CHUFSD Board of Education Regular Meeting 10/1/26

Okay. I have to now go back up in my document. Okay. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the students, families, and other members of our community in the audience and to those watching the livestream and listening at a later date. I'd like to call to order the 10/01/2026 business meeting of the board of education of the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District. Please join me in rising for the pledge of allegiance.

Okay.

Moving into item 1.3, the approval of the agenda, be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the agenda as presented.

So moved. Second.

On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstaining? The motion carries. We'll now move into the next item on our agenda, the recognition of the National Merit Scholarship semifinalists and commended students. And for that, I will turn it over to assistant superintendent, Laura DiSanto

So Ossining. Tonight, I'm going to share words from missus Fiorini, although I share her sentiment knowing all of you guys very well. And, we are incredibly proud to recognize five outstanding member... Members of our senior class who have earned prestigious recognition through the National Merit Scholarship Program. This program is an academic competition that honors high achieving high school students across The United States. Students qualify based on their performance on the PSAT NMSQT, which they took as juniors. Students qualify based on this performance. And this year, we have three commended students and two semifinalists who will continue on in the scholarship competition. And this recognition is definitely a testament to their academic ability. We want to also honor the dedication, curiosity, perseverance, and commitment these students have demonstrated both in and out of the classroom.

We're excited to celebrate each of these students tonight along with their families and to share a little bit about who they are both as scholars and as members of the school community. I'll begin with our commended students. Eli Kafka. Eli is a thoughtful and engaging young man who is always a pleasure to talk with. He has a talent for creative writing, earning the 4th Floor Literary Magazine Award for his short stories, and enjoys exploring the deeper themes of literature. His creativity is not limited to the written word. He is an active participant in Dungeons and Dragons club and is a key member of the Cacti team. I've seen him in action in Cacti, and it's pretty impressive. His peers recently earned him best dressed in the senior superlatives, a well deserved title as he even makes some of his own clothing. Eli brings a distinctive voice to our school community, and we are thrilled to celebrate his academic accomplishments

as well as the many ways he expresses his talents and interests. Congratulations, Eli.

Next, we want to recognize Charlotte Van Vossen who, was not able to be here tonight, but we still want to share a few words about her. Beyond her academic accomplishments, Charlotte brings a range of service to the community. She has a passion for the theater and contributes to our high school productions as a member of the stage crew, demonstrating that the magic of theater extend... Extends well beyond the spotlight. She is also pursuing an EMS course reflecting her interest in learning skills that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of others. Her combination of academic excellence and creativity and her commitment to serving others makes her a wonderful example of the many ways our students pursue their passions. So congratulations, Charlotte. Hopefully, you're watching from home. Next, we would like to recognize Mina Willett. In addition to her academic achievements, Mina is an exceptionally creative and community minded person.

She founded Croton's Creative Kids Art Camp, an in home art program providing personalized art lessons and projects for local children. The program allowed her to combine her love for art with her enjoyment of working with younger kids. Mina is also an athlete on our varsity tennis team and has a strong interest in social justice and gender studies. Her commitment to these interests is evident in her leadership in coordinating last spring's Women's History Month art exhibition organized in partnership with the Croton Council on the Arts. It showcased the work of 15 female identifying student artists. She also coordinated our annual Take Back the Night event last year. Through her creativity and initiative, Mina has amplified the voices of others and has made a meaningful impact on our school and broader community. Congratulations, Mina.

And now for our National Merit semifinalists. First, congratulations, Celente. Spencer is a student whose intellect... Intellectual curiosity and genuine enthusiasm for learning are evident in just about every conversation. He is passionate about history and public policy and is an active member of student faculty congress and Model UN where he is playing an instrumental role in bringing the inaugural Model UN conference to CHHS this year. His interests and commitments extend well beyond school. Spencer is an avid outdoorsman and an Eagle Scout as well as a member of our varsity swim and baseball teams. He also makes time for jazz band. His kindness and positive attitude along with his leadership and commitment to a future career in service exemplifies the well rounded and engaged student that we are proud to celebrate tonight. We wish you well as you enter the stage of the National Merit Scholarship Competition. Congratulations,

Spencer.

Next, I'd like to congratulate Sean Ossofsky. Sean's passions span an impressive range of disciplines from mathematics, physical science, computer science, and climate action to music, performing arts, and photography. Sean serves as president of both the engineering club and Cacti and is a representative on student faculty congress and a member of the National STEM Honor Society. His interests are equally evident in the arts where he performs in theater and chorus. Beyond his many school commitments, he volunteers as a tutor for younger students and generously shares his talents as a photographer at the Harry Chapin Run Against Hunger. What stands out about Sean is not simply the range of his interests, but the enthusiasm with which he pursues all of them. He is always thinking about ways to help and how he can fill an existing hole. He is truly a renaissance man and a genuinely kind human.

Congratulations and best of luck as you move on in the competition. Congratulations to all of our students, who are being recognized tonight, and congratulations on your contribution to our school community. Your accomplishments, creativity, leadership, and commitment to others are a a wonderful reflection of the very best of Croton-Harmon High School. And I think now we are going to take a lot of pictures and celebrate you a little bit more. Congratulations.

So while our families are exiting, thank you, everyone, for participating in that little photo op. I appreciate it. We'll, continue with our meeting with item 2.1, the president's report. So good evening again, and welcome again to the members of the community in the audience watching the livestream and listening at a later date. I will open tonight with highlights of our meeting agenda. As you just saw, the board of education was pleased to honor this year's National Merit Scholarship semifinalists and commended students from the class of 2027. Thank you to doctor Dubak and missus Fiorini for, their detailed and inspiring biographies of all of these students. It's really wonderful, I think, for us as a board to be able to see that for each of them, their achievement spans leadership, volunteer work, creativity, success in sports, and the arts in addition to academic achievement. These are such well rounded exceptional students, and we're very happy to have had them here and to talk to our community about them. So thank you again, doctor Dubak, for those remarks.

As part of our commitment as a board to recognizing student achievement in its many forms, tonight was the first of a series of student recognition ceremonies we're gonna be holding at our meetings this year as we did last year. So we invite you, our school community, teachers, administrators, and families to let us know about the ways your students are distinguishing themselves so that we can invite them in and hear more about it. Following our monthly hearing of the public this evening, we will receive reports from the superintendent, our student trustees, our board committees, and liaisons. The board will then discuss the New York State School Boards Association's legislative advocacy resolutions in preparation for the association's October 15 business meeting where our voting delegate, trustee Allison Samuels, is going to represent the Croton-Harmon School Board's perspective. Policy committee chair, Ana Teague, will lead the discussion along with the other members of the policy committee. We will then conclude with other ongoing and new business and enter into executive session before adjourning.

Our superintendent team is going to be talking about some of the highlights of the school week, but I just wanna say, for those of us who have kids in the schools, I think many of us enjoyed the past couple of weeks of back to school nights just being able to go in, see all of our teachers, see those classrooms, hear the exciting plans that our educators have for the year ahead was really enjoyable for me as a high school parent. One of my favorite things is to actually follow my student's schedule, and I had to sort of duke it out with, I have two high school students this year, so we had to duke it out on who got to go to which classes. But what I wanna say to our teachers is you create this really fun moment for all of us because while we get to go back to school, we also get to sort of catch up with our parent friends. And I know for me, this is my... With a twelfth grader, it's like, we've been going to these for thirteen years now, and it's it's really... It's just really one of the highlights of, the school year for us as families. So thank you because I know it's a lot of effort to put that together, and it's a lot of coordination on the part of our administrators

to keep the trains running and make sure that everything ends on time. So I thought they were very, very well done, and I think the board members who attended would agree. We're also looking forward to homecoming week next week, so happy homecoming. You'll hear more about that from superintendent Walker. But best wishes from all of us to all the athletic teams that will be entering competition. We hope that families will come out and support our tigers in all of those very, those venues and games that are scheduled for next week. You'll hear more about that. The last thing I'll just touch on for, for this community of avid readers is that the Croton Free Library is hosting this weekend. It's, I'm gonna say it wrong, relay readathon. Twenty four hour relay readathon. It begins tomorrow evening, and it runs for twenty four hours straight. And among the many, celebrity readers who will be there this weekend are our own superintendent,

Some of our school librarians and other, local personalities, you should definitely stop in. You have twenty four hours to do it. You can come by anytime. I will be there myself at 4AM on Saturday morning because I am awake at that time anyway. So it seemed like the best thing to do would be just go to the library. So that's where I'll be. Hope you'll join me and come and support, the spirit of literacy and our wonderful Croton Free Library by being there. I will now turn it over to our superintendent. Oh, no. Sorry. Item 2.2 before we get there. Turn it over to our hearing of the public. So moving into that agenda item, just a reminder to our public, we believe that effective dialogue can occur only in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Therefore, it's our policy to conduct our meetings and communications in a manner that models respect and civility. We invite the members of the public to share this commitment with us, and we open it up now for your comments.

Please, identify your name and the street on which you live if you are willing, and, speak to us for three minutes. The floor is open. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Ed Riley. I live on Drive. I think I'll address violence, the acceptability of violence, and credibility over grade inflation until second session, second round. Two things came on immediate attention today. One is that during lunch, my understanding of a state provided lunch to every student, and I'd be doing the same thing. The students are down in town, eating at various different places. Thank god because some of these, places depend upon students buying food there. And I'm assuming they're not eating twice. That means that the state required food that's being served, I assume, in the high school, the grammar schools, etcetera, is going in the garbage can. And I just heard by sitting in a committee meeting what the complicated arrangement is in terms of payback if you don't eat their milk. So it's bizarre, and it's because we have a bizarre state legislature and getting worse.

The second item that came up is that there's some some person evidently came to the front door of a school, said, don't wanna use my real name and sign in, and then someone used an alias. Let me tell you, as a person that goes in public buildings all the time, the courts, the County Legislative Building, federal court buildings all the time, if you don't show a valid ID with your picture on it, you ain't getting in that building. Sorry about that, Jack. You can do whatever you want. You you know, I can know you, but you better have a valid photo ID. Otherwise, you're not getting in that building. And that's the attitude that this school district should take when you enter that building. When that person leaves the building, just like a lousy county office building with no kids, you turn your badge in so they know if you left the building. And that's the attitude you should take. The attitude... That attitude is not in this school district right now.

