001foreign okay good evening we'll start our meeting hillary can i get a roll call please trustee ellis trusty barman here trustee brugerman here trustee amica vice president latakia here president here okay will you please join me in standing for the pledge is could i get a motion to approve minutes from the five noted meetings uh erica and john ellis uh discussion all in favor john brugerman are you in favor yeah yeah okay motion carries eight to zero could i get a motion to accept today's agenda natalia second dean uh discussion all in favor nine nothing motion carries eight nothing motion carries all right now we turn to public comment on behalf of the board i want to thank the community community members in attendance tonight for your engagement we truly value input from the community
002and are grateful that you are here please note that board of education meetings in new york state are not public meetings with real-time dialogue between officials and spectators they are board meetings held in public where we conduct the business of the district with one another but do so visibly so that maximal transparency and information sharing with the public can be achieved there is no conversation between the board and the public during our meetings however we do provide two public comment periods during which speakers may address the board to share information and opinions that may inform our work we are eager to hear your voices and opinions if your statement or question requires requires follow-up the appropriate district official will be in touch outside the confines of the meeting to enable an efficient environment in which
003the board can complete the meeting's planned agenda the first public comment period is limited to 30 minutes total while the second comment period has no official time limit the ground rules for public comments include asking speakers in the audience to conduct themselves in a civil and constructive manner we are invested in hearing your voices and ask that you model 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 in order to allow more people the opportunity to address us we now open the first public comment period each speaker is allotted a maximum of three minutes and the period is limited to 30 minutes total before you address the board
004please clearly state your name and address at the end of your three minutes if you take that time i'll ask if you can wrap up the thought that you're on please and please try to just wrap up that thought very quickly um first up is julie marshall i don't know do you need me to talk into this is that helpful hi thank you for listening to my comment my name is julie marshall i live at 140 west circular street i have two kids here at kindergarten and third grade in this school and i'm a registered democrat i teach in mechanicville i teach art 6 through 12 and this is my 17th year there i was given the superintendent days in the beginning of the school year where they go over all of the rules and
005everything and we were given quite a rundown for lockdowns this year and we talked with um he's retired kenny cooper he gave our he's in our schools like a retired sro and he gave us a really good resource with that we currently have an sro deputy lawyer whitney and she's there full-time for our school and she also goes up to the elementary so it's right there it goes right up there my concern or comment or ask in this scene the place to start i'm a little unfamiliar with it but this seemed the place to start is it possible for us to have in division street a full-time sro the reason i'm asking this is because as a teacher to somebody else's children huddled in a corner if something happens when something happens i just really
006like the concept of an ounce of prevention it takes four minutes or five minutes for the cops to get there which we do call if there's a lockdown and i really do believe our officer that's there right now would risk her life i don't care if she has a pistol they have a semi she's somebody willing to help and i'm really sad we don't have that here so thank you for listening thank you matt copens thank you all very much my name is matt kopans i live at eight empire avenue i have two children in the middle school who are here with me today uh and i was distressed this uh the end of the summer when i found out the middle school was moving earlier for its start time because really we should be
007moving the middle school and high school start times much later both the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics suggest that middle school and high school start at 8 30 at the absolute earliest in a 2014 study of 29 high schools that shifted their start times later they saw a four percent increase in attendance and a nine percent increase in graduation rates um in addition to doing better in schools with a later start date they saw lower incidences of depression unhealthy behaviors iran excuse me a robert wood johnson foundation study showed that early start times leads to obesity depression and suicidal ideations among high school students at a much higher rate than schools that start later um when you know hearing about these sros if i'm really concerned about the safety of my children having
008a later start date time will help greatly um 10 to 20 percent of serious crashes involving teens is due to sleeplessness uh one town saw a 70 drop in accidents after the moving their high school time to 8 50. um this is already happening throughout the country in california they've already mandated that high schools start no earlier than 8 30. um even in troy uh those that middle school in high school the first bell for the first class is at 8 30. um i've raised this with among my friends and a lot of them say well what about sports or after school activities um i have a couple thoughts on that it it seems that our students who are in athletics wait for schools to travel to us if they're coming from far away i
009don't know why a school that we're competing against couldn't wait for us because we have a later start time um we have as i mentioned i live on empire avenue we have these great lights on all of the fields in that high school that are on all the time i don't see why we couldn't use those more when there are athletic activities happening there in the evening and frankly if we wanted to we could just cancel the last period of school for sports which is essentially what we're doing by having the start time before eight o'clock with the first period we're essentially canceling any learning that's happening in that period so that sports can start on time which i i personally find very upsetting so i hope you all would consider soon moving the middle
010school and high school times to 8 30 or later thank you so much thank you next up is eden copens hello my name is eden copenz and i also live at eight empire avenue and i'm here to talk about sros or school resource officers and i'm in grade 8 at maple lav and we usually have one sro there full time but sometimes there are more and i don't really get the point of them because there is a one in one million five hundred seventy five thousand chance that a child will get uh killed in a school shooting but there's a five point six in one hundred thousand chance that they a child gets killed by a gun and the school the student handbook says in their gun free school section that beyond strict compliance with
011the law there is also concern for potential of some unintended tragedy whenever firearms are brought in close contact with large number of people including children and we're in new york state so all the gun owners that are talked about in this have to have up like some training to be able to own and buy a gun and like the police officers have training but there's always a chance for unintended tragedy and it's also not just about physical harm to health but also mental health because students of color already have so many disadvantages in school because of systemic racism and adding a layer of police officers with guns into it isn't helping anyone and i've heard that like the only reason i've heard that they exist is to be a resource if we need to talk
012to someone but we already have counselors and therapists and a social worker and if i want to talk to someone i'm going to them first because i will not i don't want to confide in someone who has a gun and like a riot baton like that just that doesn't make me feel any better so if we really want to look out for kids mental health then i think it's better that we have maybe more therapists or you know more social workers because that will make everyone feel better and do better in school thank you thank you [Applause] next up is tara gaston hi my name is tara gaston i live on that corner right over there on andrew street i'm here to talk about the new policy regarding excessive tardies and absences particularly at the
013high school about a week before school started i got a letter saying that if a child has an excessive number of tardies or absences they will have privilege they will no longer be eligible for privileges first off the letter phrased it as the child would no longer be eligible when in fact they would be punished because every child starts the year with zero parties or absences so the accrual of tardies or absences would mean they would lose access to an unlimited number of potential privileges it indicated field trips extracurriculars but it also said not including and it's up to the discretion of this is pretty disturbing for a number of reasons one in the code of conduct the list of excused absences do not include family necessity transportation or issues that are not that particular
014student now if a bus is late to school because we don't have a lot of bus drivers and we need more somebody apply to be a bus driver um if that's late that can be excused but if my car doesn't crank on time or if i have a problem getting between the two schools that my kids have to be at one minute apart from each other on different sides of the city neither of whom can take a bus that doesn't count as an excused tardy or an absence when i requested additional information from the school and the district i was not given any information and just told that administrators could decide in each individual situation i will also note that in the code of conduct being absent for sports it doesn't specify whether it has
015to be a school or otherwise or religious purposes which doesn't specify any particular religion or how that has to be identified or determined whether i have to provide proof those are excused the fact that my child has a big test or has a problem and is a few minutes late is not excused even if i say that's okay if we get stuck in traffic at maple avenue and my high schoolers late my high schooler is not excused now what's particularly concerning to me is that the students who are most likely to have excessive absences or tardies are going to be students who have the fewest resources to support them and their family already they're not going to have friends who can drive them to school they're going to have family who's working several jobs they're
016not going to have access to these sorts of things and those students are already over represented in the number of saratoga springs city school district students that do not graduate on time the effect of this is the students with the fewest resources in this district are going to be punished and isolated as a result of their family's circumstances i don't believe anybody sitting at this table find that an acceptable solution can you wrap up that thought thank you next up is aaron leary hi my name is erin leary and i live at phylus on file street and i have two elementary students here in saratoga springs i'm here tonight to voice my opposition to the discussed expansion of the sro program into our elementary schools in 1983 the lapd introduced a new program to curtail
017demand for drugs by going into elementary schools though elementary schools weren't exactly primary targets for drug use or dealing this program grew in popularity however and so in the spring of 1992 i a fifth grader here in the capitol district joined my peers for our dare graduation research started indicating the program was ineffective that very year when an indiana university study found that students who completed dare were more likely to take hallucinogenic drugs than those who didn't by 1995 the california department of education was showing that the program was ineffective at reducing drug use in 1998 a study from the national institute of justice also found that dare was ineffective and might actually have negative impacts another study from 1998 concluded that dare was effective at influencing student self-esteem and helping learn how to say
018no to drugs but those effects did not last fifth graders were very well equipped to decline drugs but by the time those students were actually offered drugs in high school they performed no differently than did kids who hadn't been in their programs studies continued to document the program's ineffectiveness but each year 225 million dollars was funneled from education budgets to police budgets 50 000 police were employed to teach the curriculum in our nation's classrooms until 2001 when the u.s department of education limited the use of their funds to support the program because it was just ineffective and an unjustified use of public money i bring this up not to dunk on dare but because as dare funding dissipated funding for sro programs increased the doj arm that funds sro programs community policing services or cops
019has specifically suggested that their budget lines be assigned to sro programs and also specifically acknowledges that there are no evidence to support sro programs the research can be murky but it also clearly shows that there is no increased safety sros don't prevent school shootings and they cause more harm for bypa queer disabled and economically disadvantaged students we know there is increased school violence for a period of 20 months after any increase in sro presence school shootings that occur where an sro is present have as i have said in the last meeting results in nearly three times as many deaths still there is the asserted repeated assertion that sros make some people feel safer can you finish up that thought and if nothing else that it might improve community relationships with police this was the justification
020for dare from 1992 to 2001. thank you [Applause] next up is crystal horn oh i'm sorry uh rebecca lynch then crystal horn i skipped one good evening my name is rebecca lynch i live on outlook ave and i have two children that attend this elementary school i am here tonight to voice my opposition to the proposed expansion of the school resource resource officer program into our elementary schools i am also very concerned with the decision making process surrounding this i had sent an email to district administration after seeing a facebook post on the first day of school in which local parents stated that a saratoga police officer had introduced himself to them as an sro for the city elementary schools since the mou our district has with the sspd is for one sro it was
021troubling to me that there appear to be additional sros operating outside of that contract i also attended the most recent saratoga city council meeting where our public safety commissioner stated that he had unilateral power to install more sros in our city schools that's right the public safety commissioner said he has unilateral power the email reply i received from the district leads me to believe that the public safety commissioner has exercised that power and has indeed installed additional sros in our city elementary schools the reply said and i quote sspd has added a daytime patrol officer who will be available to our elementary schools who has been trained as an sro this is a decision that should be made by the board of education not by one member of our city council it is also a
022decision that should not be made hastily by someone who has admitted to not caring what research is out there because he believes in sros we should be making decisions that are evidence-based not belief-based it is further concerning that the process as outlined in the equity inclusivity and diversity in education administrative regulation regarding new practices did not seem to be followed the regulation requires all decisions to be evaluated using an equity lens to determine the impact on all student populations if an equity lens had been used i cannot see how this decision would have been made because ample research shows that adding police into schools has disparate and harmful outcomes for many student groups especially in elementary schools what we continue to hear is that a lot of our parents feel that the presence of additional
023police is reassuring it provides them with a sense of security this is only the case for those who feel more secure with police in fact it puts many students at risk particularly students of color lgbtq plus students disabled students and students from low-income backgrounds who are all more likely to be targeted for discipline and subject to disparate treatment i will also want our students to feel safe but more importantly i want each and every student to actually be safe i urge the district and board to follow the procedures as outlined in the equity regulation that was unanimously adopted by the board can you finish that thought please and to take a comprehensive look at school safety research before making any decisions that could jeopardize the safety of our most vulnerable students thank you thank you
024[Applause] okay crystal horn you're next good evening my name is crystal horn i live on coy road in greenfield center i'm here tonight because as a resident taxpayer i'm concerned about the use of the term sro and about the liability our district bears when law enforcement officers are installed in schools without clear guidelines as to how they will intervene specifically in student disciplinary action as defined by the national association for sros an sro is a full-time law enforcement officer with sworn law enforcement authority trained in school-based law enforcement and crisis response and assigned by the employing law enforcement agency to work in the school rather than receiving certifications which either expire or require continuing education credits these officers are only trained for sro duties much like an officer might be trained for supervision but is
025not a supervisor until they are hired for such a position the second piece is being assigned to the school yet the title of sro has been bandied about by the pd to sway public opinion and establish officers as sros without following the correct process sros are established by both training and assignment in addition to training and assignment the sro program requires roles to be clearly outlined new york state education law requires a clearly delineated memorandum of understanding and that the memo be made public and amended to the district safety plan the national association acknowledges the importance of a collaborative and community process in developing the memo which again should quote clearly dictate that school discipline situations are the responsibility of administrators and that an sro should not be involved in classroom management issues or school
026discipline of any kind from a law enforcement perspective it should concern everyone parents educators students city and district taxpayers and our insurers that the police installed what they called sros at the end of the year without such a contract or their communications or accountability any effort to continue this practice which already we've seen at the elementary schools this year continues to create liability if not risk if officers are to remain on site at our elementary schools is there an agreement as to when and how they will be intervening is there an indication of when the officers on site are acting as agents of the law as opposed to agents of education the upcoming presentation does not seem to address these questions the pd in the district's failure to collaborate and adhere to a memo is
027great cause for concern and a red flag that there is and will be a problem anything less than a community approved contract puts the district students educators families and the police department and officers at jeopardy thank you thank you [Applause] next up is john miller hey everybody thank you for having me my name is john miller i live at 18 harvest lane in wilton and uh this is the first board of education meeting that i've ever attended i'm really excited to be here uh i want to first thank you all for your service to the town and the community you know you don't get paid and whatever decisions you end up making you end up upsetting half of the population here so i don't know why you do it but we're really grateful that you're
