BOE Budget Study Session#2/Business Meeting 2026-3-2

001Good evening. I call the second budget study session to order and note that all board members are present along with Dr. Patrick and members of his cabinet. Welcome to all those who have joined us this evening either in the audience or tuning in to our live stream or via Zoom. Tonight there will be two public comment sessions during the business meeting. I don't believe there will be one during the budget study session this evening. Is that correct? Yes. So anyone who wishes to make a comment, you can do so during the business meeting, which will take place immediately after the budget study session. Of course, anyone can also email the board at boardofed at scarsdaleschools.org. The board welcomes your feedback through this budget process. Okay, so with that, turn it over to Drew. Okay, thank

002you very much. Get set up here, okay. Well good evening I add my welcome to everybody and thank you for tuning in to budget study session number two before starting this evening I want to share a few suggestions that from a recent article in the New York State School Boards Association publication On Board last week's issue included an article titled the questions all boards should be asking during during budgets evening a season which identified seven questions How does this budget advance our district's mission, vision, and strategic goals? What assumptions are driving this budget? What has changed from last year and why? How are we using data and evidence to inform these decisions? What are the long-term implications of this budget? How does the budget balance educational needs with taxpayer impact? And what risks should the

003board be aware of? It was reassuring to read those questions, as I believe that we address each of these through our presentations, discussions, and revisions to the budget draft as we move forward through the process to arrive at a final proposed school budget. And, of course, we welcome a moment for you to ask any of those questions throughout the process. Also in last week's issue of On Board was a piece by NSBA President Christine Schnars titled The Many Stresses of School District Budgeting. She noted a number of factors that have been making this process difficult across the state of New York. First is the 2% tax cap, which by design doesn't keep up with inflation. She also pointed to skyrocketing health care costs, which have been climbing at a rate of 17% per year if

004you look over the past 30 years. state initiatives that have local cost impacts like what we've discussed around this table the transition to zero emission buses among others I'm highlighting these two articles to provide some context for the challenges we continue to face these headwinds are nearly universal among school districts though each has its own specific combination of circumstances As we enter tonight's discussion, we still have a number of difficult decisions to make before we reach a final budget plan. With that said, tonight's budget study session will include a very brief overview of the budget process for those new to this discussion, followed by an update to the preliminary budget plan we presented to the Board on February 9th. This updated draft contains additional revenue assumptions and expenditure reductions, but ultimately we still have an

005almost $2 million gap to fill by the time we arrive at this table for budget study session number three in two weeks from tonight. After sharing that update, we'll complete the component budget presentations in the areas of athletics, special education and student services, safety, security, and emergency management, and technology and innovation. Once our colleagues have shared their respective budget proposals, we'll take stock of the discussion and next steps as we look toward the March 16th budget study session number three. so on to our brief background of the process of course the school budget provides the necessary financial resources to operate the school district and to help achieve the goals and objectives as set forth in the strategic plan we share this model as a bird's eye view of the essential work and organizational structure of

006our school district These three spheres communicate the critical functions of our work with students and student learning situated smack in the middle of it all. Importantly, our budget is structured to support all three areas of the organization with teaching and learning held up by the operational and student support functions. Of course, the Board of Education and community provide input and guidance for all of the work through governance and budgetary support. So tonight, the blue boxes represent the components of the budget and what area of this three-part diagram they come from. And then, of course, you're familiar with this. As I've said in the past, the community has made remarkable commitments over time to establish an instructional program that meets the needs of our students. At each level, elementary, middle, and high, the design of the

007program reflects long-held community values, and these structures foster favorable student-teacher ratios, create smaller learning communities within a larger school setting, and allow students to express agency over their course of study. For the sake of time, I won't repeat that discussion, but reiterate that the resources directed toward this organization of our schools creates the strong foundation that allows us to focus on the whole child while pursuing innovation and thoughtful adaptations. And then, of course, as shared previously, these are the four high-level principles that guide the administration's budget development and decision-making processes. Of course the strategic plan and educational priorities at the center with student educational outcomes and achievement as our goal. Mandates and best practices guiding our thinking and decision making and looking for overall efficiency and balancing that overall impact with our community's ability to

008support it. Okay, with those concepts in mind, we'll now move on briefly to a revised draft budget plan from last time, and I'll turn it over to Andrew to walk through this. Thank you, Drew. So at budget study session number one, we presented a draft budget plan that included an increase in the overall budget of 4.27%. Available revenue was projected to decline over $104,000 year to year, and we recommended a reduction in the use of reserves and fund balance of about $250,000. The draft budget resulted in the need for an $8.6 million increase in the property tax levy, or 4.9%. This amount was over the cap, and we highlighted that accordingly. This next slide provides an overview of that draft budget from February 9th. Sorry, go back one, Drew. Here you can see we showed

009the projected tax levy increase available to support the budget at the tax cap. The year-to-year increase for the tax cap was $5.98 million, $918 million, excuse me, or a levy of $181,731,441. And the proposed budget was just over $2.7 million over that levy cap compliant budget. So the next chart will be just a summary of some of the adjustments we've made since that last budget study session. So I'll read through some of the slides, unfortunately, in this one just because I think it best describes the reductions. So in salary and wages across the district, we reduced one of the two contingency positions that we included in this year's budget that generated savings of $116,921 in our salary and wages categories. Contractual, we reduced by $109,909. This came from three areas. There was a $100,000 reduction

010in the transportation area. This included several different adjustments, including some work with our partners at the Village as we anticipate savings through some of the newer buses and hopefully some reduced repair costs with those new vehicles and perhaps some capital adjustments at the Village with our agreement there for the bus garage. In athletics, we sharpened our pencil on our facilities, rentals, and other contractual expenses by the tune of about $15,000. And then we got a revised proposal on our agreement with the Scarce Deluge Family Counseling Services on the social worker contract. So that generated an increase in the budget of just over $5,000. That's of our existing program, the youth. The benefits associated with the salary reduction above as well as other cleanup items, I would say, came down by $37,000. That included a revised

011estimate on our Medicare Part B and Part D contributions for retirees of $6,000. Adjustment for some commissions that we used to pay with our old health benefits advisor for some of the small portion of our insured products. That is about $12,000 that we will no longer have to pay because of the change in consultant. And then just general other employee benefits calculations, we cleaned up to about $19,000 in change to add to some of those savings. In the area of tuition and BOCES, I included these together because most of these adjustments are related to both out-of-district students at private placement and BOCES programs. We were able to revise our tuition and related services projections in special education by about $165,000. And then in the SSEM area, we were able to adjust a BOCES increased assumption

012downward. So we took $27,000 out of that code. And then finally, in kind of clean up all the equipment supplies, text materials, we were able to reduce that across the district by $134,000. In particular, that was some supplies and extracurricular funding at the high school, SSCM equipment, as well as some athletic equipment and district-wide textbook savings. So we've trimmed some of those areas that were going up year over year. Total reduction in expenditures was $589,654 in budget study sessions to proposed draft budget. On the revenue side, we are confident that all five of the out-of-district students that are currently in our district will return next year. We originally planned four, knowing that the fifth could be an opportunity for future revenue. We now are taking that fifth and maintaining that same number of... students from

013out of districts that's $95,000 improvement on revenue and then on the interest earnings Lisa and I have been looking closely at interest earnings but really about all miscellaneous revenue as well and we were comfortable just increasing that interest earnings line by about $25,000 it may come from other areas but we we felt that we needed to do some additional revenue increases there to help balance the budget although it's not there yet so the total revenue increase was $120,000 So this revised chart shows the decrease in the budget proposal, which is still an increase year over year of $7,578,000. It's a 3.96 budget-to-budget increase. You see the other revenues line is now an increase of just under $16,000 on the other revenues category line that includes all the state aid as well as other revenue sources

014like... sales tax interest earnings and miscellaneous income we are maintaining our recommendation to reduce our reliance on the health care reserve by 250 000 in this budget and the assigned fund balance is going down nine hundred ninety thousand nine hundred dollars um that's the reduction um that we anticipated last year for the architect and the engineer related to our capital bond project so that's consistent this uh total proposed budget though requires a a tax levy of $183,716,898, or a 4.5% levy increase. That is over the cap, and we'll talk about that again in a second. This is the updated staffing slide. Basically, the only change to this is we're showing on this slide we had two contingency positions included in our proposal before. We're reducing one of those. So there will be one net contingency

015position in our current draft of the budget. The next slide is our just again a refresher on the property tax cap calculation. A reminder the property tax cap is simply a threshold by which if we stay below it, it's a simple majority vote to pass the budget. If we go above the tax cap, we require a super majority. How do we determine that number? We take the existing current year's tax levy. We apply the tax base growth factor to that levy. There are a series of exclusions that we have to first take out and then add back in. So the only ones that apply to us in this current and next fiscal year are the capital exclusions. So we remove just over $9 million for last year's capital exclusion. That gets multiplied by the lesser

016of the CPI or 2%. CPI is over 2%, so it's 1.02. It's at that cap. We then add back on the right-hand side the capital exclusions for the coming fiscal year, which are $9,031,326, and that gets us to the tax levy limit. That number is what we measure ourselves against. If our levy is required to be above that number, we require a supermajority vote. If we're at or below that number, then we will have a 50% plus one vote in order to pass the budget. This levy limit number is used in the revenue projection slide here, so I won't go through it in too much detail, but you'll see that this has the revised tuition number, revised interest earnings number, and the assumed property taxes at the tax cap, giving us available funds, including the

017assigned fund balances, of $197,098,146 in the bottom line, second to last column. Unfortunately, our proposed budget still remains above that number. It's $199,083,603, or a budget-to-budget increase of $7.6 million rounding. And we are over the cap currently by $1,985,457. And that's the work ahead of us between now and the budget study session three in order to balance this budget. Questions for Andrew before we move on? Yeah. thank you i just have a few questions about the reductions contingency the last time we went from two to one we ended up needing the second contingency in that given year so if for example if we go with one in this next budget cycle and then we need a second contingency position a second teacher position can you just explain how we do that it is first step

018is to look within our existing budget and try to find funds to to transfer to cover that cost, whether they be not spending something we said we were going to as part of the budget process, or if we find savings, or if we have excess revenue, we would try to do that, but that would typically require a budget increase if there's excess revenue. That's the simplest way to articulate that. If there is not funds available in the budget, though, we would have to appropriate from our savings, our fund balance, in order to cover that. Thanks and do these positions generally turn into like a probationary position or do you usually have contingency just like in a given year for one for a need? It depends on the year. I think the we see fluctuation in

019the number of sections at the elementary level that's really what the contingency is primarily tied to so we they go up and down as low as 102 sections as high as 109 or 10 that's really the space that we use to account for that as far as you know in terms of the transportation reduction that's proposed do you believe that that will affect any special events sports student travel we would we're not including those activities in this reduction it's really just contracted services cost so it may require us to renegotiate some of our third-party agreements with either testing companies find alternative means for medical exams, hopefully a reduction in some of the services that we require to keep our fleet on the road from the village. Those are the various types of places where we'd

