001I will call this meeting of the board of education to order. Could I please get a roll call? Trustee Lakia here. Trusty Braxton here. Trusty Amecha here. Trustee Amory here. Trusty Fogerty here. Trusty Copans here. Trusty Crackler. Trusty Wilton here. Trusty Witovich here. Here. Student Representative Balser here. Student Representative How here. Please join me in saying the pledge of allegiance. America stands for that one too. Could I please get a motion to approve the minutes from October 9th? I see Deb and a second by Ashley. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor? Okay, that's unanimous. And could I please get a motion to accept tonight's agenda? I see Lee and a second by Angie. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? That's unanimous. All right, we will now have our first public comment period. On behalf of
002the board, thank you for being here. We truly value input from the community and appreciate your engagement. New York State Board of Education meetings are held in public so the board can conduct the business of the district visibly to maximize transparency and information sharing with the community. They are not public meetings with real-time dialogue with attendees. However, our board provides two public comment periods during during which speakers may address us to share information and opinions that may inform our work. In the case that follow-up is necessary, the appropriate district official will reach out. The first public comment period is limited to 30 minutes. Then, after the board conducts its business, a second comment period is available with no official time limit. We ask speakers and the audience to conduct themselves in a civil and constructive
003manner, modeling the same respectfulness we expect from the students of our district. We do not allow comments about specific individual employees, students, or trustees and ask that you be succinct and try not to repeat previous speakers to allow more people the opportunity to address us. This opens the first public comment period. Each speaker is allotted a maximum of three minutes. And before you address the board, please clearly state your name. Our first two slots are reserved for students. Our first speaker tonight is Megan Connelly Hop. Hi, I'm Megan Connelly helped. This is my daughter, Porter Helped. And I have um Doc Porter is an eighth grader at Maple. She participates in the unified PE program which is fantastic. So I really want to thank you all for making that possible last year. I really look
004forward to unified art and music being added hopefully next year. My other daughter who cannot be here this evening is a fifth grader at Greenfield Elementary. Has a great experience there. She participates in the adaptive PE program, which is also a really good program that we're grateful exists for her. We're here tonight to talk about the bike program that the si the district rolled out last year. Um I found out about it on March 14th, which was a Friday evening. Um realizing that it was going to be at Greenfield on Monday morning. bad timing. But I reached out uh to the district at that time just simply asking if the bright bike program for all students had any adaptive bikes. In the seven months since then, I have learned that there are no adaptive bikes
005in the school bike program. So when we say that is a bike program for all students, there's a percentage of the population that is being unserved by this program. So, what is an adaptive bike? Here's an example of one. I sent photos of this on March 14th, so to some people, this is not new, but it's something nice to see in person. So, an adaptive bike is different than a mountain bike in that the handlebars are higher than the seat. A mountain bike is very difficult to learn to ride on because it throws off your center of gravity. Um, another thing about it is that the student should be able to sit on the seat and have their feet flat on the ground. And then this um handle you can see was added to this
006bike. It was $40 to add to it. And this allows a student to ride almost virtually independently. It requires just a little bit of handhold, just a little bit of stabilization. Training wheels are not recommended for students with mobility or other challenges. Um, and this allows the student to practice steering and pedaling and um, really have the experience of learning to ride a bike. So, my daughter has upgraded to this system. Again, this is just one model of an adaptive bike and she's so close to being able to ride independently. If this bike is in the PE program, this could be this could be the fall when she does it. So, um, her PE teacher asked me to bring this bike for the second year in a row to school so that she can participate
007in the bike program. So, um, I'm hoping that, um, the district rethink the program as being complete, which is the word that is being used to describe the program publicly, and think about the percentage of students that are left out of that bike program. And with some simple adjustments and with a a small fleet of adaptive bikes, all students can participate and learn how to ride a bike in PE. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Um, our next section is board committee reports. Are there any committees that need to report out? Beth, the finance committee met yesterday. And uh just a couple of things. We went over the um audit report, but I'm going to save that for uh Jen Manard, who is here to present a summary of the report. You'll be
008hearing about that in just a minute. And then we also reviewed the um revised budget development calendar that we'll be approving tonight. All right. Anyone else? Okay, I have two. Um, the first is that, sorry, I'm just going to adjust. The first is that last Thursday I did attend NISBA's annual meeting um to vote on proposed bylaw amendments for NISSBA and then resolutions for NISBA to advocate um for or against or to not advocate for or against. Um, and I did take notes on everything. I will share these with board members um unless Nesba sends out a summary soon. Um and so I did take notes on how I voted on each thing. What I did was for every board member who voted I just went with the what the majority supported. Um and I
009will share it was a very long meeting. It started at 4 p.m. It ended just before 1000 p.m. Um but I thought it was really great. I really enjoyed it. Um, and I went in expecting to not enjoy it. Um, and anticipating it to be very, very long and boring. Um, but I thought it was really great. It was really wonderful to hear from board members from across the state to hear from the different people who had proposed the different resolutions um, and bylaw amendments and to hear what they're thinking about in their communities for their students and how those apply or potentially don't apply to our students here. Um, and I just really thought that that was um, a great way to connect with other people. I did get some emails from a few
010different board members um as I advocated for um my or our position on different things. Um and so yeah, I guess I I was anticipating this um cautiously and I I really did enjoy it and I hope that other board members who have not yet had the chance to do it um get the chance to attend this meeting. Um but if not, I will happily attend it any year I'm on the board. Um, the next thing is that our board of education met last week to create draft goals for our board for the year. And so I did email those to everybody. And then I also have copies. So I'm going to pass there's one for you. So I have right here in front of me. Thank you. Do you have extras? I'm sorry. Will
011you just give to Lisa? I'm so sorry. I miss I miscounted. All right. You can have one, too. We're good. Yes, we're all good. Um, I did stop the copier while I was printing, so I wasn't sure exactly how many printed. So, um, okay. This is our chance to discuss these before they will go on the agenda for our next meeting, which is on I think November 13th is when they'll be on the agenda. Um, so again, these are just a draft. We can weigh in on this and I will share I guess the things that stand out to me as well. So would anybody like to get started? Yeah. Okay. So we wrote a goal around strategic planning. Um, the people in our subgroup were Connie um or Representative Wovich um Dr. Patton, myself,
012and Representative Amecha. Um, the board will engage in strategic planning by actively participating in the process, listening to stakeholder feedback, providing leadership, and working to identify core beliefs, priorities, and actionable next steps. The board will accomplish this by one participating in the thought exchange survey. Two, attending the November 6th board session to establish process and identity common identify common themes. Three, providing board representation at the November 12th community session. Four, using gathered feedback to identify core beliefs, priorities, and actionable next steps. And lastly, participating in approving the final version of mission and vision in the spring of 2026. All right. So, any comments or suggested changes? I just had one to note, which is that two of these things we will have already accomplished or not accomplished before we vote on them. Um, but I
013think that's okay. All right. Okay. So, then, um, next group, either students or community engagement. Lee. So I was on a subgroup working on community community engagement. This was with um Deb and Natalia Deb Emory and Natalyia Lakia. Sorry. Can you hear me now? Uh okay. Can you hear me now? Okay. Uh community engagement we focused on. Um so it was myself, uh Deb and Natalia. Um the the um the language that we came up with was the board will strengthen community engagement by enhancing communication and collaboration with key stakeholders. We focused on two areas. One supporting budget communication and two supporting communication about board meetings and activities. For supporting budget communication, we will act as informed advocates for the annual budget process, focusing on transparent updates and promoting community understanding of the annual bud
014budget. The board members will attend community organization and parent group meetings in the spring leading up to the May 19th budget vote for support communication about board meetings and activities. Um we have two parts. A newsletter will discuss and identify viable options for the process to publish a BOE corner in the district newsletter. Discuss topics of communication that could be used such as upcoming topics, board perspectives, pros, cons for issues and piloting the process. And then for enhancing social media presence, we will create a template to be shared with district communications including the date, time, presentation topics, link to meeting and link to board docs, agenda for upcoming business meetings and workshops. Identify a timeline for posting said template. And then three, evaluate the engagement driven by social media posts. Sorry, we had a much
015longer one. Um, any comments or concerns? I have one. Um, so I think um, as I said at our meeting last week, I do have concerns about the newsletter proposal just because I think it is complicated to ensure that we are able to meet and come to consensus and create something that is potentially subjective to go into a newsletter. Um, and I did just discuss that with Beth last week as well, just in a conversation. And um one thing that um was suggested um by her that I really liked was instead of that coming up with something that can be done without regular board input. So um potentially taking the schedule of presentations which is set at the beginning of the year and having that be published twice a year. So instead of it being
016you know we're figuring out what we want to propose to go into the newsletter, it is instead about like what to expect at an upcoming board meeting. And um I really liked that. Um I do have concerns just about like offering board perspective because I do think that that is um first of all not always possible. We don't always see eye to eye on things um which I think is good and also um is just it's time consuming and the newsletter has I'm going to assume pretty strict deadlines. And so um I guess what I am proposing is that we would get rid of 1B which is to discuss topics of communication that could be used that like that um the the stuff that's in parentheses. So it's like upcoming topics, board perspective, pros, cons.
