001We're going to have a motion to reconvene the public session at 6.28, I'll make the motion to see a second. From Dennis, all in favor? I. Motion carries. We will stand for the pledge to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. So before we jump into our agenda presentations, thank you everyone for coming. I'm going to read just a little bit about the public comment period and just kind of the board meeting just to give everyone a heads up of how everything will roll. So thank you, welcome. We'll have two opportunities for public comment tonight. The first one will be at the beginning of the meeting here as
002soon as I'm done reading this, which will be limited to items the board will be voting on. So an item the board will be taking action on tonight. The second period will be at the end of the meeting, which will be on any agenda item, so anything good for the school business we will address then. We just ask you to state your name and address, keep your comments at five minutes, and we do have a maximum period of comment of 45 minutes. That being said, the board is here to listen. This period is not designed to be discussion, but we want to hear from you about your concerns and your questions. We will certainly take the time to listen and process and do some research. If needed, we will make sure that we discuss this
003at a future board meeting or have the proper administrative staff to get back to you in an appropriate amount of time. We want our school board meetings to serve an example for our students and the members of our school board and the members of our community can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and demonstrate mutual respect for one another. Finally, we just ask that everyone again, say your name and address, keep your comments at five minutes, and we look forward to your comments. Anyone that would like to speak on any item the board will be voting on tonight. What are those items that we know? They're in our agenda that was posted online ahead of time, so if it's around some of the items that were in Facebook and social media, those are
004not an agenda item the board will be voting on. Is there any way if you just go over, and I can't see the screen from here, we just go over like what they are, the issue we're going to be voting on so we know? Sure, it's going to be around some hiring pieces, our treasury reports, there's no action around anything around special education and that's the question that we'll be voting on tonight. Thank you. Yep. All right, not seeing any we will jump right into our presentations. Our first one is from our friends at Spruce Elementary School. Thanks everyone. I am Lindsay Turner. I am the proud principal of Spruce Elementary School, and I have brought some amazing friends here with me tonight to talk about all the great things happening in our school community.
005These are some of our fabulous leaders across the building. These students show up every day with a smile on their face. They are ready to go. They are ready to learn and honestly they help each one of us every single day become a better version of ourselves and that's pretty pretty amazing. And I feel blessed and so happy to be a part of it. So without further ado, we have some special treats for you this evening. Here with me tonight I have Maisie, Grace, Everly, Brooklyn, and Asher. We are going to begin with our school song, and Maisie beat me out for the solo, so grace yourself. Ready girl? Yep. Yes please. Here we go. We are kind in the things that we are kind in. Confidence means I believe in myself. Responsibility, I take
006ownership of me. We are kind in the things that we say and do. We are kind here in school. I do not give over, persevere. Compassion and care always try to be fair. Forgiveness is important. We are kind in the things that we say and do. We are kind in the things that we say and do. How much it takes to get up here in front of people. And when I asked these leaders in our building to help me out, they did not hesitate. And it just makes it so much more fun to stand up here and literally get to show you the amazing things that are happening. So thank you guys so much for agreeing to join me on this crazy journey. And next for you, we have created a poem. Mr. Asher, take
007us away with a day at Spruce Elementary. At Spruce Elementary we start each day with lines that shine and parts that play. A circle gives us time to share and helps us show how much we care. Then it's time for reading. Tales take flight, years and journeys, day and night. We read with wonder, we read with pride, books on our magic carpet ride. We jump into math with numbers galore, solving puzzles we can't ignore. Add and subtract, we want to fly. Math can help you reach the sky. Wonderful. One more. Art lets colors burst and blend with every door a message we send. From paper to paint, we create with glare our imagination everywhere. Using brainish joy, a rhythmic beat, we sing and dance with happy feet. With drums and notes and songs so sweet,
008our voices rise on our hearts of peak. Enrichment brings some extra time for those that love music to really shop. We spend, we build and then explore designing robots coding galore. We ask big questions, test and try with curious minds that reach the sky. Coding teaches us how to think, to solve, create and make the link. From games to apps, we learn the way to shape the future every day. In the library, we find our nook, a quiet space of every book. From fairy tales to facts that teach the world is always within reach. We browse, we borrow, we sit and read, fulfilling every very need. The stories stacked from wall to wall, the library welcomes one another. In PE, we stretch and run with grace, playing games. We find our pace, learning to move,
009to jump, to throw, with teamwork helping us to grow. We're learning how our bodies work. Mr. Bones teaches us some added music. The playground fills with cheerful sounds, where laughter and friendship can be felt. Safety is the key power. New friends let's that beat. We swing, we slide, we climb so high, with kindness shining in every eye. Spruce School spirit is bold and bright. We cheer each other on with all our might. From Friday's pray, extra smiles, our laughter goes on for quite a while. At Spruce we learn, we lead, we care. A special place beyond compare. And we have one more surprise for you this evening. We were fortunate enough to start a talent show at Spruce Elementary and I didn't know what to expect. Are five people going to come out? Well, it
010was the exact opposite. It was hundreds of students with more talent than I could have even imagined. So we loved it and when we were practicing for this performance today, me and my crew here thought maybe Mr. Asher will play a piece for everyone. So you are in for a real treat. Asher is going to play the ocarina, which I didn't even know existed. It is a wind instrument that is more than 12,000 years old and our friend is going to make it look effortless. All right. So I feel so privileged to be standing up here with these seven and eight year olds that have more courage than I probably ever will. So to end out our evening, we're going to leave you with one of our favorite lines from our school. Whatever you do.
