Board Meeting

001do you want to just mention as i was getting it over i had a little catch in my breath that we were 512 thousand dollars in the hole for boces so i did reach out and say hey what's that all about and it was simply counting air it will be corrected so if you're walking through those just know they're putting the wrong way um cindy has also included a budgetary transfer report pretty common end-of-the-year adjustments for some changes that happen during the school year nothing really out of uh typical the only thing that's in here it's actually mine for the 25 000 and that is because we have some people working off of tables kathleen is using my desk from home right now so as we've added staff we've added the need to add some

002office furniture so that's what that transfer was to cover and as usual cindy asked that we have a vote and since we did have two transfers over ten thousand a uh resolution it's 150 2021 uh proving the budgetary transfer to get a motion second all those in favor of resolution 150 20 21. hi hey boss motion carries the warrant report is also in the job so you can take a look at that that's where we've spent our money over the last week and paid our bills and uh she just shared with you that she is working on the new york state transparency report and she gave you some updates on that and is it accurate that the school year budget closes out at the end of the month we start a new budget july 1.

003we do not have any unfinished business at this time new business we're gonna have a presentation from our middle school students about updating the middle school of code condo well so people have snuck in since i had sign in i have uh with us this evening bruce bogart is the dean of students in the middle school and christina branch special education teacher is here um lily and i go way back she loves that don't you always i was introduced to eli and i should know these other two women and i apologize that i do not know your name can you tell us who you are yes you are aren't you now that i see you and i'm sorry second person cast martin so welcome to the board of education meeting and i know you have

004a little presentation for us because i can see it here on the smart screen who's going to do the presentation this evening okay come on up hi hi how are you sorry i thought it was at six o'clock no problem okay we'd just like to thank the board for coming we really appreciate we know it takes up a lot of your time just to see us so we appreciate the [Music] my presentation times the jessica and my cat thing so these are the dress codes put together this is the original original one and these are changes that we have made do the members of the board have that in the police yes they do students have made some copies it goes over the concerns that you guys may have on us bringing back the hat

005rule because we can see that we've gone over charts with teachers to see how many agree with anything that happened and how many are you not doing it is all besides how we got to change the house and what sites we'd gone to to see what was the best would fit yeah um the student's perspective well we we didn't do a student survey but we did kind of bring up thoughts it can help with like anxiety and um kind of getting back in focusing um and someone that lost some family member i definitely didn't look at the hat as like uh i like a safe place but i'd wear it and feel comfortable in school with it and i just enjoyed that and i finally have the courage to take it off but i put

006it on today so like you know i said it can just be a safe space for someone it can just be a reminder of a family member they just lost it's also it's just a comfort object just ideas that we've come up with to support our solution to the new dresser oh here's our like teacher staff data um most people didn't think hats were disrespectful in an instructional spaces and it did not affect their ability to teach as much and they did leave some comments on it telling us how they felt why they didn't want to change it because it has been a role for a very long time we have the same problems [Music] we were talking about how we got comments from the teachers remember when they left us notes about how they

007felt about why they didn't want to change it do you remember some of them we do um i remember one talking about how they were just nervous of changing it because they didn't want to look up some not this is not the best way to determine it but this is the only way i can come up with to summarize it is they didn't want to look over like a pushover because i can admit most of our classmates have made it a really hard it made it a hard argument for us to change it because we have done some stupid things in the past to make it and give it a reason to unstable that and the pe teachers and tech teachers were kind of concerned because they can be unsafe like your hat falls down

008in front of the base you run into the wall or another student or you just can't see because of the hat and cut yourself on a saw or it's like what fun danger and if teachers aren't comfortable with that i feel like they could also of course i won't in their own group if they really felt like it was a problem to their teaching so there's that option in your new policy right yeah allow some discretion uh that's sensible yeah would you like to flip back to the the suggested policy no while they're reading that over did you you kind of had some more information about uh where how did you come up with these words here when you did change the word we went to different schools dress codes and took some of the

009information from there and really we used a lot of that was our main source i believe so time changing we used um like oxalic plastic and the town that's really hard to say and i don't know if i'm saying the right water medium water water beliefs yeah um we did well we took those things right there was a date so it was thought that they had things worded this way and it seemed to work for them and they haven't changed it so that was part of the consideration um have you talked to students or teachers in other school districts that allow this um we haven't been able to get that sorry i'd be curious to know just what it does to the school environment wheeler i teach at paul smith we have a pathway in

010campus i've never noticed a change one of our teachers mr garcia the teachers were asked if we could use their names and he couldn't be here tonight at the mountain club but he did say he used to teach in peru last year and he said he just didn't have any it was just big cooler hats all the time and he doesn't remember a single instance of any disciplinary action or need or any problem that came up and we also talked to a teacher about stable said the same thing and we don't know the students that like classes like classes we read the newspaper article when the classic board did approve this about a month ago two months ago it was right while we were working on this um and we don't know yet though what

011their students or teachers said so one of the things the district has emphasized in the last half dozen years or so is to annually review our student policies because things change and we'd rather do this annually and make small adjustments rather than overhauling a whole document every decade or having things in our policy our student policy that just aren't being enforced because they're outdated we want it to reflect current and so i'm really proud of you guys coming tonight i think the absolute best way for changes is coming from students if this is something that you feel important and you can express that you've done a great job here expressing uh all the angles um it sounds to me like a student body recognizes that there are going to be some times where it's not

012appropriate to have hats on for good reason and the way our policy works we will look at this tonight we can't approve it tonight because we have to go through a multi-step process but i don't see many snags in this um i'm a former dean of students about to enforce or have files so i spent a lot of time dealing with it and if i could turn back the clock i would wish this was a place because i was very unpopular forcing them i was the one pushing for students to make the presentation i know this is difficult but i think it's meaningful for us as a board to make policy with your presentations and i like that you did some work i like that you did some some checking of all the dishes and

013i think i even saw you cited a court case in there is that correct yes yeah that's important too so i applaud you and your fellow students for the way you handled this um you know sometimes we get we get things thrown at us where it's just airways in our face change a change but we have a process for every policy we do and this is part of the process so kudos to you any board members have any other questions for the students just one i'm curious to know in your opinion the difference between a hat head covering and a plate i see that as it also i feel that it's also just an accessory because it is attached to your clothing and it's not just a hat that you can throw on every single

014day it is a part of your covering so i feel it is an accessory more than it is you're like what was your thought i mean when we discussed this a lot in class and you'd come back day after day and said i thought of this though what did you recognize about hoods that are different we didn't purposefully the students left hoods off of this and what was your main reason that you even told your classmates that are connected to your body or like the hoodie so it like can go over and like close your face but like you can hide your face mark definitely like hide things i remember you mentioning one day that in the hallways that security cameras oh yes does that make it very difficult to identify like you put your

015hood up head down see your security cameras wouldn't be obviously you i feel like it could be almost like a safety passage like water waterways that they allowed they said no goods and hallways specifically in theirs but then they seemed to allow them in classrooms but it was in that was why you said i think i know why i didn't say that in the hallways because then when you're looking at streams there's so many people in the hall and you were like yeah that makes sense and you also said that you can't really think of so not only is the security camera angle an issue when you're in the classroom teachers want to see your face so that they can judge um what's going on with you are you a tech are you not at

016them that's important as well they can read your body language and your expressions that's a big part of who you are that's how that interaction happens anything else for the students any of the supporting staff want to say anything more that one random question what's and maybe this is beyond this and maybe it's a question for lawyers but i'm just thinking of head coverings and religious liberties and the the statement there of removing a head covering during the pledge of the national anthem might violate religious liberties for people who wear jobs and i i just wonder about that i think we should think about that are you asking that uh those be exceptions so we're saying that's a that's a lawyer question i think it's i think that is already in head law yeah it

017might be wrong i believe it is that yeah so that's already been covered okay it's the must there that that that gives me a little bit of pause okay so so we can look at that in terms of uh semantics great job yes do you know when what the next step would be um so that the students know so we have to have a second reading and then a vote correct yep and it usually happens on the same day unless there are changes i wrote down decorative i don't mean that to be the word but i think we need to put only an adjective in there to describe the head coverings so most uh where it said uh hats and head coverings must be removed i'm thinking we could go to hats and decorative head

018coverings i don't mean decorative but i i think we could articulate that we are not addressing yes so high fashion oh fascism so that's an example we've got to look at a little bit of the semantics and clean that up but the core of what you're asking for i think is acceptable and we appreciate that we'll clean the semantics up and all the second reading and we're satisfied with that we'll vote on it if for some reason we have more questions and we'll reach out our next board meeting is july 6. so that's how we do that you'll come in on your summer vacation right energy in because once they did the months of research and review and writing and talking discussing these guys are in eighth grade so they're headed to the high school