020have to look for that. Thank you. And then just one more in terms of supplies reduction for the high school. athletic equipment I just do have any sense of how that will potentially impact the student experience so I think most of these increases that we've reduced were budget to budget increases so many of them were not they were not just normal 2% increases they really just were we'd like to do more I think I know Cindy Parra will be speaking about her budget this evening you'll see that I think there's still adequate funding in athletic programs and at the high school level for example the increase there was asked for to to to further support what we already do from the student clubs of the high school whether they be trips for different clubs speakers

021that come in not all of that it's on top of the regular that's already in the budget Thank you, Andrew. I have a quick question about leave replacement. I assume it doesn't impact the budget. It's covered by some sort of insurance if you can leave replacements. Leave replacements for teachers? Yeah. That does have typically a budgetary impact. In some regards you could anticipate that that is the equivalent of a substitute right so we budget for substitutes every year Sometimes those leaves are more expensive than a normal sub most often the leaf replacements would be But we we see those on a regular basis every year so they're part of the regular salary and wages taking off they only have a certain amount of time that's paid and then it's unpaid so then obviously if we

022have to leave it's counteracting So we budget maybe based on a historical percentage of total? Yes, exactly. Thank you. Okay it's a pleasure to invite Cindy Parrott to the mic and she will present our Interscholastic Athletics budget Good evening So the budget that we're putting forth at this point maintains support for the current level of athletic offerings, supports proper supervision, and prioritizes student athlete health and safety. It maintains necessary supplies and appropriate facility rentals while also accounting for some inflation and tariff surcharges that we're starting to see on a lot of the materials we buy. Salary and wages show a significant decrease. Most of that is due to the restructuring of the leadership of athletics, physical education, and health. The rest is a result of cost savings from replacing some longstanding coaches that have either

023retired or moved on and replacing them with coaches that are starting at lower salaries as per the teacher's contract. The other notable decrease you see is in the contractual and other category. The bulk of what you're seeing is for various contractual reductions where we've pretty much evaluated what we've been typically putting forth as encumbrances for these events compared to what's actually happening and bringing them more close to reality of where we are in the department. For example, to hopefully help make that... little bit more clear our bowling team used to be enormous PE changed the PE exemption rules regarding bowling a couple of years ago because bowling only meets two maybe three days a week so they cut in half the number of absences you're allowed to have that before you lose your PE exemption

024because it only meets half the time as most of our other typical sports our bowling contract used to be significant because we had a lot of kids on the bowling team. Now, I don't know if it's, you know, when we came back after COVID, I don't know if it's a direct relationship with the PE exemption change or just the nature of, you know, other sports becoming more popular, but our bowling numbers have really plummeted. So what we had been encumbering for bowling, our bowling contract was incredibly high compared to what the actual expense was. So since that's been happening for a couple of years in a row. Kind of looking at just bringing that number to more close to what reality is rather than just carrying the number We've always been carrying In other places,

025we've been able to kind of either negotiate some cost savings or look more carefully at should we be providing this level of what we had been providing in the past. Another example of that I can give you is choreography for cheer. In the past, we provided as much as three choreography. routines I should say we've kind of narrowed that down to one now that we have a much smaller cheer program we just don't have the numbers to support we haven't had a JV we didn't have a JV team this year so there would be no reason to spend money on a JV choreography and if you know anything about cheerleading nothing is cheap when it comes to cheerleading so you know that's that's a cost savings we're looking at as well so most of what

026we're looking at in that number changing is things we can live with, frankly. The primary increase really that you see there in this proposed budget is for the BOCES services, which is unfortunately something we have little control over. The costs for officials are increasing anywhere from 3 to 5 percent, depending upon the level, and with the number of teams that we have, that does prove to be a significant increase because Most of the events we have have two, sometimes three officials at those events. So, you know, with the number of teams we run out that are officiating costs are very high. So when they increase 3% to 5%, which is obviously higher than our tax cap, that number goes up. There are also significant increases to different fees that are being charged by BOCES for

027next year. Office fees and winter billing program increases total approximately $5,000, and they are now beginning a bill-back program for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Individual State Championships. This includes the sports of girls and boys swimming, indoor and outdoor track and field, and boys and girls wrestling. So basically the costs for these individual... type sports have become really astronomical and the section can no longer really cover the full cost of those expenses so what they're looking to do is try to build back per participant what you know the costs are and I'm you know looking at our current crop of athletes in those sports I'm Propose you know estimating the best case scenarios and we're coming up to a bill back of about fourteen thousand dollars so You know We have

028some successful athletes in those programs, so that's the good news. The bad news is we need money to cover them making it to the state championships, and I think that's money well spent. But again, these are things that we don't really have a lot of control over. I think Section 1 is looking at it as trying to really look at the costs that are being spent. some schools don't send anybody. So by just having every school chip in to cover all these things, and schools like us in track, we've been super successful. We're sending a lot of kids. So I think it's their fair way of trying to build back. and try to cover some of these costs. For example, outdoor track and field, the approximate cost for 2026 to New York State for Section

0291 participants is $115,000. They'll be billing at $418 a pupil. I anticipate we'll have about 10 kids. That's just one of those, an example of one of the sports that we're looking at. So again, these are costs that are rising. Plus they added some new ones and they come to some significant increases But if we want to run all the sports we run and have some success in those sports That's you know the cost we have to pay to BOCES Questions for Cindy on the athletics it's nice to see you cindy so is that a new charge did they not charge us before those charges are brand new yeah the build back system they started talking about it last year um you know that this is where they think they're going rather than reduce the

030number of participants at these events um these are again the individual sports you have to qualify as an individual yes you're a girl you're you know a swimmer on the boys or girls team but the individuals are the ones that advance at that level based on performance. So, you know, boys swimming, we're going to be billed at $632 per, you know, I'm anticipating several boys next year will make it. So, you know, the costs are not insignificant. Yeah, it's great for our athletes, so I'm glad to hear they're doing so well. That's an interesting new charge that we have. But speaking of charges, I'm wondering, you know, last year we talked about the fees for the non-sanctioned sports. How's that going so far this year? Honestly, you know, you could look at that in a

031bunch of different ways. Most of the feedback I've heard from parents has not been necessarily complaints about having to come up with the extra money. It's been more of we're just happy our kids still have this opportunity. So, you know, to be part of Scarsdale Athletics in some way. So I have to say, I'm sure people aren't thrilled to have to be writing a check or paying for it, but I think they understand the nature of it is, you know, it is something above and beyond that we offer here, and they're happy to have it and be able to have their kids part of something. So I think, you know, I haven't heard a lot of negativity around it. Winter season was the first time we had the run-through with this because we didn't have

032any of them in the spring. So it was manageable as far as collecting the fees, et cetera. An interesting side note, we did not provide busing was part of the situation. That might have saved us here and there because busing has been a struggle for athletics. I think you will hear from parents that were disappointed, upset. I got quite a few cranky calls about, you know. Daily, we were in touch constantly with the bus depot. We don't have a driver. What are you cutting? And, you know, when we're short drivers, the process that we kind of go through is contests prioritize over practice buses. So if we're using a bus just to send kids to practice to a facility, an off-site facility, that's going to get cut before we cut a game, right? Rescheduling games

033is... really not fun. The next thing we look at is proximity. You know, if we have a bus going to Pearl River, I don't want people getting over the Tappan Zee Bridge on their own. You know, if it's something we just have to get kids to Mamaroneck, can we rally parents for that? Probably. So then we look at the number of kids impacted. You know, if there's seven kids on a... on a bus for a particular team, that one's gonna get cut before the bus that I have 27 kids to logistically worry about. So providing fencing and squash practice buses would have been cut a lot. For sure because we we were cutting as it is without those two sports receiving bus receiving busing so It would have been obviously problematic for kids to be

034missing those practices. So the lack of transportation Being provided meant kids were able to actually have practice sessions that they might have been cancelled in the past The other part is I heard from the squash coach that having parents bring kids to these things actually created a better sense of community, parent involvement, parent buy-in, because, you know, they were there, they'd drop the kids off, pick them up, they'd go in, they'd watch the games or the practice, and he actually said it had a positive effect, not having the busing. And I think it also helped with the buy-in of it, right, you know, is... having parents and people there seeing what's going on. So that's a great update. Thank you. I'm just curious, it sounds like participation rates have stayed. Steady despite asking participation rates

035were fairly steady to what they were last year dance was down a little bit But for squash and fencing they were in and about what they were at and I will say Attendance was better much better than what we saw last year. I don't know if that's a Indicator of you know, we've paid for this like we're going You know, maybe that helped with buy-in. I don't know or it was just a different crop of kids that were more committed. I don't know the answer, you know, to definitively say, but attendance was much improved over last year for both of those two sports. Thank you, Cindy. Can I just chime in here for a second? Sure. So if you remember last year, the task that we set out for was either additional fees or reduction

036in costs, and Cindy was really instrumental at either finding alternative venues or renegotiating some of our costs. So that's why you see also some of the contracted services budget year to year reflects the savings that Cindy was able to capture this year. So we're credit to do. Thank you for doing that, Cindy. I try. Thank you. So I have a question. When we bus, you know, just our regular sports, I'm not talking about like the squash or the fencing or those that we don't have transportation for, do we use our Scarsdale buses or do we ever use other companies? For the most part, yes. Ski is a coach bus situation because they're on that bus for a very long time. They have a ton of equipment. But for the most part, yes, it's all school

037bus. And do you feel like distance affects the bus or busing ability in terms of, you know, like for some contests, if we go to Rockland County during the week, does that affect? The way that would impact is we need to leave earlier when we go to over the bridge or, you know, Arlington or some of these other places that are farther. And if we cannot get the bus finished with their rounds of the middle school or whatever, sometimes we get there late. But it's not necessarily really what time. It's more the time we have to leave and can we get a bus at that time. It's not the distance necessarily that drives it. Sounds good. And then in terms of equipment. for the sports that require, you know, helmets or goggles. Do you have

038a process like year to year where you look at the most up-to-date equipment that's needed for, you know, football, for example, or field hockey or lacrosse? Yeah. I mean, football really, honestly, is the one that's most logistically difficult because it's a large quantity of equipment that we need. It needs to be reconditioned and recertified annually, and it's incredibly expensive. So... We had a little bit of a snafu in that one of the helmet manufacturers that we had 22 of went out of business. They stopped producing that model of helmet, which means you can't get repair parts for it, which basically means it would no longer be certified. So we had to decommission a large number of helmets in one single year. So our expenditure, I worked out with our Riddell rep. They did give us

039a credit. For the current helmets we had because they were only several years old with it. Maybe four years old I think they were from 21 four or five years old and They were able to give us a credit for 16 of the helmets and we were able to get away with purchasing eight from last year's budget and eight from this year's budget because Football helmets have a shelf life of ten years So if it doesn't get damaged and rejected in that ten years once ten years comes whether it's in beautiful shape or not It's out commissions so helmets are running about a thousand dollars a helmet right now I was able to work out that deal with the trade-in value to get it to 525. So I bought the max we could, eight from

040last year, eight from this year. And what we're going to look at doing is just instead of having these insane numbers come off the books, like once, you know, every so many years and trying to have a big number, is really look at it as what's the right number to just keep on an annual order. Is it six? Is it seven? Is it eight? I don't know. I'm in that ballpark. um so you know i want to get things to more of a level billing type thing not wait until catastrophe happens and then have to throw a lot of money at it um so you know we're looking at that we we built slowly with our lacrosse helmets they're not nearly as expensive but um you know we we started to do that last year

041as well um another big team another helmet that has to be reconditioned and certified annually with with uh riddell so um For the big ticket items, yeah, we are really looking at trying to keep like a level billing so we don't have surprises or peaks and valleys too deep and too high in certain years. And uniforms, the same as... You know, last year was a learning experience for me. You know, we really got in those closets and dug through stuff. And this year, you know, I'm a little higher on our uniforms than I wanted to be, but I just felt like there were certain teams we were putting out there that I couldn't believe we were letting Scarsdale kids put these on. So I was a little higher this year, but I think, you know,

042moving forward, it kind of gotten us to a place where moving forward we can look at, okay, you know, four years from now. maybe we could stretch this one five or do this one in three but we have to get that a little more level than what it was I think this year I think the math teacher in me needs like symmetry you can take the girl out of the math but not the other way around Cindy, thank you very much, and she'll be back during the business meeting with a winter sports update during cabinet updates. Thank you. Really appreciate all that work. And now over to Eric, special education and student services. So thank you very much. I'm going to start with special education and move on to student services and then SSEM budget.

