September 17, 2026 Board of Education Meeting

Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order the Thursday, September 17 work session of the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District's Board of Education. Item 1.1, call to order. Item 1.2, approval of agenda. Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the agenda.

So moved.

Second. Thank

you. All in favor? Aye. I should have asked on the question. Any questions about the agenda? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? The motion carries. Moving into item 2.1, the president's report. Good evening, and welcome to the members of our community in the audience watching the livestream and listening at a later date. Welcome also to our building administrative team who's joining us for this evening's meeting. My remarks tonight will be brief as we have a robust agenda ahead of us. This evening, we'll be hearing from the superintendent on the first weeks of school and we'll receive an update on summer curriculum work and district committees. Trustees will also be reporting on their legislative advocacy work and share their committee and liaison updates. And then we'll hear from our building administrators about the priorities at each of our three schools this year before moving into ongoing and new business, including the discussion of a new communications

services agreement. So we'll dive right in with item 2.2 on our agenda, the superintendent's report.

Thank you, Ana Tak. Good evening, everyone. Thank you to those who are here in person and those watching at home. First, this evening, we wanna recognize and celebrate two outstanding students at CHHS, Sean Ossining and Spencer Celente, who have been named semifinalists in the 2027 National Merit Scholarship Program, earning recognition among more than 16,000 academically talented high school seniors nationwide. Semifinalists represent less than 1% of US high school seniors and include the highest scoring entrants from each state. Sean and Spencer now have the opportunity to advance to finalist standing and compete for approximately 6,700 national merit scholarships worth nearly 24,000,000 that will be awarded in the spring. And hot off the presses, we're also thrilled to share that three members of the CHHS class of 2027, Mina Willett, Eli Kafka, and Charlotte Van Fossen have been selected as National Merit commended scholars. Congratulations to the three of them on this wonderful accomplishment.

Collectively yes. Yes. Collectively and individually, these five students represent so many wonderful things about being a Croton-Harmon Tiger, and that they're curious, intellectually ambitious, kind, community minded, and role models for those around them. We have invited all of them and their families and friends to be honored at the October 1 Board of Education meeting. Congratulations to again to all of them on this truly special achievement. Shifting gears to fall sports. I think we recognize that one of the annual challenges in a school system of our size is determining whether or not we have enough student athletes interested in a particular sport to field a team in a specific season. For our district, historically, with regard to fall sports, this has been an annual conversation in sports like field hockey, cheerleading, and football. As we know on the continuum of contact sports, football is at the foremost end of the spectrum. And so when you have the combination of small numbers of students who are interested in playing football,

the fact that this is the varsity level, and the resulting possibility of injuries, that creates a challenging situation for our coaching staff and athletic administration to navigate. As we approach the start of the season, coach Pucello and Barry, closely watched the number of students signed up for varsity football. The team played in its first game against Hennhud, and as a result of injuries, which decreased the available number of players, was forced to end that game at halftime. Since that game, coach Pucello and Barry have heard from a number of parents concerned about their children's safety, and coach spoke with every member of the team. Based on those conversations, the decision was made to cancel the remainder of the varsity varsity football season for this year. And while that was, of course, a difficult decision, it was made with input from the student athletes, their parents, and prioritizes the safety of our student athletes above all else. I'm appreciative of how the matter was handled by Barry and coach Gouveia and the coaching staff.

Their next steps including ensuring that our senior members of the football team are recognized for their contributions to the program over the past few years. And then, of course, there'll be discussions about options related to the future of the varsity football program, and we'll make sure to keep the board and community informed. I also wanna take a moment to thank Barry for being here tonight, in support of other work of our building administrative colleagues. Shifting gears again. On Tuesday morning, CHHS took part in what continues to be an important annual event for our students, the activity and community service fair. And since Eric is here this evening, not only as principal of CHHS, but also as the person who brought this idea to the high school twenty five years ago, I'm happy to turn it over to her to speak about this terrific event. And thank you, Erin. Thank you. So under

the leadership of our CHAP advisory partners, Pam Morrison and Jen Moore, we had over 20 community groups and 48 CHHS clubs set up tables in the Aux And Main Gyms. And it's an opportunity for our students to learn about the extracurricular activities that are here, as well as all of the community service opportunities that are available to them. And one of the community members leaving, as she sought me to say, great vibe this year. There was a lot of excitement in the gym, and I'm thrilled that the fair is still going twenty five years later.

Thank you, Erica. We also wanna make sure that the community had a view into the work that takes place during the summer, particularly with regard to curriculum development and refinement. I'm happy to turn it over to Lori to provide an overview of the summer curriculum work that's positioned us so well to be ready for a successful two thousand twenty six, twenty seven school year.

So now that our community has heard about our district goals and is about to hear about building priorities, we wanted to share a little bit about the curriculum planning and revision work that is done by our faculty over the summer. While we often think about summer as a time when educators are off, they're far from off, in our school system, and we had upwards of 70 of our faculty members working on various projects throughout the summer. So the process of summer work begins by teachers and teams submitting proposals in the spring for review, then the administrative team reviews those proposals against the vision map, goals, priorities, and we determine which proposals are going to go forward. And I think this is particularly relevant as we get ready to hear building priorities because so much of the work that we do in the buildings is the result of multi year planning, some of which happens during the summer when we have real concentrated time where we can say for two weeks we're going to work on curriculum writing with no other interruptions.

So in all aspects of curriculum planning, whether you're implementing a new program, planning a new class, or you're a teacher new to teaching a class for the first time, professional learning time during the school year like conference days helps to advance the work, but often that intensive time and more time is really needed. So we have a long history of being fortunate enough to offer ample summer curriculum work time for our faculty and we've refined that process over the last couple of years to ensure that approved curriculum work is really focused on our vision map and key district initiatives and values. So I put together this slide, I'm sorry, the text is small, there was a summer lot work represented. And to kind of show visually how the summer curriculum work aligns to different building priorities and district goals, as well as vision map priorities. Some of them cross multiple categories, but I put them on the chart where I thought they mapped most directly.

And I think as you hear about building priorities shortly, you'll see direct connection between some of the summer curriculum projects and those priorities.

Thank you, Laura. And as we reach the middle of September, we also wanted to share an update regarding the work of our district committees for the twenty twenty six-twenty seven school year. Last year, we collectively launched an ambitious plan of committee work, discontinuing some committees which were previously in existence in our district and adding several new committees. Our commitment as we launched that work was that we would review the progress of each committee during the last school year and then make some decisions about how we believe our work can best be achieved in the current school year. Here we see an overview of the committees that we plan to continue into twenty twenty six-twenty seven and those that we will be pausing. With those committees that are continuing, we've evaluated their plans for the upcoming year and determined that the committee structure is the best place for that work to be launched and refined

while also expanding the scope of some of those committees so that they can have further impact on the student experience this year. Each committee, whether they're formally continuing into this year or not, played an important role in discussing and evaluating topics, many that ended up either district goals or building priorities. And I wanna again thank all of the administrative facilitators from last year as well as all the participants on the committees. So let's start with an overview of the next step regarding the committees that will be paused for this year. The Literacy Committee's work last year helped to solidify our priorities as it relates to our work this year, including finalizing and publishing our k four Literacy Vision and Curriculum overview, which Carrie and Craig will be sharing a draft of this evening. Additionally, the work last year helped position us to move forward in the immediate future with creating a curriculum overview for grades three and four and identification of additional instructional resources to support teaching and learning in those grade levels. That process will involve district and building administration,

teacher leaders, and faculty members, and is already moving forward in these first two weeks of the school year. The success in schools committee's work from last year is demonstrated in the plan to regularly and thoroughly share student achievement data from across our system as outlined in the district goals that were shared at the last board meeting. It has also positioned us to have some initial but important conversations about the impact that the implementation of New York Inspires will have on our system as we await further details and guidance from SED. The district's technology committee, of course, was important in considering research regarding the role that we want technology to play in the lives of our students, culminating in our tech reset as we began this current school year. The district's technology committee work will contribute to the board's community advisory committee on technology this this year and will position us as leaders even further on this important topic for all of us in our community.

The work of the assessment and feedback committee helped to position us well to deliver on one of the board and district goals related to providing for common experiences and assessments for all students across grade levels and departments. The entire faculty will be devoting time this year to the development, implementation, and communication of common assessments, which we look forward to sharing more about as that work progresses. Our athletic advisory committee's role in 2627 will be determined once Barry has further opportunity to gain a complete understanding of our athletic programs, their strengths, needs, and opportunities for growth. Barry's experience as an athletic administrator comes at the right time for us as a system, and how we engage our student athletes and parents in the development of plans for the future of our programs and teams will be an important part of our work together

with Barry this year. Shifting now to committees which will continue in the current school year. The Health and Safety Committee has important work in front of them, addressing the completion of Phase two of the capital project, including conditioning to rooms at PVC, the CET playground, and the lighting above the tennis courts at Spencer Field, and then reviewing the upcoming energy contract work involving solar installation across the district. Thank you to Brad for his work in facilitating this committee with an assist this year from Barry. The School Counseling Advisory Committee's work for twenty twenty six-twenty seven will feature an expanded scope and number of meetings and will include a range of topics, including expanding communication to families about postsecondary planning for students, expanding analysis of data, including survey data, and revising the entire k 12 counseling plan.

Thank you to Mark for his facilitation with an assist from Rachel. The Wellness and Social Emotional Learning Committee will also continue this year facilitated by Rachel, and we'll look to further our ways to engage families by building on some of the more recent additions to our opportunities for students and families, including the Family Resource Center and the newcomers to Croton event. And our building planning councils will also, of course, continue their work this year and further their impact within our system by soliciting broader community involvement and participation, increasing the number of meetings, and involving greater collaboration and involvement with the district administration. Some of the potential work of our VPs VPCs this year includes helping to develop a community survey instrument to garner community perception of our district's work this year and generating ideas and topics for community conversations.

Our next step with our committees is to share our communication, which is planned for tomorrow, just to solicit community interest in participating on our committees and then getting to work in October. And I also, in this moment, want to mention that in addition to community committee participation, there will be multiple ways for parents to get involved in the work of our schools this year. Please be on the lookout next week for the announcement of the schedule for our first series of learning walks, opportunities for parents to visit our schools and see teaching and learning in action. Additionally, we will be announcing plans for community conversations on topics of broad interest to our school district community. And so if our community at this point has thoughts on possible topics, please share those with us as well. It's been a terrific start to the school year and I'm incredibly proud of all the work by so many members of the faculty, staff, and administration

in great collaboration with our wonderful families and students that has made it that way. It's a great time to be a Tiger. Thank you.

I just want to open it up for board questions. There's a lot of information, a lot of really great information. Does anyone have a follow-up question on what Steve presented? Okay. I'll just chime in and say I'm really, pleased to hear the, report on the committee work and, on you know, as many of us on the board actually served on multiple, committees last year. So, you know, I hope I I believe I speak, for all of us when I say I think it's it's great to see that the work and the thought and the consideration that went into looking at what the questions and the issues were last year, we sort of now know what we're we're reaching the next iteration, which is putting the, putting sort of, like, the work into resolving some of those questions at the building and administrator level because, of course, that's where that's where all of those, you know, those questions are gonna get answered. That's where the curriculum is gonna get shaped. That's where we're gonna sort of determine what, what our operations look like going forward. So I'm I'm grateful to everyone, as Steve said, who participated in the committees, from our building leaders who led the committees, to our teachers and, staff who participated, and also to our community members and students who are part of those committees. It was really it really fulfilled our goal last year of ensuring that we were bringing in community feedback and also hearing from the entire learning community to inform the work going forward. So

how you've articulated the work this year, it I think we have a lot to look forward to, and the board will look forward to hearing on progress periodically throughout the year as the work continues. So thank you very much for that. Thank you also, Erica, for a recap on, I think, an event that my high school students, I will say, thought was really fantastic. And we heard a lot of good feedback from the community that people were excited to be there and that the vibe was indeed very positive. So really great. And, Laura, thank you also for the overview of the, curriculum work. That is a question I think that the board had raised a little bit earlier in the summer because we heard that this was all going on. So to see it sort of articulated, you know, in nine point type tells us that there was a lot There was a lot that was happening. And I think, we'll we'll take a a closer look at that and come back to you if there are further questions or areas that we'd like to understand further. And as a as a board, we'll also be looking at some of those specific topics through other work sessions that we have planned for this year. So with that, I'll turn it over to, the rest of the board then to go into our board reports,

item 2.3 on our agenda. I know that the next audit committee is taking place in January. I was so close. So close. It's still January. So we'll be hearing, we'll be hearing from audit in January. Board governance does not have an additional update at this time. So I'll turn it over next to policy.

Evening, everyone. Policy has not met. The committee consists of trustee Jacob Day, Allison Samuels, and myself. We have a couple things in play. I know that our board president sent an email today regarding recommended next steps. One of the things that we will have to send out to the entirety of the board, if you haven't already received it, is the NYSSBA resolutions book. Following that and the timeline, West putt came out with where they landed on the NYSBA resolutions. We anticipate putting any discussion on the October 1 meeting agenda because they will be voted on by NYSSBA October 15 I believe and any amendments that we recommend need to be received by October 13. Though historically we haven't done that. We've more just decided that we're going to take a position on the voting. So again, we'll need to and I know everyone has been very busy, we'll need to consult with administration

on a date where policy can meet again. But in the meantime, parallel to that work, the board will have to be reviewing all of the recommendations and resolutions. That's where we stand with that. But I do wanna turn it over to trustee Day to kind of encompass some of what he attended.

Yeah. Thank you. So just to elaborate a little bit on this, Allison, Samuels and I, trustee Samuels, attended the West Putt advocacy meeting Monday night over Zoom. There were about 30 representatives from school districts throughout West Chester Putnam to go through some of these resolutions to just sort of have a discussion kinda broadly. Obviously, there were a lot. We didn't get to all of them, but, the vice, chair of the board at West Point went through them. And I just wanted to highlight Allison and I compared notes, before tonight to sort of highlight some of the things that we heard a lot of discussion on. So the big topics for charter schools, AI, and technology use, foil requests from commercial enterprises. So we were talking about that recently. There's a proposal to have a fee for that if it's used for commercial purposes. Funding formulas and UPK, I think, in terms of charter schools, there was conversation over resolutions

that would put charter schools subject to the same audit oversight as public schools, and these are all in the the workbook that we can distribute. That was favorable from the group that was on the the Zoom call. We supported excluding well, the the group decided to exclude, support a resolution ex excluding BOCES expenses from charter school funding formulas, and we're in favor of a study of charter school funding and how it impacts school budgets. So that was a big topic of conversation when you're looking at the resolutions in the workbook. AI was discussed at length, especially in terms of ability to opt out of AI features in various software and educational settings. And there was a strong support for not allowing AI to be the educator of record in terms of grades, student conduct, things like that. So the resolutions, were very robust. We went through quite a few of them over the hour and a half meeting.

There was a discussion on UPK, which is slated to be compulsory in two years throughout New York State and there was a resolution to kind of slow that down a little bit, not, you know, still move forward with UPK universally, but to slow down the pace of it just while districts can sort of wrap their heads around staffing, infrastructure, things like that, and to do sort of a feasibility study at the state level. So those are the big kind of takeaways from that call for for us. So thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. So we'll be looking forward to continuing that conversation at our next board meeting when we review the just for the for the benefit of the public. The NYSSBA resolutions that we're talking about are actually the state school boards association's legislative priorities in terms of what we'll bring to Albany, as member school boards, to our legislators there to ensure that we have funding and that we have legislation that supports public education in those initiatives. So that is a annual part of our advocacy work as a school board and as a school district. Moving on to our next committee, the community advisory committee on technology. I'd like to just start this conversation before I turn it over to Omar to say that I'm grateful to the, three trustees who served on our ad hoc committee on technology. They've all volunteered to continue serving, on our community advisory committee as liaisons. So Betsy Laird, Allison Samuels, and Omar Mayassi will be continuing on in that work. And I'll turn it over to you Omar to give us the latest.