019next year so these seventh graders showed up which is awesome to oh great hey guys so all of these guys are going to benefit and good thank you we might have to let eli wear a hat like we might have to have an honor that's awesome all right thank you very much thank you mr bogart could you could you send me a list of all of your students who are here this evening thank you i'm pretty sure you don't want to stick around for the rest of the meeting so because there's some information for the next part too i just copied okay next item under new business is the rugby club's field use request so field juice does not usually come to the board there is a policy in place for facilities use and i

020actually gave you a copy of that policy and we have a procedure with a facility's use form and i gave you a copy of the facility's use form canon rugby has been using our facility for a long time and uh mr carr has had some concerns over what's been happening during rugby and so i've received some emails i know he's been in contact with mr moody and i felt that this was uh the board should be aware of the situation and i wanted to give each of them an opportunity to address the board this evening um so we're fully aware of the situation and make some decisions moving forward so i think it's important to point out that uh we didn't always have a policy like this one time people just kind of wandered on

021our fields and use them as they may fields have been used for all kinds of interesting things we've got circuses there um at one point we had half that whole patrol property it was a flooded ice rink with lights some of you may remember that there were hockey pens there we had men's softball tournaments there the women's top league plays there it was a parking lot for the 1980 winter olympics um cycle adirondack has pitched in for a couple days there so we as a school district recognize that our fields are virtually the only flat field in the village we own we will always try to be a good partner with a community with our facilities get the athletic fields be at the gymnasium get the auditorium and so at one point we decided as

022a district that we needed to have a policy and a procedure for approving these things so that you know we would basically be taking a neutral stance on these we don't want to be in a position to say we like you you're in we don't like you you're out we want a policy so that people apply the policies applied to these applications and decisions are made as unbiased as we can make them because we get lots of requests for our facilities as i said in a small village we own most of the facilities so it's important to know that like diane said these rarely come to one level because they're procedural if the group meets the requirements they're generally approved so i just wanted to have some background so that the audience knew where we're

023at with that i think that you know we do have a public comment session but i think while we're here i think mr carr if you'd like to speak uh we'll allow you to do so now all right very good um thank you my name is tom carr my wife and i uh own the field that is at the end of the petroleum football field and we've been there going on five years now so we've had the experience of going through obviously many football seasons baseball as well as uh you know the different various rugby tournaments that have occurred in the last few years it's for me in our experience and my family's experience and my neighbor's experience is progressively the you know it's a feather captain tournament is that you know return has grown

024and there's more people and um but there's been more impact on the neighborhood there's more impact on my property my neighbor's property um i mean i mean if you ask me personally i would probably call it an assault for three days you know it's trespassing it's it's balls in my yard it's the people i don't know running around my grandchildren it's uh trespassing it's uh i've got slime stolen ripped down no trespassing sign uh balls bouncing off the house people turn around in my driveway i got confronted on my front lawn last summer while i was mowing my lawn as someone who apparently didn't feel like i should be moving along on saturday so um so it just got to a point where i just felt like i needed to reach out to mr moody

025and and i did that you know obviously i tried to do a professional job doing that i included the reward for that also you know i let the former mayor rabbit know my feelings on the matter as well as the new mayor jimmy williams um but i i just think the uh it's the impact of the tournament on that neighborhood it's surrounded with trouble fields is it's it's too much for us to bear right now we have senior people who've gone out to spend money on like cones just so people don't park in their driveway around the grass so it's you know it's obviously troubling to me the football games are fine um you know and i think what i laid out in my letters you know where you know movie i think were succinct

026and addresses some of the things that we've seen and what my neighbors have seen i was hoping some more of my members would come i did let them know that you know you're gonna have a comment period but one of those all two of them were trial business today um i i just i think it's too much for the neighborhood i think in mr movie's letter that he addressed to me um is that there's each stated that there's not enough parking so it is a beautiful field it is a great place to have you know an event and i come from a long time uh college athletic background i was a coach for 12 years so i extended many tournaments i know how they run i know what the impacts on those are and where

027to put them i just think that the headquarters of that tournament should be moved out of control i'm not saying cancel the tournament but i think it's more student made for this property where there's parking point parking and you know what they can you know the language is bad it's bad and once again when the tournament progresses and then you know the alcohol starts getting consumed so you know those are my concerns that you know i have grandchildren with us every weekend you know i've watched i watched balls knock over drinks at my neighbors talking house when it rained last year they ran over underneath this house he was he was he wasn't home his wife had to go out called call in was like what do i do i got 20 people under my

028house so it's it's it's a little too much for us to bear anymore lose for the use as a headquarters in my opinion thank you sir you're welcome mr moody yes um thanks for having us first of all but um obviously i understand the concerns and i know there's um just no way for us to police every individual that comes to feel what we're doing at all times especially once they leave the field area and they're on public street you know the parking is the public roads i was at my son's field day yesterday and the cars were parked in the same spots and they wouldn't be forgetting obviously much fewer as far as moving the headquarters of it it's the only area that we can get multi-fields in one spot that can host and

029hold everything that we have for our vendors that sell t-shirts and jerseys and that kind of stuff with food vendors it is our home base and it has been for i think probably 44 43 years something like that the first few years that canada has happened actually i haven't been highest high school and then as we've grown over the years we've been 100 team tournament for 10 and 15 years now we can't get any bigger because there are no fields and if we lose these fields we really can't exist we get like plastic fields for one day because of their schedule across uh we were to lose this this tournament just don't happen um and this will be our 48th year uh which is a long history in saranac lake for a long history of

030uh donations and community events and things that we give back we're completely non-profit volunteer organization and our whole goal is everything we bring in goes back to the community in some way um so this leaves saranac lake also does does the donations that support you know the youth sports that you've seen summer programs and community events um and it's truthfully just can't happen without the support of the centralized politician so it's not overlooked by us and we're willing to work on things and try and find ways to make things a little easier but um when you set your vendors up are they in the uh what i call the page street portion by the storage shack is that what they show up they're all inside the fence yeah so they're all inside um set up

031some smaller tents for for some vendors our main uh folding fender is a large tank inside defense area uh just as you enter is where the food sets up right next to the yellow but also there's a smaller pop-up pens around smaller vendors and you do use inside the track still so we're going to use three fields of control inside the track the practice football field and shoulders uh we also use a field that was spencer coverts everybody else provided somewhere um and then we have north country community college and eight fields so 17 fields in total so that's i mean that's really if we lose any fields we're you know behind especially for this year we're already booked up uh teams have been paid for months and months some you can pay the day

032of you know the last day of last year's journey so brew or lose fields right now we have to issue thousands and thousands of dollars of refunds and trying to figure out a way to host this event are the championship games still at the college is that how that sounds we're working through that uh last year we didn't because they uh soon he was all at fighting field for shut down so he did host the championships last year on ken wilson ray mcdeal which first year that i've been involved though we've had some bad weather and it did beat up the field a little bit but they bounced right back and we did everything we could on our end to is the plan this year to have the championship games at the college so as

033of right now we haven't really figured that out because this is obviously the main battle to decide if we're going to have him here i would like to continue the history and tradition of having that north country because it is a popular spot for everyone but um um i know you mentioned um you can't police people once they are on public roads um but do you have any volunteers that uh or anyone from your organization that kind of circle the property to make sure that there isn't the stuff that i know i've seen going on that uh yeah so uh volunteers are incredibly hard to come by especially in the middle of the summer uh but we do our best to get volunteers to do certain things of just kind of walking around making sure

034one of our biggest things i'm talking about outside on the perimeter but we know that the parking is an issue um if you were a business and came in from the town um as far as the parking goes that would be a major issue that would be a major stumbling block i'm talking about particularly along your street the two private streets um there's regularly i've regularly seen people out there throwing walls you know on obviously on residential lawns obviously blocking driveways obviously you know those kinds of things do you have anybody that from the organization that goes you know we don't have somebody specifically assigned to do that but we do as a there's six of us on the board mechanic board that we do our best to kind of go out when we can

035when things are settled down a little bit and check and look for parking we also speak with the village police every year to let them know that you know if they are driving by and see something that's an issue that i mean it's their job to handle it if they want us to get involved we certainly can't help do you have a contact number for that could be given to the residents so if they have someone from your organization in your driveway yeah that way um it could be police directly i know in lake placid for iron man they have um instituted that you have to have your number on your bike uh the entire week of ironman so that it can be traced back poor behavior can be traced back to either an individual

