I Believe Award / Board of Education Business Meeting

001folks out there in Internet land who are watching this video um we are uh 30 minutes in advance of our uh Rochester City School Board business meeting and we are uh starting this early because we have an A award to give out the the I believe award which is one of two Awards um that our board president initiated some years back now um the I believe award um identifies an in generally an individual student who has um has excelled in some way turned their turn their academic career around or uh otherwise really uh a achieve something uh significant in their academic life and um in recognizing that student we asked the student to recognize um a a significant contributor to their success so it's a a kind of a passing it Forward scenario where you

002know uh we accept our our accolades and then and we um off accolades in in return so um with that introduction I was given the honor of I'm seeing this um award ceremony because the um recognition is going to a student at the Henry Hudson school 28 which is one of my le on schools uh that um student recipient is Jayla Morrison uh and um on behalf of the Rochester Board of Education we're proud to present the I believe award to JLA and her teacher she's identified as Angela buy is that a silent or pronounced bza but yeah thank you for correcting me that's okay so Jayla has made significant gains academically despite being home for remote learning for over the past five months Miss bua has supported Jayla by supplying materials throughout the shutdown

003creating a schedule that worked for Jayla and staying in contact with Jayla to ensure she received all the necessary Services upon jayla's return back to school on January 5th it was evident that not only had Jayla improved academically but her communication skills improved as well we applaud Miss bua for providing outstanding student support to jayla's academic success um please uh join me in recognizing Jayla and Bly with I don't know let's see if we can all find the hand clapping symbol on our on our our Zoom meeting there we go a little celebration um Jayla I would love for you to um tell us a little bit about yourself and um and uh how you feel about recognizing The Sword and then tell us a little bit about your relationship with Miss bza can you

004do that I think Mom's gonna help us out with that right Miss Washington good say hi say hi um this is jayla's mom um Jayla is partially nonverbal so she's not GNA be able to um speak what she really feels so I'm gonna speak for her and um and Jayla is at Henry Hudson school um and she is um her teacher is Miss Miss um bolza and she is amazing um Jayla has has is doing like really good um Miss Bola has been amazing with um Jayla um she has autism she's in jayla's in the ACD program so um it's definitely more difficult than the typical CH child and Jayla has made so many strides um due to the hard work um of her hard work and of her um teachers hard work and um

005I'm just very proud of her um it was really really extremely rough in the beginning um I used to run around I did speak to the board about this um run around with the iPad trying to get her to learn and she just finally um something just clicked and she's and and it was work it's working as best as it could um in the situation that we were in but we're definitely glad to be back in school and she has um made a a lot of great strides that's terrific what grade is she are we what grade are you in she's she's in the fifth grade say fifth grade fifth grade yes Jayla we are so glad to meet you and um we really appreciate appreciate your mom for being such a great advocate for

006you do you want to introduce Miss bua do you just want to say for us I love Miss Bosa Miss Bosa stheart I love you Miss B tell us a little bit about your experience with this whole you know coid and reopening with the um oh okay um well you know when this started back in March which which seems like a lifetime ago but um you know we didn't quite know what to do and we learned very quickly how we were going to support our students which is um a little bit different um given the needs of the kids in our we're a 614 uh autism program so we service children who have the most severe need in the district um Jayla has just done amazing and I've got to give a lot of credit

007to her mother uh Miss Washington who is just she's a leader as a parent and really helped our our other parents advocate for their kids too I work an amazing team at 28 school speech therapist Miss Patterson and my ta and my PA professionals are otpt and Miss lad who's led us through uh this new world of teaching with amazing leadership so coming back was has been excellent it's been going really really well it's going really well at 28 school so we're very excited I'm very proud of J jayla's jayla's really grown into jayla's using her voice so much more to participate in her own learning which is I've I've been with Jayla for it's been a year and a half now right Clara it's been a year and a half yes yes that too

008has been a real positive thing to be able to loop with the class um so we've all been together through this ride and um to see where Jayla has come in a year and a half she didn't really use her voice very much last year and she wasn't really participating as much in her own learning and now she's just grown and blossomed and it's become more about her taking initiative and and being excited about her work and participating rather than just complying which is not the goal we want her to be an active participant and it's just been fantastic I couldn't be more proud of Jayla hi Jayla I see you're uh the principal of school 28 is with us um this recognition is really a whole school you know whole student whole Community experience

009would you like to share something about uh the Journey of school 28 um through this whole coid environment sure um thank you for having us and for recognizing um Miss Bola and Jayla and jayla's Mom because um this is a whole team effort especially in the autism program so we have seven autism classes and Angela is the um is the chair for the all the ASD teachers so anything that we need to roll out we roll out with Miss Bola and then she shares it with the team and she has led her team to do some amazing work during the coid experience and then supporting the reopening um so that we were so successful reopening so our autism teachers delivered materials to kids every Wednesday to make sure they had the Hands-On materials that they

010needed and they did this all throughout um the entire time we've been home so it's really been a blessing to have them willing to go out into the community and share what with the kids what they needed to be so successful while we were remote and then to lead her team into reopening our program um so successfully so we went through all our safety precautions and you have to understand that our students are not one that we can mandate wearing a mask all day right our kids are um where they are and we meet them where they are but my staff um under Angela has accepted that we have extra PPE so everybody is confident and able to support the kids um to the best of their ability and the kids are really shining so

011it's we've really done well in this um you know coid as best we can we know um from the first time I heard Miss Washington speak to the board my heart achd and then I started going to CPAC so that I could let them know that I was here to support them because I can't imagine the work that they went through from March all the way until January having their kids at home requiring the amount of work that we do um with our kids at home every single day no respit right so our parents are um have been huge in this so you know we're just glad to be back phase one went well and we're ready for phase two and phase three so thank you congratulations to miss Bola to Miss Washington and of

012course to Jayla who did all the hard work right yes she did in just a moment I'm going to H ask if uh the our superintendent has any comment but let me tell our audience that we have four B board members that I can see present um commissioner Ricardo Adams commissioner bill Clark and uh commissioner Amy Malloy uh are the faces I oh oh and commissioner LeBron is is online I see your face now too uh so uh and the remaining two Commissioners commissioner Elliot and our pres VI who's our vice president and commissioner uh White who is our board president um have obligations in the the the political uh process of trying to get um it elected to in in commissioner Elliot's uh case get reelected to the school board and in commissioner White's

013case um seeking the board's or seeking the community's support for uh a judgeship um so they would be here if they could I'm sure so of commission um superintendent uh Myers Smalls would you like to say a few closing words sure commissioner pal thank you so much I think over the past few moments you have seen the power of a principal working with a teacher who works with a student and her family and so I have to say that on January 5th I was in that classroom with Miss Boza and it was when I spoke right after that and said there was so much significant Joy this is one of the examples that I'm speaking with the power of having in-person learning and knowing that some of our students certainly do have their struggles and

014to certainly hear that although there were some challenges and Hoops that we needed to overcome that our teachers and other staff really Rose to the occasion and made it happen because the bottom line it is about our students so miss Boza and Jayla and Miss lad and jaya's Mom thank you for working together in Partnership to move forward and I can't tell you you how much my heart is singing right now to see this again and how amazing it was to see it on January 5th when Jayla was in class learning with her peers thank you commissioner Powell uh unless my any of my colleagues would like to say a word or two that yes yes I would like to just um the jaila really has a strong advocate in uh Claire Washington her moms

015man uh the the lady seen me in Walmart she said no you I don't care how busy you is you need to talk to me right now I need to talk with you and uh we we basically started a relationship um between getting me toate um she and help her advocate and her mother you are so um you're said you keep doing what you're doing and thank you commissioner Adams for that testimonial well that concludes this award uh ceremony and our regular board business meeting will start 15 minutes so thank you right I see you tomorrow Jayla bye Clara good evening uh this is the Rochester Board of Education um January 21st uh business meeting we want to welcome you to our meeting um we want to um just um have you to listen and

016if you have comments please um share your comments um we hope this is going to be a pretty robust meeting uh President White will not be with us the E this evening um and so I am your chair uh for uh the evening so welcome to the Rochester Board of Education meeting um the first item uh on the agenda is a Act of reverence and pledge of allegiance to the flag so I will sort of say that um and then we'll move on to the acceptance of minutes so um I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you um can I get a motion for to approve the January 4th

0172021 uh minutes I'll move it thank you commissioner got a second thank you okay I understand we have H that's what I missed um callia the speaker list so we have four member four um four individuals that want to speak uh before the board so I'm going to have um CIA to call the names um commissioner Elliott since you did get a motion second on the minutes we might want to tidy that up even though it's out of order yeah you see I'm moving real fast yeah no problem thank you commissioner power so can I get a motion for approv of those minutes some well I think you already have a motion have a motion we just gotta all vote all in favor I hi hi all right thank you thank you commissioner pow so

018could you uh begin our speaker's portion C You by calling the first name yes I will so we have uh with us our first speaker is Jack pelts he is a parent and uh he will be speaking about inperson education for 7 through 12th graders Mr pel welcome you have three minutes great thank you very much I appreciate it I appreciate your time um my message is really geared to Dr Mar Smalls and specifically um it focuses on two pieces one is accountability and the other is is an aspirational request first I believe that there needs to be some accountability for the original survey that went out regarding um online instruction or inperson instruction it uh took a newspaper article many parents to complain um in addition to a high schooler being quoted in the

019DNC um chastising uh the you know lamentable uh format of this survey uh I think to uh force a turn in terms of um you know what what the plan was there still is a lack of transparency as to what exactly led to that turn the second piece is around sort of an aspirational request and I want to say uh Dr Mar small I the most respect for you for for coming into a district you knew what you were getting into um and you chose and that's a really courageous Choice um the request is that in thinking about the pandemic and in thinking about how how challenging it has been for for Monroe County for us as a nation um certainly as a state one piece that Governor Cuomo has done is that he's had

020regular briefings regarding um how the state is addressing Co well I think you can think of the crisis of the pandemic in terms of our state in terms of our County um similar to The Crisis that our district is in and to that regard my request would be to create a set of short-term public goals something that uh could be in the form of a Blog it could be something that we as public can see what are you specifically working on month to month three months to three months year to year so that we might be able to see one how you're rating your own progress but too so that we might also be able to follow and and uh be able to uh rate your progress um and I don't want to do this

021without the hope that you might also enlist us to help you to the extent that this could be a public uh blog or public uh format um you might be able to create a wish list uh what is it that you need from us as as parents who care deeply about this dri District who want you to succeed um and to the extent that you could publicly and transparently put out there what is it you are trying to accomplish and how you TR how you are trying to get there would be greatly appreciated so with that I'll seed my time and I really appreciate your uh your time and uh thank you thank you uh Mr pelts yes thank you Mr pel we do appreciate you addressing the board tonight and if you have any

022additional written comments you may submit them to the email um where you signed up to to speak all right great thank you thank you joining us is the the next parent uh Mary Star POI who will be speaking about reopening of schools uh Miss stpy are you there okay I'm going to move right along here our next parent joining us or sorry this will be a Community member is uh Mr Peter Burkin a Community member who will be addressing the board regarding eradicating bully Mr no doesn't seem to be with us tonight yes hi this is Peter Burkin okay Mr Burkin go ahead thank you welcome and you have three minutes thank you hello board superintendant my name is Peter Burke and I'm a bully prooof expert I am the antithesis of what you got

023there Jane Elliott who's very much into the brown blueeye situation instead of seeing everyone created equally I am congruent in an alignment feeling and accepting of restorative justices I'm definitely congruent with that I help frustrated and overwhelm Public Schools who want to eradicate bullying so we can increase attendance which means incre in Government funding and graduation rates I am a life coach passion test facilitator and Mastery of self-love trainer and I am a consultant which means I have solutions to many of the problems I just prepared a four-page document that will be ready for anybody who requests it by email my email is p Burkin bukin gmail.com and I like like to also invite everyone to an event that I'm having on February 13th 2021 that will be from 10: a.m to 6: PM it

024will be an 8 Hour course and Eastern Standard Time and what we're going to do is I'm going to administer the passion test as well is the Mastery of self-love course so it'll be a full eight hour day the community if you put in youra Emil free SL uh peace and I'll make sure you get the zoom link I teach a four-step process adapted from John asra to eliminate fears and limiting beliefs the first thing is acknowledge and be aware that you have a limiting belief or fear two is angle look at all the different angles at the perspective or AKA also known as reframing it three is abolish it and four is Arsenal use every tool skill resource process to rewire your brain babies kids download everything they see and hear 95% of our

025subconscious mind is this programmed from the past Z to seven years old for 400 years Jesuit priests kind of joked that if we got the kid from zero to seven we would show how they would turn out as a man or lady I'll be a man because of Jesuit priest for the most part examples of limiting beliefs are I'm not good enough you're a bad kid or you are worthless Etc programming that is rich people are rich and that poor people stay poor is really a simple thing when it comes to programming God or your higher power of your understanding made each and every one of us co-creators in the uniqueness and likeness of your higher power I call the miracle Bliss Zone the everpresent precious moment and now Miracle yes I do apologize your

026three minutes are up tonight but we do encourage you to submit your comments bya email as well very good thank you very much thank you good night thank you for joining us you're welcome all right I'm going to circle back around because I do have Miss Dar POI with us tonight um she's a parent as a reminder and will be addressing the board regarding reopening of schools Mr poy you have three minutes hi good evening okay we can hear you now good um yes my name is Mary staro and I'm an rcsd parent if you're a parent teacher administrator or student in the district the last 10 months have been an absolute roller coaster and uh I believe it didn't need to be such a wild ride um Regular clear communication from the district would

027have gone a long way to reduce the extreme anxiety the swirling rumors and confusion that we've all experienced parents shouldn't be left to wonder and translate incomplete and contradictory information or turn to social media for answers teachers shouldn't be finding out from the local media that the district has changed course again and they will need to return to buildings principal shouldn't be hearing the latest reopening plans at a board committee meeting along with everyone else information is the antidote to anxiety and rumors and this District administration has so far absolutely failed at keeping everyone adequately informed as we continue on this pandemic journey I ask the district to place communication as the highest priority provide regular clear clear updates to all stakeholders involve teachers parents and students in the decision making going forward the decisions