011Have a wonderful Wednesday. All right. Thank you to our friends from Spruce School. That's a good way to start our meeting off before we get into some really exciting presentations. So next up, we will jump into our facilities presentation, which will certainly not be as exciting. Wow, that hurts. Did you hear that Josh? All last year I was going against ringers like this. Oh, go share something. Normally, our last year I felt was important around the budget development season and how some of the ancillary areas that don't get a lot of attention, but we certainly feel their impact or they get our attention as things aren't going well. And understanding and highlighting the impact that areas like technology in last February, transportation in March, food service in August and the last real big area that
012can impact a school budget that when you think of a school district, you don't think about as facilities. And the idea of being warm, safe and dry isn't very exciting. It should just be a given. But we know that when those things aren't happening, instruction and learning experiences stop because you're not warm, you're not safe. Mr. Hart was going to join us. He tried to tough out some illnesses today and he had to go home midday. So I know he's been giving a lot of stuff and comparatively to some of the other areas where we were like near the end of the useful life and some of these areas like our facilities in general as we go into this is in great shape. And I think that's a testament to Mr. Hart, Mr. Gerhardt of
013where they're at and what they're doing and keeping their eye on the useful life of products as we go into this. So this will be a little bit faster paced because a lot of it's more intuitive and I would say in the way common sense. So in general, you know, our plan is to ensure a safe and reliable learning environment in a cost efficient manner to make sure we're in compliance with state, law and local policy. So we're going to go over our current capital project, some of our building infrastructure that's really critical of the big highlighted pieces and some of our upcoming challenges. So in our first phase of our capital project that the community supported and voted in the May of 2024 was approximately $39.9 million. We divided that into three phases. We
014call it Phase 1A, which is a lot of exterior work. We did that to drive some additional building aid. That is basically done. We submitted that to the state last December. Construction started this June and then in October it's finished. Phase 1B, we just had some bids yesterday. Hopefully we're going to be able to present that to you in an upcoming meeting and we're excited to get that started in the spring of 2026. And then our last phase, Phase 2, hopefully we'll be beginning that in spring of 2027. The challenge with capital projects is like you want to do work right away, but this is work and planning that began in 2023. That might not get done until 2030 and that's not because we're dragging our feet. That's how long and meticulous these take because
015there's a lot of thought and planning that goes into these. So Phase 1A focused on the exterior work. We tried to get this work started to drive additional building aid and mitigate the impacts of inflation. So we did some roof work at Drake, some brick repointing at Spruce and TI, some gutter and roof work at the transportation center and the high school cafeteria wing. The roof got a refresh. We, I will say as an asterisk, the middle school, high school at State Ed, they consider that one building, but that's separate from the educational side of things or that's two distinct schools with BEDS codes. In State Ed, that's considered one building. So like the Naneboring District, like Starpoint, all their buildings or all their schools are in one connected center. That's just one building there
016too. That's not like our distinction. That's State Ed with facilities. In Phase 1B, that's a lot of the interior spaces. That's a lot more of the fun things. Construction starting in spring. So in our K-6 world, a lot of capitorium and the auditorium upgrades, some window replacements, some of the cabinetry at our elementary schools, some electrical upgrades. And at the secondary campus, high school pool boilers and a secure high school vestibule and the transportation center, some interior renovations. So that's going to be work that's starting this spring around late March, early April. They're going to be starting with transportation first. We work very closely with Buffalo Construction to make sure we work around the school schedule and the students not impact their day and the learning experience. And then Phase 2. The Phase 1B and
017Phase 2 are really close together. Like, is there a thought that Phase 1B work will still be continuing or is it, like, is it hopeful? High school, middle school will be done before their starts. Some of the work at, like, Ohio or NTI, it might be like a second summer where it might span two summers, depending on the scope of the work. We're trying to mitigate the work during the school day. And then Phase 2, energy efficient window replacements at the middle school. Some of that work might take place during, like, a spring recess. And then high school has a lot of redesign with some of our art, music, facts rooms, science room renovations, health office, suite renovations. So a lot of work there at the high school and the Phase 2. The last piece,
018and our students just happened to mention it, is our annual capital outlay provision. So State Ed allows you to do a $100,000 project every year with a successful budget. I call it the easy pass, where you can get in and out real quick, but you're limited to $100,000. The previous couple years, we've done door replacements at the middle school and high school. Last year, the decision the team made was to focus on some exterior spaces that the students and community might benefit from. So we did the K-3 playground kind of thing as a way to improve safety and provide a necessary function that we felt was a good use of those dollars. So we're still looking at some potential projects for the 26-27 budget of what makes sense. But we've heard a lot of feedback
019about the playground fencing as a welcome addition. So some of our current building infrastructure. What is important about highlighting this is how long capital projects take. When things break, you can fix them, but without the State APs. I knew personally at home our dryer was on the edge. It stopped working, so now it's wait a couple weeks for the holiday weekend. But in the State Ed world, with some of these major items, you have to theoretically wait five years, or you're going to make a significant major purchase and not be eligible for any State Aid, which isn't a good use of taxpayer dollars where reasonably we should anticipate useful life and when things need to be replaced. So the hope of this is to highlight some of the anticipated timelines of when work could be
020done. Of course, oilers don't exactly have an on-off switch where they tell you exactly they're going to stop working. So some of our roofs, we've had some major installs where we've done some of our roof work. We anticipate needing to do additional work roof work in approximately the next five to 10 years at some of our elementary buildings. We highlighted and updated some of the work that's already been done or will be done in our current capital project because we know that's a definitive piece that's going to happen. On the next side, parking lots and sidewalks. That's about a 20 to 30 year useful life, depending on wear and tear. How heavy is that snow in certain years? What sort of products? Of course, a parking lot is just not going to disappear, but there
021is an element of safety as parking lots deteriorate faster and faster. They need to be updated and additionally with sidewalks as well. In our current project, the sidewalks around Spruce Elementary School are going to be done as well. You'll notice that there's a lot of some of our infrastructure pieces that were installed around 2008 to 2010. Really think the community, the board, and the work that was done probably in like the year 2005, 2006, thinking ahead. And we've really been reaping the benefits of that work now for 20, 25 years. Hopefully they say the same 20, 25 years from now. Boilers and HVAC units. You'll see again a lot of the units installed in about the 29, 2010 school year. So it's about a 20, 30, 20, 35 approximate. Again, we want to try to
022ideally replace units towards the end of their useful life. If you keep going beyond their useful life and you need to replace them, State Education Department is not going to give you aid because they're going to say reasonably you should have anticipated these items were at their end of their useful life. Why didn't you plan for that? So we are in a good spot right now, but it is something we should just be aware of five to 10 years from now. Like this is something we should be doing. Again, something that at the end of its current useful life, just trying to highlight. I think it might be helpful for some of the new board members just to talk about how we come up with these dates around the building condition survey. Certainly. So every
023five years, school districts across the state have to do something called a building condition survey where an architect team will examine every nook and cranny that you can imagine the district in every area. We're talking every building having about a 400 page standardized report where architects independently will talk about the useful life of a product. Anything you can imagine, ceilings, flooring, lights, stoves and kitchens, and they'll anticipate how much useful life they have and the cost to replace. Ideally use that building condition survey to drive and create your capital projects. But additionally, working with Chris and Jim with the facilities department, they have a really good pulse of hey, this is how much time this has left as well. So it's not just simply, oh, sidewalks you have to replace in 25 years. You know,
024you can see on the previous slide, we don't have to go back. This first sidewalks needed to be done before Drake and Ohio, even though where they were installed at the same time, just because we're aware of the work that needed to be done. Thank you. And then the building utilities, some of these seem older, but they're actually in great shape between our electrical panels, our water service lines and our gas piping. They're all, even though some of the dates of them are a little bit older, specifically at the ad building, the electrical panels and the water service lines are in really great shape. So our utility delivery and the safety of that is very high right now. There's really not a lot of context, because it's just, is it safe or is it not?
025And it's one of those you, not safe, we got to fix that. And as always, we want to just highlight some potential industry challenges things just to be aware of. If it comes up or highlighted throughout the budgetary process, as in many areas and just everywhere, but especially in school staffing is a significant problem for skilled positions with fierce competition. School districts don't necessarily steal from one another, talented people, but we're certainly not going to shy away from someone who's super talented. So we're all competing for the same skilled pool of talent. Inflationary trends, utilities are going up, but specifically insurance. Last year across the state, the minimum increase for any school district per Utica Nationals 15%. And so we were on the lower end, but it's a tough pill to swallow with the insurance
026bill for the upgrading or safeguarding the shell of the buildings. And then there are some unfunded mandates we need to be aware of. One of them is temperature and heat regulations in school with the heat mitigation in the late spring, early fall. And then also we have lead water testing is another what would be considered an unfunded mandate. We did as a district get ahead of it in our current capital project with the cabinetry and millwork at our K3s. We're replacing all the sinks with some water filters already in there. So we are well ahead of where we need to be with the lead water testing with the parts per billion per line. It's not the most exciting. I don't have kids singing. Let's hear that Josh. Oh, and I didn't make that part of
027it. I did not. I prefer a pickleball if I did. But again, these are some budget drivers that if we don't take care of or pay attention to, take away in all the other areas as well from the core educational experience of our students. So we never want to say large sums of dollars are going to these areas that we don't directly see in the classroom. But we know if we don't keep an eye on these areas, that's what will happen. So really the intent of these four presentations throughout the year is just being aware of how these areas impact the educational experience and hopefully not in like the leading way, but in just a supporting way. Josh, I have a question. Yes. So people who gave us bids for Phase 1B, that work doesn't
028start until the spring. Did they build in any kind of inflationary wiggle room? Great question. The bid is the bid. So they build that into their bid proposals for any of these projects. So they're competing and based on the timing of when we would accept bids, a good time is fall where they're planning for work in the next summer. So they try to be as competitive as they can. So they take into all the cost factors and we rely on Buffalo Construction for writing really good bid docs and Young and Wright to write really good plans. So they know exactly what they're getting themselves into in terms of what we need and specifics. Additionally, we try to buy on state contracting or co-op pricing materials that we can so we know what that price is.
