001Moment of silence. Thank you. So, could I get a motion to approve the minutes from August 21st, 2025? I see Matt and a second from Angie. Any discussion? All in favor? Thank you. And could I please get a motion to accept tonight's agenda? Okay, I see Lee and a second from Tony. Is there any discussion? Okay. Um, all in favor? Okay, that's unanimous. Thank you. We're now at the portion of the meeting for public comment. Um, we did not see anybody who had signed up for public comment. Is there any member of the public who wishes to address the board? Seeing none, we will have a second public comment period at the end of the meeting. Um, and instead we will move into board committee reports. Our board has not yet had committee meetings. Is
002that correct? No. Okay. Coming up next week. Um, but does any board member have anything to report on? I would just like just to report out uh that next Thursday night is the first meeting of the Aderonic Area School Boards Association. So I know we do have a few members of our board that'll be participating uh in the first uh dinner meeting. uh I'll be participating in um I'll be uh helping participate in a panel discussion to kick the meeting off. Uh and then uh there'll be table discussions. So, we've got about eight uh topics uh that board members will be able to choose from um led by different uh board and superintendent uh representatives from the 31 school districts in our region. Uh so again uh it's great to have the partnership uh with
003the aderonic school boards association uh and there are several meetings throughout the year that our board participates in uh to support their own professional development. Um so next Thursday it's our our first gathering Next we have our administrative reports. So typically at this point in the meeting uh our student board members, our student reps would be uh introducing themselves and uh reporting out uh for uh just programs and initiatives across the district. So, but we want to use tonight as the opportunity to uh first welcome uh Sydney Ballser and Olivia How. Uh both Sydney and Olivia are seniors at Saratoga Springs High School. Uh so, as all school districts across New York State uh for the first year uh are welcoming student representatives to the board of education, uh we are very fortunate in Saratoga
004Springs that we have a long tradition of having uh student participation on our board of education. Uh, so I had the chance to meet with Sydney and Olivia the other day and they're really excited about this opportunity to join the board governance team. Uh, I know they're going to do a tremendous job and so they'll be uh gathering information from all of our schools throughout the year. Uh, next Wednesday, which is the 17th, uh, they're going to be joining uh, student board representatives uh, from all 31 school districts in our region at the Ballard Road Conference Facility. Uh so they'll be uh participating in the morning in a statewide uh virtual workshop um led by the New York State School Boards Association. Uh and then in the afternoon uh there'll be some leadership opportunities uh
005for all the student reps who are new to the board of education uh to learn about their roles and responsibilities and uh the great opportunities they have to provide student voice and student engagement on the board of education. So at this time just want to welcome uh Sydney and Olivia. So, they're off the hook for tonight. No presentation. I told them they didn't have to prepare anything. Uh, but at our next meeting, uh, they'll be looking forward to addressing the board. Uh, so, just want to give some kudos for the start of the new school year. Uh, especially to welcome everybody back. It was awesome to have students uh, back in the building last Thursday and then to welcome everybody at our opening day uh, ceremony that was on Tuesday after Labor Day. Uh just
006uh congratulations to everybody uh our 12-month staff uh who works extremely hard over the summer months uh getting our our buildings ready for uh both students and staff to return. Uh whether it be our clerical staff in the offices answering phone calls, our school counselors putting together all the schedules. Uh our custodial uh staff who work so hard especially with construction that takes place over the summer months. Uh there's just so much work that gets done in a very short period of time. Uh and our custodial crew and our facilities and operations department uh just does an incredible job u making sure that our buildings are ready to go at the start of the school year. Uh all of our summer school staff uh whether it be at the elementary level or their secondary level,
007our ESY program as well as our kindergarten get ready program. So we have teachers and support staff and administrators uh supporting our students throughout the summer months. And a lot of those programs couldn't be possible without the transportation department uh providing transportation for our kids to get to those programs. And then our food services program continues to offer um uh both breakfast and lunch to students throughout the summer months. Uh Eric Bush had reported midway through the summer that we were doing about 700 meals a day uh both in schools and then uh from the food truck uh making their stops throughout the community. Uh so again uh the work of the district uh continues right through the summer months. Uh but we are just super excited. Uh we've had a great start uh to
008the school year. Uh so everybody is up and running uh and just excited uh to be back. Uh so again, just the recognition of our teachers and our administrators and support staff across the district uh who've just worked so hard uh to welcome our students and families back to school. Um that's all I have for tonight. Great. Thank you. We now have a presentation from our district safety committee. If I can just jump in, Dave, before you guys get started. Y uh I did just want to thank uh the Greenfield staff uh for hosting tonight's meeting. Uh and actually with us tonight, right in the front row, Geraldine, want to get a little wave? Uh Gerilyn Salado is with us. Uh Gerilyn is serving as our interim elementary school principal here at Greenfield Elementary School
009for the next six weeks. Um serving for Dr. Davis. Um and so just want to thank Gerilyn. Geraldine's first day was just on Tuesday. Uh so uh Michelle Whitley uh has helped uh provide support uh kicking off the school year and and like I said, Geraldine, we're really fortunate uh to have her here with us uh helping uh lead the Greenfield um teachers and staff and welcome all the students back. So but again, thank you to Greenfield uh for hosting tonight's uh meeting and welcome to Geraldine. All right. Thank you, Mike. Good evening, everyone. It's mostly my team, but that's all right. Uh Dave Lamadoo, assistant superintendent for information technology and oper operational innovation. So tonight we want to do our annual district safety presentation. Um so I just want to go through and talk