028here doing it um my son started kindergarten last week at dorothy nolan and my wife and i took him in for orientation and it was an amazing experience uh it was a happy joyous day for us taking him around the school all of the teachers and staff were enthusiastic and friendly and professional and it was i thought how lucky we are to be sending our our son to this wonderful kindergarten and that doesn't happen by accident that is because of the work that the board of education does and the superintendent of schools does and i believe that you know leadership uh from you all is why we have such great schools in this town it's why we all live here and want to send our kids there so going around kindergarten that day the one
029concern that i had was that the school is vulnerable to an active shooter it was going through my mind it's not something that i obsess about but it's something that went through my mind i said boy this is we're quite vulnerable to an active shooter here and uh you know it wouldn't take much for someone to come and turn all these kids you know into you know uh pushing daisies up from their graves um i am not a republican or a democrat i am an unaffiliated voter in town [Music] and i want to come here to express my support for having an armed sro in our elementary schools like everyone i understand the arguments against having an sro i think that the points are all valid and it's certainly not a cure-all to have an
030sro in our school it's not going to prevent anybody but it's a line of defense it's something that we can do to help protect our kids maybe lower the body count from an active shooter um that's all i have i really appreciate the work you all do on behalf of our town and thank you for your time thank you next up is heather reynolds a little adjustment hi everybody um my name is heather reynolds i live on richie place in saratoga springs um and i have dedicated my professional life to making schools safer and more welcoming for children through focusing on the creation of a positive school climate as a school and community violence researcher i can tell you that some studies provide evidence that sros or police in school do not make all students
031feel safer a recent study by current at all from 2021 found that the presence of sros elementary schools were a large number in this sample contributed significantly to students having a heightened fear of perceived outside threats this is despite schools being one of the statistically safest environments for five to 18 year olds in the united states perception of safety is a key aspect of a positive school climate which predicts student social and academic success it's really important years of peer-reviewed research have documented that the presence of an sro can have a negative impact on students of color and students with disabilities as has been mentioned in terms of the disproportionate negative interactions or punitive consequences although this may or may not be the case for the sros who are currently at our middle and high
032school since the mou clearly states that the sro may not act as a disciplinarian research shows that the presence of law enforcement in schools particularly when roles are not clear can negatively impact the ability of students of color to experience a positive and welcoming school climate which are critical variables for student success in addition regardless of the outcome and i have no idea what the outcome will be i find it particularly troubling that there's any movement to add police to our public elementary schools when the police department itself is under an active investigation for civil rights violations by the state ag time will tell what the investigation reveals but i ask that everyone think about this moment in time and the potential negative impact adding additional police rotating in and out of our elementary schools
033particularly without a formal mou could have on our black and brown students thank you thank you next up is lisa glazer good evening my name is lisa glazer and i live on ackland boulevard in boston spa i've been a teacher for 20 years and a parent for 12 years i can clearly remember rocking my toddler to sleep the night of the sandy hook shooting with tears streaming down my face i have huddled in the corner of many classrooms with students during surprise lockdown drills and seen the look of fear on their faces i want our children to be safe but i believe that the presence of sros in our schools especially in our elementary schools provides only an illusion of safety what is real is the day-to-day struggles our students face on the second day
034of school this year my daughter received a voice message from a classmate telling her that she should kill herself on the school bus last year she heard a student proclaiming he wanted to be the school hitler as a middle school teacher i believe strongly that when young people act out in these ways it is our job as parents and educators to help them understand the impact of their words and actions and then help them restore the hurt and the harm done research from multiple sources some of which we've heard tonight makes it clear that the presence of police in schools too often interrupts this educative and restorative process and results instead in punitive actions in other words the opportunity for restoration and growth is negated when a criminal approach is taken as in many situations
035the students most vulnerable to such punitive actions are black and brown children because of the systemic bias and injustice built into our systems additionally while some children and adults in our schools may feel safer in the presence of armed officers many other children may feel less safe against the backdrop of events nationally and here in saratoga springs specifically when it comes to how police treat black and brown bodies our children of color are far more likely to feel unsafe and perhaps even threatened in both our police departments and our school district i believe our safety resources need to be devoted to decreasing bias developing sustainable restorative practices and developing a stronger more supportive community if the district purports to have an equity of opportunity as one of its pillars we owe it to our students
036to do so thank you next up is steven verrill mr verrell boot will be the last speaker in the first public comment period the second public comment period will occur after the main body of the meeting ends thank you uh my name is steven vera i live at denton road in saratoga springs this is not my first school board meeting um i have a little less serious uh thing to bring up and it has to do with student parking i don't know if you're aware the city council is having a workshop to come up with creative solutions regarding students parking around the high school on city streets it worries me a little bit to allow the city to take the lead on this the last time we had a problem was on joseph street and
037their solution was to target our students with tickets change the parking time so they purposely could not park before they had to be at school i think this is a simple solution that the school can actually really solve and allow parking for the students i have great solutions for you and i will be sending you emails about it but the workshop is on the 21st it would be great if there was school representation at that workshop at least to be there to support our students thank you that ends the first public comment period all right we're on to board committee reports um do we have any board committee reports looks like we don't um that brings us to kate and ryan and the student representative reports you guys ready to go yeah uh so at
038the elementary schools dorothy nolan had a great opening the students and staff participated in a family feud type game show to learn about the three b's at the pbis pep rally last week their students will be participating in the i ready ela diagnostic assessments and their families are going to be enjoying a back to school outdoor movie this friday night over at geiser road geyser students began the first week with smiles and excitement teachers are preparing for open house this thursday and their first pto meeting will be this september lake ave the i ready assessment is going to be the 12th to 16th of september there is a parent night next week or this week on the 15th over at division street there is also going to be parent night this week same with caroline
039street and there's going to be open house and over at greenfield the family information night and paranoid is going to be on the 15th as well all right and then over starting at the middle school they had a great kickoff to the new school year they said it was in a normal fashion which is awesome families and students attended discover maple in the walk-throughs and it was a huge turnout sixth graders are getting the hang of their new lockers and all students were greeted on the buses this year and received toga tickets which is exciting uh open house is scheduled for september 21st for the sixth graders and then september 22nd for 7th and 8th grade and then after school help and after school clubs will begin on september 19th over at the high school
040there was a smooth great opening of school with lots of positive energy graded level assemblies were held for all grade levels yesterday we reviewed student expectations new policy and a variety of resources available at the high school in order to support the students academically and socially and emotionally the high school has a group of parents and two student representatives working with all the principals to revive the pta the goal is to connect parent and student voices to ensure the school year is comfortable and fun for everyone the pta has a start of school food drive in planning and this will incorporate a competition between the grade level flexes and school pictures are this week during history classes clubs are set up and kicking off with their meeting dates over the morning announcements each morning which
041can also be found on the website and student council is working hard to prepare the first homecoming dance and pep rally since 2019. there was a great turnout and lots of energetic school spirit at the first two football games for the high school as well thank you both and thanks for putting in all the uh effort it takes to uh compile that while you're starting what is i'm sure a pretty daunting course load for the for the school year and thanks for coming to the um the 25th celebration before that's above and beyond absolutely mike administrative reports great thank you um so as we kind of kick off recognitions i do want to start by thanking dr miller uh and everybody here at division street for hosting tonight's board meeting it's always tough to be
042the first one because obviously things are really busy the first few days of school but the the staff here has done an incredible job obviously getting the building prepared and i just want to acknowledge and thank greer for all of her her support uh in uh in welcoming the board of education tonight [Applause] thanks greer uh so as president crackler mentioned uh before the meeting tonight uh we were able to recognize uh eight staff members who are celebrating their 25th year of service to the to the school district so during our opening day celebration uh we were able to recognize each of those individuals uh in front of all their peers and then tonight uh we had a nice celebration so i just want to again recognize each of the individuals who've dedicated the last
04325 years of their professional service uh to our school district and to our children suzanne barrett jennifer eversol aaron kelly shirley neander john roark chuck tanzer ed vanatsky and kate winslow so congratulations to all of our 25-year employees [Applause] so as mentioned by our students uh it's been an awesome start to the school year it's great to have everybody back uh just the excitement the energy the enthusiasm in all the buildings over the last few days having the chance to get out and just to see how excited our students are and our staff are to have the kids back in the building it truly has been a great start to the school year so you know there's so many people to recognize and to thank who put in a tremendous amount of time and effort
044to prepare for the start of the school year so uh thanking all of our our summer school staff um all of our uh custodial folks our maintenance and operations our grounds folks uh you know there are some hot days in the summer uh that our custodians are working extremely hard to pull apart our classrooms make sure everything's clean put everything back to reassemble and you can see just the tremendous work that's done by our facilities and operations staff throughout the summer to get our facilities the point where again they're just so impeccable and beautifully maintained to our school counselors and our our clerical staff to our administrators who work year-round you know thank you for getting all the schedules ready to go communicating out with families uh transportation food services uh again it's a a
045huge task to route over six thousand kids i'll touch on transportation in a minute but you know there's a lot of work and effort that goes into starting the school year and again to our teachers thank you to the teachers that when school kicks off obviously there's so much work that's being done even before our superintendent's conference days where teachers are in over the summer months summer months setting up classrooms getting every everything prepared for our students return so it is truly a total team effort uh and again just want to thank everybody for their efforts in helping make this a wonderful start to the school year i mentioned bus drivers again here in saratoga springs like many school districts across the state we continue to struggle with bus drivers recruitment i was very fortunate
046i interviewed three new bus drivers this morning uh so we we continue to send messages out to the community to families to parents again we we want to continue to uh our ongoing recruitment efforts uh that if uh there's ever the opportunity to help support our kids that if your work schedule allows or if you're a recent retiree and you love being around children uh you know we really could need your support so you're going to see a lot of messaging coming out of the next few days yard signs that'll be going up in front of the schools banners that are going to be out there it is obviously having a direct impact on our opportunity to program today we had to cancel uh one of our middle school bus runs and make a call
047at six o'clock in the morning to those families who were informed uh just because of the lack of drivers in the district so again that's the worst case scenario we need to be able to plan and prepare for that but again the opportunity to offer after school activities kate talked about you know wanting clubs and activities to start after school we want to be able to do that but we also want to be able to provide transportation for all of our kids to participate as well as sending our athletic teams to away events if the weather again didn't cooperate in our favor that rain actually today helped us but we would have had to cancel several contests that we wouldn't be able to get our teams to away games due to the lack of bus
048drivers so as community members i often get the call what can we do to help the school all of our other departments our teaching physicians our support staff physicians our food service our custodial positions we're in really good shape our substitute lists are growing but we desperately need bus drivers so again putting the call out to the community for your support uh and helping us address that immediate need so again more more information to come again uh on behalf of our hr department from our transportation department and again we just appreciate the patience and the cooperation and support we get for from our families that were in those difficult situations uh like we were this morning and have to cancel bus runs finally i just want to welcome both kate and ryan officially as student
049representatives to the board of education this was the first summer that our our new student reps actually officially started back in july and august i don't think it's ever happened in my career that they volunteer voluntarily came in and participated in the board meetings over the summer months usually tonight's the first night that our student representatives uh you know joined the board of education and we're so fortunate here in saratoga springs that we have a long history of student representatives have done an outstanding job uh representing their classmates and i know both kate and ryan uh we're going to do are going to do going to do a wonderful job we met a few weeks ago to kind of go through talk about what their role and responsibility is and uh just really excited to
050welcome you to the board of education this year congratulations so tonight we have two formal presentations so each year at the start of the year our district emergency response team provides an update to the board of education on our district uh safety and security plans so we have several members of our our district team that are with us tonight uh the board of education had a workshop uh back in july um and so the the dirt team at that time had presented in a workshop workshop session so tonight is just a continuation of that conversation and discussion about our comprehensive approach to school safety in all of our schools here in saratoga springs so i'm going to turn over to dave valhammadu our assistant superintendent and he'll introduce several members of our district safety team
051dave hear me hear me yes all right good evening everyone thanks mike i'm dave lamidou assistant superintendent um but really tonight i'm a member of the district all right um yeah good evening good evening all right we'll start over i'm dave lamadeu assistant superintendent um but tonight i'm really a member of representing a member of the district emergency response team and i'll let as people come up to speak tonight and let them kind of i'll call it their daytime job you won't hear necessarily titles that have safety in it but the folks that are presenting tonight take safety real really it's important to them and they're passionate about it and you'll hear what hear that when they speak tonight um so mickey jones will be speaking mike walker um our two sros glenn barrett mike
052martin bethany and caitlin will be speaking tonight they're in the back and john tiener is over here as well so i'll be speaking and we also have jim victor who's our nicer representative he's going to talk a little bit about our safety audit that's coming up um in early october so this is our agenda for this evening bethany is going to talk a little bit about our dirt bert relationship our system is set up so we have what's called a national incident management system um it's very comprehensive you're going to hear a lot of different pieces tonight we will be talking about prevention and our proactive measures i'll talk briefly about threat assessment mickey jones is going to review some of our the safety drills that we do we started before covid a stop the
053bleed initiative mike walker will talk about that john tenier we'll get into and talk about our legacy project and some of our security improvements through that jim victor and i will talk a little bit about our safety audit coming up in early october and then i'll kind of close out talking about some of our future meetings and some of our outreach components so the goals of the district emergency response team during an emergency our number one priority is life safety we want to make sure all of our students staff community members are safe in an incident then you want to try to stabilize the incident then there's what is happening to our classrooms to our property to our schools and then we are our our main goal you'll hear bethany talk about this is our
054support of our building emergency response teams and i'm gonna let bethany take this slide and talk about our comprehensive system when dealing with safety so my name is bethany nightingale i'm the elementary preschool in elementary coordinator of special education also a dirt member for all of the those of you that may not know we slightly skipped over so dirt is our district emergency response team and then we have bur our building emergency response teams so we'll get to a little bit more about how they work together in a minute right now the big picture are we're always looking it's intertwined system that we have here how we can prepare by through prevention kind of actively thinking about things putting plans in place practicing them together as groups talking through them and getting the information out