029A good example, that was our roofing material on this past summer where we didn't have to deal with markup. We took that out of the bid. We said we were going to buy it off the state contract so they were just really bidding the service, not necessarily the markup on the product. So it is something and we had a really, really good turnout yesterday where this room was packed and the whole parking lot was packed with cars with competitive bidders in all the different trades areas, which is great. It's usually a 15-20% contingency too, right? We do build in things like contingency, asbestos abatement as well, which aren't considered in the bid unless it's specifically an asbestos bid. Just for the unknown, you know, for the safety side, so it's not like, whoops, what do
030we do now? We do have things in there for contingency and asbestos abatement as well that's separate from these bid items. All right, so next up we're going to jump into our fall community check-in. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to go over the community check-in for fall of 2025. At the end of September, we sent a thought exchange to our community, our families, students, staff, and we asked, what do you think our schools are doing well and what can we focus on to improve? We had 342 participants and 269 individual thoughts and almost 9,000 ratings of those thoughts. We did this last year as well. We had about 450 participants, so a little bit less than last year, but still a lot of good information. Of our participants, about 74% were parents and the remaining
03126% ended up being students, staff, community members, other people within the school district. The word cloud that's up there now, those are the words that we saw the most while we were doing or while we were looking at the information. Welcome, policy, breakfast, air conditioning, classrooms, those are the things that came up regularly throughout the survey. The top 16 rated areas are on this graph here and I'm going to go over some of those. Some are rated very positive and other things were definitely challenges within the district, but the top few are air conditioning, classroom environment, lunch and breakfast options, class size, school traffic, things like that. The normal things that come up when we ask people about what's going well and what's not going well within the school district. So some of the areas
032that we saw positive ratings included communication where there's a satisfaction with the level of communication both from the schools and the district and the special events that come out, even though sometimes those are more last minute communications. But the community and parents were definitely looking for one communication platform. So I'll also talk about where we're going to go from there after we go through the positives and negatives. Supportive schools and classrooms, many people said our teachers and counselors are very supportive of our students and families and students and families reported that they trust the staff at our schools. Another positive area was our cell phone policy. It was seen as a positive because of less distractions within the school. Overall, the implementation of the policy was seen as a positive. Students have more social interactions
033now within the school. There is a desire though through the survey, people want to be able to use phones during lunch and during study halls. That's not a school or a district decision though that is something that came from the state so we are following state rules when it comes to our cell phone policy. Additional positive areas include free meals, the appreciation for free breakfast and lunch at all of our schools. It was noted that especially with the high cost of groceries. Later in the presentation we'll go on, I'll touch on meal quality and quantity. Other curriculars were also seen as a positive with a high level of involvement in athletics, music, and after school clubs. The level of participation seems to be increasing district-wise and there are opportunities to grow and connect outside of
034the classroom setting through these activities. And then finally a welcoming environment. Schools have created welcoming and inclusive environments. Open houses and orientations have been positively received and students and families feel comfortable and informed with our schools. Some of the areas that we saw challenges, the one that was mentioned the most in the survey was air conditioning. Concerns about high temperatures impacting comfort and learning and the desire to install AC is definitely something that was pointed out a lot in the survey. Traffic management was pointed out in the survey a lot especially at Ohio School and the high school. Concerns dropping off and picking up students and the congestion there and the desire for special lanes to manage student safety. Meal quality was mentioned a lot in the survey as well. The quality of the lunch
035and breakfast options was frequently critiqued and they're looking for healthier options and adequate portion size as well. Other opportunities for grossing include class sizes. It was noted that class sizes typically look like they are larger than they were in the past. The effects on individual attention, the larger class sizes affect the individual student attentions, the support and increased behavioral issues. Another thing that was mentioned was inclusion and diversity training for all staff. This could help students from various backgrounds feel more welcome and prepared for diverse social environments. And then finally continuing to decrease the bus pickup radius so we can transport more students to school. So those are the opportunities for growth. So as we move forward, we don't just collect this information to collect the information, we certainly want to know where can we
036actually make some changes? How can we improve our school this time? So the first area on communication, we will continue to work towards one communication platform. Currently at A3 level we're using Seesaw and at the fourth through 12 we are using ParentSquared. Two different systems, but there may be an opportunity as we move forward to actually just use one system, ParentSquared, which would make it easier for parents that do have kids across multiple schools, multiple grade levels as well. Our wellness committee regularly looks at our meal quality. Some of the things that we've looked into and hope to provide as options for our kids, especially our secondary kids, more grab and go options, especially because those could be more healthy options like salads. But we also need to do a better job of communicating our
037meal options to families as well. Oftentimes if you look at the breakfast menu, you might see doughnut and it doesn't exactly look super healthy. But what we don't communicate is it's also offered with fresh fruit and yogurt and for lunches they have the option of fresh fruit, vegetables, things like that. So we don't always do a great job of communicating the other options that go along with the doughnut. So we can do a better job there as well. For the comfortable learning environments, that is more of a long term piece as we really can't just go out and air condition all of our rooms as it's very costly and there's a lot of infrastructure work that needs to happen there. So we are looking through capital projects, opportunities to air condition specific spaces within our
038buildings. That would be some of our larger places like our cafeterias and things like that. So on holidays, we can offer a place that is air conditioned. But right now it's not something that we're considering to air condition every single space within every single school. For traffic and safety, looking at signage, traffic patterns, supervision at the schools, also working with our SROs and some other experts to determine are there better ways to direct our traffic, move traffic around our buildings to be a little bit more efficient as well. Because with the end goal always being safety for all of our students. When it comes to class size, it's something that we are always monitoring. There were buildings like NTI that got an additional teacher towards the end of summer because the class sizes did go
039up very high. But it is something that we're regularly monitoring. Certainly that the secondary level class sizes are higher than they were in the past. It was a good observation by a lot of people. But our class sizes, the average at the high school the previous year was under 14 kids per class. So when you look at that, that is an incredibly low number. And as you build it up closer to 20, of course, it is going to look higher. But it's still what we would consider a realistic higher average. And as we continue to look at busing, continuing to look at the opportunities to decrease the radius and pick up more kids is something we work very closely with. Eric from transportation and Josh, we're always looking to find ways to be able to
040transport more kids throughout the district. So those are some of our next steps that we plan on working on throughout the school year and into the future to make our district better. I had one which was about the point of sort of safety and traffic patterns. You may have indicated that you were working with other experts and maybe Go Bike Buffalo was one of them. Have you engaged Go Bike Buffalo? No, we have not. Okay, because they're an entity that can, they look very creatively at different spaces, including schools, about low cost, sort of like how we can paint things that can do some traffic calming measures and things that are fairly low cost. So maybe we can connect on that. Yeah, and usually signage, painting things, doing things the right way like that can
041often alleviate some of the concerns that we have. So it's a really good point. All right, we will jump into our next one, which is around our special education programming. I'll work on that and you're not going to appreciate it. All right. So, I would like to introduce Liz Patrick, our director of special education and John Sexer, our principal at Ohio School. I'm the superintendent here, and we're going to do a presentation on our self contained program transition plan, moving forward. Our goal is to provide every student with a disability access to individualized programming that supports personal growth, while delivering essential resources and creating inclusive opportunities that foster belonging, engagement, and success for all. I do think it's really important anytime we're talking about a shift to talk about the background. Why is this even
042something we're talking about and how did we get here. If you backtrack our special education department five to sevenish years ago, we were classifying students with disabilities at an alarmingly high rate, almost 24%. So we were saying almost a quarter of our students had an educational disability. We did a lot of work. I wasn't here, can't take credit for any of it, but I can give you the historical context to study our students, study the laws, study the regulation, and we realized we were really lopsided in terms of supporting students in the least restrictive environment. We were sending at least 200 students out of district to BOCES or agency placements, and many of them were at home without a placement to go to. So over time, the special administration worked to right size that program.