017I guess I would even say that I feel I feel pretty concerned about putting a pros cons list about anything that we discuss um either that we have discussed or that we will discuss at the board table because I I don't think that it is so simple to get that across um and rather to make it about just encouraging people to know what it is that we're doing and what it is that we're hearing about in in the presentations. Um, so I guess I'm I would ask that we take another look at B or that one B. Um, and also I guess open to other people's thoughts. I have I have a question about your your comment. Doesn't my understanding of this document is this is sort of a a roadmap to what we're going
018to discuss and then put forward put forward to the board eventually. So, a discussion of topics of communication that could be used seems like something that the group could discuss and then say like, "Oh, we really can't do any of these." Right? Like it doesn't we're not we're not locking in that like a board corner will suddenly appear after we vote next week or next session that includes these topics, right? Like that we're just we're discussing discussing these topics, right? Yes. Okay, Connie. So um it seems then that we would just completely strike one B or one two as this document in front of me is written and then would we rephrase number one to just say publish the presentation schedule in a BOE corner in the district newsletter quarterly or I mean maybe it's
019maybe it is more about like discussing I mean I think that we want to keep the viable options for the process because I don't think that we know the process. And then yeah, we could have like um we could have something more like what we have for the social media presence. So um like creating a template for sharing or creating, you know, a list of suggestions or something or we could strike it, I think. Yeah, Angie. Yeah, I I agree with both your point and also the point that it's the goal is to discuss how to do it. So by striking it, I think we're losing the action of the subcommittee, but we should steer clear of board perspectives and pros and cons. Um any kind of opinion, which as we know only a president
020can speak for the board on our opinion, so we shouldn't have that in a newsletter. Does that make sense? So I I see both points. So taking some of those more subjective pieces out, but then allowing the discussion to still take place on what that board corner look is going to look like. Yeah. Matt, would would removing the parenthetical sort of solve both problems? I think I would. So we could just leave discuss topics of communication that could be used and get rid of just the what's in the parenthesis. Yeah. That's too loud. My understanding was that we were we would just be the purpose of this would be to discuss what potentially could you know thinking about all of the potential pros and cons. Um so I think yeah just just removing the parenthesis
021and then maybe even the third point um pilot like not committing ourselves to piloting a process but committing ourselves to discussing it could be another option. So, okay. So, when you said pros, cons, you were thinking about the pros and cons of the different types of topics. I was thinking that we could what your suggestion um was so we would just have discussed the topics of communication that could be used period and that would be the last that would be the the end of it. So, removing everything beyond that including the third. Okay. I think also perhaps I've just misunderstood what was meant by pros cons, but okay. I like that. Um is there any disagreement with doing that? Okay. So, we're still leaving discuss topics of communication that could be used. We're just removing
022the parenthesis from the goal. Okay. Yeah. I did have a question about the enhancing of social media presence. um this would be going through district communications and then are we saying that this is a one-way communication since we are not responding to anybody right because it's through the district so I don't know if there should be some sort of disclaimer that the board will not be responding um it's just a one-way thing because of the way that this is being set I just Yeah, I just think it's important to communicate that due to the fact that it's actually through the district and not the board. They're just helping to distribute the information. I just don't want our communications people to be bogged down and then perhaps get some feedback that really isn't their fault. Definitely.
023So, I guess I'm also wondering then should we call it enhanced social media presence or should we just just change that where it says enhanced social media presence to just social media because we're also not going to be having like a board social media presence. We're we're not having a board page, right? So, how do we I mean, is there any disagreement with just changing enhanced social media presence to just social media? Maybe through the district. Maybe social media through the district without comment like you can turn off. I mean, that's the best way to any feedback that people would want to have like we'd have to have in an open forum like the board meeting. I feel so or they can email us. Yes. I mean, I I think that's really what the committee
024will discuss how to do those parts of the project. I don't know that we need to to finesse it here. Just in terms of formatting, if we're if you keep in line with how the um the goals are written, number two is support communication about board meetings and activities. and then you know 2 a newsletter 2 b social media I think that makes sense and then I think um you know if we I think what's written for um you know number one under under social media that implies that that it's coming from the district and I do think we need to be very aware of that that we don't want to ever put anything out that gives the appearance of you know um looking for feedback on social media like on a Facebook page or
025an Instagram page. Um but I think if it's coming through the district and we just make that very clear and and the um Lee, Deb and Natalia kind of work to make sure that the language is such that that's clear, there's a clear expectation. I think that I think that's okay. All right. And then for students, so our subgroup is students or student representatives. That includes Tony, Matt, Beth, myself, and Sydney. And our mission statement is the board will expand the role of student representatives as a way to increase their own and the greater student body's engagement with the trustees. And this will be achieved in three ways. One is we will identify or create discrete sections of the meeting agenda to allow for expanded student representative comments. The second way is we will utilize
026student representatives in communicating important upcoming agenda elements to the greater student body. And three, we will create a student representative onboarding manual for the 2026 to 2027 school year and beyond. Right? Any comments or suggestions? Um, the only thing I'll note is that there was a typo for the word engagement, but I don't know if I corrected it on what I printed out. Um, and then I did have a clarifying question, which is, should we rename that instead of students, should it be student representatives? I feel like, yeah, maybe that would clarify it a little bit. All right. Does that sound good to everybody? Okay. So, I will now well tomorrow I will email this to um Lisa Netashim to have it on our next board meeting agenda for actually voting on. It is not
027too late to make suggestions. We can still have a discussion around it then. Um but wonderful. All right. So, that moves us on to student member reports. All right. So, this week we received four updates from four or updates from four elementary schools and the high school. Um, at Division Street Elementary School this week, their school community is excited as they host the annual book fair. Students are enthusiastically exploring and selecting books during their library classes. Teachers across the district are participating in LERS, the language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling training. This professional development program equips educators with essential strategies and knowledge to enhance reading instruction and improve student literacy outcomes. Looking ahead to this Friday, they are thrilled to partner with the YMCA to host a PTA fall festival trunk or treat
028event, which high schoolers like myself are able to volunteer at. So, that will be very fun. at Dorothy Nolan. Uh they thank the Greenfield Fire Department for providing their UPK through fifth graders great tips and reminders for fire safety. These students loved seeing the truck and other equipment up close. At the end of this week, they will be celebrating a second cohort of students who are being recognized as good citizens. This is a nice way to show respect throughout October. And students and families are looking forward to the annual HSA trunk or treat event this Friday as well. uh and the fall parade the following Friday at um Geyser Road Elementary School. The students enjoyed the sunshine and excitement of the ribbon cutting ceremony that officially introduced their new outdoor classroom. They heard from several
029individuals who helped make this dream a reality, creating a special space where students can learn both in and about the outdoors. On Wednesday, they will host the fifth annual color run, but this will be the first time they run during the day, allowing all students to participate in the fun. And Mrs. Prinszo, the PE teacher, has worked closely with the PTO to combine this event with an unprecedented fundraising event that has raised a significant amount of funds to support the school and their PE program. So, thank you and congratulations to the PTO and Mrs. Prinzo from Greenfield Elementary School. They said that this past Saturday their HSA hosted the annual Dragonfire 5K and the event featured 61 registered runners in the 5K and about 40 children in the fun run. Coach Coupe and Coach Bars
030played key roles in organizing the event with Coach Coupe leading both the fun run and the 5K on his bicycle. Greenfield Elementary is also hosting the Scholastic Book Fair this week, which will culminate with the Falling for Books family event on Friday evening. Costumes are encouraged. In addition, the school is looking forward to a visit from Eric Litwin, the original author of Pete the Cat, who will be joining the students for an assembly on Thursday. from Saratoga High School. They had an exciting homecoming week and the student council organized an energetic pep rally and the football team celebrated a victory over Albany. The week concluded with a successful homecoming dance attended by more than 900 students. This Saturday, the high school will host the all county band concert welcoming students in grades 6 through 12