043So special education's role is to provide our most vulnerable students with the services they need to access the areas outlined in our strategic plan, living, learning, and leading. While there are a wide range of students and a wide range of needs, the work can be summed up really in the five points that you see there. All students can learn and all students have strengths. The students do best when they are served in the least restrictive environment that's educationally appropriate. We must provide students with the supports they have outlined in their IEPs. Parents must be part of this process. And we must provide a continuum of services that is appropriate while still being financially sustainable. Next slide. Currently there are 662 students with an IEP which represents 14% of our population. Our classification rate is lower

044than the state and county which are 20 and 17% respectively. The past three years have seen a leveling of our CSE numbers with this year seeing the first decline since 2017 albeit only a decline of six students. 504s have seen a more substantial dip over the past two years, dropping by about 30 students. And while it's difficult to predict, we do believe we're seeing a leveling trend occurring across both of these classification avenues. A major focus of our work also over the past 10 years has been to expand the continuum to allow more students to be educated within district. The effort... through our SSP programs and our special class programs have significantly reduced the number of students needing outside placements. While costs overall have risen given the increasing number of CSE students, the SSP program

045and the special class programs have realized net savings for students needing significant support. And we see additional savings for next year due to the graduation and aging out of students who are currently placed out of district. The majority of students in our out-of-district placements are of the high school age and in alternative assessment or social-emotional programs. As the special class program advances, we expect to see the number of alternative assessment placement fall, and we hope to see that savings continue. Next slide. This chart, which I showed in the December presentation, depicts the staffing needed to complete our continuum of service in special class and ICT. I just wanted that up to remind everyone this budget proposal as you'll see will include the recommended middle school position for next year and that brings us to our

046special education budget slide. This year our budget to budget variance is $854,720 or 3.8%. This includes the requested FTE ad for SMS and an adjustment in our related services spending. This year's projected expenses are above budget and indicative of three major factors that I want to go over before talking about what's exactly included for next year. We have seen a major increase in the non-resident tuition rates, and that's the rate with which we pay to send kids out of district, and that is controlled by the state. And the overall cost for contracted services has risen right along with BOCES. costs. Second, we've seen an increase in the behavioral services needed on the elementary level. This increase was unexpected and it's needed in general ed classes mostly for students with 504s or IEPs with Learning Center

047recommendations. They're largely separate from our special class and ICT programs which are running in line with our projections. And then finally, we did have two very unexpected residential placements on the high school level, which cost in excess of $225,000 each for those residential placements. So that, when you look at our expected expenditure this year, you'll see that those really are the factors that have driven us there. Go to the next slide. This is the same chart just with looking at what we included in this budget. The proposed budget for the 26-27 maintains all the special education programs currently in place and plans for expanded offerings in SMS on the ICT. It also includes savings for the graduating or aging out students who are out of district, allowing us to plan for increased costs in the

048contracted service and in our T rates. So if you look, our proposed budget is similar to last year's budget. with an $854,000 increase, but it is in line with what we're spending this year. But that accounts for the rise in behavioral costs that we are expecting to continue, and it accounts for all of the rising costs across the board. Should I stop for a special ed? Pause for special ed questions before we go to student services. Thanks Eric. I was wondering so the cost this year the vision and intensive behavioral services specifically the intensive behavioral services Is that something that might be addressed by the additional social worker, or is that something we're going to need to continue? I think yes, not necessarily in the immediate, but over the longer term it may. We've seen

049an uptick in the need for the use of registered behavioral technicians for some of our students on the elementary level, mostly in the below fourth grade area, and those are individually very high costs, so it's not a huge absolute number. of RBTs but the three or four are significant because they are paid at a rate well above our aids because they are certified registered behavioral technicians that are there. Oh so it's maybe a few specific. That's correct. Okay thank you. And with the vision I don't see that changing because I don't know of a preventative program for vision issues but Just a question about the staffing request of the middle school. So this would add ICT to the two main subjects where there currently is an ICT in the seventh grade. Could you just discuss

050briefly what is there now for those students and what will the change look like? So this current school year was a year we added English and math ICT options for sixth graders in our parallel program. classic parallel program was the option for ICT and science and social studies and then a 12 to 1 special class for English and math excuse my voice I'm starting to lose it so students would be recommended for the most appropriate program out of those choices with some students being in the regular ed general education English class with support of an academic support period and some needing to be in the 12 to 1. We do believe that there is a role for extended ICT in that English and math program and we added that in sixth grade. So prior to

051that, fifth graders would make the recommendation change moving from full ICT in the elementary to the split that I just talked about. So this potential add in this budget would add it over the next two years with this upcoming sixth grade, the current sixth grade cohort, English and math ICT in seventh and then rolling to eighth grade. If that were not included in this, there would be the same choice made in the CSEs that were made in fifth grade, but it will now be made in sixth grade. That is a viable alternative to have students participate in those programs. You know, I think we have tried to move ICT up through the middle school for the benefit it has to students. We've had very good outcomes with our classic parallel program over the years. I

052don't believe that will change. But it does require either the picking of a more restrictive environment or less supportive environment with outside support rather than a program that is a little bit more of a just right fit for some students. So I know ideally we would do ICT through the whole middle school. Obviously it's the most ideal program. So if we were not to expand it into the seventh grade and keep it status quo, students would still get ICT for science and social studies, just not English and math, is that correct? That's correct. Sixth grade would stay, all four options, and then seventh and eighth grade would have the parallel classes or the 12 to one classes in English and math, and then there would be an ICT science and social studies in each of

053the houses that host the parallel program. thank you and then I have another question this regulation behavior technician that you mentioned I've never I've never heard of that position do we have any of those currently on staff they're not on staff they're contracted service and so we did we have any prior and we needed more or did we not have those contracted and that's where the increase came from yeah it's still an incredibly rare service we have given in the past sporadically over the years we have we have three to four more this year than we would otherwise, which is a significant cost. And you're anticipating meeting them again next year? I'm actually anticipating, yes. My hope is that we're moving in the correct direction with some of the students who have them that we

054can remove RBT, but I'm not, I don't have a crystal ball. So we are planning that we have them. Our hope is that they can be transitioned to less intensive support. We think we're on the right path for that. They're doing good work with the students. It just takes, I can't predict exactly when we'll be able to make that change. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. No problem. Can either you or maybe Andrew help explain the special aid fund? So the special aid fund is a... accounting fund on our financial statements that is outside of the general fund budget. It includes a variety of things including state and federal grants, other outside grants. We're required for our special education program. The summer special education program is included in that fund because a portion of

055it is technically grant funded from the state. The balance of what is not covered by state funding is what we have to include in our transfer to special aid fund. So I'm going to use a crude example. This is not the exact math, but if 80% of the program is covered by the state, the program costs $100,000, $80,000 would be receivable in the special aid fund, and $20,000 we would do as an inter-fund transfer in this transfer to special aid fund. the increase this year is because we're moving towards middle school ESY any other questions on special education I will turn it back to Eric for student services. The next two sections are considerably shorter. Two more to go. Two more. Student services accounts for all of our guidance counselors, nurses, the medical director, psychologists,

056and all of our social workers. It includes our contracted services, including the Youth Services Project, which provide us with youth outreach workers in the middle and high schools, and our current social worker contracted services on the elementary. This proposed budget includes all of the programming plus an increase in elementary social work allowing for a full-time social worker at our two largest elementary schools and a half-time social worker at our three smaller. Currently our larger elementary schools have half-time social workers contracted through Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling and the three smaller schools have a social worker two times in the six-day cycle. So if you look, these increases are really based around contractual increases for salary and then the increase in our social worker time at the elementary school. There is also, if you look at the

057contractual and other, the $308,000 increase, $100,000 of that is made up of a revenue that is also seen on Andrews. So it's really about a $200,000 increase. for those social workers on the elementary school that we talked about. Any questions for Eric on student services? Okay, SSEM, Safety Security Emergency Management. This is a conglomeration of various budgets that we started to present in this way a couple of years ago, just to remind everybody. It really focuses on how we provide an external layer of safety and security to the buildings. It includes our safety monitors and visitor management system, integrated lockdown system, digital mapping and camera access for first responders. The real short story of this budget is it maintains all of our current levels of safety and security and the one reduction here that Andrew

058mentioned earlier in the presentation is in the equipment line moving from $110,000 in this year's budget to $60,000 that's a deduction of $50,000 we felt for this year coming up that was appropriate given that we have spent last year's and this year's budget on equipment really focusing in on door jar sensors which the work is completed substantially for the schools that are outside of the the playground work which is but that playground work the PO is now in and that work should be commencing fairly shortly the $60,000 assuming by the middle of the year not too many things needed to be repaired or broken will allow us to do a modest increase in our cameras towards the end of next year Any questions for Eric on this budget area? Okay. And our third section tonight

059is technology and innovation, and Jeanne Crowley is coming to the podium, and William Yang is also here. Thank you both for being here. Hello everyone. Good evening. My name is Jeannie Crowley. I'm the director of technology and tonight I'll discuss the technology budget Before I dive into the details. I'd like to give you some high-level context for our department We have a robust investment through our lease purchase program in one-to-one student devices interactive boards grades K through 12 We also have annual investments in infrastructure, switches, storage servers, network controllers, phone systems, firewalls that are necessary to ensure our equipment is up to date and secure. Investments in infrastructure are primarily driven by manufacturer end of support dates. Although subscriptions continue to rise, we have processes in place to ensure we're thoroughly reviewing usage levels before

060renewing subscriptions. And through this review process, we've been able to reduce subscriptions of underutilized services, helping offset increases in subscription costs. In addition, adoption of new instructional technology software is supported by a pilot grant program to the community for inquiry and innovation. This new process helps ensure we engage in collaborative inquiry process before committing to full-scale rollout for any new educational technology software. Finally, although the technology budget is just a small slice of the district budget, the community support over the budget for the past few years has allowed us to upgrade the website, our emergency communication system, migrate to a new HR and finance system, keep our network up to date and secure, replace our end-of-life phone system, and continue to support teacher and student uses of technology in the classroom. Our first major area

061is the technical services budget. The technical service budget allows our team to maintain public presentation spaces, maintain classroom interactive boards and displays. provide physical and wireless access to the network. And pretty much any space you see in the district, you can see the work of the technical services team, including this meeting now, which is run and maintained by the technical service team and the hardware in front of you. The technical service has a modest $5,000 reduction from the removal of a one-time cost that we added last year. And other than contractual salary increases, there are no additional budget requests for the technical service team. The budget provided by the district allows us to maintain all of our services I just mentioned, and we're... able to meet those at our current funding level. Next slide, please.