028will be better ones and the district will not find the need to abruptly reverse course because they discover obvious roadblocks that were missed because the people who would be implementing the plans were not consulted the second thing I want to say uh with my time is that while I was a strong advocate for getting our kids back into school and I'm grateful for this is finally happening I I also understand why our teachers are extremely wary and anxious about their safety during normal non-pandemic times they have not always been given the adequate resources they need to do their jobs they're often kept in the dark by this District forced to work in unsafe conditions are expected to make do at the classroom level it seems to me there are two things that if the district

029can find a way to implement before we return to school would protect our teachers and put everyone's Minds at ease the num number one testing every person before they enter an rcsd building so we're assured that Co is not also walking through the doors and number two get every single teacher vaccinated as soon as humanly possible I know the vaccine shortage makes makes this really challenging with finding creative ways to partner with the healthare systems um maybe we can find a way to find the supply that's needed for every single teacher I know everyone in the district has the best intentions and is working so hard all of you are working so hard I just urge you to focus on the two most important things during this time communication and safety thank you for listening

030thank you so much Miss star poy um by president Elliot that does uh complete or speaking portion of this evening so C can you just let the uh public know how they can sign up to speak at a board meeting yes of course so uh if you are a member of the public and would like to address the board in our board meetings or special meetings please feel free to uh oh actually before I do that it does seem like we have Mr mccab with us um Mr mcabe is a staff member and to be joining us to a comment on reopening of schools as well um vice president Elliott all right thank you good evening Mr mccab Mr mccab you're on mute sorry about that um hi everybody I'm gonna talk fast because I

031have a lot to say but uh I'm a living environment teacher at Franklin upper uh here tonight with respect to describe how disheartened and panicked I am that the district is unilaterally making an decision to bring students and teachers back into schools at the demonstrable height of the pandemic with nothing more than a basic framework of a plan for safety listen to data being cited about how safe schools are is misleading to say the least in fact based on the New York State living environment curriculum we as teachers are asked and tasked with teaching students to identify bias and cherry-picking of data to reach conclusions for example the curriculum States standard 3. point 4 B claims should be questioned if the data are based on samples that are very small biased or inadequately controlled or

032if conclusions are based on faulty incomplete or misleading use of numbers end quote it also States 3.1 3.4 C claim should be questioned if fact and opinion are intermingled if adequate evidence is not cited or if the conclusions do not follow logically from the evidence G given end quote the following statement is a perfect example of a claim I could use my students to find and interpret potentially misleading information that come to a biased conclusion quote we have heard from students parents teachers and staff who want our schools open and we have data from our medical professionals indicating that schools are safe end quote based on that these are some questions I'd ask or expect to be asked in my class what percent of students parents and teachers the participants agree with this plan is

033it a majority are data even being provided for you to interpret are the data are there data from other medical profession profal with competing claims about school safety might there be any bias from the person or institution making the claim aside from the end quote uh aside from the fact that 89% of District educators are against the current reopening plan there are close to zero data to compare to this moment in the pandemic or even our country's history 4,400 Americans died yesterday 21,000 this week and there are 1.35 million new cases as of the past seven days according to the CDC we're still breaking various records almost a year into the pandemic now we Face a new variant of the virus that is significantly more transmissible a variant we have a little data on uh

034for each new person infected 10 to 100 million new opportunities are there for the virus to mutate with potentially dead results a new virus could emerge at any time and anywhere healthcare workers recently spoke with Evan Dawson on wxxi about how our Health Care system is on a precipice I made the decision to speak tonight because now we're playing with the live of several teachers staff many more teachers staff and students of course it's detrimental being home the data show that but what would that excuse me the data can't show are the unknown and long-term effects of this year old virus and the effects of the new variance as they continue to evolve in the millions of new people infected each week I truly understand the situation where there's no win on on any side

035but the district with an open reputation for disorder and failure and a lack of communication I believe we were finally in the hand competent and Forward Thinking superintendent as her decisions have kept thousands of people obviously we might be wrong for the sake of everybody in the district please come up with a coherent plan that addresses in detail a safe reopening thank you Mr MCC I appreciate you uh joining us this evening and I know that you have a written uh sheet there so if you want to also submit uh what you have in writing to the board I do encourage you to do so all right uh vice president Elliot thank you so I want to just thank all of the speakers who spoke uh tonight um you know there are um people who

036are on one side of this issue and people on the other side of the issue and at the end of the day we have to look at uh the research that we have and make our decisions that in the best interest of our children and families and so we really do uh appreciate uh the input uh there's no ease decisions in this so but thank you all for um speaking um this evening uh the next item uh on the agenda is the advisory Council reports and so we have the student leadership Congress report and the bilingual uh education and so um annaya if you would uh present for the student leader Congress report student leadership Congress my apologies yes good evening hello everyone my name is annia Simmons and I am president president of student

037leadership Congress this is the official report for student leadership congress's last meeting on January 20th of 2021 on our agenda we had introductions a community check-in the superintendent's form president announcements and sustainability measures at this meeting we had representatives from school Without Walls School of the Arts world of inquiry Edison career and Technology East Upper School Northwest Douglas and Northeast College High School in attendance students on the call Express their lack of motivation for school they're finding it hard to get focused in a school mindset because they are in their bedrooms the impure motivation that they usually have is absent during virtual school because of this mentality it made St very repetitive and this repetition leads to lack of motivation in students and a procrastinatory spirit during this meeting superintendent Meer small was able to

038present some of her goals for the district emphasizing healthy student development in that goal she commits to diversifying staff tracking social and academic process of progress of students creating districtwide gender identity initiatives implementing District anti-rac racism initiatives and continuing the yearly youth risk behavioral survey she suggested we meet with the district's finance committee to offer suggestions on how to redistribute the district's funds that got positive confirmations from the Congress she invited us to the legislative breakfast as well as future meetings regarding the prosp itive of a magnet school during this meeting I talked about a lot of topics such as regions a conference coming up another student wellness check-in and a spring Sports Committee on the topic of region I reminded students who would like to opt out of them to check with their counselor

039for what diploma they are expected to get and the less pressure due to college board soon discontinuation with the essay portion of the sat and sat subject test coming this June we will be looking to set up a meeting with the district region representative shortly Justin Anderson of Edison and I will be facilitating the student session of the reimagine Edison conference which I encourage all district students parents and board members to attend the event will be taking place on January 30th beginning at 8:30 a.m. and the student session will be taking place at 10: a.m. the Congress has agreed that another student wellness check-in would be nice with a theme of how to transition from virtual to hybrid learning even if students are not switching to the hybrid model there will be res resources for

040them to use the University of Rochester has a read to partner with us to help with the wellness student with the wellness check-in be on the lookout for more updates of the event forthcoming Des Garrick of East upper school and I met with Dr Cotto and I was able to propose a spring Sports Committee the spring Sports Committee would cons consist of spring athletes meeting with key figures in the process to how to safely bring back athletes this gives student athletes a chance to be a part of how spring Sports will be brought back and increase District athlete communication as far as we can tell students are happy with the selection of Fall 2 and Spring sport options available due to commissioner malloy's suggestion for students to take on districtwide environmental initiatives and Global Youth

041Services day coming up the coners discuss what we can do the main ideas were to brainstorm was excuse me the main ideas we were able to brainstorm was partnering with local Gardens to bring more sustainable foods to the district and high schoolers taking time to teach kids how to upcycle the importance of composting and how to manage their environmental impact other other ideas were given were given which um students who do not have bus passes will be given bites creating rooftop gardens and outdoor classrooms and having a community cleanup day each semester on the 16th I attended a CommunityWide youth leadership Coalition run by Kila L Maya white of rock the future this is an initiative that is supporting youth leaders from various Rochester Community groups to develop new leadership abilities and provide unique opportunities

042for our growth I have continued to work on a playground project in the Beachwood neighborhood with Hannah shapi and commissioner LeBron from Common Ground Health to possibly to possibly provide a place for schools in that area to have a social distancing rope Adventure Course for their gym class experience we are asking youth in the Beachwood neighborhood 13 and older interested in architecture and learning leadership skills to reach out to join a committee I along with world of inquiry students presented the hinge neighborhood project on January the 17th the presentation was to show community members what environment school age residents would like to see in the area they go to school vice president Elliot at this time I am in support of the following resolutions resolution 627 asking for more funding to help give um direct

043service over February break to the students who need extra support during this virtual learning resolution sits 33 to acquire property adjacent of the world of inquiry school as it would help the members of that school Community have more space resolution 635 that would help students of schools number 3 9 12 and 19 utilize recreational facilities near them and resolution 639 providing students with the services unavailable to them now such as an emergency shelter counseling counselor and individual counseling but is essential to generate happy and healthy students on behalf of the students thank you and have a nice day thank you annaya I also want to invite you to the esa meeting uh we meet once a month so we would love if you could attend the esa meeting if you have the time yes I

044will follow up with you on that all right thank you very much and the next uh uh advisory counsel report is a bilingual um education councel report um I'm um I'm not sure who the person is is it commissioner or do we have a person representing the bilingual Council we do have Angelica with us um so she will be um uh joining I hope I I saw her on the screen previously um Angelica are you there I let her into the room earlier all right so so I'm not seeing her in the room right now uh uh commissioner LeBron do you have the bilingual education uh report at all I do but I know that her and Mina were going to be here but what I will do is if we can move on to

045the next item vice president Elliot I'm gonna call Angie and make sure she gets back on with me okay sounds good all right until Angie um is able to come on we'll go down to the um the present the next item which is the Pres presentation for the tentative settlement of special education class action lawsuit and that will be done by uh presented by Allison Moyer Allison good evening everyone my name is Alison Moyer I'm associate counsel for the district and it's a pleasure to be here tonight um I have several other people with me as well as well as a PowerPoint um Kalia are you helping me with that tonight and let me just welcome Mr Feldman and um Brian Heatherton is it someone else Maggie uh anyone else that is joining you that

046I should welcome yes so I'm here tonight with Yolanda Asam Des hi Yolanda hi um I just need Kalia to um to turn my video on though please one second when when when it's time whenever it's time I just want you to know you you're controlling it Kia uh I think we just gave you back permissions uh does thank you can you okay there you go all right and I'm bringing up the presentation right now thank you and also here tonight to present um and help present are Maggie Rob Jonathan Feldman Brian heatherington and Carolyn nusom welcome thank you thank you we ask that in the interest of time um that all questions be held to the end of the presentation and then we will do our best to answer any questions that you have

047or be able to return shortly with the answers to your questions we are extremely pleased tonight to announce that the T tentative preliminary settlement has been reached in the special education class action lawsuit entitled NN versus Rochester City School District that the word NN is actually the name of the first named student who's part of this class section lawsuit and so while we refer to this as this the consent decree lawsuit or the special education lawsuit its official name is NN so it will be forever named after that student the proposed settlement was the ye the result of years of extensive negotiation between the parties and if I could take a brief moment I would like to especially express our thanks to the board board President White the members of the board of education's special

048advisory committee to review special education programs and services current and former attorneys with Empire Justice Center former Board of Education commissioner Melanie funchess former general counsel Carl Kristoff and many many members of The District's staff additionally we appreciate the Insight in the early work of again board President White who brought the parties together for Meaningful dialogue that ultimately led to this settlement uh we are grateful for everyone's commitment and everyone's efforts to assist the district to improve special education programs and services to our students and it is the work and the collaboration of those very many individuals that have brought us here today and we look forward to working further with Empire Justice throughout the consent decree and through the disengagement process next slide please there has been a very long history of negotiations with

049Empire Justice regarding special education concerns of their clients Mr Feldman is going to discuss those in in Greater detail in a few minutes but in short it was the Empire Justice's advocacy that led the board to convene the special advisory committee back in 2018 compo comprised of District stakeholders to address those concerns those members were parents of students with disabilities advocates in the community community members Empire Justice attorneys and District staff and they were tasked to review special education policies practices procedures and programming ultimately the committee authored two reports over the span of a year overall 189 recommendations were made for changes to the way the district conducted special education next slide please the special committee further recommended that the district meet final disengagement goals and yearly measur performance benchmarks in more than a dozen

050areas and it further recommended that those benchmarks and goals be turned into a consent decree where the court would monitor the district and ensure compliance with what the the special committee had recommended then the attorneys for Empire Justice mix and pey and District Attorneys took these goals and benchmarks and negotiated for many months to reach a settlement that was based in the law reportable to the court and would form the foundation of a consent to decree the settlement agreement that met that um the goals and benchmarks was finally reached in January of 2019 next slide thereafter the NN lawsuit was uh was filed in um the Western District Court of the United States district court so in the federal court the the plaintiff's complaint stated essentially that um there were claims of special education violations

051the district failed to provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities and failed to provide their parents a meaningful opportunity to participate in the education of the children as required by law we answered and then entered into a prolonged negotiations period and the the lawsuit was tentatively settled in October 2020 it was preliminary approve preliminarily approved by judge larer in December leading us to where we are now next slide slide please there is something called a final approval hearing that is scheduled for February 4th 2021 this will be a zoom and telephonic final hearing because of coid in the event that any parent or guardian of a student with disability wishes to object to the terms of the settlement which are on the district's website that the link is here anyone can

052go and and look what they are there are very specific procedures that must be followed and we've outlined those procedures on our website those procedures are also on the website of Empire Justice Center if anyone wants any further information we welcome them to visit our website or Empire Justice's website um to read those requirements and to figure out how to attend the final hearing next slide please provided that the court approves the settlement on February 4th we will then enter into the last stage of the first step of the lawsuit to enter into the consent decree a consent decree is essentially a formal agreement to parties to resolve litigation it's sort of like a contract um it requires a defendant to do certain things in order to obtain dismissal from a plain lawsuit usually what

053happens is the consent decree is drafted mutually by the parties and then it's provided to the court to approve once approved by the court it becomes legally binding and it's a court order then the terms of the agreement are put into place by the defendant and the defendant's compliance is supervised by the court often that involves an independent monitor or somebody appointed by the court um to make sure that the certain steps and benchmarks are met then after that and everything is met the defendant can ask to be disengaged from the consent decree here Empire Justice and the district are going to ask the court to sign a consent decree that incorporates all of the terms of the settlement that we reached in October the consent decree is going to require the district to monitor

054its progress on the benchmark and goals and report on that Pro progress to plff attorneys and the court if the district does not meet the benchmarks and goals the court can impose some penalties the penalties are discussed fully in the stipulation of settlement and I welcome everyone to review those at your leisure um but some of those penalties could include um like the imposition of a independent monitor like I discussed a minute ago it also could um require that attorney's fees be assessed against the district to pay the attorneys for the plaintiffs or in the alternative that certain metrics are met or that other metrics are are put into place for the district to meet at this time I'd like to um ask Yanda to talk about specifically the consent decree requirements that are going

