CHUFSD Board of Education Work Session 8/27/26

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the 08/27/2026 work session of the Croton-Harmon board of Croton-Harmon Union Free School District's Board of Education to order. Starting with item 1.2, the approval of the agenda. Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the agenda as presented. So

Aye.

On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Moving into our first order of business, item 1.3, the president's report. So good evening, and welcome to the members of our community in the audience, not so many tonight. Hopefully, some watching the livestream and listening at a later date. It is wonderful to be back in the c h h s CHHS library and debuting our new updated sound system. To those of you who are joining via the livestream or recording this evening, please reach out and let us know if you're hearing an improvement, and contact us anytime you encounter difficulties with video or audio quality going forward. We are very excited, and I hope you'll see a difference. I'm gonna open tonight with an overview of tonight's agenda. This year, each of our meetings is going to open with a president's report, a superintendent's report, and board reports. Previously, these reports were delivered monthly, but going forward, we'd like to keep our community informed of news and developments in a more timely manner.

After that, we'll be discussing the district's tech reset and cell phone policy implementation for the new school year. We're also going to discuss and consider adopting the proposed energy performance contract, formally appoint a few new staff members who joined us yesterday, and conduct other new and ongoing business. With our students returning to school next Tuesday, September 1, this has been a busy week for the district, and you'll be hearing more about those preparations from superintendent Walker during his report. For my part, I had the honor of representing the board of education at a few key events this week. It was a delight to meet our new faculty members at Monday's new teacher orientation, where my fellow trustees Allison Samuel and Betsy Laird joined me for a lovely lunch with the new teachers, their assigned mentors, all our building principals and assistant principals, and the administrative team.

Yesterday morning, I joined the district's entire staff for the annual welcome breakfast in the high school gym to kick off superintendent's conference days. And yesterday evening, I had the best time ever at the DJ Dance Party New Family Welcome Community Open House Extravaganza

hosted by assistant superintendent Rachel DePal and the people personnel services team. Betsy was there with her family as well, and I hope we'll hear about the bus ride during your report. The event was so well attended, and I was really thrilled to meet so many new families and students. Welcome again to all of you. I'm gonna turn it over now to superintendent Walker to tell you more about the opening of school and other exciting things. Thank you, Anamika. Good evening to everyone, and welcome to the two thousand twenty six, twenty seven school year.

It's a privilege and an honor, once again, get a chance to be a part of this tremendous team. And on Tuesday morning, as we shared with the staff this week, the staff of this district do an incredible and special thing. Right? We open the doors of all of our schools and say to every school aged child in our community, you're welcome here. You're challenged here. You're supported here. You're accepted here. You're inspired here. That's a beautiful, beautiful message, and a great promise, to our students and to their families that we look forward to to making making good on as we begin this year. So it may or may not be a surprise that the week before students arrive is actually the busiest week of the school year, I think, for for everybody. And no matter how much prep work occurs during those first six or six or seven weeks of summer, this week becomes the time to get everything ready. And I'm incredibly pleased to report that if we needed to open tomorrow,

we could. And that's a testament to the work of so many folks, people in this room, and so so many others. Outstanding job by Brad and the facilities team. But once again, we're gonna get a chance to open our our doors to to students who know that they'll be safe and secure and staff safe and secure in our buildings. Clean, beautiful, inspiring spaces. Thanks to the the great work of your team, so thank you for that. The clerical team, the administrative team, the a team, everyone who's involved in all of this work during the summer, truly spectacular, spectacular job. So we can't wait for Tuesday. That is, aside from graduation, one certainly the the highlight of the year, and there's nothing that places that kind of energy of seeing all 1,600 of our students where they belong back to school. So we look forward to that on Tuesday morning. And so let's talk quickly about what happened this week and how the guys covered these events, but I'll cover my perspective as well. I wanna thank Laura

for an outstanding job facilitating and coordinating the two day teacher orientation. Thanks to Ellen as well and to our entire administrative team. And that, we had a chance to welcome about 12 or 13 new members of this faculty, ranging from CET up through the high school. It's a terrific opportunity, obviously, for us to get a chance to know them, but as importantly, them to get get to know each other, to get to know our work and our community. So they spend time thinking through our vision map and with our instructional coaches, as Anamika mentioned, board members, other administrators, their mentors. We have great conversations about how they get themselves ready within the classroom space for the beginning of the year, how they're going introduce themselves to the community, to their parents, to students, spent some time thinking about technology, its role in education here. So it was a jam packed whirlwind two days for them and took a bus tour of the community.

But they're ready. And they're excited, and they're ready to add to an already amazing faculty here. So it's relative of our our new times. On Tuesday of this week, in addition to the second day of new teacher orientation simultaneously, we also held the curriculum coordinator and instructional coach retreat. Thank thank you again to all of our administrative team and teachers who were a part of that. That's a full day of really great conversation about what we want teacher leadership to look like in our system going forward, thinking through curriculum work and how we can make that better, accessible, and more forward facing to our community, technology philosophy and implementation, to wonderful conversations there that we'll hear some of the fruits of that labor later this evening, and a great opportunity for to position all of them to lead the kind of transformative work that we know our system continues to benefit from. So thank you, Go to all of them for their hard work on Tuesday.

And then yesterday morning, aside from the first day of school, the energy that's associated with having all 300 or so members of the staff in the same place at the same time greeting each other after eight or nine weeks apart, is really hard to describe. That is a this absolutely wonderful feeling that's involved in that. Since a genuine privilege, she had a chance to address that group along with Anamika, from Lana. I heard from Brad and the rest of the team introducing new members of of the faculty and staff. We spoke a bit about the hero's journey, the odyssey, not only in terms of pop culture and, of course, the literary function, but how that relates to the trajectory of our district and where we're heading and what we have to learn and how we can continue to improve. So that was the first of our two superintendents' conference days yesterday and today that culminated with a tremendous amount of work this morning among each faculty in each building,

two or three hour meetings altogether, thinking through all the district goals, board goals, building goals, all of that work, preparing the faculty for the great work at the beginning of the year. And last night, I had the honor of getting a chance to be there as well. Absolutely wonderfully attended beautifully run event. The energy in the space was fantastic. It was great to get a chance to meet parents and students that ranged from incoming kindergarten up through students who are gonna be new here at the high school. Found that I had some really cool connections with some of them. One of the families that I used to live in the same building in Tarrytown a few years ago. And so it's just it's a beautiful way to welcome some wonderful families and students to our community, but I wanna give Rachel a chance to speak with that. I'm happy to turn it over to her.

Thank you. So I think what really made this event special was the outpour of support from our partners in the community. So Croton PD was available, and they were present. Guiding eyes, ASO, Croton Little League, a few of our after school programs in the village, as well as our PTAs, Champs, Septa. So we had a nice wide representation of community resources to share with the new families that may not know where to look for certain, you know, resources. So Joe Pasquarelli DJ ed the event. He is a hype man. So if anyone needs a DJ, please reach out to Joe Pascarelli. We lost track of the amount of people that attended, but 38 families RSVP. But then with the as a result of the Parent Square, we had a, you know, a whole another group of parents come, but they really had an opportunity to connect with each other. A lot of our incoming kindergarten families were able to find other families that may have the same teacher assignments so they were able to make a connection prior to the first day of school, which was great. So we look forward to doing this for

every August or early September, depending to allow for that opportunity to make those connections, within the school community. So thank you all for for those that attended and all of our community agency partners that were able to volunteer their time. Thank you. And bravo to Rachel. Thank you for your vision and your leadership in putting that together. Great. Great job.

Shifting gears for a moment. I wanna take a couple of minutes along with Laura to address a topic that, frankly, I haven't heard a lot of discussion about in our community at this point, but I know in speaking to other superintendents around the region, is one that, districts certainly throughout our region, throughout the state, and across several states across the country are dealing with, and it relates to The US News and World Report rankings. Right? It's something that, we don't tend to comment on publicly because methodologies and these sorts of things and how they rank, districts and schools across different publications tends to vary widely. And I know we've shared information with the board about the fact that we view the methodology here to be fundamentally flawed in a number of ways. Right? Districts can manipulate, the rankings by doing things that we think negatively impact kids. Right? Like, open enrollment for AP courses, forcing kids to take Regis exams they don't have to, those kinds of things.

But be that as it may, the background here, and we learned about it after it happened, of course, unfortunately, along with every other district in New York State, is that on a a somewhat regular basis every every few years, the college board, right, who coordinate the advanced placement exams, asks the state education department for permission to share AP data with US News and World Report. Typically, SED, the state education department, has said yes. This time, they said no, right, due to data privacy concerns. And, obviously, data privacy is a conversation we've had in a robust way in this community and certainly in many others. So the backstory here is, what happens is data gets collected both in an in an aggregate and also on a student level. So what US News and World Report does is they'll say, we're not we're inter we're interested not just in in the aggregate how kids at Croton-Harmon High School did, but we're also interested in how an individual student who took multiple APs did across those APs. And so, for example, a student if I took three APs here two years ago, which is there's a lag in the data and did well on all three of those, that helps us in The US News and World Report rankings.

Because that starts to feel more personally identifiable, the state education departments explained to districts that they refused to share that data. What happens then is that has a significant impact. Our district and every district that implements the advanced placement AP model in a significant way. Right? And so what happened was that's that's 40% of the calculation of the ranking. And so the implication for a district like ours is last year, I think we were ranked eightieth in the state. This year, we're two hundred and ninety fifth. We dropped precipitously. I think we were eight hundredth in the country last year. We dropped to nine thousandth, right, while while simultaneously the scores went up. Right? So, we wanted to share that information just by way of some context for the community that, again, this is why we don't spend a lot of time investing in these sort of third party rankings of our schools.

We spend much more time thinking about the kind of data we've shared with the community and with the board, as well as the sort of data that AP themselves shares, and the the platinum level recognition that that the high school received last year for not only performance, which is the the major part of the calculation, but also access, of students to AP exams. Lori, did you wanna add anything?

Sorry. If you go back one slide two slides now. If you look at the deck, if you look at the scorecard, you can see our raw score is 49.15. So that's they actually gave give gave all New York schools that do only AP. You can choose AP or IB, whatever your school decides to do. For whatever reason, IB

was released by New York State. And can you just clarify just for people who are listening on what IB is so that everyone knows it since we don't have it? Sorry, Laura. Thank you. IB is the International Baccalaureate,

program, which is sort of like an AP program that's more on an international level. And there are a small number of schools in our area that offer IB, but the bulk of the schools around here offer AP exams. So what you're looking at on the left here is the Hudson Valley rankings, and I think there's some schools on there that would come as a surprise being in that top list to many. And what they all have in common with the exception of one in that list is that they offer IV exams. So they were given kind of that mathematical advantage, whereas all of us that offer APs got a zero factored in for 40% of our score. So the raw score there that you're looking at for us is 49.15, whereas at this time last year, it was 97.25. So you kinda get a sense of what that looks like.

Thank you very much for going into the deal with that. I guess, like, maybe not now, but I would assume then this would impact a lot of our other schools in the region. So I'd be curious, like, how we compare with them. Because if everybody was hit, like, it didn't hit us in a yeah. Yeah. We've we've had that day,

we had an an extended conversation with all the superintendents in the region with the BOCES superintendent who's our representative up at up at SED, and asked slash, demanded, a clarifying public statement from SED. There was a it's linked here. This is a section of it. It's a three page and a response. We've asked for something that's a bit more condensed and a bit more aggressively shared publicly. We haven't gotten that yet from the state. We'll continue to pursue that. Several districts, I know Yorktown, Chappaqua, others, have put out clarifying statements around this because they've experienced the same sort of drop. We'll plan to do that tomorrow, but wanted to make sure we had this forum to discuss it briefly this evening before we we shared that.

