Okay. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being with us tonight. I'm gonna call the meeting to order. It is 07:02, and I'm gonna ask you to just do a roll call. Eden? Present. Charlie? Present. Fifteen? Present. Angela? Present. Amy's not here. Vincent? Nope. Not yet. Stephanie? No. Grace? She will be here soon. Okay. And Sam? Here. Ethan? Here. Ken? Here. As all of you guys know, we're we're really, very invested in civics for all work. And part of civics for all work is so far speeches. We've had these presentations throughout the year.
We've had some of our amazing students come and join us. We're very fortunate. We have two students with us tonight. Both of which that made it within the top 50 of all of New York City for their speeches. So huge round of applause before. And one of our students that's here made it to the top eight of speeches for, in Europe too. So a big round of applause for both of them. So we have Esme who's here from PS two zero nine. Welcome, Esme. And we have, Ethan from CollegePoint Collaborative. Esme's oh, wow.
Let's see. So, Esme's speech was around, recess and lunch, and, Ethan's speech was around immigration. Both of which I had an opportunity part of this process they they get to they, the kids get to provide present their speeches and then their videotape. So I got to see the video presentation of it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for, one of the experiences. And they both did a fantastic job. So I'm really excited for them to be here to really showcase why Soapbox is
so important, why Civics for All work is so important, and how our kids are able to take some of the things that are important to them, and connect with an audience like we have here tonight. Not only did they con are they gonna connect with us tonight, but they were able to do this for kids across New York City that were able to hear their speeches. So I'm really grateful, that they are here to join us. So, Ethan, I'm gonna invite you up, for for you to share your speech with us here tonight. We thank you. We thank your your family for being here with us as well.
So you can come right up right up in front. Right here should be Yeah. You're a total I think you're good now. Right? Yeah. And whenever you're ready, you can share your speech with, the audience and all of our folks that are joining with us from outside of the spaces. Alright. Hello everyone. My name is Adrian Obias. And today, I'm going to be talking about immigration and the effect that bias has on immigrants. You might be wondering how immigration is a big issue. Or put yourself in the position of an immigrant, where every day they wake up and fear of their family being taken away, finding that their children have been picked up just outside of school by immigration agents, and being held in detention centers.
But this is the reality of most immigrants in America. From tradesports.com states, on 09/21/2025, one seventy one point five percent of current detainees have no criminal convictions, and fifty nine thousand seven hundred and sixty two immigrants were reported to be held in the detention centers. Just imagine coming to America to be put in a cage by someone who thinks you're a criminal just by the way you look, where you come from, and who you are. Some immigrants risk their lives every day to come to America, not only support themselves,
but their families. Say my grandmother, for example, who had to take a boat across the sea to provide a better life for her son, my father. She risked her life to do that, and along with that faced a lot of struggles, such as having her boat side caps in the middle of the ocean. With her five days, she was there in that ocean, and the reason was to provide for her son a better light than the one she had. Some people don't get that chance. Some people can stay in those attempt centers, and some stay there to the point, but they die. From the World Health Organization website, it says, 36,800,000 refugees, 8,400,000 asylum seekers, and 5,900,000
others needing protection. And this isn't helping organizations like ICE abuse these immigrants rights. From between 2027 and '21, immigrationjustice.org states alone, a June 2024 report examined fifty two deaths between 2017 and 2021. Finding that ninety five percent of those deaths could have likely have been prevented with adequate medical care. This report from two years alone. Think how many more today are being pulled in these detention centers where they are
left to die for what reason? Because they're from a different country, because of their skin color. It's different because of who they are. And we band together, we can make a difference and help these people out. The FFI states from July 2024 to May 2025, that their hotline volunteer team answered nearly 3,000 calls from people inside more than 50 to 10 facilities across The United States. Think about how many hours these people found their own time just to help someone in need. It's amazing how dedicated organized people like this one spend their time helping others instead
of harming themselves. This website provides actual idea that the government can and should provide to the to help them to go to New York City. Examples from the organization are 16,000,000 for are 16,000,000 for immigration legal services, including the restoration of Action NYC in schools, libraries, and hospitals. 40,000,000 from the immigration opportunity initiative, which provides legal services to low income immigrants, for citizenship, permanent residence, and other immigration related legal services.
And finally, 34,000,000 for the New York immigration family unit project, the city's first and largest public defender program in the country for detained immigrants and removal proceedings before an immigration judge. As you can see when our right minds come together, we can make a difference. We're The United States Of America, The United States Of America. We live a dream of a world free of division, a world one can find a better life for themselves, a world where everyone is united. However, right now, we live in a society where people judge each other for their
skin color and where kids get picked off the street by immigration. Well, at once, however, it doesn't mean back down. You can help by standing up for your fellow man, understanding your rights to freedom, and helping someone else understand theirs. Providing your time to talk and guide others to support programs like these that provide change to multiple communities facing the same problem. There's a good line that comes from a song by Bad Bunny, and it says, which means together we are stronger. And I believe that if we all band together, we can make a difference.
Thank you. Ethan, thank you so much. You did a a fantastic job with with your speech. You certainly had me connected, especially when, you know, these types of speeches, folks, when when it's when I start kids and they're talking about something that is connected to their families, the vulnerability of our children, it certainly connects me right to what it is that you were saying the whole time. So mom, dad, thank you for your for your sharing, Ethan with us. And for Ethan, you sharing what, was really important to you for us to hear. And I look forward to your future where you become Ethan that I learned about
at at this particular meeting, the great things that you wind up doing. So thank you so much for being here and sharing your words. So the and and, folks, I'm sure you can you you hear the this from time after time with the kids that we have that come and join us. The power that comes from from their voices and something we wanna continue to amplify across District twenty five, Making sure that our students know that the things that they are passionate about can, in fact, be heard by other folks. So, again, thank you for doing that. And, Ashley, now we're gonna have you come on up and share your screen with
us as well. Speak up a little bit for me. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Esme Dunn, and today, I'm here to ask for your attention on a super important topic. And I think you might agree. Lunch and recess time is too short. By the time we fly and see, grab our food, eat, and just after we start enjoying ourselves, the bell rings. How many of us spend lunchtime catching up with our friends rather than actually poop? We should be able to do both, so I'm here to suggest the truth. Please hear me out. I think that lunchtime is too short.
We should be allowed to have thirty minutes dedicated purely to eating. According to the National Institutes of Health, we just shoot 20 to 40 times per bite. The goal is to thoroughly break down your food in your mouth to make it easier, bring stomach to process and absorb the nutrients. Isn't that the main reason why we eat? To feed our bodies the nutrients we need to grow. Slow eating. Sorry. Take a cup. You're fine. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Slower eating also trains us not to overeat, which is also a topic.
We also need time to digest before reset. I also think that we should have more time to play during reset. School is for learning, but it it is also for making long lasting friendships. Recess is a time to develop new friendships and meet other students from other classes. It is also time to connect with existing friends. We are in school together, but we are seldom allowed to talk from class. So recess is a great time to share thoughts and ideas with your friends. It's it is. It is. It also gives our greatest amount of care from all our schools so we can
read bookings for our classes towards the end of the day. It's not just me who thinks it's important. According to child development studies such as Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and I quote, studies indicate a significant positive correlation between a child's social abilities in elementary school and their social skills and overall well-being in adulthood. End quote. If I haven't convinced you yet, let's imagine this. Imagine a school where you don't have to rush the umute. A school where you don't have to sacrifice eating with blood because you know there'll
be separate and ample time for both. Are you seeing it? I definitely am. So now, the big question is, how do we fit it all in without jeopardizing our learning time? Here's one recommendation I can think. Put a push for every period, but just two to three minutes. I'm sure you guys have even more ideas, so I call in the help of my fellow students. Let's put together a list of actionable ideas. Then we could bring up a code with the miss Eakin for discussion and hopefully a positive decision. Thank you all for listening, and I hope we can make a change together.
And she And she did make a list of actionable items with her team, and they have presented them, we're working on it. Esri, thank you so much. What a fantastic job that you just did. I'm just so proud of you guys for for being here and for for sharing what's important to you and why it's important. And for those that are on, virtually and those that are here listening in, what I get so excited about is that our kids are not only here taking a stance, but they're doing research to make sure that they have that that stance is supported by something other than just their own opinion.
So you're hearing them quote specific spaces that that support their their claims, and I really appreciate you doing that. And I agree. You guys should be able to have that additional time and space for that eating of that meal and digesting. And I probably have to take some advice from you in terms of how many bites that how many times I chew. Because I definitely don't do that. I wind up doing more swallowing than I do chewing. But the the opportunity for you guys to be able to connect with your peers is a really critical part of being in school. And I really appreciate you for elevating that for all of us tonight.
So So thank you, Ashley, for doing all this. So big shout out to our our building leaders as well that that are here to to join and participate in this. It really does mean a great deal. Certainly, for me that you're here to support your your learners. So thank you guys for being here to do that. But that is our soapbox part. I know that I get to go later on. Yeah. Yes? Okay. But thank you guys so much for being here, for sharing your speech with our community. Thank you guys for being here. You've been amazing. Thank you, guys. You did amazing. Okay. So next up on our agenda, we actually have district planning who is going to
speak to us about some things going on in the district. So we have, Emily is on. Okay. We also have Ria is on. We have a number of folks from district planning that are here. So Emily and Ria, who's gonna be speaking for tonight? We are both speaking, but I will share my screen right now if that's okay. Perfect. Thank you. Great. Can somebody enable me to share my screen? Alright. I'll do that. We got you. Yeah. You can try again. It should be fine now. Perfect. Alright. Everyone see my screen? Yeah. Great. We're back. Here. Well, thank you all for having us here tonight.
We are here to quickly chat about some ideas for the new building that we have going up in District 25. We're referring to this building as Q 510, and we're very thankful and excited to be here, though, so thank you for having us. We are so from the office of district planning, we have a few people here, myself, Raya, and Max, who's our senior director of strategy. We also have Donna Taylor here from the office of, new school development design to answer any questions about, the new school process that you may have. And then we also have the Queens North High School superintendent team, doctor Tu and
Anthony Stifler. If as as you will learn throughout this presentation, we are looking into a high school for this new building, so we're excited to have them here as well. And then, of course, we have superintendent, D'Antona, who you all know and love. Okay. Some goals for tonight's presentation is just to share information about the new high school building, again that we're calling Q five ten, and then review some updated enrollment utilization data in the area that this building will be in, which is College Point, and discuss some next steps on community engagement and just the new school design process, for
this building. Okay, so we're gonna start with just reviewing some of the features that this building has. This is also known as St. Agnes. This used to be a Catholic school called St. Agnes, if you're familiar with that. The Specific address is 13 2124th Street. It is in College Point in that Northwest area of District 25. We have some renderings here from the school constructed construction authority of what the building is being planned to look like, but it is anticipated to open in September 2027.
