scope and sequence um again our pacing guides for our core areas are in progress right now and we have multiple efforts efforts underway to make sure that those are ready to go dr

052black can you explain that for our audience what what you're talking about actually sure please close that um so uh when we say scope and sequence and pacing guys when we ask teachers to figure out or attend to teaching we want to make sure that they have a lying thing that shows them what they should be teaching in the order that we recommend things to be taught in when we say a scope and sequence it's the order and we say pacing guide it's how long so how long should you be in a story how long should you be in the math unit how long should you be covering this part of social studies so our team gives that guidance and then teachers use that guidance and their professional responsibilities and judgment to cultivate high quality

053experiences inside of classrooms all right thank you for that clarification yes ma'am um second bullet is we're currently reviewing and selecting our intervention so what do we give students when they're not understanding our assessment how do we figure out what kids no one are able to do in our enrichment when students have met the bar how do we push them further we're currently identifying our resources to do those um so we're in the middle of an rfp process which means we went out we've gotten information from a lot of different providers our internal team has said which providers meet our needs and we're currently now getting ready to siphon that information out and share to get additional input from our school partners and our community partners around our district-wide portfolio the other thing that i

054am excited to share and i got sorry i got a preview this afternoon but we are rolling out rcsd a wide array of a summer professional development catalog so big shout out to our office of professional learning and all our contributors we are going to be offering about 160 um plus that's our first volume but 160 sessions over the course of the summer for our stakeholders and our staff to take advantage of to grow their professional knowledge base so everything from procurement to instruction social emotional learning we have a very robust professional development catalog for the summer that will be going live towards the end of the week but very excited about the work that our team has done to pull together summer pd for every member of our organization to take advantage of growing

055their practice over the summer and then finally around again curriculum and instruction i want to just highlight some pilots of best practices that we're able to take advantage of through the summer and through next school year we'll be trying out and investing in practices in professional development or like how we support our teachers around middle school math we currently are in the midst of exploring middle school science curriculum um we have some schools who are going to be invested in an instructional coaching support for students and teachers who support grades four and five and we have a multiple we have multiple amounts of efforts around middle grade social studies and again the adoption and selection of a text that will support our african and african american history instruction for high school and so those are

056our highlights of our instructional updates next slide please so i wanted to forecast kind of what was coming as we end this school year and think about how we provision over the summer and go into next school year over the summer in our division we'll be looking at our comprehensive assessment data from the school year to then figure out what we do for next year so we know that we'll be receiving our students back into our buildings with a variety of gifts for us to build upon and so all of that assessment data all of what we know about what students know and need to know we'll be using to inform what we then bring them back to receive um in the fall we will be sharing at our next esa meeting our textbook adoption

057calendar and the process is that we're going to move forward to inform and get feedback from our board our internal constituencies and our families around the textbook adoption process and so how do we select the appropriate textbooks and remember textbooks aren't just the hardcover book it's the textbooks it's the electronic books it's the things our babies touch in order to make sure that instruction is well um and then as we know that there are a lot of funds and resources that we're going to have articulation of to move our babies and our buildings forward and so a lot of our summer programming into the fall will be engaging with our multiple stakeholders building on the work of our team that's already enforced around forms to think about our programs around high school supports our expansions

058and what we're ultimately going to do for our stimulus funding to make sure that we have high quality learning environments and high quality experiences for all of our babies when they arrive to us and with that i'll pause and say any questions thank you dr black i see commissioner adam's hand is raised yes sir yeah um i appreciate um the increase in the seating space for summer school but when it goes to construction i've talked to a couple parents and they feel that like especially fifth grade parents um say there's a line units for math um say one through ten for fifth grade and for sixth grade it's 10 through 20. there's some parents feel that um they did not get all the units like maybe they only got one through eight now when they

059go to sixth grade they're not gonna go back sixth grade is is eleven through twenty where are we gonna make up that gap and so um that's what i was asked to ask you sure so thank you for that question i think it's um a very appropriate question for us to respond to so i think there's two pieces um and i'll pause so in a grade level year as you mentioned commissioner adams there are a series of units that teachers are expected to do with students giving pacing and student teachers ability to meet students needs sometimes that patient gets off whether it's delayed a bit or accelerated a bit and so teachers use a judgment to give kids what they need as we move forward into the next school year recognizing that students may have

060not gotten the full breadth of the units either for pacing decisions that were made or for timing adjustments that we made we are going to be working over the summer and into next school year for to do two things i think the first one is to help teachers make the adjustments to figure out what students who are received coming into their buildings into their classrooms what they know and then how do you shift the instruction how do you shift the teaching and learning to meet the needs of what kids bring to you and to ensure that we are exposing kids to teaching kids material that they are supposed to know and be able to do um and so you may have heard us talk about unfinished learning that that's indicative of you may hear people

061talking about acceleration um or remedying we're not being remedial we're meeting kids where they are and then taking them through the appropriate grade level material by making some adjustments to ensure they get exactly the things that they need to be able to close the gap so to speak and i hope that answers your question okay commissioner adams any more responses no i i guess that was an answer um i do know that another thing i do know that that another answer would be some looping this way the teacher would know um where the gap is but that we're not doing that so your answer was good enough yes sir commissioner lebron juan i just want to say i actually am a little confused about that answer i just feel like i didn't understand specifically what's

062being done in terms of learning laws and i know that this the state and the federal government is also among parents one of the uh stakeholders that's requiring us to have a plan and demonstrate what that plan is going to be in a very clear way um and i heard what you said but that did not click for me as like an actual plan like we're going to hire extra instructional teachers to be on site so that as kids are identified as needing that extra support there i just that's the level of detail i personally would like to understand what we're gonna do for learning loss but my question is related to summer programming so two things that you mentioned was the summer opportunities and the partnerships with the city and the rec for students

063who didn't make it into summer school and just wanting to figure out if that's going to be free for families so the the city does run summer programs out of the rec centers the rec centers are free but their summer programming is not and i don't think i know that it's an affordable rate i just don't know how affordable is going to be when you're talking about like 125 a week for a family um with our average medium income as it is in rochester so i wanted to understand are we partnering to offer free opportunities the library's free so and and i work very closely with a lot of the local libraries especially our downtown library so i do know that there's intentional programming just wondering about what free opportunities exist for our families who

064did not get into summer school and are concerned about learning loss and then the other piece um is really for i think this is an administration question um dr black because it's related to our buildings um our community-based organizations and their ability to use our buildings in the summer so i just wanted to get an update on that because i have been hearing from different cbo's that um there's been some back and forth and i just don't know where we stand on it and i just want to be clear i would not support us not opening our schools especially to community-based organizations who may be trying to assist students with learning laws and that we say you can't use their buildings because it's somewhere in covid so i'll stop there all right so i'll take

065the middle question okay wait let me order all right so summer programming and free opportunities the additional program that we are offering would be a very little or no cost to students we're thinking about things like the zoo the museums some of the skating rinks and the other provisions that usually have a cost that is prohibited for our students to access and so our rcsd takes opportunities would be providing access in the summer to students to have those experiences who don't have summer school in addition the other free um access point would be we are making sure that all of our electronic offerings so all of the things that kids log into during the school year that access is being provided through the summer with some initiatives from our teams to inspire agency around it