031from Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties. The community is invited to attend at 2 p.m. for an afternoon of great performances. Participatory budgeting is also underway at the high school. Over 1,000 student suggestions were submitted and students are now in the processing of narrowing those ideas to determine which projects will move forward. I personally attended today's meeting at the high school where we continued developing the topics we will begin researching. During next week's meeting, we plan to break into smaller committees, each assigned to one of our main ideas. And these committees will begin researching feasibility and exploring how each topic can be effectively executed. And uh we did also want to take a little bit of time to talk about the phone ban so far, at least for the high school. So, um, there has been
032good compliance to the rules that were implemented this year, and students are very respectful of the new phone and electronic policies. Most are keeping their devices either in their bags for the whole day or within their lockers, which are now issued to all students. Um, I personally haven't seen any phones out this year with um, my peers um, only until after the bell rings at the end of the day. So as students now we are understanding the policies and the rules now that we've been in for a month and a half now and um many students are feeling more responsible with how and like what they are doing in their free time in school. Um of course like this hasn't been totally easy because some students we weren't exactly sure how strict these policies were,
033how our teachers would comply with them, what the punishments would be like. But I think we have had a lot of willingness and effort from everybody involved. Um so in in places like study halls or flexes I have seen a lot of board games and card games and uh puzzles especially which is really interesting because I I haven't seen that um ever actually. So this is yeah like for high school. So, it's something really interesting and we're having more um time being used towards these things rather than being on social media. Um so, I also have noticed that there's more conversation within the hallways. Um, as we wait for bells or walk around the hallways, I feel like the hallways really are typically a place of conversation and they always have been, but I feel
034like now we're rekindling some friendships and we're seeing people and acknowledging um peers or teachers or administrators now um greater. So, I think that's amazing. And um going forward, I think it would be useful to do some check-ins with the students to see how the policies go from here because this is relatively new um through Q&As's or surveys like forms so we can get a bigger picture. Um from another perspective, I did want to note um that the ban on the earbuds or Bluetooth headphones has made it a little bit harder to complete certain assignments. Um usually when teachers are absent they are given a uh they give our us students a video or something to do online where we listen and take notes or complete the daily tasks online because we are very technological
035now. So um having 20 to 30 devices playing the sounds of a video has been a little bit difficult to focus in. But I don't think this has totally impacted our performance on these assignments. it's mostly just a focusing issue that might be addressed later on. So, I would say overall the phone policies are working and for the most part they are positively impacting all students involved. Um, I want to add upon that in a more um light way. So, me and my friends in the lunches in past years have honestly just scrolled on our phones, not really paid attention to each other very much. But this year we spend our lunches in a very competitive UNO game that gets very intense. You can ask anyone in the lunchroom because you can hear us across
036the lunchroom. Um I also have w like witnessed a firsthand decrease in students reliance on their devices to interact with others and get through the school day. I think it's a really positive impact we're seeing in the hallways. Past years you haven't really heard much communication and this year it's booming in the hallways and I think it truly is helping us grow as individuals and become more connected with our school and our community. Thank you. Yeah. [Applause] Okay, that was wonderful. Thank you. Um, next we have Dr. for patents administrative report and I can attest to the card games because I w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w
037w w w w w w wed just in the last few days. Um so I want to start off by thanking uh principal Liz Carol uh and her entire team here at Lake Gav uh for the wonderful building tour uh prior to the meeting and then we had a great presentation from representatives from the lake a uh building equity leadership team. So, thank you uh to all of our teachers and support staff and our parents uh who um help the leadership team here at Lake Avenue with just wonderful opportunities for our students uh as well as engagement uh for our families. Um so, this month is always special uh for our board of education. Uh last week statewide, the New York State School Boards Association um recognizes schoolboard members across New York State. Uh so
038at this meeting every year our horicultural students at uh the Boseies program uh they put together the full arrangements uh for our board trustees for you to be able to take home uh with you tonight. So I want to thank our our horicultural students for for their great work uh in in helping us recognize our our board of education trustees. Um and this Thursday we have five of our nine board members and myself uh will be attending the annual school boards convention uh which is in Manhattan down in New York City this year. Uh so school board members from all across New York State uh come together uh as an opportunity for their own professional development. So, as much as we encourage professional development for our staff and for our faculty and for administrators, uh
039to always to stay on top of their game and always looking to learn and grow, uh it's awesome that our school board uh trustees uh also take on that leadership opportunity uh to network with school board members from all across the state and to learn from their colleagues and to attend workshops. Uh so you know whether it's this opportunity or other opportunities that we have throughout the school year through adonic school boards or other workshops that the near state school boards association hosts uh our school board members always just do a tremendous job. Uh so we have tonight um some certificates of recognition. Uh it says you know for each of our board members here in Saratoga Springs recognizing their dedicated leadership to public education in continuing their service. uh to the students and to
040the community here in Saratoga Springs. And then with it is a New York State proclamation uh for recognizing school board uh members across New York State uh signed by our governor. Uh so again, I just want to personally thank all of our board trustees for the tremendous amount of time and effort and dedication uh that all of you put into your governance uh and leadership uh roles here in the district. you know, ultimately supporting our kids, uh, but supporting the programs and the services and opportunities that we can provide to students here in Saratoga Springs. So, I just want to thank all of you, uh, for your tremendous efforts and the wonderful work that you do on behalf of students here in Saratoga Springs. So, I have a certificate for everybody to pass along. So,
041first up is make sure to bring our uh floor arrangement home uh to enjoy that uh hopefully at your kitchen table. Um so I mentioned the annual convention uh this Thursday uh and so we'll be attending from Thursday through Saturday. Uh and then finally as a strategic uh planning update um just want to thank everybody in the community who has participated in our thought exchange. Uh as of this afternoon uh we're over 700 members of the community uh who have provided uh feedback or engaged with the thought exchange survey. Uh so if you haven't had the opportunity, there are links on the district website uh for folks to go in. You know, obviously this is going to be really important to us uh as a district uh as we continue to take a look at
042uh where we are right now as a school district, where we want to continue to be in in our growth uh as a school community over the next several years. Uh so as as was reported as one of the board goals uh looking at our core values and some of the priorities and the action plans uh for the school district. Uh so that thought exchange survey you have the opportunity to provide your own feedback to opportunities for improvement or strengths. Uh what are kind of your hopes and dreams for the future. Um but a unique um you know quality of the thought exchange uh in addition to providing your own thought. You can actually rate the thought of others in the community. Uh and so there's been a tremendous amount of engagement even in folks
043getting in and uh providing their ratings and their feedback on onto the thoughts. So that'll uh be open through October 31st. So we still have uh some time. Uh it'll a district newsletter is going to be hitting mailboxes early next week, which then would give everybody two more weeks. Um again, community members who may not have children in school. Uh we've sent out the survey a few times to our staff already. Uh Mora put a parent square out this afternoon to all parents, but we also want to make sure community members who may not have children in school also have the opportunity to participate. Uh and then we have two in-person session um opportunities. Uh November 6 is for our board of education and our district leadership team uh again to start to look at
