001all right here thank you the please states i know we kind of have a bit of that atmosphere here tonight but we do want to make sure everyone's in here thank you everyone for coming all right can i take the motion to accept tonight's agenda natalia and donna okay this brings us to our first public comment period on what half of the board i'd like to extend our thanks to all of you in attendance tonight we appreciate you taking the time to be with us we value your time and are very grateful that you are here board of education meetings in new york state are board meetings held in public so we can conduct the business of the district with transparency and provide a maximum amount of information to our community this means there is
002no dialogue between the boards and 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 and we are eager to hear your voices and opinions if your statement requires follow-up the appropriate person will be in touch to for enabling efficient to accomplish the district business the first public comment period is limited to 30 minutes total while the second comment period has no timeline ground posts for public comments include speakers and audience members conducting themselves in a respectful manner please join us as role models for our students in civil discord and constructive dialogue and in return we commit to actively listen and consider what you have to say with open minds we do not allow comments about
003specific individual employees students or trustees and have a visa name and try not to repeat previous speakers in order to allow more people the opportunity to address the vote we now open the first public comment period each speaker is allowed three minutes and again a period is a total of 30 minutes before you address the lord please clearly state your name first up tonight is samurai but i do appreciate you keeping your mask on thank you so much first and foremost and um but my first question is do you have a project and what i mean by that is implementing a bachelor program so they can't chose that is one of the questions that i have the other question we have i have concerns on security especially in the um [Music] and it's [Music] i
004would also like to know about what the district is doing to recheck buildings that have molded it over the summer due to rain due to moisture due to it being unattended it is a very serious concern and thank you so much thank you um next up we have andrew shutdown hi my name is [Music] and i think as a board and as parents we can make each other aware of that and draw that place thank you so much [Music] thank you so much can you hear me okay okay good evening ladies and gentlemen the lord my name is chris duke i'm 509 broadway and i'm here to bring up an issue uh sort of following the gentleman there's a lot going on in our schools and concerns his parents one thing because is my young
005son has special needs his extremism is on a lot of medicine for that i ask him how school very marginalized 2.67 when they're sitting down there's no reason that there's put him on the side of the prospect move a little bit further [Music] thank you very much [Music] i want to talk about testing i know it's on the agenda for later i think we've got it's been a tough goal already this year in school two young kids they have a runny nose one symptom out of nine they get sent to the nurse's office whether the zero diagnosis only a phone call to a parent or from the uk and what that does to us uh leaving work taking the kid home scheduling a doctor's appointment for another diagnosis in which then we will get a
006uh order of a co-work test so that could be all of you know two to three days between the doctor's visit and testing and then after that you'll get the results serato county is put in you know with crop quadrant three and a half million dollar grant for the county all the schools i'm accounting you're using that program for testing other schools are doing it all over the county county schools down there doing it i know it's on the internet later [Music] there's a video online they go get a swat test you get the results in 24 hours it's hard enough for parents to leave their jobs to come home get their kids to the doctor and get a test and then follow can have it in up school managed by the school 24 hours
007get the results back back in school you know we're i'm lucky enough we're lucky enough on failing to manage the process the real problem is so i think that's something that it really holds know in washington people they've got to do a better program in my opinion where the kid is sick they go down on their socks and get a rabbit house negatively right back i know sarasota county doesn't have that opportunity right now but i really hope thank you so much [Music] good evening my name is district for 42 years we had two children attend who is school driving on and have two grandchildren in division street school i must say that we have been very happy overall with all this school district over the years we appreciate you all and the teachers and
008staff who work daily to support the children and make sure to a great place to live and raise a family that being said i have some serious concerns about where i see the policies and programs that are impacting our children hidden primarily based on the racist propaganda on this subject presented by the new york state education department racism we talked about this so much today this serious matter should not be tolerated anywhere especially in school currently we are discussing and developing district policies and practices in the area of diversity equity and inclusion are based on foundational guidance for the new york state education department first and foremost i believe that all children are created equal because they are created by a loving god and should all be given equal opportunity to succeed and grow in
009school and life period we should work to minimize any bias or prejudice in our school system make no mistake racism is taught no child in these schools or any other school can possibly be racist without being taught to be racist here's the definition of racism the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics abilities or qualities especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another teaching our children to look at another person to make assumptions about the character of that person based solely on skin color or any other immutable trait is in fact racist is evil and should not be tolerated this theme of racism is weak into much of the policy on dbi are currently being considered based on new york state guidance at the last sport meeting was disclosed at
010our people avenue school at our main level school made about of the students are in grade level or above in reading and math more than one-third of our students are below grade level it seems to me that we should invest more time working to better this situation than teaching our children to think and be racist i'm ready to volunteer my time to work on either the eradication of teaching racism to our children to improve the education of our children so that they can go into a world prepared to be productive our society the last thing this country or our children need is to be divided we must keep our children palpable but not blood if we teach our children precisely what dr martin luther king died for we will be fine but if we teach
011them to view people as a group based on skin color god help us all thank you for listening thank you so much next up is persons that they create as a board it is your job to ensure that policies are put in place to market safe however i ask how is muzzling our kids and functional results keeping them safe how do you restrict the creating vision keeping safe i have watched my fit where i'm asked for too long when it forms what criteria must be met before masks are no longer required these match the option just like those now you have to thread potential vaccine on our kids in schools following data alone makes you wonder why are we even doing this cdc data shows that only 143 children under the age of 12 to
