BOE Education Report Business Meeting 2025-12-15

001Good evening everyone. Good evening. I call this meeting to order and I note that all board members are present We were also joined by dr. Patrick and his administrative cabinet Thank you to those in attendance or watching live stream For joining us this evening Earlier this evening the board met with the Scarsdale principals Association We hold this meeting each year and it's a great opportunity for the board to meet with our building principals and assistant principals Our discussion was lively and included topics such as equity concerns among our different buildings with regard to the scope of proposed bond work, as well as the use of artificial intelligence in our schools. We appreciate the hard work of the principals and assistant principals, and we thank them very much for taking the time to meet with us

002and share the details of their important work this year. I do want to note that in this meeting we will be continuing our discussion of the proposed capital bond work. We will have a revised proposal to consider as a board. And so we certainly will look into the details of that a little later this evening. Also, I want to note, given the season, that we have the holiday break coming up and certainly I would like to wish everyone a joyous holiday break. This will be our last board meeting of the calendar year. And with that, I turn it over to Drew. Thank you very much, Jim. I appreciate it. Good evening and welcome. Thank you for all joining us in person and online. As we begin tonight's meeting, I do want to take a moment

003to acknowledge the time of year we're in. The period leading up to the holidays can often be challenging for many, bringing with it both great joy and sometimes significant stress. This difficulty was compounded over the weekend by deeply disturbing acts of hateful violence which weigh heavily on the minds and the hearts of our students, staff, and families. Both the senseless shooting at Brown University and the anti-Semitic terror attack in Australia elevate our collective fears and challenge our sense of safety, reminding us that our school community is not immune to world events. We are connected to those communities as humans, but inevitably in very personal ways as well. These tragedies are a stark reminder of the division and prejudice that exist in the world. While it feels like we have to reiterate these things all too

004frequently, it is important to do so. We condemn hatred and violence in all its forms, extend our care and compassion to the victims and all those affected by these horrific acts. and we reaffirm our commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive, and compassionate environment in every one of our schools so they are places where every student feels seen, valued, heard, and free from fear. As 2025 comes to a close, I also have the privilege of expressing my deep gratitude to our parents, family members, community members, and staff members. who volunteer their time and share their knowledge, skills, customs, and traditions with and for our students' benefit. Scarsdale is an engaged, caring community invested in enriching the lives and educational experiences of our youth. On behalf of our school family, we wish our students and their families

005and you and yours a restful break, a joyous holiday season, and a peaceful start to 2020. And with that, just a few dates, as Jim alluded to, to note. Hanukkah began on the 14th, and it continues through the 22nd of this month. Las Posadas begins the 16th tomorrow and extends through the 24th. Our own holiday recess will begin with an early dismissal on Tuesday, December 23rd, and extend through January 2nd, with schools reopening Monday, January 5th. We celebrate Christmas December 25th, Kwanzaa December 26th through January 1st, and of course New Year's Day on January 1st. That's what I have tonight. Okay, thank you. And we'll go into some board reports. I'll just start by noting that on December 9th, as part of the collaboration and partnership between the school district and the village of Scarsdale,

006we held our bimonthly meeting with district and village leadership. here we discussed a number of items related to among other things the future uses potentially of the a school building SSEM issues possible future development of the freightway site the timing of our respective capital projects and other current potentially future joint items between the village in the district as noted we hold these meetings joint meetings throughout the year and we want to be thankful and we are thankful to the mayor village board and village management for their partnership in collaboration on maybe items we work on with them on behalf of the community throughout the year and with that I think we have some other board reports Bob do you want to go sure so on December 5th I attended the tech committee meeting that Jeannie

007Crowley chairs. We started off with a reminder that on December 9th, I don't know who was able to attend, but there was a screenagers event, which I unfortunately did not attend, but it was geared toward elementary and middle school students, talk about phone usage, and to encourage conversations with parents. And we followed up after that discussion on reviewing some topics that we were going to consider conversations about over the course of the year. For example, the age that children will start using phones. And it was noted that people have observed that as early as kindergarten, some children are starting to have their own phones. So that was a point of conversation. The talk about how to incorporate AI into our pedagogy, which we had a great conversation with the principal this afternoon about that. And

008Jeannie reminded us that every three years that the district traditionally has to submit a technology report on what's going on within the district. So that'll be a touch point for us to review. And the final topic would be media literacy. Okay, thank you, Bob. Leah, did you have some reports? Yes, thank you, Jim. On Wednesday, November 19th, Amber, Laura, and I hosted a board coffee. These coffees are opportunities for community members to share their thoughts and questions and engage with us in a more casual conversation. Thirteen community members attended. Here is an overview of what was discussed. Some parents brought up tech safety and awareness as well as the device fair that was being held at the library. There were questions surrounding clarity of best practices as they relate to in-school technology at the elementary

009schools. An attendee asked if we could add more detail to the shared out board meeting minutes as they relate to public comment, asking if we could indicate topics that people spoke about at our meetings during comment. There were questions about learning from returned assessments at the high school and the ability to bring them home for studying. An attendee mentioned the challenges of her child having to do math homework on their school iPad at the middle school. There was an overall desire expressed for more information, more guidance on best practices related to technology and to improve homeschool communication on this topic. A few attendees discussed science education at the upper elementary level and a hope for attention to enhance this curriculum piece. They also emphasized the importance of science labs in order to help elementary students

010develop skills, confidence, and competence. Several attendees asked about artificial intelligence and the school's approach, how it's integrated into learning and understanding the balance between educational technology and recreational AI use. There was also a request for technology updates related to technology and AI guardrails. One attendee commented on the importance of digital fluency in higher education and the workplace landscape, requesting that there be design thinking and STEAM initiatives in bond planning. Another attendee mentioned the importance of facilities at the high school for volleyball and asked that an outdoor grass volleyball court be thought about. This was not included in the field study. A few attendees mentioned the long-range financial plan and the health of our reserves. We discussed the many needs of the district and attendees expressed how the bond, budget, and financial protection are interrelated. We

011also touched on the village pool bond. We discussed the importance of public engagement. Overall, it was a robust conversation that spanned multiple relevant topics. And I have one more short report. On Sunday, November 23rd, I attended the Scarsdale High School Drama Club production of The Little Mermaid. This marked a return to the high school auditorium following the renovation. The energy and excitement in the audience was palpable. It was a packed house with many children who were dressed up and wearing Little Mermaid garb. I go to drama club plays all the time, year after year, and each year the talent, hard work, and attention to detail is absolutely incredible. The costumes, set design, acting, and live orchestra in the pit, each of the students involved gave their all. I would like to give a special shout

012out to the drama club, as well as all the faculty and staff that support students in these endeavors, these endeavors that showcase the creativity within our school community and bring people together. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Leah. Anyone else have? Susie, yeah. Thank you, Jim. On December 3rd, Amber, Bob, and I had the great pleasure of attending the premiere of a documentary film entitled From the First Schoolhouse, A Scarsdale Story, presented by the Scarsdale Historical Society in partnership with the Scarsdale Public Library. Held in our beautifully renovated high school auditorium, the film chronicles how the Scarsdale Public School District grew from a one-room schoolhouse to a national model of learning. The event featured an introduction by Superintendent Dr. Patrick and the film was followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers, local historians,

013and long-time educators of our district. Thank you to President of the Historical Society, Randy Guggenheimer, for leading such a wonderful Scarsdale organization celebrating Scarsdale's rich history. Special thanks also to our own District Clerk, Honoré Adams, for her part excavating and sharing historic school documents and artifacts with the Historical Society. I found the documentary fascinating in many ways, seeing our origin story as a district and learning how the principles our schools are built on continue to be the pillars of a Scarsdale education today, of civic vision, community commitment, and a lasting respect for innovation and agency in public education. I also have a very quick update on a... Oh, I'm sorry. It was Laura and not Bob who attended the... I apologize. Oh, then I apologize, Laura. Thank you. Thank you for the correction. The next

014update is a very brief one. On December 4th, Bob and I hosted our second Board of Ed Coffee of the Year, and unfortunately, nobody attended. We were there for the hour. I think that could be attributed to the time of year. It's a very busy time of year, and it was in the evening. There were also some suggestions of maybe... scheduling our coffee before an event maybe elsewhere in the school or something to maybe try to get some more people to come there was a conflicting 11th grade parent event that night which could be also part of it as well but maybe it's a topic of conversation we can talk about at another time and to maybe get more people to either come or schedule things in a different way thank you okay thank you

015Susie Any other reports? We have student reports? Okay, great. All right, so this week I had the pleasure of attending a Scarsdale High School student government meeting. At this meeting, I heard all about the various service projects happening across the school. Right now, each of the class governments is hosting a various drive, whether that be food or coat donations. Specifically, the freshman class government is collaborating with the PTA on their specific drive. So I think it's incredibly great to see that all of the class governments are exemplifying Scarsdale's commitment to service and sort of setting an example to the middle schoolers as well as their various peers and other clubs. And so I guess for our future initiatives for what we want to do as student representatives, as the bond process becomes more specific and

016we know what the final proposal is going to look like, we would love to get some sort of student feedback and awareness on this. So a quick idea we had, which was similar to what the high school sometimes does for other school-wide initiatives, is hanging up posters on the wall with QR codes that are hyperlinked to some sort of platform like Dropbox in which a student can see past presentations that we've discussed at the meeting, past agenda items, as a way to not only inform themselves about the project itself, but also about the extensive process that has gone behind it. And so obviously we have to figure out some quirks because students can't use their phones. However, that's the path that we're currently heading towards. Thank you. Lucy? Just adding on, in the last few

017weeks, we've been working hard on our next edition of the Ex Officio Student Scoop, and hopefully it should be getting published soon, and we're excited to keep on informing SHS students on district and school board matters. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Up to Cabinet updates. Great, thank you. We're going to start with, we have four different updates tonight. We're going to start with Andrew in Business and Operations. So the first thing I'll update the board on is the Food Service Committee meetings that we've been having. We had our fifth meeting already this year with the Food Service Committee earlier today. The bulk of our time has been spent really making sure that the committee members have a clear understanding of the existing program and the history of that program and then what... changes

018might be anticipated should we pursue participation in the National School Lunch Program. That program is a prerequisite to accessing the universal free meals. So the committee has been working through that process, asking lots of thoughtful and deep questions, and we've gone back and done a lot of extra research on that. The committee is preparing a survey that we hope to have out to the broader school community in January. We think we'll have better responses in January. when that's done and we'll incorporate the feedback from that committee survey with all of the work that the committee's been reviewing and articulating to provide a summary to the board that will we hope will have a recommendation or a consensus statement from the committee that the board can then decide what to do with in in early 2026.

019um we think probably push that a little bit more to February because of the timing of the holidays and some of the work we've been doing but we still think we'll have plenty of time should we choose to make a transition to implement that transition for September of 2026. That's to be determined though. So that's the first update. The second update is on the internal audit of the health plan. We've been actively going back and kind of orchestrating communications between our auditor and UMR. The latest development is we believe that all of the information the auditor needed from UMR is now in their hands. They've provided some draft comments to us. and we think that in the next two or three weeks we should have a final draft to share with the Board of Education,

020so that'll be on the January Board of Education meeting. So we'll have to plan for an audit committee meeting to start that meeting in January. Additionally, unrelated to the audit, but related to the health plan, we anticipate on that agenda we will also have a recommendation to the board for a health. Plan consultant that we've been going through an RFP process an extensive interview process for that So we're excited to to share that information with the broader community in January And then finally, a bit of good news. So the State Department of Environmental Conservation has approved our permit for the dredging project at the stream outside on Brewster Road. The project, the permit, excuse me, authorizes routine maintenance and floodway management for dredging up to 1,400 cubic. yards of material from the stream that will

021help us kind of maintain the the flooding conditions there and make modest improvements this is not a game changer that will fix all problems that we have but it'll certainly take the the kind of edge off of some of the more routine storms that are causing flooding issues in our property. So we're excited about that. We still need final approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but we do not anticipate that being an issue that we couldn't overcome. So the consultants from GEI, our stream consultant, are beginning to work on the bid specifications for that dredging work. So we'll have that hopefully advertised as soon as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued their approval, and then we'll get started on that with a timeline for you all sometime in 2026. That's all I

022have. Terrific. Thank you. Next, we're going to turn to Edgar, and he's going to share an update on the Mahmoud versus Taylor. Thank you. So my cabinet update will be focused on clarifying our district's commitment to an inclusive, expansive curriculum and providing guidance in light of the recent Mahmoud V. Taylor Supreme Court ruling. I will also be describing the impact this will have on our school system and parents' right to exclude their child from certain lessons. The recent court ruling has addressed parental rights regarding instructional content that conflicts with a family's religious beliefs. The court made clear that parents do not have the authority to shield their children from all ideas that may conflict with their beliefs. However, public schools must implement procedures to respect parental religious freedoms, especially with young children, and when instruction

023is unmistakably normative and conflicts with sincerely held religious beliefs. The original case involved mandatory lessons that included LGBTQ plus inclusive storybooks, but can include other areas that conflict with a family's sincerely held religious beliefs. Our curriculum, texts, and classroom libraries are intentionally designed to reflect the diversity of our Scarce Hill families, the broader community, and the world. As well, we approach diversity as a strength and celebrate the diversity of our community. We will continue to use and develop materials that include multiple perspectives, cultures, and identities in alignment with our Board of Education DEI policy and the New York State's culturally responsive and sustaining educational framework. To meet both our legal obligation and our educational mission, we will continue to use curriculum and texts that are inclusive and reflect diverse identities. As well, we will comply

024with the advanced notice requirement by posting on our website and linking the commonly used texts. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list, but highlights texts embedded in educational units or courses. Educators may use developmentally appropriate texts and resources in a way that is flexible and responsive to the needs of their students and use texts from our diverse classroom and school libraries. The links will include elementary common mentor texts and read alouds by grade and middle and high school common texts. All this can be found in the curriculum section of the district website under Mahmoud V. Taylor. In addition, as has been our practice, parents will be made aware of lessons concerning sex education and puberty education and opt-outs on this narrow range of topics will continue to be honored. The webpage will also

025include the Board of Education policy and New York State's culturally responsive and sustaining educational framework for families to review. This guidance indicates the regular and integrated use of texts and materials that represent multiple perspectives and identities. I will note that it would be impractical and unsustainable to attempt to determine and predict what lessons families may find objectionable. So as this relates to parents' rights under Mahmoud V. Taylor, Parents may contact their child's teacher or building administrator to request that their child be opted out of instruction that directly and positively affirms identities, ideas, and expressions that conflict with their religious beliefs. Parents will be sent a short form to fill out. We will make accommodations for alternative learning activities during the relevant lessons to the extent practical. All right, thank you very much. Any questions for

026Edgar? All right. Thanks, Edgar. And we'll move on to Eric for a safety update. Thank you. I just wanted to give a quick update on our door-a-jar sensors, which have been successfully installed in five of our seven buildings and are currently being programmed into our system to... do all the things that they're supposed to do we should be up and functioning by the end of this week the remaining two schools are currently at SED awaiting approval with the bond work for the fields and once that approval is is received we'll institute that PO and have the other two buildings installed shortly thereafter we're Hopefully it'll be soon the the state has been on a shorter timeline than they have been in the past But we still don't have control over actually some good news on

027that front as well We get received notification earlier today that they have picked up the plans and they're in the process of reviewing the high school field project are under review obviously the playground at Fox Meadows a little bit further off so that'll be a Later phase of this project Thank You Eric and finally Megan I wanted to take a moment just to congratulate one of our high school secretaries, Dawn McGraw, on her retirement, which is effective at the end of this month. Dawn has served in the dean's office for the past 14 years. Moving ahead, Dawn's looking forward to a retirement where she can continue to spend time focusing on fitness and health and time with her husband. So congratulations to Dawn. We wish her all the best in this next phase of life.