010a little bit about the folks that are presenting. So if you guys can wave a little bit. Um John Tiner, our director of facilities. Uh Bethany Nightingale who's our coordinator of special education preschool through grade five if I have it right. Melissa Conurs who's seventh and eighth grade Colombian school counselor from Maple Avenue. And John Benolstein and Adam which are safety coordinators from Wishy Boseis. So they help support Saratoga and a whole bunch of other schools in the Saratoga area. I also want to give a shout out to Diane Wood hand. She's not presenting tonight. You can Diane if you want, but uh she does an awful lot in her office with safety, coordinating our drills, uh helping with communication, and really does a hats off the amount of work she does and safety is
011super important to her. She takes ownership for that process. So, just want to say a big thank you to Dian. And with that, I'll get started. So, our presentation topics, um, we're going to go through some of these pretty quickly. Uh, I don't want to scare you. I think it was a total of 40 slides, which I know Mike's like 20 minutes, so we're going to keep it moving. Um, but if you see our topics just briefly, we'll talk about, especially for some of the new board of ed trustees, the district emergency response team and BERT building emergency response team relationship. Um, Adam is going to talk briefly about what we call NIMS, our national incident management system, which is kind of like how is our safety team made up. You'll also hear briefly about
012some of our prevention and proactive measures such as reunification. Um, John's Tina is going to talk about see something, say something, a post instance response will be the other John. Um, including some of our drills and emergency procedures, our online portal, and Melissa's going to talk about another preventive thing is super important is suicide prevention. U Melissa did a great job last year. She presented to the entire dirt team um and has done a lot of research in that and she's got some really important information she's going to share with you folks tonight. There's also a few new requirements from New York State Ed. Um I've mentioned I think most of them to the board when we were at executive session talking about the building emergency response plans, but we'll just review those with you
013quickly. Um John Teener is also going to talk about some of the legacy capital projects, some of the safety improvements, and then we'll end just kind of talking about some of the future meetings with our team. So there's other things that I'm just not going to talk about. We don't have enough time. Um I have in the past John and I have presented to this to the state about behavioral threat assessment. Um talking about stop the bleed. Our team we do CPR and AED training. Um we get try to get ourselves certified. Last year is a this is a big item we took on last year which is after school safety preparation. So we started meeting with high school team, music folks, athletic John Goodson and the athletic team about looking at our after school
014activities and how do we provide safety and that's that's really big and we're not done with it. We're still working on that. And we've been working really hard with um Jerry Keenan and the transportation department on bus safety. So the goals of dirt during an emergency is life safety. We want to make sure our students, our staff, community, everyone is safe. That's the most important piece. Um once we know that then we look at incident stabilization looking at property pre preservation looking at our buildings our classrooms and then our main role is to support our building emergency response team. So the big picture prevent prepare respond recover. Um we spent a lot of time trying to prevent and prepare. Um but we have had situations come up where we do have to respond. And then
015again, that recover is whatever it takes to get things back to norm for our students and for our staff so education can take place. So the dirt burnt relationship, um, this is something we've worked hard on since I've been kind of dealing with the emergency response stuff is our role with the building team. Um, and it really is to support the building. If there is an emergency that happens at the building level, the building emergency response team will be the first ones there. Um, it's their building. They have staff members there. They'll be dealing with it. Um they will call us, contact us as quickly as possible and then we support and that's just what it means. Do you need me to send bodies over? Do you need resources? Does John Tina need to get
016other staff from other buildings to come over and help you? So whatever we can do to support the building to get through the situation and recover, bring stuff back to normal. This is our district emergency response team membership. And again, I won't read all the names. is actually something that was just a few years ago now the board has to approve. Um so everyone's on there. I also want to uh again appreciate Tony and Lee who are kind of going to try to attend as many of those dirt meetings as they can as well. So thank you Lee and Tony for that. And then this is not the full building emergency response teams from the buildings but these are the folks that try to make it to our district emergency response team meetings. super important
017because at those meetings and Tony and Lee will see this. One of our things we always do is we ask them like what's happening in your buildings almost have them report out. That's kind of how we start the meetings. But we also have an expectation that what we talk about at the district level they're going to bring back to the buildings and share with their colleagues, students and staff. So important group important that they attend those meetings and participate. And I'm going to head hand things over to Adam and talk a little bit about our NIM system. Good evening everyone. Uh my name is Adam Gani. Again I'm from Capital Region Boseies. I'm one of the health and safety specialists here with the district. Um so as David mentioned uh the district uses a instant
018command structure within NIMS and it's a basically a trickle down um information system to coordinate um coordinate events if if there were an emergency. Uh starting out with the incident commander uh falls down to the operations team. These people are the doers. Um then we have the planning team. These guys are the planners obviously. Then we have the logistics teams and then the financial administration team. So it's important uh to uh to make make with our local partnerships uh especially our emergency first responders. Um we're working well with our SRO's um keeping them in the loop. um inviting them to all our drills and emergency um emergency planning um so that they're aware of how we're preparing um and keeping them in loop. And we thank them for their uh for all their assistance um