044the survey results um and help uh look at the process uh that we're going to engage in. And then on November 12th, we have both a school and community stakeholder group of about 55 individuals uh representing our students, our parents, our CSEA members, our SSTA, our building level administrators, as well as some board members and community members uh that will be coming together on the 12th uh again to continue to focus our work on developing our strategic plan. So, we'll continue to use our pathways mission and vision uh as one of our guiding documents. Uh and also, uh you know, the New York State Board of Regents has recently come out with a portrait of a graduate uh for all school districts to again use as another document, uh to help inform, um just the
045progress that we're going to be making over the next several years. So, uh so again, thank you to everybody who's participated already. Uh and again, if you haven't had the opportunity, we encourage you do so uh before October uh 31st. Uh so we have two presentations tonight. Uh so first up, uh on your tables in front of each of the board members should have a copy uh of the Saratoga uh independent audit report. Uh so it's my pleasure to introduce Jen Manard. Uh Jen has been working with the district for several years uh as an independent auditor from MMBB and Company. Um, Jen came and presented uh a full presentation to the finance committee as Beth had mentioned earlier. Uh, so tonight is a opportunity for the full board uh to hear the outcomes of
046our independent audit uh report. So I'll turn it over to Jen. Thank you. Um, so as was mentioned, I did meet with the audit committee yesterday. Um, for those that I haven't met again, I'm Jen Manard. I'm a senior manager with MMB and Co. Um, I've actually, this is like my 10th year on this audit. I've been around for a minute. Um, so I went over numbers in details yesterday with the audit committee. So this is really going to be very high level, very quick. Um, if the board has any questions, I'm certainly um, happy to answer them either in this forum or if you have questions, you can always contact me. So there's three pieces to your audit. We have the audit of the financial statements. Those are in a final state. We have
047the audit of the extra classroom activity funds that is also final. And then we have the single audit which is currently in draft form and I'll talk about why that's in draft form in a few minutes. So for the financial statement audit, we had an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. That's the highest level of assurance that we can give you as your auditors. So that's what you're looking for. That's that clean opinion. We did have an emphasis of matter paragraph in your audit report this year. That is due to the implementation of Gazsby number 101 that relates to compensated absences. So, the last time Gazsby did anything with compensated absences, it was Gazsby number 16. So, it has been a while. Um, so they decided that that needed to be recalculated and the way
048that that was done needed to be changed. It did have a slight impact on your calculation for your 63024 calculation and that's why we have that emphasis of matter paragraph and we did have a restatement. Um, that is not unique to your district. You actually had one of the smaller recalculations I think. um that I've seen. Anyway, so that information is included in your financial statements. We do have the material non-compliance finding for being over 4% of the unassigned fund balance. Um so that again is not a new finding and I think that that's something that you as a district discuss regularly and that's um included in your budget discussions. We did have one finding that we had last year that we removed this year that's related to the bank reconciliations and treasur report submission
049going to the board timely. So what we found in our testing is that this year that has been remedied and therefore we were able to remove that finding for the ECAF audit. Um obviously the purpose of the ECAF funds is to teach students about budgeting and reconciling a checkbook and fiscal responsibility. Um the state provides specific guidance that um those funds are supposed to follow and that is the guidance that we use to do that audit. Um and that they're also why you're required to have that audit. We do qualify our opinion due to the insufficient accounting controls over cash receipts at the point of collection. This is not unique to your district and it is not something that your district is doing incorrectly. It is the inability to control what you cannot control which
050is the students collecting money and getting that money into the advisor's hands and the adviserss getting it to the bank. We did have a management letter related to ECAF um that includes our findings and recommendations. Many of these are similar findings to what you've seen in the past. They're also very similar to what we find at other clients. But I can also tell you that you've made improvements in this area and the findings are less. the volume of findings is less um and the number of transactions that we point out in those findings is less. Your single audit, so this is the audit of all of your federal funds. So your idea grants, your title grants, things like that. This is in draft form. This is because the office of management and budget has not
051released the compliance supplement for 2025. So they typically release that sometime in May or June and it's October. So, we as auditors are not allowed to release a single audit. We can't issue that because we don't know what the final guidelines that we're supposed to be auditing to are. So, that compliance supplement could come out and there could be additional procedures that we need to do depending on the program and depending on what the compliance supplement says. As of right now, um, we have no findings for your single audit. So, everything was clean. Again, it's going to be an unmodified opinion. We tested the ESF funing. saw all that education stabilization funding that went away in September. We did the testing for that last chunk and then we also tested the special education cluster or
052your idea grants. So, as soon as we get that compliance supplement, as soon as that's released, we'll circle back with Bobby and we'll get that issued and you'll just have to do another motion to accept that audit separately. Um, thank you to Bobby and his team. Everything was clean this year. We had no material adjustments. The finding was just that one for the 4%. So, that's a very clean audit and everything went very well. Any questions from the board? Great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Jen. And again, congratulations to Bobby and and Joe and our entire business team for again another uh incredible year and uh another clean audit report. So, thanks Bobby for your leadership. Um, so tonight is our final of three presentations of the opportunity to hear from all
053of our building administrators. Uh, we opened up a few meetings ago with our high school administrative team. Uh, last meeting heard from our middle school uh, Maple Avenue team. And today uh, we have all of our elementary uh, PR building principles here with us tonight uh, to present their annual uh, pathways uh, grades K through five program report. Uh, so I'll turn it over to our elementary administrative team. Well, thank you so much for this opportunity to present to you this evening. I'm Tina Davis. I'm the principal of Greenfield Elementary School. My colleagues and I are honored to be presenting to you tonight, but honestly, we're really just showcasing the hard work of our wonderful students, the hard work of our talented and dedicated staff, and also just um we wouldn't be able to do
054it without being really surrounded by supportive school communities. So, thank you for letting us be the representatives of all of that great work. We know that we are heading to start on a new strategic vision for our district. Um we tonight though our work our our presentation is grounded in the pathways to show you where we've been and where we're going and I'll hand it over to Liz Carol. All right everyone, I'm Liz Carol and the principal at Lake Avenue. Um, and as you have heard at each of the building presentations, um, really all of our work is grounded in multi-tered systems of supports or MTSS. So, uh, we were hoping to just provide you a snapshot of some celebrations and takeaways from last year. So looking back at the three categories that we have
055here, behavioral health and attendance, social emotional needs, and academics, we truly have a lot to celebrate in all of our classrooms. In elementary, K to5, we have implemented community building circles and at least three to five times a week. And when harm does occur with our students, because that is inevitable, they're making choices every single day to be good human beings, but mistakes happen. Um, and when harm does occur, our staff and our teachers have increased our use of restorative conversations with our students as a way to increase our students understanding of how we are all connected and how we impact each other. When we take a look at our discipline referrals, we do see an increase from last year to this year. As a team, we were not surprised to see an increase in
056the number of discipline referrals because we are encouraging our staff to enter these referrals. When we have the data, we are able to increase our conversations about what patterns we see. And when we can identify patterns, we can also brainstorm interventions and solutions. When looking at our top five dispositions from last year to this year, we do see similar patterns. We see unsafe behavior, physical contact, intentional physical and aggression, sorry, aggressive behavior, disrespectful behavior, and inappropriate language in conversations. While we have had an increase in discipline referrals, we did see a decrease in the percentage of referrals for physical contact, disrespectful behavior, and inappropriate language in conversations. We are still focused on decreasing our occurrences of unsafe behavior and intentional physical aggressive behavior. We are supporting a growing number of students with diverse and int
057uh intensive behavioral challenges. And one way that we're increasing our staff capacity in understanding behavior and how to imple implement helpful strategies is using our behavioral coach Katie Sup. When educators encounter um challenging behavior in the classroom, they work together in their PLTS and if they're still struggling, using our behavior coach has been a wonderful uh support. The coach works alongside of the classroom teacher uh works on a targeted support plan for students and then does come back to follow up to evaluate the effectiveness of the plan and to make necessary adjustments. Over the past year, our behavior coach has experienced a 27% increase in referrals, reflecting a rise in the number of students presenting with behavioral and emotional needs. but it also reflects the trust and the value that our educators place in her
