As per Public Officers Law, Article 7, § 103-a (Videoconferencing by public bodies) although board members Nicole DeStefano and Becky Peters are not present in-person for this meeting, they are attending via videoconference from locations posted on the public meeting notice/agenda and open to the public; they are therefore considered to be in attendance for purposes of quorum and are permitted to vote. QUORUM IS MET FOR THIS MEETING.

M. Harmon-Vaught thanked everyone for being here this evening; we have some meaty topics, especially in academic data. We're going to move our committee reports to the top, because our new principal colleague will be joining us later and we want to wait on those. But before we begin, among our visitors today, we have a new colleague who will be joining the Board. He then asked T. Castanza to do a quick introduction of our new Board member.

T. Castanza stated that he is excited to give this introduction because we've been really fortunate at Bridge Prep to have excellent family representation from the Family Association on the Board of Trustees, a choice that we made when we designed the Charter and one that we continue to feel is necessary and important particularly with the role that the Board plays in school governance and oversight. So he happy to learn that there was a special Family Association election for a representative to join the Board and an opportunity for someone who's deeply passionate about doing the work. The FA representative for the next term will be Mrs. Christina Caputo who will tell you more about herself. He knows her as mom to Nicholas, who is now in the 3rd grade, and the first conversation T. Castanza had with Mrs. Caputo was a frank and honest one, when she said that her son needed a place like this, and she needed us to make sure that we all delivered for him. We've seen since then that Nicholas' growth is incredible, and we're happy about Mrs. Caputo joining this Board because she really buys into the school's mission. She understands what we do here, why we do it, and why it's important. She understands the special place that Bridge Prep has in the education community. The Caputo family makes the trip every day here from their home in Brooklyn. She'll have a wonderful experience serving on the Board, and he looks forward to the rest of the Board members getting to know her and seeing her work in action.
M. Harmon-Vaught echoed that welcome and said that we're excited to get to know Mrs. Caputo, and grateful for her partnership. We're really excited for the year ahead and happy to have a family representative formally be a member of the Board. It is really critical to everything that we do. He then gave the floor to Christina Caputo, the new Family Association representative on the Board of Trustees.

C. Caputo thanked everyone for their warm welcome and spoke briefly about herself and her son. She said that she is not only a parent of a little boy who has dyslexia and dysgraphia, but she's also a special education teacher, so she fights these battles during her day and she lives a life of being an advocate at work. She works with students who are dyslexic, does her science and reading trainings, and believes that much has gone wrong with special education. So, she's really happy that we have Bridge Prep. She's happy that she found Bridge Prep and she is happy to be joining the Board. She can't wait to work with the Trustees and continue to move this amazing school forward, because it really is a gift and a hidden gem. She wishes every child had the opportunity that her son has. She can't speak highly enough about all the work that everyone at Bridge Prep does, and she's looking forward to working with the Board of Trustees.

T. Castanza gave the following CEO update:

• FINANCES: We've been doing really great work with the Finance Committee, specifically in-depth work for a couple of years now, and he's excited to hear the Finance Committee report later in tonight's meeting, because at the last finance meeting there was a lot to be put on the docket for December, January and February. He is looking forward to participating in that and making sure that is successful. 
• ACADEMICS: Similarly, at the academic level, there's going to be a lot that's shared in the Academic Committee report tonight, and we're getting ready for the Quality Review coming next week. He's excited to participate in this Quality Review now that we have a Principal and 3 Assistant Principals in place running the day-to-day. It will be a good opportunity to check and see how we're meeting the goals that we set out at the beginning of the year - the goals that we set together as a Board and also that we set at the school level. Where are we on that, and where do we still need to improve? The school team has been doing some engagement with families through our first trimester surveys. We mandated that surveys be done each trimester with the 3 major subgroups of the school: families/students/staff. And that will help us not to rely on the DoE Family Survey as our only data point. We don't get the DoE data until very late. It's good for us to have our own internal data and he's received the first set of data from staff but has not seen the family data or the student data yet. He is working through the staff data and has asked the team to disaggregate that data. He's looking forward to sharing that with the entire Board, not just the Academic Committee, and he's hoping that we'll have that update in December.
• BEHAVIORAL & MENTAL HEALTH INITIATIVES: There's some things that have just been in the works for a few years now that are moving quicker to make sure that we are all set by the New Year. And some really exciting initiatives at the school level with partnerships regarding behavioral health and mental health for students and families, partnering with Dr. Ginny Mantello, Director of Health and Wellness at the Office of the Staten Island Borough President and some other charter school colleagues. He should have more information and be able to share more at the December Board meeting.
• THANKFUL: This is a time of thanks, and one of his favorite times as a school leader is holding the staff celebration next week and talking about what we're thankful for. And he wants to tell this Board and the school team that he is so thankful for the way that they are coming together and working through some challenges with the upcoming transition. Transitions are difficult in any way, shape, or form. We have had multiple transitions here, but we experienced a big one with a new principal and a new school leader, and they're rebounding nicely. They're not running away - they're diving into the challenges. They're embracing difficult conversations and continuing to put students first, He is really thankful for that. And it bodes really well for the organization as we go forward.