And this is a high school designed building with about 600 seats in it. Then we have a few amenities that we've listed here. If you have any specific questions on amenities, definitely let us know. We do not have the School of Construction Authority with us tonight, but we're happy to reach out to them to get any specific details on any of these amenities if you have them. But just briefly has 18 full sized classrooms along with a gymitorium, which is a very common, amenity that many new schools have. It's a combination of a gym and an auditorium where the seats sort of pull
out from the side of the gym. Some science labs, music room, exercise room, cafeteria, and absorb space. And then I know I've said this is in College Point, but just wanted to give you guys a map to show exactly where this new building is going to be located. So that hopefully, you can see that star on the top left side of the map. That is Building Q 510. If you're familiar with the schools in the College Pointe area, it's just right down the street, like one block down from the middle school there, College Pointe Collaborative, so that'll be very close by.
And just to reiterate that College Pointe is in somewhat geographically isolated area. There's no public transport transport over there and just three bus lines. So we wanted to note that it does take about fifteen minutes to get from the center of College Pointe to the other nearby high schools, which are largely in Flushing. We have Bayside around there, Flushing, etcetera, etcetera. So it does take a little bit for students to get over there, so really excited for the opportunity to put something a little closer to home. And with that, I am going to pass it to Rhea. Hi. Good evening, everyone.
Excited to be back and presenting at District twenty five. I've been gone for a bit. Just to know, if I start coughing, I was a little under the weather, so I might take a few sips of my water. But thank you, Emily, for that overview of Saint Agnes or q five ten, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about the high school data side of things. So currently, Queen's has a a high school deficit of seats of just over 2,000 seats, and that means that across the district, we look at, how many students or high school age residents there are and then how many seats are available across all
of Queens. We take sort of the excess and the deficit. We end the season. We put them together, and we figure out how many seats we're short. So that's about 2,000 seats across all of Queens. However, in District 25, when we do that same sort of study, we found that District 25 itself has a deficit of 918 seats. So, again, looking at sort of the students that would go to to high school and also the seats that are available just in District 25. The table below, it shows the top five schools that College Pointe high school residents
attend. So that means that those kids who live in in College Pointe that are able to go to high school, you know, ninth grade, tenth grade, where do they go? And we have Bayside, Flushing High School, Benjamin Cardozo, Veritas, John Brown. And we found that many of those are already overutilized or overcrowded, and they're between two and four miles away from College Point. So to the the point that Emily was making before, there is not really a high school in College Point, and so students have to travel out of the neighborhood
to go to high school, and this would bring a high school into the neighborhood. So kind of what I just said, there's a seat deficit in District 25, and College Point doesn't have a high school. Most of the high schools that College Point resident high school residents attend are overcrowded. And so we would like to partner with you all, especially the College Point community to figure out how to best use, Saint Agnes or Q 510 to provide an accessible high school option for families who live in the area and also possibly help
address overcrowding at the surrounding Queens high schools that College Pointe High School kids go to. So, Donna, are you gonna take on these two, or should I? Sure. Okay. Sorry. So I'm gonna pass oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, I'm gonna pass it off to Donna Taylor who's from the office of new schools. Hi, Donna. And she's going to walk through some of the new school planning. So, thanks, Raya. We, Max and I, were in town, in April and went to, and met with
students from two different middle schools, and administration from four. Steph, you were at the second school, with us, and heard a lot of interesting feedback about what students would like in a high school. And so we would love to continue those discussions and get more and more feedback on new school planning with the College Point community. We are so, so wanting to have the new school be something that happens in
collaboration with the CollegePoint community, not something that happens to you all. So we're working very hard to schedule those conversations with students, parents, all stakeholders in the community. And then, of course, we'd circle back and present initial ideas by the end of the school year based on the feedback that you gave that you give us. Great. Alright. We'd love to hear from you all. We have a few guiding questions to help sort of facilitate some of the conversation. The first is, what do you all feel the greatest needs and priorities are to
keep in mind when planning for the opening of q five ten, you know, this new high school building? The second is as we enter the beginning stages of the new school planning process, what types of community engagement would be most helpful? Would it be something like, community meetings like this, coming to CEC meetings? Would it be, you know, town halls? Is it a survey? We would love to hear what would be the best sort of mode to get information from you all so that you can be engaged in this process.
And the third is, what types of programming would families in the community like to see at a new high school and College Pointe? I think, Donna would agree that we would love to open a high school that is aligned with things that the community wants and that kids would like to go to. So those are a few of the, the guiding questions that we have. And so I think we can open the floor up to a few questions if there are any. Thank you, Ria. Thanks, Emily. Thanks, Donna. So I had met with Emily recently and the team as just, like, a little
intro to learning about this. And I did feel that, you know, it's interesting that there is nothing in Palisque for it. I think it'll be nice if they have the option to not have to travel as far. But I definitely wanted to have them come tonight so that everybody can kinda get their feedback as well, which is why we invited them, and just hear what people think about this. So anybody from the council, feel free to chime in. I think it's a great idea. I think if if if if there was a high school closer, even though my
daughter has a good commute, I probably would have sent her there. So just so that everyone She goes so great. So that everyone knows that, as Donna mentioned, we we we came together, including myself, a member from doctor doctor Tu's team, and are building these with a group of kids to make sure that we started getting our perspectives. And one of the parents from CollegePoint who knows me as a you know, just through my my dealings in our schools and as part of deep, the DPACC committee did share a few things just for you guys to also be aware of and to hear the things that she did kind of call out from conversations within the
community. So these are some of the things, you know, Ria, Emily, Donna, that we've mentioned from some of the families there already. And just so you also know, we're planning on getting, community members all together so that we can engage in a larger conversation. But they talked about college readiness tracks, where things that that did come from, from the parents. They talked about technology, you know, and computer science as, as another area that they were keen and interested in. And health care pathways was also something else that came up as part of some
of the things that they noted, just in some initial conversations that they were hearing from from the community. So just throwing those out at you just so that you, you know, shared with me, and I want to make sure that I shared it with you as well. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Oh, yes. I was saying, m m three seventy nine, the middle school, I a week ago. And, my initial impression is, like, we we cannot find a parking spot around the neighborhood. You know? It takes me about, like, fifteen to twenty minutes to find a parking spot.
And that's gonna be inconvenient for parents, to visit or to go to the school because there is, no public transportation, not a limited public transportation nearby. So people can go there to a lot of them will go there, by, driving. So that's one of the concern that I I have. And and also, I don't I from the list that you provided, I don't see any auditorium that, have been, out there. So I was in, MP 79.
They have a really interesting auditorium. They're using the cafeteria. That's what this is all about. It's a gym and auditorium. They have bunch of It's a combination. It's a combination. Yeah. So, I I hope, you know I know it's very crowded all now. The space is really limited. I I I wish, you know, the high school has a, a big, auditorium for, you know, for either schools. Hi, Kyle. My question is why now. I'm not My question is why now? No. I'm good. You're welcome to ask. I'm good. I I mean, I I think that this and this high school address the fact
that most college students don't are in Collin Pointe for high school? Yeah. I don't think many, people who aren't living in Collin Pointe will go to this high school because of all the other options. So I I guess just to answer more of her. Right? Like, to get, you know, polypone an opportunity. Go ahead. I think that was actually something that I originally said to doctor Mike. And, Emily, I think I brought that up to you is, like, children from outside of College Point might not be the ones that would go there unless there was
specific programs like doctor Mike had mentioned. But, definitely, the kids in College Point wouldn't have to go travel as far to go to a school. And that was what was the plus side even though I feel like they wouldn't get integration from outside of the area necessarily. Yeah. If I could just jump in quickly here as well. We have so that was absolutely something that came up from a lot of the conversations that we've been having. We have looked at the numbers of the number of, like, incoming ninth graders, who currently live in CollegePoint and the number of seats that are in this school. Trying to figure out, are there enough people in that area to fill this class,
assuming that it is gonna be a largely local, school. And, assuming that it is gonna be a largely local, school? And the answer was yes. There would be enough people in the area to fill that. So, obviously, if we have that programming that would be really be attractive to families, that would be a great way to attract some people from outside of the College Pointe area. But we are definitely, as as everyone is saying, expecting this to be more of a local school. Steven? Hi. I was just wondering, like, are there any local community groups that you're planning on partnering with to bring attention to this? Because, you know, surveying's great. You know, all the stuff you're talking about is really excellent.
But we do have parents who may have their children in elementary private schools because it may be closer. And then, you know, or you know, getting ready to have their, you know, move to the neighborhood. There's all these external factors that this where this information could be really useful, but our normal means of communication within public schools may miss them. So are there any local community orgs that you're planning on partnering with to create awareness? Yeah. I might be able to hop in here. So, typically, when when we've worked to open new schools and we, you know, try
to engage the community, we've done things like go to middle schools and, you know, when we kind of put out a a flyer or a survey for community meeting, we would put that out in the middle schools because those are the parents who are gonna be transitioning into high school. So we would come to events like this. We would really kind of try to push it out as much as possible. We've worked with other sort of school openings and things like that to target, the specific demographic that we're trying to reach. And if there are any sort of community groups that you know of, that you
think we should be aware of, you know, please send us an email. Please let superintendent D'Antona know, you know, once we hear sort of what methods of of engagement you guys would like to be a part of and and, you know, that we should try to do, that's exactly the type of feedback that we need so that we can do thoughtful, meaningful engagement with those who need to reach who need to be reached. Thanks so much. Charlie. So I know it's it's going to open September 2027.
Do does this new school's high school has program that's already established that we're willing to share with the community what they're gonna offer? Because for high schoolers, having, you know, AP classes, having, like, a club is very important for them because that's what goes on to their college orientation. So I just wanna know if that will be, accomplished before the opening and how are you going to let the parents know of those informations? Because a lot of times, parents they do consider distance but when your kids are
a little older, they don't mind sending their kids a little further for the purpose of the academic. So I think the key point in this new high school is actually what kind of program you're going to bring in. Yeah. Shirley, I think part of the the engagements, I think, with the community is that they organize based on the feedback that they receive. You know, we're we're very fortunate we have, someone like doctor Tu in our community that, with all the the, the amazing experiences that she has as a high school superintendent and the the programs that are already being offered in schools that she's able
to supervise currently, can build from a base. But within that base, here are some of the things that are important to CollegePoint families, in particular and then designing the program out from that, which is why I think these engagements are so important, not only with the CEC, but with the College Point community in general. And, some, you know, general feedback that I've received is that there is some excitement about the idea that there will be a school that parents can work with their kids on choosing that's right there in the neighborhood. So things like busing may not necessarily be an issue as much there because most
most of the kids that are coming are within the residential neighborhood. So you're not gonna have as much, foot traffic, as driving traffic as much as there'll be foot traffic. As many of the kids that go to 379 are coming there by foot you know, they're they're walking to school, which I think the same thing will happen for the high school also. But I think that's why these engagements, to your point, are so important to get an idea of what what does the community really value, so that the program could could could correlate to that, to that need and wants from from our families.
Yeah. And I have another question. So after the high school is open, how do you plan to and I just just a curiosity. How do you plan to collect all the parents and, students' inputs? Like, for example, just, you know, surveys for example. Do you have any any plan for that after it's opening? Are you going to, you know, we're starting from ground up ground right now. So we need to build the data and what will be your way to build that data? And how are you going to approach to families?