Well, I'll just say I appreciate that we're I know, Betsy, you have a question. I appreciate that we're sort of getting getting to hear the backstory on this because, clearly, the communication didn't happen statewide. And noting the slide here that says there are four states, I guess, four states Yeah. Maine. States are not participating in this. And we know also just from hearing, again, what's happening in higher education that there are a number of higher educational institutions, prominent, nationwide that have, stopped participating in providing data to US News and World Report without sort of regard to what it does to their view in terms of this particular ranking. But I think because our community does you know, it's it's a metric that many communities use, and it's especially tied to real estate values, which I think, you know, it's is that a flawed thing? Yeah. It's pretty flawed, but it's still a reality. So I think it's really, I appreciate that we're about this and have an opportunity now for folks to ask questions because I think it did it did come as a, surprise

to see how how just the overall picture changed within New York and within our region specifically. That's it.

Just wanna say that I deeply appreciate having this conversation. I I'm a big believer in looking at data straight in the face and saying, what's the context of this? Because I also I saw it, and I was like, what's going on here? Because I do a lot of measurement. I immediately went and how did they change the methodology? Yeah. And so I I couldn't find this. So I'm so glad to see that this is a a bit of the explanation, but I did see that a lot of other schools that I would have expected to be higher ranking had also fallen, so that gave me some context. So I just wanna thank you both and everyone for for facing this question head on. And I think a really interesting question would be when we compare against those who also did not share AP scores, what are the things that put us a little bit further back versus a little bit further ahead of others and further contextualize the information. So thank you so much. You're I could share a little bit about that just because we, we've been through this a lot and shared this with the board last year. So, the regents,

exams that are given play a role. So for example, the if you I can go back another slide. Greg, if you yeah. If you look at mathematics proficiency, reading proficiency, and then below that would be science proficiency, that comes from your first Regis exam. So if you for example, if you give algebra for all in eighth grade and most of your almost all of your students pass algebra for all in eighth grade, very few high school students take the algebra exams, so only the high school students scores factor. So we saw in a district near us in their publication that they put out about The US news, ranking, they actually contextualized why their math proficiency score looked so low even though they're a very highly performing district overall. This'll this comes up again, like, with chemistry, for example. For our high school students, once our students have met their region's exam requirements, their four plus one, they're not required to take additional

exams. So as Steve mentioned earlier, there's schools that look can try to kinda game the numbers a little bit by forcing all the kids to take an exam that they don't need for graduation, and that gives you a higher proficiency score. So an example of that would be, like, US history, an exam that typically students score very well on. Almost none of our students need the US history exam to graduate because they've already met their graduation requirements at that point.

Could we force them to take it to up our ranking? Sure. But we don't think that that's the greatest choice for kids. Right. But and to Laura's point, that context around algebra for all is something we have to be thinking about. The although the data's on a couple year lag, we'll be seeing that three or four years down the line in terms of its impact on our our ranking related to the math, proficiency. So we'll put together and, distribute a community update on this. Oh, sorry, Allison. Go. But we'll communicate this to our broader community tomorrow.

Sorry. You know, before you said that, historically, they have, in the rank and the New York State released, you know, how students perform across various APs. I mean, if we have that data, I mean, I, as a board member, would wanna would be interested to be able to see that, you know, deidentified information, just even if we're not releasing it to the state to understand what's happening across classes. And, you know, as as you're talking about, like, I understand, like, I was just gonna play devil's advocate about the regions, like, and making it optional. It's like, I totally get why going that direction, but I would also just, like, put out there as a college professor giving students an opportunity to participate in a low stake, but what's would be considered a low stakes exam. It's not bad practice, you know, for other things that they have to do in life. And if it does impact, like, other things in our community,

it might be something to just consider. I mean, I'm not I'm not don't feel strongly about that, but I'm just putting it out there as another perspective on the topic. But a clarifying question on that. For that particular exam, for instance, they'd be taking the AP.

Is that Yes. Exactly. They would be taking the AP exam. No. It's a question of if whether we're asking them to take a Regis and an AP at the end of the year. I know it's Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think yeah. So, I mean, as a parent, like, from the parent perspective, in our family, we certainly prioritize the AP and decided not to do an extra Regis, but I I hear I think I think it's I think it is a question when we're looking at these, when we're looking at these sort of metrics and sort of, like, how they're used,

to to to modify and affect these rankings. It's a it is a good question. And that's a long standing practice at the high school, not a new thing. That's way before my time at the high school. Don't know that You guys remember when that changes me? Yeah. Well, I would just say it's it could be something that it's not even every year it's required that just, like, maybe one each year or something like that alone.

There's ways to slice and dice it that it's not as Mhmm. Onerous and heavy. Yeah. Yeah. No. I I think for me, like, the reason I'm speaking to that perspective is that I have a lot of questions about the regions generally because, you know, outside of New York State, I I don't think there's great clarity on what they mean to people. And so I think that that is a perspective for families that it's like to to determine where you're putting sort of, like, your testing energy because it's it's it's a significant amount of energy, I think, for high school students, especially during, like, junior and senior year to determine, you know, where that time is going. And you know that better than anybody else having just gone through it. So I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

I would just like to say my kids would kill me for saying what I just said. I know. So I'm just but I'm just you know?

Mine still is in my house.

Just a quick question that I I think you mentioned the answer already, but how was the statement released, and then what is the possibility for another kind of clear, more robust Right. So this this came out after

the rankings came out. Right? And there was outcry from superintendents across the state, saying, help us understand how this happened, why it happened. Right? So there was pressure put on by various superintendent groups throughout the state that precipitated this three page statement from SED. And so the the ask has been, we want something that's a bit clearer and more digestible for communities because this wasn't readily accessible nor was it widely shared by the state and contains a lot of educational

jargon that we'd prefer to have clarified. So we'll do that ourselves tomorrow, but we'd love to be able to link to a statement from the commissioner and the board of regions. We can't do that yet. Yeah. Okay. Just for a follow-up, the the thing that is linked in this presentation, is that publicly available? If someone's walking at home, they can go to that. But it it has been posted widely, I think you said, by SED. The other thing that I think for us as trustees would be helpful just to sort of contextualize this and also understand how other districts are treating it. If you said you you have, you have had access to some of their communications to their community just for informational purposes. It would be great if you could pull one or two that you think are comparable or that you think it did did a good job messaging it just so we understand sort of what you know, again, we're all in Westchester together, so it's really helpful information. Yeah. I'll share those in the weekly tomorrow. That would be great. Any further questions on this before Steve continues on?

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you for the conversation, everybody. And just one final note for me. We understand certainly for families that, back to school time brings with it a lot of energy and a lot of communications. Right? And so certainly for families who have students in multiple buildings, you're getting welcome back letters often that are detailed and contained links to various other things from multiple buildings plus transportation plus athletics. So I wanna thank Greg, for putting these altogether, consolidating them there now, and a pop up on the website, reminding folks that school begins on Tuesday and all of the welcome back letters and information in one readily accessible place. So, we're piloting that for the first time this year and hopefully is helpful for our families as they get ready for Tuesday. So I wanna thank say thank you to Greg for that and, obviously, to our principals and administrators for putting together and sharing the information to begin with.

I love that communication, I think. Sorry. I just wanted to say I it's really, really great. And I know, Greg, you've done that a couple times this summer, and we've noticed. So thank you. Really helpful. Sorry, Ana. I was just wondering if you could go back to slide

it's page 10 where we talk about the AP honor roll, the AP gold roll, all of those accolades. Think we kinda skipped over it.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So

for the past since the honor roll program has been in existence with the College Board, high schools earned honor roll status, starting in 2023 with the gold award. And then in, 2024, we earned the platinum award, which is the highest level award. And I think there were only, six or seven oh, no. It's actually It was last thing. It was two or three schools in our region that earned that level award. Yeah. And then we earned it again in 2025. And interestingly, this data that would have been used for this year's US News ranking would have come from that 2023, 2024 year, which is the year that we moved up to the highest level for the first time. So it just, you know, sort of adds insult to injury a little bit more. Yeah.

But I think as a community, we're I we are certainly grateful, and I know I am and my my my own high school student has been grateful for the opportunity to be able to take APs in tenth grade, which is not something that's necessarily widely available. Now it's not, so I know that's something we've experienced as well. And I think also just also to ensure that that there are not barriers to entry for our students who are seeking a higher, like, a higher intensity sort of, coursework experience in high school that there aren't qualifications, or, you know, testing in, or even, like, a GPA requirement. I think that those are really sort of important factors in terms of our equitable approach to giving everyone an access to education.

Great.

Sorry. A question came to mind from looking at this. So we've we've gone up in the rankings on this, which is great news. However, I think since then, we is it am I correct that we're now doing some more SUNY They They those

to be the No. They don't count SUNY exams don't count towards this news ranking. But the SUNY we started the SUNY classes in 2024,

so they were running at the same time. Okay. So but so they that would also feed into this AP school honor roll or no? Okay. So we might go down in the rankings if we're no longer offering it on-site?

No. Because we're still offering all of them as soon as in addition to Okay.

Okay. Thank you. And we've added multiple AP courses for 2020. This past year. That's true. Thank you.

Do you wanna add anything on this? Just because I'm realizing you're not doing a report, but we are talking about, you know, this and I don't wanna put you on the spot. But if you have any thoughts or questions or even wanna comment on the APPs, we welcome that.

And if nothing, that's okay too. Yeah. I don't think much is coming to mind. I mean, it's great to see that we have some of these accolades. Yeah. I think we should continue providing the access to these AP classes. I think students really value that.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I have to say. Great. Yeah.

Okay. Well, thank you for that report, and thanks for sharing all the excitement, enthusiasm, and addressing questions that may may have propped propped up in the community about, The US News Report rankings. We appreciate that. Moving into item 1.5, board reports. We'll kick it off with, audit.

Nothing to report on audit.

Thank you. We know that the first audit meeting is gonna happen a little bit later in the call. Yep. Oh, January. I thought it was sooner than that. Okay. By

January. Think so. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. Great.

So I will quickly then move into giving a report, for to for our board governance, committee, which met on August 12. As it was our first meeting of the season or of the terms that we reviewed our committee charge and structure, for the benefit of the public. The board governance committee has had a name change, in that it is focusing, more, specifically, I think, on our governance, initiatives and, and responsibilities while also taking over responsibility for board communications, which sort of is a function of how how we govern. So we discussed our summer retreat, debriefed on that, and we also discussed a plan for the fall, which fall and spring, actually, which we'll be sharing with trustees over email. We are going to develop retreat agendas that allow for a rotation of facilitators within the board to lead discussions so that we're hearing from all of our trustees and everyone sort of has an opportunity to own and participate in,

these important meetings that we have throughout the year to confirm our norms, our practices, and dig into issues that, relate to how we sort of do our jobs. We also began work on drafting committee protocols to help us ensure that all of our board committees are operating under the same sort of guidelines in terms of agenda communication minutes and record keeping. The biggest thing that we spent time on, and we'll have more to share on this soon, is we reviewed the list of recommended work session topics that came out of our retreat with the administrative team over this summer. And we're trying to refine that into a few key target areas to present to the, to the district team so that we can determine what we want to spend, the year focusing on as work session topics. Last thing we touched on very briefly, and I'll just mention it here for the benefit of the public, is meet the BOE, which is our

opportunity that takes place before each of our meetings for members of the public to come in and sit with, talk to, interact with two trustees from the Board of Education before each of our meetings is going to kick off next Thursday, which is the second, third, the third of September. It will take place at 6PM in the CHHS Rotunda, which is the place where we've been holding it for the past couple of years. And there's no need to sign up. You're welcome to just pop in, drop in, say hello, let us know what's on your mind, and hopefully, after that, join us at 06:30 for our regular meeting. Does any does anyone is there anything that I missed that you all can think of right now? Okay. So that's the report. Thank you. Over to whoever's next, policy.

Nothing to report for policy.

Thank you. Do you wanna switch these two around so that we can talk a little bit longer about technology? So I'll turn it over to you first, Theo, for ad hoc committee on hiring retention and tenure.

