BOE Meeting 7/22/2021

001all right well it's a little uh after 6 30 so we'd like to get started uh just going to entertain production purposes my name is mike patton's from tennis schools here at saratoga springs uh and tonight uh from 6 30 to 7 o'clock uh we're going to be presenting our district-wide safety plan this is her new york state education law we've been doing this for the last several years and i just want to give a lot of kudos to dave ohamadou mickey jones is here and we have several members of our board of education as well as our teachers and support staff and administrators uh that throughout the year work on our district emergency response teams as well as our building level emergency response teams so this is an obligation that the state put out

002to all school districts in the state is to have a district-wide safety plan developed by our staff provided the opportunity for communities input so our safety plan has been published it's been shared on our district website uh and the last 30 days we provide the community the opportunity for public input so dave's going to review some of the highlights of the safety plan uh obviously we'll open up for questions from the board any members of the community have uh related to this district by safety plan so that's the the topic of conversation for this first half hour and then at seven o'clock we will actually open the regular business meeting uh of which the agenda is available on the back table so if folks are here uh with questions as it relates to the safety

003plan uh we'll open up for questions at the end of this first uh you know 20 25 minute session uh if you're here for things related to the agenda there is a public comment period at the beginning of the regular business meeting after seven o'clock so just to make sure that uh folks have signed in and we've got the appropriate meetings to answer questions that folks may have so again assistant superintendent dave mohammadu uh does an incredible job leading all of our district safety and security efforts uh so we'll turn it over to the agency to talk through some of the highlights uh and answer questions that the board of community may have you um so a couple things as mike said the plan has been on our website for the last month um on

004the website there was the ability for public to put comments on so we'll try to kind of summarize some of those comments as well we also invite people we actually are going to do a safety presentation through the board into the community in september we're on the agenda and after you hear more about some of the things we do we're trying really it's just a quick overview of the plan some of the updates some of the changes and then we'll do our best to answer any questions or maybe about the plan so this is this process starts um really happens throughout the school year um looking at one of the original things we'll do is we look at what are some of the new requirements from new york state and try to make sure that

005any of those requirements are included one of the new components that we had to add this year which i can scroll down to but it was the appendix at the end of the plan was a pandemic continuity of operations plan and it really was set up due to covet 19 but it really was more not just for kobe before hopefully we don't have any future pandemics but if we do there's an operations plan that will be attached to our main district plan also went through and i think it was just last meeting we had to have our board of education approve our basic membership which is listed in the plan as well the members are on there um we also have board of ed trustees that's sitting on those meetings we have law enforcement that

006helps us we have students and some of those folks weren't listed in that chart but they also are part of our group they're also another component regarding a state of emergency the next one i can kind of scroll down to here we left most of the changes in red right again i didn't read it to you but this was highlighted there it is so that gets in and talks about um basically it has to do more with our workforce and our staff if we do declare a state of emergency or the governor declared your state of emergency so those steps are outlined listed in there we also have um two sros in our district there's an sro from the saratoga spring city police department and also an sro from the sarasota county sheriff's office and

007those contracts that's another requirement are also listed as appendix are in there as part of the plan so that's some of the kind of logistics some of the updates some of our process we have our legal counsel review it um we have our district response team members review it um it's sent to our leadership council as well then goes to our district policy committee um which we had a couple of changes that we went through and modified based on their their comments and then again it's been on the website for the last 30 days for any more public feedback or comments and then we have our public hearing tonight and our goal is hopefully in the next board meaning that the plan can be adopted approved by the board any questions on that process so

008just briefly i'll talk about some of the comments that were made from the website um there were several comments i'm not going to read every comment i'm going to kind of put them together and summarize then i'll open it up and see if the public has questions for us there were some questions about um arming all of our security officers allowing to have firearms on campus which is a topic we spent a lot of time talking about and really the only members that are allowed to have firearms on campus are active police there are some comments about why can't our sros carry on campus carry guns on campus they can because they are they are active police and again if you have active police coming on to do police business they also would have the

009ability to carry firearms other than that those are the only individuals that are allowed in our campuses to carry firearms so that was one kind of a summary we also had a few comments regarding covet and some of the safety plans and they were kind of mixed about you know we would not we don't want to see students or anyone have to wear masks but we also had other folks say we'd like you to keep you know the safety protocols restrictions as tight as you can so just kind of overall comment on that we're kind of like all other school districts waiting to get some clarifying guidance right now there's kind of conflicting guidance out there from new york state department of health who kind of set some guidelines a couple of months ago and

010haven't really changed things um then you have the cbc which is another agency which kind of feeds the new york state department of health they've made some changes they don't necessarily line up with each other so we've been doing our best to follow the guidance that we have um we also meet mike pat our superintendent meets with uh other superintendents i know if you want to speak on this and saratoga county department of health the chairman of dr cools and they have meetings they talk about you know where are we where our next steps and you know what are the best practices that we can do um keep our students and staff safe that certainly is one of always one of our top priorities so for this year we've had um you know modifications um

011and we are you know we have summer school in session for some of our students so maths are not required for our students but are recommended and that's the guidance that we've given at this point i don't know if dr pat wants people without those meetings i was actually going to address it in my comments as part of reopening but to your point dave those are ongoing conversations every friday morning we we meet with dr google's another super tense of saratoga county and just talking about just the local health update and a lot of the advocacy work that school district leaders have been making working with our elected officials over the last several months so you know there are some key aspects of our district reopening plan when it comes to required social distancing some

012of the impacts on transportation are lunchrooms as to how we're going to be able to you know safely serve all of our students during times the kids are eating any kind of testing requirements that the state may include in reopening plans and then masking and obviously right now there's conflicting messages from what we have received from the cdc and that's the guidance that new york state has allowed us to follow for the summer school and having some relief in the mass community during the summer months but it was only it was they were very clear that that that relief was only for the summer and that new uh information will be coming out for september so you know those are important questions that all school districts are looking for answers for uh and uh just

013most recently some of our elected official officials came together and wrote a letter uh to dr zucker at the state department of health you know asking for support because school districts parents communities are all wanting to know uh what school is going to look like for kids in september so i'll get into a little bit more of those details but those are ongoing regular conversations that we have the last thing i'll have about the plan and again not going through it page by page again welcome everybody to come in september for our official presentation um so they're kind of the plan itself is a general nature if you look at it again looking at the section like on responses or situational responses and it's meant to be that way on purpose because it is a

014public entity on our website it will be approved um we do have more specific building emergency response plans which are not public um and for security purposes will not be public i just wanted to kind of say the difference because i've had some people say well it's very general it is and it's meant to be that way on purpose so at this point i probably will open it up i don't anyone in the community has any comments anything you want to say i think we just got a new step here so i'll try to explain it to you i'm just going to come up here and speak you just want to hear who they are first and last name if you have any questions for us if you're gonna go ahead and do our best

015to answer hello hi um i'm mary marcolin what are you doing i know you probably hopefully have heard from me through various emails that i've sent over the school year um it's the assistant citizen planning supervisor was mentioning so much about his health and safety and that being such a big priority with the new york department new york state department of health with you guys and so forth well um i recently sent an email the journal of american medical associate association just did a recent study that showed that masking in a three-minute period children suffer from hypercapnia is elevated cot co2 levels dangerously elevated in the bloodstream okay they said they recommend no asking so just what i sent that email i got no response i just you know i was hoping that you guys

