BOE Budget Study #2/Board Meeting 2024-3-4

001(gavel banging) Good evening. I call this meeting to order. Note that all board members are present. We are also joined by Dr. Patrick, an administrative cabinet. Thank you to those in the audience who are watching the live stream for joining us this evening. Tonight we continue our budget development process for the 2024-2025 budget. At our last meeting on February 5th, the administration presented their initial budget proposal including the financial impacts of their staffing recommendations and a deeper dive into the areas of transportation, facilities and capital projects, debt service and benefits. Tonight we will discuss the areas of curriculum, instruction and assessment, special education and student services, safety and security, athletics and technology. We will also hear the administration's first pass at possible budget items to consider reducing, deferring or removing in response to the board's

002request at the last meeting to consider options for lowering the budget. As a reminder for the community, this year's budget is especially challenging, in part due to numerous impacts out of our control. For example, the governor's proposing a significant cut to our state aid, which we are very actively working to get restored. We have also experienced large increases in healthcare costs and other operating costs, which are impacting school districts throughout the state. The board believes that the process that we are taking, which began with a focus on the programmatic educational goals and now shifts into the details of how and whether we can fund such goals, provides an in-depth view into the budget development and transparency around how such decisions are made. We appreciate everyone's engagement in the budget process and thank those that have

003provided feedback. Anyone from the public who wishes to comment about the presentation at tonight's meeting may do so during two public comment periods during the business meeting that will follow the budget presentation. And will that, I will pass it over to Drew. Thank you. We're having a little bit of a technical difficulty with Zoom, so I just want to give it a second if we can. With our live stream or with just the Zoom? Not with the live stream, just the Zoom, but just in case. I'm just gonna try one more time here it's saying that another meeting is... Okay. I'm gonna try to start again. Start. Okay, hopefully that will do it and I'm just gonna rename this. Okay, hopefully that works. Sorry about that. I think we're good. And hang on one second.

004Okay, my apologies for that technical glitch there. Well, good evening. Ron, thank you for that introduction. I appreciate it. To set the stage for tonight, which is in fact budget study session number two, and I thank everybody in the audience here in person and those watching from home. Tonight, we'll start with a very brief review of the budget process for anyone who's new to this discussion. We will then present an update to the preliminary budget plan that we shared with the board on February 5th. This updated draft contains just over $1 million in reduced expenditures from the February 5th draft. From there, we will move to complete the component budget presentations in the areas of curriculum, instruction and assessment, special education and student services, safety, security and emergency management, interscholastic, athletics, and finally, technology and

005innovation. Once my colleagues have shared their respective budget proposals, we will highlight what this budget accomplishes and end with taking stock of the complete budget picture. Answer questions, and discuss next steps as we look toward March 11th and budget study session number three. As we've shared before, the school budget provides the necessary financial resources to operate the school district and to help achieve the goals and objectives that we set forth. The highest level in the broadest terms, the essential work of our schools is to provide a world class education, ensuring our students are well prepared for their next level of education. We understand that to accomplish this, we must create an environment of belonging where student wellbeing is a key focus and students have opportunities to flourish both inside and outside the classroom environment. Thus,

006we hold as a core value the concept of educating the whole child. Together, these broad or broadest objectives serve as an important decision making lens, especially with respect to our financial resources. As we've shared before, this model provides kind of a bird's eye view of the essential work of our organization. Three spheres communicate the critical functions of the work with students and student learning situated at the center. And importantly, our budget is structured to support all three areas of the organization with teaching and learning held up by the operational and student support functions. Of course, the Board of Education and the community provide input and guidance for all of the work through governance and budgetary support. The blue boxes overlaid on this figure represent the components of the budget that will be presented and focused

007on tonight. As I've said in the past, this community has made remarkable commitments over time to establish an instructional program to meet the needs of our students. At each level, elementary, middle, and high school, the design of the instructional program reflects long held community values. These structures foster favorable student, teacher ratios create smaller learning communities within a larger school setting and allows students to express agency over their course of study. For the sake of time, I won't repeat that discussion, but I will reiterate that the resources directed toward this fundamental organization of our schools create the strong foundation that allows us to focus on the whole child while pursuing innovative and thoughtful adaptations to meet the needs of our learners. Beyond these core program drivers, we've begun a strategic planning process that points the way

008toward or that will point the way toward important strategic priorities in the future. I look forward to providing a brief update on the progress we've made later tonight during my opening remarks in the business meeting. While we're not ready to share a first draft of the vision and strategic priorities quite yet, the budget we are presenting tonight emphasizes a number of those priorities that require resources if they're to be realized. Okay, and of course, as a reminder, we observe guiding principles that help us point the way toward the recommendations that we make in the budgeting process. Okay, now we will describe the updated budget plan highlighting the expenditure reductions we've identified since last meeting and highlighting their impact. So first here is a summary of the budget we presented on February 5th. As a reminder,

009that budget included 8.9 new full-time equivalent positions, some of which are currently in place because they were added through the utilization of budgeted contingency positions in the current year. The plan included total expenditures of $186 million representing $9 million or 5.08% increase over the current year budget, and a projected tax levy increase of 5.6%, nearly 2% or $3.2 million above the tax cap of 3.61%. I want to acknowledge that this came or may have come as something of a shock to members of the board and certainly to the community, but it reflects the reality that we can no longer do everything we want to do within the confines of the tax levied limit. Indeed, even with the reductions from the preliminary budget that we are proposing tonight, the budget plan currently remains over the tax

010cap. This is a budget I and my team strongly support because we believe it reflects the program we need and that the community expects. With your indulgence, I would like to spend a little bit of time putting this year in the context of the recent past before moving on to the cuts we are proposing and the revised budget draft. So first, how does this budget compare within the context of recent budgets and tax levies? Well, we understand the impacts of the tax cap as a check on a period of historically large tax increases throughout the 1990s and 2000s, but also as a constraint to school board flexibility. Nonetheless, over the past 10 years, our average budget-to-budget increase is 2.14% and our average tax levy increase is 2.23%. Over that same period of time, our tax

011levy was below the cap by an average of $453,000 or a cumulative $4.5 million. Thus, it is understandable that our preliminary proposed budget may seem inconsistent with this recent past. Notably, one of the ways we've stayed under the cap in recent years has been through the reliance on the use of fund balance to offset expenditures in excess of revenue. That, of course, is not a sustainable practice over the long run, and we are starting to see the impacts of that practice. Andrew will discuss this in a little bit more detail later this evening. Why did we start with such a large proposal? Well, there are really three main reasons for this. First, we are trying to share our authentic internal process more transparently than in the past. Second, we have significantly expanded our programs and

012supports for students in recent years. This has been in response to community expectations and has been accomplished without exceeding the cap. Third, inflation and unavoidable cost increases in certain areas have reached a tipping point. I'd like to include a little bit more about each of those three reasons now. First about the process. Being quite new to the role of superintendent, I took the opportunity last year to view the board administration budget development process with fresh eyes. While I played a role in this process in each of my years in Scarsdale. Since becoming superintendent, I've grown to believe that the board should have a more comprehensive understanding and transparent window into the internal deliberations that shape the superintendent's proposed budget. Thus, starting with last year's budget, we presented a budget that authentically included our desired program

013operational and capital elements to fulfill our educational goals and objectives irrespective of the tax levy. This marked a starting point for discussion, deliberation, inquiry and dialogue both at the board table and in the community. Over the course of the public budget development process, the board made informed judgements about the balance between cost and affordability. For those who observed or participated in the process last year, the result, a budget that came in under the tax cap was only achieved after weighing alternatives, eliminating line items that were initially requested and making strategic choices about what budget items would have a greater or lesser impact toward our desired student outcomes. Essentially, we aim to follow that philosophical approach this year and that's why we came forward and presented everything you saw between the staffing recommendations and budget study

014session number one. What's different this year is the two other reasons stated above or earlier make this particularly difficult in this particular year. Program expansion. So in any given year, the major budget drivers tend to be contractual salary increases, mandated pension system increases and benefit increases, particularly in the area of health insurance as of late anyway. Of course, staffing and program additions increase the base budget as well. I think it helps to frame both increases both generally. In respect to the preliminary budget that we've proposed around two frequently asked questions, understanding that salaries and benefits i.e. people account for 80% of the overall budget. Why is the budget going up more than 2% when our labor contracts have kept salary increases below 2%? Most recently between one point a half and 1.75%. And the second

015question, why do we need more staff when enrollment is stable? It turns out these two questions are interrelated. It is true that our contractual salary increases have been modest and well below the recent high inflation. In the past 10 years, the major driver of our budget increases have been the result of added positions. Over that time, we've added roughly 49 new teacher positions all while staying under the tax cap. Each of these positions was carefully vetted and resulted in the introduction of new programming or the expansion of existing programming. For example, we introduced a robust steam sequence and expanded electives at the high school. We've significantly increased our mental health staffing to support students and families and have greatly enhanced our continuum of service and related service supports for special education students. These FTE additions

016were proposed because they align with our guiding principles of staffing and they reflect the resources necessary to meet the needs of our students and expectations of our community. I certainly could go through each of those ads or area by area, but I'll hold off on that and we can address that if there are questions from the board as we get through the proposal. On top of the above, we've also added a safety, security and emergency management structure inclusive of a chief of safety, security, emergency management, and safety monitors at all of our buildings. This has created a recurring and escalating annual cost in excess of $1 million. Finally, the third area, inflation and cost increases the pressure of inflation on goods and services, coupled with cost increases in health insurance mandated retirement contributions has largely

017been absorbed over the years by pushing our budget to the limit and foregoing some of the desires and requests that come in, in the budget development process While in the past, we've been able to generate fund balance by having actual costs that come in below budgeted expenditures. Since the end of the 2019, '20 school year, this is no longer happening. One representation of this can be found in the 4.5 million in allowable tax levy under the tax gap that we've elected not to levy and expend. Put simply, we've tightened our belts in response to cost pressures so we could build out the programs described earlier. We're no longer in a position to do this without making difficult choices thus we simply can't do everything we want to do and that we think is important for

018our students and families without exceeding the tax cap. If we think the support of this is not attainable, then we will need to examine ways to reduce our expenditures and make choices about what to keep and what we want to cut. The next several slides will explain the changes we have made to the preliminary draft budget, but hopefully this context helps you think about that as we move through that. Okay, so adjustments that we've made to the proposed budget since budget study session number one. So first in the past month, we have reexamined the entire proposed budget and not surprisingly, we found a few areas where either our assumptions or our data entry have required revision. This is normal in this kind of process. There are two items in particular that were not accounted for

019at the level we expect, and thus they have resulted in adjusted expenditures of an additional $180,000. Those are represented here at the top, restoring the garden repair item. We've been on a sequence of upgrading and updating our gardens and Quaker Ridge is up next, next year. We restored that and we corrected an error. Jeannie can talk about this a little bit more in her presentation tonight, but we under budgeted the tech lease, so we've added that back for a total of 180,000 in additions to what you saw on February 5th. Our proposed expenditure reductions begin with salary, wages, and benefit costs. We're proposing to defer two of the three special education teaching positions that we presented in our staffing recommendations. One fewer at Scarsdale Middle School and eliminating the proposed Scarsdale High School special education

020teaching position. At the middle school, the 1.0 position that remains, remains in the proposed budget accomplishes the expansion of the integrated co-teaching program from sixth grade to seventh grade. The elimination of the second position at SMS and the elimination of the position at SHS leaves us at our close to our mandated ratios in the LRC program with decreased scheduling flexibility and little room for new student classifications. Eric will speak more to this during the special education budget section later on. Next, we reduced the overall elementary staffing assumption by two positions, which reflects the elimination of one of our two contingency positions that were proposed, as well as the decision to return a teacher on special assignment to the classroom next year. The final reduction in this area reflects a more precise measure of expected pension

021costs for civil service employees and all in this amounts to 705,000 in reduced expenditures. The next area we've identified another 263,000 in reductions from equipment supplies and BOCES codes, a budget duplication was identified. Those are the kind we like, that's easy to cut those. We scaled back the bus radio purchase by about 25% and we slowed down but do not eliminate our deployment of new cameras and door ajar sensors and defer a needed replacement time clock system for hourly employees to a future year. Finally, we've made four revisions to contractual codes that would reduce reliance on charter buses for athletics, replacing some trips with school buses, revises our liability insurance premium downward, removes more duplicate expenses identified through the re-look at the budget and suspends perhaps temporarily our association with the Advancing Literacy Initiative from

022Teachers College. This totals 285 in reductions and together these cuts result in 1.061 less in expenditures from what we presented on February 5th. The changes I just described, I do want to take a moment to revisit the staffing changes. So I've put up a slide here that you've seen in the past presentations. I just want to talk through this so that you're clear on what we're talking about in this and so the public is clear. So you'll recall that our staffing proposal included 8.9 positions, however, only 4.7 of those positions are truly new or elective if we continue to follow our guiding principles of staffing. Of the 8.9 proposed positions, 2.2 FTE are already working in the current year. These are post budget adoption, special ed. adds, one each at Scarsdale Middle School and Scarsdale

023High School to meet caseload requirements under the continuum of services and point to Latin at SHS. We are planning that those are going to be needed next year even though they're here already. So those are really continuations. 2.0 of the FTE are associated with our elementary class size predictions. We're projecting 105 distinct class sections next year. We currently have 103. So to maintain our class size maxima, that is part of our guiding principles, we would need to add those. Those aren't positions that could just be cut without having a discussion about that long held assumption about class size maxima. So of the three special education positions, two at the middle school and one at the high school proposed just to reiterate, only one of those remains in tonight's proposed budget, one of them at SMS.