Thank you, Ana Tak. So today the announcement went out to Parent Square asking parents interested who have expertise in technology and are interested in working on this committee to submit applications. We also communicate that to the village to this so that they can do a broader outreach to the rest of the community. Applications are due by 5PM on October ninth, Friday. 5PM? 5PM. Thank you. What else did I want to say? Yeah. So we're soliciting interested community members who have either an expertise or an interest in working on this with us over the next year to submit their application. We'll go through a review process and we'll announce it at the board meeting on October 15.

That sounds right. I'm sorry? So the the, right now, I think the plan is for the, for the board liaisons to that committee to review the candidates and work with the district to review the candidates

and bring them to the board as well if there's I don't know. I'll let you speak to it. Yeah. No. That just reminded me of another thing I wanted to say that in parallel to that work, the administration is also seeking interested applicants nominations, I guess, from teachers, students, administrators who will also be involved in this process.

But I'll touch on quickly because it's like when we so when we have committees that involve solicitation of community interest, the appointments will actually be made by the entire school board to those committees. And so as part of our practice, we we will review as a board those applications. But because there is an element of confidentiality to the application process and to appointments, The review of those applications will take place in executive session, and that that review will take place, by the full board that will be asking the committee to make recommendations to the board as committees typically do. And then those the resolution will come forward so that we will, in public, appoint the community members. The district members of the committee will be selected by the administrative team. Those I those will I have to actually check policy to determine whether they need to be formally appointed, and I'll be able to report back to you after I consult with the policy chair about that.

Moving on to our, our final report, ad hoc committee on hiring retention and tenure. Over to you, Theo. Thanks, Ana Tak. So,

the committee this ad hoc committee met on September 8, and I'll just give a quick overview of what we discussed that day. And just so folks remember, this is the ad hoc committee on recruiting, hiring, and tenure. And at this meeting our first meeting was really about, just, like, clarifying our scope, making and really understanding what materials we needed to be able to have access to and to review to be able to kind of move forward in our work. So at this second meeting, we then were able to review a lot of work that was done to get things like our current policy, then there's the recommended policy, some best practices out in the field around these areas, etcetera. The meeting itself, though, we decided to focus on tenure. And, actually, I think made a lot of progress in this meeting in, really, I think improving upon our current practice, right, of tenure. As everyone knows, tenure is an important thing not only for the teachers that are

in the process of getting tenure, but also for, of course, our students, right, and and families who depend on great teachers. And so and this is, I think, a a big milestone where our district is saying, if granted tenure, right, we believe in your your skills and your abilities and your, passion to, provide the best teaching for our students. So, we reviewed a little bit of what our current process looks like, just to, you know, ground ourselves in that understanding and really just saw that there was really a need to spend a little more time in looking at our tenure candidates over more time and space. Because currently, right, there's how many tenure candidates? Yeah. So 45 people, any given year. Right? That varies throughout the years, but it's a lot of people, right, and a lot of, kind of analysis and review to be done. And so what we really talked about was, like, what are the ways in which we can give ourselves more time and space to really,

look at these candidates? Without going into specifics of dates, because I think the administrative team is gonna come back in the next meeting to see if our initial plan is workable, But, really, we talked about, not only doing this review over one executive session, but actually over various executive sessions, at at least three, executive sessions where we're able to break down, the tenure candidates per school likely per school building. This might be good news for, some of our staff who are used to being there, late into the night to, wait to talk about their candidates. So, I think in this way, good good for our team and also good for our ability to really, you know, do more in-depth review. And, also, with the assistance of the administrative team, getting a list of candidates ahead of time so we are able to just understand ahead of time who's up for tenure, either in that year or,

in in the next year or the year after that. So this conversation is to be continued in our next meeting next month. But at that point, give if we are and I encourage everyone to look at the minutes there. There's some, planning on potential dates that we could do this this setup in throughout November and December, and bring comments to the next meeting. And I think that's when, at at our next committee meeting, the administration will bring sort of a, yes. This works well, after or or doesn't, and we need to make adjustments. The last piece I'll say is that we also talked about then that resulting in potentially having a vote on tenure class on a separate date as the actual celebration of the tenure class, because often or, in recent years, at least in my time on the board, we've done it on the same day. So the conversation then, we just talked about the what we would focus on for the next meeting, which is October 6, where we're where we'll, I think, seek to wrap up what our recommendation to the board will be on this issue.

And then, we'll also focus start to focus on, our philosophy around hiring, so as a as a as, you know, one of the other core issues that we're we're taking on. So, yeah, that's the summary of that meeting. So, again, next meeting, October 6.

Thank you, Theo. Appreciate the detailed, overview because I know this is a topic of interest to our colleagues on the board. And part of our responsibility as, individuals on a committee, I'm on the same committee with Theo, is that our our recommendations and work does come back to the board for comment and feedback. So if you have thoughts or comments or follow-up questions, please send them to Theo as our chair. I'll move in now to liaison reports and open it up if we can just sort of go around the table from left to right, meaning that side because that's my left. Any liaison reports for folks who are serving as liaisons?

I am serving as liaison to the high school student parent teachers association. I never get that right. I just wanted to highlight for everybody. They are doing their September 25 parents' night out, which is a DJ dance party at The Grand. Tickets are on sale now. They're $35 in advance, 45 $40 at the door, pardon me. And they are hoping to have a strong turnout. All of those funds obviously go to supporting all of the wonderful events that they coordinate in conjunction with the high school. So to the extent that anybody is interested in doing that, the tickets are now available. And The Grand is always such a great venue in this community, such a great addition to the community. So I will highlight that and that's what I have for that.

I'll chime in quickly just with a couple of advocacy updates. So on behalf of our school board last week, I had the opportunity to represent us at the New York State School Boards Association's legislative advocacy meeting with senator Gillibrand's office. Among the top topics, again, this is this is legislative advocacy season, so we're gonna be talking about it a lot. We talked about, the recent impacts to idea funding, and that's something that we need to continue to advocate for as a community and as a district because that federal funding guarantees our special education programs, our English language learner programs, all sorts of social emotional supports in our school district, and that funding is necessary out of that federal funding is necessary, for our school district to be able to continue to offer the robust resources and services that we're able to offer to our students and to our community. We also had a discussion and advocated,

for sort of, I guess, advocated against the federal initiatives currently that are driving funding away from public schools, specifically funding that is directed towards supporting and increasing the number of charter schools. New York is at a pivotal moment on this question. So although we were talking to a federal legislator, that's gonna be part of the ongoing conversation this fall as we determine, and hopefully hear what the position is ultimately going to be, at the state level on on that particular issue. Coming up next week, for me personally, another advocacy thing is that I'll be attending a technology talk, by Natasha Singer, is a New York Times reporter who's recently been reporting on the influence of, corporate tech on our educational system nationwide. I'll report back on that in a couple of weeks. And, next Friday, I'll be going up to Albany to attend an event called unplugged,

reclaiming human centered education. It's, devi designed primarily for educators and policymakers, so I count myself as the latter. And I'm looking forward to hearing, what, the state picture is on that question, next Friday. Over to you, Theo.

Well, there I did not attend any meetings, but I I do now have the dates of the meetings that I will be, liaison for. So the PVC PTA as liaison to that group and to the, to the district emergency response team. So those, calendar invites have been sent. I have them, and I will be attending those meetings.

Great. Thank you. That concludes our board reports. I'll turn it over now to superintendent Walker to introduce the topic for our work session, item 3.1, building priorities for the 2627

school year. Over to you. Thank you again, Ana Tak. First, this evening, I wanna sincerely thank our building administrative team for being here this evening. We know that this is another night away from home at a time of year that, is already incredibly busily scheduled for all of you. So thank you, very much for for your presence this evening, and thank you more so for planning and leading the work that you'll be discussing this evening. As the board and community are aware, at the last board meeting, we shared an extensive series of district goals, each of which is designed to focus on the achievement of our students at all levels through a detailed series of steps including curricular reviews, program evaluation, and regular reporting of student data. Each of those goals will be addressed in concert with our building leaders and the teachers who work directly with our students every day. And it's also important to note that the student experience does not change through one effort alone,

but instead through a variety of efforts designed to create the foundation for schools to continue to grow and improve. The development and refinement of student centered school schedules, plans to support and mentor new faculty members, and ensuring that there are structures in place for regular communication with our parent community about the progress of our students, these are all examples of vital areas of work for a system designed to continuously improve. And tonight is a terrific opportunity for our board and community to hear from our building leaders about some of their buildings priorities this year in addition to the work outlined in the district goals. And at this point, I'm very happy to turn it over to this amazing team for your presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. So we are excited to go first today for a change. But at CHHS, we looked at the district goals, the work we have already been doing around the implementation of the vision map, and the feedback from our teachers about what they feel should be our priorities based on their experience in the classroom and what will most benefit our students. So we are focusing on oops. Sorry. We are focusing on four priorities this year. Some of these priorities are also part of a multi year vision, and today we will go into more depth on the following slides to outline our actions and steps that we're going to put in place this year so these priorities are at the forefront. So priority one, we have introduced interdisciplinary courses, dual enrollment courses, new AP courses, algebra for all in grade eight, and now it's time to reflect on the vertical and horizontal alignment in the curriculum. While the individual courses have a solid curriculum, we want to make sure that the courses build upon each other where necessary

and that different sections of the same course have the same core curriculum and common assessments while also recognizing that teacher agency and individual lessons to deliver that curriculum can remain unique. And we'll go into more detail on the steps in the following slides, but just a summary for now. Priority two, those common assessments and learning experiences should not be confined to the classroom. We also want to capture the optional opportunities that are available outside of the classroom as well. This will not only ensure more equity in terms of access, but it will also help students as they explore their interests and build their own individual stories. Priority three, the district as a whole is examining teacher leadership structures and how to leverage the talented educators in our buildings, which is a multi year process. We have eight new teachers at CHHS this year, so we're placing an emphasis on how to best support them with our existing structures, particularly our mentorship program.

And finally, priority four, meaningful work is an everyday occurrence at the high school. We want to ensure that our community sees and understands the full student experience. So more detail. Priority one is to ensure a greater degree of vertical and horizontal alignment in the curriculum. There is a connection between this priority and the district goal of horizontal curriculum alignment and a focus on math curriculum development and assessment. This year we have four major actions, two of them are on this slide, but this will put our focus on the priority. So our first action, we're in the process of implementing a ninth grade course, Geometry with Algebraic Concepts. The purpose of this course is to intentionally spiral back to algebra concepts as students are learning geometry. This course will run-in addition to geometry. As all eighth graders are taking algebra one, we want to ensure that those in need of reinforcement

are getting it while still moving on to geometry as ninth graders. Because all students took algebra one in eighth grade and a form of geometry in ninth grade, all are able to reach calculus senior year if they choose to. In our old system, their final destination in their high school math career was typically determined by the end of their seventh grade year. To support this action, we shared the curriculum that was developed in 2526 by two teachers who are no longer employed here at the district. We share those with the department and those currently teaching the course. That framework is a solid starting point, which was then used during summer curriculum work. Department time in the first few weeks of school was also used to discuss the framework, and the team members will ultimately create assessments for the course. Because this framework was written by people who are no longer here and because there needs to be a more concrete explicit plan for the most appropriate places in the course to spiral the skills, we are looking into hiring a curriculum consultant.

Curriculum consultants have a broader scope of all levels of high school math and how they build upon each other. So it's important to make this investment in our math sequence at this time. The majority of our teachers in the math department are new to the district, and the curriculum writing is a huge lift, especially in this short amount of time. So action two. We are now in year three of the interdisciplinary humanities course, which was formerly known as Connections, Map Stories and Time Lines. We acknowledge the evolution of this course, which that develops from reflection. As we moved from the first year, it was a section. Now we're then we moved on to a core common ninth grade experience, and now this year, we've added another section to reduce the class size, which means another teacher pair. So it's imperative that we pause to ensure that there are common assessments and rubrics to create a common experience for all of our learners.

This summer, the three teacher pairs, along with our special education teacher and ENL teacher, spend time mapping out the common skills that are tied to each unit. They have already identified subject specific common assessments, which include things like a text analysis and enduring issues essays, and they're currently working on the shared or connected assessments that touch on both, that specifically assess components of the course. We are meeting as a team, that's all teacher pairs and admin, one time per month, and each pair has common planning time built into their schedules each day. Continuing with priority one is action three. As we said, curriculum alignment is part of the district goals and is a multi year process at the high school. So this year, all departments will be taking an inventory of their common assessments. Final exams, essays, projects are already in place. So we want to get an idea of all those common assessments documented

in one spot so we can take a look at them to identify any gaps so we can determine where our focus needs to be moving forward. And finally, action four on this priority. We want to make sure that we're leaving room for course development in the context of our students' interest and our staff's expertise. So we introduced AP business with personal finance this year. It's the first year that the course is being offered by the college board. But they've also launched AP cybersecurity this year, And they've already told us that next year in 2728, they'll be launching AP networking. So depending upon staffing and interest, we may want to add one or both of these to our course catalog in the coming years. You know, maybe not next year, but in the future. So that's one aspect of leaving room for course development. It's also the first year that we are offering a Project Lead the Way Principles of Engineering course.

This has generated a lot of interest. We've got two sections running in the first year. But the program does offer multiple courses in engineering in a sequence. So, again, as we're developing the vertical curriculum, we're exploring these courses as the next step that we can take so we can build out that program. Some of our interdisciplinary courses and our electives are stand alone courses. So we don't wanna say that we're ever locked into the same courses each year. If the needs and interests of our students are changing because new students come in and they bring new interest with them. For example, theater was a course that was offered years ago that it became something that students weren't enrolling in anymore. That went to the side, and now it's back again. Same thing with journalism. So we always want to make sure that there's room for those new courses as students' interest develop.

So department and interdisciplinary or interdepartmental conversations are always vital in determining which courses are appropriate at that particular moment in time.

Erica, can I ask you a question? Sure. Would it be your preference for us to hold our board questions you've gone through all of the priorities, or would you prefer do it one by one. That's fine. Oh, my I'm just thinking from my perspective, this is a lot of really good information, and I'm worried that I'm not gonna remember questions. I don't know if other people feel the same. What I'll ask is because we do have two two other schools that are gonna be presenting, maybe we'll try to focus on on, sort of inserting, like, one or two top questions, and then we can do a summary at the end. So if anyone has a burning question that relates to something specific in the slide, this or in in what Erica has just spoken about about this first priority, this would be a good time, just so that we can then sort of shift gears and talk about the next, priority. Anyone?

I just wanted to to say thank you for the examination of the humanities course. And I appreciate that it was like a huge undertaking and that it was something that, I mean, I'm sure you could speak to this because you've experienced it. To thoughtfully kind of like curate it into something does fit the student body. I just appreciate that as the parent of three high school students, two high school students now. And I know we heard community feedback regarding the size of that class. So to break it down even more I think just, I think it's really good for students. I wanted to thank you for the thoughtful examination in terms of that course.

