001Good evening. I call this audit committee meeting to order and note that all board members are present We are joined by superintendent. Dr. Patrick and members of his administrative cabinet Welcome to all those who have joined us this evening either in the audience on the live stream or via zoom At this time when it would like to make a motion to appoint honorary Adams a secretary pro tem for this meeting Thank You Bob. Is there a second Thank You Leah all those in favor, please say aye aye The ayes have it. The motion carries. The time is 6.30 p.m. Thank you very much. And we're going to turn it over to Drew and Andrew for the internal auditor's report and risk assessment update. I'll take it from here. So this evening we have Dimitris Bantaleskas
002from Narwaki Smith here to present his firm's report on our annual risk assessment update. As you might remember, the... five points plan from the controller's office requires that each year the school district have an internal audit risk assessment and then from that risk assessment we determine a focused area audit so this evening's audit report which was attached to the board agenda goes over all the areas that were tested by his firm and the recommendations they found when Dimitri's done I'll speak to the corrective action plan that the district management has put together in response to that audit and then at the end of the conversation we hope to have some direction from the board on the focus area that we'd like Dimitri and his colleagues to go over this year. Thank you, Andrew. Good evening.
003Thank you for having me today. As Andrew said, I'm Dimitri Vantileskas, partner in Araki Smith. We are the district's internal auditors. and I'm here today to present the results of the annual risk assessment. It's an update, you know, and for the ones who already know our firm, you know, we do this every year. The report that you have provides you and the administration information about the district's risk profile. When we talk about risk, we talk about financial risk, operational risk, reputational risk, but even the most current risk that is rising now is cyber risk. So these are the areas that we cover during our risk assessment. And the goal of the report is to provide information. regarding any risk areas and provide those observations and those recommendations for the administration to address those risk areas
004and find ways to improve the internal controls. So our risk assessment covers... broad spectrum like there are 21 business process areas that we look at you know starting from governance and planning budget development accounting and reporting areas that are within the business office but also like areas that cover outside of the financial world like you know human resources or you know capital projects or exo-class activity funds or information systems or even the student data And, you know, so in each of these 21 business processes have subcategories that we look at. They're a total of 92. So it's a very extensive analysis of the district's operations. During the risk assessment, we meet with key people who are responsible for those areas. And we have shared with you a two-page executive summary, and we have listed those.
005So as an example, like, yeah, we meet with your superintendent of schools, your assistant superintendent for business. We meet, you know, with your assistant superintendent for human resources, but also, like, you know, with directors and also individuals. who have hands-on experience or responsibilities of the day-to-day operations. So not only we look at the supervisories, but we also look at the individuals who deal with the day-to-day transactions. Our risk assessment also includes a review of documents. So from the beginning phases of our audit, we share a document request with the district and they share those with us. We review a sample of those documents, include your board policies, your reports generated from your system, from Envision. We look at packets that are shared with the board. And we also look at your prior order reports. So
006in our risk assessment, there are certain variables that we take into account. And since this is an update, we do look into whether there have been any changes in the procedures or in controls from one year to the next. And that can happen because there could be staff changes. There could be reporting requirement changes, regulation changes. If there's any of those changes, we want to see how have they impacted the operations in those specific areas or those departments. So the results now of our risk assessment update is showing we have a first table that shows two years in consecutive order, 2024 and 2025. And we have the three risk ratings, high, moderate, and low. So for two consecutive years, we're happy to say that there is zero high risk ratings. And there is also an
007increase in the low risk ratings from 69 to 72. So 72 out of the 92 areas that we look at, there are at a low risk rating, which is a very positive risk profile. Our goal is to see the district increase as much as possible the low risk ratings. We did look at the prior year recommendations. We had three. Those were concentrated in the area of cybersecurity. And we did see that the district is currently working on two out of the three. And we're looking forward to the completion of the third one as well. Now, we do have three new recommendations in our report where we wanted to discuss today. So the one recommendation pertains in the revenue cash management area. Here it's more of a compliance type of recommendation. You know, the New York
008State regulations require for school districts to have petty cash accounts at a minimum, sorry, at a cap of $100. And we know the district has certain accounts that are over that dollar amount. So we want the district to... revised its current procedures to comply with the New York State regulations. Another recommendation we have is in regard to payroll, and this is more specifically on payroll overtime, the request and the approval process. We do know there is a process for the district to document overtime. However, we often see from the state controller's office when they do audits at school districts, to comment about having a pre-approval, you know, a form or a documentation to show that the overtime was requested and was approved, you know, before the individual submits a timesheet. That way the overtime is,
009you know, people are aware of it, you know, and, you know, it is also reviewed according to their budget and making sure that they have the funds to pay for that. And the last one that we have here is about human resources, where we know that the district has a board approved policy regarding code of ethics, which is intended to disclose any related parties. So our recommendation here is to formalize the disclosure process of any related parties or any conflicts of interest. That way it provides transparency to the district, starting from the Human Resource Department and whatever department the individual will be working or will be affected by. So I know the district has developed its corrective action plan to our recommendations. But I also wanted to share that as an outgrowth of the risk
010assessment, we develop an internal order plan for the remaining of the fiscal year. And we provide options for the board to select. One of the options that we have here is cybersecurity, payroll, or exoclass activity funds. and based on our engagement with the district, we conduct one cycle each year. Any questions? Thank you for that. I was just wondering, I noticed, so you recommended petty cash as potentially one of the topics for next year, and the other one that the risk went up on was... benefits eligibility that went from a low to medium risk but did that go up because you did the audit last year that's why that went up okay I just wanted to be sure yeah there was When we do a cycle audit, meaning like a deep dive in an area,
011there's a lot more knowledge. There's a lot more information that we do get involved with, like the review of the records and the interviews compared to a risk assessment. So based on the additional audit, the risk rating increase based on that information. Okay, great. Thank you. Yep. Good questions, thank you. I don't know if this is for you or Andrew. In terms of our payroll internal controls, have they shifted? Can you describe how they've shifted with the change to Envision and have they tightened or changed at all? In some ways it's really just drastically changed the way we operate payroll. The systems that support that function are the prior system, SMARTs, and the new system, Envision. They did not operate in the same way. So we've been building over the last two and a half,
012three years. envision specific procedures and steps and there have been some bumps and potholes along the way as we try to make sure that the nomenclature and the documentation that was sufficient for SMARTs supports the way Envision technically operates, whether that be how salaries are prorated or how hourly rates of pay are calculated by the system so we've been working through all that I'm fairly confident that we've done a really good job of that but that's not to say that it you know it wouldn't be an area of interest to say could we do better or did we miss something in that that area Dimitri his team as part of their annual cycle they do sample various things in payroll like timesheets like deductions that sort of thing And thankfully, you know, the risk rating
013hasn't shifted as any of that, but it is 80% of our budget basically, right? And then I'm just curious about our cybersecurity risk. Do you know, is it similar? Like our risk level, is it similar to comparable districts around us? Is there anything different about our cybersecurity risk? So it's a good question. We get this often. Cybersecurity, it is a real risk for a lot of school districts. There's cyber attacks, ransomwares, incidents reported constantly. And the districts are making a lot of efforts to address that risk by implementing controls from... the hardware, the software, the training, the backups, the recoveries. And Scarsdale is actively working on it too. But it is an area that it's hardly going to see on a low risk rating. The cyber hackers, they're using AI intelligence to find ways to
014circumvent your firewalls. So it's a constant risky area. Back to the HR point, we don't currently have a conflict of interest for HR. We do. So maybe it's a good segue to the corrective action plan. So I'll start with that one. In our board policy, it does talk about the requirement for anyone who – we actually reviewed this policy this year as we added the term agent to that policy. Any board member, agent, or employee of the district – that may have a business interest in any decision-making that happens at the board table is required to disclose that. I think the key piece in that recommendation that Dimitri has is providing explicit ways that that employee should notify the school district. And, you know, we understand that. I think there's... ample opportunity for a conversation
015to happen, a phone call to be made, but I think we, our corrective action plan doesn't necessarily feel that posting a form and saying fill this out is the right way because the employees are reading through these policies. We do think we need to explicitly say in the policy that they should notify either myself and or Dr. Troy. Was I the first one to say it in public? Dr. Troy. let us know because we will then need to investigate that and determine if there's a true conflict of interest or a need for us to stop a transaction going forward. So that's our corrective action plan is to modify our policy to really make sure that employees know to send that email to us as the form of communication. I'm just trying to find my corrective
016action plan now. Anything more on that recommendation that you'd like me to? So we'll work on that. We've already started to draft that in update two. I believe it's the regulation, actually, that will have that content in there. Great. And I have to say, just finding the right time when we're onboarding or even through some of our mandated training to communicate that with our faculty and staff so that they're at its top of mind rather than something years ago that they read about. So I'll go back to the top of the corrective action plan just for a minute. So Dimitri highlighted something that has... Been a way of life in Scarsdale for many, many, many years. I'll be very honest. I went back to do some research. So the state's rules and regulations do state
017explicitly that any petty cash fund should never be more than $100. Scarsdale, for many years at the annual organization or reorganization meeting, by department authorizes anywhere between $200 and $400 for a specific department. And we've done some kind of... recent research, Lisa and I, it is rare that we ever refund that so the petty cash fund is essentially a cash account that is there to reimburse with receipts many districts will throughout the year use it quite often but it can never be over that limit and we never exceed in most departments what has been board authorized some of the types of expenditures that that we've seen in that area are things like purchase of postage for a building level mailer and those are often over a hundred dollars it may be the reimbursement to a
018faculty member or administrator for a building level or department level meeting for allowable meeting expenses be they you know be meals or supplies for that event. So we didn't feel, Lisa and I, that that was necessarily out of line with what the intention of the board has been. However, it is factually accurate that those numbers are above the rules and regulations. So it will, if we come forward with a revised authorization come July, it will materially make the petty cash funds. irrelevant because because the expenses that they would need to occur would not have enough money in those accounts so there are other avenues for us to pursue we have a postage machine we have to figure out the staff that would handle putting putting that through the meter we have other ways to do
019purchase orders with vendors to supply food or supplies for a meeting in advance it just it removes some of the flexibility for our administrators We can talk more about the recommendation once we've gone through some more conversations around that. So we will certainly do that, Lisa and I. Go ahead. When we talk about the high school clubs and the accounts that they have, like chess club, how much ever money they have in their account that they can use for a bake sale or to organize an event, is that also a petty cash account? No, those are actually considered extra classroom activities funds, and they are under the umbrella of the school district, but they are technically... student clubs resources so we set guidelines on how they're used in a state controller and the State Education
020Department set guidelines on how those clubs are supposed to operate you know planning for fundraising meeting minutes those types of things an organization structure for the club but those are separate and apart from any of all that and then going now to recommendation two The district should develop a standardized process for documenting pre-approval of overtime for related events, facilities use, vacation, vacant positions, those types of things. We do. Much of it's informal and sporadic in the departments that are managing those. In particular, the facilities department has a fairly robust way of tracking the preauthorization and the spreadsheet of the events that are coming up or the needs for overtime. What we're lacking, I think, in my office is a full breadth of all overtime, not just for custodians and clerical, which I think were referenced
021in the audit report, which Dimitri clarified for me was really just an example. It really is all overtime. We really should have a single document that outlines how those preapprovals might happen. Now, they can be when the facilities department has someone call out sick and they need to bring in a cleaner to spend extra time cleaning the cafeteria after school or a customer after school, they may have a blanket authorization. We just need a way to capture that. In other cases where it really is not pre-approved, we need to be able to stop that in the payroll office because it wasn't pre-approved. So we will document that in our procedures and circulate that out once we've completed them for all of the various departments. and i think those are all the recommendations and our responses
022that are included in the corrective action plan um the one edit that i i will speak with dimitri about that dr patrick and i spoke about this morning is just clarifying that reference to overtime it's not just clerical and custodial although those are some of the primary areas it really is any and all over time so we'll make an edit to that in the final document that's fine so we would appreciate some feedback from the board on their um their you know inclinations on the recommended audit areas. We didn't spend much time talking about the extra-question activity funds. These are notoriously a baseline higher risk because they're often many high school students or middle school students with cash running around with boxes and fundraising and inventory from sales. So I think there's a risk rating
023that's inherent to that, but there's also a reputational risk for that. So that's why that area is often an area of discussion. Then we talked about the payroll a moment ago, and then cybersecurity is a perennial issue. We had some feedback in the... In the risk assessment last year that Jeannie Crowley and her team have been working actively on, two of those are in process for being implemented, and a third is planned. So we're open to any feedback on preferences for those areas. Well, if you don't mind, my sense of those three areas, I mean, they're all potentially high-risk areas, but it seems to me potentially the kind of damage that could be done by cybersecurity weaknesses. on a different scale than like for example petty cash funds or the school activity funds just because
024those are often not big dollars I mean obviously the risk is that small dollars are lost or not kept attractive but with respect to cybersecurity incidents those can be big dollars Certainly those could go to the very core of what you do and the finances that you have and where you keep them and all that. So my view at least would be that's probably a higher priority. Well, they're all important, but that's my sense. I don't know if you have any sense of that yourself. We've talked about it. I think cybersecurity, as Dimitri mentioned, is perennially an issue. There's no doubt in my mind that bad actors will always be trying to gain access to information that schools possess. I think there are some activities underway by Jeannie Crowley's team that could be helpful to
025have an audit there, but also could be helpful to wait and let those activities happen and then give us the opportunity to audit were those changes successful. Much like I would have asked you not to audit payroll three years ago when we were doing a financial transition. I share that concern. There are a number of significant projects that Jeannie's team is working on and I think it would be a more valuable perhaps audit a year from now than in the next cycle to allow them to complete those projects not just because then it's valuable to audit I think also because it's a time-consuming process that they have limited time and I think prioritizing the projects they're working on that my recommendation would be to give that another year do you have a do you have
026a recommendation as well for what we might what you would like us to think about I think I will defer to Demetri's expertise of taking a broad look, right? No one wants to be audited, right? Myself included. And yet I think, you know, we are audited a lot in the business office. But I think that the business office is doing a fine job. And to maybe get some external confirmation of that in the payroll and the HR area that coincide, that might. Give me more confidence that my team is doing what we've asked them to do I've no doubt that they are but that is an option there and the actual classroom activities area just as another of the three that are recommended, you know the to Jim's point the financial risk there and the
027real risk is I think we've got good process there It's a small dollar amount and the reality is it will become more frustrating for staff with some of the adjustments we might make for very little gain. And perhaps putting that one aside, it makes sense of having either cybersecurity or payroll be your kind of two areas. I appreciate that input, and I will say I was curious as to why extracurricular classroom activities was on the list, but I can see your point about the potential reputational risk. Like Jim, I think when I came in... I was thinking cyber security, but I will say to your point too, things are moving quickly and if they're already working on things, I would probably be inclined to go with payroll for next year. That's just my perspective. We
028can have Dimitri prepared when he comes next year if we think cybersecurity really is the next most logical place. We can start to plan accordingly and coincide the risk assessment and the cybersecurity for next year at the same time if we wish. Absolutely, yeah. That's definitely something that we can do simultaneously. It could be the timeline perfect as the department finishes their projects. we can be ready to review those projects, assess the other controls, and give the board information about it along with a risk assessment update. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that's a great idea. And I would be inclined to agree with Amber. I think there's been a lot of work that went into Envision and that I appreciate, and I'm sure it went great. I think it would be kind of
029the right next step in terms of best practice to have our audit look at that just to make sure that it all... make sense and work that smoothly. I think the question of overtime is something that we've talked about at this board table in the past. So, you know, it would be nice to, you know, review that process and I'm sure it's, you know, it's all done in order, but it would be nice to have that. A long time ago we talked about specifically with the facilities staff, you know, I think it was before you were here actually, you know, that that staff was you know doing a lot of overtime and you know so even there's the process part but then there's also just the dollars part like does it make sense you know
030it's it seems like it does make sense in terms of our staffing level now but it would be nice to happy I know I not have much to say but I tend to agree with Susie and Amber I think we put a lot of time and your departments put a lot of time into the new software I think Any feedback to keep moving that forward or confirm that we're in a good spot would be valuable at this point and to let Jeannie and her team, who have done an amazing job so far, work a little bit more. It seems like the right step forward. Yeah, I would agree that I think payroll, I don't think it's throwing any aspersion on the team. I just think when you're that detail-oriented, it's just good to have another
031pair of eyes. just conceptually have a look and kind of verify that you know we've we've maximized our potential there so I think payroll area does make sense from my perspective Yeah, I agree also. I also just want to add a clarify question to cybersecurity. Like under information system, there's also network security. I just wonder when we talk about cybersecurity, do we also kind of include the processes in that area? The answer is yes. In our cyber security audit program, we follow the NIST framework and the CIS controls. So in our cyber security audit program, we will include what you already see in the risk assessment, those categories, but it broadens it into even more. It would include the network security, application security, disaster recovery, incident response plans. once we ready to do the audit
032and see the progress of these projects you know we will have the order program tailored you know to you know those areas as well I agree about payroll I think that'd be great to do and just a question about the extracurricular the extra classroom piece when did we last do that did we did we audit that piece I feel like that's come up that phrase discussed at the board table I'll have to go back and check I believe it was certainly before Dimitri's team was here and before I was here but I can go back and I would still do payroll I'm just wondering you do have your external auditors look at exoclassmen activity every year so they they do because it's a separate set of financial statements so you know they do review sometimes
033you know they do or may include comments in their corrective action plan or management letter. That's right. So that's a good point. Every year we publish a financial statement for the extra classroom fund, which is separate from ours. And in that, the management recommendations that come from the external auditor, there actually would be probably a lot of overlap between the recommendations because some of that testing is similar as well. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? It seems that we have direction. So it's on the agenda this evening. If the audit committee decides to recommend to the board the approval of the audit, we'll have it approved as noted, and Demetri will make the edit to the draft documents that we talked about earlier, including the recommendation to do payroll for next year. And we'll take
034the watermarks off everything, and we'll have signed copies attached to the official board agenda once we've made those documented. Okay. Thank you. I'm ready to move on to the action item for the audit committee meeting. I want to say thank you, too, and thank you for having me. But I do want to say one more thank you to your team. Like, you know, they were very helpful in this risk assessment process. We had a lot of good interviews, a lot of good conversations. You know, the documentation, you know, was provided. So it made it a very successful risk assessment. So thank you. Sure. Thank you very much. Amber, I believe that is you with respect to the internal auditor's report. It is. Thank you, Jim. I move that the audit committee adopt the following resolution.
