Curriculum & Academic Vision
Active
38 meetings ·
2024-03-07 to 2026-08-06
Multi-year curriculum overhaul driven by the district's 'vision map' — algebra-for-all in 8th grade, NGSS-aligned science sequence, science of reading literacy framework with new literacy coach, and comprehensive math improvement materials.
Timeline (38 meetings)
Mar 7, 2024
Board of Education
Board Trustee Joshua Diamond received feedback from the CHHS Student Faculty Congress, mainly that it's about time we had this policy, they were receptive to it, but they had concerns about language defining diversity in education, the term "moving b…
Report: 9.2 Board Reports Advocacy: Board Trustee Anamika Bhatnagar reported that the committee has not met formally, but she attended legislative meetings with Dana Levenberg and Pete Harkham. Top issues included civil service exams and the irregula…
Supt. Walker is working on two presentations: Vision Map and Collaboration/APPR.
Board Trustee Ana Teague wanted to address concerns of the public that think the work may not be being done on the DEI policy just because it has taken so long. The urg…
May 2, 2024
Board of Education
Transfer to cover high school portion of tent rental for graduation ceremonies
5/2/2024
TRANSFER FROM
Description
Amount
TRANSFER TO
Description
2110.403-01-9000
Curriculum development- special program (HS)
5,000.00
2020…
Let's not confuse critiquing this equity policy with not supporting equity.
Sara Boice asked the Board members "Do you understand the difference between equality and equity?" Sarah Carrier noted that Board members do not respond at the Hearing of t…
Elana Freyes quoted Ossining's DEI policy and urged a more collaborative effort.
Bob Wintermeyer expressed concerns about the DEI policy. He felt that the biggest concern is that DEI opens the door for teachers to discuss things that should be left…
What happened to the separation of church and state? Questioned the new math curriculum.
Kathy Connolly stated that DEI has become a religion and if you don't believe in the religion, you get kicked out of the church. Students are afraid to pick to…
Equity committee should be representative.
Andrea Furey thanked the Board for their work and noted that the accessibility of this document through translation is important and to consider word choices carefully.
Tony Granger spoke about the diversi…
May 9, 2024
Board of Education
Erica Lauden Corwin agrees how valuable teacher aides are. She noted that there is little to no budget for academic enhancements like robotics/AI. and is not seeing excellence in the curriculum.
Andrea Furey sees firsthand how important teacher ai…
Kathy Wassig has a kindergartner at CET and spoke regarding a perceived lack of academic rigor at the schools. Students performing at or above grade level are not being considered. She is also concerned about technology in the classroom taking over t…
May 21, 2024
Board of Education
Motion by Omar Mayyasi, second by Neal Haber.
Final Resolution: Motion Carried
Yes: Sarah Carrier, Neal Haber, Omar Mayyasi, Ana Teague, Theo Oshiro, Anamika Bhatnagar
Action (Consent): 9.2 Curriculum Coordinator - Recommendation
Resolution: That…
Jun 20, 2024
Board of Education
Mr. Haber went to graduation ceremony at Pines Bridge school at PNW BOCES, an emotional, heartfelt presentation of the 8 students who have come a long way. It's important that we support kids out-of-district in these amazing programs.
Ms. Bhatnagar …
Jul 11, 2024
Board of Education
Action: 6.02 Side Letter of Agreement - CTA
RESOLVED: That the Board of Education approves the side letter of agreement between the Croton-Harmon UFSD and the Croton Teachers' Association Bargaining Unit as presented.
Motion by Joshua Diamond, seco…
Curriculum Fellows 2024-2025, at a stipend of $3,000
Marlena Horton
Jennifer Rescigno
Sarah Wellman
Ashley Valentine
Motion by Joshua Diamond, second by Theo Oshiro.
Final Resolution: Motion Carried
Yes: Sarah Carrier, Joshua Diamond, Neal Hab…
RESOLVED: That the Board of Education approves the 2024-2025 co-curricular appointments as presented.
Marlena Horton, CET Chorus, at a stipend of $3,253
Kindness Club-Marlena Horton and AnaMaria Strattner, at a stipend of $2,471, each
Broadway Kid…
RESOLVED: That the Board of Education approves the 2024-2025 Curriculum Coordinator appointments at a stipend of $3,000, as presented.
Curriculum Coordinators
CET
ELA
Stefanie Liss
Math
Ana Maria Strattner
Social Studies
Ruth Sullivan
Sci…
Aug 8, 2024
Board of Education
Report: 2.2 Hearing of the Public
Jim Levy spoke in support of the pay package for the school aides and noted that many people share his sentiment, and that he supports a substantial increase as they are critical to the educational process.