016are aware of that and you know i know you're saying well it's really not up to us it's whatever the cdc or the new york department of education or the new york department of health or the gov well the governor anymore whatever you know the ball's getting passed around here but um please be aware and be a voice for the kids masking is dangerous and in hypercapnia is a very serious condition it's you you don't want high levels of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream no one should have that especially not our developing children okay thank you so when you talk about health and safety think about hypercapnia and how uh we have one member i believe who was a assistant uh superintendent assistant principal of the middle school by the name of tatino with us

017tonight is this religion or district well yeah paul because if you she's in in favor of blm who seems to be doing whatever they do our industries without masks without social distancing because there's nothing social about business but anyways the fact of the matter is you want you want you want to more or less uh implement uh masking when you when there's a member of the school board who supports those who break the law and who gather in large numbers without social distancing without masks and you know there's no consequence but our great but our children who are attending schools at school district central springs i have to wear a mask and i said you know i i could ride by the west side from the visual street school over there over there in the

018uh in the record on walnut street and envision maybe 85 degrees out i look at little kids about this high they run around outdoors and the sun should get in the blazing sun with the mascot i know it's got to be at least 15 20 degrees higher up behind that mass than it is in the ambient air that's out that that so i'm kind of curious as to what sense does that make but where other people who can break the law and we have a member here who supports that behavior you know there's our grandchildren which is my you know i have a grandchild that goes to the business street school and there's other parents that have kids here that they vote at that time at school not just that you've got carolina street why

019should our kids have to more or less be tortured to wear a mask in such such an environment that is they're my mother raised six of us on our own and that we never you know you had you had other diseases poland yeah you had this you had that i mean this kind of this corporate nonsense is being overblown i mean it's not the numbers are being well inflated but our kids have like they said i got a grandchild and she's my my my treasure i don't appreciate what has to happen to her eight hours six hours of school wearing a mess and she's collecting all this bacteria all this carbon dioxide under that mess and everything all kinds of other things that are that are harmful to her health and you want to mandate

020masks this disease has a 99 point somewhat percent cure rate i mean who says anybody what sense does that make speaking i want to ask what sense does that make just to help clarify at the end of the school year the outdoor basket requirements was lifted across new york state and so our students here in saratoga springs at the end of the year were not required what about young children wants to be affected by this so-called it's like very very minor uh symptoms that they they encounter so i mean you so somebody's gonna ask you guys some questions here why do they have to be tortured to be kept to wear and match i mean and i know if there's one person here who supports blm i know there's crt going on in this district

021i mean i don't get off of what you got back on that sheet you know but i'm a black american i do not support blm and i do not support crt this is not i want you to take a look at this seriously sir this is safety for all necessarily but still at all it still uh ties into the same it gets here but if you have other comments that you want to make during the regular business thomas camara i'm from uh the uh single most important factor that a school shooting is an organized response of armed officers having the sros unarmed when they're qualified field is a serious mistake just to clarify our sros are armed are active police officers but the rest of the moment only the active police officers all active police

022officers the two that we have full-time work in the district are full duty without the rest of the campuses the rest of them need to be on too because the single most important factor is informed response just to clarify because we've been asked that question several times our school resource officers are active duty uniformed armed police officers all of them yes yes absolutely other questions related to the district safety plan so we'll close the public hearing and again appreciate everybody's feedback and again i want to just acknowledge the work of the district emergency response team and all of our staff that's involved at both the district and building level so the plan will be presented to the board for adoption on august 26th and is always available on the district website for any kind of

023community feedback and review throughout the course of the school year so we've got about 10 minutes we're going to take a short break and then at 7 o'clock we'll start the regular business meeting at our scheduled time thank you thank you everybody is [Music] trustee ellis yeah trustee elethor trustee culligan here trustee crackler here trustee latakia and trustee litovich thank you can i get a motion to approve the minutes for may 19th june 10th and june 22nd 2021 regular meetings of the board of education i see dean and erica is there any discussion all in favor okay thank you that's unanimous can i get a motion to accept our consent agenda this evening natalia and john ellis second is there any discussion no okay all in favor all right okay on our agenda this brings

024us to our first public comment period this period is 30 minutes long and with a limit of three minutes per speaker the board does not permit in public session discussion involving individual district personnel or students persons wishing to discuss matters involving individual district personnel or students should present their comments and or concerns to the superintendent during regular business hours all speakers are to conduct themselves in a civil manner obscene language liabilities statements threats of violence statements advocating racial religious or other forms of prejudice will not be tolerated the board will not respond to statements those wishing for a response should email the appropriate personnel that starts our committee and our public comment session and the first person on our list is mary marklin if you would like to speak again you wouldn't you're fine i

025think that's what happened okay great um and then that brings us to melbourne yes as i mentioned before you have a member who supports vlf who is the assistant principal of the uh i'm sorry you cannot mention positions or individuals it's our board policy you may reach out to the superintendent oh i i've done my whole reach out because you know through uh there's a person who works in the school district that i ate that you know before we all paid for who was supporting blm and i do not believe that should be brought into this into the curriculum and if this blm has got to be crt could have a race there it goes along with that and i do not support any of them and what i was just saying to these young

026ladies out here and for the audience this is what i do this is this is what pass that around take a look that's that's not crt critical relationship that's called ambition and all the critical race theory does is young people young blacks who feel as though they're victims and it makes young whites feel as though they are they're guilty of something that's not gonna work that's not what this country's made of this country's mail you going out and doing what you have to do on your own from what you learned in school because what what i learned in school is not what's being taught and i don't know how you miss it there mister it feels as though that's okay you know i looked at some pictures that work with there's a background there's a

027big olympic god i'm a black married i'm a black man i mean how can you take that and just say it and just rub that over top of me and say well blm supposed to be what's fault i didn't i know what it means it's not what somebody should be taught in school to take that out and just just throw it to the side teach reading writing and arithmetic that's what's supposed to be taught in school not social justice not not that you know so when i want to be so because they learn that at home just just as far as though uh you know you got sex education you know that doesn't go a long school i teach that to my kids my mother taught me it's more or less it's perverted it doesn't

028belong to school you learn how to write you learn learn how to read you learn how to add and subtract through the body none of this other stuff that's not belonging so i mean who's got the answer i mean it doesn't stop will it stop or is it going to continue thank you next up is aaron leary hello everyone um i'm here tonight as a district parent and a member of this community to express deep concerns about the cultural wars taking place here in saratoga and specifically within the saratoga springs city school district elections to the board of education it has become clear in my two years as a district parent that political entities use this board as a platform to jump into city politics while there are many reasons this relationship could serve the

029people of saratoga springs as representatives build skills and experience there are other examples where the use of the school board and our elections is not just a testing ground for candidates to gain experience but for political operatives to push against the boundaries of legality and see what they might get away with when no one is watching this is not just a coalition of parents engaging in political activity as we've seen with entities like saratova springs parents for safer schools or even their choice to work with a lobbyist this year we saw the creation of a shell corporation formed through a nevada clearinghouse just days before donating the maximum allowable contribution of five thousand dollars to a candidate effectively burning that corporation's power and presumably having it lay dormant until next year we see political parties