035Resolve that the audit committee accepts and recommends that the Board of Education accepts the internal auditor's report annual risk assessment update pertaining to the internal controls of district operations and the corrective action plan as presented. Is there a second? Okay. Thank you, Susie. All those in favor, please say aye. motion carries and with that I believe we can adjourn the meeting what someone like to make a motion to adjourn this audit committee meeting okay thank you Bob is there a second Thank You Laura all those in favor please say aye aye okay that ayes have it the motion carries and the time is 703 that meeting is adjourned we're ready to move right into the business meeting yes okay good evening I call this business meeting to order and note that all board members are
036present. We are joined by Superintendent Dr. Patrick, members of his administrative cabinet. Welcome to all those who have joined us this evening either in the audience on the live stream or via Zoom. Earlier this evening the board met with Scarsdale High School students. This meeting is an opportunity for the board to hear directly from our students and we appreciate the thoughtful and candid conversation during such meetings. Specifically this evening the board heard from students on three topics, rolling grade book and grading transparency, the cell phone policy with respect to personal electronic devices, and community lunch. Thank you to the student representatives for their thoughts and feedback on these topics, as well as the many students who have reached out to the board with their articulate and thoughtful feedback. Any student should always feel welcome to
037reach out to us on board related matters. or district related matters, you can always reach us at BoardofEd at ScarsdaleSchools.org. Also, just prior to this board meeting, the board met as an audit committee to hear from our internal auditors, Naraki Smith, regarding their risk assessment report. And we also reviewed a corrective action plan for certain identified items. The audit committee voted to accept and recommend the Board of Education accept the internal auditor's report and annual risk assessment. And we voted to do so. Both the Audit Risk Assessment Report and the Corrective Action Plan are included on the Board's agenda this evening as action items. Also, I wanted to note that later tonight, the Board will be voting on the 2026-27 budget resolution. And I note as well that on March 16th, we approved the resolution
038adopting a capital bond proposal. Both of these votes represent an extremely important commitment to the future growth and success of the district's educational program. well as to the young people of our community the budget and the board will come to a public vote on May 19th at the Scarsdale Middle School in the next four weeks leading up to this vote a superintendent Patrick is super assistant superintendent Andrew Lennon and others members of the cabinet and the board will be available at town hall meetings in each of our neighborhoods as well as at PTA meetings and at other venues such as school events concerts and performances other places public venues to answer questions you may have about the budget and the bond as always we welcome your questions and your involvement in the process and with
039that I'm going to turn it over to Drew thank you very much Jim I appreciate it I had my good evening and welcome to everyone in the audience live here or joining us online I want to start tonight, Andrew stole my thunder a little bit, but by congratulating Megan Troy on defending her dissertation and earning her doctorate. And it's a pleasure to address you as Dr. Troy. Way to go. I also want to congratulate all of our seniors, including one at our table here, who have made or are making their final decisions on college next year. It's an incredible moment that hopefully everyone can reflect on, the individuals can reflect on all the hard work and support from their parents and teachers and the school community to take that next step. So congratulations to all
040of our seniors. Super exciting. To refer to some of the business Mr. Dugan talked about earlier, later this evening, the board will take a vote on a resolution related to the proposed 2026-27 budget. Just as a reminder, the proposed budget stands at $197,098,146, which reflects a 2.92% increase over the current year budget and a 3.37% tax levy increase. Notably, this budget is identical to what was discussed at the last Board of Education meeting with one exception. During the informational item part of the meeting tonight, Mr. Lennon will discuss the substitution of one of the capital projects in the proposed budget. That substitution comes with no change in dollar amount, but I just wanted to call attention to that right at the top of the meeting. In tonight's consent agenda the board is being asked to
041approve the appointments of election inspectors, assistant clerks, and a chief election inspector and to authorize the printing of ballots. Information regarding voter registration is now up on our district homepage in multiple places. There's an icon just below the welcome message and the link can also be found from the district information drop-down menu. I share that as signs that the annual meeting and budget vote and board election are headed our way. And I wanted to just stop and take a moment to publicly thank Board Clerk Honore Adams for all of the work she's done thus far related to those meetings and the election and for all the work between now and the day of May 19th. Running the budget and bond votes and board election is complex. and time consuming and there's simply no one better
042for the job so thank you honoree appreciate you of course the 2026 capital projects bond resolution will also appear on that ballot on may 19th we've been working hard to develop educational information and communication with our community members of the community should have already received a mailer holding it up here explaining the proposed bond And on Friday, we also launched a video explainer, and we thought it would be appropriate just to take a few minutes tonight and play that video so it's in the record. Sorry, I know we all hate to hear our own voices, but I think it makes sense just to share that with the community. So bear with me for a second. It appears here on our bond page. For generations, the Scarsdale community has believed in something simple yet powerful, that
043great schools build a strong future. Scarsdale schools have long stood as a source of pride. That success is a result of a community that consistently shows up, asks thoughtful questions, and makes informed decisions about the future of its schools. This is more than a vote. It's the continuation of a legacy rooted in the belief that investing in education is investing in our community, our children, and our future together. Scarsdale is very fortunate in that people come to Scarsdale for the schools. You know, in a time when... There's a lot of pressures. People want to move to Scarsdale because of our schools. There's always been a strong show of support for the schools whenever it's been necessary in the past to get involved in capital raising activities. The schools are our number one product. That's why
044everybody moves to Scarsdale. We are rolling off. a previous bond raise, capital raise, in terms of the impact on people with respect to the taxes that they pay. And so we thought now is a good time to begin thinking. I believe a year ago, we decided it was a good time to begin thinking about what should be in a capital raise. What do we need to do? The process to arrive at this 2026 capital projects bond. was lengthy, inclusive, and responsive. The district solicited input, again, from the community. There were representatives from the PTA, from the community at large, from the buildings, administration, district board members. We looked at the needs of our students. We looked at our mission. And we tried to choose the projects that we felt could help our students accomplish that
045mission. There are two things that really have caused us to look closely at Fox Meadow and Edgewood and include significant projects in this bond. The first is they are very old facilities. They need updating to create modern classroom environments. The second reason or the second priority of those buildings is to accommodate the program and the enrollment. First and foremost, it allows us to ensure that our growing population of students have ample classrooms in terms of their homerooms. It also helps us think about our special subject areas. subjects like music, art, Spanish, technology. These are critical to our students joy and learning at Edgewood. Fox Meadow has definitely been increasing ever since I've been here so with that we are running out of spaces so we have to be creative with our scheduling and really think
046about shared staffing and schedule them on opposite days which really does impact our ability to schedule our classes when we want to schedule them. Well if you looked at how Green Acres was and now is and it was not really a very pleasant place to come into. Now it's bright and the lighting and everything really is welcoming and I think that Edgewood and Fox Metal both need that. You know, we're a school with a lot of programs. You know, our athletic offerings are robust. I would say more than, you know, our peers, for sure. And the fact that, you know, we have in the fall four varsity teams that have to play on turf. In the spring, we have three. With the amount of programs we offer, I don't know of too many other schools
047our size that only have one turf field. I don't know of any. When we look at the softball situation we currently have for spring sports, currently we play on town fields. So it's our varsity, our JV, and the middle school has a modified team. I think the girls deserve to have a home field that they can be proud of as well, and that's part of what's included in this bond. It'll really be a nice place to play. Air conditioning has been a conversation in Scarsdale for the entire ten years I've been here. It was a topic in the 2018 bond though it wasn't funded then. Since that time we have managed to cool nearly all of our classroom, core classroom spaces in our seven buildings through window units. Heathcote Elementary School, though, has a different
048design and is not able to accept that type of solution. So the bond includes an appropriate solution for Heathcote to bring it up to par with the rest of the district. So a lot of our district is with window units and otherwise, but some of our large spaces aren't. So during those hot months, area like the gymnasium that not only our students utilize, but our community utilizes, gets extremely hot, obviously. So being able to air condition those spaces make it comfortable for both our community and our students, but also offers more flexibility for the building itself to push in with, whether it be specials or different programs, whether it be health and athletics or whether it be a course program. So to have the areas that haven't been air-conditioned in the past now making it
049into it it's just gonna be huge benefits for our student population our faculty in our community I think the benefits of the bond for our students and for the community really outweigh the cost to the community members We have a wonderful staff, wonderful community, but we need to support our infrastructure. We need to make sure that our buildings represent the excellence that we are. I think we have an opportunity to... really enhance our students' experience for their entire day. And I feel that we've made it very clear that our goal is to create an environment where students can learn, they can live, and they can lead. So thank you for indulging that. Sorry for the technical difficulties, but thank you to our board members who participated in that. And the public can see that and
050use it as a starting place if they're just getting familiar with what's in the bond presently. As Jim mentioned, we will be hosting public town halls. Those three meetings will be on Tuesday, April 21st, here in the high school at 7 p.m. The second will be Monday, May 4th, at 7 p.m. at Fox Meadow. And the third will be Wednesday, May 6th, at Edgewood at 7 p.m. Although at Fox Meadow and Edgewood, we will offer tours of the building starting at 6.30 for anyone who wants to come and kind of get a sense of... what's behind the scenes in terms of the components of the bond there. In addition to these events, again, as Jim mentioned, the Board of Education members have graciously committed themselves to attend a variety of school events over the next
051five weeks. They'll be available to answer questions about the projects and hopefully will be easy to spot as they'll be near a collection of posters. There's some in this room here that we've produced to provide information to our community about the bond. and I really want to thank each of you members of the board for extending this level of outreach to our community. I think it communicates your commitment to providing as much information as possible to our community on such an important decision. And then... Shifting gears away from financial matters, I'm pleased to acknowledge tonight we're going to have the chance to hear from Scarsdale Middle School English Chair Denise Del Balzo, along with High School Principal Ken Bonamo and Assistant Principal Laura Weiss, who will be participating in a robust and exciting educational report
052tonight. So I'm looking forward to that. And just to acknowledge some upcoming dates, as is our tradition, tomorrow, April 14th, Yamashoa the internationally recognized date for Holocaust Remembrance Day marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising April 22nd is Earth Day and May 1st is Buddhist festival Vesak celebrating the birth enlightenment and death of the Buddha and with that I turn it back to you thank you Jim okay thank you Drew board member reports I think you have one thank you Jim I have two On Friday, March 27th, I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the outdoor learning space at Edgewood. Members of district administration, including facilities leaders and past PTA presidents, were present. We learned about the evolution and significance of the new outdoor space from Principal Annette Keene, as well as the students who
053spoke so eloquently about the Edgewood student experience. The outdoor learning space was connected to Edgewood's new profile of a learner, WINGS. WINGS stands for... Wonder, independence, neighborly gratitude and success. The learning space set in the natural world beyond the classroom exemplifies a space where Edgewood students can wonder, collaborate and experience joy in learning. Under the leadership of Miss Jen Justino, the Edgewood choir sang several songs including an energetic rendition of the Edgewood school song. We were also joined by the Edgewood mascot, the eagle, Eddie. Congratulations to the Edgewood community, wishing you many years of joy in learning in this new space. My second announcement on Wednesday this Wednesday, April 15th at 7 p.m PT Council is hosting a general meeting as well as a panel on puberty education at Scarsdale Middle School in the auditorium
054panelists include Edgar McIntosh assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and assessment Devin Hoover phys ed teacher Eileen Alexander-Gohlenbach, pediatrician. Prior to the program, there will be a brief PTC business meeting from 7 to 7.15. Drew and Andrew and board members will be present to speak about the bond and budget. If you have any questions, they may be submitted in advance through a Google form. The event will not be recorded. I will be there and look forward to seeing many of you on Wednesday evening. Thank you. Thank you, Leah. I appreciate that. Any other board members have any reports? I don't believe so. Great. So we can turn it over to the student members. Thank you. Thank you. So first off, we hope you all had a great spring break. Tomorrow during community lunch in the Little
055Theater, Lucy and I will be leading a capital bond project information session for high school students. During this session, we plan to highlight what a bond project is, how the scope was determined for ours, and what changes will be happening to each school. We hope to cultivate a lot of excitement for the bond within the student body, as well as encouraging eligible seniors to cast their vote on May 19th. In that same vein, we were able to collaborate with High School Social Studies Department Chair Jennifer Maxwell this past week, who helped notify senior social studies teachers to lead voter registration initiatives in classes, as well as notifying students about tomorrow's information session. We've also been advertising the session by using posters, social media, as well as the Maroon News show every Thursday. This Thursday, we
056have a high school government house meeting. At this meeting, topics such as rolling an open gradebook along with artificial intelligence will be discussed. We look forward to sharing more about it at the next Port of Ed meeting. And this week is also the spirit week in the high school. Today was pajama day, and it was great to see how many students showed up ready to nap. We look forward to the spring pep rally on Friday, and as always, go Raiders. Thank you very much. And with that, we have cabinet updates. Turning it back over to Drew. And I'll turn it right over to Andrew with two updates. So just two quick updates. For anyone who's entered the high school campus from the Wayside Lane side of the campus, you'll see that we are well underway
057on our high school practice field. renovation project that's happening adjacent to the gym and across from Butler Field. The site where contractor DeRosa Sports Construction has prepared the grade level is installing soon some of the underground drainage and retention stormwater retention equipment that needs to go in place there and we are on track for our athletic turf installation contractor to begin their work on or about May 18th so that we can have the bulk of the construction work completed in advance of the high school graduation. So we appreciate everyone's patience and kind of cooperation as we've tried to slip this in before the summer period and try to get these contractors who are very well. regarded in and out quickly for us in a cost effective way. So thank you for the high school staff
058and students for their patience with us and accommodations. I also want to give an update on the food service. committees work this year I mentioned several times this year at the board table that the food service committee would dedicate their time this year to analyzing the National School Lunch Program and as an extension the universal free meals that would come along with that from the New York State Education Department so the food service committee has which is made up of administrators from from all buildings or all levels excuse me PTA representation from all buildings the food service Director Tara Cook, our food service consultant at H&B Consultants, and members of the food service. provider, Chartwells, we met throughout the year to really review deeply our current program, the expectations of our community, how we developed
059the program we have, and then we investigated the requirements around the National School Lunch Program and the positives and negatives that may be associated with any of that. We also, in March, published a survey that was responded to by about 430 individuals. They gave us significant feedback on the existing program and the positives and negatives potentially of switching to the National School Lunch Program. We are going to work on a formal presentation and a kind of a report to the board that will be provided. in the next couple of weeks but there was consensus gathered after reviewing the survey results and summarizing our conversation for the year consensus doesn't mean universal agreement i'm very clear about that but we felt that the existing program has the most flexibility and gives the district the the best
060options for responding to what our community desires in the area of food service things like menu variety health requirements and dietary restrictions and allows us to experiment with things to see what students enjoy and don't enjoy and so we've We are planning for the rest of this year to take the survey results and the discussions we had and really determine how that discussion can inform some of the meals that we will be preparing for next year. So we expect that next year we will bring forward a renewal of the existing food service management contract. Tara Cook and her team will make modifications to the program that will... address any of the concerns that we're seeing, be they financial or menu-driven, and also with an idea that some of the changes that we make would hopefully
061better position us a year or two in the future at the end of this contract to make another determination if joining the National School Lunch Program at that time makes the most sense. So I really just want to say that I really appreciate the 430 people who responded to our survey, but also the members of the Food Service Committee who really dedicated eight or nine meetings this year, which is more than we've had in my time in Scarcell at this point. really getting to understand what is important to our community, what is best for our students that eat meals in our schools. And it was a very robust and passionate conversation all the way through, and I appreciate everyone's participation in that. So we'll give a more formal report and feedback to the board once
062we've completed all that work. I just have a few food service related questions. So just to clarify, the district level committee, the food service, that's an ongoing thing, right? You'll do it every year. You'll convene to discuss any ongoing potential issues related to food service. And our food service is separate from our budget, right? So that's, can you explain that a little bit? So the food service program is a self-sustaining program. Now, we have... operated that for the last several years in a positive financial position. I believe coming out of COVID or just before COVID when the transition was made to put all buildings on the food service program, there was a deficit at one point that the school annual budget did have to supplement the cafeteria fund so that it wasn't running a deficit.