Any other questions? I just have a com I guess I have a comment and a question. I think one no. That's actually a question. I'm sorry. So one of the questions I have is my guess is, and I'm hoping you'll be able to confirm this, that this is the type of work that actually is kind of like a standard part of the work that you've been doing. Mhmm. But we haven't really talked about it in this room before. Would that be

Sure. We're I mean, as far as the common assessments and developing courses,

of course. So I think that's part of it will then be the communication of that is which is a different priority. Yeah. I didn't I didn't wanna speak because, again, in my tenure on this board, it hasn't been part of, like, the conversation here, but I think it's important for us to all sort of recognize that this sort of evaluation is part of what's taking place because it is actually how course you know, how courses are developed, how they're maintained. And I think, you know, the point that you highlighted specifically about, for example, courses that we used to have that went away and came back. These are the types of questions we sort of hear in our communities. Like, well, why is there no theater course? And I think it's really important to be able to bring that conversation here to say, the courses that we're offering at the high school are actually informed by student interest. You have different mechanisms for surveying them and actually getting that feedback directly from either student faculty congress or just knowing sort of, like, where our students are, where their extracurricular interests are. But I really think for the for the community, there's a real value to talking about some of this, like, behind the curtains work because it really demonstrates for me,

the questions that are being asked. And they're not always gonna be we we can't have, like, 75 work sessions that go on seventy five hours about all of this stuff, but the work is ongoing. So this summary, I think, is really helpful. One specific question I had, because I think there's also been a lot of discussion about this, and certainly our student trustee raised it, last week was trying to sort of get that understanding of how we're making the shift from algebra for all into the high school. So it would you be able to tell us a little bit about, just specifically about the geometry with algebraic concepts that this is the first year that that course is being offered? Correct. And is there is there a mechanism, for sort of sort of identifying how students get placed in that course, or will that become part of the is the intention to sort of have this be an ongoing course going forward because we sense that there's a need for that reinforcement? I guess if you could just speak a little to Yeah. So there's always been

two levels of geometry. We had applied geometry, and we had, you know, our standard geometry course. So there's always going to be the need to have different levels to be able to meet the needs of the students and where they are, at that time. So by having everybody take algebra in eighth grade, they're they are going to some of those students are going to need the continual reinforcement for the second year, where others are able to move on to just a strict geometry course. So I think as we're revising the curriculum at PVC in seventh grade to better support those students who are taking it in eighth grade, maybe we'll start to see, you know, fewer students who may need that additional support, but that's something that that particular cohort will determine as well as, you know, time. We have to be able to see if next year, what will we need based on the eighth graders that are coming into us. But I would think just as there's always been two levels that we will continue

to have to offer different levels of math. Just the difference is in ninth grade, everyone is taking a form of geometry and they are able then to switch lanes, right, to be able to say, I'm a late bloomer. This is clicking for me now and now I can jump over and to take this course and eventually reach calculus like students who started in the standard geometry.

That makes really good sense. And I think just to highlight what you're talking about is really also specifically the vertical alignment from the middle school to the high school and that that conversation about what we need at the high school is being informed explicitly by what teachers at the at at PVC are seeing. And I'm sure PVC will be talking about that as well. But I think that's an important piece of the the puzzle for parents is to sort of understand what that through line is. And I think, again, I'll point to just the fact that we now are not determining our math outcome at the end of senior year based off of where we are in seventh grade is really a big thing, and that's really important. So thanks for the work on that. I'll turn it back to you now if there are no other questions. Thank you. Okay. So I think I'm on

the second one. Okay, awesome. So as you were saying, curriculum alignment is part of the district goals. It is a multi year process, but that's what I already talked about. So now we're actually on priority two. So we aim to create a system that captures not only the common learning experiences in the classroom, but also those optional opportunities that are available outside of the classroom. So one thing that may not automatically in people's heads connect to a common experience, but it is, is the idea of the rolling grade book. Because it is something that all students are experiencing, and it was implemented for the first time last year on a school wide level. So as with any new practice, just as courses, it's essential to evaluate and then revise and align practices where necessary. So to start this, we had an opening day reflection with the entire faculty. We printed the 25, 26 grade books for each teacher. We distributed

that to them. That was just for their eyes. But we led them through a guided reflection and it asked them to look at the distribution of points throughout the school year, the weighting of assignments, and best practices. So those ideas of if someone thought that they were stuck in in the grade book at some point in the year that it was difficult to shift. There are some some misconceptions as far as, you know, getting a fresh start with each new quarter. Old quarters don't go away. Right? They're averaged in. So there's some idea of some clarification that we could give around those, but there are some real mathematical elements that need to be reviewed. If you're front loading points in the school year, for example, or weighting things incorrectly, that certainly can have an influence on how you're able to move throughout the year. So we're gonna continue to check-in with teachers based on that reflection as they were making tweaks in their grade book. And we'll do that after checkpoints,

and then of course, doing those pulse surveys with students to see what their feedback is and if the grade book is doing what we intend it to do. The next step or the next action to support that common experience is to uphold the district technology norms and to continue to engage in PD around intentional technology use. So we've already reviewed those shared commitments with our educators. But beyond limiting screen time, we want to ensure that when screens are being used, it's to enhance learning. So it's not just to minimize, but to enhance as well. So our instructional coaches will continue to collaborate with educators in this area through individualized coaching, shared strategies, study groups, and lunch and learns. So to continue with priority two, I'll turn it over to John.

Good evening, everyone. So this next action here about cataloging internal and external opportunities is about capturing in a more system like a more systematic way the experiences our students have in extracurriculars, the courses they're in, our academic concentrations. We offer a concentration in STEM, Civics, and Humanities to catalog them in order to have greater equity and access to them. Some of these experiences are really unique. We're hosting our first Model UN conference this year called Croton. You know, that is a very unique experience for our Model UN kids who put in a lot of work over the years to build out our program and get to that point. But we have other experiences whether they're programs, volunteer opportunities that are really tied to a career field or an academic concentration, workshops, internships that have really been built out of specific courses, specific clubs.

And if you didn't have that teacher, if you weren't in that club, you're not having access to them right now. And our goal right now is to start capturing that in a more of a as a system in order to then share that in a more equitable way and widely with with all students. And with my concentration students I've been meeting with at the start of the year, I kind of been sharing the purpose of these experiences in two ways and this kind of gets at why this priority is so important. These experiences first and foremost help students find out what motivates them. What's gonna drive them. Right? Like your goal when you graduate is not necessary to have the job you want or the career you want, but know that pathway forward that you are willing to work hard for to achieve. Right? The second goal upon graduation is having the opportunities to do that. Right? So when you start building from a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year,

your own resume of these volunteer experiences, these internships, these workshops you went to, not only are you finding out what drives you, what motivates you, what your interests are, but you're also presenting yourself with a lot of opportunities going forwards because you just did something really unique that not a lot of high school students are doing. It also will give us the opportunity to really look carefully at what opportunities are best for our ninth graders, which ones are best for our tenth graders. An example of why this is important, meeting with our concentration students last year, the feedback I heard from them is as a ninth grader, as a tenth grader, some of these opportunities are difficult for me to access. Right? They're either competitive and it's really for juniors and seniors or I don't drive yet. I don't have a license. Like it's really hard for me to commit this amount of time.

So what are better like workshops or experiences that a ninth grader or a tenth grader can go to? And then build from that. I think part of cataloging this is also helping students and families understand that the opportunity that you have in ninth or tenth grade outside of the school day might not hit the nail perfectly on the head of what you want, but saying yes to that in ninth grade, saying yes to that in tenth grade, opportunities open up more opportunities for you. So we'd like to approach this as a system. We've had a lot of teachers retire and it's really our teachers and their professionalism that helps us build these networks. These relationships come from them. It comes from their work, that they find these people, their profession extends far beyond our classrooms. They share them with us, we approve them, and then they have something great for their students, their club. We're trying to build it out in a more

systemic way. The other action on this slide is about assessing the modifications we made to our school day schedule, particularly around Tiger Learning Conferences and extracurricular period utilization. Last year we created two unique things in our schedule. We gave students the opportunity within the confines of the school day to participate in extracurricular period. We also created special Tuesdays throughout the year. Last year we called them Tiger Tuesdays. This year we have reframed Tiger Tuesdays as Tiger Learning Conferences. We've also shrunk the frequency of them during the year. And instead of half days for Tiger Learning Conferences where they would have in the afternoon three sessions that they could attend. And again, would be the workshops, the programs, those outside experiences coming into the school. We've narrowed that to two, giving them a larger time in both, giving them passing time between. That was an issue last year. But also the hope here is to really focus in on the great

academic career related, you know, what is my interest driven experiences that kids are really excited for. So we're gonna track this attendance during those days, interest in saying yes and and volunteering to be part of those workshops instead of just being scheduled into them. The other part of our schedule we're looking at that we modified after last year is the extracurricular period. It was amazing last year for kids to be able to participate in our extracurriculars during the school day, but we had put that just before lunch. And while we had like a record number of kids joining clubs last year and joining Model UN and stuff like that, We also had kids extending their lunch times because we put it before the lunch period. So we've moved that to an earlier time in the day because we really want students to have these opportunities. Like, yes, they're doing great things in their classrooms, their teachers and academics,

but we also care deeply about them standing out and being unique and having these opportunities that often come from clubs. So those are things that we're gonna assess periodically, snapshots through the year to be able to compare attendance data in those days. That's the end for priority three if you have questions. I mean priority two. Do folks have questions?

Student questions? Yeah. Please go ahead. Yeah.

Hi. Thanks. And sorry. I'm I'm playing catch up here. So there's a lot of great information in this. I really appreciate you guys bringing it to us and all the the thought that went into it. And I have, like, a lot of stuff going through my head right now and and trying to unpack a lot of this stuff and looking at the the actions and steps. So just for example, like, rolling grade book, evaluate rolling grade book. Opening day reflection activity, faculty check-in after checkpoints, student pulse surveys. Those are those are great things. What what does that look like? What does that look like in practice? Have you done the opening day reflection activity? Like, could you help me understand how we get from the rolling grade book and rolling that out rolling that out to, yeah, we've done the evaluation of it. We've decided this is working. This isn't working. It's helping students. It's not helping students.

Could you just give me a sense of, like, what that might look like over the over the course of the school year?

I just wanted to talk, so I had to ask. That that was for you, Mark. Yeah. I can talk a little bit about the rolling grade book. Our opening our opening activity, that was an activity with our faculty on one of the opening day opening conference days where we gave everyone a printed version of their grade book and asked them to follow and work together with their department to follow a list of reflective questions about how their grade book was set up. Looking at how were you front loading assignments in the year? Were you front loading the point values? Which would sort of heavily weight the grade to the first couple of months of the school year, for example. We did. We looked at many grade books, probably most grade books in the process of doing this. The three of us looked at many of those and were able to give targeted feedback and work with departments to help evaluate that. So really by letting the faculty reflect on how did the school year go,

what did it look like by the end, there's an iterative process when you try it your second year. Teachers realized, okay, maybe I need to spread my projects out a little bit differently so that the students don't feel they've earned 90% of their grade in the first three months of the year.

So as an example. Can I add a perspective as someone who was a teacher last year with the rolling grade book and and like what this felt like with the reflection process? So one of the things that was really helpful in this reflection sheet that we gave teachers is, yeah, they had their grade book, but we also like, it started with them having categories of every month of the year. Right? And we made it really clear in the data that Mark was able to pull of like, here was the total number of formative assessments you had in points, here's the total number of summative assessments, here's the highest grade you put in the summative category, here's the lowest grades, they could kinda see that range. And then we asked them to kinda tally by month how many assignments were going in. And one of the things that I experienced in my transition last year from the quarters to the rolling grade book model is it

takes a lot of thought to look at how I'm arranging things by month when you don't have that quarter reset. Right? And sometimes it could be, hey. Earlier in the year, need more scaffolding. Right? And and I want kids to have shorter check ins, but that means I'm adding actually more points in September and October, November. And instead of that being if there's ten months in our school year, instead of that being like 30% of their total points, you know, if it was closer to 50, suddenly that's really weighted heavily. Right? So like teachers, the feedback we got was like seeing that helped them realize kind of that spacing that's really important so that a grade book doesn't get stuck. And then also departments having conversations around what does a formative assessment mean? Why are we putting that as five points? Is a summative assessment? Of tying to the common experience piece of like this is what we are valuing in a formative, this is what we are valuing in a summative.

Then departments met in department meetings after this to talk about norms and grading and feedback and stuff like that. And we're gonna have another reflective practice. Faculty asked us for this in January, like halfway point. Going through that same activity besides them having faculty department meetings before that where they are every every one is agenda item, like, how are we doing with our norms? How are we feeling with our rolling grade books? Another kind of midyear point to say, like, let's do this reflective practice again, but this time for first half of the year

and go for there. So that's a little more more of the nuts and bolts for you. Yeah. Thanks. And then and last question. Thank you for that, John. That was really helpful. So so what's the what's the final product here between the reflections, the checkpoints, the surveys? Is it a report? Is it a recommendation to the superintendent? Like, what what do we do with all this information? How do we communicate it out? What do we do with all this data that we're collecting about rolling grade book? And if we're evaluating it, we're doing that for for parents and families and students. How are we communicating our findings to them?

I think in many ways,

your communication is through then your action. Right? So if we're looking at this rolling grade book and finding that people are getting stuck, we're hoping then that through these actions, we're reporting that it's not no longer that way, and students are feeling that, and then we will continue with that practice. So just as we're doing, say, to tie it back to humanities. Right? You're you're looking at the course. You're now adding something to it. You're changing it, and then that becomes the better model. So I think in the end, the product that you're going to get is an effective grade book.

My follow-up question to that, because I had similar questions to Jake, is I think there's a there's a couple points that I think first of all, I think just because we, as a board, do have a tremendous number of questions about the rolling grade book, it's probably gonna behoove us, Steve and Laura, to also, call this group back to discuss this conceptually sort of in more detail because there are a lot of questions. I think, I think, one of the things that Jake was pointing to, and I'm sort of asking this as well, is this, like, so if we're we're sort of doing, like, a level setting at the beginning of the school year and a check-in in January, Is there a plan to sort of what does the plan look like at the end of the year to sort of see this thing? So how did we do? It sounds like this past season this past school year, the administrative team looked at the grade books collectively to sort of inform the work of September. One of the questions would be, is that a regular so I have two questions. One is, is this is this sort of cadence something that is going to now become a regular practice? And then the second piece of it is,

I think this was highlighted in the remarks as you were explaining, the priority, which is this question of the fresh start. And there does seem to be, and I think we heard a little bit of this last week from our students, and we've heard heard it in the community, that the the perception of that students have a perception that they're losing that opportunity to start over. And so I think a little bit of communication and a little bit possibly of also sort of soliciting their feedback on their understanding of how this is being operationalized would be really helpful. In addition, I think it would behoove us to think about also getting that, know, it's like as you're talking about getting the teacher feedback at the end of the year, I know that there are many mechanisms and we've talked about student surveys and how they get done and what the uptake is and, you know, exit tickets and it's tough to get that feedback from high school students, but I think we have to determine as part of our practice how we're gonna get that feedback. Because

the question that Erica asked is if the grade book is doing what we intended it to do. And I think that is a question that we have collectively is, is the grade book doing what we intended it to do? I will say I'm not a 100% sure what we intended it to do, which is why I think we need to have the work session on it. But I think if you could speak a little bit to the cadence and then what you're thinking right now in terms of sort of, like, the student voice piece of this because it's a big issue for them.

Sure. So with the the cadence of it, at the beginning of any program, you are doing those regular check ins. Eventually, over time, as teachers have taught the course, they're now making those adjustments. I think the check-in becomes less frequent as the years go on because it's something that becomes part of our practice. And certainly as new teachers are coming into the model, the education for them and how to go about it, and then also the departments as a whole that they're they're establishing best practices and then sharing those with people who are coming in. So I think that it is something that happens at the beginning and becomes less as you go on. As far as the student piece, I think there is some education that needs to happen there as well in understanding how the different what the different assignments are weighted and how that can influence your grade. But there's some some ideas, like you're saying, with the fresh start.

If I have an a or I'll I have a c first quarter in the in the old system, and then I'm really, you know, buckled down. I'm putting in the effort. It's starting to click. And then I get an a the second quarter, I still have a b, right, if you're averaging them together. And so sometimes it's drawing the attention of the students to that fact that it's still in the old system, you were averaged at the end. It's not as though what you got for that quarter then replaced the previous. So I think there is, as I said, some mathematical things that we need to work out, but then there's also some misconceptions on the student end that we can do a better job of explaining. And I think as we continue those pulse surveys, some of it is about the fact that students did feel that they had less anxiety about checking their grades as often. We saw that from the feedback. We also saw that they appreciated

that they didn't feel like they were over assessed at the end of quarters. Teachers felt as though I can naturally end this unit where I need to, and I don't need to hurry up and get this in so that way I can, you know, put a a quarter grade on a report card. So there were benefits to that. The biggest complaint that we heard was I felt like I couldn't move my grade. So there's some math that goes into that, as I said, but then also some understanding. The more points that you are accumulating by the end of the year, each assignment does naturally have less weight to it. So it's an education piece, and I think maybe those, the surveys at the end of the year with the students and throughout will give us an idea if they're starting to to feel better about the negative aspects that they reported while still maintaining those positives that came out of this experience too.