062Our second technology area is instructional technology. This budget covers the district's internet access, internet filtering, library databases, inventory software, student device management, antivirus software, and all instructional software for the district. Some details about our budget to budget variance in instructional technology. All those software prices continue to increase. I say this every single year. You know, sometimes really big jumps. These increases continue to be offset by reducing underutilized services. So, you know, a concrete example in the past, we might have had a school-wide license, and now we reach out and ask the faculty directly who needs an individual license, and then we go down to individual licenses when appropriate. You'll see a $163,000 movement. That's not an ad. That's a move between budgets. We used to have Microsoft and some large costs in other budgets, and

063we moved them over to BOCES. So you'll see that as an increase in BOCES, but it's not an additional part. And you'll see that offset by the drop in contractual software and then a little bit in a drop in the next administrative budget. Overall, we have a 4% increase in BOCES services, which is some services went up 100%, some services went up 2%, and we got a place where we averaged us out to 4. Next, please. Our third area is the administrative services and includes the district's data services team which maintains all of the district's data for students and staff, develops data integrations to support daily teaching and learning activities, data integration for transportation, food services, human resources, business office, and state reporting. The data service team also provides direct support to those entering and

064utilizing district data. Also included in this budget is the technical support for administrators, counselors, secretary, custodians, all staff in central office, the cafeteria, bus compounds, and the grounds and maintenance building. The administrative technology budget has an expected annual increase in salaries and wages of around $38,000. We need small adjustments to reduce costs and supplies in the amount of $3,600. And the $7,000 you see there, $77,087, reflects the regular 4% annual increases for BOCES services. And our final area is the technology budget is a lease purchase plan, which covers student devices, interactive boards, and all infrastructure equipment. The lease purchase budget this year also includes additional Chromebook cart to support humanities department in the high school. The decrease in principal that you see here is possible because of the change in the terms of lease. Previously,

065we paid for all of our lease terms over. four years however our infrastructure equipment interactive boards have a lifespan about eight years i've worked with andrew lennon to adjust our principal payments to reflect the life of assets so reducing our annual cost by pursuing a combination of four year and eight year leases to more align with the actual useful life of the equipment this concludes my portion of the budget and i'm available for any questions questions for jeannie thank you jeannie um that was very very uh informative. For the lease of the computers that you mentioned that would support the humanities, about how many devices would that cover, the 76,000? At the top of my head. I had this number memorized right before this moment. I'm so sorry. I think it's... nine to ten carts

066worth and each cart has about 30 devices so roughly 300 and the carts themselves as well the carts are quite expensive they maintain charging the reason it's an ad this year is because even though we have about five carts that the faculty are sharing those are those are leftovers from COVID that are on their last leg. And we borrowed a bunch of devices from the elementary school in order to help faculty this year with Chromebooks in the classroom. And so really those won't be available next year. So if we want to support the humanities teacher, we need to buy a whole new fleet. And hopefully that'll address, there has been student feedback that the Chromebooks are sluggish. And they're old, they're five years old. This was really kind of a... an all hands on deck

067effort in order to get devices in the classroom for an initiative that we hadn't anticipated. We've also made some software changes that will make the next round run a little faster and I hope that will address some of the concerns and then some of it is The tool that we're using is fairly new in general. It's a new Google tool, and it's new to faculty. So this is a growth year that next year, with intention, we plan to really be much more supportive. It'll be planned. This year was responsive, and hopefully we're going to be more proactive next year for it. Great. Thank you. Would this be used primarily for assessments, like because of AI, or would this be for, is this going to be like a one-to-one kind of situation? Yeah, so it's a

068combination of assessments and for in-class work. One of the things... William and I were talking about this earlier, it's really to give the humanities faculty a space to accurately understand where the students in their classroom are. We've talked about when you're using these tools, how do we make sure that not everything feels like a high-stake assessment, so that's part of this learning process. But it's not only for assessments, it's also for in-class writing activities to make sure that faculty know what student work in real time. I had one other question. So like Westpac and NISPA, they all have advocacy points this year around cybersecurity. I know we've had some phishing type situations ourselves. How do you how are we approaching cyber security right now or you know this does that impact the budget at all?

069Yeah, so the the biggest Element of cyber security that keeps us going I mean there's so many pieces that are hidden in this budget the infrastructure budget from the lease purchase program this eight-year one We're talking about that's huge Constantly keeping our equipment up to date. That's like our number one element because I see a lot of schools who aren't funded properly and they have out of date equipment that's not being patched properly and is vulnerable to attack. We also have, you know, routine cybersecurity meeting with me and two other staff members. We review literally the last week's vulnerabilities that came out, come up with a patch plan for that week and then roll them out in addition to routine patches. And we have cybersecurity monitoring software. We have phishing simulations that we run. And,

070you know, the community has been really, really responsive. It's very, very hard in today's day and age with AI to recognize it. But, you know, people, I'm constantly pleasantly surprised by how. adept our community is at recognizing a threat and forwarding it to one of our staff members so we can address it in real time okay thank you i'm sorry can i ask one more question sure of course they're free i'm sorry um i remember years ago we invested a lot of money in like Wi-Fi coverage in our schools. And then there was talk for a while about outdoor spaces, but then we thought, well, the self-coverage was going to be better because the village and we were partnering on improving that. I don't think it necessarily lived up to maybe our hopes and dreams

071on that. Is it possible to improve Wi-Fi outdoors? I don't know much about that kind of technology. So it's not included in the current budget to increase it outdoors. It's quite expensive. So a typical access point that you see here might be $900. One that goes on the side of the building might be closer to $3,000. And we actually have to do core drilling on the side of the building and do these home runs. So one access point could run us. you know, $6,000 to $10,000 depending upon the labor and the hardware. So, you know, it's one of those things where as a need pops up, we can find a little wiggle room, but we don't necessarily have, like, in this budget, a full-scale rollout included. Okay. Thank you so much. Of course. Yeah, no,

072that's fine. Any other questions? Yeah. Thank you, Jeannie. So my question is, in terms of professional development as it relates to, like, advances in technology or understanding artificial intelligence, is that in the curriculum budget under PD, like under the Center for Innovation? That's not. Yeah, so we do professional development in kind of a few different ways. And it's actually the timing is really perfect. So you saw the Friday five came out with a request for feedback from the community because we're in the process of doing a 2026 to 2029 instructional technology plan. And we have the digital competencies that are led by William Lee Yang. And we're asked the community to help prioritize our work in this area because, you know, AI is is a massive bucket. Right. And so are we focusing on. You

073know, the ethics and the impact of AI, the academic integrity, you know, there's probably 15 different vectors on that and we can't focus on all at once. But one thing that we are seeing quite consistently is the AI inquiry groups are doing faculty share outs in each building. And our real push right now, you know, the baseline which we talked about at the last board meeting or the previous one is just really making sure that we're starting with a baseline of security and student data privacy. Like that's. That's our biggest push right now, and that's been quite successful through faculty meetings. And then the next round is small group supported inquiry for AI adoption. Yeah, Colleen. Thank you, Jeannie. I just had a question about, obviously, you know, we talk about purchasing all of these

074Chromebooks because we want to see what the students know on their own without, you know, interference of other technology. Most of the students do have their own devices, so it's kind of, you know, we're buying a device for kids who have devices. Is there any kind of research, or is the team looking into... you know, a way for them to use the devices that they own to do that, that would, you know, not like an airplane mode, but something that would allow them to show their teachers what they know on their device they have already, so we don't have to keep buying double devices. Yeah, so it's, you know, I've been looking into this and where those typically are rolled out at the university level, and it usually is under the umbrella of... proctoring software.

075So this is a little bit of a crossroads where class tools, it is a lockdown environment on our managed devices. And in K through 12, it tends to be you can create restrictions, but you have to own the device and manage the device. And there is a material difference in the feeling for a student of a proctoring software versus a classroom assignment. So it's not a no. We've looked at it, but we haven't found something yet that's as... comparable and student-friendly at the K-12 level that they currently use more typically at the university level for BYOD. Any other questions for Jeannie? Thank you very much. Appreciate it. So looking forward to March 16th two weeks from now when we'll hold budget study session number three as we talked about at the beginning We will come

076to you with an updated draft budget plan that includes recommendations for cost savings potentially revenue generation that closes that 1.9 million dollar gap between what you saw tonight and the tax levy cap we're also going to have our new health plan consultants here to give a presentation as part of this risk strategies will will come and kind of talk a little bit about their engagement with us what the work of this first year is going to be with Scarsdale schools and then the overall discussion with the board about where we are at that point in time with with the budget and of course as we always show this is the discussion timeline for the budget process here we are at March 2nd March 16th as I just mentioned will be the updated plan in full

077presentation the following week March 23rd is the public budget forum and then board continued discussion and review and then the board would need to adopt the budget by april 13th in order for us to meet our statutory obligations of communicating and notifying and preparing the all the vote materials and with that we'll open the floor to any remaining questions or discussion we kind of did that throughout the presentation tonight but is anything lingering I'm just thinking ahead to the next meeting when you're going to need to come back with some proposals. And I think this is my sixth year, so I can't remember which year I'm thinking about, but I know maybe it was last year. where I think you came back with a couple of scenarios, like we could do A or we could

078do B. And as I was thinking about this today, I was thinking it might be useful for there to be either some scenarios or some menu format where we get to see you know sort of the range of maybe from a priorities point of view so that we can understand what some of the trade-offs are which clearly they're going to be some major trade-offs so in order for us to kind of quickly get into your head about all the machinations that you went through just as a suggestion yeah no I appreciate that I'm going to be brutally honest which is we're struggling to identify scenario A right now, let alone a scenario B. So I think what's more likely within this two-week time period is we'll come forward with a specific set of recommended reductions

079with rationale, and those reductions will be in categories. I think it would be appropriate to engage in what-ifs. If not that, what are the kinds of things? I don't know that we'll have a specific list. but what kinds of things would those trade-offs entail? Okay. If that's okay. I totally get that, to be honest. I'm not even sure how you're going to get to that in the first place as we're sitting here. But, you know, I just want us to be supportive of understanding and, frankly, the community understanding, because I'm sure it's not unlikely that we're going to start to hear things that we're not so happy about. You know, I mean, just, you know, this is... we know what we want but we might not be able to have all everything we want so