063The last several years that was not the case. If the program does fall into financial, you know, concerns, the only solution we would have would be then to ask the general fund, the annual budget, to fund a transfer to fix that gap. We're not anticipating that in the near term. There's a fund balance that we're going to kind of manage just like we do our general fund balance. But there are some financial pressures. We talked this evening with the high school students. Our high school program, which often has been supplementing our cafeteria program in all of our buildings, significantly is down this year lower sales or participation there's probably a variety of reasons why that's happening including students not not staying on campus as much as they used to but it really did the food
064service program and the National School Lunch Program they're separate issues and they do not burden the general budget and so are like all of our staff in our lunch rooms those that's all paid for through the lunch or for the food service kind of separate through meal sales And it sounds like from what you said, there is an option potentially in the future if we ever wanted to opt in. It's an annual option. Is that what that is for universal school lunch? The contract with Chartwells is a five-year contract. It's one-year renewals until we get to that fifth year. And we are completing year three right now. So we've got two more renewals. At that point, we will have to go out and re-bid the contract. And to participate in the National School Lunch Program,
065we would have had to do that re-bid anyway because it's a material different change to the program we're offering. So that would have to happen at the end of that. Thank you. And then in terms of like, then say we ever did go with the Universal School Lunch, then we would have to pay for staffing out of our regular budget at that point, you think? So the work of the committee, proved that it would be very challenging at the reimbursement rates that the state would be providing to maintain our program the way it is now. That would have multiple effects. That could have reductions in food quantity or quality. That could have reductions in staffing. And it could also end up being a downward spiral where sales continue to drop, revenue does not keep pace,
066and our fixed costs are what they are. So that could cause a financial burden in the cafeteria fund. that would then translate to a burden on the general fund. But we would have to build a program that is self-sustaining under the National Food Service Program, and that was proved to be a challenge in our work with the committee this year. Does Chartwells currently have other school districts where they administer this national lunch service? They do. Not many. There are typically about three food service providers that operate in K-12 cafeteria programs. Chartwells focuses primarily on the programs that are not on the national school lunch program. It allows them to use higher quality ingredients. cost right but there are other districts that have converted and chart will stayed there and continue to operate on the national
067program one of them being my own prior district in Mount Pleasant okay I guess with that we can move on to public comment and I will begin by reading the preamble to public comment members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district related items or other non-personnel related matters during two separate public comment periods. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, please mute the live stream voice, turn on your camera, and then unmute yourself. Speakers will be asked to conclude their remarks after four minutes and will be given a verbal cue at the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board
068via email at boardofed at scarsdaleschools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. Response to public comment will take place after the first and second public comment periods. Does anyone in the audience wish to make a public comment at this time? Hi, my name is Sophia Khan. I live at 54 Butler Road. Good evening, members of the Board of Education. My name is Sophia Khan, and I'm a member of the Class of 2026 at Scarsdale High School. I'm here to address the incident at Jabberfest and the administration's response to it, and with an emphasis on what this means going forward.
069During that event, a student used a school performance, an event intended to showcase student talent, as a platform for a political message. In that moment, what was meant to be a performance became something else, and many students in the audience felt unable to disengage from it. The comment was about a hot geopolitical issue involving Israel and Palestine. For many students, particularly Jewish and Israeli students, the experience was not abstract. It felt personal, emotionally charged, and isolating. A school-sponsored event became a space where some students felt uncomfortable and caught off guard. What concerns me most is not only what happened in that moment, but what it signals moving forward. This is not an isolated concern. It reflects a pattern that students have been noticing over time and it raises questions about how similar situations will be
070handled and prevented in the future. I have raised these concerns directly. The student impact, the need for clear expectations, and the importance of appropriate spaces for sensitive conversations. In response, I received an explanation focused narrowly on procedure and contract enforcement. While that addressed policy mechanics, it did not provide clarity on how similar situations will be prevented or how student impact is weighed in real time. Students are being held to expectations that are not clearly defined in advance and not fully explained afterwards. I signed the same performance contract before the event and I still do not understand what specific actions constitute a violation or how those determinations are made. That uncertainty is exactly what needs to be addressed going forward. As I reflect on this, I see a pattern forming and I am concerned about what
071it means for future school events, including our graduation. I do not want any student to walk into graduation or other milestone moments feeling the same sense of discomfort, division, or uncertainty that some students experienced at Jabberfest. That is why clarity matters. Clear expectations, consistent enforcement, and proactive communication are necessary to ensure that school events remain inclusive and respectful for everyone. I am not asking the school to take a position on international politics. I'm asking for systems that prevent confusion, reduce harm, and ensure that future events are handled with transparency and care. Right now, students are not only looking for rules. They're looking for reassurance about what the future will feel like. And many of us do not feel that we have it yet. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Others wishing to make a
072public comment, please come forward. My name is Scarlett Dorr. I live at 7 Lenox Place. Good evening members of the Board of Education. My name is Scarlett Doerr and I'm a senior at Scarsdale High School. I'm here to speak about what happened at Jabberfest two weeks ago and why it matters. But I want to be clear from the start. This is not the first time students have raised concerns about anti-Semitism in our school community. Over the past several years, these concerns have been brought forward, discussed, and acknowledged. And yet, here we are again. At Jabberfest, a school-sponsored event, the student took the microphone and called for an arms embargo on Israel, accused Israel of genocide, and led chants of stop the bombing and free the people of Palestine. This did not happen in a classroom
073discussion. It did not happen in a structured debate where students are free to go as they wish. It happened during a performance in a setting where students were expected to be free to go. to be present and did not have the ability to engage or leave. That matters. Because when messaging like this is delivered in a school-controlled environment, it is no longer just speech. It becomes something imposed on the audience. And for many students, particularly Jewish and Israeli students, it was experienced as deeply personal and deeply uncomfortable. So I want to address directly why this is anti-Semitic. Calling for an arms embargo on Israel, in this context, is not a neutral policy position. It is a call to strip the only Jewish state of its ability to defend itself against groups like Hamas and Hezbollah,
074which have openly called for its destruction. When that message is delivered in a school setting, it does not land as abstract policy. It lands as something much more personal. It tells Jewish and Israeli students that the safety of a country tied to their identity should be put at risk. Additionally, false accusations of genocide in this context are not being used as part of a nuanced discussion. They are being used as inflammatory rhetoric, rhetoric that isolates and shuts down meaningful conversation. Together, this creates a message that many Jewish students experience as targeting and exclusionary, and that is why it is anti-Semitic. because of meaning and impact. The response to this incident has focused primarily on a violation of performance contract, but this cannot be treated as just a procedural issue, because when something with clear impact
075is reduced to a technical violation, we avoid addressing what actually happened. This was planned, it was delivered in full, and it was allowed to happen in a school setting. So this raises a serious question. If similar instances can happen at a play in the middle school, at Jabberfest, What will happen at graduation? Graduation is meant to be a moment that brings the entire community together. But right now, students like me are asking, will that space be protected? Will there be clear guidelines? Will there be real-time enforcement? Because without those things, these situations do not just happen once. They repeat, and over time they become normalized. This is not about limiting discussion. It is about ensuring that school spaces are structured in a way that respects all students and prevents harm. Students deserve clarity, students deserve
076consistency, and students deserve to feel safe in their own school environment. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Others wish to make public comment at this time? I'm Gabriel Green. My address is 24 Stonehouse, Scarsdale. Dear members of the Board of Education, my name is Gabriel Green. I'm a senior at Scarsdale High School. I want to start by acknowledging what tonight is. Tonight is Yom HaShoah. Holocaust Remembrance Day. And I find it almost impossible to believe that on this night of all nights, I am standing here in America, in Scarsdale, New York, having this conversation. This is not a complaint. This is a wake-up call. In the 1930s in Europe, the word was Judenfrei. It means Jew-free, unoccupied by Jews. It was not only a slogan, it was a policy. And it did not begin with the
077gas chambers. It began with words, with rhetoric that was allowed to spread, normalize, and go unanswered until it became something far, far worse. I'm not standing here to tell you that Skarsgård is Nazi Germany. I'm standing here telling you all something more uncomfortable than that. Every generation that watched hatred normalize told themselves it couldn't happen again. This did not occur only in Europe. In 1935, my great-grandparents fled Iraq to the British Mandate to escape persecution, and even there, they were not safe. Today, April 13, 1948, exactly 78 years ago, today, my great-aunt was murdered alongside 78 other Jews in Jerusalem by those who did not want them to be there. Look around at Jewish life in America today. Every synagogue has a security guard. Every Jewish community center runs active shooter drills. Every major Jewish
078institution has police presence outside of its door. This is not paranoia. That is the present reality of being Jewish in our country today. We have seen what happens when this rhetoric goes unanswered and unchecked. The shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. The attack at the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the attack on Jews in Boulder, Colorado, the terrorist attack at a preschool in West Bloomingfield, Michigan. These are not distant tragedies. They are a direct result of hatred that was allowed to build word by word, chant by chant, until someone decided to act on it. This is how it starts, not with violence, but with words that go unanswered in places that should know better. Which brings me to Jabberfest and the other anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in our district. Just before spring break, at
079a school-sponsored event, in front of a captive audience not free to leave, a student took the microphone and called for an arms embargo on Israel, declared Israel is committing genocide, and called to free the people of Palestine. This was a planned and well-rehearsed idea. Jabberfest requires content to be submitted in advance. The student knew exactly what they were doing and they were not removed from the stage. I want to be clear about what that rhetoric actually means. Free Palestine as chanted in that room in that context is not a call for peace. It is a call for a Jewish free Palestine, not just in Israel. The same people using that language, carrying those symbols, do not want Jews in Israel. They do not want Jews anywhere. My great-grandparents and many other Arab Jews heard a
080version of that message across the Middle East and North Africa, from Baghdad to Tripoli and from Damascus to Cairo. Six million Jews heard it in Europe. We cannot ignore this rhetoric. And when that message is delivered at a Scarsdale High School event, planned and executed in full, all 32 seconds, and then, as a result of complaints, met with a response that avoided calling it out for what it actually is, blatant anti-Semitism, we have a problem. This is not just a procedural problem, it is a moral one. I was grateful to meet with Dr. Patrick last Monday to discuss guidelines, and I want to be constructive. Therefore, and after much thought, I ask that these guidelines address the following. Real-time enforcement. Guidelines are meaningless if no one acts on them in the moment. Faculty must know
081not just be encouraged, but to be required to intervene regardless of their personal views. An opinion on any type of hate, discrimination, or bias cannot determine whether a student is protected from targeted rhetoric at a mandatory school event, whether it be Jabberfest or any event. Real consequences. Students need to know that this behavior carries actual repercussions. Right now, the signal being sent is that you can plan a statement like this, deliver it in full, and just walk off that stage. That signal is quite dangerous. graduation. If Jabberfest, an internal smaller school managed event, could not stop this, proper protocols should be in place for this June. Graduation is public. It is symbolic. It is attended by this entire community, including members of this board. I'm raising this in April because there's still some time to
082get it right. I'm thankful to Dr. Patrick for agreeing to share these guidelines with me after they are being drafted and before they are published. I'm not asking this Board of Education to take a political position. I'm not asking anyone to restrict free speech. I'm asking for something that should be quite simple. That a school-sponsored event, that they have clear standards, that those standards are enforced in real time, and that when they are violated in ways that harm students, the school has the courage to say so, clearly, without hedging, without reducing it to a contract dispute. Tonight is Yom HaShoah. We light candles to remember what happens when hatred is normalized. Slowly, gradually, and then all at once. I'm a Jewish student here at Skarsgård High School, and I am asking this board not to
083let our school surrender to the normalization of anti-Semitism or any type of hate. Thank you very much. Thank you. Are there others who wish to make public comment at this time? Good evening. My name is Mae Bansal, and I'm here regarding an email from Principal Bonamo that was sent to SHS students the Friday before spring break. This is not the first time that I've felt compelled to appear before the board. And once again, I feel this board has failed to accomplish its most important responsibility, which is protecting and providing for its students. This email announced to the school that during the annual Jabberfest performances, a student had spoken out about the United States' involvement in the bombing of civilians in Iran, Lebanon, the genocide in Gaza, and the continued occupation of Palestinian land. While I
084understand the school was obligated to prevent controversial speech during this performance, Principal Bonamo's email went far beyond the school's obligations and has fueled a dangerous and repressive environment for students. The email platformed the views of parents who believe that the students' criticism of world governments and support for the Palestinian self-determination were somehow anti-Semitic. The student did not mention Judaism or the Jewish people whatsoever in his speech, nor did he implicate any prejudice towards them. By platforming the view that the student's speech was anti-Semitic, the school has essentially given legitimacy to the view that criticism of the US government and the state of Israel is somehow anti-Semitic. It has also supported this idea that the right of Palestinians to self-determination and self-government somehow attacks Jewish identity. Regardless of whether you agree or not with the arguments
085that the student makes, you have to agree that there is not a hint of prejudice contained within them, and it is utterly defamatory for the school to support any statement to the contrary. Statements like these serve to stifle criticism of governments, criticism which is the foundation of a democratic society. Labeling discussion of the right of independence and self-determination for any people as hateful is to deny the basic human rights outlined and recognized by the UN since 1948, rights that Americans and men and women of all nations have fought and died for. If these positions are hateful and prejudicial, then I'm afraid we must condemn a whole lot of the historical figures we idealize. It's time to tear down our posters of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, MLK, Angela Davis, all these posters that line our English
086and history classrooms, because clearly, if they supported the right of Palestinians to self-determination, they must be a rotten anti-Semitic lot. Regardless of whether you agree with these positions, it's unacceptable to label someone as hateful just because you disagree with them. This email has effectively libeled a student in front of the entire student body. It has labeled a somewhat controversial decision as an attack on the Jewish population of this town. As an administration, your job is to protect students from defamatory attacks like these, not shout them out over a megaphone for the entire student body to hear. By platforming these ideas, the principal has created an environment where students will be afraid to speak out in favor of causes that matter to them, for fear of being ostracized by a community and a school administration that
087will magnify attacks on them rather than protecting them. I plead with all of you to do better. Work to make an environment that supports healthy discourse rather than branding all those who disagree with you as hateful. Making a statement that is the consensus of the UN, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, should not be labeled as anti-Semitic. It is, although a controversial decision, a well-held one. I plead with all of you, once again, to make a better environment. And at the very least, don't libel your students in an email to the entire school. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who wishes to make a public comment at this time? Okay, can we go to the Zoom audience? There's
088one attendee on Zoom, but their hand is not raised. Okay, just very quickly, if you are in Zoom and you wish to speak, you must raise your hand so that we can promote you. If not, that's fine. Just wanted to give you that heads up. All right, with that, we will close this session of public comment and move on to follow-up to public comment. I just want to thank our students for coming out and speaking passionately about issues they care about and we need to continue you know the the dialogue in our school communities and I appreciate that very much thank you With that we're moving on to written communications that's Colleen Thank you Jim Please note that the Board of Education email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk Open meetings law
089requires all board deliberations that may lead to action or policy change to occur in public. Therefore, your written communication and emails will be reported at an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience. A formal response requires that you include your full name, address, and if you are writing on behalf of an organization or in the communication. More detailed information regarding written communications received by the Board of Education may be found in today's meeting agenda located in Board Docs on the Scarsdale Schools District website. Since our last meeting, we have received 13 emails on district matters and six emails on board matters meeting board highlights and invitations. Okay, thank you, Colleen. And we will move on to the consent agenda. And I will read the preamble to the consent agenda.