Okay. So we did meet on August 11 at two Tuesday, August 11. And just to remind, for anyone who does not remember, this ad hoc committee on recruiting, hiring, and tenure, was established in June of this year at a meeting of the board of education and establishes committee to examine policy ninety two thirty, which is our recruiting and hiring policy, as well as related best practices. And, we established a committee that consists of three members of the board, which is, Ana Teague, Anamika, and I. And we and those two were appointed by the board president. We then asked for, the superintendent and assistant superintendent to join the committee, to help inform our work. So in the that August 11 meeting, I would say, was a lot of kind of identifying the things that we needed numerous documents and policies, etcetera, that we wanted to look at that are related to the subject area. We noted that tenure,

of course, is actually governed at the state level through state law, and and also through NICE rules, but that there is, there there are recommendations on process and communication of information that could be related to tenure. So that sort of gets to the decision making on tenure that we could make recommendations around. We also talked about, sort of the overall timing here. So we wanna we when we, established the committee, we said that we would get recommendations to the board no, like, later than the end of this year, so December 31 of this year. That is, of course, the goal. So we affirm that at the meeting and, affirm that we would make our recommendations to the full board. The full board might then kick some parts of the recommendations to the policy committee or other committees as appropriate, but that is, still our timeline. And from now till then, we will be meeting monthly. We already have our

meetings already on the calendar. The meeting for September is gonna be on September 8. The last thing I'd say on this is just that between now and then, we are working to get a lot of different, pieces of information so that we can, review and analyze before our next meeting and sort of break break down at our next meeting. So, the current policy, the NISPA recommended policy, the CTA agreement on tenure, kind of, like, a timeline on how we dis like, sort of, like, key milestones and kind of touch points on tenure. And then we also, talked about looking at what other districts are doing with regard to hiring tenure. So identified some local districts that we think would be good for us to look at, as well as West put a NISPA's summaries of hiring policies in Westchester, for us to look at as well. So that's just an example of some of the things that we identified. There's more. So there's a lot of work to do between now and then to,

and I know that we already have some, done already. So the next meeting, as I mentioned, is, September 8, and then we will be meeting monthly after that with the goal of having our recommendations to this board by December 31.

Thank you. Over to you, Omar, for the ad hoc committee on

technology. Thank you, Anamika. So the ad hoc committee on technology met a number of times. Don't remember them off the top of my head. But we had two listening sessions where 12 members of the community participated, two of whom were former students. We also, had participation of a 182 individuals that responded to the survey. Within that within the 182, 14 were teachers, classroom teachers, five were students, and four were support staff. We met with the administrative team on Monday to talk through kind of digest the the data that we received, talk through next steps. Where the committee is at this point is, we should receive some feedback from the administration. We're going to be drafting a resolution and finalizing a presentation that thank you, Betsy, for really doing it on your own. So thank you for that. And we'll be sharing it with the full board in advance of next week's meeting. So the charge was to present

to come back with a recommendation of the charge for the community advisory committee by September 3, and we are on track of getting that done. Would, you guys like to add anything or if anybody has any questions?

We're excited to share the findings. We had a great conversation with the administration yesterday. It seemed like there was a lot of alignment. So I'm really I feel really positive about where we're headed. I just wanna commend you all on a really remarkable turnout on the survey because I know, again, it demonstrates, of course, that there's real interest and concern about this topic within our community, but I think also you did a really good job of pushing it out and making sure that people knew about it and that there was ample time to fill it out. There was a very clear deadline and reminders, so thank you for those really robust communications. And I also wanna commend all of you because we knew that we were putting a really, tough time line, and you were up against a tough line time line to get a lot done. So thank you for, you know, not really taking the summer off, not that any of us have, but you in particular, I think, just hit the ground running right after our organization meeting and made a lot of this happen, and it's such important work. In fact, we're gonna be hearing a little bit more about that tonight, so it's a perfect night for us to get this initial presentation, and we're looking forward to hearing more from you as is the whole community,

at next week's meeting. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you on behalf of all of us. Really appreciate your, ad hoc ing it. So if I can, I will, we so, if anyone that does have a liaison report, we don't have formally on the agenda when I have a chance for us to get into our work session? But if there's anything that anyone wants to report, you sure you won't tell us they can get that bus ride. But I didn't get to go on the bus. My

husband and son went on the bus. I didn't get to join because my little one has an early bedtime, but, they did came walking home just on cloud nine. They had a a big blast. My son sat next to, a a rising kindergartner who was a little bit nervous about going to school, and he was like, it's gonna be great. Kindergarten's so much fun. And so he was he felt good being the big kid, and it was a really lovely experience. I It was a rowdy bus, though. He couldn't hear much.

Yeah. I I told Rachel, was like, the main reason I went was to be able to go on the bus, and then I realized that there were just I I could not steal a seat from an actual child. So I waved, and maybe next time I'll get to have a bus ride for some other reasons. So think about that. Allison.

I attended the NISPA advocacy meeting on Monday evening, and And so the first part of it, we basically just looked at what the advocacy priorities were last year, and it seems like most of them are going to be continuing forward. And then there was some general conversation about some of some of the things that are impacting districts, kind of a no surprise funding formula, UPK, know, and how that's impacting districts and, I guess, concerns about moving forward, kind of how that might intersect if we're using independent providers and with the union. Is it like you know? Anyway, so that was something. AI policy was a a discussion, and a little bit of discussion about how tech is being used across schools given, the New York State Teacher Union resolution that came out. And then there was actually a lot of discussion about charter schools, because apparently there's one, that's putting in,

for an aerospace and virtues school in Armonk for 800 people students in for their high school. So a lot of districts are very, concerned about that.

There's also

Yeah. That's underway. Yeah. That didn't come up for some reason during the conversation. But, yeah, this this new one, as well. Thank you.

I will just take a quick second on behalf of, our colleague, Jake, who is, traveling this week, just to let you all know that he, is serving as our health and safety committee liaison for the school board, and he participated. He got his own exclusive extra special early walk through on behalf of the school board of our, district buildings and facilities. Reported that he learned a lot, was able to take a look at everything that had been worked on over the summer. I know that there was also, the official walk through, I think, was today, or is it tomorrow? It was yesterday. Okay. Can I put you on the spot just to ask you rather than having me repeat sort of, like, what, what Jake sent just to let us know about it? Yes. So the committee met or was whoever was able to attend, and we started at CT. We looked at the CT Playground,

which, unfortunately, the equipment has not yet arrived. So that is expected to be delivered to delivered to the man or the the warehouse mid September with an expected two week installation period. So we went over sort of what what the project was and the talks we've had with administration as far as keeping everyone safe during recess with as little interruption as possible during that process. Then we took a walk down to the CT Tennis Courts. We looked at the progress they made there. Conduit installation was complete. Pole bases are set. We're waiting on the light poles and fixtures to arrive. And when they do, we'll coordinate with Barry, in the athletics have close the course down for a day for the crane to set those fixtures. Hopefully, those are operational beginning of October. Then we took a bus over to PVC, and we looked at the spaces that are getting air conditioning. Once again, unfortunately,

due to manufacturer delays, those units are not going to arrive until mid October. Once those arrive, we'll look at scheduling of pulling the old units out, putting the new ones in. Potentially, it could be an evening weekends project or wait till the winter recess that's still up in the air, and we'll talk about logistics once that comes in and how we move forward with that.

Well, thank you. Thanks for serving as our, as our trustee and director of physical health representative, to the health and safety committee. I, you know, I think it's I think just for the benefit of the public, everyone should know these are these are, like, things that really we have no control over in the current environment with the challenge like, the supply chain challenges that have been ongoing for half a decade now. And I think also I mean, if I if I'm speaking correctly, it's just things are not coming when we think that they're coming, and that's that's continuing to be a challenge all aspects of construction repair. Am I right? We we also ran into,

originally, we were planning to go through cooperative contracts, and then there was that court case in Upstate New York where they did, like, a whole building renovation off of one of these contracts and got sued. So then the court stopped districts from being able to purchase, public works projects through that method. So then we had to go to public bid. So we have been working with the manufacturer and had our equipment production locked in. And then when we weren't able to go through that method of procurement and we had to go to public bid, we lost our spot, which then reset us.

And, so, yeah, there's a couple different things. Lots of factors. Yes. But I know you all are on top of it. And as Steve said earlier, everything else is, like, spick and span, ready to go, and it's great to have the timelines on all these. Thank you for sharing because I know, of course, these are things that are important to our CET families, PVC families, PVC teachers, students as well. And, I know you'll you're here. Thank you, Brad, for being here to talk to us about the, the energy performance contract a little bit. Appreciate it. And just one more thing. We also went over. We had our state

required fire inspection at the beginning of August. So that was completed, submitted to SED, and we've received our certificates of occupancy

for all the buildings. So That's great. Great. I'm actually really I I, like, almost forgot to ask this question, so I'm glad that I did. I think going forward, I would like to just make sure that we have a practice of having that sort of, like, formal facilities update before we start the school year so that everybody really knows this work is going on. All the i's are dotted, t's are crossed, and I know you and your team are really The this

fire inspection's actually on an eleven month schedule, so that way it hits at a different time each year. So so like, it just happens that that happened over the summer this year. So

All good to know. You gotta guess. So what will the impact be at CET? How long will the playground be closed, and what's the plan for students during recess during that time?

So it's still not finalized yet, but most likely minimal impact. We'll cordon off the area, and they should still be able to use some of the playground. There will be like two days when they actually bring in the engineered wood fiber, which is like the fall protection, where they're going to need to run a skid steer back and forth, which that those two days most likely, they'll be closed. But otherwise, we should be keeping the playgrounds open, protected with a fence in between what's going on.

Sounds good. Thank you. Good question. Okay. I'm happy now to turn it over to item 2.1 on our agenda, the technology reset and cell phone implementation discussion. So I'll turn it over to superintendent Walker to kick us off. Thank you. Yes, Anamika.

To state the obvious, there's been a lot of discussion within this space and many others in our community and certainly beyond that region, state, and the nation about the role of technology in our schools and in our lives. Wish almost everything we continue to try to position ourselves as thoughtful leaders in this group. We share tonight our most recent thinking and evolution around this, some of which will be new information for our community. And I think particularly what will be a tantamount to the effect of elimination of iPads k two. This positions us to be ahead of and different than any other district that I'm aware of in the region. Know Helen shared this work in our yesterday, the tech director of private region for a couple of reasons. One of them, that will be there's gonna be an expectation that the program can do it. Other districts can should follow. Right? So there will be some some response, I'm sure, from the rest of the districts in the region. This

is product of a lot of really good thinking. It's a really strong collaboration between faculty and staff people in this room for administration and our parent community. And being responsive to that, we're trying to create schools that reflect the values of our community. So the the work didn't end last June. I don't know if she set in the never attended to. Right? Summer was a really opportune time for us to continue those conversations. About that purchasing and onboarding of greater extent. Don's classrooms, work with faculty, work with our instructional coaches and as recently as the past couple of days, right, conversations with our teachers and teacher leaders

about where we wanna be as we begin this year. So you'll see, again, kind of the fruits, the products of all of those conversations. Thank you. Over these past few weeks, we're proud of where we are. We look forward to how this is gonna change the student experience, and I think be responsive to what our community has been asking for, and looking for, in terms of the experience in our schools. To begin, the evening, we wanna thank very much the high school administration for being here. As we implemented last year the New York State, legislation around cell phones in schools, we knew that it was gonna be a year of seeing how things worked, right, what worked well, how students responded to certain things, and and what didn't work as well as we want. Right? So as we, ended the year last year, there was some update provided to the board and the community with regard to some some quantitative

data and some qualitative feedback on on what worked and what didn't. And as we entered the summer and had conversations with the board, there was an impetus in having the administration continue to look at that, right, refine some of our practices, and specifically around certain spaces in the building, certain times of the day, the cafeteria, and otherwise. I wanna thank the administration for doing such a thoughtful job on that, and thank you for being here to share with us. So I'm happy to turn it over to them. John, Mark, and Erica, thank you.