030making direct as well as in-kind contributions some of these are either not reported in the disclosure forms or are not supported by the party's funds on hand a point documented in disclosures to the new york state board of elections at the same time we have seen increasing coverage in social media posts that conspiracy theorists and extremists including followers of q and on are targeting school boards not under the belief that they can serve the public or promote education but that they can destabilize it and with that the fundamentals of our democracy school board elections here in saratoga have been under-regulated and largely unwatched as a consequence we have fake profiles on facebook propagating lives about individuals groups and district policies we have candidates unwilling to denounce endorsements from groups like moving saratoga forward which are

031populated by these fake profiles political operatives and even right-wing extremists associated with the proud boys and both keepers for hope those who don't know these are visually anti-paramilitary groups that the southern poverty law center identified as hate groups we see people outside our district exercising power to sway elections please please let her speak this is a trial by fire and me and saratoga are all being burned i appreciate the district's prior approach of not giving attention oxygen really to these entities but we cannot build a district with equity of opportunity when we turn a blind eye to what's happening i'm calling on you all to take proactive steps to protect our elections because doing so protects our students faculty staff and families thank you thank you the next speaker is rebecca lynch good evening i

032am a parent community member and member of the district equity and inclusion committee first i would like to thank the district administration and the board for the actions you have taken this past year towards increasing diversity equity and education efforts in our schools i have been honored to serve on the equity inclusion committee and i'm very proud of the work we have done with that being said i would like to address how being engaged in this work in our community has come at a price as a standard for district committees the names of committee members are public on the district website for this committee that includes members of the administration board trustees faculty staff community members and students this seems like it would be transparent and simple but that has unfortunately made us targets for

033hate groups moving sarah took a forward which is run by an individual outside of this district yet seems to take an excessive interest in what's happening here has many followers and regular commenters who are members of known papers in addition to spreading this information about anti-racism and critical race theory he has repeatedly directed attention to the names of the members of the district equity and community committee including students who serve these actions stand to potentially out students and others it draws hateful eyes to their needs and identities and endangers us all i have personally been targeted numerous times and while i remain proud of the work we are doing and have no desire to hide that it does cause me to worry about the safety of my family including my elementary aged children i am

034here to voice my support of and commitment to the school community and wider community in supporting each other and standing against hatred bigotry extremism lies and personal attacks while the realm of social media complicates us it does not allow us to ignore it i ask that the board maintain its commitment to standing with us against hate the responsibility falls on all of us to make our schools and community better for each and every individual thank you for your time thank you thank you that ends our public comment session comment period there will be another one at the end of our business meeting i'd like to remind all of those those of you in the room that this is a meeting of the board that public are allowed to attend it is not a public meeting

035so we're going to conduct our business at this time next up on our agenda is board committee reports and the first thing on there on the agenda is um me going over who's been assigned two committees so i just wanted to i think everyone here has already been talked with and agreed to what i'm going to be saying now but um if so just for the sake of the record the finance and audit committee although listed separately do serve together as one committee and so on that committee for those two committees we have tony crackler as the chair we have erica gorman and john burgaman for the policy advisory committee we have natalia laktakia as our chair we have kanye weitovich as and i and me sitting on there as members for property administration advisory

036committee we have dean colligan as chair and we have john ellis and amanda ellithorpe on the committee we also have a superintendent evaluation oversight committee and that committee meets very rarely close to the end um we just oversee the um the evaluation at the very end of the year so it's not not a big time commitment tony crackler has agreed to chair that again this year and natalia laktaki and john bergeron will be serving on that committee as well the district emergency response team is very gracious in allowing us to have board trustees attend this is not a board committee i want to be very clear this is not our committee this is a district committee however dean colligan will be serving as our official board of education liaison and i will also be attending

037those meetings as board representation are there any questions about these um i had a request about the farm to school um i had gotten a request for um i just want a request i had gotten a suggestion that a board member could be on the farm to schools committee um so i had asked dr patton if that's an option um so i guess i'm just wondering is that still an option or is that not something would everyone need so i yeah that was something new last year margaret sullivan with our relationship with pitney farms and both you and john had been involved and i think it was good just to have a conversation amongst the board that everyone was aware uh that margaret last year had reached out uh to have district representation so i

038know many of our teachers are active at the farm administratively we have opportunities to go over and do visitations so eric bush our new food services director i'll have to check with him to make sure that he's still involved but if both john and natalia are getting interested in continuing to serve in that role and the rest of the board supports that i think that would be wonderful because that's a great relationship that we've established over the last several years with pitt and farm so it's not an official it's not a it's never i don't think it'll fall on our list of official board committees it's just um they've asked for school district representation just to clarify so it's is it a district committee or it's a kidney committee oh okay yeah they just asked

039they asked because we have a relationship with them with the school district and i thought margaret at the time thought it would be great for the school board to be involved just because it raises your awareness of the wonderful things that the partnership is is doing for our school so if natalia and john or again everybody's okay with that uh i'll just reach out to eric to make sure he's aware that um this relationship exists he's aware of it okay are there any comments or questions about that from your board yeah go ahead um i did attend um their teacher education day and it was it was fabulous so i do think that and i met thank you um so we have not had any committee meetings so i'm not expecting anybody to have a

040report but if i'm wrong please correct me no okay um our students will not be back until the school year starts so that brings us to administrative reports and presentations so since the last time the board of education met on july 1st there's just been a tremendous amount of activity across the district and so we wanted just to provide the board and the community just with an overview of all the student programming that takes place during our summer months the incredible job that our staff does i was at dsy program at kaiser road this morning and it's just awesome to see kids come to school every day and excited to be in school in the summer months uh and our middle school and high school program is housed here at the high school so lisa

041is going to provide just just a brief overview of some of the summer broke programming that has started and will take place over the next several weeks anybody hear me okay good uh good evening everyone so we are excited to welcome students back on campus for all of our summer programs last year that was not the case so in the high school in the middle school the summer school is housed at the high school in one building it is a credit recovery type of program at the high school for students who were not successful during the year or wanted to be more successful we have a total of 116 students in grades 9 through 12 at the high school and they come to school and then they also have the access to their content through

042a digital learning platform called apex that they can work on as well at home so using technology as well as on-site which we know we want them on site and working with our teachers we're able to work with 116 students at the high school level at maple avenue again which is also being housed at the high school we have 80 students who are there in grades six seven and eight and that focuses more on skills in english language arts and math after doing some research and looking at the areas where students tend to stumble more those two areas are the areas of focus so there's that plus there's also some social emotional learning and counseling support too one thing i will add which kind of gets into something we'll talk about in a little bit

043is for the high school we also added a counselor position for high school so that given the unique circumstances that the covid pandemic has brought we felt we needed to have more support there for students who either were not on site or were on site or just whatever their needs are that's certainly a heightened awareness that we have at the elementary level the summer programming that we have is called our get ready program and we have focused it on incoming kindergartners in particular incoming kindergartners who we know have not had uh any or much preschool experience so it's really the opportunity to get them acclimated with you know how you do school for a kindergartner so we have two weeks of that plan starting in mid-august right before coming back to school we have about