T. Frey gave the following report on the Academic Committee meeting held on November 3, 2025:

• MTSS UPDATE: Principal Livingston gave an MTSS (Multi-Tiered Student Support) update; they're in their 3rd phase and have identified Tier 2 students from the Fall MAP data. Tier 1 is whole class instruction, Tier 2 is groups, and Tier 3 is individualized instruction. They looked at full MAP data and compared it to student IEP goals. Principal Livingston also made sure to let us know that the teachers classroom centers and their stations are also aligned to general education students' needs, so it's not just focusing on the special education students. The goal is to make sure that there is an alignment between students' IEP goals and the support that students are getting in the classroom, specifically during their humanities block of English and Social Studies. One of the criticisms that NYSED had last year was that they did not see IEP goals and mandates being acknowledged in the classroom, so this is a direct response to that.
• CASEL FRAMEWORK: Principal Livingston also shared that they have identified students who they labeled as Tier 2 Behavior students that are having a challenging time with their behavior in class, so they're starting CASEL (Curriculum for Social-Emotional Learning) framework groups. They're looking at the 5 CASEL competencies and they're going to create a rubric for students to help them improve in these 5 areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. The teachers are liking those structures for behavior. They're administering a social-emotional learning screener in grades 2 to 5 on November 25th, right before Thanksgiving.
• STUDENT ATTENDANCE: The Family Coordinator is using an attendance tracker to start a family attendance focus group and support parents whose children are struggling to get to school. They're going to incentivize attendance - our year-long attendance rate was 88% recently, and It should be in the 90%s. The goal is 90% but we've historically been above 90%. The percentage represents year-to-date of the total number of students who come to school every day.
• PROFESSIONAL LEARNING DATA: Teachers now have, professional learning groups where they look at data during their Tuesday PD time. They were doing that the day after the Academic Committee meeting. They were going to have an exemplar provided to them about what they should be looking for, and the principal said that teachers are liking how the process is cohesive and they can see their vision. Principal Livingston did a will-versus-skill activity with teachers to develop a coaching approach. Teachers are assigned to different school leaders, and are getting reassigned Monday so that they're moving through the different leaders and getting experiences being led by different leaders depending on what their needs are.
• STAFF HIRING UPDATES: The new HR Generalist, Kristin Gallichio, started working a few weeks ago. She's coming in 2 days a week in-person, and the rest of the week she's working remotely. She's going to be leading faculty focus groups to discover and listen to their concerns. T. Castanza added that the HR Generalist has already been setting up individual one-on-ones with faculty and staff, and they have been actively meeting. All staff are being asked to meet with the HR Generalist before December 19th just as an intro, to talk about any concerns or thoughts that they have. Ms. Gallichio has already met with nearly a quarter of the staff, which is great. She will spend time learning what makes Bridge Prep tick, so she can make thoughtful recommendations about what needs to be modified. A new dean has been hired to start work next week and has experience being a dean, A new social worker has also been hired. Now there are no vacancies on the student support side. A new 4th grade teacher has been hired and will start working next week. We have a new ELL (English Language Learners) teacher as well. So we are now fully staffed. We discussed whether we will be hiring an Instructional Coach and there's still a budget line for that position. An Instructional Coach could be hired full-time, part-time, or as a consultant, but the this point, a decision had not yet been made regarding an Instructional Coach.
• QUALITY REVIEW: A School Quality Review will be conducted next Thursday and Friday. Board Co-Chairs M. Harmon-Vaught and T. Frey will be conducting the QR.
• MIDTERM REVIEW REPORT FOCUS: We talked about the NYSED midterm report focus areas and the next steps. We are going to reach out to CEQA to ask for specific feedback. We don't have a charter renewal date yet but are assuming it will probably be in the Fall of 2026, a year from now, Benchmarks 1, 7, and 9 need to move from "approaching" to "meets" before the renewal process begins.
• REVIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHART: The Leadership Team is doing a "hot wash" of the school's organizational chart to focus on identifying both strengths and weaknesses and to see what needs to change, or what is working well. 
• STUDENT ENROLLMENT UPDATES: The school is doing enrollment audits to determine why students are leaving. They noticed that there were more students leaving the school earlier in the year than usual, so they wanted to figure out why. Some families were moving, and some parents who had children in 2 different schools were taking their child out of Bridge Prep and enrolling the child in the school their sibling attends because it's just easier.  Now that we have hired an ELL teacher, that teacher is working on ELL student recruitment.
• SATURDAY ACADEMY & ACADEMIC INTERVENTION: The Saturday Academy started 2 Saturdays ago, but Academic Intervention has not started yet. We hope to start it, within a couple of weeks. We were working through a staffing challenge with getting staff, and Principal Livingston and T. Castanza have been discussing potential ideas for how to recruit staff. We may have a solution, but we need to figure it out budgetarily; how many staff we might need, and what's the impact on our budget line which covers Saturday Academy/after-school enrichment/Connect Saturday. As we're doing this budget refresh, we just need to make sure there's adequate funding on that line. 
• NEW DEFINITION OF DYSLEXIA: The International Dyslexia Association released a new definition of dyslexia in October 2025. 
• MISCELLANEOUS: The school food drive happened a couple weeks ago. Today is World Kindness Day, tomorrow is Wear Blue for World Diabetes Day. The school held a staff wellness day a couple weeks ago. Staff giving is next week. 