080yeah whatever we can do obviously to help you to do that thank you leah um yes thank you i wonder would it be possible to get a dollar amount per household general you know even if you do two scenarios for example if we're over the cap and under the cap or at the cap um i think it's helpful to have an estimate for people to kind of understand what would the impact look like for the average assessed house. So for tonight's example, what the $1.9 million means for the average homeowner? Right, just to kind of get a sense of what it would be. I mean, obviously we need a supermajority if for some reason we're over the cap, and I know I don't necessarily want to be over the cap, but we're obviously making complex

081decisions, and they will have implications and consequences for the reductions. So just to understand what is the household. kind of what does that impact look like anyone else okay I think that brings us to a close okay then so would someone like to make a motion to adjourn this budget study session number two and move into tonight's business meeting Susie any second Laura thank you any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye the motion passes would anyone like to take a five minute wellness break yes okay we'll do that We are joined this evening by Superintendent Dr. Patrick and members of his administrative cabinet, except for Edgar, who is away, I believe. Thank you to those joining us this evening, either in the audience or tuning in on the live stream or via

082Zoom. Welcome back to school after what we hope was a restful winter break with family and loved ones. Immediately before this business meeting, we held the second of three budget study sessions. Thank you Drew, Andrew, Lisa and your team and the Administrative Cabinet for all of your hard work putting together the budget study presentations that we reviewed in this session and the one to come. As everyone knows, our winter break was extended by two days due to a major blizzard that involved the Northeast and New York on February 22nd and 23rd. It's scarcely receiving at least 18 inches of snow, if not more. Many in the community have already noted the exceptional work done by the district's grounds and maintenance crews in keeping our buildings accessible in spite of the blizzard conditions. It's fair to

083say they went above and beyond in their duty, and we have the deepest thanks and gratitude to them for a job well done. And I just want to name them and give them our thanks. Nick Ferraro, the Director of Facilities. John Antonicelli, the Assistant Director of Facilities. Luis Mangal-Haste, Assistant Director of Facilities. Matt Hilgendorf, Head of Grounds. Rob Schweit, Head of Maintenance. James Katsunis, who's the Head Custodian here at the high school. Brian LaVoy, also Head Custodian in the middle school. Frank Rogwetz, the Edgewood Head Custodian, Mike DeSantis, the Fox Meadow Head Custodian, Herman Garcia, the Greenacres Head Custodian, Anthony Antoniselli, Heathcote Head Custodian, and Jamie Lartigui. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. I probably am not. Oh, that was the last name that I was worried about. In any event, he is the Quaker

084Ridge head custodian. Thanks to all of these employees and others for the exceptional service and dedication they show to the district in connection with this winter storm. And with that, I'll turn it over to Drew. Thank you very much, Jim. I add my welcome and good evening to everybody. And I want to echo your gratitude for the efforts of that crew, the custodian's grounds and facilities leadership for their work during and after. last week's weather events, Wednesday not being an exception. As everyone knows, the storm cleanup was extensive and was physically demanding. That group works hard, they work with pride, and they work most importantly until the job is done. And I also want to extend an equal measure of gratitude to our drivers and our transportation leadership team. Before our buses roll, snow needs

085to be removed from the top and around each bus. They're packed in there in the yard and vehicles need to be inspected, in some cases repaired. So thank you to that group as well. And I also want to thank our PTAs for everything they did to recognize that these folks were working hard, providing food and supporting them through messages of care and concern. I think it goes a long way, probably further than even they know. As I wrote my community message on Wednesday, unfortunately, winter might not be over. but just wanted to spend a second and review our days, calendar days and so forth. So we're required to hold 180 days of session. That includes our four superintendent's conference days. We have one more of those coming up this month. And we're safely on track

086for 182 right now. So that gives us room for two more school closures before we would need to exchange a day that's currently scheduled to be off for an instructional day. When the current year calendar was originally adopted, we designated April 3rd during the spring break as the first so-called give-back day. That was a mistake that went unnoticed because that day is an official holiday for our civil service employees. So our current thinking is that we would instead designate May 26th, which is the day after Memorial Day but before Eid al-Adha. both of which are closures but we have that set as a five-day weekend or a five-day break we set that Tuesday as the give-back day should it be necessary so we're gonna discuss this a little bit further before we make that final

087decision and communicate but I just wanted to share that thought it was important to say that publicly fortunately this week's outlook is mostly more favorable and hopefully we're heading toward better weather and this is moot that's that's what i what i just a couple of other announcements i want to remind the community that we've had a very successful partnership or tell the community with kids base this year to host after school care in two of our schools so kids base is going to continue that next year offering the program at edgewood and green acres as they have this year and will expand to fox meadow for the 2026-27 school year um so kids base offer just for those who don't know offers k-5 after school care from 3 to 6 p.m for scarsdale elementary students

088and this was um partnership that stemmed from outreach from parents to see if something in our schools could be possible and we're delighted that our partnership has been successful so far thanks to kids base and also thank you to our building leaders and teachers and staff for making that the program feel welcome and and then finally last week's Friday 5 also included information and a link to a parent survey Jeannie alluded to this in the budget study session but we have a survey out there to for parents to help us Think about our district's 2026 through 2029 instructional technology plan. That's a plan that's required by the state of New York, but that we make every effort to make meaningful and to help really guide the work we do. The plan serves as a roadmap

089to enhance student learning and prepare our students for the evolving digital landscape. The survey is brief. We're asking for input on the highest priorities for student learning in the areas of media and information literacy. computer science and the impact of technology so that feedback will help inform our goals for the next three years and it really just takes five minutes or less you can find the survey under latest news on any of the school's web pages just click the Friday five for February 27th and it's the number five link right in there And in closing, just some dates to note, Purim began tonight at sundown and ends at nightfall tomorrow, Tuesday. Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 3rd, is also Chinese Lantern Festival. March 4th is Holi, and March 8th is International Women's Day. So those are the

090holidays right in front of us. And with that, I turn it back to you, Jim. Okay, thank you Drew and do we have some board member reports I believe Colleen Thank you on Thursday February 26 Amber Susie Leah Laura and I attended the elementary math coffee The goal of the session was to provide the community with hands-on experiences highlighting the additions made to the math curriculum Following this past summer's work. The work was guided by data collection observation of student experiences community feedback and teacher input This was an interactive workshop with multiple opportunities for participants to engage with principals, assistant principals, classroom teachers, the district math coordinators, and members of the Board of Education. A feedback form was available and participants engaged in small group discussion at each table. At the conclusion of the program,

091the floor was open for additional questions and comments and administrators remained available for one-on-one conversations. The main focus of the workshop was mathematical fluency, particularly in response to community feedback that our current curriculum lacked the sufficient fluency development. The session began with a brief presentation from our two district math coordinators outlining the summer work and subsequent enhancements. The majority of the session, however, was led by teachers from all five elementary schools representing all sixth grade levels K to five. Participants rotated through grade level stations where they experienced exactly what students encounter in math class with a particular emphasis on fluency. It was clear that fluency is being taught across all levels, not simply through rote drills, but through real world applications and complex problem solving. It is also evident that activities are thoughtfully designed to

092differentiate based on individual student need and skill level. One comment that stood out. came from a group of teachers who share that this curriculum allows math to be integrated throughout the entire school day rather than confined to a 45-minute it's time for math block. Activities such as be curious and what do you notice create safe inquisitive spaces for students to talk about math. For students who experience math anxiety these approaches allow meaningful learning to take place without triggering stress. The use of manipulatives and real-world applications enables students to explore mathematical thinking not only during the designated math time, but also during free play, morning meetings, and turn-and-talk discussions. It was evident from this coffee that fluency is indeed being taught in our classrooms and that the district recognizes the value of strengthening and supplementing the

093current curriculum to continue developing strong mathematical reasoning and complex problem solving skills, both of which will serve our students well as they progress into more rigorous coursework. events like these demonstrate the district's ability to listen to community feedback and create meaningful hands-on opportunities to address questions and concerns i would like to thank our two math coordinators vivian roberts and carrie orguera the elementary school principals and the many teachers who took time out of their busy day to educate our community and showcase how fluency is being developed in our students okay thank you colleen uh leah thank you I'm going to do a board report on PT Council. It is a busy time for PT Council events and programming. Their annual sports swap took place this past Saturday at SMS. The 31st annual Young Riders Workshop

094will take place this Saturday morning, March 7th, at Scarsdale High School. This event is for Scarsdale Elementary students and residents in grades three through five. This year's event features an in-person keynote from Michael Northrop, an award-winning author known for writing over 16 books for young readers, including the New York Times bestselling Tomb Quest series and four graphic novels for DC Comics, such as the critically acclaimed Dear Justice League. All students will attend the opening keynote presentation and two inspiring workshops. led by local creative professionals the 20 workshop offerings include songwriting creating a youtube channel using ai for sports insights among others right on to all of our young writers and creative thinkers pt council's technology committee also has two events coming up the first is called helping elementary students thrive in the digital world which

095is this friday at 9 00 am at quaker ridge Supporting our elementary students in navigating the digital world is essential for educators and parents alike. Join Kristen Carroll, Quaker Ridge technology teacher, and Kate Burns, Quaker Ridge librarian, as they share their experiences in integrating media literacy and digital wellness lessons into the library and technology programs, while providing valuable tools and strategies for teaching these important skills at home. The second program... is a virtual presentation on Thursday, March 12th at 2 p.m. entitled Understanding Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery, NCII. Join Jeannie Crowley, Director of Technology and Innovation, and Eric Rauschenbach, Assistant Superintendent for Special Education and Student Services, and one of our secondary counselors to learn more about the impact of nonconsensual intimate imagery on students. This Lunch and Learn webinar is open to all members of the

096community and will cover the following topics. recent trends in ncii including deep fakes and sextortion ai and ncii changes in federal and state laws district protocols for response and how the school and families can partner to support students impacted by ncii thank you okay thank you leah um i believe that takes us to the student members we have reports from from them Hi everyone, we hope you all had a great break. First and foremost, like President Dugan mentioned, we would like to extend our thanks once again to the district's custodial staff during our two snow days. On behalf of the students and the faculty, we really appreciate your efforts to make our commute to school as safe as possible. The Scarsdale High School Drama Club will also be putting on a performance of Puffs next

097Friday, March 13th at 8 p.m., as well as Saturday, March 14th at 7 p.m. Earlier this week I met with Dr. Patrick and we discussed holding a meeting to improve and get high school students informed about the upcoming capital bonds project. Our goals were to help students feel informed and excited about the bond. We also discussed ways to motivate eligible seniors to register to vote and we wish Anish and I could advertise this meeting to really just increase student engagement. And adding on tomorrow, the sophomore class government is hosting its annual blood drive in collaboration with the American Red Cross from 8 to 3 in the wrestling gym. And this is just a great event for students to give back to the community. And it's awesome that the class government is putting this on. Thank

098you very much for those reports. And with that, I think we're at cabinet updates. Great. Thanks. Our first update is from Cindy, our athletic director. Cindy Parrott will talk about a winter sports update. Thank you. We had a very active winter, so bear with me. Boys basketball defeated Porchester on Friday, February 20th, in the first round of their sectional tournament. They played at Mount Vernon this past Friday, where their season came to an end. Something I just want to add about this team, this is a team that only won one of their first ten games, and that's a tough start. They managed to finish the season 11-11, which speaks volumes about... the coaches keeping those kids in the game and the kids' resilience. So that was an amazing turnaround. Girls basketball fell to a strong