044um 64 kids or so who qualify for that so invitations went out for that and that will be an exciting time too to welcome them in and help get them acclimated again over the past few years we've found that that is the best place to focus in helping those youngest students transition and when they may not have had the opportunity previously so so we're looking to those programs um the elementary to begin uh mid-august to help welcome the youngest ones in and then the middle and high school will be ending uh mid-august and wrapping it up then as well and there are no august regions this year thank you any questions the board may have just related to the summer program what's going on we're going to talk on a few minutes about some additional

045programming for the start of the school year to help transition our students and staff back for september mike i forgot to read my own writing certainly last but not least is the extended school year program for our students who have students with disabilities per their iep so we offer classes we have 14 different classrooms that are operating out of geyser road as dr patton said and students are all on site which last year we did not have them on site so we were able to provide the services on their iep there's also a new component this year for that which really also focuses on the literacy aspect for our students too so we're excited to have added that additional layer in of support for students but it's a very exciting time over there as well

046and that will wrap up around the same time as the middle of the high school now so just to kind of build upon the momentum of the positive experiences that our students and staff are having in summer school as we think ahead to september and some of our school reopening plans or reintroducing our students to in-person learning as you can imagine this is a very busy time of year for school districts as we're in the process of really completing our plans uh for our students and staff return to school in september but again there are still a lot of important questions that need to be answered and so as i mentioned earlier in the safety meeting our regional group of superintendents have been working you know collaboratively for the last several months with dr cools

047in the saratoga county department of health he's been a wonderful advocate for our school districts you know but there's some important information and guidance that we need from the new york state department of health in some really key areas that are going to help us you know finalize our decisions and it's not just the school districts that i know are waiting for these answers you know i know many of our parents are looking for that definitive guidance from school so when it's unclear i think it creates some anxiety from our parents because they're they're trying to plan for what family life and work what life will look like so again our advocacy has been you know we've been successful we've worked through many of the issues last year and the challenges and it is definitely

048was a challenging school year to say the least but there was a tremendous amount of lessons learned and again the things that we've been able to do this summer successfully we think is going to you know carry forward into into september several of our local states have already provided guidance out to school districts so both new jersey and massachusetts have already shared definitive plans so some of the things that we're really looking for immediate guidance on that's going to help us finalize our preparations is issues like transportation you know would the social distancing requirements on school buses still be required because that's going to have an impact not on just saratoga but all schools as to how many kids you know who need transportation to get to school would be able to do that the

049social distance requirements and their self himself right now the cdc is recommending the three feet of social distance requirements but when it comes to eating during the day and especially lunch time our principals need to schedule when our kids are able to eat lunch and are the cafeterias going to be available this year or will students continue to eat in the classroom and right now that guidance for eating is six feet um so john teamers here and his staff you know works incredibly hard throughout the summer with our facilities and operations and as you can see walking down the hallway all of our classrooms are being cleaned right now but they're really waiting for our guidance uh as to how to reset our instructional spaces uh so very soon we're gonna have to make an

050important decision uh to return our instructional space you know back to that traditional three feet between our desks that's what a traditional classroom is as you know last year we were at six feet in the classroom so it limited the amount of students that could be in a classroom at one time which then forced the hybrid model at the secondary level or the use of much more creative use of space at the elementary level so that's a key determination that school districts are looking for obviously with remote learning uh last year that was an option for parents to choose and we did a great job accommodating those requests but again waiting for the department of health uh whether they're going to mandate any additional accommodations and if remote learning again will be an option uh

051for school districts whether it's required or not uh we'll have a key impact on our instructional plan um and then masking you know masking has been a conversation uh since september our kids have done a tremendous job um you know working through uh the master requirements and teachers have done a great job giving kids breaks and then the relief that we got in the spring where the kids can be outside and have the masks off i know it's a challenge right now because our summer school is being very successful not requiring mass many families are choosing to have their children continue to wear masks and we have staff members continuing to wear masks like i said i was in school this morning it literally was 50 and again it's not a requirement right now it's

052a recommendation for students who are not vaccinated or staff members who are not vaccinated to continue or mass but there's no way for us to attract that or to monitor that so we will have to wait uh there is conflicting guidance out right now uh from both the cdc making one recommendation just a week ago and then i'm sure you you read some of the comments from the america american pediatric association uh especially while we have students ages 6 through 12 that are not eligible for the vaccine that there is the possibility that recommendation could be for mass to return at least in school indoors so we will again continue work very closely uh with the department of health um and following uh the guidance and the recommendations that do come out the sooner the

053better and then again our responsibility then to community communicate that out to families and and to our staff and students so they have a very clear expectation of what school will look like in september one other thing i do want to mention because we're just a few weeks away is the start of our fall sports season and i know nick is not here congratulations to nick he just got married last weekend he goes on his honeymoon uh so but we have training and practices for school sports that are going to start august 23rd so we're waiting again for are we back to a more normal outdoor season which is helpful when the fall sports are outdoors but we do have volleyball in the fall as an indoor competitive sport so know the status of particular

054supports and what kind of guidance that we're going to be uh needing to follow so um one one other point i want to just provide an update um and kudos to jeff wainwright our transportation director we took on a initiative in the spring to gather feedback from our parents with an online survey about the number of parents who would be requesting transportation in the past we had a process of routing all students in the district all students who are enrolled and again it leads to some inefficiencies in our routes if you ever happen to be at the high school or maybe the middle school or elementary runs tend to be a little bit more um buses are more full with kids but at the secondary level you know not as full when when you're routing

055all students and some of our older kids choose to drive to school or get dropped off to school so we've heard from almost 80 percent of our families uh which is which is awesome uh and about 4 000 of the total eligible 5800 uh at this point have requested uh to be routed on transportation but we've got about three to four hundred families or individual students and families uh that at this point have not uh requested transportation so it's going to help i think with the routing efficiencies it's the first time that we've asked for this type of feedback we really appreciate the cooperation support we got from parents last year when we were limited with the number of kids we could have on a bus so we're hoping we can get our buses back

056to full capacity uh the masking rules as right now you do have to wear a mask on a school bus so i would expect that's going to continue but but jeff from the transportation department working with our families gathering this information is really going to improve the overall efficiencies of our routing system so we're going to do a few more reminders uh again 80 at this point just two weeks into it is a great response um so we're going to move forward with those plans and like i mentioned that john tiener is here and again just want to thank all of our custodial staff our maintenance staff the summer months are tremendously busy um working extremely hard um usually in hot conditions in the summertime we're getting a little bit of relief this year with

057some cooler temperatures but they've been very patient with us as they wait for final guidance as to how we reset the building and like anything i said to john you know i just don't want people to have to move things twice you know that we've got desks at dorothy owen right now that were shared from our middle school it took about two days to deliver the desks last summer so we anticipate it's going to take a few days to get them back to the middle school so once the decisions made about the instructional arrangements of our classrooms we know there's a tremendous amount of work that has got to get done so all important things but people are working really hard and wanting to make sure we're gathering accurate information as we uh help inform

058our decisions and then jumping back to lisa we just want to talk a little bit about some of the creative ideas that both our staff and some of the survey feedback that we got from our parents in the community about some new ideas for programming for the start of the school year thank you so just a a brief uh reminder that in the spring well very late spring um congress approved grants for schools to apply for to help with reopening and getting us to what we like to term our our next normal so um as dr patton said we collected feedback from the community um and we're able to prioritize that and we had to submit that as an application to access that funding and as we look through what some of those priorities were