058expertise. Teachers are actively seeking collaborative support to enhance their classroom strategies to better meet the needs of all students. Taking a look at our attendance rates, we've had significant decline in chronic absenteeism, decreasing by 3% in one year. We're really excited about that. We are getting closer and closer to the 9.25% 25% we saw precoid in 1819. In addressing the social emotional needs of our students, we've observed a notal notable increase in demand for support services, specifically our school-based partnership with Behavioral Health Services North or BHSN. They have seen an 11% rise in referrals in the past two years, further underscoring the growing mental health and emotional challenges faced by our student population. With the addition of more social worker support in our elementary schools, we have been able to expand the range of support
059services that our students have access to. This includes increasing informal counseling as well as the implementation of targeted social skills groups and friendship groups. Again, this is helping our students to build relationships and skills so they're successful in school. We are also proud to report that 85% of our students have demonstrated proficiency on our social emotional learning curriculum. Second step, a clear indicator of the positive impact these supports are having on our uh our student development and peer relationships. Moving to academics, uh we were able to build off of our work with Anna Munoz and complete three rounds of learning walks, which Mr. Connley will share a little bit more about later. And we also celebrate some significant increases in state assessment scores. Taking a look at this slide here, uh you can see our
060I Ready scores in ELA and math. Our students take these assessments three times per year. You're looking at spring scores with a 76% proficiency enla and a 73% proficiency in math. And again, these scores includes uh students K to five. I now have put up our New York State assessment scores. Again, there we're looking at scores with students in grades three to five. you can see a close correlation between I ready uh proficiency especially in math. I do want to note we do see um not of a a close alignment of the two scores in ELA but again two things of note here. We're looking at K to 5 data versus 3 to five data. And another piece with the reading assessment is there's no writing assessment for our our ready assessment but that is
061something that is assessed at the state level. uh looking further into our state assessment scores on the next slide. Um before I get there, a note that we don't have any comparison data of similar schools. So that won't be included in our presentation tonight, but later that will be shared um with the district's ESSA presentation. So taking a look on the screen here uh we can see a fouryear comparison of three to five ELA state assessment results and we've remained stagnant at 59% for three years and we are very excited to celebrate a 9% increase in proficiency rates and we are very excited to see this growth. We are working as a principal team to identify what are the contributing factors that may have impacted results like this. Is it small groupoup instruction? Is it
062focused smarty goals? Could it possibly be the exposure to uh the test format and how we present it to students with data mate? There's a lot of different variables and we're really looking forward to as a team talking about um what are those really important contributing factors. Here you can see the progression of each grade level over the four years in ELA. Third grade increased by 10%. Uh fourth grade increased by 7% and fifth grade increased by 11%. Again, wonderful celebrations for our amazing students and staff. Taking a look at our math results, you can again see the progress over four years with steady increase year-over-year. And here is the break breakdown for students in grade three, four, and five with third grade increasing by 7%. Fourth grade remaining steady at a 78% proficiency and
063then fifth grade increasing by 2%. Finally, to wrap up our academic data and celebration, we wanted to share some of the New York State identified subgroup areas that we have made some great progress when we look at 23 24 to uh the 2425 school year. Now, before looking at the numbers, I do want to make sure everyone has a good understanding of what you are looking at. We are looking at cohort data. So when you're thinking about that grade 4 column there, we are looking at students in 23 24 that would be in third grade. When we look at their results in 2425, what were our increases or decreases? So again, when we're looking at the fifth grade column, we're looking how that cohort from fourth grade when they move to fifth grade, how those
064uh New York State identified subgroups performed. So you can see here there's much to celebrate. Almost all of our fourth grade subgroups increased proficiency from third to fourth grade in both ELA and math. Looking at our fifth grade results, you can see that all subgroups increased in proficiency rates in ELA, but math remains a challenge and a focus for us for the future. Again, as a team, we're looking forward to analyzing this data further to better understand our student performance and identify interventions that need to be put in place. While I have focused on where we have been and the progress that we have made, my colleague Courtney Jablonsky will now shift the lens forward to share our goals and vision for what lies ahead. Good evening everybody. I'm Courtney Jablonsky, principal at Dorothy Nolan
065and it is great to be back in person with you here um celebrating as Liz and Tina said our collective um successes and to share with you where we're headed um with a growth mindset in play um and understanding that as a district we're moving towards that strategic planning um over the course of the year. many of our district goals that you've heard about in the past few meetings and our building goals remain a continuation of the work that's been started um in these four areas. So, we are continuing to focus on our multi-tered systems of support um and each of the other principles will kind of dig into these as we go. We are continuing our work around culturally responsive instructional practices and our learning walks. We are continuing the implementation um of our
066professional learning teams and we are continuing a focus on restorative practices. So um the next few slides will illuminate what our work is laid out for these um upcoming months. So that first area of focus for us is our multi-tered systems of support. um thinking about how every student we can ensure that they have a strong academic, social, emotional, and behavioral um program for them to be able to thrive within, get the support that they need. A key focus for us um this summer and early fall as a district has been the development of a comprehensive MTSS handbook. And this is really meant to provide clarity and consistency for us K12. What do we mean when we talk about social emotional supports? What do we mean when we talk about behavioral supports? What does it
067look like in terms of the academic supports that we provide our students? Um, what we learned through conversation and lots of brainstorm is that we have a lot of really important work happening. And across the elementary group, we kind of had our norms and um acronyms. And then at the middle school, similar supports, lots of different acronyms and norms. and then at the high school level um that as well. So, we are working really diligently as a um collaborative team across the district to bring cohesiveness and consistency um that can only benefit all of us as we're working with students who transition from building to building or from grade levels um to grade levels. So, that's an exciting part of the process. When you think about MTSS, whether you are focused on the academics, the
068behavior, the social emotional, it all starts with that strong one uh strong foundation with the universal tier one supports for all students. Um we're very focused and you'll hear it in some of the other um focus areas this evening on our high quality instruction and schoolwide expectations for our kids. For students with additional needs, we are implementing increasingly targeted tier 2 and tier three um supports and interventions. There's been a lot of work with our reading specialists, our math specialist. Um I know our social workers have worked um tremendously hard to make sure that we've got the right supports in place for the needs that our students are presenting with. Um this year we're very excited to um at the elementary start another kind of structure in place called data cycles. And this will allow
069us to um have more regular conversations targeted for um our students who are receiving um tier 2 and tier three supports with our specialists to monitor their progress, check in on those interventions much more regularly to say if this student's excelling, great. What's next for them? Are they ready to exit some of these services? We want them to go right back into that tier one strong support and it provides the flexibility for when students are struggling at the tier one level and need additional supports sooner than our typical cycles are for that review. So, um we're looking forward to those conversations. Um it'll be a collective kind of learning experience for all of us as we get into that this first year and we hope to be able to report a lot of success in
070coming years around that. With all of these tiered approaches, we are able to identify students early who are struggling. Um, apply evidence-based strategies and then ensure that students are correct connected to the right level of support going forward. I'm going to turn it over to Cody to talk about our culturally responsive practices. Thank you, Courtney. Uh, I'm Cody Connley. Good evening. Uh, principal at Geyser Road Elementary School. I do have to mention just quickly the students, the horiculture students did an amazing job, really amazing job on these arrangements. If no one wants theirs, just let me know. So, uh, as Liz told you earlier, uh, we worked with Anna Munoz, uh, with the, uh, for several years, uh, working in on supporting our culturally responsive instructional practices. So during our work with her we can