Question?

Yeah, it's actually more of a reflection than a question. I really appreciate all of this information on the role in grade book because it is something I've definitely been curious about. I think you were talking about how action is the best demonstration of evolution. Right? And I totally agree with that. There should be actions to continually evolve. But I also think that given one of the district's goals this year is to continue to build community trust, I think part of part of doing the that is saying, here's what we heard from our students and our teachers, and here is the resulting action. And even if it's just, here's what we've heard, we are planning an action. And then later coming back to the action, I think would go a long way just to help quell the types of questions. We do this a lot, in my field. It's called responsive, client feedback. And it's it's really it can work really well. Okay. Thank you. Just a thought. Thank you.

Any other comments from the board on priority two? I'll just close by saying I'm I'm wanna also, commend you all specifically on something that I think I didn't understand when it was written just on the slide, which is beginning to catalog internal and external opportunities. And I think from an equity perspective, it's really important to be highlighting this tonight because as a district, we do have a commitment to making sure that all of our students have equal access and ability to participate in all these sorts of opportunities. And I think the biggest thing that, you know, again, having having been a high school parent now for three years, I think, it's important for folks to know sort of where to find out about the things. Because often what happens is, like, we as parents hear about, oh, so and so, you know, did so and so, and you're like, why didn't I hear about this? So I think one of the questions as as you engage in this process and get to the, you know, get to the completion of year one cataloging it for our students will be to also determine what communication that needs to happen to families. Because I think when we when we see as board trustees, we have the luxury of being able to you know, we we were invited to come into the Tiger learning conferences and see them in action and see, you know, some of these special things that happen in the buildings. And I know this year, the learning walks are gonna make that more visible for our families.

But I think when you when you get a sense of, like, the scope of what's going on, you realize there's a tremendous amount of stuff. When you read sort of, like, the posts that come out from the high school in terms of student achievement and the really incredible individual projects kids are doing. It sounds really amazing. So I love that we're sort of assume creating some sort of repository for this where everyone will be able to find out about it. I also think, John, to your point about the ninth grade and tenth grade preparation, that's really, really important. And I think you really hit it, which is that that those students have a lot of things that they want to do and to sort of be able to make that clear for them so that, also, they're not sort of, like, waiting until they're juniors and seniors when things are already nutty for so many other reasons to really dig in and try things to be able to do more of that in ninth and tenth grade. I think these are important things to highlight in terms of the sort of holistic

experience that we're talking about, which is not just what we're doing curricularly, but also how that extracurricular work supports development of sort of people's passion for what they wanna learn and then what they wanna do in terms of career and college afterwards. So I appreciate that. And we look forward to your reporting on what sort of, you know, what you find and then hearing more about it. Thank you. If we're ready, we're gonna go to priority three. PVC and CET are like, what? We should have gone first.

Alright. Priority number three at the high school is to refine existing teacher leadership structures, structures to provide coordinated support that develops teachers' curricular expertise, procedural knowledge, and understanding of the school's culture with an emphasis on teachers new to the district. So this year, we have eight new hires at our district, and they are not necessarily new teachers. They are all parts of their career. And we are a great school, and we're attracting some great veteran teachers because of that. So we have system wide supports in what the district offers with our Tiger our new Tiger Academy. Right? But also at the at our schools, we have mentor programs for first year teachers at our buildings. And the mentor program is really about individualized support for what that teacher needs, and we have mentors that support them. What we are doing this year is not necessarily creating this from scratch,

but trying to better support both mentees and mentors by utilizing our schedule, utilizing our system. Mark did an excellent job of being able to schedule mentors all free at the same extracurricular periods. And we are not only checking in with our new hires this year, but also checking in with mentors. This allows us to share with mentors norms, expectations, opportunities for our new hires. It also allows us to keep a consistent pulse on what our new hires need. Whether that's just tech support, whether that's help from our instructional coaches, whether that's opportunities our curriculum coordinators can find them for PDs, whether it's work we can provide as an admin team. This consistent support of not just the mentees but the mentors themselves and helping them be great mentors for our new hires is really important. It's also a way for us to give consistent reinforcement to these new teachers,

to say, hey. This is great what you're doing. Continue to do that. Oftentimes, teachers, especially in your first couple of years, you have a few check-in moments, you have your observations, and then sometimes you could feel in the wilderness from that. That is feedback that we gathered from the entry plan I did in the spring with probationary teachers of wanting to feel that more consistent feedback of where they're at and what they're doing and what they are doing well and what they, you know, could be growing in. Right? So that's action number one for this priority. Action number two is helping teachers in years two through four. Our mentor program stops after year one at the building level. Our new Tiger Academy goes for two years. And for years two through three, we are offering those teachers the opportunity this year to set individual priorities of the things they wanna grow in. This isn't something that is, like, unique just because they're probationary teachers. Every single one of our teachers

go to professional development every year. They have goals for themselves. They're continually as reflective practitioners evolving their professions. But when you're in those first couple years, those support structures, those systems can be a little more fuzzy for you of of what levers to pull and how to access them. What we're simply doing for teachers in years two, three, and four is shining a light on those supports and making sure that they clearly have access to them, the work our instructional coaches can provide, opportunities we can find them for professional development in and out of the district, and make them feel that we are there with them through that process years two, three, and four.

So I definitely can see how this really bolsters teacher retention and obviously there's a fair amount of research around retention being good for students. But I'm curious if I don't not knowing a lot about the teacher leadership program, what do you see as the other student outcomes

of doing this for for and with our teachers?

There okay. So there's probably three I can think of off the bat. One, our mentors understand our community. They understand how to communicate with parents. They understand how to build trust with kids. We have veteran teachers coming into this district who were amazing in the districts they were in but we're a different district. We're a different community. Our kids are different. That adjustment from one culture to another is really really important. So the immediate effect on our kids and where learning begins before you get to the academics is that environment of your classroom is accelerating that process for our new teachers to learn how to connect with our students, to build that rapport with our students, to build that trust with our students and our families and interacting that way. And that's why also we're meeting with mentors reminding them like, hey, may be the norm to you because you've interacted with our families for so long but these are the expectations of a curriculum night or back to school night.

Help them prepare for that. Help them prepare for these interactions, their first communications, whether it's email or phone call. Those are great things to assist on, to make those adjustments. There's no public school system in New York. We are thousands of them and each school district has its own culture. So that cultural adjustment is probably the first thing kids will feel from that mentor support even though they're not actually seeing that mentor. The second thing is how to collaborate with colleagues. I think one of the biggest things that helps our teachers here at Croton grow and develop, not just from working with people in their department but across departments, is learning opportunities to collaborate and making those connections. It's sometimes a lot. You're going into a new district, you're trying to learn your kids, you're learning all these systems, learning the people in your department,

realizing these opportunities of Hey, you need some help or you clearly want to work on this type of closure activity for a lesson. Here's some teacher that does that exact thing. Let me foster that relationship for you. You can collaborate on this. You can collaborate during our Wednesday collab time, which no other district really has. They're very unique to Croton. So that collaboration. Culture is one, collaboration is another. And then also just reflecting on their practice. Reflecting on the pedagogy of teaching. Having someone after that first week and feeling like I never taught in a block, period, before. My school I came from only had forty minutes. Teaching to this longer time is very new for me. I don't know. This didn't feel good. And that's not just for our new teachers, but as veteran teachers, you didn't experience that, that feeling of the pacing of a class is really important,

especially in the beginning of the year. So I would say in those areas, you have someone who helps you adjust the culture, and students are gonna feel that. The collaboration with colleagues and the learning opportunities you have beyond just your own department. And then just a veteran teacher who really can have that type of professional conversation with you about your practice are three huge areas that not only help the teacher but students feel that as well. And then the last thing I'll say is I think one of the things that we've talked about this year that we want to do is make it public like who these mentors are because our mentors are some of our great teachers that students love, that families love and having the understanding that hey this person is working with this person kind of builds that broader trust and support for for that member. We're

ready for priority four.

Alright. We're ready for four. Priority four is communicate facets of the student experience to families in the broader community. And I think you'll all recognize the alignment of that priority with board priorities as well as district. And the first action to improve communication with families about course content and sequence from the foundational skills through the higher order thinking and unique course experiences. The first step there in our curriculum night this year, we're going to return to the format of a parent of the parent following the student's schedule to simulate the daily routine and hear the individual presentations by teachers. This puts the focus on foundational skills and the curriculum. We also think this emphasizes the parent staff connections, which are so important. And finally, that's responsive to feedback that we received about last year's experiment with different format. Right?

So that's an example of sort of that iterative process as we take feedback. As a building we're prioritizing communication about the counseling program from the school counseling department this year. We're focusing on engagement with parents and solid communication about the work that we're doing. And you may have already noticed some of those messages going out, both in the principals weekly and coming out independently from the counseling department, really highlighting the program, where we are and what the students are doing in the classroom. The counselors are very active in the classroom all throughout the year as well as doing individual meetings. Our target here is communication about that program and helping people to understand what's happening. Similar to getting a report from your third grade teacher about what book is being read in the classroom, knowing the program helps parents to engage with it. So that's

that step. Putting intentionality on curriculum communication. All teachers are participating in the district process this year of preparing new curriculum overviews. And that will present a high level curriculum for each course in a consistent way. So that's a district process that every teacher in our building has already begun work on. And you'll see that play out and roll out through the year. The next action is to open our doors literally and figuratively for a firsthand look. You'll, I'm sure, immediately realize what falls under that. But some of the steps, the principal's coffees and conversations, which have been a practice but those will continue. Those help parents to engage in the work going on in the building through specific topics. We're opening our doors this year for the first time for parent learning walks, allowing parents to sign up to do a building walk through and observe classes in action.

So this is really something that's new to the building and will be something that, you know, we'll be working closely at the district level to coordinate and communicate about. Our new district communications firm is an important part of that communication. We're looking forward to working with them. They're just starting in I think tomorrow. I knew it was within a week. Okay, so tomorrow. So we're looking forward to working with them and we see that being a major part of this action. We found in our evaluations that more parents value earlier intervention and meetings for conferences. And so we're restructuring a little bit in terms of dates when we're offering our conferences this year. Trying to do more upfront conferences in the year. And putting our third parent teacher conference in November as opposed to March. So conference date that is. So we're more front loading our conferences, responding

to feedback that high school students really need earlier intervention, waiting until March is really too late for a high school program. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark. Board questions on priority four? Anything specific? I'll I'll follow-up with, like, a quick question then just to sort of understand because I think parent teacher conferences is another thing that that the, that the high school sort of changed its practices on last year. So you're saying that the third parent teacher conference date now has moved to November. Can you speak a little bit about the cadence? And then also whether there were any have there been any additional changes to sort of the plan from last year and what sort of feedback you all got on that?

So I think by cadence, you're talking about sort of when they're scheduled or

I don't know the dates off my top of my head. Do you There's two in November, so it's a a day and an evening, and then another one in January, an evening in January. And the reason for that is with the change of semesters, also halfway through the year, that some people needing a check-in, but that people wanted to come in earlier. So when we invited people in March or offered anyone can sign up for a parent teacher conference. In March, we had very few that, not very few, but fewer, I should say, people who families that wanted to come in in March as opposed to November. So that's the shift,

in the date. So we can accommodate more families earlier on in the year. Okay. I think that the phrasing threw me off. So it's like, what you mean is that parent teacher conferences, now the bulk of them will be November and January rather than November, January, and March. Correct. That makes sense. Okay. I I think I just that that, that threw me off a little bit. And then just to confirm that the plan is to continue with the invitation practice across all grades.

Yes. So we will be inviting families, but I think we will be taking a closer look at the number of families that we are inviting to leave more spaces open, for families who would like to sign up to come in, and then also clarifying that if there could be that you want to come in, and it's going to be to see a couple of teachers, perhaps not the entire team. It is there's it's difficult to get the entire team around the table to accommodate as many people as possible. So it is a very intricate process of scheduling people by hand. So it is time consuming, and we will continue to do the team practice. But by limiting the number of people invited, it it opens up more spaces.

That makes sense just in light of the fact that there's gonna be more because I one of the gaps that we identified as a community last year was that getting sort of, like, that feedback in connection with teachers was a little bit harder for some families in the absence of parent teacher conferences. So it will be eager to see as a board whether, whether the introduction of the learning walks, which gives, like, folks another opportunity who are really interested in hearing more directly, they can sort of opt into that. And I think also from, from the the curriculum night perspective, going back to that opportunity for folks to really follow their students' schedule, there I think that there is really great value in that for me as a parent speaking for myself, but also having heard from the community. So it's wonderful to hear that we're, we're gonna go back to that structure. And we'll be interested to hear after you go through this year, also, if you can identify, you know, what the other areas are. I think I will say as a parent, I have seen the increase in communications from the counseling department getting a sense of, like, what's going on. So I think these are all good steps, but I hope that there will be some sort of measure of parent feedback. And I know that that's part of the district's goal, part of the communications goal, so we'll be hearing more about that as we approach the end of the year. Are there any overall questions on Croton- Harmon High School's priorities for 2627

before we turn it over to our next team? Would you like to stay, or would you like to excuse yourselves? We welcome whatever you choose. I promise your colleagues won't be offended. I know. We should do this in a rotating basis. We we will. Yes. Everybody gets to be first one time. Absolutely. And we do write it down so we will remember CHHS doesn't get to go first again next year. Over to you then, PVC.

Do it to you. You know? We

won't hold it against you. We're

going. Alright. Hello. Hi. It's our turn. Our focus this year centers around intentionality, growth, and community. We are trying to ensure that every decision we make directly serves our students and our teachers and our entire staff at PVC. Over the next few slides, what we're going to do is walk you through our overarching theme for the year. I apologize for not bringing this shirt. The concrete steps we are going to take to bring our district's vision and goals to life at PVC. We're sharing how we're shaping our school culture, the schedule, and the academic pathways to ensure that every single PVC student has a meaningful and engaging middle school experience. So like I said, we're excited to share our theme. We are making every day count. And the letters of day are an acronym that stand for design the time, anchor the experience, and your learning journey, applying to both of our students,

both our students and our staff. And so we really want to be intentional about every minute that we have the privilege of spending with our students. So our goal is to continue to

create and enhance learning experiences through rigorous standard aligned curriculum, collaboration, and, of course, quality instruction. Maximizing planning time is key for us, so we don't want to leave the learning and the instruction to chance. So every PVC student deserves engaging and common middle school experiences. So we're gonna work to anchor every experience for the whole child to enhance a sense of belonging at the middle school. And the your learning journey, refers to students and all of our stakeholders in the community, really embracing all that comes with the journey through middle school. And so we wanna work to ensure that all students maximize their potential while with us at PVC.

All right. So we're going to start with design the time. You can see on each of these slides our driving question, our outcome, and then the work that we're doing in the short term, which which is often work that we've already started or will be starting for this school year, longer term work throughout this school year or the years to come, and then the considerations we have as we are thinking about this. So just to orient you a little bit to our structure here. With Design the Time, we are thinking about how we have one hundred and eighty days in a school year, four ten minutes in a day, 08:00 to 02:50 every day. And we want the way that the time is designed with our students and our staff to be incredibly intentional. So this year, in the short term, we've already revised what was called the zero period to an orange block to enhance our advisory and our SEL instruction and offerings for our students.

Over the last few years, what I've learned and what we've seen together is that we're layering on our offerings. And now we really want to be intentional and redesign the time to be consistent and minimize the number of special schedules that we have for everyone. Over the longer term, and you can see the considerations, we're really thinking about how does our schedule represent what we value as a school and as a district. We believe that we're really at a crossroads with New York Inspires and our vision map, and that we can explore a master schedule overhaul. We plan to do this by gathering a lot of information from our students, our staff, our parents, our community through community work and surveys. And we're done. Oh, no, we're back. Okay. Perfect time for questions.