043We basically flip flopped what it looks like and started building things in district. Now our classification rate is covering just under 17%, which is a much more realistic number where it should be. And we only have about 65 students that are out of district. Only two are at home waiting for placement and receiving other sorts of services. So the ones that are placed out of district are receiving what they should be, and we started building programming in here, and we've done that for a few reasons. We really cannot rely on BOCES or agency placements for spots for our kids anymore. They just don't exist, especially since COVID, they don't have the staffing. They can't hire teachers, aides, and clinicians. So our options are home instruction, letting kids sit at home, maybe not getting everything they
044need, or building it here and figuring out a way to do it the best way we can, which is different for school districts. They talk to our other districts in the environment, and they're not running the programs that we're running. So we're learning. We can support our students here, and we're happy to have them here in their home district with their peers, with their siblings, instead of putting them in a place where they're isolated and with only students with IEPs. The need continues to grow. I do a lot of work with our CPSA students every year. It's more and more alarming how many students need smaller class or more specialized placements. That need is growing. It's booming. Every other Wednesday I have CPSA meetings, and sometimes I'm shocked about the need that our three and
045four year olds are experiencing. So we have to build so we can ensure those kids have somewhere to go when they start kindergarten. So right now we're running these six special classes, three at Ohio, two at Drake, one at Spruce. This is my third school year in the district, and we have added one to two special classes from K to 12 every year since I've been here. So we are learning and we're building that continuum so these kids have a place to go right up until high school. So as we plan for the future, over the summer and in the fall, we're looking at spaces that we can have our special programs. And one of those spaces that we looked at was at NCI, looking at where currently Bozen has a program at the Learning
046Center. And while that is a very good physical space, it certainly isn't the best opportunity in terms of inclusive opportunities for the kids. It's a, it's a, every classroom has a bathroom, like always, there's a lot of good fall air condition, a lot of good things about that space, but it doesn't have K to three kids. So that really wasn't a great option in terms of moving our kids there. Like I said, good physical space, not a good space when it comes to inclusivity. Then we looked at Ohio. So when looking at Ohio, there were classrooms available at Ohio, and with the three classes already being there and the K-3 students already being there, it made a lot more sense to choose Ohio to have all of our special programs for K to three. So
047as we move forward, what we plan on doing is working with an advisory committee because we know anytime that there's a change, anytime that we're moving classrooms from any buildings, we want to have as many people that work with those students involved as possible to help with that transition. So we'll certainly be working with the classroom teachers that are already at Ohio, the classroom teachers that are at Spruce, and the classroom teachers at Drake, and also working with the professional staff that works with the students and the paraprofessional staff that works with the students as well. And we'll also be looking for a program administrator for all of our special programs K to 12. In the spring, we plan on finalizing our staffing plans, working with our parents and having individual parent nights to help
048with that transition. And all of those conversations will continue to happen at all of our annual review meetings as all of these students do have individualized education plans. So we're going to talk about every single one of those students at the annual reviews to see if they're appropriate for the program, or if they could possibly be in any of our inclusive settings at their home building. A lot of options there through the annual review. And then in the fall of next year moving to moving those six classes in total to Ohio. So what we have done so far this year, we've had conversations with the teachers that are involved with the students that are in the program. So whether it be the OTPT speech, the teachers that actually teach the kids in the program, the
049administrators that are in those programs. So to gather a little bit more information from those teachers, and we've surveyed those teachers and staff members that have worked in those programs as well. We got about 40 responses back from that survey. And what we heard was something I already mentioned, but what we heard most was having opportunities to engage with students of the same age level. That was far and away from what we heard the most. But one of maybe the most interesting line, one that definitely stuck out to me, was the spontaneous learning moments with peers. We plan a lot of great stuff that happens in school, but it's the spontaneous things, the things you don't plan for, the interaction in the hallway, the interaction at a playground, the interaction in a cafeteria that certainly
050wasn't planned, it just happens, the natural things that happen. And making sure that all of our students have those opportunities in their program to be able to experience things like that. That's something that definitely stood out to me when looking at those survey results. And then we had conversations with the parents that are involved in these programs. So it's approximately 18 parents or families that could be affected by a move. And some of those families actually do live in the Ohio area, so they would actually be going back to their home school. But like I said, it would affect about 18 families at the most with this new way. So what will it look like moving forward? So, as I mentioned, a dedicated team and an administrator. It's a very important piece to have someone
051that is qualified and has a special education background that could administer the program. There's a lot of things that happen during the school day. There's a crisis that could happen, there's behavioral issues, and having someone that has that sort of experience will be incredibly beneficial. Also getting to know the kids and the families to really support them throughout their entire journey here in North Kanawana. Because as we know, the agency placements, they don't exist. The BOCES placements, they don't exist. So we have to have a plan moving forward. And getting to know those families and kids at the earliest level is incredibly important. And having someone that can oversee all of our K-12 programs, that would be the job of this community. There's a lot of transitional pieces that occur for our students that have
052really significant needs, especially as they start to get older. And we're looking at transition planning and support. And having somebody that's really well versed in connecting our families with outside agency resources and all those things that are going to support your children into adulthood. And I know it might be scary thinking they're in kindergarten or first grade right now, thinking about what's happening after school. Right now it's piecing, right? We're recognizing that as a district. So having somebody who's trained well versed is working with you through your child's whole continuum of education here will be really powerful for your child's post-secondary outcomes. What's happening once they leave school? When we look at the teachers, they have a specialized experience. They're wonderful people that are doing a job that is really unlike any other in the
053district. So having that opportunity to work together on a regular basis, to plan together, to provide opportunities for our kids to collaborate, to have that time on a daily basis in the same building would be incredibly beneficial. The paraprofessional staff, our aides, their job is incredibly difficult. I don't even know if any of us can describe how challenging it can be on a daily basis, but also rewarding. And giving them the opportunity to be trained on a regular basis, work together, be able to have the flexibility to go in and out of different classrooms within the same environment would be very beneficial. And then also the professional staff, our OTs, our PTs, our SLPs, our speech people. Having the ability to collaborate with one another and then provide services within the classroom would be incredibly
054beneficial to our students. Because as of right now, they're mostly pull-out services, but in a program like this, they can absolutely push you into the classroom much more frequently. So really, what does programming look like? What is the nitty-gritty on it? First and foremost, shifting buildings doesn't result in changes to IEPs. I know as I was personally calling some parents, that was a big question that came up. Will my child lose their transportation or will OCP be affected? No. It literally just flips to a different location. So unless we make a decision collaboratively at a CSE meeting, no changes to IEP based on shifts in programming. So I just want to give that reassurance to families, to the community that this is not a way to adjust any of the services that are currently in
055place for students. As we've grown these programs, we've really learned that we need opportunities for staff collaboration. We've implemented some creative solutions where we're giving our self-contained teachers and staff half days once a month, or we're providing really targeted training and support. But it's not enough. We know we need time in the day to day to debrief, to prepare for the day. Lots of surprises and crises can occur in these rooms, and they do occur on a daily basis. And oftentimes, we're getting the kids on the bus and we're walking out the door. We're not having an opportunity to do that, and having that consistent leadership also to work through those conversations and make sure plans are really implemented with some fidelity. The consistency. That's our big piece. We know for our students with significant
056needs, transitions are our enemy. Moving through the building unnecessarily is a very big challenge. It can pose safety risks. It can increase behavioral needs. So we want to set these classrooms up in a space where things are nearby, coming to them. We're reimagining what those classrooms look like. And most importantly, and this is one that's very important to me, getting these students in a location that can support our summer, our ESY program. Because right now, every summer since I've come to NT, we're flip-flopping between different buildings. We're at Intermediate. We're at Spruce. We're trying different things on Versailles. But packing up these kids, their classroom, all of their equipment and everything they need to be successful and safe, it's a lot. And then they're kind of starting over. And then they come back to their