012date have died in children related positive out of 1.8 million cases here in the u.s they are the least at risk if your argument is to protect that they should be vaccinated to protect our teachers or our family at home i ask you since when is a child's job to protect adults shouldn't it be the other way around with so many unknown risks on a safe vaccine i ask you is the juice worth the sweet i hope in the time each one of you stands up to them or you should step down the privilege of freedom or rights protected by the constitution we know today are being stripped one by one and now it lets you decide what side you are because if they can get to our children's future the future of this country
013if i can promise you our kids will never know what freedom is and they will never know the power that it has i know that manchester vaccines are on the right for our kids the highest laid down since government i have never felt so disconnected from my daughter's school and i know that i am not the only one i used to volunteer to leave almost every month i helped out at all the parties from valentine's day to christmas now she talks about her friends and i barely know who they are for the past two years i don't know where your teachers are i have barely seen your faces meetings it's it's crazy you have allowed this wall to be built and these policies these mandates of public schools we forever be doing more to keep
014an open discussion and not continue to wall parents off from their children's education how can we fix this is there a plan to create a committee for parents and school to encourage an open dialogue i thank you so much our last speaker is i can't read the first name i apologize his last name looks like kelly good evening paul kelly 27 thank you lord for all your time i know it's sometimes a thankless job to do what you're doing and i have one question it's more in regards to itemization of the costs on here please forgive me this is my first board meeting so it's been a drastic redirecting to the information but just looking at this on page 11 it seems like there's 321 thousand dollars in change and almost all of it is
015categorized under general supplies is there a way to get an itemization of these costs i'd like to know what the general supplies are in the curriculum purchased for 8 700 i was once a student here at georgia a long time ago i've lived in new york for a long to live in time for a while and florida has a very good open policy called sunshine law where everything is open about the public and it might be a good idea to have this information available to the public on the board with a voluntary uh process so people like me can take a look and see what's going on or have it available so if the board can do that so we appreciate it thank you again all right that comes with our first public comment period
016which brings us to our board committee reports we have our community reports today thanks angie so on behalf of the property committee we met last uh 10 days ago on monday october 18th uh bill mcmorty joined us at that meeting to talk to us about the legacy project and update us on how things are going with that and it's truly impressive to see the calculations and where the uh where the costs are going and how they short up all the you know proposed cost costs with the expenses that are anticipated to be incurred with that project so he updated us on the estimating uh process and provide the building level reviews of the times design development phase uh there was also going to be an update on bidding that occurred three days after our meeting
017so that has since happened and i'm sure that they have revised the figures for us with respect to the legacy project but the project that the community approved last december uh is now well on its way and things are really coming to fruition at least on paper so very excited to be a part of the process the other thing that we talked about was something that isn't directly related to school that has a great impact on schools and that's right here at dorky nolan the town of wilton has applied for new york state department of transportation grant the grant application that they submitted is actually a traffic submission for grant funds that will help improve the traffic pattern over here on jones road and car road so they're looking to put in a traffic survey
018the traffic circle is put in at that intersection it will greatly positively impact the foot traffic here at thorpe and norman so the school uh the property committee the school board we're all in support of that so we talked through that john tiener uh provided us an update that says that they have submitted the application but we probably will not hear anything until january or february of 2022 so as we learn more from the property we'll make sure that we'll work on that thanks dean and i did science on the back of our board all right another committee reports italian um [Music] any questions for policy board the finance committee met on the same monday we most of what we covered is present in one form or another materials that you had that you went
019in sharepoint uh there's nice meetings the one of those the budget development calendar the 20 the the calendar to the draft form that was as part of the sharepoint docs we discussed the internal audit reports for the 2020-2021 school year the upshot of which also is in your documents uh there were no findings and uh you know procurement activities that were that were examined uh we are switching to a new internal auditor this year um in hopes after uh rfpd process in hopes of improving the timing of their reports thus the last followers had a tough time getting us those quickly um the third thing was uh also present in your documents and the general underscore last mentioned it we've discussed the budget adjustment needed to spend the carrier money from the cares act funds
020uh these are coveted related um funds that have been uh given to us and we do have broad attitude to um to spend those in many different areas um the both are going to general supplies to the school level and the departmental level um we talked about the extra classroom and activity fund uh activity fun uh guide and training video this was a labor that joe greco in particular have been putting together for the last i don't know how long a video and handbook for club advisors that we hope will improve compliance in the area of better control bookkeeping for the clubs you know students are involved teachers are involved with lots of uh other things on their plates and um it's an off-cited uh area that that auditors find is indeed an improvement at
021schools and uh we saw the video with required and which is 40 pages long also comes with a quiz and a yearly checking and documentation of compliance by the students and the teachers involved so really impressive work by the finance office and putting that together it took a lot of work and i think it's gonna do a lot of good and then finally tim discussed the possibility of a new york state uh osc audit uh we haven't had them in six years and uh that's rare uh and so there's likely one coming uh they're they're long [Music] emotional learning programs these are things that are heard in the breakdown of other uh other superintendents in charge of finance but we don't know about me or what it will be but it'll likely take quite a
022bit off at this time when it happened that's it question sorry office of the state controller any other questions all right create any other board reports [Music] i don't think titles that absenteeism but is really going to focus on chronic absenteeism and how to address that better in schools and reach out to those children so that they can get into school and congratulations equivalent to others in their history so it should be fantastic filling up those speakers that's really great um unfortunately i'm out of town so i won't be able to go but i've seen all the things that they have in mind for it so if we are able to attend it was a lovely event so [Music] representative reports [Music] um um greenfield has organized a pbis fall spirit week and tomorrow sheltered