055and then preparing that like i just said um putting those active systems in place and then responding and recovering so we always want to be proactive in all that we do with our interventions so the dirt and bur relationship dirt is a resource for all buildings so it's the district team we meet on a regular basis it includes a number of people that will get to a little bit later to give you kind of an idea of the members of that team we plan and prepare throughout the year so we create an agenda to target various items issues concerns just to review so we start off with the basics that we're giving you right now to make sure that everybody's aware of them and then we build out from there so we cover things like
056cpr stop the bleed and again those will be covered later to give you more in-depth knowledge from there we have various positions of members that are on this team at the district level as well as the building level so there's different teams at each building the building teams are also part of our district teams so they're able to come on a regular basis get that information that we discuss and plan for and then they can bring it back to the buildings building teams so it's always that ebb and flow of information not a closed door or an isolated conversation they discuss building concerns with us if it's not during a meeting then they can reach out to us at any time as well as members of the dirt team go into the buildings and participate
057with their tabletop drills their evacuation drills or anything that they might want more knowledge and support with so here is our dirt team all of the active members the team is broken into five areas which we will go over briefly later to give you an idea but each team has specific focus and function so that way should something occur we've planned we've gone through we know these roles but not only do we know the roles right within the team that we're on we have a good understanding of the other roles and how they operate together should an incident occur this here is a list of our building team members so again it's already planned out ahead of time everybody's well aware of their roles and their responsibilities the nice thing that i'll point out about
058these teams is they're also responsible to carry out ongoing drills throughout the year so they you know study up on what those look like they help support the building to understand what those are and they help to carry those out and educate really everybody in within the building and i will turn it over nothing so you just want to quickly recognize um these are some of the partnerships we deal with and work with many of these folks are part of our district emergency response team meetings they also many of these folks participate and help in our safety drills i think we're missing the fire department up there but they should be up there as well as they help us a lot with our drills you can see the different law enforcement agencies our school district
059our school district physician dr serenza we've done a lot of work with him the last few years of guiding our way through the pandemic we also have some contacts with our mental health association of new york amy malloy and just a new reference you'll hear more about this our behavioral health services north also saratoga county department of health done a lot of work with them our nicer rep and our insurance who does help is helping us with our safety audit and then also saratoga county office of emergency management and these are the teams within the incident command system within the national incident management system those are all those acronyms which i know you guys enjoy um and i'm not going to go through when we talk we went through our safety workshop we kind of
060went in more depth about what these uh teams kind of kind of compose our comprehensive system but the incident command is the group that is in charge that has to make the decisions the operation team is the the doers of the group trying to complete a task gather resources the planning team are the thinkers the planners the logistics team gets us our resources we call them the getters the trackers and then our financial administration team the how are we going to pay for some of this stuff how are we going to pay for the resources maybe we have to have extra staff brought in how are we going to pay for those kind of things and i think i'm going to have caitlyn come up and she's going to talk about some of our prevention
061and proactive measures good evening my name is caitlin lewis and i'm an elementary school social worker this year serving as a teacher on special assignment in the pupil services department so speaking of some of our preventative and proactive measures all of our buildings are equipped with social emotional support staff between our psychologists our school social workers and our counselors the district also partners with behavioral health services north which is an outpatient mental health clinic housed within our physical school buildings with the transition to bhsn the district was also able to expand the number of clinicians available to support our students bhsn also supports us in providing substance abuse as a component of their work with varied levels of support to meet individual needs we also have community engagement with wellspring the prevention council franklin community
062center including programs like project lift our schools participate in school-wide tier one student supports like pbis second step our social emotional curriculum and character education we also access services to support students and families with their unique needs with programs like empty stockings snack pack our mentoring programs and check in check out club lastly we continue to provide professional development and support for our students social emotional health and well-being to our faculty and staff on a regular basis this slide highlights the social emotional staff that is dedicated to each of our school buildings including our school psychologists our social workers and school counselors each of our buildings have unique needs and that's reflected in the varying levels of support dedicated to each building we continue with the district see something say something initiative there's a visual
063visible signage across all of our buildings and our district emergency response team has worked collaboratively with law enforcement and mental health professionals to develop a comprehensive threat assessment tool to identify determine and respond to threats within our buildings our preventative education for students includes our social emotional learning initiatives through second step at the elementary buildings and maple ave as well as pbis and character education pbis our positive behavior interventions and supports is explicit instruction of expected behaviors modeled and reinforced throughout the day with tiered levels of support as needed for individual students character education is aligned with second step to teach pro-social positive and meaningful character traits to develop well-rounded students now and to serve them in their future another area that we focus on is threat assessment and i just put up a quick
064chart to talk about what threat assessment is and what it is not and again i won't read all the boxes to you but on the left-hand side what it is it's really a way to identify assess individuals who maybe are at risk for some type of violence again could be against themselves could be others and how can we help that person to have connections to get the supports that they need and you can see what it's not it's not a system to label people or to identify someone as a troublemaker or that kind of thing it really is a preventative measure some of the work that we've done is based on dewey cornell's comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines the state of virginia and that's where a lot of dewey cornell's work is from is what
065we took a lot of our work from based on best practices this is a little bit hard to see but we have created a flow chart from the district emergency response team that we've given out to the buildings it talks about a behavioral intervention flow chart and they they put threat assessment into two categories transient and substantive um transient being someone says something to you but doesn't really mean anything by it there's really no planning it's just one of those things sometimes some people say things they shouldn't say but there's there's no merit to it where substantive is different there maybe was planning there were other factors involved where we've deemed it that it could have been or was a legitimate threat and again that flow chart kind of talks about the different action steps
066you can take depending on how the threat is determined i'm going to hand things over to mickey jones to talk about some of our drills i'm mickey jones i'm a safety coordinator with capital region boces assigned here to the school district to help with some of their emergency planning and everything else that relates to health and safety so it's been a couple of years have been very busy so emergency drills we have requirements from the state education department we do go above and beyond what the requirements are some of the requirements that the state puts out for us are the eight evacuation drills which most people would refer to as your fire drills and not just your standard fire drills but also then having them being with block exits and people being able to learn
067what to do in lunch what would you do if you were in assembly what would you do during certain times of the day and in addition to that we also have our four lockdown drills our lockdown drills again are staggered throughout the day we try to do them at different times and again we also have conversations about what would you do if you were in lunch what would you do if you were outside on recess so we also take it not only as the drill component but also the education component school emergency planning is everybody lots of people have lots of opinions so this was actually a document that actually was put it with uh put together with input from the state education department homeland security and the new york state police so what they
068have figured is that during any emergency if you have a couple of simple steps identified of what you would do it would help to slow things down it would help to give people some ideas of what they're to do so we use the acronym shell shelter in place hold in place evacuate lock out and lock down all of our students and staff get training on this every year and we make sure that we answer their questions we give them the opportunity with all of their what if questions the hydrant fight some people will call it run hide fight some people will call it a void denied defend it has many different labels to it what we want everyone to understand is not one size fits all in an emergency we want people to understand that
069there may be different options to take place if you call a lockdown and you're near an exit door it might be safest for you and your class to leave we always do in our lockdown drills we focus on the hide and another component is what if you are actually approached by somebody you may have to take some defensive action or fight so these are the things that we try to bring up every day we try to bring up to in our trainings because our best guess our best goal is to have an educated and trained students and staff i'm going to turn it over to michael walker who's going to talk about a little bit about the stop the bleed initiative thanks mickey again my name is michael walker i'm also work for capital region
070boces and assigned here to saratoga springs schools to do health and safety along with mickey talking about the stop the bleed program it's an initiative we began back in 2019 before the pandemic after all what was happening in the nation regarding active shooter incidents it was determined by the district that having a stop the bleed program would be good for the district what that involves is having devices available throughout the school that should someone whether from an active shooter or some other injury occur where they have life-threatening bleeding we have devices throughout the schools which involve typically a having a tourniquet available along with packing gauze to help pack a wound and along with having trained staff that could be there um seconds count when it comes down to someone who's bleeding severely from an
071injury and currently we've gone through the training we've had 68 staff who are currently trained all throughout the school buildings we obviously want to increase that tremendously just because we want to have as many people trained as possible should these incidents occur the training since the pandemic has occurred always used to be always in person training but with the pandemic it was developed as a two-part program where you can have people do an online portion where they describe what the program well what the training is involved then you have those people come back to a trainer like myself and demonstrate what they've learned and to then become certified uh the training is voluntary we don't require staff to do it anybody who's willing to do it we totally recommend it and it's mainly because of
072the good samaritan law the good samaritan law is new york state law through health department or through public health law that states that if people want to get involved with an incident as long as they're they've had proper training and there's equipment available their liability and the company who's providing the devices does not have any liability as long as they're properly trained how to use the equipment and current we have 60 of these kits spread out throughout the district um every school building has them along with transportation and facilities just because it's all areas where injury could occur and the bigger the building the more kits that are out there and once there were certain ones that were purchased by the district and then other school buildings were on their own they decided to buy
073some more for themselves for a higher area of higher areas to um where injuries could occur where they're found would be in the fire cabinets uh aed cabinets and at the high school they're gonna be at the technology classes where again higher level of injuries can occur who's next thank you mike hi i'm john taynor director of facilities and operations for the district and part of the incident command team so i'm going to talk a little bit about legacy capital project and facilities funded improvements this is near and dear to my heart we've dedicated a lot of resources to safety over the last 10 years that i've been here and before and a lot of stuff happening with a legacy project which you're going to hear a little bit about tonight from the other presentation
074but we're going to talk about secure vestibules with dividers in them i'll show you a diagram of that new district-wide video surveillance system with high resolution cameras a lot more visibility a lot more camera views a raptor visitor management system which is an upgrade from the existing system we used to have the purchase of radios is ongoing i'll talk a little bit more about that but we've upgraded our systems to eventually be able to communicate radio to radio in every building in the district and then we've installed classroom visibility in classrooms when we're doing a lockdown if the window is large it may be hard for the class to hide in the corner so we've actually installed a visibility film which reduces that open area where you can see into that classroom and then we've
075also installed a ton of what's called blue lights on the exterior buildings where if there's a lockdown initiated it alerts anyone approaching the building that we're in lockdown or in a lockdown drill and a lot of assembly areas inside of buildings as well so here's a diagram of the upcoming work that's going to be in a legacy project now the area on the right in yellow will be the vet visitors the other side staff and students can come through there will be an intercom system with a camera on it the visitor will be vetted by the main office staff allowed into the vestibule and either a transaction will occur there or if they have to go into the building then there'll be another set of locking doors that they'll go through and on top of
076that there will be like when you go into the supermarket and you see yourself on tv there will be a monitor in that corner so that you can see yourself as you come in this will be in all the buildings in the district as i alluded to before the raptor visitor management system is a streamlined approach to vet visitors that come into our buildings once someone is in the system it's a lot easier to get them into the building what it also does that our old system didn't do is it streamlines the process of checking the sex offender registry so before in the old system the user would have to stop going to a third party website and look up the individual this is all done seamlessly in the background now as a lot of
077you know alyssa's law was passed in june by governor holcol was signed by governor hoco it suggests schools to consider installing some form of silent panic alarms um and then you know that's related to our safety plan and put that in our safety plan and we've looked at a few systems already we've looked at our existing platforms that we use for our cameras and our building access systems to try to see if we can use that existing infrastructure and we've also looked at some new technologies and ways that we can implement this so we're painstakingly working on this and we'll eventually have a means to fulfill this this law that was passed in june so we've talked about nicer a little bit i i've been working with nicer the 10 years i've been here it's
078not just them coming in and doing safety audits they do visual inspections of our building on an annual basis to look for any safety issues they help with inspections of our playgrounds they're an incredible partner they did a safety audit back in 2018 that was great and we've implemented a lot of the things almost all the things that they suggested so jim victor from nicer new york state school insurance reciprocal in case you didn't know is here to talk about the scope of the upcoming safety audit next month thank you thanks sean good evening everyone john mentioned my name is jim victor i'm with nicer saratoga springs city schools is just one of 76 school districts and boces that i work with on the eastern side of the state so just to give you a
079little bit of an idea of what our qualifications are i just want to share this statement from our director of risk management nicer risk management has been doing school violence prevention in our member districts since 1998. we wrote our first school violence prevention manual in 1998 a full year before columbine we have assessed components of school security in our annual inspections since 1998. nicer has completed numerous formal school security assessments for member districts these assessments generate best practice recommendations we have direct experience and relationships with law enforcement and have vast contacts locally statewide and nationally through programs managed by right risk management this network allows us to consult with leaders in the law enforcement community and vet ideas and approaches to school violence prevention these leaders in turn consult with us on these matters and
080value our guidance and insights school violence prevention is ever evolving and we strive to keep our finger on the pulse of this our symposium in 2019 focused on school violence prevention after the publication of our school security white paper our 2023 symposium will focus on this topic again bringing thought bringing together thought leaders in this area to speak about best practices to prevent school violence so as you can see from the slide the topics the subject areas that we'll cover in our safety audit currently scheduled for october 12th and 13th as i mentioned before this is a best practices standpoint evaluation most uh broken down to its basic components is really what is the district doing and not doing so as an example i'm going to focus on access control questions that we would ask
081is is the access control present how many doors is it on our keys secured are fob secured so those are the types of elements that we would look at during this assessment so i'm going to introduce our two school resource officers we currently have two mike martin i think is going to be the first one to speak who's from the saratoga county sheriff's office mike is stationed at maple avenue greenfield and dorothy nolan glenn barrett who's from the saratoga springs city police department is primarily stationed at the high school we also have a partnership and the saratoga springs police department has also allocated resources to have officers visit our elementary schools that's been going on for many years i've been here for i won't tell you when i started but for many many years um