That's just another curiosity I have. Sure question. So yeah. So a lot of the data collection that we'd like to do would happen before the school's opening. You know, in term when I was talking about doing surveys and what types of programs are you interested in, things like that so that we can sort of work collaboratively collaboratively to see if that we can have any of those programs be at the new school once it opens. Donna, do you wanna say anything about that? Yeah. The the office of new schools will work really closely with doctor Tu and the
staff of the Queen's North. And, the idea is to have parents and stakeholders from the community on the design team of the high school so that we can have the programming. You know, I heard the AP courses. I know there's a lot of work being done around the city about the portrait of a graduate so that we can have exactly what everyone wants in the community. I mean, we can't have every single thing in a 600 seat high school, but, certainly, we can target, you know, the needs and the wants of the community.
So the idea is to get everyone at the table so parents can be on the design team. And so, and the idea is to identify early enough a leader who can work with doctor Tu, and her team and us so that we can work with you, everyone sort of pulling yours in the same direction and get something going that that really reflects what the community truly wants. So the idea is for us all to be together and plan. Yeah. And just so that the the College Point Collaborative was was designed and organized with
kids. You know, it became CPC because because students had their voice in what they wanted that school to really embody. So then superintendent Domingo, engaged the community inside of that space, including kids, which is why it's named what it is and what kind of the vision around the school, came from was because of the community impact, input, including including our kids. Yeah. Is there anything else I have any questions? I know we have to leave from, for collaborative. Alright. You have any thoughts? No. I no. I was part of the meeting for Tucson, and it was just amazing to hear
what our kids are really excited about, what's going on. So, just being close to home and being safe and in the community. I have a kind of question. I'm not sure if I missed this earlier. So would this school opening address some of the overutilization that's currently happening in the other other five high schools that were brought up? Like, would they be able to would students in those schools be able to transfer over to this one, or is it just gonna be ninth grade, like, the coming ninth graders? Good question. So so typically and and, ladies, tell me if I'm I'm not correct here.
But typically, new schools start with the, the entry grade, and then they build up over time. I don't know if that would be a different scenario here, but, typically, that's what what it is. Is that is that that would be true for this case as well if you get with ninth grade and then build up? Yeah. So likely, this would phase in and would be at scale in twenty, thirty one, twenty, thirty two, if I am doing that with right? Twenty, thirty, twenty, thirty one. Affect the numbers now, but it would affect the numbers. It would affect over time. That new batch of ninth graders Yep.
Then tenth graders and eleventh graders. And over time, we'll, you know, hopefully, account for provided that it's at full capacity and 600 children that would be able to, want to do their learning. Yeah. Here instead of Correct. Yes. Would that have said transfer students too? That's of course that they're currently in a in a freshman and it's opening 2027. That's the date we would base that, but they wanna transfer to this this new high school. Will that be doable as well? Or yep. So I do believe that there are opportunities for for that.
Doctor Tu or, mister Stifler, if you're if you're there just to talk about, like, the the transfer transfer space of, of kids. I do know that when they get into tenth grade, I think they do have that that option. But would certainly, you know, phone a phone a a friend closer to the high school space then, you know, that maybe if they're if they're still on, then certainly love to hear their feedback on that. Yeah. I mean, good evening, doctor Hua Tu, superintendent co co tenant of the building. We wish you were there.
I wish I I knew I wouldn't have come to the PEP and stayed and and join you in person. Fantastic question. I think Donna did a fantastic job to say, you know, at the city, we have over twenty six years of experience building and and, collaborating with community and developing new schools. So we're really excited to work with you, CollegePointe community, for this, brand new school without a name because you and the student will be naming it as, doctor Mike said. In terms of transfer, so if we open in September 2027, it will be the
freshman class, so only ninth grade student. Then the school year of, twenty twenty eight, twenty twenty nine with a tenth grade, cohort, any student wanting to transfer into that tenth grade will be eligible, but not in 2027 when we only have a ninth grade cohort. If I understood your question correctly, that would be how it works. Spot on. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, doc. Does anybody else have any other questions? Is, are we also offering programs that are, occupational oriented or career oriented?
Value change? So because this because the school isn't designed yet, it's not open, you know, we can't say right at this moment that, yes, there's gonna be an HVAC program at the school. Right? We wanna hear from the community what types of programs you want. So if if those career ready programs or the types of programs you want, that's the feedback that we need to hear when we do these engagements so that we know that that's that's what the community is looking for, and then we can look
for a school leader to help to build that type of program. And, you know, and it it could be different. What type of a career readiness program do you want? Is it HVAC? Is it nursing? Is it, you know, electric? It there could be a lot of different, sort of career ready programs, so we would really look to you all as a community to let us know what type. And, you know, if I may, we did hear we were at one eighty five that morning as well and talked to about eight or ten eighth grade students who
were really very articulate on that very point about having some kind of industry connection. And when when Max and I were out there between these two two school visits, we just couldn't help but notice much of this a lot of industry nearby that we could really partner with. So this this business of really collaborating with the community, you know, under, you know, doctor Tu's leadership with the person we're gonna bring in at some point who's gonna
be the leader of this school to really reach out and establish those kinds of connections. That's the idea. The idea is to do something that is robust, really, you know, grounded in the community and grounded in the needs of the students who wanna go there. So, yes, we can we can look at all of this. Awesome. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Well, thank you for being here tonight to speak to the council, and I look forward to speaking with you guys again soon as we continue planning.
Thank you so much. And we can just drop our contact information in the chat as well. Yeah. If you could do that for everyone. And then if anyone else has any other questions to come up, you can send it to me, doctor Mike, you can get them over as well if not. Wonderful. Thanks, Emily. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for the time. Have a good evening. Okay. So now we have our AI presentation. I'm gonna call up Mary. Hello. Good evening, everyone. So maybe Hi, Mary. So I brought the folders for that'd be okay. I brought folders for everyone so that you could have some handouts of some of
the materials we use. So I'll introduce myself first. I'm Mary Becaro, the vice president for education for the United Federation of Teachers. But, I wear a number of hats. So I'm also responsible for the teacher center. I'm the executive director of the teacher center. And I currently am running the $23,900,000 grant that we have for AI. So, we have some really exciting stuff going on, and I'm proud to say that many of the schools in '25, so I wanna thank your president for inviting me. We're at they're working with this, in particular, one eighty five, which is gonna be
our pilot school for for a lot of this work. And I just wanna be clear on what that means because most of you in here as parents will never know the work that's going on because none of the work that we're doing is student facing. We strongly believe at the AI Academy that teachers are not well versed enough in AI that they should not be using it in the classroom until they really understand it and they're able to do that work on their own. We learned a lot of this when we had to quickly learn about Zoom through
COVID, and we had to learn a lot about remote learning and all those pieces. Teachers weren't adept. They didn't have the background knowledge in order to do that work, and we were learning on the fly. At the teacher center, which has a forty six year history, we strongly do, and part of our mission is that nothing should be you're you're building the plane as you're flying. So that everyone should be really understanding that work. That's why we don't allow turnkey for any teacher that just learned something. So you go to a workshop and next week you turnkey it.
That's not permitted in our program. The same principles will apply to the AI Academy. And what I'm proud to tell you is that most of your schools, if not all of the schools in '25, have some at point sent someone to one of our workshops so that they're learning something about what we're teaching here. And what's interesting about that is a number of your schools in this district, and I can give doctor Mike David that school, a number of your schools will be participating in some program where teachers will be going, Boston, Baltimore, Orlando, San Diego.
People want better places than I've been sending them to. Detroit, Seattle. They're gonna be participating with teachers from around the country in order to really understand the work that we do. So with that little background, the AFT has come up with safeguards that we believe are fundamental to any AI instruction. So really making sure it's FERPA approved and all the other things. And I'm sure with this group, you all know all those things. I don't have to go through them. But all those are before any AI is using. We're working with the engineers of Microsoft, ChatGPT, and Anthropic.
They come to the UFT office, which now has a separate space on the Mezzanine Of 50 Building that is only for AI studies. And they come and the engineers are meeting with groups of teachers after school to understand how to better develop products for teachers in their classrooms. And what I mean by that is lesson development, understanding where to look for things for research, knowing where to look for ideas in order to support children with disabilities, all of those type of things.
There's a few, like, QC things that they've taught them about, like, making songs and poems and all that kind of stuff. But the major work is how to reduce the workload for teachers, teachers so there can be more human contact in the classroom. So that teachers speak of the devil. My daughter-in-law watching. Is that why she's yes. She's one of your teachers. I think she's she said speak louder. So that teachers can actually be working with their students in a more effective way
and really be getting to know their student and not worrying about all of the things that teachers have to do behind the scenes for data collection, how to develop a lesson, and how to look up things to reduce all of that. So that's our goal at this point and that's what the engineers of Microsoft, Anthropic, and ChatChiPT are working on with us. They're also working with us on how do we think about once this becomes part of our classroom routine. What will that look like when we use? How do we think about how to save intellectual property? How we're going to work with how students are gonna use their thought process in
order to really be critical thinkers and not use the new term which is cognitive downloading. Not worrying about that piece or in some cases, it's cognitive uploading really is what I would like to say instead of cognitive downloading so that they don't have to think and they get the information from the web instead of actually critically thinking on their own. And so we're trying to change that thought process. We also are proponent of and this is aside from the academy. This is the official position of our national union and our local union is no
screens, no online testing, k to two. Now that's in opposition to many of the things that are going on in the department of ed, but that's what we're pushing for a national ban on any screens, any kind of this type of work. Once it gets out to children, it's being updated too. So that's like the overall big arching picture. But so why did we pick one eighty five? Principal Wu Yong contacted us. He attends a lot of our workshops. So you should be very proud of him. Doctor. Money, he attended give him a highly effective. He attended a lot of our workshops.
And what we wanted to really do is look at how a large school, especially a middle school, how they use this information and how the teachers then respond to the work being reduced for them. And so that school already has teams set up on every grade level. They already have by E and L, by special ed, all of the things that are in good practice in schools. So what we ask them to do is really take a look at this, come to training. So they're sending 10 teachers at a time.
Many of those teachers are doing that on Saturdays and Sundays at our workshop, but some are coming during the week and they're being released from school to do that. And we're gonna be working with them really, we're gonna be really invested in seeing how what happens to a school culture once we change that. After probably about November year, we're gonna be asking more schools to join on. We're calling it a pilot, but it's really we're gonna supply all the support. We're also gonna supply all the instruction. And, our partners at Apple will make sure our devices are working properly.
Our partners with Microsoft will make sure bandwidth and all of that stuff that we have to add into the school. Anthropic and ChatGPT will be looking at how to train the AI in those schools in order to support the teachers of whatever their needs are. Because every school is gonna look a little different. Right? Just as you learn, like, CollegePoint Collaborative, maybe if it becomes a CTE type school, we would both well, yours oh, like, into the high school. We would focus on your school to say, what could we do in order to support the children that are now moving into that high school, and what are some
of the background pieces they would need for their AI. But, again, like, I know that parents are filling out right now because there is until May 8 to respond to the department of ed of what that looks like, of what their AI policy is. We are not focused on anything student facing, and we're being very, very clear about that. We don't think that teachers are ready for that yet. And, yeah, there's gonna be some playing around again. It's like little song things we've been playing with. Have they put in some words or things that it's doing? Little different than really using it for research and stuff. So that's our overall view.