071we read and we continue to reference Zoretta Hammond's book uh the book the name of her book was culturally responsive teaching and the brain. So through that work we actually started learning about instructional rounds and learning walks. This is a practice that was taken from the medical field uh where a team of doctors would visit different patients and discuss best treatment options uh for those patients. But in schools, what we're doing as a group of educators, we identify a need. We visit several classrooms um in the and it's very important in a non-evaluative way. We just visit. We're noticing. uh we take those notices and we develop a plan to support and improve instruction. So it's our goal to incorporate learning walks into the district culture and make it a positive uh a positive practice
072to support and uh to support effective instruction. Um last year we did complete several learning walks in each of our buildings. This year we plan on continuing this work. uh we began reading the book instructional rounds in education and ultimately we would really like to include teachers in this process. Next up I'd like to introduce Mrs. Dana Bush my stuff. Good evening everyone. I'm Dana Bush, principal at Division Street. Um, and over the past several years, I've had the pleasure of working with our reading specialists and classroom teachers across the district to really um, develop and enhance our ELA curriculum. So, before I get into talking about this slide, I just want to share some background information. We began implementing American Reading Company ARC uh program in 2021 with our Kadis 2 students and then
073we expanded that in um to three through five. And when the curriculum renewal team got together, uh one of the major uh focus points was to adopt a curriculum that really fostered the love of reading in our students. And uh ARC provides our students with opportunities to select books that they're um spark their creativity and curiosity. They're able to select topics um that interest them to do research on. Um it provides a lot of background knowledge in science and social studies. Um students are listening to readalouds um and able to take part in collaborative discussions. Um in addition to that the team also wanted a consistent framework K to5 um and ARC is comprised of four units. The first being a literacy lab where the ELA classroom routines are being established. Students are selecting their
074books. Um teachers are getting to know the students as readers both with engagement levels and their uh reading levels. Um and then we move into anformational unit followed by a literature-based unit and then the last unit is an argumentative unit. Um in through all of this we have seen um many strengths with the program including student engagement um with reading um diversity in literature um opportun enhanced opportunities for both writing and research. Um, so despite all this, we are still seeing gaps in our students phonics instruction. And so we got a group of teachers and administrators together last year con to conduct um an audit of our ELA program and it did confirm a need for a more structured and systematic phonics program. So UFly um University of Florida Literacy Institute has a foundational program
075that we've used um at the tier 2 and tier three level with students who have phonics gaps as an intervention program. This year um the team decided to adopt the program as a tier one core instruction in all of our K to2 classrooms. Um this is only replacing the phonics portion of our ARC program. Um UFly foundations is an explicit and systematic program. It's d designed around a carefully developed scope and sequence to ensure the skills are introduced. They're practiced. They're mastered in a logical and cumulative progression. So the le lessons are about 20 to 30 minutes in length and they follow an eightstep routine. On day one, um the students take part in some quick warm-up drills um where they're per practicing phmic awareness skills such as blend blending and segmenting words. Um they're
076shown pictures of letters or groups of letters and they have to identify the sound they make. Um they also um hear the sound and then they practice writing those sounds. Um they practice decoding words. Um and then the new concept is introduced as the last portion on that day one using explicit instruction. In the next day, um students have multiple opportunities for word work including reading words, writing words, um practicing tricky words, which are irregular words and using orthographic mapping in order to try to get the um muscle memory in place on how to spell those words. And then they're also practicing connected text where they're reading sentences, writing sentences, and practicing with decodable texts. So this multi-ensory approach where the students are seeing, hearing, and touching um really helps to improve retention of the
077skills. As you can see here, the kids are building um words with magnetic letters on their cookie sheets. Um there's repetitive practice with um not only reading words and sounds but writing as they're doing on their whiteboards. Here we have consistent use of sound walls um hand motions and keywords for all of our sounds that are in all of our K to2 classrooms and it also incorporates uniform handwriting instruction which we did not have prior. So to ensure the effectiveness of this program, we'll closely be monitoring our um students progress in the area of phonics. Um there's you uh weekly assessments through UFly that we'll be looking at. And then we also have our I Ready diagnostic data and we look forward to keeping you informed with how our students progress in this important area.
078Turn it over to Dr. Packard. Thank you, Mrs. Bush. Good evening everyone. I'm Dan Packard, the principal at Caroline Street. It's an honor to be here with you this evening and share a topic that I really enjoy, which is professional learning communities andor professional learning teams. So, I was as I was standing here, I was thinking when did I first learn about professional learning communities. It was 15 years ago. Um, this is my 20th year being a school administrator. So, it was like 15 years ago though. I went to my first PLC conference and it was great. It was wonderful. And last year in a conversation with Dr. Cutting, she said, 'Hey, the RTI PLC conference is coming to the area. Would you be interested in going, I said, I think so. Yeah. And I
079ended up taking a team of teachers and it was phenomenal. So, um, super excited to talk about this with you this evening. So, we've been having a culture of professional learning communities here for quite some time in Saratoga Springs. Um, however, you can always get better at your practice. So, in revisiting that, um, I want to share with you what is a professional learning community and what's a team and what are we really striving to accomplish this year with that. So, a professional learning community is simply a strategic uh, systematic way for teachers to work collaboratively to raise student achievement as a collective team. Think of it that way. Um, it's grounded in four core beliefs. The first would be that educators nowadays, we're not designed to be working in isolation anymore. We're designed to
080work as a collaborative team with also a collective responsibility to ensure that all of our students are successful. That's the first anchor statement, the first belief that's really paramount. you need to start with that. And I think here at Saratoga, we've been doing a really great job at fostering that. So, for example, I'll talk about Caroline Street. Uh, a grade level team, a second grade team of teachers, three teachers, they're not just meeting together on a Thursday morning to plan a field trip or plan the Halloween party. They're a professional learning team. So now they're coming together to collaborate and have a collective responsibility to ensure all kids are successful at their grade level. So it's not my kids in this class and your kids are over here. They're all of our second graders. So
081what can we do collectively to help them be successful? Which leads to the second core belief that's super important, which is as a professional learning team, that second grade team for example, they want to ensure that they're providing a guaranteed and viable curriculum. So what does that mean? Guaranteed means that the same essential content is being delivered across each second grade classroom. viable means that you can actually accomplish it in the time allocated to cover the content. That's what our teachers are really good about doing. Uh we have summer curriculum writing. Uh we have a great pacing guide for each and every grade level that's phenomenal. I was meeting with a new teacher today her second year and I said tell me how do you feel about the pacing guides and she said I think
082they're so great like it really helps us stay as a team on track together. So that's great. The third core value or belief with a professional learning community though has to do with how are we going to know how our kids are doing. We need to have some common formative assessments. common assessments that are the same across that grade level that the team has either developed or maybe if it's from you fly or into math or it's a district benchmark math assessment but it's something that we all agree on that this is essential then we come together we agree okay we're all going to administer this test within a couple of days of each other not one person this week and one person a month from now we're all in the same pace and Then
083we administer the assessment which then leads us to the fourth common belief that makes a PLC successful which is what are we going to do with those results that is first we're going to see what kids need extra help what students could benefit from some enrichment but also as a professional how can I use this to better my own practice and then collectively with my team, how can we raise our own self-efficacy as professionals? So, I love this topic and this year we as a principal team are really zeroing in on anchor three, which is the common formative assessment. We have the assessments. The next step we really want to encourage and focus our teachers on and we as a team are committed to is how are we using those common formative assessments to then