057school, and they're starting over again. So at least for those years, we can keep them in a space where they're going to be coming to school year-round, and they're going to be in a familiar area. And Peer Connections will be in that K-3 building. We heard the concerns about inclusion. I agree. So we're going to keep them in an area where they have access, but also versatility in our groupings of students. Right now, we're spread. We're spread around, and we might see, oh, that student might work better in that classroom. But we don't want to pick up a kid and move them from building to building mid-year, even though we think something else could be more supportive or suitable to them. That's not the best way to do it. So really giving us and the
058team the flexibility to look at students and hopefully better group them based on their academic, social, and behavioral needs. So really, I did allude to this a little bit in the last slide, but what makes this powerful and beneficial is we can build the capacity of our team, continuing with our half-day programs. We started that a couple of years ago, and it was very loose. We were using it, and we were kind of figuring it out as we went this year. We went full-on. Every month is planned. There's something specific. The teachers gave amazing input for what they think their teams need to learn, and I'm hoping by the end of the year we see the results of that. I can't comment on how it is right now, but continuing that and growing that as
059we go. Also looking at our scheduling. Right now, our students are in buildings, and we're putting them into a box of a K-3 building. Bringing kids together, increasing resources to this program, we'd like to get more creative and build schedules for them that really meet their developmental needs versus saying, you're in this building, you go to the library for 40 minutes, and you have to go there and stay there. It's not reasonable for our students. So making sure things are flexible and better meeting the needs of everybody. For our integration opportunities, I'm going to bring in Mr. Steckster. Good evening, everybody. John Steckford, Prince Wood, Ohio Elementary. Thanks for coming out tonight. So I want to get a little bit of a background of myself as well. So I've been to Prince Wood, Ohio for
060seven years, and as Ms. Patrick alluded to, this is a program in Grove, and I can remember the day of Grove, and it was a specific day that I got a call out to the bus. And that was for her, and somebody said, do you have to go out to the bus and help this little one get off into her class? I didn't really know what we're talking about, so I went out there and I seen what they were talking about, and I said, okay, let's figure this out, and we had gone to the classroom, and I said, okay, I'll see you later, and went on my way. And about 10 minutes later, I got a phone call. I said, we need to get back there, and I went back there, and then we realized
061we had a special young lady with us. A young lady that started in the mid-North Carolina. They started with one little girl, and as we reached out to Spruce and Drake, we realized there was a couple others that also need appropriate classrooms. And then we had three, and then we had a class, and we had Mrs. Burgess, and they joined us at the feature of that very third classroom, and that was number one. Nobody really knew what we were doing at all. We needed to get day to day, just kind of finding our way. And as time had gone on, it continued to grow to a second class. Now our third class, and now we're talking about going to six classrooms next year. Now, I got to be honest with you, early in the year
062when I heard about, you know, we have our three classrooms, which certainly can be a challenge. No doubt about it. I got to be honest with myself and ask everybody in the room, a little bit of relief. These three classrooms may not be here. Well, I get the whole thing. I have all I can do. But the emptiness was pretty severe, and to not have these children and our people in our building was overwhelming. And so when the opportunity came to be able to house children and work with them and keep this going here inside one of our K-3 buildings, it was just easy. It was just, you know, there's no way that I could turn this down. And it comes, it certainly comes at cost. There are families here from three groups, and there
063are faculty members here, and this is the challenge, and this is the change and the loss. But for every single person in this room that's affected, I will happily meet any one of you to go through every thought that I have and keep you informed along the way so that you are at least informed and you have a voice in every step going forward. And one of the reasons why I want to do this is talking about integration. And I said this at a meeting recently and I get a little chocolate every time I say it, people say, what are you doing about integration? I tell everybody, I do nothing. I do nothing at all. Zero. My staff, my teachers, my teachers, my kids have taken it over. There was a time when we did
064an assembly and we didn't have anybody reach out to the classrooms and include them, which is an embarrassment. Times have changed. I go to now our assembly coordinator, it's taken care of. It's not only done, not only is it done, but our students and ourselves in contained classrooms are on stage and volunteers. These are real authentic everyday opportunities. For example, we have an assembly coming up on Friday, which to be honest with you, it really wasn't on my radar until yesterday. So, you know, I'm going to expose myself a bit too much here. But just speaking honestly from the heart here, and today I almost had to pull out my camera because you know what happened when I went out to the buses when our children were coming in? You know, I need to see
065our staff out there. I see our students out there. We have other students that daily go on the bus and take the hand of children that use assistance and walk to their classroom together. I've seen classrooms in the third grade wing with desks that have names of children in our self-contained room with all their supplies and all of the decorations. And they participate as much of the day as possible to the point where now they're participating in reading and math. It's not just playtime. It's not just specials. We're starting to be able to do some things relatively well here and to be able to consolidate it in one location is going to give our children the next best step forward. Inclusion is not a destination. It's a journey. And this is just the next best
066step. And the last thing I'll say is I've been here for seven years and this is not related but similar in a way. Early in my career, I worked with our staff at Ohio and we did create the Discovery Net. We did create a really nice hub that spread across the district and our goal was to bring people in to see what we're doing instead of us going to see what everybody else was doing. We're going to do the same thing with inclusion. We're going to set the model here and beyond and how this will view and how it's done. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be pretty. We haven't done right by every single kid and every single family. But I'm telling you, we're getting better and this is the
067next and best step for all of our children. And for anybody that's got reservations, I am happy to sit with you anytime to walk through this with you and be with you through this. Just one other point that I put up there in the slide is the TIEs program. That's something we're trying to get up and running in the district this year. I'm thankful to one of our parents who encouraged Starbridge to reach out to me about bringing this to the district. But it's essentially a program where we'll have a coordinator who is caring on student volunteers with our staff. And I'm thankful to one of our parents who encouraged Starbridge to reach out to me about bringing this to the district. But it's essentially a program where we'll have a coordinator who is caring
068on student volunteers with our students with disabilities to help them participate in school-wide events, extra curriculars. The opportunities are really endless. An example that she gave that another district is supporting is that she has a child who wanted to do Girl Scouts. And there's a high school volunteer who's participating with her versus her mom or dad having to go and be with her through that whole program. So that's hopefully we're going to be interviewing for a coordinator in the next couple weeks. And I'm really excited to get that up and running for all of our students with disabilities. But I do see how we could really support this group getting into those gen ed classrooms. And I know our high schoolers love to volunteer because when we have parent nights, we have more volunteers than
069we usually need to provide child care. So I'm hoping that they'll be ready to go. So I want to just highlight that for everybody. For family engagement, there's going to be opportunities, as there are now, for parent education nights and classroom activities. Also celebrations and recognitions at the school and then within the programs as well. And then continued opportunities for families and students to participate in their homeschool as well as Ohio school. And this will give us an opportunity, once again, as I mentioned earlier, to provide better transition planning year after year and then from level to level, level all the way through graduation for our students. And right now we don't have any sort of special education PTA or parent advisory council. So that's a goal as we transition into this program that that's
070created. And we really do have some standards for frequent meeting and not just for our students and self-contained. I know their needs are drastically different than maybe some of our other students with educational disabilities. But I do think it's important for us to have a mechanism for bringing our parents together more regularly, more frequently with a little bit more structure versus, you know, just our regular engagement on those random phone calls or CSE meetings. So keep your eyes peeled for me asking you to join that. So here's some of the goals and just some of the mindset that we had in thinking of enhancing and building this program and trying to bring some more resources to it. Obviously, first and foremost, continued focus on integration inclusion. I think Dr. J said it best those spontaneous