090The board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings. A consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education into a single motion. The consent agenda is prepared by the superintendent of schools in consultation with the president and or the vice president of the board. Items are selected for the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent believe there is no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item on the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove that item from the consent agenda merely by requesting same at
091the meeting. The exempted item then moves to the regular agenda. However, all non-exempted items will be moved, seconded, and voted upon without discussion in order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine items of the business of the school district and with that we will move on to the consent agenda and that is susie thank you jim tonight's consent agenda has 10 items 11.01 the minutes from the budget forum business meeting march 23rd 2026 11.02 personnel certified 11.03 personnel non-certified 11.04, the claims audit report, March 2026. 11.05, the internal auditor's report, the risk assessment update. 11.06, election inspectors and assistant clerks, budget vote and board elections, May 19th, 2026. 11.07, printing of ballots, the annual district meeting, May 19th, 2026. 11.08. Putnam Northern Westchester both sees cooperative bid 11.09 the approval of the inter-municipal agreement
092and 11.10 to accept the consent agenda I move that the board accept the consent agenda as presented Thank You Susie is there a second for that Thank You Leah any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye the motion carries And we are now on to information items, section 12. The first one is the Treasurer's Report. the reports you see tonight are for the month of february tax receipts include 57 million from the town of scarsdale and 2.3 million from mamaroneck sales tax allocation from westchester county for the fourth quarter of 2025 which was an amount of 547 000. at the end of the month about 94.8 percent of the tax levy has been collected and remitted to the district Collections will continue to be remitted through the month of March and then will
093be made whole in April. state and federal aid payments for the month include the monthly VLT the video lottery terminal aid of 25 25 thousand a small portion of 24 25 ESY aid the extended school year aid from for six thousand two hundred five dollars and we also received 24 25 CRP aid which represents a tuition reimbursement for a student that's enrolled in a children's residential program total interest earnings for the month were approximately 249,000 which hit a peak interest rate of about 3.57% any questions thank you okay can we move on to the education report section 1202 I don't think I need to give any preamble to it I turn over to Edgar who will kick us off Education report is in three parts, all related to the evolution of the work we're doing
094in Scarsdale and across all three levels, elementary, middle, and high school. I'll start off discussing an elementary math parent webinar that was held on March 24th and co-facilitated by Dr. Patrick and our elementary math coordinators, Carrie Orgera and Vivian Robert. and focused on answering community questions about the tools we use to teach elementary math in the district and our choice to use the published Reveal Math resources in our instruction. I'll review the themes of the questions during the presentation as well as questions that we ran out of time for and the answers to those questions. Afterwards, I'll invite Scarsdale Middle School English Department Chair Dennis DeBasso to join us and discuss how she and her colleagues are empowering students in building communication skills through SMS voices. And she's got clips of students that we're going
095to start so it's fully buffered by the time she gets up here. Finally, I'll bring up High School Principal Ken Bonamo and High School Assistant Principal Laura Weiss. to share some exciting updates to various high school initiatives. So, starting with the elementary school webinar, you'll see the broader areas where families express questions about process, philosophy, and access to resources. I do have to say that I had a visit from a parent after the webinar who gave me advice about future presentations. He said, be direct and succinct. He also actually said, be more blunt. So, here's my attempt to engage his critical feedback. For those who would like more words and links and nuance, I'll guide them to the webinar and frequently asked questions through our website on the next slide. So, there were questions about
096curriculum selection and pacing. People wondered about why we transitioned from Singapore math. We explained our move from the previous Singapore slash primary math program was a shift towards the next generation math standards. While the previous program relied heavily on the bar model, our current approach integrates a wider array of tools like open number lines and arrays to build a more robust conceptual foundation. People also wondered why we follow state standards at all. Research here is clear. A standards-based curriculum provides the best long-term outcomes. These standards ensure students develop the technical proficiency required for traditional testing alongside the critical thinking necessary for advanced high school mathematics. The standards are built from the best and most recent research in the era of education, mathematical education, and alignment is not optional. Why reveal, people asked. Our current resource,
097Reveal, was chosen after a rigorous pilot involving 42 Scarsdale educators who evaluated five different programs. Reveal stood out for its rigor and usability. While we reviewed the updated version of primary math, the committee reached a consensus that Reveal provided the strongest foundation for our specific Scarsdale-led enhancements. People asked whether questions, whether, they asked whether the pace is slower than peer districts. We follow the same state standards and we prioritize depth over coverage. As noted by a recent research article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, moving deep rather than fast creates a more resilient mathematical foundation, particularly for advanced learners. And the link to that is in the resource section that I'll share. People asked how we review. curriculum and the answer is that while large-scale curriculum review happens every eight to ten years curriculum
098work in Scarsdale is iterative we are entering year five with reveal and while a formal review will begin in a few years we refine our pacing and materials annually based on teacher and student student performance Under the category of instructional philosophy, people had questions, some focused on our emphasis on multiple strategies. We teach multiple strategies because we seek procedural fluency, the ability to be efficient, flexible, and accurate. When students have a variety of strategies, they learn to analyze a number first rather than jumping into a memorized procedure on autopilot. To be clear and to be blunt, basic math facts are essential and expected. Fact automaticity reduces cognitive load. However, we do not treat facts as isolated memorization. We teach them through the lens of number relationships, which is the most reliable path to deep learning.
099There were questions about an emphasis on communication, especially explaining thinking. Modern mathematics requires students to construct viable arguments. In the professional world, doing math is rarely just a calculation. It is the ability to identify the right tool for a problem and explain that choice to stakeholders. Another category related to support for diverse learners. We recognize that math can at times be wordy. Extracting math from language is a core requirement of state and national assessments. For students with language-based learning disabilities, we use small group instruction and low floor, high ceiling tasks. This means that math is accessible to everyone, even if they're still working on their reading. We've also introduced additional tools such as Number Worlds to support students. As for advanced students who require more, enrichment is integrated through what we call application stations. These
100feature rich tasks curated from high-level resources like Math for Love. We continually add these extension opportunities to our pacing calendars to ensure every student is appropriately stretched. In both these areas, we spend time every summer through program improvement, refining our materials to make them clearer, more accessible, and appropriately challenging. We also continue to urge families to reach out directly to their child's teacher to discuss specific struggles. The final category relates to home support and performance. People wondered about the role of tutoring and our continued standardized success and recommend surveying our parents on tutoring. We know that tutoring is common among all high resource and performance areas and has been. An opt-in survey of parents choosing outside support would suffer from participation bias, lack of comparison set, and not provide us with either reliable or helpful
101information. Our math program is designed to be comprehensive on its own. We often caution that outside tutoring or for-profit organizations can sometimes focus on shortcuts and can inadvertently hinder a student, sometimes requiring them to unlearn habits to succeed in higher-level conceptual math. We heard some people report that their child struggles with homework. We encourage parents to embrace areas of progressive productive struggle. If your child is stuck, ask them to justify their thinking. If they remain stuck, a quick note to the teacher is more valuable to us than a corrected answer, as it provides us with the data we need to support them the next day. People ask how we know the program is working or how our math education is working. The data That says that it is in a variety of ways through standardized
102internal monitoring monitoring We use renaissance star and state test scores remain at high levels administrators also see it and hear it in classrooms during informal and formal Observations and the evidence is even showing up and teachers digital portfolios as they're sharing their work During a recent conversation, a group of colleagues at the middle school report that students are arriving with a more sophisticated use of mathematical language and a stronger number sense than in previous years. Importantly, we are measuring success by our students' mathematical perseverance, confidence, flexibility, knowledge, and skill. Our goal is to graduate thinkers who don't just do school well, but who can confidently approach novel, unfamiliar problems in future scholarship and life. For parents looking for resources, we have added a quick link to our elementary math website under the popular links section
103in the district homepage. Honestly, some of the critical feedback that we got was well deserved. People said that it was hard to find some of the resources, so we've actually created a shortcut. It used to be, it still can be if you'd like to do it this way, four clicks to get to the parent resources. If you go to the curriculum areas, you can continue to drill down until you get to the parent resources. But now, if you look on the upper right hand side, there's an area that says popular links. If you hit that, we have directed a link right to the parent resources in math. And also if you got Drew's most recent Friday Five, I think it was the fourth item, third or fourth item down, there is a direct link there
104as well. I want to thank all the community members who attended the webinar, who have been asking difficult and important questions. I also want to thank... members who attended from the Board of Education, all the elementary administrators, and several of our teachers who are greatly invested in the success of all our students. I will take questions about the webinar now, and then perhaps we can queue up the video so it's fully buffered. You're teaching me something technological here. Oh, wait, wait. I didn't see that coming. What technical thing? So, Denise, would you like to come up and tell us, or actually, did people have any questions? I'm sorry. Was I blunt enough? I didn't mean to be blunt. I meant to be concise. So in light of that, Edgar, I think you might have said
105this when you said alignment is not optional, but just to pull it out a little more. As a public school, are we required to choose a program that falls within the state standards? Yeah, we are. We are required. But I also think that this isn't just about compliance. It is built on the newest and best thinking in educational research about how kids learn. we're doing it because it is good for our students it's also not optional and nobody in the modern publishing world is putting out any programs or resources wide scale that aren't in alignment thank you that make sense and in terms of the wordy the wordy problems like the language heaviness I know I've kind of asked you this in different ways before, but when you were evaluating programs, when the teachers were
106evaluating, all the programs, I believe you said that fell within the standards, had a similar feel about them? They did. They had the elements because one of the mathematical practice standards is really about being able to pull the math out of the language. So there is an uptick in every single one in the wordiness of it. And so that's both something that's a component that we look for, but also one that when we're thinking about meeting the needs of all of our learners, we've gone on and made some adaptations. Some seem like wordy problems that don't have a purpose, but if you drill a little bit deeper, then there's actually a method to the wording of it. Thanks, and I know and I appreciate the comment that you made about the middle school hearing the
107feedback that the students had a stronger use of mathematical language. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit, you know, briefly about what is the relationship between like the fifth grade teachers and the middle school math teachers in terms of? understanding the transition or well it's interesting because in the last few years we've we've had meetings and some of the meetings have been focused on really what RIVIA looks like some of the ways that it's aligned with the standards and what's important to note is that the mathematical standards at the middle school are an extension and are aligned with what we're doing at the at the elementary school What's been really exciting is that you've heard about performance tasks. Some of the exciting work that happened over the summer is a group of
108sixth grade teachers got together and worked on the development of a performance task that really in many ways leaned into these mathematical practices. The task wasn't something that could be just memorized and then wrote Lee. put back they had to do some collaborations and thinking and that gave the sixth grade teachers an opportunity to look at those skills as they or demonstrate some of these skills as they're developing and as they're emphasized in these standards so the conversation is ongoing and will continue as it spirals up the grades And just a question about resources. I know like Jeannie has been looking at our apps and we're being careful about our app subscriptions and things like that. Are all the resources that we push forth easily accessible when children are at home with their families if
109they want to test things out? They should be. I mean, if there are any glitches in the ones that we're putting out, that can be a communication. back to the teacher. But one thing I think is important to point out is that what we've done in the resource page for parents is there are lots of games and activities. online things that you can choose to do and it's optional and some of them are absolutely free and some of them actually take you a place where some of them are free and some of them have a paywall attached to them. But if they're up there, they're ones that actually have an alignment with the standards. They're not just drill and kill rote games like that. Thank you. Thank you, Edgar. My favorite night, education report. I
110had the pleasure of doing the webinar and going to the coffee, and I've learned so much about elementary school math. I think the coffee was really, really well done, and I was able to see the response the district has had to the feedback and the new resources that you guys have been using to work on fluency, and so I appreciate that, and I hope that the community is able to somehow see that as well. And now having high school and older students, I can appreciate the skill set of the use of mathematical language and the complex reasoning around it that I think will benefit the kids as they get older. So I was happy to hear the sixth grade team reporting that. And I hope that our elementary school parents who are all listening at
111home, I'm sure, can get that feedback as well. I just wanted to remind, I couldn't remember the timing, but I know one of the things that we were doing this year was the STAR assessments. Yes. And are those, when do those start going home for parents to see their students' growth when it comes to math? Thank you for asking that. They are going to be going home in June. Okay. And I'll be... giving some context to that before it goes home part of what we did at the superintendents conference today is the elementary teachers all got together we did some norming and we did some work on the star report they have been giving it right in June it is going to be a snapshot of the June report going forward after that it's going
112to be it's going to be it's going to show kind of a year's worth so people will see it at the beginning and at the middle at the end so the goal is for us to do well the reality will be there will be a communication that will go out to all the families that will say this is what you should expect. But importantly, I've been working with a committee of teachers and administrators to make sure that it's as clear as possible. So when they get this score, they have all the information and the context that they need so it doesn't just feel like. It is at one data point, but we want to make sure that there's a depth of understanding so it doesn't create unnecessary anxiety. Right, the goal being a resource for
113them to see how their students are doing. Yes. So this is something that the parents can use to just help continue to inform them. We talk about the star, the Renaissance star, as we use it in ELA and math. This creates another point of transparency and communication for parents. There's a curiosity about that. It is something that has in the past been shared selectively as asked. It's not something that we've hidden. But what we're doing going forward is just as part of our process, part of our structure, we're making it available, we're sending it out so that everybody has that access to it. Right. I mean, it's proactively communicating data about their own child, which I think we all can appreciate. So I appreciate the efforts of your team on doing that as well. It's
114been a real collaboration with the STA. We've talked about ways that we can look at communication and look at ways of making it structured, transparent, and a real partnership with the parents. that so thank you and good job being direct more direct I'm working on it thank you oh yes thank you for the update and the discussion it's really helpful so I would like to ask about this very significant feedback about like sort of the perceived need for outside tutoring with all the I know we've been implementing these program improvements and professional developments for some time now so with this do do you envision maybe some some trend of like like a reducing trend in in the sort of again I understand it's a perception but it still seems to be fairly significant, you know,
115among the feedback. Yeah, it is not unusual in my cohort, my colleagues in other districts that are similar. report that tutoring is something that is certainly happening a lot. I do think that people have their children tutored for a variety of different reasons. And I can't really predict. I think that the message... That we want to or I know the message we want to get out there is that this is a comprehensive program That there are some math clubs and that students enjoy attending they they like and I'm not discouraging that I am however with Colleagues in the district. I just cautioning that some of the programs out there really emphasize speed of coverage and teaching into the algorithm very, very quickly and some tricks around memorization that we are finding in our classroom that
116we're having to do a little bit of undoing, slowing down, pulling back. And we can tell because they'll get to the right answer, but they won't understand how they got there. and they won't know why the trick works. So I would encourage people to not feel like they need to do this because we do have a comprehensive program, but I can't predict what the reaction is going to be. Yes, I think during some of the conversations, we make the distinction between students who have the aptitude and interest to go for competition math. That's a smaller population, but for the cohort of students who just want to learn well and sort of move up with the curriculum, I think... You know many members of the community hopes that with the improvements in the program they will
117find they'll have like good outcomes right with without much like additional tutoring so just like a quick thought in Like higher elementary grades, like what's the amount of homework, like the range of math homework? Just sort of as a quick. The range of math homework. I'm going to have to get back to you on that. It's all right. To be honest with you. It's a random thought. Yeah. Sorry, I know we've spent a lot of time on this. I just wanted to thank you. I also appreciated the coffee from a couple months ago. It makes so much sense to me, you know, now that we are, you know, looking at AI and everything that, like, straight computation as a skill is not going to get you anywhere in just a few years from now, right?