Question? Yeah. I I say this with all due respect. I know that I'm not correct. I'm increasingly getting exhausted with the mounting pile of evidence of how destructive these technologies are. Especially through OpenAI and Anthropic. There's mountains of evidence of like misinformation, just cognitive damage to students. Like people not second guessing a correction coming out of this. Correct. And I haven't heard a single reason, especially outside of the chancellor, but two minutes of them, for a reason why we need this technology, decide it's here.
And I'm becoming increasingly exhausted that the only answer we get is that the technology's here, we have to use it. That's not like And again, I say with low view of tech, no. Like I have yet to see a reasonable answer as to why we need this technology in front of our teachers. Like every single day there's more and more studies about how destructive this technology is. How harmless. And like when I hear you say, oh we're doing cute things with little songs. That's, like, dystopian to me. Well, wait. Because, like, what what I'm saying, that would be the only thing that would be like, everything else will not be in front of me.
No. No. I hear that. But when I hear you say that you're putting AI music in front of students and that's, like, a good thing, as a creative who's married to a creative, who knows creatives, whose industries are being demolished by these companies, hearing that is a cutesy fun thing to put in the classroom, that doesn't sound exciting. That sounds dystopian. I don't disagree with you. So I wouldn't be doing it, my question. So I'm just telling you that that's why I hear that. But why are we doing this? I don't have a reason as to why. Well, we're doing it at the AFT and the UFT. We're doing it so that we can control the technology before it controls us.
Social media is controlling our teachers, and we don't want that to happen. Screen time in classrooms is controlling our teachers. We know that the cell phone ban, we see the increased learning that's going on, but think about how long that was. And for a long time, even the Department of Education, and I say this with respect to the Department of Ed, they were saying it's great. If a kid has a cell phone, they can use extreme r code in the classroom. And we were saying no, but we have no control over that. What we're trying to do is control the narrative and make sure that the companies
that are working with us work with us in a more, functional way. I I agree with you that teachers need to understand this technology is everywhere. Mhmm. And, like, I think on that part, we're in base agreement. Yeah. But, you know, when you're describing it, you're describing we're taking steps towards it being implemented in our schools. We're doing a pilot with one eighty five. That's putting it in a school. That's not getting teachers informed and knowledge. That's implementation. Even a teaching forward version. Wait. Not from students. But it's I still think for I don't like, to be honest, for my child, my child's teacher using ChatGPT to work on stuff is something I'm trying to not
take this off. But would this be off? Yeah. Because, like, I again, there's been no reason as to why this needs to be implemented. Education, essential. Like trainings, absolutely. It is everywhere. But the implementation portion, the only answer I keep hearing is because it's here, because we wanna get ahead of it. The one the DOE gave up, it's an equity issue, which we're quite right. Just again, like and I understand what your mission is. I just don't understand why why it's in So, mister Kenaporta, piece that I would say to you is that teachers are using it now.
Right? And your point is well taken, and I represent the teachers, so I'm being careful with what I say here. Some of them are not using it properly. And what we're saying is, if you don't know how to use it, don't use it. I hear what you're saying about it shouldn't be used at all, but we would rather proper implementation. Than for there the other ways that it's being used out there. And we also wanna make sure that private information is not shared. So if teachers are getting ideas, they shouldn't be writing Mary Picaro in my class.
We are dead against that even with the FERPA approved, no names of students, no names of class, and no names of schools. We're even like showing them not to use any of that information. You go on to chat GPT, at times you can put in, and I've done it, you could put in a specific school and you can find what other people were researching about that school. Right? You can find, like, you can find a paper that student has written from that school because they put in that information. We're trying to make sure we clean up that kind of stuff in order to
do it. We're not gonna resolve that. I'm not gonna resolve that doing right now, we did 20,000 teachers this year across, five states. We're not gonna resolve that. The goal is within the next five years. I'm not even talking about Paris, social workers, just teachers. Our goal is to hit 400,000 teachers within the next five years. So we know that we'll do that, but I think we're in agreement with what you just said is it shouldn't be leading the instruction. It should just be part of the instruction and not in front of the students. I actually don't think it should be part of the instruction in any way, shape,
or form, especially given And I don't wanna like to be back and forth and waste everybody's time. But like, I agree with you on like 90% of what you're saying. It's that extra step of, well, it should be in the building. It's gotta be in the building. That is where I draw especially again. And honestly, like, people were talking about it as if they were gonna be models that were, like, part of the DOE. ChatTBT is riddled with hallucinations, with misinformation. And that that will inevitably Our teachers are wonderful. Like you said, there are people choosing it improperly now.
There are gonna be people not checking the data. Not checking whether or not these are errors in the stuff. Right. And that choosing to put a thing in front of our teachers to use it for our children, that we know some will not check to make sure they're giving false information, is actively harmful. And that honestly scares me that the overwhelming thing is we're excited for this. And I'm like, why? What is exciting about it and what is actually helpful? And short of, it makes people's work easier.
And we can have arguments whether or not that's accurate. But, like, again, I don't wanna just argue and waste your time. I really appreciate you taking your time. But, like, we keep hitting this wall where no one gives a real reason about how it is beneficial in the end to our students who have this technology in the building. There's tons of technology that people should understand that we don't choose to implement with enthusiasm. And that's why I'm, like, so frustrated. And you can see me getting work up in a way we normally don't, because there is no evidence that this will help our students. Yeah. There is no evidence that this is beneficial.
There is mountains of evidence that it will hurt our students, and I find it gross that we're just throwing this in here. Anyway, that's I appreciate that. Go ahead. And I just wanna jump in and ask, like, so a lot of the the issues with AI is that there is misinformation, there are hallucinations, whatever. That comes from the data. Right? So you're saying that Microsoft, that Broadband, OpenAI, they're they're working with, you know, you guys to implement this software. But where is the data that these these companies are even coming from? Like, is this gonna be if we're saying that this is gonna be used for
lesson development, is that information that they're using for a lot of curriculum? From the curriculum. They're being uploaded and then the AI is being trained in order to do that. And then that's why we're working with teachers now on understanding, like, what's wrong, what's not. And there has to be a cognitive piece to that. It can't just be to your point, I agree with you at the academy. You can't just accept what you're having there. And that's part of the piece. And that's why we're doing this at teams, not just one teacher working alone.
So it's not like this is just general information that's available on the web and we're just expecting it to be accurate. That's correct. So we're trying to avoid some of that in misinformation, some of those hallucinations by controlling the data that these PLOMs are using to provide information to teachers. That's correct. Does that help a little bit with some of that concern? If the concern is the misinformation and the the hallucinations and let's not get into the environmental impact on that. I mean, does that help though? Can I just say, it's my understanding that that when we're talking about generative AI
in particular, everything that it spits out is technically a hallucination because its function is to generate? Readiness to, like, if you want a text, here's a text. It is pulling from things that have existed, but it's something you do with it. But we're pulling on the curriculum. Yeah. Is to And I think the relationship to to curriculum and, you know, being an educator for for twenty eight years when and when you're looking to make sure that you're making a real smart choice within the context of where in my curriculum, I know that that might need a specific scaffold.
What's my scaffold that I can use that's really gonna give entry into a piece of text, that's within a curriculum based scenario rather than having to to look at resource after resources after resource within a given curriculum for a tool to be able to point me into a space and says that this is a resource that you might wanna use for a child that's struggling with x. That's curriculum based. I do think there are efficiencies there that are worth engaging in that conversation to make sure that we're pinpointing. If something if if I'm struggling in something connected to, connected to phonics and I'm
engaging in a piece of text that's from this particular curriculum, and I can have myself point out certain elements within that particular text that I might wanna queue in on, it gives me an opportunity to do that in a more efficient way than reading through each of those pieces of text to find that specific thing when the when the program can bring me right to it and say for me make me allow me to make a decision that'll that that's much more efficient, allowing me to to make other decisions by other kids in my classroom. So what is curriculum curriculum based, which a lot of these these, entry points are
really really intended to do, is about lifting the the resources that are part of that program to then give me easier access to it. That's the way that I see a lot of these things. But I completely understand the the concerns that you're sharing and why you're concerned about it. And I think you should continue to voice those concerns. You know, I think it's important that through that dialogue, you're able to come up with with a space that makes sense. Obviously, right now, you might not feel that way. Right? But I think the there there are entry points that I do think would be
valuable for for an educator when they're organizing their plans to support their instructions. And I I do think that there is a place for that. We will never ever no matter how long we do this and we keep this going, we don't believe there should be any evaluation for students, meaning uploading essays, checking, whatever. Yeah. We are dead against that of any form at all and that's part of our safeguard in our document. So because that's a question that parents have been asking across the country when I go, well, we'll teach us just the uploading essays and then, the AI we are
dead against that. That's a human to human piece, you know. Will be here will the training sources be publicly available? Because OpenAI has been caught lying so it's in profit. Well, they're not developing any of the training. But those are the people you are working with? No. They are coming to learn how to I guess what they've had. Yep. They are not giving any training. We at the U of T teacher center do not allow outside vendors, and we will not hire outside vendors in order to do something. So it's going to be, even though it's a national program, it is going to
be New York City teachers that are adept in technology. We've spent one year with them. They have been learning everything there is to learn about AI in many, many forms, and we're agnostic. So even though Microsoft OpenAI and Anthropic are spending the money, we are agnostic, and we're using other, AI forms in order to do that. Will those sources still be available, Sartre? Like, is it possible for if people wanted to find out what the sources of the training data is, will that be made available?
It's gonna be the curriculum that New York City Department of Education also I I see it as a frustration. So my question I just curiosity again. So teachers are getting trained for this and as a parent, we're a little frustrated because we don't know what they're getting trained on exactly. So how come there can't be any parents representative in and how is there any way that we could find out? Two weeks ago, we had 250, parents attend our AI training, at the UFT.
It's through the parent coordinator of each borough. So Delty Rodriguez, invites parents to the parent leadership piece, and we've had 250 parents and that parent piece is gonna continue. And they they get to see what They get the same exact training. Training. So they know what they're getting trained on teachers. Nothing is stated. So I know we had stuff in the chat. I'm talking to Mike. I don't know. I think most of it is just an agreement with Just an agreement. Okay. You know, with Steven, you know, Steven's perspective. And then just around accountability measures, it's, you know, similar kind of context.
You know, it was kinda echoing what it is that you shared. Not not as much a a question, it seems, as as much as it is, agreement with where, the the context. So that's for sure, Mary. So you mentioned about you're working with, you know, Microsoft, and, the other firms, the big corporations. They do have their financial interest, to device details. That's interest when developing, you know, this is they are they are not more marketing companies. They gave the question is Wait.