028And looking ahead at the end of January, we'll probably be hearing... more about some other retirements that'll come after the January 15th deadline related to our faculty. Okay, thank you. So we're now up to item five, hearing from those present, and I will read the preamble, item 501 from our agenda. 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

029at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via email at boardofed at scarsdaleschools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. the board will not engage in dialogue the board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion either during the response to public comment or at a later time in place response to public comment will take place after the first and second public comment periods and with that move on to item 502 public comment does anyone in the audience wish to make a public comment evening members of the board my name is cornelia i reside in on lions road I would like to sincerely thank Eric Rauschenbach and the board for the comprehensive and thoughtful presentation on special education this evening.

030I truly appreciate the transparency, depth, and long-term planning that will be reflected in tonight's presentation on special education. From my own long experience as a parent of three children in the district, spanning early childhood through high school, I have seen firsthand how intentional programming, strong... Professional development and a clearly defined continuum of services can make a meaningful difference in students' education experience. It is encouraging to see the district's continued commitment to strengthening these critical areas. I strongly support the district's continued investment in professional development and special education services across all levels. At the elementary school, I strongly support continued investment professional development for ICT, LRC and special classes. Early intervention is critical and the focus on social-emotional monitoring, MTSS expansion and pre-referral supports aligns well with the needs of students and families by helping identify

031and address challenges early. At the middle school level a seamless transition and access to inclusive learning environments are essential. Expanding ICT offerings across all four core subjects through grade 8 is a meaningful step forward and targeted professional development ensures staff are prepared to support diverse learners. At the high school level, I appreciate the thoughtful expansion of the continuum of services. including evaluating ICT in level 2 classes, continuing the Bridge 12-1 program, and planning for a future 812 alternate assessment class. Ongoing professional development remains vital to meeting students' academic, social, and post-secondary needs. I greatly value the ongoing partnership between families and the district, and remain committed to working together with administrators, educators, and the board in support for our students. Continued dialogue, data-informed decision-making, and meaningful family engagement will be key to strengthening special education

032services across the district. Thank you again for your dedication to inclusivity, your thoughtful planning, and your continued collaboration as we work together to ensure that every student has access to a meaningful, supportive, and equitable education experience. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wish to make a public comment? Thank you. Hello. Good evening. My name is Rokhaya Hasaballah. I reside at 35 Bright Avenue, and I want to clarify that I'm speaking in my personal capacity and not representing any organization. I am here to address an event that took place at our high school 10 days ago. The Israeli Cultural Club invited members of the IDF's Search and Rescue Brigade through a nonprofit organization called Friends of the IDF. I want to be clear, I understand that this event followed existing district rules and regulations for clubs

033hosting events. My concern is not compliance, it is that the policy itself is flawed and needs to be changed. Inviting any foreign military or an organization that promotes a foreign military into a public school during the school day is unacceptable. Even more so when the military is involved in an active conflict. Labeling the group as search and rescue does not change the fact that it represents a military institution tied to an ongoing violence and deep global division. Public schools must remain neutral spaces, and this crosses that line. When I heard, I emailed the district, and the response that I got suggested that students who are harmed by such programming should respond by organizing counter-programming. This is unacceptable. In our district, where support for the IDF is widespread, students who voice opposition face a foreseeable risk

034of being labeled antisemitic, excluded from social groups, and targeted socially or online. When the district suggests counter-programming, they are asking minors to place themselves in harm's way socially, emotionally, and potentially academically. In our community, Parents often become involved and those dynamics can extend beyond the school walls and affect students reputations and future opportunities. This is an unreasonable and inappropriate burden to place on children. Asking a minority group to counter the majority directly contradicts with principles we apply elsewhere. We have clear protections in place for minorities based on race, gender identity, sexuality, and other protected groups precisely because we understand the power imbalances. Those same protections must apply here. Introducing an active geopolitical conflict into our high school setting is a recipe for division and harm. Those are minors. They are not college students or adults.

035The responsibility to anticipate and prevent harm lies with the district. It does not lie with the students. I even understand that the U.S. military, to get access into a school, there are guidelines and there is federal laws to allow these things. We need to have our own laws here that protects our children. I am asking the board to formally revise the district policy and explicitly prohibit foreign military-affiliated groups from presenting in our schools during the school day. Thank you all so much for the effort and the time you do in our school. Thank you so much. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to make a public comment here in live from the audience? Okay, not seeing anybody. We can go to Zoom. Is there anyone with their hand raised? We have one person with their

036hand raised. I'm promoting them now. Well, if you can maybe unmute and unmute the, well, the live stream, I guess, and put on your video. Can everyone hear? No, maybe. Hi, this is Anta. Can you hear me? Yes, it's a little low, but we can. Sorry, I'm just going to unmute. My name is Anshuka Chawla. I am a resident of 65 Fayette Road in Heathcote. And I just wanted to, first of all, thank you all for the hard work you're doing, especially in being responsible about the board process for all residents of Scarsdale. Your thoughtfulness in trying to have a responsible proposal without a heavy financial burden for everyone is... very much appreciated as a resident of heat code and an active member of heat code elementary i have a fourth grader in the school

037and an incoming kindergartner next year when i will be done with heat code i would have spent nine years as a heat code parent i am very concerned by the slide deck that i saw today about the heat code auditorium not being cut from the air conditioning if you have spent any amount of time in the Heathcote Auditorium, it is by far the stuffiest, most uncomfortable space in Heathcote School. And it can absolutely not be used for its purpose, which is holding school-wide assemblies, school-wide performances or gatherings, but also the fact that it is now used because of essentially as an overflow space. There are music classes, there are pullouts. It is essentially being used as a classroom and not just as simply a large space that can be cut from the budget as such.

038And I would urge the board to consider its use and include it in the air conditioning going forward because it truly is uncomfortable. My daughter, as an example, anecdotal data of one. has music classes at 2.30 right before school lets out in the auditorium and comes out in 19 degree weather without a jacket because she is so hot in that space. That's the only comment we have. There are many, many things that Heathcote needed, but we understand that Edgewood and Fox Meadow have bigger needs and more urgent needs. And we urge the board to consider adding the Heathcote Auditorium back to the slate of things that are urgently needed by our students. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on the Zoom with their hand raised? give that another few seconds okay so with that we

039can move on to the follow-up to public comment if there is any I just want to let the board know Rokai met with me last week and I appreciated that the chance to talk about some of what she shared tonight and as for the other commenters those presentations are to come so I'm sure we'll discuss those items okay with that we move on to written communications item seven that's Colleen Please note that the board event email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk open meetings law requires all board deliberations Which 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

040full name, address, and if you are writing on behalf of an organization in 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 docs on the Scarsdale Schools District website. And since our last board meeting, we've had 18 emails on district matters and eight emails on board matters, meetings, board highlights, and invitations. Thank you Colleen and with that we're moving on to item 8 the consent agenda and I will read the preamble to the consent agenda The board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda in an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings Consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education into a single motion The consent agenda is prepared by the

041superintendent of schools consultation with the president and or the vice president of the board items are selected for the consent agenda when officers of the board and the superintendent believe there's no controversy regarding them The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item on the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove that item from the consent agenda merely by requesting same at 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 the order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine items of business of the school district. And with that, I'm going to turn it

042over to Alara for the consent agenda. Thank you, Jim. There are 14 items on this evening's consent agenda. 9.901 minutes, business meeting, November 17, 2025. .902, minutes, special meeting, December 8th, 2025. .903, personnel certified. .904, personnel non-certified. .905, final agreement with the managers and district services association, MATSA. .906, claims audit report, November 2025. Point 907, IHO interim order appeal. Point 908, stipulation of agreement, STA. Point 909, stipulations of settlement. Point 910, contracts over $20,000, special education. Point 9.11, contracts over $20,000, technology, gray bar. Point 912. high school auditorium project change orders point nine thirteen budget amendments point nine fourteen accept consent agenda I move that the board accepts the consent agenda as presented thank you Laura is there a second okay thank you Leah any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye no

043one is opposed and that motion carries We now move on to section 11 of the agenda. No, section 10 of the agenda, information items. Good evening. Tonight's reports cover the month of October 2025. A substantial amount of our first half tax payments were received with $85 million from Scarsdale and $1.8 million from Mamaroneck. That represents about 51% of the anticipated levy through the end of October 31st. State and federal aid includes the VLT funds, which is video lottery terminal aid from the state. Interest earnings were totaled about 112,000 with the rate at about 3.92. The Fed did drop the rates last week, a quarter a point. It will impact our rates, our interest earnings going forward. So I'm currently working on updated projections and on revenue and expenditures, and we'll share those as soon as

044we have those. And the final item is health insurance contributions. That includes stop-loss recoveries of about 1.8 million. thank you any questions now we have budget transfers so there's one transfer presented the fuel for our grounds and maintenance vehicles is purchased through our contract with the village so the transfer is just a reallocation of funds from the contractual line to a supplies line just to cover those fuel costs so it's properly accounted for as a supply rather than a contract thank you very much sure i don't believe there's any questions so we can move on to the special education report So first off, thank you for the opportunity to talk about special education tonight. Special education at Scarsdale has unbelievable students, a vibrant faculty, and a set of successful programs, which I'm always happy to

045talk about. Doing both here. Tonight's presentation will have four main sections. First, a review of our current student profile and historical trends. Second, an outline of the current continuum of service, programmatic and professional development priorities in the coming years. And last, I'll discuss how the district assesses our programs on an individual student level and look at a formal assessment data for our special education students in the aggregate. Our strategic plan, not only... Our strategic plan outlines not only systemic focuses for the district, it illustrates a vision for all of our students and that includes students with IEPs. Special Education's main job is to provide the access to the goals outlined in our plan for living, learning, and leading. This presentation will connect very directly to the three specific priorities outlined for special education. These goals

046live in the learning bucket. and focus on increasing access and developing transition opportunities for students with non-traditional tracks. The next slides look at our current special education numbers and a 10-year history. As we go through these slides, I hope to highlight the increased needs special education has experienced in both numbers and the expanding profiles of students. As you will see in the next two slides, Scarsdale has experienced what many other places around the county, state, and country have, and that is an increasing number of special education students without experiencing overall population expansion. However, unlike our conversations over the last few years, we are starting to see some plateauing in those numbers, and I'm happy to take you through that now. Currently, we have 662 students who have special education needs and 64 preschoolers with an

047IEP. Our CSE number is similar to last year, but notably preschool has come down this year. Preschool does tend to fluctuate more than the school age classification rate, but the continual increasing seems to have leveled. Our school age numbers have actually come down for the first time since 2017-18, although the reduction is modest with six students. And in the last three years, we've stayed within a range of about 12 students. Our classification rate remains at 14%, with the state reaching 20 in the 24-25 school year, and Westchester at 17 in that same year. State and county rates are not available yet for 25-26. And as a reminder, these rates are only for students with an IEP. It does not include students with 504s. Our elementary ICT has also had a small decline this year and

048is following the overall trend of classification. I don't believe this is a start of decline in classification, but I do see evidence that our numbers are beginning to stabilize. This graph actually shows our initial referrals to CSE. So these are students who weren't previously classified and being brought to the CSE committee. This past year was higher than 23-24, but there is a general flattening overall of the trend. This is the best predictive indicator that we have and how our numbers will look a few years out. Overall numbers, sorry about all the numbers on this, but... It's an important graph. Our overall numbers are only part of the story. It's important to understand the breakdown of students by classification. IDEA has 13 classifications, which obviously limits the specificity in how we describe student need on a

049programmatic level. But the trends show a major shift from specific learning disabilities to autism and other health impairment as classifications. While autism is specific, it's a wide spectrum that encompasses a number of needs and OHI separately encompasses both students with ADHD, anxiety and depression, and a number of other social emotional needs that don't rise to the level of emotional disability. Although specific learning disabilities has come down as an actual classification, many students with autism and OHI exhibit LD needs as well. IDEA only allows for one classification and we use the classification that best describes the barrier to access that the student is experiencing. These changes in profile have impacted both the pedagogy and programs needed to effectively serve our students. In these next slides, I'll start to outline our focus on providing as many Scarsdale

050students as possible the opportunity to be educated within the district. ICT, special classes, and Scarsdale support program have significantly increased the percentage of students with disabilities that can be educated within their own community. Our overall percentage of students outplaced has fallen from 12% back in the 16-17 school year to 3.4% of students now. And you can see the actual numbers have dropped from a high of 50 to 23 students in the current year. If we break down our outplacement data by grade and by student need, we see that all grade bands, the graph on the left there, have had significant declines and there are currently no students out of district in K-2. Our largest group of students still requiring out-of-district placements are on the high school level, placed mainly for social-emotional or alternate assessment needs.

051This data, when viewed in conjunction with the next two slides, really outlined the realization of a goal to educate as many students in the community as possible. This chart shows the number of students with IEPs who are currently enrolled privately or in CSE terms, parentally placed outside of the school district. The blue represents all students parentally placed regardless of the type of program they're in. And the red are students attending actual special education schools or program. So you see a decreasing trend from a percentage standpoint over the last number of years. In summing up the trends, here are some key takeaways. Over the past 10 years, we've had a 242 student increase, and this seems to be leveling out over the past two to three years. Emotional disabilities, especially anxiety, depression, and autism, autism not

052being an emotional disability, have become much more prominent in the profiles of our students requiring different pedagogy and programming. Out-of-district placements have fallen significantly in the past 10 years, assuring the vast majority of students are educated here. Alternate assessment for high school-age students still require the use of out-of-district placements, and as we talk further about our next steps and thoughts, I think you'll see an alignment to that and this need. The next slide is a look at the current special education programming that are in place now and their enrollments. Before we dive into specifics, it's important to reiterate that the goals for special education students are the same goals that we have for all students, to give them the tools to live independent, purposeful lives with as many choices as their desires and talents allow.

053Special education is simply the mechanism for students who need specialized methods and tools to get there. Those methods and tools address four main things, access to curriculum, self-understanding, self-advocacy, and planning for the future. All of the programs you hear as referenced tonight are in service to at least one of these four areas. IDEA and Part 200 of the Commissioner's Regulations outline a continuum of services that a student must have access to if needed. It also focuses on the idea of educating students in the least restrictive environment that is educationally appropriate. While it's not a legal requirement that a district have all program types as in-district options, Scarsdale has worked hard to expand the options for students here within the district. The goal has been largely realized as evidenced in the previous slides, but we're going

054to now take a look at the current programs available in the district. On our elementary level, all of our buildings have learning resource centers which service students needing pre-referral services, consultant teacher services, or resource room services. We have our integrated co-teaching classes at four out of the five elementary schools, with our K classes starting every year at two of the buildings. Our most intensive special class programs, including the Bridge, which is a 12-to-1 program, and our intensive support program, which is an 8-to-1-to-2 program, are housed at the Edgewood School. These programs represent the breadth of special education continuum and have dramatically lessened our reliance on out-of-district placements at the elementary level. As you can see, there's a consistent enrollment in all of our ICT classes with a range of three to five sections at each

055grade level. Currently, QRS and Green Acres have the most sections, but over the next two years, all four schools housing ICT will have comparative numbers of ICT sections. This is being accomplished through adjusting where we start kindergarten, not by moving students who are currently attending either of those schools. Our special classes are all enrolled at a level that make an in-district program more cost-effective than out-of-district placements, and this year we have taken on four students from other districts in our special classes as a revenue stream. As I explained, ICT is not available at all elementary schools on every grade. Each cohort year, two of our elementary schools host the incoming KICT classes. As we discuss the coming bond proposal, it's important to analyze the impact of special education programs on enrollments at each elementary school.