036cyclist or a team um that's something that uh to try and make a little more accountable through accountability yeah so that the locals i mean because they have a right to enjoyment of their property as well and the language does get ready yeah no and of course you know i personally send out an email to all the teams uh in advance and one of the things i do tell them is let's be considerate of the people that live in the area obviously i tell them you know make sure not to be parking on people's lawns or in your driveway things like that does it happen i'm sure it does and it's something that we you know we can work harder at five minutes are there any consequences for those violations i mean in all honesty

037i've never really come into a situation where i've seen somebody doing something so out of bounds that needs to have consequences you know if i see somebody parked in where they shouldn't be and they're in their vehicle or something like that i tell them to move we have a pa system that runs all weekend along with an announcer and i'll take their license plates if they're you know announcing at the field to move your vehicle or we know uh we have had several vehicles go through the years that i've been involved so you know as much as we can we do have situations where if a team violates the rules or a player we you know things like that i want to be clear that i am not against rugby tournament at all i think

038it's a wonderful event however my big yank is this is the way it's always been done um and i get that it's grown and i get that it is a great thing for the community but we also have to look at the cost to the residents that are there and i think that's my biggest concern absolutely you need to take that seriously i do know that um some of the houses airbnb but we can't do so i know they shouldn't have to airbnb so that they're not well i completely agree i'm just saying that sometimes they do so when you do see a group of rugby players on the lawn or parking in the driveway or something like that sometimes they may actually be renting a house for a weekend i know several guys from

039ottawa have landed houses along those streets and um actually years ago one of the reps uh gives you one of the houses there too and you would have four or five of the other reps that would savor him for the weekend so um sometimes when you're seeing those things it might not necessarily be that they're doing something wrong obviously though well obviously his situation is but as you're driving that street and you see somebody in the front lawn when you see somebody on the front lawn half dressed and with a beer in their hand what was that when you see someone on the front lawn or half parked on the lawn half parked on the road with a beer in their hand and half dressed that's what we're taught i think a big concern what

040does uh the police department tell you about these situations when you have your conversations as far as marketing as far as parking as far as uh open container did they come by and they just keep swinging by and they'll even like they'll come in and they'll walk the grounds they'll walk the field walk the parking lots um you know as much as they can you know what their staffing is but they're definitely a presence around during the weekend so it sounds to me like what we need is we need a better coordinated effort from all stakeholders to clean up a few things here yeah we certainly don't want the neighbors um to be just uh and discomfort over this um we recognize the economic driver that he is [Music] and there needs to be a

041little work done clean some things up i know it can be done uh for for people in the audience that don't know my first career was in law enforcement and when rugby first started i was a brand new police officer and i spent 10 hours walking between two bars and it was it was it was a crazy scene and i know that rugby got a lot of heat from the community and they adopted a policy that if your team was too rowdy they banned the whole team three guys get in trouble the team was banned for life and a lot of teams had to disband because they couldn't come to the tournament so they took it seriously then and that problem by and large has cleaned itself up it's become a more family family-friendly event

042overall but i think there's some room for some improvement and i think that you know our hope would be as a school district that we can uh alleviate some of your concerns and uh i'm hoping that with a combined effort of everybody involved maybe a little better uh enforcement of some of our village laws maybe some of our own rugby people that that are from here saying no no that's not okay here um it was a decade ago so we were having a real issue with alcohol in the fields and there was a crackdown and by the rugby part and that clean that up we're not naive to believe that some guy isn't going to get away with it but if caught we want it to be addressed absolutely where we are at any of

043the poor questions can i answer questions absolutely so cam have you talked to the village police about just no parking about around that corner where all the houses are just no parking for that weekend we haven't because you know that we need parking we could work something out you know where maybe they're they're further back from that stop sign if that's a concern or whatever um but i mean the road is wide enough dab cars marked on both sides and still get two vehicles down in my time doing this which uh i've been involved for 13 to 14 years now that you know it's the police really want us to be able to control things as much as we can they come around as a presence but as far as you know they look at

044it as their public roads that can be parking spaces and as long as it's not a danger or a hazard for you know traffic violations things like that i i have a suggestion to that end because i've dealt with that when i was athletic director in the football games and the police department would would loan us their signs right and i would suggest that maybe you request from them say whatever uh neighbors want their driveway protected and ask the police department to borrow their no parking by police order sign and put those right there and you know secure those spots those residents and requests from the police that when they patrol if they are moved and someone's parked there please act on it uh for your sake and for the residency that's a small piece

045that you're looking for i know there's other issues i think that we need to work on some of those for sure but in terms of blocking your driveway parking in your driveway and being on your property we don't condone that we don't have control over the streets either we can't tell people you can't be here to be here because it's a public robot we don't enforce it that's a municipal jurisdiction so i would i would suggest you request their assistance in getting and they have hundreds of those stances with their things on we have a bunch of football yeah yeah we do use some for you know for some areas but i think we need to target this area yeah because it is tight it's listen you drive down that road after a football game

046it's very tight and let's let's be honest rugby brings a few more vehicles than an average football game but we want that corner to be safe um i would just request that they they mark those out and i would request that you know you check with the residents do you want this home driver we'll put it there so people don't park in their driveways um and the other issues i think we got to take a look at and try to work on you do you use the same pile slot for parking yes yeah at that point well that's about parking well i just wonder if it's you know this parking problem right that is that is maybe the root of what's going on it's too crowded and people and then when they park on somebody's

047lawn and they you know cross over the lawn yeah like what about a shuttle and parking at dewey or some other place where there's more parking and people are going to be parked all day and be further out and then you can you can close that side of the street where the people's homes are yeah so it's something we can look into in all obviously we're not you know money's tight for for what we're doing especially over the last couple years and we have done some shuttles for north country because the parking situation is even crazier up there with the side road going to the field that's right in the middle of a residential area the hard part with it is for especially for friday and saturday is that teams aren't necessarily staying there all

048day and playing their own depending on wins losses they may play their first game in the morning and end up like classic in the afternoon so a lot of times vehicles being there are coming and going through the day it's not like you know they're getting their first thing at morning parking all day let's try to make some strides on some some things we think we can fix with a little effort yeah i think we could for starters i think we could find a way to have just one side of that road parking and you know the other side not something like that where we can obviously the parking spots or [Music] i think that this law is never really overused and it's not that far from the field but i don't think people from

049out of town really know about it unless they're playing here yeah i would also say can um you have a pa system and it would be useful and helpful if there were every half hour or so um announcements about parking and all parking directions and if people don't park where they're supposed to and we get those cars though then so be it right absolutely we need to send a message that the behavior needs to be respectful and starting with parking is the thing that i think together between the residents the organization you can just look at the community and the school district we all try to send the same message about that because everybody wants the same thing here we don't want to see rubber go away because of its importance and it's history to

050our community we also don't want to see it become such a burden on the community or the residents uh in that area either so we're all looking for the same thing we should be working towards it right cam um what age what's the minimum age that a rugby player has to be to be able to compete in this term um so minimum age is 18. okay so so so they're adults for intensive purposes okay um and how important are these fields to you and those teams in this tournament we i mean we can't have the tournament i think that's would be my point in this situation if you want access to those we got to make sure that it's not mr mrs carr's problem it's the association's problem and figure out how to get the

051discipline or not to have happen right because for intents and purposes this tournament brings that culture with it and i don't think that's on the neighbors and i don't think that's necessarily on us right so from my perspective that would be my maybe recommendation or suggestion is if it's that important what are you doing about it to make sure that this doesn't happen right because i think that's what we're working towards is we want yes but it shouldn't be mr mrs carr's problem to get today in my opinion i agree with you this is realistically the first time that someone's come to us with with these you know actual hey this happened we've seen this we've dealt with this so obviously if it happens in the moment i understand deal with it but you're not

052blind i mean well i think but i'm only one person too i'm saying as the association let's be realistic i mean i remember as when i was when i was younger i remember you got advice about it driving through like money and uh driving through at night to watch star fights and you got that handled so if i agree with you that if this if these fields are that important then we see what i mean anybody that drives by what's going on anybody that's been here for rookie weekend knows things get a little out hand now you have somebody saying it i think i speak for a lot of my neighbors who i don't elaborate i'm pretty good at it but and i think if you haven't read the letters i think i think it's

053worth the time if you want us to do that my last my last letter was october of last year so eight months and it doesn't seem like there's any ideas to make any changes mr carr would you be okay if i stopped by rugby weekend and just hung out with you a little bit and and get a look for things would that be okay i'd like to see um the driveways in particular that issue i think is quickly solved but uh um your house is the one right on the corner yeah so i've had people changing their clothes in my front yard yeah we don't watching the females last year at seven o'clock on a sunday morning when my grandfather watching cartoons with my granddaughters that's how it got out yeah we we concur i