Molly L…
Sep 5, 2024
Board of Education
Reports
Report: 2.1 President's Report
Board Vice President Omar Mayyasi gave the President's Report
Topics included:
Senior portraits
Back to School Nights
PTAs
Fall Sporting Events
Booster Club meeting 9/10/24
Meet the BOE sessions
Report…
Oct 10, 2024
Board of Education
And four, to include or add curriculum in practicing and encouraging civil discourse of challenging times. We are currently awaiting a response that identifies trust's plan for accountability assessment and implementation of the recommendations or a …
There are many resources many resources available to administration, faculty, and students, not just Jewish sites, the UFT, the NDA, and have partnered to create curriculum, which will help support the teachers on this sensitive and important matter.…
The other day, they've been relating to curriculum or facilities or whatever, but we're thinking about how and when to have such a session in the 2425 school year. We also discussed the possibility, which is still kind of information, to develop a ki…
Nov 7, 2024
Board of Education
Melissa Frie spoke to support PASA and urge acceptance of recommendations
Ed Riely warned against direct involvement of public officials (Croton Village DEI committee) who have a political agenda should not be in public schools. He noted that he wa…
Ms. Carrier attended the first Building Planning Council at the High School, topics included changes to the master schedule. Board Trustee Joshua Diamond attended the first CET Building Planning Council today, topics included scheduling, interdiscipl…
Nov 21, 2024
Board of Education
Be it resolved. The board of education hereby approves the agenda as presented. So moved. Second. Oh, yeah. Please. Yeah. On the question? All in favor? I'm sorry. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. And 2.1 of our work session is our work session on m…
And I'm happy now to turn it over to John to kick us off. Thank you so much, Steve. It's an honor to be here, today to discuss our plans for enhancing two core curriculum areas, science and mathematics. As Steve said, we put together a dedicated team…
There is an alignment between our vision and the state's plans for the future of education. And Croton-Harmon, as we know, is at the leading edge of that change. In the same way, the New York State's science standards align perfectly with our big pic…
last year, I worked with fourth graders who were amazed by the solar eclipse, a breathtaking real world phenomenon. And I'm sure that sparked a lot of interest in earth and space science for many of them. These kids would really benefit, actually des…
And the last part of three d learning is called cross cutting concepts. These concepts are super important because they help us connect different ideas and science. They help us to see the big picture. They help us to understand complex systems. They…
This helped us find gaps in our teaching and see how our students learn science throughout their time at PVC. Although you might not be able to see the minute details on this slide, the overall impact of the analysis is clearly visible. In these thre…
Hello, Noah. Thank you for having us tonight. We're excited at the middle school because over the last couple years, we've worked to better align the middle school science standards with the updated 1996 standards, and now we feel like we have a pret…
Next slide, please. Oh, can I just do the demonstration? Do you mind? Sure. I'll the demonstration. So just to take you through a very simple exercise. Traditionally, it has been pretty common practice to give students a problem or question, and from…
Thank you, Noah. John, next slide. So we just wanna make the board aware of how it changes in science to middle school road map. So as you know, starting next year, living environment will not be offered in the eighth program. So what we did is we go…
think because I'm just sort of I think I'm trying to understand a little bit better, but I think there'll be time to sort of see this as sort of, like, as it comes together for for parents and families who wanna sort of understand what is changing so…
So most of their experience will be a lot more aligned than it is now. And then here is just the timeline of how we're approaching it because this is a lot of curriculum work in a pretty short amount of time. So I'm writing now. We've already started…
I have a question regarding this transition period. Because while while I think we're very progressive and I think that we're very student focused in terms of curriculum development, the world around us perhaps isn't right. Like, colleges are still l…
I just have one additional question. So I know that you, in the past, represented that you've been working with colleges and and you're getting, you know, feedback and input regarding these changes we're making to our curriculum. Could you just share…
I mean, the math and per you'll hear it too. The math in particular take one. I don't know. The math presentation, but from a college perspective, one of the things that you're quite aware is that all of our students will have the ability to get to t…
and we would never do something something to harm our students' chances of anything. We're what we're doing, we're being told by colleges is actually helping to differentiate our students, and that's something you hear over and over again in the coll…
So before I hand it over to them, we're just gonna talk about the timeline first on the front end instead of the back end. So, basically, over the summer and going back into last year, we had conversations about what do we take to help students find …
And then finally, we will do a final analysis in the overall hall, you know, of the curriculum and have it in, you know, a published form, not just for our teachers, but also for the public, and then be ready to to launch in in September with the cur…
Hi. Thank you, Secondary math teacher at QVC. I wanna start with the summer that Michael was just talking to us about. We had worked with special ed colleagues. And when we were creating this this this curriculum, we saw that it was very sequential. …
So just wanted to share with the board our goals in this all, and these are goals that we came up with at the beginning of our work. Obviously, we wanna provide students with instruction that results in them developing skills, skills that will help t…
Yeah. So when we're thinking about our redesign of the curriculum, we're concentrating always on the, strands of mathematic proficiency. So in the five strands, we have multiple record indications of mathematics that we want students to know, like gr…
That's The other thing is is I think our fifth and sixth grade teachers who are here this evening, I think they always their aspirations will always to get kids as many kids into algebra. And, again, like I told you, you know, with this year, over 80…