023with harvest parties um caroline street has a pta coordinated halloween fall fest and that's supposed to be held outdoors um it's going to be a family and community event and then lake has a spirit week for students and staff um today they're celebrating through doctors and generally all the elementary schools are very to be back in person this year and they're getting back into swinging a holiday celebration switching over to the lab middle school they had a very successful have funded affair 1 200 books for make lab students um and over at the high school um the halloween the senior only halloween dance is tomorrow um but end will be a fun and safe class event for seniors and lastly the drama club will hold its fall production radio drills on friday november 12th and
024november 13th so please come out good evening welcome everybody thanks for coming out uh at this meeting each year it's my honor to recognize our board of education members uh for their service to our school district first of our school community and school boards across new york state are recognized for their dedicated leadership to public education uh and especially their continuing service uh and their dedication to uh children of our community um and again it's been mentioned several times tonight uh we are so fortunate to have nine volunteers in our community uh who really dedicate a tremendous amount of their own time their personal time in service to the school district i'm very proud of the efforts that our board makes in their own professional development and their advocacy efforts on behalf of the children
025here in sarasota springs so like i said it's truly an honor of the year to take the opportunity to thank our board members for everything they do for our schools and just as a again a token of our appreciation our horticulture students that our local boces put together a flower arrangement to thank our board members for their service and i've got a certificate that i'll want to recognize each board trustee individually that says it's school boards recognition week honoring each of our board trustees for their dedicated leadership and public education and continuing service to the children of the saratoga springs school district community so with that said i'd like to again recognize each trustee individually and again a random applause for their dedicated services thomas attack [Music] so again it's my honor to serve on
026this governance team uh and truly appreciate uh all the efforts our board members make throughout the course of the school year we do have another recognition tonight and i'm glad i see maura is here with us just a few weeks ago the new york state public relations association which is nisbra is made up of public relations specialists from all across the state and they have annual communication contests where school districts can submit pieces of work that they've created in the course of the school year and more than is our full-time communications specialist here in san springs and maura is just does an incredible job on telling our district story putting out newsletters to the community helping the videos she maintains a different website which she's working on this year there's a whole renewal that we're
027working on for a refreshing our district website uh as well as both internal communications that shared with staff and then supporting our building principals and our teachers with information that comes out from the building level so uh so first i just want to take the opportunity to recognize and thank maura for the incredible job she does throughout the school year supporting our district but also just to announce that she was nominated with an award of merit for our capital project newsletter so in anticipation of last december's legacy vote um we'll work extremely hard with our partners in mosaic and central project management so many of you received that newsletter at home as well as our annual budget newsletter so two of our publications were selected by the new york state public relations association uh for
028just the incredible work that she's done so congratulations to maura and again thank you very much for bringing me here for you and i have a few updates uh hopefully one of our parents have asked questions about testing this computer are you still here oh great okay good it's always helpful once again we've got questions and we can be able to provide some updates to our community members so as i have each week uh providing some updates uh of the accuracy uh surgical spread school district as well as all of our neighborhood school districts in sarasota county uh obviously have a very close working relationship with certain county department of health as i mentioned many times dr fuels is the the health commissioner of saratov county he's a resident he's there for his friends his
029children come to our school district so he has invested interest and again the success of all school districts in the county but especially right here in sarasota springs so they've been a wonderful partner for the school district and again providing guidance providing training for our staff and then again all of the recommended protocols that we have in place to keep our students and staff safe throughout the course of the school year so just an update from board for the community we've been talking about being a year there's the mandate to have all of our staff testing on a weekly basis for those folks who are unvaccinated and so we gave our staff about a month to provide proof of vaccination and for those individuals who are not vaccinated we have a program offered weekly now
030for the middle school and high school about 125 staff members are participating in participating in a county-based program uh it's really gone very smooth um so staff comes in after work hours uh it is a private test uh that our parent had that indicated that the counties applied for some grant money that is available to school districts for again first to start with our staff testing and then the next step in this process is to use the same quadrant test with parent consent to begin screening testing for our students so we've just filled out a survey from the your state department of health uh school districts were just asked about again having the resources available to us the partnership with our county sarasota county right now is actually leading the state in testing procedures so
031again there is a partnership between all the counties in the area because obviously a school district we have you know students obviously living in certain perspectives we have parents who work in other school districts so sometimes over the last year there has been some confusion about you know what our practice is in warren or washington county and why a different unique conservative and uh county but again i give dr fuels a tremendous amount of credit uh he is a well-respected epidemiologist uh at the state uh and actually federal level and so he has implemented some protocols uh that you're in the university of saratoga county will be the first to be able to implement one of which just started last week and that's a reduction in the mandatory quarantine time so when this again pandemic
032started it used to be 14 days that an individual if they were identified as a close contact would have to be out of school or out of work uh last year central county advocated to reduce that to 10 days and then last week we got an authorization that they were the only county in the state has operational authorization now we use from 10 days down to seven days with a five-day uh test test out option so uh when our students again are identified as either positive or as in close contact um the parents have that option now uh after 85 to test out and get their kids back to school so definitely a step in the right direction you know obviously as educators we have been advocating to do anything we possibly can do again
033to keep our kids in school and again when we have students who are systematic or students who test positive it's happening every day whether it's students or staff members and again in a large community of over 6 000 students 1100 staff members we have learned to manage through positive total cases but the counties also has presented proposals to the state department of health if you remember several meetings ago we had a parent come and ask about the massachusetts plan which is the test to stay option and again it's being piloted right now in southwest falls so saratoga county is uh researching that option and we hope uh if everything goes well uh that the test the state option will be the first uh available in new york state uh right here in syracuse county so