I'll open up. Bisci, go ahead. Yeah.

So this is probably just my ignorance, but I don't know what an orange block is or how it's different from what's been in the past. So I'd love a little more of a description on that. And then I also was sort of surprised not to see

referenced here in any way, partially because

it is such an important of change for our district and given the continued focus on that globally and nationally in the news, I think it'd be really great to see that reflected here. And secondly, because the digitization of the middle school's homework in particular came up so frequently on the community survey from the summer. I don't know if you guys have shared the results to the district or the building leaders. So I just I was wondering how you were thinking about evaluating the effectiveness of the shift with the tech reset. I'll start Oh,

start there and move back. I'm gonna start there because it's coming in the next one. It's just not reflected in this particular priority. All good. So that's coming. Orange block is so the point I made about special schedules. I think at some point when I was in my interview process, someone mentioned the schedule. And I asked, tell me more about that. And someone did exactly what I'm about to do to you. And they flipped over their badge. And they showed me their schedule and how there's the letter day schedule. And then last year, there was advisory and zero period. So there was two special schedules. And what we decided to do was go down from what you can I mean, I don't know how well everybody can see, but like four types of schedules to three this year to try to clarify, to try to reduce the number of different things that people have to look at every day and understand and follow? The orange block is then our, right now, our advisory block. It will also be the time where we work on passion pursuits

together. It increased the amount of time that advisory was. It was shorter in the past. And so it meets about the same amount of time, if not a few more times throughout the school year. And the amount of time students are with their advisor is longer.

And I think that was super responsive to our school climate data, a lot of our SEL work. That's so important at the middle level for sure.

I was gonna ask this at the end, but given that question that you just asked, so it's a good question. I was wondering, Steve, if you could share some of the conversation that we had when we're talking about, and you alluded to this in the beginning, whether the distinction between the district goals and the building priorities and how they connect and how they're different as well as how when they're competing priorities, no pun intended, kind of the the thought process that you that you shared with us. Sure. So,

yes, as, you know, as we shared on September 3, there was a collaborative process between the board and the administration in developing what I think we all agree are a robust and student centered series of goals that speak to the student experience and how we advance achievement in K-twelve. And so from the outset of the year, that's what's been communicated to the system through the building administrators, through us, to the faculty about that. That is the core thrust of our work during the course of the year. And any time there's a conflict in terms of priorities and how we're going to be using our professional learning time, the district goals are the priority. And that's been very clear from the beginning. The other parts of it, I think what you're hearing already from high school and PVC and you'll hear it from CET, is that in addition to all of that work, there's foundational improvements that we believe we need to make. And you've heard this through the lens of the master schedule, through mentorship of new teachers, through communication.

All of those things are part of that broader movement toward continually improving the system in general, right? Improving the foundational work that then allows for the district goals to get done better, to get done more quickly, to get done more impactfully because we have this other work that's happening as well. So we have multiple structures during the course of the year, collab time, interbuilding time, faculty time, as well as a really robust system with instructional coaches that allow for these things to happen simultaneously. But with the district goals and then therefore the board goals remaining the hinge point, the leverage, the most important work of the system.

Thank you. Other specific questions on this before we move on? I guess my one question is just to if you could speak to us a little bit about, the action step of creating committees and surveys. What are we what are what are you thinking about that in terms of what you're looking at with those? And, again, if you could explain whether they tie to district priorities or something specific within the building that you're looking to focus on, that would be helpful.

So we're talking about, master schedule, overhaul. And, again, going back to crossroads that mentioned, for New York Inspires and just where we are with the vision map and the work that's happened over the last few years. We want to really take a look at our, master schedule to make sure it matches our values, and make sure that it's representative of all the things that we think are really important for our adolescents and our middle school journeys. So I think that last part about creating committees and surveys is we don't want to do that work in isolation. We don't want to make those decisions on our own. We want to make sure that we're getting input from students, from staff, from community, and all of our stakeholders. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We'll move on to the next. Thank you. Alright. I'm gonna talk a little about about the r r a, our anchor the experience. And so anchoring the experience is really all about working towards creating joyful,

memorable, educational experiences, and more importantly, common experiences that really foster trust and belonging. And so we know middle school is a unique time, and I think those ex our experiences or the student experiences really should reflect that. And so that's why we spent some time resetting our lab expectations this year. We're working to enhance engagement with families through our consistent communications, newsletters, coffee talks, the parent learning walks, meet and greets, parent teacher conferences, the back to school nights, all of those things for outreach and engagement. So so much of, you know, the difference, I think, that that students experience is is their individual experiences, in the building are so unique. But we wanna make sure that they're anchored in, right, common experiences when they're leaving us and heading off to the high school. We we appreciate those differences,

but at the same time, right, really working towards this year defining those collective kind of similar experiences. So whether those be in the classroom, out of the classroom, bringing experiences into the building, all along those lines. So we want to be true, right, for all of our middle school experiences and all the students that come through PVC for their four years that they can walk away saying, oh, yes, we all went to the Met in sixth grade, and that was an amazing experience that shaped then my seventh and eighth grade. Right? This was a culminating experience that tied together all of that social studies, the work that we've done. So things along that line. So I think going back to what Betsy was asking before in regards to that tech reset and just intentional tech, we've been working with doctor Moskowitz and miss Morse, our new library media specialist, to create digital citizenship and wellness lessons

and common experiences for all students in grades five through eight. So they'll monthly work with miss Morse on creating responsible digital citizens who have the tools necessary to really navigate and explore all of these different media landscapes. So really just adding the tools to their toolbox and, you know, continuing to scaffold what that looks like in fifth. Obviously, it'll look, you know, different in eighth, but to really get that up and running next month. So we're excited for that.

Questions? Questions from the board? Yep. Go ahead, Betsy.

It's great to hear about the the digital citizenship work. I think that's really important for middle schoolers. But in terms of the tech policy that was put out by the district like earlier in the summer, I'm curious how the middle school intends to evaluate the effectiveness of implementation

that reset and if you're thinking about anything else related to intentionally using technology. Yeah, great question. I think anecdotally we've gotten some feedback even over the last week or so, particularly with sixth grade. And the sixth grade staff and teachers have already noticed, and they pulled us aside to say, hey, wow, what a difference this has made. You know, we're seeing a lot less of just, obviously, carrying devices and things of that nature. But so there's a lot less of a need, what we were kind of jokingly calling, that dopamine hit in the hallway or that need to open up the screen. And so they're just not grabbing them. The sixth graders have a much more steady and kind of consistent approach to like, yeah, we're gonna put that in the parking lot and leave it there. They're comfortable, more comfortable, I'd say, not walking around with them as much throughout the day. So I think just anecdotally so far, that's that's a good sign.

But I think, yes, we're gonna continue to monitor that and check-in with staff and students. Students. Yeah.

I'll you talked about sixth grade. I thought you were gonna talk about fifth graders who are coming from CET. Sure. And the beginning of the year testing, the beginning of the year setting up on their iPad, we needed a lot more support than our fifth grade team was used to because of what the fourth graders were used to. And and I'm saying this in a good way. The fifth grade team was like, oh, they used to have more practice logging in and using their own device than they did this year. And so thankfully, Ellen and the team showed up to help. But that was something that our fifth grade team so shout out to you all because that was something we saw with fifth grade. I think the other thing that we've talked about is where can we be more clear for teachers? And that was lab because, again, it was common experience. People were doing different things. People were using tech different amounts.

And so we said from the first day staff was with us, let's be really clear about this period. And now as we go, it's on the two of us observing and spending time in classrooms to think about where are other places where it's not as common and how can we then be more clear about what intentional tech looks like and doesn't look like. Yeah.

Other questions? Okay. I have a couple. I'm just gonna go into them. First of all, I think it is, as Betsy said, it's really great to hear about digital citizenship coming back as a focus because this was this was actually a course at PVC many years ago where it was, like, specifically about media and media literacy. So it's great to hear that it's coming back. My question about that is if you could explain a little bit, like, what the mechanism is because students in the middle school don't officially go to library. So we're curious as to, like, you know, where is that what is the space for that? Where is that gonna take place?

Should I do them one by one? Maybe that's better. Sure. Yes. So we're gonna go to the Library Media Center for those lessons to work with the library media specialist. Fifth and sixth grade will do that during their lab time. Some students who don't have that availability during lab will be able to use their flex time with Ms. Morris to do that. And seventh and eighth grade has generously given up one period per content area throughout the course of the school year to give up that period and bring their class into the library to do that. And co And I was gonna say the nice part about that is then that content area teacher will be there for those lessons. So improving

common language. Right? We were talking about anchor charts and that exists in the library, existing in the classroom, be able to co teach those lessons as well. Okay. So that sounds great. It means it's gonna be a common experience for five through eight to be able to have a moment on that or or multiple moments on that. And we're using that, common sense literacy guidelines for those. That's really helpful, and thank you. Thanks for that clarification. I think the other, oh, I lost I lost my second question, but I'll go to my third question. Again, just thinking about, a topic that and I know, you know, we have a new team sort of working on this, but the for middle school families, the question of the passion pursuit has been an ongoing question, I think, for a few years because it's a practice that we've had for some time, and it hasn't quite evolved as quickly as I think maybe even you all hoped that it would. So could you tell us a little bit about what your timeline is for this year in terms of the evaluation? It's a long term

priority, but is there an expectation that the that element of it's an element of experience for grades five, six, seven, and eight and has been for many years now. So we've got eighth graders who've done it for four years, seventh graders who've done it for three, etcetera. Can you explain to us a little bit just, like, what your thinking is now in terms of the types of questions you're gonna be asking and what you're looking to sort of, you know, end up with at the end? Is it gonna be like an overhaul, an adjustment? What do you and you haven't done the research yet, so it's gonna come out of that. But if you could speak to that a little bit, it'd be helpful. That

is a very relevant question twenty four hours after our faculty meeting on it yesterday. So we we delayed passion this year to give ourselves and our staff time to really try to answer those questions about what has it been. I mean, yesterday's faculty meeting was how did we get here? What has it been? Why does it exist? What is the purpose of this? And then how can we change it for this year to make it meaningful for every single grade and meaningful as a fifth through eighth grade community for our students? And so there's a lot of notes right now sitting in our office for us to process and really think through what again, the answers to your questions. What has our staff experienced and what are they thinking? And then what smaller tweaks can we try as soon as the beginning of November of this year? So we still have some time. We're gonna join team meetings. We're gonna bring back the ideas that they just shared yesterday to them

and try to get to a place where we can really plan this out based on everyone's feedback and ideas.

It's really great to hear. And I think that's responsive not only to teacher feedback because I think it's been a practice for a while, but definitely student feedback as well and, community feedback. And I appreciate hearing that we're feeling comfortable enough to say, you know what? We're not gonna just do this because we did it last year and the year before, And we're gonna actually think about why, and the questions that you've asked seem like very reasonable and appropriate questions. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. Jake.

Thanks. And is there any preview you could give us about these questions of why does it exist? What's the purpose? Because those seems like pretty important questions. Is there is there a preview you can give us of what was discussed that seeing that it's been a multiyear effort now? What did we hear?

Yeah. I think, kinda just building off of what we were saying before too and and really thinking about the design, the time, and and that crossroads that we're approaching. I think passion was a perfect example of something that was layered, and we've we we threw out there. Right? And we continue to layer upon it. And so now it's the time to step back and say, are we as intentional with this? Right? Is it appropriate for an eighth grader to have the same experience as a fifth grader? Or, right, should we be, you know, scaffolding differently to make sure that those experiences have different elements and and things like that. So I think that's really where our heads are at at the moment. Thinking about, you know, the priorities of of student voice and choice is crucial. Right? We wanna maintain that. We want them to explore their curiosities. We want to foster all of that. And so we want to just do that, I think, with with different spins on different grade levels to make sure that we're meeting those needs. And the research that a fifth grader is capable of is very different than that of an eighth grader. Right? And so,

you know, what are our expectations for them? And I think our staff had some amazing experiences, even going back to what you were talking about before, John, with mentoring from the teacher perspective. But I think a lot of our faculty is thinking about eighth and even seventh graders mentoring our fifth and sixth graders through this this journey than they've had, you know, four years of now on their own. So we'll be curious to see how where we land. But I think, yeah, that's kind of the direction we're headed. Okay. Thank you.

I think we're ready to hear about our learning journey. Mhmm. Your learning journey. Yours the you learn y. It's the y. Not the And I I love the acronym, by the way. D a y. Mean, it's perfect. Love it. Love it. We did it just for you, Jake. Just for you.

So your learning journey is really all about a a collective yet individual journey. And so we at PVC really want students to receive valuable feedback that reflects growth, drives mastery, and, of course, staff and students alike. Right? We want that for both of them working towards all of these goals. And so as mister Walker mentioned earlier, right, the the focus of this really kind of blossomed somewhat organically from the the work of the district wide committees, especially assessment and feedback from from last year. And so, you know, algebra for all, I think, has primed us. It was a great success last year, but we wanna continue to work in this area to ensure grades five through nine, as Erica was talking about earlier, really are spiraled spiraled and scaffolded appropriately to continue to see these future successes. So we're really excited to explore also literacy and math curriculum,

k six is alongside CET in the upcoming time, right, to kinda work and cultivate these shared interests that really all impact a student's learning journey. We wanna think about standards based assessment, common assessment, formative feedback, and really make sure that there are systems and structures in place, things as specific as maybe a revision to a progress report or something like that that are also, right, meeting the community's needs, but also thinking about New York Inspires and those expectations as well. So we're gonna continue to survey students and see what's working for them, of course, is our priority, And also continue to share out those curriculum overviews this year to the community. So that will drive a lot of that work as well. So we're excited about the individual yet common learning dreams.

Board questions? Anything specific? No? Okay. Well, we thank you. Is it that's is this our that's our you have one more? You're just gonna wrap it up. If

we're yeah. Don't wanna get ahead of you. I do have one, but it's not about this it's about the whole the whole framework of short, long term, and considerations. When you say short term, do you mean the next year? Do mean the next quarter? Long term, is that multi year, or is it like throughout this entire year? So I just what's what's the framework you're using on short and long? Mhmm.

So short term for this, most of it is within this year. And some of it has already started. This one, we're talking about how are we doing this review of standards based assessments with our families, thinking about it feels like progress reports and report cards are around the corner and then conferences. And so we want to do that honestly in the next several weeks. When I go back here, it is things we've already started this year or, yeah, are in progress of doing. And again, same thing here, things we've already done or are about to do in the next few weeks.

And long term is all still like within this year or they might be multi year? Within this school year is the the plan. Thank you. That's helpful.

Can I close this out? Okay. So we started with every day counting, and that is our ultimate goal for every student that walks through our doors. Achieving this is going to take some strong collaboration across our entire community. And we really look forward to gathering your feedback with committees and surveys as well, and everybody who's not here that we all represent so that we can continue to build an environment where all of our students are thriving in middle school. We know it's a really unique and pivotal chapter in a child's education, and we want to make sure that we are anchoring in shared experiences, providing consistent academic rigor, and valuing each child's learning journey. And we're really looking forward to this work at PVC this year. Well,

on behalf of the board, thank you both. Over to CET.