099Royce-Ketchum team on Friday, February 27th as well in the quarterfinals of their tournament. They're definitely a fun team to watch. They're incredibly young. They've been led all season by some freshmen, a sophomore. At times during the season, there were four freshmen on the court, maybe three freshmen and a sophomore and maybe one senior in there. So they're young. Their future's bright. Aaron Gans qualified for the sectional tournament in bowling. His season finished on a competitive note, but he did fall short of advancing to the state tournament. Our cheerleading team competed in Orlando, Florida at UCA Nationals in January. They're also a young team with a future that looks bright. Dance is working hard preparing for their performance on March 19th. Our boys' fencing teams had a great showing at sectionals. Fencing is a pilot program

100for Section 1. So it's something they're trying to get growing. I did go to a fencing competition this season. Learned a lot. I couldn't find our team because everybody's wearing the same outfit and their heads are covered head to toe. So it was fun to watch, though. The foil team of Jack Levin, Adam Roth, and Grayson Lynn took fourth place in the section, while the epi team of Arthur Luke Solars, Michael Rivachev, and Ian Goldman. took second place. Gymnast Leila El-Moselli had a strong showing at divisionals and was able to advance to sectionals qualifying in the uneven bars. Boys ice hockey defeated White Plains in the first round of their sectional tournament. They played BYSNS, which is a merger team of four schools, at Brewster in the quarterfinals this past Thursday. They competed until the

101end, but ultimately fell to a very strong team. They fell 3-2. It's tough on us. We're just a Scarsdale team where we play a lot of teams that are mergers, so it's like having all-star teams of multiple schools. So it gets tough at that level. The girls' ice hockey merger team that we are a part of, we're the Section 1 champions. Allie Greco and Noah Avni represented Scarsdale on that team. On Thursday, February 12th, they played in the state regional finals in Glens Falls. They fell in overtime to Adirondack, but they had a season to be proud of for sure. After several weather-related delays, our indoor track team competed at the Section 1 Championships at the Armory this past Friday. In New York City, they had to do it at 9 a.m. because when Armory

102cancels, that's when it's available to reschedule to. The nice thing about that is I was able to attend. We had 15 athletes that qualified for... the sectional championships. Skylar LaBoy, Sydney LaBoy, Dahlia Latzman, Leah Patel, Rachel Rackhauer, Adriana Pettinelli, Alice Nicasio, Brandon Lynn, Jack Sheridan, Charles Rich, Nate Lynch, Raj Bhat, Jake Saxon, Sally Liu, and Dylan Chen. We have a large group moving on to States after Friday's event, and States will be this weekend at Ocean Breeze, which is in Staten Island. The girls 4x400 meter won their event, and they'll compete at States. The relay includes Anna Petinelli, Leah Patel, Rachel Rackauer, and Alice Nicasio. Alternates for that relay will be Dahlia Latzman and Skylo the Boy. Anna Petinelli also won the 1,000 meter race, and she'll compete in that event as well. Jake Saxon

103won the 55 meter hurdles and he also heads to states and Charles Rich plays fourth in his event so he will run at states as part of the intersectional relay team. Scarsdale Skiing had their largest team ever at sectionals, largest group they've ever had qualified. They competed Tuesday, February 10th at Hunter Mountain. Alex Zia, Hunter Frank, Ben Cheekin, Andrew Jeremiah, Liam Mancini, Ali Kaden, Warren Sau, and Leo Petinelli represented the boys' team. The girls' roster included Stella Van Arsdale, Jaden Hernandez, Laura Chady, Avery Kaden, Sally Steinberg, Katerina DiCataldo. Amy DiCataldo, Haley Lamb, and Chloe Lamb. Stella had championships to remember. Stella Van Arsdale took home three medals and was named the Ski Meister of the event, which is a first for Scarsdale ski team. She qualified for the state championships this past week at Bristol

104Mountain, where she took fifth place in Giant Slalom and ninth place in Slalom. So she had an amazing season, and she's going to college to play soccer. So boys swimming and diving had another strong showing at sectionals. The team finished in third place. Avi Stahl was the section champion in both the 200 and 500 freestyle. Kieran Lee was the section champion in the 100 backstroke and the 200 IM. Noam Tiamkin took third in diving. Avi, Kieran, and Noam all advanced to the state championships this coming weekend. Our wrestling teams recently competed in the section tournament. Both Jack Harrison and Luke Iasello received their 100 wins at that event. On the boys' side, Scarsdale had three podium finishers in Andre Duval, Ben Zhao, and Luke Iasello. The girls' team placed second in section one. Daisy Bennett

105and Jackie Goldberg finished second in their weight classes. Iman Marouf and Celeste Minardi won their weight classes, so they were able to compete at the state championships this past Thursday. The competition up there is really tough. Both girls fell to two amazing opponents to end their seasons. But again, our girls wrestling is so up and coming. And we have one of the larger groups of girls on our team in the section. And they're doing a very good job of recruiting the younger athletes out there. As we close the door on our winter season and look forward to spring, I actually want to jump on the bandwagon and take a moment to acknowledge the incredible amount of work that's going to go into getting our fields and actually our turf. I never really thought we'd have

106a problem having turf available to us, but getting our turf and fields ready to be playable for this upcoming season. Everything is still buried under inches of snow and we only have a week before the season starts and that's a season that includes only outdoor sports. Our facilities team is incredibly talented. We're lucky to have them. I am hopeful we have enough manpower to handle the monumental task of getting all of this ready and I am going to in advance thank them for the work I know they will be putting in over the next couple of weeks and probably throughout the season, but this is an unusual one. um i'm even concerned that we're going to have the turf available i don't know if we'll see green by next monday we haven't usually had to

107make that kind of a contingency plan we've always known you know especially with the march 9th start date we knew it would be difficult for the fields we didn't think turf would be tricky or track so i want to thank them in advance for all the work i know they'll be putting in and thank you Thank you very much Cindy appreciate it any questions for Cindy Really successful season. Thank you so much and I'll bring my shovel Yeah, sorry. I do have a question But Cindy what happens if they just can't start and there's so much snow They just can't start outside. We bring them indoors Okay, I guess there's nothing and they have to do use our gyms and shifts. Yeah Wow. Okay. Thank you. Yeah We've ordered up some rain for the rest

108of this week. 65 degrees Sunday is what I'm, yeah. It'll be a Sunday miracle. And our second cabinet update is Andrew with some capital projects. It's related. So just some progress on the high school turf field practice field project. So this Wednesday we're opening bids for that project. So we're anticipating having significant interest in that. As a reminder, we're trying to complete that project before graduation. So that turf field we expect to be under construction in April. through May and the first few weeks of June we anticipate having that turned over so that for graduation the site is clean and ready to go. So we would anticipate a recommendation to the board to award that contract if all things go well on the March 16th board meeting just to keep that project moving. That concludes

109cabinet updates. Okay, great. Thank you, Drew. So now we're up to a hearing from those present, public comment, the preamble. 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 via email at boardofed.scarsdellschools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The

110board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during the 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. With that is there anyone in the live audience who wishes to make a public comment? Hi Excuse me My name is Claudine Giselle and I live at 10 Kent Road and I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my friends and neighbors who also live here I just wanted to point one thing out that's a financial concept that I haven't really heard in this room as frequently as maybe we could be using these words and That's the funny thing about the math program. There's a lot of words

111involved that aren't typical math words, but I'm just going to bring up a financial word which we use that's called all in, meaning everything is included, including the kitchen sink. So this is like a tough scenario here with a budget gap that we can all see. And apparently this has been going on for a couple of years. And it has to get resolved, otherwise we're just going to drain all the reserves or people are just going to get upset with the tax increases. that are significant for some families, maybe not for every family, but for some families. So maybe in the concept of a scenario to come back next time, because it is hard. This is, you know, it's just hard. It's just a hard situation. Another scenario that maybe would help clarify things, especially

112with the large... budget item of a million dollars round and rounding it for the special ed increase all in all in We might need to also consider that we're possibly considering a 25 million dollar addition to an elementary school to accommodate Some of these special ed programs and that's a big increase now. There is some matching of the debt We don't know how it's really going to shake out but that million dollars that we're seeing in this little budget book now could If you take, let's just call it 20 million, which is underestimating the amount, and do simple math, 20 million, 20 years, million a year, there's some runoff, but there's some additions. So we're not doing a linear progression on how that would make it bigger as an all-in figure, but that... line item

113when you include that we're doing a huge capital expense to support it also could make it much higher and that's I think that's just something that we have to look at that's the all-in consideration not just the teacher salaries and not just their forever pensions but we're also going to be paying a long-term mortgage on a large addition. So I just want to bring that up as something that maybe should be considered as part of the scenario. And I don't have any answers. I mean, I shouldn't stand here if I don't have an answer. But I'm also looking forward to what's going to happen next year and the year after that. Some of us will still be living here at that time and writing checks. Somehow this has to get under control, otherwise we're going

114to have no reserves. And then what are we going to do? So anyway, I just wanted to bring that up as a concept because I don't hear it in this room, but it's how financial people look at things, the all-in cost, the total cost, the cost of the checks that we are all going to be writing. So I just want to bring that up and thank you for your time and attention. And I appreciate all the work because this is really brutal, in my opinion. This is very tough. Okay. Is there anyone else who wishes to make a live public comment? Turn to Zoom. We have one person with their hand raised on Zoom. I'll promote them now. You can turn on your camera, please. Hi. Is that working? Yes, it is. Thank you. Okay,

115hi, I'm Tali Swan Sternberg. I'm at 181 Clarence Road. I am joining to strongly give my opposition against the artificial turf field that is part of the planned capital bond. The board and the administration are well aware of the health, safety, and environmental harms that artificial turf fields pose to our students and to our community. So far, they have been unresponsive to these harms and have not given the details of what assessment has been done. into the many other strategies to managing the natural grass fields to mitigate the problems that were revealed in the field assessment. There are other strategies that are cheaper than artificial turf that don't pose health risks to our children and community. that don't increase injury rates. Artificial turf compared to grass turf has been showed in a meta-analysis to increase

116injury rates among athletes, including a 60% increase in ACL tears. The board claims to prioritize student health and safety, but this has not been reflected thus far in their decision-making. There are examples across the country where districts have actually opened themselves up to liability. They have been sued by injured students playing on artificial turf and by parents whose students have experienced heat exhaustion due to the extreme heats that occur on artificial turf that do not occur on grass fields. The decision is irresponsible for the health, the safety, and the integrity of the environment, as well as financially. I would greatly appreciate the board and administration being more forthcoming with their analysis. The consultant seems to have been led towards the artificial turf solution rather than a thorough analysis of other strategies. Legislation is moving away

117from artificial turf. This year in New York State, There is a bill that is going to be voted on which will ban new installations and replacements of artificial turf altogether. The EU has banned artificial turf. There are clear signs from the medical establishment that they recommend against artificial turf. There is so much evidence against this decision and there are viable alternative solutions. Thank you. There's someone else in my household who would like to speak now. Yeah, it will be very short. First, I want to quote. Oh, sorry. My name is Ari Sternberg. Sorry? You have to give your name and address if you're going to speak publicly. That's the guidelines. That's what they said, but I was talking over you, so I am sorry. Your name and address, sorry. Ari Sternberg. S-T-E-R-N-B-E-R-G. 26 Tunstall Road,