019and input as we continue to uh try to try to better improve our planning. Good evening everyone. Um As Dave said earlier, planning and preparing is something that we're really um responsive to. So everything that we do is proactive. We have several different committees and pieces in place. So our first social emotional support network. We have a variety of people within the buildings. We have school counselors, psychologists, um and another uh several other layers. We have school mental health partnerships. So we have BHSN right located in our buildings. It's an outside agency that has housed in um each building and has counselors available although they're not on our staff. We can apply and get students serviced and support there. Um we have partnerships with a variety of other places outside um Wells Spring, Franklin Community
020and you know beyond those um places schoolwide prevention. So we have layers within the buildings. We have a program called PBIS um positive behavioral supports. We have um TCIS which is a training program to help um again educate all of our staff first on um just not just physical. So that's the end piece of it, but it's a lot of um different layers of verbal support and modeling and visual supports that we can provide to students to empower our staff. Um and then we have social emotional learning which is a program um in the earlier years that we used called second step. It's taught right in the classrooms and carried throughout all of the layers of the um building. We have um other supports such as snack pack, check in, check out. So snack pack
021is a program that we can help provide food to families in need. Um and then we have professional development. So that is endless from the ground up. We have um learning teams right in the building so teachers can meet with one another. Um we have programs called Vector where we have online pieces that all of us do so we're on the same page and everybody's getting the same training. We have other times where we bring in speakers and a variety of pieces there. So um again paired with being proactive we have um several initiatives. So, we have the see something, say something. Um, there's signs posted throughout the district. Um, but something that we believe strongly in, we have to work together as a community. If we notice things different or if we're not sure
022of something, being able to speak out and have support is important. So, something that we um, you know, proactively um, let people know about. The safe school helpline um, and somebody will talk about that later more in depth. Um, the threat assessment, again, we've talked about it in the past, but something that's ongoing and we make sure that we're aware of it and that people are constantly revisiting that piece of it and being trained in it. And then the social emotional learning and curriculum. I'm gonna hand it over to Melissa. Thank you. Um, so we have our slides here that I had presented. Um, one of the great partnerships that we have been working on within our district is through the New York State Mental Health Department. They had a five-year grant, which was great.
023Um, so a lot of, um, my at my school, I was trained, so I'm now a trainer in suicide prevention, how to get staff and children and how to make it kind of part of a normal conversation in a way, mental health. Um so these are some of the things that we had talked about just the fact that these are our students that are sitting within our classroom. So one in five um are considering it and then we have one in 10 that go into attempts. This is why it's really important because as we're sitting in front of the classroom whether we're in an office we're dealing with these students and right now their biggest thing is to turn to a screen. So, we're really trying to make it so that they're turning back to
024the adults in our building and we're trying to make it so that they interact with their peers and we know their peers are there to support, but their peers are not the ones that are going to be able to assist and get them the support. Let's see if I can click this now. I'm a school counselor. I talk. Um so, um basically last year we really worked on this. We got a group district-wise um between our elementarymentaries, middle school, high school, and we talked about how we all do the process. So, we have a process that is K12. Um that included doing a board policy. It included making sure that we're going through our processes with um psyches, social workers, our nurses, school counselors. How are we doing this? If we see a student, what
025is the first reaction? Um one of the things that we kind of worked on is teachers are really that forefront. Um, so we really kind of talking to teachers about how you don't have to like journaling. So, especially for English classes, some of them will really write about their feelings. A teacher will read it and they instantly are like, "Oh my god, you have to go see somebody." And they kind of hand it off. And so, we're trying to teach them to kind of do a nice handoff saying, you know, I recognize you. I see that you might be hurting. You know, I'm going to take you to go see someone to talk about it. And then kind of recircling back the next day and kind of checking in um so that they know they
026can about it. It's okay to talk about it. Doesn't always mean that it's going to necessarily lead to them um committing suicide. So, we talk about if a student has a desire plus the capability, they have a higher risk. Okay? So, that's what this is. It's the integrated model of suicide risk. There are different indicators. There's a couple, but this is the one that kind of breaks it down and how are we feeling at the individual level, environment, and includes all of the interpersonal as well. Okay. So suicide is a complex issue. Therefore, prevention must be comprehensive. So we have our tiers of intervention. So we have our tier one which is everyone. So we think of tier one as everyone. You get the same the staff awareness, the staff training programs. We have second
027step as we just talked about. Um the beey is kind of doing a behavioral to kind of see where they are which kind of gets us to our check-in and checkout kids. So it gives us a higher rate of these kids that need a little bit more attention. Um or intervention or support. Um so then we have our tier two which is very targeted. So now we've identified kids we know they need to check in checkout or they need snack pack they need resources their family needs resources and then we have tier three which now we have the student who's in front of us who is talking about wanting to die by suicide. Um so then what we do uh we have the Colombian suicide severity rating scale. A lot of us partner with mobile
028crisis as well. So, a lot of times we'll do our rating scale um because it's not an assessment. It kind of just sees where they're at in the moment and then um sometimes we'll call mobile crisis to come in. We'll connect with the parents with the outside um providers as well. And then we have a thing when they come back to school as well to make sure that they're getting the supports in place. So, something I'm really excited about and I know I brought it um at the end is in October we have two trainings. So we are starting our sources of strength program which I'm really excited about because for New York we're actually the first middle school that they are working with through Boseies right now. Um so I'm really excited about it.