118Of course, number fluency is, you know, good, but in terms of... Looking at the future, I think emphasizing critical thinking skills, how to approach a problem from different ways, I think will be what is selected out in the future for our math students. And I appreciate that that's the approach we're taking in elementary school. Also, people ask, what is the point of word problems? That's not real math. All of science. Yeah. Are word problems, right? Like, you know, and I think in elementary school it might be phrased as like, you know, Sue has, you know, X baskets and, you know, puppies and whatever. Right, sure. When you get to the higher levels, you know, you're talking about the velocity of a rocket ship going to the moon, you know, like, or whatever. Those are word
119problems. And I think learning that language, the earlier the better, you know. Yeah. And setting you up for that. Thank you. And thank you all for those people in the community and also for those of you who were able to attend the coffees because as dynamic as we try to make our webinars, they are a series of slides. And I think that if we're going to lean into the research around education, you learn more by doing. So the people who came to the coffee and actually saw the demonstration, got to see the materials. That can be a very powerful experience. So we will look for those opportunities in the future to have more coffees and invite people in so that they can experience it firsthand. Thank you. Yeah, that was very powerful to be able
120to talk to our teachers there. Well, just a comment to add off to Ms. Hahn's point. Like, what I've seen that has helped me the most when I think about how my elementary math education has impacted the high school, I definitely do agree with the fact about this idea of phrasing and application of the real world. Like when I think about my calculus class this year, I think one of the most valuable components is definitely that, like you were saying, there's a constant urge to prove everything, right? You don't want to, like if you get a theorem, you don't want to just take it at the teacher's word. You want to prove it and see how it's identified yourself. And I think, one, the urge to want to use your own deductive reasoning, but also
121the ability to articulate mathematical concepts in a professional and rigorous way, I think is something that is so valuable. And to the point of real world application, like I'm in chemistry right now and... if I didn't have the ability to extract this numerical information from dense texts or as is very apparent on standardized testing like the AP exams, I definitely think that not only will it help in the inter-school system as students advance to middle school and high school, but definitely the real world is more words than numbers. So yeah. Great. Thank you. That is a perfect transition unless there's any other questions. Because the next, it is actually about meaningful, authentic communication. Share. I'm Denise DelBalzo I teach seventh grade English and I am the English department chair we're gonna save that for the
122end I just wanted to make sure that it was yeah we want everybody's lips to match the story that they're telling So I'm here to talk to you about SMS Voices, which took place just before spring break. It's the culmination of the storytelling unit that happens in all English classes in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade now at the middle school. And because I'm the kind of teacher who doesn't assign anything without first doing it herself, I'm going to start by telling you a story. I was not a particularly athletic child, and the physical activity that I hated above all else was running. I got a cramp. I was slow. I was not good on the playground. I was the last person picked for anything that required speed. And so no one was more surprised than
123I was when I found myself in my late 20s starting to run as a form of exercise. And I started small, and I started slow. But over time, I built up some stamina. I was living in the city at the time. I joined New York Road Runners. I started participating in races, first a 5K, then a 4-miler, then a 10K. And then one day I met a woman who was another mom at the daycare where my children were in daycare, and we became running partners. We'd meet in the park at 5 in the morning in pitch-black darkness, and we'd run the loop and come home and wake up our kids and get everybody out the door for the day. And her name is Marita, and she was a distance runner. And because of her, I
124really built up my stamina. And next thing I knew, I was registered for my first New York City Marathon. So the thing that most people ask when you are training for a marathon is, what do you want to finish it in? What's your time going to be? And they ask you to make this big prediction. And, you know, I knew my past, and I knew where I'd come from. And so I just gave the safest answer. I would always just say, I just want to finish. But that was a lie. Because what I really wanted was to run in a time that would qualify me for the Boston Marathon. And for my age at the time, that meant I had to run that thing in three hours and 45 minutes. But again, I knew my
125own history, and I really did just want to finish, but I wanted this other thing too. So the day of the race was beautiful weather. Marita and I line up at the starting. point. We run over the Verrazano Bridge. We head into Brooklyn. We're running through all of these neighborhoods I've never been in before in my life. We're seeing all kinds of people out cheering for you. It's really a beautiful experience. We get into Queens and we head on to the 59th Street Bridge. Here is where the race really is different than any other part because you're running on the lower level of the bridge. You've got the upper level above you. It's kind of quiet. There are no spectators. There's no other sound other than the... the sound of hundreds of runners breathing in
126and breathing out and thousands of feet pounding on the ground. And as we make this turn onto the bridge, all of these people converge at once and I lose Marita. Now, she had been kind of my pacemaker because she had run this thing before and she had a pretty good time and I had just thought, well, if I can just keep up with her, I'll be in good shape. And then I lost her. And I tried calling to her a little bit, but I didn't know if she was ahead of me, I didn't know if she was behind me, and I had no other choice but to just keep going. So I come off the bridge, I go up First Avenue, I get into the Bronx, and I'm just a little delirious at that point
127because nobody wants to be in the Bronx when you're trying to finish a marathon that ends in Manhattan. I get back onto Fifth Avenue, and at this point the sun is beating down on me. My legs are really tired, questioning all my life choices. My husband jumps in for a couple of blocks and runs with me and then sends me on my way. And I turn into the park and I realize I am going to do this thing. I am going to finish the thing that I wanted. I just wanted to finish. I'm going to do it. And there's some conventional wisdom around goal setting. And it's this. It's that if you have a big goal, you should start by naming it. If you name it, then you're holding yourself accountable for it. And if
128you name it, then the people around you can be a voice of support or a voice of advice. But I never named that goal that I really had. Because I know that of all the voices in the world, for better and for worse, the voice that is always the loudest to me is the one inside my own head. And on that day, that voice got me over the finish line in 3.44.26. You just heard a very small moment from my life over two decades ago But I was introspective about it, and I made meaning Of it and that's exactly what we ask our students to do in this storytelling unit We ask them to mind their lives and their lives are little lives They've only been alive for 11 or 12 or 13 years, but
129we ask them to mind their lives for their their stories for what are the moments that with a little introspection and a little storytelling craft become like the fabric of their lives and help them see each other and relate to one another. We have partnered with The Moth, which is a storytelling organization that is out of New York City. And The Moth has a curriculum for high school students. They had nothing for middle school students. And so we reached out to them about four years ago. and they did some staff development with us. Excuse me, I just need a little water. They came and they worked with the entire English department and they shared their materials with us and then we kind of made it our own. So we help our students understand that a
130good story starts with life as it was and then one day something happens to kind of change things a little bit. That there are stakes involved and they don't have to be super high stakes but it has to matter to you as the storyteller because if it matters to you then it matters to the listeners. There is a moment of change when something happens and then there's life as it is afterward. Either now, maybe you're forever changed, or maybe just in that moment something changed for you. And then once we help them mine their stories, we have them look everywhere, you know, to their memories, to the objects that are important to them, to their relationships. We spend a lot of time in class doing... Excuse me, doing that. And then they begin to draft
131their stories. I just want to make sure that I remember to say everything. We teach them the craft of the storytelling, how to start in a moment, how to choose the details that you want to focus in on. What do you want to zoom in on? What can you pull back and summarize a little bit for your listener? And then we give them lots of practice so that they can begin to deliver these stories with ease. I like to point out that... there's a partner skill in storytelling that partner skill is listening so in this unit not only are they practicing their speaking skills but they're also really honing their listening skills we do social drafting so nothing ever really gets written down other than maybe like a few notes or an outline the social
132drafting just comes with the iteration of the story telling it over and over to different smaller groups of students and then those students as listeners have to give feedback And that's another important skill that gets addressed in this unit because giving feedback and receiving feedback, those are soft skills, but they're really important skills. And we often give our students opportunity to practice those skills, but we seldom actually teach them how. to give feedback and how to receive feedback. And that happens very much in this unit. And it also builds empathy because just when you hear someone else's story, you're building a community with them. When you make yourself vulnerable to tell your story to someone else, you're building a community. So the really exciting part comes when we have our storytelling event, SMS Voices. We
133partner with the PTA. They are such a phenomenal. partner we come to them with lots of ideas and they just kind of say yes yes yes to everything they help make us a real feel like a real communal evening they provide food kids show up both as speakers as storytellers as listeners any child who signs up to be a storyteller tells their story the night of the event. First we go into small classrooms and everyone gets a chance to tell their story. When that part of the evening is over we all move down to the gym and this is where the PTA has worked their magic. They transform our gym into like this real sort of cafe kind of feeling. There's a curtain, there are balloons, there's a banner, there's a microphone set up and
134that's where the night becomes a story slam. So students who want to tell their stories in front of this larger audience. throw their names into a hat and we just pick names at random and the students come up and they tell their stories. Their stories need to be between three and five minutes. We keep a hard stop on that. They have to wrap it up within the five minute time frame. And we have a little montage to show you a little bit of what happened last month. I swear, if this guy did not shut up within the next five seconds, I was gonna completely lose it. Today, I was at my local tennis facility playing tennis. But today wasn't a normal day. Today, I wasn't just practicing around with my coach. Today was tournament day.
135And I was really competitive at the time. All I really cared about was winning. And if I won or lost the match, it would impact my percentage of how much I won in the tournament rankings. So today I look at the other side of the court and I see this really short guy. He's like about this tall and he has blonde hair. It's super messy. And as he gets closer, I can see he's wearing this shirt. It says blood, sweat, respect on it. And he walks up, he's like this and his chin is like this. So he looks at me with just like an intimidating stare and I can tell this is not going to be a match I like. So a month or two ago, I was going to my friend's bar mitzvah. And
136this is the first ever bar mitzvah I've ever been to. I mean, I've been to one bar mitzvah before for my sister's friend. But other than that, I've never really experienced it, especially for my best friend. So me and all my friends get there. And it's, I mean. you know, as big as you can expect, you know, not the biggest thing of all time, it's not the Coliseum or anything, but, you know, it's filled with marble, and it looks nice to me, I mean. So, we get there, and there's glass that breaks, and, you know, kind of shrug it off, you know, these things tend to happen. So we go inside and you know it's fun as a typical Sermon or session can be you know I throw pieces of expired candy at my friend.
137You know it's truly an amazing time so we're waiting until we can get into the party room and Waiting we're waiting the doors are about to open and I hear something in the back of my head And it keeps on going louder and louder until everyone is screaming it and I finally make out what it is fire So apparently there was a forest that lit some candles that were ignited that turned the entire room ablaze And there were two things that were going through my head One I've watched Final Destination and I've seen the glass break and I've now seen the fire and I'm realizing that I could probably save everyone here and then we'd all go through a series of very unfortunate and improbable events to all die in the end And two, I
138really like challah bread. So, as the fire and probably, you know, ten movies stretch behind me, I run for the challah bread. I get about five or six pieces in my mouth and on the plate before I'm asked to leave. And there's one thing, maybe two things going through my mind. One thing, did I just save everyone and now we're all going to die? And two, this is going to be the most boring time of my entire life. I went to my best friend's bar mitzvah, and now I'm just going to have to sit here in the cold for an hour and have nothing to do. But that didn't happen. When I was three, I decided that I was going to cut my hair because I thought it would be a really cool idea. And
139it turned out horrible. I had, like, micro bangs for, like, a... five years and it was just like really bad and I thought that because I was three years old back then as I was eight now I could just do an even better job and I would look so cool. So I just grabbed the scissors and as I bring it slowly towards my head I'm just like debating whether I should cut my hair or not because I was worried that if I did my parents would get me in a lot of trouble and I would just be grounded. But I decided to ignore that because I don't really care about the consequence. I don't really care. So I start cutting my hair and as I take the first layer of hair off, I'm just, I
140hate it. I thought it looked really bad and it was like uneven. So I just started cutting and cutting even more. And when you cut your hair or like practically anything, everything just gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So I just kept on cutting until I was... I basically had a buzz cut like right here. And it was just, and as I turned my camera, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought I looked really good. And that joy lasted for around five seconds, and then I started panicking. So I was eight years old, and I was going to this place called Rocking Horse Ranch. And it had a giant rock climbing wall, and believe me, I was prepared to climb it all by myself. Now, if you don't know what Rocking
141Horse Ranch is, it's like a dreamland, but for kids. I'm so excited, and they had so much stuff, like arcades and water slides and an indoor pool. And that was really exciting. So I get there, and I'm looking around, and I see the giant water slides, and I'm going to go on that. And I see laser tag, and I'm prepared to shoot my brother so much, I'm going to win. And then I see it, a giant rock climbing wall. And I don't even think twice. I run to it. And I don't ask for my parents' permission. I just say, Mommy, Daddy, we're going on that right now. And they don't let me. They say that we just got here, we need to have dinner, and we need to settle it. I say, okay. Now, this
142was very hard for me. I was very impatient. By the next morning, I was already running out the door before the sun had even risen. If they didn't catch me, that would be pretty bad. So I get there, and I just put my harness on, and I'm running to the wall, and I look up, and it's really tall, and my hands start shaking, and I'm sweating, and this is really weird. I think I'm scared, and I don't normally say that because I was that child that's like a daredevil that does things before they think about it. This was a problem, but I wasn't going to admit that I was scared. So I just started climbing the wall. And I grabbed onto the red one, and then the blue one, and the green one. And I
143was climbing really fast for an eight-year-old girl. And I was climbing, and I was climbing, and I was climbing, and I got to the middle of this wall. And I reached up for the yellow one, and I couldn't reach it. And I wanted to reach it so bad, tears were forming in my eyes, but I was going to do it. So I squatted down and I jumped up and I could almost feel it, but I fell. And I was getting dizzy and before I knew it, I was on the ground covered in wood chips. Okay, people, I'm going to ask you a question. What does family, friends, the police, and Christmas have in common? By the way, nothing. Don't stalk your ex-friend's Instagram because it makes you look creepy. But um, but um, but um
144goes my heart my heart pounding my my eyes sweaty and my face totally red then I swallowed a whole gallon of water as I gulped every single drop down like the big back I am and then to complete to utter darkness I was younger I was real I sucked at making friends I saw the ball high in the sky and realized that I had no choice but to run. I moved from Turkey to the U.S. and it was the hardest experience of my life. You wanted to share the opening line of your story. You were invited up to the microphone to just tell your opening line. That's what that was. I love them all. Oh, yeah. Oh, P.S. on that. Like I said when we started that they did not have a curriculum for middle
145schoolers and that we built this and then Shauna Frazen did a great job of bringing moth storytellers to the middle school this year in lieu of author visits that the PTA normally funds. She used that money to have the moth come and so three high schoolers from the city came along with a moth educator and ran assemblies for our students when we were in the throes of our storytelling unit. And then afterwards we had a debriefing session. Shawna and I just the other day had a debriefing session with them and I shared with them a lot of the curriculum we created that we had put in the document for the tri-states visit. and they said this curriculum is amazing we've long been wanting to get into the middle school space and this you know lets
146us see that we could do that and they were very uh complimentary of our curriculum so that felt really good it felt really good yeah and then chris was telling me something about a faculty meeting oh yeah seeing the first storyteller the tennis player spoke at our um our faculty meeting today he did a great job right he did a great job he got a standing ovation from the teachers Any questions from the board for Denise? When you say unit, is it like a quarterly? No, no. It's a three-week unit that's embedded in every English class. So in sixth grade, you do it in seventh and in eighth, and we scaffold it so that you're having a slightly different experience at each grade level and trying to build on your storytelling skills at each grade
147level. Oh, I see. I think that's great. Thank you. It kind of reminds me, ages ago, there was like a speech contest in the middle school level. And this looks so much better. Having the kids like perform on a stage in front of each other, they really look like they were having fun. And, you know, being able to tell their story is just so affirming for our young kids. I remember, you know, being a judge back in the day. And, you know, I think. I don't know. There's always a place for competition, but I think this kind of a format is just so much more just joyous and celebratory than you're being judged. for writing a speech you know kind of thing yeah so i love this that was a long-standing tradition um it also
148took up time in our curriculum as well preparing them for that that speech contest every student used to give a speech in their english classroom but at the end we we really kind of took a hard look at it about five or six years ago and we realized that we were giving the students an experience but we weren't really teaching them skills and this is both of those things there's a lot of skill teaching into skills that happens here as well as a great experience and it was also very kind of private that competition you were in a small room in a classroom and you didn't really have an audience the way you have an audience with this thank you thank you Hi, I don't really have a question. I just, I think what you
149and your department did with this is beyond amazing. Thank you. Middle school is such a trying time for so many kids. So in addition to having storytelling skills, which we all could benefit from, I think you've given them a... space where they can show that they have something important to share like and it can be celebrated and i think at that age it's such an important message for them and i think what you have done in creating this curriculum literally what makes Scarsdale who we are and so I just really wanted to say thank you on behalf of everyone I think it's really special what what you've created here thank you well we definitely appreciate that we have that opportunity to do it as well thank you thank you so much one more comment I
150just want to say First of all, thank you for your story. I was incredibly moved by it. I found myself really enthralled. It was beautiful. And just also the point you made about human connection, you know, in this age of AI and kind of creating those moments when people are vulnerable and they experience that together is really moving and I think really what we should be hoping for with our, you know, creating community and all that. So thank you. Any other questions or comments? Come on. This is great. No, I mean, I just, when you think about, and this will also come up when Ken and Laura come up here, but. you think about those lines that connect so directly to the strategic plan and what student-centered authentic learning looks like, I find it incredibly
151moving. And I thank you and your department for the work that you've done in creating this Assured experience. And you know we love Assured experiences. So thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Banamo. I regret that I won't be as nearly as entertaining as any of those middle school students. Good evening everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you a holistic update on the progress on several initiatives at Scarsdale High School this year. The presentation today will show how we are evolving to meet the needs of a changing world. We are focusing on academic innovation, including the evolution of graduation requirements, and perhaps most importantly, the wellness and belonging of our students. To provide a roadmap for my presentation, this slide outlines our primary areas of focus for the 25-26 school year.