066um right so we're right now thinking about what monitoring um and um incentive so to speak can we put forth that encourages students to still log on to success maker to still log on to zearn because we provided access and what makes a student want to do that for 30 minutes in the summer in addition to that we're making sure that our partners the library and such have access to our um access points for people to get in and so are we ensuring that our rec centers and our libraries can get to the see-saw can get to the um cern intersex success maker so that when students come into those places they are able to access so that was the free additional option um the really i'm sorry i'm sorry in terms of the response

067to cbo's we have we have shared with our community-based partners that for this summer we have restricted access to building use um in terms of the number of programs that rcsd has running um and the number of programs that rcsc has running and the number of projects in the construction that happens makes it hard to dole out additional buildings within the district and so we shared very early on probably about sure very early on for about four to six weeks ago that for this summer we would be reducing or restricting the access to our cbo's that weren't already in force inside of buildings the additional um information that we shared with our partners is that we're really also thinking about quality of program and quality of access and so our cbo's that historically been with

068us have served a small population of our students about 1200 and there are measures around finance measure about quality and then as you mentioned health and safety that we are attending to and so we did share in um that we would not be allowing facilities to use this summer um the third piece and and i'm gonna you're gonna hear me pause and be really deliberate because i don't want to sound um confusing or convoluted when we attend to unfinished learning some people call it learning loss when we attend to unfinished learning the thing that we are paying close attention to and working to support our teachers and our staff to pay close attention to is when our students come back to the school buildings what do we know about what they've learned thus far and

069what they need to learn when you attend to unfinished learning what becomes really important is our ability as teachers and educators to say here's what the grade level information is and how do we provide access points and learning experiences for our kids to meet the grade level so it's not about going back and lowering the level or lowering the information that kids get it's more about teachers figuring out through multiple exposures to stuff through giving additional content information through giving multiple opportunities to try something that then helps students close the gap between where they are and where we need them to be which is at grade level so i'll pause there and hopefully that unfinished learning response gave a little bit more information to address what our plan around instruction is um i'm just gonna

070add i think i would actually prefer to see something in writing um so that we're all on the same page and we can all speak to any parent who has concerns about what to expect for the fall um and and i have to include my own child in the mix right she's gonna be transferring to fifth grade i share the same concerns many parents do i don't know how much she's actually um learned versus loss because i i don't have the capacity to monitor and grade those things at this point um but i do share concerns that she's not gonna be ready for fifth grade and if i i just i share some concerns i'm going to keep it at that i want to see it in writing the other piece though about our summer

071buildings i i just have to state that this is what it sounds like that what we're doing as a district is telling community-based organizations who are going to service our kids whether it's a hundred or twelve hundred it's a hundred or twelve hundred of our students that we're not doing anything with that they can't use our buildings and we're gonna shun kids out of our school buildings even though they're gonna be empty because we're not providing full summer school year-round for all kids in the district based on covet and construction we've always had construction the modernization projects have been going on for a number of years um and and that that's what i hear and i have to tell you all that sounds absolutely ludicrous to me that that's the logic that we're going with

072and i also hear what you're saying that there are some cbo's that we need to evaluate and look at the outcomes and the relationships that we've had and i think we can do that and have a plan ready for next summer but to shut our cbo's out now this summer in this critical turning point of cobit where kids are literally suffering from mental health because they've been shunned in and isolated for over a year i i just cannot support that and i will continue to bring this up until we figure out a way to work in collaboration with our cbo's to open up our schools that are going to be empty and have been empty for over a year so that we can allow even if it's a hundred kids but the fact that it's

0731200 students back in back into some social settings back with some supervised staff and the opportunity to re-engage on a social emotional level i'm all there for it so i just want to put that out there yes ma'am commission lebron uh commissioner powell oh thank you i think um dr brock was oh i'm sorry were you going to respond dr black i'm sorry go ahead i can i'll respond in group no go ahead you can respond now i think the one thing um commissioner ron well two things i would like to add is uh we are actually working on the unfinished learning plan so that is public facing so that parents community members students can know what to expect as we do that work so that is actually in motion um so i'm going to

074just name that i think the second thing that i would um also like to just share around our cbo's which i'm not sure is public knowledge but want to put it out there is that all of our cbo's over the course of a couple of years so the the decision not all the decision to limit access to buildings did not come lightly i think there are some financial considerations that were also at play when the decision was made around the participation fees the fact that we provided also some in instances transportation um some instances food service building use and paid a partnership fee to some of our cbo's that also went into that decision so as we think about the quality controls and ensuring that we provide the right levels of access to the right

075types of programs in addition to facilities use and health and safety that quality bar and that cost also play into into that and so i am more than happy in additional uh meetings or places to provide like the paper of those in those um decisions but we did not arrive at that lightly and i am hearing you and we'll go back to our cane to see what if anything can be done to get closer to where we would all like to be for 2021 and ultimately 22 21 22. um before i call on commissioner powell commission um melody i see your hand up did you want to uh add on to this conversation yes good evening commissioners i just wanted to um also add that we're gonna be uh running two separate summer programs for

076middle school students this year we are going to have about 200 um young men for through mbk we're having a summer experiential learning for them that's going to be house at monroe and we're having a bilingual linguistic program for middle schools as well okay thank you commissioner powell sorry for the long delay that's fine um dr black uh the two question two separate issues um the first is could you describe a little bit the negotiating process with the zoo the art gallery the museum other experiential learning opportunities uh to let us understand are are we paying are we offering are we paying full price for admissions so that students can achieve achieve access at free or reduced rates or are we negotiating with these partners such that such that they're offering us reduced price tickets

077so this is not going to be a satisfactory answer in this moment and that that is a work in progress and our team is currently working with the potential partners to identify where we can get reduced costs there are programs that are available um through like a different stream that provides access to some of the museums for students who qualify for free and reduce lunch and so we're exploring all of those options and we'll commit to responding and writing via question log as those things move forward um but to be uh i would like to actually say for for you also that we're being diligent and thoughtful about our resources um and our babies deserve to have access and we should be able to provide that but i will come back to you with where

078we ultimately landed um around those efforts i appreciate that and i hope it is recorded for the question log because some of these partners have suffered no real financial hardship and um you know i would hate to have us be exploited because we have this you know new federal monies for you know to help us respond to summer learning loss and what have you um so my second uh point is is more a tangent and it's for my colleagues uh you your presentation showed uh spent a little bit of time on professional development and best practices sharing of best practices and um our last policy committee meeting we had a conversation about uh long-term financial planning and i want to just plant a seed with my colleagues that possibly professional development is something we want

079to include in the language of such a new policy so that we can support the administration you know you know in a long professional development plan in the same way that we support the administration in a long term in our our textbook adoption process which as we know doesn't turn on a dime you know the committee meets over the course of months and years to pick textbooks and you know when they're done with their work they want to be able to pay for those textbooks so we have to have our our plan in place before the decision is made and likewise with professional development we need to make sure the money is there you know for i mean the board is it's not the board's job to decide what kind of professional development to put