082and again i can remember back as far as 20 um going in and now it's chief crooks i think he's lieutenant when he was working with me but we went and visited all the schools and we sat and we again introduced so it's been a long relationship with all of our law enforcement partners i'll let mike talk a little bit about the role the sro thank you good evening i'm mike martin i've been the sro over at maple lab dorothy nolan greenfield since february of last year in that short time i have built countless relationships with these students um we're really fostering relationships with the students in the community i all the time in my dealing i'm not just dealing with the students i'm dealing with their family members friends i've dealt with cousins everybody
083on the outside of the outside of school all summer long while i was at my kids sporting events i'm running into the wilton stars baseball team that my kids are competing against sorry i have three kids that go to shen sorry for the rivalry this way i can remain impartial out here in saratoga springs we're educators and mentors every day we are speaking with the students and educating them on you know just good behaviors being positive role models for other other students we speak with classes we read books i was in dorothy nolan on monday or actually friday i read to five separate classes it's basically a book that i found online about why i'm at the school it's about a school resource officer we assist with after school programs currently i'm trying to get
084the uh to identify some stupid students that want to work with me and develop some powerpoint presentations on anti-bullying and and stuff like that drug prevention that the students can work with me to develop and i and they can present to the rest of the school once again i'm a community liaison if family members anyone has questions law enforcement related questions i try to use my what expertise i have in the law to give them as much advice as i can and we give the community another avenue to discuss current issues and trends lockdowns active shooters i recently became certified to teach the civilian response active shooter events and even in that training it says civilian response to active shooter i try to relate that to any emergency that you may encounter in uh let's
085say cross gate small just about everybody's been there that's how i try to give that broad scope of emergency response and preparedness we're visible in patrolling the campuses and the buildings every day i make it to all three of my schools i'm predominantly based out of maple avenue because it's just a little bit more busy there safety and security are at the utmost importance for us i do check every day of each school making sure the doors are shut we assist with arrivals and dismissals it was embarrassing students yelling their names because they did not notice that their parents pulled up in front of maple lab today monitor launch periods just walking through uh students always are inquisitive on what i have to eat i sit down with them every day i pick a table
086whatever grade uh have my salad or whatever i brought that day and we just chit chat about stuff sports life anything they want to talk about and i walk around the hallways the kids also see me with a nerf football that's kind of my engagement tool some kids that you might not have the best relationship with police they look at him like they look at me and say he's got a football and i'll throw it to him because they're looking at me and it's just an engagement tool with me to get the kids engaged and want to interact with me thank you [Applause] so good evening i'm officer barrett i'm the proud school resource officer to the high school i find it to be a gift and just building relationships with kids this year i
087really found that connection when i'm sitting at the track and kids are going across the track to come say hello to me made me feel like a million dollars and really important but i am here to talk about see something say something we all know that right heard it a million times it's not the easiest thing to do especially for kids ultimately first of all they communicate different than i i make phone calls still they text a lot and stuff so but there are opportunities for them and that'll be the next slide to communicate the way that they choose i ultimately say i am primarily responsible for safety right but it starts with everybody and that's why you guys are all here too for kids to me the kids know the school better than anybody
088they know what's going on they know what activities are going they know what's going to come up so i try to engage with them as deputy martin said the best you can because they know the information ultimately opportunities for them to report something is to the administration or to a teacher to myself or a parent i try to educate them on our phone numbers for not emergency because some people are maybe come across the situation don't feel comfortable down 9-1-1 if you live in the city of saratoga springs we have a non-emergency line it's 584 1800. when in doubt call it if you don't know between the non-emergency or emergency dial 9-1-1 and and report the incident as i say to people in their neighborhoods they know their neighborhoods better than me i could patrol
089through i know it pretty well i've been doing it for a long time been here for 23 years but if something doesn't look right to you you should report it and if it turns out to be nothing i'm great to deal with nothing then more serious something happening down the road we'll go to the next slide which brings me to the way i think kids communicate and i think a phenomenal tool for our district that's been in place for a couple of years but it is our app safer schools helpline it's a way for our kids or our staff or even our parents if the kids don't feel comfortable to report an incident they could download the app on their phone i did about 15 presentations last year in the class the first one was
090the best because i think i had almost like 100 of kids in the class download the app the other ones maybe half percentage but it's not only a reporting system it's something they can use for suicidal if they're feeling suicidal they can go and there's counselors available for them to talk to there's people that they can get resources from it's phenomenal and as i explained to the kids if that's the only thing you ever use it for is for yourself or a friend that needs it it's an awesome app right but there are many other tools they can report incidents with the name which is always the best way because we could do a little bit more with it but they also could do it 100 anonymously and if they don't feel comfortable and they
091come home and report it to you you guys can report it that way and you can put it down and then we will research it it goes if it's a school matter stays within the school if it's an urgent it goes with through the school and to us and it's a pretty good partnership that we have and the activity that we have on it has been responded fairly quickly so i think it's a great tool i will promote and deputy martin and i are pretty passionate about trying to get out to every kid and we now just recently got the health teachers at the middle school that did their first presentation last year to the whole class so i want to thank you once again for having me and [Applause] thank you guys um and
092just in closing just a couple of quick things these are some of the meeting topics that we have scheduled just as you can see some of the things we'll be talking about de-escalation techniques we created a post-incident response plan see a typo there maybe 2017 and again it's time to we always kind of look at those things and update it there's a lot uh lori newcomer and some of my other teammates back there give them a lot of credit for the plan but there's a lot to it i'm dealing with suicide a staff member or a student and you know how do you respond to that how do you bring normalcy back to our district i already mentioned we're going to be reintroducing or looking back at our behavior intervention or threat assessment we always
093try to review and get re-certified in cpr aed we mentioned about the stop to bleed training we also try to have specific meetings at our high school and middle school working with the buildings on like a topic that they're interested in and that's what our tabletop is based on and then we're also going to be working with our element elementary schools on reunification again we've done that a few times where we've actually had schools go to like maple avenue get off the bus relocate in the gym and actually go through that process of what would look like if parents had to pick up students from maple avenue or we actually we just recently did one at the high schools we're looking to it's a good experience for the elementary schools but it's also a good
094experience for maple and the high school as the host schools how does it impact them having buildings come over and just quickly community outreach last year during covet it was difficult but we tried to do a bunch of safety presentations not only to the community we did two of them to the community we also did one to every single elementary school again to try to spread the outreach of what we do and so that all staff was aware of it this year we this is our annual board presentation but we also are going to try to meet with all the school uh ptas hsas ptos and schedule a meeting with them and try to talk to them about the safety protocols and practices we do at the district and with that i will open it
095up to any questions for myself or the team team sorry john uh thank thank you all for the really informative and clear presentation and uh thanks for everybody more importantly for all the good work you do um to keep our kids safe and keep our our employees safe um i have a couple requests and then a couple questions um i wonder how we compare to other districts in terms of psychologists counselors social workers and sros and i i guess i would say that i know nicer is coming and perhaps that can be part of um the context for the information you provided us down the road so we we actually have a survey in the works regarding sros i don't know if mickey wants to speak to it and i can and mike may want
096to add to this too i know when amy molloy from new york state mental health services came and worked with us she thought we had a very strong number of support as far as social workers psychologists compared to other districts so i don't we haven't actually had like numbers solid numbers but we have had some comparisons that we're we're in a good place with that okay i'll let mickey talk a little bit about the sro survey that we're doing so i know the number of sros has come into question for a while so after talking with dr patton one of the things that i did is i reached out to the new york state association of school educational safety and health professionals i created a survey and i'm in the process of gathering that data
097and it asks things like what's the population of your school how many school buildings do you have are you a central campus are you spread out campus how many sros do you have in addition what is your sro engagement with at the elementary level so we're waiting for the results for that i've actually told them i would like those results by september 26th so hopefully i'll get those results you can be able to give you some actual data what actually is going on out there jim speak a little bit too he can give you a pretty good perspective against saratoga versus other schools jim was a safety specialist so he worked for other schools and now in his role i mean he can tell you how many schools that nicer works with and who he
098visits so nicer ensures 350 plus school districts and boces across the state so we've we've seen everything in terms of how saratoga springs compares to other districts it's up there it really is so with respect to elements like the threat assessment behavioral intervention investigations saratoga springs is one of the only districts that i'm aware of in new york state that even does that it's a huge huge lift i'm working with some other schools now to try to get them invested into that concept so a number of schools have have indicated to me that they want to build up their safety culture and what can they do to to to move down that um continuum so saratoga springs uh in terms of any of the safety and security measures is really really up there in my
099experience could i do a little follow-up okay um i just want to note i noticed that dorothy nolan and caroline seem to have fewer social workers per capita than the other schools and dorothy nolan seems to have fewer psychologists per capita compared to the other schools i'm just noting just saw that and lisa could speak this as well but i think it was based not purely on enrollment but based on need and that's why the numbers are different okay um just my final question at least for this part of my comments um john just one does anyone else have a question before i let john do his third go ahead john one of the things that i find really frightening when we read about stories in other places and thinking about what we're doing on
100the board trying to oversee things from a 30 000 foot is when school districts say they have all these systems in place and i lack the expertise to know whether that's true and then you see you read about these stories where they where this the districts did in fact not have the systems in place and so i'm i'm always looking for reassurance that that we've got all the right stuff in place it always strikes me that for example we do all these drills that seem to be mostly oriented towards students and staff and i and i just wonder how we assess whether our overall systems and the leadership involved in the systems are maximally prepared and i understand there's no guarantees in life we just want to try to make sure we're we're doing everything
101we can so just like with i guess kobe we had the safety layers that's what you heard tonight they're all safety layers so we do different things you heard you heard bethany and caitlin talk about we have a lot of preventative programs in place and that's that's what we try to focus on is being preventive but we also in case there is an incident we practice we drill but all the building emergency response teams and the district emergency response teams when we can we also debrief after all of those and talk about what went well what didn't go well hey i saw that happen but that's why we practice that's why we drill so we do kind of try to reflect on our practices i've been doing this for a lot of years and again
102someone else wants to speak please come up here and we're always we've never said i've never said we're good never we're always looking at ways to improve bringing in new resources trying new things to make ourselves better to your point are we perfect no but we really try hard to be as safe as we can with the resources we have connie um thank you dave for all of your hard work um and i have a question on slide seven side seven has the bert team members i was just curious to know if all of these buildings have um classroom teacher representation on each of these burt teams i don't know if kate or beth wants to come up but i i don't have all the full bert teams in my head but yes there are
103classroom teachers you know bethany wants to speak to it it's a variety of people from each building so the actual list that is up there are head building people so no those aren't classroom teachers and the reason being if an emergency happens the classroom teacher is with the class and can't readily respond but on the actual team within the building there are teacher representatives there's a variety from aids tas nurse at every building at every building it's elective who wants to join so it's not a mandatory team but it's a readily active team that we get really a good turnout in every building and have members the other thing we should mention when you look at the five different committees that we had at dirt represented they also have those broken down within the building
104so everybody knows what their role is their responsibility how to react and respond should each type of situation occur to the best that we can prepare and plan for so that's also prepared out so for example like the nurse knows okay i'm on the team during this i would do this during this side do that the custodian same thing the teachers so everybody has a responsibility and practices okay and then my last question is about the hide run fight i'm assuming that's practice but i'm just wondering how we're training people to fight great question you want to take this one we're not necessarily uh lisa i haven't done any self-defense courses i think it's more of this is grab what you can do what you can to protect yourself thank you so the fight isn't
105necessarily you know be ready to take somebody down the fight is what do i need to do to protect myself what do i need to be able to get away from the situation so i'm not trying to teach elementary students how to take somebody down who's a threat in their classroom i'm trying to teach a teacher even of okay if somebody's coming into your classroom what can you do to protect the rest of your students to get them to safety is it picking up a garbage can is it picking up a book is it something to try to divert their attention to try to get people to safety so the term fight isn't necessarily put up your dukes and let's get down to it it's more of a what can we do to protect ourselves
106thank you very much natalya um i have a follow-up question too very loud um to something that john asked i guess it's more for you lisa um but i feel like especially since covid hit that we have heard over and over and over again and i've seen it myself and i fully believe that our students are having a lot more mental health concerns than ever so um i guess what i'm asking is how do how is it determined that a school would only have one worker who is focused on sel compared to no fewer than two at any other school like with regards to caroline okay is that better that's a great question so there are students who have needs as prescribed on say an iep or something like that and those are mandated services
107in implementing our social emotional curriculum at the k5 level all of our teachers are trained in that so that's more when we think of tears that's tier one but the specialists you're talking about such as the psychologist or social worker looking at the special education or the iep and 504 needs and then also looking at the population of the school number wise and also how that person has has functioned so sometimes you have a psychologist who may be not just testing or working on the academic piece but sometimes they also are supporting students with some of the sel pieces too so when we talk about the allocation of where our resources are in terms of those supports those are conversations that happen with our principals with our directors and also at the building level so
108that we're making sure we're hearing and seeing what the needs really are and they're not just oh on this paper it says we have x number of students enrolled let's divide that by how many counselors we have or you know psychologists and divided out evenly no we take a lot of time doing that and the pps department especially with stacy and the coordinators as well there's a lot of layers of conversations to come to that decision and if we need i mean we've added additional um supports um over the past year and a half through covid and that's something that we actually are continuing to look at um as we are made more aware of student needs anybody else one more natalia my next question is i guess still kind of free lisa but for
109everybody else as well which is that um we had passed a policy and regulation in the spring of um surrounding diversity equity and inclusion and part of the regulation was that any decision making will go through will be examined through an equity lens so i guess what i'm asking is as we make the decisions related to safety are we following that regulation and asking the questions that are outlined in that for example has the district looked into what the data shows about the impact of the decision that's being made and are we looking at the disparity among students and how we can mitigate that disparity i think we always look at what the data is showing us if you're looking at discipline in particular and we look across all the subgroups in addition to having