056The graph on the left shows the net difference in student enrollment due to special education program. This ranges from nine extra students present at Edgewood to 13 less students at Heathcote. This chart includes all students including staff students with special education needs and our tuition based students. Additionally, due to the fact that ICT is not available everywhere, when a student is recommended for the program it may involve a move from one district school to another. This decision can be difficult and there are families that reject the ICT program due to the need to move schools. The graph on the right shows both the number enrolled in ICT on each grade and the number of students who were recommended but decided not to enroll in the program. Currently overall there are 22 sections of ICT on

057the elementary level. Just as the graph on the right. exclusive of non-resident students so no tuition students in that graph and no students who are here who are staff kids are in that graph so that is just the number of resident students. At our middle school, we have learning resource centers in all of the houses, which offer consultant teacher and resource room services. The parallel program offers a mix of ICT and special class options in math and English. Currently, the sixth grade offers all four subjects in ICT, and seventh and eighth grade offer ICT in science and social studies only. The Bridge and Scarsdale Support Program are available in SMS as well. The Bridge Program is a continuation of our 12-to-1 program on the elementary, and the SSP, or the Scarsdale Support Program, is a

058combination of resource room and counseling that serve as a specialized program for students with social and emotional disabilities. And for the first time this year, our intensive support program, our 8-to-1-to-2 class, has come up and started at Scarsdale Middle School in the sixth grade. At our high school, we also have consultant teacher and resource room available through our Learning Resource Center and the Scarsdale Support Program for students with emotional disabilities. The Pathways Program also started this September, which provides a continuation from our 12 to 1 bridge programs on the elementary and middle school level. SHS does not have the ICT option currently, but our skills level classes serve students who have academic challenges and need smaller, more structured classes. Skills classes benefit from a push-in model where LRC teachers join the class to provide specific

059support to the teachers and students. This is simply a visual representation of the continuum on the secondary level. We're currently building the continuum here through our special class and ICT offerings, but we'll get to more on that in a moment. And here are the current enrollments for our secondary programs, including an additional tuition-paying student at Scarsdale Middle School in the parallel program. So that brings the question, what is on the horizon for planning for special education? There are really four driving questions to guide our decision-making around special education programming. How does our programming forward the goals of the strategic plan? Are we able to implement the highest quality pedagogy and interventions for our students? Are we able to honestly say our teachers have everything they need to do what we ask them to do? And

060do families feel supported? Are the programs we build sustainable? And do they forward the inclusion of students with disabilities in the wider goals that we have for all students? These questions guide the work outlined in the next slides at each level. With a complete continuum on our elementary level the focus is on continued professional development, monitoring of need, and the focus on general education pre-referral services to support students prior to special education. Future program growth is not expected at this time. Of course changes in student profile or need could always adjust that plan. At the middle school, we're focused on continuing implementation of ICT in all subject areas, robust professional development around both ICT and special class programming. All of the programs we expect to need have been introduced on the middle school level, and

061the completion of their implementation should be realized in the next two years with ICT moving in all four subjects to seventh and eighth grade as the students in current sixth grade move up. As these programs continue to evolve, high-quality professional development will continue to be the focus. The high school continuum is where new programming is still to be ruled out. Expanding the continuum to include alternate assessment programming is planned for the 28-29 school year as our current sixth grade group in the 8-1-2 move to the ninth grade year. We will continue our implementation of the Bridge 12-1 classes as our current ninth grade cohort moves up. And we continue to evaluate the need for ICT in relation to the current skills program. Professional development will be a major part of all of these implementations and

062these programs. With those goals in mind, we want to, to the extent possible, forecast the needs of special education over the next three years with regards to staffing as it represents a financial commitment and has real tax and budget implications. On the elementary level, FTE needs are based solely on section needs. ICTs, similarly to a general education section, require an FTE and are directly connected to the number of incoming or newly recommended ICT students. While it's too early to truly project the number of sections that will be needed on K next year, or if any sections will split along the grade level, early numbers suggest three sections would be coming in in K, which would not require an additional FTE as we have three fifth grade sections rolling off into the middle school at the

063end of this year. On the secondary level, On the secondary level, the introduction of additional ICT programs, the special class expansion, and the overall numbers drive the need. The actual number of FTE will depend on the number of students overall, the number that qualify for these programs, and the extent that those new program opportunities draw students from existing programs like Parallel, Skills, and LRC. Importantly, the two special class programs expect to serve students that are currently being served in the program at lower grades. These students would be placed out of district without an in-house program and represent a fixed expense whether actualized through FTEs and program expansion or through out of district tuition costs if the programs did not expand. There are offsets to this expansion including the ability to take on tuition based students

064and the decline in the need of students that go out of district. goal still to be realized on the secondary level as you saw with our alternate assessment numbers out of district in the high school last year we started the process in earnest of looking for tuition students mainly for our special class in an effort to create these revenue offsets We predicted two students in our forecast, but we were able to engage five tuition-based students totaling approximately $445,000 of non-tax revenue. The revenue is approximate since the non-resident tuition rate, which we charge, is state-directed and is still an estimate form for this year coming up, but it will be right in that neighborhood. We thought it important because during our presentation last year we showed a forecast for costs of building these special class programs

065in comparison to the cost of using out of district placements. Here you see our original forecast from last year with the 2526 actual enrollments and revenue. The next slide will show our updated forecast based overall on this year's enrollment, next year's likely incoming students, and an updated related services cost based on our experience. This new forecast takes into account new adjusted enrollment numbers of district resident residents, I'm sorry, new adjusted enrollment numbers of district residents. Staff and tuition students are excluded here. We had some new student enrollments at the end of last year and through the summer that eclipsed our original enrollment estimate. Additionally, we forecasted two tuition-based students and acquired five. We used three tuition students moving forward in our forecast, although we don't expect to lose any of our current students, and we

066do continue to look for appropriate opportunities. It seemed prudent not to rely on those numbers. We are still forecasting one and a half new enrollments for 27, 28, and beyond, and next year's numbers are actually based on the current projections from CPSC. Cost escalations for both expenses and revenue numbers are at 2%. You'll also notice that the revenue for 25-26 includes a new updated cost for related services with regards to tuition-based service. We are using consultants to do a lot of that related service work. So it is a direct cost when we bring on students from the outside. take up another slot in those related services. So we've figured that out and subtracted it from each of the revenue numbers. Providing an appropriate program for our resident students is a legal requirement, and the out-of-district

067cost estimates are based on a comparable program for 12-to-1 and 8-to-1s that we've regularly used in the past. The out-of-district costs for these students continue to outstrip the cost of providing services within the district, as you can see on those bottom couple of lines there, both with revenue and excluding it. Here are some takeaways from our programmatic priorities. I'm not going to read all of them, but they are what we just covered. I know this was a lot of information, and I know that there's more information in this presentation, so I think it makes sense to just stop here and ask if anyone has questions on kind of what we've gone through thus far. I have a few questions first thank you Eric super helpful informative I appreciate the updated costs so that we could

068see how things played out I do have a lot of questions so I think you sort of answered it but when we were looking on the first slide with the diagnoses or I tried to write which side they were on after that, but that slide, there's a really... This one? Yeah, that one. There's a really significant increase in the other health impaired, but I think that's... You mentioned later that anxiety and depression were part of that. And ADHD. So all three of those things are really potentially what's driving those numbers up? Those are definitely what's driving those numbers. Okay. And also the same learning disability decrease. So is that like a reshifting of how the ADHD? So it is a shifting. There are less kids who are primarily diagnosed as specific learning disabilities. It's important

069to recognize the other health impairment peace the anxiety the depression the ADHD often those things are comorbid and some of those students are exhibiting LD needs in one area or another but it's not the primary thing stopping their access so the CSE has to make a determination they can only choose one of the 13 categories which It's what the state makes us do but it's not particularly helpful in really identifying what a student's needs are. That really happens in the goals and the levels of performance that we write a narrative for. This really just shows that we are having more kids who are more complicated than what we used to have, which was much more of a higher ratio whose learning disability was the main impediment to access to the curriculum. or kind of just

070the more instruction they needed in math or in reading or in writing, those were the main impediments. Now we're talking about more social-emotional pieces. We're talking about ADHD, which is really around attention and executive functioning, and then not to forget about the increase in the students with autism. okay thank you that's helpful so then I guess also part of our increases in mental health supports would be related to this although we're not really speaking about those this evening but those are tied in yeah and I will say the start of our SSP program has been paramount in helping kids get this especially our most needy students with social-emotional disabilities getting the help and that also really frees up our other counselors to engage more kids especially if those students are taking up inordinate amounts of

071time with the house psychologist or the psychologist that's kind of part of the general population. Okay great thank you. On slide 21 it sort of talks about the placement sorry I'm making you multitask well. It was the ICT, the students that don't accept the program. So when students are offered ICT, it's typically, so the Heathcote and Quaker Ridge are linked together? Is that typically so like if they're in Heathcote and the grade is not? I'm sorry, no, no, no. So how does that work? Fox Meadow and Quaker Ridge. Oh, Fox Meadow. And then Green Acres and Heathcote. Okay, so I guess how does it work? Like where does it, what does an Edgewood student get when they're offered ICT? It'll depend on the year. So you're never sure how many kids are coming from any

072catchment zone. So as we come to the end of the preceding year before we start the Ks, we look at what the balance is and really balance out numbers. We do try and keep elementary schools generally going if it's not a Green Acres year. We try and take all the kids from Green Acre and move them to one school because it's easier for transportation. sometimes there are connections with those parents. There are times where that's not doable just because of the way the numbers work out and we need even classes and depending on how many sections there are we may have to split that. So it's really done on where this making equal size sections and kind of figuring out where those K's should start. Moving forward from that we do try and keep if

073we were able to put all Green Acres students at whichever school it was. We would try to take other Green Acres students and put them there, but really as we get farther in the grades, it's about where spots are open. So it could depend. But they will stay in that school once they're placed in there. Correct. Once they're placed, there's not a situation where we would move students from one ICT section at this school to another ICT section at another school. Also, if at some point during their elementary career they're declassified and don't need ICT, the family has the choice. They can go back to the original school or they can stay at the school that they were in ICT. Obviously, they'd be assigned to a general ed class. But so that's really their choice

074and there's a split on what families choose when that happens. Okay, that's interesting. Thank you. And then I think on slide 24, so right now in the middle school there's ICT for sixth grade in all four core subjects. Correct. And so are there still students who have? ICT classes and get LRC or once you're in ICT for all four you don't how does that work there are very few kids who are in LRC and either an ICT or parallel class most of the time kids who are in the parallel program have what's called an academic support period which is a larger it's a 12 to 1 class but it's it functions similarly to an LRC except it's kind of It's specifically taught by one of the teachers who are either their parallel or ICT teacher.

075There is, on occasion, a student who has a very specific need, like a student who may have a particular weakness in math and just needs the ICT or the special class math or the ICT math, and that's the only piece of the parallel program that they're in. They may stay in LRC. It's rare. It happens. It sounds like it's very nuanced and responsive to what the student needs It is based on the student needs And so your plan then is for next year potentially to include a hire for ICT at the middle school so that there would be ICT in all four core subjects in seventh grade? Seventh grade next year and an eighth of college Okay and so then following on that I noticed there's not a plan for ICT in the high school

076for next year so how are you thinking about studying that you kind of alluded to that in one of the slides. So right now the skills class we've started the 12 to 1 which is a self-contained class for students who need very direct specialized instruction to approach regular assessment these are not alternately assessed students so they will take Regents they will go for a regular Regents diploma at the end of four years those students previously would be in the skills classes or in in in cases where we need more support using an out-of-district placement we have to now look at as that program matures is there a need in the skills classes to put ICT which would kind of be in between the skills class and a two-level class at the high school do we

077have the population that would the critical mass for that additional continuum. And if we were to do that, would skills still look the same? Would we still push in an LRC teacher? Would that be different? So those are all pieces that we're going to explore as kind of the 12-1 matures and we see what that impact is on the skills classes. Okay, that's super helpful. And just one more question. It's also about ICT. There was a slide, slide 31, where you talked about the revenue that we get from outside programs. So do we ever take in ICT students for revenue or that's just not something that's done? We would. On the elementary level, our numbers. There aren't many places where I would feel comfortable having a tuition-based student that it isn't possible that with a

078couple of extra referrals or a couple of extra kids moving in, it wouldn't kick us to another section. I would not want to take in a tuition from outside. Either I tell them they have to leave the next year because we have no room, or the $90,000 in revenue doesn't equal the extra section teacher that we would need to bring in, so it doesn't make for... good a good you know bet now parallel we do have one student with tuition in it because we had the numbers where we were sure over the next two years that wouldn't be the case and we could take that student and it was a very good fit we've done that in the past the LRC in the high school for instance so where we have room we're not restricting

079ourselves to not take a tuition student in any particular program it's just we're very conscious of let's forecast out the next two or three years if there's a possibility that a resident student could kick us over a section break we wouldn't okay so if we added ICT and as we're looking to expand it obviously be thoughtful about whether we might have tuition opportunities there Okay, great, that's it for me, thank you. Thank you, Eric. I just have a few questions. So related to what Amber asked at the middle school, where you're gonna focus on the continuum of ICT into seventh and eighth, just to clarify, would the request be one FTE this budget cycle and one the following, or is it two this budget cycle? It's a possibility. It's one right now. It will be

080one for this year, most likely. Again, we're in the midst of budget planning, so nothing is solid yet. But it looks like it will be one this year. And next year's will really depend on numbers coming in and the way our students who are in the 12 to 1, the way those sections shrink based on who goes into ICT out of them and what section and what... What assignments we save on having less sections of those being able to reroute them to ICT? Okay, and if for some reason we didn't stop that What would what would it how would that affect those students those students would be making well? The CSE would be making a choice with the parent input but as a team on which class would be most beneficial for that student and

081Provide the amount of support that gives them the best chance for success and that would either be the parallel math and English Or the regular level so in other words moving out of the ICT and having more of an LRC type of experience so it would depend it's It's not different than it was in the middle school prior to this year. That choice has to be made on those programs. Thank you. And in terms of the 8-1-2 that will move into the high school, you said in 2028-29? 2028-29, yep. Are there any space issues at the high school for this class? They would require a classroom. We've talked to the high school. They have that available. The other space we would need is an adaptive living skills space, which would be akin to an apartment-like

082setup with washing machine, sink, stove. We have spaces. We've looked at three or four different spaces that are nontraditional spaces in the high school that can accommodate that. If you look at the forecast, there's a bump. in the costs during the year before having that program come into the high school that account for that type of capital work. A capital project we would see in this budget cycle? No, not in this budget cycle. Thank you. So thank you, Eric, for this very comprehensive report. I have two questions. One is kind of a fun question. The other a numbers question. So the first is for the special classes. So these are students with the most severe needs. I'm curious about like what like they're in their curriculum. What art, music and sports, what role? You know,

083is that all taught by the same special ed teacher? So no. Depending on the class that we're talking about the bridge classes or the 12 to 1 classes typically are included in mainstream art music and all of the other classes on the 8 to 1 to 2 there it's a mix between being included and having separate sections for that class as kids gain the skills to engage in the curriculum in the mainstream art or the mainstream we we provide those opportunities and it's really about meeting the student need on on the eight to one so um the um special teachers they have some special professional development in terms of correct thank you um and then the numbers question is on slide 33. So if you can just maybe share the assumptions of some of the