152We've categorized our work into two main pillars, academics and well-being. We've implemented the online gradebook this year, and we continue to oversee the advanced topics course review process, as well as introduce some new courses. We are also deeply engaged in the work of the assessment committee, specifically looking at how our portrait of a graduate translates into performance-based assessment and learning. Under well-being, our focus remains on the human side of the student experience. This includes the implementation of our new cell phone policy, the full rollout of community lunch, and our ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of inclusion and belonging. Each of these initiatives is designed to work in tandem, ensuring that as we push for academic excellence, we are equally supporting the social and emotional health of our students. As you know, we implemented the
153rolling gradebook for the first time in the 23-24 school year. And as we engaged in feedback collection through surveys and focus groups, as well as in feedback directly to the Board of Education, it became clear that concerns about the rolling gradebook could best be addressed through the implementation of an online gradebook, which was announced last spring by Dr. Patrick and implemented starting with the current school year. The online gradebook allows students to track their progress as grades are entered throughout the year. This transition provides students with ongoing access to performance data, fostering student agency. It allows students to pivot and seek help when they need it, rather than waiting for a mid-quarter report or a report card. The implementation of the gradebook was accompanied in the fall with intensive support from Doug Vermis, acting as
154our computer teacher. We also engaged teachers in norming conversations by course so they could examine areas of convergence and divergence among teachers teaching the same course. I'm pleased to report there have been very few technical hiccups this year with it and no reports of students having issues accessing the information. In focus groups earlier in the year, student feedback was mixed, with some students saying they appreciated the access, but others saying that it did not impact their experience. More recent focus groups have reflected a greater consensus among participants that they find the access helpful. Scarsdale has long moved beyond the traditional AP curriculum. through our advanced topics courses. To maintain the validity of these courses as college level, we have implemented a triennial review of these offerings by professors in the relevant fields. We are looking
155at how these courses align with 21st century collegiate expectations, ensuring they offer the depth of inquiry Scarzillo is known for while keeping the content relevant to modern scholarship. Innovation is also happening through new electives that meet students where their interests are. The new Global Scholars course is part of ScarsHill's commitment to civic engagement and international awareness. The program involves interdisciplinary study and capstone projects that challenge students to analyze and propose student solutions for complex real-world issues aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Popular Music is designed as a student-led band with the instructor as coach while students collaborate to perform rock, pop, R&B, and folk music. Beyond just playing, the workshop covers arranging repertoire, developing a unique band identity, and practicing the entrepreneurship of being in a band. It culminates in public performances throughout
156the year. Cooking without a kitchen is a health elective for students who want to master culinary arts without access to a traditional kitchen, a situation they may find themselves in after they leave us. Students learn innovative techniques to prepare healthy, delicious meals using limited appliances and utensils right in the classroom. It focuses on fostering a passion for gastronomy and empowering students to make nourishing food choices in any environment. These courses represent our commitment to a diverse and modern curriculum. All of this work is anchored by our North Star documents. The Scarsdale High School profile of a graduate is our local aspiration. It defines the competencies like empathy, resilience, and critical thinking we want for every Scarsdale student upon graduation. We are also aligning this with the New York State portrait of a graduate, ensuring that
157our local work meets and exceeds the state's vision for 21st century learners. You will see in these two graphics that the current diploma requirements are aligned with subjects. while the profile on the right focuses on competencies that transcend subject disciplines. These frameworks move us to an aspiration that our curriculum isn't just a collection of classes, but a cohesive journey toward a specific set of cross-disciplinary competencies. One year ago, the state put forth its portrait of a graduate, which has domains that are very similar to those in our profile. This is one of the steps along the way to redefining diploma requirements and creating pathways to graduation that will move beyond the traditional New York State Regents' examinations. Closely aligned with the vision promulgated by the profile and the portrait is our focus on performance-based learning
158and assessment. The assessment committee is exploring ways in which students can demonstrate what they know and how our assessments can reflect our values that are articulated in the profile and align with that profile. Increasing opportunities in performance-based learning and assessment, or PBLA, moves us toward authentic demonstrations of mastery. Whether it's an oral defense or portfolio or a complex simulation, we want our students to show us they can apply their knowledge in real-world contexts. During our Superintendent's Conference Day, This past March, we were joined by Jay McTighe, a true leader in the world of instruction and assessment design. He gave our teachers frameworks for designing performance-based assessments, and they spent the greater part of the day working in teams to create or refine opportunities they already have for PBLA in their classes, and to add these
159new ideas to examples already in place that were shared with the tri-state visitors last year. The statewide cell phone policy has truly transformed the school day for our students. We are very pleased with how smoothly the transition to the new cell phone policy has gone. Students have adapted remarkably well, leading to fewer distractions in the classroom and a noticeable increase in focused learning time. The shift has also fostered more meaningful face-to-face interactions during unstructured time. Students are more engaged in conversations in the hallways and during free periods. The state law and our district policy have made a significant positive impact on the academic and social environment in the school. One of our most visible changes this year is the implementation of community lunch. In a high-pressure environment like Scarsdale, time is our most precious commodity.
160By creating a unified break in the day, we've created time in the school day to reinforce healthy behaviors. It's not just a lunch period, it is a dedicated window for extra help, student-led clubs, and peer socialization. It slows the pace of the day and ensures that every student has the opportunity to connect with faculty or friends without sacrificing their after school commitments. Finally, none of these academic gains matter if a student doesn't feel safe and seen. The Wellness Committee has been working directly with faculty to share best practices for creating inclusive classrooms. We are focusing on the idea of belonging, the idea that every student, regardless of their background or identity, feels they have a seat at the table. It's not soft work, it is the essential foundation that allows for high-level academic risk-taking. I'd
161like to ask Laura Weiss, our assistant principal for academics and operations, to present the next few slides to you on the community lunch program as she has chaired the schedule committee and spearheaded the work of piloting and implementing the program. good evening before we dive into the data from our latest survey I do want to extend a sincere thank you to the schedule committee this successful rollout would not have been possible without the dedicated partnership of our students our parents our teachers as well as the essential contributions from our food services and custodial teams their collaborative effort was the key to making community lunch a reality for our school community These internal surveys that I'm about to show you highlight the impact of this work. Our first slide deals with social connections. So we asked
162our students just over the course of the year, how has community lunch helped you to maintain or build social connections? We found that this helped us to measure the pulse of our well-being initiatives. The data here is quite compelling. Nearly 85% of students reported that this dedicated time had an positive impact on their ability to maintain or build social connections. For many of our students, this time was an important reset to the day that allowed for organic peer-to-peer interaction. And as Ken alluded to, we have a very high pressure academic environment that sometimes can crowd that out. While the majority of our students really see value in this time, we're also looking at the students who might be represented by the smaller segments of this pie chart to see how we could maybe support them.
163They may find the time overwhelming or even isolating, and so we're thinking about how we can serve them better as well. As far as clubs and activities go, we also had really positive feedback from our students. We asked them how useful they found this dedicated time for clubs and activities over the long term. Nearly 72% of our students, the combined blue and red segments in the pie chart, found the time to be useful for their club involvement, with the vast majority, 59%, calling it very useful. This confirms that the community lunch period has been a vital window for our student-led organizations, removing the traditional conflicts with after-school sports or transportation. While about 26% of students aren't currently in clubs that meet during this window, this actually highlights the flexibility of the period. For some, it's
164a high-energy time for leadership and meetings, and then for others, it allows for that social reset that we discussed in the previous slide. We also asked students just generally about how they were using their time. This slide shows how students use that time. Unsurprisingly, 93% of students were using the time to eat. And then nearly 88% were also using it to socialize. This reinforces that the period is serving its primary purpose as a social reset during our busy school day. 53% of students are using this window for extra academic support. Having over half the student body engage with teachers or peers during the school day is a massive win for accessibility. With 42% attending club meetings and others engaging in sports or games, the data shows that this isn't just a downtime, but it's also
165a high utility choose your own adventure period that allows students to check off boxes that would otherwise keep them at school much later into the evening. We also asked students about the loss of instructional time. So our new bell schedule resulted in a loss of three minutes per class period. 72% of our students reported that the three minute difference doesn't affect their classes at all. And then interestingly enough, 20% of our students felt that the impact was actually positive. Combined, over 90% of our students feel that the academic cost of the schedule shift is either non-existent or outweighed by the benefits of the midday break, suggesting that our instructional goals remain well supported under this model. We also asked all stakeholder groups about academic support. So you'll see students to the far right, and then
166we have our families and our faculty. The primary chart with the students shows that 72% of students find it easy to access their teachers for support during this time and this is confirmed by the parent and teacher responses that align. This is a really crucial finding. It shows that by embedding support into the natural flow of the school day, we are ensuring that academic help is more broadly available, especially for students and teachers whose free periods don't always line up or who have after-school activities that might get in the way of after-school help. We also surveyed all of our stakeholder groups about support for full adoption. As you can see, the response was overwhelming. We had nearly 95% of our students and 98% of our faculty supporting permanent adoption of the current bell schedule and
167the community lunch period. After a full year of implementation, the data reveals that a dual success in academic support and student wellness has been achieved. While the program is overwhelming success, we also did have responses that identified the need for expanded indoor seating, especially being a concern. To that end, we have removed hallway lockers in one area of the building as a test case to see whether this attracts student use, and we plan to expand this as an option in other areas of the school building. Based on the comprehensive feedback from all of our stakeholders the recommendation is to adopt the community lunch as a permanent fixture in our daily schedule as it become a vital avenue for both academic support and social emotional growth and I'm gonna turn it back over to Ken just
168to talk about our belonging work and then we'll take questions at the end And I should also Thank the PTA leadership there. They were the ones who can I refocused our work on looking at the schedule again and also a Dr. Patrick for your leadership. This has been More than a 10-year journey on the schedule as you well know So to understand how belonging truly lives at the high school We have used the time at two faculty meetings this year To identify the practices teachers use every day to connect with students These are the proven strategies our teachers are currently using across departments. Recognizing student lives outside the classroom from birthdays to personal hobbies. Offering choice in assignments and positioning extra help as a collaborative effort rather than a fix for a deficit. Teachers lower
169the barrier to student engagement in that way. Noticing the quiet or frustrated student and reaching out first. Building a bridge before a student even realizes they need one. Moving beyond hand raising to ensure all students can contribute while modeling how to navigate respectful disagreements. Greeting every student at the door and using inclusive language intentionally. Builds a collective community. These are the responses that we collected in the fall when we asked teachers what they do currently to create inclusive classrooms. And I would like to thank the teachers on the Wellness Committee and the co-chair, social worker Lauren Pomerantz, and social studies teacher Frank Candulo for leading this important work. We know that a sense of belonging is not just something that's nice to have. It is the prerequisite for high-level cognitive functioning. The research shows that.
170Students who feel they belong are more likely to take academic risks, persist through challenges, and ultimately achieve higher grades. There's a direct correlation between classroom belonging and reduced rates of anxiety and depression among students. And this is the research that Frank and Lauren did that overlaid what the teacher responses were with the research they had. When students feel seen and valued, their attendance improves and their overall investment in school and community increases. Essentially, by focusing on these belonging strategies, we are creating the psychological safety necessary for the rigorous academic work that we are known for. We aren't just teaching subjects, we are teaching students and the research confirms that the environment we build is just as important as the curriculum we deliver. So these initiatives are not disparate programs but a cohesive strategy, modernizing our
171schedule, our grading, our assessments. We are creating an environment where students do not succeed only academically but they thrive as healthy, self-aware, and globally conscious citizens and with that I'm happy to take your questions. really appreciated all the reports this evening edgar so so nice to hear what's happening in each of the levels um so ken i thought the new classes were super interesting i was wondering how you decided to add those classes and and what was the process there Yes, we have two different processes at the high school for introducing new courses. They usually come from the department. So for a department-based course, the teachers will develop the curriculum, submit a course outline syllabus to the chair, and the department will decide on their own whether it should be added to the course catalog.
172If there's an advanced topics course, similarly... process happens at the department level but then it comes to the full cabinet which is all the department chairs and the administrative team for review to see that it meets the level of rigor for an AT course. So for these classes, how do you publish that information to students or how do you get it out to students? It's in the course catalog with all of our course offerings. And sometimes you'll see more titles in the course catalog than we can offer. And then we will use student interest. Students meet with their deans beginning in January through just recently, like three months. And then when we have those course requests, we'll decide what to run and what not to run based on student interest. great thank you and then
173I just had one question about the online gradebook so I assume we're continuing with that next year and earlier this evening we heard from some high school students some potential areas for improvement or to make it more useful, I guess, for students. Have you had any thoughts about what might be different next year yet? Are you still working on that? We're still working on that. I think some of the, what you heard, when I have spoken to students in focus groups throughout the year, they have noted that sometimes we have teachers who update Google Classroom, but not necessarily directly into Infinite Campus and just do like a data dump at the end of the quarter. from Google to Infinite Campus. So I want to see if the reports that we heard about something sometimes coming
174at the end of the quarter, or that it was just being dumped from Google to Infinite at one time, or that there was no information happening. So I want to look into that a little bit more. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. I guess one One thing that struck me is that some of those students were checking regularly. I know that was a concern that we had about that potentially being an anxiety-producing situation. And I just wonder if there was some regularity or a schedule around those posts where the students, that might help with some of that. So I appreciate that you're looking into that. Thank you. Hi, thank you Ken and Laura for that great really interesting presentation. I also love the new course offerings. I have a musician, a first year college
175student who would have loved to take the popular music class. It's not always easy to start a band in the real world so that's like teaches you a lot of important skills I'd imagine. Also the cooking thing I was noticing too because we were visiting colleges over the break and they had a health and wellness center at one of the schools we went to and right inside they had different cooking. class times for the students kind of drop in and they can learn how to make something which i thought was great skill to know when you're outside of your home so these seem like really great kind of real world you know creative you know classes so thank you for that um we met with that high school group earlier so i just wanted to
176comment on a few things everyone seems very positive about community lunch i think it's great that they have time to eat and to be together Several of the students said that it helps them kind of create relationships and connections with students who are in different grades Which I thought was really interesting so they're not just hanging out with you know all freshmen But they kind of have different students and peers to look up to and hang out with The removal of the hallway lockers was that a facilities thing that they were gonna work on with the kit like countertops or Is that piloted we've piloted in a couple of locations where the lockers were not utilized well and there was within the space of the hallway in order to install countertops. I don't know if
177you know these specific locations, Ken. Yeah, we picked a spot by the math wing on the second floor underneath the guidance suite, the counseling center, rather. And, you know, I think it's not necessarily a high-traffic area, but we have seen some student usage. So our thinking is that if we... use more high-trafficked areas, do the same conversion, that those counters will get even greater usage. The lockers really don't get any usage at all. One of the challenges is that you have to make sure the hallway is still wide enough for safety reasons and egress, and you're not allowed to have loose furniture in the hallway. So no stools. So no stools. So these would be standing counters. But, you know, I think we've seen people working on a laptop and eating at the same time.
