Boards of Cooperative Educational Services

largely the school districts in rockland county um and how can we and and that that was you know as a communication service they were working with school districts to um you know share information about what was going on in the school district the pr for the school district crisis intervention and crisis management and as someone who's in news you know what that means and in your role right now that is what this unit um, does for our school districts, but seeing how well that was working and the professional, um, product that that unit has been putting out for their clients, uh, our commissioner personnel said, you know, let's, let's see if there's something that we can do here.

Um, so we did, we have an IMA with BOCES, um, Rockland BOCES, uh, to perform those services.

So an inter-municipal agreement, um, to perform those services for us.

Um, And so where we might have that strategic goal in mind, it is our staff on the communication side that is able to do that.

I brought together a group of high school students.

They were from a BOCES program, which is a career tech education here in New York.

And so they're taking half day culinary arts classes for their typically their junior and senior year.

um these students met with me at our visitor interpretive center so it's our nordic ski center it's our nature center we've got a butterfly tunnel there some neat lean twos and over 45 miles of trails and a few different lakes you can paddle and camp on and whatnot really beautiful spot um the kids met with with me there and we went through an activity of um of cooking breakfast by the campfire and uh and our breakfast was whole grain buttermilk pancakes we made omelets and we cooked in a few different kind of modalities for campfire cooking we had a we had a hanging tripod we had a kind of raised fire that we could cook on a cast iron griddle and then we also had some cast iron pans that we could cook on and to your point exactly, Jamie, it was interesting to see students that I knew from that class from some previous experiences, they're very comfortable in the kitchen setting, right? And they kind of naturally fall into that leadership role.

Well,

I mean, I got to say, you've got BOCES out there and those who are not from

New York are not as familiar with BOCES.

Yeah.

Basically, that's like it's a tech school and it's around the whole the whole state.

The following story features the experience of someone who used her voice to combat a broken system, Sandy Karner-Shafrin.

Sandy worked as a teacher's aide at the Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES for nearly four decades and later became a certified teacher's assistant.

She currently sits on the executive board of her local union as labor ambassador and co-chair of the Saratoga Addie Rhondak BOCES Employees Association Women's Committee and is the second VP of the New York State Teachers Union Retiree Council 10.

She's also president of the Saratoga Labor Council and member of the Greater Capital Region Teachers Center Policy, BOD.

Well, I was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1982, Sandy attended a Little League game and was approached by one of her colleagues who asked,

Hey, you like kids? And I said, somewhat.

And they said, how about subbing at the BOCES in Saratoga? And I said, what does it involve? And they said, well, basically you help with kids with disabilities.

The following story features the experience of someone who used her voice to combat a broken system, Sandy Karner-Shafrin.

Sandy worked as a teacher's aide at the Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES for nearly four decades and later became a certified teacher's assistant.

She currently sits on the executive board of her local union as labor ambassador and co-chair of the Saratoga Addie Rhondak BOCES Employees Association Women's Committee, and is the second VP of the New York State Teachers Union Retiree Council 10.

She's also president of the Saratoga Labor Council and member of the Greater Capital Region Teachers Center Policy, BOD.

Well, I was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1982, Sandy attended a Little League game and was approached by one of her colleagues who asked,

Hey, you like kids? And I said, somewhat.

And they said, how about subbing at the BOCES in Saratoga? And I said, what does it involve? And they said, well, basically you help with kids with disabilities.

The cost for the program would be $26,000 annually.

but with the partnership with Orchard Park and Cheektwaga, some of the costs can be covered by BOCES aid and the full cost wouldn't be on the district.

Frontier Superintendent Christopher Switek said this past school year the district investigated 50 to 75 false residency claims.

He added that doesn't mean these are all fraudulent claims, but just the total of what the district had to investigate.