On a couple of things that are in the news big time is you have heard about this, professor at Cambridge University, a total hoax, who... He was a DEI promotion, became a full professor. Anybody that questioned his suitability... Credentials or his suitability to be a professor was attacked as being a racist, culturally insensitive, whatever it was. And this went on. This... King's has a new clothes system went on for years, years. As a matter of fact, if you question him, they fired you, and several assistant professors were fired. And that atmosphere has prevailed here in the past. Thank god over the last couple of years, that's turned around. But that attitude has prevailed in this institution. I've seen it. And so just remember that fellow's name. Unfortunately, he committed suicide. He couldn't stand it. Jason Arday. Remember that name when you think of DEI. Thank you.

Any other members of the public to speak this evening?

Okay. With that, we'll close our hearing of the public and move into agenda item 2.3, our superintendent swore, report. Over to you, superintendent Walker. Thank you, Ana. Good evening, everyone who is here in person and all those watching at home, and congratulations again to our outstanding scholars who were recognized earlier this evening. I did wanna note, for those who are interested in participating in the Relay Readathon, if you don't wanna wake up at 04:00 in the morning on Saturday but still wanna hang out and talk about some school business business... School business, please stop by about 05:15 tomorrow, where I'll be reading, and then we'll be happy to hang out and talk about, some work of the Tiger. So, thank you as always for the opportunity to share some of the highlights of the past couple weeks in our district and a look ahead to next week, which as we know is homecoming.

One of the important fall experiences for our parents and faculty comes with our annual back to school and curriculum nights, which concluded last week. These events provide our families and faculty with an opportunity to make connections and begin a cadence of regular communication, not only about teaching and learning in our classrooms, but about how our students are making progress throughout the year. I've had the chance to connect with several parents representing each of our schools. And in follow-up to those evenings, every one of them has shared positive feedback about their experience. In alignment with one of our district and board goals for this year, all faculty were asked to focus their presentation on these evenings around the core curricular experience that students will have in their classroom. I wanna... And I wanna thank our faculty for doing such an excellent job in delivering on that promise.

Thank you also to our building administrative teams, custodial teams, and clerical teams, all of whom play play an integral role in preparing our schools for those evenings, and to our board of education trustees and representatives from our school PTAs, CEPTA, CHEF, and other organizations who spoke to our families at the outset of those events. Taking a quick look at our fall sports achievements, I wanna take a moment this evening to shine a light on some exciting accomplishments by our modified teams. Modified sports don't always get the spotlight, but the growth of young student athletes at the modified level, which typically represents students in grade seven and eight and occasionally grade nine, is critical to their development as young adults. Modified student athletes learn how to function as a member of a team, the importance of showing up and trying your hardest every day, not only for yourself but for your teammates around you, and how to be coached, how to take feedback and use it as fuel to continue to improve.

Modified sports also serves as a crucial point in the growth of our sports programs in general as student athletes who find success and enjoyment in modified sports help to sustain and grow junior varsity and varsity programs in the future. And so tonight, I wanna highlight some recent accomplishments and points of pride from our modified sports programs beginning with modified boys volleyball. On Thursday, September 25, history was made at PVC when our students took the court in the PVC Gym for our first ever modified boys volleyball game. Our community may be aware of the introduction of a boys varsity volleyball team just few years ago and the incredible success that they have already achieved. And on September 25, we saw the future of our boys volleyball program take the court at PVC. The tigers won the first game and lost the match overall, but we all know that the final score isn't the takeaway from that experience.

The tigers made memories and learned many lessons from playing in front of a crowd, competing for the first time, supporting teammates, making mistakes, and making plays. That is exactly what a modified program is about, learning, growing, and getting better with each opportunity. Congratulations to these modified volleyball tigers, coach Yao, and thank you to Barry Sumon whose leadership on this along with May Leon and Nicole at PVC helped to identify the potential of putting together a team on the court this fall and recruited interested student athletes to be a part of this terrific first effort. I also wanna highlight the resurgence of our cheer team this year at the modified level featuring 18 student athletes in grades seven through nine. The team did an incredible job cheering and supporting the modified football team and also performed at halftime. We're extremely proud of these students for taking a chance and becoming part of something new. Their enthusiasm and commitment have been wonderful to see. We're actually currently exploring the possibility of hiring a second coach or offering two training sessions each day, which would allow us to divide the group between PVC and the high school for the winter basketball season and give those student athletes more opportunities

to participate. And finally, I want to note and celebrate the work done by our modified football team who recently beat peak skill 39 to 14. As we think about how best to move forward with our varsity football program in the time to come, the development of our modified football program and those student athletes will play a vital role in the future trajectory of the entire program in our district. And so a shout out to coaches Matt Ferreri and Tyler Rodriguez and the Tigers for a fun and exciting start to the season. Next week also features one of the most exciting series of days in our annual school calendar as we celebrate homecoming at CHHS. The week begins with our second annual homecoming dance, which is taking place Saturday night in the gym at c h a... CHHS, followed all week next week with games featuring our varsity girls tennis, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls volleyball,

and girls field hockey. We look forward to this special celebration of Tiger Pride, and I wanna thank our booster club, the athletics office, and CHHS for their collaboration in coordinating these events. For a complete list of all of the homecoming events with event details, please see the pop up on our district's homepage. Greg, thank you for putting that together. We look forward to seeing all of you at some of these events next week. And in follow-up to our recent tech reset, we've been contacted by a number of school districts who wanted to learn more about the collaborative process working with the board of education, faculty members, and parents that we undertook to get to this place as a school district community. And on Friday, Laura, along with several outstanding teacher leaders in our schools, took part in a panel discussion at a conference of the New York State United Teachers. And I'm pleased to turn it over to Laura to to share some more information about that as well as updates on our upcoming conference day professional learning and community conversations.

Nice. Nice. It's president actually reached out directly to our CTA leadership to learn more about what she had read regarding our tech reset plans for this year. So Alana McConville, CHHS social studies teacher, Jen Moore, CHHS art teacher, and Ashley Valentine, CHHS English teacher and instructional coach, and I were happy to share the collaborative work that it took to bring a vision for what we want for our students with strong advocacy and partnership from our parent community and the board of education to implementation. Our goal in the conversation was to talk through the process, hopefully, a way that could be replicated in other district who are looking to do similar work. We emphasize the importance of doing this work collaboratively collaboratively with all stakeholders, but ensuring that teachers have what they need to make the changes versus creating a framework without the necessary supports,

particularly focusing on time and budget. NICE IT was also very interested to learn about the work of the vision map and how so much of the work they found evidence of relates to the overall student experience and the kind of environment that we are creating for our students. Next week, we have our our first half day professional development happening on Tuesday, October 6. So that's a half day for students, that day. Much of the work that afternoon will center around continued work on our curriculum overview templates and we intentionally moved our half day conference day slightly earlier in the year than it has been in the past to keep with the continuity of curriculum work that we began this summer. As our community heard when we shared our district goals, we are planning to launch section of our website that will include these updated user friendly curriculum overviews that we think address the key areas that our community identified as what they hope to have included,

including unit titles and approximate timing, key content and texts, key assessments and projects, and common experiences across grade levels and content areas. After all of the reviews are completed this month, we will go through a review and revision process and we will be sharing a community update when the work is complete and the website is up and running by early December. We will also plan to launch our CET literacy overview website around the same time and we anticipate having a section on that site to outline information about what we are piloting and plans for implementation. And finally, Steve and I will be hosting the first community conversation this year on November 16. We will have a morning option to hopefully catch people right after drop off as well as an evening option. Personally, I had a great experience holding these more open conversations about high interest topics

and as an opportunity to learn about topics that were on parents' minds or things that they just wanted to learn more about last spring when I did them as part of my entry process. They're great opportunities to connect, learn together, and in some cases, even meet new people across the k twelve system. So we wanted to continue these kinds of conversations as we shared as part of our district goals and are looking forward to this first one in November. We will send out the dates and times via Parent Square, and we'll also be sending out an RSVP form as the date gets closer. And we'll be looking forward to connecting with many members of the community through either this conversation or future ones that we plan to hold throughout the year.

Thank you.

Okay. Great. Thank you both very much for, those overviews. Yeah. Questions from the board? Thank

you. Do you mind going back to the slide about the homecoming events, please? It seems like there's a lot of exciting things. I noticed that the homecoming dance has a cost of $20 per ticket. If that's an issue for some students, is there a mechanism by which they can still attend or process that they can

yes. So all students who want to attend will be able to, and we, usually, students will work with their school counselors, and we'll facilitate that process if there's any need.

Yeah. I just wanted to give a shout out to, Samantha Benjamin who is the modified cheerleading coach. She's taken on... She took it on, two weeks into the school year. She's, already whipped the team into shape with all of her practices and it's just such a great opportunity for all of the things that you've described, the camaraderie among teenage girls in the middle school, which is I think great in terms of social emotional development. And also just, to thank again Samantha Benjamin and Rachel Marino. The sheer will of what they do has brought us a homecoming dance in this community for the second year in a row. And I know that they did it, with the faith that students would turn out last year and you all did. And now it's just immediately become a great community event. So I did just wanna acknowledge both of them also. Thank you.

Hi. Can you tell us a little bit more about the event in Albany and sort of how that came to be? Because I guess it's... It was because of the tech reset. They found us. The tech reset is, like, brand new. So how did this conversation happen? How did they find us? And then... So now the spotlight is kind of on us to do this right if we're saying we're gonna be the model and and and present. So what are the next steps? I'd love to hear about that too, but I'd love to unpack this a little bit more. It seems like a great event. But I'd love to hear more about, you know, how we're getting this attention and then how we are gonna model this for other districts and implement and all that. So I'm excited to hear more if could elaborate a bit. So

interestingly, the NICE president, saw, I think, what Steve had posted about the tech reset on Instagram, through social media, and, that led her to reach out to our CTA leadership, to inquire more and just learn more about it. And, I think at that point, they, the NICE president invited our CTA leadership to be a part of the conversation at the panel, and they kindly invited me to join them too. And... Yeah, so that's kinda how we got invited, so through good old Instagram. But I think it was a really nice opportunity for us to kind of also see the bigger picture of all the advocacy work and how this is playing out in different places across the state, how different districts are approaching it, and I think was a nice reminder for us of, how lucky we are to be in such a collaborative environment and recognition that not not everywhere is like that, but happy to help places that are are ready to do the work.

