FCSD BOE Discusses Summer Programs, Learning During Quarantine

FULTON – The Fulton City School District Board of Education met virtually last night, October 12, and discussed the district’s summer programs and virtual learning during quarantine.

The meetings are again being held virtually until further notice, and community members may watch the meetings live or following the meeting on the Fulton Communications YouTube channel. They may also email [email protected] with questions or comments. All board members see the emails sent to that email.

The board explained the reason for going virtual again on the FCSD website: “While conducting our school board business, it is also our obligation to protect the health and safety of all members of our school community and to adhere to NYS public health regulations. This includes requiring that masks be worn while indoors in school buildings. These public health regulations and the FCSD Code of Conduct apply to all who enter our schools or attend school events.

Unfortunately, at our September 28th meeting, visitors from outside our community refused to wear masks or comply with requests to leave the school building and disrupted the business of our school board. These actions compromised the safety of our students, community members, staff and board members present at the meeting and disrupted the business of the board.
In order to safeguard our school community, meetings will be conducted remotely. We believe this approach will allow more members of our school community to participate in meetings safely and provides a platform that will be more accessible for many.”

In honor of National Principals Month, student representative Reagan LaPage read a proclamation.

Director of Special Instructional Programs and Pupil Services Kathy Adams and teacher Julie Cook-Lynch presented on the Special Education Extended School Year Services. This summer, from July 6 to August 16, several employees took part in the program with 45 students divided into five classes.

During his report, Superintendent Brian Pulvino said he is recommending adding two early release days this school year – November 4 and November 12 – for PreK through 6th grade students to conduct parent-teacher conferences, with the option of in-person or through Google Meet.

Executive Director of Instruction and Achievement Dan Carroll reported on the 2021 Summer Instructional programs. This summer, additional instruction was offered to all grade levels in a summer camp style at no cost to families. A total of 460 FCSD students took part in the district’s summer programs.

Kelly Gates, supervisor for the K-2 FCSD Bridges to Success (B2S) program, Michelle Briggs, supervisor for the Grades 3-4 B2S program, Caitlin Toleno, supervisor for the Grades 5-8 Community School Program, and Amy Stephenson, leader for the GRB Summer Institute, spoke about their experiences this summer.

Carroll then spoke about instruction while a student is in quarantine. He said the district’s mitigation strategies and Department of Health guidelines are helping the number of quarantined students. He also said a challenge is not knowing which students will be quarantined the next until after the school day ends.

He explained that Cook-Lynch handles the process of getting the needed information to the families of quarantined students of where to find the instructional resources in their teacher’s Google Classroom and connecting tutors for those students.

This week, the district began offering an hour of virtual tutoring support from 3:45 to 4:45 to K through 6, and plans to do the same for 7 through 12 next week. At this moment, they do not have enough staff for after school instructional tutoring for those grades. Carroll said communication regarding virtual instruction during quarantine will be sent home this Friday.

“So we’ve got the base of the things that we’ve been offering; this is that next layer of coordination to create more coherence,” Pulvino said. “We are still recruiting staff to be able to support in the tutoring areas, because some of those areas are extremely specific.”

The board then discussed comments and questions regarding virtual learning while in quarantine.

Pulvino also talked about working to access other types of COVID-19 testing for students to provide quicker results.

Chief of Operations and Innovation Dr. Dominick Lisi and Director of Finance Kathy Nichols discussed a current challenge in purchasing. Lisi said the district’s policy (6700.0) is for any purchase over $500, there must be different quotes, but they are running into the issue of timing. They are proposing to revise this policy to make sure they can get the materials and supplies they need, which are limited and in high demand. Pulvino agreed with Lisi and Nichols.

The board then worked through the agenda, and the board approved to suspend policy 6700.0 and to revisit it at the end of the school year.

The next BOE meeting will be Tuesday, October 26, at 6:30 p.m. It will be live streamed on the Fulton Communications YouTube channel.

The agenda for last night’s meeting can be found here and the video of the meeting can be found here.

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