034again that is it would be the case that if the student is in close contact not necessarily the student who is i identified as positive or symptomatic those obviously those individuals both students and adults would still be quarantined but if the student was identified or an adult was identified as close contact if they were not symptomatic and again they were healthy we're not showing any scientific symptoms individuals would be permitted to come to school every day we would use the rapid tests not the quadrant test the quantum test it's more of a diagnostic test so we'd be using rapid tests and again the the test this data is something that as educators we've really been uh advocating for uh and it's great to see uh that we're very close uh to having that option available
035to us so that is not a local board of education decisions but will not be a vote for the board once saratoga county uh hasn't been approved we will be full speed ahead to put that in place and again if you read recent news released just yesterday new york state department health has authorized this to move forward they are not sanctioning it they're not again authorizing at this time they're saying it's a local level decision finder county departments of health and again we are just very fortunate uh that we're situated here in saratov county uh and our independent health has been very progressive uh in their actions um so again we are continuing to move in the right direction and again i think this is a result of just incredible collaboration and cooperation between all
036the saratov county school districts with dr pewell's and his staff and i can't say thank you enough to all the support that they have provided each week the board asks that i provide an update on the total number of cases both student and staff and again committee members can go to the air station school report card code report card as of today we have 90 total cases since the beginning of the school year we had an increase of 17 cases in just the last week so we were down at one point last week to only having 10 students and quarantined as a result of those 17 additional cases this week we are 90 students currently in quarantine so again we make every effort that we possibly can to limit the disruption of having kids out
037of school but again we work closely with the county health department when it comes to identifying close contacts and then providing families with all the information that they need that if they want uh to take advantage of the reduction in quarantine time uh that is all according to the county that has nothing to do with the school district so uh again the district helps in the contact tracing process but it's the form the county department of health is who quarantines and we always say this over and over to make sure that the parents understand what the schools whose role responsibility is and then obviously their work with the county um to take advantage of that return to the school uh early so so again positive uh results um another thing the state just released last
038night our parents earlier indicated the frustration when parents had to go to a pediatrician's office and get a pcr test that that can take several days to get a result that i just took my own summit monday to see the nutrition because he was out of school on monday he took the pcr test monday morning at the doctor's office and by eight o'clock monday night he got called back to the pediatrician that he was negative he could return to school so again every parent i think has gone through a similar experience um dr serranza and our community care physicians uh partner dr friends in our school physician his office has been just inundated with pressing requests of getting that pcr test from the kids to return to school so what the state has now made
039available uh to to school districts across the state is that if an individual is fully vaccinated uh a rapid test would be now allowable for students or staff members to return to school so the pcr test moving forward will not be a required test so the rapid tests obviously are much more available to school districts into pediatrician offices 15 minute turnaround so much quicker response than having to wait on a pcr so again all good things all things that obviously as educators we've been advocating for uh and some of these things obviously were announced just yesterday and until we see it from writing uh would be obviously the the regulations the stuff that we would have to follow in the school district so um so again if the board had any questions consider this information
040i haven't even shared it because i just read it uh it seemed like the department but it really is it's all good it's all good information so questions from board um on the last point you were making with some of those rabbits be available in the schools yeah correction we have ordered a whole new batch of new rapid tests one of the requirements for our winter high risk student athletes to participate winter sports again for students who are convex maybe we'll have to participate in some weekly rapid tests screening tests again wrapping test is not a diagnostic test it's just a screening test so the school district has a submitted request to the state to have rapid tests available they are hard to come by right now there's definitely a supply and demand type issue
041that's out there um but we are requesting so so if a child were vaccinated and then had the stimulus that got sent down to the nurse when the system is in place they could theoretically like you to pass along a big thank you to dr for moving us forward and southbound falls for being the pilot yep thank you i will we meet tomorrow morning at age 13. so all of them share your your appreciation um so this i'm just going to turn over to lisa again the health and safety component but then there's obviously the academic support um that as a result is when students do go out on quarantine um just an update as to where we are from the academic side good evening everyone just um [Music] don't need to um that here
042the things that we've been working on and continue to work on are basically falling into two categories making sure we support our students with disabilities when they are out of foreign [Applause] [Music] setting those supports up so we'll continue to do that and also continuously gathering feedback on the program itself from parents who have students with ben adams and to provide a better support for our students during what is certainly not an ideal time but we really do feel the need to support our students and are always trying to improve on that the other things on that is always trying to improve on communication in terms of what do i know my child is now on a locker quarantine because really uh parents don't necessarily have to pay attention to it until you really need
043it so trying to find out how to make it as user friendly and easy as possible to get the information right there when you need it so we continue to work on better ways to streamline that with our buildings our website communication everything like that so it's an ongoing process that you will continue to evaluate to go through hopefully you will not need as much based on some of the developments that dr kat mentioned thank you lisa i just wanted to to check on page six [Music] of your presentation in the top box it says performance longer than three days but then in the description since two yes so we you're actually trying to do it more quickly if we can um so it's two days and then on the third day we're trying to
044get the students in but we've actually been able to get students in most of the time before then um if we chucked it down from four days to three and a half a lot of the time we're able to do it more quickly um as it rolls out and with that is there any thought being given to increasing the amount of construction for five for longer than one hour and then for the rest of the district for more than two hours of flight construction one of the things that we're working on is the quality of the instruction that's happening right now so i think that's the first thing to try and get it um thank you so this time uh it's my pleasure um we have our last program report so if you remember back