118Skarsgård. Okay, thank you. New York, Perth. First of all, I want to quote my grandson who said, at school they teach us to be aware of the environment. At school they teach us to take care of our health. He doesn't understand the decision or... going towards the decision to have artificial turf. On my side, I have received a very nice letter from one of the members, and my first reaction was, should the board recommend that the kids should drink bleach? It helped, probably. With coffee it may help with the poison from the artificial turf Thank you very much All right, so that closes our public comment at least the spoken part and we'll move on to written communications Before we do the follow-up to public comment. I'm sorry. I almost I must skip that Just

119I think a clarification on the On projects with respect to the new construction there there are no specific projects that are that were brought forward whether Edgewood or Fox Meadow that connect directly to some kind of special education program we have our programs we have our student enrollment and our projection around that as we need for reasons of enrollment but also reasons of aging facilities new instructional spaces so I just I just want to clarify that's not a reason that we're proposing in the bond those new classrooms so I appreciate the concept of thinking all in and the big picture costs and we are definitely trying to do that with describing the impact of the bond with respect to taxpayer responsibility if it passes but they're the students we educate are the students who live

120here and the you know we think about the program in its totality okay thank you Drew so with that we move on to written communications Thank you, Jim. Please note that the Board of Education email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk. Open meetings law requires all board deliberations that may lead to action or policy change to occur in public. Therefore, your written communications 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. the communication more detailed information regarding written communications received by the Board of Education may be found in today's meeting agenda located on board Doc's on the Scarsdale schools district

121website since our last meeting we have had 22 emails on district matters and five emails on board matters meetings board highlights and invitations okay thank you Colleen and with that we are moving on to item 8 the consent agenda And I will read the preamble to that. The board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda on an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings. A consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education to 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

122agenda 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 the meeting. The exempted item then moves to the regular agenda. However, all non-exempted items would be moved, seconded, and voted upon without discussion in order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine items of business of the school district. I think it's Bob. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So this evening there are 10 items on the consent agenda. Item 9.01, minutes, budget study session number one, business meeting February 9th, 2026. Item 9.02, personnel certified. Item 9.03, personnel non-certified. Item 9.04, claims audit report, February 2026. Item

1239.05, Westchester County agreement for electronic voting machines. Item 9.06, smart moving loading machines. Item 9.07, contract over 20,000 special education. Item 9.08, contract over 20,000 technology. 9.09, consensus report. 9.10, I'd like to make a motion to accept the consent agenda. Okay, thank you, Bob. Is there a second for that? Okay, thank you, Susie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, that motion carries. Thank you. And we're up to item 10, which is information items. I believe the first one is the Treasurer's Report. Thank you. Tonight's reports are for the transactions for the month of December of 2025. Tax receipts included $1.7 million from Scarsdale and $131,000 from Mamaroneck. So as of December 31st, 57.4% of the tax levy has been collected and remitted to the district. That's in line with the fact that

124the second installment is due by January 31st. Federal and state aid includes the first initial 20% payment of the Title III ELL grants. When state and federal grants are approved, they issue a 20% payment of the approved budget. The remaining 80% is paid when the final cost reports are filed on a reimbursement basis. State and federal aid also has a current year foundation aid payment of $441,000. Total interest earnings, which is the big topic. They were just shy of 200,000 for the month. Interest rates were at 3.71% for December. Since August, we have seen the rates drop about 10 basis points each month. That is reflected in our current revenue projection. We're continuing a decrease, hoping it will level out a little. So our current projections are showing us about 26,000 below the $2 million

125budget for 25-26. Any questions? I don't think so. Okay. Thank you. Budget transfers. There's two transfers tonight. The first transfer is to cover contractual fees for the new health plan consultants, risk strategies. The second transfer is to cover the installation of the common circles project. Okay. Thank you. All right. Do you have a question here? actually it's probably not for you Lisa so I mean you're welcome to stand up here though yeah thank you so I'm excited to go see the common circles project when we reschedule it I'm just curious so I think the total cost was more than the transfer that we're allowing you could talk a little bit about that yes we have commitment from the Scarsdale Schools Education Foundation to provide half of the funding for that total project which would be

126$150,000 total so $75,000 is committed to us though we haven't received it yet from the Scarsdale Schools Education Foundation And this transfer is only $60,000 so we're using another $15,000 That's existing in budget code Just curious as to why we're doing this now before we have the commitment formalized from SSCS? So nothing compels us to spend this. We don't have a contract signed with them yet, but it's trying to prepare for anticipating year-end. accounting what the fund balance will be so we're trying to get all the money in the right codes there'll be more information that comes to you before being over $20,000 you would have to be party to approving that contract I just have a question related I'm just wondering in terms of the commitment which is wonderful from SSEF but do we

127have anything in writing like a letter promissory letter from them No not yet but we we certainly will before we go to the point of signing a contract Thank you Okay so I think we're up to item 1003 the capital projects bond update one particular update which is with respect to secret but keeping with our practice we're just going to do a quick overview of the of the bond as it currently stands slides you've seen before but I'll make it quick I promise we view this as a moderate and responsive vision for investment connected to our strategic plan that focuses on learning living and leading our The bond reflects work in four priority areas, vital infrastructure, student learning spaces, environmental impact, and wellness and well-being. We've gone through a responsive process to arrive at the

128ultimate, what currently stands as the scope of $101,707,875 of proposed work. this is the breakout of that 101 point seven million dollars by area with 25% of it earmarked for infrastructure 58% to renovate or build new classroom spaces learning spaces 12% toward air conditioning projects that improve the environment for student learning and then 5% for three field projects There's also projects earmarked for each building in the vital infrastructure amount. This just shows the breakout by school. Again, you've seen this before in the area of student learning spaces, two significant additions and classroom renovations, both at Edgewood and Fox Meadow, a library renovation at Heathcote, a renovation of our 3D art room, the learning center, the little theater. and the creation of additional library quiet study spaces and two single-use bathrooms at the high school and

129renovation of the library and four house dining spaces to create more multifunctional use at the middle school. in terms of the air conditioning projects these are largely air conditioning large spaces with the exception of Heathcote which accomplishes both that and the cooling of classrooms because of their unique architectural design we've not been able to provide cooling in those spaces like we have with other classroom regular classroom spaces across the district and then finally the three field projects include renovation at Greenacres to varsity softball field and a second softball field there drain it significant drainage improvements at Quaker Ridge and the proposed turf field at Scarsdale middle school Andrew will talk a little bit about the phasing just to remind you of that So our colleagues at BBS and ARIS have worked on a phasing plan

130and it really takes five kind of priorities into consideration as we're planning out these phasing. It's to minimize the disruption to the academic program, coordinate the work to achieve economies of scale and project efficiency, address the most pressing needs of our buildings first. and provide the professional teams and our building teams, the committees that will be working on these projects, with adequate time to really collaborate and design the work that will be happening, and then time the bidding of our work so that we get the most optimal pricing with the most qualified contractor interest. So the next chart really is the long-term view of the project from start to finish. Obviously, it's not legible, so we'll break it down area by area. phase of the project would be the grass field work at Greenacres and

131Quaker Ridge. This is slated to be, we believe, completed and ready for September of 2027. The next phase of the work would be Edgewood and Fox Meadow. We would have those plans to the state at the end of April or the end of May 2027, and construction for that would be completed, we anticipate, by September of 2020. nine all of these projects would take two summers and school year in between to complete so following the phase two and phase three pieces we'd move on to our other elementary buildings and deal with all the building condition work air conditioning at those buildings that work would be hopefully approved by New York State at the end of the beginning of December 2028 and completed in construction in September of 2030 and then phases five and six would

132be the middle school and the high school the middle school field would be part of that middle school project and that would be ready we believe by September sorry October 31st of 2030 but the middle school project and the high school balance of the middle school and the high school project will be done by September of 2031 these phasing schedules led us to a cash flow needs that helps us inform our borrowing so the team at Aris took their cost estimates played calculated what the annual needs of funding would be that's the top line the second line is the cumulative to date at that point funding so you would see that after year two we'd need about 13% of our total funding at the end of year three 43% all the way up to the

133hundred percent of the funding in 2031 2032 school year We took those numbers, and if you remember, we've shown this bar chart several times. The blue coloring is the existing debt that has been previously approved and committed by the district. The green bars would be this new debt, and the blue dotted line across the top is our 2026-2027 portion of the tax levy that is attributable to the capital construction projects of the district. Anything above that dotted line is an impact felt by our taxpayers. So we're estimating that the peak of that impact will be felt in the 2033-2034 school year. And for the average home assessed at $1.32 million in Scarsdale, we think that that peak annual impact would be $439.76 and a Maranek home. assessed at $1.971 million would be $491.49. Again, there's

134a gradual increase to that point. Available on our website is this detailed slide, which is prepared by our municipal advisor. We've highlighted here some of the key data points for those that are interested. We do anticipate having multiple bond anticipation notes to help us with those initial funding needs throughout the project. Their interest rates are ranging between 3.25 and 4% estimated. then at the end of the project we're projecting that we would issue a final bond to capture the remaining. total of the necessary capital construction dollars and that would be at an estimated interest rate of 3.71%. We've of course factored into all of these are building aid as well and we'll show those in a separate portion in a moment. Trying to pull out those numbers so they're more legible. Again, this gradual impact

135over the seven years of this project as each piece of the project gets completed. We'd see our first impact in 27-28 school year. The average homeowner seeing a $68.65 impact in their taxes in Scarsdale and a $76.72 impact in Maranek. Again, it slowly grows to that ultimate. amount above 2026 2027 levels by the 2033 2034 school year at the numbers I referenced earlier 439 76 or 491 49 again just pulling out some of the the highlighted kind of facts about what we're the estimates that we're using for these key assumptions we do believe based on the review by our municipal advisors and our architects that 80% of the overall cost of this project will be eligible for state aid that portion of the project would get 19.5% state aid amortized back over either 15 or

13620 years 20 years for the buildings that are getting building additions 15 for all the other projects The statewide average interest rate which is used to calculate that amortized state aid payment is assumed to be 3.625%. And again, we've listed here just the assessed value and equalization rate estimates that we are currently using, which are all subject to change based on assessed values in the area. we're up to our milestones do you want to take them with you so you talk about this oh yes sorry thank you for minding me so on February 13th our consultant following the board meeting earlier that week submitted to all either interested parties or possibly interested parties or agencies I should say that the board has taken the person that we'd like to be the lead agency on this

137project that historical significance of two of our buildings fox meadow and and edgewood means that we needed to have a 30-day waiting period so any of those interested agencies can come back and tell in those 30 days say that they also want to be interested or such as New York State Education Department, who has already submitted to us. They are okay with the Board of Education in Scarsdale being that lead agency. At the end of that 30-day period, the environmental consultant or the secret consultant will complete. Parts two and parts three of the secret form they'll come back to the board on Monday the 16th with the the draft environmental impact statements parts one two three and recommendation for the determination of significance or no significance on the project and based on the scope of