They gave us 23,900,000. That's public. There was a press conference. I spoke at it. Yeah. They gave us 23,900,000. There are no strings. And all I have to do is have their engineers listen to teachers, but they do not participate in our workshop. Okay. So so do you have any any third party, like, independent third parties to work with you guys, you know, as a debt advisers, it within a roles like No. Microsoft or Android. We have an independent third party that's evaluating the work, but we do not work
with the third party to develop the the workshops. But we have an evaluation as we do for any grant based program that you need to have an independent evaluator evaluating work that you're doing. Anybody else from the council on time? Can I understand off? Airgap from general, Chachatete, Claude, you know, wherever it is. And it's only using data and curriculum that is provided by DOE. And so, essentially, this is really more like a chatbot that is answering based on
the data that the DOE is providing them. So it kinda looks like The DOE is providing the curriculum. Well, the DOE has enforced the curriculum. The UFT is buying the curriculum because the DOE does not have AI rights to everything. So a lot of money we're spending right now is about buying curriculum so that we could upload it so that we have the rights to do that. So the answer is yes and and no. So remember, we're working with all 50 states across the country. We are moving with all 50 states. Not all the curriculum is exactly the same.
So what we're using right now is the basis what the Department of Ed is using. Eventually, that will be different because HMH is not being used around the rest of the country. With wisdom, it's not seen as culturally responsive. So we can't use that in certain places across the country. So depending on where we are, we're gonna have to use those as models and then it comes to companies' practices. Okay. And I guess the way it kind of is being presented makes it sound like this is just gonna be like a really advanced search where teachers are going in and asking, you know, a question or asking to help plan something or or, you
know, ideas on how to implement whatever. It sounds like it's being presented as, like, a super advanced search function. But is that all it's gonna be used for? Is there ever anything else? Like, somebody was asking how what economy measures will put in place to make sure AI is in most used in assessment or grading. Like, is there is it really only just gonna be used as a super search function? Yeah. Or But how is it creating and not to be like a gotcha. Sorry to think about it. How is it creating music if it's just a searchable database of production? No.
That they use that as an example to teach teachers what to that was just an example. Okay. Because I was like, if that's in there, then it's not It's not in there. Okay. That's why I was asking. We use it because teachers are saying, like, show me a quick cute thing of how like, what does this look like? Remember, they send ten days with us over the course of of learning all of them. So when teachers come first, they're like, what could I do tomorrow? That's the one thing that teachers in New York City always want. They want something tangible that they can use in their classrooms tomorrow. We're saying this is not exactly that.
Because you really have to learn how to use the function in order to do it in your classroom. So we show them, like, this is like a quick and I I hear what you're saying. This will not be used in my classroom. But this is a quick piece of what you can do in your class. Look what you can do. In five seconds, you can find them. We're trying to show them these are the real stuff. We, again, we are very clear on not for evaluation, not for grading, and not for any determination of where a student is. We are clear cut on that. That is a human to human, even though I think we have to think of
something better than human to human. But that is a person to person, piece that we will not budge on. And that's one of those those elements that, is, is part of the the the traffic light kind of scenario. The whole grading part of it is is identifiable as the kind of the red light space, inside of that current in the current framework, which is was shared with everyone, a couple of times. You know, but still, you know, questions still can come from any of those things. Right? It's there there that's the reality of this is that there will be additional questions
that could be raised as you go as you go through. And I think it's important that we raise them as as they come to you. You know, that I think that's how, you know, things get, adopted or not or changed or not. And, you know, I think it's through that that kind of dialogue that it will allow for, you know, a a truly productive, model and, you know, set of guidelines for for those to follow. You know? So yeah. Is it is it just kinda like a newer system where the teachers are saying that they're not gonna put, you know, an essay or ask it to help grade
or anything? Or is that actually gonna be, like, disable functionality if they were to put it in there and just let them work? With with our partners is we want them to disable that functionality. Right now, we do not have that there, but we're not even talking about that in we're telling them we're dead against it, and they have to sign an agreement when they take their program with us that they're not going to use it. Does it mean that you're right. Does it mean that somebody couldn't? Of course, they could. They could do that right now without coming to us. But we are very, very strong about that. There'll be a speech at the national press, national press Washington, DC that we'll be
giving in another two weeks, and we're gonna be very strong on that piece. Okay. And is there anything that these partners are in the process of implementing where they would flag if somebody were to try to ask for input on reading? At this point, there is no login system that is controlled, that they're not able to do that. But that is, like, one of the pieces that we want the engineers to work on. So that municipalities, based on their law of their state or their city or or
their municipality, we would be they would be able to log in and we would be following the rules of your municipality. So it sounds like this might be a little premature to be highlighting this for these guardra families. The guardrails are a place for us. So anyone that's worked with us, they're they're gonna log into a system with us, and we're not gonna permit it. That's not to say they couldn't go on OpenAI right now and do it on their own. So just something that I so one of the things that's come up, not even in our district in general that I've heard at certain meetings is teachers are taking
people's work and submitting it into, let's say, like, something where they're able to say, was this written by AI? Where does that come into this case? We're not we're not doing any of that, but that already fits in all the high schools and in the colleges. I mean, middle school's even doing it right now. So so so I know that's part of Blackboard. That's part of all of a lot of the learning management systems already. You know? Like, I know my son just graduated with his master's, and I know he was, like, panicking because 8% of his paper they said was plagiarized, but it was close. Right? So it said you had 8% and, you know, that that's our only allowed set.
So we had to go back and take out some quotes and rework it. Right? Because the system automatically said what was going on. My goodness. They did not have that with my dissertation because I don't know if it would have been an 18% quote. I know that we we've had a lot of problems I wanna see. And I think I'll have any questions, I think. No? I have a question. Go for it, Grace. So so we are conducting, this pilot the risk that children are facing with this
technology. So so we have that in mind that we need to, at the same time, to take advantage of the, technology? That would be more a doctor Mike because we're not doing any of the children's basic. Yeah. So there there has been you know, part of the the reason for this this forty five day kind of window is also then becoming around those conversations that we
do need to have the kids. And kids across all all grade levels and access points and entry points and conversations with families for that matter. We have some that are clearly very educated around, you know, what these what OpenAI can or cannot, you know, can do. And other families, they just don't have any knowledge necessarily about it. So I do think that there is a lot of, of work that we do need to also do with our families to make sure that we do so have some safeguards for our children, and that we're making real smart choices.
And I think, you know, a big part of the of the framework is about being critical consumers of the things that we have in front of us. None of us can be in front of every child at every moment and the choices that they make with the resources that are available to them. And we've said while the phones are put away in school, they still have access to them after they leave, and have access to the ability to utilize them either in a productive way or not so much. So there is a lot of ongoing conversation that does need to be had with with our kids, with our families, and certainly with our staff, to make sure that
we're that we're utilizing the things that we have around us in real productive ways. There are not necessarily ways for me to know whether or not unless I'm pulling someone's plan and filtering it through who where is it that they got it from. Unless, you know, that that's just the the the reality. I wouldn't be able to necessarily know if Angela then put that inside of her system. You know, that without really digging deeply into knowing, Angela's plan. So I think there there is it's important that we just learn and grow through this this type of work. Back to my kids a 100.
I just wanna jump on that. Teacher can develop a plan with AI. Right? But if they can't implement it in the classroom, I could have the best written plan for them. We can support them with that. But if they're not able to implement it, AI is not gonna help them. So when they're standing in front of those students and they're supporting their students, you have to be a great teacher. Right? Like, we we can write it up. I can show them on AI how to write these great things with HMH and incorporate phonics and do but if they're standing in front of the classroom and doctor Mike walks in and they don't know they're students and they're not able to do
it, it's meaningless. So that's the work that we're trying to reduce. We want them to find it, as we were saying, but we want them to really learn the implementation. And that's the part of the teacher center part that that's why they that's why Randy and Michael asked me to do this so that that teacher center part was like, great. We found a plan. Now let's make sure we support the teachers on the implementation and and for them to do that work. Yeah. But I I think just in general, the the question is the the safeguards. I think it's gonna be an ongoing process of of educating our young learners, around
what it means to to utilize resources. You know, prior to the idea of of AI was around how are we making sure that we're choosing reliable resources in Google alone, You know, from choosing the right site to the one that gave you misinformation, which, by the way, still exists. AI or not, that exists in Google. We've had access to it for a really long time. And kids do access information that is also inaccurate, also, filled with biases, also that is unfiltered, and they still have access to use.
So it it's about making sure that we can continue to educate our kids on how do we make sure that we utilize the things that are out there in front of them, within with intent, purpose, and, and understanding of what is available to them, if that makes sense. And I'll kinda end with this that, if you haven't read the anxious Generation, if you haven't done that work, I'm happy to give everyone a copy of the book. We met with John Stowman last night with Goldie, who's, because, you know, Goldie Fund
Foundation is doing some work in in your district. And we met, and we were really talking about it. And one one thing that he added was, this is all great and good, and I think you'll you'll enjoy this. It was great and good. When kids are on screen, kids are doing this. So the one piece that he gave us that will stick with me forever, being a boy mom, is that twenty five years ago, the average number of boys of all the boys in The United States, thirty eight percent of them broke a bone at one point in between zero and 15 years old.
That number is down to two percent at this moment in time because kids are on their screens. Kids are not I don't want them to break their bones, but they're on their screens. They're not having a high. That changed a lot of perspective for us last night when we were having these conversations, and a number of our teachers were sitting there about the importance. And then when I heard her talking about recess, I was like, well, they haven't been for recess. Yeah. I know. It's up here running around, but, you know, so we're we're carefully walking these waters as they as they happen right now.
One last question. Is anything being implemented to determine or evaluate efficacy of teachers using AI, or is this just the teachers self reporting? No. Yeah. We have a third party, that we're using now, and they'll be evaluating us, and we'll be getting an evaluation. The first one will come out, I think, in June. And then after that, we'll be getting them regularly. And are, like, those metrics or the the parameters that you're evaluating on, are those available for Yep. They'll be on the web. They'll just like our teacher center, they'll be available on all of our website.
And, you share the websites that are available? We're gonna have it while the national AI is happening. Alright. Thank you. I'm gonna get everybody forward. Can can can the parents who are attending virtually also to get that information, or is it just a yes? Like, it's alright. I almost planned for virtually. But, yeah. We we could I could send it in and it could go out. Yeah. I have one question. Are there currently any limitations since you're just using AI in the classrooms? I want to train it around. So say more, Ben. What do you mean by that? I don't know. Any of my teachers use to use chat GPT and do they want?
So right now, there's nothing that would say that the that a resource because it's it's accessible. Can someone do that? If the question is can, the answer is yes. Someone can. And I think that's the real, the real importance about this work being put out there now and that we're we're starting to have these conversations around, what's what's beneficial and what's not. Because there are realities to that. I see a prevalence of AI every single day in our school, especially from sophomore
year to year to senior year. I see AI in our classrooms every single day. I just want to On a future front? Yes. Okay. The DOE suddenly the meeting about the soft light that is not allowed to be used in schools until it's fully processed. Processed. So that alone is Well, maybe, hold on. Anyway. Is that in the meeting with the chancellor, is that in any way the app should not be used in the schools until the everything stops. But thanks. I'm not gonna So I'm gonna touch it for a second.