045in september we started with our high school minister of the team uh then we were fortunate to hear from our middle school administrative team uh so tonight all six of our elementary schools are represented by our seven elementary school principals as well as jim steinle who's our director of elementary instruction so they're here tonight to present their annual cafes vision k5 program report so at this time i'm going to turn over to our elementary administrative administration so dr messing you're kicking it off [Music] so i got you wondering too this is the third time i think that i've gotten to lead off our presentation i was thinking how come i get sober and i had a student in the office a couple of days ago and he was asking me about the big statement in
046the office and i said well this usually means a hospital it was built in 1923 it's almost 100 years old he was like you've been here division as we examine and reflect on our program each year in preparation to present to you you board members work so hard and are so giving up your time that we want to present the most thorough and informative program that we have when we prepare for our program we talk about all of the activities and programs that we have and we always keep the four core beliefs at the core of our mission so that we can present to you knowing that each one of them does address each one of the four beliefs if the purpose of schooling is a warm welcome and a sense of belonging certainly these
047last few years have really challenged us to make that a core to make that really our mission as we look at the core beliefs and that has been something that we've had to do very differently these past two years but we feel like that we have worked hard and diligently and respectfully as we come together to talk and discuss and prepare our programs that they are so in sync with one another and i think that you'll see that in all of our elementary schools in the presentation tonight that we all focus on the four floor beliefs and that you will see how hard working our district is to make school for our students truly a warm welcome and a sense of alone which does lead to high achievement so with that said i will turn
048it over to dr patrick who here tonight and i love this core belief i think maybe it's because i'm a first generation college graduate i love the idea though that we are going to overcome barriers to make sure that all students are successful in school and i've always been able to talk about this so my priority for this year is to increase the number of students who are efficient proficient in ela but i'm excited to share about that particular minority is that this is the first year that we've had a common reliable valid assessment across all of our schools and you're status you've had to have but this is the first time in several years that we've had one assessment that is created outside and how do we select this assessment tool last year there
049was a distribution committee we had teachers administrators and they looked at various assessment tools and several of the teachers highlighted i-ready assessment and also the n-w-e-pa assessment then it takes a chance to sit down and look at that data first of all he's giving us next was the assessment engaging for our students teachers selected the iranian assessment and many other districts already used american assessment it is a computer adaptive assessment so what that means if i'm a student and i'm taking the test and i answer the question correctly and continues on introducing a slightly harder question i continue i get it correct it gives me another hard question if i get the question at all it then adapts to my response and it gives me an easier question and all the questions for our focus
050standards for the next students so when the child is done taking the assessment teachers and ministers can look at how do our students do on these standards [Music] the trainer showed all of us how teachers can access instructional materials that are specific for an individual so whether your child did really well on the assessment perhaps you'd like them to have access to leadership originally there are instructional activities and lessons and access for that child and [Music] and finally so i mentioned the classroom teachers but if you have a child who has some significant delays in the test they may need some academic prevention services right well now because we have a common assessment across we now have very clear consistent criteria for identifying students who may need academic international services so whether you're at dorothy
051nolan or you're a parallel street we can all look at the same numbers in the same score for our students and identify the kids big equity good evening sounded perfect did you see i was getting a tutorial over there so on behalf of our to highlight some of uh work that we are doing in the elementary buildings focusing on diversity equity and inclusion both our leadership team and building teams continue to engage in purposeful discussions and professional learning with guidance and support from our district office and generation ready consultant anna munoz last school year all of the elementary buildings participated in discussions focused on culture diversity identity perspective equity and access these conversations were critical to our professional growth over the summer the administrative team participated in a workshop from boces that outlined the nicest
052dpi frameworks which were issued late last spring what we noticed is that each of our core beliefs listed in our pathways contains elements included in a proposed cpi framework which is indicative that we are engaging in the right work here at saratoga our elementary administrators are working closely with building leadership teams to develop smarty goals for each faculty these are goals that are inclusive and equitable we do this through looking at our instruction curriculum resources and student support services to ensure a welcoming and affirming environment for all this year elementary educators across the district will continue to impede engage in intentional discussions which foster culturally responsive instruction in all classrooms we will continue to align our work with the goals of the district's dei committee which is compromised comprised of educators students parents and community
053members we look forward to updating you on our continued work and now mr thank you so much we are as you've heard and seen through other word event presentations our collective effort over the past four years has been the ela renewal process this year was a heavily anticipated year of implementation of the american reading company program also referred to as arc and our grades came here too just like so many other things our initial implementation plan unfolds with cobit so we were excited for this year to get underway as explained in tuesday night's parent university session art was selected by a committee of over 40 people including teachers administrators and literacy experts this team knew that increasing students time on reading could change the structure of their life and is looking for a resource that
054aligned with what we wanted for our students ours scored green in all categories on ed reports which is a curriculum renewal tool that helps review and focus on the alignment of standards the rigor of the program and usability from a student and staff art perspective a wide variety of diverse and authentic texts books at each reading level have been balanced for genre quality of literature along with kid appeal and the ethnicity of the main character as gabby our art teacher shared today on the tour we want all of our students to feel welcome in saratoga and one way of helping us reach that goal is to be sure that they see themselves in the stories that we share we know some people inquired about the books being used and we wanted to provide into as