024We also proposed the district administrator for special education accomplished through the elevation of a current employee in hiring of a CPSE chair and 0.2 FTE clerical at Fox Meadow to align Fox Meadow with Quaker Ridge and their staffing model and the half FTE position at SHS for financial literacy and multi-variable calculus. So I'm gonna flash the same slide but with the changes. So crossing out those positions which have been eliminated from the proposed budget and hopefully that sort of makes clear what we were talking about. I know Andrew hates this slide, as being too busy, but I don't know, it works. It works for my brain. You'll recall there was a great deal of discussion about adding a Dean at Scarsdale High School that remains excluded from the budget draft plan. It was never included

025dollar wise though we had discussion. So what you see tonight does not include that. Okay, so essentially this reduces our ask from 8.9 to 4.9, retaining the request for the special ed. position at the middle school, the 0.5 math for financial math and multi-variable calculus at the high school, the clerical additions at Fox Meadow and district office and the special ed. administrative add in addition to the two special ed. positions that were added this year and the Latin through use of budget contingency. Hopefully that makes sense. So here's a high level summary of the budget plan. You saw a slide similar to this. What's happened in this slide is you see a new column that you did not see in the budget study session number one, that column is all the way to the right

026and Andrew has added that to show how tonight's proposed budget differs from what you saw on February 5th. And this column will be continued throughout each of the individual presentations you'll hear from each of my colleagues in their respective areas. The next slide is more granular detail on the very same number with each of those reductions line itemed out or additions 'cause there were those two additions. They appear in the right hand column and that's the explanation for the revised budget plan. I'm gonna turn it over to Andrew now to... Well, I'll explain this one and then turn it over to Andrew for a few more items. So what does this look like? This total expenditures now at $185,739,372 or 4.48% budget-to-budget increase and a total tax levy that would require a total tax levy

027of 170,841,161, which is a 4.95% increase in tax levy. Andrew. So though it's small, I do wanna highlight an adjustment to the property tax levy cap pertaining to the exemption related to pension growth. Based on the increase on the ERS contribution rate, we are going to receive an additional $20,007 in levy space under the cap. This is pertaining to the contribution percentage rate going up above that two percentage point threshold. So it's small, but it's worth noting here. So it does cascade into our discussions about what an allowable levy is and how we compare this budget to that. This slide is changed from our prior presentation just to reflect the property tax levy presumed to support this budget. You'll note that in a prior slide, I originally showed this slide with the tax cap figure

028just to give a full picture of what we felt was kind of the tax cap compliant outer limit of what our budget could support or was available to support our budget. You'll see here that we've now updated that and this proposed budget would then require a 60% voter approval in order for the budget to pass. And this slide is just the updated kind of details that Drew showed earlier, reflecting the new preliminary proposed budget with the budget of budget increase of 4.48% proposed levy increase of 4.95%. The cap is still projected 3.63, it was 3.62 prior, so we are over the budget cap, the levy cap by $2.1 million. I've added to this slide as well the estimated tax rate increases from Mamaroneck and Scarsdale residents. So Scarsdale, based on the equalization rate changes takes

029a little bit larger proportion of the increase there. Their estimated rate is 5.26% increase and Mamaroneck's tax rate is actually going to decline by about 8.09%. Okay, thank you very much. And with that we'll start our first department based budget presentation and I'll turn it over to Edgar. Thank you Drew. I appreciate the opportunity to highlight the essential areas of the curriculum instruction and assessment budget. I'll start with some guiding principles in the realm of curriculum instruction and assessment. Most importantly, students are at the center. We must check back to see that we're using our financial resources in ways that meaningfully, holistically and positively influence student development on all ways. And ask the question, "can this be connected to student learning and student thriving?" As I discussed in the October educational report, our curriculum must

030be responsive, meaning it should be research-based, collaborative, supported, and appropriately patient. None of our educators in Scarsdale work in isolation. So the principle of creation and cohesion require collaboration. We rely on a wide range of expertise and perspectives to create the best possible curriculum for our students and engage in the most effective instructional practices. This budget is also guided by the principle that multiple perspectives and authentic experience enhance learning. Next. The heart of program improvement is using internal expertise and harnessing experts in the field to design and update our methods and curriculum to better meet the needs of our students. The vast majority of this work is done during the summer months when Scarsdale teachers come together to think, plan, innovate, coordinate, and make meaningful changes to the curriculum. We are not a district that

031reads from curricular scripts or mass how to manuals, but rely on our experienced and talented educators to innovate, adapt, or find and improve on existing curricula to make them relevant and inspiring to their students. As many in education know and research supports, teacher agency is their superpower. The opportunity to craft, curate and adapt quality resources and meaningful progressions is part of that and program improvement is key to that process. Arts and aesthetic education, the arts are strengthening and affirming for our students and essential to a whole student approach. We continue to expand the in-person opportunities for visiting artists and visual and performing arts that model and inspire creativity in our students. Here's a group in the hallway participating in MLK Day, the second year. Students have taken this joyful dancing into the hallways. This is

032not the only funding for the arts. This is a centrally funded budget item that provides enrichment opportunities beyond school scheduled and PTA funded opportunities and allows for a select assured experiences that can be flexible based on the goals of the building and revealed opportunity. For example, we are funding a performance by the Classical Theater of Harlem for all of our eighth graders. They are currently touring an innovative and minimalist production of "Romeo and Juliet." A perfect and special enrichment and extension of this Shakespearean core text. Interdependence and global initiatives. The Interdependence Institute fosters the development of intercultural skills that teachers and students need to deepen global understanding and broaden their international perspectives. Through partnerships and exchanges, students and faculty develop the skills needed to successfully navigate the complexities of an increasingly interdependent world. The Interdependence

033Institute is also sponsored author and expert visits to enrich and inspire the student experience. We've successfully expanded our global network recently through admission into the Round Square consortium, an organization that connects multiple international schools in meaningful and globally important ways because of the scope of our work already underway and the unique structure and opportunities in place at Scarsdale High School, we were the first public school admitted into this international network. We are entering our third year as members of the Global Education Benchmarking Network and we'll be representing at the annual conference in Montreal in April as a means of strengthening their articulation of global competencies from middle to high school. Our high school representation, principal Ken Bonomo and global coordinator Heather Waters, will be joined by middle school assistant principal Marcy Rothman and social studies

034teacher Megan Leahy. I'm happy to report that Heather and I were chosen to present at this year's conference on the essential intersection of global competencies and our district's work on belonging, wellbeing, inclusion, diversity and equity. The global entrepreneurship challenge continues as do fantastic travel opportunities for our students. You'll see a photo from a recent trip to Iceland. You'll also see a picture from a panel discussion with internationally acclaimed author Colum McCann at our annual Global Citizenship Day facilitated by high school students. This connection has grown to an invitation to engage with an organization he founded Narrative 4, a network of artists, educators, students and community advocates who use the power of storytelling as a means of developing understanding and deep empathy. This has grown into an STI course and the Plan Future International Experience for

035students with the narrative schools in Ireland. STA Article 9 funds competitive project grants. Each year, over 100 teachers receive funds for conference attendance, school year research or workshops. Individual awards are limited to $1,200 per year. The total funding is negotiated in a contract with Scarsdale Teacher Association. The Scarsdale Teacher Institute provides continuing education to Scarsdale faculty. STI is funded by the district and teacher tuition. The district funds the administrative salary of the STI director and provides an allocation for support of the STI program. The funding level for the STI is contractually negotiated with the Scarsdale Teacher Association. Our STI is an important element of the work we do in Scarsdale. It reflects the needs and interest of diverse educators and courses are informed and generated by Scarsdale initiatives and values. Importantly, there's a coordination between

036the STI leadership and district Director Ann Marie Nee, Meghan Troy and I meet regularly to coordinate our resources and work hand in hand to align and support district priorities. Center for Innovation, research, planning and evaluation. The stated purpose of the Center for Innovation is to reimagine teaching and learning, develop new models of instruction, explore the role of technology in transforming instruction and foster widespread change beyond a single classroom or teacher. An analysis of this work, its scope, reach and impact has led us to expand on the mission of the CFI to be more inclusive and nimble to the challenge and opportunities that are facing educators today. Powerful structures have grown out of the CFI ones that have lasted positive influence on student experience, but participation has been has not been as broad as it could

037be and expanding on the original language. We are looking to invite a larger and more diverse group of Scarsdale educators, innovators to engage its resources and structures. So we're thinking CFII, Communities for Inquiry and Innovation. In-service training and instruction. In District PD, professional development is essential in our goal of integrating outside innovation experts and research into our professional practice. Examples of these include the transformational work we've done with research for better teaching or the skillful teacher, responsive classroom, and important BOCES based training where many of our educators have participated in meaningful collegial circles. The sustainability initiative, this budget is to fund gardening sustainability initiatives in all seven schools and support projects as they arrive. Here's a photo of Sharon Hill at Greenacres, introducing a former Scarsdale Elementary student to talk to their fifth graders about

038the dangers of climate change. This spring, you can look for the impressive physical impacts on the Heathcote Gardens as part of a responsive improvement rotation. Opportunities to support the work of our educators who have weighed in on improvements to better align with our curriculum. And as Drew had said, Quaker Ridge is next. One of the district's ongoing goals is to use meaningful data to improve instruction. This budget includes funds to bring in committees of college professors who work with teachers to develop, validate, and assess high school curricular offerings, including a rotation to evaluate the college equivalents of our advanced topics. This budget also provides funds to assess the district strategic initiatives. Recent district-wide surveying on belonging and developmental relationships falls under this category as well. Next year, we are scheduled for a Tri-State Consortium review

039as part of our three year cycle. The Consortium is a valuable assessment tool and the recommendations have been powerful levers for program change as you've seen in most recently in improvements in the last five years to the MTSS structure and advanced topics, articulation, communication and evaluation. We'll be discussing the focus of our next visit once we have it fully determined. Research, collaboration, support and patience. In past budget presentations, I described the importance of connecting, knowing with the doing that is an important guiding principle. For this presentation, I want to connect back to October's educational report in which I described the process of turning, knowing into doing through a key process that counts on research, collaboration, support, and appropriate patience. In October, I described how this relates to curriculum changes in elementary math and reading instruction,

040integrated studies and the nuanced work in belonging through diversity, equity, and inclusion. This evolution process, all the components of it is important in many other areas. From gender inclusive puberty education to the continued roll-up of next generation science standards to the development of performance-based assessments and all disciplines. Funding of this budget not only provides the resources for positive change, it assures that Scarsdale continues to lead the way. Multiple perspectives and authentic experience enhanced learning. Through critically examining different voices, ideas and opinions, and having the resources and educator support to do so, students get a deeper understanding of history, current events and social and societal trends that shape our world. Authentic experiences are engaging and meaningful to students. Ones that relate to their sense of purpose and experience, which connects to our goal on student-centered and

041project-based learning and the exciting social entrepreneurship and science research that's fueling and motivating our students quite simply both by engaging in multiple and diverse ideas and engaging in authentic learning experiences, our students get smarter, more skilled and are better equipped to thrive in our globally connected world. Now, curriculum research and professional development. You'll see on this slide in this area, the budget-to-budget amount has decreased by $13,834. Research planning and evaluation covers district-wide compact for learning, which covers our compact committees assessment and data analysis and Tri-States collaborations. The variance here is driven by an accounting change of 75,000 budgeted for standardized test scoring, which was previously charged to an instructional BOCES code. This is an accounting change and an expense always budgeted for, for more accurately considered an evaluation expense and now in the appropriate place.

042In-service training, instruction funds for the Scarsdale Center for Innovation and contracts for out of district consultants. The variance here is a decrease of 91,940, which includes the reduction of 150,000 for the elimination of a contract with the advancing literacy coaching organization. Instruction, supervision and general education. For curriculum supervision, this portion of the budget funds building level supervision, including the salaries for all principals and assistant principals and the operating expenses of principals office in the seven schools. $69,823 is primarily from contractual salary commitments per collective bargaining agreements. Curriculum, instruction, funds, salaries, and other instructional costs for regular education. Teaching staff. Variance in this area covers general education, staffing projections previously discussed, as well as inflation adjusted per pupil allocations. Additionally, we have included $140,000 for high school classroom furniture, 80,000 of which is to address a

043school furniture needs after their relocation to the high school building. School library automation funds have moved from technology to the library account codes. Co-curricular activity, anticipated contractual obligations per collective bargaining agreements are reflected here in this section as well. And now I will be handing the slide over to Andrew. Yeah, I just want to talk about, again, accounting changes, right? We wanted to highlight accounting changes versus those that are more kind of decision driven. So as Edgar noted in the STA contract, Article 9 is related to a professional development program and Article 10 is the STI. Typically, those expenses in Scarsdale were kind of co-mingled with our general fund expenditures and it did cause some confusion about what is general fund kind of funded expenditures versus other items and the contractual obligations around the STI

044and the program development budget. Those funds are committed to be rolled over year after year after year. So we thought it was more appropriate, Lisa and I, and in consultation with some of our audit partners to separate this out in the budget going forward. So what we've done in this slide at the top is we've identified the general fund codes that were all over the budget or in several different places in the budget in the past to align them with a transfer to special aid code. One will be the transfer for STA Article 9 and the other will be for the STI. Article 9 is a very explicit number that is specifically listed in the contract. The STI has two pieces of it. The first piece being a contribution to the Scarsdale Teachers Institute to

045cover the cost of running their various programs, paying for consultants and the like. The other piece is the director's salary and benefits. That's also named in the contract, but that number is less specific because it depends on which teacher on assignment is in that role. So going forward in the budget, you'll see these as individual line items that are directly related to the STA contract. Thank you. I'm gonna take over and discuss special education, student services and safety, security and emergency management. I'm gonna start by kind of pointing us to the philosophy and practices that we've focused on for a number of years here in special educations. Really starts with the identification that all students have strengths and we can develop those strengths for all students to be successful. We operate under the idea that

046the vast majority of students can and should be accommodated in a regular education classroom with appropriate supports. And we acknowledge the classified students have the right to receive all the accommodations and modifications that their IEPs dictate. Along with that, parents are an important part of any decisions made about classified students. They're a full acting member of the CSE and have as much a say in that committee as everyone else seated there. And then finally, we must always look to expand the continuum of service to have as many students educated in our own district as humanly possible that is financially sustainable. With that being said, I'm gonna take a couple of minutes to just remind the board and the community of some of the base numbers around special education. When we think about the recent staffing

047adDs, this first slide tells most of that story. While we have had flat student enrollment, the classification rate and number of special education students has risen fairly dramatically over the past 10 years. We have, in 2010, we were classified at 6.8% or 371 students. Our current classification rate is 13.5% at 639 students so a rise of 268 students. We've also had a similar rise in identification rate for 504 students, which has gone in 2015 from 8.8 to 14.6%. With that being said, students with IEPs, we serve 95.6 of our students in district, in our schools with IEPs. So in the next slide, you can see some of the work in our expanding the continuum of service. I think this is an extremely important slide to show the juxtaposition of our special education population and how

048many students we're serving in district. This is all happening at the same time. So we've had a move from about 11 to 12% of our students out totaling about 50 students to now 4.4% of our students are served out of district and that's 28% students even while we've risen about 270 kids in special education. There are some cost savings. While it's not the main driver of why we wanna bring students back to the district, each student that we send to outside placement costs approximately $75,000. They can range though from about 55 to over $100,000. These costs can be foregone if students are in our programs where we have a critical mass of students, that allows us to have some efficiency in developing those programs. Next slide. So I think it's important to also recognize that

049special education is one of the few places in New York State education where we have mandated class size ratios. And I've listed out our various continuum of services here. Direct and indirect teacher consultant is a five to one ratio, so no more than five students to one teacher at any given time. Teacher consultant is also an interesting type of service. It is usually a step down from students who are receiving resource room daily when they're stepping down to least restrictive or less restrictive environments. With that being said, it does sometimes create scheduling nightmares because teachers are also needing to do indirect consultation with the team that take up teaching assignment time. Resource room, which is probably our most prevalent program, is a five to one ratio that is an LRC situation in all of our

050schools. And then we have our integrated co-teaching, which is the program that has grown the most over the past seven to eight years. We maintain a 60:40 ratio. New York State does cap the amount of classified students that can be in a class to 12. However, our class cap practices really stop us from being able to include a full 12 students in any ICT class because best practice indicates a maximum of 60:40 general ed. student to special ed. student ratio in those classes. So on average, eight or nine students is the max amount of students that can be included in a section of our classes given our class sectioning practices. And then the last three are various special class assignments. We currently have one section of 12 to one in the elementaries, a number of

05112 to one sections in the middle school, and then we have our special class, eight to one sections at Edgewood. There is another area on the continuum of services, which is a six to one class. Currently there are none in Scarsdale. So those we have to keep in mind as we start to section out and think about staffing for students as they come into the district. Excuse me. On this slide you see our current programs, all of our elementary, on the elementary level, all of our elementary schools have a Learning Resource Center, which both service students who are classified needing resource room and class of end service are tier two students for MTSS. Our integrated co-teaching, you can see this year how they are sectioned out. The majority, well, we're half and half now with

052four sections in three of our grades and three sections in the remaining three. And our Quaker Ridge Bridge program and Edgewood eight to one to two intensive support program are all listed there. As we move into next year, the only change on the elementary level is the rolling off of our fifth grade sections, which is three, and bringing in Fox Meadow and Quaker Ridge is our next incoming case. We are projecting four sections coming in. So that is a net difference of one section from this year, which would be a additional FTE. That is a projection. There is a possibility that could come in at three, but given the numbers we're close to going to a fourth section and it is only March, so there's a good chance we'll also find students that will come

053in over the summer or through the annual reviews that have yet to happen. Likewise, the next slide is the current programs at our secondary level, our Learning Resource Center, which only services resource room students at the middle school. We have our integrated co-teaching and special class, which is the next version of our parallel program using the six methods and really changing the pedagogy around in our integrated co-teaching classes. That program necessitates two houses and a section in each that don't change from year to year. Our previous practice was to move each year the parallel program to a different house. Seventh and eighth grade still have our classic parallel program. And then we have our SSP program on the middle school level. Likewise, in the high school, we have our Learning Resource Center, which is really

054the major part of our learning continuum there that does consultant, teacher, and resource room. And we have our SSP program. Our more supportive academic classes are really supported by the skills program, which is a general education class that has push in from some of our special education teachers, but they are taught by a general ed. Teacher. Next year, the change to that and the reason for our plus one that you'll see in a minute at the middle school is moving our ICT up into the seventh grade, which necessitates doing the two house opening on one more grade level. Everything else remains in place. Okay, so this is our special education proposal. So we'll start with special education funds, all of the staff and instructional resources for special education programming, including teachers and aides in the

055salary and wages column. Our current budget funds all of our current programs, the reduction of the requested staffing. So we've gone from the... We've reduced in two from one high school position and one middle school position that we did ask for in the first budget presentation that really will require student or teachers in the middle school to take on some extra teaching load. And it's gonna slow our development of proposed program expansion in the middle and high school. While this is doable, the idea, it does take away from the time, teachers in the middle school have to attend team meetings and do the other pieces of support that happened, but we are able to cover the sections and maintain all of our current programming with this request. The transfer to special aid is a new

056area that you're seeing in this budget presentation. Before this, it was really folded into our general ed. expenditures. It really just highlights mainly for our special class students, the cost of maintaining an extended school year program at our elementary level over the summer. So looking at some of the variances, our salary and wages for this year coming up include an adjustment in aid projections that was not included in the '23, '24 approved budget, which was an error. And the projected increase is based on contractual salary commitments. The salary and wages also include $305,000 in staffing for the proposed special education teachers that remain. Additionally, two contingency positions that were needed for this year are also in that budget that were not shown for last year, although two of those positions already exist in our schools.