I know I've got a lot of thoughts, a lot of questions on this, but I do wanna kinda wrap up this segment because We do have a lot. I know Mary has somewhere else to go as well. And you can get me out of the pack. Stay here. I'm still going. I'm getting messages. So I do wanna be mindful of her time as well. But But we I just wanna throw this out here. We're happy to do a workshop with the parents in District 25 if that's what we would so like. We're happy to do that. Know what the what we're giving, but that's gonna be what what happened. And we're always happy to do it with the teachers here and bring it to
you. So if I can bring it to Orlando next week, I can definitely bring it to the classroom. You know? So we're happy to do that. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. Good luck going over there. Not important. Thank you. They have an AI in Captivate. Okay. So we're running a little later on time. So I'm gonna give a photo to doctor White. I will go fast. I promise. I don't know. I'm gonna try to keep it to a The couple of interactive things.
No. But I I think you should because they're very you can definitely have a conversation. That's why you're here as part of the CEC, to be able to communicate the things that you think are important. And, you know, that's why you guys are here, to ask those important questions. It's not to to to be sitting here and idle and say that, you know, that's important to me, but not communicate it. So, I appreciate that you that you shared your thoughts. So I think that's what how and I do honestly believe that's how we grow. We improve when we're able to engage in dialogue. Not every side of every scenario are we gonna necessarily agree wholeheartedly on.
Not hold on. Not email. Not emails. Hold on. You already read that. Not email. I read that already. We're not always, gonna be in the space of of agreement on any given topic. But if we don't talk about things, then how do we how do we improve? So Our conversations have to happen. Okay. Alright. So this, I am not gonna do. But connection before content, if, if you could, what job would you like to try for a day? I will quickly share mine. I would being that I'm a huge sports fan, and the Knicks are playing right now. If you could put me in a space where I can call one of those
games, next to walk by Fraser, I am all in all over that. If you have one you wanna share after I get quickly done through this one, feel free. But just for interest of time, I know that, you know, we might be a little bit behind now. So May has a tremendously large number of things to celebrate. And what I'm learning is, is that don't miss any of them. Right? Don't don't miss any of them. But, it does get a little bit overwhelming when you start thinking about how many things get celebrated, you know, throughout every month.
But this is Jewish American Heritage Month, Asian Pacific Islanders Month. May also brings in Military Appreciation Month. You know, these are all times to celebrate the important folks that, have been past, present, that are some very close to us. Maybe some that, you know, that we have made an impact on us, just based on what they will be able to their connections historically. So, big shout out to those particular groups. Friday was National Principal Appreciation Day.
You know, what I said to our principals, I said to them, and I will say here, I couldn't be any more grateful for the people that we have serving our kids in our schools. In my what is a biased opinion, we have the best principals in New York City that are supporting our kids every day. So I'm very grateful for them. It's all this one I did not know. It was school lunch superhero day. I didn't know that. Did not know that, but throwing that out on May 1 for all of our folks in, that are supporting school lunch for our kids. Big shout out, to you. Saturday was wellness day.
So super thankful for you as a CEC. We had a number of our members from the CEC that were able to be present, and support. Speaking with Steven earlier, he said that, that he's he talked from the time that he started to the time we finished at around 12:30. We had over 400 participants, for the day. It was really fantastic. Grace had, a whole, a whole set up, with a little spinning wheel to do a whole variety of different activities. Angela was there also chatting it up. He even joined us. So big thanks to to you guys.
Shirley, we had, mister Met was was present, which is always a big hit. But huge thanks to Diana Stein from our team. Wing Yi Chung from our team. They did an amazing job of organizing, organizing what was just a fantastic event. We had so many vendors there, from from our hospitals to those that are supporting around, mental health needs. You know, things in the the physical, therapy areas.
We have local communities, partners and organizations that donated things to the to the event. It was just really really a great experience. I have to tell you, I was a little panicked when it hit 10:00, and I only saw a handful of people there. But they all filed in. It was really an amazing event. We we have one of our members from our district community also here that volunteered. It was just really really nice. And, what what really was a a capper for me, we had one of our soul box speeches present, and he did a fantastic job yet again, talking about the
importance of kindness, and its relationship to this event. He had all of the audience really cute in listening to what he had to say. So that's our little pal, TJ. You can see him there in the in the image. And he wound up winning a raffle at the end of it all, which was really really cute and completely appropriate. But this was a a really great event, and I thank you guys for being part of, part of it with us. We also have single device that just passed for those that celebrated. It was also happy Korean children's day, as well, for our community members that celebrated.
Happy teacher appreciation week, is all week this week. Huge shout out to our folks for for what they do every day for our kids. You know, you know, we are very fortunate, much like our building leaders have amazing teachers here in District twenty five. It's also happy National School Nurse Day. If I did not include this one in there, my wife would probably be a little bit annoyed with me. She is a nurse at Sloan. So big shout out to my wife for the work that she does, to serve all of the patients that she has. She was not, unfortunately. Just my son. Yeah.
But this Sunday, puffy is is Mother's Day. So big shout out to all of our moms, or our mother figures, that, that are, either with us or, or not. But I you know, this is just an opportunity just to give thanks for for my mom, who is honestly, one of these people that, does everything for everyone else and thinks of herself usually last. And I think I can say that for for most of the people that you probably have in in, in your mindset, whether it's mom or a mother figure.
You know, keeping dear to our hearts those that, that really ensure that we were able to be, in a in a have a positive future. And, you know, my mom was is so so instrumental in that for me. So I don't know that she's gonna hear this, but, you know, big shout out to mom. Well, that is the right way. For all of the things that she's done, for me as, as her son. So, big shout out to all of our moms. District 25. So you I'm hoping that you get a kick out of this. I am gonna show it, because it is part of, our work for safer college.
So Monday kicked off, for those of you that are Star Wars fans, May the fourth be with you. So we took a little bit of a play on those words and tried to talk about it through if you are a Star Wars fans, the Force Awakens was one of the latest iterations of the Star Wars episodes. And we instead of of of, Force Awakens, we called it a fund awakens. So connecting it to the idea of parents being able to to really open up those accounts. So we made this little video.
Let me just reshare with, with sound so that you can hear it. We made this little video, so that we can encourage the idea. Again, it is a parent's choice, but we do wanna make sure that we're getting this out there for all of our families. We did create this to have a little bit of fun. That's not the best part of the video, by the way. Oh, and the the volume's not going. Oh, no. Why is it fourth graders around the Save for College program. With May 4 on the horizon and our love for Star Wars, Grogu and I
have a message for all of our families and our kindergarten through fourth graders around the Save for College program. Greetings, families. And Grogu, how are you today? Good. I'm joining you today from Lindley Place as we launch District 25 of Future Fund Awakens. This is Mac. The fight. As a parent of a ninth and eleventh grade learner, I know too well of the importance of planning forward to support the success of my children. Creating a clear path for their success comes with the thinking about the financial needs to support college and career. I am a Jedi, by my father before me.
The save for college program is a great opportunity to start the saving process as students with a college saving account are three times more likely to attend college and four times more likely to graduate. Do or do not. There is no trial. Like the force in Star Wars, we can help build the roots of success for our learners by activating your account. Join today and awaken the opportunities for your child's college and career pathway. The force will be with you. Always. Thank you, everyone, and we'll see you in space. Obi Wan has taught you well.
See you, Grogu. Hi, district community. Let's get those accounts activated. So all of the, the cutting and splicing is all all Lewis, you've done a great job of, putting little little clips to to make this something. Hopefully, that'll connect with kids, connect with families. In the end, as I said to you guys in the past, this is always a parent's choice. But we wanna make sure that it's accessible to everyone. The goal is to get to 80% of our fourth graders. We have about 32% to go. That's an awfully long way. It's a $180,000 still on the table. So it's now down to a 178,000.
So we have had some activations over the over the first few days of this, which is great. But we wanna get as many kids access as we can. Because I do think there's something to be said around having a goal at an early age that we have we're striving towards something. We have an account that's bringing us towards the goal of getting to college or career. So, you know, more to more to follow on this, but I do wanna share that with you guys. No problem. Alright. And these are the flyers. So as part of this, we've made it a little bit of a contest just to have a little bit of fun. The school with the highest percentage of activations will wind up getting a small little,
popsicles in the school yard type of scenario. Popsicles kinda serving as the, the lightsaber, and will have a loss in there with, with his DJ equipment, and he'll play a little bit of music for kids to have a little bit of fun. So that's just kind of where we are with Sabre College. This, we're we're really excited about. We are extending this to our entire community. So those that are interested, we partnered with Together in Dance, as I mentioned to you guys as part of our arts grant that we've had and that we collaborated on. We have and by the way, I'm not gonna ever sleep again, apparently, because we
have an event on Monday the eleventh, Tuesday the twelfth, Wednesday the thirteenth, with Together and Dance where they're coming to our to one of our schools. We have P s 160 65, P S 22242. And then the last one will be at, 193. There's also an event at the the pre k center as well. Together dance comes to our schools. They will choreograph the dance for our kids and their, and their parents to engage in and have a little bit of fun and grow together as a community. So that is coming, next week.
So, if you like, please go to the events page and register. We also have celebrating as a community. We have the Sambuca tribe that's gonna be going to p s two zero one and January. Again, to do a community based event. And then, Mexico beyond mariachi. So there'll be news, music, dancing, storytelling, all opportunities for our community to take advantage of. And I encourage you to do so because these are great organizations between Together and Dance and Arts Connection. They do great work in our schools. And it's a nice chance just to go and do something fun with your kids and also get some, some connections to various cultures that, that are prevalent within our
district community that maybe perhaps you're not, not a part of, but wanna learn more about. So, we do encourage that. Oh, just really quick. Sorry. Yeah. I know you said it. I just because I gotta ask this question a lot. Yeah. I just wanna, like, repeat what doctor Mike said. These are free to our family. A lot of parents a lot of parents were wondering if they did have costs, and I just wanted to reiterate your point that they are free. 100%. No. We we don't, we don't charge, for any of these events. We just hope that people come. And then if they register, they they join. Because if you register and they don't come, that means someone else can't come.
So that we we are hopeful that that folks do take us apart. Because it's just fun to do with your kids. You have a cultural experience at the same time. So, hoping to see you guys there. I will be at all of them. I don't know how much dancing I'm gonna be doing, but I will be at all. We'll broke you in one. Yeah. At least the one I'm hearing. New York State, assessments, you know, ELA has done math. We're in the final couple of days. Science testing window begins next week. And then, NYSIS LAT is through April and May. Can I ask a question? Yeah. What was the issue with math? Yeah. So that was a statewide, a statewide circumstance.
It's not something that was city related. It had everything to do with the with the platform. I I I don't know necessarily what the, what they found in terms of the actual causal agent, but it was at a state level. It was not necessarily at school. The reason why I said it is like, for instance, my son, he got into the system. He got on he was able to do day one. Mhmm. Half the school, obviously, couldn't, but some of them went to paper, and some did test it all. Mhmm. When they finally tested them that Friday, they started with day two.
But at this point, some kids had seen day one and some kids hadn't. And now that information is shared, it almost feels like the data then skewed and people are not getting a fair assessment. Yeah. No. They they they do have, then we can ask Barbara to to come back for, you know, for additional context on this. But they do have, you know, because there there is a window, they do have safeguards against this idea of sharing. Well, this was what question one was on on the assessment. So they they they do kind of account for that.