So, hopefully, that answers your question. If you have any follow-up. Looking forward to hearing more because now, like I said, the spotlight's on us. You know, you you presented on it. It's getting a lot of attention, so we gotta make sure that we are serving, you know, as that model. So be great to hear if we go back and and in a year, we go to that same conference and show them the results and and the outcome. So it's exciting. Yeah. And I think we also, I didn't mention, we shared a lot of our practical resources. So communications,

presentations, agendas for facilitated meetings. So trying to almost create, like, a toolkit. We created a kind of practical steps toolkit because we really wanted to hear a lot about how we go from vision, collaboration, stakeholder, and community conversations to implementation and action. So that was kind of the the framework.

I would chime in just because as I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I was able to attend in my role as, board of education trustee, and I actually traveled up, to the conference with a bunch of local advocates from across Westchester County specifically who are engaging in, sort of the work of, you know, encouraging school districts and even, like, you know, communities at large to look at tech. And I think from my perspective, and I I believe that the, you know, Laura and our teacher team experienced this as well. It was actually a really great day of sort professional development and learning for all of us to hear sort of what the problems are across the state and actually, you know, like... Even, like, the differences between what folks are experiencing upstate versus what they're experiencing in New York City where, there's a different element of control over the school systems there. It's not... You know, school boards have different powers in New York City than they do in, our suburban school districts. So I think that was an interesting part of the conversation.

I think the other thing, you know, as as we're sort of, like, listening to the overall conversation,

among the issues that came up were that teachers are really grappling with, challenges that are being presented by AI. And I think, you know, again, to be able to just sort of hear about the fact that this is happening statewide and that we're all sort of at a moment where we're having to sort of, you know, negotiate that. I think there's a lot of focus on that piece actually right now at this very moment, which wasn't the focus of the entire conference. But I think for us, at least for me and the audience, hearing about that and then hearing about it firsthand from the perspective of educators who are in the trenches sort of having to balance those competing demands of, like, frankly, what some of the messaging might be coming from the state level and what they know to be their best practices in the classroom.

That was, like, an interesting dichotomy to hear about, I think, from from the educator perspective. And I think for me just with, you know, having had a lot of conversations with people who are teachers in different parts of the state and, parents and advocates from different parts of the state, it was it was really... Like, I think it was a bold step for the, state teachers union to, like, get out front and actually engage in this conversation at the start of the school year and say, we're gonna be talking about this. And I would say, actually, that Melinda Person, the president, it's like, she's approaching this from the perspective of a parent. Like, that is actually, like, in all of the statements that she's made. She's looking at this as a parent of a student, which I think, again, that's that's such great value for our community and then also for, you know, for all of our systems across the state because that leadership is going to, I think, impact.

It's gonna it's gonna... It's... That's gonna... This conversation is leading a little bit ahead of where the state is. We did actually have, you know, we had... Commissioner Rosa spoke at the, conference, and our state attorney general, Leticia James, also spoke at the conference. So it's like this is, you know, this is gonna be the conversation I think that we're gonna be having. And certainly here, I think we as a board should determine what it is specifically that we'd like to hear more on as we get through the year, and we can think of the right time, you know, whether it's halfway through or closer to the end of the year to determine what kind of check-in we want. That gives everyone a chance to sort of prepare and talk about. And I think it would be fun if folks are interested in case studies of, like, sort of, you know, like, what what people are feeling they wanna celebrate about the work in their classrooms, think, would be really interesting.

We're certainly seeing it right now in terms of the district social media and, also, other presentations that we're seeing online from our teachers that that there's a lot of hands on work going in going on in the classrooms that students are really engaging with. So I would say watch this space if that sounds good. Okay. Wonderful. Any other comment? Allison?

I'm assuming we might we might talk about this in the board governance a little bit, but just like off the top of my head based on what you said, I do think it would make sense for us to have some sort of check-in before we hear about budgets because I'm assuming there's gonna be questions about, like, how things are going so that there's resource alignment. And then, you know, and I think also this probably does tell with some of our later conversations about our... The advocacy and this vote resolutions, but also, you know, the case studies of what's working, but also what's not working as well because it might be that there's not... There's only a digital resource in an area or something like that. So hearing the the things that are, like, really working well, but also what are some of the friction points because then, you know, hopefully, we can figure out some ways to support to make that as as as supportive as possible. Thanks.

There are no other questions from the board. We'll turn it over to our student trustees. Trustee reports.

K. So following the, you know, all the tech policy and tech bans in the high school, I think we're wondering how many more students are leaving the school grounds during lunch to use their cell phone, and also how that... If they are, how that is affecting the federal funding that we're receiving if, you know, not as many students are getting lunch. From my perspective, personally, I haven't, like, visually seen, like, a lack of students in the lunchroom from last year or the year before that, but I'm only one person. I'm only in one area. So I... I'm interested in getting, you know, the actual numbers behind that. And then I am interested in doing some student polls. I I have some points here that that me and Nikki have touched on in previous meetings just in conversation, but I've compiled them into questions that we're interested in pulling students on in person during lunch or collab periods.

And I specifically wanna ask these questions in person because I think it it provides more accurate answers and also more like they kind of have to answer me if I'm engaged in a conversation rather than a Google form which can get very easily lost in an inbox. I also think it allows me to ask better follow-up questions that pertain to each student. So the first question I have is, do students feel like they're, you know, leaving the building for lunch more often to use their phone and take advantage of that? Have students been able to fit the classes they want in their schedules, both APs and elective courses? Do students in... Or did students in the humanities course their freshman year feel they were prepared to then take the next class, whether it was AP World or Global 10? Do students feel that extracurricular period in the day, in the schedule has incentivized them to attend clubs more often than when they were held after school?

And I know that this question in particular is a change for the current juniors and seniors because we have experienced both of the schedules, but the current freshmen and sophomores have experience within the middle school with clubs after school, so I think they can still speak to that change in the system. Do students feel helping period is best split between the middle of the day and end of the day, or should it be grouped into one period given, you know, the time constraints that that makes by splitting the period up? And then do students feel they are able to access their teachers during helping period because it is split up and they have a shorter time, than previously, or do you... They feel like there's a higher concentration of students, and that they're in too high demand to answer their questions? Do students feel they are being provided enough to... Opportunities to meet college admissions counselors?

And then also, you know, not necessarily in the poll question, but can we use Tiger learning conferences for this purpose? This year, it's actually very exciting because we have a ton of college counselor... College admissions officers visiting our school. I actually went one today... To one today, but it was only me and one other student. So I don't know... I received an email about this, but I'm pretty on top of my emails and I know that is not the case for everyone. So, you know, how is this being then advertised to students? And also this this meeting was during class time. So I had to miss one of my classes to go to this, which was a bit frustrating, and then I was also marked absent because of that. So I... I'm thinking that maybe Tiger Learning Conferences would be a good time to have college admissions people. And then, you know, finally, as a more general question, what would students be interested in seeing during these Tiger Learning Conferences?

I think there has been... Have been some, like, Google forms sent out from administration, but I don't think that the student body is that on top of these forms. So, yeah, those were my poll questions that I'm planning to ask. Cool.

And I wanted to talk about the club fair for a second. I know that was a topic last meeting, when some of the administration came in, and I had a lot of very positive comments. So it was once again a really amazing experience and opportunity for, some of our new students to engage with their school. There were a lot of, local, like, community organizations, which I thought was really cool, definitely more than last year. And although it was a bit shorter, I did see a lot more engagement, from the new students this year, which, as a member and officer of a few clubs, it it is very exciting to see. And I want to especially note that in the two clubs that I am really a part of, there was a massive increase in size. And, obviously, since, clubs want to do a lot of things and have a lot of goals, it's good to see that, the new students really care and are interested in those as well. And so I mentioned my own findings specifically because I want to highlight the overall increase in extracurricular

involvement. And after talking with a lot of my other friends and fellow club officers, they too have seen an increase in club participation overall, which I think we can all agree is pretty fantastic and supports the whole purpose of why, the school changed extracurricular timing to earlier in the day. And to wrap this up, Maddie and I, looking forward, would like to talk with club advisers and officers, throughout the year, about the change in extracurricular period and sort of gauge whether they think it's been a, support for them. You know, it's easy to look from the outside and be like, yeah. Of course, it's not before lunch. More students are staying. But you really never know until you actually talk with the people who are experiencing, the engagement overall. So that's something that Maddie and I would like to work with the officers and the advisers of the clubs, throughout the year. And so next is gonna be the student faculty congress. And so from my report back, to the f... SFC,

about a week and a half ago, Members of the SFC also expressed interest in college readiness and interdisciplinary courses as well as more advocacy for Croton Theater, and both items have been added to the agenda and are continued to be talked about... Or are continuing to be talked about at SFC meetings. They are excited by the opportunity to meet, the new board of ed members and the current board of ed members, due to the new, cycling board of ed SFC liaison system. So I know miss Morrison is planning on sending out a schedule with all of our meetings throughout the year. The members of the board of ed will be able to sign up and attend whichever ones they can. And then a bit more on the theater. There's amazing turnout for auditions, and the cast is super excited. And I think looking ahead, how can we work with the program director, mister Kaplan, to support and advertise the production now that it it is up and running?

So, yeah, those were some of the things that I

talked about. Would you mind reminding us what the play is going to be this fall? It's gonna be 12 Angry Men. Very exciting. I think that's that's gonna be Yeah. A meaningful, timely presentation for sure. We're So all looking forward to it. So thank you to our students. Before, before asking for board questions, I just wanna say, I think that these reports have given us a really good sense of what life is like at the high school. I know that, you have plans over the course of the year to engage with our PVC and CET students as well. So although we're hearing a lot about the high school today, you have you have more to come on those fronts, and I know that's part of your, part of your agenda. I think, one of the things that's coming up as a common theme is that many of the questions, Madalyn, that you raised are actually questions that we have discussed in work sessions in the past, including specifically

the data on how the move of extracurriculars into the school day has actually impacted participation. So we can get those numbers, I think, to sort of show you the percentage increases Nikki sort of alluded to. And I think the other thing that I would highlight is I... All these questions to be able to ask those from a student perspective, I think, is really valuable because you have pointed to something that actually our administrators have mentioned, which is there's not huge uptake on, Google Forms unless you have to answer it to leave the classroom. And so I... Our CET teachers are sitting in the audience. They're like, yep. They know that because they've got them in the classroom for that. But, unfortunately, at the high school, people don't always fill out the forms and surveys. So I think looking at sort of multiple ways to get that feedback both from administration and then from student polling will give us a great picture of sort of what's going on. What I'd encourage you guys to do is also make sure that you're coordinating with other folks within our high school system that are asking these questions so that we'd also don't sort of, like, overwhelm everyone with, like, you know, surveys and sort of inquiry. There might be an opportunity for you all to collaborate, as you said, with SFC and then also,

talk to your adviser and to the admin team at the high school just to sort of, you know, look at the cadence of, like, what we're inquiring about so that we can sort of do it, together and really get good information on that. So we look forward to hearing more from you. I know that there was a couple questions that came up that we might be able to answer really quickly. Can we talk just really quickly about how students going off campus for, lunch impacts federal funding? So

it doesn't impact federal funding per se. However, we... The school gets reimbursed.