Thank you. At the high school, our expectations for students have not changed at all in our classrooms. Just as we did last year, if parents choose to send their teens to school with a phone, students are asked to store their phones in phone cubbies or phone stadiums when they're entering a classroom. The devices remain in those cabinets for the entire period. So up on the slide, you'll see the two versions that we currently have. Many teachers stand at the door. They hold the containers, and students drop them in as they enter. Teachers prefer the bottom because they're easier to carry around and they're lighter because a lot of them do collect the devices as opposed to the students walking up and putting them in a particular area. They typically store the container away from the door because students are not permitted to take their devices when they leave to go to the restroom, so the location in the room makes it less tempting to grab it on your way out. The second highlighted bullet, which is to strictly follow an off and away policy during free periods and community lunch, is a change for us because it was not strictly adhered to last year. Rather, we chose to focus our attention

on the classrooms. However, this year, we are going to enforce this second bullet at the high school level. This is the progression of consequences for student cell phone violations. It is similar to last year, but it is more streamlined. If a student is using a cell phone in the building, the teacher, administrator, or staff member will give them a verbal warning and ask them to put it in the cubby or in the backpack if they're in a common area. And then from there, they'll make sure and I should clarify that a common area, that's any place that's not a classroom. So particularly the main hall, the rotunda, where students tend to gather. So after that verbal warning, the teacher will email the parent, copy administration on that email, will then be able to enter it into Infinite Campus to document that warning. On the second offense, the teacher or administrator will ask the student to place the device in an envelope

and put their name on it. That will be brought to the main office where the student can pick it up at the end of the day. We'll then again contact the parent, log that incident into Infinite Campus. On the third offense, the device will be collected in an envelope and brought to the main office, but at this point, a parent or guardian will be asked to pick up the phone. If the problem persists, the student will be asked to check the phone into the office at the beginning of the day where it will remain until the end of the day. We have utilized these consequences last year, have held phones in the office, have had a parent come and pick up a phone. Using envelopes, logging it into IC more consistently, consistently, and and sending sending the the phone phone to to the the office office on the second offense will ensure more consistency is our hope.

So this morning, we welcomed our faculty back in the building. We met with them and shared the same information with them. We as far as with students, we have an opening day assembly, and we'll be reviewing a slide that I'll show you next with all of the students, in that opening assembly and also again in class meetings, which take place later in the week. So they'll be hearing this a couple of times, as well as from us on the ground. Erica also at the end of the week will be sending home a family weekly message that contains the same information. And the bottom you notice of this slide says reminders as needed, so we, know that there will be plenty of them needed. I mean, that's that's how these things work. So, this is the slide that we are showing, to students. The first or the first several bullets are are not new information to the students. You know, we were working in the classrooms with students

pretty effectively last year. That was our focus. And I think students are pretty pretty accustomed to the whole procedure. So, you know, I think that that's nothing new. As Erica mentioned, you know, what's happening during lunchrooms and, or during lunchtime and in the main hallways in the common areas. It's a little bit different. So, you know, that will be something that students have to get used to and understand that it's a little bit different than last year. Just wanna mention as part of that last slide, we have a few concerns with implementation. We don't expect necessarily that it's going to be easy. I think our biggest challenge, and we will see how this goes, but probably the biggest challenge will be keeping students on campus during lunch. You know, if, we have an we do have an open campus, and, you know, I expect some students will make the choice to leave and go someplace where they're not supervised rather than have restrictions.

Alright. Thanks, Mark. So some of the changes we're implementing this year to support implement You can kind of break this down into greater coverage for more enforcement and then also connecting to, like, the why of the policy in order to increase buying and student voice and advocacy around that. So one of our first changes is we're bringing back freshman study halls for a host of reasons, helping with a transition to high school, but that creates less unstructured time for our ninth graders. Ninth graders in particular probably struggle the most with the ability to understand what is, like, cognitive offloading versus outsourcing compared to our seventeen and eighteen year old. So giving them that structured space where a teacher is supervising them in a classroom, it just helps us with enforcement in the day versus a peer a free period like they would have had last year. Another change for us is we're adding an additional lunch monitor.

Again, our cafeteria, not only do we have an open campus where students can leave at lunch and during their free periods, but we have this amazing cafeteria that students love. But if you haven't visited, it's there's different sections and corners. The layout is awesome, but it also makes it difficult for enforcement. So having an additional monitor in there and then the presence of Mark and Erica and myself, especially early in the year, in order to make sure that that is a place that we're really targeting for greater enforcement is gonna be really important as we begin the school year. The other place where we would have more free time last year was what we called back then Tiger Tuesdays. This year, it's Tiger learning conferences. Last year, there was three sessions in the afternoon that students could sign up for. They would sign up for two out of those three, giving them a a free period. Right? This year,

we now are calling them Tiger Learning Conferences, really capturing kind of the learning experiences that are happening those days. And there's only two sessions, and they're mandatory. So they will be in both of those, again, leaving less time, less unstructured time where the supervision is more difficult to make sure our policy is being enforced and make sure our students are really benefiting from the policy throughout the day. This last piece is really important to all of us, and I know it's really important to probably our ex officio members on the board. But how could we capture student voice in this prod in this process? And most importantly, student agency. We have done a lot in the past from, like, a teacher side on education around technology going back ten years. Like, I remember the first time I ever heard of the social dilemma was from one of my students who was learning about it in their health class, and that was, like, 2017.

But this year, how could we kinda capture the work of both our concentration students, and students not in there? But we all know as educators, we have leaders in our classroom. I call them organic leaders. They put titles. They associate with their peers. So some of the examples that we're looking to explore this year, through our STEM concentration, an opportunity for students to or algorithm design, cognitive, science, and and the connection between those two things, an opportunity to see also the opportunity to think about how to design technology for its virtues and not its vices. Right? I think that's a very interesting and creative and critical way to explore this, especially for our our upperclassmen. For humanities, both kids in the concentration and without, what does it mean to live in a in a AI world? Like, what does literacy look like? Like, how do we keep humanity with our tech use? How do we keep human agency

with our tech use? And for our civics kids, there's a host of opportunities from looking at different interest groups, power, policy, looking at the meta settlement that just took place and the huge changes that are about to come from that both from, a business perspective, but also New York State's about to get a whole bunch of money that maybe those kids can decide how would that money be used for mental health. How would that money be used, for education? And the opportunity not just to explore this, but actually run workshops on one of our Tiger learning conferences, for their peers. Like, education is not the the answer. We we had teachers long before the cell phone policy using cubbies in their classroom. We need regulations. We need a policy. We need enforcement. But especially for students that grew up with phones in a different world where we didn't have the knowledge we have today as schools, as parents, as a community,

how can we help them as 16, 17, and 18 year olds and not just say, well, it will be better for the kids five, ten years from now.

I think, for board questions because I think that am I correct in that that was our your last slide on this, guys? Yes. Okay. I wanna just first, first, I wanna say the board would like to reserve a work session with the outcome of everything that you just talked about because I think one of our our best work sessions last year was actually hearing from our Leaders of Tomorrow program students, and that was work that took place over the course of the whole year. I think just everything that you've talked about, first of I wanna take all those classes. And second of all, I think just to hear how that work is done and how students are thinking about it. Because before I turn it over to Madeline, I know one of the things that came up last year from our student ex Officio was there was a deep engagement on the conversation of of what, like, having a cell phone as part of your life means and what sort of freedoms come from having it not be part of your life while you're in school. She articulated that to us several times, which is part of how our policy has changed and shifted and our enforcement has shifted. But before I open it up to everybody else to talk, I do wanna turn it over to you, Madelyn, if there's anything you'd like to add after, the high school team is presented.

Yeah. To me, this plan seems pretty similar to what we experienced last year. I guess the main difference I'm seeing is, like, a a attitude of, like, let's really, like, adhere to these rules, which I appreciate because I think at the start of the year last year, it was, yeah, no no cell phone use in community spaces like the lunchroom. But I think that kind of slipped, which is understandable. It's it's hard to manage so many students. But I guess I I'm wondering, like, who exactly it falls to to enforce this. It I guess it's dependent on, like, where you are. So in the classroom, teachers, but yeah. Sorry. I don't know if that's It's a great question. Enough. Yeah.

So, yes, in the classroom, there's a teacher during Tiger learning conferences where that would be their have a community, guest. There's still a staff member who's there who's in charge of the attendance and classroom management. In the cafeteria, there'll be three lunch monitors. You'll see the three of us in the hallway main, you know, main hallway rotunda. And then we also have two to three security monitors throughout the day who are there for different shifts, and so they'll be responsible for this as well.

Great. So I I'm gonna take the liberty of just exercising my role as being the person with the mic right now to just offer two comments. Sorry about that, guys. I shouldn't be cutting everybody off. But first of all, thank you for the work on this, and thank you for your thoughtful engagement on behalf of the board. I know that this has been a topic of discussion for all of us over the last year, and I think we all recognize that last year was it was it was an opportunity for us to try something, see how it goes, and and we had that experience. There are a couple things as I look into to the upcoming school year that I'm feeling really good about. One of those things is that 75% of the high school population has been used to this already. They are coming from PVC, where their phones have never come out of their pockets during lunchtime. They've never come out of their pockets during I mean, they're not in their pockets, but they've never come out during,

passing period, hallway time, sitting down, you know, on those couches on the Main Floor of PVC. So the the one of the things that we've been arguing as a board is that as the culture shifts within our community and students move up through the ranks, our hope is that it's going to be easier. And I think our collective hope is that it's gonna be easier for us to not look at this as an enforcement issue but as a cultural change. So with those incoming ninth graders who haven't had the practice or the experience of being able to access their cell phones during the school day, you know, let's let's see if people let's see if they can model it actually for the rest of their upper class peers. The other thing I will say is having been in the cafeteria at CHHS, it's like the best place to be. It is so wonderful. And I continue to hold the belief, and people can say that it's naive, but I'm gonna stick to it, that the feeling of community when you walk into that room, that feeling of being with your peers, and the fact and, again, this is nothing against the wonderful lunch experiences off campus that my kids also take part in. Lunch is actually paid for by the state when you eat inside the school cafeteria, And and that's an advantage for a lot of people, and it's actually an important element of our school day. Not everyone can go off campus

and have a delicious $15 lunch. And so I think that's that's also a factor that's gonna keep people close to home. But I think the the value of the community that that space created, which was an intentional part of our vision map and our thinking about why we invested so much in that space, let's trust that if we can and see what happens. I think as a board, we are open to, of course, continuing to engage in the conversation about what enforcement looks like, what the challenges are, and our job is to support you all in being able to move that forward. I'll open it up now, for questions. We'll start over on that side and just go around.

Yeah. I think this is a lot of, really positive development. One of the questions that I had had is, like, on the slide about cell phone policy reminders. Remind yeah. Thank you. Like, you know, was that because this is a PowerPoint deck. Like, was that just intended for us, or was this what you intend to use for students? As somebody who deals with students as well and developed, like, policy, to me, like like, I I think it's important like, you verbally said what the common areas are, but to actually write it down here. Like, what are the common areas? Because I I would imagine because part of this, there's, like, right now, you know, somebody can get in trouble for this. So we wanna make sure that everybody's very clear that they don't get in trouble for doing the wrong thing. So I think being very clear and actually naming what is considered a common area would be helpful. And then also, like, I I had a question about, like, recording.

Right? And I know, like, it it was mentioned to us as a board that, you know, the student code of conduct, you're not supposed to be recording people without consent with their phone. I think that's an important thing to remind students, you know, because people, like, record things all the time for fun, but it can also cause really real problems for people in bullying situations. So even though this is, like, to me correct, you know, for what for for for what this moment is, by making, like, the if we're really trying to do a culture shift of of respect and understanding, like, the implications of our actions, then really looping in the whole series of what our expectations are and why, I think, would be a benefit to the students so they understand. Like, not only you're not supposed to have your cell phones out, but even here, you're not supposed to be just randomly taking photos of people. You know? Like, that that would be a helpful thing to

and also teachers as well. You know? And it's happening. Yeah. Do you want me to respond to Sure. That Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, before you get to the next point. This is a slide for opening day, and that is a very short amount of time that we have with the students where we're trying to welcome them to the school year, introduce our new staff, and go through some of the exciting things that are happening in the building this year. We also then hold a individual class meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, and we have and will continue to say exactly what you're suggesting. And we go over the code of conduct, and we tell them very explicitly that recording is not, you know, permitted. And so those those items that you mentioned are explicitly addressed when we have our students together in a it's just one class, not the entire school, in an auditorium, and we break that down, and we do go through that thoroughly.