029We met in June and we planned I reached out to all of our clubs um all of our coaches as well and I'm going to be meeting with them with a group of our psyches and social workers and so our first is an adult training on October 9th. So they're going to kind of train us and how to be sources of strength and what does that look like? And then we're going to get peer leaders as well. So again, we already have these clubs that are in place. We have these sports that are in place. So once a month we're going to get them together and then once a month each month is going to have a theme around it. So September they talk about is mental health ninated awareness. So they have these really
030um nice signs that they had given to everybody. So we are looking to put these in our bathrooms. Um I can pass them around actually. So um and just get more awareness. We have magnets, stickers that are out. Um, and again, we meet within our buildings as well as districts. So, we make sure that it's K12 and we have u made sure that our assessments are at the age level that they need to be as well. So, again, this sources of strength, it just is trying to normalize asking for help. Okay? And so, really, the thing that I like about it is it's studentto student, too. So, you're getting kids who somebody might be really upset and now this person who's trained can say, "You know what? I see you're having a really hard day.
031My person that I go to is Miss Conjurs. How about I bring in Miss Conjurs and we can talk to Miss Conjurs together?" Um, sometimes that's all it takes, too. Um, so I'm really excited about that. The kids that have been kind of talking about it are really excited because again, it's something they want to they want to be ambassadors and that's what we're kind of calling them is our student ambassadors. So, did you want to Anything else about? No. Okay. One of the things we try to focus on is, you know, what is their relationship with teachers, neighbors, outside of school, hobbies, what interests do they have? There's a lot of different ways to connect with students. We define what those are. The invisible backpack, as we say, and it takes a village. Um,
032is this? Yes. School connects to this. I'm so sorry. So again, this goes back to our sources of strength, but again, as well as our training, um, and getting things out in the classroom, which I really like because again, these kids are seeing that this is something, oh, okay, if I'm feeling sad, um, ask any psych social worker, school counselor, school started. We have everyone who's getting anxious, whether it's they're out of routine right now, whether they're away from home and they don't know how to do that. Um, so we've had these kids right now, so it's really important our new families when they come into the district. Um, I know for the middle school, we meet with them and then even within the first two weeks, we've met with our new students and then
033we connect with their families. Um, so I right now am excited. I have a cart and I'm in the hallways. I'm checking in on my kids, my new kids, any kids that need extra help with their lockers. Um, so again, it's just making sure that every single person is getting checked in on. We are in the lunches. So again, whether it's outside lunch or inside lunch, we're looking for kids that are sitting by themselves. We're trying to connect kids. Sorry, there's a fly. Um, so it's all about building those relationship and it's not just with a teacher. Staff members, our transportation when they're in there in the morning, they're the first ones when they greet them. Um, our custodians when they're cleaning, they're around lunch. Um, so it's really great to connect them and with
034our check-in and check out, we have teachers that volunteer that and then we can connect them. Now, this is unique. So, I just want to talk briefly about another area that we spent a lot of time on, especially the last couple years, which is practicing reunification. So, reunification is important. Um, obviously there's the horrific 100% um if there was an active asalent and we had to do a reunification, that's the the extreme. But I also tell the buildings that we practice for a lot other reasons. Reunification could be a gas leak, you have a electrical problem in the building and you're not allowing students to return. So it it definitely has happened before. So it's a super important thing to practice with our students, our staff, and also with our families. So two years ago
035and beyond, we kind of we kind of did our own reification, but there really were no guidelines. So it was just recently that New York State um has kind of paired up with the I Love You guys Foundation, and they're using their work, their model. So, we had to kind of redo our whole plan, which we've been working on. Um, following New York State and the I love you guys method. So, it's it's more comprehensive and I'm I'm learning to like it. It's just it's a new for me as well. Um, and it's if you look in there and again, I won't go through that about reunification area. It's all about flow. There's a lot to this that how do our students move? How do our parents move? How does everyone leave the campus? Those
036kind of things with reunification. So, this chart probably is the best way to explain it. This is something that we created and I'll just go through it real really quickly. So basically as you come into a building if we were going to reunify I don't know there was something that happened at Caroline Street. So we're going to bring all of our Caroline Street students over to the high school and we're going to reunify at the high school. So reunification has many layers to it. Maybe we could use buses. So some of those students could be on their normal buses and go and we'd have to reunify normal like parents want to pick up their students. or it could be maybe buses are out of the equation and it's just parents are going to pick up
037their students. So there's a station A which is basically is coming into a greeting area and we have a basically have a form that we will be giving out to families asking who you are, who are you here to pick up, do you have your ID with you, things like that, try to give them some instruction then they would go into what we're calling station B which basically is we would have another setup where that's where you would say you're Dave Lamadoo you're here to pick up and we would just look at our emergency contact information, our information and verify that yes, Dave is supposed to be here to pick up his son. When that happens, then we would move you to we're calling it a parent assembly area, which basically is you're kind of
038then at that point waiting in line or waiting or sitting waiting for to get your students or or children. So station D is a reunification area and then there's a whole another big big area probably like a gym whereas our student that's where the students are being held. So basically then we would have um some like a a runner of of nature or someone go in and they would find the students. They would bring the students. I would go in and get the parents and would bring the parents to that area D and then they would be reunified. We do one more check with paperwork and then off they go next family that that's kind of moves. I'm really simplifying it but that's kind of how the flow is supposed to happen. So that's what