054i'm going to be eggs and visits over the three days to your household i'll knock on the door reintroduce myself i want to be there to see what's going on i i've seen lots of rugby i generally don't come in for games anymore because you know i've seen a lot of it um there's a god on the light to do something but i will make it a point i won't park in the driveway i understand it's accidents and mr moody i'll offer you if you need some help uh with the request for the police to do a little signage there i'll i'll pitch it and help with that as well we want to solve this problem so that everybody can be mostly happy i'm not sure we can make either side totally happy but we

055want to make you mostly i mean 17. i mean there's there's got to be something to do that's enough like i said eight months without without any years okay we're not going to go there right now thank you you know i think that in terms of concluding our business with this we we want to help where we can we recognize that our jurisdiction is limited we don't control the streets really um we control the fields we do but uh that's where we're at i think i would suggest to the board you know in a case like this what we ought to do is fall back on our policy um and i would ask mr fox or superintendent you do have a a field use form from rugby perhaps absolutely i think i put it up

056there tom and if i didn't if when you touch it and it's not there just let me know i've got an extra one down here we'll uh you know again this is not the first time we've had them we've told no to organizations because they don't meet their requirements or policy sometimes we're not happy about it some of our policy is regulated by law things that we can allow and things that we can't allow so i think that our position right now is if this if this application is not in violation of our policy we should just follow our normal procedures i've offered to come and firsthand be a part of this uh so i i will be there right one way or another um several times i'll check in with you and again mr

057moog if you need some assistance on that other thing i've dealt with that before in a previous position i'll help you with that and what i would ask is that maybe um so this is a first week in august is that correct no last weekend of july oh okay all right can i just say two for them it's a non-profit group yeah so what we will do is i would ask mr finn to make a notation that we will um revisit this item probably in september make sure that we don't let eight months lapse huh for reviews for an assessment please make sure that mr carr gets notified of when when we decide to put that on the agenda and mr moody as well so that we can see if we've made any progress or

058if we have where we can continue mr moody i would suggest that uh with your club members that you talk about how we can perhaps maybe have a little better presence in that area um changes have been made over the years i always found rugby to be pretty accommodating to try to meet the needs and you know this is an area that's cropped up and we need to address it so that's where any other board members want to weigh in i think i would like to see uh either before the event or afterwards when we're doing the assessment a kind of list of changes tangible things that have been done so that the cars have it know what to expect and i think some information shared with residents like what to do if someone trespasses

059on your property i think that would be helpful information i would like to see like what are the actual changes that are going to be um and what and whether they were successful or not i think that's just in terms of continuing to learn and make it better we all agree it's an important thing but i would i would like to see that i would actually like to see some some written changes that could then be shared with the community so that they have a sense so that everybody's on the same page we want to be good neighbors for sure um maybe 15 years ago the press republican ran um the sports writers did a kind of a list of the top football facilities they like to go to when they're doing their covering games

060and they rank saranac lake either one or two because they love the fact that it was in a neighborhood it was charming and that great atmosphere and that's some faceless barren area so that's a plus for us but we have a responsibility as well we recognize that so mr carver scar thank you for coming tonight and i will be seeing you last weekend in july and uh mr moody if anybody's looking at that field request form it reflects the time that they're setting up and breaking down you so it's not if you look at that you might be like oh why do they have to run me for a week it's actually set up thank you very much for coming i look forward to uh stopping by so it worked for you thank you very

061much thank you thank you vern is the outfield fence down at that point from serge is it is it gone uh during runway yes it is is that field piecemeal is that fence piecemeal or is it a solid run it's no offense this is a quiz for your bonus i'm sorry what was that yeah why not the the fence is in our neighborhood and it's the village's fence so here's here's the unknown fact about that field the covenant of that field to the district leaves that field in the village's hands when the district is not using it for district business so in the old days the village did all the summer scheduling and the upkeep and that that in the summer when we're not between the end of our season or the end of our

062school year where the kids are using it and the start of sports that historically has been the village's role and they've been more than happy to hand it to us haven't they burned and we'd be more than happy to hand it back so so they should have their hand in this too if there's a way and i just think that fence is right there the three days before we set up we should think about that okay yes so mr carr one of the things we're doing on that third baseline is we're gonna net that whole run um we budgeted for it we've ordered it we've ordered it we're waiting for it to come on a slow boat from somewhere so it's it's it's long back order but our intention is because that one house is

063close to the baseball field um we've paid for every window that's been broken by baseball but we know it's inconvenient and so we're trying to fix that as well um so we're putting some dollars to that we're just waiting for the materials to get here to do it so it's it's not been months and months of us not thinking about what's going on there we've we've talked about solutions burr has been outstanding and trying to wrangle some of this stuff and when that gets here we hope to net that that third basic line down that road to help alleviate footballs i don't is the pool still there sir no no the pool was a big deal when somebody kicked the ball into that everybody went crazy in a football game except for the guy that

064was buying the footballs so um we want to try to alleviate that as well thank you okay thank you very much appreciate the forum thank you very much thank you sam okay next presentation is our safety and security review and i think diane's gonna take lead on that this box yeah it's a little white on the live streaming so can i turn these lights off just you can do whatever you'd like to will everybody shine their phone flashlight on me i'll know for next time no white background okay all right so good evening um many members of the administrative staff are here tonight but i thought i would take the lead do a bit of a presentation and then everybody's here for questions i'm assuming we will have many i want to start with reading

065an email that i sent to the staff that said as an adult i remember everything about where i was and what i was doing when the challenger exploded the 9 11 attack and the columbine school shooting i'm guessing you too have events such as these edged permanently into your memory i'm not sure where the shooting will end up in the collective memory of our country but at this moment in time it feels different somehow from school shootings of the recent past perhaps it's because the students cell phone videos that transport us into the classrooms that look just like ours and surround us with students who look just like ours perhaps is the fact that the shooter looks vaguely familiar reminding us of many students who have passed through our doors regardless of the reason there

066is a heightened concern for our school community's collective safety i feel it and i'm sure many of you do too this seems like a good time to remind all of us that school safety is a combination of three elements physical security issues practice plans and personal connections with our students and their families we have a fully locked campus our individual school and district-wide safety plans are updated yearly the village police and the state police have access to these plans in their vehicles we practice many scenarios each year in the past few years we've had real-life incidents that have triggered the use of our emergency plans and after each incident we have heavily debriefed and updated those plans statistically school violence is most likely to be carried out by someone in the school all of us

067share the responsibility of keeping us safe our school district focuses on student engagement including the importance of making connections as this is our best defense thank you to those of you who embrace the challenge of making connections with some of our most challenging students i wish i had some words of wisdom to assure you that an act of violence will never take place on our school campus but as we have seen never say never however we cannot live fully if we live in a world with a constant undercurrent of fear our job at times like these is to support our students and examine our facilities plans and procedures in order to ensure that we are doing the best job possible of providing a safe place to work and study this includes evaluating the job we

068are doing connecting with our students so i have written many iterations of this letter over my nine years here this could have been written a month ago but this one was actually written in february of 2018. so unfortunately this is a reoccurring event and tonight i want to talk to all of us and i think there are some people at home i got a lot of people interested in this topic and talk about what we do on a daily basis here in saranac lake districts are required by new york state to have a district plan and they also are required to have individual building plans and i have some building plans to share with the board those of you who have been on the board know that you actually review those every year but they

069are not for public consumption because they are very specific as to the actions that are taken in the time of an event so just give you a chance this is petrova's and because petrova elementary and middle school share the same building they have one emergency plan the building level emergency response plan include actions for specific events and you'll see the list there our five typical our shelter in a place in place evacuation lockout and lock down and we plan and practice for all of those these plans are available the state police receive them the village police receive them because they have computers in their vehicles those plans are available immediately and those plans all include building maps and of emergency responders all have emergency responder swipe cards so they're able to access the building at

070any time even if we're in oh we have some specialty safety equipment that does lock all of the swipe doors so that you can't swipe in but the emergency cars override that as i wrote in the letter unfortunately we've had the opportunity over the years to practice just about all of these in a real situation and we do spend a lot of time after that going over our plans that updated often and they're also updated when new information comes out we receive information after a school shooting about what happened what best practices might be and we look at that also we are required to provide safety drills for staffing students yearly that includes fires lockdown bus drills we also practice a move to an alternate location in case we have to evacuate that is not

071required we still do that we've not done that during the time of cobit but we'll pick that up again next year all of our building access doors are locked visitors have to announce their intent get buzzed in there's a camera when you get buzzed in so we see who you are the petrova and high school buildings have camera systems we're talking about that tonight with the heads and huds school buses are monitored there are cameras and and audio on school buses so remember that when you're chatting on a school bus you know what you're chatting about that's an interesting watch sometimes isn't it all teaching spaces have phones capable of darling 9-1-1 and we have a very robust two-way radio system we updated it a few years ago so we are able to talk between