071moments. We can't replicate that. When we talked about moving the students to NTI, that's where I was struggling. How do I do this? But here we can, and it can just be natural, right? And it becomes an answer part of the day for everybody in the building. The second goal, really honing in on how our resources and our supports and changes to our programming can hopefully lead to a decrease in our behavior referrals and improve social emotional learning, building up those skills in our students. Hopefully with consistency, increased collaboration, increased training, building those cohesive teams that can work together. Hopefully we do see a decrease in some of those behavior or crisis situations. They do happen daily. Increased staff collaboration, continuing our monthly meetings, trainings, but also building in that time every day that people
072are together. And then our increased family engagement, building that parent advisory group or whatever we want to call it. But those are some of the goals we'd really like to work through as we make this transition and by the end of next school year. And in closing, centralizing our K-3 self-contained classroom strengthens consistency, collaboration, and support. Together we're building a unified program where every child has the opportunity to learn, roll, and thrive. Any questions to the board? Thank you. Thank you for providing context about the history of where the students have been placed over time and really the inclusive move to bring back to district to be educated here with their peers in the district. I work at NU. I'm the department chair for special education there. We're planning a post-secondary program there, so we're
073going through kind of a similar process. We want to be more inclusive at the university level, including students with intellectual disability there. And it's disruptive because we don't know exactly. We have to hear from the care holders and be intentional about it. And it sounds like you're being very intentional about it and contemplated. And the community, I believe, I'm really heartened that the community responds. I've seen some activity on Facebook. I try not to get too engaged because I really trust that the leadership has done a great job. But it's still heartwarming to know that the community cares, and I think that's a great foundation for what we're doing in districts. Thank you. All right. We will jump into our agenda. We will go to 10.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the personnel
074agenda as presented. Are there any... You skipped the agenda order. Sorry. All right. Let's start over. 8.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the agenda order as presented. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes? Not hearing any. I will make the motion. Just need a second. From Chloe, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We'll go to 9.25. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the consent agenda as recommended by the Superintendent of Schools, Justina Motion. So moved. From Jeff, in the second. Second. From Stephanie, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Now we'll go to 10.1. It's recommended the Board of Education approves the personnel agenda order as presented. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes? Not hearing any. I will make the motion. Just need a second. Second.
075From Stephanie, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We will jump down to 11.23. It's recommended the Board of Education approves all personnel items in section 11 as presented. Justina Motion. Moved. From Dennis, in the second. Second. From Jeff, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. And it looks like the last item to vote on for the public comment period is a second read of our policies, which is policy 7410. And I don't know, I don't think we have any questions or changes from the first read. Any additional questions? I know we've talked about it a couple times, but any additional questions before we move forward on that one? All right. So not hearing any. It's recommended the Board of Education approves your revised version of policy 7410 as
076presented. Justina Motion. Moved. From Chloe, in the second. Second. From Jeff, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right. Would someone mind grabbing you the... Oh, perfect. Do you mind keeping me on track there? Sure. All right. Again, we just ask that you state your name and address for the record. Keep your comments to five minutes. If I touch you off, it's just because I want to get as many people in in our time period as possible. Who do we got first? Amanda Berger. Where am I taking some people? Oh, you can come right up to the front. Go ahead and get you on. So Amanda Berger, 148 Miller Street is where I live. I am a mother of two children in North Soundawanda. My older son, Aiden, is 20, and he's autistic, and
077he went through the North Soundawanda school system. I was trained as the parent advocate, and I went through the CSU meetings with other parents who were newly diagnosed. I myself am neurodiverse. I have a pretty severe ADHD, if you can't tell at all. And I have a 12-year-old who is currently in the North Soundawanda school system, giving me my eye of care. It is never okay to regress backwards into moving away from inclusion, because if you're having, I understand the idea that you're still saying you're including, but when you're taking kids away from the other buildings, you're making our kids have kind of like a target on their back, and they are not, those other kids are not being exposed to neurodiverse kids, so they don't know how to deal with them as they're growing
078up, so when they finally go into middle school, they, you know, kind of have a not-familiarity with them, and we already have that in our community that we have to deal with, so it's just bringing more of that towards us. And also, even for the neurotypical kids, you're denying them the opportunity to be exposed to our kids who kind of have a different way of looking at the world, and they get, you know, creativity and spontaneous ideas and different things from the way that our kids look at the world, and so you're denying both of them those opportunities, so I just think that's things that need to be considered. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Rebecca Maron. Good evening. My name is Rebecca Maron. I live at 251 Oakville Tribe. Thank you.
079I'm a teacher's aide in one of two 812 self-contained classes at Drake Voluntary. I've lost my voice a little bit, so please excuse me. I'm also a parent to two young boys who attend North Carolina Schools. I'm here tonight to share both my family's inclusion success story and to address some concerns that I have with the proposed relocation of our pay-for-free self-contained classes to Ohio Elementary. My eldest son, Teddy, is in the fourth grade at MTI. He is currently in a general education classroom and is a member of the fourth grade band of the Gifted and Talented program. In his spare time, he loves to read, write stories, play games on his tablet, swim, and ride his bike. He has been studying piano at Buffalo Suzuki Strings for close to five years and is an
080enthusiastic member of Cub Scout at 193. I mention all of these things because if you had told my husband and I eight years ago that this is where Teddy would be, we probably would not have believed you. Teddy was diagnosed with autism level two when he was two and a half years old. He's always been academically gifted, but he had a severe expressive and receptive language delay, as well as severe delays in both gross and fine motor skills. He spoke and repeated phrases, was prone to meltdowns, and essentially looked at other children as objects rather than playmates. As first-time parents, we really had no idea what the future would look like for him. Throughout Teddy's elementary education, he has run the gamut of placements and services. He attended an agency-based preschool for two and a
081half years before starting kindergarten at Spruce Elementary in a 1211 self-contained room. While at Spruce, he transitioned to an integrated CT classroom and eventually returned to Drake, our home school, where he moved from a CT room to a general education classroom over the course of three years. When news of the potential move to the Learning Center first came to my attention, my first thought was, where would Teddy be now had he not been in a building that contained both a self-contained program and a CT classroom? Because of that structure, he was able to slowly transition to a less restrictive environment, and I truly believe that was a catalyst for his current success. Now that Teddy is at MTI, he has had some struggles socially, but consistently the kids he knows from Drake have been kind
082and inclusive classmates. Many of their parents have told me that their children didn't know Teddy was autistic. I think this speaks to the fact that young children do not see differences in the same way that older kids do. I strongly believe that exposing our neurotypical children to a diverse, inclusive learning environment is essential to fostering an empathetic and accepting school culture. At Drake, our self-contained classes are welcomed as part of the greater school community. We are included in school events, and many of our students know the names of most teachers in the school and say hello to them daily. They get so excited when the opportunity arises to play with other classes on a playground or during field day. My younger son, who is a general education student, often has children from the self-contained classes
083push into his class during the day. He's always so excited to tell me about their new students and will give me updates on how great they're doing. By removing these programs from Drake and Spruce, you'll be greatly reducing the organic exposure of our kids to those who may act, look, or think differently at a crucial age. What happens when the kids from these schools get to intermediate school and have had no exposure to special education students? Will that benefit any of them from a social-emotional standpoint? Aside from this, as a staff member, I feel that moving all of our self-contained classes to one building will spread our already thin resources even thinner. Currently, we have one sensory room and sensory pathway at Drake. Our self-contained students utilize both of these throughout the school day, every
084day. Our school's social worker and counselors spend a good amount of time providing extra support in our room's theme. If we are moved to one building with six self-contained classes, all containing very different special education populations, how will these resources be renegotiated? If there are six special ed rooms, are the general and CTE teachers at Ohio going to be amenable to more students pushing into their classrooms? If the need for self-contained rooms continues to grow, won't we just need to add more classrooms and then we're moving kids to a program that's going to just become overcrowded again? I just do not feel that this move will benefit the staff or students of these programs in any meaningful way. I appreciate that our pleas for inclusion have been taken into consideration since the initial idea of