Otherwise, they wouldn't give a window. You know, they give a two week window. Kids can test it anytime. Specific. Yeah. Kids can test it anytime with, you know, if a child's absent, they would be taking it, at a at a following time too. So yeah. But, well, I mean, we can certainly as Barbara for for Friday. Feel like they are going to go back to day one. And it it just the whole thing is all weird. Yeah. No. Yeah. Certainly unfortunate. I know that that was not certainly in the the way it was drawn up. You know, and it it's something that that kind of organized around afterwards.
Yeah. Science testing window next week. Nice slide, as I mentioned. Diagnostic assessment window is from May 4 through June 12. May is a big assessment month test. It it just is, and into into June. So we do do not encourage our buildings to start doing any diagnostic screeners on in I Ready now. We do ask them to extend it a little bit further back into the month so that kids are not going from New York State math test right into an I Ready screener again. So, you know, but just so that everyone knows being two days after.
Yeah. Yeah. Just so that everyone knows, this is the this is the window. AI framework, I think we can go past this particular one. We spent a lot of time on that. But the window, just so that everyone else in the link is here, the window is May 8. So if you haven't done so and you have some things that you'd like to share, please do so, you know, in, in the survey that's made available. So just two two other quick things I wanna share with you. These are our draft goals for next year. I'm sharing just two of them with you right now. A couple of the others, we're still in process of of of organizing with our
principals. But we have our reading and our math goals currently organized in draft form. What I would love and this is goes to the DLT as well. DLT will be looking at this this coming Monday, just for feedback purposes. Our goal in the through line that you should see this year, in our work is there's gonna be a lot of common entry points to what we've done this year. But meaning making is gonna be a big part of our conversation. You know, so what we've seen in our data is that our foundational skill work in, in our early grades, we're actually seeing improvements in our kids.
The which is a good thing. The balance of that though is, now that we can make sure that we can decode these words, that we're able to read fluently across the page to start making meaning of what those words are across a text. So while we're seeing improved phonics across grade levels, we are seeing still more improvement that's needed to make sure that kids not only can make out what those words say, but ensuring that that meaning is coming along with it so that both are growing at the same time. Not just that foundational skills grow, but that we're also growing and improving inside of
the context of reading as well, and making meaning of that text. I mentioned this to you already, but I'll quickly just reiterate. The reach program is something that we're going to be working with going into this year. It's a National Geographic product, for our children that are entering and emerging, across our schools. We have 16 schools that will be participating in this, to really bolster the, the language supports for our children, the listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This year, we did pilot a program that, unfortunately, we as I mentioned to you in past meetings, we, we did not plan on saying we're gonna move forward with.
So, this program has been organized and tested in other spaces, and they've seen, progress with it. So, and we have looked at it ourselves along with our building leaders across the district. So we will be working with that next year. Math work and math curriculum, as you guys know, we've shared throughout the year. Amplified Desmos is our math curriculum. We are we're moving from this idea of six to 12 and some pilot schools in elementary to something that's going across our schools in kindergarten through our eighth grade, going into next year. Math has done a great job of organizing sessions throughout the year, preparing our, our,
teachers as well as our parents. The things that she's done inside of her trainings have all been amplified related. So parents can get an idea of what does that curriculum look like for their kids across grade levels. But the same through line here is around making meaning, for our kids, inside of math routines and tasks that promote problem solving for our learners. So this is also on the horizon. I do ask that you enter into this space and provide me with any feedback that comes to you. If something hits you, say, you know, Mike, what about? Always entertain that conversation.
So please feel free to do that. And this, I just wanted to share. We talked about this already. You guys have shared this, but I wanna give you a very quick snapshot of what's been happening with this. So I've asked in these last two two columns for SLTs to also contribute to this. So SLTs from across our schools, you should be seeing this as a conversation around what does academically and social emotional safety look like? What does academically rigorous look like? What does integration look like? But these other two buckets really important for me from our SLTs is what does
it mean to make meaning? What does that actually look like, sound like, and feel like for our communities? What do we really want? So that as we're designing our professional learning, we're really thinking really, strongly around PLs that we need to organize and think about, so that we're we have a collective collaborative decision, and definition for what this means. Yeah. I think, okay, one eighty five. That's what you did. It's VSC at all. Oh, you don't have to do it yet. No. No. No. No. If you did it once, you don't know if you feel like but as an SLT, you'll contribute together.
It won't have to be individual. But, what I like about this is seeing other perspectives. And I encourage you to take a look. And what you'll see everyone is doing, you'll see p s twenty one SLT. At the bottom, they're just noting that it's their school that that is represented in here. So we have a number of our of our SLTs that have already met, in either April, May. And then throughout May, I'm hoping that every school contributes to this. So we have a solid understanding of what everyone believes this should mean. And then we'll start establishing a collective one that's also backed by research to support
everyone's perspectives inside of the space. But I wanted you to know that that exists, and I hope that you also take advantage of that as, CEC members if you haven't done so already. And this is the last part. This is a future conversation. We touched on this very briefly. Portrait of a Graduate is something that is coming from New York State and New York inspires, and this will be future conversation centric. Where we'll be discussing what what does it mean to be academically prepared? What does it mean to be a creative innovator? What does it mean to be creative thinker, effective communicator, global citizen, and reflective in
future focus? What you saw today from our kids actually is reflective of that. In terms of being civically minded, connected, a researcher, thinking critically, all of those things from civics for all, so project, so box, all has its relationship to this work. For us, it's about getting perspectives from all of our community members, so that we're doing the things that our community really values inside of it. What you'll also learn is the adjustments that are gonna happen not necessarily prevent, because he's now graduating and going to Fordham.
But for students moving forward, what it means for graduation, and what it means in terms of diploma. Those particular entry points are changing. So instead of having the Regents diploma and the other, iterations of it, there'll be one diploma with seals that get part of an individual's diploma. So I'm gonna bring to you moving forward, probably not the June 1 because we have our, celebration. But, likely, in July, we'll start talking more in-depth around the presentation that goes around portrait of a graduate so that everyone has a a true understanding and we're as
educated on as we possibly can be. But I wanted to just post this here so that everyone had an idea that this is coming. Okay? And I think that's it for me. Yes. That's it. That wasn't it. Right? How did I do it? Okay. Okay, Jen. So I'm gonna come back to what's next on our agenda. I'm gonna quickly go to my president's report, and then we'll go to the superintendent evaluation because that, we need to do executive session for. I just wanted to share with everyone, thank you all first for voting with the equity council. I have been voted in as one of our means for executives for equity council.
So thank you. I've also been very busy the last two weeks because I am, as a CDC president, part of the nominating committee for the PAC. Right now, they actually had a meeting this evening. It actually just ended, I was told. It was a nice quick meeting. But we finished our interviews of the initial candidates. We do have one of our CEC members who interviewed with us. So Shirley was one of our interviews. We do have our borough forum, though, on May 14 from 8PM to 10PM.
It's a two hour window. Everyone is invited to join that, and I will make sure you guys have that link. However, only I will be able to ask the questions on our behalf. But what I'm asking is if anyone has any specific questions that come to mind, you send them to me privately because I don't want them shared to the chat right now. So I would ask that you send us to me privately. Like I said. So I would ask back. Other than that, that's really it from me. I know we have next month is gonna be our celebration.
So I will make that very quick. And I'm going to ask if everyone is okay with going through a quick executive session for us to discuss doctor Mike's evaluation. Yes. Yes. Okay. We will be back momentarily, so just bear with us. Okay. I'm gonna tell you how proud we how proud we are of you. And, honestly, you're gonna do a fantastic job in whatever you do. Just listening to you ask me questions was actually the one of my highlights. To doctor my email. They have a little quality time. Okay. Oh, he's he can be honest with you. Everyone for bearing with us.
We were able to go over doctor Mike's superintendent evaluation that we are required to do every year. I will be scheduling time to meet with doctor Mike to go over that evaluation privately. However, as counsel, we're just gonna go through a quick roll call vote just that we've agreed on all the scores that we have. So if you can just do a quick roll call for me. Edith? Yes. Charlie? Yes. Christine? Yes. Angela? Yes. Anyone here? Vincent? Yes. Stephanie's not here. Grace? Grace is in the bathroom, but she was there with us. I'll let her cut time down here.
Shauna? Yes. Steven? Yes. And Ken? Yes. We'll get her Yeah. When she comes in. But okay. Thank you everyone for helping with that. I will you know, you can have a time Understand. Like we did last year. At least we are doing this at our awards ceremony meeting Yeah. This year. Yeah. So we're a step in the right direction. Okay. On that note, does anybody Have anything for public speaking? Do you wanna say anything? Anybody on Zoom? No. We're the only ones. We're the only ones. Okay. Awesome. If that's the case, somebody wanna Grace, what was your vote yes or no, by
the way? About our agreement on the court. Yes. Okay. There you go. Motion. There you go. Got it. It is nine zero six. If everyone's fine with it, I would love to just kinda zoom right into the business meeting because of time. And I'll sign up real paper everyone's papers as soon as we're done with that. So 907, we're gonna call it to order, and we'll go through a phone call. Hannah? Here. Steven? Here. Ken? Yes. The question's not here, Ben? Here. Perfect. For now. So we will have to skip the minutes for right now, and we will review
them. The printer was giving me Yeah. In the future? I wasn't able to print the minutes. I can't. You know, it's when you guys do a time for me if you wanna do it like that. But It's we'll we'll put out that at a later date. I'm busy, and I can do it at the next month. So, I mean, you and I saw that, but we will that's you. Oh, okay. No. Stephanie could. I'm sorry. Stephanie, I'm looking at you. I'm used to Stephanie being over there. So we will we reviewed it, but I will make sure that everyone has a chance to see that the next time we are fully in a meeting setting so
we can adopt both minutes. She just stepped out, so we will come back to that. Moving I already touched base on the patent candidate forum about sending me questions. So I hope I get some good questions this week sent to me because it's only a few days away. I can only use two max three overall once I get them. So I will see what doesn't look like duplicates to other councils about them sharing for me, and then I will make sure we have that. So we're good there. Anybody do a school visit in April that I should know about?
There was, Emma, February. In April? Yeah. April. Do you have the date? April 23. April 23. Okay. Head flies. Anybody else have any schools with it in April? Okay. Amy did, but she's not here. Right. Amy had something, but I will have to wait for that. Okay. Shout it back. Yeah. So that's why I skipped it for now. We're gonna go to the award ceremony for now. First of all, we officially have our location. We will be returning to JHS one ninety four this year for our award ceremony. They are able to accommodate.
They have some AC in there, so we won't be dying of heat. And they usually are able to provide some, like, snacks to the kids, things like that. They make it kind of because it's really there for the children to have that while they're waiting. As you can see, Egypt is showing that we did finally receive everything after our chaos last month. Is that the umbrella? That is the umbrella. They are amazingly sized. That is our meeting. So you you kind of hold I mean, you do you do similar things at I will do role call. Role call and all that. And but they won't be, like, the same business day after.