I've got built in volume. Hi. Good evening, everyone. Going last has its pros and its cons, but what I think is really neat about us kinda wrapping up the evening is for you to see the op how our CET priorities align with the district goals and the other building goals. And very often, things scaffold up. It's kinda neat to talk about it going down. So you'll notice that the priorities are also a natural alignment with the work that CET has been doing over the past few years. So our first slide is really overview of each of our priorities. So the first that we'll go into detail about is our ELA program review. We will also be doing a review of our world language implementation, which if anyone needs me to recap how we've shifted world language this year, would that be helpful? Yeah. So in the past, we were on a six day cycle, six day letter cycle. And Spanish was one of our specials. So that meant a forty five minute block

once in a six day cycle for every student kindergarten through fourth grade. We got a lot of feedback from teachers, the community, students that that just wasn't really working for especially our youngest learners. That sustained forty five minute block of time in a foreign language was really difficult. So we spent a lot of time talking with Senora Pecoco, talking with a consultant that we brought in from Putnam, Northern Westchester BOCES, And we really have turned it now more into a true FLASS experience for our students. So instead of it being part of our special schedule, we are now back to a five day letter day cycle. And Spanish has become a push in instead of the pull out forty five minutes. And one of the benefits that we're already seeing from that, and it's only week three, is that Senora Pecora is able to work with the classroom teachers because the classroom teachers stay in the classroom during that world language period

and being able to make connections to the curriculum that's happening in the classroom as well as what's happening in the classroom at that time of day. So for example, by design, first grade has world language first thing in the morning pushed into the classroom. That's when they normally do their morning meeting and their calendar time. And if you think about the things that Senora introduces to our youngest learners, it's days of the week, months of the year, seasons. And so she's able to kind of co teach in a dual language concept the calendar time in first grade. So that's just one example of how but we are going to continue to look at how that aligns with curriculum connections and team teaching in all of the grades. So that's just a recap of of how we've changed our world language. Our second priority that we'll go into detail about is the grade level anchor experiences and common instructional experiences.

And our last priority that we will talk about is communication and family engagement. So as we take a deep dive into our priority of curriculum review, Our goals for this year will be a program review of the implementation of Hegarty curriculum in grades two. So we are in year two of full implementation of the Hegarty phonemic awareness, Hegarty Bridge to reading, and head Hegarty Bridge to writing in grades k through two. So this is really a great year to really reflect. Last year, it was still new. Teachers were rolling it out as they were teaching it. Now that they've done it for a year and they know what's coming and what has passed, it's a really good time to sit down with our k through two teachers, talk about the strengths, look at the Hegarty assessments that are given throughout the year, make sure that they're providing the appropriate data and what is needed to create instructional groups.

We will also be expanding on the work of the CET Literacy Committee from last year and continue to look at our grades three and four ELA program to identify additional curriculum resources or possibly new curriculum programs for grades three and four, which also aligns with what PVC said. Because if we're reimagining and looking at three and four, it's an amazing opportunity to look further up and what programs we can put in place that will not only serve our third and fourth graders, but then carry into middle school. We are working with our instructional coaches and curriculum coordinators to create curriculum communications. And what we mean by that is how are we telling parents and letting parents know what their children are doing in each curriculum discipline as the year progresses. And we are going to review the implementation again of the world language instruction and schedule.

Board questions on that before they move on to their next priority area?

What's the timeline on on some of these goals? They're all done. So then, I mean, all due respect, then what are you gonna do for the rest of the year? No. No. No. Yeah. So honestly,

the of these, the biggest lift in my opinion is the continuation of this literacy committee and the grade three and four review. And that's ongoing because we really wanna take the opportunity to look at what we're using, what else is out there. But my goal would be by the end of this year to identify what we will be using in third and fourth for the following school year. The program review of Hegarty is ongoing. So by the end of this year, we will know whether it is actually meeting the needs that we want it to and giving us the data and information and instructional practices that we want for our K through two students. The third bullet, the instructional coaches and curriculum coordinators, has already started. And we've had meetings with our grade levels and with our teachers about making sure that they're communicating, through newsletters with hard copy and or in their newsletter. Like, if they're gonna introduce the next unit, so say they're moving from module two in math to module three, sending an overview of what that module three will cover to parents.

So that's ongoing throughout the year. And the implementation of the revised world language is also an ongoing thing for the year because she will be targeting different grade levels at different times of years and in different cycles of the curriculum. So it's not something that's a one and done. It's how did the pushing of Spanish work for third grade in the fall when these were the topics in curriculum? How does it work for second grade at that time of the year? So they're kind of all go ongoing, but the the biggest lift and my time frame for that is the close of the 2627 school year having identified what we will be using in third and fourth. So just for purposes of

informing the public and just to refresh the board's information on this. What is the current third and fourth ELA program? Right now they are using a combination

of spelling connections which is word study, vocabulary, grammar

and StoryWorks. And when was that implemented? Which one? Well, StoryWorks has been ongoing. And that's not really story. Yeah. And that's I mean StoryWorks got implemented about

2015 or 2016 when we moved away from our say TC units and our relationship with Teachers College. We adopted StoryWorks. We did a few different pilots. And then we had Lauren Tarshis come in and talk to us about StoryWorks and at that time the benefit of StoryWorks. And third and fourth grade team liked at that time what StoryWorks offered. But since then we've still continued a lot of our TC writing units also with the mystery writing units. So we've done persuasive. We've done

These all down.

Wrote them all down right now. Narrative. Personal narrative, persuasive essay, informational writing, poetry response to literature and opinion. So we've always continued to do the writing units and continue to do them in a workshop model with also, StoryWorks.

And spelling connections, we're in the second full year of implementation.

And that's more of a word work program and sentence structure program and syntax program.

So what's what's the plan for continued review of that twenty fifteen program and the new program? And then what's the plan for identifying additional curricular

resources? So a first step that we're going to do is actually Craig, Laura, myself, and I believe administration from PVC are going to attend a vendor review of two programs that Great Minds puts out. It's being hosted by Lyric in the beginning of October. And that is a program that when we've surveyed other districts to ask what they are doing I know Laura did a through her curriculum council, and I've reached out to the elementary school principals in our region through my elementary principal group to find out what people are using and asking for their feedback. So the questions that I I just last week sent a survey to the elementary school principals in the region to say, what are you using? How long have you been using it? Are you happy with it? And what notes can you share about it? Just to get an idea of what other schools in the region are using. The one, it's called Arts and Letters, is the Great Minds one that we're going to preview and meet with the vendor. And if it's something that once we go there we want to know more about, we'll set up individual time to speak with representatives,

bring in samples, and so that we can have the opportunity to try that, look at it, assess it. That's one of them. But I'm also waiting for all of the responses to come in so that if there's other programs that come up repeatedly, we can make connections with the other districts, possibly set up conferences, possibly set up intervisitations to find out what's out there, what are other people using, why do they like it, what are their strengths, are they moving away from something, or are they too in this journey of looking for a

new program? I think I'd just also add in terms of timeline what we're looking at for this, and I'd I'd share some background about arts and letters. I think it was last week in a board weekly and some reviews of it from a curricular standpoint. For me personally, that's a front runner. And it's, you know, if you haven't spent a lot of time looking at curriculum packages, Arts and Letters is from the same company that created Wit and Wisdom years ago, and that's a very well respected, well known program. It's a little bit older now, so Arts and Letters is a newer version of it, but I think one of the hallmarks of it is that it's genuine interdisciplinary approach to k six ELA curriculum. So a lot of the mentor texts that come along with the program are related to history and aligned to whatever kind of social studies instruction would be happening and directly aligned to New York State standards.

They have an authentic set of writing modules as well as word study modules. It's being implemented in some progressive New York City private schools right now and some progressive New York City public schools as well as schools in our area including Byram Hills, Irving Ton, Pearl River. So it's it's definitely taking hold in our region as one of the kind of up and coming strongest curriculum. So that's just a little

Yeah. Just to say, when I saw that in the weekly, I was extremely excited because I have some teacher friends who have been implementing it in Byram Hills and some other places and they think it's a really stellar curriculum and I also think I know Byram Hills does the combination

of Hagerty and arts and letters, and that seems like a really robust combination for k all the way. So I would hope that if we're thinking of bringing arts and letters for three and four, we would also consider maybe adding it to k to two as well. Yeah. We've had those conversations just last week. Yep. That was gonna be my exact question just in terms of the in terms of again, I think one of the things that, as a board, we've been talking about is also sort of understanding the connections between these programs, only within the building, but then as you spoke about how we're transitioning from three, four to five, six. Because as we've talked about here, our distinction between elementary and middle school can feel arbitrary to people in other systems because other systems make that shift at a at a different place. Are there any other questions on the three to four? Because my question is actually about the k through two before we move on. Okay. So the I guess one question, Carrie, I think you mentioned is that the hope is that by the end of the year, we'll have an understanding

of, whether we're whether we've achieved what we want to or we're seeing what we want to in terms of the in terms of the, oh, dang it. I'm in the wrong presentation. Hold on. Let me go back to the right page. In terms of the in terms of the Hegarty, k through two curriculum, we said by the end of the year, we'll know what we've got there. What are the what are, like, the what are we looking at when we say that when we're let me try again. What are we looking at to say that we know we've got what we want? Is it more like is it like the, like, the STAR tests? Is it like the actual, like, the actual assessments within Hegarty? That's so that's question number one. And then question number two is because we've now had a pretty substantial shift in terms of how, assessment is gonna take place in k through two, we've really moved away from using, you know, devices for anything other than mandated state testing in STAR, what does that assessment look like so that we can get that answer? Hegarty is not online

at all. The Hegarty assessments are currently all They're pen and not online at all. And so what I like about waiting till the end of this year really is because by that point, so if you look at our kindergarten students who had full implementation last year, they're now in first grade. I think that a good measure will be our first grade teachers saying, wow, after last year and now we've done it for a year, are we seeing our kids come out in diff in a different place, at a different level? Whether that's higher or lower, that's what we're looking, than our kids did a year ago, and same for our second grade. So now those same kids that were in first grade last year and had the full year of implementation are now in second grade. So we'll be asking our second grade teachers to kind of look anecdotally at these were the results of our assessments at the end of second grade last year. Now these students who have lived this program with fidelity for two years,

where are they? If they're performing at a higher level, if there's less need for intervention, if they are if they're you know, we talk a lot. A lot of the conversation we had about Hegarty last year was the difference between decoding and encoding. And every first grade teacher was like, these kids are decoding amazing. They weren't sure about the encoding, but those were that was the first year. So now that those same kids that had it in kindergarten or in first, I will be asking my first grade teachers, because they had Hegarty in first grade, and last year, your first graders, you were having concerns about encoding, are you still seeing that? Or is the scaffolding of the program now setting these children up to be where you would expect them to be with both decoding and encoding? So those are the types of questions that we're asking and looking at. And I think it's important to look at

grade levels and cohorts when we talk about this. Like, are the first grade teachers finding that kids are well prepared for the first grade curriculum? Are the second grade teachers finding that the second grade kids are well prepared? But also as a cohort, how are these students

doing as they move through program. I think that makes sense. I think the only thing I would I I think I would ask on behalf of the board is in addition to anecdotally, which is I think the phrase that you use. We wanna make sure that we're actually looking at in terms of the results. Yeah. Well, we we'll be looking at Sorry. The actual results. Right? What's really amazing is that Rebecca Stokes as our literacy coach,

she creates these amazing spreadsheets that every teacher inputs the data in. So we will be able to actually pull up the same cohort and look at how they're doing, but also first grade last year compared to first grade this year. So I anecdotally was the wrong word. I'm sorry. No. So but having those spreadsheets where it's color coded and it is ex like, what's benchmarked, what's not, where are kids. So we can, again, look at the cohort as they move, but also compare

grade level, grade level. And that's something we'll also share as part of our reporting. So typically, we'd look at things like the New York State assessments, the RENSTAR assessments, but you see in the district goals when we're talking about locally developed or common formative assessments, those are the types of assessments that we're looking to share too with our community.

Yeah, just a follow-up question. I mean, related to what you were just speaking about. One of the goals is to ensure that the curriculum that we're implementing is the best one for our students in terms of achievement and learning. As you're looking at other districts and what how they've implemented it and what they're how they're experiencing that particular curriculum, are they able to share some of that information about student performance?

So not we're not that deep into it. So what I would like to do is continue to reference that list that we got. And once we hone in on programs that we think are beneficial to Croton students, than asking deeper questions when it's a program that we think could be like, I know Laura said, the, arts and letters is like a forerunner. If something else becomes a contender, looking at those districts and saying, what have you seen? Like, how long have that's why I think how long have you been using this program and what results are are deeper next level questions, but definitely ones that need to be asked. What makes one a forerunner?

So one of the, I'm just pulling up from the old board report. There's curricular review tools that we use that you can access, but you can subscribe to them as a district. But a lot of these curricular, the companies will actually publish their results, especially when they get very good results. And so I think I'd shared in the last board weekly the review of arts and letters, and it's one of the top reviewed curricular resources in terms of it's actually k eight ELA that it's known for. So you it it look these curricular review guides look at longitudinal data, so they kind of do a lot of that work for us, kind of looking at implemented, where it's been implemented, what the results are over time. They look at it from teacher perspective, parent perspective, student achievement perspective, and compile that and you get kind of like a rating. Here's what's great about it. Here's what's not great about it as kind of like a higher level look before then you wanna reach out to individual districts to talk about implementation.

And we do a lot of that work in curriculum council, which I was actually at today, which is all of the curriculum people across the district, across the region come together and these are exactly the discussions we have. What literacy program are you using? What are the results? How do you know? What changes would you make? We were actually just talking about arts and letters today and kind of the merits of keeping Hegarty with arts and letters, which seems to be what people are recommending, even though arts and letters has its own phonemic awareness portion to it. So these are kind of like the nuance discussions that you get from just being with people who are actually in the trenches implementing it. Wouldn't you wanna start with that though?

Like which programs out there are the most effective? Yes.

That that's the curricular review program. So you start there with what has the highest ratings, which arts and letters is one of them with the highest rating. But those ratings come from national implementation, not just local. So then it's okay, you want to look at it nationally. What's your rating? What's your scorecard? And then hone in, okay, what does that look like in our region with school districts that are similar to us or in our area? And there are other programs that are great. Fish Tank is another one that has really high ratings. I know Malian has some experience, I think, with Fish Tank. And that's, you know, I think another front runner in terms of quality, in terms of assessment. I do think still arts and letters is going to come out on the top just in terms of the actual content involved in it. But that's kind of the approach. You wanna look at the actual kind of, I guess,

maybe not completely unbiased because it's a company, right? But an actual like longitudinal overview that's been seen by multiple parties before you kind of

dig deeper into the local scene. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. We'd definitely love to learn more about this as you guys and and, you know, go through this journey.

Well, I'd love the collaborative approach between working with PVC, CET, and then having Laura with her curriculum background. I think we've got a strong team and we'll make a decision and keep you apprised along the way. Yeah. Got really, like, almost nerdy excited when I got the email from Lyric that they were offering this vendor,

opportunity. And I was like, oh my god. Because another conversation is looking at math curriculum. And they also are the vendor that puts out Eureka Squared, which is the newer iteration of the Eureka math that we've been using at CET. And so when I saw that it's like one stop shopping, like they're gonna have opportunities to engage with because it's at Lyric, other schools from our region will be there too. So it's a really great place to start those conversations, start that networking, and hear more about what so again, I was like, I emailed Laura right away. I'm like, oh my gosh, look what's available, and I'm registering now. And it's it's those opportunities that get us excited about finding out what else is out there, how we can enhance what we're doing and make sure we're providing the best possible programs for our kids.

Follow-up

question? I have an additional question with respect to the World Language Program. We've seen this goal or this topic come up many years. I know that certainly in my ten years as a parent in the schools, the evolution of miss Croton Point and pushing in and not pushing in and twenty minutes and I mean all of that. It feels like every year it changes or every two years it changes. What about this review implementation of the program is going to be different?

So actually this in the So Senor Pracoco has been a teacher in the district for ten years and this is the third time we've changed things. So when we first started it was brand new and she did much shorter sessions. And really, I'll be completely honest, when she first started, it was really trying to plug her in to an existing schedule. And so I see she's shaking. She was bouncing from fourth grade to second grade to first grade and here and there. And it was really just because the program was brand new. It was under different leadership. I was not the principal at the time when she started. And we really just kind of plugged her in. We realized that that was not sustainable. She was running like a chicken without her head, and kids weren't getting continuity. So with when we tried the next iteration, which lasted for several years, was having her as part of the specials. That was probably the last five years.