085moving ours to the Learning Center was brought up. But I still urge you to reconsider whether these classes need to be removed from their communities at all. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Next is Katie Congerty. Hi, my name is Katie Congerty. I'm a kindergarten special education teacher and ICT classroom at Drake Elementary. We acknowledge and appreciate change in sending our self-contained students to Ohio rather than to an extension of NTI, but we still have concerns that we'd like to make the board aware of. As of this year at Ohio, there are three classrooms that are welcoming self-contained students to integrate with their same age peers in the entire school. At Drake, we have Gen Ed teachers allowing self-contained students to integrate and are even setting our Gen Ed students down
086to spend time in self-contained classrooms. Our concern is how and why would we send our neediest students to a different location where they A, may not be welcome, and B, may not have the opportunities for integration that they do now. Drake currently houses two of the most extreme behavior classrooms. We're going to handle these behaviors with crisis teams spanning beyond those that would be making the move to Ohio. Our Gen Ed and ICT students in crisis benefit from our response teams as well. What will become of them? The whole school is familiar with our 813 students' behavior and are going to respond accordingly. Ohio currently houses the autism classrooms and are already exhausting their resources to meet their needs. How will these much more extreme and intense behaviors be received? Our behavior classrooms utilize the
087sensory calming room all day, every day. How will one of these rooms service six self-contained classes? Why, other than administrative ease, are we moving these classrooms that are well established and running smoothly in their respective elementary buildings? Why are we taking away diversity and inclusion opportunities from the other two elementary buildings to overload one? We urge you, when considering to make this decision, if the benefits of keeping all of our self-contained rooms together would outweigh the strains and the pull on resources that one building would endure. Spruce and Drake value our self-contained classrooms and have worked for over five years to provide inclusion opportunities at all three locations. Our hope is that all three buildings can embrace the challenges and benefits that come with including our most difficult students, and we can continue to develop
088the programs that we've worked so hard to create. Jessica Stewie. Hi, I'm Jessica Stewie from the Lemon NT, but I am the School Counsel at the Drake Elementary School. For the past five years, working in NT, I've worked with both the self-contained 812 rooms and also the general education students. I've focused my career on creating a culture of acceptance, understanding, kindness, and inclusion within the Drake buildings, and it's been successful for many years. Hearing that the district would like to take the self-contained classrooms out of our buildings goes against everything I've focused on for the last five years. Everyone is kind of losing in this situation. Our buildings, the staff, the special education children, and general education children will be affected in a negative way. These self-contained rooms bring a sense of empathy that can't
089be taught. I can go on and on about examples of children who have benefited from having the classrooms in the buildings. One story I'd like to share is about a girl who asked why the kids in those classrooms scream a lot. I explained they learn differently, and that's okay. The girl told me that if she learned differently and was confused, she would probably also have a hard time. A few weeks later, the same girl was seen comforting one of our self-contained children in the hallway, telling them it was okay to have a hard time, and she has a hard time sometimes, too. These moments create something within our children that cannot be taught through books. We are losing our support in the Drake and the Spruce buildings. The district spent thousands of dollars on Uquero
090equipment and training. This training is not just used for the self-contained rooms, but also the students having major behaviors. It takes three trained staff to implement Uquero properly. With the loss of these classrooms, we are no longer going to have the support within our schools, which could result in more staff and students getting hurt. Also, the amount of support needed within our new program with six rooms in one place is astronomically higher than the current support needed in our buildings, and it will be hard to properly staff. Taking these classrooms out of the current buildings and placing them in a separate wing away from their peers could potentially give the message that North Conwanda doesn't care about what's best for our kids and hides away those who are different. These are our most vulnerable children,
091and moving them to a foreign environment out of their current community away from their already built relationships and supports is traumatic, and how do we justify them? I just hope you consider keeping our self-contained classrooms at their current schools to help all of our students grow into the best people they can be. My name is Mark Perry. I live at 43 Hagen. My son, Jonathan, is disabled. I've got two issues I want to bring up, so I've got to speak quickly. When I moved into the district, he had to go to Gassport out of Boces, Royal Heartland, an hour on the bus, there and back. You guys didn't have a program here. I wanted my son to be included with his peers, the kids he lives on the street with, that he plays with at
092home, where we teach there is no differences. Like they said, we're exposed. He's treated equally. I don't like this separate but equal thing. As the past has shown us, it's not fair. Everything in North Conwanda is supposed to include. You guys include religion. You guys include all different groups of people, sexes, nationality, together. So when the kids get older, they know that and they look out for the community, don't want to hide them out. But another issue I have, though, which is talked about is the percentage of kids with special needs, we'll say. 17%, but it was 20%, correct, those are the numbers that were given out. So we have a problem that we're not talking about is why so many kids nowadays have this. The government is talking about the vaccines, okay. Here in
093New York State, 2019, Governor Cuomo got rid of the religious exemption, so all the kids have to get vaccinated. I regret getting my son vaccinated. What I know now, Robert Kennedy, health and services secretary, and the effects of it, the dirty something, I chose not to vaccinate my son who's disabled with medical conditions. This school district, and this board needs to know this, I got a letter from the governor stating if I don't get my son vaccinated and put things that are questionable into his body, he cannot go to school anymore. My son is disabled, so I had to pull my son out of school and home teach him, okay. So what I'm saying right now is we have a zero tolerance for drugs in the school. We're giving our kids drugs, forcing them to
094school to put things into their body that could harm them. We don't even know what they are. There's up to 36 they need nowadays. Something's going on, and that's just with the vaccines. Another thing with you guys that are misleading here is you say that kids could be non-citizens and attend school, which I agree. Every student should get an education. But if you're going to say they're here legally, but then my son, because I choose to spare him from harm, he doesn't get an education. That's discriminative. Another thing, you allow students to change their sexes based off how they identify, okay, without a medical certification that they are. But yeah, my son, in order to go to school, needs a medical exemption from a doctor to protect him. I don't see how this is fair.
095I think it's discriminatory against kids who are unvaccinated, especially if they already have autism on the spectrum, disabled. So I just think that this district needs to be more inclusive and give all kids an education, vaccine and not, because right now my son is home and I'm getting no help from the school board at all because of the governor. And I want to remember, point out that two minutes left, COVID happened. We forced these kids to wear masks. We forced them social distance. We forced teachers who no longer work here to get vaccines that they didn't need. Why are we continuing this right now? Why don't we look at the past and look at segregation and look at all these other things and not separate and discriminate one group of people which belong to the
096school district? My son has got friends. He's doing great here. But because of politics, because of a mandate for 2019, Governor Cuomo got rid of the religious exemption. He's not even in office anymore. We don't mask our kids anymore. Yet my son can't go to school. But you're telling me to inject my son with whatever thing that could harm him. And I have to live with that. The state of Florida, okay, just lifted all vaccine mandates. 47 out of 50 states have religious exemption. So we've got to ask the question. Instead of trying to build schools to separate kids because it's growing, the amount of special education that we should figure out the cause and let us parents respect our kids and not putting things into them. And then this might not happen. Do you
097understand? I'm asking this board right now. I understand to follow the laws, but you could object to the governor's vaccine mandate with a written letter to us parents right now. Because like I said, the kids who are unvaccinated, we pay school taxes. I pay school taxes. I'm not getting any help, any education from my son, from you guys at all. And I don't think it's fair. And especially the kids who are disabled. I shouldn't have to prove that a medical exemption with my son fits into the criteria. He's on the spectrum. He's got medical conditions. So I just asked this board to take that into consideration. North Tonawanda is nondiscriminatory for everyone. Your religion, your sex, anything, your citizenship, or if you're vaccinated or not. Take a stand here in North Tonawanda for the kids
098because think about it. You're sending a wrong message to the kids to put things into the body they don't know. For example, my body, my choice women. You understand what I'm saying? But then the kids, we don't have a choice in our own kids what goes into their body. So I'd like that to be talked about. I'm bringing it up now because it has a lot to do with the schooling and the separation right now. Because like I said, I am not putting any more things into my son. I should never did in the first place. We learn from the past, the past four years of COVID. And this is being talked about by Robert Kennedy, the government all over the world right now. So I think you guys should be talking about it too.