055much transparency as possible recognizing as some of the family members have shared here that they feel isolated um from schools through our coded situations but our company has been very clear with us in sharing that they in no way teach racial supremacy or racial hate nor have we seen that in any of the materials that we're using and many of you probably saw some sample texts when you are at division street we also help you to peruse the teacher manuals that we provide in the back of the gymnasium to get more information around the actual text or curriculum you'll see in those materials that there are four texts shared in the whole class there are additional read-alouds and other books that students use throughout each of our units the beauty of art in comparison to
056some of our other past resources is that it intentionally is designed to include core curriculum and personalized paths for learning this speaks to what dr packard and ms whitley was sharing about equity of opportunity our cultural diversity efforts and along with our collaboration here this allows us to accelerate and scaffold support as needed for individual students maximizing growth for all with this shift and approach and the need for shifts in our mindset shifts in our instructional practice and shifts in our data collection knowing how important the first year implementation is for any program our district has done a fantastic job of mapping out a year one plan in collaboration with art supports the year-long calendar provides us with checkpoints in guidance as to where we should be and where our focus and energy should be
057given at any point in time as engineers we want to know what's ahead of us we want to do our best and this calendar helps protect us from our own good intentions it's very easy to overwhelm the amount of material there is and these checkpoints help us maintain balance each building has been provided two full days of coaching in each building each month these sessions are taking place both virtually and in person with our trainers our training days are tailored in a variety of ways to investigate the needs at the current time including whole group sessions visual activations of the work modeled by our coaches work with our plts on specific questions they may have and one-on-one drafting sessions for any teacher who has specific to their students with any new program from questions from
058teachers families and others and the questions come up or concerns are raised we encourage anyone to work with one another at their plt level in the building include principles as needed and when necessary reach out to our coaches and supports our district directors or other experts in the field most recently we have had a grade level working in conjunction with our art coaches and anna minas to help navigate conversations and potential scenarios in which she was asked for survivors now most programs do offer professional development to teachers when you sign on but art is also provided embedded leadership training so that principals can run alongside our teachers and help guide and monitor the implementation it also hosts a convenient session with parents to help families understand the shift in our ela instruction and how to
059best support their children at home we look forward to our training with teachers in grades three to five this spring with an anticipated full rollout next year and i'm going to now turn over to dana bush um here with helen to talk you through a bit more about what the heart feels like on a day-to-day basis good evening everyone it's been really great to see this program in action [Music] and it's been an awesome start so far so for the past six weeks of school our teachers have been launching the literacy lab which is the first of four units of the program and during this time period we're developing the classroom daily routine that will then be present in all future units to start off we focus on real engagement this program stresses the importance
060of having that love for reading so teachers work closely with their students to try to make them help find the books that would suit their talents their interests their culture there are hundreds of books that students can choose from and not only do they match the student's reading level but they also get the option of choosing what folks interest them the 100 book challenge is also a huge portion of this program and it really encourages that lifelong reading by increasing the amount of time students spend on their reading skills so the goal for the program is for students to read 30 minutes independently during the school day and then 30 minutes outside of the school day or thursday in the morning the evening whatever is best for the family also during this literacy lab unit
061the teachers cited ministers at burla which is the independent reading level assessment and this is the formative assessment that a teacher does one-on-one with a student and it really provides specific information as to where that student currently is why they're there and then action on steps that are needed to accelerate their reading growth so from there the teachers identify a power goal for each of their students and then the program provides specific toolkit lessons that can help the students develop the skills registered to achieve or master that power goal once that power rule has been mastered another one is the breadth of it it's really been so great to see the kids taking ownership of their reading and writing starting from the beginning of kindergarten we are so proud of them and we love seeing
062their hand in books every day we are going to be moving into unit 2 starting in the next week or so and that unit consists of our students reading writing and researching on a science topic [Applause] independently in even with the classroom and then also a picture of our art coach working one-on-one with one of our students utilizing lessons based on the students powerful so hopefully i can share that with everyone in the near future so now we need to turn it over to dr greer miller to talk a little bit about our professional learning okay good evening everyone one of the core beliefs of the district's pathways is collaboration we've heard a little bit of that the priority that i'm referring to is also continuously improving student work through highly functioning professional learning communities
063the pandemic has really brought together the plcs they had a strong foundation to begin with but then this has really unified them they are meeting weekly um throughout the pandemic texts running in-person meetings all of the above happening and some of them are meeting daily as well as we have discussed the american reading company and also the iranian programs the plts are meeting together so that means classroom teachers ais students enl teachers special ed teachers and at grade level all hearing the same message through the different trainings and professional development opportunities the plts are also sharing and collaborating through resources activities and different lessons they're spreading out their responsibilities when they're informing parents of different initiatives sending out newsletters they're drawing on each other's strengths and again being on the same age with regard to
064curriculum with regards pacing activities cultural arts activities all of the involved it has truly been wonderful watching the plc's grow over the years [Music] of support for our students and staff if you've been at children in elementary school if you've been on the board you'd like to hear the acronym rti it stands for response to intervention and it usually typically focuses on the academic side of the house in terms of literacy and mathematics and rita is a process in which we engage in to make sure the meeting needs a role for students as you know the last few years our districts have had a very strong commitment to social emotional health and so it just means appropriate that we start to broaden our processes that we use to address the needs of all students mtss