R. Peters gave the following report on the Finance Committee meeting held on November 12, 2025. There were 3 main topics covered in the meeting:

• BANK ACCOUNTS & INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS: We touched base with the people that support us in that area and we updated the investment policy to include quarterly reports from the finance team and CEO, showing where our money's allocated, and how much interest it's earning, and a more detailed version than what we get in the normal finance reports. So that is chugging along really well.
• COMMUTER STIPENDS FOR STAFF: The other thing we talked about was commuter stipends, about which CEO T. Castanza can add a little more color. The idea is that we have staff that travel from outside Staten Island to our school, similar to Mrs. Caputo traveling from Brooklyn. We discussed an idea of supporting those staff members getting to work with some sort of stipend. The Finance Committee supported that idea, but believe we need a formula of how we get the numbers for the commuter stipends. That's still being discussed. T. Castanza added that the commuter benefit is something that we have talked about for a couple of years. We committed to our staff during the hiring process the commuter benefit would happen and our staff is holding us accountable to that. He very much appreciates the Finance Committee's backing and support on the commuter stipend. We're working on getting the final numbers worked out so we can share the process with staff regarding when they will get that stipend, what will it look like and what is required to get it. All of that should be sorted out in the next couple of days, so that we can get that set up before the end of the calendar year for them. We now have teachers coming to us from New Jersey and Brooklyn and we want to be able to remain competitive for those teachers. So we're using the commuter stipend as a staff recruitment tool. It's pretty common in Staten Island, but not very common in charter schools across New York City because they don't have that same commuter travel experience, There's a path for us to do a very detailed, formulaic approach, and that would mean that maybe the stipend looks different depending on where you live.
• BUDGET REFRESH: Now more than ever, CEO T. Castanza has been looking at this budget refresh, almost on a daily basis. We approved our budget when we were worried student enrollment was going in one direction, but now we're in a very different place, so we're re-allocating funds accordingly. We discussed some of those details. It's still not settled at this point. We talked about some of the staff changes, and some staff additions to the budget. Keeping in mind the idea of spending money to support the students, and if paying a commuter stipend to employees who live outside of Staten Island to help them with their expenses for travelling to work. If that helps with staff retention, it will help to serve the students as well. Those are things we're looking at. T. Castanza remarked that now that we're fully staffed, we've seen some bigger expenses come in and hit the budget. We're re-allocating funding into various budget lines and now we have a better sense of where our budget is actually at right now in terms of surplus. We're at just under $200,000 of surplus, which is pretty good. It accounts for us having a more conservative enrollment than we actually have by about 3 or 4 students so that we don't get a budget hit if some students transition in December. It also does not require us to do much decrease or re-allocation of existing budget lines, which is good. There are some things that the leadership team would like to move forward with regarding how we use the surplus funds in a really thoughtful way to support the people that work here at the school. We can have a much more clear conversation about that in December, so we don't need to go into that right now. We're also doing some additional analyses on staff compensation.
• COMPLIANCE REPORTING & FEDERAL TITLE FUNDING: We've completed all of our compliance reporting for NYSED. We submitted the annual report, containing a major financial component of the audit, and the updated budget. We submitted all of our title grants for Titles 1, 2, and 3. Only 4 is left and has to be completed in December. We do get revenue from the titles and there will be changes coming with title funding and allocations which T. Castanza will share with the Board. We were not impacted by the cuts at the federal level this year because that money still went to the state. However, starting next year, there will be some potential changes to how the state allocates that money and that could result in a reduction of federal funding to the school through title grants. We are not heavily reliant on federal dollars, but it's not a small amount, somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 per year. The state has not given clear guidance yet as what that's going to look like, so it's something to watch in the Spring. 