084numbers, for example, the out-of-district placement, like the increase, especially the big increase in 28, 29, is that based on our current population? Yes. So it's based on the enrollment right up at the top there. Students in the 8 to 1 to 2 program are... There I don't have it right in front of me, but I think it's about a hundred and two thousand dollars as An out-of-district placement cost which is comparable to what the BOCES cost is and that Starting in 2526 is increased by 2% you know, each year. And then the 12 to 1 are slightly less. I believe it's $89,000 or so. I can go back and look and give you those exact numbers. So this is just the existing population? Correct. Assuming no additional... Well, it's the existing population. For 26-27, it's

085based on what we expect to have out of CPSC and what we expect to move from ICT in the second grade into the third grade bridge. 27 and 28 on, each program is just receiving one and a half students per year. We average between one and two students entering per year, so it's just used as a... placeholder to show that we will probably get some students on the bottom end and the reason why the number doesn't really level off until 2930 because no one's old enough to graduate until then so at that point that's about the point you'll start to see it level level off any other questions for eric oh sorry yeah sorry i wanted to make sure um thank you eric most of my questions were answered already um by my fellow board

086members questions i just um i had one question i think it was slide 21. um in terms of the number of rejections are those all rejections purely because the ict program was not in the the child elementary school or was was there a number of majority yes but not all okay great And then on slide 30, I just wanted to understand a little bit more about the expansion of the ICT in the middle school. So next year you wanted to add one FTE to expand it to seventh grade. In 27-28, you have zero to one. Is that because you anticipate numbers falling of enrollment in the ICT? Because it feels like we would know those numbers already. So wouldn't it be kind of... The question will be, as we move over the next two years,

087we've been seeing a rising number of students that are graduating out of ICT in the fifth to sixth grade transition. Not that they're disappearing. They're just going to a less restrictive environment. And that is leaving less kids for a parallel. I can foresee a year where we wouldn't need the 12 to 1 and one or both of those. So it's really, it's probably one. But depending on how those cohorts kind of progress and what those decisions are, that's where the difficulty in projecting it exactly is. So who's going to need to move to a less restrictive environment, both from moving from a 12 to an ICT and moving from an ICT to an LRC. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Question. Am I correct that... the numbers that we're seeing

088typically do not include staff children or that they do in any I've I've chosen to include them or not depending on what we're looking at when I'm looking at something that is like all of the cost estimates exclude them because we're really only talking about we would only incur costs for our resident for our own resident students so they're excluded there when we're talking about enrollments I add them because they're actual kids who are actual in the seat so most in most cases it it shows whether they're included or not okay I was asking because it seems to me that as as retirements occur and we start hiring younger teachers which not necessarily universally but potentially you know there may be somewhat of a surge in interest in having their children attend the schools they

089just want to make sure that our projections sensitive to the fact that there could be a demand and I assume, correct me if I'm wrong, that we don't have the right to deny. No, we do. We do have the right. So we will, and this isn't. This isn't special ed specific. This is across the board. If a staff student were to cause a breakage, in other words, they're won over, that spot is not open. We have to have a spot available that doesn't require us to hire. Okay. That's good to understand. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. It was a great presentation. Most of my questions have already been answered. I have a random question. Okay. We have a responsibility for providing education for some part of our special education population until the age of 22.

090Correct. Is that correct? Alternate assessment. So that would be our 8 to 1 to 2 cohort? Yeah. So the law actually reads you are entitled to special education services until you receive a diploma or until the year you turn 22, until your 22nd birthday. Okay. In practice, what that generally looks like is students who are alternately assessed, in other words, they're not working towards a diploma, will receive education until they're 22. Usually in the last year or two of that, that education is much more vocationally based, based around work opportunities. There are programs called like Project Search, which will have students spend the year interning and learning in a place like Montefiore Hospital or trying different jobs there doing that type of work. So functionally, what you would see as the 8 to 1 moves

091up into the high school is those students 18 and 19 starting to spend part of the day in the building, part of the day going to an internship where they're getting supported work, and then maybe they're culminating in their penultimate year actually not being in the high school, but being in a supportive work environment and getting classes there to be ready for whatever the transition plan is for those students. Thank you, so exciting. Okay, I do have a few more slides, but this is the fun stuff. When we talk about how do we really look at individual assessment and planning for students, we're going to talk about how do we assess special education. In order to evaluate how individual students are progressing, we have to identify what a student's needs are. This is the core

092of the Individualized Education Plan or the IEP. How do we identify and evaluate the needs of a student? Committees, IEP committees or CSE committees meet yearly at meetings known as annual reviews in which a variety of information including their achievement in classes, test scores, parent input is reviewed to discuss student growth in areas of needs. Every three years through meetings known as re-evaluations, the team uses or provides updated comprehensive standardized evaluations, IQ tests, achievement tests. test of executive functioning, attention, in order to provide standardized data both to discuss student growth year to year and to discuss where those students fall in relation to their peers. This information is then... moved into developing goals for students. The goal is the heart of any IEP. They're essentially the strategic plan for students with disabilities. Goals are aligned

093with both student needs and curricular standards. The goals are developed to help students progress within the curriculum for students who are regularly assessed and progressing towards a Regents diploma, for students who are alternate assessed. The goals are focused on foundational academics, adaptive living skills, vocational skills, and independent living. As students age, these goals increasingly focus on what the post-secondary plans are and what we need to provide the student in order to achieve those goals. Teachers use a variety of ways to monitor the progress a student makes towards these goals. Depending on the goal, those methods can vary. Examples include portfolios. Teachers may collect work samples throughout the year to show growth in a particular area. Exams. Exams could be used to progress monitor when directly related to a goal. For example, if a student has

094a goal around making meaning out of charts and graphs. and that exam provides a chart and graph for the student to examine. That could be used as an example of making progress. Observations can be used if a student is being asked to complete tasks such as engaging in executive functioning work. Interviews with a student may be used to help them develop the language and approach to advocating for what they may need in a particular classroom or observing to see if they're making reciprocal conversation with other peers. Do nows and exit tickets are a big one, especially in ICT. These are quick ways to monitor whether a student has the curricular access at the start of class or at the end of class. This is far from an exhaustive list, but what you would see at

095annual reviews is teachers providing a myriad of examples of how students are making or not making progress towards their individual goals. Students with disabilities often develop at different rates than their peers, and progress can look different across the spectrum of students. How do families know if their child is making progress and how do they have input in the progress? Informal conversations occur quickly between parents and special education teachers throughout the year. These conversations can reinforce what parents can do at home to support and they can provide teachers with information on what works at home to help drive the instruction forward during the day. Parents receive formal progress reports on their individual goals on the same schedule as report cards. Finally, IEPs are living documents. Families and teams can ask for the committee to meet at

096any time during the year to discuss current recommendations, goals, programs in a meeting called a program review. The focus on individual progress is at the heart of special education, and it drives the content of the IEP at every level. While individual student success is paramount for parents when discussing special education programming, we also need to look at data for students in the aggregate and get an idea of the overall program performance. Using quantitative data to assess is important, but it is only one part of accessing success. Regular feedback from staff, families, and students is important to gauge whether programs are both meeting the needs and if they're feasible. Regular opportunities for that feedback are woven into the system for staff. Department meetings and team meetings are scheduled regularly throughout the year. These opportunities are expanded

097in grades where we are significantly changing or adding programs. Similarly, in conjunction with CHILD, we hold six coffees, two for each level each year to garner feedback and answer questions from parents. CHILD reps hold additional coffees on the elementary level. And the CHILD chairs, Amy and I meet regularly to discuss any concerns. Parents also have regular contacts through the CSE meeting held at least once a year, and teachers also make a regular practice of engaging students on their experience through class and individual conversations. This is a practice that is further encouraged through our work with Responsive Classroom. Additionally, special education is a federally regulated service. I don't expect you to read this. This is just an example. It is a federally regulated service, and as such, New York State is required to collect data in

098order to receive federally allocated funding. The state is required to maintain a performance plan and measure 17 indicators with statewide goals. Some of the indicators include numbers that we've talked about already, like classification rates and other demographic information. These are analyzed for trends and disproportionality. Other measures are focused on achievements, which we'll look at in the next few slides. These indicators, both the demographics and the achievement, are collected yearly. Other indicators are set on a seven-year collection rotation. There's a link in the slide, and there's a document attached to the agenda if anyone would like to look at the totality of the state indicators. Recently, the district was required to report on what's known as Indicator 8. Indicator 8 uses a parent survey to illustrate the district's efforts to work with parents. We received an

09984.8% positive response rate to the overall survey. I've attached the detailed report to the BOE agenda if anyone would like to look at the specific questions and their breakdowns. Overall, the survey measures how the district solicits and values family input in the CSE process. This round of the survey from seven years ago saw a fall off in our response rate, although we achieved the state minimum for respondents. Previously, prior to Zoom meetings, we were able to hand deliver each one of these surveys to each family and ask them to fill it out before leaving the school. So we had a captive audience. This year, we had to rely on the mail. as the state requires that the surveys are numbered and assigned by family. So you can't hand them a random survey. Each number is

100attached to a family. And their process of the online option actually requires them to take their paper survey, add in the number from the paper survey, and just answer the questions online. So it's generally a relatively complicated process. We got 171 responses, which is not great, but it is a number. Most were from the 6 to 11-year-old age range and the 14 to 21-year-old age range. a little less than 80% of the response rate. Okay, but you feel free to look at the detailed report. Similarly to general education, we also look at aggregate data, aggregate student performance data as one marker of how our programs are performing. The following data shows performance of our special education students on state exams. When we look at this data, there are a few things to keep in mind.

101First, students with IEPs have disabilities which create barriers to learning and often delay the development of conceptual knowledge or production skills. Additionally, the cohort for each grade level is small. So unlike the overall data for the district and state, a difference in only a few tests can significantly change the overall proficiency numbers. Lastly, state tests are imperfect instruments for assessing learning. As I pointed out, there are very specific ways in which we measure progress of special education students. And the cartoon above rings true for many of our students with disabilities when we talk about standardized testing. This slide and the next show the percentage of students with disabilities who achieve proficiency on the state math and ELA exams. Proficiency is defined as a three or a four on the exam. The data show that while

102we have always outperformed the state, there's been a very positive trend in performance over the past 10 years. This trend coincides with the expansion of our ICT program, concerted efforts with regards to professional development, more focused MTSS procedures, and an increase in related services including reading services and social emotional support. As an FYI, the 24-25 state results are not yet public or I would have included them on this in the next slide. The math numbers follow the exact same trend. Our middle school numbers show evidence of the same trend. As you know, the current work is focused on expanding pedagogic ICT into science and social studies, with continued expansion into English and math this year in sixth grade. Important to note, less focus is put on the state exam as the students move into the

103middle school, and our opt-out rate jumps significantly from the single digits to the mid-teens year to year. Anecdotally, we feel some of the opt-out numbers stem from the greater amount of overall assessment in the middle school and testing fatigue, especially for students who already find testing tedious. It drives some to opt-out as well as it being a test that doesn't count per se. But our ELA assessments... and our six through eight math assessments follow the same trend of rising proficiency. As we move on to looking at high school data, regions passing rates, which is 65 or higher, are the most comparable data set. This is appropriate for high school given we're working specifically towards achieving graduation. Passing rate is not the higher standard for proficiency in the three through eight tests. Given the very significant

104differences between the three through eight tests and the regions, there's no real way to compare them directly. But this data is still instructive both in the relativity to the state and county as well as the overall performance measure for our special education students. Our passing rate is impressive, especially when compared to the general education passing rate of the state. For a small number of students who don't pass in the first attempt, there are multiple opportunities and supports to try again. These scores are also not inclusive of the special education safety net, which allows students with a disability to graduate with a score of 55 if they have met the passing requirements for the class. And finally, we have to look at graduation rate. Our graduation, we look at the graduation rate for special education students.

105The variations in rate account for students who are alternately assessed and age out in the year of their 22nd birthday without achieving a diploma. These students receive very specific post K-12 planning including supported employment, supported living as needed through state services. You may notice the 2025 numbers for graduation are not present. All of the data you've been presented come from the state reported data site to ensure the common data set. 2425 is not published until later this year and 2223 Westchester County comparisons are also not available. As you can see, our special education graduation rate equals or outstrips the general education graduation rate for Westchester County. It's truly a phenomenal comment on both our students and teachers. With that in mind, before I open this up to questions, and yes, this is the actual end

106of the presentation, I would like to take a minute to thank all of our teachers, our related service providers, our aides, and our administrators that work tirelessly to educate and care for our students each and every day. With that, are there any other questions? Thank you, Eric. Federally allocated funding. Is there anything in particular we're watching at the federal level as it pertains to special education funding? We're watching a lot of things with not a lot of insight into what is actually going to happen. There's been no talk. of the funding disappearing right now, especially around special ed. There has been talk about moving it to various departments outside of the Department of Education as the expectation is that will fold for real soon. We get about a million dollars in what's called the 611

107and 619 grants, which we use to supplement salary, because it's the easiest thing to use the grant money fully on. At this point, we expect that funding to continue. There are two very different proposals in the House and the Senate. The Senate has a bipartisan proposal right now for education funding that, broadly speaking, increases it. The House is not a bipartisan budget proposal. It's a Republican proposal that pretty significantly cuts overall school grant funding, more on the Title I side, though, than the IDEA side. The title want, the different type of education funding is often dictated by different spending allocations. There's an actual congressional promise to fund a certain percentage of special education, somewhere around the 13%, so that would have to be changed to significantly change the funding. And then I have a question

108about, you know, Regents, like the Regents diploma. So when a student, if they don't pass the test and then taking it again, that's to get a Regents diploma, right? Correct. But New York State is phasing out the Regents diploma. Correct. for the current fifth grade cohort is when those regents will be phased out. The regents are not being phased out. Right, well, that's true. So there's going to be a single diploma. We don't know exactly what that means yet. Regents' exams are not being phased out. They will become one of multiple options for demonstrating proficiency. Beyond that, we really don't have a lot of details as far as what that looks like. For students looking to get a Regents diploma at this point, there are a number, 55 is a safety net, but if you

109get the 55, you're getting a local diploma, okay, that still exists for students with special education services. There are a number of... special education safety nets inclusive of if you get a 65 on on an ink you have to get a 65 on the English you have to get a 65 on the math in order to get you can get a 45 on one of its there's a lot to it it's not worth going into the weeds here on exactly what those options are but there are a number of ways you can only if you don't pass one of the regions you can take it work and work internship and do that through a CDAS that would be a four plus one so there are different ways to get to the diploma in general the

110vast majority of our kids are passing the Regents exam with a 65 or higher and or a 55 in a small minority they haven't said anything about like alternatively assessed like diplomas or anything like that So alternately assessed students don't receive a diploma. They receive a certificate of completion. That certificate of completion is either known as a CDAS, which is a Career Development Occupational Skills. That can be either an add-on to a regular diploma or a stand-alone certificate of completion. It is required to have a certain number of hours of internship, a number of vocational training pieces. Or there's what's called the SACC or the SACC, it's a terrible name, Skills and Achievement Credential, which is a student-specific report out on what the islands of strength and the islands of need of that student are.

111It's used in conjunction with post-secondary services, usually from the state. Most students receiving a SACC will need supported living, will need supported work, will be working with. state agencies like OPWDD or the Office of Mental Health. Thank you. So the very high graduation rates, you know, the assessment results are really impressive. I think they are, you know, testament to the quality of our program. So the vast majority of our special education students actually go on to college. That's correct. So I'm curious about sort of in terms of preparing the students and families to access college services. Like do we have programs in place? So all of our special education students benefit from the same type of college counseling that our dean do for all students. So that includes meeting with the dean, creating effective lists.