072buildings we're able to talk with buses we're here in all of this mountainous area makes that communication difficult so we actually have repeaters and additional antennas on our buildings so that we're able to talk to everyone and we have procedures in place for the use of our public address system and you'll see that in the plans there's specific language that everybody uses so if you are between buildings you work in two different buildings there isn't code blue in one building and we call a lockdown in another building there's common language and common response for use on the public address system we've done a lot of security upgrades in 2019 our our smart schools bond act money was used to update and expand the swipe card system so we can get in and out of the

073buildings keeping the doors locked the cameras were installed visitor screening systems installed so we actually can screen using your license to see whether or not it does a quick background check to make sure that you are able to be in the building and there is additional emergency security in the main offices to secure all doors with flight cards and it starts the process of contacting first responders we also did work in our 2019 capital project all the buildings got entrance vestibules so there's a double lock door system we put doors on the bloomingdale rooms that were built in the 60s or 70s when nobody used doors um we updated and unified the bloomingdale key system it doesn't sound like much but in an emergency if you've got 15 keys to go through to get to

074a certain room that's that's a big deal and bloomingdale had been done so piecemeal that was a problem there we updated the fire alarm system in all the buildings including the bus garage and new pa systems at petrovin high school and we fixed the bloomingdale system and coming up this summer uh thanks to covet it's been held up a couple years but the bloomingdale smart schools bond work should be starting and that will include everything that was done at petrova and high school so all three buildings will have the same safety and security systems we also started in the 1819 school year we introduced alice and it's uh an acronym for uh response training the goal of alice is to train teachers to teach teacher strategy that will increase the chances to avoid injury if

075school shooting were to occur um and alice's alert lock down inform counter and evacuate we haven't used alice in a couple years just because of cova it's been an odd time so in february this year harold weave did the groundwork to um continue we were at the end of a three year cycle for a contract so we've upped the contract and carolee actually had her email sentimentally hang on there currently but we have plans in place that at the end of this year we're going to have all of our staff whether they've done it before or their new staff through the online training portion of alice so that when we come back in september we're all back on equal footing as we move forward with some trainings i want to talk a little bit about

076threat management pay attention to the whisper so you won't have to listen to the screens when i first heard i said but really that's what we do every single day in a school probably multiple times a day some we utilize both in-house and community organizations to provide comprehensive mental benefits for students there are two things we need to do we need to do threat assessment and threat assessment is that we get a call from a parent who says their kid got a snapchat video with a kid with a gun who says they're going to come to school tomorrow and so we do immediate threat assessment we're going to gather that information in the moment and understand the threat of violence by a person but we also have to do threat management we need to understand

077our kids and understand where we think we can provide some supports for our kids that are here on the violent act continuum they've done a lot of work on on school attacks and it really a typical flow is it starts with a grievance and then there's some thought to how they're going to take care of things because of whatever happened to them research and planning the attack pre-attack preparation probing and breaches let's see if i can get in the back door when i come after school today and then the attack and the good news here is it's not a one-way street with interventions there's also de-escalation of that continuum and so in schools we need to deal with the immediate but we need to be spending a lot of time looking for this so we

078can make sure that we are de-escalating any situations that we find and we have a lot of support to do that we have a robust mental health staff five school psychologists six school counselors a school social worker school nurse in each school including two at petrova community school liaison and the community school coordinator and our counseling staff is working with school house school health assessment and performance in shape we had to apply to be part of this program and we were awarded the grant by the united states office of mental health and it really helps our mental health team establish their mental health plan making sure it's robust and meeting the needs of the district i've kathleen could talk to you about it for an hour you can tell me if there's a better answer

079for that this is like a quiz but but we have a lot of support through our community schools of actual people here in our district citizens advocates uh provides counseling services in-house and we have a full-time prevention specialist here in-house we tried to start this year but they had to hire and so we are ready to go the person has been hired and will be they're with us right now just getting to know the kids and will be back with us uh in the fall we were part of three districts that worked with franklin county and franklin county was awarded a huge grant called system of care grant provides in our district a social worker a respite worker family support advocate and a youth career advocate that's a five-year grant we also work with community

080connections and in-house we have a family support advocate and a lead family coordinator and we just picked up on some work with high peaks hospice uh eli was here with us this evening and you know i mentioned that he's lost a parent recently and so we're doing some work with hospice to do some bereavement coordination with our kids in january i had the opportunity to speak with mark concordia and he has a long impressive resume here and really what he talks about at risk international is paying attention to the warning behaviors through a threat assessment model about we we have student support teams in each building but each works a little differently and the idea is building procedures and protocols so that we don't miss any signs so we've already begun working with him in

081february 28th we did an on boarding call with at risk they then do a needs assessment their work is based on not only the district but also the buildings so it's tailored to each building the needs assessment went out march early april we have two asynchronous training modules and those will go out to our building level teams next week and then we have the in person training day on august 24th and then after that we'll have some other there's some other pieces to his work with us and we have established times we have some immediate next steps we do continual review of current procedures and updating safety plans happen each summer in fact we're working on the district one right now we did sometimes when things happen it does remind you and our safety security

082cameras and swipe cards and the main office items have been in for a couple years so we are going to go through and do a thorough testing of all of that hardware and make sure that it's all in good repair and the other thing that we don't have the lab schools have is the possible use of an anonymous reporting software where kids can report there's actually there's somebody on the other side it's just not a school official so anything that gets reported there is a there is a body there to go back and forth whether it's texting or phone calling or whatever they use um but it is something we should look into and see whether or not that is a missing piece of our school safety program i included a lot of dates in

083the presentation because i think i i if i wasn't in school we often talk about school speech you know and we have our own language when you're when you're not in here it's uh we talk a different language and i find that when you go to someplace else the doctor's office talks a different language than i do at school and i think it's really important that the dates that i shared with you and i put the dates in purposefully because this is part of what the administration does every day on an ongoing basis the community and the national news brings it to the forefront for our families but it's always on the forefront for us and i think the the dates some things that we have been doing show that this is a continual improvement

084process for us as a district um erica said something that was moving she said i work here i'm not going to work someplace that's unsafe and my child comes to school here and i'm not going to have my child come to school when i feel it's unsafe and i think that's true we have so many of our staff members who have students in our district and we are all very invested not only on ourselves and everybody's kids but our kids are here too and i think by having so many of our district personnel actually live in the district we as a district do have a heightened awareness of safety and security so i'll stop there and i'm sure there are some questions and we're ready for it we hope you members of the board have

085questions for diana's i would make one note there are some state regulations regarding what you have to do in this area and we started many of these items before those regulations were in place so we've tried to be out in front in school security and it's a credit to all of our staff right admin staff our teaching staff our support staff and our students that we try to implement some of these things well before the requirements so i know it's important for our district to continue to update and i'm glad to see that there's more training and constant training in these issues so i'm happy about that thank you diane okay we've reached the public comment uh portion of the meeting do you have anyone in the public that would like to address the board

086yes ma'am your name jen patnam i just have a question i don't know if it can be answered but it seems like this district is being very proactive and finding someone who would pose a threat but what if the threat is already being escaped okay so we talked about this at another meeting i would say that this is a difficult balance for us to disclose all of our procedures we want to be careful we want to reassure staff students community members that we're doing everything within our power to do we also don't want to disclose some of our procedures and approaches for fear of tipping off a perpetrator as of the way we handle things um i would suggest that if you're looking for a little more in depth on that you can schedule time

087with mrs fox and our board president and or me and we can maybe answer some specifics for you we just don't want to publicly broadcast some of the things we do and i know that for many people that's unsettling to them but we do it for a good reason we just want to be sure that not everything we do is open to everybody to know we do more things than what was presented here and so if you have a specific concern please contact mrs fox information okay okay and we'll talk okay i have one more question sure um what would be the steps that would be taken to try to get a resource an armed resource officer so we have debated that in the past we've had some proposals in the past none of them

088really worked out to where we could fall through some of those proposals we're always open to reinvestigating it i have gone on record in the past that having a resource officer is less about having the position and more about the person that fills it understand what i'm saying there i do um just having a warm body in that position doesn't really do as much good person in that position is critical for it to be successful so that they can maintain a good relationship with students so students feel comfortable in approaching them unfortunately a small community like ours it's very difficult to get someone that can stay here long enough to kind of establish those things but we're we're not opposed to discussion on that there's a lot of factors that go into that absolutely i