059and i would direct everybody back to the the website where it's listed there's a nice brief bulleted list of how the priorities shook out by far the top priority amongst all stakeholder groups was social and emotional supports for students returning back to school so when we looked at all the priorities there were some that were more immediate that we wanted to start planning for uh in spring summer and fall re-entry and then some that kind of go throughout the year or multiple years so obviously the things that were most pressing were those which were impacting students in the summer and in prep for the fall and some of those things uh that we're really paying attention to are how can we best be aware of our students social and emotional needs and some of the

060ideas that came through and have been discussed and some have already been put into practice for example at the high school there was definitely some disengagement and in order to work on that proactively we had added that counselor in the high school for summer school and that person is meeting with students is reaching out to students if they are not there when they should be the middle school also has a built-in social worker they have for years but they've also got some ideas in terms of adding more social emotional supports and creating what i'll call transition programs so opening up the school more frequently in mid-august in those couple of weeks before school starts and having faculty and staff there and planning a variety of activities to welcome new students to the middle school to

061welcome seventh graders to the middle school who may not ever have been on site so we've got this really unique mix of experiences that students are bringing in our faculty and staff have really worked hard to say okay we know we need to be more open literally to um having and welcoming folks into the schools and in not such a formal way either but trying to personalize it so it may be small groups it may be individuals that sort of thing in the high school as well if you have a high schooler you would have received an email from mrs similarly trying to personalize the high school experience in terms of doing some team building experiences and again this might be for students who have been on site before but really haven't been perhaps they

062were virtual all year so again recognizing the range of experiences that folks are bringing our social workers and our psychologists have been working with the administration at each of the buildings at the secondary level to to come up with these programs in addition to working with teachers and trying to tie in student groups too because we know sometimes student to student works better for some than adult to to students so some ideas um and you'll be hearing more details about that but generally looking at mid-august and the end of august for those kind of opportunities to be welcomed even more into the school and then at the elementary level we will be finalizing plans as well of a similar nature to be open more and allow students to come in and again similar situations there

063might be students who are going into first grade or second grade who've never actually been in one of the school buildings so again being open welcoming and using all of our resources that that we have available and the creativity that people have shown in supporting students to create that safe and welcoming environment before they even officially step foot in and it will be open to all students not just new students or our students who are transitioning to different schools and then throughout the rest of the year we will continue having supports in addition to the academic supports but um along the way because again that was the number one theme across all of the stakeholder groups that we are concerned about the well-being emotionally of our students so we're excited that our teams the teachers

064administrators have been using the survey results that we've heard from our community in the spring to plants programs really to reconnect and engage our kids in non-traditional ways we've always had orientation programs for students and parents but these are going to be much less formal more team building activities more fun activities ice cream socials opportunities for kids to get to see each other again you know the kids are just excited to have the opportunity to reconnect with their friends so the board have any questions about any of the summer activities so the last of my updates which is always a wonderful event on august 17th is our is a date that we've got planned for our august graduation ceremony so always kudos to our kids who persevere unfortunately a few do not have not met

065the graduation requirement when it comes to the end of june and just need a little bit more time to fulfill their academic requirements so it's always a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the newest members of the class of 2021 so right now it's august 17th at 11 am when i have more information i'll share with ward obviously it's a community celebration we welcome everybody to come and participate and recognize our our newest graduates so they're working hard in summer school i've actually got notes today that a few of them have already knocked off all their graduation requirements and have done a great job and so we're looking forward to their their celebration at this time i'd like to turn it over to dave and dallas holly our school register again val is here with us i

066just want to recognize the work that she does throughout the year especially in the spring months when it becomes very busy and to do that this year remotely and communicating with families as kindergartners are registrating for registering for school or new families are moving into the district val is usually the first point of contact you know for our families when they are welcome to seraphim springs so they want to review uh for especially the new board members our student registration process uh some of the modifications uh and enhancements that we have made uh with our flexible attendance zones and what how that kind of comes into play and then they're going to give an enrollment update as to kind of where we stand in all the elementary schools at each of the grade levels uh

067at least at the end of july with things that continue to change on a daily basis so dave and val thanks mike so just a couple of things before we officially get into the presentation again i'm not sure if everyone knows valerie then a couple years ago back up here in july so just to register um i also would like to introduce diane woodard who's in the audience she's kind of a support person that does an awful lot with our enrollment um calling families sometimes in the front line kind of talk families down and give them great information with administrative transfers a lot of our babysitter requests so it's really a team effort so i want to again here tonight um so sorry about enrollment and registration what is it um i still remember kind

068of coming into you know i don't know no one else wanted that role when i first got my new position but it was like great enrollment registration i don't know here i am nine years later whatever it's been but uh it is i learned really one of the most important and challenging positions in the district um many many times it's the first experience the family gets to interact with district if you have families that are coming in you don't really know anybody or the only thing about the district the first call is the register's office how do i get my kids in school so it is really really important we take that very very seriously we want to be a positive experience for their families and again some of the challenges we have for someone

069client is about getting good information to our families because they get information from a lot of different people and sometimes it's not always accurate as we start talking about attendance zones reflect zones what school am i going to how do i enroll what do you think i'm not going to like happen so those are kind of things that we deal with quite a bit so i'm let gallery talk the first couple of slides just about the enrollment process so the first step when somebody wants to bring their children to the school district is to go online which there's a link on the district website under parent tap student registration and it will bring them to an information page which then has the link to the online registration so they fill out that information and um

070so once we once we do get that online registration we look through and make sure first of all that it is in the series of the spring city school district um some people think it just has to be in search of a county so we confirm that before we welcome them and you know start the next step that they are entitled to be registered at saratoga and so it is it's you know it's a welcome letter um because it's been online it's been a lot of um emailing back and forth um we do make ourselves available obviously for people to call but a lot of times maybe they're at work and they can just shoot for email but um doesn't give enough credit um really to me the process very efficient by doing the online

071form and kind of getting the information up front and setting an appointment up through code we kind of got to a process where we almost do it all online but even before that having uh preset appointments and talking with families and helping them to get proof residency what they would need so it is a successful experience it's really been a turnaround for us last few years when i first took over registration it was not that way it was all hands-on and it really was first come first served we had long lines because everyone came to lunch and most people in the line didn't have what you know people needed they weren't prepared it was many many times very uh you know angry angry times because i'll say it in a nice way so that process

072has come a long way i think it's much more efficient and friendly for our families i will talk a little bit about attendance zones just for some of the we did i didn't go over this but for some of the newer board of ed trustees maybe some folks in the audience um i want to say two years ago three years ago we have kind of created an elementary task force um we didn't have a lot of time but we put together we did a lot of work we came up with a way to create what are called flex zones um again it's kind of hard to see the map because the over lies but basically saratoga had six attendance zones for each elementary school and just in the last few years we've created five flex

073zones and the flex zones are listed up there in the chart so flex zone one is george nolan lake avenue flex zone two caroline dortmund lake flexzone three caroline division lake flex zone four we only have one or so i'm sorry that's division in geyser five only the only one that has greenfield in it is division street geyser in greenfield so what does that mean so as a family coming into the district if you happen to live in one of those flex zones which again you've kind of seen on the map there it's not your choice it's still the district that chooses where you're going to go but we can we have the ability to put you into two schools one school three schools transportation is provided and that is your school that you would