112The difference with special education students, the LRC teacher often plays a much more. prominent role in those conversations talking about student needs helping the guidance counselor identify schools that would be culturally supportive that being said at the end of 12th grade each student receives a packet with an exit document that includes all of their psychological testing all of their achievement testing and we go over specifically with those families if you're looking to get a fight because IDEA and IEPs end in 12th grade that's a K through 12 law colleges provide services only under 504 So, if they're looking to get a 504 in college, they need to apply directly to the Office of Disabilities in whatever university they're going to. They will need the testing and the former IEPs. All of that is given to

113each student in their exit meeting towards the end of senior year, which can literally be taken and kind of handed over to the 504 committee to do that work. Thank you. Thanks Eric. I was looking at the state report. It's not actually in the slides. Yep. Yeah, and it was, sorry I was trying to figure out because I was scrolling. It was indicator three, section D. It's basically the proficiency gap between our students. without disabilities and with disabilities. And it's super interesting data to look at, right? So I guess a couple things I was wondering about. So when you look at sort of the, and you mentioned the middle school, or I'm gonna call it grade eight, but grade eight ELA, our proficiency gap, we didn't meet the target. But then you look at our

114high school ELA and the proficiency gap is like almost nothing. I don't understand how the numbers are so different. Yeah, part of it, In many middle schools, the state test is focused on in ELA very heavily. In eighth grade and the middle school, the focus is on preparing kids for our high school English curriculum. There is very little preparation done for the state ELA test. And as kids move into high school, if you are in a skills 11th grade English class, they are doing a lot of preparation for the English regions because it's a graduation requirement. It's really about prioritizing what's important for students rather than chasing that particular indicator on the state report. Okay, thank you. I was really wondering because that was a big, that one's a big difference. Also, you might notice

115in some of these graphs about the assessment performance, it's not, you know, They're not huge cohorts. Right. And each cohort is made up of kids with different abilities that some have more severe, some have less severe challenges. And it can vary from year to year. So that particular year may look different than next year also. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Eric? I just want to extend my thanks to Eric for his work on this also to Dr. Tramelli who's in the audience back there for her work as assistant director and she's sitting next to Rochelle Hauge who at the middle school plays a key role in special education and supporting the students and the faculty so thank you to all of you those are two key people

116that we couldn't do this without thank you very much we are indeed we're ready to move forward Okay, so we are moving on to our bond and capital projects planning update want to start with Expressing gratitude to our partners in the audience some of whom will be up at the mic and others Available to answer questions as we go through this literally couldn't do it without you so thank you I'll just blaze through these first slides you've seen these regularly but the idea is this work is connected purposefully to our strategic plan and our goals we've followed the process followed some key guiding principles that are that are outlined here we're in the part of an iterative process that is leading toward definition of a scope and ultimately hopefully adoption of that scope of work

117before moving on to a final phase which would ultimately be an information campaign that would conclude with the bond referendum tonight's focus we're going to talk about five things quick overview of what we've done since last meeting we're going to talk through some revised cost estimates really an overview of all the cost estimates to date that complete scope and then some recommendations for ways to bring the total scope under 100 million dollars in total some recommendations that um andrew and i will put forward so quickly since last meeting we've uh we've met with ed edgewood community via zoom to answer questions there have been regular meetings with bbs and aris folks in the room on calls working through tons and tons of questions of details uh refinement and clarification of the building conditions survey scope

118items that is a very detailed set of projects that requires a lot of clarification and then ultimately cost estimation which you'll hear about tonight there's been some reprioritization of some of the building conditions scope and bringing them into our responsibility district items that we will take care of in a five-year capital plan or through maintenance budgets there's been a real careful thinking of the fox meadow site work requirements to accomplish that addition so you hear more about that and then ongoing cost estimation so we'll we'll jump into it i'll invite paul and and jonathan to play a part in uh first starting with our spatial air conditioning and field summary and i'm going to go to this is their document which uh appears in the uh agenda and you you'll just guide me through what

119what pages oh thank you So the way we arrange this is to do a recap first. So we're going to basically just recap the three areas, which are the spatial, the air conditioning, and the field upgrades. So in doing that... Really, the spatial is now the upgrade total is 60,886,363. And that one increased. That's the one that increased basically after everybody during the meetings, we further reviewed the Fox Meadow field work. And it was determined that a... ramp to connecting the school with the lower field was necessary so that was added in there was also you have an issue with water runoff onto an adjoining property so we looked at trying to address that and and connect some of the drainage together to basically settle some create to create solutions for some of the problems

120that you existing have also what was Determined we needed to account for the removal of the stairwell next to the existing library and multi-purpose room. Remove that, add some windows into the side of the building, and create a little bit of site project in there. So that added to the overall cost, and then at the same time there were multiple discussions. regarding the electrical and the data for the classrooms that we were renovating. So we had to increase our numbers a little bit to cover what was being requested under the data technology and the electrical requirements. um so we're at 60 million 886 000 there the air conditioning did not change that's our original number that's the all-in number now the we had two areas of that uh the all-in number was 15 million 756

121000. that's the number we carried right now and the field upgrades we reviewed at the last meeting also where we had the green acres elementary school one five and the middle school with three two four four seven So this meeting as we promised was going to be based on the BCS and infrastructure work now Basically going through next page So this one broke it down. Now, this one is labor intensive because we have to really analyze every single item in the report and then basically figure out how it's going to be costed, what it includes, so that we have an accurate estimate on the work that is being proposed. So in doing that, this report actually took the longest out of all of them because of that. But we have Edgewood at $2 million, Fox

122Meadow at $2.9 million, Green Acres at $900,000. These are very similar to the numbers that you've seen. Heathcote at $2.8 million, Scarstown High School at $6.6 million, Middle School at $6.7 million, Quaker Ridge at $6.2 million. So the BCS, or the Building Condition Surveying Infrastructure, comes out to a total of $28 million, $28,404,000. All of our costs, as always, include hazmat, escalation, project contingency, soft costs. so that we have a and fixtures furniture equipment if it's needed a lot of the items and if you look at the individual report you'll see that there are only ff and e tied to certain line items that's because we're looking at items such as pneumatic controls it doesn't need any furniture so it's not across the board it's really just based on areas such as the nurse's room

123at Edgewood the nurses so we put we would put attached furniture to that area so without going unless you want me to going through every one of these but there's nine pages of individual line items it you know it gives you the total of 28 million in that as we were going through and this the report covers all the committee priorities that were developed during the committee meetings so that we took their reports and we indicated what the costs were on those and the district priority priorities provided to us by nick and the rest of your administration so we can basically figure out what is needed in the district from both sets of viewpoints As we got to the end of this project and we were starting to trend higher than where you were hoping

124this to go so what was happening was through the help of Nick and John and I know they're here today which is good they helped provide us with a scope reduction from the the items removed from the scope which dealing with the district priorities and that's on page 12 of this document yep okay good So as we go through there, and I don't know if, Nick, do you want to basically go explain some of these as you're going through? So these are the items that were taken out. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody. So as Paul alluded to, the committee got together with the groups in the administration, as well as our partners from Arison BBS, to kind of identify areas to reduce scope. So when we looked upon things like spline ceilings

125and fritz tile, it's areas that, while it is throughout the district, there are some key areas that have become problematic, both because of the substrate of the type of floors beneath fritz tiles and access to areas for maintenance. Key areas are Heathcote within the pot areas for the spline ceiling. then looking at fritz tiles it's really our standouts or the high school hallway outside the main office and also edgewood as well so while originally wanting to identify all areas throughout the district we brought it down to just those which significantly reduced that scope We also looked at other areas that is being handled by both our in-house teams and through capital work that's currently being planned or proposed with items such as balcony rails throughout three of our auditorium, well, gymatoriums in our elementary schools,

126as well as fire hose cabinets, which are nearing completion across all of our buildings, as well as some pointing and railing work on the outside of our buildings that are in the process of now getting ready to begin for capital work. We also took time to identify... Some items that were also crossovers within some of the spatial and the air conditioning work allowing us to reduce that from the overall total scope as well. So we we took those numbers also we estimated everything that Was provided on that list and gave you a separate list of what that is. So that's the two-page list the What Nick was talking about came out to about five point three million dollars of reductions over the overall scope So then when we added all the categories together, the four

127categories, we ended up with a total scope of what was proposed of what's on the table right now of $109,810,787. So that's where we sat as of last week on finalizing all the estimates on everything that was put in front of us. Let's pause there the beasts. So just again the BCS cost estimation which They just spent time talking about Is the newest piece of information that you have and obviously it's lots and lots of projects so I'm just recapping what you heard and Nick represented that the facilities team has done work to either bring projects that were in the BCS and in that original 33 million dollar cost estimate that we started with bring some of those projects into the responsibility of the district outside the bond or reduce the scope overall scope of

128some of those types of work particularly the floor tied the Fritz floor tiling and the spline ceiling work shrunk the the total scope of that work for right now Andrew, anything you would add to that? So any questions? We'll revisit that just to make sure everyone understands, but any questions for these folks? I'm actually not sure who the question is for. So there's three documents that are linked to in our board docs, and they all kind of have similar names, so I just want to be sure I'm following along on the correct document. So the $109 million is with the reduced BCS scope? Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. That was my question. I like that. That's an easy one. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So we will return here to the slide deck and talk

129through. First, this is just recapping the spatial increase. So you'll remember Paul just talked about the need for increased site work at Fox Meadow as there was more thinking and discussion and the, I'd say, more appropriate specification of the electric work and the data cabling work necessary for the classroom-based renovations at both Fox Meadow. and edgewood grew the total spatial project budget from the last time uh that we were we met by 1.78 million dollars up to 60.8 million million dollars so that's what that that shows there um this is the bcs scope that that was just described there's one item here i want to call out to attention and we can you know try to answer questions if you have we significantly grew the scope of it what was a small item in the

130bcs at quaker ridge and we grew it into a large item which is to really try to fix the weaver street lake the the front field in quaker ridge that experiences really bad flooding there's a scope of work that grew to this is a drawing that is in the slide deck of it that BBS prepared but drainage improvements totaling nine hundred and thirteen thousand dollars so this appears I just want to explain this appears in the building condition scope because it was originally a small item there and we just yet have not moved it out it could be easily called a field project but we didn't want to confuse you at this point we can make that change if that's what the board prefers but because it started the process in the BCS we're keeping

131it in the BCS just for for consistency because what Paul just presented is the first time you're seeing the full cost estimate of all the work in all four categories that that Eris undertook does that make sense so that I just want to call it this is a new and we we believe in this project we think it's important and will be really positive not just for the Quaker Ridge community but the Scarsdale community and it was important to that school as well. Yes? Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I think moving forward in terms of selling it to the community, I think it should be under fields because I think people are going to have a, there are going to be certain people with the lens of what's being done

132to the fields and not going to look at anything else. And I think this... It's accurate, but it's confusing to be no offense. Yeah, so I think I would I I mean, it's not too late I would just yeah, I think we can all adjust to the fact that it was here and you're moving it over That's just my opinion Well, I mean is this Work at Quaker Ridge going to yield more playing time for athletes both in the district and potentially in the village Yeah, so more usable field space more of the time I guess is a way to say it. Yep. I'm just curious was this identified in the field study that we did last year with the village? It was. So we just thought we could do a $50,000 improvement, and then

133we sort of realized we had to do the full. Actually, it was a different location on the property that we had included in the BCS. So there's an area in the back of the building. I believe it's by the boiler building. made its way in through the committee as part of the Quaker Ridge BCS items, but the field project hadn't made its way in in the same way. And upon our review of the appropriateness of that BCS line item and the broader scope of work that our fields are morphing into in this project, we thought it was important to include that at Quaker Ridge. So we took out the other, whatever, the $50,000. I mean, that field is not in this. yeah we took that out okay thank you i just if you don't live

134in quaker ridge you might not understand like the severity of the water issue when it rains but there there literally are ducks swimming in the field and it goes into the weaver street and you can't you can't drive down the street and you can't enter into the school and our soccer teams play on these fields this is a project that will have a positive impact that will ripple through the entire community so i'm happy that you you added this on and i think that if you haven't experienced the beautiful water views of weaver on a rainy day you you know i hope you never have to now but i appreciate that i agree with you colleen i just have a quick logistical question is weaver street a county road or state road is i don't

135know it's a local road i don't know if that affects the process Believe it might be a state road based on conversations. I had with the village superintendent public works, but I'd have to Confirm that just curious if we're doing you know, if we're doing the work like right at Weaver to make sure Well, all the proposed work would be on our property Be on our property and we'd have to much like we did with the stream jet we'd have to get a you know regulatory approvals to do all that work because of the stormwater impacts that in in the drawing on the screen you'll see that there there was a contemplated in the drawings are water retention on the property so that it doesn't spill over into the broader playing field and I think

136that's going to be an important improvement to both the roadway but also the field okay so just just again to remind everybody on September 15th the first proposal of bond scope represented the recommendations broadly the consensus of the capital project steering committee and came with a dollar amount that was you know based on those initial discussions in our conversations with BBS then at last meeting you heard revised cost estimation for well a revised scope for spatial Kevin presented the idea for Edgewood that was the first time you you saw that Edgewood addition so there was revised scope and then cost estimation associated with that along with the air conditioning and fields and then tonight you're seeing for the first time the revised BCS and then that spatial change as well. So taking you back to

137September, we had this slide up there. that showed a breakout in cost by these four broad categories and at that time it totaled $95.6 million. We thought it would be helpful to continue looking at it this way just to keep that pattern. Last meeting a month ago on the 17th of November, we had revised spatial plans and costs for spatial air conditioning and field scope. uh that brought at that time the total up if you were to add all of that up without the revised building conditions items that brought the total up to 113.2 million dollars and now tonight the last thing you heard from paul there is this again slightly revised spatial scope cost estimated and revised BCS and infrastructure projects air conditioning and fields as you heard them last time no change there

138that totals a hundred and nine point eight million dollars and the green here just highlights the new information This is a view of what those revised that 109 million looks like as divided out by school Excluding the two field projects because they're sort of not really dependent on the school. They just happen to be there so you see the Greenacre softball field amount is not included there and the middle school field amount is not included there But again, just trying to be parallel with ways we've shown the breakout prior What we're going to share now is our current best thinking about what projects could be reduced or eliminated from the plan to bring bond scope down under $100 million. So these are... I will go on the record like I think all the 109 million

139dollars of work is important and valuable but also understand what the board's direction to us was and why why that's important so we're gonna show just like I did we're gonna show those three points in time just so you see the evolution in each of the four areas sorry it'll take a little little time but I think it's worth kind of making sure we understand how this happened and we're also going to point to the that community survey that we did that got feedback about the projects as they existed after that september presentation and we're going to prepare to do a similar survey now after tonight to get feedback but just as a quick reminder you'll remember in spatial 47% of respondents supported the projects as the right balance, but another 27% supported it but

140thought the scope should be bigger. In BCS, 63% supported the projects as the right balance, and another 20% thought it was not sufficient and needed to go beyond. In air conditioning, 67% supported the projects as a necessity, 27% supported some but not all of the projects. Fields, 37% supported the projects as is, 29% supported one project. In terms of overall balance, 44% supported the balance across those four areas, and another 22% said it was not sufficient. And then total amount at that time of 95 point something million, 52% support the total cost, 21% thought it was too low, and 27% thought it was too high. Just wanted to reframe that for you so you have that in your mind. This is a high-level overview of our recommendations, but we're going to go through through each