addressing possible gaps. Yeah. I know that from sort of going into eighth or going into alpha, We used to have things called the wrapping your own deck. Mhmm. And Yeah. And some did that very diligently. Maybe some did not. Either which way, we allo…
But say they're, sophomore year, they wanna take more challenging science courses, and they don't wanna have the demand of having a challenging science course, challenging math course. So they have a chance to laterally move without losing tempo on g…
Okay. Alright. So this is our proposed, amendments to our existing curriculum. So as you can see, we have two pathways where students can choose where they would like to go. So we have the applied path and the theoretical pathways of the courses that…
So if you go we actually just go back to the chart just for the horizontal, mobility piece just to make it really concrete. So if you take analytic geometry in the eighth grade, you can pick anything from the tenth grade, Rob, whether it's in the app…
to speak about, like, at least the algebra two Mhmm. Trigonometry course, we're probably one of the only schools that still offer algebra two trig algebra two trigonometry. So we're kinda like, we took the summer to re, look at our precalculus course…
So, like, to kind of follow-up on my question in the like, the the changes that we're making in both the the science and the math curriculum are really exciting for our right? For the there's this current group of of cohort of seventh graders that ar…
Work Session (Thursday, November 21, 2024)
Generated by Denise Bisaccia on Friday, November 22, 2024
Members present
Anamika Bhatnagar, Sarah Carrier, Theo Oshiro, Ana Teague
Meeting called to order at 7:35 PM
1. Opening of Meeting
Procedural: …
Dec 5, 2024
Board of Education
because certain of the committee members said they're available early mornings and then Administration said oh early morning means like Before Dawn well the solstice is the next day start getting longer almost the home actually Sunrise that day is 77…
Jan 9, 2025
Board of Education
In regard to the last one, including curriculum practicing civil discourse on challenging top topics, I would like the children of this community to understand that many seemingly contrary opinions can be held by the same person. For example, I can f…
Good for me to respond. Of course. So on the resources question, I think that's yeah. That you've hit the nail on the head. Right? And so, I think part of what I'm optimistic about is the connection through Neil Boyle as the district superintendent a…
Next steps, we are going to analyze and update state aid projections, implement our collective bargaining agreements, and project our salaries out into our budget to see where we stand, review and update enrollment projections, assess staffing needs …
One relatively simple question. You said March 13, there'll be a presentation on the vision map portion of the budget. And then two weeks later, there'll be the school building budgets and curriculum and instruction. What's the difference between the…
Assistant Superintendent for Business Denise Harrington-Cohen gave a 2025-26 budget development update including:
Budget Timeline
Revenue Assumptions
Expenditure Assumptions
Next Steps
Budget Presentation Schedule
Board Trustee Neal Haber a…
Feb 13, 2025
Board of Education
And because of the voter registration, they would win every time. With many of the climate initiative failures over the last five years, the the windmills in The Atlantic now caught in 300 of what we're supposed to cost, whether they're wet shifts or…
I I think the community also hopefully well knows, with regard to annual professional performance review, we're one of two, approximately 700 public school districts in the state, that have received variants from the state to think differently and an…
And then lastly, extend the public sector inquiry waiver, which is set to expire in June, and that reduces the the maximum allowable earnings of a a previously retire retired state employee so that we can garner some of that experience and knowledge …
And then if if it looks like curriculum, they use seventeen and eighteen. So the relationship between the growth from 20 to twenty three and eight to four, from five sixty seven to five to 90, That's what? Twenty three twenty three students. Shouldn'…
Provide leadership toward developing further cohesiveness between schools as we implement the work of the Vision Map
Develop leadership capacity across the system
Develop multi-year trajectories for goals, professional learning, budget, and curricu…
Feb 27, 2025
Board of Education
13 will be vision back, technology, and athletics, followed by school budgets, building level budgets, curriculum and instruction, and our pupil personnel budget. And then in April, we'll have on the tenth superintendent's proposed budget followed by…
Mar 13, 2025
Board of Education
And after being at that meeting yesterday, I find myself wondering what is next for your capitulation. Is it curriculum? Is it rainbow flags in in classrooms? Is it culture night? Is it pride clubs? Is it the Laramie project? What is next on the shop…
and the gym, the high school gym. So in order to do this, our proposed budget reflects strategic investments that align with those guiding principles that I shared earlier. And some changes include a slight reduction in our OC services while some inc…
We plan to do more events like that. We brought back the three point contest this winter, and we're offering prizes. So look for more things like that in the future. For physical education, we're looking to moderate modernize the curriculum with new …
Ms. Teague attended Student Faculty Congress on 3/6. There was a lot of discussion on the cost of electric buses. Other topics included ideas for the upcoming 100 year celebration and ping-pong tournament. Also a committee was formed re: the parki…
Mar 27, 2025
Board of Education
First, I'd like to thank everyone for giving us the opportunity this evening for all the schools and for Rachel to go ahead with our proposals this evening. Our first slide here is kind of self explanatory. I'd like to dive into a little bit more det…
Thank you. And, like Rachel, we wanna highlight some of of the budget, pieces from the 2425 school year. Last year, we had put in for our part time literacy coach. She has been an amazing resource in addition to our faculty providing professional dev…
And now we're going to talk about how this all this funding supports the culture of well-being. And the overarching piece to that is the addition of the new school psychologist at CET, which will help to support our current clinical team that works v…
in the curriculum development and supervision, what's what's driving that? So a lot of our training expenses for the last couple of years were around IMSE and Hegarty, and that was a huge investment. We now have our entire k one two teams, AIS and e …
Alright. Alright. So the on on the curriculum development development and supervision, so that's for the training of that curriculum?