074stay in again why do we do that we wanted to be able to not only balance our class sizes but also balance our resources throughout the district our first year going through year one you'll see some of the numbers and a couple of the slides coming up i think you'll see it was pretty successful look at how kindergarten is flat what i mean by that is and you'll see it if you look at grades like three four and five you'll see still see some of that where one school may have and other schools got 27. so that's something that that was one of the big bonuses of creating the flex zone was that ability to balance the other thing i want to show you quickly is this is a tool if you haven't seen this

075that's on our website um part of the when we had the committee we went through and we worked with a company with uh transportation and we created this digital tool so we still recommend that families call the reference office and just double check because we found a couple errors in the tool but it's pretty good um if you are moving into a district you want to see like where could i go so one of the things you want to do is come up here to the plus sign again this is under the registration component for parents and as you start to scroll and look at some of that stuff you see a link for this interactive map there's a description about how it works but i'll just show that to you if you were to

076put an address in you in that particular case you just made it you're just inside of our boundaries um and then it tells you to list for your schools again you may not be a geyser because level we'll talk a minute because of resources or classrooms already full but you could be headed to you know technically you're in the geyser road elementary home and then english maple lab doing enlist serotonin springs if you were to put a different address down to put yours in val val lives in an actual flex zone so you'll see a little bit of different screens come up again doesn't mean you're it's not your selection but it just tells you where you are and it's good we've had folks in the past that have moved in and they're actually not

077even in the district and they come in and they're like i was told by my realtor that i i'm like you're not and i don't even have families asking me can you move the attendance on like like three houses up i'm like scarlett will not let me so that did happen so this is a tool that's great for families you see that we it's valerie's house you can see it says flex zone so she would have again maybe george lake or caroline um i just want to mention briefly about some of our community connections as well we started in 2018. mike i think you read that first one it was very successful more manny helped us as well we met with i want to say 20 or so we had closer to 50 people we

078had a bunch of different realtors that came and we found that's a really good strategy for us is to get the realtors to come in and talk to them about what's enrollment was registration what does that map look like just because you move into a lake zone doesn't mean you're going to lake and we try to so we found it to be very helpful if the realtors give out good information and we also encourage realtors to call call the rec you know have families call the registrar office and ask those questions just don't look at what's on the real estate manual hopefully scratch but sometimes it is and say oh the manual said or i was told i know you're closing that's not accurate so we have we did uh we had another schedule i

079think it was in march of 20 uh 3 19 20 which we had to cancel because of cobin but we're hopeful to start that back up again um we also have worked with the town of wilton i gotta think mike was here for that we went up and met with tom wilton and we do that annually buying england some of the new developments um what do they believe is the impact what is the timeline um we also have the district just updated a new demographic study 2019 and again we look at that i got to be honest with you sometimes it's been pretty good um sometimes it's been way way off and again the further you get away from the demographic study this you know the less accurate that it seems to me but we

080do feel that community monty's got a connections neighborhood going in there you know just two or three years ago they said that was eight years away well obviously the infrastructure is going in so it won't take long obviously for some homes to be you know coming online and you know that would be an area that would hopefully give us some you know some flexibility uh or at least on on that portion of town but as new neighborhoods come on it gives us a chance to kind of evaluate um you know how our attendance zones work i'm a little baller talk a little bit about our class size targets and she'll talk about how they're getting smaller that was also one of the outcomes of that elementary task force when we created the attendance collections right

081so now while the number of sections um in the any given building or grade may change from year to year the class size targets are going to be remaining the same and we started last year with hindi very changing the class size target to 20 and now this year we got kindergarten at 20 and changed first rate now to 20. so we continue to do that throughout the years this past year which was our first year that we did this and utilizing the flex zones it's the great local kindergarten now going into first grade bit of data i asked valeri just do a little research and check like with shannon in boston's box it's sometimes always good to see how your neighbors doing what are their class size targets look like and that word again

082for some of our newer trustees class size target is that it's what do we try to get at kindergarten as an example we try not to go past 20 that's kind of our limit and that leads us into you'll be hearing a minute about administrative transfers and babysitter requests and change of elementary requests but i've been here a few years and it's supposed to be a target it's not supposed to be a hard gap a few years back it turned into kind of should have been classified but i think we're back to more of a target component and again that's a number that we try to reach just to give an example on i called three different school districts shen for kindergarten and first grade year class that's 24. um second grade is 25 third

083grade is 26 and then the um so i think that you know 25.66 will be definitely one of the lower end schools in the suburban council so what happens if we reach those class size targets so one of the things we've had to do through the years what are called administrative transfers where typically if my myself or valerie working together we would assign students to go to a school outside of their approved dependence zone so going back to the class size targets could be a particular building let's say you're at lake avenue and kindergarten is full there's three sections of kindergarten currently at lake avenue we have 60 students in there's no more room so that's when we look at again right now we have that ability through the deflect zones before we place our

084students to try to maybe move some students and lower that number back down but there still are occasions where a student comes in maybe it's after school starts and we don't have that ability to flex them anymore and we would have to do an administrative transfer so administrative transfer basically we are placing a student and i i call a place in the family in another school and again those are that's why i said enrollment registration is a hard area because a lot of the conversations you have to have with families are challenging because that's not what family wants to hear again i bought a house to go to lake awesome we're going to send you to caroline so and again it's not that easy and that simple and those are very difficult conversations um typically

085in my experience doing this many years uh most families oh they may be upset that they're going to paralyze for my example once they're there they love and that's why we've also given families the opportunity to continue in that school where years ago we used to kind of force to move them back as long as they can provide transportation some of the other examples of administrative transfers are i know spaces in the audience some of our special ed programs are only offered at certain elementary schools um our i'm learning the term l's our english language learners also is only offered currently at division we created a new term this year another acronym pat pandemic administrative transfers and again that was really based on yes that was really based on the movement um of the physical

086classrooms there wasn't space so for those ones we definitely were pretty straightforward to families like listen we got a movie this year but we're getting it back next year so we've tried to stick with those as well some of the numbers we had i think were last couple years we've had around 20 or so administrative transfers all that last year we had eight i'm sorry this past year we had eight but then we had 25 of the past um the following 1920 we had 26. before that we were 41 and i think before that we're into the 80s or 100 i mean one of my worst years here with that was i made like a hundred and some other families with admin transfer that was a lot a lot of difficult difficult changes it was

087nice to see that remember everything it's great because it's disruptive to the families so and then we're also going to talk about i mean i've got to talk about team developmentary requests or the famous babysitter requests right so we do have families that um work with the um to do that the other thing is if you do have a student that's been transferred by people services say to kaiser and they live in the division zone they can request that their child be allowed to attend with their siblings so that's another plus we have people that move throughout the school year and they want to rather than pull their child out of one building and come in another they ask if they can let them finish off the school year at that building which we do

088try to work as much as possible as long as there's a room which they've already been in the numbers so the only thing is to let their child finish their fifth grade year based on our poor policy we do allow our seniors who are scheduled to graduate in june after the schedule we do allow our senior to complete the school year but again that's another case that the family will be providing transportation if that is something that comes up um but for remaining your cases there's a lot of work and there's a lot of communication that it now has with families as families are coming in or families are so just to share some numbers with you again we'll read all these to you but you can see some of the data points the school