141one so in the area of spatial our proposal is to remove the renovation of the four newest classrooms at Edgewood and five of the newest classrooms at Fox Meadow from renovation so a total of nine classrooms, so you'll you may recall Edgewood had an addition the multi-purpose room and four classrooms there they're not as old as other parts of the buildings at Fox Meadows similarly you have the kindergarten wing and above that two fourth and three fifth grade classrooms the kindergarten and those upstairs classrooms are the same age there was no never a plan to renovate the kindergarten rooms and we're proposing with that same rationale we we could pull back on renovating those five classrooms upstairs in an effort to save cost that would be a reduction of just over two million dollars in

142the area of BCS and infrastructure Andrew will talk more about this so I'll just describe it as defer the replacement of oil tanks at all seven buildings which was a scope item in the in the BCS that's a reduction of 2.28 million dollars again he'll say more about that air conditioning prioritize classroom spaces and elementary gyms as making sure they are all air conditioned first and then air condition prioritize other spaces that are having work done already as part of the spatial scope to to air condition the others we'd like to do it all but if we can't that's our current recommendation for how to propose that knowing we've already heard public comment tonight about that that's approximately five million dollars and then finally prioritize just the softball project just to be clear that Quaker

143Ridge field would be in that it's not in that category right now we'll move it I get that but but just to prioritize the softball and defer the artificial turf field at the middle school we'll talk more about that rationale in a second so this is the big picture 97 brings that 109 million dollar scope down to 97 million dollars So this was our original slide. We were at 44.3 million in spatial projects. That did not include Edgewood way back in September. We got feedback, kind of shared that a minute ago. Some of the folks supporting or feeling like it did not go far enough. We had a revised scope at 59.1 million that included the sixth classroom addition at Edgewood. and then we've made some changes to that to reflect the site work that

144was described earlier at Fox Meadow and the wiring and data for the classroom renovations so this 60.8 million would be reduced by 2 million by no longer renovating classrooms 51 through 54 in Edgewood and no longer renovating 60 through 65 at Fox Meadow. It's that's not right. It's It's six classrooms. I apologize six classrooms So six and four Okay, ten total So that brings that that cost down On to infrastructure, we originally just proposed 33.5 million in work. Got public feedback. The scope that you heard tonight was down to $28.4 million for those reasons we described, items reduced from the scope. just defining the the clarity over the projects was part of the process and removing some of the items that the district will take care of and then tonight discussing further reduction of 2.2

145million dollars by deferring the oil tank replacements at all seven buildings and study our options and report back to the board so Andrew will pick it up from here So each of our school buildings have oil tanks buried oil tanks underground those underground storage tanks are insured through our through a annually bid insurance policy currently it's Chubb is the insurer The age of those tanks range between 33 and 35 years. When I arrived in the district, the first thing I noticed in our, some of my entry work was the insurance policy costs related to underground storage tank which. kind of keyed me into perhaps the age of these tanks are a concern. So in the BCS process or the facility study, I should use the right term, that we went through, you know, I was

146a large advocate, and the facilities department agreed that trying to get those oil tanks replaced was a good idea. However, there was no indication of any sort of deterioration or damage to those tanks that would require immediate need for replacement. The reason why that age is interesting is most of the underground storage tanks are warrantied for 30 years. And insurance companies, when you get to 30 years for an underground storage tank, the premiums you pay start to escalate significantly because as they get closer to the end of life, they don't want an environmental hazard on our hands. They are in good condition. They're maintained. Our reporting systems are in place. We have daily monitoring of the interstitial tissue space on the tanks, annual testing of the tightness. So based on further discussions with BBS and

147the facilities department, we think that the immediate need to fund the replacement of these tanks. perhaps is not necessary but however this would be an item that you would anticipate seeing over the next five to seven years as part of our capital five-year capital plan to replace them on a on a kind of priority basis based on the age the benefit of replacing these tanks with a replacement in kind is a significant reduction in our annual insurance premium as well as an improvement on the deductible should we have a liability claim on the tanks. The scope of that would be we're currently paying about $20,000 a year in liability insurance for those tanks, and if we were to replace all of them, that would drop to about $4,000 a year. And if the tanks were

148replaced, our deductible would decrease from $250,000 right now on our policy to about $25,000, which is a significant improvement on the insurance posture. However, I need to reiterate, the tanks are in good shape. If you, in discussions with BBS as well as my own independent research, tanks can certainly have a useful life of 40, if not 50 years if they're well maintained, which ours are. But over time, we need to think about planning the scheduled replacement for these. So in order to reduce scope, we place this on the list of things to reduce, knowing that it will fall to the five-year capital plan. and may cause other things that have been placed on the five-year capital plan to lower in priority in order to fund these in the future. Just as a point of reference,

149one 6,000-gallon oil tank in the BCS estimate that ARIS has prepared is about $273,000, and then the two larger ones at the high school are about $455,000 for replacement. So that would be the amount of our annual capital appropriation you should anticipate for these items. Sure. Based on code, we're required to have boilers that have dual fuel sources. So we have natural gas and oil, the oil being in the underground storage tanks. Quite often, the natural gas is far more cost-effective to burn. So we typically will burn the natural gas with the exception of when we receive notice from Con Edison that there's a high demand on natural gas in which they ask us to switch to oil so that it reduces demand in the area. That ability for Con to notify us to make

150that switch provides us with a reduction in fuel cost per therm basis. because we're on interruptible service. If we were to, for example, remove the oil tanks and not have that immediate ability to switch over, we would anticipate needing to be on an uninterruptible service and then our fuel costs would increase by default. There is some more research for us to do to see if there's an opportunity for us to go out to the marketplace and secure our own supply of natural gas outside of Con Ed that could generate some savings but there's some more work that we would need to do to really make that recommendation to the board at a future date so right now we're just gonna say the course and plan for replacement until we have more information and just to

151make it perfectly clear that could be an option that's considered is not replacing the tanks but Abandon them. Yep. Abandon or remove and backfill. In which case, if there was a fuel emergency and natural gas became scarce and we weren't able to burn, we could, in theory, rent portable oil tanks that could be used. They'd be above ground, they'd be unsightly, and they'd take up space on our property, but that would be an alternative option that we'd need to investigate. Okay to move forward and we can come back to that if there are questions, Jim? Or do you want to? Okay. Sure. Is there any value to removing all the tanks at once? Like any savings if we remove all the oil tanks at once or not really? I mean, I'd look to Paul and

152Jonathan. There may be some, you know, economies of scale to be able to bid one contract for a contract to do them all. But other than that, I can't think of an immediate benefit. Remember, when you remove the oil tanks, the first thing that you have to do is remove the oil. And you're not going, you're not selling it back to the company. They're actually charging you something like 50 cents a gallon to remove it. Most of your tanks at the time of removal will be about half full. So there's a considerable cost and loss in oil when you just remove them. Thank you. all right on to air conditioning you'll recall originally we had come forward with a collection of projects that cost 12 million dollars that had not and this was the public

153feedback we had not captured all of the so-called large spaces we went back and made sure that we were sort of identifying all the spaces that would need to be cooled to kind of fit that description so it the cost estimate went up to fifteen point seven million dollars there seven additional spaces that we had not identified initially plus the cost estimation of determining which solution would be suitable for each project rooftop unit ductless splits and so on and it was also determined that we needed a service upgrade at Heathcote to accomplish the air conditioning there so that was a revised cost recommendation is focusing on classrooms and most gymnasiums the the elementary gymnasiums and the high school and large spaces where spatial work is being done to leverage those economies of scale so the

154projects that are omitted in this would be the Heathcote older multi-purpose room and auditorium the Quaker Ridge auditorium and multi-purpose room the middle school, gyms, fitness center and auditorium, and the high school cafeteria and wrestling room. And this would result in just under a $5 million reduction in cost. Here's another way of looking at that. text struck through the the projects that would wouldn't be done so I listed the projects that wouldn't be done here you can also see the ones that would be done the three spaces at Edgewood the spaces at Fox Meadow again associated largely with the the new construction and renovation the gym at Greenacres the classroom projects library and electrical upgrade at Heathcote the gym and cafeteria at Quaker the library band room and dining the four house dining rooms at

155the middle school and then gyms one two three and four the little theater and the music tower in the high school would be included and then finally the field projects originally we had the Fox Meadow was the location for the softball we got feedback from the public we came back with a revised proposal to put green acres to make green acres the location of the softball best dirt in the district is the shorthand for that and then of course the middle school turf field that brought the cost down to four point seven six million and then tonight we're suggesting we prioritize the softball improvement in order to make sure our varsity and JV programs can play on school property and then to postpone the middle school turf project to a future capital project and do

156you want to say anything about the Yeah, so at the last joint village board meeting and the school board meeting we Mayor Aris made mention that there was some potential storm drainage work that the village was thinking about doing that may impact our area so I had a follow-up conversation last week with the superintendent of public works about that project and there's a substantial project that is on hold indefinitely at the village as far as i i can understand it around the sheldrake neighborhood where there's some substantial flooding in that community it's perhaps the worst in the village and there was a conceptual idea of a large-scale stormwater retention and pumping system that is not moving forward at the village at the moment but there could be a potential for future collaboration with the school

157district to host some of that storage under our field. And there could be a collaborative project here that would have multiple funding sources available to it, some through the county, the state, and the federal government on stormwater issues in Sheldrake area. of course the district and the school, the New York State Education Department with some of our projects, it would be a very tangled, a very long and drawn out discussion, but there may be a potential for that to happen in partnership with the village. So it just so happens the recommendation that we were making coincided with that conversation with the village. One did not lead to the other, but it was an interesting kind of coincidence, I think. So that brings us back to the starting slide. This is our recommendation for how we

158could bring the total scope of work under $100 million with a reduction in each of those four broad categories. Just to again show the original survey with 52% of respondents felt the amount, total amount was just right. This roughly reflects that amount. 27% thought it was too high and 21% thought it was too low. But that's roughly where we are at, is roughly at the amount we were at in September. And then thinking about estimated tax implications. we continue to use our rough model we um we we are exploring putting a more uh resident specific calculator on the website we will get to that um that is part of the plan but at um The bottom two rows here would show the estimated annual taxpayer impact for $57 million beyond the tax-neutral amount. So that's

159a $97 million bond. That would be $570 per year. The full $109 million would be $690 per year. Anything to add to that? No? Just that I did a follow-up conversation earlier today with our bond counsel, and I will have another with our fiscal advisor. If this scope of work as presented this evening is indeed what we decide to move forward with, we will work closely with ARIS and BBS to put a phasing plan together and a cash flow need analysis. Those documents would then be shared with the fiscal advisor to help us put together a financing plan and a building aid. projection that would help us better understand what the annual tax impacts will be. The scope of work that we're including, in particular many of the field and site work projects, will influence

160the aidability of those projects. So we'll need to kind of finalize that scope. But once we have that, we'll begin that work for the early 2026 estimates of what the implications are to taxpayers. this is a new version of a slide you've seen before but it puts a little more granularity to what a timeline might look like this is theoretical wouldn't exactly have to happen this way but supposing the board could confirm a bond scope at the January 12th business meeting just under a month from now the board would probably want to consider holding a public forum on the on the scope like we do a budget forum every year. You eventually have to make secret determinations and adopt the bond referendum in enough time so that at the latest, really, probably the 16th of

161March, if you want to be on target for a vote that coincides with the annual budget vote and board election on May 19th. But we're certainly still on track for that, theoretically. And with that... next steps we do plan another community survey on the current scope that we're talking about tonight January 12th would be an opportunity to review that survey feedback potentially confirm a bond scope and then you see the other dates here consistent with that previous graphic and we'll open it to questions and discussion I mean I did circulate questions over the weekend for the board members to consider I don't I'm not gonna like repeat them but I mean I do think those are general topics we can have in our minds as we you know a pine and give our questions and

162comments here so with that I would just turn it over to people to to you know give those views whoever wants to go first you want you hammer happy to go first First, thank you for the work that went into putting together, first of all, the costs and then the revisions. I think it's really helpful and I appreciate that you were able to have a very thoughtful recommendation under $100 million. I too wish we could do everything at the higher scope, but I think you've made some good recommendations. I do like keeping it at about where the community expressed to us their interest level or their support level. I would be interested in hearing my fellow board members' thoughts or perhaps discussing more with you two and everyone else about the... air conditioning scope. There

163were some things that sort of raised some questions for me. I'm happy to share those. Now, just... I think first we heard just today from Heathcote some of the concerns that they don't have a dedicated space for their band or orchestra and that we did see that services are being performed in the auditorium. So there was concerns about that space not being air conditioned. That said, that is a pretty hefty price tag because we don't have a nice space there. So I'm not sure what kind of creative solution. might be possible there but that was one thing that kind of had me a little concerned and then i guess the other things that jumped out at me were it looked to me like in edgewood and fox meadow the renovations we're doing on the old

164multi-purpose rooms or maybe they're called new multi-purpose rooms whatever will be existing are really building storage spaces adjacent to those and not major renovations like we're doing at the dining hall at sms And so I was curious as to why you chose to air condition those spaces, but then I have concerns that Heathcote and Quaker Ridge still have their old multipurpose rooms that aren't air conditioned. So in my mind, I sort of, I don't see the storage additions as being noteworthy enough to add air conditioning to those two spaces when those buildings are getting a lot of other work too. I would kind of leave them all without air conditioning. you know, so that they, unless you're seeing something happening in the construction. And I'll give you a second to comment, too, after I just

165share all sort of my concerns about air conditioning. And then in our meeting with the principals earlier, I had asked Principal Coughlin about his thoughts around the gyms at the middle school and sort of, you know, he'd love to air condition everything. It was just a priority. I originally had some concerns about not air conditioning those gyms. I think he'd love to do it is what he said, but I feel sort of comfortable now with saying, okay, maybe those spaces. could be left as is. I wasn't sure why the wrestling room was left out of the other gyms at the high school. That seemed a little unequal, but I guess it was a lower priority. But that was maybe the other things that jumped out at me. So again, I would love to hear other

166opinions on this, or perhaps you want to answer. I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, it really, the MPR piece came to, we're in there anyway. makes sense to do work and we have taken that approach in other projects in the past in the district if we're touching it go for it do the thing I can't say that that's rock-solid as a approach necessarily it just seemed consistent with sort of the approach we've taken in the past And wrestling room was just the lowest. With the high school, the gyms were definitely the priority for many, many, many reasons at the high school. And then the second category was classrooms. So the little theater is a classroom, and the music tower is a classroom. That's really what that comes down to. Not that the cafeteria, like, certainly

167they would rather have the cafeteria than the wrestling room if that was a choice, but they'd want it all. And I'll just add that I think for the multipurpose room, Quaker Ridge in particular, it's essentially the size of a classroom, and we've been effectively air conditioning those spaces that have not gotten air conditioned through principal allocations or the maintenance budget. We think we could certainly, you know, if that becomes the priority for the building, we could certainly address it in that way. I think also adding on to Ms. Seuss' point, I think what Mr. Coghlan said at the principals meeting was that The reason why it's fine if the gyms aren't air conditioned is because events are usually hosted at other sites. And from my recollection of what was at the middle school is that

168most of those events were in the auditorium. And so I understand that $903,000 is definitely a hefty amount. But in terms of how we choose to... Like how we choose to prioritize I guess what we're air conditioning to me it feels that we can't not air condition both the gyms and the auditorium because then when you have your large spaces like for assemblies or For other events you really don't have like an air conditioned space where you can host the entire student body But once again, I do understand the cost and the priority of that Thank you Amber for your suggestions and to look more closely at air conditioning because that was also my concern. Well, first I wanted to thank everybody. This was an incredible amount of work that went into looking at every