080out there but we need we do need to make sure that we're supporting you and and the decision making in one budget doesn't necessarily support a long-term financial uh long-term professional development plan um that's why we need to integrate that into a long-term financial plan so that there is going to be an email coming at you both the my colleagues and the administration asking folks to think about that and give me feedback as to whether that's what they want to see in a long-term financial management policy so thanks for the time thank you commissioner powell commissioner malloy thank you vice president uh just a quick question uh dr black if you could tell us um do you happen to know if the summer leap uh enrichment program is still being offered through allendale columbia i

081know that we had stopped that program at some point um so i am wondering if that program is going to be offered in the future as in terms of not just catching students up but also offering enrichment for those students who might need it i do not actually do not know i believe that i've heard but let me check and confirm and then respond back please thank you all right miss clingscale you have a question um yeah i have i have a couple of questions okay um my first one is that um i want to know what is the ratio for summer school for high school student versus elementary okay so we have about 1500 seats across our receivership schools we have about 750 seats in our commencement high school we have a another number

082of seats and in our accelerated program and then we have seats across a number of different programs as doctor as ms martinez alluded to we have seats for our secondary which is seven and eight in mbk seats are not english language learners and i can actually give the exact numbers um in the question after this meeting so she's asking about uh the number of students that are in the high school program versus the elementary program yeah the ratio what is that 50 to 40 60 to 30 what is the ratio i don't want to misquote exact numbers i will say that we have 300 seats in our elementary comprehensive 750 seats in our high school comprehensive and then we have about 1500 seats in our receivership schools which serves pre-k or k-12 so i would

083like to go back and get the exact ratios for you but we have seats across our continuum and our specialized and centralized programs and then my next question would be in your lost learning planning you said something about them being able to log in for 30 minutes a day or one of the programs that they could log into what is the realistic expectation being that our students have already checked out virtually so what do you really expect do you really expect these students to log in for 30 days i mean for 30 minutes a day to try to upgrade their learning when they've already checked out right now so in full transparency i expect that our students do what they need to do to get what they need in the summer and so the difference

084between us in the school year and us in summer sometimes is the influence we're going to make available to students all the options that they have available around electronically logging in and share what's available to them and share with them what our hope and expectations might be but i can share my expectations um or the expectations of a program so for instance we have one program to see really good growth a student would log on to that program 20 to 30 minutes a day three times a week right so i would hope or i'm going to hope and as we share that here are the programs um students that you still have access to and here's how you should be using them so i would hope that students will attend to that we will again

085actually incentivize and so like i'll date myself but way back when when i was a student we read books in the summer and we got booked coupons to get pizza book it may not be available but we can think about how we have students aggregate minutes log in and then figure out how we reward students to do things above and beyond in the summer and make it available so our deposit is to make it available to incentivize it and then support students in um attending to what they can attend to this summer with the provisions that their families or the libraries or our partnerships are able to make okay and so i want to just discuss the care act because i know the care act is something that is put into place to help us

086get our kids back on track so i guess i'm a little concerned you know with all this money sitting here that we're not being at the district more aggressive i'm really trying to bring our kids where they where they should be because if we are honest with ourselves we know our kids is a year behind some of them already started at a year behind so some of our kids are almost two years behind so what is our realistic goals what are we really really doing to actually help these kids get back on track we gotta stop like we gotta be more aggressive with that why aren't we trying to make a more comprehensive program for these kids because when they do come back in september it's going to be difficult but that's money doctor yeah

087dr meyer small is for the next school year correct it can be um used during the summer vice president elliot but uh miss clinksdale one of the things that remember we're still gathering information because that's a requirement for the um the money so we are hearing from parents we're hearing from the community from students staff the board etc so we are still gathering that but as you said when we've had we're working on trying to get some activities just to get our scholars re-engaged back in if you've been in a remote environment for 16 months are you really are how many of our students are going to come rushing in to 29 days of school so we are trying to get certainly we're trying to hook some scholars through summer school because we know some

088students and dr black gave the report on that but we also want to get brains moving again we want to get our children moving out and about and i think the document that the uh division of teaching and learning uh is working on relative to unfinished learning is going to help to address that because we've got to stop applying and i and and i'm not just i'm not pointing at you but we're we need to be realistic but we can't just think deficit we also have to realize and capitalize on what they do bring to the classroom and what they're bringing to their schools every day so we're trying to create some activities that are getting scholars just engaged back getting them into social environment but i know that we're going to have some scholars

089that aren't going to want to come to summer school even if we had 10 000 seats available so we're trying to create multiple options and opportunities to engage students the library that partnership is going to be incredible where scholars can go in and participate they're going to be mobile units that are going and pop-ups that are going to come all over the city so we've worked hard to create a uh many many opportunities for for scholars to connect back with school to connect back with one another and to combat connect with opportunities okay thank you anything else miss clink scam i know that's it for right now so the the question i would have before we end of dr black has to do with our evaluation measure i mean how are we um benchmarking uh

090the the the the final results from the academic year and positioning our students um for success after the summer program and that they're positioned for of the next school year can you talk to me a little bit about that yeah and if i've asked the question correctly you're completely fine so at the end of this school year schools will have their multiple measures so you have your teacher created assessments you have something called nwea which a lot of parents have seen which uh captures how students have grown over the year and you have some other assessment measures such as ames web teachers internal dras or internal assessments they would use to say hi hi student let's go from what you know what have you learned we recognize that as part of our academic monitors plan

091one of the things she's encouraging us and supporting us to do is to create a more comprehensive assessment plan which is what i alluded to in um the slides that were in the process of building out our overall assessment plan so that at the end of next at the actually the beginning of this school year where we have baseline data so what do we know about what kids know right now and then at the end of next school year what do we know about what they've learned so we're gonna take what we have this year again our nwea um our aims web some of our teacher bait assessments use that to inform some of our planning we're gonna then in the fall so beginning of next year benchmark and baseline all of our students and

092then we'll have multiple assessment measures um over the course of next school year to then speak to and track over time how our students are moving towards proficiency and grade level yeah and just lastly i i'd like to for you to come back to us uh in september october to some time to to tell us was the summer school um worth it i mean are we spending the money in the right way for summer school you know is is some school worth us doing so thank you very much dr black i appreciate the presentation and so we're here from our state monitor dr jallo who will discuss the academic piece of the state monitors plan right good evening everyone um i really like to start this presentation was not really a presentation but i'd like

093to start my discussion by referring back to the summer school presentation or discussion that just took place and if you look back in the academic plan it's very specific about the type of um items that are expected for summer school program um some of the items include an evaluation process what's the structure for leadership how are you going to supervise um teachers and others during the summer school so i would submit to you to take a second look at that and you'll see some very definitive um ask for as it relates to the summer school program for this year that's part of the academic plan so i think if you stick to that you should have a really robust understanding as to what the summer school program was whether it worked how much it costs