089year some of the different enrollment numbers at the elementary levels going back to 16-17 look at that a little bit you do see kind of a slow decline in enrollment i think we're looking at enrollment numbers and it was not my first year here one of my first couple years here i want to say i looked at when you look at george nolan and they're in the 700s i think when i started here they were about 900. so it's definitely been quite a bit of change through the years that's one example that i have um that basic these numbers except for this year are from what they call bets day which is this first wednesday right for example first wednesday in october um always and best days again there's a basic educational data system there's

090the acronym for that but basically that's kind of what the new york state takes that data that's like the snapshot for all our districts so there's enrollment numbers there's other demographic data that's it kind of gives us a standard that's the snapshot that we are compared to a lot of other schools on so that's what the most those numbers are from are from that beds day snapshot except for this year um we want to make a note that we although we're at 5900 we certainly you'll see some chart coming up that no more students are enrolling or the numbers elementary so the famous color chart which has been simplified when you're sitting in the audience though it's using a couple other layers in there different colors um but again new board of edge trusses if

091you can see it i'll just look at caroline you can see the gray class size target is listed there are pupils peoples are the number of students that have completely enrolled and again i'll talk about i added another role up on top which i'll explain in a second which are we have some kindergartens that are kind of in the process but they haven't finished so they're not in that chart yet um if you look at target that's really what slots what spaces we have left again looking at kindergarten caroline we have 55 students currently again we haven't flexed all the legal students yet so that number can be moved a little bit you'll see that from a chart coming up next um but if we didn't flex anybody there's 55 students we have five slots

092left and then the column over after that to the right is sections there's three sections of kindergarten um at carolina and you kind of can see how that chart kind of flows um look way over on the right you can see there's suction capacity i bring that up because if you look at grade one that's this is year two now the flex zone you see that's our smallest number that's because we were able to balance working we were able to balance classes the best we've been with the balance class so that's again it's gonna take a few more years but that's our process um you can see kind of in the middle of the chart or just averages and again those do fluctuate if you look at some of the discrepancies like third fourth and

093fifth grade from some of the different buildings that's what the flex zone is supposed to help that was one of the the you know tasks that we had from it was we're trying to get rid of so we have you know 16 at one school and 27 in another school is there a way to make that a better balance so we believe the flex zones can help us with that so again enrollment again this is a snapshot a couple weeks back but it was 59 43 so just quickly this leads into our next slide if you look at the very top you'll see k in process and you'll see some numbers up there um those are students that are maybe they started the online form haven't gotten back to valerie or maybe valerie's in the

094process with them right now again titles numbers everybody changed um but i bring that up because our kindergarten numbers are also getting tight and we did add a section of k to division but we may be looking at adding another section of pay i don't want to make that decision yet but just want to bring to everyone's attention that it's getting tight um if you look at session capacity over there on the right it says i think 49 and then we look at total of what we have out there it's 58 and those numbers have changed a little bit but that's just something that you may see us bring forward over the next few weeks can i just ask a quick question uh what grades have been subject to the new policy just k and

095one one [Music] um this is kind of a little bit about kind of some of the background word kind of breaks down some of our k's as far as they're not in the flexzone they're in one of the different flex zones um they registered they're pending and they gotta let valerie kind of go through it right so you know as they said up at the top those are the students that are in that attendance zone without being able to flex then below it we've got for example our street has six and plus so looking at the people that are pending and registered that brings us up to 67 and because that's the class size of 60 we would have to look at flexing seven of those kids from their combination of two and three or

096all of three depending upon and dispersing them into either carolina toughest one up there is greenfield because greenfield is only only in one flex zone and again the concern with greenfield is having 12 pending or extremely 11 pending i think that number is different now but you're already at capacity it's uh it's not a place when you've had to do it in the past you want to use that admin transfer of process again some of the little kiddos are on the bus for an hour plus which is really tough prepared so we don't like to do that that's a challenge and one other thing that's new this year actually is the um the students that are going to be an integrated co-teacher right so there may be students that are already assigned to greenfield in

097an integrated co-teach classroom who is in a flex zone but now i can't bless them so even though we've got it looks like okay we've got 14 students that are able to flex and we've got a total of 14 kids over our total any questions um so could the flex zones actually change can they be adjusted for time if this becomes an issue no that that was one of the things we talked about um as we move forward it doesn't make sense or they need to be tweaked a little bit that's something we have to bring back up and look at that yes doesn't exist correct our new development is expanded just to give us a little bit more flexibility we had some parts of carolina street that was up close to the lake uh

098to survive that there was a little island of lake avenue students of course and again those kids have been able to age out and then transition years ago they do a process called redistricting which is basically they say you're no longer late now you're caroline that's kind of what they did the problem with that is as mike just said as that house housing development either moves grows or spans what you did doesn't work anymore now you're looking at registering yet again that's a very difficult process with families so i think we're in a much more assist or better system with myself i'm just so grateful i mean i think it's early obviously we're one and a half years into this but i remember working with diane and valerie and then the transportation folks and they

099were all just cringing as we were doing this cover but you you're still smiling and upright so i'll take that as a good sign but you can look at the numbers and see all the crazy numbers in the older grades and all the good numbers on the lower grades and you know the thing i think the real impact is looking at the difference of transfers from the year before to this past year we only had technically eight versus the year before was 26 and before that 41. so that's that's great to see that number lower it took me um long time to wrap my head around this and i'm still trying but um as i recall the administrative transfers are pretty disruptive in the system yeah over time so you get that number down and

100then of course we remember uh again picture yourself moving in john and you're all set to go to caroline and again you're hey come on caroline no you're not going to caroline we're going to we're going to send the division this is extreme after frustration disappointment and there's hard conversations and then also when you're when you're a child or your child is in a class it's really small and all of a sudden it gets really big yeah and we've seen that before too yeah i have a couple questions one is um do you know how many people are driving by two schools to get to their schools is anybody doing that we're worried about that in you know division caroline and lake and it was theoretically possible we tried to look at um the folks

101that live close i figured three miles of the of the schools we try to give them preference to your point if i could just you know two stocks walk across and go to the division we hate to have them going to boston go to lake or caroline so we do try to bring this back to folks that are close to a school yeah one other thing that was sort of in my mind i mean i guess it's hard to know this but friends in the neighborhood don't get to go to the same school i know that was always a risk that we were worried about but i just wonder how you how how is it going in august i mean your august must just be awful in your office i mean it always has been

102right but now it's really bad and it must be hard on families and it must be hard for principals and others to plan not knowing what their head count is going to be right you know actually the schools have haven't enjoyed the fact when years ago again a couple years ago when my kids left geyser last day of school whatever they had a you know on a piece of paper who their teacher was for talent square and you moved them again that was it was another hard hard conversation i've been waiting there was a groove all year he's the best teacher now you're telling me yes that's full time so it actually gives our buildings more flexibility i think it will help them to balance classes and to you know have students where they want