And this is different because their instructional time is clustered into twenty seven to twenty nine day blocks where the consultant from Putner Northern Westchester has talked to us in-depth about that it's more about the length, not the individual time that they sit down with her, but the consistency over a number of days is more important. So instead of saying it's forty five minutes every six days where you're sitting there for forty five minutes and then it's six days before you're getting anything again, the way that the schedule lays out now, which I'd be more than happy to include the new schedule again in the board weekly tomorrow so that you can see it, it's broken down into trimesters where kids get Spanish instruction every day for twenty seven to twenty nine days. And the reason I say twenty seven to twenty nine is because each trimester because of calendars and breaks in school, it broke down into that.

So they are seeing her consistently so that it can continue to build without a period of several days in between that instruction. And it's connected to the curriculum more. So that's what makes it really different is that the frequency of seeing her and the connection to the curriculum in the classroom, what we're hoping to see is that it does stick more and that kids are actually building a foundation of a foreign language instead of just having that exposure that was kind of like they sat, they listened, and then they didn't see her again for six days, and they kind of lost it. So that's

different, very different. So grades will only see her for a third of the year? Yes.

Not grade. No. Classes. Classes. So she will see so, like, right now, she's seeing two first grade classes. In the next trimester, she'll see three first grade classes. So within the so it's try it like, I I will put the schedule in a copy of her schedule in the in my weekly next tomorrow so that you can see it. So it's trimester 1a and 1b. And within trimester 1a and 1b, she's seeing all the grades I mean all the classes and all the grades, but not it's I wanna if I could pull it up right now, I would. It's kinda hard to explain. But we this was the schedule that was recommended from the consultant we used from Puttner, North Westchester BOCES, where it clusters instruction into more concentrated periods of time for a shorter sitting. And that's the way a FLES program is supposed to be rolled out.

Nick, do have a question or okay. Yeah. So I guess I I guess a couple of things just to sort of like bring this portion of our discussion to a close in terms of follow-up from the board and what we might want to think about exploring further, either through your communications to us or, you know, bringing it back to the table here. It seems like with world language, the the question is we don't have as much as a board and even as a community of parents because, again, many of us have been through this as parents and also our current CET parents right now. It's like we may have had one kid who has had one set of experiences. They're a fourth grader, and now they've got a kindergartner coming up, and it's gonna seem totally different. I think, you know, I don't have the pleasure of I did not have the pleasure of going to back to school night for CET, so I won't be hearing from you all on But I think for other for the board to understand

this shift and sort of the background behind it, because honestly, what you're hearing here is a little bit of the not understanding how the cluster actually works, because what we're talking about is, in essence, a class having a particular it's almost like, you know, how we it PVC, like an elective or a course that's only one third of the year. And then the other two thirds of the year, you're not having it anymore. But that instruction is sort of done,

and you move on to other things that you're studying. So I think we have to sort of understand that. In this Yeah. It's done, and then it comes back. So it's not done for the year. So, for example, I know right now, Cristina Alvarez's class gets

is in that first trimester one a. Mhmm. She will get that again later in the year. Okay. Yeah. So I I will be I think we need an explanation. And then what I would argue is that if we're not getting it, probably parents who have been through this one of the previous iterations, as Ana mentioned, it might be helpful just again because I think there is a focus, and I think we really value the fact that we do actually have a world like language program in elementary school. That's something that's really important to our community. So any any additional sort of explanation of this change, I think, would be helpful.

Communicate it with the families, but my newsletter two weeks ago was a sample schedule with the the explanation, and then I provided a screenshot of the sample schedule. So and I I'm happy to keep revisiting that or reinforce it, recommunicate it as much as It might be just something that I haven't read. So if other folks are feeling like they understand it, then I apologize if I'm not understanding it. It's even complicated to explain. It's definitely a visual. Yep. So I will provide a link to her schedule in the newsletter tomorrow,

and then happy to meet and talk with groups, individuals, anybody that has a question about what they're looking at, I'm happy to go deeper into it. Alright. Does that sound helpful for I mean, to in terms of the questions that we've had here? And then I think the larger piece, again to take it back to the curriculum thing that we were talking about, I think that what I'm hearing from the questions coming from the board are, is the following, which is it's it's helpful for us to understand the process by which the front runner emerges. I think because because of the board's oversight function in terms of curriculum selection, if there's a budgetary piece of it Right. We haven't come up we I know there's gonna be, but we haven't come up against that question in some time. And so for the benefit of demonstrating to the community why we're choosing a over b, Some you know, our practice has been sometimes we get a recommendation, and it's like, it's a all the way, and we believe it. When we're making a significant investment in a new program, we are gonna need to be able to demonstrate the community front runner versus our second choice and what the pros and cons are. Because, you know, that, again, happening backstage or behind the curtain, it's great here, and it's even great within this board meeting. But I think, beyond that, we'll have to have we'll have to have some external and community facing conversations so that we have that buy in, if you agree.

Okay.

It extends beyond just the budget as well. So the board's Yeah. Part of the board's duty is to review critical, which we haven't done historic you know, historically, but doesn't mean that we shouldn't you know, when there's interest from the community and that there's change that we don't, that we should be part of the review process. Absolutely.

So we invite you to now move on to your next topic. All right, sounds good. Our next one are grade level anchor experiences and some of the common instructional experiences that students at CET will have. So our bullets here and our goals, identify and communicate a set of shared common anchor experiences that each family can look forward to at each grade level so we have those common experiences. Those will be talked about not only in the, say, school carries newsletters, but also the individual teachers' newsletters at each and every grade level. Involve faculty in a discussion about what common experiences exist across each grade level, and evaluate the effectiveness and make changes and additions to the current offerings. I'm really pleased to say we started that conversation at superintendent's conference day when we met as a building, and we continued it through our first faculty meeting. And the teachers are discussing that at their regular,

daily meetings, so that's well underway. Identify and implement a new common experience so that each grade level has approximately three tent pole experiences. We touched upon this yesterday also, and we're very satisfied that that's gonna happen with probably even more so than three. Communicate experiences to the community through curriculum overviews, classroom newsletters, learning walks, and the principal's weekly update. I know Carrie mentioned this earlier, but something we're very proud of is that all of our teachers, k to four, send out a weekly newsletter, and they highlight whether it's literacy with ELA, social studies, math, science, exactly what they're doing that week. So the parents are informed on a week to week basis of curriculum and also different highlights in the classroom, different activities, field trip, whatever that might be, upcoming specials, but that curriculum is hit upon on a weekly basis.

And once we get to the, intentional technology, I think everybody's aware for k through two, the only time the students are using an iPad is three times a year for STAR. They're stored in a completely different room. They get rolled out for STAR, then they get stored back into a separate room. For third and fourth grade, we've had I'll use the word extreme reduction in technology use for three and four. Chrome or iPads do not go home at all for anybody at CET. And the one thing, if they are being used in a grade three or four classroom, they are with a direct instruction of a teacher. They're not being independently used on a small group. It's with a direct instruction from a teacher. And once again, they are stored inside of a classroom, but they're in a cart that's a charger cart locked up in the corner of the room so students aren't accessing it. A lot of them are in the hallways as well out of the classrooms.

So please report on all of those.

Questions from the board?

With respect to the newsletters that are they're going to start coming out, are they gonna come out as individual teacher newsletters or are they grade level newsletters? They're They're Sorry. Sorry. They're individual each each teacher is sending out an individual weekly newsletter.

Okay. That started last year with the our requirement that teachers send them out weekly. The added layer to that this year is making sure that there's a reference to each curriculum discipline and what they're working on. And when they shift from one unit to the next, sharing that curricular overview that's provided by whether it's Eureka or Hegarty or Spelling Connections.

So to kind of piggyback on that and tie it into some of the common experiences, The common experiences that you're talking about that's deviating from last year because last year you represented to the board that you were allowing teachers the individual choice of having different individual experiences for their classrooms.

Is that so it's different from last year, this year? So it's what the charge that we were given and what we're doing is making sure that that there are at least at least three anchor experiences that every child in the grade level will experience. However, if it goes beyond those three, we have not told the teacher that they can't do something different. So like if we look at third grade and we're selecting three anchor experiences that every family going into third grade knows their child will get this experience, this experience, and this experience. If there's something that goes beyond that, we have not told a teacher that they can't do it. But we are ensuring those common. So last year, I sat here a year ago and said, in third grade, every child is doing x, y, and z. This year, I will be able to say every child in third grade is doing x, y, and z, so that it's predictable, it's communicated,

and families know to look forward to that experience at that grade level. So we are kind of solidifying what those things are on each grade level and communicating them to families. But that does not mean that every child in third grade is going to have the exact same every other experience, because then we are taking away from the teacher autonomy, teacher passion, the makeup of the class. Like there could be a teacher one year that's like, my class is so into this and I want to provide this opportunity for them. The next year's cohort might not be as interested in that. So that could change year to year, but the anchor experiences that we've been asked to identify and communicate will be consistent throughout each class in a grade level.

And then my last question is just regarding STAR implementation because I know mainly and Hermit just said that like when you get students who don't have that exposure to technology at all, sometimes you need that startup time. What are you doing to expose these students to being familiar enough to feel comfortable taking the STAR exam? Because that's a little bit of a concern of mine that you're going to see some of the drop in those scores just in students being unfamiliar with how to use device. That's a huge concern of ours, and we've talked about that. Because

if the only time they're going on an iPad is to take the STAR assessment, we do question the validity of those scores. Because if it's tied to APPR right now, we have to implement STAR. But we are going to use this time in this year to look at other things that we could do or could use that would be approved through APPR so that they're not just using that for the sake of taking that test. In an ideal world, if it weren't tied to our APPR, I'll be honest, I would say let's use our new Acadians or let's use some of the Hegarty data for the same purpose as as additional data points. So that that is a huge concern. I don't have an answer, to be very honest right now, about how we're going to navigate that. Because like our first grade, everyone's taking it right now. The window is open right now. What I can say is that I'm very grateful for Ellen and her EduTech team because they have been in every classroom during the implementation to help teach students how to log on, how to use their class link QR code, how to do this. But we're going to need that same support in January, and we're going to need to have that same support in June.

Because if the only time these children are going on the devices are for that, that is a big topic of discussion. Especially

for our youngest learners in kindergarten and first grade. Like they won't hold that from September to January to June.

Second grade, third grade, fourth grade a little bit more of ease but I'd say especially a concern for K-one. My concern is more an equity issue because you're going to have students that are exposed to those devices at home that aren't getting them at school and then you're gonna have students that aren't exposed to them at all because they would only have access to them through school. So I'm looking at it through an equity lens and I'm just wondering how district because it's certainly not unique to CET you're seeing it right now at PVC. We're going to be addressing the reporting of those scores and some of the disparities that you're going to see across different communities in our community if they're not given the opportunity, the equitable opportunity to be able to get up to speed before they're comfortable taking a test on a device they've never experienced before. Is

that that's just one snapshot. It is not a be all end all for any decisions that we make about instructional groupings or instructional practices. So in addition to the star, we're looking at the Hegarty scores. We're going to be looking at the Acadian scores. We're going to be look at teachers' records of assignments, guided reading lessons. There are so many other measures. Because of that being a concern, that's why we're making sure we have plenty of other measures that we can say if the STAR assessment isn't an accurate depiction of a student's ability, we can look at comparison to the other assessments that they are more familiar with taking. The

counter to that is that when we get county wide information or when we get assessments where, you know, parents in the community on very public pages turn around and compare us to other districts, they're not comparing the ins and outs of of what other districts do in terms of that. So I wonder if there isn't, an asterisk or something that we can put in terms of some of our scores or how we're reporting them to just reflect that. And again, I worry about communities that don't have access or families that don't have access to these things outside of the school and how reporting or test scores are skewed based on those factors.

I think that's the comment and then I'll chime in because I have one as well. Yeah, I also have a question on something else on there, but we can finish this conversation first. One thing that I'll say about the not having a lot of exposure to tablets is that I was really excited to hear from Ms. Capone tonight at the back to school night that Ellen was offering hands on support with the class and my daughter went and all the other students when they were doing the STAR assessment this week. And she reported that it went really well, that the kids picked it up really quickly, that it was very clear, that they understood what Ellen was sharing with them. And my experience anecdotally is that my children get extremely limited access to tablets. But the minute that they do get one in their hands, they can navigate it like they live on it. And I don't know why that's the case, but it's very strange. So I'm not as worried about

that. The other thing is that the prevailing research says that lower income families actually have far more exposure to technology than higher income families. So the higher income families our town might have taken the tablets away from their students. But if one of the discrepancies you're worried about is that lower income families might not have a tablet at home, the research isn't bearing out that that's the case. It's showing that actually lower income families tend to have much more exposure to smartphones or tablets. There might be other discrepancies or other differences in terms of equity, but that's not one that I'm particularly concerned about right now. Just

turn on your mic, please. Sorry, mic. This experience

during COVID and I know that there was also a switch over from just going to iPads in the fifth grade a couple years ago that I think students found challenging because it wasn't what they were familiar with. So having exposure to technology, but not necessarily this technology platform that's being used for this testing is also, I think, something that we have to consider.

Could you Carrie, thank you for the the explanation. Could you just describe a little bit what the the RENSTAR test is like? Or is it multiple choice? Like, what are they actually doing on the telegraph? I really don't know. It's multiple choice, and it does self

adjusting to a student's ability. So it so if a child is showing mastery, it'll consistently increase what the difficulty of the questions are. And then it's a multiple choice. And so kindergarten takes the test called early literacy, which has a component of math in it. Then by first grade, take so they take that all three times in kindergarten is the early literacy test. Then in first grade, it becomes early literacy. But then we do have them take the separate math one because there's not enough math in the early literacy to really gauge a child's progress and growth in math. By the time they get to second grade, they're taking two tests, star reading and star math. They're all multiple choice. Yeah. They all self

adjust to a child's ability. And that that was my question. It's like, they trying to type? No. Right now, they're just tapping. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. Yep.

Right. So I I think that the the thing that I'll bring into this conversation is also, I think, the thing that we'll have to look at and continue to look at as a district and also districts across the country is how companies like Renaissance Learning are gonna also have to adapt their mode of delivery of assessments in response to the national movement. Because, of course, it's like it's really hard to deliver an adaptive test on paper. Mhmm. And I know that that's one of the values of Renstar is that it's adaptive. And you then you have your three you know, you have you also get, like, excellent reporting from them because they pump out, like, this fabulous report that then as a parent, can look at and you can see what did they do September, January, June, or whatever the cadence is for us now. It's been a while for me. So I think that that's gonna be a question that we'll also have to be considering as we look at this as a mode, you know, both from the perspective of, like, access and ability to adapt to using that test when you're when that's the only I mean, sorry. Using a device when that's the only time in the school that you're gonna be using it, whether that's even going to end up being

what we're using a year or two from now. Because like every educational, you know, product provider, they're they're gonna be responding to the same national pressure. So it's a watch this space kind of thing to some degree. But I think this is a valuable conversation, and I think I I also just wanna highlight the questions that are coming up are certainly representative of questions that are in the community broadly, like not just from CET parents, but people who have now you know, it's like we've experienced it, but we're trying to think about, you know, what is the next generation of students actually going to be experiencing. The questions that you asked tonight are very representative of the questions that we've been asking internally

as we hit our tech tech reset knowing we still have to do the so every question I don't have the answers to the questions you're asking tonight, but every question has been brought up at the admin level for continued conversation and eventual answers.

One more question, Betsy. Yep. Okay. Go for it. I

think the idea of having common tentpole experiences is really wonderful. And I know I already think of the gym city as being something that kids really look forward to it and think I know. Year. But that's good. It's a common experience that kids look forward to, right? So I think that's great. But when I think of wanting my children to have common experiences, I really want them to have the same rigor in their class as other students have in their class. So to me, having a common experience is that all of the children have excellent teachers who are teaching to the same degree of rigor. And so I'm curious if there's been conversation about how to make the commonality the actual academic excellence not just the fun experiences.