055to be in this case and I'll be available at the end to answer any questions that you may have thank you Allison so the district has agreed to comply with its legal obligations with respect to the delivery of special education services and programs for students with disabilities those suspected of having disabilities and their parents and Guardians the district will address the special education problems described in the plaintiff's lawsuit by meeting specific interim performance benchmarks and final disengagement goals mostly by the end of the 2021 2022 school year some of these requirements were extended to the end of the 2022 2023 school year because of the co 19 pandemic the benchmarks and goals involve as you can see on your slide uh ensuring timely and compliant services for students with disabilities achieving equity in classification and

056discipline of students with disabilities increasing achievement in graduation rates of students with disabilities increasing parental participation and the development of students individualized education programs and increasing the percentage of qualified special education teachers including through the development of a strategic plan to address the lack Spanish-speaking special education teachers the consent decree will apply only to the claims made in the NN versus Rochester City School District lawsuit that was filed in 2019 and so it does not cover any potential claims beyond the scope of the consent decree that may have Arisen after 2019 if any student parent or guardian or Advocate has concerns over their student specialized Education Services whether or not these claims are part of the lawsuit we encourage them to contact the department of special education for assistance next slide please as part of

057this the district will appoint a consent decree coordinator the coordinator will be Desiree Richmond currently the acting chief of special education the coordinator will supervise and coordinate all aspects of consent decree implementation mon monitoring and Reporting the consent decree coordinator will respond to complaints made about compliance with the consent decree she will work with building staff to address the complaint she will oversee a complaint log where calls and issues will be tracked to make sure that the issue is not systemic the district will report annually on its progress towards meeting the benchmarks and goals and reports will be posted on the district's website at ww ww. rcsdk12.org nnv rcsd at this link the public can also view all of the relevant documents to the consent decree and all of those documents will stay on our

058website while we are under the consent decree so that at any time anyone can visit our website and know what is going on under the consent decree next slide please when the district achieves all of the final disengagement goals as shown through regular reporting to Empire Justice Center and the court and the district remains in compliance with the goals for a year after achievement is verified by the court the district can request that the court release it from the lawsuit if the district does not meet all of the goals or fails to maintain compliance after achieving a goal there are procedures for coming back into compliance and those specific steps and procedures are outlined in the stipulation of settlement and the stipulation in full is posted on the website next slide please so I want

059to thank everyone again for all of their hard work and efforts uh in this endeavor and turn the presentation over to the attorneys from Empire Justice Maggie Jonathan and Carolyn thank you um I'll be very brief um my name is Jonathan Feldman I'm the legal director for the Empire Justice Center and I really just wanted to take a moment for for us to thank everyone involved really um so many people to thank but we're just going to focus on the attorneys um we'd first like to thank the attorneys for the Rochester City School District especially Allison moyer for all her hard work and dedication to the settlement as well as the attorneys Carl Kristoff Steve Carling and Yanda MOA Wade um thank you to all of them we'd also like to thank the people on

060our team especially Maggie Rob who you you'll hear from in a moment she's the lead counsel for Empire Justice on this case and she's done a tremendous job in pulling it all together um on our side we also we're also extremely grateful to Carolyn nusb who's a partner with the law firm Nixon Peabody for all of her hard work and dedication and expertise which has been really valuable and invaluable really for our efforts um also like to thank Jane Gabriel an attorney who was with Empire Justice and did a tremendous amount of work with our plaintiffs and finally last but not least like to thank Brian heatherington who many of you know for his work on this cause over many years and never fear he is still here he's still working on the case as

061a consultant so thank you to Brian as well um we're very excited about the substance of the stipulation of settlement and the forthcoming consent decree which you've already heard um a bit about um there's a long history of advocacy for students with disabilities and the Rochester City School District um I'm not going to go into that right now but we're happy to answer any specific specific historical questions you may have um after the presentation is over tonight we'll just focus our presentation on the current settlement and the lawsuit that was filed in July 2019 and the subsequent stipulation of settlement that brings us here tonight and I'd now like to turn the presentation over to our lead Council for Empire Justice Maggie Rob thank you Jonathan and thank you Allison and Yolanda as well and

062I just want to briefly say that I Echo the expressions of gratitude that uh all other parties have already discussed and I won't I won't um rehash all of that uh but I just want to get started and say that in this settlement the district has affirmed its commitment to meeting its legal obligations to students suspected of having disabilities to delivery of special education programs and services to students with disabilities and to the parents and guardians of those students as the district noted the plan to meet its obligations will be accomplished by the district by meeting a series of yearly measurable interum performance benchmarks and final disengagement goals and the district has already summarized those benchmarks and goals for you tonight so I'm going to speak briefly about the approach used to reach the settlement

063in the benefits of the settlement this settlement is based on a collaborative approach and recommendation made by the special advisory committee and included members of the community experts in the field District employees and Empire Justice Center Representatives the settlement sets goals and benchmarks to measure improvements expected from implementation of recommendations in several key areas the protracted litigation would take many more years years to complete and so all parties um believe that protracted litigation would further delay any Improvement in the delivery of special education programs and services to students during the ongoing litigation this settlement will more quickly provide students with disabilities and their parents the relief that they deserve and not delay that remedy during ongoing litigation the settlement could also possibly avoid significant financial cost to the district as you may be aware Empire

064Justice Center has agreed to wave attorney fees as long as the district meets its obligations under the stipulation of settlement and the consent decree in a timely fashion next slide please briefly I would like to mention a few specific and key outcomes this settlement hopes to achieve and will benefit students with disabilities and their parents this settlement requires the district to increase the involvement of parents of students with disabilities in the development of individualized education programs the settlement also requires the district to ensure that students with disabilities timely receive the programs and services on their IEPs and the settlement requires an increase in the percentage of qualified bilingual special education teachers next slide please we have talked mostly tonight about what this settlement does and I just want to take a very brief moment to

065talk about what the settlement does not do this settlement does not wave or limit any rights of any student with a disability or their parents or Guardian the settlement also does not involve issues connected to the closure of schools or remote and virtual education during the coid 19 pandemic finally we Echo the district's lawyers in stressing the positive relationship that has allowed this agreement to become a reality we were met with cooperation from the district which clearly which showed that they clearly wanted to move forward and ensure that students with disabilities receive appropriate Services we applaud the district district for the spirit of cooperation and we look forward to continuing to work with the district to ensure that this settlement is fully implemented and that all students with disabilities in the Rochester City School dist

066District have the opportunity to succeed next slide please I thank you all for the opportunity to present here tonight and we would all be happy to entertain any questions you may have thank you for the report and I'm looking at the uh participants screen are there any questions for the team uh commissioner LeBron yes thank you I just have two questions one I first and foremost I do want to thank everyone who's worked on this I know it's been an incredibly challenging um process to navigate through and certainly we're here because obviously we have not been doing what we are obligated by law to do so I want to put that out there but I do thank you all for the hard work and hopefully I will remain hopeful that um through this process that

067we do get to where we need to get to to provide the services for students with special education I don't like that it takes a court order to get there but um this has been a longstanding issue so nothing to do with the current Administration let me put that out there as well on record um just two things though that popped up one is um there was a consent decree coordinator to supervise some of this work and I just wanted to understand more about how that hiring is going to go and also um obviously I'm assuming the district will have to pay for that but I would like to understand um who's fiscally responsible and where that money would come from in our budget I'll stop there if you guys want to answer that first

068yes Allison sorry it took me a minute to unmute um I can um pull up the act the specific language from the stipulation if you give me a second but I can preliminarily answer your question by saying the consent decree coordinator is not meant to be in a role that is exclusive of other duties of employees at the district okay the stipulation was designed so that the chief of special education executive director director or associate director or other administrator with special education duties could be the coordinator um the only requirement would be that that person who is an employee of the district currently or someone else who the District could choose to have similar roles so the district could hire someone outside the district but they could also use an existing District district employee the

069person would just have to have the ability to supervise and coordinate or have um um duties such that they could put those things into place um but I could actually pull the specific language from the stipulation um Desiree Yolanda I or Justice folks I um do you have anything to add on that front no Allison I think I think you you've covered it um um the the coordinator needs to have sufficient skill and experience in special education um as well as be able to coordinate efforts to address the concern um so um that role requires the person to have the authority and the power to um make requests of District staff um and to expect liance with those requests okay I think then um this then falls under the superintendent to identify who that person

070is but also to ensure that it is public and we're transparent to our community around who that individual will be um so that our staff and our parents um both know just in case that there is any concerns that that is also another individual that they can bring some of their share their concerns with um my second question it has to do with um has the district identified the barriers um and I'm sorry I wrote them down while you guys were presenting um and then I wrote really tiny and I'm going blind so I apologize but has the district identified barriers that need um identified barriers to accomplish the goals that they that are within this consent decree um and I know that we've had a number of reports over the years around special education

071and the issues but I'm just curious internally if we've identified those barriers and what the solutions are to those barriers and I don't know if this group would have that answer at this moment um I'm okay as well with the superintendent in the future preparing um an update presentation to identify how the district is going to address those barriers but just curious as to what the bar barriers have been identified and the solutions to those barriers anybody are you asking for a response commissioner LeBron or at another time um I I don't know if if Dr marus can give a response or if that is a response from this group but I think I'll put this one on the board question log okay um Kia and I can email it to you if you'd like

072for the specific language um in the future I guess I am anticipating an update from Dr Meyers to the community on what are some of those barriers and solutions to those barriers that the district is how it's being implemented and who the um coordinator will be the first the first step um commissioner LeBron is this presentation needed to happen and then the rest as you said as far as making it very transparent excuse me and clear to the community the other thing is um Desiree has beg to lean in on those on those uh barriers and challenges and we we absolutely can provide updates to that thank you thank you any other questions any other questions thank you everybody we appreciate the presentation and I'm sure there'll be questions in the future thank you and

073have a good evening thank you very much uh the next item on the agenda is the president's report but he's not here one second uh vice president I'm sorry I have um Angelica here from more bilingual education Council oh my apologies certainly certainly Angelica oh you're muted un mute yourself Angelica okay hopefully I won't get disconnected um I'm covering for Mna she was having issues logging in as well let don't know what's going on with Spectrum so good evening Buenas noes um I am reading this report on behalf of Mna Gonzalez the president of the bilingual education Council thank you for this opportunity to share some of our Council activities we are bilingual parents community- based organizations Educators representing and advocating for the educational rights to equality bilingual education for our students in the district

074the council continues to actively advocate for equity and bilingual education in supporting the needs of our students and family during the pandemic and virtual learning in December due to the increased number of coid positive cases in our area we canceled our November and our November BC meeting and also our Christmas celebration instead we hosted a successful thankgiving Thanksgiving basket giveaway and a cat giveaway in December and had over 20 parents drive through um Miss Martinez the new um Deputy superintendent recorded a presentation um covering the December topics and that was posted on the bilingual Council um Facebook page and emailed to all parent representatives in January um we hosted our drive-thru three kings event that was also very successful toys were donated by the community and Nissan vision and food boxes were distributed um thanks

075to food link um we also distributed the remainder of the coats um that we had available at that time our parents continued to be very overwhelmed by the technology challenges supporting their children in their classroom in their class work and just managing daytoday they continue to express huge basic needs and great concerns over learning loss parents are worried about the vaccine School reopening safety measures but most importantly they are abil they are worried about the district's ability to meet the IEPs during this virtual learning period yesterday um Deputy um Martinez had the opportunity to meet with the DC parents and actually heard some very concrete examples of how e um I APS are not being followed so I just want to make sure I emphasized that um with the previous presentation several schools continue to

076not have their bilingual education Council Representatives as required by the BC bylaws it is important that each bilingual education have to BC parent representatives to help advocate for the needs of the parents and students in those schools we also received the unfortunate news that chel Blackman um resigned as principal for Monroe upper the BC is deeply concerned about the future of Monroe High School and the potential fallback of the progress made under Sandra's leadership with over 250 bilingual students at the Jan Monroe campus the C the council wants to remind the superintendent but more specifically the Board of Education of their responsibility to comply with the consent settlement in the BC bylaws the the bilingual education Council expects to be included in the selection process of a permanent principal in the past the BC has

077been consulted but most recently the BC was not engaged in interviewing or recommending the principal position at James Monroe lower School Monroe has been the leading school for bilingual students and the permanent principle needs to be highly knowledgeable in educ in bilingual education but also be able to engage the families in the community bilingual education has been unstable for many decades the pandemic has created an even greater educational gra gap for our bilingual students and Moro was the only solid foundation that the district had for bilingual education all thanks to Sandra's expertise and the commitment to her community we are at a loss we do completely understand her decision to leave the district and thank her for her commitment to our community our students and our family we wish her the best but she will

078be deeply miss that concludes the report on behalf of Mna Gonzalez muchas gracias and this is the report for January thank you thank you Angelica we appreciate the report uh the next item on the agenda is uh my report since the president is not here as chair of the uh equity and student achievement committee we had a pretty uh robust and exciting um meeting um last last earlier in this year um I early in this month I should say on January 12th we talked about student attendance uh we spotlighted mro High School uh which was a very um excellent report um special education transitioning planning and graduation a community schools and data and accountability and so uh we're looking forward to uh continuing the conversation around um improving attendance and getting strategies around that and

079strategies for chronic absenteeism the next Esa meeting is scheduled for February 9th at 5:30 and that concludes um my report and the next report is the finance and resource allocation committee report commissioner LeBron thank you I'm going to read it from my other screen so I apologize I should have printed but I don't want to waste paper on this because it goes on record um the finance committee report the finance committee convened on Tuesday January 19 2021 as committee of the whole via Zoom video conferencing the finance committee recommends the approval of the district's un audited December 2020 financial report and the second quarter change order report from October through December 2020 can I ask for a motion now on those so move seconded all those in favor I board clerk have you you got

080that Callie thank you got it um the finance committee discussions during the December meeting focused on a variety of topics and several discussions were entertained um we reviewed the new process for Resolutions and so we re we received January and February 2020 um Financial resolutions we reviewed januaries that we'll be voting on tonight December 2020 financial report and Trend analysis we also had a professional development presentation on the title funds and fiscal practices a review of the financial policy recommendations and updates reference the state monitors plans include the purchasing policy which is policy 6700 the budget policy which is policy number 61110 um or 6110 I apologize the new budget transfer policy 6150 and the fund balance policy 6500 following the review um small slight changes to the purchasing policy which included removing language um