057The tuition and contractual expenses actually is about a half a million dollars lower than the projected expenses for this year and that is mainly due to the number of students that are going to be cycling out of district, out of district placements. And they're not being replaced by other students so it's driving our number of students out of district down. Next slide. I thought it was important to look to the future. We have been expanding continuum across our three levels. This graph and table really shows the next three school years include... Next four school years, including '24, '25, which shows the FTEs requested in this particular budget. It really is a low-high estimate. So we have taken a look at our cohorts moving up, the programs moving up and what the possibilities for needs are

058as the ICT and special class move up through the middle school. This includes the eight to one to two classes that will be aging up into the middle school in two years, as well as taking into account expanding inclusion opportunities at the high school and those opportunities for the special class students currently in the middle school and currently in the elementary school who are moving up as we go along. And you can see eight to 13 new FTEs through '27, '28 school year. Just to be clear, that's inclusive of the three? Correct. That were proposed in tonight's budget? Correct. And you can see '23, '24 there, which is the FTEs from last year. That is not included in the eight to 13 at the bottom. Okay, going to move on to student services. Right now,

059this is really a, well, this is really a rollover budget. This maintains all of our psychologists, deans, guidance counselors, contractual social workers, including the youth services project and our social workers at the elementary schools. The only variance here really is in our supplies and materials for the psychologists. There's a higher percentage increase in that because there are new IQ tests coming out that need to replace all of our current IQ tests in the next year so that's really a one-time expense that's there. It's just relatively small. That's at $9,900 expense increase. But this does take into account contractual growth and inflationary growth for the other categories but otherwise it's a rollover budget. Safety, security and emergency management. This is the newest part of the budget that we'll see. In our previous accounting of safety, security,

060and emergency management there was never a home for all of the codes. We have in our move to envision, really look to consolidate these into their own area. This is really to focus on the expenses related to safety and security. That means our safety monitors, our chief of safety and security, also the safety and security of our physical plan. So that includes our camera systems, lockdown integration system, all of the hard costs for our physical plan and the safety and security included in those. This budget maintains the current level of safety monitors and it provides support for a modest expansion of cameras and door ajar sensors. But that is one of the identified areas that we've lessened from our initial budget study session. So as you can see, there are many variances in this budget.

061It is really about the reallocation of where monies go in our budget. The equipment line is a restoration of a previously incorrectly removed equipment line that funds cameras, door ajar sensors, any of our equipment based purchases for safety, security and emergency management. Usually that was funded at $150,000 plus we had... we were looking at the bus radios for this year, which we adjusted into the transportation budget. That leaves us with $115,000 there to fund any expansion of cameras and door ajar sensors. Contractual really includes, almost solely includes our safety monitors across the district. Previously, this had also had Alteryx's contract and our budget for our chief of safety and security that has now moved to BOCES services. So you'll see that change there. And the change in the contractual includes our expected, any expected changes

062in the state prevailing wage for our safety monitors, our supplies, material line is an inflation, an inflation projected number that stays constant. So our safety, security and management maintains the current levels of safety monitors, allows for slow progress in cameras and door ajar sensors. Thank you very much Eric. And I'm gonna invite Ray to the podium to present athletics. Thank you, Drew. This proposed budget maintains the support for the current level of programming student choice and level of participation for student athletes. Increases are primarily related to an error in the projection of coaching salaries and inflation. Specifically in this proposed budget, you will see increases in equipment reconditioning along with section one and BOCES fees, supplies, uniforms and professional materials, as well as facility rental fees show the greatest increases among non-salary expenditures. Included in

063contractual and other accounts are the funds necessary to fund advanced life-saving services, that is ambulance services staffed by paramedics at all home football games. This budget defers non-essential equipment replacements such as items in the fitness center that are aging and more susceptible to breakage and need for repair. And while planned coaching additions are also not included, programs are not affected. The newest sports like squash and fencing will continue to be funded contractually and crew will continue to be funded contractually with one coach by the district. Thank you very much, Ray. Appreciate that. And we'll move on to technology and innovation and invite Jeannie to the podium. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Sorry it's a little low. Can you hear me? Yeah? Okay. Tonight I'll discuss the technology budget, which is broken down into four major

064areas. Before I dive into those areas, I'd like to give you some high level context. Thank you, Drew, for our department, so first we have a robust investment through our lease purchase program and one-to-one student device programs and interactive boards, grades K through 12. We're in the process of replacing every interactive board in the high school this summer to provide a consistent experience for students and faculty. We'll continue to expand our wireless coverage into elementary hallways and informal teaching spaces and annual investment's required to support our infrastructure, which is the switches, storage servers, network controllers, phone systems, firewalls. It's necessary to ensure our equipment's up to date and meeting our needs. Investments in infrastructure are primarily driven by manufacturer end of support dates. Next slide. As I mentioned last year, we saw a nearly $100,000

065increase in educational software purchases during the pandemic. This many new tools acquired during the pandemic continue to support face-to-face teaching. Going back to pre-pandemic spending is not a matter of simply removing new software. We have a process in place to ensure we're thoroughly reviewing usage levels before renewing subscriptions. We ask for details from vendors about usage and we right size before a budgeting process to make sure that we're only buying the licenses that we need. Software costs are rising significantly. This is gonna be a drum I will beat for the next few minutes. You know, some of our services are rising as much as 40% in one year. There's huge jumps in software costs. Our current instructional software budget increase reflects renewal cost increase, not expanded services. The increased cost and instructional software line is

066what's required to maintain just status quo. Thank you, Drew. Our first section is the technical services budget. These are not very exciting things you're looking at, but this is the invisible work of the technology team. Our technical services department maintains public presentation spaces, maintains classroom interactive boards and displays, and provides physical and wireless access to network. In pretty much any space in the district you can see the work of the technical services team. If you look up, you'll see the wireless access points. If you look to the sides of the rooms, you'll see the ports and wires they maintain. And even this room, the setup of the room and the labor that goes into providing these board meetings is done by the technical services team. Other than routine salary increases, there are no additional budget

067requests for our technical services team. The budget provided by the district, it maintains all services I just mentioned, and we're able to meet our needs at current funding levels. Okay. Our next slide is just a sampling, our technology is instructional technology. This budget covers the district's internet access, our internet filter, library database, inventory software, student device management, antivirus software, instructional software. What you see here is just a small sample of the instructional software that we offer to district, students and faculty. We have a wide range of services, including software to support music, 3D animation, robotics, coding, virtual labs, math assessments, writing and reading, interactive elementary activities, research and citation, academic integrity, science exploration, physical education, software to differentiate for learners with different needs and software to support our ENL learners. And this is just a

068tiny taste of what we have available at the district. Thanks. Some details about budget-to-budget variance in instructional technology. Initially there's a $220,000 variance in contract and other, this is about a 4% increase to cover core services such as internet fees, the district internet filter and device management. We have $30,000 to implement a new website and emergency notification. Our current website will sunset on July 1st, 2025. That's driven by the vendor. This fee will help us transition to a new system before the end of life date. The $50,000 reflects an average of 10% increases across both the instructional and BOCES lines. Software increases are staggering, as I mentioned earlier, and this amount allows us to continue our current subscriptions. Our third area is administrative services and includes the district's data services team, which is essentially the

069circulatory system of the district's data. The data service team maintains all of the district's data for students and staff, develops data integrations to support daily teaching and learning activities. It supports transportation, food services, human resources, business office, and state reporting. If there's data in the district, it flows through this department. The data service team also provides direct support to those entering and utilizing data in the district. It also includes in this budget its technical support for administrators, counselors, secretaries, custodians, all staff in the central office, the cafeterias, the bus compound, and the grounds and maintenance building. There is some movement in this budget to align expenses, much like Eric mentioned earlier with the appropriate office. $75,000 was moved out of this budget for professional development tracking, absence management, and our election management system to other

070offices to make sure that those expenses live where they should live. $62,000 with this budget covers increases at our student information service subscription, which were significant increases in BOCES service costs. For many years, we have enjoyed grandfathered pricing plans on many of our services. Vendors are moving away from those grandfathered pricing plans this year and moving us to more expensive per student enrollment plans, which are drastically increasing the cost of some of our services. In addition, we're adding an automated rostering service to facilitate student data integrations and to streamline the account creation process with our new finance and HR system. The automated rostering service will greatly increase the efficiency in our data services department, who currently writes custom integrations for most of our district software. And finally, the $110,000 variance reflects an omission in the

071current year budget for student information service increases. Our final area of the technology budget is the lease purchase plan. Through the lease purchases, the technology department is able to support devices for all students along with replacement of aging interactive boards in each school. As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we're in the process of replacing a variety of mismatched interactive boards in the high school with one consistent model this summer. This will greatly facilitate the ability of faculty and students to seamlessly use classroom technologies as they move between classrooms. This is largely funded by the smart schools bond and supplemented by the lease purchase program. In fiscal year '23, the lease purchase amount was $1.6 million. Last year, we temporarily reduced the amount to $1 million. For this fiscal year, I apologize for this fiscal

072year. In order to get us under the tax cap, we're returning nearly to our previous levels of investment to ensure we have adequate funding to replace end of life infrastructure such as switches, phone systems and storage servers. Infrastructure maintenance requires annual investment to ensure all of our equipment is up to date and receiving latest security patches to protect our data and our network. This concludes the technology portion of the presentation. I'll hand it back to Drew. Thank you very much, Jeannie. I appreciate that. So to try to contextualize what you've heard tonight and stepping back and thinking about the full budget picture, like as we've done in the past, kind of highlight some of the things that this budget accomplishes or provides to our students in our community. We think the budget as proposed really

073maintains the high quality of teaching and learning that people should expect from this district. Some of the points to make here, it continues to fund that exceptional level of instruction through the elementary, middle, and high school models that I discussed earlier in the presentation. The house and team structure, the vibrant program of study for the high school and those elementary class sizes, it continues the staffing levels that we expect. Eric talked about those ratios, but also our class sizes and so forth. Continues to support wellbeing and belonging through the enrichments in the program that Edgar described and continues the SEL approaches, including responsive classroom implementation and so forth. We continue support for the ongoing development of Reveal Math and the technology commitments that Jeannie just described that help support the classroom instructional environment. The budget

074also supports some of the high priority initiatives. We've talked about the financial literacy course at the high school. That and the multi-variable calculus, those continue to be in the budget as proposed. We have funds in this budget to continue the development of our response to the belonging survey and implement our action plan related to that. Continued investment and social worker support. We know at the elementary level, we're still in a assessment phase of that support, and we're gonna continue that, the way it's existing this year into next year's budget. The specialized instruction through the CPSE and CSE processes, of course. Global opportunities and sustainability opportunities that Edgar described in his section continue to be supported. And the partnerships with experts and consultants and college professors to support our AT program and so forth are maintained

075in this budget. And then some of these key specific areas that Jeannie highlighted. Replace funds, the replacement of our end of life website and a mass notification system replaces those end of life systems and hardware and infrastructure before they become obsolete. Thinking about the projects that we talked about, including the stream dredging for climate resilience and sustainability, and then some of the safety, security and emergency management items that Eric discussed. Those are all in this particular budget. Okay. (Drew clears throat) Excuse me. So before moving to the Folsom discussion, this presentation obviously necessitates from the board. I wanna provide some thoughts about the pressures that our budget faces now and in the future potentially. First, while we have managed to stay under the tax cap over the past 10 years, we've added or expanded a

076number of programs as I mentioned earlier. Incidentally, we're not alone in doing these things. The focus on school safety has been driven by clear if disturbing trends in our wider society. And we see our peer school districts and others doing many of the same things. Our focus on student mental health and wellbeing has been both necessary, and I'm happy to say impactful, positively impactful on our students and on our families. We've talked at length about the special education commitments throughout the continuum of services commitments which both benefit special education and general education students in our district. Those new norms for our schools and increased expectations we embrace, but obviously come with a cost. It's also understandable to feel like some of these pressures have crowded out other priorities. And I just wanna spend a second

077to acknowledge that I understand different people have different priorities. Different members of our own administrative team have different priorities. I certainly understand that board members, community members, students themselves would think certain things are more important than others. These necessities that we have funded do force tough choices about what to do or not to do. I just want to acknowledge that we understand that, we're not blind to that and what is and isn't within our financial means needs to be assessed. It's also important to remember that our best expenditures and for that matter, the best cuts, things we don't do, are ones that we can sustain. I just want to acknowledge that as something that matters, that delaying or deferring expenses means future pressure on the budget likely, just an acknowledgement of that as we think

078about the conversation ahead. And as Jim rightfully pointed out last meeting, that our continued reliance on the use of fund balance to close the gap between expenditures and revenues is ultimately unsustainable, at least at its current rate. And I have asked Andrew as I promised earlier, to say a bit more about that particular thing. So we'll start with this slide, which you're familiar with. So this slide is from our last presentation and it really provides the history of the legal reserves and fund balance that... to give the general context of where we've come from over the last several years. This next slide, however, though, is really how we got there. And I think it's important to note use of fund balance is a budgeting term change in fund balance is the actual result that happens

079in a given fiscal year. So one of the things that I wanted to show on this slide to folks is how does the fund balance actually change. Well, it's when your revenues do not keep pace with your expenditures. That's essentially, in a business world, it's a loss, right? We sometimes plan for that in our budgeting use of fund balance. And then the actual change in fund balance is when the actual figures arrive. So this slide shows since 2018, '19 school year how our revenue and expenditures have kind of aligned to result in a changing fund balance picture for us. I will note two things. One, I did notice in the '21, '22 fiscal year, the numbers we presented on the previous slide were the unaudited financial statements. These numbers are the audited financial statements. And

080the one important thing to note is in '21, '22, there was an accrual done at year end that's reflected on this slide, but not on the last one. Since fund balance is cumulative over time, there's no real change into the meaning of this slide or the prior one other than to tell you that the individual year '21, '22 is slightly off in the prior slide. The other thing to note is my second bullet here, I say that the projected change in fund balance, I really meant the projected expenditures on this slide include two and a half million dollars of carryover encumbrances from the prior year. That would've been an expenditure in one year or the other. So again, no change in fund balance, but I wanted to make sure that I articulate that. So as