110more what i would call qualitative conversations about climate and things like that so as part of dei taking that and looking at it would be part of our conversation in determining where resources are needed and the impact that it might have i guess the same for dave and the rest of the decision making are we using that rubric that's outlined yes it's part of our decision making process thank you is we all good or it was that oh okay john i just i just want to circle back to the the chart that shows the psychologists social workers and school counselors and suggest that we might have more of those resources per student capita than most districts but as much as we've heard about social emotional well-being in recent years one psychologist and one social worker
111basically for every 600 students seems um concerning to me so that's that's just an observation and let me just add that i think my impression is that in the community the psychological and psychiatric services medical services available for young people is really uh dangerously low and i will ask another question are we working on anything out any with anybody outside our district to try to beef up those resources in in the region i know that we can't take responsibility for all that but it this whole issue to me seems extremely concerning correct and i would ask stacy moulton to come up because this is something that was noticed through looking at a lot of the data over the past year and not being able to find additional outside resources wasn't a satisfactory answer for our
112kids so um when you hear the acronym bhsn and us talking about people coming in from the outside community that is in direct response to the needs and the increased level of needs that our psychologists or social workers within a school setting can't possibly meet all those needs or nor is it expected of a counselor or a person in that capacity in the school so that's why stacy and her team reached out to create these and states do you want to talk a little bit more about that um so bhsn we've doubled more than we've doubled the amount of clinicians within the district this year so caroline has an on-site clinician in their building they didn't have that before so that's not on the chart so that's something that is huge we were functioning from
113a wait list with parsons and we don't have that currently so that is a big piece another piece during covid we've had some arp money and we've um we've uh partnered and have a school psychologist 0.8 to kind of come in and help with the testing so that person is traveling through the district doing the testing so our schools psychologists and social workers can work with the students in the buildings so that's another piece that we've really added as a response and it's something that we're constantly looking at and we actually talked about in cabinet today thanks stace john you have one more sorry connie do you have another i just had one comment i just really appreciate the the banner on the bottom of each slide that says safe and secure school climate enhances
114student learning so thank you welcome anybody else dave and everyone who spoke thank you for the comprehensive look at that safety team it's a ton of work we really appreciate it again i also would echo tony's comments i just want to thank uh all tonight's presenters uh as well as all members of our district emergency response team and then all the individuals at every building uh who obviously do a tremendous job of keeping all of our students and staff safe and again i always encourage in conversations that i have with parents if you have feedback to provide back to your building principles your classroom teachers if again questions concerns that you may have please reach out share those questions share those concerns we've got a tremendous team who works extremely hard and takes this role
115and responsibility very seriously and we're really very proud of the work that we do here in saratoga springs so next up i'd like to introduce bill mcmorty who's our capital project manager from saratoga project management and matt gasberry from mosaic associates the district obviously is uh involved right now in a very significant capital project our legacy project and we've just started completing phase one this past summer and this uh coming fall there is significant um amount of work that's being planned for the next several years uh so every few months bill uh and matt and john under dunk is to provide a quick update to the board as to where we are with the progress that's being made and then what the next steps are ahead of us in our capital project planning bill thank
116you dr patton everybody hear me all right no more is that better all right thank you all right so as uh dr patton said we're here to talk about really phases one through four which we have eight phases in the capital project so you'd think that was 50 but it actually represents about 61 of our total project so we're gonna each of these phases are in in different parts of completion so we're going to go through that tonight just to give you an update so phase one is really we're in construction on phase one uh john tuner talked about some of the safety things that we're addressing in phase one so i'm not gonna go through those i'll probably just stick to really the the two major projects in phase one which are lake ave
117and maple lav for the two schools we're replacing the boilers boiler rooms at both schools and at lake ave we're replacing unit ventilators on the third floor so we had a successful summer in doing that we did have a couple stumbles due to deliveries actually we'll start at lake ave on the third floor we had everything set up to go and found out our unit ventilators weren't going to be delivered until mid-september which didn't feel very good at the beginning of summer so we do have a plan they actually got delivered about five days before school started which did not give us enough time obviously to replace those but we do have a plan in place where we're going to do that on second shift actually starting on friday and hopefully get those completed within
118the next two months before we need heat on the third floor at lake f at middle school we had two boilers that nationwide the boilers at the foundry the founder actually broke for about two months so nationwide they were not delivering boilers to any school projects and we still do not have a delivery date for that boiler at maple lav the good part of that is we can use our existing boiler and we do have two other boilers in the building that did come so we'll be able to put temporary heat this winter and then in the summertime we'll have to come back and replace that major boiler with two more boilers so good news bad news i think that's probably going to be the way it's going to be for the next couple years
119the unfortunate part about our deliveries is we don't usually find out until about the week before they're supposed to ship whether they're coming or not and that's really nobody's fault that's just the way the supply chain is working these days so we'll keep as good tabs as we can but we always have a plan b master clocks we got those upgraded at um geyser and dorothy and so they have new master clock systems we did good on technology this year we have some new wireless access points open for our one-to-one programs at both high school at dorothy nolan and at maple lav which was something we didn't think we were going to get complete until the fall but we actually got those up and they're running now for the first day of school so now
120we're going to talk about how we move forward really phase two which is dorothy noel and greenfield and transportation we're going to talk about a little bit about the bid process we're actually combining these three projects into one bid so that will be phase two will be these three projects dorothy nolan greenfield transportation they will be going out to bid you can see the schedule here on an october november december timeline where the bid date is in november and we will contract award in december we'll explain a little bit about how it's put together there's a base bid package which is most of the scope we'll call that the base bid and then there are four alternates and these are the four alternates at dorothy nolan we are running piping from one boiler room to
121the other but that's basically across the whole spread of the school so we're either going to replace new ceilings and put new ceilings in or reuse our existing and depending on what the cost is on bid day and whether we can fit that in our budget we will make those decisions at that time when we get bids similar scenario for rubber flooring we'll either put in the base bid vct flooring but we may be able to upgrade to a rubber floor which helps with maintenance and with sound in the corridors exterior stucco that is also an ad alternate and new stage curtains so those are the four ad alternates that we'll be having in that bid package estimated completion for the phase two projects is the summer fall of 2024 they'll start in 2023. same
122timeline here we're going to talk about greenfield so we're looking at the middle of the slide really there are three alternates are some storage storage doors basically rebuilding the storage doors below the stage against staged curtains like dorothy nolan and then a parking lot replacement currently in the base pid we're going to reutilize approximately 10 000 square feet of asphalt and we're going to keep our existing asphalt if we can afford it we would replace that right now it's in pretty decent condition so that's why it's in the base bid but if we can afford it now would be the time to do that so we wouldn't have to do it in the future the next project in phase two is transportation there are no alternates there and matt's going to go through the scope
123of that job here in a minute so going through the scope for all the for phase two at dorothy nolan we're doing cafeteria renovations which is taking the existing cafeteria and serving serving a move to the existing kitchen and then we're building a new kitchen addition so you'll have new cafeteria kitchen serving one of the other items would be renovating multiple bathrooms throughout the building they'll be moving down classroom renovations we'll be looking at renovating six classrooms in the space would be fourth grade classrooms which new finishes new hvc new cabinetry on those spaces one of the other items that john teener highlighted earlier was at the main entrance we'll be looking to do a secure vestibule where visitors will be have a secure vest wheel will enter and check in and then we do
124have some minor traffic improvements in that area some of the building improvements and energy efficiencies that we'll be doing at dorothy nolan we do uh as as bill mentioned we will have boiler replacement uh work going on there we'll have some roofing replacement there some flooring um going through there too um and then some audio auditorium upgrades upgrades to that would be um at the stage we'll be looking at doing lighting and curtains so here's a rendering of the dorothy nolan cafeteria i believe you guys seen this before and then here's this example of the secure vestibule for visitors entrance and here's a rendering for the classroom renovations that would be happening so at greenfield there are similar scope items that dorothy nolan will be looking to renovate multiple bathrooms throughout the building we'll be
125renovating six classrooms with all new finishes cabinetry new hvc in these rooms too similar to dorothy nolan um and we'll also be doing a secure vestibule um at the main entrance at greenfield um the traffic improvements one of the big improvements we're doing here is we're going to actually have a parent do a design department uh drop off loop and a bus drop off loop so we'll be uh keep cars separate from the buses they'll have separate entrances and everything um some building improvements and energy efficiencies here we're looking to do uh new hvac in the gym we're looking to replace all the exterior doors around the building we're also doing roof replacement here too and then similar to dorothy nolan we'll be doing auditorium upgrades at the stage where we'll be replacing uh stage
126lighting and curtains and then at the transportation building um we're looking to replace the bus wash and then uh we're also looking to replace the bus lift um it's the third bus list the other two have been replaced this will be the final bus lift to be replaced and then we are doing lighting replacement at the service bays where we're putting new led lighting throughout the service base i'll turn it back over to bill so the high school the first really the first part of the high school project remember the high school projects in two different phases phase three and phase seven so the first part of the high school phase three actually went out to bid yesterday we will be taking bids on that on october 11th so it's roughly a one month bid
127time and then we will be awarding those at the end of october so the ad alternates at the high school it says dorothy nolan but it should say high school similar new corridor ceilings we're taking piping from really the front entrance on the second floor all the way back to the corner of the d-wing all the way down through the b-wing so we're going to look at possibly getting new ceilings and new lights in those quarters if we can afford it the exterior windows are a net alternate there is a felt partition in the cafeteria that would provide a separation currently we have a mobile partition in there that really nobody opens i don't even think it works anymore but that would be provide really a visual separation for different meetings you could have in
128there storm retention really in front of the administration building we have a pipe that goes underground and actually goes under the entire building that pipe is undersized for the amount of water that goes in there that's why we get the backup in the administration lot if we can afford to fix that we would put underground retention which basically means we put big cylinders underground stone underground in the admin parking lot but that's a significant amount of work we didn't have that included in the referendum but we once we did the study on why we have a drainage issue we discovered the problem so we if we can and can afford it we will try to fix that issue and also in the auditorium currently we're replacing all the lights in the rigging on the stage
129currently you have to get a ladder go up and change light bulb this would be able to have motorized mechanisms to bring that down to you know a six foot ladder level so you could get up and change those lights similar to the the fro the light that's out in front over the seat again we'll be starting this in the summer it'll be summer 23 and proposing to finish that in the fall of 24. so some of the scope items in phase three that we'll be doing is uh renovating the cafeteria we're running the serving area and the corridor outside the the main entrance of the cafeteria um the students will have multiple seating areas for them in a bunch of different uh places to sit and stand um one of the other areas is
130we're renovating the auxiliary gym that's currently auxiliary gym that will be turned into a wellness center fitness center um some traffic improvements that we're doing at the high school uh we're creating a uh turning lane a right right hand turning lane onto west ave that would be a big one and then as bill talked a little bit um the parking lot drainage will be some of the other track traffic improvements uh building improvements and energy efficiencies as bill mentioned um in area d we'll be placing the boilers there were looking at getting a new a new generator for the high school window replacement um there were some doing some plumbing and electrical upgrades the auditorium upgrades we'll be looking at doing some new rigging and some new lighting there and then we'll be looking to
131renovate some bathrooms throughout the the building and then we're doing a major roof replacement throughout the building here's a cafeteria rendering and here's a rendering of the the new fitness center i'll turn it back over to bill so this will bring us into phase four which is caroline in division elementary schools the proposed bidding for those projects is actually in the fall of 2023 so we're a year away from that but currently right now we're in the second phase of design which is really the design development phase the next phase will be construction document phase we're just completing our estimates now in the design development phase should have those completed in the next week and we will be moving into the construction document phase so as you can see each of these phases are in
132different stages of completion but combined we're we're made real good progress in the amount of months we've had since a referendum so again we're about 60 percent through the program in design we're starting construction and we have two major phases under bid questions sorry natalia um thank you so much um great to hear about all the work that's being done and sorry to hear about all the roadblocks yeah um i'm curious about how much of the work um that has been either completed or already awarded has been given to union shops that's something that we don't track um well i don't think i've ever tracked that on a job and i think from the experience just knowing the contracts that we have it's it's hard to say some are straight union some are straight open
133but there's also hybrid where you could get an open shop contractor who will hire union contractors and vice versa so if you even had like a mechanical contractor he may hire an open shop insulator you know that happens you could have a open shop general contractor who hires a union drywall guy so i think we're there's really three different categories there's really straight unions straight open and then kind of the hybrid but we really we haven't tracked that you know going forward thank you any other questions guys thank you as always thank you very much great presentation that's it okay so we are on to the consent agenda are there any modifications to the consent agenda yes we have one item that has been pulled so we are pulling personnel item f11 so the recommended
134action is that we recommend the board pull the appointment of linda isaac from the position of 3.5 hour food service helper um let me just explain the consent agenda process here before you ask for a motion for those in attendance in watching a consent agenda is a commonly used vehicle provided for by our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure which are robert's rules 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
135we pull those out and vote on them separately consent agenda items are known to trustees in 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 fact-finding that is part of their due diligence process is that the only modification yes so i make a motion that we approve the consent agenda as modified do i have a second john brugerman is there any discussion connie just a quick uh question clarification so the as you will be the voting delegate going to the nisba conference and voting on our behalf people are to email you what they if they feel strongly about something on the resolutions uh any other discussion okay uh all in favor that uh junior
136that's unanimous eight zero motion passes just bear with me we have a new lengthy document process here if it brings us to close a meeting yes we are now at the second public comment period the same uh rules of engagement so to speak apply from the first public comment period please [Music] be civil and constructive and we don't allow comments about specific individual employees students or trustees we still have a maximum of three minutes per speaker and before you address the board please clearly state your name and address [Music] first up is carmela frius okay second up is beth arthur hi my name is kate fitzpatrick actually i live on grand ave i know beth arthur had to leave she had to take her baby home are you on the list no i'm gonna read
137her statement if that's okay just go back to my apologies state your name again i'm sorry my name is kate fitzpatrick i live on grand avenue in saratoga and i have two children here i'm going to read beth arthur's statement she had to bring her baby girl home so her name is beth arthur she lives on macrae in boston spa she has a student at maple lav and division street and she is in support of additional sro officers this is her words i find it extremely disconcerting that parents in the district are intimidated and scared to come and speak to the board of education by speaking to you tonight i now risk having my character intelligence and motives slandered on multiple facebook pages i'm going to skip quoting research and i'd like to speak to