039we're working on. We've had some schools that are starting to really work on this. Um we had Caroline Street a couple years ago. We had parents involved in it. It was very very successful. Um we had Maple Avenue first time ever move all the students over to the high school and we brought the high school into the gym and kind of categorize all the students and had a nice discussion with the students about reification. So we're making some progress. I'm hopeful that maybe the high school because it's our biggest one. Maybe try to move them like over to Maple and try to go through some of that process as well. Again, you don't know when you're going to need to use it, but it's it's really an important practice for us. And I'm hand things
040over to Jen. So, as Bethany had mentioned, uh the see something, say something initiative was a big undertaking that we took on as a result of the nicer security audit we had done. Our school nicers aren't sure. And one of the recommendations they made was to have this type of campaign. So at that time we had signs made. We put them up throughout the district. We had pamphlets that we passed out to students and staff and we worked with local law enforcement to get their recommendations. And one of the things I instill in my staff and whenever I talk to students or anybody is something feels wrong in your gut, don't just walk away like report it. We have this we have this opportunity. A lot of times it's it's nothing but always trust your
041gut. And if something doesn't look right or feel right, take the time to uh to pass it on. You know, it could be something serious. So, this has gone really well. We've been doing this since 2018. We'll continue to to use it. Uh the safe school helpline was another recommendation made in the audit. And this has been a great tool. We've had 129 calls since 2019. Um the way it works is it's anonymous. students, staff, whoever can call, parents, they can call or text in and it goes into a call center and if it's deemed as a serious threat of harm, then it gets it could be two in the morning. It goes to Dr. Patton or it goes to Dave or it goes to me. We get the call and then we notify administration
042of the building. We may notify an SRO or a local law enforcement, whatever we have to do. And I can say there's been a lot of cases where we've had to do that. And the response is immediate. All the principles, I've texted Michelle S, principal of the high school at 2 in the morning or called her if I had to and somebody's out making a home visit within an hour. So, it's a great tool and a great resource. I'm going turn it over now to John to talk about drills. Hi everyone, John Olstein Caposis Hall Safety Risk. Uh we're going to talk about drills here. Some of you may be aware that last year, last school year, state ed began requiring trauma informed drills. Uh that means avoiding tactics and training or drills that may
043involve or introduce trauma or activate trauma like the use of props, actor simulations or other tactics. Uh fortunately, the school district has always performed trauma informed drills since I've been here. There was no major change with that here. Um also during a lockdown drill, all staff Students must be notified at the time of the event that the incident is a drill. Also, that there's an advanced notice to parents that go out goes out about a week ahead of time to let the parents know that a drill is going to be occurring. Here's something a little bit different. Uh there's there's a student video. It's relatively short. It involves Grayson Grayson Spurber from Division Street during an evacuation relocation drill to the high school on May 23rd. and also Shay Br, kindergartener from Dorothy Nolan, as
044well as Cooper Allen, fourth grader, when they did the evacuation relocation to Gavin Park on May 29th. It happened. [Music] That one. I felt someone tell me about relationship. So, thank you to the students that uh participated in that. It's very insightful and it helps you understand how kids feel when we do these drills. So, that's great to hear. Little more on drills. Uh state ed requires a total of 12 drills every year. Eight evacuation or fire drills and four lockdown drills. The first set of drills must occur before December 31st. So it's a combination of six evacuation fire drills and two lockdown and four of the evacuation drills will be through fire escapes or secondary means of egress and one evacuation drill during lunch or assembly if possible. Also important to note that after
045school programs, events and performances there must be somebody in charge and that person notifies the attendees at the beginning of the program or event on emergency procedures. With that said, I'm gonna pass it back to Adam. So, New York State had some uh new changes that they rolled out this year. Uh one being associated with your uh New York State emergency response terms um also known as your shell card. Uh one being the specifically being the language in the secure lockout uh mechanism. Um so there was some misconception between lockout and lock uh lockout and lock down. Uh so the state implemented uh the word secure in front to uh to eliminate that. So you'll see those shell cards in every uh every building in every single uh building room to assist anyone if and
046in the event to something is called. Uh they also had two new requirements. Um the transportation emergency procedure and sudden cardiac arrest. Uh the new transportation emergency procedure uh required that we develop some sort of um emergency response plan in the event that you have a transportation emergency on the road. Um and it also um it also uh requires us to have some sort of emergency response plan if we if we have to evacuate a building. So I know Dave and uh Dave and his team has worked pretty hard in the in the past couple years prior to me starting at uh Saratoga to work with the transportation department to update their um their response plans. Uh so we took bits and pieces from that and uh developed a plan with procedures to evacuate buildings
047and provided all the resources they might the current buildings might need to evacuate the buildings. Um and we place that all in one one plan and sh and shared shared it with shared with transportation. Um so the sudden cardiac arrest is in response to uh the signing of the dasha law at the end of July by the governor by the governor. So this requires us to also develop uh policies and procedures um within the within the buildings to have uh procedures in the event that we do someone does experience sudden cardiac arrest. This also applies to um off school site uh you know field trips or events. Um and it also we developed policies uh to address to address any of these uh circumstances. Um and it also we also identified um any um personnel