081you can see, the trend goes red in the 2020, 2021 school year and continues to stay red. Essentially, we keep using our savings for the last several years and it looks as though we will continue on that trend even more so than we budgeted for the current year. That is the concern that we have. Our projected budget proposal does include a reliance on fund balance to balance the budget, but it's certainly something that really has to make us pause and reflect on what our budgeting practices are and how we operate in a given fiscal year to determine whether or not this is a sustainable kind of picture or not. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that. So moving toward our discussion on this slide, just at the top, just reiterating the 10 year budget history showing

082our average budget-to-budget and tax levy increases over that time and the cumulative dollars under the cap, just as an information point. Tonight's proposal, tonight's budget plan, though significantly lower than a month ago, still remains at 4.95% from a tax cap increased standpoint in 4.48% as a budget-to-budget increase item. And we provided what each 1% is in terms of a dollar amount as a tool for thinking, as a reference point. Finally, we made a commitment to you to share some of the additional ideas as we further, as to where further budget plan adjustments could take place. So unsurprisingly, the expenditure cost centers are clear. They are staff salaries, wages and benefits. They are program, what we do with students. They are stuff that's materials, supplies and equipment. And then to a greater or lesser degree, we

083could think and talk about the capital projects that we proposed and what they do to the overall budget picture. On the revenue side, we certainly hope for a restoration of Foundation Aid. There's an advocacy item on the agenda later tonight to that end. And of course we could consider using additional fund balance to cover the gap between revenues and expenditures. But as Andrew just pointed out, we strenuously recommend avoiding going any further than we are right now. And in fact, we would suggest resisting any urge to earmark a restoration of state aid toward any expenditure in the hopes that it might help replenish some of those reserves. That is what our recommendation would be, should that come up as a discussion point. So turning our attention to the aforementioned cost centers, here are some examples

084of what additional cuts from what we proposed tonight could look like in terms of dollar amounts. First we'll look at, because we've been asked this question both internally and externally, how can you add new positions with such a budget? So this is what it what looks like if we were to eliminate the remaining proposed positions. We wanna keep in mind that the Scarsdale Middle School special ed. Position is really required to meet our continuum of services. So if we're gonna provide the continuum of services, they have mandated ratios that Eric went over and we really need that position. And the Dean, while we discussed it, doesn't appear anywhere in the budget. So the positions we're really talking about are the half position at the high school, 0.2 clerical at Fox Meadow, the additional cost of

085of moving the clerk at special ed. from 10 to 12 month. And the administrative position, which we had on the table last year and cut and have on the table again this year so that totals $264,462. In the second area, reductions to program. The things you see here are reduction in several of our arts partnerships such as Alvin Ailey. These are those curriculum assured experiences that Edgar's office directs funding toward some of the summer program improvement money that we direct toward teachers to adapt the curriculum, slowing the purchase of elementary classroom library books, perhaps doing over two or three years what we would normally do in one year and eliminating Varsity B teams as a program adjustment. Those things would produce about $244,500 in reductions. And then the third area that we discussed, this idea

086of material, supplies and equipment. These are things that are really in the category of reduce or delay spending expenditures on. They come back in some form eventually or supplant other things if they come back. So 10% across the board cut in materials and supplies, both instructionally and non-instructionally in offices. Cutting, delaying all the furniture purchases, including those Edgar discussed in his budget, the non-instructional IT purchases that Jeannie presented in her budget and not doing the wifi expansion in the hallways. We had a good question about that. Why do you need wifi in the hallways? Actually our hallways are impromptu ad hoc instructional spaces. Kids go out there in small groups and we have some poor areas of coverage and stronger areas in other buildings. And that's what that would address. And all together, those reductions

087would be over half a million dollars. So those are the kinds of things that, we put out there very reluctantly to you, but we promised we would show some of those things. So as we move toward the discussion, I would suggest that we, the administration need your guidance to work toward our next budget study session, which is only seven days away. And so I thought perhaps starting with some questions, three big ones with some bullets beneath them might focus the conversation a little bit. But of course it's wide open to whatever questions and suggestions and direction you have. We would benefit from knowing where you stand on the proposed budget. What do you still have questions about, of course. I'm sure you have many new questions because this is the first time you've seen these

088parts of the proposed budget and you should, and we appreciate that. I think the question of tolerance for exceeding the cap and what that looks like, what choices are possible, these four bullets are areas to start, right? Propose a budget over the cap as constituted, propose a budget over the cap that's different than the one we proposed. Use different revenue assumptions or make cuts to get closer to the cap, below the cap. Those are, I mean, I don't think that surprises anyone that that's the universe of things to discuss. And then it may be useful to think about what Andrew just said in terms of fund balance and think about that together and where the board is thinking about that. We tried to present a little bit of the multi-year outlook, certainly with special education.

089I think it's only fair to show you what multiple years looks like there. We've done some thought exercises about assumptions of revenue and expenditure growth over time and what that looks like. We can certainly talk about that. Obviously we have a longer term goal once our financial system is in place to be able to do some longer term forecasting. We're not at that point exactly yet, but that's certainly in our minds. And then the Foundation Aid question, if that is restored, I think it would be helpful to know some thinking around that. So let me, if it's okay, I'll leave those questions up. Take a deep breath and turn it over to you. Before we open it up to comments and questions from the board. I just want to thank Drew, Andrew, everybody that presented

090tonight, everybody that's worked on this budget. As you can see there's a lot of work and thought that goes into this before it even comes to this board table every year. And I think there's been even more thought that's gone in this year just given the attempt to bring along the community and how the budget's created, the decisions that have to be made and all the challenges that Drew spoke about. So with that, thank you and I'll open it up to the board. Who wants to go first tonight? Oh, Amber has her hand raised nice and high. Yeah, I'll start. Thank you everyone for your presentation tonight. I actually don't have too many questions. I thought you guys did such a great job explaining everything. But I'm gonna start with a question that wasn't covered

091at all tonight and I just wanna be sure that it's actually in there. So the auditorium renovation, we talked about rental spaces for next year. Do we have that built into this budget? The cost for those? Okay, great. So great. So my few couple of questions. Eric, on slide 45 you talked about adding one new ICT class next year at the elementary level and then I think in a previous slide maybe it was Edgar said something about going from 103 sections to 105 sections. So that would be one ICT section and one note, so... It's, yeah, the additional ICT section is not an additional section of elementary class. Oh okay. It's adding ICT to an existing section. So it's not a double count, it would be 105 sections is our expectation for overall elementary classes.

092Adding one more ICT section within that 105. Got it, okay. 22 special ed. teachers who are paired. Right. Got it. It's an FTE add but it's not an actual additional. It's not a full section. Because there's two sections. Two teachers in each section. So we would go from 103 to 105 regardless? Correct. All right, that's helpful. And I think you said this on a a different slide but so with the one Eric, this is for you, sorry, with the one additional, with a minimum of one additional teacher, we would adhere to all state mandated ratios for special education. So I think you're talking about the middle school addition Yes, yes, that was it. The middle school addition, teachers would pick up additional teaching responsibilities over and above what they normally teach. That would crowd out

093some of the non-mandated, the non-mandated pieces but we would maintain all mandated ratios. So what happens if we go over during a school year? So we can ask for a variance if there is an... Oh, if someone moves in or something like that, we can ask for a variance for the state, that is possible. We have to correct and rectify that at the start of the next year. Similar to our class caps. Once it closes you can go over but you then have to rectify it as you come into the next section. You have basically that year to, to, okay. And the state takes a dim view if you're repeatedly doing that. Yes. Okay. And then I think I had one more question but no. Oh, and I'm not sure who this would be, but

094can we separate out the FTE add for multi-variable calculus and financial literacy? Or does that have to be the same add, that 0.5? Good question. Don't know the answer to that. We'll have to get back to you. All right, that's it for me. Thanks Amber, I should have just pointed out, I think it would make sense that we all ask our questions first before going down some of the questions. Thank you for starting that way. So Jessica, yeah. Well I had the same question about the auditorium, so thank you for answering that. Drew and the whole team, I applaud your commitment to transparency and I understand that that actually creates more work for you. So I appreciate that you've taken that on this year. I also appreciate your commentary Drew at the end that we

095are putting supports in place that will facilitate better long-term planning so that we'll be able to look at a more holistic view in the future. I had a couple of fairly small questions because you guys really answered everything. Andrew, I noticed that there was $90,000 or so set aside for TimeClock software and hardware and it feels like in 2024, that's a thing we should almost be able to do with like an extensive software on people's phones. If we put that off for a year, is that something that potentially we could find a less expensive solution to? I'm looking towards Jeannie 'cause she might know the details more, but I will share what I do know. So we currently use TimeClock Plus, which is a system that integrates with Smarts, our existing financial software system. Envision

096our new platform has its own proprietary software. So the current system and the new financial system won't talk directly. There's also a need for us to update our TimeClocks, the physical things that we use for our staff to check in at each of our locations. So the $90,000 was both the software cost, the integration cost, and the actual physical hardware to replace our existing clock system. To answer your question about other alternative options, I mean I don't know that there's one that we've investigated deeply yet. The purpose for using or or planning to pursue time piece was because of that software integration that it's made by the new, the financial system so that things will be more efficient and automated going forward. I would just add two things to that. Like Envision does not have

097motivation to support other systems because they have their own and the second thing is, our current time collect system does have an app. It's widely used, but we can't require the app to be used. The hardware has to be there as well. I understand. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks Drew and Andrew. And as I was following along with the presentation and reviewing it before, one of the things was the overruns this year or the sort of misalignment between what we budgeted and what we're on track to spend. Sorry. Is there a sense that there are one or two primary drivers of that? Because it was hard to sort of spell out, okay, here's where the mismatch was, but I'd like to understand that to make sure we don't have that mismatch this year.

098Yeah, so there's the primary driver of the mismatch or misses in last year's process to accurately account for expected or anticipated expenditures in the current year is in the teacher aid line. So that was... I wrote to you about that, but that is an area that... that's the biggest chunk of that. You heard a couple of other examples tonight from safety, security, emergency management, infinite campus software and a couple of others. I feel, while I'm embarrassed about those misses in last year's process, I feel very positive about the work that has been done to get our arms around the budget because we made this transition to the new system. And my comment was not meant to embarrass anyone. Just being honest. Just to understand going into the next process. And Eric, I was curious as

099we, I think you said something that either I misheard or didn't understand. You were talking about 12 to one classes at the middle school level. We don't currently have any, do we? We do, our parallel English and math classes are actually 12 to one special classes. We also have the students who have moved up from our bridge program in Quaker Ridge that there are two additional sections of special class for that cohort of students. Okay. All right. Sorry, that was a misunderstanding on my part. And then in terms, Eric still, as we roll out more of an ICT option at the middle school, moving away from parallel, what's the plan for reviewing that? Are we gonna need sort of third party reviewers, like the ones Edgar was talking about? Or is that something that'll be

100reviewed internally? No, I think it would be reviewed internally certainly as far as getting feedback from teachers, students and families about their experience, looking at student data. It's really about giving students more opportunities to be educated in a regular education classroom while maintaining supports there and reducing our reliance on segregated class settings. So following another principle of special education that's enshrined in law's least restrictive environment. So we need to look to provide students with the appropriate educational supports in the least restrictive environment which is, think about it, the closer you get to a regular education classroom, the least restrictive you are, less pullouts, less segregation. That makes total sense to me. And finally, Edgar, in the version of the budget where we would consider reducing classroom book purchases, are there concerns about our ability to

101meet our diversity goals if we're not able to purchase sort of new books as those are more likely to kind of be in line with the EI initiatives? Well, a couple of things. I think, you know, as those around the board know, for the last several years, we've been really prioritizing and making sure that we're flooding our libraries with books that represent multiple perspectives and diversity. And I think we would continue to prioritize if we went forward in that area. I am somebody who loves to bring in lots and lots of books and we have been in the last several years. The reason I would even go to the edge of that is that we have been really making the libraries richer and richer in the last few years. And if we were to slow

102the pace of that, I do believe that students would get what they need. Is that my first choice? No, I wanna keep all my budget to be completely transparent. I appreciate that. Thank you all. That's all for me. Thank you. Yeah, a great presentation. Obviously, a lot to think about. My mic's on, yeah. So before we perhaps get into a deeper dive on some of the questions directly, I just wanted to make sure that I understood some of the information before we start talking about it. So the current version that has been presented to us, which is still over the cap, am I correct that it's about $2.15 million over the cap? Did I get that? That's the number? So am I correct that if 80% of the budget is pretty fixed in the sense

103that it's contractually driven by contracts that we have with, you know, it's people related salaries, that in order to get below the cap it would really require shaving a little over $2 million from that remaining 20%? In other words, that's where... Yes, if we don't eliminate positions. If we don't eliminate positions? Okay, so I just want to kind of, as we start trying to kind of debate and get our heads around the ability to, that's a lot of that dollars to get below the cap, right? That's a lot of shaving and it's not necessarily big across the board. Yes, theoretically one could cut staff, but the majority of the conversational will be focused on that other 20%. That's starting to, at least for me, highlight the challenge of getting under the budget in terms of

104the practicality of how we're gonna do this or what's involved. And I think, and maybe this comes at a different point in the discussion, but I know it's important because of the nature of the budget and the vote because at the end of the day, the community is going to weigh in that we educate the community as fully as possible, which I think this is certainly doing a great job of. But the one piece, again, I want to make sure I understand this, that if we were to propose over the cap and not succeed, I think it's important that the community understands what that means. It doesn't mean that we necessarily will continue, as I understand it with business as usual. Yes, you could do another vote, but if you don't get the approval you

105could theoretically have an austerity budget. Is that correct? So I would to just make sure that people understand what's at stake here. Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh it doesn't fail, that's okay. We have a pretty good system. We can just keep everything we have. It doesn't quite work that way. It drops down to an austerity budget, which I have to say I've never lived through that myself personally in Scarsdale. Maybe it happened, but I'm not aware of it so I'm not sure people understand what that means. In terms of the importance of coming to grips with some consensus. And even what the process is. Right. Just a little bit of context 'cause it's very important. So there are two opportunities for the community to vote on our budget. If it fails

106the first time, we can go out with a second budget and they have a second opportunity. If either after the first failure or certainly if it failed a second time, the district is forced to go to a contingent budget. A contingent budget, and in state finance and education law, there are restrictions on what can be included in that budget, limitations on equipment, administrative cost. But most notably is the tax cap changed the fact that the levy amount must increase by $0. And we have a situation where other revenue growth is not substantial. So we're talking about cuts to get to a cap, which reflects a significant, a fairly significant levy increase even at the cap. If we had a contingent budget, we'd even have to go much, much deeper than that. And that would be

107substantially impacting the 80% as you referenced and our programs that we've talked about this evening. Right. And we are compelled to kind of present what that would look like and we're not there tonight, but we would. Okay. Okay, so, right. I wasn't sure whether, you know, part of the methodology I should remember, but I don't whether at some point in our list of meetings that becomes clear to the community because as you say, it's not like we can keep going back there. You get two shots at it and the way my brain works is, let's say hypothetically the scenario is we agree we are going to take a shot at going over the cap and we agree how much that is obviously through discussion. Then the question is, if we're not successful, what is the

108next step? Well, the next that's a big decision. You may still wanna go over the cap, but you may wanna lower how much over the cap or you may want to go under the cap. But although I apologize if this is generating a lot of work, but I certainly would want to know the implications of each of those occurrences that if we fail people have to understand what's gonna happen next. But potentially obviously we can always keep revisiting that. But it's, you know... Potential impact to the whole system is pretty profound. The only reason I even thought of it, the community that did not pass their budget on the second round and I was reading things to cut out, you would necessarily, but it was more impactful than I had imagined. I tend to, I

109think the process is very comforting. The process is very transparent and very powerful and that we're getting a lot of information but you know, it's not until we get to these big questions that the rubber hits the road. And I just wanna, I hope we are gonna get into that because it's, you know, at the end of the day it's a vote. So the plan is to get to those discussions. But before we do that, we're just asking if people have clarifying questions about the information and then we will get into the heavy conversation. Yes. I have some clarifying questions. First of all, thank you guys so much for all of these presentations. I know the amount of time and effort that you've put in to try to get the budget lower and appreciate that.

