FULTON – The Fulton City School District Board of Education met virtually last night and discussed monitoring social-emotional wellness and contributing factors to the district budget.
The video of the full meeting can be viewed here.
During the Superintendent’s report, Brain Pulvino introduced and welcomed Christina Schirtz as the district’s new director of school nutrition.
He then asked Director of Human Resources and Student Services Geri Geitner to give an overview of the district students’ social-emotional wellness with Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System-Teacher Form (BIMAS-2).
BIMAS-2 is a data tool the district uses as part of a multi-tiered system of supports to identify needs and prescribe evidence-based responses in the areas of: academics, behavior, attendance and social-emotional developmental health.
“We use it as a universal screening but we also use it as progress monitoring and program evaluation,” Geitner said. “The BIMAS specifically helps guide our tier one instructional decisions for social-emotional learning and also is a tool that is flexible enough to assess individual social-emotional wellness.
Teachers in kindergarten through grade 6 evaluate their students using the rating scale tool and in grades 7 through 12, the students evaluate themselves.
The rating scale measures progress toward mastery of the New York state social-emotional learning competencies and the student’s overall well-being.
There will be a further presentation with the mid-year data update at the next meeting on February 22.
Pulvino then moved on to discussing the budget for the next academic school year. Further information on the budget can be found here.
He shared data showing a decline in enrollment since 2011. In the 2011-2012 academic year, there were 3,783 students and this year, there are 3,258 students enrolled across the district. The difference in those numbers, 525, equates to the size of a district elementary school or the junior high school.
Pulvino said sharing the strengths of the school district to realtors could help enrollment numbers.
He also shared other data including that ten years ago, 50% of students qualified for free and reduced lunch. Now, 65% of students qualify. Other data looks at the number of babies born in Fulton and how many are enrolled in kindergarten when they are five years old, which is about 93% on average.
Looking at these numbers helps the district to project its enrollment numbers for the upcoming years and to prepare for that in the budget.
Pulvino also talked about spending per student, which has consistently been more fiscally tight than other similar school districts, and staffing this year.
In the elementary schools, there are three extra reading teachers and four extra math teachers funded by federal COVID-19 money through 2024. These teachers are interventionists in the elementary schools for students who need more support.
For grades 7 through 12 staffing, three certified teaching positions were added using COVID-19 stimulus funds.
Other positions added for the district using this funding include: a counselor, a nurse, four teacher assistants, one TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages), three instructional coaches, two and a half interdisciplinary instructional specialists, five restorative practice specialists, one district intervention team facilitator, and one SEL success coach. In 2022 there will be several retirements across the district, including two principals, according to the board.
The board then moved on to passing all items on the agenda, which can be found here.
The next board meeting will be held Tuesday, February 22 at 6:30 p.m. and can be viewed live on the Fulton Communications YouTube channel.
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Geez,How many extra employees do the school district need? student database decreasing.
500 less students…many parents/students I’m hearing want to know why the last lunch slot is always running out of food