Okay? Just wanted to confirm because it first first around numbers. Yeah. No. Contract place, we're gonna be on the stage, because I think we're gonna be calling names. As soon as we have all the names so as soon as I have all the student names, we'll create a list of them, and then we'll kind of break that list up so everybody gets a chance to call some of the students' names. We are still we are getting names in, but we haven't gotten all of them yet. 13 responses to the third. So you're just waiting for more. I think, like, the thirtieth is the last day. Yeah. We'll we'll get on then. They'll they'll log in then. Yeah. So, usually, Lewis will follow-up. This is one of our lovely awards.
It looks amazing. This is our bell. I don't know if you guys can see. They have one over here. Okay. And then the other one is here. Huge. Wow. They look amazing, though. Yes. I have to say. Amazing work, PJ. Thank you. I thought that you guys would like this one so I picked it. So I'm gonna send this your way so they can get that back. Does anybody have any other questions about the award ceremony? 1234, Okay.
Thank you. So I'm gonna circle back to Shauna really quick. Do we have a copy of it for her? You want it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me okay. If you can just go over the budget real quick. Sure. So the reimbursements, we have $2,500 remaining. Meaning expenses, $2,400 remaining. The card still has $500. And there's a pending charge on that. Yeah. There's pending charge. Okay. Supplies, $702 remaining. And equipment repairs and equipment are both down to zero. Awesome. Thank you. So I would like to ask the council if they are okay with adding something
to our business agenda briefly. There is a resolution that Steven has sent that is in front of everybody I can do it in thirty seconds. About specific failures in preschool. So if can I just get a show of hands if you're okay with putting this on the agenda for us to go over right now? Just raise your hand if you are in favor of doing that. Here we go. Okay. Perfect. So, Steven, go ahead. Cool. There's a report from the preschool data analysis by the University of Public Schools. Only 62% of preschool students with disabilities received all programs and services that were full compliance for their IEPs. Also, sixty point three percent of preschool students with a disability were fully placed students
receiving services in full compliance. So this is in, this is a resolution also in support of other CECs where parents have been saying things. Basically encouraging the CEP and encouraging, New York City College schools to, basically fix their system. Because our In Queens, there are two weekend and after school centers that are to cover all students with disabilities who are not receiving their proper services. There are many ways where parents would have to leave, work, and would have to travel long distances to try and get students services that are guaranteed to them by
law. So this is basically outstanding in support of preschool parents, children with disabilities, receiving the services that they're covering our agenda for. Yeah. Okay. With that being said, do I have any questions? No. Okay. Can we do a quick roll call vote to putting that on the next agenda? I don't know if that it could be in June. It would probably be July. July. Because we're not gonna try to vote on it at will be on In July. So we'll be voting on it in July meeting. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Ian? Yes. Shirley? Yes. Christine? Yes. Angela?
Yes. Amy is not here. Vincent? Yes. Stephanie, Andrea? Great. Yes. Hannah? Yes. Damon? Yep. And Ken? Yes. Okay. Thank you, guys. No worries. Okay. The other thing I just wanted to bring up really quick, you do have a copy of another resolution in there. This is still a resolution that Angela had been mentioning previously. This is not our resolution, but this is just for you to look at so that we can decide if you would like to go forward in creating a resolution. Take a look at it. Take your thought. If you are interested, I would say connect with Angela since she's the one who kinda brought us up first.
I will let Angela take the lead on it, if you don't mind. Sure. No problem. We have meeting live, but you're you finished your firm. Oh, yeah. At that point, you know, visit us and hang out with us. Nice maybe a nice cake for you guys. How's I guess, put us on our resume.
Yeah. Yeah. It's been a pleasure having you and Natasha with us here, and I would ask spread the word to your fellow juniors that are going to be seniors next year. There is talk though Alright. With other CECs about trying to also expand it to juniors or seniors so that when they get ready for their college application, they already have this. Yeah. So that is something I will be probably presenting shortly, that we are I have been talking to the phone of the MCC president in other districts, and we are gonna try to bring that resolution forward. As you know, most of the people in eyes, we don't get the money to it.
So but I'll try. Yeah. So anybody would recommend, like, people you know, or student council, things like that there. Those are the best ways to start. So thank you. I originally started planning for June meeting. Our June meeting is our award ceremony, so I'm gonna say let's plan for July, not June, really. Anybody have anything specific that they would like to talk about other than us obviously having our annual elections at the July meeting for our positions. We do have to do elections again in July.
So I would say think about the positions, think about if you wanna step into a position, if you don't wanna stay in a position that you're in, start thinking about it out loud with each other, talk to each other, so that when we come in July, we can kinda get through the elections and have our regular calendar meeting. Especially on the budget. Because this budget only goes till July. So we have July We will have a date coming for, Did July meet both of No. There's no role. We have a date on July? Yeah. We have a Yeah. We won't be able to The first.
Okay. So July's meeting is July 1. July 1. So it's not your birthday Yeah. He's probably He's hiding out the work. He's with who is a he's a worker bee, so he's probably still creating somewhere. Yeah. But other than that Actually, you're looking down. Vice president. President, Clark, vice president, executive secretary, treasurer, that kind of stuff.
It's that, and then we could start talking about our budget for next year at that meeting. We can kinda get a head start on that. And I do wanna bring up I was just talking with Helena at Egypt. I would like to get a few people that are willing to take a look at our bylaws. We have some recommendations on the changes. I know we just as we honestly just did this at the end of last year. We expect had to vote on a to your meeting, which was our words that we had to stay after. But I would love if somebody would like to step up and, you know, spearhead
that or help me with it, and I'll spearhead it. I don't mind, that we can work on the bylaws and make some adjustments. I know, Angela, you met with Elena. You were on briefly, I believe. Right? I'm sorry. No. You stayed on for longer. So I know you've been hearing some of the conversations. So I don't know if you wanna take part in that. If anyone else would like to step up into that. Sure. Angela? Okay. Anybody else? I can provide some backup, but June is bright month, so that's I'm really busy with it. We have to go to June. We're going to go to July. Then Yeah.
Go for it. Okay. So Steven and Angela and I will join you guys for that. Okay? Our last committee? Yeah. It's me, Shirley, Angela, and Steven at the right time. Okay. And once we meet, we will bring together our ideas. We'll present it to everybody. If we all are in agreement, that's where we will present it out to everybody in public during our calendar meeting, and then we can go on at the following meeting. So if this is the paper of other district, we could present to different district for our CTs as well. I also do wanna quickly share.
I I don't know if you know this, but I will share it. If when we do our next step of PEP, if Shirley ends up on the PEP, she will, unfortunately, have to step down from CEC. Oh. So I just want you guys to know that that could be a potential thing. We don't know what it's gonna be, but Not yet. She has not been notified of whether she's made the next round or not yet to the forum, but she will be notified shortly. So just as a heads up, depending on how that all plays out, that's one of the possibilities. However, I encourage her strongly to continue going through this process, and I think she
would be a great fit. So think it makes sense. But, I mean, I thought it was just because, you know, they they comfort each other. They won't be a conflict. Like, right now, there's a pet meeting while we're in army. Right. That's true. That part. Yeah. So but I will make sure to get everyone the borrow forum link by Monday, hopefully, at the latest. I'll send that out. Corresponding that I'll be very nervous. I'll be very red about that. Okay. You're fine. We got this. With that being said, we don't have to vote on any accesses.
Two people that have been on Zoom, we're good to go. Do you wanna speak on that for the people that is not gonna jump on the other day? Do you wanna briefly speak on the access thing? So part of the discussion we just had with you the section about attendance and hybrid participation. So we have a discussion together about the how the phrasing is for that section, we'll go over it so that moving forward, everyone could be on the same page with how the protocol is. In terms of reporting your, attendance, your intent to be absent or your intent to
participate through hybrid platform with Zoom. So we'll go over that. And then Can I ask a favor? Yeah. Before we start doing the work, can you schedule a meeting on your end for some time early July? July. Before this group of people to meet with you and kinda go over those items that you pointed out. So it will be okay. And is that not fair? Yeah. Those of you that are gonna help with pilots? Yes. Yes. Yes. This way, you can schedule a meeting. It would have to be that we come in person if you schedule it. So I'd rather you schedule that first.
Sure. Sure. Sure. So we'll touch base and go over the points that I noticed. Right. And then we'll have more than we can discuss, you know, in that meeting. Right. But in general, for those who were not able to make it on Monday, just, if you have a chance to look through the bylaws, there's some steps you you can follow when it comes to reporting your attendance. So sometimes, let's say you have the emergency, there's a there's a clause for emergency. So there are reasons that can be excused. But then for other reasons, they will be voted upon as a counsel.
And then there's a there's a timing too. So if it's forty eight hours prior, please let your president and your AA know. If if you just read the section, it's there. But, I will send a, like, a recap of Monday for Angela and Sean to be able to touch base a bit, but I'll send it out for everyone to see. But we'll go more in-depth because there are some clauses I want to review with you guys because, once you see it with me, you'll understand what I'm talking about in terms of, like I mean, just for what she showed me today, I see Yeah. The point. Steps. I will say it was a little rushed last year to change the bylaws.
We we had some urgent things that came up that we needed to change, but there's always obviously a person that we made. Right. That's it. You were you were here as we were going through that as well as your grades. So So then yeah. So we're just gonna take a look over it, and then we'll I'll give you guys some examples too. So, like, to see what would, like, work best with the council. But basically, the council is a public body, but you can, you know, make steps in how you want to proceed with certain things. Right? One of the main attendants. Right? And then because there's some higher level regulations, like, including, like, OML Mhmm.
So we have to make sure that they also follow OML. So your regulations cannot supersede those. Right? So we're gonna go over that for more detail. Yes. And then I just have a quick question because I didn't have a bit. Is the are the the three months from all, the time? Sorry that you gave me that time. For a year or for term. Sure. And it's unexcused. What excuse? So if you're excused, it doesn't count again. Right. Right. Yeah. I'll tell everyone if you wanna pass it to me. I will sign as you're ready just so you know. And so I'll give you mine to sign in a minute. I thought I signed yours already.
Sure. But I gotta go to the April. Why? Oh, it was the last one. So you didn't do it last month. Okay. One last thing. Just send them over and I'll find them in a second. I didn't finish that. Did I? Okay. Last thing to just note, Stephanie did finally respond to me after we had not heard from her. She had a family emergency, lost track of time. We will vote on her access next month. That will be something that I will have us vote on at the end of the week, awards, or we'll bring it up in July to vote. But she had a family emergency. With that said, go for it for my money.
Okay. 926. I heard Steven. I didn't hear Adam. I heard Shirley imputed. I don't know. Okay. With that, we are done. Well, if you're interested, this is the publication that that District 25 was a part of. Mentioned it during our last session. Called All Systems Go, we were kind of, interviewed by the Center for Public Research and Columbia University. So this is the publication you'll see myself quoted in there along with some of our district, principals and parents and teachers. So, if you feel like a quick read, feel free.
You're you're welcome to, to a copy of it, but I do think it's something that's nice for our district. He represented that when I am gonna as my colleagues assigned them, I will just take them so that I can give them Change your call at once? People need some this is a cool insightful information for you guys. I will send you guys information, as we get closer to let you know what time to be at one ninety four. Cool. I will get there early to set up before the award. But we wanna make sure we're there. So I will make sure my too.
Thank you.