110As we continue to dive deeper into these numbers. I just had a few questions. I'm gonna start with Edgar 'cause you're next to me. Just, I wanted to make sure I heard you correctly on 30, slide 37, we talked about furniture. You said 140 for high school classroom furniture and I thought you said that includes 80,000 for the A school furniture. And I just wanna make sure I understand, is the 140 including the 80,000 or is it in addition to the 140? It's inclusive. It's included. It's $60,000 of normal furniture refresh and then 80,000 for the A school. Okay, so it's 140 total. Okay, great. That's great. And then, sorry, just going down to my next thing. I do think it would be helpful, you know, at the end where you were talking about places

111to possibly cut, not ideally to have more of a line item. I know you and I were talking about this, but like how those different programs break down the consultant fees for each of those I think is valuable to see in the future possibly. And then for my other buddy on the side, Eric. So I just wanted to understand a little bit more about the middle school program. So I think it's, I wrote slide 46. So the plan is to continue the ICT program into seventh grade for next year, correct? Correct. And just so I understand, so the one mandated FTE for the middle school is to continue that program, not if we didn't continue the program and kept a parallel in seventh grade, would that one FTE still be mandated? So it is a

112combination. So we're looking with the addition and there is a delta in students leaving to students coming in which is rising the number of LRC costs. It is a combination. Certainly one of the driving factors in expanding the six models of co-teaching into the parallel program over the next couple of years is that we've solidified the houses that have the parallel program in it and all of the research points to, if you want effective co-teaching, you have to have pairs together. We typically run between one and two sections, usually towards two. So we solidified that there'll be two sections of parallel starting each year that's moving into the middle school, but it's replacing a one section eighth grade. So that's the majority of the sections plus an up in Learning Resource Center is also coming

113just from a number of kids that are coming, leaving eighth grade and coming in in sixth grade. So it's a bit of a combination. If we didn't move it up, I would have to go back and really re-look at the sections and how that looks in the parallel moving up. The issue is it wouldn't be that the kids who are currently in that program we would need to move the program up with. So wouldn't want to say, okay, you've had this program for one year, now we're gonna get rid of it. We would probably have to go back in sixth grade and go back to the original program that we had been in, it would be tough to tell the one group that has had that program in sixth grade now that they couldn't move

114forward using the same type of special education program. You'd be moving them from a less restrictive environment to a more restrictive environment. Yeah, okay, I understand that. And so you mentioned that that cutting, the extra FTE in the middle school would add extra workload onto the teachers. Can you expand on that a little? They would pick up additional sections of teaching than they would be this year. That's crowding out space for team meetings and other consultation with the teams. That's doable over a shorter period of time. But it does maintain the ability to focus in on moving the program forward. So less flexibility in their schedule? Much less flexibility. And then you mentioned that, sorry, you mentioned that currently there's a state mandate in terms of ICT courses for classes, but we, for best practices

115stay below that mandate. Is that correct? Yes. New York State caps the number of included students in a class at 12. On the elementary level we have class caps of 22 and 24. All of the research says you should maintain at least a 60% general education majority. If we were to put 12 in a 22 person class, we would have more special ed. students than we would have general ed. students. That's not a recipe for success in ICT nor is a 50% ratio. So functionally what I was saying is, we don't get to 12 'cause we follow the 60:40 mandate or the 60:40 best practice. I guess I was just trying to understand if we ended up getting a few new students in after the year started that we have a little bit of room.

116So it depends on the section. Like our elementary sections, we could have a 22 person class in kindergarten, in Fox Meadow and an 18 person class in Edgewood just because of the way thing, the same thing happens depending on how many ICT students we have. So depending on what grade we're talking about, but like the class caps, if on August 15th we close our sections, we have our sections set, in September, if we gain one or two and this has happened in the past, we gain and we go over the 60:40 mandate, we will continue that class at that mandate or at that ratio level. And then on the next year's cycle, adjust those numbers. I mean right now we have a, I think this is right, a K at Heathcote that's 50:50, not 60:40.

117But the total class size is 18. Right, right. I think it's also important to know that intra grade, if we have a an ICT section and if you are just above where the section break is, you have smaller classes. The closer you get to the section break the larger classes you have. If we do happen to have a small section overall class or grade, we will integrate, adjust. So there might be 20 or 21 kids in one class, 16 or 17 kids in the other class where, so that we don't have to break to another section. So we'll adjust it as much as we can. Now we can't have a 22 person class and a 14 person class, but within three or four students, we do adjust those things in order to make the space

118in our ICT sections. Thank you. Just a few more questions. This one was with athletics. Just because Ray, you noted there was a error in the projection of the coaching salaries for this year. Do we have any concerns about that being an error next year? Are we able to figure out where those errors occurred and? No, the error that we uncovered was that when the budget projections were made for the current year, several of the coaching positions for the spring were not yet appointed and those positions were inadvertently left out of the math calculation. So we have identified all the positions we intend to fund based on our current teams and we've projected those forward this year. So whether there's a person appointed or not this year, that position is being carried forward into the

119budget for next year. Thank you. All right, I think that's it. Thank you. Other questions from the board? Sure, I'll go. Thank you everybody for this really thorough presentation. I really appreciate it and thank you also to my fellow board members for asking such great questions so that there aren't so many left. So actually most of my questions were answered. Thank you, but just maybe one or two. To clarify even further Colleen's question about the ICT class in middle school. In elementary school, the class size norms, not the legal, you know, but the Scarsdale norms are at 22 and 24, what is it in the middle school? There's no specific cap. I'm going to turn over to Chris. 22 to 24. 22 to 24 and we feel reasonably confident that adding just the one ICT

120section in seventh grade would preserve that norm? Yes, it's not going to affect the overall class size in the middle school. We are going to maintain the mandates by having teachers teach additional section rather than pack a section. Okay, great. Just clarifying. Thank you. And I guess I had a question for Edgar as well. One of the things that, you know, I guess didn't make it to this round was the $150,000 advanced literacy item. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more. I know there's a lot of work going on now, like in Scarsdale but also in the education space about elementary school reading. Evidence-based and scientifically based practices. Is this that or? Well this is not about that per se. What happened is that the organization that for many

121years we were partnered with the teacher's college reading and writing project in which we get some of our materials and literacy around comprehension and fluency became kind of shifted at the beginning of last year to not being the co-creators of the units in collaboration with Heinemann the publisher, but strictly being a coaching organization in which they would go out and they would actually work with a variety of districts. And their sole purpose was really to be instructional coaches. And so as we go into a year in which we're really digging into strategic planning and really thinking about what we want to do, what we wanna really put our energies and our focus into, it made sense for us to take this time as an opportunity to really look inward, look at the resources that we

122have. A lot of these conversations have been happening at the elementary administrative and coordinator level where we've been looking at the best structures that we possibly can have, not just in literacy but in professional learning structures across the district. And we really saw this as an opportunity after having a year of working with them where it's great to have extra support, we're finding that it really does make sense for us to take a pause on having that organization from the outside come in and do some real looking inward and using those resources in a different way. Great, perfect. Thank you. I guess if I can keep going a little bit. For Jeannie, I really appreciate the fact that, you know, that it's kind of more a rollover budget for technology. Just reading a lot of

123stuff about what's been going on with technology in the area around, a lot of people seem to be concerned about like cybersecurity and stuff like that, ransomware stuff. Like do we feel like we're in a good place? Like maybe we've made those investments in the past so we don't need to make them now? Or do we feel comfortable about that kind of thing? Yeah, it's a complex answer. So we have, part of this budget includes an annual cybersecurity review. We just contracted with a vendor to do internal and external pen testing. The auditor process, the internal auditor process is also really helpful in identifying anything we need that we can address at that time. And the big part of the budget, I can't overemphasize enough that maintaining infrastructure, those are the big vulnerabilities when those

124pieces of hardware you forget about, I used the phone system as an example, you know, it sits there and you haven't replaced it in 15 years, which is not where we are. But as an example, if we let this go and it's not getting updates, it's just this giant hole in our network. And so you really see infrastructure as the biggest weaknesses. So if we continue to invest in that, but it's very top of mind for us and we really wanna make sure that all of the hardware that we bring in and all the software we bring in meets our standards to protect student data and faculty data, yeah. Thank you. I guess my last question would be on the athletics, the charter buses, like what is the process to decide like whether a team

125for a certain game gets a charter bus versus a school bus? If we cut what is proposed initially, will students be on school buses for hours at a time? I just don't have a sense of what that means from dollars to student experience. It's a great question. So a couple of years ago we realized that we have to reserve all of our buses in June, July in order to make sure we can get them because of the bus shortage. So we don't expect this to impact the actual transportation for any teams, but it's a way of accounting for all the buses we need early so that we have the money in place in case we do use them. Right, so we've been, I think we're gonna be, we're pretty on track for the amount that

126we know what we'll spend next year. It's just on how we account for that or make sure we have money available to reserve all the buses in advance. And we're not rooting against our teams for playoffs or anything like that? No, not at all. But like for this year, just to give a comparison, we reserve buses in excess of $150,000 or so but we don't even come close to using that but we need to make sure that they're in place. So I think we're in good shape. I don't think it's gonna affect any of our transportation needs. I agree, and I think when that budget was first set up, I think we were somewhere in the December timeframe and we were earlier in our maturity of understanding of what is happening in the athletic reservation

127space. I think as we've seen lots of pos getting canceled because rescheduling or not needed buses, that made us pretty comfortable being able to reduce this budget and have no student impact. Great, thank you. Any other board questions? Yeah, just very quickly and this will be quick. Thanks again. Just want to add my thanks to everyone else's thanks for all the hard work and transparency, which is great. I don't know that the community or everyone in the community realizes that the first proposed budget was really sort of a transparent effort to put out there what the needs, the felt needs were for the district as opposed to a fully baked and finalized proposal. I certainly had reactions from some people in community that were like, "how could this possibly be what you give us?" And

128I'm like, "wait, wait, we're discussing. It's okay." And this is a continued discussion and that's great and thank you for that. I did wanna note that at least with respect to what's been proposed as additional cuts to the budget, it's still a pretty big gap if we did all those things between what the tax gap would permit and what's on the table in front of us. Like in this presentation. Just rough math about a million I think at least. So just wanted to make sure people knew that. Okay, let me just go around one more time before I get to ask my questions. I just have a few questions. The first for Andrew, just so I make sure I understand. We reduced the ERS expenditure. Is that taken out from the expenditure side or the

129use of fund balance? Because I think we are using some fund balance for ERS and TRS. We still left the ERS appropriation of fund balance in the sources of funds to balance the budget. What we reduced is the expenditure line. And just a little clarification around that is we have several part-time staff who elect not to participate in the pension system therefore by their election we are not required to contribute towards that for them. So our initial estimate included all staff and we looked a bit closer and we were able to obtain those savings. Okay, great. Thank you. And I just have two quick questions for Jeannie. The first is, there was a line item that said school library automation. I'm just curious what that is. I forget which slide it was on. Is it

130rostering automation? I don't know. That's the library service catalog and the online posties services for all of our school libraries I believe. Yeah, if you can point out which slide it's on. It's 37. Thank you. Way back here. Yeah, it says school library automation movement of funds from technology to library accounts. So it might be an accounting change. I'm getting a nod from Lisa. It's just an accounting change. 37. So it actually falls under Edgar. So it is a BOCE service which seems like technology. Seems like technology 'cause it's on the lower Hudson Regional Information Centers schedule of services. But it essentially is a software that's used to manage all the library catalogs at all of our school buildings. And it is a charge through BOCES that previously was being, wanna make sure I got

131the change right previously was included in technology. So it's easy proxy. So when kids are on campus, it recognizes they're on campus. They don't have to log in, they have access to the databases without logging in. Yeah. It may have been accounted for in either Jeannie's area or in general educational instructional BOCES and we've put it now in the library area because that's where it belongs. Okay, thank you. I just had one other quick question. From the lease perspective, the one-to-one, do we have the option of changing for next fiscal year, any of that lease amount? Let's say we discussed and talked about changing one-to-one and K to two. Do we even have the ability to do that within a one year ramp? Or do we need more time for a lease to roll off?

132So just so I'm understanding clearly, so you're saying if we decided next year to just stop K as an example? Just as an example. Yeah, I'm just kind of curious if we can even, if it's even feasible to do that or if we're in a multi-year lease where a decision we make on that wouldn't actually hit our financial books for multiple years. Yeah, so we are in a four year lease. So if we rolled off one, we didn't do K next year for example, and I'm not committing to that. I'm just throwing it out as an example, which I honestly think would take a much bigger conversation with the kindergarten faculty to see if they wanted to do that. It would have an immediate hit that year, right? Like we would come off, you know,

133probably a little over $100,000. But at the same time, like there's so many demands on the infrastructure side that it would just slide right over. So like any savings that we have on the one-to-one side there's a strong, I have like a cookie monster image in my head, right? There's a strong appetite for that funding to be used for infrastructure. We're really underfunding infrastructure right now. We're on a shoestring per se budget and if we have any savings of one-to-one, we would apply it immediately to infrastructure. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Can I just say really quickly. Jeannie's budget has been one of the first ones that I've gotten into the detail on. And I have to say like, that seems to be one of the first areas of the budget over that timeline that I

134showed on the fund balance slide earlier that has really been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. And I think her note earlier on, more so on the software side, but like her budget has really gotten to the point where she is living kind of hand to mouth in the technology budget, whereas we've trimmed as much as we can from there. Just a food for thought in the technology conversation. No, I appreciate that. Could you put up your slide of questions Drew, but before we go to the next question, 'cause I think it will be a thorough discussion, I would suggest we take a seven minute break since we've been going for two hours, maybe even 10. Is that okay with everyone? All right, we'll be back in 10 minutes. Okay, I'm gonna give a

135little gavel so Ben knows that we're starting again. (gavel banging) We are back from our brief recess. So we've now heard the second presentation from the administration on the budget and the board had a chance to ask any clarifying questions about the deep dive into different areas today. And I think we'll move now into the second sub-bullet that Drew has up on the screen. If it's not on the screen and you're following along at home, it's on slide 75 about what the board's tolerance is regarding the tax cap. I'd also like to add in this another bullet that's farther down, but I think goes hand in hand with this discussion about our feeling of use of fund balance. They are intertwined, you know, just those two pieces. Just to set the stage for anybody watching

136at home on where we are at the moment. So looking at the start of the presentation, there was about a million dollars of reductions or deferrals or not doing items, which brought us down to about $2 million over the tax cap. There are three slides, slides 72, 73, 74 that Jim referenced earlier, which would bring the budget down if we accepted all those but those are partly up for discussion. Those start to get into some of the programmatic aspects that we talked about that would bring the budget down in about another million, which would still leave us about a million dollars over the tax cap. So I think it's important that the board have this discussion and give some guidance a discussion with the administration and give Drew, Andrew and team some guidance on where

137we'd like to go for our next meeting. The one thing I'll add is we use the term tax cap a lot. I think we hear that term a lot from the community. I do, for me personally, I think it's important to just think it's clearly an important number. It does require a higher vote threshold, but I think we should also think about talking in terms of just where we want the budget to be vis-a-vis the value that we're looking for. The tax cap is a number that is given to us. We do not determine that. I think it is this board to talk about what is that budget increase, obviously keeping the tax cap in mind. So with that, I'll open it up to my fellow board members if they have any comments they would

138like to share or perspectives. Yeah, so I'll just share a few perspectives if that's okay. So I certainly do recall, you know, I hate to bring it up, but I do recall the last time the district exceeded the cap. It's only been one time in its initial proposed budget and that budget was defeated. And I personally supported that budget even though it was over the cap because I don't really believe that the tax cap is really something that's for the benefit of students. It's a political thing and I still believe that. However, I recognize that we live in a community where people are very concerned about our conduct as stewards of their tax dollars. We live in a community where many of us don't have kids in schools. We live in a community where not

139all of us are very wealthy or have a lot of income that we feel we can easily spend. And so there's a lot of other considerations, not just, gee, is the tax cap fair? Is it right? Should it ever have been passed? Those things out of our hands. We have to deal with it as it is. In my experience, unfortunately the one time we tried to do that, I say we, the district tried to do that. It didn't work out. Ultimately a budget was passed. It was not an austerity budget if I recall, but it was one in which a lot of last minute things had to be done to get the majority vote needed to pass the budget and they were done. But it's just, I just say that because I don't think we

140should be cavalier about this. I'm not saying we are cavalier, but we should resist the temptation to be cavalier. You know, just because we intellectually can see that the tax cap is somewhat of in position from above, not a ground up thing about what the school needs. We should still resist a temptation to think okay, therefore, intellectually we should sort of think beyond it because it is a very real thing that we have to contend with come the vote time that I've seen personally how it plays out, how it can play out. And so my personal view and not the board's view, obviously just my personal view is that I have tolerance for exceeding the tax cap. I've always had that tolerance as a citizen and as a board member. But I'm extremely, extremely reluctant

141to put that to the test unless we absolutely have to. And part of the reason for that is because of all the things I just mentioned. And another reason for that is because we have future years to think about future expenses which will grow. We've heard about the FTEs on special education growing over time. This decision will be before us again and again and again I think over the next 10 years and how we treat it now and how careful you are about treating it now is going to be ingrained in the minds of our citizens and those who vote on this throughout that entire period of time. So I think it's just extremely important for us to take this responsibility with utmost seriousness and exceed it if we must, but not do so lightly.