094and did you get your return on investment in terms of the number of children who earned credits or the number of children who graduated so i just wanted to add that um to get back more formally to the purpose of the evening um this is the second quarter um quarterly report that the district had to respond to so just to go back in terms of the sequence of events um this second quarter represents january february and march so i need um everybody to keep that in mind and the idea is the first step is for the district to respond based on the items that were due during that time whether or not those items were in fact done and just to go back to the colors again blue means it was started and it was

095finished it's done green means they are on track to get that recommendation done in its entirety yellow means that you are not on track to get that done um on time in its entirety and red um symbolizes a violation that for some reason district was unable to perform that recommendation just as a reminder so um the district responded and i believe the district sent to the board their responses um to the academic and the financial plan and they sent that to the board for feedback and for um familiarity so that you're aware of how they are responding to the plans and then um it it's turned over to the state and to me for me to respond as to whether or not i agree with their findings uh is everybody clear about the sequence first

096the district responds gives it to the board board gives feedback then district officially gives it to me and to my colleagues at sed um for response and i send the response back as to whether or not i agree with the findings with that being said yeah question no uh with that being said everyone um i decided to create a chart that showed where there were variances where there were differences between what the district said and what i am claiming based on my observation and my my examination of evidence so for instance this first one district leadership shall establish a protocol for regularly reviewing regulation resolutions prior to presentation to the board um the administration as you can see gave them um awarded themselves um blue which means it was done and it was finished and

097i gave it a yellow which means i do not believe that first of all that it warrants a blue but second of all i believe that they're behind schedule in accomplishing this recommendation so i want to give that as an example the next one happened in a few instances where it went from blue to green both of them are good they just have different purposes blue gives the indication that it was started and it's ended and green gives the indication i think it's a better rating because it shows that the recommendation was started and will continue that this is something that is good and should continue throughout the period of time that everybody's together working in this capacity so that's why that one went from blue to green if you go down i want to

098show one where we had to make a modification okay so let me stop here in this particular one the administration thought it was green i thought it was red um after additional information and conversation and so forth and so on uh we agreed on a yellow designation right so the state asked me to return to the district and give them another week as an opportunity to resolve issues that were in the red and so we did that and in these two cases that you see um they went from red to yellow and that after further conversation and examination of additional information um we were able to agree on a yellow designation are there any questions thus far okay so yellow still is not a rating that we want to aspire to because yellow indicates that

099we are not on track to complete the recommendation in time it also indicates that perhaps a modification uh might have been warranted but was not um submitted or um just a difference of opinion so that's why conversations take place if you go down a little bit further um by the way these are all just from the academic plan okay in this particular case um i agreed that it was green that they were doing everything everything was going well but there was one area 1.3 i don't remember what it is right now but that was an area where i felt it was a violation and we were able to come up and say that was in fact yellow what i'm hoping is that yellows and reds are not forgotten particularly the yellows but the work is

100done to turn those ratings around into something more positive like a green on or blue depending on the recommendation dr jallo could you just for the audience uh define the the the colors green sure please blue is a recommendation let me see if we get an example do we have a blue recommendation on here can can someone move it up or down okay here's a blue establish bi-weekly meetings with an academic district leadership team representing offices responsible for finance enrollment placement accountability and human capital technology to discuss staffing allocations and projections right the district gave themselves a bloom which is fine i changed it to green because i don't want this to stop i want this to continue to occur blue indicates it was something that started and stopped it had a beginning and an

101ending i gave it a green because green means this is something the district is doing they're doing well they're on track it's timely and it's it's positive so that's the green and the blue that's the distinction between the green and the blue the distinction between yellow and red yellow is green is we're operating and we're on time and we're operating in a timely fashion to get things done yellow is we're operating but we may not be operating in a timely fashion or we're operating but we're not operating to the full extent and intent of the recommendation and so that's how you get a yellow right red red we have a serious problem either there wasn't any evidence or the work has not begun or the work is not happening um there's a variety of reasons

102why that might occur um we don't we definitely don't want that um but we also don't want the yellow either um so those are the colors um go down okay this one our implementation of approves approved rti plans um this is important for a variety of reasons and i want to just spend a moment on this um so when i look for evidence i'm not just looking for evidence for the from the people who produce these things i'm looking for evidence from the people who are the end users and the end users or principals and teachers and how they support students this is particularly timely and significant for a variety of reasons first of all rti is a state regulation has been for for many many many many years right so the fact that we're

103not doing this and doing this with full fidelity um is is of concern um but aside from the regulation this is a system that's part of mtss that you hear many speak about that helps teachers and schools um identify children when they first show when they show early on that they're struggling either academically or socially or behaviorally they're having a challenge and these teams of people in the school come together to try to study and understand what's happening to that child what's what's preventing that child from being successful and they start to design a little plan to help that child be successful and they monitor to see if what they've done for that child has been successful then they come back again it's a very cyclical um process it's a very critical process to catch

104children early on when they first show any sign of challenge difficulty problems in the school setting so the fact that this may not be up and running to its fullest fullest capacity in every single school every single day is is of concern so we've had many conversations um i think at this point in time the district is on the right track to try and reverse this but this is important and this is significant not because it's in the plan not because giallo says so but because it has a significant impact on the children especially now as you start to have conversations about uh interrupted learning that children have experienced all right um the yellow on the summer the yellow on the summer is for the reason express there was a time given when summer school

105was expected to be completed right it was expected to be completed so that it could be shared with the public so that the public could make decisions um for their children about what they wanted to do um as it relates to summer school or other um other activities for the summer um the other reason why this is yellow is because there are components of the summer school plan that are still um works in progress dr jello so when should our program our summer program be complete and ready for our families uh to make a decision on what what timeline are you recommending for for that in in other districts where i have worked or been associated we start putting messaging out in february after that after the second after the first semester or second marking

106period we have enough evidence to put up some um i don't want to call it warning heads up communication that your child is at risk of of not passing and that we are starting to design summer school programming for children who qualify who may need this help in order to pass the grade or pass a course or graduate we start that in february but certainly think of your parents who are trying to make decisions as if it were summer camp what will i do with my child from the summer so the sooner you can get this communication out i think the better i think now is is late but if that's the norm in in in rochester then so be it but i think the earlier you can do it um the better um uh

107so that people can make appropriate plans and decisions for their families during the summer um but that varies from district to district but i i would have liked to have seen it earlier um than i'm seeing it now um but i do feel that they are on the right track and there are a lot of key components that have been done my main concern at this point is not so much the timing although it is of concern my main concern is okay so you have a summer school program what will the student experience in that classroom or on zoom or whatever the case may be for those three weeks six weeks or whatever what will the academic or social emotional or whatever experience be what will they be learning what's the content how do i

108know that if i attend this i will be able to then pass so i have more questions about the instruction and the um design of the instructional model for summer school i mean i think everything else is fine but now the rubber hits the road when child walks into the classroom and knows that they failed something or knows that they are at risk of not graduating what exactly is happening behind those closed doors what's the instructional model and and that has not um been fully fleshed out to to my um to my attention um not to say it hasn't been done but i have not seen it as yet um now the next one um is uh interesting one it was green and i made it red because um there has been a lot of