081requiring us to do purchasing at correctional facilities and I want to remind the board that we did agree in that meeting to write a letter as a board and urge our state legislators to look at that law in New York state and to urge them to stop that requirement for school districts to have to purchase even if it's a nominal amount from state correction facilities so I'm hoping to get that letter drafted within the next two weeks and we'll circulate some draft through the board um for feedback so that we can get that out to our state legislators um the policies that were agreed to move out of the committee include our new budget transfer policy the um fund balance we moved that one to the January 26 meeting so we moved the new budget

082transfer policy the budget policy and the purchasing policy um for tonight's meeting for discussions one thing I did miss on Tuesday and it is under the new business is a some changes to our um budget calendar for the 2122 budget year and it is under new business tonight so I will discuss it with more detail then um and that concludes my report the next finance committee meeting is February 23rd 2021 thank you thank you commissioner LeBron uh commissioner P commissioner Powell NOP excuse me commissioner Malloy for the Governor's report commissioner M thank you good evening everyone let me just pull this up here wonderful yes the governance committee met for the first time in the new year as a committee of the whole on Tuesday January 5th 2021 uh the topics that we discussed during

083the meeting included an update presentation on the commissioner onboarding process and our standards of procedures um in order to address action items listed in the state monitors fiscal and academic plans uh District our district clerk Wade shared changes that have been made to enhance the onboarding process for our newly appointed Commissioners this process is closely aligned to policy 2510 which dictates the actions to be taken to orient new members to their role on the board our enhanced process Now features orientation-based meetings not just with the major departments and members of the administration within the district but also with the board's advisory groups as an added feature the board orientation process now also includes definitive timelines to allow for better tracking of completion our next discussion focused on the board liaison to preschool programs as many

084may know the board has a long-standing practice of assigning Liaisons to the district schools this allows for a unique relationship to be built between board members and the communities and schools that they serve however our preschools are traditionally not part of this process um in response to administration's identification of this Gap commissioner Adams has now been appointed as liaison to Rochester Early Childhood Center also known as the re Center and commissioner poell who is already the liaison to school number 33 will be the liaz on to their preschool program uh during the governance meeting we also discuss board resources traditionally the board utilizes the unabridged version of the Roberts rules as a textbook for board meeting proceedings um however acting general counsel carlen shared that it may be more useful to refer to the in

085plain English version of the text it sort of puts it all in layman's terms for us this version is more aligned to smaller boards such as our own and would be an asset in my opinion uh board members May purchase a copy for personal use or speak to board staff uh regarding acquiring a copy um in respect to time constraints the discussion item on Board of Education compensation related to resolution 20056 um 420 has been tabled to our February meeting so we will be revisiting this topic at that time and also provide a promised update on the board polling um survey uh device that we've been using our next governance committee meeting will be Tuesday February 2nd 2021 at 5:30 pm and that concludes the governance report thank you thank you commissioner Malloy commissioner Powell

086for the policy committee report thank you madam chair um the uh policy committee report for uh January is posted to Bardo but I will cover it briefly at and I'm GNA take them a little bit out of order um board staff presented provided an update on the policy manual update process we're going to try to uh review all the policies in our current manual over the span of three years and and we're doing that through bi-weekly uh subcommittee work um the next subcommittee will meet um next Wednesday um but and it will be covering special ad the policies um this is this process just began uh last week for the very first time so it was kind of a fits and starts um there's no product out of those subcommittee work uh meetings to present

087to the policy committee as yet in the meantime our acting general counsel uh Steve Carling um introduced to us the student voter registration policy which is policy 5605 um which is uh required by uh by law now um the committee members voted to advance this proposed policy um out of committee and it will begin the three-phase process and it is on the agenda later today under new business finally uh acting general counsel Steve Carling uh informed us that there are no new nisba updates that is to say no policies that are uh required of us to update because of changes in New York state law um that is a summary of our uh January TW um I'm sorry of our January 5th uh policy committee meeting of our next meeting is February 2nd at 5:30

088pm and that concludes my report thank you thank you commissioner power and before we get to the superintendent reports um commissioner Ricard commissioner Adams U you had a question yes I I just wanted to formally submit um to our board question log my concern with the placement of pairs in prek you know could the district make an effort to return the prek paas to their previous classes they were Teen um don't need to be trained again um and so I'm not sure what that process is or what the intentions is but could they get back to me and so that's that's what I wanted to do formally submit that to the question mark thank you all right thank you commissioner Adams commissioner Paul you have your hand up you have a question um yeah this

089hearkens back to the governance committee's uh report report I just wanted to ask uh commissioner Malloy uh being now one year into her board service and commissioner Clark who is going through this uh on boarding now if you could review um the policy that was just described um in the governance report committee report uh to see how uh relevant and pertinent is and whether having just gone through that on boarding uh whe the policy at stuff needs updating ordinarily we would put policies through the subcommittee work but you know policies that pertain exclusively to board service we need to attend to ourselves and uh I can think of no better people and no better time uh than right now to look at that um that onboarding policy thank you commissioner Powell so on to the

090superintendent reports Dr Dr Meer small thank you vice president Elliot good evening to all of our commissioners to our staff and those who are watching on Facebook and YouTube I Am Second uh Dr Meers I'm just bringing up your presentation right now great thank you had I am presenting Gomes first for some reason I don't know let me it's okay I'm presenting I can I can go and then we will catch up uh with Dr nm's report first Kia uh I had it that way but it's it's okay I'm it's coming up right now okay the other on so I'm providing January updates for my superintendent report I want to just start by saying certainly welcome back to our students approximately three of 300 students returned to our school buildings on January 5th as a

091part of phase one and it's certainly hard to believe um but up until that date I had only seen students in person at the r centers um since arriving back as Rochester's superintendent so you can certainly imagine my excitement visiting some of our students and staff on that first day and then subsequent weeks afterwards I want I want to thank everyone for their tremendous sacrifices their patience and their resiliency as we prepared for in-person learning on that very first day January 5th I was able to talk with multiple students and staff in several schools Wilson Foundation Wilson commencement school 28 29 and 33 I do look forward to our next phase of our reopening plan phase two when we welcome back students in grades prek through six to hybrid in-person um learning model the the

092pictures that are listed on my PowerPoint reflect my visits to Edison Tech and Wilson commencement which is my assigned school so similar to our commissioners who have a certain number of schools assigned to them every executive Cabinet member and central office staff member um have assigned schools to them in each of the phases I want to move now to graduation um our graduation rate data was released last week the New York State education department certified that our graduation rate for 2020 of August was 68.2% so this reflects a 5.2 percentage Point increase from 2019 which shows that our district certainly is on the right trajectory to help more students graduate even during a senior year that was complicated with the pandemic being in a remote learning environment the results do show an increase in graduation

093rates additionally 80% of our high school showed increases in graduation rates compared to August 2019 just specific subgroup data includes an 8.1% percentage Point increase for elll students from 4 2 2.6 to 50.7% a 7.1 percentage Point increase for black students from 62.6% to 69.7% a 5.8 percentage Point increase for economically disadvantaged students 59.8 to 65.6% uh four percentage increase for latinx students from 62.6 to is 66.6% a 0.9 percentage increase for students with disabilities from 47 to 47.9% and a 39% Point decrease in dropouts from 16.8% to 12.9% I have to say that our students certainly endured uh an unpr unprecedented excuse me school year that none of us could have expected and the this increase certainly is due to the collective work of our village in the in the Rochester Community so families

094students staff teachers and administrators I do want to point out however that this data points us to key information highlighting areas that require our specific and direct attention and enables us to focus better how to better educate our Scholars to ensure that their programmatic and their academic needs are being met increasing the graduation rate certainly remains our focus and it's a priority in our strategic plan and as we will continue to work on reducing and closing achievement gaps for our students with disabilities economically disadvantaged students English language Learners and our students of color next I want to talk about my goals um I have six goals that I presented to the Board of Education through our governance committee meeting there are six big goals which include student achievement accountability parent and Community engagement healthy Youth

095Development safety and discipline and diversity equity and anti-racism under those six goals I have a total of 36 subg goals of actionable actions for me to um to meet or hopefully exceed during the 2021 school year I just want to quickly just give you a few updates two for e one or two for each so under student achievement um our one of my goals was to ensure that our school department and District strategic plans were designed board reviewed and implemented there are 70 plans and all 70 have been reviewed and approved and we continued to move forward with implementation another goal which President White talks about often is to certainly make sure that the relationship between Rochester city school district and the East EPO with Dr under Dr Nels leadership so that relationship is strengthened

096and so Dr Nelms and I um meet monthly and we've increase that to twice a month um starting in 2021 our uh deputy superintendent Martinez Davis and Morris um initiated meetings with assistant superintendent uh Washington starting on January 7th and Kathy our chief academic officer Dr black um has uh set up meetings with East to uh talk about curriculum and um the academic program under accountability we uh I submitted a goal to develop the five-year financial plan with the CFO Chief Financial Officer and our state monitor that was board reviewed and approved um that was completed and we move forward I'll talk about that a little bit later in the plan also um I wanted to establish a principal think tank with meetings to increase the um relationship and the uh visib ability with principles

097even though we are in a remote environment so we have held weekly principal meetings on Friday mornings between a half hour and hour and we have had 13 meetings to date and my goal was to have at least 20 under parent and Community engagement my goal was to strengthen relationships with major parent groups and to at least have 10 meetings I have exceeded that goal I work with the parent engagement Collective under the direction of kadia Muhammad I've met with the bilingual education Council the BEC I've met twice to assist with the parent engagement in plan and to hear feedback I've met with the pcan group through Rock the future and I have by weekly meetings with Jackie Campbell um from the children's agenda we meet at 6:30 in the morning every uh every other

098week and we've had multiple meetings to date the other goal under strengthening uh parent and Community engagement is to increase our Partnerships with higher education I've met twice with the Brockport College Council MCC met with myself and our deputies to look at the pipeline between the Rochester City School District in MCC and we will we've already held a meeting and we plan to have addition meetings um I've met multiple times with uh not only Dr Cara finegan but also Dr Maneri from the University of Rochester and I also participate on the community engagement for racial Justice um ad hoc committee and we've met six times in the school year healthy Youth Development as our um our student represent representative annaya mentioned um one of the sub goals under that is to conduct student forums sponsored

099by the superintendent or in collaboration with other groups so I've met um a few times with the student leadership Congress we held um an event with uh Kim baton who is an Olympic medalist and she conducted a forum with athletes and there are multiple present uh opportunities that have happened at each one of our schools particularly at the secondary level um under safe and discipline um the comprehensive districtwide safety plan was uh board reviewed and um as we all remember we the Board of Education unanimously approve no approved the uh trans the SRO transition from the Rochester City School District so we have a plan that we are moving forward with to help make that transition smooth once our second AR students arrive in build in buildings in schools and then the last goal diversity

100equity and anti-racism um we are a proud member of the MBK or My Brother's Keeper and we have um implemented the Grant and we have that partnership with the city of Rochester and they hold monthly meetings to ensure that our Scholars who participate from the leadership academy that the things that we said that we would move forward in the grant actually happened and um just so our public knows I will be in February uh reviewing with the board much more fully those are just my goals but I have have other um expectations or targets to meet and I will be meeting with the board to discuss that in February I also want to share a racial Equity update um that area certainly is a both and situation in our district so we have an executive

101director for um Equity diversity social emotional learning and that's Elizabeth Reyes um but we also have committed as a district to ensure that racial Equity is um achieved in the district so a few things I just want to highlight Rock restorative team continues to um provide monthly training so book studies and PDS for staff and teachers on things like implicit bias anti-racism equity social justice Etc the team also meets and provides leadership opportunities to the Rock responders who serve as presenters and mentors to their peers over the past three years the district has organized and facilitated close to 200 professional development opportunities panel discussions book talks and conferences on implicit bias anti-racism Equity inclusion Etc this past month alone staff at schools 33 and 17 have either received training are providing training or have initiatives

102that are being developed specific to equity and anti-racism work and then Elizabeth Reyes who I mentioned and Crystal Clark the director of student support services are chairing the task force on ensuring an inclusive um caring and safe learning environment and they are using Resto practices to promote inclusiveness in our diverse uh School District they're working on also establishing training Norms so there's a lot of movement with our racial Equity uh progress in the district Co 19 which is something that we always are talking about we know that Monroe county is at about a 6.3 infection rate and that percentage is down Rochester uh City School District still is is in the orange Zone whereas um other places are in the yellow per New York State um guidelines and so when we're in the orange Zone

103you know that we must test 10% of our in-person total population every two weeks coid precautions and Protocols are required in schools which are masking social distancing coid screening and following the directions of the Monroe County Department of Health additionally um just want to talk a little bit about the co 19 vaccine we know that phase 1B includes uh prek through 12 Schools Monroe County has a a website where residents can check their eligibility and I think it's important that um we are working and partnering with not only the county and the state to try and make sure that um more vaccinations are available in our region um but we don't um oversee or control the vaccinations we are partnering with others to make sure that that is smoothly so I would encourage others to

104continue to check the website for your eligibility and to sign up we also have Co 19 testing available at the following locations the other thing that I think it's important to share is that um we have heard public comment there has been um emails and other correspondents about concerns about Rochester City School District reopening in phases one two and three so I sent a letter today to the health and safety group of the fingerlakes reopening schools task safety safe task safety task force excuse me asking for them to complete an independent audit of both our reopening plan as well as our facilities because out of an abundance of caution and care so someone independently would do that that letter went to Joanne Anoni the district superintendent for Monroe 2 we have asked for an expedited

105process for individuals um locally and nationally to review our plan so I wanted to make sure that that was an update hybrid and remote academic updates that's another um area that we are moving forward with and uh I know that there continues to be concerns about how to do that successfully and with integrity so the office of teaching and learning or the department of teaching and learning is working to build that teacher capacity around simultaneous instruction using best practices uh not only locally but across uh also the country there has been professional development that was delivered on January 13th again on the 20th and the 27th and so we're continuing to try and make sure that those resources are available and that our teachers feel comfortable as we move forward with phase two with more