089feel like the fortunate thing about this community is we're a community full of people like my husband um who is retired law enforcement we live around all these prisons um we have a bunch of retired troopers they are all trained with firearms they are all used to running towards bad situations it's a valid point for sure and we have all kinds of men and women in our community like that that are already trained and have done so what i would say to you is like we said earlier there are legislation issues involved with who we could hire who we can't hire there are rules for that but your point is valid given the law enforcement presence in our community perhaps there's an untapped poll there i will say to you when we last discussed this

090one of the things was brought up is our proximity to our police station is incredibly near and in any issues we've had i've had some firsthand issues with police responding when i was dean of students and their response time is incredibly quick it still doesn't replace someone that's already here we also have a concern as a district that we have three buildings so we've had conversations about do we have one person for three buildings do we have three people for three buildings so these are things we've discussed in the past we're not opposed to continue as we said to the students we like to update the policies yearly on that these safety issues we constantly want to readdress what was not possible euro may be possible this year what's possible this year maybe it may

091not be possible two years from now so we we definitely are looking ahead and there's pending legislation to provide funding for these things but my view of this is it's critical we get the correct people in those jobs because that's what makes the difference so when you meet with mrs fox and similar things she she can kind of walk you down that path a little bit and let you know where we're at with that and if it's the board's pleasure we can we can re-examine this too we do have some new board members so that's something i would like to do perhaps we should uh review what we've done in the past and you know see where where we stand today do we know how many schools have armed resource officers and or metal detectors

092in and how many do not i don't think we would have a defender new york state there is a website and i don't have it um i don't have the website address in front of me um i would give you my email address though and i would be happy to share with you because it was interesting to see there's a couple websites that are fact checked to make sure that they're right just to kind of get an idea we hear about the resource officers all the time but how many schools actually have them i think if i can say one thing to you as a mom that and it makes me cry thinking about it that had to have that discussion with my daughter okay this is what you do right and sleepless nights regularly

093is if you have a concern talk to somebody um and i say this to all parents whether it's your child someone else's child you hear something something on facebook talk to somebody talk to one of us talk to if your child has a teacher that you feel comfortable with a guidance counselor whoever it is it is better to say call and say hey i have this concern um because i would personally rather check out something i'm not going to have an answer for you right away but i will look into that i would rather come back and say no we got that under control or i yes i have looked into it we can't give you details but yes we've looked into this i would rather be able to go to bed that night and

094know god i'm glad that call for miss patnode was nothing then find out the next day that maybe you did hear something or another parent or something i think i think the phrase is overused it takes a village to raise a child and i think especially a small community like this where we don't have a ton of resources i i think we all have to help each other out and so please and other parents that you talk to please tell them not to hesitate to reach out reach out to whoever you feel comfortable with um and if you don't feel comfortable reach out again so that's one of those if you notice a presentation we're investigating a text tip line that's anonymous that resource is available to anybody in the community staff students community members

095parents sometimes people are reluctant to get involved so we're researching that to see what we can make happen to make it easy for people to give us information that can help us manage a situation prior to it occurring that would be helpful i think for a lot of people or somewhat hesitant or not sure who it called but if we have a targeted thing they know that's the thing that may help us avert some disaster in the future so we're we're currently looking into that we we have the same fears that parents do we really do and this is important to us we have we've done a lot of work on this and i wish we could sit here and detail everything from a to z it just would not be appropriate to do whatever

096i think um i think there's i just wrote a letter to aurora i think three weeks ago and there's been like two school shootings since then so it's uh it's terrifying it's everybody's fear and if you look at our district buildings they were all built during an era where the more open your building was that was the architect of the day and i i know vern can speak to this we've done a lot of work on our door hardware our doors uh our access systems uh mrs fox noted that you know you know we do have people funneled into a central area but there's still holes in that system we're trying to plug the blowing deal has been an issue that's another supply chain parts issue we're waiting on um and we're pestering the vendors

097all the time so we're trying to retrofit our schools that are 50 60 years old for a more modern approach it's not easy but we're drawing all of our interior doors in the phase one were made to be lockable from the inside with exception i think bloomington work process i think they're they're good to go correct you know what are you asking i'm not sure what you're asking doors can they be locked from inside yeah they can be locked in the inside but they're constantly locked and the door is then shut it just has to be shut came back so those are improvements there's a little secret behind the curtain right there right so we're looking at all of our key locks and trying to advance that system it is pricey but we're looking and

098evaluating can we do some of that and we know there's some federal legislation and pending funds that may be potentially available that's the thing we look to do it so this is always in our minds we have updates on this constantly staff training is constant so we hope that it is always only training anyone else move public okay we'll move to uh reports versus our superintendent report thank you thank you thank you everybody thank you thank you jen and our uh all the board's contact information is on our website thank you so much talk a little bit about foreign language in that if you are watching our open positions you'll see that we are looking for american sign language and spanish so i just want to clarify that a little bit there has been a

099multi-year movement away from french and into spanish and it's happening everywhere it's not just a saranac lake move we have always been responsive to kids when kids tell us with their feet and their sign ups that they're not interested in a particular course we we stop offering that course and try to offer others that they are interested in taking and so our kids are speaking loud and clear our sixth graders who are moving into seventh grade have about 90 percent of them would like to take spanish and so we have posted for both american sign language which is an acceptable language and a spanish position nobody will be losing their job we have a foreign language teacher who has multi certifications who would be welcomed with open arms to do some other work in the

100district that it's necessary um but we don't we have an american sign language instructor on staff who would love to teach american sign language however i don't feel it's it's a unique certification and i would never want to offer it seventh eighth grade and not be able to continue it through the high school and so it's sort of a twofer deal we can't do one without knowing that we have the full continuum so that they can do the multi-year coursework anybody who's in french we will continue to have french instruction throughout their school year so they can continue on their french course however the other option is to hire a another spanish teacher we've always been a little lopsided in spanish so josh also needs a couple periods of spanish because of the large number

101of students taking spanish in high school so we had originally talked about doing a 4.4 position which is two periods but um they could pick up the three periods in the middle school too and be a full period so our plan is not to do both our plan is to do one or the other but neither is an easy position to fill and the other thing i just want to talk about tonight is graduation it is fast approaching it's next friday and the weather is going to be 75 and partly cloudy with a light breeze to keep the bugs away and i was speaking with mark as we prepared for this meeting and he mentioned that the board may have a preference as to whether to do scholarships in person or uh be videotaped and

102the videotape shown so i wondered if we could have a conversation about that if you could just let me know if you're actually going to be here next friday um and then i i promise because you're new to zach right have you been no oh this is so exciting yeah so the board uh and we're sort of flipping back because we've had a couple years of covid too so it's been a little different so the board has the the job of announcing the scholarship winners and this year we're keeping it very close to our vest because we have some staff members who also have seniors so it's top secret so you will get the listing of those scholarships but you must guard that list that list with your life because it's it's not public knowledge

103and what we do is we we introduce the scholarship and the scholarship winners in pairs someone reads the name of the scholarship and someone else announces the the recipients of that scholarship and we work with eric wilson's group and the office gives pictures so the kids pictures will come up on the screen we used to try to find them in the audience and that made an hour and a half long searching for kids so the pictures are already there kids are welcome to stand but they're already up there so one piece of what we do is announce the scholarships and the second piece is uh we are part of the the receiving of the diplomas mr dan hands them their diploma and shakes their hand i shake their hand and move their tassel because they're

104now graduate and the board of education member um congratulates them and a lot of times we have board members who know certain kids and would like to be the ones that shake their hand and so if you let me know that i'll make sure we go in no particular order and i'll make sure that you are on stage for that particular child or children we could we can make it work we're pretty flexible um so that's our job at graduation we did during covet actually record our um scholarship list so it was just played we didn't actually have to get up and do it live and when i told mark we were doing it live he said well maybe maybe we'd like to be recorded so i spoke with mr dan we're happy to do

105it either way if you would prefer to be recorded i'm happy to reach out to eric i'm sure that will not be an issue and we could record it or we can do it live at graduation so for the new folks the advantage to being recorded is it could be edited you know i think my thought on this first was if it's outside and we have space because we have space out there you know live might make some sense um if we're if we're forced inside during weather um that's going to be very tight quarters perhaps a video presentation of that what that would allow us is you would be able to when you come in and do the recording you'll be able to practice and understand how it's going to work and then recording

106will be used as a backup so we can do it anyway supports preference there's been years in the board of education's involvement and graduation with virtually show up and be seen there's been other years where they've been highly involved decorating the stage all kinds of things so we pretty much can go between those two extremes um i know for me personally one of my greatest fears is to mispronounce a student's name i don't want to do that when i was here fairly active uh when i left i still knew a lot of the students but this is pretty much a new group for me as well so anyone have thoughts on how they like to proceed with this personally i think the more we need to celebrate these kids and the hard work especially having