103to have them i think they were kind of locked into schedules as well so i think it's a good thing yeah and the other thing is that we were able to do last year so of course this past school year was an animal of color but we let people know during registration that we are implementing so we'll kind of you know preset the tone for everyone and um this year it's the same thing because it's been out there for the second year that it's been you know on the website and so we are giving calls um and i certainly can understand parents wanting to know you know right you know next week well i just want to say thank you to diane and valerie and your whole team and we also have to thank our

104friends in transportation because when you look at the map you don't you don't immediately get that like to go around the block in greenfield could be a 30 minute deal and so they and they've done such incredible work to make this happen too i think it so far it really looks encouraging i think you answered it actually so has the online interactive map has been live for two years so this is going into the second year yes it's just beautiful dave you mentioned a couple of times you utilize the terminology realtor right so when people move into the area and the realtor says go forward you know sorry this is where you'll go to school if i recall correctly although i did not sit on that committee we did have a realtor that was was

105a representative on that committee as well right from carolina right yeah parent in the district as well so i would assume i would assume that by now all of the realtors or at least their agencies within the district have been informed that this is the way our district places students now so that we potentially curb those conversations for valerie and for diane as much as possible although i'm sure you still get there you've still got new players coming in and again it was it's much slower than i would say you know we were still like meet with him again again we've got some changes just go over it again we'll get thanks foul dave diane for all your hard work as you can see a lot of moving parts um that's it okay there being

106no old old business john do we have any modifications to our constant agenda we do have some modifications and if you'll uh bear with me they're a little complicated today in your folders you should have two addendums one says addendum and the other one says addendum two and so addendum one i'm gonna sort of we're gonna envision that these things are being added to the consent agenda that we're gonna vote on so addendum number one would actually go on page three and it would be under b2 and what is on addendum on the addendum would become a and then what is currently in the consent agenda would be b c and so forth okay and that that that item refers to kevin middleton and then on the addendum 4a would go on page 4 and

107would be tucked in there underneath four and those uh those folks mentioned in 4a glory belthouse and peter robinson would be there and then what is currently on the consent agenda which would start with would be b and so forth and then if you turn your attention to addendum two that piece we would shove into onto page four now we're underneath uh four again and we're putting more things in there so a b and c will be put in there and you can see the names the first one under a is kendra estonborsky b is kendra aston borskigen and then c is kendra again john christian carrying italia oh oh my uh i guess i just didn't read the back my fault um addendum one going i'm gonna go back to denim one see if

108i get myself organized this is under uh also under co-curricular appointments uh personnel under personnel subsection b number eight civil service performance and that's going to be a new a so this is on page 10. and this relates to tracy stanley okay sorry i missed that one page okay now i've got some stuff for you that is not in your folders so bear with me this is being added to page number 12 under personnel b item eight and now we're adding an m just above c financial we're adding an m um and this the wording goes like this recommend the board approve the following appointment for head start program effective july 6th 2021 to august 13 20 21 collin colleen mcintyre senior food service helper and then we need to modify some items on page

10911. the numbering might be off from the changes i've just made but he'll be able to find it item b8 under personnel d so this is for joseph rivers as the first person and the word provisional should be changed to probationary and moving down to item f referring to joshua kerwood the right between the words the and appointment of the word probationary should be added and moving on to g which is katherine sweet right before the words the an appointment the word probationary should be added down to i which is barbara cook between the word the appointment the word probationary should be added any questions so far i know it's all very clear as you can tell we've been doing a lot of interviewing and a lot of hiring in the last three or four

110days and the event has been changing hourly uh because folks are working so are then on page 12 under financial item number one you'll see on that list there's an item for boces mayfield for seventy thousand one one hundred sixty five and dollars and twenty eight cents that item should be removed and then finally under um financial again this is under number three on page starting on page 12. this is the resolution to decrease the 2021 school tax levy we're going to pull that item which is c3 and it requires a roll call vote which so i believe that there are some things which we are legally required to have a roll call vote which is why we're doing this this is not something that somebody in our district has said hey we should pull

111this out this is something that's legally required of us so what we're going to do is pull that item out and then tim will read our names and each one of us will uh verbally vote and then after we do that we will vote on the entire consent agenda any questions tim will you just give us a quick 30 second uh on y that's yeah absolutely the tax levy's lower i think that's also this is a good time for that to happen yeah um so this happens every year there are changes constantly happening for a variety of reasons it can be changes to star or other credits or exemptions it can be changes to valuations there can be small claims adjustments and then the most significant portion of that amount relates to certiary claims that

112are settled throughout the year and so those what we're doing is essentially adjusting the levy to what it actually ended up being at the end of the year and just to draw a little bit of connection to the resolution that follows that on the agenda you might have noticed that the the first part of the resolution states the uh authorized tax levy amount and then below that the calculation is actually about 16 000 less that is representative of the changes that have happened since the budget vote in may and today when we're finalizing the tax warrant and then you'll see again next year we will capture another series of changes that being this resolution that we're discussing that happened from this point on throughout the year great thank you i would like to move that

113we approve the resolution to decrease the 2020 2021 school tax value yes trustee ellis yes trustee culligan yes trustee crackler yes trustee latakia yes and trustee who is yes thank that you us to the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda any discussion okay um that's unanimous thank you i just have a few recognitions because we did have the number of folks uh the board just just approved for appointments so i want to welcome kevin middleton to his new teaching position as an elementary teacher at geyser road vivian black is a new speech and language teacher at the high school grace gleber as his students with disabilities special education teacher at lake avenue kennedy cacozo kindergarten teacher at division street and stephanie cash a kindergarten teacher at lake avenue so welcome to

114those new staff members who will be joining us for a new teacher orientation at the end of august thank you that closes our business meeting and opens our second public comment period is there anybody here we do not require you to sign up for this public comment period so if anybody would like to speak to the course okay seeing nobody we will close the public comment session and that brings us to agenda planning do we have any agenda items no talk um i would like to request a yes generally we would look for other at least a majority of the board to support that um request before we ask people in our district to do the work to do that yeah is there are there other people supporting that hybrid okay great thank you we'll

115see where it fits into the overall schedule and get folks time to prepare on the presentation are there other agenda planning items nope okay i just want to point out um that we are trying to schedule some new board member orientation sessions so i believe the first week of august so we'll coordinate that individually but each year as new board members come on the board we do a whole few individual orientation sessions uh as well as september 2nd thursday night is when we're trying to plan our first governor's workshop not trying we are we are so that's nobody said no do that do you save the date be there again for uh again governor's training through the board so that's thursday september 2nd and then we'll work um literally the only day we are all

116in town this summer i can't even tell you [Music] i know where all of you are calendar all right any other other agenda okay um board member comments john i just want to say it's nice to be uh together and change the space it's nice to see colleagues smiling faces without masks done i have to cover our mouths now when they're young and things like that it's good and i also enjoy hearing from the public in person always grateful for different perspectives we may not all agree on everything but it's nice to be able to have some civil discourse together any other comments i'd like to welcome connie to her very first full award meeting it's very nice to have you at the table so thanks thanks for being here hopefully we didn't get to

117early meetings yeah we're making a good impression so far so far so good don't let it flow all right if there are no further board comments again thank you to our staff who set up the room and re-reconfigured a brand new way for us to do it again um and it is like john said really nice to see everybody's faces and be here in person so um with that there being no executive session can i get a motion to adjourn dean a second tony all in favor all right thank