curriculum assessment, where would that cost show up?
it's not really a a budget question. It's more of kind of a process question around decision that's just coming up because I'm looking at the numbers. But, you know, the the CT went through I think all of the things went through a period of procureme…
So we we what we are looking at closely is aligning our materials now with the training that they've had. So we are very you know, we know that the governor is going to be asking us each to do a curriculum review of our ELA programs. We currently do …
the open space. The awards. That's who we have. And even just the furniture that we selected in in that room is conducive to a variety of different configurations and collaborations. So we actually have two that they look like McDonald's booths with …
Carrie jumps in, if I could just share. So these budgets are done based on function codes. Unlike Rachel's, which is one function, she's twenty two fifty. So it's broken down a little bit differently. It's broken down by salaries, both these. So the …
And once we have our curriculum programs in place, we would like to then look at reviewing our report cards and assessments to align with those instructional practices and philosophies so that we're giving, very specific and Mhmm. Families and studen…
before we jump into looking ahead at our proposed budget, we wanna just take a minute to highlight some of the past budget items that have kind of come to fruition this year. So at PDC, we are super excited to be finalizing our instructional coaches …
That being said, if you could just go back there, what I'm really happy to speak about tonight, almost in a celebratory manner, is that three years ago, we came before this board when the vision map was still in the fledgling stages, and we said what…
Culture of well-being. Culture of well-being. Right? We're very excited about our mixed grade advisories that have been going really well this year. And they really allow us to dive into our SEL curriculum, practice mindfulness, and and restorative p…
That that we finally get to that point, that will be a year about curricular revision and development where we'll be implementing our revamped math and science sequences, focusing on growing the experience that we're able to offer students and staff …
May 8, 2025
Board of Education
We are focused on three key areas, genuine interdisciplinary learning opportunities for all students, an innovative professional culture that encourages thoughtful risk taking and a continuous pursuit of excellence, and uplifting faculty to faculty c…
So just to be clear, that's the English curriculum that's gonna be rolled out Yes. Three through four Yes. PET to be implemented in September?
attended many of the events that have been mentioned previously. I didn't have the opportunity or, in fact, I would love to, but I didn't know about c this storytelling event. But I attended science research symposium in the details induction ceremon…
Jun 5, 2025
Board of Education
7. Agreement for services between Croton-Harmon UFSD and Management Advisory Group Business Operations, Inc. (MAGBO) for Medicaid services for the 2025-2026 school year in the amount of $6,153.00 annually payable in monthly installments of $512.75, …
Jun 12, 2025
Board of Education
Nicole Curran asked the Board to postpone renewal of Superintendent's contract for community input. There is no strong elementary curriculum, it's inconsistent. She stated that there is a lack of communication to parents about curriculum, assessmen…
Motion by Neal Haber, second by Joshua Diamond. Final Resolution: Motion Carried
Yes: Anamika Bhatnagar, Sarah Carrier, Joshua Diamond, Neal Haber, Theo Oshiro, Ana Teague
----------------------------------------------------------------
8. Closing…
She reported that 55% of voters voted for two women at election, it's a majority, not a minority.
Allie C (?) noted her concern with the talk of curriculum/academic rigor. There are many ways to assess what our children are doing and what their suc…
Jul 10, 2025
Board of Education
Gregory Gnos
Rosario Martinez
Xuan Myers
Grace Smith
Anna Tsagarakis
Alternating Driver Substitutes at contractual rate:
Russell Bauer
Gary VanAsselt
Cleaner at contractual rate:
Caroline Peckel
Motion by Omar Mayyasi, second by Anamika Bha…
Closing of the Meeting
Procedural: 11.01 Hearing of the Public
Erica Laudon, parent of twin boys in the district, reported that they will not be returning and she will be sending them to Millbrook School. As an advocate of public school, she felt t…
Sep 4, 2025
Board of Education
Leslie Pollak reported that the Village of Croton has endorsed a definition of IHRA and asks if the school will follow suit. She is requesting a response.
Kara Read, parent of 2, stated that she is discouraged by the cell phone policy. She asked w…
Sep 18, 2025
Board of Education
Croton intends to be active participant.