084improve our instruction for all of our children with that collective responsibility and then what do we glean from those assessments where we have to go back and refine our curriculum or look for a different strategy to deliver that instruction. So that is our primary area of focus with the PLC model this year is to hone in on anchor three and four and we're really looking forward to that work this year. Thank you. And next is Katie Eman. Hi everyone. I'm Katie Eman, the assistant principal of Dorothy Nolan and I'll be talking to you about restorative practices tonight. So, we are continuing to implement tier one community building circles with staff and students using a greeting group norms, a talking piece, a share or activity enclosure, which we talked about a bit last year. Our goal
085is to deepen our tier one practices, laying a strong foundation for eventual tier 2 work. We'll do this by helping staff reflect on prompts and setting up their circles with these prompts in mind. So, that's the first set that you see up there. After the circle, we will guide staff to reflect on how the circle and student interactions went using the second set of questions that you see up on the slide. We started this with our staff at Dorothy Nolan on opening day, asking staff to share a story about themselves as a student in school. We then had staff use these reflective questions to think about how the mini circles were different than the typical circles that have been run thus far. They saw right away how more connections were made, more insights were gained,
086and how circle time can be restructured for various purposes throughout the year. And we included a couple pictures up there. You can see them in the many circles. Um, as an administrative team, we are starting to explore and learn more about tier 2 restorative practices. Some of our teammates went to a training this past summer, problem solving circles, conflict circles, and harm circles. Our goal is to then be able to extend this type of work into next year. And with that being said, we will now take any questions that the board may have. Angie, I have more of a comment and that's um a thank you for paying attention to the um new curriculum program around the ARC and noticing that there was a a deficit there and doing something so swiftly to um compensate
087for that. So, I appreciate that. Although it's disappointing to hear there's deficit in the program we just picked, but it's really lovely to hear that you're being so nimble about it and just swooping in and making sure all those needs are being met. So, thank you for that, Matt. Um, thank you for there's there's so much to to applaud. Not only that you didn't use any acronyms that you didn't tell us what they meant, but that's great. Um, but the you know, the reading choice sounded great. the fostering of um of learning, the use of restorative practice both throughout the curriculum seems incredible. I just I do want to sort of ask about one of the earlier slides of the math assessment um the grade five subgroup and I realize that I'm sort of comparing
088apples and oranges and and uh the numbers for these subgroups are pretty small but it is troubling to see consistently across all of those subgroups a decline in math especially sort of amongst the the overall increase in in math scores. So I just I wanted to I don't know flag that or ask I mean you sort of speculated a little bit about what could be done about that. I don't know if you want to add any more to that or just you know I wanted to express my concern of that particular slide. So we we too are concerned about that. The the complicating factor is how complicated schools are. Um and that's something this data is new for us to take a look at. So that's why I wanted to point out that we are
089interested. We've also identified it. It wasn't something that we wanted to hide. Um but it is an area of focus for us to say what is going on there because we are so proud of the increases and there's so many different ways to go about trying to triangulate what are those factors but it is something on our team's to-do list this year and hopefully we're able to identify some really intentional next steps to address that and hoping to present out some positive um proficiency rates moving forward. Can I share something? Um just kind of in line with what Matt said firstly like you put that right out there on that slide and thank you and it wasn't you weren't oftentimes you'll see presentations and it's like oh we're just going to pass over those red
090marks. So thank you for addressing it right away and thinking about like what Angie just said how swiftly you came together and figured out the phonics piece and I have all the faith that this team is going to do the same. Um, and just thinking about that from what um, Dr. Packer just said, like with the PLC's, figuring out those formative assessments and then using them to inform teaching is just it all comes together and I know I'm just excited. It's wonderful to see. So, thank you. All right. Thank you so much. [Applause] So, I just want to take this opportunity to thank uh all of our elementary uh leaders for their tremendous leadership and efforts throughout the year. You know, this presentation when you bring seven building administrators all together is an always very
091impressive uh collaborative effort. You know, when you think of a a professional learning team, that's a great example, I think, for all of us. uh how closely our elementary teacher uh principles uh work together and supporting teachers uh and our support staff and again it's a total team effort. So thank you to our teachers and our support staff and again all the administrators. Uh again these are incredibly impressive results. You know I don't want to underscore the the results that we're getting are incredibly impressive especially when we have some comparative data. you know, we compare oursel against our oursel and we're our own biggest critic. Uh when you start to see how well our students are performing across the state and across the region, uh our teachers are just doing incredible work. Uh so again,
092want to celebrate and recognize the just the incredible accomplishments and again that always that desire for continuous improvement. Uh and we know we can continue to offer more opportunities for our kids and provide more support. Um, but the job that's being done at our elementary schools is just incredible and just want to uh appreciate and recognize those those efforts that happen every day in our classrooms. So, thank you to the elementary uh team and uh that's the the last of our our pathways presentation. So again, thank you to all the administrators the and our teachers uh from kindergarten right through our seniors uh for again the the great work from last year and obviously the focus uh of work that's ahead of us uh this school year. Uh and that's it for our presentations. Thank
093you. Now we turn to the consent agenda. For those in attendance or watching, a consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure that allows a board to vote on a large number of items in a single motion. Typically, these are business items associated with the everyday running of the schools and their inclusion in the agenda is the result of a great deal of prior work and care by the professionals of the district. There are from time to time business items that by law cannot be included in a consent agenda and when this happens we pull those out and vote on them separately. Consent agenda items are known to trustees and the public several days ahead of the business meeting on which they are considered so that board
094members have the chance to ask questions of discovery and do any advanced factf finding that is part of their due diligence process. Beth, do we have any modifications tonight? We do uh there is one personnel item uh item D2 which is a clarification of a teacher appointment placement. So with that um change, I would like to motion to approve the consent agenda um items E, F, and G in addition to the modification item D2 in their entirety. Okay. Can I get a second, please? Deb, any discussion? Okay. Okay. All in favor? That's unanimous. I just have one one recognition. Um I just want to thank Bill McMorty is here with us tonight. Uh to both Bill and to all members of our capital project team who continue to work so hard uh throughout the course
095of the school year uh in support of our building projects. Uh tonight was a great example. Get to see the all the work that was completed uh this past summer here at Lake Avenue. And I know we visited Caroline Street previously uh but tonight the board just approved the contract awards uh for phase 7. So we're already prepared uh for next summer uh be through Bill's uh efforts and again the tremendous interest uh by local contractors who want to work in Saratoga Springs. Um we've been at this for several years now. Uh we are so fortunate when we put our projects out to bid the number of contractors who respond who want to work uh with us uh on our capital project work. Uh so we continue to not only be on time uh with
096getting our projects done when our students and staff return uh to school in September. That's a that's a huge uh you know collective effort uh starting in the fall uh right through to working with our principles and our teachers uh in the spring to prepare everybody for what's going to happen over the summer months. Uh but not only to be on time but we continue to be under budget. Uh so again this last uh phase of bidding processes because of the tremendous uh generation of interest. the more companies that you have bidding on our work, obviously that uh helps us reduce uh reduce some of our costs. So, so again, just want to thank Bill for his leadership and then also to just all members of the capital project team uh who we get together
097every Monday morning uh and work hard to uh support uh the legacy project uh in its current state and then everything that we've got planned moving forward. So, uh so that was awesome, awesome results. when we get these kind of results coming in consistently, uh obviously that's a that's a result of of really uh great work that's being done behind the scenes. Um this brings us to our second public comment period. Is there anybody who would like to address the board? Okay, seeing none, we're moving into agenda planning. Do any board members have any agenda planning items? Be up. Um, as a followup to the conversation that we started last week, um, I would like to ask the board's kind of consideration of the attendance issue that we heard about last week during public comment.