138work that we have and our knowledge of that Type of work we anticipate the end result being no move forward with our project with all of the other evaluations reviews and permitting that we have to do as part of the problem that was a lot sorry after that on March 16th there'd be the opportunity for the board to adopt the bond resolution which would then set about the sequence of events that would allow that to appear on the ballot as on May 19th along with the budget resolution and the board candidates at that time. If approved, then as you see here, design work would begin for phases one, two, and three with the hope of submitting those to the State Ed Department in September. So you can see how quickly that unfolds once approval is

139given. And that's our capital projects update. Floor is open for questions. Can you refresh or remind us of the field study like the context and history just just to remind people of what occurred the context of the field study? Yeah the field study was a joint project by the village and the district to use an outside consultant expert to evaluate both the condition, the usage, the demand, predicted usage in the future for our fields and courts, both on the village side and on the district side. And they made an assessment of what they felt the biggest... the best solutions to the biggest problems that they identified which were connected to largely at least in terms of fields playability and availability and that the demand in the community far exceeds the availability of playing surfaces in

140part due to the unplayability and inability to upkeep grass fields in this climate and with the school year being we really don't have 12 months we have 10 months and really outside less less than that we have the fall and spring seasons so among their recommendations they had recommendations really for every single school if we talk about the district side and many of those recommendations included improvements to try to increased playability and access to our grass fields but they did not feel the solution to those problems could be accomplished without adding multi-season turf field so actually we discussed two one is in the current year budget that Andrew talked about earlier tonight which is just a practice field that's not a competition field adjacent to Jim's three and four here at the high school that's

141in the this year's budget and then in the bond which is the the what we've been just talking about would be that one field at the middle school which is actually scaled back in the bond proposal from what was in the field study proposal really sort of minimizes the footprint of that field to really just be a rectangular sport field rather than expanded to potentially include softball and baseball as well We should note that that middle school field in the first draft of the field study was actually all artificial turf and based on community feedback that was gathered. And at that time, we scaled that back, and it's now even scaled back further in the bond proposal. We should also note that that field study was not just a report that we were handed. It

142was a collection of surveys from the community, interviews with the independent sports organizations that support our community from a rec and a... travel competitive sport perspective and obviously we had multiple forms including in this room where many of that those suggestions originated from feedback on post-it notes on property maps I remember there were several public feedback sessions in this room and I will say you know at this point in time the board nobody's committed to exactly what that turf field is what the material is what the infill is that's a project that andrew just described as being slated for design in 28 29 winter and then construction for 2031 right the final final completion so there are other processes that would take place between now and then to for public input around what the construction

143actually looks like there are questions we're going to move on to the draft board meeting calendar thank you to honoree for preparing a proposal for the board to to look at that includes the schedule for business meetings special meetings for executive session that we typically view as holds you know for maybe at the moment unknown but it but anticipated business of course the budget process that includes the forum and the budget study sessions like we're in right now the November public forum on budget priorities of course and the March budget forum that's within the budget development window and the one date that's not on here is the first meeting of the organizational year which is In July, it typically has a law was passed and signed by the governor that creates more flexibility within the

144month of July that the meeting can take place as late as, oh, I'm going to get this wrong, the Tuesday closest to after the 20th. Is that right? July? Something like that. 21st, yeah. So that's a decision that... is still open and does not appear on this calendar it's obviously an information item tonight not an action item tonight but the calendar does follow our pattern that includes a business meeting before school starts which is for us to get important business done prior to the school year including hiring and then our typical pattern of two board meetings in a month with the exception of december February the months that we have school vacations yeah to question like so a prior organizational meetings have been close to July 4th weekend and also have begun at like 9

145a.m. or something like that I mean what about the time of the meeting I mean I gather that the date of the meeting is now flexible does the meeting have to be at 9 a.m. is there a reason why the meetings were at 9 a.m. I'm just sort of trying to understand that piece of it because it's frankly it's part of the workday for the staff and it's you know this is overtime for our custodians and this is during the school year there's a night crew as one factor, but they all work the day shift during the summer. So it would be an added cost. Yeah. I'm not suggesting that I'm looking to make life difficult for any of the staff, but I just think in terms of there's reasons, I guess, why we have

146our actual board meetings at 630. I'm just saying it's an added cost. Yeah. I mean, just because I think we have our actual board meetings at 630 for among other reasons because it's easier for the community to either attend in person or... virtually so my only thought is as a board do we want to think about dates and times of when the organizational meeting should be assuming we have that freedom it seems like we do we have at least that decision to make I see the value in keeping it during the school day just because everyone is here working and I don't want to create an added cost I would like to propose like a July 15th only because I don't know, my son is competing overseas at the beginning of July that I was

147not planning to go to because I thought I had to be here for this meeting. So to be able to see him compete would be really special for me. So for personal reasons, I'm proposing the 15th. But obviously, what works best for the board, I'm happy to comply with. I wasn't planning to go because I didn't know about this. But now that there's an opportunity, I would appreciate if it worked for everybody to consider the week. that week and so I'm throwing out July 15th just as a date but happy to discuss further. That's wonderful and I think you should see your son. I was going to say that my question is more like are the terms end June 30th right so our outgoing board members terms end June 30th. I know in our reorganization

148meeting we make a lot of approvals so the district can kind of function. I don't know. Is there anything lost by us not doing that for two weeks following terms ending? I'll turn to you. First from a vital function standpoint. I think waiting until the week of the 20th would possibly be problematic if we have any June 30th year-end accounting. you know resolutions most of them we can work through as a retroactive decision but other than that I think most of the reorg items are things that either we'd have to check with legal counsel but either maybe could be approved in June Such as who is our legal counsel and a lot of the things like that are purchasing agent There's no expiration on that term. Those are some of our treasurer. We anticipate coming

149back Those are the type of the things I can think of right now And if we're not swearing in our officers until you know, right so you'd have to get things done by if you need people assigned for something I think I think that's addressed somewhere. I don't know it'll stop my head But I think there is an ability for someone to function as the board president that period I'd have to I'd have to find that I actually happened to know this because I had looked into it before I believe if I remember correctly that the person who is currently the board president functions until the next board president is chosen does that sound right honoree oh yeah I just remember that's what I thought is that just for the president or is the officers

150I kind of thought the officers served until replaced that's fine to make sense but yeah it's probably worth you're looking into yeah we should an expiring term would be the only kind of caveat I think I don't think that would be true just saying theoretically yeah yeah no just but it wouldn't be true this year no yeah all right so do we have a i guess do we want to wait do we have to make a decision now about when okay so do you want to think about it about what would be a good first day just a thought on the 9 a.m thing in a previous district i know that the the board chose to do that because the board planned to travel the week of july 4th and if they could leave earlier

151they didn't want to stay till the end of the day that was a previous district that i worked in that was that well yeah i mean i think it's always uh an inconvenience um in the sense that you know we just plan around it but it does affect planning for that weekend because it's a holiday weekend. So that's my thought in thinking maybe it's a good idea to have it not be that weekend or at least a day adjacent to that weekend when many people would, if they had their druthers, perhaps be coming back from somewhere instead of coming back a day early. So that's, to me, the advantage of it if we want to go that route. I mean, I'm happy with the July 15th. But just as long as we are comfortable with

152everything, all those other questions. Yeah, we don't have to decide that now. So, yeah, something to look into. Because I also would like to do it on the 15th if that's the date agreeable to other people. If it doesn't mean we're without any officers, you know, if we need one in that two-week period between the end of June. There's only five of you with skin in the game. I guess if you can check on the logistics make sure you guys will have everything you need if we were to push it back and then we can see what everyone's availability we can do that great we'll bring it back in two weeks great thank you okay we're talking now about gift proposals so we have two gift proposals both from Green Acres greater than $1,000, so

153they're here as information. There's a bulk field trip donation. You'll remember we've talked before about how we've revised our processes and trying to do things less piecemeal if possible. We did this successfully with the author visits at the beginning of the year, and Green Acres has pulled together a field trip gift, so that's that first one. And then the second one actually comes from the family and loved ones of a former art teacher from Green Acres who is no longer with us, and they'd like to donate a bench that is in memory of Nancy Kloster. So those two gifts, because they're in excess of $1,000, will come back next meeting as action. and if Greenacres is aware and they've discussed with the family and they have a plan for location and so forth I should

154have made that clear any questions on those two gifts it's just a very thoughtful gift the bench it's very nice to see that thank you okay I think we can move on to action items the first one is 11.01 that's amber Thank you Jim. I move that the board accept the following. Resolve that the Board of Education approves the attached STI courses for the spring summer semesters as presented. Thank you Amber. Is there a second? Thank you Leah. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Okay that motion carries. Budget transfers. I believe that's Leah. I move that the board adopt the following resolution resolve that the Board of Education approves the attached budget transfers in excess of $25,000 as presented Thank you Leah is there a second thank you Amber all those in favor

155please say aye aye okay that motion carries and now we're up to section 12 of the agenda which is gifts I believe the first gift is Laura I move that the board adopt the following resolution. Resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $2,591 for transportation to support various field trips as described in the attached letters. Okay, thank you, Laura. Is there a second? Thank you, Susie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion carries with thanks. And then 1202, I think, is Susie. Thank you, Jim. I move that the board accept the following resolution. Resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of $1,700 for a second grade author presentation. The purpose of this gift is to support the launch of second grade passion projects through an author presentation

156focused on the research process as presented in the attached letters. Okay, thank you. Susie, is there a second? Thank you, Laura. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion carries and passes with thanks. 1203, I believe it's Bob. Yes. I move that the board accept the following resolution. Resolved, that the board accepts with thanks gift of $1,092 for a kindergarten trip to Saxon Woods mini golf course as presented in the attached letters. Thank you, Bob. Is there a second? Thank you, Leah. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion passes with thanks. We are now up to section 13 of our agenda. That is the second public comment period. We'll skip the preamble and just ask the question if there's anyone in the audience who wishes to make a public

157comment at this time. I believe the answer is no. So let's take a look on Zoom. No attendees on Zoom. We'll give that a few more seconds. give people a chance to quickly log in now's your chance okay so we'll close that public comment period and are there wrap-up items I don't think so okay No wrap-up items. So then we're going to go to meeting dates for the coming month, and that is Colleen. Thank you, Jim. Our meetings for the upcoming are Monday, March 16th. We have a budget study session number three and business meeting after at 6.30 in this room. Monday, March 23rd, special meeting executive session at 5.30 in this room. followed by the budget forum and business meeting at 6.30 in this room. Monday, April 13th, a meeting with the designated group

158at 5 o'clock in the Learning Commons, followed by a special meeting executive session at 6 p.m. in this room, followed by an education report business meeting, and the board will adopt the budget hopefully at 6.30 in this room. Tuesday, April 21st, we'll have a special meeting. Yes, WBO sees bow at 9 a.m. In this room and on Monday April 27th We have a special meeting executive session if needed at 630 in this room Okay. Thank you Colleen. And now do we have a motion to adjourn the business meeting? Okay. Thank you Amber a second. Thank you, Susie All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. We're adjourned. Thank you, Rudy