178They'd be that kind of a deal. Sounds great. And then in terms of the loss of kind of class time, the few minutes that was shaved off and I saw the survey results and I know I asked this earlier to the student group but I was curious, you know, in a math class, for example, if you're taking in a, if it's test day, did they feel like they didn't have enough time to finish? they seemed like they felt like they had enough time generally but I didn't know if you had received any feedback on that again I you know I meet with probably 10 or 12 different student groups throughout the year and like 10 students at lunch and I haven't heard students feeling that the tests weren't were too long that they weren't shortened
179properly you know my guess is that I don't want to draw conclusions but I would imagine that even if the question was trimmed from a test you might not you know you're always gonna want three more minutes so yeah And then I also found it interesting because I remember last year when we were thinking of online gradebook, one of the concerns would be that students would not go to the teachers. But we talked about it at our student meeting that students said, yes, they're seeing their grades. Sometimes it's a point, like a helpful point of conversation. Then they kind of know where they need the help. And they are still going to see their teachers. So is that what you're seeing as well? Yes, and certainly with... I think with community lunch that has really
180changed the game in terms of students' access to teachers. And you know, we really gave broad guidance to teachers about how to use the time. We were clear that although we were adding 20 minutes to a 25 minute lunch period, it was not intended to be. 45 minute lunch period but that there had to be some student contact time as they saw best to use so whether it's a club meeting student meeting maybe of planning you know collaborative meeting with a teacher that they don't have a free with but they teach the same course and we've seen that student that teachers are really using it in that way and the reports from students bear that out thank you thank you ken And congratulations. I think that these are all really wonderful initiatives that consider the
181whole child, that consider mental health. As you say, we are a very academically rigorous school, being responsive to student needs. I think... As a board member, I appreciate seeing this data, because I can say something sounds great, and I can be all for it. Seeing numbers like this and the data like this gives me a lot of confidence that it's not just a great idea, it's actually really working in the schools, because as board members, we're not in the classrooms with the kids. And yeah, I really, want to congratulate you. I think these processes are iterative. We've talked to students and we've talked to you over the last year with different concerns and I think that you've really appreciated and responded to each of these concerns and really kind of... address them in a way
182that led to this kind of a feedback. It's overwhelming, you know, the support for this program. And it really did fulfill everything we hoped it would, you know, especially the tutorial time. You know, I think I especially appreciate kids who are struggling. they need that time with their teachers and you know they might be too shy to you know or whatever not have the time before after school to have a carved out time in the day where it's okay to go see your teacher I think is really invaluable for our students you know having that connection thank you yeah I would add Susie that I was also pleased to see the alignment among the three constituent groups in their responses. You know, it wasn't that the kids are saying one thing and their parents are
183saying something else and the teachers are thinking yet one more. You know, I mean, if you ask people do they want more lunchtime, you would expect to see, you know, 98%. But the alignment about how they're using their time and the high response rate on the different ways they're using it, to me, was very gratifying and validating. And I would also say that although it wasn't a primary... stated reason but we knew it would be an ancillary outgrowth. You know, some of our students who have extended time accommodations have really struggled to access that extended time when they have packed schedules and sports teams. And so it's not a marquee reason but if they could get that extra time or even make up a test when they're sick during that lunch period which is one
184minute shorter than a regular period, it is that is a form of wellness and students have really reported in those focus groups that that has been a game changer for managing their weekly schedule um again it's not only for extended time but even kids coming back from days off who have missed a test and so you know it's not a it's not a glamorous piece but i when you really think about the life of a student i think that has had a huge impact as well that makes a lot of sense yeah thank you so much for bringing that up Yeah, I also want to add my congratulations to the successes of these new initiatives. It's such a sort of huge improvement on student sort of the quality of life during the day. My I
185would like to I also love the belonging in the classroom all these um the framework I wonder How are these kind of shared across faculty and how is it kind of implemented and growing? Thank you for the question. Yeah, so those two slides the first one was what we elicited from teachers in the fall like what do you do to create inclusive classrooms and then Lauren and Frank took that all those results from post-it notes. They organized them by theme. They found research that supported the different practices. And then our most recent faculty meeting, we asked teachers to sit in groups to look at that data that was processed and basically a version of can you pick one thing that you might add to your repertoire that you're not doing now? From the things that
186your colleagues are doing that is supported by research, what might you add to your bucket? And so we are looking maybe to do like a belonging week. faculty facing not necessarily student facing about when we're all going to be a concerted effort to do that one thing we haven't done before so that I think that's the way you grow it organically and I think it really feels valid to the teachers who's coming from their own practices not you know coming an overlay from the outside that's great thank you thanks Ken for all of this. Really appreciate the work that you guys are doing. I was excited to see the new courses. I think it's always so fun for the kids to have new and exciting courses. How, you know, to add these, I know it's
187a lot of work for the teachers. How is this going to be in replacing, are we replacing other courses that maybe kids aren't enrolling in anymore and that's how the teachers are having time to teach these new courses or is it being added onto their schedule? How are the logistics of that? So I think in the health department, we probably have room. It's a single semester elective, so we have enough of those sections of health because it's one course to carve out space for that. In music, the band class, it's replacing a class that will not be running that had very low enrollment. And in social studies, I think, well, taking one of the low-enrolled classes and closing it. Social studies has the most flux. You'll see things run every other year sometimes or sometimes
188every three years because the interest ebbs and flows. And so that's how we kind of manage it. And I know kids have already been enrolling in classes. Are you getting a feel for if these courses are popular already? Are kids really interested in them? Yeah, I think we have one section of the global, one section of the music, and one section of the cooking. Oh, that's great. For a first year, for sure. Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you. And then for the community lunch, I agree. I think it's been a huge success. Laura, thank you for all your work collaborating with all this data and the scheduling committee and the wellness committee. I'm curious because one thing that I'm hearing just as a parent is there's no stress around meeting with teachers anymore if your
189frees don't line up. I think that has been a huge impact immediately, so I appreciate that. Do you find that kids are enrolling in... more courses now because they feel like they you know don't need the free as much because it's easier for them to meet with their teacher I was just curious as the enrollments are coming in for next year if that has been a secondary yeah to do a comparison right yeah Just curious, because more and more kids are enrolling in more and more courses. That is a trend. The last time we studied that, we saw a two-period-per-week increase over five years, but that was, I think, five or more years ago. So there's always that upward pressure, especially in recent years when standardized tests have been de-emphasized in college admissions, although because
190they have returned, I wonder if that pressure might be reduced. Yeah, it would be interesting. I heard some kids saying it in my car the other day, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't think about that. But I think overall, the community lunch has been huge in terms of the mental health of the kids, so really appreciate that. I think one thing also that I don't know if the community knows, but you mentioned when we were touring the high school, is the little theater, the renovation we're doing. could possibly allow for more spaces for the kids to meet during that lunch? Yeah, the Little Theater has some fixed lecture hall style seating that really is not comfortable to eat in at all. And so if we are through the bond project, we would
191be able to take out the fixed seating and the tiers and put in flexible furniture that could be used for additional seating at lunchtime. I think that's just important for the community to know another benefit of the renovation of that space for our kids. And that space holds about 150. Maybe 100. And students, you know, they like, many of them like the smaller spaces, you know, rather than the large cafeteria, like little nooks and crannies. Yeah, so definitely an option. So I just wanted to make sure. And I really appreciated the organic work around the belonging. I think, you know, as an educator, the best PD you have is sitting in another colleague's classroom and watching them, you know. practice their strategies. So I really appreciate you valuing that during your faculty meetings because I
192know those minutes are really important and creating an organic process to keep working on that. So just wanted to thank you for that time as well. Thank you. I just wanted to say, coming from a student, I feel like the numbers kind of speak for themselves, but I think every single one of these changes has been absolutely great. I'm actually already signed up to take the cooking class, hopefully next year. I think I'm someone who I've always really relied on seeing teachers for extra help. I don't think I've ever taken a class where I haven't had to go see someone for extra help, and the lunch period has been amazing, especially with having fewer frees. Last year at the end, I only had two frees a week, and now it's just a complete... transformation but
193I'm just very grateful for all of these and I wanted to say thank you I think just to reiterate Lucy's point, I definitely think the community lunch has been a great addition. My only sad part is that I didn't have it my first three years of high school. One thing I would definitely say that's I guess tangentially related is that I definitely thought that I really appreciated how the participation on the latest poll was like very significant that you got in some cases like 800 students responding which I thought was excellent because when I think about polls in the recent past I think that may have been some of our highest. I guess response rate so definitely I think that it is indication that students are passionate about the community luncheon and that their willingness
194to support it and fill out the form is definitely indication of that as well thank you very much thank you thank you so much should we take a five minute wellness break what do people think yeah all right let's do that we're back for section 12.03 the 26-27 budget discussion I alluded to this in my opening comments but we just want to make the public aware of this one change from from the budget as it was presented during the budget forum will take that so prior to the spring break as we were going through some of the the fine-tuned budget details we realized that the bleacher replacement project that was in the proposed budget was also captured in the bond scope of work there had been discussions during that uh deliberation of removing the the
195bleacher project and uh doing a lesser costly option which is what was in the the proposed budget proposal so since that is already included in the adopted bond resolution we're making the recommendation to remove that from the 26-27 budget it is also a timely change because a One of the priorities we've identified in the five-year capital work is the oil tanks, which did not make it to the final cut for the bond. And we mentioned that we would be prioritizing those over the next several years. Well, the Fox Meadow oil tank was in the proposed budget. The Edgewood fuel tank, however, which is a year or six months younger than the Fox Meadow. has been giving us some trouble with some water leaking into the fill port which really needs to be repaired that repair
196cost was estimated around thirty thousand dollars and we think that that's bad money to spend right now if we're going to be replacing this oil tank the following year so we consulted with our engineers and architects and we believe that adding the two hundred thousand dollars that was previously identified for the bleacher project to the 275 000 in the fox meadow oil tank to have one project for both oil tanks at both buildings will be both sufficient but also a good investment of our money in the 26-27 school year. So that is an adjustment to the transfer to capital section of the budget. I'll just go really quickly over the final list of projects just so we're all clear. So we have the life skills program at the high school, the modification of learning spaces
197there to accommodate our program as students move from the middle school to the high school. We have the playground replacement for the kindergarten playground structure at Heathcote Elementary School. We have the replacement of the aging facilities infrastructure in high school library heat exchangers and the Edgewood and Quaker Ridge hot water tanks. And then we have paving replacements at the middle school, Heathcote Sanitary Main replacement, the Fox Meadow, and the Edgewood oil tank replacements are all included in the 26-27 recommended budget as of this evening. There is no change to the property tax levy, no change to the overall budget total, and no change, in fact, to the amount we had previously listed on the transfer to capital. So it's just the detailed project that we are substituting there. And that has been updated in the
198budget book. Thank you any questions good, okay So next we have I think an item for amber. Is it okay? But boces. Yeah. Thanks Jim. I'm the liaison for Southwest boces and Wednesday was their annual meeting so I went up to their Location and heard their presentation on the budget, which will be voting on April 21st, which is an increase of $519,413 from last year. And we also heard from all three candidates that are running for positions on the BOCES board, including Nan Mead. She was there, and she was very grateful for Scarsdale's support for her candidacy. I have the budget book if anybody would like to take a look at. I can answer any questions. all right thank you for not asking any questions i appreciate that to item 1205 next which is the
199board budget insight letter which has been prepared with comments from colleen and drew and and i've also revised it from last year's letter this letter is a little different than last year's letter or prior year's letters insofar as we have the significant bond project that's also up for a vote on the same day as the budget. So this letter does devote a fair amount of real estate to the bond. I'm discussing that. But I think it's appropriate to do that given the size of the bond and the significance of that vote this year. So I think we've had some comments. We've incorporated those. Any discussion around this? I mean, it would be sent to Insight on behalf of each of us, assuming we adopt it and support it. So if that's good, then that's what
200we'll do. Looks like everyone's in agreement with that. So great. And we can move on to the, I think this is probably one for... yes dr. Chuck Detroit so earlier this year the district entered negotiations with the CSCA the custodial grounds and maintenance unit and have reached a one-year agreement which includes a 1.75 percent increase salary increase for the 2627 school year and an increase in the employee contribution of the healthcare premium from 6% to 7.5% of premium for a few housekeeping and language cleanups. And then we would anticipate next year a full negotiations process in preparation for the 27-28 school year. Okay, thank you. Questions? Megan, does this work to stagger our collective bargaining? It will. This year, currently, we had four negotiations, so then that would stagger. Next year, we would have... we
201would have the custodial unit, and it would be opposite these. And, of course, it changes depending on if we agree to three-year or four-year terms, but for us it would give us a little space for next year. Anything else now? Okay. With that, we move on to a tax certiorari settlement. Andrew. So there's two tax-assured settlements here that are on as information items. They're information items because when the petitions were filed with the village and the school district, the district did not take a formal action to actually intervene and have a seat at the negotiation table. So the settlement that was reached by our assessor is basically effective upon us once it was signed into the court. So we are sharing this information item. refunds apply to both the 2526 school year and the 2425
202school year so any of the portions of these refunds that would be coming from the current school year are actually going to be recorded in their financial statements as reduction of property tax revenue because we are refunding those those proceeds to the to the taxpayer the proceeds from the prior year will be Either paid for through the tax certiorari budget line in our budget or if those funds are not available at the end of the year We'll do a progression from the fund balance Excuse me from the tax cert reserve to cover those Thank you. And we have a, you said it's a $40,000 line in our budget for tax cert every year? We do. We do. In February, unfortunately, we did a transfer to help cover some of our negative balances, and I don't
203know specifically if it went from one line to another specifically. So those funds are already spoken for, so it's likely that unless Lisa's able to put those back through a budget transfer, we'd probably come in the month of June with an appropriation to the board asking you to increase the current year budget to cover that. And then just in terms of the tax cert reserve, I had asked you about the amount, and it's around like $4.3 million. Yes. And that's where you'd like it to be? It fluctuates based on the number of petitions that are outstanding. We'd love all of our reserves to be, you know. Bigger than they are but I think it is at an appropriate level based on the level of activity we've seen in recent years When a tax return gets
204filed, I believe it's three years The the taxpayer does not have the ability to come back and ask for another tax cert And we don't have a substantial amount commercial property here, which is really the the risky pieces for us Some of the golf courses in our community may come back I think they're on the petition list, but we are comfortable with what the number is right now I'm just curious because I hear so much about our property values going up. How is it decided that these properties are over-assessed? I mean, obviously they're filing a claim, but who's deciding that these two properties are? were overvalued? So there's an assessment review board that handles smaller claims, but when those can't get settled at the small claims level, the taxpayer files a tax-restricted proceeding, which often
205will include then analysis from appraisers, our town assessors, and legal experts on both sides to negotiate a settlement. And if they can't negotiate a settlement, then it goes to trial and a settlement gets directed by the court. That's my layman's kind of summary of what I understand it to be, but I'm sure there's... That was the summary I needed. Perfect. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I also had a question about, like, process of this. When somebody wants to, you know, go back and challenge the assessment on their property, they have to file... a grievance with the village and with us or how does that go we have to be notified so um there's a deadline i believe it's in october excuse me where where all of the petitions for that calendar year's assessed values
206need to be filed now a property owner could file for several years up to a point where so they treat all of the assessment years as one case but they have to notify us by i think it's october of each year that they are appealing their assessments and going down the tax or surrey proceeding. So none of these are, you know, out of the blue? They were all petitions we received and we confirmed that before moving forward. Do we have a sense of like what the outstanding petitions are out there or what that value would be? We do. I don't have it memorized. We have a list of the petitions that we've received and the requested reductions. That's the tricky part. Oftentimes they come in by moving a decimal point, right, to say that we
207want this much of a reduction as 90% reduction, you know. So that's not really a solid kind of estimate to use. So we try to look at the assessed values, the reduction percentages that we've been historically seeing, and if they seem to be rising in terms of the size of the reductions, we'd want the reserve to be based on that higher assumption. Do you see a trend of more filings lately? I don't recall seeing these kind of settlements recently. I think this is pretty rare. There hasn't been much activity in my few years here. I'd have to go back and do a little more research on maybe what the number of petitions look like and the size of them just to get a sense of where we stand historically. we do we do keep you
208know we share the lit log with you quarterly we have tax or list we can do the same if you'd find that helpful or at least periodically is that part of the yeah file that they get yes it's a separate petition log So we can discuss that in a two-by-one if that would be helpful to the board. I should note, too, that the list of outstanding petitions are reviewed annually by our auditors to make sure that our tax return reserve is reasonable. Because if we were over-reserved in that area, they would make the recommendation in one of the audit comments that the board should consider reducing that reserve. We want to make sure that the community knows that that's a requirement. because it's information item there's no action needed by the board so there's no
209no no follow-up so any other comments about that or questions and then we should move forward to the gift proposals that's true yep so we have two gifts the first to Edgewood is the book nook vending machine the gift is an amount of just over $15,000 at Edgewood it is actually not Those aren't funds that will come to the district or the board and then be paid They're all part of the Scholastic Book Fair credit that they have and they're apply over many years and they're applying that credit to get this Machine that vends books and the students will get a token Kind of each year associated with their birthday and get to go and choose a book Push the buttons to select a book. So but we're grateful for that so we it was
210it's a little bit different and that that is the dollar amount but they're scholastic bucks they're not greenbacks I guess is the way to say it and then the second or any questions on that the aggregated scholastic dollars yeah over multiple years they've they've it's it's credit and and if they so they get a portion of the sales they get credit the PTA gets credit for those fairs and the credit is more substantial if it goes back toward scholastic products and this is one so versus getting it as cash and then the second gift is a field trip contribution for multiple trips as we get further toward our process of getting more lump sum donations with gratitude to the PTAs but this supports trips and costs for third and fifth grade students I just have