138you through the lens of an educator i walk into my school every day and pray that i won't have to lay my life down to protect my students pray that i can return home to my own children pray that my children will return home to me pray that none of us will have to live with the trauma of experiencing an active shooter this is the new reality these are the thoughts and fears that i share with so many fellow educators i look at every room and visualize the safe corner i try to mentally steel myself as i visualize the steps i would have to take to fulfill my duty as a teacher in an emergency it is an unbelievable responsibility mental load and source of anxiety i am proud to say that i work in
139a district that has recently added additional sros i take comfort in knowing that there is a shooter shorter response time and that our sros know the physical building or environment that they check our doors and correct us when we make a mistake and support the common goal of keeping the building safe i am sickened with the thought that my own children who i would give my own life for do not have that same level of protection in saratoga the politicization surrounding a common sense approach to safety has to stop we all must compromise to service the whole community and again that was uh beth arthur speaking thank you next up is jennifer taylor good evening um the topic of bringing sros to elementary schools has proven to be a divisive one it is sad to
140see months pass and the rift widens for months rather than being proactive or responsive to the community the board has spent considerable time debating the nuances of how motions must be phrased that is sad and frustrating to watch one thing that i have learned in the last three months is that the board has agreed to wait for nicer to be reviewing the schools for safety before any measures will be reviewed further and discussed this means months of waiting for parents to know what steps the school will take to ensure the safety of their children at the elementary schools we stated i'm sorry we started schools this month without knowing exactly where the board would would stand and we will not beat around the bush here nicer is the boar is the district's insurer and they
141tout themselves for financial fitness and the ability to minimize schools liabilities and i am not here to argue or question their expertise it was nice to see them there this evening however how can the mindset of minimizing liabilities be the driving force behind your safety making decisions it is nauseating to me almost as much as the reference that was made at the july meeting of a kindergarten student perhaps needing to throw a book to defend themselves in an emergency situation and that was in reference to the run hide fight side that you've shown again is this what we should expect in terms of what you're willing to promote as safety in saratoga beyond the troubling mental images and the conflict of interest there's a contradiction at work here you have chosen to wait for a
142report so you can make an informed decision however you already have two sros working at the high school and the middle school and the city has more trained and ready to help you are allowing for safety measures and resources to continue to be inequitable the city council applauds the sros and yet when it comes to providing them to our youngest citizens there is pushback of course parents will ask why why have you passed the buck onto the principles i have inquired and please know that the principles see the benefit of having sros i don't see a board of education engaging with them or the teachers and isn't this what you are tasked to do i am glad to hear that you are surveying other districts regarding sros how about ours can you tell me that
143you're taking this seriously and you're being proactive i am not naive and i've watched you throw hurdles in the way and dismiss the concerned parents since the board has made nicer its fallback i would ask you to look at their safety safer schools publication it's on their website it is here and i'm gonna quote from it there is a building security checkup article could you finish that thought please yes the first recommendation is to reaffirm relationships with law enforcement it states law enforcement should have access to buildings and should be familiar with facilities they acknowledge increased billability is important and promoting an sro to be visible engaged with students i'm encouraging you to read more of what nicer has on its website since you'd like to use them as your go-to source thank you thank
144you next up is stacy marzullo next up is chris dubuque good evening ladies and gentlemen the board chris dubuque six kaileen drive boston spa heard a lot that there's consideration as to what other school districts do with regards to safety resource officers i can't speak for your school district or for your various schools but i can speak at least for boston spa i have four beautiful children that have gone through that school from elementary all the way up my oldest has graduated and my youngest is now in eighth grade and i can tell you they have been exposed to sros since elementary school i recently was at the high school orientation for my one son for ninth grade and rsr sro officer beckett got a large round of applause from the kids he has truly
145ingrained himself in the community he's been one of the integral parts of that community and one thing he reminded the kids we unfortunately had that school shooting in ivalvi texas he reminded the kids not the prop doors open i'd love to think the kids would think common sense don't leave the doors propped open but i know with having a teenage girl that just cannot seem to lock the door when she comes home at night it's nice to know that my kids are safe with regards to the sros within the school district you're blessed because not only do you have the county here you also have the city police department as well i know they were an integral part of keeping my synagogue safe when the tree of life shooting had happened and most synagogues were
146concerned of whether we could come and we could practice and feel safe in our home of worship and they always posted at least two officers outside temple sinai wednesday nights away at hebrew sundays we had sunday school friday and saturday services and any holiday services it eventually came down to one officer but again it was nice to feel protected when you gather as a community and a place of worship a place that should be safe that especially applies for schools as well so again i can only report what we do in boston spa it's been very successful we haven't had any issues there and again it's been a great addition to our community our kids feel safe and our kids really welcome officer becker within the school i'd like to take stuff from your district
147as well the helpline that was reported on tonight i'm going to take back to my district and hopefully we have something in place there and hopefully we can have something established if we do not you as a board though i would recommend you engage the county sheriff's department i work for the state in the county building i work we just went through active shooter training it was very informed informative it helped me but one of the examples they used was a florida active shooter case at a school board meeting a angry husband his wife had recently been fired as a teacher he showed up at the school board meeting armed and with the intent to cause as much harm to the school board members as he could thankfully they had their version of an sro
148there and prevented what could have been an unfortunate loss of life so again i really am concerned for the teachers and the kids first and foremost but even this board could finish that thought absolutely even this board could benefit from the addition of sros in all your schools and also at your meetings thank you thank you next up is charlie samuels hi thank you very much my name is charlie samuels i live in saratoga springs and my child is enrolled in our fantastic schools um thank you for staying late i know you want to get home so i'll make this as quick as i can i hear that experts recently assessed our school system and recommended that we add another armed guard which i'm fine with but now i understand there's a proposal to add
149six more armed guards to our schools at the added cost of 450 thousand dollars per year so i did some research here's two studies and a quote that may surprise you a 2014 study by texas texas state university and the fbi examined over 160 incidents including 25 school shootings the study found that none of the school shootings were ended by armed officers returning fire then last year in 2021 there was a study by researchers at hamline university and metropolitan state university in minnesota who examined 133 school shootings the study concluded there was no association between the presence of an armed officer and deterrence of violence these studies are by schools okay and you who are you know at risk andrew hairston education judge justice project director for texas appleseed said in a statement after the
150uvalde student shooting we must face the truth more militarized school environments do not address the root causes of mass violence mrs harrison probably was referring to the 376 law of enforcement officials who failed to stop the uvalde school shooting in other words well no but take my but but don't take my word for it see for yourself by typing something simple like this into any search engine have sros prevented school shootings with this question mark you'll see a variety of reputable news sources with similar conclusions that i've just brought up adding more sros may feel good and give some of us peace of mind the data shows otherwise let's remind ourselves that feelings are not data and feelings are not facts let's trust the experts thank you next up is jessica toddenhagen because i'm not
151very tall jessica tottenhagen macarthur drive and boston spa according to a report from every town for gun safety in august last year alone there were 193 accounts of gunfire on pre-k through 12 campuses 59 died 138 wounded a recent pie delta cap and poll showed that 82 percent of parents strongly or somewhat supported armed police in school a recent petition in your own city was signed by nearly a thousand community members now who feel sros and elementary schools are necessary when some of you ran for office you came around to our neighborhoods knocked on our doors and made promises to listen and advocate for every student in your district you were elected to do just that however it seems you do not want to have this conversation regarding sros in the elementary schools a conversation
152which regards the safety of both students and staff you tell us you come into these meetings with open minds you leave politics at the door however the actions of the last few meetings would suggest otherwise a board member said at the july 28 meeting that they didn't want to waste time debating sros until the nicer report came in because we already know where most people on the board stand that seems more of a fixed mindset to me if you're not even willing to talk with one another you use the nicer report as a reason to stop the conversation but unless parents watched that july 28 meeting they would be unaware that the audit that is taking place in october will not be reported on until the winter don't be misleading with your timelines be clear
153with parents that you are pushing the conversation aside until the winter district leadership at the table on july 28 stated that the staff had not been asked their opinions about sros in the elementary buildings but tonight we hear they are offered training to learn to pack wounds so a student doesn't bleed out you are surveying other schools but not your own staff why does their why doesn't their opinion on the safety of their workplace matter it is their job to teach young minds it is unfair to every single teacher in those buildings to place a burden of a child safety on the shoulders of teachers when we could have officers there who are not only trained in keeping people safe but officers who create bonds with their community having them will not hurt our children
154but not having them could hurt everyone we keep hearing about how it makes some feel unsafe what about those that it does make feel safer also nobody mentions how lockdown drills shelter and place drills run hide and fight drills do those make kids some kids feel unsafe do we stop those do we stop doing those if some kids are scared by those no you don't you keep doing them i'm tired of being talked at talked about and most importantly tired of not having questions answered you represent over six thousand students in this district but do not have conversations or answer questions you talk about transparency but are anything but transparent could you finish up that talk with the members of the district parents and staff if you aren't having these conversations with us or your
155staff then we as stakeholders must really start to wonder why you are ignoring us thank you next up is hannah hurley hello my name is hannah hurley i live on steward street i'm here tonight to talk about sros as a resident of the city of saratoga springs the continued partnership with the sspd and the issues that it raised concern me namely that the sspd is currently under continuing investigation from the new york state attorney general's office for civil rights violations while some in the community has said if this happens if enough of people complain it's worth noting that while every department has someone complaining about it not every police department is under investigation from my own experience in housing work i can tell you getting the ag to pay attention to an issue like this
156is not easy and a serious red flag for the sanctuary of the sspd it is also worth noting that while a case can be started it does not continue unless there is a reason to allocate the resources and two separate investigations into the city of rochester's police department were closed by the ag's office including the death of daniel prude and the shooting of daniel flowers the investigation against the saratoga springs police department continues as we know from the subpoena of formal city officials made public in the last two weeks there are other indications that the sspd in particular is not meeting the highest standards and that their continued presence at our city's elementary school is troublesome the sspd is also one of the only law enforcement agencies locally that is not accredited by the new
157york state division of criminal justice services a designation that requires among other things review of hiring processes training and operations from the new york state dcgs website accreditation and where it began in 1989 they are to quote provides formal recognition that an organization meets or exceeds general expectations of quality in the field it acknowledges the implementation of policies that are conceptually sound and operationally effective in other words being accredited helps police departments operate more professionally justify their operations and promote trust in their community end quote and again a reminder that sspd does not have this the saratoga county sheriff's office achieved this designation in 1993 the sspd and its civilian supervision has chosen for more than 30 years to accept subpar standards from our police of force department and to the building the only law
158enforcement agencies running an sro program in the suburban council schools without accreditation is the glenville town police which provides a single sro across burnt hills boston lake and scotia glenville schools before allowing more police to be present in and around our schools we need to know that they and their supervisors are adhering to the highest standards so far they are not i also wish to speak for members of the school that might not be comfortable around the police i know that there's police here i'm not terribly comfortable with the weapons i wonder what bringing weapons into and around the classroom does to the young minds finish that thought please thanks and their concerns and how they can focus on learning while there's a threat in front of them thank you thank you next up is
159mark crockett hello good evening first of all thank you to all of you who serve on the board appreciate it big time we uh mark crockett we live in wilton we have two grandchildren here and our children went through dorothy nolan sros to me the mere idea that we are less safe with police officers in the building is a lie and any data is perverted it's totally ridiculous the first person that you would call an emergency is a police officer yet it's dangerous to have that person in the school it's absurd in this meeting alone we have addressed stop the bleed bleed out kits lock down drills security film on windows and yet adding s adding sros is dangerous stop vilifying the police new york state has an official position that law enforcement in this
160country is racist that is racist that is damaging stop telling non-white students minority students that they are victims they may believe it and not do what they can do with their life having sros in the building is a deterrent there's always strength there's always a deterrent that's why we have an army and a navy and our law that's why we have our military to deter bad people in addition the sros add an valuable resource to the building they're not there just in case of an accident they're there to help to talk to students nearly 1 000 district people have signed a petition for additional sros i believe the board was elected by the people of this district do you know what they think and lastly that last board meeting was an embarrassment the last 40
161minutes while you danced around and figured out how not to talk about sros was a waste of my time and your time and it was an abomination of what you do bring the subject up talk about it find out what the heck the people wanting us in this in this school district and then act thank you [Applause] is there anyone else who wishes to speak who didn't get to sign up on the sheet what up i am vertically challenged so i'm not going to play with the mic stand my name is deandra chuckrow i live in saratoga springs new york and i'm the proud parent of two graduates one who graduated in june i was hoping he was going to be here to join me but he's on to bigger and better adventures at the
162moment and i too wanted to speak very briefly about the sro situation i have a little bit different perspective because i'm a career prosecutor sort of semi-retired from active courtroom duty doing training now but was trained and spent most of my career as a special victims prosecutor so i am very comfortable and familiar with law enforcement the good the not so good and everything in between and i would like for you to consider doing your homework and doing the research and making a decision that is not emotional i've sat here and listened to all of these parents and my heart breaks because i am so happy that my kids are no longer in this school district only so that i don't have the same emotional stress tied to how safe my kids might be but
163i also know what the research says and the research says that adding sros is not making our kids safer the research says that the chance of a child dying in an elementary school is one in 10 million and i thought of something that i've talked to a lot of people about in a corollary manner and that's do you guys remember stranger danger i don't know if you all remember stranger danger we used to teach our kids to be afraid of the strangers on the street and i'm going to tell you as a career special victims prosecutors they need to be afraid of the people they know statistically they need to we need to take that data and we have and we've taught ourselves how to make sure our kids are safe with family members right
164kids are 60 more likely to be abused by a family member or someone they know so please do your homework and do the research the research shows that spending money on sros it feels good right it makes us think that our kids are safe but what really makes our kids safe is spending money on more psychologists on more social workers on really learning what de-escalation is all about on putting programs in place that teach our kids how to engage with one another how to be better citizens and how to exercise those really difficult emotions at such a tough times in their life without becoming one of others it's not that i don't want police walking in and out of schools i have a very different feeling about it even knowing what the data shows could