106students in phase three um a teaching and learning update we continue to uh dive very deeply into the curriculum and so again that work is being led by Dr Black in the department of teaching and learning in science um we have uh updated the the toolkit to reflect the New York State uh science learning standards and to provide access for curriculum and pacing guides relative to science social studies is currently working to upgrade the district's k6 curriculum we're also the dep department has um reviewed the materials that are existing and are working to uh include potential re resources including Buffalo's black lives matter curriculum it to incorporate into our social studies curriculum in ela there's been a lot of work in k6 68 and 912 so there's been a heavy focus in emphasis on aligning

107curriculum and cfas which are common formative assessments with the prioritized lessons in our new um literacy program and then again in math the K12 curriculum is being aligned to New York state standards and to address the unfinished learning during the Co 19 period common assessments are currently being aligned and guidance documents are continually being developed under Dr Black's leadership with her team the other update two more updates um the state independent monitor plan Dr Jello as you know works with the Rochester City School District we specifically work with her on the academic plan and the fiscal plan there are 50 5 recommendations that the board approved for the fiscal plan and 53 recommendations for the academic plan we are required to report to the state and commissioner quarterly as well as have regular meetings with

108the New York State Department of Education ways that we are addressing the independent monitor plan is policy modification or creation um task force development reviewing and modifying our current systems and structures we work regularly with Dr Jello and she participates in multiple meetings every day and week with school and District staff as well as community members the last second to last item is H A celebratory one and that is to congratulate um Wilson Foundation Academy we just recently found out that under the leadership of Dr deer Matthew Wilson Foundation Academy has been authorized to offer the international Balor or IB primary years or pyp program for students at that school in grades k36 the program is for children aged 3 to 12 and it works to nurt nurture and develop students as caring active participants

109in a lifelong journey of learning through a student centered approach to education I have to note that um when the authorization visit happened which was not too long ago commissioner Adams participated um with this with the visit along with myself and Dr Black and that was a very positive and healthy conversation we know that the uh WFA already offers the middle years's program for students in grade seven and eight and that um and it continues with Wilson commencement in grades 9 through 10 and then Wilson commencement Academy offers the IB diploma program for grades 11 and 12 so now we are able to offer a K12 IB experience for our Scholars to transition from Wilson Foundation Academy to Wilson commencement this is a tremendous accomplishment and we need to give major to Dr Matthew and

110her team for for garnering this PR this extremely prestigious designation and this designation will allow our Scholars to have a plethora of opport academic social emotional and other opportunities commencing at a very young age the final thing is I just want to recognize our school board this is School Board recognition month so we want to offer a special thank you to our our Rochester Board of Education Commissioners you work incredibly hard put in countless hours uh in front of the scenes behind the scenes so we just want to say thank you we certainly appreciate the work that you do on behalf of our of our Scholars and our staff vice president Elliot that concludes my report thank you madam superintendent um I have a couple of hands for questions for you madam superint we'll start

111off with commissioner commissioner Malloy sure Malloy thank you so much vice president Elliott um more so than questions just uh just a few comments just about reopening um in general I you know I have to thank you Dr Meers small for just the amount of work that you and your administrative team have put in just what you continue to do um during this this tumultuous time this challenging time and so I I thank you for that work I can only imagine the logistical nightmare that that you're working through um and so I want to say thank you very much uh just to you know preface my comments and so I do thank you and your team I do have a few concerns um just about the instructional aspects of our return plan for phases two

112and three um and and just please remember that as we're we're getting ready for this this return Please be cognizant of the fact that it's our Educators who are are bearing the brunt of this crisis um in addition to helping with you know their own kids educational needs we as Educators we're we're in crisis and we are we are overwhelmed um during this time so just please remain cognizant of that um I am concerned about the survey that went out a month ago um this survey in part resulted in 70% of our families choosing remote as their preferred instructional model um and then subsequent information came out about how instruction would occur and that has many families wishing to change their minds um at this time um just when we were offering hybrid you know

113only two days a week versus you know in other communities they're able to split the kids in half and do half the kids on two days and then the other half on um the other two days so it's um in regards to that so however you know now that some parents have changed their minds wanting to go now to the hybrid model or plan um I'm hearing reports that we can't accommodate these families um so we've essentially created a hybrid plan that is only accessible by half of our students um and for me this is very inequitable and I feel like we need to address this as soon as possible um I think we also need to consider the switch and instruction that we are asking our teachers to adopt midye um we are asking

114teachers to simultaneously teach this remote all of our remote and hybrid students and I I understand that it's a staffing issue um but I'm I'm concerned about teachers not having the technology that they need to make this possible um so quickly at least um so we need to make sure that we can make this a reality for for our teachers and then additionally I'm I'm also hearing reports that students in the hybrid plan are not going to be allowed to bring their Chromebooks to school on hybrid days out of the fear that perhaps the Chromebooks will be broken in transit from home to school um and I feel like that fear cannot drive our instructional model um students absolutely must have this access otherwise you know what's the point of our onetoone Tech initiatives or

115efforts so that's just my opinion more than anything else but I feel like we've got to make sure we're utilizing the technology that we've worked so hard to incorporate into our instruction um finally I I also encourage the district to just remain flexible about some of the health fears expressed by our teachers and um consider allowing teachers the four hours of paid time if necessary to travel to get the coid vaccine um this is reflective of a push for workers Statewide by by Governor Cuomo and so I just ask that we um consider that for for our own workers um I just want to express that I remain committed to high quality and rigorous instruction across this district and we must consider that the the best circumstances under which we can make this happen for

116our students and families um I I just want to also make sure that we're working very closely uh between the district and East High School um I feel that perhaps East High School has accessibility that other students in the district don't have um and I just want to make sure that we can make a push for more academic equity and accessibility districtwide thank you thank you commissioner Malloy um commissioner poell thank you madam chair um my question was prompted Madam superintendent by your your slide that had the three the six Focus areas the last of them being the um equity and uh anti-racism um I'm one and you know now that I'm newly appointed the chair of the policy committee I see everything through that lens um I'm wondering have you met with the real

117team or have you reconstituted it recently ly uh since you have the authority to appoint Community you know members both staff and community members um H have have you um have you utilized the real team at all we're actually meeting on Monday the 25th from 5 to 7 PM well how convenient of me to ask that question um the one of the charges of that committee is to uh develop an action plan and Implement policy 2011 and you know the work plan for the policy committee doesn't even come close to uh reviewing policy 20 2011 but if you were uh if that were to be an agenda item just to give it a glance over and see if it's still appropriate and and comprehensive enough I'd really appreciate that okay thank you thank you commissioner

118po commissioner LeBron thank you vice president Elliot um so a couple of things and I don't have anything of formal speech typed up but I do have some quick notes based on your presentation one I the model um for teaching and learning right now this dual hybrid and online I remain concerned about the doability of that type of model um and I'm also concerned you know selfishly so for my fourth grader and how her teacher is going to in person keep her attention and then also those of her peers on a computer screen um but more so I'm actually going to formally request a video demonstration to this board and this community on what that model would actually look like before February 8th so that this board can understand what we are asking our staff

119to do and what we are asking kids to do in a classroom and if you need a child to volunteer I volunteer Sophia who is a very difficult child for her teachers to manage I know because I'm in I'm at home with her every day and I know when she's muting that screen and doing other things because I don't hear her teacher talking but I would like a visual demonstration of that to this board before February 8th um I am concerned that there was information shared about stav ability to um take a leave of absence I know that there were a number of of passages with the car act that did U extend some additional privileges for those who were U not able to come to work um and take family medical leave because of

120coid but that my understanding has now expired I don't know if our new President Biden will extend that um but I have concerns so I would like some clarity around that and Dr Meers Smalls that Clarity does not have to come tonight verbally I actually would like to see it in writing so if Kia you can document that on the board log and then I have another request for the board log tonight just based on some of the resolutions um and I'll have some comments on some resolutions later but I would like to understand how professional development for this district is developed approved the process um I know that there's a teacher Center we also offer PD I would like that in writing to understand um from the conception of it through the what the

121process is of implementation offering um when an individual in our district signs up for it how they are compensated for it where those funds come from um and that'll be more related to something coming up later but I know that you mentioned and some PD that will be offered and it it just kind of piqu my interest um to put that out there now commissioner LeBron I just had a one question when you say you want a video demonstration of a teacher teaching um it could be a teacher teaching it can also be um Miss Black herself who's in charge of teaching and learning to demonstrate to this board what that actually would look like with a student and like I said I'm going to volunteer one of Mr Adams kids if he don't um

122they could be the virtual learner and Sophia could be the imperson learn I will bring her to the district if you guys want to record her in that multi-purpose room um but I do want a visual of what that's going to look like for a staff person to have students in the classroom online um and ideally with the equipment that they are actually using so I will say that too um and while I would love for us to give all of our staff all of the equipment that they need um I don't think F fiscally we're in a position to do those purchases so how do you manage that as well hi I just sorry to interrupt I just want to point out that uh vice president Elliott had to leave and so uh the

123meeting uh chairing will move over to uh commissioner poell as um indicated by uh President White okay uh thank you uh Madame clerk uh commissioner LeBron are you complete through your questions yes and uh uh superintendent are you satisfied you understand her concerns I do I I I think so I might have to I might Circle back uh commissioner LeBron okay um uh and your report is complete Madam superintendent uh in that case I'll turn the floor over to our East Tha superintendent uh Dr Nels you're on mute mut I just thanking you all thank you Commissioners for allowing us to present tonight I typically um have a shorter presentation but we've been kind of delaying some things and I want to take advantage of tonight um to introduce a team of folks from East

124who are going to walk us through the curriculum when we when we presented a couple months ago we got quite a bit of feedback from uh teachers throughout rcsd as well as um throughout the region who surprisingly watched the board meetings at night so and they were asking us to um how can they access uh some of the lessons and some of the curriculum and so tonight I'm going to uh have Dr Wilson who is our lower School uh uh principal grade 6 through eight and Quinton mitro who's a lower school teacher who's been at East I believe quit now all five years at East I think he was hired um his first year at East and going to walk through uh one of the lessons that we are going to have highlighted and um

125and and open for folks to use on a new website that we've developed with a local technology company uh so I'm going to turn over to Dr Wilson who will walk us through the first part of the presentation there'll be a short uh video about the website um and then I'm going to end with the discussion on our gradu tion uh data for this past August Dr Wilson great thank you so much Dr NS and the board of education for having us this evening you can go ahead Tom or is it um thank you so much all right go ahead so I'll be speaking to you tonight about our culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy at East as Dr NS has shared um with you in the past much of the work that has happened at

126the EPO since we came in 20 5 has surrounded curriculum writing um when when we arrived there really was no curriculum available to us and so um much of our work has been spent doing that as we continue to refine our curriculum we are doing this through a culturally relevant and responsive pedological lens go ahead so our process at e started with a visioning process that included the voices of all St stakeholders we then engag the services of Dr Sonia James Wilson a local consultant and with support of Dr James Wilson our school Community has engaged in book studies professional learning and um for both teachers and administrators and through that work our teacher leaders and our administrators have been giving feedback to our current units as well as lessons delivered in the classroom go

127ahead so the vision of crrp at the EO and it's important to Define this because as you as you um do research on uh culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy you'll find different definitions so it's important for your school Community to embrace a um a shared Vision about what crrp is and so for us at East it we acknowledge that students learn differently and that these differences can be connected to their unique identities culturally relevant and responsive teaching at East recognizes student identities it includes gender ability disability religion sexual orientation socioeconomic status race ethnicity language and nationality and it takes these into account to enhance teaching and learning at East we strive to create a school environment where all individuals are valued cared for and respected for their full full selves go ahead crrp at East

128has five facets and board members I believe as part of your docs your board docs you have a copy of our crrp analysis chart which goes into these five facets at a deeper level but they include relevant curriculum responsive practices positive social and emotional development go ahead complex and critical thinking and empowerment self-efficacy and initiative we use those f assets to review our um curriculum go ahead that's fine and so as we've been doing this work and as Dr Nels mentioned we've heard both locally and nationally that some some um Educators struggle with how to embed crrp into their units and so as you know we want to make our curriculum widely available not only to Rochester but to anybody who is interested and so be because of that we have created a website go

129ahead and our website will be live um at the end of this month but we want to give you just a little snippet from our web designer chip so if you could play the video that we sent to you my name is chib and I am the founder and co-owner of chib designed it a Rochester base web design company we were tasked with developing a website called elevated educator that will meet the needs of teachers across the country to deliver unit plans that are culturally relevant to students of color this website is not your nor directory it's a little bit more vibrant however we're going to learn how to use it appropriately once you land on elevated educator you can go ahead right to the top right corner of the website and type in a

130category grade or information that you're looking for in the search box for for example math you typee in math and you will see options for mathematics come down if you can see you can see a few options but if you want to see all options all you have to do is Click search all now before we do that we'll scroll down and see the site a little bit here you'll learn a little bit about the site just a snippet as you read you'll see information about Educators cultureal relevancy and pedagogy when you scroll further down you'll learn more about the team the people who turn this Vision into reality first is the eaff who developed all of these unit plans and then there's the administrators who help put all this together and then we scroll

131further down you'll see the spotlight in the spotlight you'll learn about one person or people who have been positively impacted by the unit plans in play so when you scroll further further down you'll see the search now again here you can search once again for what you're looking for and then you'll be able to see everything that meets your criteria now let's scroll back up as we scroll up you'll see index on the index when you click it you'll see every single unit plan available to you now instead of scrolling to Infinity what we've done is Implement filters that will allow you to sort by grade subject and language so for example if we click grade 11 the subject is US history and then we filtered by language Let say English we'll find that one

132unit plan meets our criteria you can read a little bit about the unit plan and then you can click the explore button and when you do that you will be sent to the unit plan's full page at this full page when you read a little bit about it some more you can scroll down and when you hover over the download unit plan you'll be able to download the full unit plan upon when you get to the download page you'll be able to download the unit plan with this button right here and then if you want to go back all you have to do is click the picture and when you click the picture you get sent back back to elevated educator home site we hope that this website meets all of your needs and surpasses

133them and it was our joy and pleasure to deliver this to you thank you from Chip [Music] design I disregard and never take advice it's either I'm get it wrong or I'm get it right thank you so much for um playing that video and as we said that will be live at the end of this month for everyone to use I brought with me today one of our teachers uh Quinton Mitchell and so if you could just go forward quinton's going to take over the presentation so you can hear from him hi good evening I'm just GNA pull up the shared screen so I can look at that at the same time okay uh my name is Quinton Mitchell I am a seventh grade social studies teacher at East lower school um and today I