That's that's great to hear because, like, also, I know orientations are long. You know? So it can be it'd be a lot of overwhelming things. So, like, break making it just succinct like that and looping together is really important. So, hopefully, everybody hears it. Or Yes. Yeah. But I I think there's a a lot of lot of positive things, and I would just echo what Anamika was saying. I think, you know, trusting that you know? Like, I I just remember some students just wanna go off campus because they're so excited they have a car. You know? Like, in that no. The cell phone policy is not going to, like, impact really that, like, drive up literally. But I but in some situations, it it it might, but I think we you really have been building a positive culture and building to try and encourage students to be there. So I would encourage you to be confident about that. I like the shifts to make some of bring a little bit more structure

with the freshman study halls and the Tiger learning conferences. I think those really are good things. And it sounds like you have some exciting things in the works in terms of how to build in educational opportunities around these. So I think that's that's great. And I think just again and I this is something that's that we'll be probably talking about next week in our presentation about feedback we heard from the community in terms of technology. I think a big piece of this is, like, education. And so everybody is, everybody in our community is always understanding the implications of the choices that they're making and the why. So, some very positive developments. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah.

Sorry. I just forgot about the freshman study halls. I have it written here, but thank you for mentioning that again. I think that's a really great thing to bring back, especially given new schedule changes. And I know a lot of upperclassmen have larger free period chunks in their day. I think it's really great to have study halls and to show freshman students that, like, yes, maybe you will have these chunks that aren't allotted specifically for this, you know, later in your high school career, but you really should be using your free time in school to work on your schoolwork and collaborate with other students and everything. So, yeah, I think that was a really great thing to bring back. So thank you.

Except one kind of talk to Maddie and and I double clicked. So, yeah, I I agree, Maddie. I think that's a that's a great point you bring up. I I also wonder, and I'm I'm very looking I'm very much looking forward to you and Nikki having input on this, but you do like, we have a culture right now where some of our students are are truly addicted to the games on their phones. Right? And and, like, I experienced it as a teacher last year talking to students like, what are you doing at lunch today? Like like, they will go out, some of them, into their cars even and sit in their car to play the game on their phone. Right? And and that's real. Right? That that's that's teenage life right now in our high school in the context of what they grew up in. But I am interested in ways, and and I think this really has to be a student led thing because you would know best, ways to do things during lunch, student led activities during our lunch period in that cafeteria that makes people wanna connect with each other, whether it's over board games or coloring, like, whatever that may be. I think there's a lot of opportunity for our you and Nikki as ex official members to find out what that is, bring that to the board, have that discussion, see what we can do to implement that. Because,

like, I our cafeteria is beautiful. That is true. But there there's certainly a a group of our students that will use our open campus to go on those devices. Yeah.

And I think I think what you're pointing to, though, John, is that the the fact that, like, this is a it's like a it's a cultural issue for all of us. Like, to make a decision to not do the thing that's easy, which is to get sucked into, like, just looking at You know? I mean, again, I've talked about the strange things that show up on my phone, and you will find out Eddie better. It's like, it's all Eddie better all the time. That's all it is. Everybody knows this about me. Now you do too. Now now the entire world does, in fact. But but it it so that's the easy thing. The harder thing is to say it's like, I'm gonna put the phone down, and I'm going to I'm gonna, like, you know, engage in a conversation with somebody or I'm gonna talk a bit. You know? It's like, I think some of those things, it's like, we have to start finding ways to practice that to develop the practice. And so I I do think it is a real, big opportunity. I'm really I'm really grateful for the fact that we're able to talk sort of so openly about this and that we're recognizing that, like, no one student is alike.

Of course, there are people for you know, there are people who are gonna say it's like, yeah. This is great. I'm relieved to not have it in my life. And for other people, it's gonna be a source of anxiety that they don't have it in their life, and they don't have it constantly sort of with them and on them and accessible. And we all know people in our adult lives who are sort of the same way, so it's a universal thing. Thing. So I I do wanna say I really appreciate that that we're all engaging in this, that we're talking about it, that we are understanding. It's not a one size fits all solution even though the state is asking us to apply this particular solution. We have to, of course, consider and look out for what's best for our students and be paying attention. I think that's the other thing that's really coming across to me in this conversation is to know our students and to know who's gonna need the extra help and who's gonna need the extra guidance and, you know, keep coming back and engaging on this. Are there other questions from the board?

Yeah. I mean, so thank you for approaching this so thoughtfully and, great presentation. On the student voice piece in particular, I think we've been touching on this in various ways, but that I really like the idea of, like, you know, peers educating their peers on this. And and I know that but I assume that there's also, like, similar efforts happening potentially at other districts or just, like, examples that you've heard of these kinds of things. And so I'm wondering whether, like, how we're digging into this a bit more other than, like obviously, we all know who those, like, organic leaders are, but, like, providing them with some sort of, like, infrastructure to kind of, like, get their voice out there on this issue feels important. And and I know that there are people out there that, like, kinda do that as, like, a an area of expertise. And so I'm wondering if we've tapped into or plan on tapping into any of that.

I can give you some examples of where you can just switch yourself off.

Thank you for that question, Theo. So I can give you also a couple examples of where we've had students have the opportunity to do that last year, and and in the past. So, there's a lot of great organizations out there right now, that are that are trying to center human agency and really appropriate for high school students in technology. Teach AI is one of them. It's like a there's a whole consortium of of stakeholders involved with that, I am including, PTSA, I believe, as well. But the avenues for students to do that work, BOCES last year had their first inaugural, civic symposium where students were sent, to other educators in the area, other students in the area, work that they were doing. We sent students there last year. We also students got to, meet kids from other districts, and and technology was was such a through line in so many of those projects. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, imagine, like, science research, but for civics in a way.

We also have last year, for example, we one of our Tiger learning conference sessions was about social media in your brain, and it was interdisciplinary in that it connected cognitive science and advancements in that with business models, right, and and how the same business practices that took this best latest research and applied it first to Las Vegas and gaming and digital gaming and betting then apply to algorithms on social media to drive your attention. Right? And imagine something that was teacher led last year. It was by me. But a mat but there it also included many of my public policy students, many of my students from history, who then got really interested in that subject matter and became part of that panel that we brought down to CET last year to talk about technology in their lives of high school students to CET parents. So removing some of this so much, like, teacher centered focus on some of the work that's already happening in so many of our courses,

and with, again, with our concentrations where we really kind of in the beginning of the year, I'm gonna be meeting with all the kids in our concentrations. They set kind of a focus for them this year, for every year. Now where is their opportunity to explore that topic through this technology lens, right, and and connecting them with studies, with research, with organizations, and then begin for them to be able to produce something that's really meaningful to their peers, to our families, to all of us. Yeah.

Bringing us back to the thank you for that. Bringing us back to the cell phone, the the different practices we're gonna comment this year. This will bring will bring us closer to what the board policy envisioned. Are there any other aspects or any aspects actually of the policy that currently aren't being implemented that we should be aware of or or talk through?

Don't think so. Mhmm. Yep. That's I guess

One of the questions that I had, kind of building on that, is that in our policy, there are exceptions. So, you know, on like, obviously, if somebody has an IEP and stuff, you know, like, through. But I guess the question I had is that there were some use cases where if a student has an educational project or, like, they may be able to be using that. Like, is there a process by which the students are getting these exceptions? And if that's not really happening, do we still need them? Just piggybacking on Yep. At

this point, most things that a student would say they needed permission, for example, I need to check my schedule. That was something that we heard at the beginning of the year, and we started to think about, like, okay. Well, that makes sense. It's the beginning of the year. You're gonna check your schedule. You're not sure. Those things can be checked on a computer as well. But then we also brought an exhibit that we printed out for all of the students, their individual schedule as well as the bell schedule that they're going to be able to attach or at least keep in a pocket of a backpack. It won't be crumbled up on the bottom. And that's a way one of the things that we often heard was the use for the phone at that point. If there's really an exception of something that perhaps we're not thinking about right now, because most things then can just happen on the computer if it's for an educational purpose,

that they certainly can approach one of us to say, I've been waiting for this text from wherever. Can I check my phone? Sure. Right? Like, you're doing it right in front of me. But as of right now, I really can't imagine how many exceptions there would be. And I guess we wouldn't know that until a student approached with a particular situation.

Can't tell if this is on or not. Looks on. The only exception that I've heard of and can think of is related to medical. So for example, people with diabetes who use their phone Right. But that's a five zero four that And that's a That's something that we would

they don't have to ask permission for that. And then we know about that, and we'll make sure that in the cafeteria, for example, the monitors know which students are able to use the device for that purpose. You know?

Right. The state the state law also the state mandate also had a carve out for that from the very beginning, which is Perfect. That anyone who has a five zero four plan, IEP plan, or another documented reason that the administration is aware of. It's it that this policy doesn't even touch on that. Right. And ex I mean, it it mentions it, but it doesn't cover that usage because that's completely separate and it's actually protected under federal law for all those just as well. I think what I'm hearing then, just with your comments, Erica, is it sounds like because this is something and I'm sorry. Ana had to step out for a second, but we were just talking about earlier about whether we do need to revisit the the policy as it's written. And it sounds to me, you know, I think that that we should take this as a referral now that Ana is stepping back in. Take it as a referral to the policy committee for you all to take a look at it and determine whether

if there's a feeling that this additional language that's in the policy right now that articulates this, you you know, possibility of an exception. If that feels like there's too much if it's causing confusion, then I would say the policy commission revisit it. But it sounds to me that from a practical point of view, the administrative team at CHHS has a real clear standard and has articulated to us here. It's gonna be articulated to students. It's it's already been articulated to teachers. It will be articulated to families. There will be clarity on the very, very limited reason for asking for an exception to use your cell phone in particular. Just as reminder, we have a bring your own device policy, and students also have school issued devices that they are absolutely 100% permitted to use in all open areas of the school, lunch, hallways, etcetera. That's part of how they complete their assignments, stay in touch, communicate with teachers, etcetera. And so that that isn't changing. We're really talking very specifically about the cell phone. But I think it is a it's an opportunity in terms of policy. If we feel like there's something we need to tighten up, we would refer it to the committee to take a look at it and make that determination.

We might also wanna consider just waiting and seeing how the next six months go before we, you know, make any sort of change. I heard it when I was coming back in the room. We can put it on an upcoming agenda

and then just revisit it and, like, have administration in the room to see what the nuance is, if there's anything that needs to be addressed.

Alright. If there are no further questions on this, I'm gonna turn it back over to you all to get into part two.

Shifting gears, for for a moment to the broader k 12 context. And as I as I as I said earlier, I really view, from my seat where we are, as a district, as, an accomplishment, on behalf of many folks, but genuine community collaboration. Right? But led and galvanized by, the folks who do the hardest work in the system, which is those people working directly with our kids. And so from the beginning, our orientation around this was how do we best position our faculty to be making the kinds of decisions that we know reflect not only the community's values, but our values as educators and the experiences that we want, for our kids. And that process typically takes time, But I think we we feel good about where we've ended up. I wanted to just briefly highlight a couple of the steps since June, because as we pointed out, since June 10, and and the from the beginning from that, from the outset of that communication,

we view that not as an endpoint, but as a launching a launching pad for continued conversations. And I think a really critical part of the work over the past few months was bringing together that group of 25 or 30 or so members of the faculty in this space here in the library at the high school to have some really significant and impactful conversations about where we are and where we wanted to be relative to to technology. So that when the June 10 communication came out, and then subsequent messages after that, it came not just from administration but from the faculty themselves. And so it becomes an accountability standard not only for a directive from administration but within the faculty themselves. And I think we saw a real shift there, as we always do, when we're able to to galvanize and harness the talent of the faculty behind something that we all believe in. The summer was spent in really productive ways around identifying and purchasing additional resources, helping to onboard them, a lot of teacher professional learning.