Principal Livingston gave the a presentation on student academic data and formative assessment data and classroom learning systems by sharing the following information:

• NYS ELA & MATH TEST DATA: A comparison of grades from 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, a 2-year comparison, with the difference shown to the side. We were really strong in 3rd grade ELA, 4th grade Math, 4th grade ELA, and 5th grade ELA. We struggled in our 5th grade Math and 5th grade Science. One of the things that we really wanted to focus on this year was incorporating more of the multi-sensory and tactile approaches into Math, and making sure that teachers are using the coding of language that they're learning or teaching in OG and transferring that over to Math. Specifically in the form of word problems, and using the manipulatives, like counters so that students would be able to bridge the gaps that we're seeing. She then shared the same sort of data, showing the difference by cohort indicating that we did make gains, for example 3rd grade ELA in 2023-2024, compared with 4th grade ELA in 2024-2025 shows an increase of 7.62%. Even in 5th grade ELA, there's an increase of 18.39%.  So this is comparing the same kid in different years, as opposed to different kids in the same grade as shown in the first group of data. A question and answer session followed regarding: DoE district up-and-down trends in data and whether our data follows those same trends since our data is judged against the district data. T. Castanza remarked that there were increases citywide in ELA and in fact, the district proficiency number in ELA increased and will continue to increase, which means we have to increase a little bit more than their increase every time. One thing we're going to really take a close look at is the proficiency of students with disabilities at the district level which decreased. We are well within striking distance of where we want to be to meet or slightly surpass proficiency levels for students with disabilities, compared to the district data.
• STUDENTS ON THE CUSP: We are focusing on our students, who are on the cusp. And they are being seen by our reading interventionists, and focusing on comprehension and fluency so that we can get over that hill, and really target that competency. That's one of the things that we're doing during the school day, and at Saturday Academy we're also focusing on students who are on the cusp. A lot of them happen to be students with disabilities. We're opening up our academic intervention to all students, to make sure that we get a full picture of support this year for all of our students, focusing on growth, but also proficiency. In 2023-2024 Science exam, there was a hands-on component and 27.5% of our students were proficient that year.  For the 2024-2025 Science exam, they removed the hands-on component and the Science test basically became a reading comprehension test. So if we already have students that have reading challenges, it makes sense that they wouldn't do as well on the Science exam. Our performance on the first 5th grade Science test was higher than the district and higher than the state average, because we knew our students were going to be successful there. It was disappointing if they changed that Science assessment in New York.
• MAP DATA: Principal Livingston shared the MAP data for each individual grade; MAP data is collected in the beginning of the school year (Fall), and again at the end of the school year (Summer) to compare each student's data over the school year and see if there was any slippage over the summer; that was the first walkthrough of looking at the data. The second was for teachers to really hone in on the priority skills. The teachers are slowly breaking each of those, overarching strands down into specific skill gaps, and placing students in groups that will focus on these skill gaps during the humanities block, focused on station teaching, and also during the second half of our ELA block. Teachers are also working on this during our data professional learning centers which occur every Tuesday. We initially were looking at this data for all Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 students, but we wanted to get even more granular with our Tier 2 and Tier 3 students as part of our MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports) Phase 3. 
• MTSS PHASES: This what we are currently working on. We have drilled down to the specific standards that students are deficient in for both ELA and math. The next step is to develop the instructional strategy and intervention, and how often we're going to progress-monitor it. We want teachers to be cognizant of skills that each student is deficient in. The leadership teams are responsible for going in and making sure that we're coaching teachers around how to address these skill gaps, making sure that the teachers have manipulatives, making sure that they understand the best practices. We also have 3 different phases for instruction, which are aligned to Danielson, and in MTSS Phase 2, with all of these skill gaps identified, we want to see differentiation, we want to see intentional, intellectual prep with benchmarks along the way that are tangible and actually, reachable for kids. And we want kids to also know what their goals are as well. This is something that teachers have been working on for 2 weeks now. When you come for the Quality Review on Friday, you'll be able to see the Kindergarten team in action working through this.  MTSS Phase 1 and 2 were about laying the foundation, making sure that we had the right structures in place and the right systems, and MTSS Phase 3 is about strengthening it. MTSS Phase 3 ends tomorrow. We also began our PPT approach as an intervention. We rolled out PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention System) and we are kicking off our school store next Monday. We're going to administer our SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) screener to grades 2 through 5 on the 25th. And we're going to use that to populate our MTSS Tier 2 SEL focus group. We're going to incorporate art therapy into it, to be facilitated by our 2 social workers and our specials teachers. We hope to kick that off in the beginning of December with 3-week cycles. She shared the MTSS Strategy Map. Principal Livingston said she has a really incredible leadership team that are so patient. They're able to actually work together and make her ideas come to fruition. She's really, really thankful for her team. 
• STUDENT ATTENDANCE TRACKER DATA: Principal Livingston shared her Attendance Tracker Data spreadsheet and said that we're continuing our attendance policy, and our Family Coordinator is starting a family attendance focus group for our students that are chronically absent. Right now, students have been identified for our SEL focus group. They're all students that have 3 to 9 referrals. We want to continue to populate these groups based upon the SEL screener scores. We use the data on our Attendance Tracker for our attendance meetings to see what is happening with chronically absent students. We had our attendance meeting today and we look at the weekly attendance occurrences the number of absences for a given week, and then we identify the intervention based upon our policy. Then we look at the cumulative absences, a summation of all of the students' absences throughout the year, and there's a lot of  cross-referencing. Our attendance percentage this month is 91%, and overall this year it's 88%, which is 2% below where we would like it to be. We still have a little work to do, but she's really proud of the work of the OPS team and the leadership team.
• MTSS PHASE 4: Is being rolled out to teachers tomorrow. This breaks down how we're building upon all of the other phases, and this is our high-intensity interventions for our Tier 3 students, while still continuing all of the interventions that we put into place for Tier 1 and Tier 2 students. We're deepening our Tier 3 interventions, and that has a lot to do with the MAPS tracker. We're refining our small group instruction, making sure that the intellectual prep is aligned to not only the scope and sequence and curriculum, but the kids that are in front of teachers every day. We're really working on enhancing the OG, instruction, and making sure that that carries over to Math as well. The manipulatives are big. We've even gone in and started to review how we're writing some of the IEPs and making sure that the language really benefits kids and teaching and learning. We are really making sure that our PBIS system is, sustainable and systemic. 