134want to talk to you about how I've been able to incorporate CRP um at the unit and lesson level you go to the next side please so so this is just a brief overview of the seventh grade course at East Low School uh which has been evolving uh since I've been at East for the past six years now um so really from a chronological perspective uh we start with looking at resistance to colonization which is the unit that I'm going to talk to you a little bit more on in the next coming slides and we take students through the end of the Civil War so that's just to give you some context for what the seventh grid course is made up of go to the next slide please uh so these are the understanding um

135or the Big Ideas and the essential question or the foundational question that actually drives the unit uh so the two big ideas that we have for this unit our European desire to obtain and maintain political and economic power in colonial America led to the oppression of non-white people so we really focus in on Native Americans and people of African descent and more importantly our second understanding uh that resistance to that oppression has taken many forms and has evolved over time so the question that we have students think about um is does history repeat itself and if so what does that mean for current and future Generations so really what we're asking students is are there these patterns to the oppression these groups have faced but also the resistance they've used and once we can acknowledge

136that what should be done what comes next you can go to the next slide please so this is going to talk about the key content and skills for this unit so kind of like I mentioned earlier uh this unit has shifted um from my time as an earlier teacher till now which I'm still young in my career uh but I've gone from more of a eurocentric view of this time period um to focus more on really the oppression faced and the resistance used by Native Americans and people of African descent so really you can see in the content we really look at those two patterns beginning and colonization all the way to present time also at East we use the understanding by Design or the ubd model to plan our units uh which really gives

137teachers a flexibility of being able to prioritize the content and skills um that they're giving their students uh to serve them best and really a goal for us in the social studies department at the lower school as far as skills are concerned um are really improving and sharpening students ability to gather use and interpret evidence can go to the next slide please so this is our curriculum EMB bettered performance task uh which is really just a fancy way of saying a summi of assessment for this unit so curriculum better performance task is a little bit different from other summi of Assessments uh because it gives students opportunities to practice working with the key content the key skills and any questions they'll be assessed on prior to starting the performance Tas so typically you would teach

138your content and then once you get to the end you'd have students do whatever you have for the project but this just really gives them opportunities to be successful earlier and hopes that that will transfer at the back end so again that's still the same essential question that students would actually create their claim off of and then Supply supporting evidence and Analysis to support that to the next slide please so what I wanted to do to kind of end uh the presentation is really share with you a very high quality example of student work um there were a lot of great uh presentations that students made but this was one that really kind of stuck out to me so I just want to read a few excerpt from some of the students work uh so

139this student believes that history repeats itself due to the patterns of Oppression faced and the patterns of resistance used by people of African descent you can go to the next slide please so one of the first tasks students had to do um all of the actual lessons that we had the content lessons it kind of was a piece of the puzzle so each lesson gave students information about either the oppression that one of those groups faced or some of the strategies of resistance that they use so this student chose to compare the conditions experienced by enslaved Africans during enslavement to the condition experienced by African-Americans during the hder segregation in this country and the way we have students Analyze That evidence is through them make that connection across time so on the very bottom the

140student wrote these examples are connected because they both fac conditions or were very horribly treated just because they're not white and they are people of color slavery was 100% worse than segregation but they both happened to people of color and have happened for the longest period of time it took a lot of strength dedication and perseverance to get through those types of situations so what this student I really wanted to keep her original work uh because as you can see as the next couple slides I feel like her emotion really came through um with this you can go to the next slide please so the next task that students had to do to balance that oppression they also had to talk about what strategy of resistance has this group used so this student chose to

141compare rebellions that were carried out by enslaved Africans during enslavement uh to the Civil Disobedience that was a defining characteristic of the civil rights movement of the 1940s and 50s so this student connected them by saying uh these situations of resistance are similar because they both did what they thought were right at the moment even if it ended up in them getting hurt or arrested or breaking a few laws they knew it was for the better of the world that's all that mattered to them they've also done these things to show everyone else how they are better than what everyone what everyone else sees them as excuse me hopefully a lot of other people will join in and it'll start to become International and a change will actually begin to occur you can go to

142the next slide please so the final part of this project where we really had students who they're still in seventh grade so most of this is actually brand new for them um but we really wanted to give them a chance to think about what kind of action can be taken to uh take steps to achieve equality so not that equality will be achieved what will those steps look like so I just want to read a few quick excerpts from her work so the student said that I think we should try as hard as we can to overcome it meaning that the war and the fight our ancestors did to try to make the earth a better place for us we should continue to fight that until we overcome it with flying colors we shouldn't give

143up until that war is won so the Earth won't be as hypocritical and as discriminated as it is I think something should be done about the oppression I think this because whether you like it or not we are all human beings and should all be treated the same no matter our differences and not everyone is perfect I think you should continue to use your voice and our power that we have to make sure that sooner or later Earth will change for the better and we should never give up it would help African-Americans a lot because then we will finally be looked at the same as non-p people of color and hopefully that will get rid of a lot of the oppression that we still face you can go to the next slide please um so

144this is just a small glimpse of some of the curriculum writing work that I've been able to do um but there are a lot of other teachers at East who are really becoming a lot more versed in incorporating CRP whether it's a unit level um or whether it's the lesson level um or really just our interactions and the conversations that we have with students um so if you would like to further discuss how I've been able to incorporate s RP or to see any other copies of instructional materials um or really to see any other examples of student student work that is my email address and I wanted to say thank you for your time Quinton thank you so much for sharing with us it's so important for us to see um the the transfer

145of I'm so sorry my children are bursting at the door to come in here right now um to see the transfer of the work that's happening in the classroom to students real life so I truly appreciate that and let me mute myself and hand it over to Dr NS before they break down the door you have to see her children are absolutely beautiful and they're hilarious too they're active um so I want to first by thank uh thanking Quinton for representing himself and the teachers and staff at East um he's absolutely right part of this part of the reason for East um and U of our partnering was to uh truly build capacity within the staff so no matter if you of our is there or not the staff continues to work because it's part

146of the things they've created we also decided a long time ago not to buy a canned product because there's no investment from the teacher and the creation of that so uh we spent a lot of time with the board support and assistance to to create these culture responsive and sustaining um uh uh units and lessons and just very pleased to be able to have that made available to whomever um this is you know this is the district's uh product these are teachers products and uh our goal is to make sure that every school every class and every uh room in this country will have lessons that reflect students who sit in front of them and this is one this is our contribution towards that I also want to thank chib uh the Local web design

147designer um being someone who I would consider myself being technologically uh uh Limited at times he was very patient and and really uh worked hard to ensure that we honored um the work of the teachers we honored the sample work of the students and that we created a safe space for teachers to gather and learn about um different ways to represent uh the culture that's often missing from history books I think many of you heard me say this in the past our curriculum is our moral contract with our community and uh I think it's a moral when we don't make a conservative effort to have um uh folks of color represented um within the the fabric of of this this great society and that includes all other individuals also so before I let Quinton and

148uh Dr Wilson uh leave are there any questions for them all right seeing none I am going to say thank you Dr Wilson th as and uh and Quint Mitchell have a great night say good night to T thank you alrighty um I'm gonna continue on the presentation and go on graduation rates because we this is this time of year and we typically do this and I'm going to um run through these these data um we're g to as as um we often do we give a lot of data we have discussions um with the board after that we'll also provide additional documents to the board if they want to go super granular in the data so we tried to kind of match the granular level of the data and also keep it big picture

149so I'm going to move fast because uh I think um Dr Myers and I Smalls and I probably took more time tonight than we were participating um so uh the first slide is just the trajectory over time of the graduation rates again I want to thank our teaching staff our students our parents are having faith in the curriculum and really allowing us to um to kind of work it over over the years as you all know before we came to East the graduation rate was 29% and you've seen a steady increase the purple line represents the August graduation rate so we've moved from the 33% um graduation rate to 78% this past August we're very happy and pleased with that and I also want to acknowledge the University of Rochester for its support and guidance

150during that process next slide we also quickly show the the the the dropout rate the dropout rate is really important it's particularly when you look at 2014 15 and 2016 17 just to remind the board we what we discovered when we got to East is there was a practice of keeping students on their enrollment on the roster and that was done so that if you have if you show a certain number of kids then placement may not put more kids into the building and so there were a number of kids we call ghost kids back then I think remember that term I kept using there are kids who were on the books that never existed and so we work with the State education department in 201617 to actually go through and do an audit of

151all of our students and we found a great new number of students who had attended School in like three or four years who were still on the roles and that's when we started partnering with uh some area uh Community Partners with need and iau to help trying to help those students transition into other uh parts of their adult lives because they were some of these kids we hadn't seen for three years and we just really didn't want to drop them the first two years until we found them but State education department work with us on the process to give them a pathway and I also mentioned that because often people will say well you're grad your number of this student dropped this number of student dropped and it's showing that you know there's a huge

152decrease the reality is those kids are never there and so I think being very honest and starting with a clean uh Baseline of data is uh was very important for us you'll see that reflected in the subsequent slides next um again this is just an overview of what I just spoke to um I'll go to the next slide time just kind of save some time here here you'll see the board um this is a pretty a pretty involved SL I want to give it to you by category and subgroup so you'll see that um uh over the years the number how the demographics at East look from all students being the far left down to ever else just for just for clarity for those listening swd is students who disabilities elll are English um English

153uh Learners Ed is economically disadvantaged and ever L's are students who at some point receive Services um based on language and sometimes times kids will get it for one or two years and they'll kind of uh um they'll be they be they're in the US long enough to no longer require those services and so some of those students are still struggling with literacy they know just enough to not get U mandated services so we still support those kids um at East as well but you'll see how that cohort data changes and again I draw your attention to that 17 18 years when we actually had to clean the data so you see some drastic changes um within the data that's probably the year where the enrollment was actually accurate um in terms of kids who

154are actually attending and so you see those numbers um increasing in some of those categories moving from 201718 to current this just it's just again it's a lot of data but I wanted to kind of share that with you this is really important here the graduation Trend by accountability subgroup so how are kids doing within the subgroup from 1415 to 201920 I'll just take one line and you can actually uh look at the rest yourself so for black students at e so the graduation rate was 38% in 201415 last year the graduation rate was 85% so that's a 47 percentage Point difference between the first year at East uh sorry the year before East and then and now so you see it's significant across all subgroups and I'm really excited when I get to you

155the type of uh of diplomas that these folks these kids earned also next slide so this is the diploma type by subgroup so here you would see uh the local diploma which we discussed at the board meeting in the past on that going to go over that again you'll also see the region diplomas you'll see the change in the type of diploma types that kids are um are earning also something I'm extremely proud of and continue to be proud about because we're seeing that the level of standard has increased particularly because of the curcum that we're using and looking at kids from grade six to grades 12 and building on their literacy skills and their numeracy skills you start to see the impact of kids achieving at much higher levels at the end of 12th

156grade um this is not what you would typically see um in in large Urban settings you typically see the number skewed the other way um and again we're just extremely proud and I I would say that it's the hard work of the teachers it's to buy in uh kids teachers students and parents buying in but it really really really anchors and centers on our curriculum it's a spiral curriculum from grade 6 to 12 it's consistent so if you walk into two algebra classrooms you'll see very similar lessons teachers C the Art and Science to you know shake it up a little bit but by but for the most part we're able to track data meaningfully because teachers are doing similar things not exact they're not robots but these are this curriculum they actually created as

157a team so we teach our algebra lesson it's all the algebra teachers meeting during their collaborate planning time developing the lessons and developing assessments and then coming back the next week and looking at the assessments and say how did our kids do let's say all the kids um incorrectly answer question three we can't say that's the kids issue it's a curricular issue because every everyone failed it so we can't say all the kids don't know it so the teacher was like yeah we did something different here or wrong here we're going to catch up with this skill in the next unit and so it is a recursive and cyclical cycle and um folks like Dr Susan Meyer who's a academic officer she put tons of time in making sure this is uniformed across the board

158and uh individuals like Jen ree who uh is our U professional development coordinator it's all align so that we are going back and visiting our teacher leaders and our admins and our our staff next Slide the next slide is uh just again another illustration of the diploma type over time and so this is what I'm saying when you see the local diplomas in yellow and the regions in purple you'll see from the first year where the graduation was 33% 79% of those diplomas were um regions 21% of those are local diplomas you fast forward to 201920 of the 78% of the uh 78% graduation rate 91% of those diplomas are regions and 9% are local that's what you want to see and that that that's more align with what you would see in a Suburban

159uh uh World setting uh throughout the county you see that purple big and the yellow smaller and uh again this is just diploma type by subgroup I've already kind of gone through this but I want to make sure you have it in different ways because I know we get different questions we do this presentation every year you'll see I'll go back to the black category again you'll see there was a 10% drop in local diplomas a Reliance on that and there's been an increase um when you look at that over the course for over a 5year period um with these individuals this is a fiveyear snapshot of Beast and how the numbers have moved all right and that's it sorry I had to go fast but I know you guys have been listening to us

160for about an hour now and I didn't want to drag that out so I appreciate it again we can ask more questions um offline or we can have some questions now but I really really really want to tell the board you have supported this process of professional development and curriculum development um over the last five years and you're starting to see the fruits of of your labor and uh and I appreciate that and so do the community at East thank you thank you Dr NS you have a couple of questions uh commissioner Clark I'll go with you first yes thank you and thank you Dr NS uh pretty impressive results I did have a question not I noticed that uh on one of the charts students with disabilities it actually decreased significantly from 14 20145

161I think from almost 20% to 14% now is that due to a different way in which you assess the students or what do you attribute that to client which is a good thing but what do you attribute that to well what what happened was in the first I tried to explain this and I you know I'm always respectful of the past at East because I don't want to like make it seem like things are horrible before we got there because if we're not there's really hardworking people doing incredible things um but what happened was um so let's say you have a capacity in your building for a thousand students I'm G usey thousand students and you know that 400 of those students don't come to school and that's the that remember that dropout rate was

16241% so that's about right so of a thousand kids 400 of those kids weren't coming to school you knew that if I don't tell placement that these kids need to be dropped then place is not going to put in another 400 kids because that would put us at400 so the enrollment was showing that there were a thousand kids attending East when in fact there's only about 600 kids attending I'm making I'm using thousand as a num for easy math okay there's only 600 kids well you can imagine which kids made up the 400 who who were dropped out a large number of those kids were elll kids or English uh English learning kids and our special education students and our black mens so we knew those kids weren't coming so although that percentage looks High