169item in this large bond to come up with these. I think the general prioritization of things followed not only the feedback we got from the survey, but like building tours that we took. that the board took that you know other communications and feedback sessions that we attended so i appreciate that very much when it comes to air conditioning and i realize these cuts were only made to get us under you know to a certain number I would love to advocate for the auditoriums. I do think it gets really hot on stage. If you're a musician or an actor, if you're on that stage and you've got all the lights on you, it gets really hot. I think, although I don't want to be misquoted, that... I think there was a student who might have had

170some heat issues in the past with a music performance. That was in the gym. It was in the gym? Okay. Thank you for that. I mean, it was a school that doesn't have an auditorium. It's a gymnotorium. So a gymnotorium, right. Okay. They're wearing heavy costumes oftentimes when they're performing. I just think that it's important to have a comfortable space for an auditorium for a school. It is such a central focus for the school. for the community that it should be a comfortable space. You know, we see how wonderful our high school auditorium is, you know, the renovation, how much it's brought to, you know, our school. And I think, you know, I would like to see, and I realize it would get us a little closer to that $100 million amount, but I think

171if we can keep it, like, right there, that maybe, you know, it would be okay. I don't know how other people feel. Yeah, I was going to agree with Susie. I think not to be overly pedantic about it, but we are still almost $3 million under $100 million. So there seems to be a little wiggle room in terms of the auditoriums and to still keep to the spirit of the goal of under $100 million. Again, looking at the numbers, even if you add it, two of the auditoriums in it still is technically under 100 million. Well, it is under 100 million, so. Which two? Which three? Well, yeah, I mean, I think a general point we've already sort of indicated we were interested in having a proposal be under 100. I mean, I think we

172understand that's an arbitrary number, but it's really the spirit of a commitment to... not having this be an ever-expanding scope, which it could be, right? Because I think there were lots more than $110 million of project identified at the very beginning of this effort. And I thought the kind of guiding principle was when we started all this like a long time ago to not be artificially constrained in considering what needed to be done. To come up with you know a full and expansive sense of what needed to be done But then from there drill down to what could manageably be done given our community and you know what it could a Burden it could shoulder and I think that's where the arbitrariness you could say it's arbitrary on one side and the other side It's

173really a disciplinary a disciplinary tactic like we try to discipline us so that we don't creep like ever higher or at least be perceived to be creeping ever higher and so that's a long way of me saying you know um obviously you know there's things here that we could disagree with that have been cut that we think should not be cut but then the question becomes you know what other things have been cut that you can make a really good argument should not be cut. And then that could really kind of go on, I think. Now maybe auditoriums are a special category and it's just really hard to put other things in that category. But my only concern would be that we keep in mind that this is really an effort to put a discipline

174on us in terms of what we think should reasonably be spent. and I don't really have a personal view as to whether gyms really need to be in there or not, but as we go forward, we should be thinking about that, in my opinion. Thank you for this. I actually just had some math questions. So the classroom, I think it was slide 26, you said, taking out the 10 classroom renovations would save us. little over two million dollars when we were first looking at classroom resident renovations I think the cost estimate was like a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars per classroom do we now that we've kind of dug in deeper do we anticipate every classroom renovation to be closer to the 200 225 price range you Paul want to come up but the

175team at Arras looked individual at each space and based on square footage and the specific set of work that we're doing in those spaces they have more information right we you know we had to take the 175 is like a 30 000 foot view of you know just put a number on a classroom that is flooring painting ceiling sliding that type of thing and just stopping there We went in there and went into each individual classroom and did a view of the classrooms and said, okay, in this specific space, what would you want to do? So we identified flooring, ceiling, lighting like we have in the others, but then started looking at you need new, not chalkboards, but marker boards and tack boards. There were other items in certain classrooms that were necessary. to make

176a renovated classroom and then adding in the furniture brought it up also because the furniture would be necessary. So we were trying to look at what would make the biggest impact in each classroom, not just base it on just ceiling sliding for it and that type of thing. So the price per classroom was not all the same. It was modified depending on square footage of the classroom and what we were putting into it. So I can't say I didn't we didn't look at it as did they average 225,000 a classroom But the numbers are showing that but it's not necessarily we didn't use a fixed number for each room We were first discussing the scope. That was kind of the number we were looking at. This is Significantly a pretty large increase per classroom. So

177that's why I was just curious Is every classroom renovation closer now that you've gone in? Do you feel like every classroom renovation is now closer to 100 to 125? I'm just curious. Well, this would be 200. Right. So it's 10 rooms, 2 million. Right. So it is more than the 175, but the scope that we're including in the classroom is more than what was originally identified in that 175. So the addition of... So can you talk about the radiators? Yeah, so we figured some more casework that I think that was initially identified, and I don't believe there was electrical costs included in that 175 either, which we are including now for lighting, some power, and some data, as we discussed earlier. So the scope is different now, but like Paul mentioned, we're not looking at

178it as a per-classroom. cost it's broken up into individual spaces as a cost per square foot estimate so even if you look at you know reduce the number if you compare the reduction for the one school that is removing four classrooms to the school that's removing six classrooms the cost per classroom is different because of the average size of each classroom. It's not the same. Right. That was my question was when you broke it down by classroom, it was just different than what we had originally discussed. I was trying to understand that. I'm going to kind of link to your discussions over the electrical because it sounded like adding all of the electrical to the classrooms was going to increase the price. Do you anticipate the other, I think it's slide nine, the other renovations

179that we're discussing like the library and the 3d art room do you anticipate once you look more closely at the electrical that's going to need be needed for those and increase costs as well the um we were looking at specifically just the classrooms that were being renovated and talking to your i.t department and what your needs were and they were looking for us to increase the data and electrical both of those So we did that, but the other renovation spaces, we felt that our estimates covered the appropriate electrical and data. The classrooms, the original, like Jonathan said, the classrooms originally weren't identified to have data and electrical in it, so we were actually adding those to it, where the spaces such as the libraries or those multipurpose spaces. we actually factored in the electrical and

180data into the original estimates and so the learning resource center in the high school the 3d art room those things were already factored in to have all of that electrical okay and really the the the learning part there was trying to make those classroom renovations create spaces that are as future proof as possible no yeah i appreciate that um but there we're doing a lot of different classroom learning space renovation. So I just wanted to, you know, as we get, as we dive more deeper into the details, I just wanted to try to anticipate where we might be missing additional costs, but it sounds like you guys covered that. So I appreciate that. The, you know, in terms of the scope, I, I feel comfortable with it for the most part. I, I do, you

181know, agree that it would be nice to include you know I know the Heathcote Auditorium does you is used for multiple purposes I think you know Maria was saying earlier today that it's used for OT and speech so I think each auditorium is different in its own capacity and how it's utilized I think we focused on doing the band and orchestra rooms and some of the other schools but I think Heath code and Quaker Ridge both use auditorium for band and orchestra if I'm not if I'm not mistaken So it might be worth considering taking a closer look at adding Adding those two spaces because I think those are used on a daily basis for educational purposes more over the middle school auditorium I don't think it's utilized in that same capacity. So for me

182if I had to prioritize Possibly adding anything I would I would prioritize prioritize the Heath coat and Quaker Ridge auditorium. I agree. I would be comfortable adding the auditoriums and the NPRs at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge back in because as far as I'm concerned these are teaching and learning spaces and I also think it's a point of equity among the elementaries. We often talk about equity among the elementaries and we're partially doing this bond in order to have kind of more equity within our elementary school spaces in terms of Like the level of instruction that can be given in a given space and a future thinking space So I think if we're doing it, I would do all the elementary's their large spaces like that I have a question about the classrooms that were taken

183out at Fox Meadow and the potential reduced scope Those are the classrooms like in the in the new wing the 1996 wing heading to the NPR Okay, there's one to clarify And then just another note about the Heathcote old MPR I believe it's also used as a dining space for the younger grades In terms of you know, not having a see just wanted to share that and then oil tanks the timing on the actual replacement of Removal and replacement if we go with replacement if it's in the bond versus a piecemeal approach maybe in annual budgets like if it's in a bond anyway it would be a few years out right in terms of the process so just understand maybe wouldn't be such a different timing if we put it timing of the bond scoping

184but for an annual budget perspective like we would We try to target the oldest one, which is about 35 years old right now, as the first one that we would propose in an annual budget. We normally wouldn't put the oil tank as a standalone project. We would really build it into whatever renovations we're doing on that school at the given time. Our economies of scale really are that we have other work going on in that area, so the oil tank would be part of that work going on. Unless it's a... Stand-on project where you're saying I want to remove all the oil tanks We would then look at Packaging them all together, but right now that's not what we were figuring And just one argument against doing it all as one package. I mean as

185you might have seen in the notes I think five of the seven are all 34 years old. So at some point 34 years ago, they were all replaced at the same time, which was probably a standalone project at that point. If we stagger them, it might give us some more flexibility on how to address that, or not we, somebody long after us, on how to address that in the future. Nobody at this table. Yeah. Getting back to the air conditioning. Drew, you kind of made a fair question, so I started thinking about it. And I think I'd rather, rather than talking about, you know, whether the multipurpose room or the auditorium, I'm thinking of it slightly differently. It seems to me that you want to have in every school the ability to have a large

186gathering of adults, parents, to attend something in comfort. That could be possibly in an auditorium. It could be possibly in a gym. So it seems to me that and if indeed an auditorium is in truth a multipurpose room that serves functions, then I think it's almost a misnomer to call it an auditorium because our responsibility is to make sure we deliver spaces that can can attend to the services they need to provide. So I think if it's being used for OT and it's being used for other things, I think it begs maybe revisiting. But as I look at it, it seems to me that the middle school, they're not getting the auditorium and they're not getting the gym. So there is no large space in the middle school. for a large gathering of people. Every

187other school has at least one large space. Now you may not necessarily want it in the auditorium, you'd prefer it in the gym, you'd prefer it in the auditorium or vice versa, but it seems to me we want to at least have some sort of equity that a lot of people use, you know, the middle school is a gathering of all the kids at that age cohort. So I'm thinking now that the auditorium might be a priority for the middle school. Just a couple of... That's the way I'm looking at it. I definitely understand. I think a reflection I have is the degree to which an auditorium space is used as a classroom. I think that's an area that we need to really consider. I've seen it at Heathcote not seen it as much at

188Quaker Ridge other than performances but there are definitely things at Heathcote taking place on this backstage area that are different than probably typical auditoriums they're using the space they have creatively the middle school so first of all the middle school auditorium cannot house the total student body I just want to be clear about what's it 500 so It fits not even half the school. So it's just a point of fact. So typically when they do assemblies, it's one grade at a time. And in terms of performances, I think we're looking like the use of that auditorium is like six events during the hot time of the year total. The play is in March, so all the practices are prior to that. There's not a graduation. So there's really the usage would be the use of

189community council meetings, which I think they could be flexible and use other spaces and adjust those. But in terms of it's usually the spring are those six-hour-long conferences in the evening. And the space doesn't get as hot as other spaces where there's direct sunlight. just a point of reference. Yeah, the windows, yeah, contribute. Okay, that's really helpful. I mean, thank you, because that's, I guess one of the things I was reacting to then in Heathcote is it seems like, you know, not to make this more complicated, we're short some classroom space. It's because if we're using the auditorium as if it's a classroom, why are we not trying to solve it the appropriate way, which is create a classroom rather than, trying to gerrymander the auditorium because it's used for OT and whatever, it seems

190to me... It's a space that is conducive to that. Oh, it is? Okay. The backstage area is... It works. It works. Okay. Yeah, it works. And it can get hot. Apparently in the winter. Just another thing to think about with the elementaries, you're talking about you've got Heathcote and Quaker Ridge that have an auditorium, and their gyms will be air-conditioned. The other schools, it's just a gym that's available. So I think there are different dimensions of equity there. The fact that all five gyms... Those can be like so, you know, the music example, that was Edgewood. It does get hot in that old gym. That's where all their performances are. It'll be cool if it... goes through this. As Quaker Ridge's gym will also be cool. That's not where the performances tend to take place.

191They take place in the auditorium, but that large gathering space would be accomplished without doing the auditorium there. Just as a way of thinking about that question. I'm not arguing one way or another, but just to keep the discussion moving. I mean, if I can just jump back in. It's interesting to hear everyone's perspectives on this. And I think I now have landed in my head sort of with what Leah put out there, and I don't know how others feel about it. But I was doing the math in terms of adding in the multipurpose room at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge and the auditorium at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge. I think that would still keep us under 100 million. dollars if other board members think that's something worth discussing I would be supportive of that I

192think if I were to prioritize I think Colleen's point about the auditoriums at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge being you know daily classroom spaces like is the most compelling to me, but I, you know, looking at what it would cost, I would be okay doing the multipurpose rooms at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge as well. Yeah, so I think for these specific large spaces, like maybe it's worth going back to the building stakeholders and to do like one more round of vetting. I know the reductions, like you probably worked with them already. But like today we are hearing sort of different responses from the principals. I think maybe to resolve this discussion, just to... like check back in with them like like one last time like what would you want us to because they're going to say

193yes we want those air condition they're like that that's yeah and we did share this revised proposal with them just to make sure that we weren't completely with the administrators just the administrators yeah abroad the principles and you know they understood and and no one gave a vehement rejection to the revised proposal but they would want them cooled. And if you widen that circle of stakeholders to include teachers and parents, they would also want that. I'm not saying that's not a good idea. I'm just, I don't think we'd learn anything that we don't already know. That's my hunch on that. Does that make sense? Yeah, so if we have the information sort of in terms of priority, right, like how hot, for example, the middle school, we're hearing the auditorium doesn't get super hot. Like,

194are we willing to consider sort of those details in terms of making the adding backs? Well, this is the priority list from those buildings. So, like... The auditorium was last on the middle school list The gyms were higher up. Okay. Yeah, so that this the order represents their viewpoint I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear it represents their the administrative and their building conversations preference if there had to be a reduction And if you look at the middle school the reason Dining surfaced above even though it's fifth is because we're in that space anyway doing that work. That's back to that other, which is reasonable to challenge that rationale, but that was the rationale. Based on that, if we were to go back to them, they'd say, no, we'd rather have the library. Yes.

195So we have to be respectful of that, you know, as opposed to jumping in the same boat. I don't think any of us were proposing cutting air conditioning in the library I think we're just talking about additions That's what it represents is library as a higher priority than the auditorium I think when we talked about air conditioning we said we wanted to prioritize student learning spaces so the conversation really is kind of around the auditoriums at those two buildings are utilized as student learning spaces and so when we're discussing what we should cut By cutting those, are we kind of going back on our original guideline around air conditioning, which was we feel that student learning spaces should be as comfortable as possible for the students so they can focus on the learning and not

196on how hot they are. So for me, that's what's driving my suggestion of adding in the auditorium for Heathcote and Quaker Ridge. Do we have board members who would like to air condition the auditorium at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge? Seems like it. And the MPRs? I don't need the MPRs personally for me, but I don't want to speak for everyone. That's just my reasoning behind wanting to add those two back in. I think that makes sense, and this is where I struggle, though, because to me I also see the gyms at the middle school as a teaching and learning space more than any of the MPRs, right? Those are all, I mean, I guess in Heathcote they kind of use it as a gym, too. This is the problem. It's a school. Everything is. kind

197of a teaching and learning space isn't it I don't know there's no easy answers I mean I personally see given the cost of the NPRs in Heathcote and Quaker Ridge it seems To me an easier add given that we're adding in that air conditioning for if we weren't doing Edgewood and Fox Meadow air conditioning in those old NPRs I would leave out Heathcote and Quaker Ridge, but we are so that's why I feel like they should be included I think we're talking about going out to the community with the survey and you know, will have potentially a question or two on air conditioning. To me, that's an equity across, you know, I think, Drew, you brought up equity and the fact that Heathcote and Quaker Ridge have auditoriums that other schools don't. I think you

198might go back and forth and say, well, you know, Heathcote also doesn't have a dedicated band room or whatever the other schools have. So, or, you know, it doesn't have a full cafeteria like Quaker Ridge does. does or Green Acres so there are differences but I think we're we're air I think we're proposing air conditioning the spaces that the students are really using and trying to keep equity where there is consistency across the buildings so to me those are the right choices but I don't I agree I don't see that there's consensus right now Jim on this board about what we're moving forward with Yeah, I mean, I think there might be enough consensus around auditoriums. It's the NPR that is less clear, not to mention the middle school and exactly what to do with.