098It's not the first time we've heard this issue. I think in my first um one of my first board meetings uh when I first joined the board, there were um some students that were a member of a competitive equestrian team that came and spoke about the same issue. And so just given that it's come up a couple of times, um I wanted to uh get input from all of you about if there is some thought that we should pursue this in some way. Um, I did have a conversation with Mike um during our agenda planning and got a little bit of information about just the idea of changing the policy around attendance. Um, and that that is a pretty significant lift. Um, just because we do have so many students in our district participating in
099um kind of competitive clubs and um also competing in a way that um outside of a school sanctioned activity. Um we have a lot of students who are competing at high levels um that this would also we would need to include all students. Um so my understanding just from the public comment last week and also from the information that was shared with us um the the um document that they provided last week that there is this issue of an idea of equity um in terms of students who have to miss because of these competitions and and being marked with unexcused absences. Um, and then also, you know, there's a a reference in the information that they shared that there is a suggestion to kind of lie about that. Um, so that there's that that in
100order to get it excused just you're sick from school and that that was kind of an issue that they had. Um but then also the National Honor Society I think is a the the idea that there are criteria in National Honors Society um attendance criteria um that will that are also that's also um impacted by absences. Um so that may be something that might be something that we need to look at or if we agree um that this is an issue that we want to look at. So, I just wanted to get everyone's input on that and see what you all think. Connie. So on the equity piece of this, I guess my concern is all of the kids who have to work after school or have to watch siblings after school or are not
101in I dare I say affluent optional activities like being in on an equestrian team or rowing. Um, all of those take time and money and support. And there are some kids that don't have that, but may still need to pursue things that maybe they can't go to a National Honor Society meeting because they they can't. So, I just wonder if we should talk more to leadership to see that there that should be maybe more of a conversation between that individual and an adviser. um the principal. I I just don't know if we are waiting into waters that we shouldn't be in. Angie, are we conflating the attendance specific issue with National Artist Society in that? So, I guess I'm wondering if what is the question? Is it attendance period or is it for or is
102it National Honor Society? I thought it was attendance. Um I guess I will say I did some reading um as a person who wasn't super familiar with National Honor Society and I asked also Dr. Patton some questions about it um just to learn more. Um, and there are uh regulations or maybe that's not the right word, but there are guidelines um from National Honor Society at the national level. And then all of those guidelines essentially say that the local group can make their own bylaws. And so I did read both our local bylaws and the national guidelines. And um I was not able to see any uh I'm going to say like strict attendance rules. They're all very um I don't know I guess I would say subjective honestly where it was like attend school
103like I I can't remember the exact wording but it's basically like attend school as much as you can um and showing and you know in a show of good faith of attendance. Um and so I do think that there are two different issues here. The first is you know as a board we can always take a look at a policy. I do think that the attendance policy in particular is comp is complicated because it's not just a policy that like we look at and we vote on. It is the result of a committee that's done at the district level or maybe even lower than that. And so um I think that for us you know we can take a look at it and we can have discussions but I don't think that we would be
104proposing changes at our level without going through all the different channels just because there are other levels to that policy. Um when it comes to National Honor Society um as far as I can tell the local chapter is setting their guidelines and that is not under our purview at all. Um and so that is for the local um the local group to to make their decisions on and they can work with their faculty advisor on that if there are changes that they want to make. But it is a studentrun organization. I will say I guess I really I hear what Connie is saying and I do feel concerned about us bypassing all the levels to look at a policy. I guess not to look at the policy. We can look at the policy. um we
105can discuss it and we can learn more about it and move forward in that way. But I do think that this is I don't want to be bypassing the other levels as those are the people who actually work with our students and are doing you know a year's worth of work. Um you can correct me if I'm wrong on that Dr. Patton but they're doing a lot of work to get to that point. So I just um I'm saying I think that we we can certainly have conversations but I do think that we should proceed with caution on this because a lot of it is really not our purview. If I can just add this has come up in the past and what I think folks got to recognize every year we have a new
106incoming class of juniors who are getting information about national national study u membership in national art society where the criteria uh our NHS advisor does a great job getting information out to students and families when families see this for the first time it raises anxiety uh and I followed up with our NHS adviser as well as a high school administrative team last last speak and I said, "Have we ever had a situation where a student has been excluded because they are a national participant in some of these out of school competition or events?" And that's just not the case, you know. So, all of those things are taken into consideration. We do have an attendance uh uh committee that every year meets regularly to review our policy. It's run by our school attorneys. Um I
107I don't think this is a policy question. I think it's an administration of the national membership criteria which we've always handled very professionally in the past and has been an issue. Again, every year you have a new group of parents that I think are um it gets them stressed out to think my kids are going to miss school because they're participating in these wonderful events that we want any student to have had the opportunity to participate in and to make sure that that is not going to count against them when it comes to one of four criteria of a student being eligible to be members of an HS. So, I think it's it's best that we allow NHS to continue to communicate out to students and families and it'll help alleviate maybe some of the
108anxiety about kids being excluded because of they're doing these great things outside of school um because it hasn't been an issue and again I don't want to create an issue uh that really doesn't exist. So, um, so again, we be responsive to the folks who came, make sure they're getting accurate information. Um, and so NHS advisor fully aware, high school administrative team fully aware. The best thing parents can do is contact the the high school and they can help walk them through what those procedures would be. Just I just want to cl there's no truency issues that we're concerned about here either, right? I know they brought that up. I just wasn't sure. These are oftentimes these are our top students who are performing at the highest level and they're involved in so many activities
109that we're super proud of and we would never kind of use any of that to exclude somebody from being recognized for their academic for their character for their community service. Um, so again, if there are concerns from any parent individually, they should be reaching out directly to the NHS advisor and to the to our high school uh administrative team and we can get those resolved. But I've been here eight years. We've heard it that the community come with a concern, but I'm not never aware of an issue that's come to fruition where uh the process hasn't worked itself out. Attendance is critically important. we want our kids to be in school. Um so, but again, there are so many activities that kids are involved in um that we we obviously recognize um those wonderful accomplishments
110whether it's an in school or an out of school activity. Angie, I appreciate all the conversation you bring up as agenda planning and all the background stuff that went on behind to inform this. I don't see anything else for us to take action on at this time. Um, and I'm sorry I did look it up just because I couldn't remember what it was earlier, but um, so for the requirements to become an NHS candidate at our high school are an overall non-rounded unweighted GPA of 92% or higher. Um, commitment to complete 20 to 25 hours of community service volunteer hours, commitment to attend four or more of the annually scheduled meetings, commitment to character void of behavioral infractions, and commitment to attendance indicative of successful performance indicators. Um, but again, that's I'm sharing that because
111I think I I found it helpful to read that. Um, but again, it's not for us to decide. Um, and then I also just want to go back to something that you said, Connie, which I think is such an excellent point is that we do have students that have commitments outside of school that would prevent them from doing some of these things. Um, and I think that's something to keep in mind as well. Definitely. Are there any other comments or any other decisions for agenda? Sorry, for this topic and then that's Do you have anything else on that? No, I agree. Thank you for all the background information, Mike, um that you that you got from the high school. Um and I appreciate the conversation about it. Any other agenda planning items? Okay. Um seeing
112none, that moves us to board member comments. Are there any board member comments? Matt. Okay, Connie, I just want to thank our board reps for your report out and especially on the cell phones. That was really nice to hear. Um, also the elementary school principles and your presentation and for the parent that came out to speak about the bikes. Um, I I think that is an important topic and I'm sure that that is being looked at. I cannot speak for it, but I'm I feel like she was heard. Thank you, Pat. Uh, the arts have always been and remain central to our educational mission to prepare students for college and career. Excitingly, this year, they will also explicitly help uh to prepare students for civic life because the high school performing arts departments recently announced
113the school musical this year will be Newsies. Uh, Newsies tells the story of one of the original labor strikes, the News Boys and Newsgirl strike of 1899. The strike was led by children the age of our students who formed one of the first unions in our country. And uh spoiler alert for something that happened a hundred years ago. Uh they successfully forced concessions for their labor against some of the most powerful people of the time. In addition to the student and faculty directly involved in this production, teachers teaching history or economics can take advantage of the performance to give students a new way of understanding these concepts. Uh virtually all the adults our students interact with are members of various unions at the school. Uh, and this musical gives a hint to the important history
114of the struggle that made that possible. And as we strive to prepare students for civic life, seeing how a small group of committed people changed the world will be immensely powerful for our students. So, bravo to the high school music and theater teachers for this inspired choice. I love it. Beth, I want to recognize a donation that we have received from Nicer. This is in or this is uh money that will help with the transportation department orientation and awards day. So, thank you nicer for the generous donation. Any other board member comments? Okay, I did make a list of our um upcoming meetings for board members to be aware of and there are a lot of them. So, some of these have already been mentioned, but the NISBA annual convention starts in two days. um
115will run from the 23rd to the 25th. Um next week we do have the first of our SSTA board leaison meetings um which will be attended by Tony, Deb, Ashley, and me. That's on the 29th at 5:30. Following that will be our budget workshop. So that's the uh 29th at 6:30. Um the workshop is open to the public. Um but it is not a business meeting. We will not be voting on anything. we are getting information and we would love you to join us to get that information. Um so those two things will be at the administration building. The uh week after we will start with the um strategic planning meeting. So the board and district leadership will meet on 116 at 5:30. Um and then on 11:12 there will be another strategic planning meeting.
116Board members um are split between these meetings and so I think we all know which ones we're attending. Um, but the one on the 12th is at 4:30 and then the 13th is our next business meeting which will be at 7 PM at Dorothy Nolan. Could I please get a motion to adjurnn Matt? And a second Decision right all in favor? That's unanimous. Have a good night. Thank you.