Board Vice President Anamika Bhatnagar reported that the Village Bicycle Committee has implemented crosswalk signs and is thankful this was made a priority by the committee and put into action. More discussio…
Oct 9, 2025
Board of Education
Superintendent Stephen Walker advocates for continuing with 4 drills. Board Trustee Theo Oshiro notes that families should also have a role in preparing children and asked if the District provide resources. Superintendent Walker confirms that yes, th…
Nov 20, 2025
Board of Education
from Imagination to Innovation. Students learn 21st century skills,
collaboration, and team work and communication, while applying
what they learn in the classroom to solve one of our challenges.
It's fun and a great complement to the school curri…
CHHS
PI Squad
Establish Club
Soyoung Lim
Pi Squad is a student-led math club open to any student interested in tackling challenging math problems and exploring advanced mathematical topics beyond the standard curriculum. Members strengthen th…
May 16, 2023: Item 5.1 Resolution Amendment
June 1, 2023: Item 5.2 Instructional Personnel Amendment
June 15, 2023: Item 7.7 2023-2024 Hearing Officer Recommendation and Item 7.21 Budget Transfers
July 13, 2023: Item 6.1 Employment Agreement…
Jan 8, 2026
Board of Education
The next CET literacy committee meeting will take place on January 26th where we will begin finalizing our philosophy on literacy and will begin developing a comprehensive framework for teaching literacy aligned by pillars of literacy. Splash musical…
We learned our colors and we hatched chicks. and half of the school year, if we were in the morning, we switched to afternoon and if we were in the afternoon, we switched to morning. It was a very different world. And the curriculum, my son is in kin…
Laura, the all APs score one to five, right? Yes. Okay. If I could recommend the scale just be uniform. Okay. So that they're all cuz you you look at them differently when you start with four versus five. Visually it can look Yeah, that makes sense. …
So as schools you can continue to teach the traditional AP environmental curriculum or you can get trained and engaged in the project-based curriculum which we chose to do and you can see that our scores actually went up pretty significantly while em…
We have incredibly talented content specialists that do this work and are not settling and saying, "We're just going to do the same thing that we've always done." We want to get better. We want to try the project-based curriculum. We want to find the…
I know, there was we as a board will be considering and we need to be working on this and an AI policy and then guidelines on how AI will be used in the school setting, both for learning, for teaching, for curriculum development, and for operations b…
ELA Regents as Compared to NYS
English Regents Ranking within Region: 2024-25
Global Regents Scores as Compared to NYS
Global Ranking in Region
AP Exams Offered At CHHS
AP Course Enrollment 2021-2025
English AP Average Scores
AP Calculus AB/BC…
Jan 22, 2026
Board of Education
So I think that that causes us to pause and think about, more of our restorative practices and how do we not expect a child to forget, but be able to recognize change, which is a maturity piece, too, but to recognize that yeah, this may have happened…
Robin does push into all of our classrooms and takes two lunch periods a month for a short period of time, 8 n 10 minutes just to reinforce some of these strategies from Little Spot. speaking of Robin, we've had the creation of our curriculum coordin…
Feb 12, 2026
Board of Education
So the superintendent and or his design shall implement and maintain a high quality recruiting and hiring program to attract, secure, and retain the best qualified staff to meet the needs of students and the district. The portion of this policy that …
It's a long list of a long list of things that I think we're looking to see in terms of sort of like reinforcing standards, having better communication about outcomes, having a better vision of the students trajectory from elementary school to middle…
thinking about the things that provide need to do to prepare for the upcoming school year, how are they expected to plan a robust prek curriculum without knowing how much funding they're going to have? how can they make decisions about hiring staff? …
That's a that's a big one this year. based on our experience over the last three years with our with our electric vehicles. so we're looking closely at that and then again accessess assessing current performance based on our fund balance projections.…
We also have the added benefit of the three-year goals, right? So, all of the budgetary spending is no longer it's always aligned with those predetermined goals so that you're not just looking at it point blank for every year. And also the principles…
Feb 26, 2026
Board of Education
and it's important to understand and to do this work publicly and to go over line items and the detail of it all. and I know it's tedious work. so thank you for your attention to detail. Thank you. You guys can go and get home first thing in the morn…
Mar 12, 2026
Board of Education
Resolution: RESOLVED: That the Board of Education hereby approves the minutes of the February 26, 2026 work session as presented.
Motion by Sarah Carrier, second by Allison Samuels.