165you finish up that thought absolutely i just ask you to not go on a motion and to do your homework it is your job as members of this board to do the research and spend the money where our kids need that money to be spent thank you thank you is there anyone else go ahead no help is on the way thank you hi hi my name is deirdre ladd and i'm a 24-year resident of saratoga springs on regent street my boys went through saratoga springs schools and my husband was on the school board briefly so thank you very much for your volunteer service i'm here tonight to express my opposition not to school resource officers but rather to armed school resource officers more guns is not the answer the leading cause of death amongst children
166in the u.s is not a car accident and it's not illness it's a firearm more guns mean more gun violence period i urge you to make data-driven decisions here and find effective ways to prevent and de-escalate situations in our schools i believe arming sros sends the wrong message it basically says to kids that a gun something that kills and takes a life should be considered a good resource an effective tool that helps an officer do a better job at conflict resolution and peacekeeping it says a trained professional in uniform is simply not enough to keep our kids and teachers safe i just watched the queen of england's bodyguards march in procession with their archery bows and i thought wow how how far have we fallen there are more guns in the u.s than there are
167people one firearm for every 20 americans gun violence claimed more lives in 2020 over 45 thousand lives than any other year on record i do not want my tax dollars spent on more guns or more gun training for our school resource officers i'd much rather put the money in pretty much any other resource counselors animal therapy art music field trips etcetera as a means to resolve conflict minimize violence promote a safe and peaceful school environment even investing in bulletproof vests for sros would be better than bringing in more guns in schools since in the extremely unlikely event there is a mass shooter odds are estimated to be 10 million to one the same child the same percentage as a child being killed by lightning or an earthquake means a mass shooter is more likely to
168have a higher powered gun than an armed sro anyway so i certainly don't want officers patrolling our schools with an assault rifle more guns in schools is not the answer let's find another resource that doesn't kill thank you very much thank you i think sometimes when you're looking at this issue it's easy to be on one side or the other do we have or have not is that going to solve it i don't think it's going to solve it during those slides one of them said sros are a component in the overall safety of the school but i think they're an overall component in the safety of the community we heard about police officers being racist we've heard about police officers of officers having dangerous weapons but i think when you integrate one way to
169remove racism is to have police officers in the schools from the beginning that's where you that's where you build a bonding and understanding you can't perpetuate this this idea that you can't touch you can't believe this person because they're a police officer and they're bad give the kids an opportunity to engage to look and if you do look at the data and i'll bring it next time where police officers are involved anywhere in the community you have somebody who's going to engage and maybe not look at somebody who they're engaging with the police officer and have some kind of implicit bias because maybe they've had the opportunity to know the student and look at the student and speak with the student and engage maybe that student will then have the opportunity and the familiarity and
170the safe feeling to go and talk to the officer about anything whether that's a crime a a sexual assault or um fighting in the schools i i attended dorothy nolan school my daughter is in dorothy nolan school i have got a wide range of experience in this district having graduated from here so i would encourage i'd encourage the board to not just look what's on the horizon but look over the horizon maybe an idea for the police officers if you don't want to be armed maybe they're uh in plain clothes maybe there's a lock box for the for for a weapon at the school that they can use i don't know but i think that there's more opportunities to engage rather than if you have an armed person that's going to solve everything and if
171you had don't have any police officers we're going to just wish away the the evils of the world so i'd be glad to come forward with any other ideas but i think there needs to be a an effort to look farther beyond thank you thank you is it on not that i need a mic um michelle king middle grove um so i did miss the two summer board meetings but i was informed of a lot of information from friends who uh did attend on my behalf and i'd like to say i want to take the safety thing out of it for a minute we all want safe schools i want to talk about the bonds that are being built when these police officers these sros are brought into the schools i have a 23 year
172old who graduated from saratoga springs and to this day still talks about officer davis the bonds he built with officer davis the the bonds he has built with him allow him when he is not in the school when he is out in the community to speak to him as a friend for advice okay or if there's a problem my daughter just graduated same loves officer barrett absolutely cannot talk about him enough the bonds that are being built are going beyond the brick in mortar of these walls we are showing students that they can speak up we are showing students what they can grow up to be we are allowing students to feel comfortable in a situation where maybe their political views from family members are telling them these are bad evil people are all cops
173bad absolutely not most of them are not are all attorneys bad no are all teachers bad no there is a very very very very minimal percent of people who are racist and bigoted and evil we need to break that we need to get the politics out of it we need to look at the facts we need to look beyond the safety also the safety is definitely important but the bonds that are being built from kindergarten up with the security that these kids feel outside of these walls not just when they're seniors going out to a job or that next level but the security they have the bonds they have built for the rest of their life that is important also we talk about well-rounded let's look at how these sros can make this school better
174well-rounded and make our students better well-rounded and what they see and what they learn thank you thank you sharon dominguez saratoga springs i just want to share a story a childhood story when my sister and i were little we went to like a kmart or ames with my mom and i don't know if you remember the little round clothing racks well we would hide in there and my mom would get frustrated because she couldn't find us and at one point she said you see that security guard over there if you girls don't behave i'm gonna stick him on you basically so we had fear of that security guard well what ended up happening was we hid in the circles racks and then my mom couldn't find us we thought it was funny we're giggling she
175ends up on the other side of the store and the very person that could help us was the big scary security guard that my mom put in our heads that he was a bad guy and so i just want you guys to think about what are we telling our community and what are we telling our children about police officers if we're sitting here saying and i've heard it over and over again that minority students are uncomfortable with police officers well what if we build that bridge what if we bridge that gap and build a community between our students our resource officers and our police force i think that makes way more sense than tearing people apart building walls and basically stereotyping because like michelle said you know there are bad cops there are bad teachers
176they're bad school board members so we all have issues i'm not saying this board i'm just saying in general like there are always bad people but it doesn't represent the mind or the minority of people right or majority of people sorry so i just wanted to share that story and i wish you know it was a great learning lesson to not teach my children to be afraid of cops or security guards that they can actually be a resource and be helpful and bring kids back to safety thank you hello my name is alexis brown i'm a resident of saratoga springs and a 2018 uh saratoga springs high school graduate and i know that we're all here today because we all have one common goal and that is to protect students and the communities from being
177victims of violence but um and while i appreciate you know the hard work of the presentation we're not addressing the roots that cause people to perpetrate these kinds of you know mass shootings things like that and if we fail to address those more young people will continue to die and those that live are going to continue to have the rising levels of depression and anxiety you know if we have police officers in our schools who are able to physically protect students from harm but they're able to go on tv and witness you know in another state that 17 kids were shot that doesn't make them feel any safer going into school i was in seventh grade when sandy hook happened i was a senior in high school when parkland happened um and you know we
178had increased police presence during that time we had a walk out about ending gun violence the presence of police did not make me feel any safer being in school um and i feel it's kind of like beating a dead horse at this point i'm obviously i'm a community activist and we're constantly having to reiterate that you know this is a much deeper you know much deeper rooted issue than police are able to put a band-aid over time and time again we're seeing that the most violent elements of white supremacy are seeping into you know online platforms like 4chan 8chan etc a lot of these young people are driven by misogyny anti-black racism isolationism and they're being radicalized online to the point where they feel empowered to kill people and you know the police they don't
179have the tools to address these issues and there's just so many things that we need to do to make sure that you know kids feel safe and you know there's so much contempt and anxiety around school and i just feel like we're not you know addressing what needs to be done to make sure that this actually ends thank you i what for keeping this going long could you could you come closer to the mic there's some reason it's not picking you up how's that a little better thank you my name is fraser taylor i have a first grader and a third grader at lake avenue yeah i have a first grader and a second grader at lake avenue so i'm here in favor of uh having our rsos at our elementary school so tonight i'm
180going to talk about data being presented that i feel was completely inappropriate uh stating that sros present a potential negative impact on death of students if a shooting were to happen so this in particular is research that was recently presented here peterson at all gemma network open 2021. um as any article it says there are limitations to the study multiple ones but this is the tip of the iceberg it's been presented that the there's a rate of death if a rso is present that's uh 2.85 times more when there's an arm guard this leads the reader to believe that sro is really cause or because of this that's what happened which is completely unfounded and untrue so when analyzing data and critically looking at publications the first thing you want to do is read the
181methods and the first thing it says in the methods is that this is a cross-sectional study the very definition of cross-sectional study is that this is observational in nature and it's descriptive research not cause not causality not relational meaning you cannot use them to determine the cause of something such as a disease or in this case a shooting or resulting death so no hypothesis was tested and it's just at best hypothesis generating so despite not being capable of answering such questions the authors further state that this increased rate of death persists even when controlling for aforementioned factors such as location or school characteristics this would also make the reader believe that you are they are actually controlling for these variables and that this is unique to an officer influence and what's interesting is the most
182profound and obvious factor in this letter um is that it's a type of weapon that influences death more heads and tails more than anything else um but they do not even mention that this questionable rate of death with an sro present was still independently elevated when controlling for these variables this seems deliberate and i find it interesting seeming that this would have the most profound impact if it were to be clustered or associated with another variable because of the absolute magnitude of its effect on death this is called confounding and it's a huge issue with studies like this so why would sros correlate with more lethal weaponry are the schools being targeted okay or are astros being placed in schools already determined to be higher risk for violence or in locations where people may have
183more access to lethal weapons or prior threats or history instead of asking these questions the authors basically quote prior research suggests that many school shooters are actively suicidal intending to die in the act so an armed officer may be incentive rather than a deterrent now there was a reference for this could you actually finish up that thought you got it thank you so there was a reference for this and i was hoping to see some sort of peer-reviewed data but instead it goes directly to a website advertising for their book now that seems self-serving using personal theory or hypothesis to force-fit an explanation so in conclusion this is when citing data can be dangerous if we're going to allow it to influence what we decide so my conclusion what i would say is before you
184make decisions be very careful and invest the time to understand the data or involve someone with the expertise to actually evaluate this data if we're going to use it to influence our decisions thank you thank you looks like it might be it all right uh thank you everyone uh both before first public comment period and second com public comment period for spending your time with us and staying this late and taking the time to uh to speak to us we appreciate it that brings us to agenda planning are there any agenda planning items connie yes in looking at the district's mission the mission states that the saratoga spring school community will empower all learners in an engaging collaborative environment to discover their personal pathways to the future our pathways vision will help guide the important
185work of the school district and ultimately help shape our students future success i move to review the mission of the district to include the word safe somewhere you move to review the definition of no i i move to for us to review the mission of the district to include the word safe like perhaps it would say that all learners in an engaging collaborative safe environment is there a second amanda is there discussion [Music] i just want john can you say it again your motion again sure i move for us to review the mission of the district okay um as usual i'm going to ask you to be more specific when um well this is tricky because in the past when i've asked for things i've been told that i'm too vague and then i'm too
186and then i'm being too specific and i'm being too bossy so i um i would say whenever it is convenient for the district the board pardon me for the board you're asking the board to review the mission of the district or are you asking did the board create this mission no right so that's is it a collaborative thing with the district huge yeah yeah so so you're moving for i i don't think you can move to have the district convene an entire process to review its mission okay well it's not a it wasn't a board creation tony who approved it probably the board john i believe connie has the right to to say that the district has to revisit this i think the board has that authority um i think i would want to know
187what is the process what is the typical process when the mission is uh revised um revisited and so forth is is there a standard cycle i'd like to know what mike thinks about that but more generally back to how we make motions in general i will be opposing vague motions i want to know time frames and specific actions because what if you say we should discuss this we could say well we didn't discuss it at the next meeting or the next year and we're still consistent with your motion you know what i mean so i'm always going to ask you to be more specific um i i so i'll be opposing the motion as written amanda um i understand the concern aren't we in agenda planning so i would assume if i made a motion
188that i am suggesting that this be added to our next agenda are you suggesting that we need to state specifically the date of the next meeting for which we want this to be added to the agenda i'm not i'm not telling you how to write the motion i think it's too vague as it's written and i'll oppose it it has to be more specific for my support and i would like to edit my motion then one second connie okay go ahead actually you can add it i move to review the district's mission at the next meeting can i ask who you'd like to review the mission who would you like present in order to review the mission at the next minute i would think that since the district made the mission this would be district
189business and this would have to be done at the table so at the table it would be a discussion on the agenda so but you only want the board to review this i'm asking who do you want to actually do the review of the district's mission the board and dr patton and his cabinet any other comment natalia um i guess this is a question for mike but what is the process that led to our current mission um and i guess i guess i don't really know a question to ask but i mean who does this work john already added the standard cycle question is there kind of a standard review cycle like probably a part and parcel i can only speak to my experiences here so when i was hired in january of 2018 one
190of the first things that i was charged by the board was to update our mission and vision statement so we assembled a group of students parents administrators community members we did community forums it took eight months to develop the current pathways vision statement and then each year we present the mission and vision statement to the board and so we presented to you back in august and the board approved that and so each year we identify their priorities for each school year and at the start of almost every presentation any of the presenters will start with the pathways vision statement so so that took about eight months worth of work engaging all stakeholders in the community uh to create the initial document which was a continuation of previous vision and mission statements that have been established
191by the district thanks mike any other amanda does anyone at the table know if there's education law that dictates what this process is and with that whether the board of education can modify a mission statement of the district is anyone familiar with any education law that covers this topic may i revise it revise it i'm going to write it down and i'm going to repeat it and then um any more discussion can occur and then we're going to vote sound good sorry go ahead i make a motion to discuss the review of the mission of the district at our next meeting so the motion as i understand it is you move to discuss the review of the mission of the district at our next meeting yes please and uh is that is your second still
192stand yes um further comment um i guess we're having a discussion right now though right so because that's part of the motion process we can have a discussion right now about whether or not we think that your emotion needs to happen what i'm understanding from mike is that this is a a process that requires a lot more people so i guess are you proposing that the board amend it at the next meeting or just discuss the possibility of reviewing it and amending it i mean i guess i don't understand what that process would look like but i'm sorry i understand what the process would i understand what the motion is let me i'm going to cut you off i'm going to answer that the move the motion is to discuss the review of the mission