048and staff on duty that are currently trained in CPR and AED. So we work work pretty hard and we notified everybody um within the buildings that they are that if they do need to respond they're required to do so. So this here is navigate uh as you guys are familiar this is a online platform that we use to um track our drills as well as place all our uh building level safety plans. So if uh anyone needs to access them quickly um they have the ability to do so. And you can also find some emergency maps in within this uh navigate um provides um a location uh gas water shut offs. Um, in the event that you do need to access them relatively quickly, we do share these uh these maps and uh information with
049our local um first responders um so that they they can stay in the loop and gain access to the building and the necessary have the necessary necessary resources at their disposal. So I'll hand that off to So part of education law 2801A and commissioners regulation 155.17 requires every school district to have certain teams. One of those teams is a post instant response team. You can see it's highlighted on the screen. And the quote directly from NISD, one for each building within a district Boseies and charter school is appointed by the building level emergency response team and has the responsibility for helping the school community in the aftermath of a violent incident or emergency. So with that uh the school district has a post incident response plan and myself I cover eight schools throughout the capitol
050region and this is one of the only schools that has a post instant response plan. So kudos to the district and everybody that worked on it. It's very important. So this is a statement of purpose with it. Crisis intervention is for responding to, minimizing the impact of and preventing school and personal crisis. With many sociological factors affecting the school community, it imperative that districts develop and utilize a plan to mitigate crisis situations efficiently and effectively. I'm not going to read the rest, but I think that gives the uh the idea of what it covers exactly. So the post instant response plan the goals the first goal is recognizing a crisis second goal is responding to a crisis and the third goal is mitigating of potential negative effects after a crisis. The post instant response plan
051also provides a standardized process for notifications utilization of support services as well as managing the school day excuse me immediately after and the weeks months following a crisis. Also to note there that uh currently each building will be conducting a tabletop exercise utilizing the the plan and we've already conducted it in Greenfield and Lake A last year and it it went very well. So hoping the rest of the buildings take kind of run with it. Pass it on to John. So between all the capital work we've done, we've already we're already over, you know, around 50% through with legacy 2020. Then we have legacy 2025 come coming up shortly. There's a lot of um capital improvements related to security and safety, whether it be traffic flow, whether it be secure vestibules, on and on and
052on, bionet boxes. Um, we do some of this stuff with our own budget with facilities in terms of bolstering our radio inventory, teaching communications, use of radios in our dirt meetings. There's a lot of things we do internally. Um, purchasing blue lights for assembly spaces and exteriors of buildings. So, uh, this is just a list of some of the things that have been done. Um, again, secure vestibules throughout the district. There's been a lot new a lot of new exterior doors installed through the projects. Our radio system now can communicate almost with every building with link plus programming. So dirt members have these radios and can communicate via radio in the event of an emergency. A lot of time if there's an areawide emergency, cell phones aren't going to work. So we still have the
053use of our radios. There's been a lot of traffic flow improvements. The bionet boxes are a device that we've installed in some of the buildings and will continue throughout the capital projects. And what they do is they do a whole series of things at once in the event of an emergency. So when you hit that button, it will automatically notify law enforcement through a call center. It will activate the blue lights. It will release magnetic door holds on corridor doorways. It will disable card readers. Only a select few people in the district will be able to use those card readers. So it does a lot at once. It's very complex. It's difficult to get it to work right when you're first implementing it because there's just so many systems that have to communicate, but it's
054an incredible tool. Um, and then like I talked about with the blue lights and it also will announce lock down automatically. It can be initiated through a phone as well as a button in the attendance or main office. So, great tools that we have there. This is just a couple photos. Um, this is over at Caroline Street. This was just completed this summer. um another secure vestibule which is great because we have the wall in the middle. So you have students and staff coming in on one side and visitors coming in where the window is and that way there's that separation. Um and then we have both doors have card readers on them. The exterior doors and the interior doors. And there's also a monitor which is kind of hard to see on the left
055of the greeter window so you can see yourself as you walk in similar to what you see in a supermarket or sometimes a mall. Again, all these pictures aren't complete because we're rushing to try to get all this work done here at the end of the summer. We also have a new secure vestibial at Geyser Road that wasn't completed when I was scrambling to get photos last week. Um, it's since been completed. We're just waiting on a different type of glass, but this is all at Caroline Street. So, this was new sidewalk improvements, um, new crosswalks, new asphalt all through there. Um and it's just made that whole area for pedestrian buses and um uh traffic to get through there safer. So, a lot of great improvements, a lot more to go. We'll never stop,
056but I'm encouraged by um the drastic changes that we made. So, I'm going to turn it over to Dave now to talk about topics for our dirt meetings for this school year. Thanks, Sean. So, just in closing, these are especially for Lee and Tony, some of our future meetings coming up. Um, our first meeting coming up in the 25th really is kind of a review of some of the stuff we talked about tonight. We get into a little bit more detail about our roles, the drill requirements, um, a little bit about Navigate 360. Um, so we'll we go get into that. Then you see some more specific topics that we go through. One of the things we're going to do is a chemical tabletop. um dealing with if you think about what's in the industrial