211a question about field trip lump sums kind of going forward how much detail do we need you know if if for example the PTAs gift Field trip money at the start of the year or something like that Do we need? Details about what every trip is going to be or could it be more general like third fourth fifth grade trips through the year? But what would we need to approve that does it matter you would just need to know it's going toward field trips Just right. Yeah, we don't need to know need to know the things are streamlined in a different. Yeah. Okay. Thank you The principals are approving all the details within within that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you I believe that is you Bob for budget resolution action item I move that the following
212resolution be adopted resolved that the Board of Education adopts the budget resolution set forth for the budget for 2026-27 school year presented okay is there a second okay thank you Amber and before we vote it's our tradition to have a comment by any who wish to comment on this budget so who would like to begin you would like to begin yes of course as is tradition I know as I prepared for tonight's budget vote I reflected on the budgets adopted during my six years on the Board of Education Consistent with past practice, this board has balanced its fiscal responsibilities while keeping the student experience at the center of its decisions. I appreciate the thoughtful deliberation from my colleagues. Assessing priorities and making trade-offs is never simple. I also want to thank Drew, Andrew, Lisa, and
213the full administrative and cabinet teams for their work on this budget. Last year, several board members, myself included, raised concerns about over-reliance on reserves. Early in this budget cycle, the board made a deliberate decision to adhere to the tax cap, recognizing the broader financial pressures facing our community. Within those constraints, the administration presented a budget that meets both objectives while maintaining the district's core values. While not every program or idea could be included this budget preserves key priorities Small class sizes at the elementary level the house and team structure at the middle school and student choice at the high school In light of over $100 million in proposed capital projects this year, the board also made prudent decisions to defer certain initiatives, including expanded social-emotional supports at the elementary level, additional middle school special education
214programming, and reducing math class sizes at the high school, saving those for future consideration. Looking ahead, I am hopeful that steps taken this year, such as engaging new health care consultants, will create greater flexibility for future boards to thoughtfully expand programming and continue strengthening the student experience. For these reasons, I fully support this budget. Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to go next? Susie? Thank you, Jim. In considering school budget, we like to say that the budget season kicks off in November with the budget priorities forum, where community stakeholders speak to their budget priorities for the year. However, in truth, the budget is an ever continuous process and the work and experiences of previous years budget processes are carried into the present year. Over the past handful of years to face inflationary headwinds to
215our budget while under the constraints of the tax cap, we've gradually eaten into our reserves. Our reserves levels are at a point that when we went out in the fall to rate our auditorium bond, Moody's stated that our reserves levels remain below average relative to rating peers. And that a decline in available reserves sustained below 10% of revenue is a factor that could lead to a credit downgrade. Now, I don't want to be alarmist, Moody's used the word sustained, and we are still over 10% of revenue with our reserves. But when we discussed this as a board in the fall, the consensus was that a rating downgrade would be seriously detrimental to our district and to be avoided. With a $100 million bond on the horizon, I think it critical that our reserve levels stay
216at a place where we can hopefully count on a top tier rating. Mindful of this bond and the ask to invest in much needed capital projects to our community, a budget adhering to the tax cap is the judicious path this year. And past comments have discussed the tax cap and as a board we have even advocated for common sense adjustments to it. This tax cap which has not kept up with inflation and new expectations of our schools in terms of mental health and security has taken its toll on our budget. We're at a moment now that we've been told that we are at the bone in terms of trimming any excess from the budget. At last month's budget forum, I really felt here the compelling advocacy points of our community stakeholders, as well as appreciated
217their nuanced understanding of the challenging budgetary environment we find ourselves in. I do, however, believe that this budget funds so many accomplishments, furthering our strategic plan of learning, living, and leading. The proposed budget preserves our tradition of academic excellence and care for the whole child, while continuing to manage the fiscal challenges facing many school districts such as ours. Our investments in teaching and learning include funding an exceptional level of instruction. It also addresses some of the capital needs of our aging district identified in our bond priorities work, as well as allows for program expansion. We all say that people move to Scarsdale for the schools, and I believe this budget reflects judicious fiscal management while maintaining the educational program that reflects our community's core values and cultivates life skills in our students to succeed and
218thrive. Tonight's education report showcases some of these innovative student initiatives at all levels. These past few days, the nation has been transfixed watching the Artemis mission to the far side of the moon. I was... enthralled watching that. Really anything is possible if we invest in our young people. Today's students will be our future leaders and I believe this budget enables and empowers our students to achieve whatever goals and dreams they set for themselves. Thank you to Superintendent Patrick, to Assistant Superintendent Andrew Lennon, and the rest of the Administrative Cabinet and our building administrators for their process throughout this process. Okay, next, who would like to go next? Bob? This year's budget has been especially challenging given the broader context in which it was developed, including a proposed community pool renovation, a capital bond initiative, and
219the economic environment we face in 2026. I'm grateful to work with the board and administration that not only keeps students at the center of every decision, but also carefully consider the impact of those decisions on the community as a whole. Each year we evaluate the budget through multiple lenses all tied to student well-being. Our discussions reflect a thoughtful balance maintaining the academic rigor that defines our schools, supporting physical health through athletics and exercise, addressing the condition of our facilities and ensuring we value and support our teachers and staff through fair salaries and benefits. As we've noted, these salaries and benefits account for roughly 80% of our annual budget. As an architect, I strongly believe that the physical environment matters, that well-designed, well-maintained spaces communicate the value we place on education. But ultimately, it is our
220teachers and administrators who bring that value to life through their dedication, continuous growth, commitment to our students' success. I also acknowledge that when certain items are not included in this budget, it is not because they are unimportant. Rather, it reflects the difficult choices we must make and the reality that some priorities must be deferred to future cycles. For these reasons, I fully support the proposed 2026-27 budget. While it cannot include everything we would wish for, I believe it strikes a responsible balance and continues our strong tradition of supporting the whole child. Thank you, Bob. Leo? Thank you. Regarding the budget, I encourage the community to make an informed vote on May 19th. We are at a pivotal moment in school budgeting and as has been said throughout this process, the reality of budgeting within the
221tax cap has tied our hands with regard to the fullness of the program that we'd like to offer. This budget will preserve elementary class size, a hallmark of our schools. Small, manageable class sizes in the elementary schools enhance and enrich the student experience and the formative years of a child's education. Anyone who has had their children go through the elementary schools can appreciate the importance of this guidepost. However, as I mentioned throughout this process, I'd like to highlight the importance of monitoring the size of high school math and physics classes to make sure that they're not overly large next year and in future years. 29 or 30 high school students crammed into a math classroom and learning a complex subject is far from ideal and not what I would like. We have heard from parents,
222the high school PTA, and students, specifically our student board members on this issue. We know that many high school students are taking multiple math classes in a given year, as well as unique elective offerings, part of our high school guidepost of student choice. This is the first obvious instance of the tax cap not being able to support the program we expect that we believe is expected by our community. Further, I'd like to make sure that we keep an eye on how the reduction through attrition and the reduction in eight hours for the second year in a row affects the student experience in 26-27. This year, we are putting forth a capital projects bond vote, which exemplifies forward-looking investment in our district buildings and grounds. We know that the village is moving forward with a pool
223bond, and it is not a year to push the cap. This shows fiscal restraint. We have made budget reductions through this process and it's important for the community to know and understand that. All of these reductions and the lack of additions have been made in order to fit our budget into the tax gap. While I believe we have done our best this year to maintain the richness of the school experience for which Scarsdale is known, I don't doubt that these reductions will be felt. Regarding the tax cap, while in my view it is important for the purpose of preventing major spikes in the annual tax levy and it compels fiduciary restraint, it is also an arbitrary calculation that is not in and of itself reflective of the real financial needs of the district. Last year
224a big topic was our reliance on fund balance I'm grateful to Andrew for his early work and weaning us off the use of the health care reserve in this budget I think that is a very positive step for us I noted at our last meeting and continued to note the lower level of our health care reserve and know that Andrew and his team will do their best to replenish it as we are able as far as the unassigned fund balance this year we continued to use 1.1 million dollars toward the budget in order to alleviate the tax burden As Drew mentioned during our process, we have, up until this point, been able to replenish that amount year over year through revenue. However, if you're following our process, you know that we discussed that due to
225the deeper cuts made this year, the tight budgeting, there may be a point where the 1.1 isn't fully replenished. I note this because I wouldn't want to pull an amount from the fund balance on an annual basis that is not being replenished. That is something that I'm watching, and that concerns me. and I'd like the community to be aware of it for future budget cycles. I'd also like to highlight, as Suzy did, the general health of our reserves as they affect our Moody's rating, which in turn may impact our ability to go out to bond. A huge thank you to Andrew and his team, Drew and the entire cabinet for your work. Andrew, specifically, you've done incredible work this year on the bond and budget. Thank you to our engaged community for your questions and
226comments. The exchange of thought and ideas is essential to this process Please stay engaged stay informed and most importantly vote I vote yes to adopt this budget and look forward to the work that lies ahead Thank You Leah Laura Thank You Jim I'd like to start by giving gratitude to everyone who worked tirelessly and collaboratively on the budget over the past several months That include Dr. Patrick, Mr. Lennon, other members of the cabinet, their central office staff, and our building principals and administrators. Also making important contributions to budget work are PTC and PTA leadership, budget study chairs, PTA members, community groups, including the League of Women Voters, the Scarcelle Forum, and individual residents who engaged in the process. Many different perspectives were discussed robustly which led to this comprehensive budget that aligns with our strategic
227goals and prioritizes student learning and well-being while also balancing fiscal realities which Susie Leah and other fellow board members have so eloquently summarized. We are in a unique situation this year with both the 101 million school bond and the 75 million village pool bond very much on our taxpayers' minds. The school board and the district were aligned from the get-go that we would commit to a budget that stays within the tax cap this year. Given the high inflation and fixed costs, this posed tremendous challenges. had to make some hard decisions and defer several highly desirable staff additions in the area of elementary social work, middle school special education, and high school math. While these deferrals are not ideal, Our administrators and teachers are committed and doing their best to optimize class sections and school operations
228to deliver the highest quality student experience as possible. I'm glad that in this budget we are able to accommodate the playground renovation at Heathcote, the 812 life skills room renovation, and several important program improvements and professional development for faculty. These are high priority items that will benefit our programs and our students directly. Going back to the significant deferrals we had to make this year, I'd like to note that in future years, it would not be sustainable to always stay within the tax cap while also delivering the quality education the Scar Still community desires and deserves. As has often been discussed at this board table and in the community, I look forward to continued community discussion and consensus building around this topic. In conclusion, I fully support this proposed budget. Okay, thank you, Laura. Colleen? Thank
229you, Jim. I would like to start by thanking everyone who worked so hard to develop this budget. Drew and Andrew, thank you for your leadership and guidance in this challenging process. I would also like to thank the district leadership and principals who took the time to look closely at their individual areas and school buildings to see how we can continue to deliver our programs while staying within a limited budget. And lastly, I would like to thank the community for their continued engagement with us as we move through this process. We are fortunate to live in a community that not only values our children's education but continues to invest the resources needed to provide our students with every possible opportunity. Each year as we develop this budget, we carefully reevaluate the programs we offer and assess
230the evolving needs of our students. This year we also took a close look at our infrastructure considering how well our buildings support the daily experiences of our students spaces where they reflect question problem-solve and think critically The development of this year's bond proposal is centered to ensuring that our facilities effectively support teaching and learning as a board we We had to keep these priorities in mind while reviewing the school budget. We are living in uncertain times, and these uncertainties are significantly impacting both the cost of living and the cost of maintaining the high educational standards we set for ourselves. It is considerably more expensive to provide the same programming next year as it was to provide it this year, and we had to come to terms with that reality. We also remain concerned about rising
231health care costs and continued reliance on reserve funds to cover expenses, something we have committed to reducing. Combined with inflationary pressures, these factors made it even more challenging to meet our students' needs. Scarsdale has long been recognized as a leader in educational innovation and excellence. We would welcome the opportunity to continue expanding our programs and enriching our students' experiences. At the same time, we must be mindful of the broader economic climate and the financial responsibilities we have on our community. This year, we are presenting a budget at the tax cap. While there is more we would like to do, we recognize the importance of balancing our goals with fiscal responsibility. especially as we ask the community to support both the budget and the bond. I support this proposal because I believe the education we provided
232this past year was exceptional, offering a wide range of opportunities inside our classrooms, as well as in athletics, the arts, sciences, speech and debate, and global learning experiences. Maintaining this level of programming will continue to give our students the tools they need to grow and thrive in this ever-changing world. This year our focus has been on investing in capital projects and addressing aging infrastructure As we look towards the future it is my hope that we will be able to focus more on expanding instructional programs and opportunities for both our students and our faculty For these reasons I fully support this year's budget and encourage the community to keep these factors in mind on May 19th Okay, thank you, Colleen. So I'm going to be brief. It's late. And everyone said a lot, which I think
233has all been well said. Just really wanted to say that... As the president of the Board of Education this year, I think it's really been my privilege to work with the board and with the district and with the cabinet, and in particular with Superintendent Patrick, to sort of work through all these thorny issues of cost, expense, tax cap, and the desires and needs of the community and what we want to do and what we can do. It's all been sort of a... learning process even though I've been on the board for five years, really seeing how it all kind of comes together and I've been very impressed with the job that's been done here to try to really accomplish as much as we can with what we can afford to spend while at the same
234time bringing the community along which is in itself a challenging thing to do. We have a community of committed, focused people who scrutinize everything we do. And that's good because it really encourages us to be transparent and to have strong rationales and support and explanations for why we're doing what we're doing. So on the whole, it's been my pleasure to be involved in this process throughout. I've been impressed by the way my colleagues have dedicated themselves to this and scrutinized but also supported where necessary the steps that were taken and the cuts that were made and what's in and what's out. I think on the whole the budget does what it has to do in the face of difficult financial circumstances and a tax cap that's really implacable. We may have to consider in the
235future how to navigate that tax cap. This year we're coming in at the tax cap. Will it be possible to do that next year? We'll see. But I think we just all need to be cognizant of the challenges that this tax cap presents in coming up with a budget that really does everything it needs to be done to support the growth of our students and the strength and long-term strength and excellence of our school district. With all that being said, I fully support this 2026-27 budget, and I encourage everyone to vote on May 19th. Thank you. I don't know. Let's just go home. We support it, but we're not going to vote for it. Okay, so all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. No one's opposed? That vote carries. Thank you. And now
236we move on to the property tax report. I believe that's Laura. I move that the board adopt the following resolved that the Board of Education adopt the attached 2026 to 2027 property tax report card as presented is there a second thank you Susie any discussion no all those in favor please say aye aye that carries and now we're on to the MOA I believe that is Susie thank you Jim I move that the board accept the following resolution. Resolves that the Board of Education approves the attached memorandum of agreement with the Scarsdale Custodial Grounds and Maintenance Unit, CSEA, as presented. Thank you, Susie. Is there a second? Thank you, Laura. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That vote carries. And we are now on to gifts. So the first one, just so I
237can find it, is Amber. I move that the board accept the following resolution. Resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $1,171 to fund a first grade field trip to the Greenberg Nature Center as described in the attached letters. Thank you, Amber. Is there a second? Thank you, Susie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That vote carries with thanks. And now we're on to Bob. I move that the board accept the following resolution. resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of eighteen thousand eighty dollars to support the enrichment programs for the 2025-26 school year as presented in the attached letters thank you Bob is there a second Thank You Leah all those in favor please say aye aye that carries with thanks and we are now on to is
238it Susie again no it's not oh it's you yeah okay sure I move that the board adopt the following resolution resolve that the board accepts with thanks the donation of a lightly used snowblower to the Greenacres dual schools custodial department as presented in the attached letters Thank you, Leah. Is there a second? Thank you, Susie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That vote carries with thanks. And now we're on to Susie. Thank you. I move that the board accept the following resolution. Resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $320 to fund busing for a fourth grade field trip to Phillipsburg Manor as described in the attached letters. Thank you, Susie. Is there a second? Anyone going once going twice? Okay. Thank you, Leah. All those in favor, please say aye.
239Aye. That motion carries with thanks and we are now with Laura. I move that the board adopt the following resolution. Resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $885 to support an in-school workshop for the Westchester Children's Museum for the first grade sound and light unit. as described in the attached letters. Okay, thank you, Laura. Is there a second? Thank you, Amber. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion carries with thanks, and we are now back on public comment, Section 15 of the agenda. I will forego the preamble and simply ask if anyone in the audience wishes to speak and give public comment. No? Okay, thank you. Now we can check Zoom. No one on Zoom. Okay, so I think we will give it. split second see if anyone wants
240to join this is the time if you want to give public comment to jump on zoom and raise your hand you didn't convince any all right so we're gonna move on from that there's no follow-up there's no comment and now we're wrap up items Back to Colleen for meeting dates. All right. Thank you, Jim. Our next meeting is Tuesday, April 21st. It's our special meeting, the SW BOCES vote at 9 a.m. in this room. And then we have a bond information session at 7 p.m. that same day in the auditorium. Monday, April 27th, special meeting executive session if needed at 6.30 in this room. Monday, May 4th, a bond information. information session at 7 pm at fox meadow elementary wednesday may 6th another bond information session at 7 pm at edgewood elementary monday may 11th
241we have a meeting with the volunteer liaison groups at 5 pm in learning commons and a special meeting executive section at 6 pm in the high school of this room with the statutory budget hearing and business meeting at 6.30 in this room. And on Tuesday, May 19th, is our budget and bond vote and board elections from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the middle school gymnasium. Okay, thank you, Colleen. And now would someone like to make a motion to adjourn this business meeting? Thank you, Susie. Thank you, Amber. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, we're adjourned.