193of the district at our next meeting i mean i think that answers your question does it not to discuss the review of the mission of the district at our next meeting or am i wrong i guess i don't understand how that differs from our last meeting but yeah i am not asking to amend anything at the next meeting i am not asking about how much money it would take to or or if this is nothing financial that's what i asked about at the last meeting i am asking to discuss the review of the mission statement no changes will be made at the next meeting it's a discussion perhaps about more of this process so we're getting educated on the process maybe we'll have a discussion about moving forward and maybe making some changes maybe we
194want to talk about health and wellness in the mission maybe we want to talk about equity and diversity and equity and inclusion there's a lot of things that we could put into our mission not just safety we can have two things at the same time we can compromise and negotiate and work together i'm going to make my own comment i i trust the um work that an enormous and very diverse group of people in the community did for eight months in 2018 because the original motion i really i didn't realize it does not include this now because the original motion was uh posited to include the word safe somewhere and because i think that implicit in all the hard work that we've evidenced tonight from all the people in this district i i think it's
195implicit that safety is um it's not only implicit it's it's obvious that safety is at the forefront of our professionals work on dirt and bert and every other element that goes into our safety plan so i'll oppose the motion on that those grounds is there any other discussion john i just i just want to talk about how we do our business i know folks in our community have expressed frustration that we're not more efficient or that we don't make a quick decision or something but we're sort of getting in these habits in a habit of it during agenda planning a vague motion is proposed to talk about a topic that is not aligned with the cycle of presentations and topics so this comes up at the beginning of the year we talked about this like
196two meetings ago and that would have been the time to do it and we can do this i don't mind discussion but this is part of why our meetings last so long so if you we now have a calendar we have access to the calendar of when topics are discussed you know over the course of the year and so when different things come to us that ought to be when we address them i mean we can always depart from that i do believe we have the authority to change it i'm with i'm with tony on on the whole idea of of respecting all the stakeholders in in this process but there's a way to do this more efficiently and it it has to do with respect knowing how to make a motion and respecting the
197cycle of topics that's already established dean thanks tony with all due respect to the opposition of the motion uh i would like to say john specifically to the comment that you just made that i think it's incumbent upon all of us as we listen to presentations throughout the year that we have the opportunity to ask questions about those at that time i understand that you mentioned two meetings ago this was approved and that would have been the time if we have a fellow board member that makes a motion based upon some information that they learned that evening that may be after the fact i believe that some of the conversation that could curb the discussion at the moment would be a more respectful more appropriate more professional response that may say the timing may not
198be appropriate but we respect the motion that you're making and believe that this is the time in which we could do it so with that said if the opposition to connie's motion specifically happens i will end up then making a second motion and i understand that i can't do that just yet because we haven't voted on that but i would like the opportunity to make a second motion should hers be defeated amanda from my own learning i think now john that you understand the crux of connie's motion can you please educate me on how a more efficient appropriate way to make that motion would have been at the last meet at the meeting where where we voted to affirm our mission statement that would have been the right time to take this topic up i'm
199not asking about timing i'm just that you you seem to take issue with the way that she's um repeatedly taking issue with the way that she's formulating her emotions as a relatively new board member i would like to know how she should have phrased that more efficiently well as i said before you have to mention timing every single time every time every time we say we're going to discuss something with an open end i think that's a problem and i i also i take particular issue this you're not doing this this time i think it's complicated but i always feel very protective of the administration if we if we dr drop a giant task on them sometimes we need to do that and sometimes it we absolutely need to get out of the rhythm because
200something pops up that's important we always have the right to do that and i'm not trying to say shut up this isn't a legitimate topic i'm just saying that in general we could be more efficient if we paid attention to the cycle of designated topics and this particular topic came up two meetings ago okay i understand that so just to be clear because my only question was about wording the motion that's all i'm asking you to make the motion correct in your mind she needed to state the date that we would discuss this topic correct i'm not giving you all the parameters of an effective motion i think tony and mike have raised relevant issues about who discusses it so we i took we to mean the board and in fact when we make a
201mission statement it involves a whole bunch of stakeholders so that's also a vagueness in that particular wording okay so saying at the convenience of the district which i believe is respecting their authority and their time i was that was a no-go so you have to understand my frustration i'm hearing you i'm making changes but they're still not good enough so my motion is what it was and i i just i just want to say that i'm sorry sorry no no john ellis has wanted a chance to speak and he hasn't been able to again uh connie made the motion i think it was seconded we're finishing up discussion but we should vote on it whether it's good timing for now to do but also taken to connie's consideration of county is you know for the
202school district to possibly look at all the stakeholders and review the mission statement and you know it's not something that has to be done tomorrow but i mean everybody can make a motion on anything you know or on the agenda so we should vote on it whether it's something we should change or is it just the discussion of we would like to see the district sometime in the future look at this motion statement review it and you know will come up something if they decide not to change it you know that's their point and i think i'll defer to your first point which is we probably should take a vote on this so the motion is to move to discuss the review of the mission of the district at our next meeting it's been seconded
203it's been discussed all in favor raise your hand please keep it up one two three four five two three five four the motion and i'm sorry one the motion is to discuss the review of the mission of the district at our next meeting and i currently have board members boytovich ella thorpe colligan brugerman borman and laktakia voting yes and [Music] all opposed board members crackler and ellis are opposed the motion carries is there any other agenda planning item erica i'm not sure if this is the right time to bring this up but just listening to some comments regarding the tardiness of some students with concerns of issues that they're having and and personal obstacles getting to to school is that something we can look at and is there a policy in place that we may
204take a look at to amend so my motion would be for us to uh review that policy at our next board meeting thank you if we can review the policy on tardiness and how how other students are are losing privileges based on situations that may not be in their control at our next meeting or if it does not fit into that agenda soon after thanks do i have a second amanda ella thorpe discussion john dentale i yeah it was seconded i share your concern erica i what i would like to do is to take it to policy committee and look at the existing policies that we have and the new language that we've seen recently that one of our neighbors spoke about or maybe a couple of them spoke about today so so um i
205will vote against you your motion but i share your concern and i'd like i'd like to see policy committee dig into it natalia um so eric i completely agree with the spirit of what you're saying i would propose a friendly amendment which is just with some additional information so the policy that was referred to um during one public comment it is my understanding that even though it's called a policy it was a letter that was sent home from the high school so i don't think it's an actual policy so what i would propose is that we um because then if it stops at that level it's like not ours it's it is the implementation of an existing policy but policy 5100 is the attendance policy so i'm wondering if you would accept a friendly amendment
206to send policy i think it's 5100 but in case i'm wrong the policy on attendance in the schools back to the policy committee which meets on monday oh that's absolutely just to just to take a look at that okay whatever the best process i don't know how robert's rules works in this regard but can that be accepted as a friendly amendment uh i don't want to make it board business i don't quite know if there's anyone who does we can either rephrase the the motion to include that and where we can i just proposed a friendly amendment which is that um so the policy referred to is not a board policy so rather than taking a look at that specifically can we propose that the policy committee at their next meeting um take a look
207at the policy i think it's 5100 that is for attendance in the schools and then uh following that review bring it back to the board i would just say from john i think from a procedural point of view that's really a different motion so i don't think it's a friendly amendment because you're really altering the substance of what she's saying so we the the the person who offered the motion and the second can can opt to table their own motion and then we can have another motion um and i'll just i have a comment too if i could we're in comment period um it's i'm eager to find out the technical details of this like what's a motion what's a what's a letter that went out it it appears to me that what went out
208is it contradicts the spirit of the policy that we've established which is that our tenants policies should not be punitive they're about pulling people in and i'd like to understand that better and i i think we i think we might be able to make some progress in a smaller group digging into it with the documents in front of us but that's where i think it should go personally okay so direct response then i'll withdraw what i said and then erica would you want to propose that she can table her she can propose to table the first motion it has to be seconded and we can go on okay so my motion is to table my initial motion and second are you okay with that amanda second seconded okay okay so then um move to make
209a motion to have the policy committee review the attendance policy if that is the correct one and take a look at investigating whether it could be amended or added something can be added to that to incorporate the tardiness and then we'll report that out at the next board meeting seconded by trustee brugerman the policy committee review 5100 or the correct number if 5100 is not the correct attendance policy number at the next meeting of the policy committee and report back to the board after that it's been seconded any other discussion all in favor that's unanimous eight zero motion passes anybody else uh natalia yeah so then i would like to make i guess an accompanying motion that the policy committee also looks at the um code of conduct in the same meeting so that the
210information from the code of conduct can be used to further support the work being done around the attendance policy and then bring that information back to the next board meeting during report out so the motion is that the policy committee look at the code of conduct in the same in conjunction with that conversation in order to inform the discussion of uh 5100 right i just want to make sure that the code of conduct is also available to the policy committee at that meeting okay is there a second erica borman second discussion so just for clarification natalia you're just utilizing that tool to make sure that whatever language is reviewed is is going to be um in unison in the documentation correct or at least reviewed simultaneously so i'm not asking for a review of the
211code of contact at all we've already passed that and i'm not asking for that to be brought up again but i just don't know how it works because our committee meetings also have an agenda so i would like to make sure that the policy committee isn't like violating that agenda i don't i mean maybe i'm misunderstanding how that works but i want to make sure that we can take a look at the code of conduct it's my understanding that the school policy that was brought up has to do not only with attendance but also with what we've identified in the code of conduct and have discussed as a board around choosing restorative practices first rather than punitive and i'm not sure if that was the exact wording but i i would like to have that
212be part of the discussion maybe that doesn't need emotion mike did you have a comment i guess i just could ask for clarification that is the concern about the policy or is there concern about a letter that was sent from the high school because if the it was the concerns about a letter that was sent from the high school that's going to be a lot easier for us to get a copy of the letter talk to whoever the author of the letter was and make sure that in the future or in align with our existing policy because our policies have all been reviewed by policy committee submitted to the board adopted by the board so it doesn't sound like the issue is with the policy it sounds the issues with a letter that came from
213a specific building that we just have to get our hands on that letter and then address the concerns that have been brought forward to the board so again i don't want the policy committee to be spinning their wheels if really the issue is about a letter that came from a school so john i think my my impression is that it's it's about the letter where i don't think we're questioning the policy it's but what i was thinking of is to make sure what was communicated in the letter is consistent with the policy so i wanted to look at them both next to each other just i have no reference of any letter that anybody's referring to so i'd like to see a letter i believe this went out to at least high school students recently
214and um there was there was content that said that at certain number of absences or tardinesses you lose the privilege to participate in sports and other things like that okay and it and it also involves lunchroom detention around targets okay so again i think the issues with the letter and not necessarily the policy it was just to me it seemed like the policy was the thing that would guide us in in making sure the letter's on target so it's it's not about revising the policy it's about making sure the practice is consistent correct lisa cutting natalia um i would i mean i still support erica's motion i'm happy to table mine so i will table mine and i hope erica that you'll um i guess agree with that um i still support the previous motion
215though i do think that we want to make sure that there is wording in the attendance policy that clarifies some things because i think that the letter um that went home which i know that can be discussed by actual district workers not us um i do think that it showed that there is room for a review of the attendance policy okay natalya tabled that motion and it was seconded by er the tabling was seconded by erica are there any other agenda planning items okay on to board member comments how about i just take it for the group since it's 10 16. uh thank you to greer miller and the staff here at division street for welcoming us in to our first we'll call it in school board of education meeting a great job by her
216staff and the custodians and everyone here to prep this school congrats to the 25-year um anniversary 25 years of service anniversary participants that we had earlier unfortunately some of them couldn't be with us but that does not mean that we're not uh appreciative of your service to the district thanks to dave and his team for a wonderful safety presentation this evening thanks for allowing the board to be engaged with questions and responses throughout that as well and thanks to the group to bill and i believe matt was here tonight for coming in to update us on the legacy project as always i think i speak on behalf of the board thank you for the community and your involvement this evening i can tell you that this is the fourth year that i've been on the
217board and i try to keep track of everyone who comes up to speak during public comment period at least name and and kind of the general purpose of what you're coming to talk about this evening we had 25 individuals that came and spoke that says a lot for our community and we're very supportive and appreciative of you coming up here no matter what it is exactly that you're coming up to speak about and thanks to my fellow board members for allowing us to have engaging conversation at this table to allow all of us to better understand exactly what our purpose is here and how we go about doing that as far as business is concerned at the table if i missed anything president crackler please throw it out there but i think i probably looped
218in a majority of what we're looking for tonight i think i think he nailed it anybody else have anything connie i just wanted to share i mean there were there was a lot of evidence and research cited tonight and i just wanted to and i'll send this anyone can google this it's so we all belong to the new york state school boards association as school board members they do reports and research for us and there is a report on armed security in schools what the research says and i just want to read the four big takeaways school resource officers are sworn law enforcement officers assigned to work in public schools by the police departments for which they work in 2019 the number of school resource officers in new york doubled from about 200 to 400
219research is inconclusive regarding whether armed school security reduces school violence or deters schools shootings and agreements with outside security agencies should clearly define their roles and responsibilities as school board members we also get something called onboard magazine august 8th they did something on the red flag law there is limit they note there is limited case law the law does not authorize course to mandate treatment for threatening behavior nor does it prevent others in the home from possessing firearms and then the other thing just to kind of close the gap and not close the gap but just to finish my what i've been reading on july 31st in the gazette there was they feature books and there's one book from the psychiatrist who treated the movie theater killer i don't know if you remember that movie
220theater um the movie was a dark knight rises but this is a direct quote from her book she had death threats because she was a psychiatrist who was treating this mass shooter and he went on to do a mass shooting um she says even if we had super easy access to mental health care i think very few of them patients would come into treatment then once they're there there's a lot of things we can help with as psychiatrists but we can't treat hatred of mankind and a wish to kill people that's not treatable that is from dr lynn fenton a colorado psychiatrist i appreciate all the comments tonight but i think that we need to be logical and listen to people like dr laura fenton anybody else all right can i spoke too soon go
221ahead amanda just quickly i uh appreciated both sides of the sro conversation i learned from both sides um i was enlightened from from both sides of the discussion um i did want to say i appreciated the information mike that you shared with us yesterday about increased sro presence at our schools i've appreciated seeing them at my children's school and i look forward to hearing more about what that means it was a little vague i'm sure it's still unfolding what they will be doing so i'll just look forward to hearing more about that all set can i get a motion to adjourn connie seconded by amanda discussion all in favor opposed 8-0 motion passes meetings adjourned