Final Resolution: Motion Carried
Yes: Anamika Bhatnagar, Sarah Ca…
Apr 9, 2026
Board of Education
There's a lot in there. So, >> I'm looking for >> me, too. No, I I just That was >> when we were brainstorming that did not >> It always comes up. >> I did give you that. >> So, we're ready for our next slide. So, this is just one of our standard sli…
Teaching line, you'll see contractual, you'll see an addition of some um newer versions of some of the textbooks that we use for our literacy instruction. and furniture. Um, our teaching and special schools budget code, there was an adjustment there …
Um we've noticed recently an increase in teachers pursuing different field trips and making connections for those field trips to um curriculum in the classroom. It's we were just talking about it today. We are seeing a huge increase in each grade lev…
So we've been having a lot of sorry >> a lot of focus and we've been actually working with a consultant from Boseis on the model of an elementary world language program and our focus has been on less time at one given sitting period and more frequenc…
>> I have one just one question which I sort of I think Carrie sort of answered already, but I just wanted to comment to say I think in terms of the um the increase in budget for curriculum development supervision, it's great to hear that we're makin…
Um, so the first half of a library period for every student in every grade consists of what we would refer to as traditional library skills. Beyond that, we pride ourselves in that our library has become like a maker space. It's like the precursor to…
Whatever they need gets delivered to their room. So, a lot of the budget goes to supporting the curriculum through, you know, text. >> I'm sorry, just because you're talking about the library so much, I just want to say I want to say how lucky you ar…
Um, so this is like this is like so like whenever you have a situation where you have possibly like hundreds of people being involved with a thing despite our best intentions there can be that person that does something very weird and inappropriate l…
um it it is aligned to standards so that again there's always that backup of this connects to what I'm doing because but it is not a curriculum there's no CCT nature space curriculum um and as far as the guidelines for if a parent or a volunteer or s…
Um, and we're really excited about what the future holds for our faculty under their their leadership, too. Um, so that professional collaboration, the curriculum development um that has been going on all year is something really to be proud of. inst…
So we have built-in support systems for success to ensure that all students are maximizing their potential especially in those two areas. Um that inquiry approach in science has really led to some great collaboration and experiences as many visitors …
Just an observation and this is both for CT BBC maybe also the high school but what strikes me here is that the things that you've talked about are really not as superintendent said not dollar items but what they are is kind of a refinement for incre…
And similarly for Tiger Tuesday, the um the work that goes into coordinating programs like this um can't be done by one person or two people at the scale that we're doing. So this these two positions allow full programs to come to fruition. Um that i…
And they've partnered with them to create uh or plan field trips for our students. They also signed up for the New York State seedling program with the goal of helping to restore data wildlife habitat. So it's very hands-on. our bioeththics course. T…
Um so we are excited to once again be bringing some new rigorous course offerings to our students. In the humanities, we are adding a theater elective. There is some real renewed interest and excitement around theater. I think a lot due to the streng…
Our students have consistently expressed interest in AP psychology, some of them taking it virtually through our virtual high school platform. So now we can offer it in person and we have enough so many students interested that we're offering two sec…
I'm sure you're not going to be able to read this all now, but we wanted to include just some data from the College Board where you can read more detail about the AP business course and see some of the industry collaboration with um associations like…
Um this slide delves a little bit going back to the principles of engineering course through project lead the way. So just starting here this is just an overview of what project lead the way offers um prek through 12th grade. So this is a comprehensi…
We don't know that we'll be able to offer them all at once, but these are ones that they're very interested in. environmental sustainability, principles of AI, human body systems, principles of biomedical science. And I think it's important, obviousl…
So you might have a cohort of kids one year who are really interested in aerospace engineering and be prepared to pivot in the following year to maybe automation and robotics based on student interest so that you don't always have to have like a stat…
The PVC Middle School Experience … the Vision Map in Action
Evolution at PVC
Croton-Harmon HS budget was presented by Principal Dr. Laura Dubak and Assistant Principal Erica Fiorini and included:
Croton-Harmon High School 2026-2027 Proposed Budget…
Apr 21, 2026
Board of Education
We then as a district office team met with the most promising candidates in person for some initial interviews. That's always an interesting part of the process as well because as you know, we bring different perspectives to this business, technology…
Yes, if I could. Yes. So we've spoken extensively about how you achieve longevity in the work of a school system. And in my belief, one of the ways that you do that is by identifying high quality leadership talent from within the system, helping to g…
Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So I think the term teacher leader is one that is regularly used and perhaps overused in education. But I think for you, John, it's an incredibly apt term. You are and have been a leader among the faculty innumerable in ways. A …
I wanna add on that point that would be it'd be helpful to go through more than just presentation on technology itself. I think with with the board what I'm asking for is the board member, I'm hearing from the community that has been coming and talki…
A parent of a kindergartner spoke regarding what her daughter has been watching in school every single day -- videos of books read by celebrities, low-quality, high stimulation videos, not educational tools. Corporate TV show is being used as math cu…
RESOLVED: That the Board of Education, upon the recommendation of the Superintendent of Schools, hereby approves the appointment of John Bohuniek to the position of Interim Assistant Principal for Croton-Harmon High School, effective July 15, 2026 th…
Leslie Pollak thanked the Board for not voting for PNW BOCES Board Trustee candidate. She requested information on committee member selection. She also asked for tenure rationales. Why aren't academics in the Superintendent reports? We need answers …
Discussion: 7.2 Polling of the Board
AB: Technology review -- process? AT clarified that ?s will be asked of admin, compiled so all can see, and responses to be shared.
OM: we need better understanding of how technology is involved with curriculum,…
Commended district on cell phone policy, but it has come in too late.
A parent of a kindergartner spoke regarding what her daughter has been watching in school every single day -- videos of books read by celebrities, low-quality, high stimulation vi…
Motion by Sarah Carrier, second by Neal Haber.