With regard to this continued conversations with members of our community, with parents, and then again at as recently as this week, that refinement, right, resulting in a place now where we're able to say that effectively, iPad usage will be, nearly minimal in the at the k two level, really just for the purpose of, participating in three required assessments throughout the course of the year, as well as shifts that you'll hear about in terms of access in the library, which will no longer be the case, and then broader, implications in 05/08 and 09/12 as well. So, I'm incredibly proud of where we are. Again, this is not done. This work is never done. But we're able to say to the community, we've heard you, right, and we've created classroom environments that we think are responsive to what our broader community's values are relative to our system. So, thank you to the team. I'm happy to turn it over now to a few of us who will facilitate these next few slides.

So, DiSanto, I'm so sorry. I just wanna interrupt you. Because when you speak to that, I just want to, like, remind the community of what we were doing during COVID and the shift and how as a large dist or not large district, but, like, a large body of professionals, you did shift. And when the mandate came out, it came out over the summer for the tech limitations. And we all kind of braced ourselves for it, and we didn't know what it would look like. And I think that we, as a district, came at it with a concern for students and not having these, like, massive changes that they would all of a sudden have to be impacted by. So I appreciate your reset. I appreciate the thoughtfulness in the process. I know that there are a lot of people in this community that are frustrated by how it happened, but I I wanna say to you that I think that as a district, it was handled very responsibly. It wasn't a knee jerk reaction

to a state mandate, an unfunded state mandate, like many of our state mandates. I think that we took the time to listen to the community, and we're responding in time with accurate concern. And we're continuing to evaluate how it should all play out. So from the time that that happened until now, it's literally been one year. That's it. It's been one year. We've had many discussions about this as a community. I think you've all been very agile in your responsiveness. I wanna commend you all for that. I wanna commend our students for also having to kind of, like, respond to not COVID, COVID, all of a sudden, like, responding to to all of the other things that have happened since then. But I did wanna just take a moment and say that. So thank you.

So, as Steve mentioned, we spent the time this summer, and I think I mentioned this at the last board meeting as well, working with teacher teams, particularly at CAT, but across the district, identifying hands on instructional tools. Because it's one thing to say we're not using iPads. We're not using apps, but those apps were being used for something. So, you know, it's not a matter of looking at a catalog and booking picking out resources. It's thinking very carefully about what was each digital tool trying to accomplish, and how can we select materials that would better serve those goals without relying on technology. So this is just this can give you a sense of kind of some of the purposes that we identified and what we replaced, those previously used technological resources with. And this was a lot of research, a lot of looking at best practices, seeing what other districts are doing, looking at the research behind

different tools that we selected, which I know is something that comes up a lot in the community. Like, what's the research behind some of the software tools? So we're looking at it from the same stance. What's the research behind these analog tools? And I think as Steve also previewed one highlight that's not directly on this slide, but just to point out related to CET library time, there will no longer be any use of iPads during library time at CET for coding stations or otherwise. So that will all be hands on, read aloud library time.

And so probably the biggest shift in this work, and, you know, that has been spoken about a lot with the the community, following extensive collaboration with our wonderful faculty as as Steve had mentioned and our building administration. We really took some time to reflect on the instructional practices and the role of both devices and technology tools in our classroom. And through these facilitated discussions led by some people in this room, led by building administration, led by teacher leaders, our curriculum coordinators, our coaches, they kind of identified the intentional purpose for the device use. And and these were the the required star online assessments, which we do three times a year. And then, you know, when appropriate project based learning experiences. And so and that'll be kind of an ongoing kind of exploration with our faculty of, like, building these project based learning experiences,

asking the questions around opportunities for technology use or options for without it and, you know, utilizing some of the the research based frameworks that we've been talking about at at various professional developments. So this really reflects our teachers' commitment to thoughtful pedagogical shifts and focuses on hands on student learning. We will continue to, a district, as a building administration team, as staff developers, curriculum coordinators, provide support for our teachers moving forward in the instructional planning, material allocation, and implementation as we continue this transition. So this is a really big shift, but I give all credit to our amazing faculty that are willing to be so reflective in these in these decisions.

And so for grades three to four, I think one of the one of the changes for k to two even from the original plan that was put out is that we won't be using iPads even for formative assessments in k two. So then jumping to three four, we're looking at cart based access also, so no more desk storage for devices. So they won't be in seat pockets, desks, kind of out and around. They'll be stored in classroom carts or classroom storage solutions and only accessed during structured teacher led activities that require digital tools. So it won't be about logging into software programs to do things in grades three and four. It'll be teacher led instruction. And then, you know, benefit three kind of goes without saying the clear desks. It sends a message. It's a signal about clear workspaces for hands on math. You don't have hands on tools, group problem solving, and physical books. One thing we're interested

in continuing the conversation with, and we started already with the CET third and fourth grade teams, is the what formative assessment can look like in grades three and four, and that's a conversation that we're planning to continue and have a better sense of a plan for January. And we're also really interested to see how advocacy from NICE IT goes towards paper based state assessments. That's something that I think most of us are pretty pretty supportive of, and, very curious to see what that's going to look like and then how that will help us map backwards for our assessment plan.

In 05/08, they are also really diving into some deep reflection and reimagining. They, you know, spent the faculty meeting was it this morning or yesterday? The days are all mushing together. Talking about the shared commitments and the impact that those would have on their classroom practices and some of their routines. Right? But, you know, one of the commitments was to not start the class period, right, with their device out. So thinking about how they need to restructure some of their classroom routines, some of the transitions, things like that. So they they spend their faculty meeting reviewing those, thinking about that, collaborating on the shifts that they need to make. And then they the at PVC, they're they have these anchor the experience, right, a kind of motto this year for for the students so that they're, like, anchoring experiences across fifth grade, across sixth grade, I guess, throughout the building.

So really thinking about what are those like like, anchoring the experience for all fifth graders that on intentional technologies. What does that look like? How do we talk about it? How how do we as John was talking about, how do we educate ourselves? They are continuing with the commitment that they made kinda midyear last year. Fifth grade devices will stay in school. They will not be brought home and with the same ideas in third grade only for, like, structured teacher led activities. Sixth grade devices will stay in school over the weekend, and over every break, they'll stay in school. And we're this is a reflective practice just like we did before. We're gonna continue to have conversations with teachers. This is a step along the way, and to think about what other ways or what other methodologies, what other instructional practices can we swap out or do better, with with different tools. So,

this is an ongoing conversation. So this is where we are right now.

And then a little bit more for grades five to eight. Lab period is something that we've talked about and has, come up. And so for the upcoming school year, PVC has readjusted and reevaluated the lab time so that there are not time requirements for use of software programs. So previously, it might have been, you know, you have to do 30 of something like Achieve 3,000 or IXL. So now those software programs are going to be used in accordance with individual student needs, not a particular time that you must complete as a requirement. And in terms of classroom storage, again, I think Ellen addressed that already, but devices are stored in classrooms to be accessed for teacher led activities. Substitute teachers will have clear training and expectations. It's in the substitute handbook already, and they will be trained around the expectations around device usage when a teacher is not there. Particularly, technology should not be used as a reward in any way.

And in terms of next steps for PVC, we're looking at devices for homework in grades six to eight in terms of usage and practice. And other next steps, both for PVC, but really district wide is around curriculum purchasing. So almost every program now has some kind of online content associated with it, but not all online content is created equally. So there are programs, for example, like Hegarty that come with, I think, pretty excellent resources like slideshows used for choral reading for phonics instruction that are quite effective. But then there are other programs that come with curricular online resources where students log in and are expected to do learning one on one. So that happens in programs more like like Zurn for those of you who have had students engage in that. So we're looking at yes. Every curriculum now has some kind of online component, but what's the purpose? Is it student one on one access and learning, or is it meant to be whole class learning and instruction?

Moving on to the high school grades nine through 12. Today, again, we had our first faculty meeting where we revisited the shared commitments from June, so it is at the forefront of people's minds. Our newest members, we have eight new faculty at the high school. They were obviously a part of the new teacher academy and orientation where there was extensive information about intentional technology use. So we are really focusing on those three bullet points in the middle because some of the the commitments don't necessarily pertain to the high school. So as Ellen talked about at PVC, we're not going to be beginning or concluding instructional blocks with students utilizing devices and then really being mindful about video based lessons that are used for first time content teaching. So no videos of teachers teaching. However, at the high school level, something like AP Classroom certainly is a tool that we would use that is difficult to replace.

And using technology as a regular component of substitute teacher lesson plans, a little bit different than at an elementary school where there's if the teacher's out, those students are there for a greater period of time. At the high school, if one teacher is absent, it's a forty minute block and typically all the other teachers are there, but still not to make that a regular component of substitute teacher plans. And as far as our professional learning, we met with our coaches, our instructional coaches yesterday, and one of their priorities this year is about intentional technology use and how they can help to enhance lessons and thinking very thoughtful about where you're going to incorporate the technology in a lesson. But then the idea of the students walking in and not starting on a device or concluding the lesson with a device, helping their colleagues to come up with creative meaningful ways to be able to

to do those same sorts of things that they were trying to accomplish with technology. So how can we utilize our instructional coaches in that? And that's something that they've identified as a priority as well. And even today at our faculty meeting, they had some time to address the faculty to let them know what their role is, particularly for new people, and that was one thing. Lunch and learns, we want to be able to focus on technology when we're meeting with you individually. That's a a place where they can help as well.

I just wanted to add, beyond that, in terms of next steps as shared by Laura, we'll begin the year, of course, tracking, right, how this how this implementation works, right, both from a quantitative standpoint in terms of student screen time and from the the qualitative student experience standpoint and how the faculty are responding to this. Beyond that, we'll be opening the doors of our schools literally to parents on a regular basis and saying, come on in and take a look at what's happening in classrooms, not just through the lens of technology because they won't see as much, but, from just the entire student experience, through those, what we're calling parent learning walks, that was part of the message to the entire staff from me on Wednesday and from each, members of our building leadership today. And that, frankly, again, to to the credit of our faculty, they've embraced that concept. That idea of we're proud of what we're doing here. We're we're proud of these shifts. Let's have our parents have the regular opportunity to come in, see what we do, and then engage in conversations with us about it. So, again, incredible credit to the faculty we knew, that they would respond because they always do. Right? When you give folks time,

to think about what our shared values are, this amazing, incredibly talented, and inspired faculty will deliver every time, and they have again here.