142I'm not suggesting we are inclined to do so lightly, but just to resist any inclination to do so lightly. Thanks Jim and I'll just add, as people are sharing their comments, how we talk about it now I think is linked to the next bullet, which is, which we'll talk about tonight is if we feel we need to see to discuss reductions including the ones on the three slides. I think this overarching question of how people feel will help us that with that discussion on how much we need to talk about. So just for people to keep that perspective in mind. Anybody else like to share? Yeah, Colleen. I'll go next. I feel like I'm in the similar view as Jim. I don't know if it's realistic for us to get underneath the tax cap, but

143I think we need to look closely to see how close we can get to the tax cap at this point. And I think it would be extremely helpful to look at these next set of possible reduced expenditures in a more detailed fashion to really understand, how a cost, the price to cut these out, I guess on our students and on our community. And I think the community needs to see that as well. If we are going to try to pass this next budget, then I think we owe it to them to look at every line item in a more detailed fashion. And so I don't feel comfortable right now leaving the budget as is because I feel like I don't know enough about the items listed on slide 72, 73 and 74. And I think

144it would be helpful for me to have a little bit more information on that. Thank you. Bob. I think my own personal observation is what I'd like to see honestly, I guess is okay, what I'd like to see is, I guess in my mind it's either over the tax cap or under it. So to have it a little bit over or a little bit more over is kind of semantics because people are going to either... Well, what I mean by that is I think people are gonna react. I mean, we're looking at this in a lot of detail and we're getting the nuance, which I think is very, very important. I'm not so sure in terms of going out to the public and marketing it, which is what we're gonna have to do in selling

145it. It's gonna be so easy. So I guess I would like to see what an under the tax cap would be if at the end of the day we feel we're not willing to risk, which we obviously haven't reached that point yet. And I'm not saying... I am someone personally who's always voted for the budget, because to me that's a very, very, very high priority. But these are different times, you know, we have heard comments online or whatever about concerns about it. So it's gonna be, it's a different world now. I was just thinking we don't have a newspaper to talk about it publicly, right? So we're gonna have to come up with some other ways. I think we've had the luxury, the past few years of dipping into our fund balance and being able

146to avoid going over the tax cap. I know I'm jumping ahead, but I don't know if we have that luxury anymore based on what Andrew's telling us. So I think I have a very low tolerance for exceeding the cap. But if we need to, then I think I have to firmly believe that what we're doing is what we have to do. You know, and as we go through, I don't know how much detail I need, but when I look at some of the proposals for just this first potential round of cuts, I still have questions. I'd like to engage my fellow board members in discussion about those items because I don't necessarily think I could support cutting all of those. I could see keeping them and I could see having to exceed the cap for

147some of those items. But I'd really want to be confident that what we're proposing is what's best and what's needed. You know, I even think about some of these reductions in radios for the buses on the safety committee. And I think, is that where we should cut $25,000? I'm not sure if that was the right amount. So I think I wanna be very thoughtful about anything that we proposed, if we are going to try to get under the cap and if we have to go over, I think that's a point we crossed, but I wanna be able to be confident about why we're going over. Thanks, Jessica. I agree with that sentiment, Amber. I think last year the same board engaged with Drew and the administration in an incredibly thoughtful process that really weeded out

148particular expenditures and kind of weighed exactly what the priorities of the district were in forming the budget. And I think that that was a very valuable process. I thought that was a great process. And you know, I do think that this year the situation is different in a way that might merit us going over the cap, but I want to be equally mindful of setting the budget and how we do that and really understand some of the, in the weeds issues, how many students are gonna be impacted and in what way by each of these changes, how many faculty will be impacted? We have had the luxury of not... We have often had the luxury of not being a district that, for example, puts a burden on our teachers to furnish or provide books fully

149to their own classrooms. You know, obviously some teachers choose to invest in their classrooms in that way, but we have provided a great base level. I certainly don't wanna put our faculty in a position where they feel like they need to be out there, funding classrooms for example. That's one small type of concern I have with the budget that is really bare bones. So I think we need to think through line by line the whole budget at this point. Thank you. Is it my turn? Okay, great, thanks. I guess to state the obvious, this is a very tough budget and we have some tough conversations to have decisions to make. What is a want versus a need? Deciding what can be deferred and at what costs to our students, their lived experience. Where is the

150line? I think we're all grappling with that question. Who gets to make that question? Does answer that question and does Albany get to decide? I hope that we as a community make that decision together, and not just look at some arbitrary number that is very flawed. It doesn't take into consideration inflation, which we've experienced the last few years beyond 2%. I think that's a big reason why we're here. And that being said, even though I think I don't wanna be beholden to a number, I think we have a responsibility as board members and administrators to look at every budget line and be able to defend any expenditure. I think, you know, even though I appreciate all the work and there's been so much work that went into this, to come up with a budget that

151saves as much money as we can, I hope that we can still continue this work to try to find ways to get the budget down. And I appreciate the conversation. I hope we stay student focused in all of our discussions, which I think we are. But you know, in the talking of dollars and cents, I hope we remember that these are our students. Thank you, I'll add my comments. I think from a programmatic and educational standpoint, this is an excellent budget that's being proposed to us. It delivers a lot of services to our students. It continues delivering services we've talked about over the years and is very thoughtful. My comments will focus more on the financial side and for me, it's even more than the tax cap itself. I agree with what Suzie said. This

152has just been handed to us and Albany making the decision on what number we're talking to. But I think back to our discussion of last year when we appropriated a larger amount of fund balance than we had done in the past. And at that time that discussion was, well let's do this. There's some one year anomalies. We wanna maintain all of our services, all of our programs, and that we would think about it again. Well, we're here a year later and not for any reason of anyone at this table. A lot of it's out of our control. But we're talking about a bigger hit to fund balance and using a lot of fund balance, even if we get to the cap. And I just worry about the long term sustainability of that path going forward.

153You know, we have a number of risks out of our control in the coming years. So we, at the moment, Drew talked about this before, have $500,000 reduction in state aid from the governor. We are working very hard with Shelly May and Amy Paul and our legislators as many other districts, half of New York State school districts lost state aid this year. We are trying to get it back. We will not know by the end of this budget whether it's back If we do not get it back, that is only 50% of the proposed reduction from the governor. We could be looking at another $500,000 reduction next year. We are in a period of high interest rates. There's pros and cons to that. It is helpful from an interest income perspective if rates decline, that

154could be a potential pressure on our revenue. We have seen very high amounts of health insurance, not just us, every school district, every employer has. We, again, we hope that it was a one year anomaly, but we have now seen a trend, hopefully it turns or we have to understand the risks ahead of us. We saw an increase in our TRS and our ERS rates in a period where the stock market has done well. If there's a stock market decline, we could see a big increase in those areas because New York State is a prudent financial in this area and fully funds pensions in New York, unlike many other states. I believe it's the right thing to do. But that means that there could be cost to us. And of course we talked a lot

155about special education. We think we are at a steady state, but we don't know that, we could see an increase in classifications and mandated services. So that's just some examples of things that keep me up at night. I know they keep up a lot of people at this table at night and so it's the struggle that I have. And Jim said something similar earlier about, what about next year and the year after. If we go to the community and ask for a tax cap override this year, is there what position? And we fund all this, where will we be next year? Will the community have the appetite to do that again? The longer we take, the longer we keep deferring certain items, we have deferred items, the bigger the challenge becomes. So I do think

156we have some tough discussions, in my opinion for this year. Again, from a programmatic standpoint, I think it's a wonderful budget. I support it fully. I just think there's some financial realities we have to face. So let me pause there and just ask before we sort of... I envision us sort of now going to the next part about talking about those slides and those three sides of potential reductions. I did hear consensus from the board we need to talk about potential reductions. They are in front of us. I thought we could talk about them. But before we do that, I want to ask Drew or Andrew if you have questions of the board or want to hear more discussion. I'll say a few things. I'll give Andrew a chance to share whatever he's thinking. I

157wanna start by two things. One, I just want to acknowledge you all start by appreciating our work and we appreciate that, not everyone has to say that, you all do. And thank you. It's nice to know your comments start with appreciation for the work and acknowledgement that it's challenging. The second point is absolutely, the points you're making about the out years and the risk and even the history of the one tax over the tax levy budget that was proposed. Absolutely all of those things are keeping us up at night. And I've actually thought about little else recently. I did not imagine my first budget in my first full year as superintendent was gonna be one that had to potentially be in excess of the tax levy and require the super majority vote. Not part of

158the design. I also appreciate that you've recognized that we're trying to be as transparent as possible and give as much information as possible. And we can in fact give a little bit more detail to those three slides. I'll give Andrew a chance to talk next. Before doing that, I do want to kind of again, revisit the ideas, the concepts behind where our costs lie because the work of... I'll just be blunt, we could, Suzie mentioned looking at every line in the budget, right? Absolutely. And we've provided you with a line item budget. There are sort of overarching ideas that explain why we kind of do those things the way they do. And I would want to make sure you understand kind of those things and I'm thinking out loud that sharing with you some of

159those big, big ideas. I'll give an example. You know, much of our professional development, I mean, you can see all the costs of our professional development. We believe deeply in it. We think it's the key strategy next to salary that helps us recruit and retain great educators. A good chunk of it is contractually mandated. And actually, we can't change if we wanted to. And the pieces that we do totally have, you know, during Edgar's budget and have that, we use to keep reflecting, refining, changing our curriculum and our approaches and pushing that work forward. The fear with looking at that as a cost change center to lower the budget is that that's gone forever. That actually literally changes the nature of the adult work here in Scarsdale. I just wanna be clear about that and

160that those types of things would be what we're... some of those things would be things that we're talking about said another way. We're not gonna reduce 2.1 more million more dollars out of this budget with textbooks and technology and deferred school bus purchases. That would be cutting our nose off to spite our face. Did I say that right? Yeah. So just as a framing comment. Andrew, and I don't mean you don't have to say anything. No, no, first let me echo Drew's gratitude. I mean, the recognition of the work that's been done by several of folks you've heard from tonight as well as folks behind the scenes that sit quietly and watch this is integral into getting the the right information to the board so you can make an informed decision. And it is hard

161work. I think to Drew's point, the cuts we listed right are purposefully kind of general because there's gonna be a lot of flexibility we're gonna need if we are going to make those types of reductions and certainly if we're gonna make even further to get to the cap. So the time spent focused on line items might be wasted in terms of really trying to get to the big picture. And we've reaffirmed it in our earlier budget presentations and even again tonight, what is core to the values of this institution. And I think Drew and I have spent a lot of time talking about, well how do we not alter that but yet try to meet this challenging crossroads we're at. And I too did not anticipate being here my first year in my role. But

162I think it is accumulation of years of kind of trend that I shared some of that with you today. to really not have line item direction, but much more have some philosophical direction because that would allow us to do a lot of scenario and research and none of which will be fun. But it'll certainly give us the flexibility to come back seven days from today with some more meaningful adjustments. I just, I have a comment and a question about that. First, my comment, I don't know if this will make us feel any better, but I think the context is important if anybody's wondering. Is this a Scarsdale issue? Is it something we did here that has got us to this point? I just wanna let everybody know that every school district around Westchester that is

163comparable to us that I've looked at is facing the same question. Some have already announced they will be going over the cap and appropriating a significant amount of fund balance. Some are, they don't meet on Monday, they meet other days of the week, are meeting this week and have the same questions in their presentations about do we wanna do these programs or do we wanna cut expenses. A lot of this is out of our control and a lot of this is the tax cap over, it's now been about 10 years, I believe, a little bit catching up, catching up to districts. So I just wanted to put that out there for everybody to have that context. We're not alone. I dunno if that should make us feel better or worse, but we're not alone here.

164So one just question for Andrew and Drew, when you say it would be more helpful to have general guidance and direction, does that also apply to the three slides that you've put forward? Do you want us to give some feedback on those particular slides? Yeah, yeah, sure. We put those out there and we can give detail on what those are. Let me just go back to put these up. So it seemed this first slide, the remaining proposed positions, it seemed silly and almost disingenuous not to have a discussion about positions that don't exist yet in the district. I don't know how we could be honest with ourselves and not talk about this even as I don't wanna look at Eric as mountains of work, have added to his area of leadership leadership position to unclog

165a bottleneck of decision making that's real. And we've talked about that and it's practical, but I don't know how we don't talk about that. So that one to me is, I mean the money's straightforward. It is what it is, that's a quarter million dollars of positions we know. I feel confident saying, I think the board understands why we've asked for them. I think the board understands what gets accomplished if we do them and then what we don't do if it's not there. That may be a false assumption. So I don't know how much time we need to spend going into detail on this. It's just about how you feel about those. In terms of these things, so the reason these particular let's take the curriculum piece. You know, the kinds of conversations we have are,

166I'm gonna be totally blunt about this. I went to Edgar and I said, "if you had to cut half a million dollars from your budget, what would you do? What is the least painful of some of these things?" And these are three of the items that are on that list. It's not items we want to do. We think the arts and enrichment piece that is reflected there is really a joy for our students. It allows us to do some things that really speak to the whole child and that other places actually frankly don't do. So the dollar amounts we're talking about there, I don't know if you can pull that out quickly, Edgar, but we're talking about 60, $70,000. $75,000 for the arts and aesthetic consultants. So that's an example of one of those things.