A question and answer session regarding interventions, MTSS phases and tier systems followed the presentation.

The Board returned to public OPEN MEETING SESSION at 8:23 PM.

• T. Frey stated that she had dinner with Vincenza Gallassio, retired Superintendent of District 31, former principal of PS 16, who indicated that she might be interested in joining our Board of Trustees. Need to figure out what that process looks like, and if the Board members want to talk to her beforehand. She's knowledgeable about literacy practices, and it would be nice to have another educator on the Board. It's also a boon that the Family Association representative, Christina Caputo, is a special ed teacher. It's great to have other education perspectives on the Board of Trustees.  Let her know what needs to happen next. As Chair of the Board Governance Committee, N. DeStefano thinks it's great.
• M Harmon-Vaught added that we also have 2 other potential Board members that we want to accelerate follow-through and follow-up on. He sent an email earlier today to N. DeStefano asking to schedule a special meeting of the Governance Committee to talk about it.

M. Harmon-Vaught stated that since it's a month of thanks, he is eternally grateful for all of the Board members, for your dedication, your commitment, your being here, your partnership, and your strategic engagement. In this last month, we've had really engaged Academic Committee and Finance Committee meetings on meaty topics relating to important things. We're obviously carrying a lot right now. This is a heavy time for all of us, T. Castanza included. And he is grateful for continued collaboration and partnership in good faith. We are moving forward on a mission that matters, and he feels very positive about the trajectory of everything, notwithstanding the challenges of the current moment. Thanks, everybody.