Superintendent Stephan Walker noted that the term "teacher-leader" may be overused in education, but it is incredibly apt for Mr. Bohuniek. He has proven himself in multiple roles, such as a curriculum…
Closing of Meeting
Discussion: 7.1 Hearing of the Public
Leslie Pollak thanked the Board for not voting for PNW BOCES Board Trustee candidate. She requested information on committee member selection. She also asked for tenure rationales. Why aren'…
Lack of instructional time. Ideology has to stop, especially re: college night.
Ed Riely addressed the diesel bus issue. The community was to be blamed for pushing district into buying the expensive buses. He congratulated the Board for having tran…
May 12, 2026
CHUFSD Board of Education Candidate Forum 5/12/26
Rigor to me means that we're helping every kid reach, you know, reach as far as they can. We're instructing them to start curriculum,
curriculum tells us something.
When we talk about what's happening in other school districts, actually looking at the best practices that other school districts have in terms of curriculum development,
journal that is not an actual curriculum and doesn't give, and arrives to the teachers
And that includes hearing about the ways in which curriculum is being reviewed in ways in which might change,
And I think that rigor is curriculum.
And I think curriculum has to be developed by experts as a board member, not going to micromanage teachers, you know, the board sets the vision, the superintendent,
And I know that the vision map is is trying I think to align with New York inspires and Portrait of a Graduate and there is a lot of change coming from Albany. I understand that.
making sure that we know what the outcomes are in these curriculum.
this intentionally undefined future that we have in the vision map. I don't think that New York inspires in Portrait of a Graduate. The direction that's going means that we get away from rigor. I think that there's a way to, again, like I said earlie…
making sure that part of the curriculum is ensuring
I think one of the first things I'd like to see is more scrutiny on programming and curriculum, especially changes to that. So one of the things I've enjoyed about the last few weeks on this campaign is talking to people, knocking on doors.
the highest percentage that I saw of that survey was rigor, right, and curriculum changes and things like that. So the first thing I would do is introduce,
you know, a formal framework for any time we're changing curriculum,
whether it's a tech, advancement, anything like that. What's it gonna cost and how are we gonna measure success? That would be a framework I would wanna see. And at board meetings, we would publicly ask those questions of the superintendent of, those…
shut in front of us. And I think, you know, not inviting in that partnership is one of the main challenges we have right now. And then, of course, the third is the strong foundational curriculum.
curriculum. I know a lot of folks have talked about curriculum and I think curriculum is an important work that we have kind of
set to the side for a while and we need to pick up and I am hopeful and confident that we will. I think curriculum we have to talk about between schools, among schools, how everything scaffolds
evaluation and improvement aligned against it, it's really not much of a vision. The other thing that I want to say is this question of having set aside reviewing curriculum for a while, it's a dereliction of duty and we need to change that.
May 19, 2026
Board of Education
In each of you, we see a legacy being built. We see experienced educators deeply committed to their craft and devoted to their students. You have witnessed the ever evolving landscape of public education. And through every change, you've continued th…
Edwin has spent the last seven years to Croton-Harmon High School as an innovator, advocate, and intellectual thought partner within our school community, always pushing us to think just a little bit more deeply. He is a talented curriculum writer w…
Andy is teacher who has demonstrated commitment, growth, care, collaboration, and depth of skill in his time so far at CHHS. From the beginning, Andy approached his work with curiosity and eagerness contribute and help the math department develop and…
It was about twelve years ago when I joined the fourth grade team, and that's when I really got to know Ann Marie. All joking aside, Ann Marie, affectionately known as Serge, is someone who truly cares. She cares about her colleagues, she cares about…
I have had the privilege of knowing and working alongside Kristin Noël Schoenleber for the last twenty five years. We began together as English teachers sharing Room 207, where we spent our prep periods discussing curriculum, grading papers, and rewo…
as the boards liaison to the Village Bicycle Pedestrian Committee, I was very pleased to be able to participate this weekend in CET's bike rodeo, which was an incredible community event organized by Suzanne Leslie, our CET physical education teacher …
Jun 4, 2026
Board of Education
what is curriculum and what what is
technology as it relates to curriculum
about is technology curriculum, is it
the curriculum versus the technology,
difference between curriculum and
technology, what's curriculum.
I don't mean curriculum committee,
There was agreement that there should be a specific charge with a discrete timeline and purpose and that there should be listening sessions (i.e., having the sub-committee hear concerns to bring them to the Board and have the whole Board decide how t…
Motion by Neal Haber, second by Anamika Bhatnagar.