167So our program improvement budget is a budget we control and it funds summer work for teachers that we shape collaboratively by level based on strategic plan priorities and other priorities. That total budget is in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. And in this particular thing that we looked at 100,000, I don't think we had... Yeah, about $100,000 of reductions there. That meaningfully changes what we can accomplish. The impact of that is rate of change and volume of priorities. So when we're trying to shift toward our wide priorities or look toward performance-based assessment, which is really important, it's a priority that you will see in the strategic priorities. Just haven't gone public with that yet. I mean, Edgar's been talking about it already. Those things would, it's not reasonable to ask for those things to

168change fast if we don't provide the time and the support to educators to learn together to understand what it means, apply it to their curriculum and their kids. So why did we pick that? It's summer, it's not September to June. There's a logic to that which is it stays away from the absolute core at least for a little while until we don't have the resources to do it. Does that make sense? The elementary classroom book purchase that was $25,000. Varsity B. I'm sorry, can you just go back to that? Out of what? What's the? Of the total book budget? Yeah, Edgar, can you speak to that? That's the total amount. So Edgar has, from his office, that amount of money to accelerate those types of purchases. There are building based textbook budgets that exist for

169each building. That's where that work would need to be accomplished now. So that's 100% of his budget, but leaves the building based, that's connected to student enrollment. There's an allocation to student enrollment. And then Ray, the Varsity B? And how much transportation's built in there? I think we estimated like 100,000 in that. So again, so why do you put that, why do we put that on a list? So we run a really, really robust athletic program with opportunities for lots of students. Varsity B games, frankly are hard to schedule because no other, very few other school districts have a Varsity B team and their varsity teams wanna play our varsity A team. That's really what that's about. So it would reduce opportunities for kids and we picked that because it's a challenge to run that

170program. Those are my words. I'm not speaking for Ray. He would probably defend that much more vigorously. And I believe in the sports program deeply and have a child who's a varsity athlete and it's not that, it's just that that's the kind of thing that we look at. So let me pause there. Do you want the board to give you, would it be helpful? I think it would be helpful for the board to get feedback on any of these particular items. I mean, these are before us. I think people have questions. Feel free to ask questions, but this is the time. Might as well have the discussion while it's before us. Agreed. Does anyone want to share anything on, do you wanna do the third slide? Oh yeah. Reductions first actually? Sure, we can do

171that. Why don't we do that? I'm not sure what to say here. So, the idea of a 10% materials and supplies reduction is arbitrary. Give me a second to pull up the... So that is for instructional supplies, $138,667 for non-instructional supplies, that's $125,670. So combined that is 264,000 of that reduction. $200,000 in furniture reductions. So the part in Edgar's budget wasn't the total district-wide furniture allocation. That was a high school ask. So we would reduce that and basically leave, Edgar that leaves some money in the budget, right? For sort of really essential replacements, desks that are broken and things like that and not moving forward or flexible furniture goals and desires and so forth. Jeannie, the non-instructional IT purchases. That would be moving from a four year to a five year cycle for all administrative

172and support staff desktops and whatnot. So we would push those out to a longer lifespan. Yeah. And then the wifi expansion we talked about, I think that is, give me a second to find that. 25,000, the wifi, slowing down that is a $25,000 reduction. Thank you for both going through all those and for being very transparent about the thought process and how you got there. And let me open up to board members for any feedback for the administration. Just a question about the arts consultants, is that specifically in a building or in a grade level or what exactly is that? It can be, it is district-wide. So it would be something that would be, for example, Alvin Ailey is a group that we've organized and had them come in and do programs with the high

173school, but also the middle school, the Harlem Shakespeare is new. We've had somebody come in, do something related to the history of jazz and went to every single one of the elementary schools. It isn't something generally that just happens in one elementary school. Those kind of things are things that are generally PTA funded or part of the building budget. The benefit of it is, it's something that we can create as a cohesive arts experience across a grade or a level. Thank you. And the other question I had is with respect to the 10% material and supply reduction, I understand it's arbitrary, but is there a sense that although arbitrary 10% is a reduction that would not drastically upend the sort of function of the classroom in some way, I'm just trying to understand like where

174the line is between arbitrary and like operations are impacted. It's hard. So my answer, and Andrew has some thoughts on this too, it's hard to know exactly where that line is. This is very much quality of life and issue. Like what I would imagine is that we might not be able to anticipate the impact until it happens. And then it's a high level of frustration for the classroom teacher. At that moment around that thing that they thought they could count on, that suddenly they realized not because it wasn't, thoughtfully done necessarily, but they didn't need to think about it until that moment. That's kind of the gestalt of it for me. Yeah, I think we did increase the per people allocations for 2% because these are the types of things that over the last several

175years have seen inflation impact, but we've not given them increases, so we took the difficult decision to start a budget process by increasing those allocations. I think yeah, to Drew's point, some of the things that Edgar's able to make happen and even our building principles, it's because we have the flexibility in these numbers to be reactive to needs as they arise. Whereas we're talking now about budgeting for 12 to 18 months from now. It's gonna make a quality of life change as Drew mentioned to the experience in the short term. There might be some flavors that can be operated here. This year we had as reveal is getting rolled out, the LRC have used different types of supplemental math materials and they have found one that aligns much more perfectly to reveal. Those are the

176types of intra-year requests that come up with this that will be less doable on the moment. You'll really need to plan out what are we also getting rid of that will supplant that rather than being able to take on those types of purchases right away. That's the flavor I think of the things throughout the year that teachers will have been used to being able to say, "this is really impactful for these kids right now. Could we go in this direction?" And we can sometimes say yes to. Obviously, those are vetted through numerous channels, but those are the types of things that we'll have to say, we'll need to plan for it for next year or we may not be able to do this. Ron. Were you done Jim? Oh, I have one other question, which

177is I don't believe, and I don't, at least I don't see in terms of the reductions, anything that's directed to the physical plant improvement projects, things of that sort. Is that because those are not impactful of the cap that those weren't really looked at? So on the supply side, some of those supplies reductions, would be affecting the capital, the facilities department reducing some of the work they'd be able to do in-house. I think what we're finding though is we don't want to allow our building's existing conditions to deteriorate any further. So in the capital line, we've put forward things that we feel in the short term are meaningful kind of preservation protection type requests, whereas larger, more significant kind of programmatic driven requests have been deferred in this budget. Those are for future conversations perhaps.

178So that's why we haven't put those reductions in there. To your point, Jim, yes, if we did take some of those items that are in the budget and reduce them, it lowers the levy, that it does help with the tax levy. What it also does in many cases is in those instances would be to lower the tax cap. So depending on some of the guidance that we receive from the board tonight would be helpful. It is the important thing to get a closer to or below the cap or is bringing the tax levy down the important discussion and being comfortable with the fact that we would perhaps still need a 60% majority. That is an option as well. And if I need to clarify that in any way, please ask a follow up. Yeah, well,

179I mean, one of the things that certainly I'm sitting here thinking about is, and I really find some of Drew's remarks particularly helpful about what is core, in other words, what constitutes the core and piggybacking a little bit on Jim's comment, I am concerned about creating a core that is not sustainable. In other words, creating maybe a level of expectation about what we can do not only for next year, which maybe we can figure out, but it's creating a pattern, right? To Ron's point, every year these things have to be maintained. And the question is, are we creating a core that is sustainable? I would like to think we are, I hope we are, but I don't know, maybe the nature of the funding through the state, some of the reality of the politics is

180making us step back and think, yes, this has been core, but maybe this is like a controversial remark, but say adding the additional statistical compute calculus program, which personally I love the idea of it and I support it. Yet, are we creating expectations or creating opportunities that we just can't afford, forever and ever because it's not only hiring them for next year, but obviously we're gonna keep, it's part of now the baseline. So I'm struggling with that. In other words, what is core and are there things that we need to maybe readjust? I hope, again, I sincerely hope not, but the numbers make me pause that the amount of money we're talking about is not just cutting off 10 or $20,000 on books. These are big swatches of dollars if we decide to go under

181the cap and if they do it one year, can we real realistically expect them to do it the next year and the next year and the next year? I don't know. It's not certainly the pattern that Scarsdale has had in the past, as Jim pointed out the one instance that it didn't fly. So I think maybe we do need to talk about more of some of these things that it's not a matter of do we want it. Yes, we want it, but can we afford it, right? I think we want everything. There's nothing here I don't want, but can we afford it? Amber. Yeah, please. I see your point, Bob. But you know, when I look at some of the proposed positions that we're talking about potentially not including, and one that jumps out at

182me is the special education administrator. We have that slide from Eric, which talks about all the positions that we're likely going to have to fund over the next few years. And it seems like while we need to make a decision about this year, we need to be thoughtful about the future as well. So looking at that, that one gives me pause on that side in terms of removing that from the list because to my point, if we are over the cap, I wanna be able to say we're over the cap for strong reasons. And to me, that's a strong reason to be over the cap to say that we've looked forward this many years that our special education plan and this makes sense. And so that's why we're talking about adding an administrator this year.

183The other item that kind of gave me a little pause was on the other side, I understand the challenges of Varsity B teams that does feel like direct impact to students and I mean, there's direct impact to students, I guess there's impact to students in all of these. But that one struck me, when I asked about what options there were for those students, they're kids that are not going to be able to play. It's not just that they won't have a new manipulative in math or that they won't have the newest books. There are children that will not be accommodated on teams. That gives me pause as well. Suzie. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate and support it, what Amber said. Those were the two things that stuck out to me the most on these

184three slides as well. That special ed. administrator wasn't asked last year and was deferred, but I don't think realistically we can defer it anymore. I think the Varsity B teams, we've been so focused on mental health the last few years and having being a part of a team, having something to do after school is so vital for our children's mental health. And it's also healthy, right? Like, they're doing activities, physical activity as well. And I don't think that's something that our community would wanna give up. That's not who we are as Scarsdale. Yeah. Jessica, please. So I'm aligned with those two items as well. I had one other thought on the Varsity B teams. I noticed that we currently have five girls, Varsity B teams, I think three boys, Varsity B teams. So again, I

185would just worry about the elimination of Varsity B as being seen as an equitable opportunity for kids, for students and I would worry about particularly impacting girls' sports. I also wanted to reiterate the point that Suzie and Amber had made about the special education position. But I wanted to clarify, Eric, which position was it? Or is it both that were asked for last year and deferred, the special ed. clerical or the special ed. administrator? The administrator, the clerical is, the request for a clerical is an $8,000 expense, which is moving a 10 month clerk to a 12 month clerk. $8,000 is a difference between, we bring in a summer intern to do a number of file maintenance, a lot of file maintenance work that would be subsumed by the clerk, but also the clerk would

186do additional things that they would do during the normal year over the summer. The special education administrator, and just so everybody knows what it looks like in the budget is actually the hiring of a CPSE, CSE chairperson which is a teacher on assignment and the elevation of one internal person to that administration role. So the new position is the administrator. The hiring will most likely be for a teacher on a special assignment as a CSE chair, just 'cause it folds up into the process. And the cost that you're seeing there, the 185 cost is the total of whatever increase the administration position would have, plus the cost of the CPSE chair. Thank you for that clarification. Are there specific comments about those three slides? I'll share my perspective. I mean, I think, sorry, I just

187wanna go back to them. I think we have to find ways to reduce expenses. I think this is a fine place to start. The specific ones I'm open to, I hear some board members saying we should keep the special education administrator. I'm personally open to discussing that. I mean, the, the one thing I would want to add though, personally, I don't quite know how we're gonna fund eight to 13 new special education FTEs to be just really candid. That doesn't include any additional faculty and staff or any other aspect of our schools over the next four years. I understand the need, I totally get it. I've been on this board as we've been rolling this out, just being honest with this group. I don't understand how we do that. And it's the same with... So

188I understand the need if we are doing that with this administrator, but I'm struggling to understand how that looks without then being back in a similar place year after year with our budget. So I want to put that out there. I don't need an answer at this moment because I know that's a weighty question. I just wanted to state that. And in terms of the half FT for high school math, I guess, maybe Ken has already thought about this and his team, but if financial literacy and AT multivariate calculus are really demands, what would it look like to ask an existing faculty member to take those classes? Is that feasible? Not feasible. What's the trade off to do that? And again, I don't know that you have to answer that this second, That one I

189can. Oh, okay. I mean I think, so there's no real direct precedent for that. The only comparable or tangentially related thing would be we have had situations where someone has gone out on medical leave and really the feasibility of finding a qualified teacher in a short timeframe is not there. We have paid high school teachers to teach an extra period to do that. That is completely an ask that they can say no to. They have no requirement to do that. It would not make a lot of sense to me to build a new elective offering on the premise that we are dependent upon a teacher accepting an extra assignment. It's just not a good practice. I understand that. What I'm really trying to ask is finding a math class that we swap for these. Oh,

190I totally misunderstood your question. I'm sorry. No, I actually really appreciate that information 'cause I didn't even think about that way of thinking about it. And this is the place we're at. But I'm saying looking at, it would be starting with the assumption that we can deliver a set number of courses and if these are two courses that are in demand deciding, we've been very fortunate here to be able to add programming. And what I'm really saying is we might be at a place where we now have to prioritize programming if we wanted something new. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. Like, I understand the frame better what you said. I don't want this answer to sound like I'm putting words in Ken's mouth. He may have a totally different answer than this, but I

191don't think the practice we would promote is to create something new at the expense of something that exists unless it's driven directly by student demand and interest. In other words, if there's waning interest in something, that's the time to do the new thing. That is not the case in this proposal. The multi-variable calculus, for example, is a need of 12 or less kids which is great, appreciate that. However, I would not close a section of a different math class and raise class size above 30 in the other sections, which is what would happen to do that. Something comparable would happen, that I don't think that's a prudent choice personally. Okay, no, that's really helpful. I appreciate that. So, I'm very open to different ideas, but my overarching view is we can't utilize this level of

192fund balance and this level of expense. So, after we go through these, I don't know whether you want feedback on other ideas or you'll come back to us. But I just put that out there. Varsity B, I would like to find a way to maintain this only, well not only but for the reasons that Amber and Suzie talked about, this is directly impacting to students. If there was a way to look and see what those students are also doing, I just want to make sure that those are students that have extracurricular experiences. We've talked about this over the last several years about mental health, about making sure every student in our high school is participating in some kind of non-academic extracurricular for health and wellness. So let me pause there. I think everybody gave you

193feedback. Do you want to talk about other general ideas or would you rather- Let me ask you this question. Would you rather us start to give you more ideas or do you want to come back to the board from the administration side? So I'm gonna play back part of what I heard. Yeah. I totally understand all of it, so please, this is not a judgment at all. It's just an observation of kind of playing back what I think I heard. At least some of you support the special ed. administrator position staying in, right? So that maybe comes off as a potential reduction and there's wide support for Varsity B for all reasons that I suggest. So we're at the need of 300,000 in different ideas than that idea, right? We could do this 24 hours

194a day for the next two weeks and still not have $2.1 million in additional reductions. And I just picked that number 'cause that gets to the tax cap. And I know that's not what you've said, I'm not trying to put those words in your mouth, but the challenge for us is when we put out a list of ideas that we think are the right ideas and you come back and say, "not that one, keep this one." I don't know how we accomplish a thing. I think the best thing I can do and we can do right now is to try to convey the following. The ideas that really don't touch students in ways that will be notice, like really noticeable, are minimal and at best they're 20% of our budget, right? But a good chunk

195of those things, it's not really prudent to do because we need to keep our facilities up. We dig ourselves an even deeper hole. You know, just as an example, I think if we don't replace a couple of school buses, I definitely don't want to be in the position of saying we actually can't transport kids to school on one day 'cause we have two buses down and we haven't done the job. Like, so I think you have to trust us that some of those things that are tempting because they're big items to pull that we'll bring forward anything we really think we can prudently live without for a year. And I'm not guaranteeing there's anything in that list, but I think Andrew, can we commit to trying to do that and come forward with those, right?