065is now also called multi-tiered systems of support and multi-tiered systems of supports addresses not just the academic side of literacy and mathematics but also the social emotional well-being of our students so if you work with me through my visual if you look in an algorithm and tss is the larger and then underneath mtss important element of the process such as rti or mtss is a screen we use an academic screener as you heard here tonight dr packard called already and that screener allows us to catch or make sure that we're meeting the needs of every student because every student engages in that screener so now the social emotional side we are now implementing a social emotional screener called the bc and the bc is a very quick way for teachers to look at students demeanors
066through externalizing categories tight behaviors and then internalizing behaviors such as the behavior that would um look like a child's drawing and our pbs teams will look at this data to make sure that if there's any child that needs support or making sure that there is support that they need either through support network so that might look like a mentor a checking checkout program or um sure three which would be more intensive support such as you can hear the emphasis on making sure that all students are are looked at and and made sure that they're meeting all of their needs and that helps them get to that comprehensive plan that's our priority this year i need to talk about two companies and the last one is community we know that our priority is just to continue
067to strengthen our communication systems both at the clock all at the classroom the building and the district world and so last year we started using csun it was a very powerful positive tool with our families and so we want to take it a step further this year and one of our goals is to establish a predictable communication skill using csa and then also monitor and promote family engagement with that tool we also are looking at accessibility to technology we are monitoring student access to devices and internet at home and we're intervening when necessary and then we continue as we need to communication we have a classroom teachers keep information present and on seesaw so families can access it readily we've also distributed families so that they understand the tools that they think their children can
068access and then we do continue to support and remind our students about the importance of doing data and we did we had um i have a daughter first grade caroline so we're going through this program but i also have about our third grade so i can see the sort of the before and after and i just want to say as someone who works professionally in the literacy sector i'm really excited about this program there seems to be so much intentionality with this um communication has been wonderful my daughter loves to read anyway but she's very excited about the program as well i do look forward to hearing more about the specific texts that are being used and excited that there's information in the back for us to go through i apologize there's a lot of
069um abbreviations i'm trying to get used to can someone explain the difference between the library assessment and irwin we've used already [Music] [Applause] it's adaptive and so questions start at the student's grade level and as they get one wrong it depends on they go up right it goes up and it tries to find that sweet spot of resulting possible learning like here's where the kid is identifying strengths identifying that step so they can continue is part of our new literacy program and it is not computer-based it's a one-on-one conversation and work with this teacher it starts with some quick screens to kind of understand there's a good spot for the student and the teacher to really dig in once they go through those initial screens students are asked to read one-on-one live with the teacher
070and so the assessments give us hopefully some alliance information about kids students and businesses in ela but also different points of information students react very differently and some better on a computer versus one-on-one with the teacher and vice versa there are differences between a student reading independently at a computer at especially our primary level versus working with the teacher one-on-one and so we find value in all of it i know we have as a district that really worked to try to minimize the amount of assessments and then i focus on the action connected to those and i think they've done a good job and we continue to reflect and refine and adapt but these two pieces i hope will serve great purposes going forward and give us pieces of information that should be aligned but
071also helpful in different ways for you i think so it sounds like maybe i'm getting on the eye ready is for the natural look and then the herbalife is really going to drill down yes okay okay okay assessment is administered three times a year at a set schedule but erla is administered on one to the start of the year and then progress stress when the student has mastered the powerful and they're ready to move on that's when the quick check is done individually the flowers there was a word up there that i really love to see and it was the word predictable i think that when you have small children it's a nice word but post pandemic it well we're still in the middle of it i guess where you missed it's a really nice
072word so i'm just wondering what the predictable communications would like what do you mean by that can you be specific um there's a plus families can button on communication at a certain time and also depend on the type of communication that's to make and if i can speak to greenfield since our vlt is working on developing what that predictable structure would look like and also what it might include so it might be different school to school but what's most important is that families know when to expect i just think we have six great elementary schools and uh it's really cool to see your strong team working closely together i know you're always trying to figure out a balance between a consistent system across classes and schools and enabling creativity and independence on the private teachers
073and i this you've shown us uh vividly kind of how the system works i'm just wondering how teachers are feeling and whether we are protecting their capacity to you know some teachers may be eager to get whatever you give them in the program and others may be sort of you know wanting to do go out the rails a little bit i just wonder how they're feeling about it and how do you all balance that trick you go down well like with anything people learn in different places and at different times some things are easy for some folks and then some things are doing more difficult so i know i'm speaking from my choice i'm very excited about materials and at the same time there's a lot to learn and so what we're emphasizing and our
074coaches emphasizes grace giving teachers the opportunity to take time to learn the material and get themselves great for not um being able to do everything our coaches emphasize that again and again and again it's okay that you don't get it the first time um i know in there's different aspects of art there's the teaching side of art working through the manuals and then there's also a digital side to art and so depending on your expertise you may be struggling in one area or another um but we're all i i know every coaching session our coach today and he doesn't work through it and it's exciting to learn how this is a real available stress it's so robust i was just going to add to that this program incorporates reading read aloud almost on a daily
075basis sometimes multiple times a day and those texts are optional so teachers can choose from a variety of those real labs but if they have realized that they use throughout the years that they love and have a place in their heart those are also on the table to still be used within the classroom setting teaching the same thing whether it's theme or main idea um all right well thank you so much um for a fantastic presentation around all of our different levels of learning and programs i really appreciate it so much so again i also want to thank our principals for presentation but really to our entire elementary staff with our administrators working so closely with our our faculty and support staff across the district you know obviously tonight we have incredible schools for our