So that has always been a expectation that when you're talking about the instructional experiences that a child has. Like, even when I've talked to teachers who wanna do these crazy unique things, I will say the expectation is that you are all covering the same instructional material. You are using this similar, if not the identical resources. Now that doesn't mean that someone might not grab a math mat at a time when someone else might grab math manipulatives. Right? But the expectation that is communicated to all of our teachers and has not changed under our leadership ever, we've never shifted away from it or toward it, is that the academic experience is consistent across the grade levels. So when we're talking particularly about these anchor experiences for the purposes of what we're discussing, it is those extra things. To me, it is should not even be up for discussion whether kids are getting the same academic

experience and the same rigor and the same exposure to the same materials and resources. So that should be consistent across the board without question. Thanks. And I'm

glad to hear that that's the expectation. I think the reason why I raise it is that in many of my community discussions this year, I felt and have personally felt at times or had experiences with the fact that it doesn't always feel like people are getting children are getting the same experience in each grade academically. And so that's why I was reflecting upon it because it did come up a lot in my community discussions this spring. And I'm sure other board members have had similar conversations. So just something to continue to keep an eye on. But I'm glad to hear that that's the expectation.

Any other questions from the board? Okay. We'd love to hear what's next. Alright. Next is communication

and engagement with families.

Greg, I can No. Get you to It's sorry. That's us. Sorry. Alright.

So one thing we're really proud of and I'm gonna give credit where credit is due throughout the district. We have amazing instructional coaches, and we've got three ourselves at CET. We had two of our instructional coaches. Carrie and I sat down. We had a conversation with them, and they jumped right onto a project for us. So one of the things we've been looking to do when we talk about transparency is we really wanted to put something out there for all of our families to see, which is our first bullet, that's going to be a comprehensive, literacy curriculum site that parents can click on and they can get everything we've talked about tonight at their fingertips. Actually, Greg, are you able to do that link for us? Understanding that it is not public. Is not live it is a work in progress looking for feedback. So I wanna make sure we say that. And I was remiss to say as I asked Greg to click on it, Greg also played an integral,

role in this. He was kind of the man behind the scenes that put it all together. So just another example of a collaborative approach and just, teamwork. But this is a snapshot of what we'd like to put on our website for the community to see. So when they say what does literacy look like at CET, like what does it look like in kindergarten? What are you doing for reading program? What are you doing for writing program? What are you doing for your word work? It's all it's all right there. Like I said, this is the beginning of a draft, but we have our statement. We talk about an overview of what we believe in, and we've got visuals on here. I think this is just a great start to that communication to families. And once this is complete and like I said, they've done a lot of work already, but this is a working draft. Once this is complete, it's something that we'll be able to share with all of our families,

and they have all that information at their fingertips. They've got additional questions. They could reach out to their teacher. They could reach out to Carrie. They could reach out to myself. But I think this is just a wonderful resource that anybody in our community is able to take a peek at and be able to have information when it comes to K-four literacy. Another thing we're very proud of, and know the other schools share the same goals, we will be having four learning walks this year where we're inviting our parents in to walk our hallways, to look at our classrooms, to see all those great things that are happening at, CT. We're gonna continue to do our principal coffees. Our PTA is amazing. They reach out. They do a survey. We come together. We put on a presentation for our, parents. And once again, I know we hit on this early, but I think it's really important. Our teachers have really stepped up with their newsletters.

So I think when you combine what we have here, whether it's at literacy website, whether it's parents getting something weekly from their teachers about what's happening in their classroom, whether it's Carrie and her newsletter highlighting something, I really think we've got a great informational background here that's gonna give parents the information they want and information that they need.

Board questions?

So I am really excited about the learning walks that are gonna happen throughout the year. And I think we've all mentioned learn learning walks, and I I've done one myself. They're they're great. And I guess this isn't really a question, more of a comment that it it feels like and we've talked about this already, I think, in the in past meetings, but, really, just getting the word out for people to go to these learning walks feels, like, crucially important. And to the extent that, like, people can know, like, what to expect ahead of time, like, what what what will they see in any given building, and just, like, innovative like, we could maybe a family goes through it and they make a video to tell others to go through it based on what their experience was. Because I I think you really get a taste of the school experience via these learning walks, and then it's would just be a shame if people don't go because they just, either don't know they're happening or whatever. And and I think diversifying the schedules and things like that based on, you know, work lives, etcetera, will will also be important.

I think Nicole is laughing because she knows what I'm about to say about the term learning walk. Could that possibly be it? She we've had a conversation before that it's like that that is a term that we use here internally within our board of education meetings and within this system. And, you know, we go back to that famous expression that that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. And so it let's let's also just think about that because it's for those of us who've been on these learning walks, a learning walk sounds like homework. If I'm taking my lunch break to go do this, I don't wanna be doing homework necessarily. What we know, for those of us who've done them, these are incredible opportunities to go into your kid. It is a tour of your kid's school to see learning in action. So, please, we invite you at do need to just to to piggyback off of what Theo said to consider the terminology and think of how the community is going to receive it. Because, again, you know, any of us who have done these things, we come out of these things and we're like, this was fantastic.

We finally get it. When you see the when we see the work in action, we come back inspired and we want to go to there. Right? It's like that's what we wanna do. We wanna be in that classroom with those kids. So I think thinking about how we position that really is important. And I also, you know, again, this is something that we we do know because PVC was our early adopter of learning walks in the past, that there's a lot of effort and thought that goes into sort of curating that experience for families. And it is really important to get as much buy in and uptake of these as possible because that encourages, number one, our teachers to feel good about the fact that we're letting folks into the classroom in the middle of the day. And, you know, you've got people coming in to watch what you're doing. That's weird. But it's actually also amazing. Right? So it's like we wanna make sure we have enough to sort of sustain it, make everybody feel good about the experience. So we we do invite you to really think about, you know, how that specific term might feel a little insider y, how that would be received. So, Ana Tak, I'm so glad that Theo asked that question, and you said that because I was going to make the whole focus of not this Friday's newsletter, but next Friday's.

But now I know from what you just said to say, you know, learning walk. What is it? What does it look like? What is it actually? And then lay out, to your point, Theo, these are the scheduled dates for CET for this year. You'll get reminders. You'll get an invite. But I'm so grateful that we just had that one minute conversation because now I'm totally reframing my wording for my newsletter next week. So thank you. Sorry. We didn't So we we so we shared that really exclusively with Nicole, I think, last year. Valuable because I could have sent it out and unintentionally turned people off of it instead of making it the exciting opportunity that it really truly is. So really

framing how we roll it out and introduce it is so important. So that was so valuable. Thank you. I would just add from the district that I think the first communication about this will come from the district. We gave in anticipation of the board's potential approval of the communications contract later, we've given them some kind of preemptive homework, in preparation, and this was one of the things that we've asked them to think about that they're excited about because they don't see other districts doing this. So we've asked them to come in with a plan for how to creatively do this, and maybe we just lift from the language of learning walks. It's weird, but it's also amazing. So, but we're I we're excited about their energy around ideas in terms of getting this the word out in a way that's accessible to folks. And then to your point, once they happen the first time, the buzz will carry it from there. Well, that's what was gonna say. I've had the privilege Nicole's invited me to a couple of the learning walks at PVC.

And I'm not only amazed by what I see, it's what I hear. Like, when you kind of fall back a bit, you start to talk to the parents between visits, they're amazed. They're completely floored about what's going on. And I've never spoken to a parent with a PVC learning walk who hasn't come away without just feeling, you know what? I'm so happy I had this experience.

So I think they're when they're getting into all three schools, I think it's just gonna generate a buzz of its own, and it's gonna kinda have a domino effect. Yeah. I should clarify because it's getting late, and it's been a long day for all of us. What I meant by it's weird is it's weird for the teachers to have people coming in. It has never been weird for me to be in these rooms. I think they're fantastic. So I can give you another adjective if you'd like to use my Weird. Late in the day ad hoc kind of, like, reaction. And and Theo and I certainly, as active participants in the full board, we're happy to give you a quote if you'd like, just telling you how much we love these things. And, well, we just did the one last year, and the feedback was amazing. And the teachers, even though it was, like, a kind of a last minute decision,

they were all fine with it. And the feedback that we got was all like, bring it on, bring them in, let them see. Like, parents understand what we're doing and and see it firsthand. So even though you might think teachers think it's weird, I think they're very used to having people in and out of their classrooms. And so for them, it's not that strange.

Sounds great. Any other comments from the board?

Just a quick one that I'm so excited about the literacy curriculum page, even just from the quick glance. Think it's gonna be impactful for parents. And wondering if you are thinking about doing something similar for mathematics at Okay, any

wonderful. It's really exciting. Also, starting on the very cusp of talking about math as are we going to be looking at other programs or other iterations of what we're doing. So it would still be a work in progress. But yes.

Before we close it up, I just wanna just turn it over to the admin team to see if there's anything you'd like to say. Otherwise, I will extend my thanks. Okay. Well, just on behalf of the board, we'd like to thank you all for coming in. And this, you know, this is this is this is an annual part of our fall to have this discussion with our building leaders to hear about what you're excited about, what you're committed to doing in terms of improving student experience and outcome at the start of the year. I know it's a lot to do it all together. We we are thinking of you with many of our other plans and breaking things up by school. So please know we have incredible respect for your time. I think this is one moment where it is really important to be able to see the k through 12 view altogether and to see all of you here and to also just benefit for you all, you know, the feedback from having your colleagues from all of us to be able to hear when you're interacting with and talking to each other about what you're seeing.

It's it's a really valuable experience to take this one time where we're all together. And, of course, with that deep respect for your commitment and your schedules, Thank you. If you'd like to take this opportunity to step out, we will happily continue our meeting without you, but we want you to be fresh for tomorrow morning. So, again, on behalf of the full board, everyone joins me in thanking you for for for this great presentation.

I'm not blaming anyone. Did you give this to Omar before you get out? And tell him Ana Tak can explain.

Ana Tak can explain it. Thank you.

Apologize. I might have to be fine as well. Thank

you, Omar. Thanks for letting us know. So, we're just waiting for folks to sort of clear through, and we're gonna try to run fairly promptly through the rest of this business.

Okay.

Again, thank you. We'll move into new business net I'm sorry, instructional personnel now, Item 4.1, instructional personnel recommendation. Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the amendment to the 20 six-twenty seven instructional personnel appointment of Claudia DiAzvedo Medeiros, e n l teacher at Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School, $78,948, plus 30 step two, from a 0.6 FTE to 0.8 FTE. That would be 0.6 at Carrie E. Tompkins and 0.2 at the high school effective 09/08/2026.

So moved.

Second. On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you. Moving into new business. Item 5.1, agreement for services. Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby accepts the proposal from Rocklandt BOCES to provide communication services for the twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven school year as presented. So moved.

On

the question? Actually, yeah, absolutely. I just, I wanna give the administration an opportunity to speak to us a little bit about the process

the, and about this recommendation, and then we'll open up for questions. Sure. Thank you. This is a recommendation we're particularly excited about for a number of reasons. As the board knows, back in the spring, our business office team led by Denise and Kelly put together a request for proposals for communication services. We had multiple respondent multiple responses to that that RFP. And in the subsequent time, the entire district central administration as well as Greg, Ana Namika representing the board interviewed each of those four firms. And the proposal and scope of support and service from Croton BOCES was the clear choice, I think to all of us. This is a very well established communications group. They have more than two dozen members of the team who provide service to districts throughout Rockland County and now into Westchester in several places. I personally have had prior professional experience with both their director and assistant director

who continue to impress us with the thoughtfulness of their leadership and strategic support for districts across our region. Both Scott and Jen Sicciolo have met with us as well as Emily Klinkenborg who would be the full time on-site communications specialist for the district. As we've shared internally, this is a substantial increase in our investment in communications and I think one that's likely to have a significant, if not profound, change in how we communicate with our broader community. So we're thrilled by this recommendation and for the possibility of getting a chance to collaborate with this team going forward.

Open it up for questions, and I'll chime in after that with, my experience from the interview process.

Yeah. Just a a comment, and thank you for the work that went into this. I know you guys had did a search and had a lot a lot of conversation interviews. So it's great to see this and that and that we're also excited about it. I think that from from this person coming in from their perspective, I think they should really try to understand as we're doing surveys and community conversations, like, what parents really want to hear and want to know about and how we sort of amplify that, but then also what parents need to know about and need to hear about that they're maybe not. Right? So our district goals, tonight's conversations, like, that should be amplified. That shouldn't just be like a parent square push notification. Like, there needs to be a space where we can communicate these kinda, like, really high impact conversations, decisions we're making that's not just gonna get lost on, like, Instagram

along with the other stuff. So that's why there's a big emphasis on this on digital storytelling. Right? That seems to be, like, really kinda upfront. I don't know if that's the best way to maybe communicate. This is what our our goals are gonna be. Our priorities are gonna be. How we kinda figure all that out? So I would just kind of advise that person on here's what the the current feedback we've had about about, you know, communications from Parent Square and and online and all that, and maybe talk a little bit about the tech reset and where we are as a community with with technology, with social media, right, with kids, right, where we're gonna be really emphasizing how we communicate. But I think it's really important to make sure that these conversations that we're having tonight over the past couple of weeks since I've started on the board are communicated in a way that's meaningful and impactful because a lot of the stuff that we heard tonight, like, everybody's been asking that a lot. You know what I mean? So, like, how do we make sure that what was covered tonight gets out, like, tomorrow or Monday or when this when this person starts? Say, hey, everyone. We went over curriculum at CET tonight. Here it is. And then it's like, yo. Then every time a parent asks to say, go to the website. It's right here. You know, something like that. So just amplifying these really critical discussions and decisions, I think, would be would be a great starting point. I completely agree, Jake. I I think one of the the things that's become apparent to us that we've been missing is that communications

lens in the room in these conversations. Right? We have these conversations in this sort of setting where we have them administratively all the time, but we don't have that professional communications background that lens that experience. And so to have someone like that in the room with us as we're having these conversations who's so proud is to think about how do you package this, how do you find the through line, and then how do you explain it to the community and then help us engage better with the community, that's a that's a game changer for us in terms of resource allocation and what I think we'll get out of it. Great. Thanks.

I just wanted to thank the administration and certainly Greg for all of the work that you have been doing in the interim because there has been a lapse since we lost our last communications person up until now. And thank the administration for actually being open to doing this and picking up a professional that's like super comprehensive given that there is such a call from the community to communicate some of the work. So I hope that it works to elevate the good work that's going on and the student outcomes that we have and the student experiences that we have. So I'm very excited about this.

Other comments from the board?

Likewise, I think that while you referenced that this is a greater investment than we've historically had in communications, I think this is the moment to make such an investment because of exactly the board goal around building community trust. Communication is such a big part of that. And then I would just make one tiny comment on the scope of work. Community relations is the second item for the scope of work. And again, building on that goal, this is not explicitly said here. I think embedded in there. But I would just pull out what Jake was saying a little bit about understanding the parents' communication needs. Because one of the frequent things I've heard even just in the start of the school year, and I had heard it before as well, is people saying, I only have elementary school kids. Why am I getting communications from the high school? Right? So really thinking about streamlining communications,

we're all constantly inundated by information, nineten of which I never want to see, not just from this district. I mean, from my life. And so just thinking about how are we streamlining communications and making sure people are getting the most important information. Yeah. But I am, likewise, excited and appreciative of the work that went into finding this individual.

Other comments from the board? I'll just close them by saying I I am I appreciate that the board sort of designated me to participate as our representative in these conversations partly because of, having served on the communications committee and the board governance committee because you know? And especially because those two functions have now come together. It was really important to bring the board's perspective as the liaisons to the community into this conversation. So there are couple of top line things that I think are just really important for all of us and then for our community to understand. By electing to go with this particular, firm, we are going to have the benefit of actually a not just the one person who is going to be in our Building 5 Days a week, which is pretty remarkable, actually, just in terms of that level of coverage and also access and understanding of what's going on, but also the benefit of the entire, Rocklandt BOCES operation,

which, you know, these are experienced, publicity professionals, storytellers, and they understand and have deep experience in district in education as well. So that's a real benefit, I think, to us in terms of the work that we're looking to do. The other piece of it, and I know Greg participated in the interview process as well, is that I'm particularly excited that this, that this, communications profesh