109conversation around this but there hasn't been any traction and i'm looking for evidence of traction evidence of production not evidence of conversation not evidence of meetings but evidence of production in this particular case we had a good conversation and we came to an agreement that this particular recommendation needs a modification a modification not just on the time or modification that kind of um bifurcates this recommendation into two different areas with two different groups of people responsible because um through conversation and that's why conversation is very powerful um we learned that many of these old outdated materials are sitting in warehouses which by the way you're paying for um to just be stored and some of the and then the other half of these outdated curriculum materials are sitting in your school buildings right so um

110i am of the belief that you have to remove most of these outdated materials otherwise people may default and go back to what's familiar and comfortable and start to use them again even after you've brought the new um updated material so i think this is very important uh i think we now have the right people who should be involved i think um administration will send forth a modified modification to change the date and to change the actual content of this recommendation to better reflect on where these materials are and who is responsible for supervising their removal [Music] this next one um this um uh on the document i received there was no rating for the comprehensive assessment program we have had many many conversations it's moving along um it's not moving along at a pace

111i'd like to see however it's moving along and i think that it's going to be expedited during the summer where um after certain other questions are answered so i'm i'm confident that that will be a better rating in the future um but this is also very very very important um you need to know how to measure um the performance of your students so that you can then identify how you're going to support them so absence something that's comprehensive to assess your students and i'm just now i'm not just talking about tests but whatever it is this has to be established it needs to be comprehensive so the community parents board and administration can clearly understand and communicate to anyone who asks how are our children doing and show data to back up their responses to

112such a question the next one uh high school selection process i've been in conversations um and uh we've agreed on a modification for this one some work has been done on this area and uh it's still under a work in progress but i'm very happy with the progress that's being made here but this is also very significant because it's going to impact at some point in time just about every family in the district how they go about selecting high schools for their students um so this is very important i rather them take more time to get this um as right as it can be so that's why it's yellow there because it's still a work in progress um i don't know if you have any questions about any of the others or if you want

113me to just keep going through each one if you all have any questions i can't see the screen uh just sort of chime in uh commissioners if there are any questions i do have a question um dr jallo and to the administration i'm not sure if there's if you showed them this and what their response is and i'm just thinking back to when dr aquino was here um you know he would i think i believe that he would give the administration their ratings up front and then ask them to respond to it so this is a little bit newer for me that the administration is kind of rating themselves and then the state monitor is giving their ratings and then they're not adding up and so this is the second time in the last two

114months we've kind of been in this position because we were there with the finance piece of it too so just trying to understand um what that communication looks like but then also how does the administration then respond because this goes to the state this is this becomes the record for the district so there was a meeting there was a meeting with administration and the commissioner and sed to discuss this and i believe it's fair to say that she expressed some concerns about the variance between some of these areas and maybe this chart doesn't do it justice because the majority of both the plans um show you know agreement in the ratings between administration and myself but this chart is just specifically for the variances so maybe that's why we're highlighting those things but the sequence

115of events that i described are are pretty much it it starts with um with administration rating themselves and sharing with the state how they rate themselves based on the recommendation and then it's up to me to agree or disagree or make some recommendations um for improvement i guess my question would be and it kind of contributes to the variance should anything be blue because when the administration put flu and you put green you're basically saying that they they're meeting the objectives but they should continue to meet exactly so should i mean is there anything that really should be in blue because it seems like it it should always be green because you you don't want to you should see you what you want to see is mostly green because if it's a good practice it's

116something you want to continue but yeah and now i'm i'm at a loss but there were a few recommendations where it's very specific you needed to create something or you needed to you know and so once it's created it's created so that there's you know there's number one it's not a lot like them but you're right it should be what you really want is some of the blue uh for those type of specific word and mostly green that's what you're hoping to see thanks any other questions for uh dr jalla at this point okay dr jealous thank you dr geller are you just going to finish the the few that are violations i think that's what we're waiting for you want me to go through more or you've had enough you know i can go

117through more um the other one that i really want to to they're two that i really want to highlight i want to highlight the theory of action around receivership schools right and um myself estate monitor uh scd um my colleagues over there are gonna always be laser focused on anything related to receivership right there's not going to be a gray area it's either going to be there or it's not going to be there um theory of action and some of the other recommendations in the plan around receivership um are well it's all serious but it's very serious we have to do something to make sure that receivership has become a thing of the past um for this district this district has more receivership schools in new york city and we have to turn that tide

118around and so um it starts with um what you value what you believe about turnaround schools what do you believe it takes to turn around school and many uh in the field refer to that as your theory of action what is your theory of action around how you're going to provide value added as a district to your receivership schools to get them off this list and it's a challenge it's a hard challenge um it's one that's also been expressed by the commissioner to administration um this is serious um i i i broke out the part about benchmark data every four to six weeks because through conversation and and agreement myself and the chiefs have agreed to have those meetings every four to six weeks to discuss what they're finding out in all their schools but

119with a focus on the receivership schools but this is an area where the district has to turn this around um there are too many receivership schools and principals tell interesting stories about their experiences i sit in on all the sed meetings for receivership schools and go into all the classrooms and look at their data and so forth and so on and so this is the area that i would encourage administration to apply as much attention to as possible i understand even scd has hired someone to oversee receivership schools at the state level because they feel that they need more support in their department around this area as well to support those schools throughout the state but surely and particularly in rochester uh the next one under culture shift um um that one we're very good

120and this is a perfect example commissioner clark where don't stop you know keep going yeah you did it but i want you to keep going don't take it down make sure that that becomes not just thought that it's on your website that but it gets ingrained into your culture that we're not just talking about race we're talking about culture religion language uh we participated in a professional development today about um english language learners and you know so it just has to be ingrained into the community so you want that to continue parent engagement is is a challenge we've had some conversations about this and this is just the area where um more focus is going to have to be placed in order to to change that rating around um but that's a challenge now i

121think they're on a good track to change this around 360 degrees um but we'll wait to see the evidence of that okay um but i will say that i'm pleased with the conversations that have taken place with um deputy uh martinez and um for some reason i can't remember khadija's last name but um if anybody can help me we've had conversations with her to discuss this and i think that can turn around um this is this is more parent engagement similar things um yeah we just need to work with parent engagement to get them to the place where we need them to be and i feel confident that that will happen um finally going down to this last parent um yeah that's just a green um okay here's a challenge here right so on you

122put green i put yellow adhere to staffing allocations that's stipulated in collective bargaining agreements right so this is a case where you do have evidence but the evidence you have contradicts this being green right so you have a budget book that clearly identifies the staffing allocations and they are nowhere near um what's in the collective bargaining year so that's just that's just a fact um um but there's still time to to work through that as the district goes through their growing pains to see how that's going to come through but that one was pretty kind of open and shut in terms of what's in the budget book and how um staffing was allocated based on the budget for next year um and that's it these are just some general recommendations um and this has been