199I mean, I'm not hearing a huge outpouring that there must be air conditioning in the auditorium of the middle school, but I'm not less sure about the gym and what people's view is on that. I mean, I heard Chris Cochran say he didn't think it was, you know, must have. but you know that's I think he basically said the kids go outside when it's hot I mean that's what he said is it fair to say for example that in Quaker Ridge the multi-purpose room is you know 95,000 that that's a number that is more easily absorbed in our annual in other words a 700,000 feels Not the kind of number you would roll into your annual kind of maintenance, but a $95,000 might be. So I feel a little more comfortable with the smaller numbers

200of the multi-purpose room being dropped if that becomes not feasible. Because I could see that it doesn't actually have to wait 15 years to happen because. you know, it could be absorbed. I mean, it feels intuitively like that could be the case. So factually, we had a conversation with Dr. Gill about the NPR at Quaker Ridge, and I know that we could air condition that space with a window unit. much lower cost right so the multiple purpose from a Quaker Ridge the multi-purpose room at Heathcote I would suspect we'd like to do a rooftop unit or some sort of a split unit that might be more expensive there I'd have to look to the team at what the right answer is on that one but the fitness center at the middle school which is also

201essentially a classroom space or two classroom spaces you know we could find an effective way to do that in our annual budget perhaps utilizing the building's principal allocations to help offset that. I think the more compelling question is, for me, as I listen to the dialogue, is the Heathcote and Quaker Ridge auditoriums and then the middle school gym. And if those are the things that we need to investigate more, I think that might be an area where we could find consensus both in stakeholder need and the functional instructional spaces that we have in our buildings. Heathcote is a ductless split in that MPR. that's what they've got and the middle school are there two gyms in the middle school so is this going to air condition both of those gyms i believe that was the

202estimate that we took there yes it can be yeah wall there's a movable wall there's four there's a and b and c and d right so there's four there's four spaces two rooms yeah you can have four spaces I'm feeling at the board level to go forward with cooling auditoriums at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge and maybe the gyms at the middle school. But I'm still not sure about the MPRs, like whether there's a strong view on those. I mean, you know, I just heard that at least at Quaker Ridge that could be a wall unit or window unit, rather. I suggest we take that approach for the Quaker MPR. Yeah. So we're talking auditoriums, Heathcote, Quaker Ridge, gyms at middle school? Putting those back in, potentially? Yeah. Okay, maybe that gets... I think that sounds

203great. I'm not sure how the rest of the board members feel. Cooling with air conditioning, the auditoriums at Heathcote and Quaker Ridge, and putting air conditioning in the gyms at the middle school. Microphone. I'm sorry. I think I'm on board with the auditoriums, but I'm not necessarily on board with the middle school gyms after hearing the principal's reaction. He didn't feel, I just didn't get the sense that that was, I mean, you know, Meg, you obviously are very familiar. It seems like that's not as. pressing perhaps you know that when it gets hot the kids go out and play on outside and you know I interpreted what he said a little bit differently Bob I mean because I did sort of catch him on his way in and ask him the same question and I

204took it as we don't have air conditioning the gym we make do and we find a way around it and you know he sort of had noted that oh it's not as used for community type events but I think that's a little bit sort of chicken and egg right if it's not air-conditioned who wants to use that space so it might be more popular you know especially as we have think four boys basketball teams here at the high school and four girls basketball teams I'm sure they're always looking for gym space so I don't know I could I could see that you know they they make do that that was the way I interpreted what he said is like you know he's he was willing not to push for it but the two auditoriums in

205the middle school gym would put you over a hundred thousand hundred thousand hundred million twenty three thousand thank you that's an arbitrary you know point an arbitrary cutoff point yeah so that's not really a reason not to do it it's just you know again my concern being like you know how many other things are we going to become persuaded over the course of the next few weeks are as important as these and therefore must also be put back in I think you know and then what next thing you know we're at 115 then 120 I mean that's that I would really like to avoid that really we only have costs up to 109 so I know, but people will start writing in their favorite cost and how come we haven't adopted that and there's 1,000

206kids who use it and whatever the heck. I mean, I think the board understands this is the scope, maximum scope that we're talking about. The 109 is the outside envelope of scope. We don't have cost estimates on anything else, just as a point of fact. Well, do we have consensus on adding those things back? It sounds like the elementary school auditoriums there's consensus on. Yeah, I agree. I feel comfortable adding the auditoriums back in. I don't feel a desire to add in the middle school gym, but if the rest of my board members want to, I'm... I really don't feel strongly about it either. I kind of feel like almost symbolically I'd like to stay below 100. For some reason it's important to me emotionally and mentally to stay below $100 million. I kind of

207feel unless there was some pressing need to go beyond it, I'd like to draw the line in the sand on below $100 million personally. So why don't we draw the line and not include the middle school gyms and see? What community feedback we get about it, right? We've had a pretty extensive conversation about Gyms and air conditioning and all the spaces. I think you know, I think I feel pretty good about where we're landing But let's let's see what comes back. It sounds good to me. I could go with that I've just asked just knowing the middle school gyms a little bit is there a way to see if you only did gyms A and B versus like the cost because I know that number is including both of them only because gyms A and

208B are also used for modified athletics in the fall so girls volleyball uses it in the fall after school just as a no it's one of those events that happens but is it it's both just want to confirm it's both gyms it's 11,000 151 square feet presumably we could do one of those and not yeah would it be reasonable to think it's approximately half the cost as a ballpark 750,000 yeah yeah so right now the direction is include the auditoriums we have a separate plan for the multi-purpose room at Quaker not including the old multi-purpose room at Heathcote holding on the gyms for now survey out to the community on 97.27 million plus two auditoriums yes okay can I ask about the mechanism for getting feedback from we the nature of the questions we asked

209the first time around were I called it the Goldilocks survey it's Too much, too little, or just right? That was the approach. Do you think that is okay to continue with that approach, provide the information, and then ask it roughly around that type of framework? I think so, yeah. I mean, but we're not really considering a larger scope, right? Well, no, but I guess you would want to know if people think it's just right or too much, I guess. You don't have to ask them to think it's too little. I mean, I do think for comparison, it is helpful to have the surveys be similar and the questions be similar so you can see how the numbers might have changed in terms of, you know, people thinking whether it's... While it's a few million higher.

210It's it's still like we've changed what the scope is We've added a whole spatial element in there for Edgewood. So Understanding if it's the right prioritization for the scope I would expect those numbers I would hope those numbers would be higher I shouldn't say I would expect it but I would try to keep it somewhat similar for that reason is it fair to say that The survey is very, very valuable in getting sort of a moment in time image, but it's not like it's up for a vote. No. So I think to be fair. Not to minimize the feedback, it's 800 and something, which is not little, but it's a relatively small percentage of the whole. I think we need to take it very seriously, but I think at the end of the day, I

211think we need to use our judgment. In other words, it's not whatever it turns out is the- Right. Right. It's not necessarily gonna dictate your it's not gonna dictate over this one. We're in the discussion 100% obviously, right? I think it has it has actually guided us pretty well In terms of where we've gone from then till now I believe and so it has that ability hopefully to continue to do that with respect to the revisions that have been made I Also think the community has engaged a lot more since the survey went out We had, you know, a lot of feedback after the demographer's report, which came after the survey. You know, we've had some more meetings with Edgewood. You know, we've spoken to the Heathcote PTAEC, and we heard from them again today.

212And so I think people are maybe following along a little more. And so I would hope that the feedback we'd get from the survey is more involved than what we got originally, too. And also, and I know we did this the first time, but would emphasize the real importance of getting community members with non-school-aged children, empty nesters, you know, to really give it to the neighborhood associations, to have it available at the library, the Scarsville Adult School, anywhere where we can get people who are not, you know, we hear from the PTAs, but we want to hear from everyone, really, because this is your bond for our community, so we want to know. Is that a wrap on that? I think so, yeah. It's a good discussion. I believe so. Thank you. Thank you very

213much to our audience, the collaborators. Thank you for all the work you've done. I should make a plug to the team. The level of detail that we've been going through is unusual for this stage of a project, and I really appreciate the team at PBS and ARIS for really answering a lot of deep questions to support these cost estimates. So thank you very much. I really second that. At the next meeting, you should bring pain samples. While we transition real quick, to answer a question Amber had earlier about the Quaker Ridge field, in the field study there was about a $1.8 million estimate for the work at Quaker Ridge, which included significantly different scope. It had baseball fields and the backfield also factored in. This is not... aligned with that joint field study work the

214way that the fox meadow green acres and middle school project were in the proposal but i guess a way to say it is it it could set up future work by solving the single biggest problem okay we are on 10.05 we have a first reading of a new policy i'm happy to to take that this is I'm also having this latency here. This is policy 5550, student privacy under the protection of pupil rights amendment, which is federal legislation, short known as PPRA. And it is largely about surveys. It's largely about the requirements under certain types of surveys for if you're going to give them to students for basically positively opting in versus passively not opting out there are eight categories of questions that surveys if if they are covered things like political affiliation, mental or

215psychological problems, sex behavior attitudes. If it's funded by the U.S. Department of Education or has funding through that mechanism, you have certain requirements. And then otherwise, it's just generally the requirements for notifying parents about surveys and their right to opt their students out and providing. advance notice of what the survey is and it's required any questions or suggestions on that okay thank you the next is a first reading of policy 2160 this is an update this is the school district officer employee code of ethics and its associated regulation Do you want to take that? Yeah, I'll take that. Great. So as we mentioned earlier, you know, as a federal grant award recipient, we talked about the IDEA grant earlier, but any federal grant, we are subject to what's known as desk reviews. So we had

216a recent desk review. It's essentially an audit that made some recommendations on some procedural changes and some policy updates. And this is a really minor one. According to the... the federal uniform grant guidance at the federal level, we needed to add the term agent to the, I guess. Folks that are covered under our conflict of interest policy. So the policy now reads board member officer agent or employee an agent in this context could be anyone that we've appointed the board's appointed to act in a capacity where they Have any sort of fiduciary relationship for us or oversight or compliance relationships? So they need to act in the same code of conduct that we've got for all of our employees So that's the edit there. We've added the reference for the uniform grant guidance at the

217bottom of that policy. And then additionally related to that is the regulation, the same edits apply for agent and the reference to federal uniform grant guidance. But we also, thank you Amber for noticing that we updated our policy 1810 recently that reflected general municipal law and the limit of $75 for any gift to a school district employee. We thought it appropriate to make those two policies align. So where it was referencing previously $15 in regulation 2160R, we've updated that now to $75 to match both the other policy, 1810, and general municipal law. Any questions for Andrew on that? Okay, they'll come back for a second reading next time, thank you. We have four gift proposals that exceed $1,000, so they're here for the first consideration. The first is 10.07, gift for Fox Meadow, fourth grade

218trip to the Nutcracker. Any questions on that? 10.08, gift to Fox Meadow, third grade in class science program, it's a beyond core sort of supplemental experience for third grade science any questions on that number 10.09 is a gift proposal to support world language day at scarsdale middle school for sixth graders and 10.10 high school gift proposal of twenty five thousand dollars from maroon and white to replace the Storage, it's not really a building. The storage containers that are out adjacent to Butler Field with a building, which we're very pleased about and will vastly improve storage and access for kids and coaches. Okay, thank you. There's just one action item. Right and we have one action item and just before we do that, you know, that is really great that those gifts are being made especially

219with the building replacing the temporary containers. That's a wonderful and very generous gift But the budget transfer I think that is Amber it is. Thanks Jim. I Move that the board adopt the following resolve that the Board of Education approves the attached budget transfers in excess of $25,000 as presented. Okay. Is there a second? Okay Leah any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye no one's opposed and the motion passes and we move on to section 12 gifts and I believe that first one is Laura I move that the board adopts the following resolved that the board accept with thanks the gift of $600 for the wings up cafe grant at Edgewood Elementary School as described in the attached letters okay thank you is there a second hey Susie any discussion all those

220in favor please say aye aye aye no one is opposed that motion carries with thanks the next gift is Leah thank you I move that the board adopt the following resolution resolve that the board accept with thanks the gifts of $2,400 for six sessions of the kindergarten harmonized kids program as described in the attached letters Thank You Leah is there a second Thank You Amber any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye no one is opposed and that motion passes with thanks the next one is Suzy Thank you, Jim. I move that the board adopt the following resolution. Resolved that the board accept with thanks the gifts of $2,582 for a second grade field trip to the Westchester Children's Museum as presented in the attached letters. Thank You Susie is there a second

221Thank You Laura any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye that motion passes with thanks I believe we back to Amber yes we are thanks Jim I move that the board adopt the following resolved that the board accept with thanks the gift of $1,750 for indoor recess games and building toys for third grade students as presented in the attached letters Thank You amber is there a second Thank You Leah all those in favor I'm sorry any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye that motion passes and carries with thanks the next one we have is Leah thank you I move that the board adopt the following resolution resolved that the board accepts with thanks the gift of three hundred seventy five dollars for a fifth grade art workshop with the contemporary

222and local artist as presented in the attached letters Thank you Leah and is there a second? Okay. Thank you Bob any discussion? All those in favor please say aye Aye That motion carries with thanks the next one is Bob I move that the board accept the following resolution Resolve that the board accept with thanks the gifts of six hundred and eighty dollars for the rate Sorry, for the regulation station mobile sensory cards for classroom wellness as presented in the attached letters. Thank you, Bob. Is there a second? Okay, thank you, Laura. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion carries with thanks. And now we go to Laura. I move that the board adopt the following resolution. Resolved that the board accept with thanks the donation of an art kiln to

223the Scarcell High School Art Department as presented in the attached letters. Okay, thank you, Laura. Is there a second? Okay, thank you, Leah. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that motion carries with thanks. And now we are on to item 13. which is our second public comment. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to make a public comment at this time? I do not believe so. Let us go online. Nobody with their hand raised. No one's online. No one's online. We will give it a few seconds. Back in. Nobody's online. Okay, so that does it for public comment. We're closing public comment. I think we have our direction. Share a draft of the survey with the board, and we'll get it out ASAP. Thank you. Thank You Jim on

224Friday January 9th we have our board coffee at 10 a.m. In this room on Monday January 12th We have a special meeting executive section at 6 p.m. In this room followed by a business meeting at 630 on Monday January 26 We have a budget staff recommendation and business meeting at 630 Followed by a special meeting executive session if needed in this room on Monday February 2nd. We have a business meeting at 630 in this room on wednesday february 4th is our second board coffee of the winter at 7 p.m in this room and on monday february 9th we have our budget study session number one and business meeting in this room we are uh adjourned and we'll just say uh have good evening make a motion to adjourn so who was it amber you want

225to do it thank you thank you amber susie okay uh second uh anyone uh want to debate that no okay all in favor please say aye okay thank you now we're adjourned