163that's just who the kids were on the books and we work with the State education department for the first two years because we were at a we were at a a pivotal place I'm like I don't want to drop these kids I don't know who they are we got to try to find them they were hurting us on our daily attendance we were being deemed by the state because our attendance was low because those kids weren't showing up and then we were being deemed by the dropout rate every year because this mass number of kids were being dropped out um yearly and so we worked with the state and they said we're going to clean it this year this is your new Baseline that so once we cleaned it those numbers in 1617 um I

164believe it was those honestly that was probably represented 178 that was probably the uh the data that represented where East truly was as a school as opposed to the the data before that was inflated and not active and so um if those in the board remember this the first few years we returned quite a bit of money because we didn't have to sta classroom because kids weren't there and so I didn't like over spending in the school because there were no kids sitting there and so when people say oh you're gradu your student disabilities number Dro do your l number Dro do your girl I I understand it on paper what that looks like but when you walk in the building every day and you noticeably see 40% of your kids not there it makes

165a difference and and I think so the bigger question is why did we have that practice prior to EPO and um and and how do we prevent that moving forward and I I know the district has been working on that even for having accurate attendance and working placement so that's the percentage difference you see there but then you also see within those categories you see that the number of kids who are graduating within those categories has in some cases tripled and doubled so oh thanks question I'm happy to ask that question because every year I have to explain it and and and sometimes people don't want to accept the answer but the answer is consistent so okay thank you thank you commissioner LeBron yep and my response is consistent and so I just want to

166say that for a number of years both Edison and Monroe ended up with those elll students and those special education students and I I I didn't even want to rehash this because it's being thrown out there like these students didn't exist they absolutely existed and they were absolutely transferred intentionally out of East and stuffed into Edison as we cut Edison's budget which is something that we've continued to do year after year as a board so something to think about as we go into this budget cycle um and Sean you can shut up that's not true I didn't interrupt you I I could have interrupted you and said that you're lying because again multiple times on records I have repeated this I have shown data as well I just want to put it out there we

167can have our district present those same numbers when East is dropping in those populations where those students went on record in other schools I can I can have Administration pull that data up for this board and Community to see I I didn't raise my hand to argue and go back and forth though what I want to do in the future is make a request for this type of presentation to be done in the Essa committee um although I appreciate that this is how we've always done these types of presentations in the past in the board business meeting we reenacted and re brought out the Essa committee for this this purpose intentionally to look at data and have the opportunity to have really focused more in-depth conversations about teaching and learning the data the models and

168so I'm making that request tonight um and commissioner vice president Elliott This falls on you as the chair but I'm asking my colleagues to also consider that this type of in-depth conversation transfers over to the esa committee um and the other and final request is that I also in the future want to see raw data in terms of numbers versus the percentages so that I also have an understanding um year-to-year comparison what those percentages means because I do know that you know in in sometimes the raw data also tells a different story in terms of actual numbers versus the percentages with that I'm done all right thank you commissioner LeBron uh commissioner Malloy thank you vice president Elliot um yeah I just wanted to request and this is this isn't so much of a a

169request of Dr Nelms but more uh the district as a whole I would like to have the ability just to look at such data so I need a side by-side comparison of all of our schools broken down in the way that that I saw the East information broken down so if that's something I don't know if we can put that on the question log but um I'm a visual person I need to see it broken down and that way uh by school um the way that we were presented this evening and and yes perhaps that is a conversation for the Essa committee but I would like to see the data presented in that way thank you thank youy uh commissioner Powell um thank you um commissioner LeBron asked you uh Madam chair to uh facilitate

170moderate negotiate whatever her question uh so I'll just put this out for consideration this section of our agenda is the the superintendent report now the board can frequently uh demand or require that the superintendent cover certain information in their presentations but I don't think that there's any condition under which the board would direct superintendant what not to cover in their presentations and if they want to talk about graduation rates then that is absolutely their prerogative I can't think of a single instance where a board would direct their superintendant what not to talk about in their reports well we can let me just say commissioner power we can also have it in the esa uh committee as well I think uh to commissioner LeBron's um point when you're doing it in a a form like this

171you don't get a chance to get into the real details the committee uh structure allows that to happen so I'd be happy uh and Dr NS if you don't have a problem with presenting at the smm meeting we'll do that so but thank you so much uh Dr Nels thank you so much Dr Myers small um we will now oh I want to just put in a plug I forgot to mention that I had um met with the Franklin upper and lower uh schools um two of the schools that I visited uh via zoom and just want to give them a a shout out and um looking forward to I'm I'm also interested in inviting them to one of the esa meetings somewhere in sometime in the future but uh just want to give them

172a shout out and let them know that the board is is truly in support of the work that they're doing and um to advocate for them and you know what they need in order to increase academic achievement so that's just a shout out uh for both of those schools over there Rick Smith and um Miss Harris over there so and with that we will get to the consideration of resolutions um first resolutions is uh HR resolutions resolution 601 to 650 can I get a motion um I'm sorry vice president Elliot before we continue I just want to make a note that uh 607 609 621 and 622 were added after the 48 hour packet uh was sent out and I you know I I'm juggling a lot of things as we all are with work

173and family and and I do try to print the 48 hour packet review it um but when I went into my email this morning there was an email sent out last night that there were some changes to the resolution so I had to print that additional packet and then compare those changes and I just want to remind the administration to remind well Dr Meyers I'm reminding you to remind your team that we have a process in place for a reason but the board really should not be getting resolutions after the 48 hour um timeline and I just ask respectfully that you guys consider that because I've created my own system on how to review these things and you know I was trying to juggle this today in between other board meetings and meetings I had

174today thank you yeah Dr Myers would you like to respond to that our apologies Absolut commissioner LeBron is absolutely absolutely right our apologies so have ack question Smalls it won't happen again there I'm being video uh what had happened was okay all right thank you yeah let's not have that happen again please so I have I have a quick question uh vice president OT you you um named 601 through 650 that's all the to correct myself on that yeah thank you so the resolutions the HR resolutions at 601 to 628 am I correct on that CIA can I get a motion for those yes can I get a second okay now is this the point where I say all in favor or do I ask for questions uh can you just can you restate can

175you restate for me what how how far the block goes in 601 to 628 all of the Personnel okay yes and who's I'm sorry there was everyone was talking on top of each other so it it blanked out for me who made the motion I motioned second I did okay so is is this where I ask all in favor or do I ask for the questions first questions ask for conversation about yeah yeah any questions comments about that block of resolution yes commissioner LeBron so since you did a a large block and I motioned it and I accepted it I just have a question on number 608 I just need clarification on the language contract substitute um I don't know if I've actually seen that type of language before I know long-term substitute um but

176I don't know if that's what was meant with that one Chris is that something you can respond to please sure yeah these are our um substitutes that are hired um we have up to 25 of them that are hired to work in our schools um to fill positions through the pdsu contract the okay can you spell out what pdsu means because again I'm just trying to understand if the if it's a long-term substitute teacher ver I don't I guess I'm not understanding what a contract sub is versus a long-term sub uh yeah so they're they're hired to finish out the year so these individuals will start uh per the dates that that that are indicated one in March and one in January and they will finish out the year okay and then um my second

177question is related to 621 and 622 it's actually just a request on when we're recalling um individuals if we can also put the Sal salaries um create a an additional line to have the salaries for those who are being recalled as well because when we you know um are hiring positions we do present uh in our resolutions the salaries that individuals are making but I'm not going to remember that someone was hired 10 years ago and they were laid off and now they're being recalled and what their salary was from back then so if we can just have that visual also give us an idea of what we're spending I would appreciate it and that's all I have thank you um I made a mistake so um Steve I'm gonna need you to help me

178with this that that packet should have been 601 to 621 because the the next um section of those resolutions are additional pay can I ask for an amendment here how do I have how do I do that or do I not do it since already have a motion before we do anything I think it might be 622 because that's the that's the end of the line for the oh okay HR then it goes that one under um since if we can't doot yes this time for additional resolution we can yeah but you know that's not we can do a cons at or can we you can just say hearing no objection yeah hear hearing no objection we will amend the the uh motion to be only for 601 to 622 okay unless anybody objects we'll

179move forward that all right any objections to that any objection my apologies and I didn't see the 622 because I had my page stapled and it's at the top okay so all in favor of resol resolutions 601 to 622 I I any I have one nay for 601 and I just want to put on record again that I'm not voting for anyone to be tenured during a pandemic and so it's not anything against these individuals who are eligible and qualified and I do not want any of them to take it personal I just have taken the principle of not voting on any 10 years during resolution so yay for the all of them except nay to 601 thank you commissioner LeBron commissioner Adams were you um did you have any no votes commissioner Adams okay

180I need I need to have on screen for the for the vote thank you commissioner Adams okay we all set I think he's speaking you're muted uh commissioner Adams you're muted yeah so um there was still muted and he froze yeah I'm sorry I I totally missed what was going on an emergency happened at the center at my job um and so I had to respond was it you needed me to do to vote on something yes vote on resolution 601 to you muted again I'm sorry unmute again commissioner okay got it yeah all right uh can we consider can I get a motion for resolution 626 through 628 I'll move can I get a second seconded all in favor I I and I'm a no to those say I but um commissioner vice president

181Elliot can you also open the floor for questions thank you you know I don't do this but once or twice a year I know it's okay I didn't have any questions on these I asked it earlier thank you any questions I'm sorry all right so uh can I get a motion for resolution 629 that's the special education um program recommendations motion can I second wait I just want to make sure the 626 to 28 pass then because we did discussion backwards yes it pass it passed it was it passed it was no discussion okay y'all slow me down if I Slow Me Down fine all right so we got a motion and a second for resolution 629 any questions on that all all in favor I I I any oppose I and I'm in favor

182okay thank you can I get a motion for Resolutions um 630 well here's here's one question if you I'm looking on the business sheet in the 6:30 to 635 then 558 is that correct yes okay yeah 6:30 to 6:30 and then there's a 558 let me double check that I believe it actually just goes to 635 558 should not be there that my mistake all right so res a a motion for Resolutions 630 through 635 motion can I get a second second any question on those resolutions all in favor I I I and I'm in favor thank you uh we have um the last resolution 636 through 650 uh can I get a motion for these resolutions motion second second uh any questions on those resolutions I had a couple of questions one on 638

183and the other on 641 and I'm on 638 it indicates that we're going to be working with 84 students and to to better manage uh their classroom Behavior I was just wondering what what type of work is done there and how how much success we have had in in in accomplishing that goal thank you for the question commissioner Clark um the request for 638 is for us to provide Federal flow through funds um for this educational program that's being uh held at Hillside so we are a um flow through um Agency for Hillside um and also we are making sure that we're providing this information um I'm sorry the funding for 84 students that are at the Andrew Andrew treye campus school and this is um working to improve the delivery of their instruction and

184manage the classroom behaviors Etc but once again because we are a flowr agency um we're providing that information I mean that that I don't know why I keep saying the word information we're P providing that funding to the agency because of our role as the Lea that is the flow through agent for that funds and also I see Paul is on too so I'm not sure if you want to give additional information but I think that's basically um the the reason why we are um providing the procurement for that funds for that agency okay but understanding their Federal flow through dollars that that that answers my question and the other was uh resolution 642 the uh the bank Street principal preparation program and that was resolution 642 okay I'm going to defer to my colleague

185Dr Green to answer that question good evening Commissioners so we have a partnership with Bank Street through uh New York City State Ed it's a P20 Grant and this this process has been flowing through since last year we did a resolution early in the year for the first part of the funding the funding for the second half of the year just came through so we're continuing with that work you're welcome thank you commissioner LeBron you have a question yes I just want to highlight that that in our financial previews for resolution number 636 that Dr jallow has recommended that there's a little bit greater details in this particular resolution in terms of um the way that it reads it's very general so approximately 18,000 students um and I'll share I'll try to quote her as

186best as I can she said it looks like everybody in the district every teacher every student will get these services but then how do you measure those outcomes and how do you know which schools these will be at so although um I'm going to support this tonight I just wanted to uplift the fact that this type of resolution should have greater details as to the number of students what schools the number of Staff in each schools and how we will measure the outcomes of success for these programs see Dr Jello chearing anything else commissioner LeBron no that was it thank you all right commissioner Adams no I just needed to I need to go I'm a Frontline worker I need to go to the front lines um I'm sorry I I still have a quum

187but I have to go all right have a good night Commissioner Adam good luck tonight miss Adams so can um all in any other questions um with regard to to resolutions 636 through 650 having none can I get them um all in favor I any opposed and I'm an I so that concludes uh voting on The resolutions um we have no unfinished business and under new business commissioner LeBron you want to talk about the budget calendar update I do but I see commissioner Malloy has her hand up and I think that's because we have some GIF acceptance resolutions and she Ty acknowledges those individuals commissioner Malloy before I turn over the mic I just want to thank um Mr Paul Burke for being here tonight from Oasis to answer any questions and always uplifting Oasis

188in the work that they do go ahead all right thank you commissioner Malloy great thank you so much I just want to extend thanks as part of some of the resolutions that we just approved for some of the gifts that our uh district has so generously received um want to say thank you very much to uh the hillside Children's Center um want to also say thank you to sorry I'm out of order here my bad um oops I was so prepared here we go oh also wanted to say thank you to the Scot Pino Foundation they donated 500 children's winter coats that were valued at $110,000 to be to be distributed to our CSD Elementary School students thank you so much for that um and also the as a social studies teacher have to say

189thank you to Bob Abrams who donated 1,800 Peters projection Maps um to the district um and thank you very much to gmr Associates for uh their generous donation for use of of to help fund field trips and cooking uh in our schools as well as um would like to thank Illuminating expressions for a gift that was valued at over $100,000 um for different materials that will be distrib red to our families and students um as well as action for Education Equity um I'm sure I've missed some of the other generous donations but I want to say thank you to everyone you're muted uh vice president Elliot I I got a telephone call um so um commissioner LeBron if you'd like to talk about the budget calendar update yes thank you and I appreciate how you're

