Ask the Superintendent, Episodes 1 to 3

1. Episode 1, August 31: Academics and Vision
2. 0:01Hello, Hudson. My name is Todd Hilgendorf and I'm the new superintendent of Hudson City School District. I want to start by thanking all the community members, parents, students, and faculty and staff that shared questions on our Ask the Superintendent. Today I'm here to share some answers. So I'm going to start with some personal questions today to let you know a little bit more about myself. And then we've clustered the questions into different themes. So the theme for today is academics and vision for the district. But first, those personal questions.
3. 0:34So the first one is what can we call you? So I'm always okay being called Mr. Hilgendorf, which is my full last name. But my first year teaching over 20 years ago, my students at the time thought that my name should be Mr. H. And that has stuck all these years later, and I very much appreciate that name. And I'm okay to be called Mr. H for short. Second question, do you have any pets? Yes, indeed, I do. My husband, Steve, and I have one dog.
4. 1:03His name is Gus, and he's a little Chihuahua Dachshund. He's a little old now at over 17 years old, but is still very much our fur baby. A theme in the questions that we received was around the idea of vision. So this is a question that came in through Ask the Superintendent, but it's also a question that I've gotten in person as I've met with people over the course of the past month. And the question is, what is your vision as the new superintendent for our school district?
5. 1:31When I hear that question, the first thing that comes to mind is that vision isn't meant to come from one individual person. For example, me as a new superintendent. A vision needs to be a shared vision that comes from bringing people together from the different groups that make up our school community. So what I've looked to work on over my first year is to focus on what was called a shared decision-making plan. And that will pull together people from parents, community, family, students, faculty, and staff,
6. 2:02so that we have a plan in place to then pull people together to create what will become our shared vision for the school district. And when we talk about a vision, we'll be talking about what we want to see for Hudson in terms of curriculum, instruction, our assessment practices, and the environment that makes up our school and the school community. So look over the course of the next year for opportunities to get involved, first in creating that shared decision-making plan, and then second, in being part of the team that comes together to define our shared vision for the district.
7. 2:36Our third set of questions for today fall into the category of academics and being an identified school by New York State. So in New York State, there is an accountability system that all school districts fall under. At Hudson, we're identified at our elementary school and at our junior high school for what's called a targeted support and improvement school. This means that some of our data as a district is not up to the standards that's required by New York State. For that reason, we get identified as a school in need of improvement.
8. 3:09So the questions that came in make me think about this identification and also the process of continuous school improvement. This past spring, teams from across the elementary school and the junior high school came together to review data and identify areas that can be worked on over the course of this coming school year to improve the areas of data that have concern. These plans are called our school comprehensive education plans. You can find them on our website, and I would encourage you to take a look to understand what the areas are that our faculty and staff plan to work on over this coming year.
9. 3:47Some of the common themes in those improvement plans are curriculum alignment and creating student connections. These are areas that we will continue to focus on and build upon what we are already doing here at Hudson City School District. As I mentioned earlier, this topic really makes me think about continuous school improvement. The process of identifying through data what are our strengths and what are our challenges, and then identifying what we can work on as a school to make sure we are consistently moving forward to best meet the needs of all of our students here at Hudson.
10. 4:22Those are our questions and answers for today. Thank you again for everybody who submitted questions to ask the superintendent. Stay tuned for another edition coming soon.