On the question: Superintendent Stephen Walker reported that he and CHHS Principal Laura Dubak met with the CHEF board re: the grant process and it may evolve to in-person presentations with grant …
Action (Consent): 5.3 Math Curriculum Coordinator Recommendation
Resolution: RESOLVED: That the Board of Education hereby approves the recommendation of Kym Garrett, CHHS Math Curriculum Coordinator for the 2025-26 school year, at a prorated stipend…
Jun 11, 2026
Board of Education
our curriculum coordinators, our math
from a curriculum perspective." That's
there's a shift in the curriculum it's
curriculum and how different things are
is the curriculum doing what we thought
priorities and structure curriculum and
families to the Little Spot curriculum
basically curriculum if I can call it
Jul 16, 2026
Board of Education
All of the post event production and editing. So all of those are available now on our website for review. So thank you and congratulations to everyone who's involved in those. Also wanna make mention that over the past year or so, there's been a gre…
Thank you, Steve. This summer, nearly half of our faculty will be engaged in summer curriculum work. At CET, some of the highlights include diving into the Hegarty bridges to reading and writing work across grade teams. At PVC, several of our grade t…
I can share some preliminary things. Sure. Mostly about the high school. Okay. Great. I spent most of the time. The interdisciplinary courses, the ideas for interdisciplinary courses come from student and staff interest. And so that's where the initi…
I think that's a great answer. And, again, I just wanna remind everybody because we are sort of doing a little bit of shift. And, honestly, I didn't tell anybody we're doing this. So I apologize for that. But I think the the great thing about being a…
For the benefit of the public, again we didn't say this earlier, this is a list of mentor appointments, curriculum coordinators, facilitators, and other annual functions and other appointments that as well as special education recommendations. Typica…
that we have. Okay. Yeah. So there are a couple of things that are on the back there, which were budget and discussion of curriculum. I think we need to sort of, again, use our retreat conversation as well to sort of surface not to decide, but to loo…
Motion by Ana Teague, second by Allison Samuels.
Final Resolution: Motion Carried
Yes: Anamika Bhatnagar, Omar Mayyasi, Theo Oshiro, Allison Samuels, Ana Teague, Jacob Day, Elizabeth Laird
Action: 11.02 2026-2027 Mentor Appointments
Action: 11.03…
Aug 6, 2026
Board of Education
great. Thank you. Yeah. We all have it. It's just a matter of Yeah. It's also just being able to put it on the screen so everyone can see. Rebuild trust through timely, transparent, and meaningful communication and engagement with the community is nu…
Yeah. I I agree with what Theo said. I I guess what I would just add is, yeah, I'm I'm overall supportive of these. I and, you know, I also think about our role as a board is to be a liaison with the community. We're elected by the community and to h…
So there aren't as many questions over curriculum changes and new scheduling and courses. So communication is key, and that's just sort of one example to operationalize. Alright. You know, by the end of this school year, we wanna make sure we've held…
Do have anything? Oh, I have a question about the way these are ordered. Is is this any particular order? Or No. Just okay. Cool. Again, they're designed around, like, three main buckets. Gotcha. Yeah. I do wanna add, I think, obviously, these are go…
Yeah. I I would say as much as I do think it's important to start exposing the community to New York Inspires, the challenge that I've been hearing or the challenge that I feel and experienced myself around rebuilding trust with time transparency and…
Said what I was gonna say, but thank you, Betsy, for reminding me that it's not just New York inspires. It's every building where my kids are. I've just been trying to wrap my head around New York inspires as much as I can lately. But, yes, obviously…
Okay. And I think bottom line is the research behind the Blue Ribbon Commission, which is a national commission, not a New York State commission Right. Is all about what's best for kids in terms of curriculum and education. I I think that's a good po…
Thanks. And then just just a quick just, again, I think for the benefit of those who haven't been following this conversation. So the Blue Ribbon Commission's findings and research also informed, like, the first iteration of the state reevaluating th…
of how we're using devices and using, you know, ed tech essentially in instruction. Right? So it's like these are things that are gonna continue to sort of come come up against, you know, what the priorities are for the year. For me, I I'm gonna actu…
Number two, it was examine student curriculum, including measurable student achievement to ensure continued academic rigor as compared to continuing to strengthen academic rigor for students achievement.
I was just gonna and then. Yep. I was gonna say if we're gonna continue on sort of the high level goal framing start, then I would I would flip what what the suggestion was for the reframe and just say, ensure the continued academic rigor or I still …
I get, like, persimmony about how do you work strength in two times or no, but Yeah. I do like it. I I I kinda like the way it was written, like, continue to strengthen academic rigor. Curriculum coherence to me through the process of, like, curricul…
Just like someone else has said, I think think that the phrase curriculum adherence is really, really important to what we're articulating as a goal because it's it's something that we have identified or educators have identified or building leaders …
Jacob, you can take off. No. No. I I don't have any I mean, it it sounds fine. What is the main difference between the two? I see it. He's curriculum
coherence. If we're studying student curriculum versus talking about strength strengthening the coherence of the curriculum and and thinking to some degree, at least from my perspective, beyond the kind of term, The curriculum coherence was also one …
That's a good unpacking of curriculum. That's all I think. Sure. A couple of comments. I don't think it's a good idea to say bye because that's that's really not our job. That'd be the administration's
In terms of comparing the two statements, it's examine student curriculum and