190moving things along tonight um so a couple of things that came up in accordance to State legislation um we do have to um get a presentation from Dr jallow on our budget so there's a couple of new dates that were added um one we have to in accordance with State legislation give our budget by Monday March 1 to the state monitor for her to review so it does change um our process just a little tiny bit but really internally that budget has to be given to the state monitor um and then Tuesday March 16th we've extended that day in terms of the presentations so it'll incl include the district and the East EPO presenting the budget um to the Board of Elections like can overview and then the state monitors presentation to the board um

191in special meeting prior to the finance committee so I just want to put that out there I think those are the two additional dates that we added we're still waiting oh Thursday April 1st deadline to provide the proposed budget the state monitors finding and any budget amendments to the public via the district's website so also according to the state legislation we have to aside from our normal public hearings we do have to make sure that the public has access to any of the recommendations um and feedback that we are also getting from the state monitor has to be made public um so we've added that for Thursday April 1st um as the deadline and then make sure that it is published uh before the public hearing but I want to note that we're still waiting

192on the dates from the city as well which is on there as a draft a TBD at this point could I ask could I ask that the calendar be put back up again uh commissioner LeBron you said it would be posted before the public hearing we usually have two public hearings correct yeah so there's usually well yes your path practices have been to have two public hearings um I we have if you want me to jump in on that one yeah Kia go ahead cause yeah so um uh when uh last last budget season we looked at the traditional way of of presenting the public hearing and the overwhelming response from the public is that they wanted an event where there there could be um interactive uh uh kind of debate or discussion or learning

193on the budget and so with last year's budget we did a budget we webinar um uh well it was a budget workshop at the time because it wasn't coid coid hit right in the middle of budget season so we were able to have a budget do you recall a budget workshop at East EPO in their collaboratorium where we were able to um facilitate question and answer responses kind of talk to the public about uh what the budget looks like uh what kinds of things we were prioritizing and that kind of thing um and that's usually earlier on in the budget season because it it allows the the the public to kind of go on the ride with us so that date um for the public is actually uh Wednesday February 24th there is the um

194public budget webinar we had to make it virtual this year um because of coid but we will be facilitating that as in in replace of one of the um public hearings and then we have the traditional public hearing um which which we we have to have a per or um or budget policy we have to have at least one public public budget hearing so um that is April 8th and that's the date that we use to um go in accordance with this the legislation to provide all the materials to the public that one is more traditional and people would just be speaking um and addressing the board on on their reactions to the budget right I did um pull up the budget hearing policy just to make sure that we were complying with that policy

195um I do note that the policy states that we reserve two minutes per speaker which is peculiar because our standard for for speakers is three minutes um and uh if anyone wants to give me uh private feedback on that so that I can that we can uh potentially update that policy during the review uh I'd appreciate it and the policy does only require one public hearing although we have done it in multiple in the past thank you thank you commissioner pow uh commissioner Malloy yes thank you I'm so sorry I forgot to thank one of our largest donors so apologies to the community um I want to thank the Rochester area Community Foundation for establishing the coid education fund and it was um through generous donations to this fund uh that we're able to provide

196better access in terms of highspeed Internet to our our students um so I just want to say thank you to aeng grid for their $10,000 donation uh ESL Federal Credit Union um they're matching they're making a dollar to dollar match um up to $360,000 on our behalf um and also the Max and Maran fesh um charitable foundation for their very generous donation as well as the United Way of Greater Rochester thank you for helping our students gain access um much needed access during this um pandemic thank you thank you commissioner Malloy um and the next item under new business is one one question I'm sorry before you move on we we do need a motion to amend the um the budget the budget calendar because we adopted it on October 22nd and now there have

197been changes that have to really um we need to use um to move forward can I get a second second thank you all in favor say I hi all opposed nay all right that unanimous except for um commissioner Adams okay all right so now onto the the um discussion items are board policies um budget policy new budget transfer policy and student voter registration policy uh commissioner um poell you want to say anything about these policies um well the two budget policy icies were uh under the guise of the committee I do have something to say about the last one when we get there yeah so thank you I'm gonna start with the budget policy um and I don't know kie if you want to pull it up do you have it up um let's see

198that is policy sorry sorry about that do you want me to pull up the redlined version or the um or the clean version to that um I would ask the board if I don't know what you guys would like to pull up so I can pull up the red line version it might help a to understand their changes um one second and while she's pulling that up I'll just again remind that in purchasing policy the only changes that were uplifted were originally from commissioner um vice president Elliot who saw that line in there on the corrections facility and so we're going to remove that language but I want to acknowledge that it is part of New York state law um so it is to some degree we're just removing it from our policy but the

199big ask will be for us as a body to really push our state legislators to review that law and remove that law um or make changes to it so that no school district in the state of New York has to make purchases from Correctional Facilities using education dollars and when we talk School dep pris a pipeline to me that's a perfect example um Mr CLK I don't know if um commissioner Clark wants to react to what you yeah I see his Han right yeah yeah my question is can we remove it if it's part of the uh state law at this point in time or do we need to Advocate to the state first to get it removed in order to take it out of our policy because it seems like we'll be out of

200compliance with state laws if we take it out beforehand yeah so um my recommendation um is going to be to remove it and we had this discussion um in financial previews um and I want to recognize that we may be in compliance and that would be a fight that I would absolutely take up with the state and um again I think we can advocate for it but we don't have all of thew laws within our policy anyway um and so my understanding is that our staff actually tries their very best to minimize any purchases from Correctional Facilities as it is and that we've gone years sometimes without making any purchases um I just don't think it's language that needs to be in the policy um and encouraging our staff to do so although I want

201to acknowledge that they themselves have said that they have there are years that will go by where they don't make any purchases from Correctional Facilities um but I do think it needs to be a twofold remove from our actual policy and writing and a big push to the state and I think it's one of those um laws Mr Clark that was probably I don't know how long it's been there the you know our own policy was written years ago and the language was just taken and put embedded in there um but perhaps forgotten and in 2021 I think with our new state legislators that are there that this would be the time to uplift this and advocate for removal and that we would have the support but I see commissioner I don't know if that

202answer your question Mr Clark but if you have more questions you can feel free to raise your hand but I see commissioner pow has her hand up go ahead commissioner Powell uh thank you um I thought that um commissioner Clark's question was really valid and I'd like to hear what uh legal counsel has to say about it if there's a way to reframe the policy Al together so that it does not recite that portion of the law but leaves it you know obscure um that might be the way around but I I'd kind of like to hear from uh legal counsel um yeah I we don't have to have every law Incorporated in our policies that that that is true um commissioner LeBron was accurate in that in fact we don't in a lot of

203cases we still have to abide by those laws um as long as there are valid laws on the books but we don't have in the policies um I guess I would maybe feel a little more comfortable if at the end of this instead it just said or any other legally required uh procurement something like that that kind of leaves it you know a little bit more um open but at the same time if our as long as we're not directing people not to do this then you know we're within the confines of the law so if if the policy had been written to say procurement shall not be made from State Correctional institutions we would have a problem in this case as long as the finance team is following the law we won't be out

204of compliance um but this this is a bit of a closed list um so I think I'm let me just read it over again really quick I'll turn well you're doing that I um I follow what your suggestion is I wonder if we could push this policy back for re another review and cons with the consideration of eliminating this six point bullet list entirely and replace it with um generic reference to State purchasing laws if that's what the if that's what somebody is suggesting as an amendment you certainly can put a motion on the floor let me let me say let me say this because I'm the one that sort of had some some concerns about it you know we we have these people in the prison system who are making these products uh it's

205almost as as as if it's slavery and that's what this whole prison system is about uh to be able and they're making a ton of money the powers that be uh in these you know private uh instit pres uh Correctional institutions um it's an ethical issue for me that the district would purchase uh products uh from an institution that has um in my mind slave labor to do this work um and it's not you know competitive salaries or wages that these inmates are getting so for me it's it's an ethical issue um that we not purchase any products from the correctional facilities due to that reason Madam chair I'm totally sympathetic to your position and I agree with it I'm trying to find a way to thread the needle so that we can um honored

206that um that uh Vantage Point without calling undo attention to you know to uh kind of not skirting of the law but um um of downplaying the requirements of the life the law specifies that this is a a choice they're encouraging us to make for whether it's for fiscal reasons or otherwise um we can say yeah yeah that's what the law says and you know but we're not gonna We're not gonna like put great emphasis on it by by including it in our purchasing policy vice president Elliott I just want to again uplift and remind I mean I talked about this on Tuesday as well that we again don't need need to have laws written word for word in our policy but also um you know we don't have to encourage individuals I'm sure that

207the finance department and purchasing knows the laws and knows you know how to circumvent or follow them or whatever the case may be um but what I will also say that New York State requires this not just for our district that is a requirement for all districts in the state of New York to purchase from State Correctional Facilities so they own these correctional facilities and I do agree we're talking about people who are locked up often primarily black and brown people for long sentences for very um Petty crimes right that we don't see counterparts um face the same type of harsh treatment and um you know just I'm with you too on the ethical but also the this is a social injustice that school district are being required to make purchases with educational dollars for

208New York state ran Correctional Facilities they own they own these as well so all I will say is that we we can remove that one line that was my recommendation before the law is still the law again our internal Finance um individuals know what they need to do and how to make purchases and I'm not in the weeds with them and I'm not going to um ask them to do anything different than what they normally would do and have been doing dayto day in terms of purchasing um but that we as a board take this cause and also um ask other boards in the state of New York to join us in this in this fight to remove this that's it um Steve I see you have your hand up let me backtrack a a

209bit just given given where this Falls if this is the only line you're trying to take out which is number five in this particular block the only thing that this says is that if we're going to seek quotes we don't need to seek alternative quotes if we're buying from a State Correctional Institution so if you want to take it out I I've I've actually having reread it a couple times that's fine because this this simply states that we don't have to seek Alternatives it doesn't say that you can or cannot be looking to the State Correctional institutions so the it's one of several things that what we don't have to go through our normal purchasing protocols if we're doing that and that's that's why it would be listed like this but I don't think it

210encourages or discourages in any manner um so if we if you want to take it out as a matter principal that's fine if if it comes to the point where the district terms the only place they can get something is from a State Correctional Institution they can still buy it and they don't have to seek it on tariff quote that's all it means so I I'd be comfortable if you want take it out without having to go back to committee um after considering the way it's written it's it's different than than the way it was uh I was interpreting in the first instance commissioner pow oh I'm very comfortable with his explanation and and therefore uh um I'm I'm content to have it move forward um as recommended out of committee um it we don't

211vote on it this month anyway we vote on it next month month but um I'm I'm pleased that we're having conversation because getting this kind of clarity is is we need to be doing when we do our policy reviews thank you any other questions about the budget policy 6110 that was the purchasing policy um we didn't look at the budget policy yet okay so I don't have the purchasing policy on my no we re we readed it because of okay okay commission po no I think I just didn't have my hand down there we go commissioner Paul I mean commissioner LeBron do you want to con uh take the budget changes or or anything like that or do you want to leave the rest of them as is so I'm comfortable where this is at

212I don't know where my colleagues are at with it um so this is the budget policy 6110 um vice president Elliott okay so the the the purchasing policy we're clear on that right we we're okay with that okay all right thank you but that won't be voted on till next month yes understood it out of re you know committee for tonight and and there's no comments for the budget policy 6110 we're all done with that as well correct okay appears so yes and now we are on 6150 okay and all all of these policies that we're discussing tonight I just want to let the public know we have sent them out via email multiple times we've reviewed them um through the finance committees and we've had some discussions but we're just formalizing the process of

213having removed them out of the committee process and out of emails so that we can have finalized these conversations and these policies now so that they can be ready to be voted on okay any questions on um budget transfer policy commissioner Powell um yeah I would only note that the changes that are being recommended here um the the uh transfers report that we saw this month for the first time uh one of those items would have uh haveed uh a board resolution requirement based on this language so um you know if the same if the same transfer had happened after we said yes to this policy it would have generated a little bit more work for the administration just an observation okay thank you and I just want to say this is we don't have

214this policy in place so this is a new policy um and this was worked on in collaboration with the administration to finalize the number that was comfortable for both um we do get the monthly reports with details about these things but we still needed a process there are other school districts when they're moving large sums they their board is required to vote on it and understand that there was a budget that was passed and that there's going to be a large sum of money transferred to another budget line away from the original budget that was pth and this will give us more clarity and transparency as a board okay thank you very much commissioner LeBron um commissioner po you want to talk about the student voter registration policy um yes Madam cl5 mad clerk you

215have that coming up um Steve could point to the particulars um my only concern about this um being at the discussion stage right now is that um unlike the um unlike the financial policies we just covered this particular one really does require uh superintendent regulations to properly Implement and we talked about um you know who you know who what where when would this would this activity of registering or pre-registering 16 and 16 17 18 year olds um and so my my question to the superintendent is while we're waiting for the policy to come up is um have have you given any consideration to the regulations I've I'm sorry no go ahead I've spoken with um Steve and he has communicated with uh both um not only Dr Morris but do and Dr Black and Ryan

216who oversees social studies and they were going to work on putting something together so we could um present that back to the board to just take a look at the regulation or the guidelines yes okay um generally speaking the guid the the regulations are entirely yours Madam superintendent that's that's your purview um the board can do and I would recommend it do do in this case is uh is um vote on the the policy once we see that there are regulations to support it um would you be able to have Language by our next business meeting next month's business meeting yes that's feasible yeah I the the version that was being shown ever so briefly didn't take out the uh nisa's suggestions and notes so we really don't have the cleanest sorry I'm I'm trying

217to locate the the correct one I don't I'm having trouble with the um with the sharing I'm sorry give me you continue to talk about it but for our viewing audience and staff who might be on the call um this essential the essence of this is that state law now allows for pre-registering our students before they reach the age of 18 and it calls upon school districts to facilitate get the getting kids um registered to vote um so um in order to make happen we have we have to have a policy and in order to have a policy we we need a we need to understand what the superintendent's vision is for implementing implementing that policy um but the bottom line is it's something we all endorse doing I think it's a good idea and

218and helpful in developing civic education thank you commissioner Powell so that ends the new business and so um we are um about to go into executive session and this is the last uh item uh on the agenda before we come back out of the executive session to do our board survey so at this point I will say um good night on behalf of the board because there's no other business that we be will be conducting other than the board surve when we come out of of the meeting and so um have a good evening join us again next week um and so I'm going to ask for a motion to go into executive session for the matters of um dealing with a pending litigation and also a collective barting matter can I can I get

219a motion second all in favor I I okay thank you good night everybody thank you for joining us