11. Episode 2, September 2: Facilities Improvements
12. 0:00Hello, Hudson. We're here today with episode two start with a couple of personal questions so you superintendent of Hudson City School District. So, "What was my favorite subject and what did I enjoy question. My subjects were definitely math and and truly I've always said that I am a science in the wonders of the natural world. I was also the stage every year in the high school musical also came from a student. They asked, "What advice So this one actually made me think what would be came up with in thinking back to my time in high
13. 1:00math, science and drama and music. And because kept in my comfort zone. So if I was giving it say push yourself outside your comfort zone and the things that you'd like. Our theme for today's work that is happening across the campus. So we the things people have seen like roof work at the near the junior and senior high school. So our happening across the campus. Some of which started this coming year of the 26-27 school year. It is our larger capital project. So the capital the campus. So the roof work that you might have
14. 1:59of that project. Another piece that will be coming auditorium there will be new seating as well as The second one is the energy performance project looks to enhance energy efficiencies and being more environmentally friendly. throughout the district and also this summer we high school. The third one is the smart schools safety and connectivity across the district. Wi-Fi across the district, as well as security three main areas of work for facilities the energy performance contract, and the smart improvement is at the junior senior high This has been an ongoing project and I'm excited
15. 3:11delivery of the actual greenhouse and it will be we see October come, we will have a greenhouse informed about all these facilities updates, website that will share all the information these projects progress, we will also include Thanks again for submitting questions to Ask the
16. Episode 3, September 4: Technology
17. 0:00Hello Hudson. Welcome to the third and I'll start with a couple of more personal to learn a little bit about me. The first "What is something a colleague has said to you and why?" Of all the questions that we It really caused me to stop and think about my I've had with previous colleagues and staff. This I had several staff members come to me and share a leader, but also felt that I always encourage as a leader, that really stuck with me. I want supported by my leadership but also feel that they
18. 1:01to grow as educators. So, thank you to that staff I had several members of our community ask if new superintendent. Over the summer, I've I've met many people and thank all of those me. As I continue to go to community events, yourself. I look forward to meeting many of you we will have open houses or meet the teacher and the junior senior high school. I will be at Stay tuned for details that will be released about today is around technology. To help answer these of curriculum, instruction and technology,
19. 2:02Rabinowitz, thanks for joining me today. It's my Ask the Superintendent was, "How is AI being used last year the technology committee met regularly staff and parents and community members and we it over a couple of months. We contacted various then put our policy together. Then we shared it ultimately shared it with the board for review time. Once we developed the policy, then we knew that same group together again and we talked about What is it that we want to see our administrators committee came up with a plan and we developed
20. 3:05they can use it. And we always wanted to make sure excuse me ed law 2D compatible. And basically what some of the artificial intelligent programs out So in our plan it discusses what programs are And this year our instructional technology uh conducting lessons and activities in the AI and we will also be doing more professional year goes on we can't wait to see how it continues out there in the world with AI AI could also be sure our students and staff are comfortable with if somebody wanted to learn more about that
21. 4:11a copy of our plan could be found on our website instruction, and technology and they'd be able to about technology is around cyber security. This important for us to be teaching our students and of potential scams and phishing occurrences that we as Hudson City School District protecting our threats? Sure. So first and foremost, it's always last few years, we've been working to make sure even having a secure network, we really need to uh, we're going to be using a program called middle and high school, as well as our faculty and
22. 5:12campaigns, which it'll send out information to and click on this and click on that. and it's not getting phished in the real world. Um, in from the governor's office, New York State, which going to do for our staff is it's going to provide which will provide each staff member with a token. onto the computer, that's another layer of we want to protect student data. So, while the because they're dealing with a lot of student So, we're really excited about that. Uh the we had here in the district uh called CyberNut,
23. 6:10will be the first year we're rolling it [Cyber IQ] because we're starting to see that in other school students. So, we're excited. Great. Well, thank certainly topics AI and the idea of cyber security now. So important that we're teaching our faculty they understand how to use tools appropriately leadership in this area, and it's exciting to see you for inviting me to speak to the community. This concludes our third and final episode of Ask submitted questions and I hope through these my leadership, and the work that is happening
24. 7:03am excited about the school year that lies ahead. a community member, parent, faculty, staff, or things in the 26-27 school year. Keep an eye Hudson City School District. You can follow us on an eye out for our monthly [biweekly*] newsletters

Timestamps link to the corresponding moment on YouTube. Auto-transcribed, contains speech-recognition errors. Not an official record.