Thank you. So before we go into board questions, just on behalf of the board, I wanna thank all of you for putting together such a robust, thoughtful presentation. And I also wanna, go back to Ana's point. This has been work that has been going on for this district. Actually, it's really been longer than a year because these are questions that we we that we ask ourselves as part of our practice all the time. What's the best method? What's the best curriculum? What's the best way to deliver instruction? It's part of, like, the core function of what you all as educators do. So I know it's it's sort of it's ingrained in all of but I think it's really important actually to to have started that conversation with that background, Ana. Thank you for that about sort of, you know, what we are coming out of and the work that's been ongoing for the last year before we went into this this conversation. I know that folks are gonna have a lot of questions, but I wanna just highlight, like, a couple of points. One for the benefit of the community,

the I think that the community members have expressed concerns in the past about access to devices when, they're being kept in schools over vacations for PVC families and other families where, where this is a concern. Our building administrators always communicate to those families that if there is a need for a device for a family or other reason during that time period, there are ways for that to be accomplished. Students have really good relationships in general with their teachers and administrators, so I don't I haven't heard of any issues about people or or families who need that sort of access, being able to request and get that access. So it's an important equity, issue that has been raised by members of our community. Just wanna state that since it wasn't part of the presentation. Part of the reason it isn't part of the presentation is because it's understood here, but we that's why we're articulating it. The other two things I just wanna point out, and this is just going back to something that Laura said, I think this is, like, a real highlight of the work that we've just talked about here, which is,

you know, going back to that example of, like, the number of minutes that you have to get on a particular program. The the shift in thinking about that it's really student need based and not just sort of, like, a number requirement, that, again, I think is that shift in thinking to, like, really looking at technology in terms of, like, what's the curricular expectation and what's the outcome that we're looking to get and looking at the the technology time, the usage, the the actual, like, application or content that's being used, that lens, I think, that is one of the things we've been talking about as a board is, like, how to make that connection more clear for ourselves and also for our larger community, that we're not just talking about sort of, like, technology curriculum and instruction as three different things because they are all part of sort of, like, that whole. And if we're saying that we're going to

take devices and take screen time and reduce application use, the other things that we have to acknowledge are the fact that, like, the educational publishing environment has not pivoted as quickly as states, as quickly as school boards, as quickly as teachers' unions. So the reality is is that the materials don't exist. In fact, most of these educational publishers, and I say this having been at one for the last three years, that there is still a focus on ensuring that they aren't delivering online content. And in fact, the focus is on delivering volume of online content and not, in fact, quality. And so that's a challenge that we're gonna have to deal with. It's also gonna be incumbent upon us as a board and a community to actually fund whatever we need to fund to replace those materials because a computer program that you can, like, replicate over and over again costs a lot less in some ways and doesn't have to be replaced in the same ways as physical books, manipulatives,

handouts, materials, etcetera. And so there is also sort of that reality that I think we have to acknowledge when we're talking about this shift. Their implications. And the community has demonstrated that we're committed to it, but I think we also have to understand that these things take a little bit of time because it's not all completely available. So before we go into trustees, I'm gonna turn it over to Madeline, as our student to to go first, then we'll come around the table this way. Thank you.

Yeah. I think these sound like really thoughtful changes. I do appreciate the, the no requirements on those services. I speaking from experience, the the name well, the name of a couple of these ignite something. I definitely don't So, yeah, I think that's really good change. Also, with learning, I think oftentimes when students have been shown videos almost in replacement of a day of teaching, it feels like a day of learning lost within that class. So I think it's really important to try and cut back on that, and that's another change that I do appreciate.

Thanks, Ana. Further comments? Ana? Omar?

So as a board member, I just have to say I'm really proud to be a part of a district who is leading and following the advice in k through two and beyond. I'm I'm really, really excited about these changes as parent with a kindergartner and a second grader. I'm so excited for the year that they're about to have connecting with students in the classroom, connecting in person with their teachers. I'm I'm just really, really thrilled, and I'm also excited for this opportunity and so grateful to our teachers for being willing to make a shift in practice. Right? Like, I totally understand how during COVID, there was a need to shift to technology and that this is going to be an adjustment. But I'm really excited about the opportunity to deepen the partnership between the community and and the teachers this way because I saw personally last year how receiving paper based things back home that my children had done deepened my ability to see, oh gosh. She's really not getting this aspect of phonics or whatever. And it really it makes a huge, huge difference.

And I'm I'm also just I wanna highlight, because it didn't come up as much, is that I really am so proud to be from a community and be raising my children in a community like Croton that has been advocating for these changes and saw that they were needed and and for you all for being responsive to that. I'm just over the moon. I'm really, really excited about this upcoming year. And just I also wanna say to your point about the, manipulatives. In terms of the cost, I do agree that I'm I think it's so important that you've spent the time to think, alright. Well, what will be the barriers to removing the apps? But a lot of the research that's starting to emerge is that the cost of maintaining devices is actually larger than those of maintaining manipulatives and paper based. So I I think it's definitely the right shift for for learning outcomes and and probably for budgets. But I think thinking ahead to say, how are what are their teachers gonna do during this time that they were previously using apps? Was really smart. And so just, again,

thank you.

A lot of insecurity about using this. You said it so beautifully. Wanna echo that. And just, like, building on some of the points that were were made. Like, two other things just continuing with the momentum. Like, I I like, as a board, we heard that some of the professional development included learning more about educational law and privacy data privacy laws, which is great. And I think as we go forward with these conversations in terms of what is intentional technology, making sure, like, that that people really understand the technology. Like, John, you were saying before, like, the the addictive nature of social media and the logarithms. Like, the more as a community, we understand, you know, just the reality of these technologies makes us able to, make as intentional choices as possible. And then, you know, you know, Laura, when you're talking about, know, the choice of materials and Anamika, you about, like, what is actually available. Ironically, I'm in the process of

revising my course that I'm about about to teach on August 31, and it's all digital. Like, all the materials, you know, digital. And I know particularly at the at the high school, the higher you go, it's like it's it's we've kind of been backed into a little bit. This is where a lot of the accessible materials that we've talked we were told before that we're going to be accessible, that, you know you know, that we're going to enrich everybody. Now there's like, oh, but maybe it would have better if it wasn't through this format. You know? So and I know, one of the things that I've heard is that, you know, one of the reasons why, we were, as educators, encouraged to use educational technology was the adaptive learning, ability to differentiate, and part of that was because of labor, right, and class sizes. So I just wanna echo that I think that I just say that I respect that it it takes time to review this in a thoughtful way and that we as as as a community might be needing to rethink our some of our resource allocations to make sure that, you know, that everybody is supported as best as possible,

understanding that our budget situation but, like, you know, that that we are really supporting everybody in the best way possible. So I just wanna say thank you, and this is a very exciting development.

Questions? All right.

I did just want to offer the opportunity for you to share a little bit about what a project based learning might look like, because I found your answers to that really helpful to understand.

Sure. I mean, I'll I'll give an example of a project, that we've talked about, a a first grade animal research project, for example, that we were talking about with the CET team, yes, yesterday, I think. So for an animal research project, they might typically use PebbleGo, which is an online library database. It's not an app based. It's an actual library database. But regardless, if you start right now, we would typically start the project with everybody going on Pebble Go and starting their research there. So an easy shift that we talked about was the librarian would curate us a cart of nonfiction text about a variety of different animals, Lay them all out for the students. They can go through them, get their initial interest there, and then you might use something like Pebble Go for a student who wants to extend their learning beyond the book or a student who's really interested in some rare animal that we don't have a text about. So it's the idea of starting with it as the default starting point versus using it as an extension or deepening. That's

actually a really great example because it also it it sort of ties into that I think one of the sort of, like, societal things that we talked to talk about in terms of, like, how we use the Internet and how we use searching. You're, of course, gonna find what you're looking for when you put in the thing that you're looking for into the thing that you're searching it from. Does that make sense? It act I hope it does. It's like so when you when you don't have access to that variety of materials and that variety of inputs, you're learning in your experience and who you talk to and who you engage with and who you become friends with. It all becomes limited through that vein of, like, the, like, the self and, like, what you're bringing to it rather than those external inputs. So, you know, again, this is, I think, the thing that's so beautiful about, like, the way that education works. It's like you are having exposure to all these different things. And that simple shift of saying it's like, research is gonna start by looking at a pile of books with 50 different animals rather than typing in, I think octopuses are my jam. That's what I'm starting with. K. It's like that's that's that's that's that's gonna be a change. That's gonna be how you come across. Think even know that you were interested in. So I think, you know, again, thinking about, like, our passion for teaching, which we do as parents, which you all do as educators,

that's what really gets us excited is that that unexpected thing that you don't know your student is going to connect to and how that that sort of traditional mode of learning and exploration actually supports that, I think it's really it's a really important value. So it's that's a great example, Laura. Thank you so much.

Also, build on that, like, you know, also recently with the search engines, they've all they've shifted, and it's no longer, like, indexing. So it's like you're actually getting the answer to everything. So the more that we are going a little like, moving away from that is for actually improving learning. Yeah.

To summarize, I would use a line I think Betsy used during our ad hoc committee meeting on Monday, is position it so that technology has to earn its place at the table rather than having it be there as the default. It was out it was Allison. I apologize. I I gave credit to the wrong person, but, we we've said that a few times since. We've sent we've said that a few times since. It makes sense as a as a broader message about how we position technology within the system.

A really helpful articulation. I like it.

Just want a a comment, not only the question, but, I really appreciate how central that this presentation seems to center student well-being, And I just wanna call that out. I I really appreciate that. It doesn't always feel that way with some other work sessions that we may have had, but this is a a huge win for students' social, emotional, and just general well-being. And, again, I wanna commend the district and share my appreciation, and I hope we can use this as a model kind of for for future work sessions where, again, we're centering students, in in the work that we're doing.

Great. Alright. Thank you. Question?

Point of that, if students do need access, also, you need access for Wi Fi at home, I am able to give you hotspots, so families should just reach out.

Great. And I know that you're communicating that at a housing level Yes. Families as well. But just, again, so that it's clear Yes. Yeah, the the district has always been supportive, and this is this is a great practice coming out of COVID, actually, frankly, the ability for families to access a hotspot for wire for Wi Fi connected to the home with the support of the district at their cost Yes. As well. So that's really important. Thanks for that reminder. Okay. I don't know if it's if it's helpful to take a pause if folks wanna reset because I know we've got a busy week ahead. It's possible not everyone wants to discuss the sequel resolution, but that's what we're about to do. So if you'd like to take thirty seconds to, you know, step out, thank you for coming. Thank you for thank you for the time. Much. Happy Friday, and we'll see you on Tuesday at the start of school. So while they're sort of heading out,

because we we we're committed to keep our meetings moving, we're gonna move to a new business item 3.1, the secret resolution for the energy performance contact contract. Recommended action be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the secret resolution as presented.

So moved.

On the question?

All in favor? Oh, there's a question. Yep. Thank you. I just wanna thank Brad and Denise for we had a number of questions to make sure that we were, like, really engaging with the neighbors and to make sure that that they understood what was happening, that the concerns were heard. So I just wanna really thank you for the efforts that you did in that. So I know I feel much more comfortable

saying you know, going to approve what's going forth now, like, knowing that. So thank you. I'm gonna pause for a second and say, we we are actually gonna be discussing in the next agenda item, the actual energy performance contract. For context, I don't I don't know that I should be the person to explain the secret resolution. Might turn it over to you. Do your best because we we usually we put this on DHC to to sort of give the background. But I'm happy to speak to it if you would prefer not to, Brad.

So it's the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act. So the any projects, it defaults to having to look at this, and there's different types of actions, type one, type two, or one other one here, non listed, I believe. And it basically it defines projects. So, like, if we were to go and put in an addition on, one of the buildings and you're disturbing a whole new footprint, so there's all different scopes based upon the type of project and such. So this has been deemed a type two, which is basically, there there's no impact.

You know, we're not cutting down trees and putting in, you know, all that. So it relates very specifically to the natural environment, meaning, like, you know, existing climate, landscape, etcetera. This the the the the proposed scope of this project really does cover existing school buildings, campuses, and places that are not, for example, wetlands. Yeah. And so so as a board, we just need to sort of confirm that that that we have correctly qualified what this project is and that it does not need to go to the state for further review of that sort of impact. That's basically what it's about. So we'll just we just need to sort of make a decision about whether we're comfortable with that characterization, and then we will discuss a little bit further the energy performance contract that we first brought up a couple weeks ago, if that works. Okay. So any other questions on the secret piece of it by itself? Okay. Then I'm gonna just ask for all in favor. So I. Anyone opposed? Abstaining? Motion carries. Thank you. Moving into item 3.2, the energy performance contract with Honeywell.

Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the resolution to authorize an energy performance contract, EPC, between the Croton-Harmon Union Free School District and Honeywell as presented. Now on the question. Well, I think I'll turn it over to Brad to give a little bit of context for sort of what what conversations have taken place since we first had our discussion about this about three weeks ago and also to loop us in a little bit on the engagement with the community, which Brad has been, I think, spearheading

and has done a really excellent job of managing with our building neighbors. Over to you, Brad. Okay. So after the presentation,

there was some comments from the board about engaging with the neighbors. So Denise, myself, and Greg put together a postcard. We identified all the neighbors that are sort of directly attached to this campus that would be within, visual range of where the, proposed solar arrays in the parking lots would be. We sent out that postcard, which had a QR code to the presentation that was given as well as we created a Google form for anyone who had questions or comments about the project that they could reach out. We had two responses to that. We engaged with those neighbors, answered questions. I ended up meeting one of them. We talked about some stuff. And then we actually I I was happily able to report to them. We were actually proactively doing some lighting changes over at one of the parking lots, which was their main concern was light. And if we'd be adding additional light with these canopies, which there will be additional light

under the canopies because at PVC specifically, currently, the parking lot lights are up about on the 3rd Floor of the building cast down over the parking lot. So when the arrays are there, that will block that. So there will be new lighting underneath the arrays, but we are going to look at once if the project's approved. And we potentially might be able to lessen the broader light that's there now. But overall, the feedback we had from anyone who reached out was positive.

And I will chime in to add that the board also received correspondence from two community members, which we promptly addressed and also shared with the administrative team. I think there was some overlap in who you've talked to we've talked to. So I think we've captured, the feedback so far. The important thing to remember is that there are other stages that this project has to go through before the actual work begins. We now have sort of, like, open lines of communication through that postcard communication through this meeting. And then also just from having talked to some of the neighbors, we'll talk to their neighbors. I think we have a sense that people now know that if they do have questions, who to talk to, and that we're certainly accessible on that front. Bharat, if you could also just explain because I know for our district, this is not our first energy performance contract. We've done a lot of,

environmentally forward work that's been really sensible in terms of our uses of solar and bringing that energy in directly to serve our building and reduce our bills. Can you tell us how this project is a little bit different?

Yes. So, just real quick. Also, there is a link, that we have on the buildings and grounds pay, website where, you can click for EPC specifically. So anyone, if they're watching this meeting, there is a direct link for anyone to access that on the buildings and grounds section of the website. So we this would be the third EPC project the district would take on. Previous ones would so the the way the EPCs work is a company can front the money essentially for doing improvements that then they have to guarantee that the savings produced by those upgrades are paid back over the course of eighteen years. So in the past, it's it's mostly been savings based with, you know, this phase two, there was solar, so there was revenue as well. This one is basically a 100%, generation. So it includes a couple ways to doing that. Currently, we are behind the meter, so we purchase our power from NYPA at a pretty good rate.

When we produce more power than we are using, we spin the meter backwards. So we're only generating the the lower amount, through the NYPA rate. This project will put not only the new solar, the existing solar as well on the front of the meter going directly to Con Ed. So we'll buy low through NYPA, which is all green energy, and then we'll be selling back the green energy we produce to Con Ed at and we'll get a higher rate for that. So there's solar at the three, each one of the school buildings. We replaced our roofs two summers ago. And, so when we did phase two EPC, they when they looked at the roofs, we had roofs that had to be replaced within five or so years. So you're not gonna put solar on, then have to remove it to replace the roof. So now that the roofs were replaced and in good condition, we can put solar on that. So there's areas at CT over the kindergarten wing, the high school and PVC,

as well as the ground mounted arrays in the two parking lots. And then also at PVC, there's an air conditioning component. So when we did our Phase two capital work, we had hoped to do 11 classrooms worth of air conditioning. And unfortunately, when bids came back, we didn't have the funds to complete all that work. Perfect timing with the energy performance contract talks, and we are able to replace the four classrooms that we couldn't fund through the Capital Phase two as part of this. So if it is approved, those four classrooms would get the additional air conditioning.

Yeah. I I thank you for reiterating all of this. I I said to Brad earlier that I know we went through a lot of this last week, but somehow when Brad explains it, it makes sense to me. Yeah. And I think that that's a really important quality of how you communicate the work that your department and that the district has been doing on this front. So I really appreciate it because, again, it it's it's just it's like I get it, so and I really for me, it's really, really helpful. I hope for other people it is as well. Are there any other specific questions that folks have on this?

I don't have any questions, but I did wanna thank Brad for taking the time to speak to, certainly, people in my neighborhood. I also just wanted to say that, with respect to this, my concern initially when we had this conversation was about the funding that was going to come from the federal government. And my understanding is that the contract has been modified to, and I I don't wanna use the language, but I'm going to have to use language. So Honeywell guarantees the full amount of the ITC income tax credit provided the district meets its obligations of filing all documents necessary to obtain and allows Honeywell sufficient access to the site to complete the work in time to meet the deadlines of the ITC. That was something that was very important to me because absent that commitment, the district would potentially be responsible for a million dollars. And while there is really great savings and,

environmental impact in this work, a million dollars to our district is something that I seriously considered. So I wanna I wanna thank the district and specifically, assistant superintendent, Denise Harrington Cohen for making sure that that was there and also for for the our our partner in all of this to being open and amenable to making that guarantee because that was something that was very fiscally important to me. So thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Yep. So last time when we talked about this, we had said, what's his name? Terry? Terry. Terry. Thank you. Terry. I was gonna say Peter, but I knew that was wrong. Terry had one you know, was expecting this last week, and we had said we weren't meeting on the twenty third. We're meeting today. And and he had a he's like, we can work with that. Is that that timeline of, you know, us approving this tonight, does that still give a give the disc give Honeywell and district enough time to file all the required paperwork?

Yeah. That so Terry Terry said this is good. We already step is so nothing's guaranteed. We still have to go to Con Ed, and he's very confident that they will be able to take on the added capacity. But we have to do Con Ed applications, which, we gave to them preemptively to start the process if everything move forward for today so they could hit the ground running tomorrow. So, yes, it's still right now, you know, everyone thinks that we can get this done. The you know, we have Con Ed. They have to confirm that they can do that. We have to do SED submission. We have to do financing.

But right now, everything, seems to be on track that he's confident. And that's part of Honeywell's function in this is to make sure that all those those things line up and keep moving. Yes.

Piggyback off on on his point about the the guarantee. The guarantee is contingent on our the customer's obligation, and it specifically says customer filing requirements, timely access. Those are the main two points. So they don't say anything here about Con Ed. Yeah.

Well so so we're at no we're not obligated to any money at this point. So we will find out if, like, Con Ed will get back to us before we actually make the commitment to finance the money. Perfect. So Thank

you. I think these are all really, really good questions because it sounds like a great thing to move forward on, but these are contingencies that, again, I appreciate Ana and Omar, your expertise in both of these areas to just highlight, the things that we as a district and as board have to be looking out for. Are there any other questions? One little thing I'll add just based off my community conversation on this is I think there has been a question about solar canopies over parking lots, and everyone keeps thinking about our train station, that beacon of blindness, which I love the energy, but it's, like, it's quite a bright spot. So one of the things, Brad, I think you had mentioned is that we because this is something that we control, we'll have the flexibility to either figure out whether any lighting that's necessary under those that might add to the overall sort of lighting situation at each of our school buildings, which, by the way, they're pretty well lit. I mean, you can see them, and that's a safety.

It's an important safety thing, especially for after school sports and activities and the fact that we use our buildings as community members after hours for a lot of things. But those lights you said, they could be either set on a timer to go off at a certain time or dim at a certain time and also motion detection. So you have already thought about ways to sort of mitigate the light concern, which is one of the common themes that came up from our community feedback. So I just wanted to highlight that as well for the benefit of the public who might be listening to this for the first time. If there are no other questions, I'm just gonna ask all in favor. Aye. Anyone opposed? Anyone abstaining? And the motion carries. And, Brad, Denise, thank you so much for all the work presentation for bringing, Honeywell in to talk to us about this, and thanks to everyone for engaging in all the board's questions

on this topic.

Thank you. If you wanna stick around, you're more than happy welcome to. But We have we have covered We

have brought a number of things. So thank you, Brett, for being here tonight. Guys. And good luck on for the next, three days four days. You'll get there. Okay. Moving into item 4.1, donation. Be it resolved that the board of education gratefully accepts the donation of $100 from William Fortini and Mary Ellen Keane as a contribution towards the Memorial Scholarship for 2027 at Croton-Harmon High School. This before I go on to to ask on the question, just a reminder to everyone because we did receive a few donations a couple of weeks back. This is a, contribution in honor of a, a a late student of our school, Lacy Carr, and it's to be awarded to a graduating student who exemplifies Lacy's qualities of including others staying positive and overall being a good friend and respectful student. So on the question. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you very much to William Fortini and Mary Ellen Keane for your contribution

and for honoring Lacey Carr's memory in this way. Item number 4.2, donation amendment. Recommended action be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby gratefully approves the donation amendment as presented. This is for the New York State Office of Information Technology Services. Just a little bit of context if you could, for us on this, Steve, in Sure. Absence. Yeah. So this was first, considered and approved by the board at the July meeting,

and we're we're thrilled to be able to to recommend this for approval by the board. It aligns directly with our one of our priorities, which is around data, security for all of our our students and our our staff and our systems. And so what this does, obviously, is with our implementation of multifactor authentication, there are a couple of different ways that that gets executed. One is, by downloading an app on your cell phone. But for, you know, many staff members having regular access to their cell phone and cell phone service, here in our buildings is not a guarantee. So this would provide tokens that will, generate that same numerical code that you then put into the, to the computer to access, our system. So, the change here is just because there was some delay in procurement from, the state through the vendor, so it's a modification in the cost of the tokens themselves.

And, basically, the tokens are costing us less? Yeah. Yeah. So, with that said, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Same? That motion carries. Moving into instructional personnel, item 5.1, recommended action be it resolved that the Board of Education approves the appointment of Suzanne Lewis, 1.0 leave replacement position for Amanda Frioli as a special education teacher at Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School, effective 09/14/2026 through 11/06/2026 to be compensated at an annual salary of $104,718, MA plus 75 step seven prorated.

Second.

On the question? Well, we're happy to welcome back Suzanne Lewis, a former former and well loved special education teacher here. I will say all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you, miss Lewis, for coming back. Item 5.2, recommended action be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the appointment of Linda Enrique one point o leaf replacement position for Catherine Ellington as an e and l teacher at Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School, effective 08/26/2026 through 01/31/2027 to be compensated at an annual salary of $101,583, MA plus 15, step 10, prorated. So move. On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Motion carries. Item 5.3, be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the appointment of Claudia DiAcevedo Medeiros, 0.6, E and L teacher at Gary E. Tompkins Elementary School at a salary of $78,948, MA plus 30, step two, effective 08/26/2026.

On the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Item 5.4, recommended action, be it resolved that the board of education hereby approves the appointment of Andrew Vogel, morning math intervention teacher, CHHS, at the rate of $55 an hour effective from 09/08/2026 through 10/16/2026.

So moved.

On the question? Yep.

I just wanna thank the the district and, the high school staff and, specifically, mister Vogel for offering this for our students.

Absolutely. Other comments or questions? Okay. Then all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Item 5.5, recommended action, be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves the appointment of Christine Harris, one point o leave replacement position for Elizabeth Damasi as a third grade teacher at Kerry E. Tompkins Elementary School, effective 08/26/2026 through 11/18/2026 to be compensated at an annual salary of $101,583 and a plus 15 step 10 prorated.

On

the question? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Welcome to all our new, personnel, many of whom started yesterday, so thank you to the board for getting these, instructional personnel recommendations approved so quickly. Moving into our consent agenda for the evening, be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby approves all the items under the consent agenda.

Second.

On the question? There are no questions. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motions carry. Moving into the closing of our meeting, I just want to, quickly say before we go into the next item because we don't have a sort of next meeting kind of, like, announcement on this, that our next meeting will actually be on Thursday, September 3, beginning with meet the BOE, your opportunity to come meet two members of your board of education, tell them what's on your mind at 6PM in the rotunda at Croton-Harmon High School. Our regular meeting will, convene at 06:30PM again in the library, and the board is looking forward to hearing from the school district on district goals for the 2627 school year. So, with that, I'm gonna go to item 7.1. Be it resolved that the Board of Education hereby enters into executive session to discuss the employment of a particular person or persons. On the question?

The board will actually go into executive session, leave executive session, and at that point, join the meeting. So, we will quickly take a vote. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstain? The motion carries. Thank you to everyone, and we will see you in one week. Have a great night.