099Because like I said, there's students that are in your district that can't get an education. Because why? Because my religious beliefs, Florida, we can't be behind. I understand. We can't be behind anymore. We were behind when I put my son into this district at Royal Heartland. You guys didn't have a program here. So why can't we jump it up and say education is for everyone? Send a message to the governor vaccinated or not. North Tonawanda is going to give them an education and treat them all equally in the same school. No separate schools for vaccinated, unvaccinated, special education and not. Once everyone is able to go to school. Thank you. That's the end of the list. But was there anyone else that would like to address the board? I didn't put my name on the
100list. Sure. Just your name and address in five minutes. Thank you. My name is Amanda Krenz. I live at 369 North Avenue. Thank you. I have, I didn't write notes like everybody else did. So I'm kind of flying off the cuff there. But I have three daughters in the district. Two in middle school, one in NTIB or Drake family. I have a lot of teachers there that supported my babies growing up from Drake. And without them, my autistic daughter would have suffered horribly. I get teary thinking about it because they taught her classmates to be kind to her. She struggled a lot in her CT classroom and they taught like, it's OK that she's learning that way because she learns differently. And she still struggles every single day in the middle school when kids pick
101on her and make fun of her because she's different than all those other Gen Ed kids. I can't imagine if she was not with Gen Ed kids growing up because they wouldn't have seen that that's a normal behavior to act a little weird or be a little bit different. I'm so thankful for those teachers that helped those other Gen Ed kids to be like, it's normal. That's just how Caitlin learns. And it would be such a disservice to those neurotypical kids to not be exposed to great kids like Caitlin, who knows that she's just a little different. I think it was, I don't know, Dr. Jay or our principal from Spruce who said these neurotypical kids are like learning how to be kind because of our neurodivergent kids. You're going to steal it from them
102by taking all those kids and putting them at Ohio. Ohio is great. You people are doing amazing things at Ohio. I want you to keep doing it. But Dr. Spruce should also have that opportunity to do that and those kids. Anyone else? Not seeing anything. Thank you, everyone, for your comments. We will go around to the board for final comments. Awesome. Thank you all so much for coming out. And for those of you that spoke in particular, it always just strikes me because it can be so scary, right, to be up here and saying some heavy things. But I think this was expressed earlier, but it just shows that we really care about all of our students. We're giving this the time and attention it deserves. And that means a lot. So thank you for
103all of your voices. And I want to go back to the very beginning of the meeting and just say I thought it was incredible that we got to hear from our Spruce student leaders and Asher. I thought that was an amazing way to kick off the meeting. So thank you very much for that. Thank you. I do want to echo. I do appreciate all the parents and teachers and staff coming out. We wish that you guys would come more often so that we know how you guys are feeling about things. So I do want to thank you all again. I know it's hard getting up here, especially talking about things that affect your children. So I do thank you for that. And again, the Spruce kiddos are so stinking cute. Yeah, to all the other
104schools that will present to us later this year, you have a lot to live up to now. So I just want to, so we'll start there. Echo, obviously, what Chloe and Melissa said. But the other thing I want to say is that I live behind the high school. I get to see a lot of the things happening at the field. And I just want to give a shout out to any parents that have been outside in sports activities this week. You're the real MVPs, not anybody on the field. You're like the parents out there in this weather have been the real MVPs. So just want to give a shout out to the families who are making it happen for all the kids. Yeah, thanks. I took a lot of notes. And Ms. Pultz-Ferner, thank you
105for bringing your kids. I want to echo. It was a joyful way to start the meeting. And Dr. Denise, thanks for sharing all the interesting stuff. The capital project, the first amends. But it's important to provide context, too. And diversity is a fact. Inclusion is an act. And I really believe that, for my part, we're going to listen to your concerns and try to figure out how to act and to make it work for the kids, all the kids going through the schools. And I think that the administration presented their plan in a thoughtful way. And I believe that it's a work in progress that it will develop with your participation and hearing your voice. I think it's really important process. And like Chloe said, show up. We love hearing from you. It's important to
106hear from you to get all the perspectives to move forward in an informed way. So thank you for being here. First of all, I apologize for stepping out. Second, it's very hard to follow up all the well-spoken board members I share up here with. So I want to echo everything like I said. Thank you everyone for coming out. I appreciate the infrastructure. And except there's a lot to take in, a lot of feedback and going back and forth. So work in progress. I really appreciate the presentation. I always appreciate the feedback and questions that all of you have. I definitely appreciate Mrs. Frantz and Mr. Patty there. There are two people that actually called me over the last couple of weeks. And we've had conversations and I would encourage any of our parents to have
107questions and see something that just doesn't look right. Give me a call. Email me. I'm happy to talk with you about some of these things. And always give you the answers and things like that. But certainly having conversations is a good place to start. Thank you to Spruce. Just amazing job on the first school spot light of the year. And also I want to recognize our school board student member, Chris Chenier, who couldn't be here tonight because he is participating in his last football game as a senior tonight at Lumberjack Stadium. So congratulations to Chris. Awesome. Yeah, I was wondering where Chris was on the sign. So he's excused. Yeah, very exciting. First, I wanted to thank the Remember Ryan Foundation for their wonderful donations at the middle school and at Drake Elementary. So thank
108you for always their generous support of our schools. And again, thank you all for being here. We normally sit here and there's the kids from the government classes, which we love to have. But it's nice to see some different faces, whether it's our staff, whether it's the community parents, everyone that's here. Just because, you know, we see things online, we hear from our administrators and all the stuff that's going on. But really hearing from your first hand point of view is super important. So thank you for that. We'll definitely, like I told people, they took a lot of notes to dive in and really to look at things that we're doing here. So thank you for that. The only other thing I had, just for the good of the board, Jeff Zellner and I went
109to the New York State School Board Association Conference and I know some of you did the virtual option. Some really interesting things going on in the world of education, shocker. Some really exciting things and really boring presentations around budgets and policy. Yeah. But overall, some really exciting things, I think, coming. I think, you know, we have some time to talk to our counterparts in other parts of the state and even just here in our backyard and just all the good stuff that's going on here in NT. That we should really celebrate because there's a lot of shenanigans going on in other places that we're lucky to not be part of. But I don't know, Jeff, anything else that you got out of it? I mean, it's definitely drinking from the water. For me, going in
110the first time, I think the most valuable part was, like I said, running into counterparts from Niagara County and other places across there. You know, kind of just candidly speaking, kind of going over how, you know, we're all here for the right things and what's the right thing to do, policies. It was really intriguing with the AI policy and how to kind of approach that on everyone's different opinions on that kind of stuff and all the fun kind of stuff on there. But it was, you know, super valuable to me. Like I said, it's still, you know, still do as I am, like digesting all the kind of stuff there. All right. So with no further business come for the Board of Education, just seeing a motion to adjourn at 7.59. Following a second? Second.
111From Stephanie, all in favor? Aye. My motion carries. Thank you, everyone. If there's any students on either sheet side, please come on up and we'll get you. Any of us can do it.