Thank you.

The school gets reimbursed for every lunch and breakfast served. So if we're serving less meals, there's less reimbursement. But most of those reimbursements only and even not fully cover the cost of the meal itself. Does that answer your question? Okay.

I think if there were any other questions, but what we'll do is if we didn't you can you can send it to us as a follow-up, and we'll we'll go from there. Are there any board questions for our student trustees? I know we have board reports too, so we'll try to keep it brief. But if there are any pressing questions for today? Okay. Then we will thank you again, both of you, and we look forward to hearing what you're up to for the next month when you come back, for the next report. We'll move now into item 2.5, board reports. The audit committee, as everyone knows, and I also now remember, it will be meeting in January. The board governance committee, will be scheduling a meeting in the upcoming weeks, but I do have just a couple of very quick updates. You should please, trustees, take a look at your email, sometime within the next couple days because there are a few administrative things that we need to work on, including getting some updates made to our

web page with biographies and other sort of pertinent information. I wanna say thank you again to Denise Bisaccia and Greg Cavallari who spent some time with me this past week, picking up the work of the communications committee, which right now is on pause, and that work has come over to board governance. They actually, I think you all who were on the communications committee last year went through some substantial work to streamline and improve the, what you see when you get to the board of education web page. So we're gonna move that work forward, and, we'll report to the full board on that. You will also see if you go into board docs and look for meetings now that there's some great new information on our featured page. A special thanks to both Denise and Greg for helping get some of that stuff up. That is my report for board governance. I'll turn it over to policy. Ana.

Thank you. Policy committee today met, immediately before this meeting. I will just go over some of the highlights from our agenda. We met with members of the administrative team. Our last meeting was just members of the board and we did at the end of the meeting kind of agree to the cadence of being every three weeks the board members would meet and then the following three weeks the following three weeks after that, board members would meet with members of the administrative team just to allow some of the the detailed work that goes into crafting some of the the proposed, policies to to allow us to do that, and not take up the valuable time and resources that the administration, needs. So to go into the agenda, we did have to start with some of our old business which was to review our charter and scope. Again, with the benefit of having the administrative team there, we spoke to Superintendent Walker about moving forward with an audit

of the current policies. In addition to that, we did discuss perhaps as we move forward after that audit and considering using the NISPA policy resource also considering looking at the Erie One BOCES possibility which is another policy resource and then to be able to compare and contrast that. So the policy committee members will... The board members of the policy committee will now be looking at other districts who actually use Erie one. In doing the audit of what we have that's existing, I think there is some kind of, nuance to, the two different policies. So we're going to look at the policies that we have now through the NISPA scope and after we kind of like lock that down and solidify it, we will then decide whether or not we wanna move forward with NISPA, continue our relationship with with their policy product or if we're going to and we'll be presenting all of that to the board at that time.

We did have questions about some of the dissemination of policies so we did have the benefit of having Superintendent Walker there. With respect to policy 2450 and policy dissemination, Superintendent Walker provided us with a copy of the mini policy book which is given at the beginning of the school year and he elaborated on some of the different ways that the policies are disseminated given the urgency, given the length, given the nuance at the different calendar times throughout the school year when things need to be disseminated. With respect to policy twenty four sixty which is policy review and evaluation, we requested from the district some of the policies that they would like us to look at going forward. And obviously that's something that happens on a rolling basis but we will be looking at policy nineteen oh one which is parent and family engagement which has not been reviewed since

2019. In order to do that, one of the practices that we're going to rely upon going forward is to look at the NISPA recommended policy and start there. So the policy committee will be disseminating that and looking at that, working with assistant superintendent for people personnel services, DePal, and hopefully bringing that to the board for a first reading sometime in the near future. The administration also asked us to consider looking at a policy regarding e bikes and e scooters. While there isn't a NISPA policy per se recommended to that specifically, Pleasantville, School District has recently rolled something like that out, so that will also be another policy that we're looking at going forward. We did make an inquiry to the administration regarding the NISPA list of legally required policies and we were very pleased to be informed by Superintendent Walker that that is always posted on our district website. So for purposes of due diligence as a board,

we have asked the district where this is housed. This is all housed on our district website for purposes of being openly and readily available to the public. We did also look at an update regarding the review of the NISPA list of annual parent notification requirements here and we're gonna be engaging in an audit going forward. It's a lengthy list. The administration and and, the policy committee as a whole are gonna be looking at auditing all of that and we'll be providing the results of that on a rolling basis. If not, you know, succinct, but it does look super time consuming. And some of that doesn't really it doesn't really inform us as to how or why. It it really is a matter of, I guess, choice for each district to do that... It's not specified. So I think it's... We'll simultaneously be looking at maybe whether or not we should develop some kind of policy to just have that rolled out by,

a reorg meeting or some particular date. That way that work is done at the beginning of the year. It's disseminated and we can all move forward with that. We did decide to table our review of, policy 5,000 student policy goals because the majority of our meeting, we conducted a review and discussion regarding the NISPA resolution guide. But we did discuss potential changes to the Health and Safety Committee draft policy eight one one (two)R. And we also discussed some operational versus policy differentiations regarding HIPAA and some of the student privacy conversations that we need to have. So we're going to be, examining that more closely in anticipation of our following meeting. I know that's a lot. The minutes of the meeting, will be posted, within the next few days. I just have to fine tune them, have the committee, cosign on them and then we'll be able to get them out for the public to examine including all of the underlying documentation that we reviewed

at the meeting. That's what I have for policy. I don't know if either trustee Samuels or, Day have anything that they wanna add. Alright.

There you go. Very comprehensive and yet shorter than a policy committee meeting, but you got a lot done. So thank you for that. Just two quick points before we move on to the next one with regards to the mini policy manual because it's actually something that Greg, Denise, and I also talked about. So it is located right now on the, the policy corner page of our website. One of the things that we'd like to talk to you, to you all about is whether we could add some sort of explanation introducing what these two policy manuals are. There's our full policy manual and the thing that we've been calling the mini policy manual, which doesn't actually tell us exactly what you told us, which is that is the manual that's intended for staff so that they have a condensed version of the key things to read. I know for our policy committee going forward, one of our commitments that we've made is to make sure that our policies

can be read by a regular person like me without, you know, having to, like, look things up in the dictionary and, you know, fall asleep reading them. It's just making them shorter and human friendly. I think that that's something... Well, it's actually something that I think we we have talked about as a board, and I know that that... Again, it's like when you have to read it, it's like you wanna just get to what's the point of this policy without a lot of extra stuff. So that is definitely part of our philosophy going forward, just to simplify and then to align with NISPA as Ana said, where where appropriate. So I think that's a great improvement. In terms of the New York state, were you talking about the New York state required policies or the New York state required documents? I think I was fishing around online when you said that.

There is a list of NISPA annual parent notification requirements. So those are documents that are required, or notifications that were required as a district, to give to parents. And it's quite an extensive list. And, again, it'll be linked in the the minutes of the meeting, but that's what I was talking about. Okay. Fabulous. Thank you. I I... It's my understanding that, the NISPA required policies will, be encompassed in the review and the audit of of whatever NISPA does. So... If that makes sense. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay.

Steve, did you wanna weigh in on something on that? No. Just just... I wanna thank Greg for, his work in consolidating a series of policies that were located various places throughout the website, some in technology, some in human resources, some other places, putting them all together into one, easy place for our community to find those that are required for posting. And then we look forward to that review and audit of, our annual notification requirements, which will be upcoming. So thank you, Brenda.

I... This is... I think this is just a great collaboration between policies focusing on what's important in terms of student student facing and parent facing policies and then also for administrative team just to be so responsive in our approach to making sure things are, easily found searchable on the website through multiple modes. And, I mean, there's a lot of great stuff happening, so thank you all for that. Incredibly responsive. Yeah. Really appreciate it. Shifting on to, oh, I lost the agenda. Sorry. The community advisory committee on technology, our, committee chair, Omar, unfortunately, is not able to be here tonight. So, we will have a further report on that at our next meeting. I'll turn it over quickly to Theo about the ad hoc committee on hiring retention and tenure.

Alright. Thanks, Ana Tak. So we have reported, at the last meeting about the the September meeting, at our last full board meeting about the September ad hoc committee meeting. We will be having our next, committee meeting on October 6, where we will be focusing... Concluding, hopefully, our conversation on tenure. And at that point, I think we'll be able to bring back, some information on on tenure to the full board and starting a conversation on philosophy of hiring, walking through our current practice and processes there, and likely continuing that conversation at the at the November meeting. So that meeting again is Tuesday, October 6 of October 6, which is next week.

Thank you very much. Anyone have a liaison report since our last meeting?

I'm meeting with champs tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Greg has told me to stop looking at the red thing, and it's gonna take me a while to stop doing that every time I use the mic. Anyone else for liaisons? Thank you, Ana. I know that you've been liaising with our booster, so thank you for the shout out in terms of all the work that they've been doing. And, again, just a huge thanks to them for everything that is going to result in an amazing, amazing homecoming week next week. We can't wait. So, if that is all and we don't have questions from the board, we'll turn it over to item 3.1, new business, which is our proposed NISPA resolutions. I am gonna turn this conversation over to our policy committee chair, Ana Teague, and the rest of the policy committee. But before I do, just a quick note about this. So one of the things that, I know Ana's gonna sort of explain sort of the context for this, but one of the things I just wanted to highlight as we're talking about this,

it's been alluded to already by some of our trustees, is that resolutions we're gonna be discussing today actually are completely connected to, the conversations that are happening about education right now in our state, specifically issues around things like charter schools, around funding that is being diverted from public education to other entities, to the use of AI AI policies, to the, the desire that educators and school districts have for the state to actually come up with solutions, if if there is a proposed shift away from computer based testing to other kinds, making sure that those things are funded and that resources are actually provided for districts and for educators so that we're all on the same page. So all of these legislative advocacy resolutions that we're gonna talk about are very of the moment, and I feel like that's a real difference actually from some of the past years when I've looked through these. They feel very, very timely and pretty urgent. And there's also an alignment with the advocacy issues that the New York State Council of School Superintendents,

I hope I got the acronym right, advocacy issues. I'm sure for, like, you know, administrators, it seems like there's a moment where all of this advocacy is sort of coming together. So it feels like a really great time to be having this conversation as a board. I'll turn it over to Ana Teague.

Thank you, Ana Teague. So as attachments or public content to, item 3.1, the proposed NISPA resolutions, we have the twenty twenty six NISPA voting delegates guide. So for purposes of informing the public, and I know that the prior chair has has done this every year, So shout out to Neil Haber if you're listening out there. The New York State School Boards Association basically, adopts these resolutions as a guidance for their advocacy work every year, with the state legislature. These resolutions are comprised by individual school districts sometimes in collaboration with other school districts. Sometimes one school district will take on element for something regionally or some collaboration they have across the state regarding something. So the guide itself contains every resolution that has been presented to NISPA to vote on. Right? And that... Their deadline for that is the end of the summer. At that point, NISPA turns around and they present to school boards, every school board, their voting delegates guide, their proposed law amendments and resolutions. And they then break it down as, okay. We've received this resolution,

and we are we are in favor of this resolution. We are... We received this resolution. We are opposed to this resolution. In addition to that as, material that's been added into public content, what we have added is the 2026 NISPA proposed resolutions worksheet by, the West Chester Putnam School Boards Association, West Putt. Okay? And that would, hone in on what is important kind of regionally to us. And then, it is then... And that worksheet broken it down by what has proposed that they recommend for adoption, what NISPA has, proposed that they oppose for adoption. And then on top of that, to make this even more complicated for everyone, West Putt has told us how they feel, what is in the best interest of of school districts regionally. So, in taking all of that into account, what we honed in on as a policy committee was to look at where, West Putt was in opposition to what NSBA was saying or,

had no, decision regarding what NSBA was saying. So that was a a series of of of resolutions. Not every resolution that you have there, but to start with number one, the sunsetting resolution, to support proposals to generate new state revenues. And I'm going to turn to my two fellow trustees because they were actually, at the West PUT meeting to offer further insight into, the decision, by West PUT to to not to not vote on that. Right? To not oppose it and to not support it.

So I'm the the... Our BOE lead and Jake and I both attended the virtual meeting. And, just to build on what Ana was saying that, the positions here are not like what... It... It's like what we... Everybody who... All the BOE members... I don't think there were any superintendents on this... On the meeting. It's... It... This is what we we discussed and what our consensus was. So it wasn't like the directors or the admin team at West Foot came up with this. It was like... It was bay... This is is, what was decided upon by our fellow, BOE members in the... In this region. Yeah. So, in the in the first with this first issue, the reason why there wasn't support about it is that it was felt like it was very open ended. And there was also some discussions of concerns that, like, maybe this might open us up to having, like, corporations giving donations and then having, like, a quid pro quo. So that

was why there was that support around this. Okay.

Infinite jest, I guess. So we decided to go along with West Put in terms of that and, Allison, on behalf of our board, unless there's some other discussion that anybody or other fellow trustees wanna have here, would, would would vote no decision on that. Right?

Moving on to item number... Oh, sorry. Can I ask a question? Sure. So so my question is, does that mean you're gonna abstain from the vote or you're not gonna... We're not gonna vote no when we say no decision because it's like... Is... So we have... Our choices are yes, no, and abstain. Are we saying that we're abstaining or are we saying because of the questions that we have about this that our feeling is no? We don't want to spend their time doing this for us. Just understand. Yeah. We discussed that, and we didn't wanna say no funding became available. We didn't wanna

So I have to confess that this is my first time doing this, and I don't know technically whether whether or not we can say no decision or if we have to take that position of abstain. And there's, a meeting to kind of orient people to this process that's coming up that I hope doesn't conflict with work that I can attend, and I'll get clarity before that. So maybe for the purposes of tonight, it would be helpful to just say have, like, a plan a that if we can do no dis... Like, no or

no.

You have to vote. It's either yes, no, or abstain. Okay. Because you've done this before. Okay. So then I think we then are saying we we oppose if it's no decision.

Were there concerns that if we oppose this and then the funding became available that it would, I think... Or no? There were not? I'm sorry. Was was reading something. No. It's okay. Were there concerns that if we're voting for this and we, we oppose that it would perhaps affect us detrimentally? Suppose the educational

front gate? It's just... It's legislative advocacy, so it's really... It's like... It... It's a question of... Sorry. If I can just, like, put it down to, like,

laypeople terms. Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not committing us to anything. It's really just, do we want our advocacy organization, the New York State School Boards Association, to spend its legislative time and dollar and energy on this? If we say no, we don't. It's just we're we're telling them this is not a priority for us. Let's focus on some of these other things that we think are more priorities when it's a set... And, again, the... This is, like, the challenge of doing this. It's because we don't have, frankly, like, as a board, institutional, like, records of, like, how to sort of do this. So every time each one of us has served in this role that Allison is serving in right now, it's new. Like, the year I did it, like, had to figure out a tremendous amount of stuff without a lot of help. So this is... I'm speaking from a place of total empathy on this. And, what I recall is is it's, like, it's just a... It's a legislative advocacy position. So if we feel like this is not where we want our legislative time going, say no. It's okay.

So it's... So this came up, like, this aspect of, like, during the meeting of is this... There's a lot of things here. Is this worthwhile as a priority? As a group, our guidance was don't don't focus on that question. More like, if this is the given thing, what's your position on it? So I'm not saying we don't have to take that in perspective here, but that was our... What you're seeing here was not working under that assumption of, like, we're trying to prioritize. It's more like if the mindset with what we're looking at is, would we support this or not or we don't have consensus on it. But I I... For myself, I'm... I don't think this should be a priority.

So that's opposed. I would come from a place more of suggesting that we should just abstain, but that's how I feel. So I don't know if we wanna do a thumbs up or if we wanna just pull the board and see how they feel on it.

I don't have an issue abstaining. I mean, like, it's just whatever we...

I saw... I... It's... Again, I speak... I looked to people who've done this before. Like, what would be... I would be a 100% comfortable abstaining as well. It's not a big deal. I think unless we have a a real serious objection or real serious that we wanna air, I I think abstaining is fine. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So moving on to number seven, which was the, NISPA. It's a resolution. NISPA support a new state bond act to support school capital and facility needs such as HVAC, new electrical systems, pre space... Pre k space, and technology. And for this, we had to turn to the expertise of our assistant superintendent for business, Denise Harrington Cohen, who, immediately started to do research on exactly what type of bond act, there are and and and the implications of all of that. So I will turn this over to her for a moment.

So this would be, required legislation in order for New York State to raise capital through bonds and investments to fund various, capital projects. For example, electric buses, HVAC, buildings in need of repair, etcetera. So what it does is just like we have a general fund budget and operating budget, this is in addition to that. So they are saying allow us to issue bonds so that we can generate additional funds to support various projects. There's not a lot of information as to how these districts are being selected, whether or not it's through grants and application processes or if it's going to be dispersed equally. So there's not a lot of information on it, but it's just... It's an avenue for the state to raise funds for additional items outside of the operating budget.

So just to kind of provide some additional context, I I do wanna just turn this to superintendent Walker because there there is a a bigger, I think, policy issue here at play that I think the the greater public could, learn a nuance to. And I know I've used the word nuance too many times tonight, but, because I do know that you raised, concerns regarding, taking funds from the states that are specifically earmarked.

Right. We normally would take the position that, with regard to state funding, we would prefer just to have the state issue the funds to school districts and then allow local, boards of education and administrative teams in conversation with their local communities figure out how to best allocate that money. What what will tend to happen is the state, with all good intent, will allocate money, but will allocate it only to certain specific... For certain specific purposes that tend to exclude, many districts that may not be in that particular need in that particular time. So we prefer remove some of the, the specific requirements and issue the funding and allow districts to to use it as as they see fit.

And for for all those reasons, we did fall in alignment with, West Pet's recommendation, was to essentially what will... To not confuse the public or ourselves any further. Just say that we would abstain. We will neither support nor nor oppose that. There... We have concerns regarding some of the things that are raised here, and at the same time, we wouldn't oppose it because I do think that there are some school districts who could or would benefit from it. Moving on to number 12, I am very happy to say that we immediately heard from our administrative team that we should 100 support this. So that was really a quick one for us. So to read the resolution, resolution 12 is NISPA advocates for school boards to be offered a pencil and paper option for New York State testing in grades three through five. So the West Putt recommendation is to basically abstain and we will not be falling in line with West Putt on that. We will actually be supporting

advocacy to offer a pencil and paper option for testing in grades three through five. So that's something I think we all feel good about. And then moving on to number 19. Resolution that NISPA support the use of evidence based practices by districts to improve literacy outcomes for students with dyslexia. So I'll turn to Trustee Samuels who offered some insight into the reference of this resolution with respect to Resolution 18 and then I will turn to Assistant Superintendent DePaul because she had some very practical comments and information for us to digest regarding that.

I feel like you're a little bit more of the expert but I'll tell you a little bit about the... So conversation was that with 18 it sounds like dyslexia, dysgraphia has not fallen under some of what has been the focus of some expert practice or or, like, the way things are organized. I don't know how to how to accurately describe it. So there was an interest in in in in bringing that under the umbrella. The reason why there's support for that from our conversation, at West, but as opposed to not reaching a decision or abstaining rather abstaining for 19 is that 19, talks about NISPA supporting the use of evidence based practices by districts to improve literacy outcomes for students with dyslexia. We felt like that was... Should have already been addressed by the previous 18 and then, of course, that's everybody's going to be trying to do anyway. And... But there was really more of a concern that this might wind up being some sort of unfunded, like,

unfunded mandate that was kind of lurking around the corner from that. So so the idea that we kind of came to was to abstain from 19 but to support 18, which should address what nineteen is trying to do. Does anybody even understand what I said? Okay. Sure.

So in addition to what Trustee Samuels just shared, New York State Education Department already requires evidence based reading strategies to be used with any student receiving tiered interventions through MTSS or RTI and are either diagnosed with dyslexia or suspected of having dyslexia. So in a sense, it's a bit redundant because the state law and the regulation already requires that of us, through our tiered interventions for literacy.

So with respect to resolution 19, we would fall, in in, agreement with, the West PEP recommendation that we abstain from agreeing to that.

Yeah. Is West putt's reasoning also basically the same that that it's redundant? It's already in... Required? Okay.

And covered by resolution eight... 18, I think. That would be my assumption and considering it's already kind of, I guess, assumed through resolution 18 and the fact that NICE IT already requires that of us. It may just be that 19 in... On its own isn't...

And it won't be supported because it's already embedded there. That... That's what I heard in Allison, like unfunded mandate and sort of redundant mandate. So it's certainly not like that this issue isn't important. And, Allison, I think if you... That's what I heard.

Yes. And that's much more succinct. But... And and also just going back to, even though at West Point, we weren't supposed to be viewing this through how... What we're going to prioritize from advocacy, going back to Ana Tatyana, your point, it doesn't make sense to include this if it's already redundant to other things that are happening.

So to keep this moving along to resolution 20, where NISBA seek and support legislation that protects the nonpartisan nature of school board elections by preventing partisan political influence. West Putt suggests or West Putt recommendations to oppose this. My understanding is at that meeting there were some first amendment issues that were raised regarding this but as a group we also opposed limitation on anything related to partisan support. I think that that... Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting because the conversation people were like, it's... It... Like, because in other states, it is partisan, you know, school board elections. So, like, we... Pretty much everybody I feel like on the meeting was like, why would you want to become affiliated with the party in this? We got a good thing going on here in in New York State. And, politically, their feeling was like, that's probably not very smart to do right now. But putting that aside, there was, like, some people are very concerned about the potential First Amendment, file... Like, it being conflict with that. So they're, like, put it to the side. Yep.

So to talk about something that's been raised a a few times this evening, resolution 21 is NISPA advocate for changes to applicable federal and state laws, regulations, and guidance to include water, whether dispensed or packaged, as an allowable beverage component of a reimbursement school breakfast or lunch. The West PUT recommendation is to basically abstain. We did have further insight from assistant superintendent Harrington Cohen regarding this, because this falls under the federal school lunch program. So I don't know if... I mean, I know you've spoken about it earlier in the evening, but if you wanted to touch upon it again.

So milk is a component, a required component in a reimbursable meal. So if a student doesn't accept the milk, then it's not considered a reimbursable meal. The student would be charged and the district would not... And or the district would not receive the funding. So, there are some alternatives to the milk option, but it is it is generally a requirement. So this proposal is offering the alternative of bottled water.

Can you specify or do... If you happen to know, I know it's a little granular, but, like, what the alternatives are to milk

that we that we get... Do get reimbursed for? On what the the reimbursable meal is. Okay. So the meal has various components, and all of the target components need to be hit. So if there is not a milk component in the meal, then the milk is required. Sometimes juice can be required. So it's a matter of having all of the components of the meal. And many times, the meal has the bulk of the components, but that milk is the final component.

So if it was like... If the lunch was like a salad and there was no cheese on it and the kid didn't get milk, the district wouldn't get reimbursed. Kind... Like, in theory. I mean, I know that's not like... Right?... The oversimplification, but... Mac and cheese can get water. Yes. Right. Yeah. So I... Just for... I get... Thank you. That's helpful to just sort of understand. It's a little whack, but it's helpful to understand.

In all of our in all of our serbories, we have water stations. So... And most of our students bring their own bottled water. So the the language that says that it's an allowable beverage alternative, The beverages, I don't believe, are requirement under the National School Lunch Program. I think the components of the milk Right. Make it a requirement.

I guess my only question for you all on the committee then is, like, was there discussion about... I mean, first of all, it sounds like which number is this again? Want one, I think. 21. Oh, so so I guess to hear from you guys if you're thinking of whether we should abstain from this or whether there was any discussion about just, like, the environmental impact of allowing packaged water to become part of a school lunch, which, again, is not our practice in our school district because we bring our bottles generally, I think. Right?

So now you see the rabbit hole we entered as a group at, like, towards the end of our meeting. And and, like, we were seeing, like, the the exit possibly and then this looping of this complicated thing about milk versus water. It was a lot. So we we went down the rabbit hole of, like, you know, serious schools collecting Like, we have our students. Most of them have water bottles, and we have fill... Water filtration. Other places don't have it. But then what do you do with the wasted milk? But then there's all these, like, plastic bottles that come up. And so I think everybody was just like, this is... Like, we we figured out, like, foil requests and, you know, funding funding formulas, but this milk and water thing was, like, too much. So we we we went on the, you know, no decision route. So, I mean, we could abstain, we could oppose, but it seemed like it, it was complicated and, like, surprising a little bit con... Controversial.

I mean, I will just speak it as an individual. I always come at it from the position of not wanting to do any harm. Right? So to the extent that there is a school district that perhaps doesn't have all of the water stations that we have or where students don't come to school every day with, you know, a YETI or whatever other fancy water bottle lots of our students carry around. I wouldn't want to inhibit another school district perhaps advocating on that behalf to that. And I also think that challenging the National Federal School Lunch Program is... And the USDA. And the USDA is perhaps not the best advocacy resource but I wouldn't want to prohibit somebody else from taking that on so I think we fell on basically abstaining and doing no harm if somebody did want to or if the scales were tipped in the direction of actually advocating for that because I can only assume that if somebody chose to advocate for that it would be out of a real need

but that is not a need that we have so we had fallen on the basic decision of abstaining. Makes sense. Moving into the next portion of what West has put together for us, the next portion is proposed resolutions not recommended for adoption by NISPA. That resolution 26 is NISPA support legislation that would reduce the required number of lockdown drills conducted each year. So NISPA does not recommend adopting legislation that would reduce yes. This is all backwards. They, recommend not adopting a resolution that would reduce the required number of lockdown drills. West put also opposes legislation that would reduce the number of lockdown drills. And we as a committee and as a district in conjunction with the administrative team also oppose reducing the number of lockdown drills. So we would be opposing that. I don't know if members not on the committee have anything they want to add to that.

Nope? Okay. And then so moving into the final portion of it which is proposed bylaw amendments recommended for adoption. The only one in question was, number five. NISPA proposed that article 14 of their bylaws be amended to remove the requirement for a printed financial report and add that the treasurer provide a financial report to the the membership. So here is where we have, as a district, completely benefited from the fact that both, trustee Day and trustee Samuels attended this, West Put meeting because you would look at that and think, oh, like, why wouldn't you want them to stop, you know, using paper and trees to print this? It seems like a a no brainer to just have this posted, on a website somewhere. But there was a nuance to it so I'll give that to whoever wants to speak to that.

Well

this was a good one. Okay. So, what... Like one of the themes that would come up is that sometimes people would theoretically approve something, but the way it was written, they would would be too vague so that... That's why it wasn't supported. Or other times, people were supportive of one aspect of what was written but not of the other. So in this proposed bylaw amendment, we were supportive of the fact that of no longer requiring a paper audit report to be sent to all members. But kind of tucked into there too was this... It removed any deadline by which the report would have to be delivered. So we thought that it's important to retain some sort of time boundness in terms of when membership should receive a report. So that's what led to the opposition of it. Oh, yes. And they said that the new... The the resolutions... Sorry. The by bylaw amendment was that the report would be delivered in, like, a video.

Like... And you could get the link through there. It seemed... I don't know. So we didn't like that.

While we love our community updates Yes. We didn't think that that would be a wonderful mechanism for, delivering something, would contain financial material. So we will, fall in line with Westcott and oppose that. Now I don't know if any... Go ahead.

We just get one. Oh. Number eight under recommended.

I don't have number eight. The,

the tax burden. Oh, right.

I don't have that in my notes. So if you wanna take that over, go for it.

And

it helped me, Allison, but what I understood this to be was fair and equal distribution of the tax burden meant putting the tax burden on those other than homeowners, businesses, essentially. And this is, like, just for my... This is from listening to the conversation, not being deeply familiar with the resolution, but the sense I got was that there was resistance to this because it could turn off businesses from going into a community if they think that they're gonna be taxed. And that's

that's what I understood, Allison. I don't if that was the takeaway you got too. Yeah. It was, so the resolution is New York State School Board Association shelves support legislation and regulations that alleviate the significant pressure that's placed on school... Oh, no. Sorry. That's the wrong thing. I'm reading the wrong thing. Oh, I was reading number six. Guess who's had a long day? No. Okay. Yeah. So it's... Yeah. That the New York State School Board Association shall advocate for policies that ensure a fair and equitable distribution of the tax burden among all classes of property statewide. That seemed like it was... Like, I don't think people were opposed to it conceptually, but, again, is this the best use of our legislation... Like, our advocacy work? And, also, was concerns, like, how do you even reach consensus about what this might look like and concerns about, you know, like, what does that mean to make it

an equitable distribution or tax burden? And there concerns about... You know, like, also in our region, we talked about, like, if if, like, there's a commercial tenant, we shift things here. They might move... Just move to Connecticut, which was just right nearby. So people just kind of know that that that it's an issue but they didn't wanna, really spend a lot of time advocating for this. Yeah.

That's where we fell regarding all those West Pet recommendations, and we fell out of line with, what some of what NISPA was doing. But I just just wanna highlight for members of the public that there are some real advocacy issues, that, NISPA is considering in terms of of of what they're moving forward with. Some of the areas that I I... I'm aware of are, definitely charter schools, things such as supporting an amendment requiring charter schools to be subject to the same oversight as public schools, which is important, Supporting excluding BOCES expenses from charter school funding formulas, and strongly supporting a state study of charter school funding and the impact on school budgets, public school budgets because charter schools draw money from public school budgets and they don't have to take every student. That's my mantra.

Regarding AI and technology, supporting legislation which would require AI products to employ a duty of care standard, supporting requirements on tech companies to provide opt out options from AI updates to software, so existing software that then has an AI update, supporting strong limitations on AI to ensure that AI not be, the educator of record in the room for purposes of grading, student contact, graduation requirements, etcetera. And then supporting legislation preventing AI companies from using foil requests for data mining to build their databases. This is where AI companies will come to school districts and they will ask for an inordinate amount of information to be able to then feed to their own databases.

Then with respect to UPK, there was a resolution supporting new state bond act to improve facility needs because with these additional UPK classrooms, you need additional classrooms and spaces, so some of that. I don't know if anybody has anything else for discussion or...

Well, I'll defer to the committee members first, then I have questions on two resolutions. Just to follow-up on pre k. So,

and I... This is also just a... I didn't I didn't get eligible for all, so I have a problem with these double negatives in in this thing. But... And so on '27. Okay. So... Say what I had a question about. So thank you. Yeah. So it says proposed resolution not recommended for adoption. Right? So this is saying there's a resolution. We don't wanna adopt it. The resolution is to pause the implementation of mandatory pre k in... By 2029. We... On the on the meeting there, you see we have the s for support that with the caveat support UPK, just not the timing and inflexibility of the mandate as written. So I think during the meeting, it was pretty clear everyone was on board with the compulsory UPK, but it was the timing of it. But my question is, it says proposed resolution is not recommended for adoption. So that means they're... Allison, help me out here, not recommending to pause the implementation or to advocate for the pausing of the implementation.

That's how I understood that. So how we vote on that would be whether or not we think we should pause it or not. I think whether or not we should pause that is a completely different question that has to do with, like like you said, on a space and capacity for the CBOs. So I just wasn't really sure because the conversation seemed to me like the the the members on the call wanted to pause it, not that they didn't want to rid of it. But then if you read this, it's saying we don't recommend adopting advocacy work to pause implementation of the mandate. So I just wanna make sure, like, what we're voting for when we vote for this. And I just... The more I look at it, the double... Like Now I'm more confused. I think you're right. Because, I... Like, if you look at the bottom, they have these, like, little notations.

They said you would do support but with this... An amendment. Like... So it's basically saying that

the The the note says support,

just not the timing. Right. So I'll chime in and say, I'm strongly opposed to us voting against this. I mean, voting for this. I'm sorry. Because deposit or voting I I don't... I mean, like, with all the advocacy and discussion we've had in our community and the fact that we feel that it was a great win for the state to actually, like, set timing... Like, a time frame for instituting universal pre k, Our... This is something that our community wants. So it's it's interesting that the, school board wants to advocate for the governor to do it in a responsible way. That that is an expectation of the community. I I just... I think pausing the implementation of the mandate, I get what it's coming from. It's like, where's the money gonna come from? That's that's the government's obligation. If they set this mandate, this is what they've been talking about, and that's what all of our legislative advocacy has been towards.

So unless I am missing something, waiting for a comprehensive due diligence feasibility study when, like, this has been this has been, like, a promise to our communities that we're moving forward with a deadline for implementing UPK, which we know... Like, when we talk about, again, like, the things that impact students' achievement in school. We just saw this, like, New York Times article about all the things. Right? It's like, it's your teacher, and it's your access to pre k. So for me, I don't get it. But, I... Over Theo. Can I I mean, my understanding of this is that this is in the opposition

section, and the proposal is to pause? And so NISPA is saying that they are opposing this, and so we would support that that recommendation.

So...... Was... Maybe I'm reading it differently, but NISPA is advocating to pause the implementation of the mandate. But it's in the not recommended section. So if you look up here... Oh, okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. They they recommend... So the resolution is to pause. Resolution is to pause. Pause. NISPA is... Does not support this. But West PUT is saying they do support it, and I thought we West PUT is saying they support NISPA opposing this. But that's not what I No. That's not what... That's not what... How this chart works, unfortunately.

That... That's what's in the in the delegate in the delegate guide. The delegate guide and, I guess, the west putt guide are confusing to me. So we just need to understand how how this board would like to vote. At least based on the commentary in the... On... In the meeting and Allison and you were there, it sounded to me like everyone was like, yes, pre k, but is the timing right and the and the... You know, is the capacity there? That's what it was. So I walked away, and then I looked at this chart. I'm like, I don't really know where everyone landed exactly on that. But

I would agree. I'm confused. I know what our conversation was when I'm looking at this chart. I mean, I think we have to make just some sort of decision. So I I think, like, the reason why people were interested in the pause, just to give a context, was that some schools, they don't have the space. Like, they just don't. They're like, we don't have the classroom space. We don't know how we're gonna get it by this period of time. Some people, they don't have... Know of any providers in the area that are interested in this or that some of them have going out of business. So, a lot of the conversation was, like, yes. We want to do this, but we... I mean, it's kinda like what happened with the electric school bus concerns, like, where there's a a date to do a thing that there's a lot of support about, but is the is the infrastructure and funding realistically in in place to hit that deadline? So that's that's where

the conversation

was. I just... To go back to when we were discussing this in the fall and in the spring, there was kind of a universal consensus that there was no meeting of the minds regarding the allocated amount, the entry point into UPK, and the feasibility. Right? So I think that this... I understand this resolution, kind of asking for a pause to get on the same page with respect to all of that is is how I I would see it written.

I'm seeing some... I think I think part of this is, the... That the West putt, sort of explainer is a shorthand that doesn't actually cover what's in the, the actual resolution language. So in the explainer in our handbook from NISPA, the last paragraph clarifies a little bit, but, you know, again, I have not been participating intimately in this process, so I'll rely on you guys. New York school boards support the governor and legislature in continuing the process of reviewing and assessing, which that makes sense. It is sort of like our expectation, I know. Seems not to be everybody's practice to review and assess things before they do it, but we hope that the state would think about that, while thoroughly assessing then addressing what it will take to build a high quality, sustainable, and truly universal pre k program. During this pause, all proposed UK expansion funding set forth in the 2627

executive budget, which is the one that we're living in right now, should be provided to school districts that demonstrate the physical capacity, infrastructure, and fiscal readiness to voluntarily establish or expand. So this resolution is suggesting that the expectation is that funding would stay where it is and that there would be no discussion of regressing or going back from that. That makes me a little bit more comfortable. But, again, as I I just... I don't fully understand this, so I don't know if it's like, we need to sort of dig into it a little bit further or if by stating this, we're we're in alignment with... If the board is in alignment with this position, it's like research it but don't get the funding. That I feel comfortable with That. Overall. That is how I read it and I will also just add that in the greater explanation

in the voting delegates guide it says pause the mandate not the mission. Funding must continue for districts that are ready to act now and our district is thankfully due to the hard work of everyone on the administrative team especially Assistant Superintendent DePaul and her team and everyone else who managed to make all of the numbers work here. We we clearly are because we have the program. We have rolled it out continually over the last couple years. So to vote to support this, don't think would impact us but it would allow us or would allow the state to actually conduct a feasibility study, which is what we asked for before the arbitrary number the governor handed down, which we're grateful for. And I I know our providers are grateful for and our families are grateful for, but it was kind of a universally arbitrary number in my opinion.

Just on on the... I I just wanna reiterate, what, Ana mentioned around AI, policy or recommended resolutions fourteen, seventeen, and 23 that have to do with AI and state regulation around AI, specifically the opt out, the educator of record, and the AI foil to data mine. I mean, I think they are... I'm glad that is is supporting them and that we potentially will too because of, I think, the the potential negative impacts that that that these could have on on districts. I had one question on resolution nine, which is a foil specific one, which, I guess, would allow districts to charge reasonable fees for foils that are meant for commercial purposes, which I think, understanding that, district offices are inundated with foil requests and, you know, we know that FOIL requests should be go... Should... You know, FOILs are important, and, the public should have access to information. But when it comes to... For commercial purposes,

we know that those are increasing and and putting a lot of burden on on district offices. And so just a very kind of technical logistical question is how workable... So say that is enacted, how workable is it for us to be able to identify when foils are gonna be used for commercial purposes and, and for us to potentially implement a fee structure?

On this. But, generally, we have, an email address and a company. Sometimes... Now the term commercial purposes. So sometimes it's just to collect data for various groups, not necessarily for marketing, but just for informational purposes. And then we have some that are probably getting the information and selling it or producing, vendor lists for people about eligible schools that are doing construction projects. So go market to them. I would think we should be able to ask if it's for commercial purposes. And if so, it depends. It's very hard to quantify because if it involves extensive computer work and, editing and auditing and redacting, those things take a lot of time and a lot of money. So I guess we could establish an hourly rate to cover that, but it's difficult because you're talking about whether we're using our highest level tech engineer or we're using our attorney or we're using,

a regular staff member. It's not easy to quantify, but it can be done. And I think that it would limit some of the burden that we have on the district office and on other district clerks around the county. They are getting exorbitant. And now with AI, we are getting multiple foils, almost identical but just slightly different from the same organization, just from different individuals in the organization. And we have to respond to each of them the same way.

Mhmm. At the meeting, the... It was it it was discussed how it might be challenging to totally make sure that somebody's a commercial entity and, you know, people could fake Mhmm. Things all the time. And then one of the things that was kind of added to this or the series of the FOIL recommendation is is actually being able to charge for legal fees, the legal review of it. So I think, like, my sense of the discussion was, like, this might be imperfect, but, hopefully, it'll be a deterrent Mhmm. To slow some of this down, at least offset some of the expenses that we are having. And and, you know, we were clear that if it's for an individual, you know, absolutely, we need to do that. But if it's for a commercial purpose, for somebody to just prove their business model, that's a that's a different category.

Well, I would I would hope it wouldn't be a deterrent to documents, but I would hope it would be an... It would offset our cost is what I would hope, because the true nature of FOIL is to, allow freedom have access to these documents but it does come at like a huge amount of cost and energy and resource.

A lot of times all of the information is available on our website but they just want us to put it in a nice package for them. But can we not direct them to our website? We we did recently get word from our counsel that we can direct them to the website. But if they're asking for a number of different things, we kind of have to route them

to the appropriate place. Yeah. Because my understanding was that if it's readily... I'm sorry. I don't mean to do that. My understanding is if it's readily available information, like, don't have to reproduce our entire policy manual. We can direct them to, board docs. Right.

Correct. And, the last word that we got from counsel was that we could do that, but we couldn't just say if they ask for 20 things,

it's all on our website. Right. You have to direct them specifically to specific areas. Well, that could be one way of offsetting. I'm sorry, Greg, as I look at you. That could be one way of but it doesn't diminish the time and the resources that you have to of district personnel in terms of responding to that.

And also a lot of times they'll ask for information that is on the website, but they'll ask for two things to be added to it. And those two things may not be things that are easily added to to whatever that is. So in those instances, you have to really just completely recompile a report.

Got it. I I... I'm... I know we wanna kinda wrap this up, but I just have to ask this because I don't still completely understand the end of our conversation on resolution 27. So what is the... What is our proposed vote on that resolution?

What are you all proposing? Otherwise, I'll call I'll call a thumbs up, thumbs down. I... Again, I... I'm I'm confused by the the language in it. I mean, I don't think we should pause it because I think the best way to kill a a a policy is to study it to death. Right? So if we say we're gonna pause it and study it, well, how long is that gonna go on for? Mean, universal pre k isn't a new thing.

That's my personal opinion, but I'm not speaking for the board. So Well I I don't know enough. You know? So We'll use our thumbs to speak for the board. The last thing I'll read is off of the resolutions committee recommendation, which is, again, because, like, so that we all are operating with the same information. I know, again, we see merchants. The resolutions committee of the New York State School Boards Association says while the committee saw potential value in a study, they ultimately were concerned that a pause in implementation could give cost either delay... To either... To cause either a delay or reduction in current funding for UPK. Such a change in funding could have an adverse impact on districts currently offering UPK programs such as ours as well as an impact in high need communities. In addition, the, the DEI committee of the New York State School Boards Association resolutions committee, which looks at those questions from a different lens, also opposes proceeding with this. So both the resolutions committee

and that subcommittee are opposing moving this forward. So I just would like to understand what the recommendation is here if there is a recommendation. Otherwise, we can look at our thumbs. Board if you want. Like, my my my

recommendation would be to support NISPA not recommending this policy for adoption. So that means we're opposing the policy? We are opposing the policy. I am... My... That's my recommendation if you wanted to individually

pull everybody. I think we're in agreement. It's just that, like I said, this... I've gone through this, like, little thing about the, like, the s's under the proposed not recommend. It's like the double negative that Jake referred to. It's a little bit confusing. So I'm just asking in, like, human people terms. Our vote is opposed on this. Is that correct?

I think it's... Yes. We agree to not recommend. I wanna get a say Yeah. Obvious.

When it's time to vote, you're gonna select oppose is what you're saying?

We're supporting No. Because this was recommendations.

No. No. No. No. No. No, guys. So when when you get the resolution... I'm sorry. It's like I'm not trying to belabor this. When the resolution pops up on your screen, you get, like, a little pop up window, and you have two choices. You get to choose support or you get to choose oppose. This is all explained in the delegate guide. So we're confirming that this board is opposing opposing this resolution. So we're in agreement with NISPA. NISPA. And we're in agree... Okay. Got it. It's... Double negatives are

against the rules for a very good reason. They're very confusing. So thank you. Sorry. But I will just add the thoroughness of this because my brain's getting twisted. Think that that's what they're talking about. Yeah. I will just add as a caveat that if this resolution for whatever reason passes, I do support a feasibility study and this... The passing of this resolution would not impact our district.

I feel the need to say that. It wouldn't except for if the funding gets taken away, is exactly what the res... I'm sorry. I disagree because I think that's what the resolutions committee is flagging is that talking about it and thinking about it and looking at studies could then actually provide a further impetus for that funding to go away.

But I also don't wanna come from a position where we're going to oppose actually gathering information back to this because last year when I did a deep dive as an individual trust... All of this, there was a gap. There was a huge gap in understanding what the actual cost was, what the future of it was, how it would be funded going forward because right now we're waiting for the transition when it's going to fall to districts. Right? That was the concern from the school district standpoint was, okay. Now they're going to fund it or they're funding it and the the funding allowed for it was so arbitrary. They were arbitrary numbers. They weren't asking for costs or anything like that. It was basically based on when you decided to enter the program. And then all of a sudden, the funding was there. There was no additional information. There was no additional study or anything like that. So I do think that there is a lack of planning in terms of how you're going to incrementally turn this over to districts because we don't believe that we're going to, in perpetuity, forever get $10,000

per pupil from the state for UPK. That's the reality of it. So I do think that there needs to be... And this is me speaking as an individual, some type of feasibility. I don't want that to ever impact our program here. My understanding from this resolution is that it would not right now because we have a program that's running and in play, but I understand your concern. But I I do feel the need to say that I think that there still is the need to study this, to understand the feasibility of it, and to also be very responsible in in... From the state's perspective and when they are going to start requiring districts to include this in their budget and not just continue to take money that it has been arbitrarily given from the state. That's my fiscal responsibility as a trustee to the district.

Yeah. I mean, it's like I I am reluctantly going this because I understand why the the the... What's probable about not going along with it, but I am very concerned that it's going to leave a lot of districts in a pickle.

Okay. And at the end of the day, what's our vote? Opposed. Okay. Got it. Great. Just so that there's clarity for everybody. Okay. So I think we're ready to close this discussion then unless there are further questions from trustees.

I wanna thank everyone for participating in a robust conversation regarding, the NISPA, annual meeting. And, again, I wanna thank, both trustee Day and trustee Samuels for participating in all of the conversations and for conveying the information back to the committee and for, all of my trustees and their input and and and definitely the district because we loved hearing your perspective today, on that in in our hearty discussion. And good luck to you, trustee Samuels, during the virtual meeting on October 14. We look forward to hearing how... What the outcome was. Yes.

And training. Let us know if you need training, and I will turn it back over. And thank you also to the policy committee for basically doing double the committee work this year as is another one of our committees because of our consolidation. So we know that you have had a hefty agenda and a lot on your plate. Thank you to everybody. And, again, thank you for the discussion. I think it's helpful. I know it takes a lot of time, but this is the work that we do, and this is the organization that we count on to legislate for, to to advocate for these issues with the state legislature.

Moving into item 4.1, our... I'm sorry. Item four... Yeah. It's 4.1. Approval of our consent agenda, be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the agreement for... Sorry. Consent agenda, the approval of the consent agenda. I'm on the wrong thing. 4.1. Be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the consent agenda items as listed.

So moved. Second.

On the question. I guess I have two questions. Question number one is, for item 4.7, special education agreement for services. We just wanna flag because this is something that came up that this is a contract that we're actually approving that is from a prior year. There was a delay in paperwork submission not on the part of our school district. And so, we are actually paying, we're... Sorry. We're approving an agreement for services for the prior school year. I will just note, Denise, that the, the executive content has dropped out of this, so that does need to be restored for perpetuity for us. And then, item 4.5 facility use fee waiver. I think we had a discussion about this prior. But just a quick question that the, that the waiver and the waiver for the, CHAMP event, that is an after school event. Is that correct? Correct. Great. Those are my only questions.

I just was one... I could look at this on at another time too, but I... In case you know offhand, the facility use fees for this year, are those the same as last year, or is there any?

And I also wanna thank the business office for the nice, clear, and concise facility use fees document that you all created because now everything's very clearly itemized, and it's also very clear, for organizations what the, what the rates are for custodial services and what that covers. So I think this is a nice, you did a nice job of putting this all together in a way that's very understandable by our community members and by us. So thank you for that effort. If there are no further questions, I'll call for a vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Moving into the closing of our meeting item 5.1,

hearing of the public. Again, we'll open it up for comments from the public. Please, limit yourself to three minutes and address the board.

Ed Riley from, Truesdale Drive. I'd like to recommend to the people that are attending the state and regional school board associations is that as seen in the past, there's a tendency to get wrapped around the axle and what these associations do. I'm sure you pay dues. That'd be interesting to know how much dues you pay To make recommendations to a legislature, consists of, 65 senators and a 150 assemblymen, when the best thing you can do is find out what your recommendations are, make sure they're 10, and go to your net local state senator or assemblyman and tell them what you want. You can go there to get the temperature of the water, but you don't need to be told what kind of fish swim there. I'm off the subject. One of my biggest concerns is representing children, unborn children specifically, is that school districts and colleges over the last forty years have developed an environmental policy and philosophy that hates children.

You're in a children business. You lack children. You've gone through lack of children and an abundance of children in your schools. Yet your in... Your environmental policies, environmental teachings, and your scientific teachings teach a hatred of children, of unborn children, such as it is that The United States has the lowest birth rate in the history of recorded statistics. Following the Chinese, which are even in a worse position, where they admit to missing 20,000,000 girls, and India admits to missing 70,000,000, which is... Let me tell you, it's an understatement. You should look at the kind of stuff that you teach in these environmental classes and find out why the pet section of this food store is five times as big as the baby in diaper section. Item two. 37% of a major political party think that it's okay to use violence or kill an opposing politician. 60% of that same, party think it's

it's okay. I... You know, I'm not gonna be concerned with it. And we've had a system where at least in this... Terms of this president, there'd been three attempts, assassination attempts on his life, one of which the latest being Iranian, but two, homegrown. One, a kid who just graduated from high school, and then a large, a significant individual in political and social circles was assassinated on a public university campus one year ago today. This kid is a product of a public high school, was in college for like one and a half years, and thinks it's okay to assassinate somebody disagrees with. And then where did this come from? It did not pop out of nowhere. It's being taught somewhere. It's being encouraged somewhere. You should look into it. Thank you. Oh, by the way, this is the consent agenda for the for the village of Croton. I suggest you expand your consent agenda because when you look at the agenda half the time, I don't know what you're talking about.

Thank you. Anyone else to speak for the public? K. Then we'll move into item 5.2, polling of the board. Any comments or questions from the board?

Yes. I have one final comment. I'm sorry. Just in going back to the facilities use, I just did want to, for purposes of informing the public, always give a shout out to our custodians because when we have custodial staff on the weekends or supporting any of those building use fee generating, events, there is always a custodial person there who is an actual first responder, who is wearing a, walkie talkie, who has direct contact with our police and our fire, and, who is there for the protection of our students and our public. So I always wanna just give that shout out and let people know that it's not just, like, an added on. There is actually, like, a safety measure there involved and they are trained and they are professionals and we are so lucky to have them. So that's all.

Thank you, Ana, for highlighting that. Appreciate it. Anyone else? Okay. We'll move into item 5.3, next board of education meeting. Our next work session will be held on October 15, 06:30 here at the library. Topic to be announced in our next business meeting coming up on November 5, again, at 06:30PM at the library. Now the board will enter into executive session, be it resolved. Item 5.4 be it resolved that the of education hereby enters into executive session to discuss the employment of a person... Particular person or persons. After this executive session, we will promptly leave and then adjourn the meeting.

So moved. Second.

On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you everyone for joining us this evening, and, we will, head into executive session. See you in a couple weeks. We can come back into