076kids and to think about the last three four years the research that's gone into the implementation of arc and do it at a time in the middle of a pandemic it would have been very easy to continue to postpone but our teachers took on this challenge uh and uh has worked extremely hard and you can see a lot of collaboration uh tremendous amount of feedback into uh the process itself but uh i had the opportunity to sit with our principals and teachers and some of the professional development sessions and um you know the board now has visited several elementary schools and it has to have the opportunity to see the resources that are available to our teachers and your feedback so again just thank you obviously to our administrative team for uh your wonderful efforts
077and obviously the partnership with our teachers who are dedicated obviously to uh helping out not only the academic needs but also that focus on social emotional and making sure we're providing all the support that our children their families need um during these challenging times so uh before i return back forward i want to thank dave and courtney uma for the tour tonight uh it's always an awesome opportunity for our board to get into classrooms tonight all of our special area teachers here from knowledge our art music library pe teachers had a chance to showcase their programs and their classroom space and the wonderful opportunities that our students have really had again across the district um here at the uh at the elementary level so uh thanks today for hosting the board of education and to
078all the teachers that open up their classrooms to the board of education so great job everybody all right thank you so much um [Music] we do we have uh three modifications the first one is the uh what you see on the addendum and that that roman numeral and i think it makes more sense to think of it as j and k and then you would add all that to page number seven underneath um and then um the second one is also on page seven on page seven item g for paige gilfoyle the school listed there is geyser road and it should be maple app [Music] all right there's a third one [Music] and the numbering there is a little confusing item four actually goes from the top of page eight to the top of page
079nine and we are going to uh we are required legally to pull out that item and have a roll call vote on that it's fairly lengthy um it's a sarah springs city school district reconstruction visiting skate park inside recreation park resolution i won't read it but i know you all read and so we're going to we're going to pull that out and have a roll call load among the trustees and that is all a lot of patience [Music] so i think i now would like to move that resolution that we just pulled out that we approve that resolution okay any discussion yes i now move that we approve the consent agenda as modified any discussion thank you so much all right this one brings us to a second comment period yes before you start i
080want to do a quick reminder that it is still three minutes per person same including um and audiences conducting themselves in a respectful manner no comments about specific individual employees students or presidents [Music] thank you [Music] looking at october 19th meaning that it is largely women and so from a diversity standpoint and representation at that point i was suggesting maybe one or two men get selected that they're there also dr patton i'd like to thank you and whoever made the decision uh to give the staff i think i understand the staff as a decision for some some reason some staff have not been vaccinated given an alternative to intestines that way the state has provided uh all school districts for whatever reason people choose not to give accidents non-vaccinated people people who haven't vaccinated can
081contract and spread the disease so i would ask you maybe to consider doctors does that make sense not to have all thank you anyone else wanting to speak with the board yeah i just want to thank everybody for giving us the opportunity as the public to share how to share pretty relative issue affords attention one of them was obviously testing i worked in the state of new york we're under a similar mandate two tests weekly every seven days and again people will give those individuals some state agencies have pushed for testing actually two weeks that's a little bit more fair consideration from teachers who may have deeply held religious police for not being a vaccination by making them test and only tests tests so i would recommend pushing that maybe reaching out to the state
082and putting together that alternative maybe those parents board members our group is new york reform uh at the beginning of october about 90 members in the county we have now exploded to well over 100 we're going to connect with other families throughout the state of new york there's about 20 counties on board and one thing we are addressing is obviously some parents concerned with the literature that their children are being exposed to also the potential critical race theory coming out of the schools that a lot of our members have uh including mass candidates and potential uh not seen in these as well that may come down so again we'll hang around if anybody's interested in knowing a little bit more about our organization and us we were more than happy to share that information with
083you uh all involved we're numbers teachers uh a lot of state members uh but yeah you just want to make sure that everybody especially the children being represented thank you anybody else all public right period thanks again to everyone who's been here tonight and stuck it through all the presentations we really appreciate this brings us to our agenda planning portion of the night and we have one [Music] yep we have a board workshop that's scheduled for monday november 15th uh six o'clock to the end we just held a board workshop this past tuesday night in the high school pplc highlighting all of our district diversity equity inclusion efforts so next topic for november 15 is our budget development process that meeting will be held in the administrative offices in rooms 221-223 again these are information
084educational sessions for the board but those sessions are open to the public for those folks who would like to observe so again uh tim hilker joe greco from our business office uh each year provide an overview of the budget development cycle for board uh and then focuses on specific items that finance committees recommend for this specific workshop so 7 30 monday night november 15th okay [Music] so i think finance already agreed that the workshop was going to take place in finance uh property committee has postponed so we're really down just a policy so again if we can still move ahead and we have some public student review i said let's try to stay on schedule so maybe we can meet at 5 30 i'll put the information ahead of time but uh policy may be
085able to meet at 5 30 in person since we're going to be gathering sex so i'd like to i'd like to try to keep the policy cycle moving and not not pass up an opportunity for the committee to get together but both finance and property will not need that night that's very helpful all right [Music] um these teachers are doing with our students and i just think it's so wonderful to have um um i just want to thank the principals for your presentation um congratulations to laura [Music] i know this is a huge time commitment and a lot of jargon that you might not be familiar with so i personally appreciate you showing an interest in what is going on in our district and sharing your views um it's very clear that um all of
086us here are in the same place we are caring deeply about our children and what they're learning and who they're being taught how they're being taught to be good human beings in our community and for the planet so i just i i know i think it's wonderful that we have different ideas and that we can have these conversations and here with each other and i'm just very grateful that we're all here for our kids and willing to work together so well so thank you so much for being here again staying the whole night that's really the last time so appreciate it thank you principles great great captioning um