057park near Geyser Road and that there's potentially could be that opportunity for something like that to happen there. So, we're going to look at that. You'll see us talking again about re uh threat assessment, um reunification. A topic that was brought up was best practices and use of our walkie-talkies, our radios. As John said, they're used a lot if there are emergencies, but we don't always know how to use them correctly. So, we're going to try to work on that and probably do some practice and do some drills with that. Um, we continue to try to keep a good portion of the members of the dirt team updated with the CPR, AED, and a stop the bleed refresher. We have an open spot there in March because sometimes topics come up and we're asked to
058do things and we want to kind of leave that open for some flexibility. um we're going to be talking probably a tabletop or go reviewing some of our bus accident protocols and then in May we typically try to just reflect on the good work that the buildings have done, everyone has done and what we've learned for the year. So that's kind of our our schedule. And then some of our community outreach, we've tried a whole bunch of different things through the many years. Um our presentation tonight, we've already been requested by a couple of buildings to do like a presentation to the PTA HSA, which we always honor. Um, and we encourage the buildings to try to involve parents um, in some of our drills, especially in our evacuation drills. It really helps because then
059they like, "Oh, that's why you do that or that's why I couldn't just come in and grab my my child or that's why I need to have my ID with me." And things like that. So, it's very helpful. And when we do a debrief, we also learn a lot from them and they tell us like, "I wouldn't do it like this or it might be more helpful to parents we did it this way." So, we're always learning from each other. And that's what we got. and open up to any questions you may have. Thank you, Matt. Thanks. That was uh that was a lot. Thank you. Um I had some questions about uh in this the suicide prevention section, which I thought was really great. But um you had a an acronym Bessie Bis y
060that I wasn't sure what it stood for. What was it? Uh it was part of the social emotional learning section. Sorry. Yeah, but you're act I don't know what's the acronym because it's the behavioral. It's the brief externalizing and internalizing screener for youth behavior. Thank you. Was it on there? I I missed it. Well, I will give credit to Angie who has created our acronym document and it is in there. Thank you so much. That's why I looked it up. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I can totally describe it. Can give you the questions, what we do after the questions, and how we get them together, but I'm really bad with all the acronyms. So, thanks for asking. And I I love the um the flyers that you're going to post. They they all have
061like QR codes on them, and the students aren't don't have phones anymore. Correct. So, we're g those right now. So, the kids are going to be making theirs. So, those were just examples that they gave us that you could use. So, the kids are going to be doing it. Okay, great. Yeah. Because they can't use their phones. They're in their their lockers. Um I had a similar question about the the reporting app the reporting how to report uh in the safe school hotline and those things for kids who don't have access to phones is that through the computer through their computers. Okay. And then lastly, this is actually not a suicide prevention question. Um but the difference between the the shelter in place and a secure lockout, the secure lockout is sort of a lock
062in, but like can you give me an example of what the the two like how the two would be used? Sure. So, shelter in place typically is weather related and it could be high wind or things like that and you may want to move kids from a certain part of the building or move them out of a gym into a hallway area or certain classrooms. A secure lockout is typically there's a an event in the area, something outside of the building, and basically we're not letting anybody in the building except our students. We want to make sure we get everybody back inside, but then they they would not be allowed it until it's deemed safe to have visitors and other people come into the building. That's the typically shelter in place and hold in place
063are the ones that are kind of sometimes used for the wrong term. Again, hold in place is maybe you have a medical situation or something's happening in the hallway and you want to clear the hallway and give that student privacy and you would do a hold in place so classes don't pass, everybody kind of stays where they are, the situation is cleared up and then you would release. So, sorry, just to clarify. So, like a shelter in place, like if there's a hurricane, we're sheltering in place. Correct. If there's uh like a car chase happening outside, like if it's man, if it's man-made, it's a secure lockdown. Correct. Typically, they're locked. Sorry. Secure lock out. Lockout is keeping, you know, you're locking doors. You're not letting people into the building. Yep. Once we get all
064our students in and that's it. Yep. Until we're given permission to. Yes. Thank you. Yes, honey. Um, I had two items along uh what Matt was um saying. So, I do want to thank you for your presentation. It was great. Um, I do want to also um acknowledge Melissa Conurs and your presentation. Um, I know that um you are very much a beacon of light for many kids and this is like a response to um a tragedy that our community had in 2024. So, thank you for that. Um I and this is more of a comment, not necessarily a question, okay? But there is uh the New York State Legislature passed um a bill that about child abuse uh hotline reform which would prevent the weaponization of false reporting um to stop anonymous reporting. So,
065I'm not sure if there's possible implications of that for the see something, say something hotline, but I just wanted to mention it because it's on the governor's desk. She hasn't signed. We haven't seen anything on it yet. No. Yeah. So, just wanted to mention that. No, it's it comes up. We will deal with it and learn about it and try to do the right thing. Um, I also want to thank you for the very thorough presentation and just the comprehensive approach that you take to school safety. I feel like it is foundational in our schools. If kids don't feel safe, it's really hard to learn. Um, and so I really appreciate all the ways in which you are thinking through that um, you know, school safety and um, the attention that is being paid to
066school suicide prevention and mental health literacy. I feel like um so often it can be really scary for someone to encounter someone who um is there and so to help teachers empower them to have the tools to know how to help. People often want to help but they don't always know how. It's scary. Um so I think that's really wonderful and for students as well, the work that you're planning on doing um with the sources of strength, I'm really excited to see how that evolves. Um I think it's wonderful because our kids need to know how to help each other as well. So, um, thank you for for the good work that that everyone is doing. All right. I have, um, two just clarifying questions. So, the first is about the fire and emergency drills.