123shared with administration it's um collectively and individually and this has been shared with sed and it has been shared with you i believe twice so um that's my that's my presentation for this evening unless you have additional questions which i'll be happy to answer thank you dr jallow any questions uh commissioners um i'm assuming that uh dr meyer smalling your presentation you will probably respond to uh some of the reactions of some of the recommendations from the state monitor so thank you dr jalla much appreciated um and so dr meyer small is up next with her responses uh to the academic plan um from the state monitor madam superintendent thank you vice president elliot and good evening to everyone as dr jallo stated on june 3rd 2021 we met with commissioner rosa with deputy commissioner

124kim wilkins and many of her assistant commissioners in the p12 unit dr jallo was also there ira schwartz was there and our deputy superintendents our cfo carlene pierce and meri as well as chief academic officer dr kathy black and we had an opportunity to conduct a presentation which i'm going to show each of you that provided the following highlights for the academic and fiscal plans areas of challenge with implementation we added steps to mitigate the challenges we talked about violations and how we want plan to move forward dr jallow i really went in depth around those so i feel i can just give a little bit of a highlight on that again or reiterate and then recommended updates for 2122. so i'll begin just again the strategic plan that i'm so grateful that each of

125you unanimously approved really focuses on four areas and that's in providing high quality learning experiences ensuring that we have an inclusive caring learning uh safe learning environment that will build strong community and that we will indeed foster dynamic leadership and a little bit later i'm going to talk about when i focus on ch areas of challenge with implementation we as a district have multiple plans multiple expectations that are placed on us both internally externally with the state as well as the consent decree so we have really come to some focused conclusions around how we'll move forward in the 21 22 school year so if we look at just some updates as far as highlights relative to the academic plan and um again dr jallo mentioned what she showed each of you individually and collectively was

126where there were discrepancies between what we self-rated us for each of the categories and the academic and the fiscal plans and then how she rated us so highlights in the academic plan and you did hear about this a little bit from dr black is that you know that we have a lot of work to do relative to district-wide comprehensive program materials textbooks and assessment tools so dr black and her team have been very busy over the past several weeks and will be very busy in the summer to make sure that we do have curricular materials in place that um working with our content directors making sure that textbooks are refreshed the literacy program which is in a second year we continue to move forward and that certainly district-wide assessment and interventions are complete so that

127we can have accurate targeted information to help us make good academic decisions as dr jallo mentioned the area that we received yellow as far as establishing the program evaluation arm dr morris and her team have been working very significantly on that we will be adding additional staff that was in the budgeting process so we'll make sure that the multiple programs that we have and vice president elliot mentioned okay i'd like you to come back in october and talk to us about what worked and possibly what didn't work and what might uh what possible adjustments might be needed to be made so this would be where that arm of the district would come into play and would conduct that analysis for presentation to the board and others so that's something that we are have and will

128continue to focus on you did hear about summer programming to address unfinished learning um and we continue to make sure that those programs are in place um and moving forward to support unfinished learning and then professional development which i know commissioner l uh commissioner powell mentioned is we want to make sure that as we have scholars coming back full time five days a week that we have professional development that helps them to help our scholars make that transition back but also with all of the academic curricular um anti-racism etc expectations and requirements that we have that they will be thoroughly prepared to do that or begin to be prepared for that as far as highlights from the financial plan you all know that we have celebrated the fact that we have the elimination of the

129revenue anticipation note or the ran and we'll be discussing that tomorrow night when we go before city council to have our conversation with them you know that our current manage financial management software is not a comprehensive platform and certainly doesn't serve the needs of the district in finance in human resources or budget development and we've actually been slowed down and so this our current program really is outdated as far as functionality and it it requires uh folks in glen shop imnt to develop programs known as patches to accommodate the needs so switching to a new financial system is is absolutely critical and that was something that we've moved forward you also know relative to special education which we are are making progress and continue to make progress we're going to have a management system that

130we are targeted to have in place by january of 2022 we can provide detailed reports in related services we can help pinpoint areas of concern much more quickly with this program medicaid reimbursement which has been problematic will be streamlined and it's really important as indicated in our academic in our financial plan that we improve our iv iep process so that our reimbursements can be improved upon and then we certainly are pleased that we have a balanced budget as far as areas of challenge with implementation and you heard a little bit about that from dr jallo as she talked through but i'll bring a little more life to it certainly just prioritizing all our systems and structures this is no fault or blame on anyone currently or previously but there was a there is still a

131lot that we need to put in place in the district as far as systems and structures to make sure that we are moving forward that we operate in a way in ways that are meaningful that are successful and that are productive and so we need to make sure that we have those in place so for example the sops or the standard operating procedures so that we know that if we have a particular area say special education or the superintendent's office that we have procedures in place that we can follow and so that things are handled not identically but they are handled uniformly with some consistency another area of um of issue certainly is the cadence of reporting so as dr jallow stated this update that we provided to the state education department on the 3rd

132of june it reflected january february and march which is seems like now a long long time ago and so the timing of the of us requesting modifications the timing of communication between the quarterly reporting and really also determining the best quality of evidence to present progress to dr jallow so that has been an issue for us and then when we talk about competing priorities we have the academic and the fiscal plans um that were developed by the state monitor that we have agreed to so those are our plans certainly but we also have the strategic plan we have the corrective action plans which include the bilingual education and special education and we also have the consent decree so we have multiple accountability structures multiple plans we have um and then we have competing stakeholder interests

133and so that's certainly not an excuse at all but just explaining to you what some of those issues are as far are challenges relative to implementation but we just don't want to say that we have issues or problems or we don't want to what i like to call we don't want to just to continue to admire the problem so let's talk about what are we going to do what steps are we going to take to help mitigate these challenges first and foremost foremost we want to cultivate a shared vision can you please go to the next slide and to ensure that we have integration of the multiple mandated plans but we want to make sure that all of those plans really are accomplished through the lens of the strategic plan and that is our our

134foundational plan the foundational document which everything else flows through so as i work with dr morris over the summer and we look at any possible tweaks to the strategic plan we want to make sure that everything that we need to do flows through that particular through our strategic plan additionally we want to make sure that those stat standard operating procedures um are in place and that we review those with regularity and that is included in the plan that dr jallow talked about the other thing is when we talk about the cadence of reporting requirements we've made some shifts so now that we have the following that will establish a monthly reporting structure so instead of waiting you know at the end of march beginning of april or may to talk through we'll monthly look at

135so we're now in in june so we'll look at the end of june where are we with all of the things that are due in june but also we'll take a look back to those things that have been in yellow to make sure that those are moving to green and they are no longer yellow and that they really become a regular a regular part of our process as dr jallo mentioned green means it's on track but she wants to continue for it to occur if things were blue it means that we kind of can check the box off and there are a few things that we can do but really the purpose of having the all of these recommendations and just to remind you there are 96 of them that we need to make sure

136that this becomes a part of our practice and is a regular part of our repertoire the other thing that we feel is critically important to mitigate these challenges is to increase the touch points between us and the state monitor so having regular meetings both formally and informally and as um you know we begin to have more in-person meetings it's not just the formal it's those informal connections and conversations when dr jallow's in her office and someone's coming either into the superintendent to see medisol or to do some board business if they see dr joe in her office they can say oh dr gel let me talk to you about my standing operating procedure let me talk to you about this particular aspect of the plan so we're looking forward to increasing those touch points and

137we have um we're doing that in cabinet executive cabinet the deputies are meeting as well as the school chiefs and others so you heard about the violations um that dr jallow talked about and those again are those areas that are in red and those those are those five areas um that dr jallow mentioned so again on the third we had the conversation with commissioner rosa and her team and we have a meeting on this friday june 11th at 11 a.m we will go over all of these violations because we cannot have violations because this information gets uploaded to the state website so we will make sure that we are clear that the evidence that we need to submit meets the expectations of dr jallo or if there are any other things that we need to

138do for example if we do need to have a modification which she mentioned in some instances that we will do that one of the things that we also are working on relative to these violations and um this isn't about well that we've got to do this because dr jallow said it really is to improve in most instances the the academic or social emotional conditions but mostly academic conditions for our scholars in the rochester city school district so we will meet with her on friday make sure any other tidbits either small or if there are larger things that need to be accomplished we will ensure that we get that um done and that we move forward so that it is i don't want to say minimally yellow but it has to be out of the red

139zone and then finally um the state education department asked us to make res recommendations around what might we want to see updated in the plan because this is there can be some modifications and so again this is no um this is not to target or to be judgmental but these are things as we are getting acclimated to the plan um and that's just one thing i just want to pause for just a moment and say that you know we didn't know what we know um you know dr zhao said well you agreed to these yes we did these are all things that we agreed to but to the extent of what they needed to be done you just don't know it until you get into it and you're actually doing the work and some of

140these things are quite time consuming and requires us to minimally or significantly change the way that we are doing things and so as we are moving forward i just asked the board to consider again no excuse but you know in some instances there was nothing in place or very little or what we had in place was not adequate or did not suffice so we are doing some significant changing in some instances so um that's why in some cases we do need to ask for a modification and we this is a a delicate balance because we got feedback that we ask for many modifications but in some instances we do need to ask for them so um we're just continuing to work through that progress and we want to make sure that we certainly are satisfying

141what is outlined in the plan and that it's again improving the outcomes of our scholars in rochester but our um we have just four kind of big recommendations that certainly in some instances something may be due in april when we say in inc incongruent dates with the systemic process something may be due in april or march and we really need to have that deadline move to the end of the year because there might be an evaluation piece or there might be something around best practice so we'll be asking for updates in some areas there in some instances there are inconsistent deadlines for similar requirements that appear in both the academic and the fiscal plan so we just want to make sure that those are um identical and that those line up so it there isn't

142anything i think it's in the zone reconfiguration in one planet said april and another it said may or something like that so we just want to make sure there's consistent deadlines and then there are some things in the financial plan that should be transitioned to academic and vice versa so we'll make those formal requests for that to be an update and then the last one is a review of the organizational structure alignment to support the district's strategic plan so we're taking a look at just where some of those recommendations that are outlined in the plans that we make sure that we are organizationally making the shift so you heard dr black say for example that the department of multicultural education or dome that typically s sat in student services or support services that now moves

143over to teaching and learning so we'll be making some recommendations to the plan but also we need to do some shifts organizationally as well this certainly has been a learning process for all of us on the executive cabinet and others who have been involved in it we do appreciate um that this has made us better in some instances i'll be honest it has been frustrating um you know we are still moving we're still getting used to one another and working together and we're getting used to working with dr jallo and making sure that we really understand what the expectations are but we also do understand that the goal is really you have a state monitor in place because things are not going well in certain areas in your school district and in your schools and

144we recognize that we need to expedite and exponentially improve what we do in the rochester city school district so we're working we're learning in some instances this is a awkward junior high school dance where we're bumping into one another but we're listening to the song we're getting the beat down and we're learning to really walk in lockstep with one another with dr jallo with the state and what the requirements and recommendations are in the plans and we look forward to coming to the board this isn't a competition or anything like that but we do look forward to coming to the board where we will have certainly congruence number one between what we rate ourselves on and how dr jallow in the state rates us but that you will see no red you will see very

145few few yellows and that it will be predominantly green and so we will be okay with singing the song it's not easy being green we will be all right with that but um this has been a good process for us and it's been professional development frankly for all of us and we just look forward to making the district better um with this process and this is one of the opportunities for us to do so because again and dr jallo reminded us commissioner rosa reminded us this is about improving conditions first for the the 25 000 scholars we serve and that's what the bottom line is and that's why we have to have urgency and that's why we get the feedback that we we do to make it better for them thank you welcome thank you

146very much um commissioner powell you have a question um observation um and um uh member superintendent this isn't um this isn't a criticism of you personally or any of your team but i want to say that i'm not surprised uh about the to to see the report say that the reputations uh with regard to rti um i remember now of course it's been what six seven eight years now when when east high was in danger of being we had to make a choice of either close the school or or get it into uh the epao configuration there was a very public um admission [Music] that the uh school improvement plan was essentially created for the singular purpose of checking the box of the compliance box that the state required and uh that it was written

147and then never looked at again in your presentation you said that in terms of standard operating procedures and so on that there was nothing in place and and it's it's one in the same issue but one of the ways that we have to one of the steps that has to be taken to change that culture is that every level of leadership and supervision has to internalize that intervention plan and hold their subordinates accountable for what is written and demand that the subordinates write down their actions what they've done and record the results of that so that when we find out or if we find out that the action plan has serious flaws we can react to that because we have a paper trail you know it's i've said it over and over again it's what

148in the army we call the football if you you know you keep a record of what you've done how it worked how it didn't work what you would do differently if you had a chance to do it over again so that you're in a cycle of continuous improvement and i just don't see evidence that we do that in this district that's a that's a cultural problem and that's a leadership and supervision problem as well so um i think that madam superintendent from what you just reported that that you recognize that problem as well and um i can only hope that the next time you report out you're going to be able to share with us that that we're making progress in changing that culture and in and essentially upping the ante so you know another

149thing we've learned in the military is that you have to know what success looks like and a lot of our leaders have been in this district a long time and they've never really seen really super great examples of what success looks like so we have to grow that ourselves with this iterative process of trying stuff and recording what worked and and brainstorming in an after action report what what we could do better or differently the next time because there will always be a next time so thanks for letting me share that this clean scale yeah i actually don't feel like um commissioner power is far off i mean i've been sitting on this board for years and i've always said we need to throw things against the wall to see what stick but for some

150reason with our district it's like we're so afraid to move outside of the predetermined box we know that we struggle we have been on the list for graduation rates since the last district for years yet and still we still practice the same uh idealism we we still stick to the same program no matter and there's no disrespect to you of uh superintendent smalls it's always no matter who it is it's always seem to stick around the same plan we know this is not working for our kids we got kids in our district that are in jail for murder i don't know why we don't see that that's a cry but we're not doing the right thing [Music] we need to really and you you guys as a board need to really come down go to

151your district talk to your kids talk to the staff because trying to judge from statistics and numbers don't work you have to be there to feel and see because what we're doing now is the same thing we've been doing before before you came on superintendent smalls we had superintendent barbara she was so stuck on systems not once that i hear her think about the kids we have to remember why a district exists it's to help do productive young people to increase them into a productive citizen and if we look at ourselves truly we know that we haven't been doing that so and and i'm not a you know i'm i'm not technically i don't understand all the terminology sometimes that i listen to prior to bylaws and the rules but me myself personally i've been

152working with kids for 34 years i'm in your district i'm in your schools so i'm seeing it from two lens i've seen it as a parent which three of my kids went through then it was a struggle for me but i'm also seeing it as a community based organization that has been in some of your more uh poor performing schools for some years so my only thing is that guys we got to shift our thinking we shift our thinking to our kids and make decisions that are best for them because once we start doing that then now we have a village that's going to actually you know create comfortable spaces for our kids and some of it don't even take a whole lot of money you know i know we're doing uh revitalization of the

153schools but simple things like making sure that when a kid walking to school he feels like he's in a a nice environment so i think that a lot of times we get stuck on systems and what we have to do and the kids get lost and with me being like i say dealing with kids directly i'm in the gutter as they call it it's just sometimes i think you as commissioners y'all need to go to your schools spend some time with the students listen to them the youth will lead us if we allow them to that's all i got to say thank you keep telling us that miss clean scale we need to we need to hear that all the time thank you very much any uh other items uh for the equity student achievement

154committee um then uh president white i'll turn it back over to you that concludes uh the um committee the equity and student achievement committee of the whole so uh president white i'll turn it back over to you thank you very much vice president thank you dr javo thank you dr meyer small for your presentations it it for some it may sound at points very technical but sometimes you have to get into the weeds and understand the methodology for fixing a district that uh helping us restore a district that has had some challenges in some areas so we appreciate and respect the time it took for both of you to provide that detailed and thorough uh discussion of where we're at and where we need to be next item on the agenda is uh new business

155um commissioner paul and i were speaking earlier today about an event involving the new york state school board association um commissioner paul you want to just briefly tell the folks what your very reasonable ask is george thank you um the new york state school board association's uh annual convention will be resuming again uh this year in person in october 24 through 26 as you all know i go every year as a board member representing the big five uh um and um and nisba pays for my trip but uh rcsd needs to send a voting delegate to the annual business meeting and um it should not be me it's strongly recommended that that nisba board members not represent their home districts during the business meetings for for voting and this year in particular one of the

156sun setting resolutions require is is being recommended for re renewal but i would i'd like to have us offer up an amendment um i'd like rcsd to to do that but we can do that we can talk about the specifics at a future meeting um uh but in in that process our voting delegate would have to speak for that that amendment um and and bring it to the floor so most definitely should not be me so i'm first and foremost want to find out if there's anybody already planning to go to the nisba convention again it's october 24-26 and um sec and if if there's already someone planning on going uh would you be willing to serve as a voting delegate i'm going so i can serve okay i i also just give me more

157information about it i also see a commissioner malloy raising her hand too yeah i was just going to volunteer but prior to vice president elliot um if she prefers she could certainly be the voting delegate but i wanted to volunteer well there there is a room for alternates so you know if if there's a schedule if amy wants to do it that's fine i didn't know if there was anybody else who's attending so if she wants to do that that's fine oh we'll we'll work it out if you prefer you can go i defer to you vice president okay so if one of you is the the voting delegate and the other the alternet that's great um again i'd like to i'd like to in a future meeting talk about the amendment uh to a

158resolution that i'd like uh if for the district to sponsor it it needs to be something we vote together on um but i don't want to take up too much time during this meeting thank you um yeah once we've you know obviously there's some interest from vice president elliot commissioner molloy so you guys can speak offline about who would be the voting actual voting delegate and then you're right the board would have to agree with respect to what the positions would be with respect to those particular votes but i assume as you said that can happen at another meeting um i did want to make sure um i'm sorry commissioner paul i just wanted to make sure um that uh i did speak to the clerk want to make sure we have money in the

159budget for that and then there's additional protocols involving the independent monitor that the state imposed so we have plenty of time to work that out but our clerk did tell me that we because nobody's done any traveling this year that we have uh money in our budget for for that travel whether it's commissioner malloy and or vice president elliot there is as i understand it um ample money not that we have to spend it all but we really are way under budget for our travel so uh commissioner powell were you going to say something else yeah i just wanted to explain the reason i'm uh well interested in pushing this off to a future meeting is that the nisba board of directors does meet this weekend and so i'll have a better idea when amendments

160have to be prepared for submission after this weekend okay so yeah we'll address those issues later on um vice president elliot commissioner malloy you guys work it out the bylaws say the board president um designates people in these positions whatever you guys work out is fine with me um and commissioner powell i'll leave it up to you and whoever is going to bring this back up on some agenda so that we can have that vote that we need after it's clearly what the vote is going to have to be about you're all set on that issue thank you no thank you for for bringing it up um folks we do have to go into executive session on a couple of um actually uh corrects me it would be for next year's travel budget um because

161that starts july one so but again i i think uh we we've been pretty prudent i don't uh we kaya very quickly what happens to that money or dr meyers from last year that we didn't spend it just go back into the general pool fund yeah right it gets swept back into the the fund okay well we'll figure it out and i'm sure you guys can can work that out so uh we'll just wait for a report back from you about who's going and and uh what the vote is going to be about all right we do have to go into executive session um on matters relating to uh actually this wouldn't even be an executive session we have to have some discussions with our attorneys regarding contractual issues uh and and i guess maybe

162now that i'm thinking about it there's another second matter that does relate to a particular employee or person so why don't we just to be safe and to make sure we're doing it the correct way why not someone give me a motion to go into executive session to discuss the terms and conditions of employment for a particular person oh moved thank you commissioner malloy is there a second second thank you commissioner powell i was in favor of going into executive session for the purpose of discussing the terms and conditions of a particular employee's employment indicate by turning on your video and saying i i any opposition so the eyes have it for those of you who are still hanging in there and watching your board of education and all the committed district employees who are

163still with us um at this meeting we thank you we are going to go into executive session but i will tell you based on the knowledge of these particular subjects i don't anticipate that when we come back into open session to take our survey that you've seen us do many times before we'll be having any kind of meaningful vote this pretty much ends the substantive part of our meeting so the board of education would encourage you to go out uh turn off your screens and spend time with your family and your loved ones and be safe given the subjects that we discussed i think we moved to the agenda pretty quickly um we have to take a survey if you're still here you'll you'll witness us put our heads down tapping little buttons and then

164i'm going to make a motion to adjourn the survey is up and we're taking it for those of you haven't seen our survey results every once in a while we come back to the public and we tell them how we think we're doing on our job what is just here okay tell me when we're ready commissioner uh i'm sorry i'll call i will commission away that's right it could be one day she's shaking her hand prophesied i know prophesied [Laughter] prophesied all right we are done okay i just need a motion to adjourn thank you vice president second commissioner powell all those in favor of journeying say good night good night everybody enjoy