107both problems and everything else i think the more that we do in person that's my personal opinion and if you need somebody to help decorate the stage i'll help you android i think i got that covered so you'd like to do it in person i personally i think it just it shows our support of these kids and it shows how important that is i mean a person i think under ideal circumstances but if we wanted to do a pre-recording like you said if it's incoming weather it doesn't make sense that's we have that the auditorium we've had exactly one graduation in there the class is a little bigger than this class but it is very tight maneuvering in there and so to get in there and move around as a group is it's not an

108easy thing yeah that was my thought about if we're forced in there then we'll have that and the recording gives you it's a practice sure we're not doing any tense we are tensing this year we are tempting so we could be like that's the thing about tenting is that it gives us a bigger window of weather yes and i prefer to do it in person personally i think it would be you know we're kind of for the same reason before i say i mean there's no reason we can learn to pronounce names as best we can um that wouldn't be a reason not to do it for me but if it looks like it's very likely we're going to be indoors then recording it might make sense and we i don't know how last minute

109you can make that decision yeah that's sure eric but you know uh a couple days but i would prefer i agree okay so uh what i'm hearing is we'll do it in person so we usually meet at 5 30 on friday downstairs in the boardroom and that gives us time to go over the list read them aloud i'll find somebody to help us with the pronunciation who is not the person who usually helps us with the pronunciation because he's going to be doing parent things that night having the graduates so it does say 76 and partly cloudy what's important is that we have to know what board members are will be here yes we know that aurora will not be right because you know then we got to kind of divvy it up and uh

110you're going to give us this ahead of yeah so what usually happens like on wednesday um diana gives me the list and i break i see how many we have and i break it up by group and then i i email it to you yes and you'll see which section is yours and then we'll maybe uh maybe mr dan can uh record the name the difficult name he doesn't get to know what the name no no not who oh i guess just all the names then make sure you don't mess that one up okay we have a resource yes so we'll meet then at 5 30 on friday but you'll hear from me before then probably on wednesday um i'll send you the list and we'll go from there sure of course five questions okay

111no i've got some sweet regalia that i like if you would you can you can do as you wish i can't wear mine because greg's wearing it saranac is doing we have the same whatever you call that so uh will not be in my regalia all right and the only other thing i have is tonight is kade's very last meeting with us and so i have for uk a resolution of appreciation for dedicated and exemplary service to the saranac lake central school district whereas kate kors has ably served as a student representative to the saranac lake central school district board of education from december 9 2020 to june 15 2022 and whereas he has distinguished himself by making outstanding contributions to the saranac lake central school district by offering sound and thoughtful reports and input

112between the student body and the board of education and where is kate korres through his accomplishments and exemplary services as a student representative to the board of education has served as a role model for other students and adults now therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the saranac lake central school district together with its superintendent and clerk of the board hereby extend their deepest thanks to kate course for his dedicated and exemplary public service to the people of the saranac lake central school district during his tenure as a student representative of the board of education kate i wish you all the best of luck thank [Applause] so you was fortunate enough and okay way back in middle school baseball all right i don't know you got some stories no i don't i

113do but you knew then that he was going to be a leader and he was a quality young man back in middle school and it's good to see that you've continued that and hopefully moving forward continue to be involved with things because you're a good person to be involved thank you mr farmer i appreciate it thank all of you for listening to my input and understanding what i have to say from the student's point of view it's sometimes different to hear it from a student's point of view and i really appreciate you guys just listening and understanding where the students are coming from as well it's important thank you committee reports we'll start uh with joe dancing uh just to say that we had our last diversity equity and inclusion committee meeting of the 2021

1142022 school year it was last thursday uh we are taking the summer off a nice summer and we did schedule our first meeting in the fall at september 22nd it'll be on the district challenge with how we'll meet and all that and then at that meeting we'll um restructure our calendar for this year discuss new york you know whatever reorganizing that we'll thank you so i was able to meet with mr dan today and uh phil being we're back in the regents testing mode and uh there's a learning curve there we have a group of students that have not been through it and teachers that haven't done it in a while and so there were um you know a few hurdles but by and large that's going really well is that correct mr dan yep

115yeah so we're happy to report that so that will wrap up the high school i did meet with forest morgan last wednesday our new athletic director and again over here what i said previously he's excited to get going i think there's a good plan to support him and get him rolling uh i will meet with him again in august uh right around the time sports get booming and uh so we're on track there exactly one more thing i forgot sure i attended the high school concert on was it thursday thursday and it was a pleasure it was such a treat to have a good question i don't want to take it away from thunder but as as a i no longer have a child in singing i was still thrilled to get to attend as

116a board member but really more it's just a community it is always spectacular what those students are able to do and i was able to correspond with mr van wielden over there um blooming bloomingdale elementary first and third grade hiked mount baker um it's pretty phenomenal um looks like state testing's wrapped up and they also were able to get the third graders off for a canoe trip field days uh went off with hopefully without a hitch yeah okay good and uh and they had some fifth graders uh enjoy the vix so it sounds like they're getting out and about which is awesome so that's what i have to report and uh and just uh thank you to mr van gaal and for always being so quick to reply thank you tori so just a reminder

117of the board at our organizational meeting we will take a look at community liaisons i think you were going to send the list to that would you not i can sure yeah i think we talked about having to get that so people know what's what's there um i think the other thing i'll say i don't know if it was on one of our paperwork or not if any member of the board is interested in uh becoming president or vice president what we've typically done the last couple years is if you are interested in holding one of those positions you would email the group and say hey i'm interested it helps them void when we do our reorganizational meeting in july we've had some difficult moments with that but that way you'll know going into the

118meeting who's interested and and you know i'll give you time to think about what where you would uh place your vote so um we're only going to meet graduation then it's the organization so um what i'll do is i i will ask aurora's gone so what i'll do is i'll just send this out in the form of a memo to the board copy to diana pratt about how this process works if you're interested in such positions then you can apply the email is aurora in communication you know she promised to send me some pictures from her trip but uh i will i will text her and see well i don't want her to sit on the opportunity my understanding from what i talked to her last is that she's interested but i will try to

119reach out there um so now we're to our student representatives anything for us um as said already there was the band and chorus concert last week the some of the ensemble and course went over to the middle school elementary school yesterday and put a performance on with a few of the songs that we did at the concert and we had student elections where all of the student officers were appointed last week and regencies are in full swing today's first day of regents is yesterday was the last day that actual classes for students so now you only have to come in if you have a test at least in high school so i would say um senior pictures are also tomorrow and friday for two years yeah administrative staff we'll start with mr daniel we'll just

120work our way up i just want to uh thank cade for uh throwing us his name in the hat when we uh decided to take more reps um i think when we decided to have four four reps in the beginning of this we we had nobody that was interested we kind of found somebody that was and then we had our elections for the uh student board reps we have nine people that were interested in one position so i just goes to show you that you guys are doing a good job and advocating the position nicely so nice job um i also want to give jackie uh um a shout out should a solo at the at the concert and uh just a phenomenal job so kudos to you and i think um yeah i think

121we're winding down it seems uh seems weird i think uh because we're just it's it's done next friday so i think uh kids are um you know nervous and anxious about doing well on their tests but i think also i'm excited for the summer so um a couple comments today from some of the ninth graders were the tests they took today with some of the hardest tests they've ever had in their whole entire life so i think that some some of them are uh you know that's it's it's uh it's real for them so i think um i think our staff has prepared our students the best they can and uh we'll see what the the end results are i think as much previously many of the students are caught in this group where they're

122just out of practice that kind of evaluation so it's gonna there'll be some bumps when do we when did the region's results wouldn't be um so we usually get the answers um the the morning or the afternoon of that of that day or the next day and then teacher's grade the exam is pretty pretty fast and then all the exam grades and final grades will be available on school tool on friday the 24th so everything will be available up on school too we actually give report cards on the last day of school um it's kind of crazy i'm not sure many high schools do this but we have a we have a last day we have an assembly we do show the slideshow and our kids they show up and it's pretty awesome so they

123will get a paper copy of the report card on the last day of school but the grades will be accessible in school too okay thank you very much or not but the last official day is that but a lot of students will know well before that yeah lucky we could get you a copy earth science so as zach pointed out we've had a pretty busy june it seems as though all the teachers students and families included um i think there's a fear that all the things that we did three years ago but pre-covered may go away again so we have this opportunity to have trips and to have events and people come in and ceremonies and stuff like that so they're all happening and so all that stuff that zach just mentioned was the first