067And so, I understood that there are 12 drills required by New York State and then that time requirement plus the early release. Are the other requirements that you listed, are those also from NISET or are those things that our district has chosen to do? And I'm sorry that was so it's the um four of the evacuation drills will be through fire escapes or secondary means of egress and one evacuation drill during lunch or assembly. Yep. So the those drills are required by the state. So we we just follow through with those and then again the the changes like we that's recommendations from the state as far as mixing stuff up and then the is also set by the state when those have to be done. Thank you. And then my other question is just um
068how would how do the relocation drills at the secondary level impact instructional time because I feel like those must take a long time. So they do they do take an hour or two depends on again we've only done it one time at Maple. Um I always I'm just a preacher and I believe like I I just want our students and staff to be prepared. God forbid something ever happens or again it's an electrical issue or a gas leak and there's many reasons why you may not be able to go back to a building. I just don't want the time is worth it to me. I don't want our students or staff to say like we don't know what we're doing. We we don't we've never done this before. I want staff and students to feel
069comfortable like yeah we've done this. This is we're okay. Um so there is a time component and it's kind of an ashamed but to me it's worth it for the safety of our students. Sorry I'm not questioning the value of it. I hear you. Um, I just meant in terms of like the requirements of instructional time. Oh, I I don't know. I I think we're okay. Not a concern. Great. Thank you. Um, and then I just wanted to add um just as the parent of a Division Street student, there's been so much communication about safety this year. So, we got a handout sent home. There's been communication using parent square. It's been really, really thorough and clear just to start off the year. So, I'm sure it's that way at other schools, too. That's just
070my only experience. But, it's been really, really great. That's good. So, thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Just want to thank uh Dave for his ongoing leadership and to all members of the district emergency response team uh and the support they provide to our buildings. Uh but it is really a comprehensive um approach across the district. Uh and we continue to look for ways to get better uh throughout the year. Um but again, it's uh one of the most important things things we want to do is uh maintaining a safe uh and supportive learning environment for all of our students and staff. So uh thanks to all the members uh for tonight's presentation. Great job everybody. All right. Now we turn to the consent agenda. For those in attendance or watching, a
071consent 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 members have the chance to ask questions of discovery and do any advanced factf finding
072that is part of their due diligence process. Are there any modifications to tonight's agenda? There are not. So I move to approve consent agenda. the consent agenda in its entirety. Items E, F, and G. Can I get a second? Okay, Lee. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? All right, that's unanimous. Okay. Is there any member of the public who wishes to address the board? Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda planning items. Do any board members have any agenda planning items. Lee, uh, thank you. So, on the consent agenda, I noticed that there were a number of new hires in the transportation department. Um, I also know that we're going to be talking about transportation at an upcoming meeting, I believe, in December. Um, and I just wanted to um put forward
073and ask if we're going to have updates on hiring in transportation um as well as sort of returning to some of the issues and questions that were discussed last year. All right. Thank you. So, um I guess I'll just say Mike to jump ahead. Is that something that we can expect? Um or if not, that's something that we can discuss at our next meeting during agenda planning. No, you definitely actually I met with four new drivers and two new aids that were recommended to the board tonight for their probationary appointment and we have several others that are completing uh their training uh this month. So, the recruitment efforts last spring and throughout the summer uh really were very productive, which was awesome. Uh, so I don't think we'll ever end our recruiting cycle when it
074comes to drivers. Always looking for uh new folks to join the transportation department, but um I can work with Joe and Jerry to be able to provide an update as to kind of where things stand uh at our next meeting just with those folks who were completed their training. And so we're expecting that presentation in December. Sorry, go ahead Tony. I just was wondering, Lee, were you talking too about um update on the impact of transportation um developments on the um possibility of schedule changes and things like that as well? Yeah, I think those are the two major parts of it. So then we'll discuss this further at the next meeting during the agenda planning times that board members can prepare. Are there any other agenda planning items? Okay, seeing none, let's move to board
075member comments. Are there any board members who'd like to make a comment? Uh, I just want to thank the Dorothy Nolan HSA for their donation uh to offset the cost of uh student electric pianos and to also thank Matthews buses and Leonard buses for uh help their their donation to support uh the orientation and awards certainly from the transportation department. Great. Yes, thank you. Any other comments, Lee? Um, I just wanted to say that, um, I know it feels like school's already, well, for me at least, been in session for quite a while. But, um, before the first day of school, we had a number of welcome back events across the district. Um, depending on grade levels, those are opportunities for students to come in, meet a teacher, drop off supplies, try their hand at
076opening their locker for the first time. Um, but also to be welcomed into their community and and um in their school. So, um I just wanted to thank um everyone who was involved in making those really successful and and welcoming and warming. Um there's a lot of uh behind the scenes um requirements and also on the day of to make them really successful. Um I had the privilege of attending the high school one and I think I saw like a million devices being handed out within the space of an hour very efficiently I should say. Yes, I walked past you about 10 times. Um but so thank you so much to all of the um all of the staff, all of the teachers, all of the student volunteers, um everyone involved in operations, IT um
077administrators, um and also welcome to all of the new people in the district, those who are joining Saratoga for the first time. Welcome. Um as well as all of the um alerting me to a new term, still someone coming into within the district, but to a new school. So welcome and and hope everyone has a successful year. All right. I guess I will just say ditto to all of that. That's so important. Welcome back to the new school year. Um for board members. Um we do have our annual board retreat. It is next week on September 17th at 5:00 pm we are meeting in the administrative building. Um for those watching this is not an event that is open to the public and does not have to do with public business. It is just for
078board members. Um and then for those who are here um or sorry for board members, we will be providing dinner. And if you emailed me food restrictions, I have passed those on. Um our next meeting is on September 25th at 7 p.m. at Division Street. And for board members, we do have the 25-year employee recognition ahead of time at 6:15. So, um we will see you there. Is there any other um board member comment? Okay. Um, could I please get a motion to enter into executive session to discuss the CSEA contract? Okay, Deb, and a second from Ashley. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor?