CHUFSD Board of Education Work Session 10/15/26

Okay. Good evening, and welcome to the members of our community and the audience watching livestream and listening at a later date. I'd like to call to order the 10/15/2026

work session of the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District's board of education. Oh, do I have to move it? It's just procedural, guys. Thank you, though. We're not gonna... Not not a resolution. Not not yet. So we'll move we'll move right into item 1.2, which is the approval of the agenda at which time we will be happy to take your, movement in a second. So approval of the agenda be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the agenda as presented. On the question? Right. Just a note to members of the public that we have reordered tonight's agenda to open with our independent audit report, which will then follow with our regular internal reports. So on that basis, all in favor? I. Opposed? Abstaining? Motion carries. I will now turn it over to assistant superintendent for business, Denise Harrington Cohen, to introduce item 2.1, the independent audit report.

Good evening. So we've just recently completed our independent external audit, with the help of, Samantha Nardo and Jeffrey Shaver. Samantha was our lead auditor for this review and she was overseen by our engagement partner, Geoffrey Shaver with O'Connor Davies. Our report was reviewed last week by the audit committee along with the management response letter and corrective action plan. It was I will tell you that working with this team was fantastic. Audits can be very stressful and cumbersome. There's a lot of intricate details and it was really very smooth and efficient. So I'd like to thank them. I'd also like to just recognize Barry Gamson, our Treasurer, who is the man behind the scenes and Kelly Luntz, our Assistant Business Manager and the whole business office team, Sue Camilleri, Risa Ross, Thomas Thomas, Alex Bernicker, I think we got them all, and of course Denise Bisaccia who is my right hand person.

Audit outcomes are really built on thousands of decisions and transactions that occur behind the scenes all year long. It's not one event. So, that is a credit to my team and we are very fortunate to have them working for the district, extremely talented and committed team. So thank you. And with that, I will pass it over to Jeffrey and Samantha.

Thank you. Thank you for the introduction.

Again, my name is Jeff Shaver, partner with PKF O'Connor Davies. Happy to be here to present the results of the audit for the fiscal year ended 06/30/2026. As Denise mentioned, we did meet with the audit committee last week. We went through everything in much greater detail. For this presentation tonight, I'm just gonna try to keep it brief and just give some high level, points that we, you know, that we discussed at the committee. On display is the, financial statements and supplementary information. I'll stay mostly on this document. I'd like to start off by showing you the page... First page after the table of contents. This is the independent auditor's report. We have issued what's known as an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. Sometimes that's referred to as a clean opinion, and that's the most favorable opinion that the school district can receive. What that means is the financial statements are fairly stated in all material respects.

We also talk about in the auditors... In the independent auditors report, management's responsibility, which is the presentation of the financial statements and also the design and implementation of, internal controls relevant to the financial statement preparation. We, as auditors, are primarily engaged to, render this opinion that I'm presenting to you here. We're obtaining reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatement whether due to error or fraud, and also issue this report that I'm sharing with you now. The audit was, I think, a smooth process that Denise alluded to. There were no, what we call, material weaknesses in internal controls noted. We didn't note any unusual transactions that we would need to make, the board aware of. No disagreements with management during the conduct of the audit. The books and records are... I would say are in very good condition.

We didn't have any journal entries to report, to the board as part of our... As part of the work we did. There were some very minor insignificant entries that fell below what, you know, what what we'd be required to actually report. So overall, books and records in very good condition. We received all the information that we requested from management, and there were no unanswered questions or loose ends that, you know, that are concerning in any way. Also, I'd like to thank the business office for their cooperation. This was my first year as the audit partner. I think I may have ruffled a few feathers. I'm not sure. But I'm here. We're done. We finished on time, and I think I think it went overall.

I was pleased, so I'm I'm happy for that. I will just say that Jeff is extremely

technical and we love that. We... Well, I would say 90% of our staff loves that. Barry and I love that. So we really appreciated all of the value that, you shared with us.

With that said, I'd like to show you some financial results, and I'm gonna skip back here. Hopefully, I can find it for you. The detailed stuff is in the back. And I know, hopefully, everyone can see that. I can't see it. But this is the general fund budgetary comparison schedule. It did change, slightly from the previous year based on a new accounting standard that the district was required to adopt. The first column is the original budget as adopted by the board. The only changes to that original budget would be open purchase orders from the previous year rolling automatically into the original budget. Final budget encompasses any transfers or amendments that were approved by the board during the year. Third column is the variance between the original budget and final budget. So any changes to the budget would show in that third column. That is the new column that... That's as a result of this new accounting standard.

Third... I'm sorry. Fourth column is the actual amounts, revenues, and expenditures. Fourth column is encumbrances or open purchase orders. That's a reserve of the current year budget. They will automatically roll forward into next year's budget where you spend them down. The final column is the variance between the final budget actual less the encumbrances. You can see on the top of the page from a revenue point of view, the original budget call for revenues of 57,300,000. The actual revenues, 59,500,000. So you collected greater than your budget anticipated by approximately $2,200,000. Also, a new requirement under the the accounting standard I mentioned is, in the pages following a description of some of these significant variances. So I will not gonna read them all to you, but just so you know that descriptions on some of these significant variances are on the pages that follow. You'll see descriptions on things like,

use of money and property, which was 900,000 greater than the budget. That's may... Mostly due to the interest income earned greater than anticipated. Interest rates stayed relatively high, and some of that some of that, interest earned is restricted by nature and really should not be budgeted because it's not for general spending purposes. From the appropriation side of the budget, expenditures before transfers were 60,443,000. It was revised upward to 60,888,000. The actual spend, 55,000,000. After purchase orders or, open purchase orders of 1,500,000, you had an underspending of your budget by approximately $4,400,000. So you did better than your budget on the revenue side and the expenditure side. The total budgetary variance was the number on the far right column all the way to the bottom, $6,600,000.

Keep in mind, budgetary variance does not equal actual surplus or actual increase in fund balance.

When the board adopts a budget, it it often will use surplus or fund balance to balance that budget. That's a planned use of the of the fund balance. So at the beginning of the year, you essentially have an unbalanced budget. You're planning on using some some of your savings, your surplus to to balance that out. If you spend every dollar in your budget and collect every dollar of revenues, your fund balance would come down by that appropriation of fund balance. That figure in your original budget column was $4,700,000. The district used 1,200,000 of its reserves to balance the budget in addition to 2,500,000 of unrestricted fund balance and also, $1,000,000 of open purchase orders carrying forward from the previous year, bringing you to that $4,700,000. The $4,700,000 was was revised to 6.25, which is the balancing figure in the final budget when the district, authorizes use of your reserves. Some of them are voter proposition,

capital reserves. That's a use... Additional use, of your reserves... A fund balance. So that's additional planned use of fund balance. The increase... Total increase to the budget was $1,000,005.48. So in the final budget column, the anticipated use of fund balance was 6,252,000. The $6,000,002.52 compared to the budgetary surplus plus your encumbrances gives you your actual surplus or increase in fund balance. This year, the result is an increase to your fund balance of 1,870,000. The general fund starts the year at 25,500,000, ends the year at 27,350,000. So, certainly, a positive year financially for the district. I'd like to share with you what that fund balance represents. On this page, this is all the governmental funds. We're focusing just on the general fund, first column. And, again, at the bottom, you'll see the total fund balance of the general fund, 27,350,000. The vast majority of your fund balance is

what we refer to as restricted fund balance, $20,600,000. Sometimes you refer to those as your reserves. The largest reserve the district has is its capital projects reserves. There's actually several in there. $10,700,000. Keep in mind that's a restrictive reserve. The voters have to approve first establishing that reserve. They have to approve again, when you when you try to spend it down. So, restrictive in that way has to be approved by the voters twice. But it is it is a prudent use of surplus funds to be able to put it towards specific capital projects as when you use it towards a capital project, you don't have to use debt. You don't have to pay the interest. So certainly a prudent thing to do. Your other reserves, you have some some set aside for tax tertiary, workers' compensation, ERS retirement contributions, TRS retirement contributions, employee benefit accrued liability or payouts for employees when they resign or retire,

and a repair reserve, and finally, an insurance reserve, 1,400,000. So the total of those restricted funds, $20,600,000. Once again, there's some of these restrictions or reserves were used to balance the 2627 budget. And if you add them up, where it says four subsequent years expenditures, you'll see, they add up to $1,200,000, same amount as last year. The unrestricted fund balance used to balance 2627 shows in the assigned category. That number is 2,716,000. So total use of surplus for next year's bud... I should say this year's budget. For me, it's next year. Total use of fund balance, twenty six twenty seven, will be the 3,900,000 plus your open purchase orders at 1,500,000. So when I come next year, hopefully, to present or when Sam does it on my behalf, should... That that starting balancing figure would be that 5,400,000 total use of fund balance of $26.27. What is left over is referred to as

unassigned fund balance. New York State restricts that to be no more than 4% of the next year's budget. You're currently at the maximum. That number is 2,510,000, and that's your total fund balance, 27,350,000. The last thing I wanted to mention, the district has, almost completed a capital project from several years ago. It was funded with bond anticipation notes. There's also... The district's been funding, bus purchases with bond anticipation notes, much that portion is much smaller. There's 39,800,000 of bond anticipation notes outstanding, related to that, mostly related to that capital project. That, at some point, will need to be converted to long term financing, and it'll become, you know, a general obligation bond. The actual bonds outstanding for the district, relatively minor. One bond outstanding for 3,600,000, but that... You know, when the the larger bond anticipation notes get converted, that'll certainly certainly increase.

That's all the, information I wanted to cover for this evening. If there's anything you'd like me to go into further detail on or any questions that the board has, I'd be happy to try and answer.

So just turning it over to the chair of our audit committee, to see if there was anything that came up in your preview of this that you wanted to highlight for us, and then we'll turn it over to the full board for questions.

Nothing really came up from the audit committee meeting that that wasn't already discussed by by Jeff. The one thing that we did mention that I'd like to mention to the full board and and the administration as well is while you look at the savings and you see $6,000,000, not all of it is recurring. But it does still... There's a portion of it that we do... I think we should enter or at least plan for some of it to continue. And does that create an opportunity for us as we think about the budget for fiscal year twenty seven, twenty eight about where we wanna make some investments, in in our district, whether it's through programmatic investments or, know, PPS or wherever. But it's just something that we should think about as a board and the administration as we're planning on putting the budget together for 2728.

And that is already happening at the building level.

So other questions from the board? Yeah.

Hi, Jeff. I'm I'm Jacob, and I was on the audit committee with with Omar Theo. So thanks for your time and for the presentation. I just had something I wanted to unpack. I think it came up during the audit committee meeting, and then tonight you spoke about it. It's just helping me and and the public sort of understand some of these, like, fund balances and and restricted, unrestricted, and sort of, like, how that money can be used, where it can go, like, sort of, you know, what what can be done with it, what can't be done with it. Because there's lot of different kinds of reserves, a lot of different kind of balances, and it seems like it all gets treated differently. So on page 16 of the document, it says budget includes the appropriation of 2.716925 of general fund balance and 1,200,000 in reserves. So is that the appropriated monies? Is that the rollover monies? We're just not quite sure how that works.

And is that a a significant amount for a district of our size to be using from reserves and from that fund balance that we don't... Do we know what it was spent on? Or just sort of, like, your assessment of that of that figure. So that is

when I was on the fund balance chart, and I was talking about the amounts used to balance 2627 budget. That's what that statement was referring to. So some of your restricted funds, the reserves, were used as part of the 2627 budget. So that was the $1,200,000 of your restricted funds. It's... I would say it's common. I think it's recommended for districts to show that they're using their reserves towards the operating budget. That's what they're there for to help offset costs. I would go further to say if the district has a positive year financially, it would be in a position where it could replenish some of those reserves. So you may allocate 1,200,000 of your reserves if you have another good year in 2627, you may be able to put that right back into the restriction. We see that pretty commonly at other districts that we audit. The 2,700,000 is from unrestricted, so that's not part of your restricted fund balance. Okay?

So that's just at the discretion of the board. This is what we have left. You can't keep more than 4%. So if you're happy with your reserves, you end up having to give it back. We consider it a give back to the taxpayer. It's like reducing the tax levy. Because if you didn't have those use of reserves or use of surplus in your budget, that would result in an increase to the tax levy, which, you know, would be a little... Which would be... Could be high if if if you weren't able to use those reserves. Is it a high amount? I would answer that question by looking at your budget to actual that we talked about.

The concerning part about appropriated fund balance is when you're not able to regenerate it every year. So if you're appropriating, in this case, about $4,000,000, but you don't achieve budgetary surplus of $4,000,000, guess what? Your fund balance is gonna start to drop.

And if you... And if that... Local governments can get themselves into a pickle by doing that year after year, you're gonna start draining your fund balance. So the amount of it doesn't matter so much to me. It's whether or not you can generate that much in surplus. Because the the goal, I think, should be roughly breakeven. You're not... You know? Mhmm. You don't want to totally drain your fund balance, but you don't wanna add to it unnecessarily either. That might be a goal. It never happens exactly that way because just because it it won't. So I look to... Yes. It is a significant number that... That's been used to balance... A fund balance that's been used to balance the budget. But from... I don't have much history here. But Mhmm. From what I can tell, they're they're... It's not concerning because you're generating the savings to offset.

So it's something you need to look at over time to determine... You know? Okay. I was just trying to understand those different sort of reserves and everything, but I guess it would require a little bit more of a look back to see. But as long as there's nothing that you think is concerning and it's it's pretty appropriate, then You know, if you start seeing... It would show itself in decreases in your fund balance.

You know? Decreases in the fund balance. Year after year decreases in fund balance. Some of that caution, some of that could be planned use. Like, if the voters authorized you to spend all that capital reserve money, that would be a drain on your fund balance, but that's different. That's like a nonrecurring onetime. Yes. We know we're gonna use 10,000,000. Your fund balance could drop 10,000,000 in one year, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. You've planned for that. Mhmm. So when it comes to your recurring operating expenditures, you're looking for drops in fund balance because of that.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

To add a little bit more more color to that, so the way we've been using the fund balance, it's it's really trying to find the right balance between increasing the tax levy and utilizing our our fund balance. So we've had a couple... At least two years that I'm recalling top of my head where we didn't get to the max tax levy that's allowed because we're able to tap into our unrestricted reserve. Other

questions from other trustees

on what was presented so far or any of the, attached documents, which just for the benefit of the public, all of the, all of the presentation materials are available through our board docs agenda for the community to look at as well. Questions? Any other comments? Otherwise, I... Just I'll end with mine. I know some years, actually, as part of this presentation, we get a little bit of an explanation about any sort of corrective action that's needed. Could you speak to that just really quickly? I know you've gone over it a little bit with the audit committee, so maybe not granularly, but just a top level overview of what you were asking the district to take a look at, please.

Findings, as related to the audit were... I would consider them minor in nature. We did discuss them in detail at the audit committee, and they relate to primarily the extra classroom activity funds where you... We saw, some deposits that were not made timely, which is commonly found at extra classroom activity funds. It's the nature of of the operations. Many people have their hands in it, so we we do see that sometimes. Some some special purpose accounts or some of your miscellaneous, you call it a miscellaneous special revenue fund. Some of the accounts in there didn't have any activity, so the ask is to look at those, follow-up, and dispose of them prop... You know, depending on what the nature is. And, you know, you just don't wanna leave those type of funds just dormant for a long period of time. You wanna do something, with those funds. And, one item on segregation of duties that's already been corrected

about the purchasing clerk having the ability to change additional, things within the accounting system. I understand it's already been corrected, so, hopefully, that just goes away for next year. That's really all we had. It was pretty pretty minor in nature, I would say. Yeah. No. I think that that's true. And just to confirm, the the,

the the first two items that you highlighted, I think, have been part of part of this review kind of annually because they are common issues that the district also has every year been able to address promptly. So I think we're very happy to learn that, you know, we're on par with sort of what what the findings have been in previous years and that we have a timeline for actioning those things. And between the business office and the audit committee, I think we'll be able to wrap up those things as required.

Yeah. Please. So to add about extracurricular activities. K. So we had changed our policy Mhmm. To define activity as both financial and nonfinancial. Right. Right? So a club could meet. There could be some activity on a club but doesn't necessarily need to generate... Collect any fees. The way the audit is conducted is looking purely at a financial perspective. So we have to kind of reconcile that going forward. But, again, to... As Jeff described, like, most most districts have this finding in there as well. So this is gonna be just an ongoing conversation we're gonna have.

And I I just would add that, yes, this is a common finding because the individuals performing the functions within the student activity funds and extra classroom activity funds are generally not financial people. So they'll collect money and not realize the importance of getting it deposited immediately. So we've developed a training program for the staff and for our student representatives so that they can be more aware of what is required in supervising those funds.

And then in regard to the scholarship comment, so we have a number of scholarships that are probably five to ten years old. These are scholarships that were established. They cannot be refunded because the individuals have already received a tax benefit from it. Some of these individuals have since passed. So to legally release that money is very difficult. They... We would need to get a legal sign off by someone who is in charge of the estate or... Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's a long process. It's a long process. Demonstrate that you have reached to the, reached out to the donor or their descendants, extended family, anybody that has related to the estate. And if you are unsuccessful, then you have to petition the con... The controller for a new estate to release the restriction.

Which is not a It's a it's a good thing when you're talking about funds that were donated to the district for a particular purpose that were not used because of one thing or another.

So, I'm gonna ask a question that you may not know the answer to with this. But, as you were talking about the distinction between, you know, an active club based on our policy could be, you know, having activities not... But not doing, anything... Having any financial activity, and we've heard that this is, like, a common, like, challenge, you know, with school districts. Is... Do we have a sense if our... Because we're planning on doing a policy audit anyway. Do we have a do we have a sense if it's because we have a policy that's distinctly different from other districts or just the nature of the beast? We we changed the policy

intentionally to say that it was... That activity was not only financial but club activity. Also, because clubs are very cyclical. Sometimes they'll run for two years and then they'll have a dry spell, so we'll kind of hold them at bay and then the next year, they'll regenerate some interest. So this comment is... Jeff, how... What would you say? This is in the majority of districts? I would say majority for sure. So this is this is a common comment for most districts districts because

of the sick... Cyclical nature of clubs. So we we did align the policy with what we believe is our practice,

but it's still is a requirement that they report on it.

Right. Yeah. No. And that policy change was actually made in response to Yes. The last year's audit and actually previous years. So it's been at the forefront. I think also just, you know, just, again, for the benefit of the public and for folks who are new on the policy committee this year, the same thing with regards to the scholarships because it is... Again, scholarships when they are endowed, if there's not a student for whom it's appropriate, that scholarship then cannot cannot actually be offered. And so I think we we have done or we are in the middle of embarking on sort of understanding what those funds are overall. And then once we have that information, it'll come back, I believe, to policy and for us as a board and administrative team to sort of figure out what the solution is. But this is... Honestly, it's like it's part of the it's just part of the the annual work of of looking at those numbers.

Other questions from the board in terms of this, presentation? Anything else you'd like to add, Denise?

I don't think so. Okay.

Steve? I just wanted to add, in addition to thanks to the business department and and to the the team from the... From p o... PFK O'Connor Davies. An audit opinion like this doesn't happen by accident. Right? It happens, in large part due to really strong, fiscal oversight and leadership from our business leader. And so I just wanna thank publicly Denise for your outstanding continued leadership over this summer.

And on behalf of the board, I would agree because, Denise, you have a you have an excellent way of making things that are, sometimes above my ability to understand very clear. So always appreciate that. And I know our our fellow, board trustees who are not as versed in reading budgets and things like that also appreciate that. And then also to the entire business office, and thanks to everyone who's here tonight, Barry, Denise. I I don't think Kelly is here, but to everybody who, participated in this, thank you so much for the time and the effort and for keeping our books clean, running in good order, and making sure everyone gets paid. It's really important. So we appreciate it. And our audit committee. Yes. Thank you. Commitment. And thank you again, Geoff and Samantha and to at PKF O'Connor Davies for, for your work and your, continued, relationship with us. We appreciate it. Thanks for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Have a good night, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

So we'll give Jeff and Samantha a sec... A second to, pack up, and then we'll move into the rest of our meeting. Barry, have a wonderful evening. Thank you for coming. Thanks again. Okey doke. So with that, we will move into item 3.1, starting our report section with apparently me, president's report. Give me a second to get into that. Okay. So I will begin, just with some quick highlights of tonight's meeting agenda as you all saw. The board has just accepted. Oh, wait. Actually, we haven't accepted. We gotta go back. I highlighted this on my piece of paper so I wouldn't forget, and I forgot. So let me go back actually to the previous item because in fact, we have to, we have to actually take an action on this. So I'm gonna go back to item 2.1. The recommended action be it resolved that the board of education hereby accepts the external audit report prepared by PKF O'Connor Davies LLP with corrective action plans for the year ending 06/30/2026

as presented.

Second.

On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you. I did highlight that, and I still forgot. Every year, there's something that I learn. Okay. Moving now into the next item, president's report. So now I can begin with the highlights of tonight's meeting agenda. We just accepted and approved, the external audit report and corrective recommendations presented by our auditor, and we're now gonna move into our regular reports followed by the district's presentation of 2025, '26 student achievement data. As part of the board's ongoing effort to engage with their community with transparency and timeliness, we will be convening work sessions throughout this school year related to our governance function. Per New York State law, education law, and our own board policy twenty one ten, the primary responsibilities of the board are to adopt policies to guide the professional staff,

establish goals for the school system, appraise the results of efforts made to achieve these goals, and to perform the ministerial functions required by law and state regulations. During the first quarter of this term, we've established board goals to set the priorities for Croton-Harmon Schools, collaborated with the administrative team on district goals, and reviewed building level goals related to the district's instructional program and student experience. Tonight, we're going to continue the program we brought back last year of reviewing together in public student achievement data to fulfill our oversight role, to continue to communicate the efficacy of the district's instructional program, and to inform the board and district's shared priorities and budgeting imperatives in the year ahead. So before we get to that, I know, individual trustees are gonna share some of our community updates through their board reports, and I know superintendent Walker has a lot to say about what's been going on in the district and the community. The one thing I will mention is because I came straight from work, unlike my colleague, Betsy Laird, I am not wearing my Harry Chapin memorial shirt, but I know, superintendent will be will be reminding us all of the upcoming,

event that's coming up on Sunday, and we'll talk about that after. So over to you, sir. Great. Thank you, Anamika. I'm pleased as always to have the opportunity to share a few of the important events,

that have taken place in our district over the past few days and to highlight some of the important family connection opportunities led by some of our administrators, and staff members. First, held its parent evening for the strings program last night where Sarah O'Brien and Sarah Taxter collaborated to engage parents in interactive sessions designed to provide a truly hands on glimpse into what their young musicians are learning and how to support them at home. One of the highlights... And we were talking to to Sarah Taxter about this earlier. One of the highlights of the evening was activities which asked parents themselves to pick up the instrument, and learn more about posture, how to hold the bow, and care for those instruments. The parents were then taught how to play some sections from the song, into the midnight forest, which is the same song that students will then be performing at their upcoming concert. Sarah Taxers report was that the parents actually sounded pretty good. So, I wanna thank both Sarah's,

for their work in facilitating that event. Also last evening, CHHS hosted high school success, a guide for families, the first of what are two sessions, designed to help families of multilingual learners navigate the high school experience. This was facilitated by high school counselor, miss Moesenthal, and Spanish teacher, Baina. These sessions offer families... Offered families information about graduation requirements, school procedures and processes, and other resources designed to help their children succeed. It's part of a broader school counseling outreach in line with our district's college and career readiness goal, which included the financial aid night, last month in September and the upcoming college symposium on November 18. Also last evening, PVC held a parent coffee on digital citizenship and wellness where Ellen Moskowitz, Maylene Herm, Nicole Kelly, and PVC library media specialist Catherine Morse shared information and engaged families in discussion on topics,

including what digital citizenship is, some discussion points for parents as they help their children remain safe online, and strategies parents can use to help their children engage responsibly in online interactions. On... And shifting gears on the occasion of school board appreciation week on behalf of all Croton-Harmon-Tigers, I wanna take a moment to thank our board for your dedicated service to our district, to devote time from your lives and away from your families to make the lives of other people's children better. That is a remarkable gift that you give to our entire school district community. And on behalf of the entire community, I thank every member of this bunch, for the opportunity to serve alongside you. So happy school board appreciation week. To help you celebrate, we are offering a humble gift, a robust presentation of student achievement data to come shortly. So... Yeah. We knew. We knew.

So sincerely, thank you for the opportunity to serve alongside you in this amazing community. One of the many, many things that makes our school district special is our collective commitment to causes which benefit the people of our community and areas beyond it. In keeping with that important commitment, this Sunday, October 18, we come together and have the honor of hosting the forty sixth annual Harry Chapin Memorial Run Against Hunger, which raises funds to fight hunger and to provide food to children and adults in need locally across The United States and around the world. I wanna take this opportunity to thank race director Mike Gray, former director Jud Ramacher, as well as faculty leaders Brie La Fuente and Jessica Butts. It's an honor to be supporters and collaborators with you in the run against hunger, and we encourage our community to come out and support this fantastic cause on Sunday at the high school.

And finally, I wanna make sure that our community is aware of some of the new communications approaches that we've implemented so far this year pursuant to one of our district goals. Each Thursday, including a short while ago, we share an update on school district events, which we are calling the Superintendent's Weekly Connection. In addition, this past Friday, we debuted our first monthly e newsletter designed to provide a quick overview to our community of how the work of our schools is aligning with our district goals, board goals, and the vision map. We look forward to sharing a new edition of this e newsletter every month continuing next month in November. Additionally, we'll be creating and distributing a hard copy newsletter to our community twice this year with the first edition scheduled for next month. Those newsletters will provide a more detailed look into how our district's work is translating into the student experience

and will be in addition to the annual budget newsletter, which is distributed this spring. Thank you again to our new partners, Croton Bozinski, and Emily who's here this evening, for your work in helping us to continue to improve our community engagement efforts. Thank you.

So before we before we move into board reports, any board comments or questions?

I was really disappointed not to be able to join the strings night last night, because my son started cello this year and has been having a lot of fun. But I was curious about the engagement with the digital citizens. We know that the partnership between home and school is so important for safe online behavior. So just curious to hear a tiny bit more about parent engagement.

Yeah. In terms of attendance last evening, it was a small but mighty group. It was advertised through through PVC, and I think there were four or five parents there. My understanding was that there was a robust discussion, and we'll be sharing the slides from that, through various communications beginning tomorrow.

And if I understand correctly, this is the first of a few different opportunities to have discussions on this topic throughout the year. Yeah. Okay. It's part of doctor Ma.

Right. Fantastic. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from the board? Well, I'll just repeat, superintendent Walker's call to action. If you cannot run and you cannot walk, you can still cheer. And that's what I'll be doing, although I can walk. But I but I prefer to cheer this year. So I'm gonna be cheering, and, the the sidewalk in front of the high school is the place to be right at the finish line. I hope to see our entire community out there whether it's for pumpkin painting, whether it's for snacks, whether it's for anything to, support this really,

important Croton community cause. So hope to see you all. And we did, include the link to register again in this afternoon's, community update.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Alright. So we'll move now into item 3.3, board reports. We'll start with board committees then move into board, liaison reports. First up is audit.

Audit audit was presented. I think we're gonna meet next in January, February. I think it's not on the calendar yet, but I think I saw, Kelly sent an email, I think. Yeah. February.

Wonderful. Board governance, there's a meeting scheduler out, so we will hopefully be getting our next meeting on the calendar. And we'll be reporting back to the board with a couple of things including... We've talked about this before, but a retreat, fall retreat as well as some key, fall events, that we're hoping that trustees will be able to attend and join both, regional events and also, statewide events upcoming, in about a week and a half, I think, two weeks maybe, is the New York State School Boards Association convention, which is taking place upstate this year. I'm not sure that anyone is going in person, but there's a virtual attendance option which I have signed up for. So I will be sure to fulfill the role of information gatherer and try to, pull out key presentations and other things, and we'll disseminate them via board governance to the rest of the board because it's great information, and we'll all have access to it. So I'm looking forward to that.

For policy, unfortunately, committee chair, Ana Teague, is not able to be here this evening. I don't know if anyone who attended, the last meeting, if there's any, interim update. I don't think there has been. Okay. Great. Then we'll move on to the community advisory committee on technology.

Yep. The community advisory committee met, on Tuesday to go through the 43, community. And the header. Take out the header. I think it's 43. Over 40. Well, so we don't have to disagree on. Over 40 community members responded to the survey, so we're very thankful for their, their willingness to participate and support the work of the district. We are going to be talking about that later in, later today. And, we will be communicating out to the whole... Everybody who, responded shortly.

Sounds great. Thank you for that update. On behalf of the ad hoc committee on hiring retention and tenure, committee chair Theo Oshiro is not able to be here tonight. The committee did meet and has moved forward on, discussions about the tenure timeline, which the board and, district team are in the process of sort of formalizing so that everyone has a sense of what this looks like. And we, began a conversation about our philosophical priorities with regards to hiring and retention with the goal of continuing to inform the, the work of the district as we enter the next school year and the years ahead and eventually, inform policy, as well. So that's where that landed.

I forgot to, add one more thing about the the committee. I know there's a call to... A second call to action that was sent out to to CET. I'd like to personally just reach out to all of our teachers at c... In that building, and ask if they're interested to participate. We would love to have them participate. It's gonna be a lot of work. It's gonna be a lot of important, good work, and, we we really would love their feedback as we progress. So just another shout out for call to action.

Thank you, Omar. We'll move now into liaison reports. And just to keep it logical, I'll start over there with you, Betsy, if you don't mind. You have anything to report? I

did send an email to, mister mister Walker and Carrie Bianchi last week, I believe, after the PTA meeting just celebrating the, nature space because we got to take a nighttime tour with the lights, and it was it was really magical. My daughter actually got her first foray into the garden today and just came home being very excited about bees because her name is busy. She's a busy bee. And so, yeah, that was that was really fantastic, but I feel like that's my only update.

I'm excited for BOOFEST, and we will be there. Okay. So BOOFEST BOOFEST is taking place on Saturday, October 17. I don't have the exact times. I think it's one to four. Yeah. Okay. One to four. And, where is it taking place? It's been a while for me. I'm sorry. It's at the the field behind the CET. On CET Upper Field, from 01:00 to 04:00. And is it rain or shine? I mean, the weather looks good. Think The weather looks good, so I haven't heard anything about any rain date. Yeah. Definitely a busy weekend in Croton this weekend, but that is a top attraction, and it's, one of the thing... One of highlights I noticed, and I believe this is happening, is that there's a cost, costume swap, bring an old costume and exchange your costume, which is something I wish I could have participated in during my CET days. So thank you to the CETPTA for that. There's... I think there's some other sort of, like, recycling thing that was being discussed as well, but that one is the one that stands out. So really great to see the sustainability efforts actually coming to that event as well. Anything else for you?

No? Okay. For me, I'm just trying to think what did I do. Oh, okay. Two things next week. Next week, the, the village bicycle pedestrian committee is convening. And since it's a week that we don't have our board meeting, I will be attending. I am pleased to report that there's always, at the start of the school year, renewed attention to safety and student safety and the safety of our walkers, our bikers, and all the kids going back and forth to school in so many ways. So we should have some, formal things to report after next week's meeting about some improvements that are in the works, to that end. The other thing is is I serve as, one of the... A co liaison with Omar to the PVC Building Planning Council. And I think anyone who's heard me talk about building planning council knows what a big fan I am of this, joint decision making body that, takes place in each of our school buildings. So I was very happy as a,

a parent who's no longer a PVC parent to come back to PVC and meet the parents who are engaging in this work. There's a representative from each of the four grades at PVC. Teachers across, the PVC spectrum, experienced teachers, newer teachers, and our administrators, and we engaged in a really interesting conversation about what the priorities of the school are for this school year, looking at scheduling, looking at instructional programs, looking at overall student life. And, I'm very excited to just continue to have this conversation, especially now that my kids are not there, to really see the work that's taking place and the engagement that parents have. One of the things that the, parent representatives have all committed to is making sure that they're going back and telling other parents in their grade about what's going on and connecting through the PTA as well so that folks really know what's happening,

and know that they have a voice through that, through that body at PTA. So I wanna commend, principal Millian Herm and assistant principal Kelly for just running a really, really, wonderful meeting. It was really lovely and productive and a lot of fun. It also went really long, and nobody wanted to leave. It was great. So that's it. Yeah. Please.

You're jogging my memory. It's been a really long week. I also attended the building planning committee for the CET last week, and it was just the first kickoff. We sort of went over what the committee is for and introduced introduced it it to some of the new members from the community. And then we spent some time deep diving into the shifts that have occurred with the Spanish, the Flesse program and hearing from each of the teachers about how they're adjusting. And what was very interesting to me was how the teachers are finding ways to make connections to the push ins throughout the rest of their curriculum. I thought that that was really lovely. It's making a really holistic stream through their classes. They said that they were initially concerned about how this would displace other instructional time and have ultimately actually been really happy with the change and have seen how the students

have enjoyed it as well. So that ended up taking up the bulk of the time. And I joined virtually, but everyone was very happy to be there in person because Rebecca brought treats from Little Star Pastry. So I will definitely recommend going in person in future. Yeah. Yeah.

Anything from you, Omar?

Yeah. We had a meeting today with the with the village of the many topics that we talked about. We did talk about collaborating with the village around facilities, about busing for activities at at the Cortlandt youth center, and also talked about some additional crosswalks that are gonna be popping up around around the village. Yeah. That's it.

So if you're looking for something to do this weekend in Croton, you can't find anything to do. I attended the village's idea committee on Friday, and they will be having a Hispanic heritage celebration on Saturday, this Saturday at 11:30 in the room in Croton Library. They will have a community offering where you can place names and photographs of your your deceased loved ones at a traditional remembrance altar. They will have a celebration workshop, Afro Peruvian dance, and an interactive workshop for children and families. And they will have a bingo style, Mexican game for a chance to win prizes, that have been donated by the community. So 11:30 to 02:30, and then those three activities are are staggered throughout the day. So, again, if you can't find anything to do in Croton this weekend, you're looking for something to do, in between Boot Fest and and the Chapman Run, 11:30 at the Croton Free Library

sponsored by the idea committee, the library, and the village. And the rest of that meeting was really around other opportunities they wanna put together for the community to celebrate, together different different cultures. And and, as they continue to plan those and I engage in those meetings, I'll be sure to report back. But that's the big takeaway from that meeting.

So I met with Joey from CHAMP, which is, a newer organizations that focused on supporting the arts across the district. And it sounds like they're involved with a number of exciting new initiatives. One, I think they're they're very actively involved with BOOFEST and running some of the crafts. And then also, I don't know if some people in this room might be familiar with an upcoming play at the high school called 12 angry... Have you guys heard about it? I have actually. Oh, okay. We might be of interest and attention. They're... So they're gonna be involved with... It also helping support that production, and you could already see on their social media feed that they're interviewing some students who happen to be involved with the the play. So that was a a lovely meeting, and I look forward to joining one of their upcoming, overall meetings of the group. And then the other event that I just came from was the NYSSBA annual business meeting,

which was an interesting Zoom experience, in which... You know, so, like, our last... One of our recent meetings, we went through all the resolutions, and then that was our app... Opportunity to actually vote. So I got through, I think, 20 of them, 22 of them before I had to leave, and everything passes. Like like, it's like... It was interesting because even though... Know, and they're the... And so one of the things that I would, think that one of the things we might wanna do as a board next year, because when we had our conversations, we talked about should... You know, we can abstain. And I understand why, but the... There actually wasn't... Like, when we vote in our meetings, we can vote to abstain, but then there wasn't an option. So it was... The toggle is support or oppose so that if you were actually abstaining, it it... They couldn't tell if it was just like you dropped off the call or something like that. So I think it just... If that's the way they organize their meetings, it's something for us to consider that if we wanna have a real voice on something that we should

choose a direction. And then the other thing that I thought was interesting that I don't know if it's if it's typical, this is my first year really being involved, is that, there is an... So they send out the NYSSBA resolutions across the region, and then there's an opportunity for people to provide feedback to amend the resolutions. And it didn't seem like there were any shifts from the original that... What we had previously seen. So my takeaway from that is that if you really have a thought on what you want, you have to be at the table at the beginning. You know? So, anyway, so that was an interesting experience.

I will say I'm glad that you had a a short and efficient experience because the year that I was delegate, it was a seven hour meeting. It was the longest ever in history, and a number of amendments were introduced. And, like, the length of discussion on some of these was long. So it's diff... It is actually different every year. There was still quite a bit time. But Right. The other thing we'll hope is that, you know, for for whatever reason, some some years, their business meeting, coincides and comes up right against our regularly scheduled meeting, so we were not always able to join. I had the luck of being on an off night for us, so I was there the whole time. They don't usually run that long, but that was one for the record books. So I'm glad that you got off easily, and thank you again for participating and representing us. I know our student trustees are here as, students. They don't have a scheduled report this week. If there's anything you wanna just tell us extemporaneously,

you're welcome to. Others, we'll hear from you formally, at our next meeting. Perfect. Okay. Well, then we'll move into, our next item. I'll turn it over to superintendent Walker and assistant superintendent Laura Dubacht to introduce our review of twenty twenty five, twenty six student achievement data. This is going to be a presentation and discussion. If you all could let us know just because there's a lot of information to get through what the cadence of questions should be just so that we don't interrupt your flow. But, also, you know, as I said, it's like we don't... We wanna make sure that you have the opportunity to ask questions without sort of interrupting your flow when it's appropriate. So you'll let us know what works for you tonight. Great. Thank you. Thank you again, Ana Tak.

Each spring, our students in grades three through eight join hundreds of thousands of other students around the state in participating in their standardized assessment program in English language arts and math. Our And students at CHHS join their peers statewide in taking part in Regents examinations as well as advanced placement or AP tests, which are administered to students across New York, The United States, and in more than a 100 countries around the world. And while I think that we all agree that student performance on these standardized metrics is not the sole arbiter of their success in school or or of a school's success overall, I think we also agree that they're an incredibly important component of the analysis and conversation about the work of our schools and programs. Last year, we shared information with the board of education and community regarding our students' achievement on these assessments at multiple meetings.

And this year, in alignment with our district goal to create a standardized format for sharing achievement data at regular intervals that includes strengths, outliers, and areas for growth. We combine that data into a single presentation. We have designed this presentation to align with that goal, and so our community will note that in addition to the slides that we will discuss this evening, there are approximately 35 additional slides in the appendices which provide detailed information on our student achievement data, including rankings of our students' achievement compared with both the PNW, BOCES region and the entire Lower West... Hudson Region, which includes Putnam, Rockland, and all of Westchester County schools. While the vast majority of the data shared this evening is publicly available, it takes a significant amount of time to compile it and produce usable graphics and rankings. And I wanna thank Ellen Moskowitz

and the data team for devoting that time to assemble that information for this evening. So let's begin tonight by taking a look at performance in English language arts for students in grades three through eight. And maybe what makes sense is if we just go section by section, pause after each section, then address questions if that feels okay to everybody. Before looking at the datasets themselves, we begin with this... With a with a slide which provides a listing of noticings, strengths, items which we believe warrant further attention and consideration, and implications for our work both now and in the near future. We also made note of places where our work exists in direct alignment with the district and board goals for this year. In examining our ELA data, you will note in subsequent slides that our achievement trajectory mirrors that of the statewide data over the past few years while remaining at least 20 points higher than the statewide

average each year. Additionally, as you'll see when looking at cohort data, each cohort's proficiency increased from the time they first took the New York State ELA assessment in grade three up through spring of twenty twenty six.

Can I interrupt for one second? Sorry. Just for the benefit of the board. Our board docs is not working, so we actually have to use the screen until Denise is able to possibly repost the deck for us. So for folks who think they might be seeing it, yeah. Oh, you did? Thank you. Because I can't open it at all. But just... If you're wondering why we were looking confused, it was not you. It was us. Thanks. Thank you for that clarification. I appreciate it.

In terms of areas requiring further attention, the broadest item is the fact that between twenty five percent and thirty percent of our students in grades three through eight are not demonstrating proficiency on the ELA assessment arrange, which has been consistent in our district going back many years. So as we move forward with curricular reviews in ELA, piloting of new instructional resources, one of the broad metrics that we can and should be looking at over the next few years is whether we can create upward movement in the overall proficiency percentage that lasts more than a single year and even if the statewide average in a particular year declines.

When we look at the data from PVC specifically, we note that there's an increased variability across sections of students in grades five and seven, which speaks to the work involved in our district goal this year, prioritizes consistent instructional experiences and common assessments for all students. It's our internal practice to look at classroom level data as well. And when we see variability across sections in a grade, it prompts us to examine both classroom practices and curriculum. As we note under the implications heading of this slide, this aligns with the district goal of work to align ELA curriculum both at CET and leading into grade five at PVC. On this slide, we see our district wide proficiency percentage for students in grades three to eight for the past few years along with the statewide average for those corresponding years. As a note for the public, proficiency on New York State three to eight assessments refers to a score of three or above on a four point scale and means that the student is meeting or exceeding grade level standards.

For those that may not remember, the three to eight assessments were not administered in the spring of twenty twenty, and they were optional in the spring of twenty twenty one. So while we're sharing our district's data, SED did not provide statewide data for that particular year. Shifting to the next slide. We color coded this slide to demonstrate the performance of cohorts of our students over the course of years as they begin taking the ELA assessment in grade three up through grade eight beginning in two thousand twenty one, twenty two, the first year that the assessments were administered to all students after COVID. With the next few slides, we shift to a building level view of ELA results beginning with grades three and four at CET. This slide looks similar to the data shared in slide four except this is solely for grades three and four, and the statewide averages are for students in grades three and four as well. One of the items that we noted here is the gap between our students' proficiency and the statewide proficiency, which in prior years was between 1115%,

has widened to 20% over the past two years. Now we take a look at the same set of data for PVC grades five through eight. Here we see the proficiency percentages for PVC students over the same period of time as we shared for all students in grades three to eight and students in grades three and four along with the statewide averages for all students in grades five through eight for those, same years. We're in a position now to transition to Mass, so, obviously, we'll take questions. But I I want to note again that there are many slides in the appendix section of this presentation which display proficiency percentages by grade level in ELA for grades three through eight along with those rankings among the 18 districts in the PNW BOCES region and the approximately 50 districts in the entire Lower Hudson Region. So before we shift to Laura sharing three to eight math data and high school data, we're happy to answer questions from the board on that initial set.

So we'll open it up for questions on ELA. And I think maybe if we could just go back to, for the slide presentation just to the ELA takeaways so we have that to look at as a sort of framework. People can frame their questions against that. Or if there are specific questions on any of the the data slides after that.

List of a question, more of a request. Can you... I think for me, what's what's really important is this is all wonderful data. Thank you very much for putting it together. It's... I know it's a heavy... It was a heavy lift in getting it... Getting us, this dataset. I really love to spend a little bit more time on the implications. Right? I think that's... The takeaway is really what's important. If you're... Or doctor Dubi can talk a little bit more about that for for each section, think it would be really helpful. Sure. I think we're both happy to speak to it.

I think one of the areas that was most interesting for me, I'll speak for myself first, in looking at the PVC data. Right? And we and we briefly touched on it. That variability, which doesn't necessarily come across in the... This dataset, but when you look at internal classroom level data, there's variability, particularly in grade five and in grade seven across sections. So that gets us, of course, to conversations about not only curriculum, but the classroom practice, and leads us into some really, the opportunity for some really robust conversations with those faculty members, with our instructional coaches, and others about how we can standardize the excellence that we see in pockets across the entire system. Right? And so the fact that you have less variability in grade six and eight year over year, is something that leads us then to to make certain,

or to prioritize certain conversations with the faculty and with the administration at PVC, in addition to the curricular conversation, right, which aligns very directly with that district goal. And so, you know, as we think as about, the three, four performance at CET, one of the interesting things there is as we look at a more kind of standard and cohesive curricular resource, those scores excellent relative to most of the rest of the system. So it leads us to think about there's some really high quality classroom practices happening in those grades and across that building. So when you then add to that the work that we're doing this year in terms of providing a a selecting and and piloting and then implementing a high quality consistent curricular resource, I think the potential there

is fantastic. And that's one of the things that excites me about this. Laura, I don't know if you wanna speak to spelling connections or morphing magic or other things. Yeah. So,

when we're looking at the the data here, we're looking at averages. We're looking at proficiency rates. But one of the more, I think, interesting and useful instructionally pieces of data is actually looking at item analysis of what those questions that students are doing well with, the ones they're doing poorly with are actually measuring. So in doing that, one of the areas that we found that needs some consistent work over time is on spelling and word study. So most recently at CET that led to them adding spelling connections, and at PVC, they're... Which is a program specifically related to word study. And at PVC, they're looking at the partner program to that, which is morphine morphine magic. So it's it's an ability to take a look at the item analysis and actually target instructional tools, not just generally around improving ELA scores, but what our students are actually not performing as well with specifically.

So, as you were talking, like, you used the term classroom practices, and, you know, I'm an educator. I'm like, I know what that means, but then I'm like, I don't know what that means. So I... You know, and then I was thinking to just, reflecting on my kids' experiences and how different... They had very different experiences, different years depending on who's in the class, the composition of the... You know, and who... You know? And also, particularly at that age, executive functioning is interesting, all these different, you know, as as well. And then the other thing that, came to mind, and I'm wondering if you ever are looking at it, it's not only what's happening in the in the class and the... And that... That's that's also very important, but also finding out what are... What might be happening in the home because there might be some some families that are supplementing, you know, outside the home too. So that could also be leading to different... You know what I mean? So I think what I'd I'd just say, I'm I'm... I... So I guess the question part is is classroom practices, but just the the more general thought thing is to be,

like, if possible, also... Like, I think it's great to be looking specifically and love looking at at the item level in terms of, like, what's... What the results are. But, also, if there's ways to do it, get a little qualitative feedback on what are some other things that are happening in in the student's environment. Yeah. We can both speak to that. I think,

that's a yes and conversation. Right? So the... When we say classroom practices, we're referring to the planning, the pedagogy, the implementation, the management, the use of time, all of those things that are both the art and science of teaching. And so when we look at teachers whose results year over year consistently exceed that of the rest of the building or the rest of the district, those then become places that we wanna hone in. And one of the the great things about our system right now is we've designed processes that allow for that kind of sharing, right, through lesson study, through intervisitation, through the coaching model, through administrative, walk throughs and observations, through mentorship, through curriculum coordinator roles. So all of those things allow us to to know that we've built the system that I think best enables us to to have a multi... You know, a multiplying

factor or or force from individual classroom practices practices to to the broader system. And these sorts of conversations then lead us into the second part of it, which is, okay, mister Walker, right, in fifth grade ELA, this is... Let's take a look at your students' performance over the course of years and then more recently this cohort, talk to us about what's impacting the classroom environment and your kids' ability to exceed it or to to succeed at a high level. So I mean, at that point, if we have needs or particular students or the system has needs, then it becomes conversations with with Rachel and our PPSD department about how our our support system occurs from the social, emotional, and and the academic end.

I think I'd also, add that there's the classroom practices and the time in your core classroom, there's also additions we have here like the PVC lab time, which I know we've discussed, as part of building priorities and also as part of our tech reset. But that's a place where, they've made adjustments to focus on silent reading stamina, which is one of the single most, the single most important factors in those scores. So our curriculum is great. Our... You know, working on curriculum is great. Classroom practice is great, but the single most important thing is reading that will impact that over time, which you'll also hear more about as we work on our third and fourth grade curriculum implementation because that's one of our priorities is selecting the right program that focuses on core whole class texts as a significant component,

which

also has a budgetary component. Yeah. Of course. And just to add on that and to go back to Omar's point about implications, one of the things that that also excites me and interests me over the next few months is the the conversation extending beyond just grades three and four and into PVC, grades five, and hopefully, grade Not only because, you know, most... Many districts, elementary and middle schools are structured k five, six, eight, but because there's a developmental continuum there that we wanna make sure we have consistency in terms of the resource that's put in front of kids and that they're engaging with on a regular basis. So the the interest, the willingness of the PVC faculty to engage in that discussion along with CET with their building leaders, Laura, is something that I think we wanna stay tuned for because there's there's good news coming there too.

I I just wanted to sort of jump off of that idea also because one of the things we talked about at the at the PVC building planning council was that exact issue of, the fact that... You know, because we've got our fifth graders making that change to middle school. One interesting point, and I don't know if it's... You know, I don't know if it's... I don't know what... If there's a correlation or not, but it's interesting to note that it's grades five and seven that we're looking at. And both of those are, of course, transitional years. It's that first year of middle school, and then seventh grade at PVC is something that they recognize within the PVC environment as a year where we change from sort of being on the elementary school schedule to something that transitions us to the high school schedule where we're just doing things differently where, you know, we don't have the same, like, two t, two core teachers. It moves up to four core teachers. So that question and then also sort of, like, the larger question of as we're as we're

sort of, like, recalibrating the way that we are asking kids to organize themselves as part of their school day, the question of sort of their general executive functioning skills in middle schools come up. That's definitely something that I think parents have raised, and it came up as... At building planning council as well as, you know, whether there's... Whether whether some identification of what those supports might be and figuring out how to work them in, whether it's through lab or through other, elements of fifth grade and seventh grade. It'll be interesting to see if we're seeing a similar correlation at... You know, in terms of math, but I think I was grateful to know that at PVC, they were sort of looking at both, these sort of results and just sort of anecdotally what they're seeing in the classroom in terms of what students are asking for and what families are noting about what their students are asking for. So I I appreciate the attention to this as well. Betsy, did you have a question? I wasn't sure. Okay.

Any other questions from the board on this one? Others will move on to math. Yeah. Just, and and Lauren,

Steve, I know Ellen's not here, but thank you for putting this together. I know it was a lot of work, you guys worked, like, all weekend on it. It's so helpful, and it's great. I hope that the public is watching tonight, or maybe we can find a way to package it for public consumption. But there were some, on the three through eight, you know, like, takeaway slides. So it said, we talked about variability. We're talking about curriculum. 25% of the students in elementary and middle school are not at grade level in any given year. I know we had kinda talked about this over email during this week, but could you maybe help us understand why that warrants closer attention or how that is... Has been historically. Just give a little bit more context around that because that number does kinda, like, jump out when you when you look at it. So some clarification would be great. Sure.

So... Yes. So it sounds... When you say that, it definitely sounds like not something we want. Right? We never want to be in a position where 25% of our kids are not at grade level. Right? So as Steve mentioned earlier... Well, first of all, one, it's one data point, of course. Right? And we've been consistent over time in that range. So I think that's important to know that we're not rising or dropping often in any significant way. And one thing to keep in mind as we implement new curriculum, just as an aside to this, that I wanted to mention is that there's research based, that there's always an implementation dip whenever you start a new curriculum in the first year. So at this point, once we've implemented new curriculum next year, at the end of that year, we just have to kind of earmark, to expect that there might not be the growth that we want to see that quickly. But other than that, another factor, Jake, to your question is,

our demographics have also changed over time and we've remained consistent. So when you look at subgroup analysis, which is all publicly available on NYSSET as our... As subgroups have increased, in size that haven't historically done as well, we've maintained, our kind of proficiency rate. So there's some positives to dig into a little bit from a subgroup analysis there. And looking regionally, one of the things you can see in the appendices slide is you can actually look at that proficient... Proficiency ranking regionally. So if you're... For example, if we're at, say, 75% proficiency and ranking, you know, number five or six in the region, I think that's telling information too about kinda generally that other districts typically have that range of, slightly below or below grade level students too.

I would just add... Sorry. I was just gonna add, you know, when you look at it kinda broadly, if in a in a... On an annual basis, about seven in 10 of our three through eight students are proficient in reading. The statewide average is about five in 10. Right? So there's that context. But what's most interesting, I think, to us is the three represent the growth opportunity. Right? And so what we've... I think one of the things we can glean from this is that there's there's tremendous potential in a system kind of achievement without the sort of robust curriculum work that's in place through the district goals and board goals that have been put in, into effect for this year. So when you add in that kind of evidence of quality teacher practice, but broadly with a focus on curriculum overviews and review and analysis and, identifying high quality and consistent, resources. That mix, I think, has great potential to see

a 100% of its students. Right? We'd love to be that system. Nobody has yet. But I think there's a there's a mix here. There are ingredients that allow for us to feel like there's strong potential that in the next couple of years, we see that continuing. We see it moving up even if the state average doesn't change.

Also just wanna thank you guys for dealing... Like, talking about this very directly because this is like a... You know, it's it can be hard and... You know? So really, appreciate. And I and I... I'm I'm assuming you're doing this already, but to me, it would be interesting to... Because earlier, we we talked about we're gonna be coming up with budgets for the next year and there... And a lot of efforts being put into the curricular side, but to see if there's any patterns of certain groups of students that that there's, like, some pattern to, like, who's not being proficient. I I know that we've done a lot of different work in terms of instructional coaches, a lot of different, you know, in... Like, very interesting, team teaching models and things like that to see. But, you know, like, is that pushing the needle well? Is there... Do we need to do more of that? You know, whatever it might be, but to see if there's any thematic things.

Thanks.

I just wanna say, thank you on that note of kind of the the humility with which you have to to approach these sorts of conversations. I wanna thank our faculty and our building leaders. Right? This is, this is a very candid appraisal of where our kids are in terms of standardized achievement, and, you know, they continue to embrace the idea of continue... Continually improving, right, and and striving for what's next for all of our kids. We understand that this is one measure of it. And there... There's data in here that think people would say this makes us feel good, and then there's a good chunk of it that makes us realize we've got a lot more work to do. Right? And so always work to do. And so I I wanna say say thank you to the faculty and building leaders for their their openness to this as well. K. We're happy now to shift gears, to math starting with three eight, and doctor Dubak's gonna share that data with with the board and community.

Alright.

So in terms of grades three to eight math, from an overall cohort performance over time perspective, each cohort remained the same or slightly better from their first time testing in third grade to their spring twenty twenty six test results. There is some variability year to year in terms of larger jumps where you might see the same cohort going from, you know, 60% proficiency to 75% and then back down to 63% from year to year. That's a greater variability than we see in the ELA cohort scores. The end point of each of those cohorts is similar to the starting point or slightly better though. In addition, grades three to four math proficiency has increased, which you'll see all of this in the next set of slides. And you'll also see what we believe are some very strong results after year one of algebra for all in eighth grade implementation. In terms of areas that we think warrant closer attention, there is a proficiency dip in grade five math, which also connects to a district goal around our math curriculum alignment and very similar to the previous conversation about looking at grade five while it's physically at PVC as an extension

of, CET. Overall, math, five to eight proficiency is declining slightly when compared to the region, which you'll see in the appendices as well. And while it's not necessarily a significant decline, there are a couple of places in the ranking that are something to watch. And you can... Again, you can see all of those details and rankings in the appendices. But, essentially, the proficiency rate is in the seventies in, 70%, in third and fourth grade and then goes to the mid sixties as you get to five to eight. And as Steve also mentioned, we regularly look at section by section data, and one of our noticings this year was that in grades three and four, when you're looking section by section, when there were discrepancies within one specific class, the same group of kids taking ELA, same group of kids taking math, one of the things that was consistent was that math was typically the stronger area of performance. So same kids,

same teacher. So we look at that in terms of, okay. So what's what's the input? And, again, going back to the district goal connection, we have a more coherent and similar math curriculum versus ELA curriculum right now. And so the implication there is that there is, a connection between that higher performance in math for the same students based on the curricular inputs. So additional implications then include a need for investment in updating curriculum materials and aligning math curriculum grades k to five. We talked about this as part of the district goals, but in terms of timeline, we're looking to identify that by December 2026 for school year 2728 implementation, and we're anticipating, k to five rollout of that aligned curriculum. Okay. So, again, with math, we're looking at the trend of New York State scores. And, of course, we would expect that when New York State improves, we will too and vice versa.

However, math is a place where there are slight discrepancies with that, and you'll see that a little bit more clearly in the upcoming slides where we break it down by grade band. And you can get a glimpse of that in the '25, '26 where you see the state average going up slightly while we're going down slightly. Again, they're not huge percentage points, but they're they're trends to watch. And then here from the overall cohort perspective, this slide again tracks the performance of each cohort as they progress through grades three to eight. And while no cohort goes down, the end result is that most cohorts tend to stay relatively the same or very slightly higher than when they started testing in third grade. And, again, there's that variability year to year that you can see here numerically. So from a growth trajectory perspective, while student proficiency proficiency may not be declining on a long term basis, we would want to see greater consistency

and growth over time versus that variability from year to year. And then taking a deeper dive into grade bands and math, we'll start with grades three to four. And here we see in grades three to four math a positive trajectory that generally follows the same trait... The the same trend as the statewide data. So you don't have that '25, 26 dip here in grades three and four. And in five to eight, that remains mostly true with the exception of last year where a gap between our scores and the state averages, became slightly closer. And here, we have an overview of the algebra one regions, which are now, I think, most of our community knows, primarily given at PVC beginning with the first year of algebra for all in eighth grade last year. So we pulled this data out for the last three years so we could really look at data from years prior to algebra for all compared to implementation of algebra for all.

So you can see over the three years, there are obviously high proficiency rates. And please just note that the numbers on the left, on the graph on the left, represent the eighth graders that took the exam as well as any high school students taking the exam. What you see on the right, the table on the right, I think is actually a more interesting way to look at the data. And this table represents the cohort of eighth graders that took it each year, it takes out the high school students. So if our goal with algebra for all is to increase access to and proficiency in algebra one for more students in a cohort, which is is our intended goal. We want more kids to access the more rigorous curriculum. This, we think, is a useful way to look at our progress. So in 2024, pre algebra for all, we had 55% of that eighth grade class taking the exam and getting that access in eighth grade. A hundred percent of those students that year passed the exam, which is certainly amazing,

and it only represents fifty five percent of the cohort reaching that proficiency. So the following year, more students in 2025 took the exam, and ninety eight percent of those students passed as we added more students. So that represents seventy four percent of that total co... Or that total grade eight class attaining proficiency. And then in 2026, algebra for all, we have ninety eight percent of the students taking the exam with 87%, attaining proficiency, which is 86% of our overall eighth grade class. So going for... You know, in three years, going from 55%, proficiency and access to 8686% proficiency is a pretty strong growth trajectory. And, again, very impressive and we, definitely want to make mention of the incredible work of the PVC math team, particularly our eighth grade math team to do this and have these kind of results in year one, without having, you know, a k to seven rollout leading up to it. So it's exciting to imagine what this is going to look like as

as we adjust our math curriculum leading up to the algebra for all experience. And, of course, we will continue to track each cohort's progress as they move through the high school math math sequence because that's the other end of the equation. The intended goal is access to rigorous curriculum. So we have to track how students are accessing those rigorous classes and how they're doing in each one starting with their experience in geometry this year, which is also conversation and reporting. So I think we can pause here before we shift to the high school regions and APs. Questions?

I'm gonna actually... If it's okay, start just on on this algebra slide if I can just so that we don't have to shift back. So I think the thing that I wanted to highlight is... Or or actually get your input on is sort of the following. I think, what we're seeing is, first of all, that the trajectory of moving students towards algebra for all actually did take place over three years. So while we weren't talking... You know, while we've talked about it is, like, this is year one of algebra for all. In fact, in 2425 during that school year, I think this was part of, like, the thinking at PVC was to try to move as many kids as we could into that track of being sort of prepared to take algebra. And I think what this demonstrates again is just... It's like if you look at... This is really... What we're seeing, although we've implemented now, is really just sort of like that piloting and transitioning

process. And I I also wanna just also join you in commending the PVC, math teachers for their thoughtful work on sort of getting everyone here. I know from, like, a... Know, again, thinking about, like, the social emotional perspective at PVC, how very important it is to be able to have eighth graders all taking the same math. And I think also having, you know, again, for myself, being a parent of a high school student, for everyone to be entering high school taking, generally, many of them are taking geometry at the same level, and many of them are also having other sort of, like, common entering into ninth grade experiences. The the sort of the equitable sort of entry point, I think, is... It's just just an important sort of stepping stone. And, really, for folks to also feel prepared to be able to achieve that higher level math for students who want to, we're really positioning them well. So I'm pleased to see these numbers

just here. And I know there's other questions on, the the rest of this math, but just wanted to start with that before we move on to the, previous slide. So over to you, Betsy.

Comment is not super dissimilar for yours... From yours. But before I go into the specific comment, I I also just wanna echo my fellow board members in saying I'm so thankful for all of the work that you guys put into this presentation. It's really rich. And I saw over the course of the week how you iterated and really found new findings and digging into this is just going to make our school system so much more robust. I'm incredibly grateful. Related to what Ana Tak was saying, if you go back to grades three through eight math proficiency slide, I really want to commend the sixth and the eighth grade because if you look across their years you see incredibly consistent scoring keeping that scoring really high and I think that what that... What I see there is, again, what you're saying, the really strong grade eight math, but also that kind of teeing up of strong math throughout. And I wondered

when the coherent curriculum for math across c... I don't know if you said it was just three and four or if it was all of CET. All of CET. All of CET started because I wonder if... I often think about how the foundations we give our students in elementary enable the middle school to And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and if you feel like that's allowed for this transition. So

CET has in grades three and four for more than... I think more than a decade, they've used Eureka Math in those grades. And then they have a kind of partner program that is aligned to Eureka Math but a little bit more user friendly for kids in that age group called Zurn that they're using. So what we're looking to do is update that whole program to a newer version of Eureka which is called Eureka squared so that all kids k to five would have it. And what's particularly wonderful about Eureka Squared is it is much like the ELA curriculum having whole class text, it's manipulative heavy. So it's all about touching, having kids with their own access kits to manipulatives. So while we already have more of a cohesive math program at CET, this is going to level it up even even more.

That kind of segues to what my question was going to be. I echo everybody's appreciation. So, you know, I... So what I recall with a lot of math, so it might be a bit out of date, was a lot of it was, focused on using software programs, like, in terms of adaptive learning and all that kind of stuff. And I know we have a tech reset. So... And you're looking at curriculum. It's great to hear there's manipulatives. I'm looking. I'm curious if you could comment a little bit, like, how you're navigating that. Are there different types of materials? And that... Like, if there is a movement away from using as much adaptive learning software program, that's the real shift for teachers.

Yes. It's a it's a good question. So all of these, curricular programs have online components and the question becomes how much or how little do you use of them. So for example, Eureka Squared has online manipulatives, which I know sounds a little bit like an oxymoron. Right? And the intention around it is to provide students with access to those same materials at home. Right? So the the intention behind it wouldn't be to use those software materials while they're in class. You use the physical manipulatives. So it's kind of reframing those as... Those software tools as primary to instruction versus supplementary resources to be used as needed outside of the classroom. So that's kinda how we're thinking about it.

Just just quickly, what I saw, three four math proficiency is is 76%. Was 74% in 1819. It's been steady. Right? There was a dip, and then it's it's gotten back up into the seventies. Three four math proficiency. And then five eight math proficiency, it hasn't... It's been net flat since 2018, 2019. Right? It was COVID dip, and it was back up. It was strong, and then it's been a pretty steady decrease. Is that just what we talked about earlier, that transition to middle school? Is that something you expect, or is there something else there that we're looking at?

I think it... It's hard to say definitively. I think that that... The shift in thinking between grade five being middle school and k to five being the elementary experience, I think, is probably what we're going to end up finding to be the biggest factor there. So if you're approaching a curricular development as just k to four and then five starts your new, you know, your new curricular experience, you think developmentally, skill building. There's a reason why most elementary schools are are k to five. So it's just... I think there's probably a lot there. There's the natural transition to middle school anyway. It leads to the question of would we see that if middle school's in sixth grade, if middle school started in sixth grade? Because that is typical across other districts in the region to see that dip in sixth grade versus five. Thanks.

I just wanna add one other consideration that we didn't put on a slide, but I think it's something we'll wanna look at, one that's specific to us and another that's, kind of a a broad challenge When it comes to a human resources perspective and a budgetary perspective, the board and the community have been wonderful in, supporting additional intervention and support staffing over the past three or four budget cycles, and we've talked about that before in terms of hopefully seeing some of the the results of that investment, particularly in the CET ELA data. The the majority of that staffing has gone in the direction of English language arts intervention and support, Less of it, by percentage and by FTE has gone toward math intervention and support. So as we get into the budget cycle, I think that's something that we'll wanna take a look at. The other part of it is a is a statewide question and that's... Or or issue, and that's when you hire an interventionist in English language arts at the k six level, typically, that person's gonna have a background and certification in literacy in

teaching students to read. There is no equivalent for math. Right? And so it it creates a different sort of imperative for a system, including ours, to to make sure we have the right people with the right background providing intervention to students in math. The other part of it, and you heard it from Maylene as part of her entry plan discussions, is we wanna make sure there's a master schedule at PVC that allows for math intervention to be provided ideally by the same teacher who's providing the core class instruction. That isn't the case across the system now. So that's one of the priorities, and you referenced it as part of the PVC BPC conversation to identify a process through which we can ensure that that happens more often.

Other follow-up questions on this section? I just have one last one. This is sort of like a more broad overarching one, but since we're coming to the end of our portion of the conversation that's about New York state, tests that are... You know, the elementary and middle school tests are consistent. And I know we might not have this information now, so I apologize for asking, but I think this was a more relevant question a few years ago. So I'm just curious if we if we don't know today if we could find out what our overall opt out percentages in the district on, testing because it's just... I think it's a good piece of information to know. And then I think also just because, you know, we're hearing now, of course, the conversation continuing across New York State about pushing back digital tests, which is... You know, it's like every day there's a new article about that. So I think, you know, in terms of sort of anticipating that,

and again, maybe not for today, but as we're thinking about it over the course of the year, what we may or may not need to do to be responsive to a change in the mode of testing also, because it it... You know, I I... We recognize that this is... Again, it's one data point. And, obviously, as we get into the later conversation about Regents and APs and the difference between your performance on a standardized test and actually the work that you're doing in the course, I think, you know, that'll be an interesting thing also to sort of think about in terms of elementary and middle school. Because the a standardized test that everyone takes on a specific day in the school year is not necessarily fully representative. I mean, it's not fully representative. We know that of a student's learning. And so I think, you know, again, this is a question that we talked about a few years ago, which is to continue to also determine for ourselves as a board and as a community, what are the other ways that we're able to to evaluate,

how students are learning beyond just looking at these numbers?

I don't I don't know the opt out rate off the top of my head. I don't wanna misquote it, so we'll see if we can get it to you tomorrow the weekly. Sure.

Alright.

So now we will shift gears to the high school regents and AP takeaways. There are a lot of slides here. So as we go through the presentation, I'm not going to talk through each slide subject by subject, but I can go to them and navigate to them as there are questions or specific references. In general, our region's proficiency rankings in the PNW BOCES and full region is fairly steady. One thing to take into account in some places where things might look particularly high, like particularly in the 2122 school year, just a reminder that those were years where there were still a large number of post COVID exemptions. Exemptions. We like the high high rankings, but they're a little bit of an outlier because of that. And, also, just to keep in mind, when we're looking at rankings for something like the regions, most schools in our area have high graduation rates, so, therefore, everybody passes the required regions.

So as an example, like being tenth in a ranking in a particular, regions exam, we'll use English for example, for tenth in the ranking for English, that's the difference between a 97.1 proficiency and 97.2 proficiency across the region because everybody has to pass the English regents in order to graduate. So it's just a note on kind of under... Or understanding more for for the community's benefit around what those rankings mean specific to Regents exams in a region with high graduation rates, but we included those rankings in the appendices regardless for for reference. A place where there is better comparative data, which our community now has access to, is looking at those AP exam scores. On all of our AP exam slides, you'll see information about how we compare to New York and global average scores as well as how our percentage of students earning us three or above in each subject area,

which is what is considered proficient by the college board compares across New York and and globally. You'll see that most AP scores are above New York State and global averages last year. Some other... In terms of highlights, other highlights include very consistently high AP English, math, and art scores. Those are some real consistent points of pride across our district, and those are all of the levels of math, all of the... Both versions of the English and all of the, AP art scores. We're also seeing some pretty strong growth in our AP chemistry and AP US history scores over time, which will... And in particular, our AP environmental science scores, we're seeing some strong growth that aligns directly to the adoption of the project based AP environmental curriculum in the last few years. In terms of specific areas warranting closer attention based on the trends and comparisons, we're looking at biology,

physics, and our world in terms of AP exams. We... Later in the presentation, we also need to look closely at our AP participation as we continue to add... So thinking along the lines of as we continue to add new AP courses. This year, two were added, and, there's consideration about adding another new one next year. These are wonderful opportunities for our students, and we need to consider whether we are drawing more students or more distinct students into taking AP exams that might not have taken them otherwise, or are the same students taking more exams. Neither is necessarily fundamentally positive or negative. It's just something important to take a look at and understand. In terms of the conversation around AP language exams, something to note there is that that's actually a new exam this year, and our AP language teacher spent the summer making curriculum updates to get ready for that exam... For that new exam. And the key change in that new exam is an emphasis on oral assessments,

which you can imagine is the most difficult thing to implement on a classroom level when you're talking about doing one on one assessments. But they spent some time working on that curriculum work aligned to the changes and the specific focus is on spontaneous conversation, whereas previously, it was on simulated speaking tasks. And there's generally greater emphasis, on allowing students to prepare ahead of time, so have the topics ahead of time that they're going to be asked to speak about, and bring their notes into the conversation so that it's really focusing on fluency and delivery versus that on the spot planning and speaking. So that's good news if, either of you are taking a language exam this this spring. Other implications in looking at the data is a need to continue to really invest in common local assessments across sections. So all of these tests that we're looking at, these are summative tests. So once you take a summative test, there's not a lot you can do to adjust instruction for that group of students. So the common formative assessments that we're working on as you've heard through our district through our district,

goals presentation, our building priorities, those can actually be used to adjust instruction. We will also, as I previously mentioned, be looking closely at the impact of algebra for all on science and math APs over time. So it'll take a few years to see those indicators, but we anticipate that students coming into those classes after having that experience in eighth grade will be entering with stronger math skills. And then in terms of AP biology, significant time was spent this summer on curriculum work, and we anticipate that we are going to see a lagging impact on AP biology performance now that ninth graders take biology at the high school, whereas previously, students were much farther away from having a life science before they took AP biology. So now they... In many cases, they'll take biology as a ninth grader and then go right into AP AP biology as a tenth grader. So we anticipate that there could be,

that there will be some changes in those results there. So that's kind of the broad overview and then I'm just going to skip to the end of the presentation to look at that AP participation before we go to questions and kind of look at specific slides. There's a lot of them. There we go. AP participation. Okay. So in terms of college readiness, the metrics that districts look at to assess college readiness are AP enrollment and dual enrollment. So we wanted to provide a snapshot of our overall AP participation over the last five years where you can see some some pretty strong participation numbers. We actually have more students taking AP exams overall in... Over the past few years, and that's even with the addition of dual enrollment classes over the last few years. And, of course, with two new AP classes this year, the numbers will naturally go up again when we do this presentation at this time next year. And I know there are sometimes questions from the community about whether the dual enrollment options cause our students to take fewer AP exams,

but our participation in exams overall, as you can see, has actually increased as we added more options for students to earn college credit. So I think I'll pause there so we can go through questions and go back to any slides that we wanna take a look at more closely.

I have a question that's quite nitty gritty, which is of the the AP students with scores three plus, two zero seven of the two forty six is is a good, you know, amount. But I'm curious of the tests taken, do we know how many tests? Sorry. Is it very... Because like if I know the... I'm trying to work out what the average number of AP classes are, what the average number of kit... Can get you the total number of exams ordered. Yes. Can get that. You Awesome. I could probably also add it up across all these slides. But but, yeah, I... That that would just interest me because it's like if I'm Mhmm. Being counted as a student receiving a three plus score because I got it on one, but I got it one or two on the other three APs I took, then it's kind of... It's it's telling a different story than there might be, but I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just curious. There's actually a different a different report that I can provide in the weekly from the college board website.

Cool. Thanks. Other

questions from the board? And then also for our students, since you all are high school students, if you have any questions or noticings that you wanna share.

I'm just... This is a lot of information, so I'm here, like, trying to take it in. It is indeed a lot of information, and our hope is that... I mean, I know for us as trustees, we've all... We've had a we've had a chance as we prepare for this meeting to absorb some of it, but this will all be... Not only is it available in board docs, but as part of our new practice going forward of, highlighting our board recaps, we will be able to pull this out so that if you go to a recap of one of our board meetings, you'll find it. And I'm I'm sure as we, continue to work on our website and make it more robust, you'll find this information in other places as well. So you don't have to read it all tonight. Allison, you had a question?

Jake. I'm gonna go because I think she has a lot. But this is my... I think I think my thought. I think this is my last one. And this is another one that, again, thank you guys for... Throughout the week, we were kinda peppering you with questions, all of us. So there was a lot of kinda pre, you know, game before this and sort of talking. So there was one that you guys had clarified for me, but I think for a public benefit, I wanna just quickly talk about chemistry. So we have excellent growth in AP chemistry versus a pretty steep decline in the region scores from 2022 to 2025, 81% to 65%. So, that's a pretty that's a pretty significant decline. 65% were at state average where throughout the night we've seen were above state average. So I'm just wondering if we can kinda unpack that a little bit, like, what may be going on there? Yeah.

So chemistry is actually a case where not all students take the chemistry exam. So only students who need that particular exam for their plus one take that exam. And, actually, this... The same is true, for US history, which I think... Which you can also see on that slide too. So your your n side your n size is a lot smaller in addition to, you know, several teacher changes over the last five years. That always has that always has an impact, on scores too. So we're now in year two with more stable teaching assignments and now a set of common assessments to track student progress throughout the year. So I think each of those three factors play a role in that for sure. Thanks.

Actually, this is a quick follow-up to that question. I think that's a really good sort of point, and maybe, I mean, maybe it's helpful for us to sort of, like, highlight it also just for our community. What you're saying is that that the students are sort of encouraged to get their regents out of the way Correct. Which means that when you're taking your regents, you are taking to to to accomplish your four plus one, you're gonna start with the sort of, most introductory courses, and that would be... For most people, it's algebra. It's living environment. And for a lot of these students, living environment was still offered at the middle school. Right? Yes. At that time. What would the other... The the the English and history? Global history. English.

And what am I? And then the the other one is, like, the extra. Yes. That's your extra. So whatever... So your extra could be chemistry for some kids. It could be US history for some kids. It could be geometry for some kids. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No. I just think that's... I think that's I think that's an interesting point that we don't think about is that,

again, our cohort is getting smaller. And, you know, for many students who are, you know, I guess, in that grade, it's like they're focusing on different tests at that point, right, rather than the Regents. That's usually the case, like, for AP US history. Very few students

have to take that exam. Most of them are taking the AP US history exam instead. Okay.

I mean, I think one of the things I'm I'm sort of, like, interested and excited about having heard from the people that I know in high school is that folks are actually very excited about the breadth of the AP courses. So I think it would indeed be very helpful for us to sort of get that sense of is the diversity of courses that we're now offering because I think that, you know, it's like we've covered the core, obviously. So some of the things feel like nice... I don't know. They're like... They're really nice extras. Like, I would never... I... You know, many of us did not go to a school where AP There wasn't like the AP purse... Is the personal finance class an AP? Yes. Okay. So the AP for personal finance, I think that the the, college board has really expanded into territory that gives students a chance to take a really compelling and interesting courses. And I do think it would be really interesting to see, you know, what the

what the sort of commonality is between people who are taking the sort of core AP courses and then what I would call the ones that feel kind of more like elective in terms of content area. Just would be interested to see because I think, again, to be able to give every student an opportunity to pursue that sort of college level coursework might be really, tagged to interest. And these high interest courses... Again, it's just I know, you know, so many kids who who are interested in hoping to be able to take, you know, course x or course y. I don't wanna call them out specifically, although I know you guys know what they are. Mhmm. There are definitely some that that that people are really, excited about. So I'd be curious to hear that when, you know, again, when when, when we have enough data to sort of make that relevant would be interesting. Great. Alright, Allison. You gotta ask your question or we gotta move on.

You've got it now. These are good... This is

form. So I so I apologize. So I guess, like, one of the things that I was I was just reflecting on... Like, I think one of the hard things with these, like, these... Like, looking at the AP scores is, like, you know, it's also... It it is complicated because, also, it's, like, the timing of when some kids are taking the courses because I know, like, when I had certain people in my life who were seniors in high school, they knew they were going and they weren't going to get it for the AP class, then all of a sudden, there were other more interesting things to do than try to get a high score in the AP. You know? So... But I do... And I... And, like, we we went off back and forth about this. I I think that, you know, the the more that for the kids who do wanna get the higher scores, the more that we are are doing what we can to make, you know, refine our our teaching practices. And I I was I was just, like,

thinking back to our previous conversation about classroom practices. Right? And, and also just like the... You know, these are very different types of courses, and I'm sure there's different types of classroom practices. And when thinking about consistency of experience, like, I'm I'm thinking... Reflecting on my experience as a parent of two kids who learn very differently. And, like, some, you know, some... If you have, like, one instructor as a flipped classroom, that might work really well for one type of student, you know, who's good at, like, learning more on their own and they're okay with more watching a video or something like that. But I know I have another learner who was like, I don't like like... I I shut down for that. So, like, particularly when there's courses when there's, like, one... There might be one section of it. Like, how... Like, is that something that's in the back of of people's mind when they're approaching their teaching? I don't even know if I'm making sense with what I'm I'm bringing up. Yeah. I understand. But it's it's... There's

if there's one section of a class, right, you're gonna implement the curriculum in one way. I actually find, fresh from a teacher perspective, sometimes when you have one section of a class, that's the class that you use, I wanna don't say, as your test ground, but we were able to get more feedback from students. So I know in one of our AP science classes last year, the teacher became... Made a regular practice of surveying the students, in order to get feedback. And it came up actually the first time when students did poorly on an exam and it was very different than the other section. So same class, same instruction, very different results and the teacher surveyed the students and said, let's go question by question. What happened here? In order to make some adjustments. So I think in some of these AP classes, you really get the opportunity to do things like that and hear from students about what's working and not, and you and you get good feedback from students who have... You know, are often juniors and seniors and have been in high school for a little while and can give you a little more

to go off of. I think the other thing that the college board has done, which if you don't have high school students or haven't had them recently, they've put out an incredible resource library of AP videos. And so it's not video based instruction to, you know, supplement teacher instruction. It's meant to be tutorials that students can go home. I'm sure you guys have used some of them before, and those came out as a result of the COVID period when it was necessary, but they're one of those really good resources that have stuck around since COVID. And I think they also help kind of level the implementation playing field a little bit because these are resources that are coming directly from the college board that everyone across the entire country is getting in terms of, equity and access to that. So little bit of a circuitous response, but I think Yeah.

Hopefully, we got somewhere there. I would just add, I think the other thing that that we should look at that that I don't know off the top of my head is as we increase the number of AP course offerings, I think we're at 23 or 24 now, are we, in a commensurate fashion, increasing the number of teachers who are teaching AP course? So if that cohort continues to grow, what challenges are associated with that in terms of professional learning and providing for for some consistency among what is a greater group of of faculty about what happens in those classrooms? That's a really good point. So we're a very small school typically in high schools,

particularly larger high schools. The AP courses are typically taught by the same teacher who's been doing it for a very long time and kind of owns the program. You don't have that same luxury in a smaller school where you may only have one section of an AP exam. So you don't have, you know, an AP English teacher. You have an AP English teacher who also teaches three other things. So it's... It... There's a a push pull factor there, but the the other highlight in terms of budgeting and community support in this breadth of offering, we're a very small high school comparatively to have this number of AP course offerings. And so that's, I think, a testament to our community's support and budgetary support for keeping all of this kind of programming alive for our students. So it's also something to preview for budget season as we talk about adding more AP courses.

It's a fair point. Yeah. Please go ahead and then I'll go after you. And

this is, like, kind of, again, a little all over the place, but I'm kind of taking a different approach. But I... So this is... I I I think that the other thing that, not necessarily today, but at some point, I'd like to understand a little bit more about the... How this is interfacing with the guidance department and, like, how students are, you know, how they build their schedules and what they're taught taught about this. Because, I mean, I assume, you know, my kids benefited from their parents, like, drilling into their heads. Like, hey. You want to do all of this because it will help you, like, in terms of, you know, showing rigor of curriculum, and you can report these scores. You don't have to when you're applying, but some places they'd like to see it. It might do well. But, also, like, depending on how you do it, it might give you, opportunities to apply for different scholarships and things like this. So to, like, make sure that we're doing the best we can from an early... As early as we can let people know about...

You know, not to, like, shame people into things or, like, this and that, but to just say, like, hey. This is this is why. You know?

So that's actually a fairly timely question, actually, because the high school guidance department just, went over the stars process for students, which is the the self reported transcript and academic record system tip sheet. And so that's the place on your college applications, Nikki's nodding his head, where, you're self reporting and trying to build your story. So you might not always want to submit all of your AP exam in that place, but maybe there are places that you really wanna highlight that are going to enhance your overall application. And I think the counseling department sent a a similar communication kinda summarizing the tips to families as well today to as part of their goal around, increasing communication and so forth.

But my point is, like, if that's being sent when they're June 6, like, at the... Yes. I got it. Yeah. Gotta think about it earlier. Gotta start to act early as a parent. Sorry. No. It's a really good point.

I think one thing just to just to to jump off of the question that Allison raised and also to highlight this is... So I think, you know, again, we're, as a board and as a district, we're pleased about the work that our counseling department has done. In, you know, in the past few months, we've been hearing more about the engagement with. I think this is another opportunity because, again, as... Like, we don't know within the district where these AP scores are being accepted for credit and where they're counting. And, you know, twenty years ago, the goal was, like, if you take x number of APs, you'll be able to you'll be able to advance out of certain introductory courses. My understanding is that's not as true across the board necessarily. But, again, I think that would be an interesting thing even if we can't get hard data just to get that sort of feedback from our alums to sort of understand,

you know, you're electing this challenging coursework, which for a lot of our students, people are taking, like, four or five AP courses by the time they're senior year on top of applying. That's like... That's a tremendous, course load. It's... That's not... That's like... That's a lot. And so I think just to sort of understand, you know, what the what the sort of value is in terms of college achievement beyond just sort of, you know, enhancing your profile as a student and demonstrating the rigor of your work. There are a lot of kids for whom it's a passion too, but I think there's a balance there. So I think that would be interesting to, to find out. The other thing I wanted to ask, and this is a question that I think has come up over and over again, and we've talked a little bit about this as a board as well, is, if you could touch on a little bit just sort of explaining again for us and then also for the community.

What... Like, how how is community members and as parents of high school students or future parents of high school students or... And high school students ourselves, how should we look at that sort of relationship between what we're seeing here in terms of test results both on Regents and on APs and our our, classroom grades? Because I think for me, a learning through this process was that, that both the state and the college board have a perspective on this, and I wasn't aware that. So it would be great to hear a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Glad you brought that up. I think this is a really important conversation. We do get questions, about this every year. So one thing about the way that our district approaches, AP courses and rigorous courses is from an open enrollment perspective, and I think that that is really important to keep in mind. Not every school does that. Many more schools are moving in that direction, and this high school has done this well before I started in the district. So it's a long standing, practice of wanting our students have access. So it doesn't mean everybody needs to or has to take the classes, but there are not sort of artificial barriers to entry. So in many places, there might be... You know, you have to have x score on your Regents exam in order to be considered for the AP. Philosophy here is even if you don't have what we think is a guideline, if you're motivated and want to work and and do well, we're not gonna stop you from taking it. So that's one thing to keep in mind, and that's where you get some of these high numbers of AP enrollment.

On the flip side, what you can see if you take the example of, like, AP calculus BC. Right? So that is a course that's naturally just through the prerequisites. In order to be in that class, it naturally is only available to a small number of students. And so it kinda gives you a microcosm of what it looks like if we were to not have open enrollment. Right? When you put certain barriers in place to restrict access, you can control the results a little bit more and a little bit differently. So that's one piece to keep in mind about kind of equity and access generally for our students and our beliefs around that. Specifically in terms of the correlation, between class grades and exam performance, If you think back to colleges or some college classes that you have where your grade is solely based on your assessments. Doesn't matter if you attended the lecture or not. Doesn't matter if you did any homework. You're getting your

Allison may may... This might sound familiar. You... You're, so right, wrong, indifferent, your grade is solely sometimes based, on your assessment. So when it comes to the college board's perspective on the correlation between grades and, AP exam performance, they actually have statements they put out on their public facing website to keep in mind that high school grades are comprised of a number of different factors. So there's experience, participation, there's projects, in addition to assessment scores. So naturally, that does not mean that if you get an a in a class, you are necessarily going to have a five on your AP exam. From looking at our internal data, which I'm planning to share with a summary of with the board in upcoming weekly just, because I know it's a a point of interest and curious, we've done an internal analysis over the last few years and actually went student by student. What was the final course grade? What was the AP exam grade? So it... There's not a situation where you have students that are getting a's in classes and getting ones on AP exams. What you look at is more a range of you're getting

high b's and a's in a class and your range... Your score range is somewhere between a three and five on the AP exam, which is a more, I think, natural correlation. I I think sometimes there's a concern or a wondering, you know, our students are getting a's in classes getting ones on AP exams. So that's not the case, based on our data, but it's an understandable, question and concern. And the same goes for the state's perspective on Regents. So NYSUT actually puts out a statement. They remind us of it every year that Regents exam grades, they do not recommend that they are factored into students', GPAs. They're a moment in time to look at proficiency... Standards of proficiency, and they don't recommend using it. So I think, hopefully, that is helpful kind of to contextualize for the community.

I think it's actually super helpful because, again, it's like I think of myself when I was a parent of an elementary student, and I heard these terms, and I didn't know what they all meant. And, you know, I've spoken about this before as a person who did not go to high school in New York. I still... I do find the regions baffling because it's not something that I experienced. Right? So I think just to sort of understand, what the context is for some of these things for parents who've come from all over, it's important. And then also to sort of, I think, understand I think we're doing a good job here of engaging at this table with this question that's important to all of us, which is how does our, you know, knowledge building and acquisition of skills and critical thinking, how does that translate into whatever is next for our students in terms of their careers, in terms of their college readiness, so to be able to engage in these conversations.

And specifically, again, if I can wrap it up... I know bet... Betsy has one more question. I'll wrap it up. Oh,

I was just... One thing I was just gonna say about the college board and Regents' response, which I also found super fascinating. The cynical part of me says, oh, they say that so that you don't sue them if your class grade is really high and your test score is really low. So I understand their perspective and I agree it's one snapshot in time. In addition to really deeply caring about the knowledge building for our students, I also think that I'm glad to hear that you've done some of that assessment and have seen a correlation because what I wouldn't want to happen is a student going through the year saying, okay, I feel like I'm doing pretty well on all my tests. I feel like I'm prepared. I don't have to over crush myself towards the end and then not doing well on the test. I think having some correlation between grades and final exams is really important and I know that it also helps I'm thinking more about standardized testing now when you look at past grades for teachers to look at, oh, wow. This whole cohort had really high grades but did really poorly on that standardized test. What is going on here? So it's all formative information that I think is super valuable for our teachers and our students. You said that, it's not it's not that there's no correlation. It's just not, like, a one to one correlation. Right? Yeah.

Thank you. And really two last things. But, just building on when, you were suggesting that looking to alum and see what AP credits might be accepted. I think that's also a good question with the SUNY dual enrollment credits because I think that that's like a different... They're two different stories, but that would be helpful to get a a sense of as well. And then the other thing that came to mind, is that, like... And I know what I'm saying might be really annoying, but I'm gonna go for it anyway. But, you know, like, we have the interdisciplinary classes. We have, like, all these, you know, interest in doing for things, and I'm I'm wondering, like, it seems like in in the history, we have the dual enrollment classes, right, where we had the AP and then we've been able to map it onto another opportunity for our students. So I'm wondering with it... Like, with any of these interdisciplinary classes,

is there a way to map them on to any of the preexisting a... And, like, other APs that offer more or some of the Sunnis? Because I think, like, to... It... Like, I I think, unfortunately, the reality is is, like, a lot of, somebody wants to go to a cert... Like, colleges are looking at academic rigor. So tying these courses to something that's based with the more national

or regional standard, I think, is important for conveying that if we can. No. That's a really good question, actually. I know Ana mentioned some of the newer AP courses kind of sounding a little bit different than the existing AP courses. And I I had shared some information about the... This is probably a couple of years ago, so I can kinda refresh it in a board weekly about why the college board is engaging in creating these new classes, and they're doing it specifically because of the changing interdisciplinary nature of college. So they're moving in that direction too. So I... I'm about to. That's a business. But, you know, they're they're seeing where things are going and, you know, like any good business does. Right? And so I think there would definitely will be opportunities, and that's a really good good point. Thank you. Yeah. I'm sorry. Let's go back ten years. There there was no k two data in this report, so I just wanted to let everyone know what we can expect for that. So Yeah. So

Okay. I'm just I'm just gonna keep talking. So the k two data, we, have slated, I think, for February and May to look at, formative assessment data, and we we picked that timeline so that we... We've had our fall administration. And then by then, we'll have our winter administration too so you can see some some comparative data.

Well, so I I do... I... Actually, that is a great question because, again, I... There's sometimes things that we know in terms of our schedule that the public doesn't know, so I appreciate the question and and also the explanation for a sort of, you know, why the cadence is a little bit, different for k through two. So from all of us, I will just say thank you again. We know this was an incredible investment in time. And, you know, while some of this... To pull all the information together in a way that we are able to now, interpret meaning, I think, was really helpful for all of us. I think, also, I just wanna commend the approach, and I know my colleagues join me in this perspective of just being able to really look at very specifically, you know, what we are noticing, what we have to sort of keep an eye on. And then for us, in terms of our governance function, and, again, this ties back to what I was talking about during my remarks at the beginning, which is it's our charge to then help determine what the investment is going to be in terms of staffing, in terms of where we have to invest in curriculum,

in terms of where we have to focus our time on looking at where our students are spending their time when we're talking about scheduling and what, you know, what the school day needs to look like. These are... This this is this is one portion of what we're looking at. Obviously, it's not everything. And one of the challenges... Again, this has been a conversation that's come up, you know, in past years on the board as well is, of course, it's like we have to continue, as New York State is evolving, as our students are evolving is what expectations for learning are changing, different ways to sort of ask this question. You know, are they... What are they learning? How do we know that they're learning what they're supposed to be? How are they demonstrating their proficiency in all of these, content areas? I think it's an important ongoing question. So we are looking forward to, having come back now to this practice of looking at this data and learning from it. I think it's very healthy for us to be to be making our decisions based off of concrete information in terms of the... You know, our function as

approving a a budget that Denise puts together with the support of the administrative team. Being able to make that connection is really, really important, and so we appreciate that. Thank you for the time. And, again, thanks to the trustees and everyone for a really robust conversation. For folks listening at home, you can check out our board recaps and get a copy in a few days. Give us a little bit of time. Emily has a lot to do this week. But you'll be able to see this, presentation as well. And we certainly welcome, questions from the community and follow ups. I think you can direct them certainly to, you know, your building leadership. That's always your first place to ask a question about what's going on in your school. But we do invite the community to send in their feedback about this because this is a change, and it's a change that I think we're all engaged in because we're really seeing that the work of the district is... It's most successful when we're basing it in looking at student outcomes and experiences. So thank you again. If I can, I'd like to just shift gears to the next item on our agenda, which is,

item 5.1, our consent agenda, and I will introduce the resolution. So be it resolved... Oh, first of all, thank you again. Did I say thank you? I feel like I... That was that was intended as a thank you, but a very specific thank you. And thank you also also to, to doctor Ellen Moskowitz, who I know was helping with gathering some of this material and wasn't here tonight, but it is a team effort on the part of everyone involved, including our building administrators, to look at, pull this together, and to, formulate the learnings. So we really appreciate that. Going back to item 5.1, consent agenda, be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the consent agenda as presented. Second. On the question? Anything that anyone wants to highlight? Pleased to see that we're appointing our, medical director, which is very important for us. So thank you, Rachel, for your hard work in ensuring that that we have that covered. We appreciate that. I don't think there's anything else very specific to call out here, but if people have questions, otherwise, we'll move to a vote.

Okay. Then all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Motion carries. Moving into the closing of the meeting, item 6.1, polling of the board. I know we've all asked a lot of questions and had a lot to say, but if anyone has further or closing comments from the board, this is an opportunity. That's okay if we don't. We've talked a lot. We'll move into item 6.2. The next board of education meeting is currently scheduled for November 5 at 06:30PM at the CHHS library, and our next work session will follow two weeks later on November 19 here also at the library at 06:30PM. Before both of those meetings, you can meet two trustees from the board of education at 06:00 in the rotunda of the high school. Come by with any questions, comments, or things that you wanna chat about. Next item on the agenda is 6.3 entering executive session. Be it resolved that the board of education hereby enters executive session to discuss matters leading to the appointment of a particular person or persons. Please note for the community that after,

the board exits executive session, we will promptly adjourn the meeting and will conduct no other business after that. Could I just get a motion, please? Thank you. Thank you. On the question, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. The board will now enter executive session. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you to the admin team, and, wish everybody a good night.