124half of june it's just the first two weeks so the next you know seven eight days we still we have our kindergarten moving up we have our fifth grade um well it's a kindergarten celebration fifth grade moving up uh ceremony that's uh tomorrow and friday and next week we have a fourth and fifth grade talent show going on we have a fun day that we're doing and there's a school like picnic that's going to take place so it's just a really full end of the year so um i'm gonna disagree a little bit with josh we're not winding down we're still like way amped up right now and probably will be until um friday and graduation day um but it's been great it's been going going by really quickly but it's been a lot of

125fun so we're enjoying it all the same things different building really uh just a couple things that i don't think have been mentioned actually exactly our third graders have been canoeing um the last few days which is pretty awesome uh gets them back they're loving it and i want to get a canoe so just getting them exposed to the some of the things that we can do in our own backyard it's pretty awesome because there's many kids that haven't even been in a boat let alone a canoe and there were others because i'm never getting in a canoe again but that was uh that was pretty cool again our fifth grade moving our moving up ceremony is tomorrow we spent yesterday at fish creek with our fifth grade um which is always a fun event

126our fun days are coming up our first graders on bowling today which was pretty neat little white barbecue coming up so yeah a lot of the same things i agree with bruce it's far from winding down in our buildings but it came quick and it's hard to believe that a week from friday's the last day had a good year oh yeah yes so there's a funny story here so kelly duffy was very proud of his uh accomplishments putting together uh a kickball tournament with our fourth and fifth grade students with the ultimate goal that the team that won got to play the teachers which was today um two innings everybody has a chance to kick i'm gonna stay back with your kick and i think we were they they thought they were gonna guess they

127weren't one nothing after the first inning they came in to uh we came in the back and it ended up nine to one no mercy we even let them go through their batting work again um it was a great event uh the kids they they had their trophy so kelly duffy made it you know took an old trophy big one put a kickball on the top of it um so the kids you know that they won it wasn't they already won the championship it was to play the teachers was just an extra added thing well we we didn't feel like that was fair we felt like we should have trophy of course so i was walking the halls and walked by a room and i'm like there's a trophy and there's nobody in there so

128i went in and i grabbed the trophy and i brought it up to the main office and it's sitting beautifully on top of our microwave in the main office and i don't think they know what's gone yet we'll see what happens tomorrow morning that was a fun event or anything no i think suzanne had the first stop could you pick the home run he knew that he played father time is undefeated so i was in my office the other day i'm on the second outside practicing and they were so good i had to stop what i was doing and go through the office and outdoor too and they they sang the song that was like every pop song you've ever wanted to hear whatever song a memory of it and it was it was the

129best so i hope you got to see some of the middle school performances about the high school performance okay um so we had grade level meetings at trova with special education across the with the gen ed teachers to talk about the service delivery next year we wanted to get a little bit creative so that we could allow for some interventions for a lot of these students especially the younger students who've had some broken instruction and some news and intervention and things like that prior to the classification for special education so we rolled some lessons out um so we had those meetings and they were great um one sort of sad aha moment was we were meeting with the third grade team brian and i know them together um their students that they're going to be

130seeing in their classrooms next year have never ever gone to school non-cultural world third grade so that's that's sort of what we'll be walking into our classroom section in the first race what's going on um currently the third graders heather normal kindergarten but so um those are really good and we really were able to wrap in all the work the personal mapping that they've been doing with melissa butler um and how special education really weaves in with that and how we're delivering the services at the elementary level next year um so everyone else is sort of want you know closing up the school year and we're going to take a quick break for special education and then we start back up july 5th for extended school year for some of our students um so coordinating

131with building new grounds um roofs with food meals transportation again with the safety talking about where the different radios will be these staff members will be in different locations than they are in the school year um so that's ready to go underway um and then the third thing is uh they're on the agenda tonight for the admissions program for summer preschool students there is some reading waiting lists really for prejudice speech services um at the preschool level so we wanted i want to use some of that grant money in a creative way media manchester united work out some summer's enrichment services for the younger students to help with that prevention as we get into middle school students have had some real language deficits that have had anyway but also being with kobit they may not

132have been in his school they may not have been in daycares um and they just you may not have been looking to do a boxes i don't know why so um liz quayle is going to work with some students starting contact parents and i'm really excited to get some of our younger girls in over the summer to give them some speech language enrichment and then also under that same umbrella with a grant we we worry about our kids and their mental health which i know you've seen and we've talked about a lot cara cassidy is going to be running a social skills group to keep the help of our students over the over the summer we come in once a week and contact some of the students and families some of them will be in

133the y so it'll be great to kind of help them especially if you're kind of having some issues you know whether it's social issues whatever just kind of touch them for them and keep things going for some of them over the summer no specific programs but just to be another resource for our kids in the summer thank you so great news about the y camp ampersand is uh over 110 students per week will be attending it is uh so awesome to hear all the things that those students will be receiving during their summer fun at camp ampersand and we had an opportunity from camp southwoods i encourage you to look it up when you're in your bed tonight uh to look up camp southwoods on your phone students were selected based on merit by all

134staff and then from that uh district level leaders chose from that group 25 students to receive a full tuition two-week overnight camp at camp southwoods uh july 23rd through august 6th including canteen money um and i can only tell you how many times i've told the owner that should they need an expert i'm not a camper but i would go to this camp for those two weeks on their behalf uh it is truly remarkable we um suzanne's called families i've called families uh katie lava and ruth pino and we've all had someone cry when we gave them the news of their child's uh merit-based scholarship to go um so please look at the camp and this is there is no string like that was the first thing i said to the owner like what's the

135string he's like there's no strength we want our vocal children to come and enjoy the magic of being a summer camper where is the kid paradox lake and how many children 25 25 has scholarships in the same week 4 000 for each session for two weeks uh-huh yeah so it's close like 97 000 in in scholarship money we were awarded through this camp so we are able to provide transportation should a family be awarded this opportunity and not be able to transport their child thank you fred and um we can also support them in camp needs you know like clothes or water shoes or whatever it might be that students might need to feel successful during those two weeks it is amazing it's great it is yeah my first thing was like what's the and

136some families are rearranging their already scheduled family summer plans so that their children can attend a great opportunity yeah anything else oh i could go for an hour because that was good [Laughter] erin i don't want to leave you out do you have another course i don't have a lot uh i can say the last couple months have been real challenging for us uh as we've been short staffed right along but we had one of our maintenance people out on long term sick uh of course i lost maintenance foreman uh a month ago uh he moved down to a different position so we've been a little short uh had a lot of people off because a lot of my people have been holding their vacation to try to help us out during the school year

137you know the main school year and not make us any shorter so they got to use up their time by the end of the year so i've got a lot of people off there's been a few days where uh i think myself or scott crew have been the only maintenance people in the office on the district but we've gotten through it uh we're coming up on our challenging time once uh school gets out getting everything done cleaned and waxed and everybody moved and all that stuff the encouraging side a change we've actually had uh some interest in jobs and job applications have been coming in uh we've had three students that were uh interested in doing the work study and we've had uh three or four other applications i think coming in whether or not

138they'll all come to fruition after we get to the end or not i don't know but for what we've had in the past no applications no interest no phone calls no anything it's at least encouraging so we'll see where it goes and [Music] hopefully we can get everything all done [Music] summer is like vacations for everybody else they're always too short and you can't get anything done that you want to get done but i don't think people realize what gets done in the summertime by our maintenance and custodial staff it's a lot of work it seems like it's a long time you see what's going to get done so thank you for that i said that diane yesterday in our meeting i have never seen our petrova baseball complex which includes the football field and

139the infield looked better than it is now and i've been here a long time i've never seen it look better than that uh any any news on the geese is that still those people still coming or i haven't touched bases with them recently we're not seeing them so they typically take a little break in assembly yeah i've only seen the geese out there a couple times and i did see the family of ducks out here a week or so ago with all their little goslings i thought they were decent first until i got closer but it was ducks uh but i haven't seen i haven't seen the geese i somebody sent me a picture of some geese over on the practice football field but as far as their calling cards being left i have hardly

140seen any so i am very amazed but we'll cross our fingers on that until but because they usually do leave uh about this time yeah and then they come back usually the week before we start sports in august so i'm sure they'll pick back up again in august thank you for uh working with that lady i think that thus far we've made progress well i certainly had my doubts but i'm glad to be proved wrong on this one because it's made my life a lot easier everybody's like a lot easier so thank you so we are in need of an executive session to discuss the medical financial credit or employment history of a particular person or corporation more matters leading to the appointment employment promotion emotional discipline suspension dismissal removal of a particular person or

141corporation so i'm looking for a motion to appear right hey both