196But there's no way to do this without touching staff. I don't see it. So here are some of the other ideas we threw around that's not new staff. So you saw $1.2 million in security, safety, security and emergency management. The biggest chunk of that is our safety school monitors. We start school monitors at 7:00 AM at our elementary schools because we have morning activities that take place there where kids come into the building. We don't have to do that. We could have the teacher open the door to run rehearsal and not have that layer, like that doesn't touch the classroom. Maybe that's $25,000 worth of savings. Maybe we don't do anything on Sundays in the school that require a safety monitor. Like those are the kinds of things we as educators go to. But we

197think the community expects that of we arrived at that because we think the community expects that. So that's an item we put on the list. You probably would say don't touch that and here we go again. We're back at okay, I don't know how to do those things and put those things out without talking about people. Every 10 teacher aides, $250,000. We could do that. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I wanna clarify something because I know Amber and Jessica and Suzie felt strongly about not cutting the supervisor position and about the Varsity B, but I'd really be interested if the board is comfortable for a hand raise about who agrees with them or who thinks those things should be on the table, because that's three of you and there's seven of us. So

198I just want to get a sense of where we are on those two things. Is that okay? Can I add? I'm gonna answer your question, but I wanna have a say something beforehand. Here's how I'm viewing this process. You have gone through a very rigorous internal debate verbally and personally to come up with a list of items. I'm sitting here and I 100% by the way trust your judgment. So in my humble opinion, if you think those things we can live without then I would say go for it. Meaning, I believe- I proposed a budget that doesn't have these things eliminated. But we're now getting into reality. We're now getting into the reality. I think. maybe we're not, maybe we're not. So I think it's great that we comment and I have my thoughts as

199I'm sitting here, but at the end of the day, just like you went to Edgar and said, "how would you cut out $100,000?" I said half a million. Or half a million, right? And he went through whatever, you know, he gasped and then he did whatever he did. And he debated and he knows the nuance of it. I don't know the nuance. He wasn't able to get to half a million dollars. But he got where he got. So I guess, you know, you had a choice of not putting in Varsity B football or whatever, but you put it in and you felt, and you did defend it, in my opinion, you gave me the rationale. And therefore my vote is you can't have everything. You just can't have everything, in my opinion, that this is

200not gonna... We're gonna have a potential problem selling this to the community. And I think there are gonna be some hard choices that those items that you listed, that you feel are in that package, that second round of $500,000. You know, I trust your judgment that we should keep them out. I want to clarify, to Jim's point. What Drew was saying, I just wanna be clear, if I understand correctly, Drew and the administration is not proposing slide 72, 73 and 74. That is not the budget they're proposing to us. They are being responsive to the board saying, we want to see additional items that could be removed. Their recommendation to us is to remove the items on the first few slides. Right. The 1.061 million. Early in the proposal. I just want to be clear,

201I am putting words in your mouth. My understanding is- They're accurate. You are not, he does not recommend any of those. But he has to be responsive to the board saying, "show us ways to reduce the budget." So if we were, so let me make sure I understand this, but if we as a collective group decide that we want, let's say we're comfortable going over the cap to x to a certain point. If we wanted another $500,000 above that 1.6, these are the items that you would recommend. Is that correct? Preliminarily. I'd wanna have a little more conversation about them, but I'd say broadly speaking, yes. Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. I just wanna add one thing. I think that's for slide 73 and 74, which are curricular, extracurricular, Not 72. Because what Drew said earlier

202was he has to show these new positions, we have to discuss them. I don't know that if we had just given a number. I mean, tell me if you think that's accurate. I don't know that you would've come back and said, "take out all these new positions." It's just we had to discuss them. I think that's right. Like, there's a logic problem that I run into as a leader. When we're tasked with making serious reductions in expenditures and we've proposed to do new things, just me, my mind goes to those things. Well, we're gonna do what we're mandated to do only. I don't wanna speak for my colleagues who might sit in, in our meetings, in a room behind a closed door and say, "no, here are really the things. Here's something that's actually more

203sustainable than that cut. I just don't wanna rule that out." But I don't know how we look at each other honestly and say, "no, we absolutely have to add these non-mandated" and I don't even wanna look at Eric, but we absolutely have to add these non-mandated positions. I don't know how we do that with legitimacy. You started what I thought was maybe off limits, but you sort of opened the door about such things as talking about people like security or modifying the security strategy or let's say modifying the, I'm sure this is not gonna be a popular remark, but modifying some of the social services that doesn't mean eliminating them, but dialing it back one or two positions that are consulting consultants to the, you know, currently part of the consultants. Right. The elementary social

204work program. I don't think anyone that's sitting here is saying we wanna do that, but if you're gonna open the door, I mean, people that are tenured I think is a different kind of, you know, that that's not an option for us getting rid of, I believe but that there is a category of people, jobs that could potentially be modified. Make sure to speaker check. Sorry, that could be potentially modified which I didn't know whether we would talk about that. Maybe we can. Here's the big picture. There are a limited number of those types of things, but there is a universe of positions that exist that we could abolish those positions and not do that work. So these are either teaching positions, leadership positions or civil service positions. I'm gonna put to the side what

205the rules are around who gets eliminated 'cause that's pretty complicated. It may not be the person you think, or the position you think because of seniority and other things, but the board has discretion to abolish positions, tenured or not. Like you have the discretion to do that if the budget is not gonna fund them. Let's say, you know, I talked about these positions we've added over time, the ones that aren't, the positions that aren't really mandated, the special ed. positions are mandated, but in recent years it's the social work, positions of the additional psychologists we've added in that arena at least those are positions that the board can decide to abolish. Outside of that universe. 100% of our teaching staff, with the exception of some professional development coaches and stuff like that, is determined by

206our class sizes, our middle school house and team model, and the high school course catalog. So cutting into that, I would say would require a very significant conversation about those assumptions and guiding principles. Now so far I haven't heard anyone asking for that conversation and I appreciate that. But just to understand that those structures, and that's why I start every budget presentation with that three part model. At a fundamental level, that's what costs the money, that running the program that way is what? Is the way we've done it and we've tested those assumptions periodically over time. And this seems to be the core of what we do. So I would argue, unless we're gonna have that discussion, the only types of position cuts come from those things outside that. And the ones we've had recently,

207all of them are for good reason. They're to build out the continuum of services and they're to support student mental health. And then the other stuff is safety and security. I mean, that was the point I was making. Sorry, and I appreciate that. Hold on, hold on, Colleen had her hand raised before you. I beat you. I appreciate that Drew. And I just wanna clarify, having you go through, I think the details of those slides, I think it's important for the community to hear actually what we're giving up to get us lower. I do have concerns about the budget passing as is. I'm not here to nitpick where you should make further cuts, but I do think we're gonna have to make further cuts for this budget to pass, in my opinion. I wish it

208wasn't because none of these things I feel good about cutting. I'm sure my fellow board members feel the same, but if we don't have a past budget, then we can't do anything. So I don't feel strongly keep this, don't do one way or the other. I defer to you and your team to do that because you know the day-to-day better than I do. But I do unfortunately think we're going to have to make further cuts. And so my guidance personally is for us to try to find ways to do that. But I don't feel comfortable telling you where to make those cuts. I'm gonna defer to you and your team on that. Thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, and I just wanna make sure that you're clear that I also feel that way. I mean,

209I don't believe that there should be untouchables in what you've put out there as potential areas to look at at this point anyway. I just don't agree that there are untouchables. I think that there are things that need to be considered and weighed and evaluated and it's tough. I know it's very tough, but I would not support the idea that some things may not be considered in this process. Can I seek just some clarification? Sure. And you mean including elementary class size, middle school house and team model and the high school? I don't mean that because I didn't think we were in that zone. I agree. I just wanted to clarify that. I didn't think we were in the zone of reconfiguring Scarsdale education. For all intents and purposes, let me know when we're there.

210I will. Okay. Other feedback from board members. Amber. When I think about my guidance about what you consider for a budget, I still go back to thinking about the future and what we're doing this year and how it impacts future years. You know, we can make cuts or whatever to get us through what we need to this year, but I think we have to be thoughtful about what the future will look like. And when I look at some, for example, the special education administrator, I think about our special education needs and what we're mandated by the state and how long, whether some of those are discretionary or not, how long we can put some of those items off. I also think in terms of guidance, if you have to make reductions in areas, I again

211want to minimize impact to our students. So things like directly cutting a student program, to me, cutting a Varsity B program is almost the same as cutting that math class that you talk about and increasing the kids there. One may be academic, one may be extracurricular, but the mental health piece that Suzie mentioned about sports and having those sense of belonging to the school that's still there for those programs. So I think as you think about things that might be considered for the future, I'd ask you to just think about the impact. I can see summer work having a different kind of impact to students, not having as much summer work than removing a program entirely for our students. Any other guidance or feedback from the board? Sure. I agree with what Colleen has said

212that I think going through everything and I wasn't being literal before by the way, saying that go through every budget line. That's for you and your team to know. But just from what we've heard from the community so far, I think it would be very hard to pass it as is, you know? But it does make me sad, but I have to agree with Colleen. Anyone else wanna share any comments before we wrap up? Well I think, I mean we still need direction. No, no. Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm sitting here thinking that realistically we are going to exceed the cap, but the question is by how much, that's how I'm sitting here, what I'm sitting here feeling based on the remarks that have been made about trying to get under the cap. So

213I think in that regard, do we want to give the administration a theoretical target that we feel, I mean there's no, we don't really know what can be achieved. But do we want to say we're comfortable being over the cap by 1% or 2%. I mean, do we want to, at least for a point of analysis could put some parameters on it for Drew and his team. Maybe others don't feel that way, but that's how I'm feeling right now. Yeah, I don't know that I'm prepared to say a percent is what I'm comfortable with over the cap or anything like that. I mean, I think realistically the position we're gonna be in with a budget, if it's over the cap is we're either gonna get that 60% or we're not. And if we don't get

214that 60%, there'll be cuts to be made in a very quick period of time that will have to be made. There'll be no choice otherwise it'll be austerity. So to my way of thinking, what we go to the public with should sort of, and be modest in terms of any amount over the cap that we're proposing because we will have to come back in the future again, I'm sure with an amount over the cap, unless we completely rethink Scarsdale education. So it should be, in my view, it should be modest and it should be with the back of the mind thought that we may have to do some cutting very quickly if we don't get to 60 on vote day. I agree with Jim. I think it would be helpful to get to a place

215that's closer to the tax cap and I think it would be helpful for the community to know if the budget does not pass, what will have to be cut in order to get the budget below the tax cap. I think maybe that can help them make an informed decision on which way they would like to vote. I don't know if that's helpful in terms of guidance, but. Any other guidance or comments on? I'll just add, I agree. I think we need to show, the board needs to know. I also think the community needs to know what it means to get to a certain level. So I think the administration is incredibly informed about the day-to-day of our operations. The board is not nearly as informed but pretty informed as well. We sit at all these

216meetings for years. I don't know it's fair to assume that when there's some gap between class sizes at the elementary level and where we are today. And I understand why a community member might say, help me understand what that is. You know, articulate in specifics. I understand that A, that's not so easy. That is a lot of work that we are asking you to do. I also understand that it's very disruptive to come to this meeting and talk about things and we are a people organization so everything we're talking about is affecting either students or faculty and staff members and a very disruptive conversation. I just think it's one we have to have. I just think financially it's one we have to have. So I agree that having that discussion on Monday. Do you feel

217the board's giving you the feedback? Do you have feedback back for us? It's a lot to take in. Andrew, is there anything? It's a philosophical one. I don't know that I have the perfect answer either because the tax cap has a compounding effect and we've demonstrated a need to look at our fund balance. Some of the cuts that we've placed on the slides are areas where fund balance gets generated from when savings are found through the normal course of business. $1,000 here, $500 there through different supply codes and that sort of thing. If we're trying to get under the cap, then I think we need to do everything that's on those slides and then some. I think that's pretty clear. I think if we were to come back to the board with a number that

218we are reasonably comfortable saying beyond this level, there will be felt reductions in meaningful areas of our community. I think some of these, what may seem like low hanging fruit need to stay in the budget 'cause that is what gives the flexibility to what's left moving forward because we have sustainable fund balance issues that we've gotta think about and we need to be able to plan around those because perhaps those cuts will need to be made in the future. I appreciate that. I didn't hear anyone on the board say the board's not willing to entertain being over the cap. I think it's just you. So you might bring some things and say this is what it would take. Again, the administration doesn't recommend them and then we'll have to have a public dialogue about it.

219Yeah, and I think I heard Colleen articulate, at least for me most clearly, where even if the board adopts a budget that is over the cap, we need to be able to communicate what that next budget might look like, which is probably a budget under the cap. So either way, we're talking about tiers of impact. Does that sound right? I don't know. I agree with that. I don't know who said it, but I guess it was maybe the term that Andrew said, significantly impacting the delivery of the education to our kids. I don't know whether it's possible to determine that. In other words, yes, this is gonna have some impact but not significant impact, but at some point it goes from some impact to significant. And the question is, where is that line? Like I

220would think altering a class size to me would be a tipping point for that personally. So somehow when again, when we're explaining it to the community to try and explain why we've decided what we've decided to propose that I think that's what people are concerned about. Will it significantly change the experience of my children and these things will change, but the question is, is it significantly or somewhat less significant? And that's what I'm trying to figure out, what are those elements? Obviously it varies from kid to kid. If a kid's into sports and their sport is cut, obviously that to them is gonna be significant. But it's a general statement. I think that's what we're trying to avoid is significantly affecting the core delivery of our education to the children. Yep. There's one more slide.

221Yep, just to remind you, a week from today we have the budget study session number three, no new component presentations there. Those were completed tonight, but obviously you've given us direction to come back in the next week. You know, it says in that row of March 11th, full budget presentation. I don't know that that's gonna be successful. So it's possible the board might need to think about a meeting date, just putting it out there as a possibility just given the meeting schedule, just being practical because we really need to have the budget adopted by April 8th. All right, before we move into our business meeting, I just want to thank everybody again for this, both the presentation and the thoughtful discussion. My ask to the many people watching this at home, which I know is

222more than you think, 'cause we all get comments about it. I know this was a long meeting, many people are talking about it in the community, they get snippets of it. We do a very good job of posting these meetings quickly. I think to be an engaged citizen, it's important to see the dialogue that happens. And my ask to, if you have a discussion with somebody on the field or at dinner, is to point them in the direction of these meetings so people can really see the thought that goes into these deliberations. They're not easy. We are all trying to do the best for kids in a fiscally responsible way and appreciate that for everybody at home. I'd like to enter, throw out a five minute recess so then we can just go through the

223rest of our business meeting. Does that sound okay to everybody? So we'll come back in five minutes at 10:15. Okay. (gavel banging) All right, welcome back everybody. We just finished up budget study session number two. Thank you again to everybody that put so much work into it and we'll have come back to us next Monday for the next budget meeting. Prior to the budget study session, the board met an executive session to seek legal advice concerning the administrative appeal of the determination of the FOIL records access officer. In order to add this appeal determination as an action item, we need to approve a motion to amend the agenda. Therefore I make the following motion resolved that the Board of Education amend the business meeting agenda to include the resolution to formally adopt the determination of

224a FOIL appeal. Could I entertain a second? Amber? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. I shared my opening comments before the budget study session, so I will pass it over to Drew. Okay, thank you very much. Give me one second to get some slides up. Okay. Ah, I hit the wrong button. It's late. I apologize. Okay, well I want to add my welcome this evening as well. Thank you for those who tuned into the budget study session. I'm delighted to start tonight with thanks to Michelle Verna for helping put this together some of the great things happening around the district. So we'll start with the high school and the senior, the trade war simulation that our AT seniors participated in. It was a half day live simulation of

225a trade war with China, with the potential for conflict around the South China Sea in Taiwan, a real practical simulation. Each student had their own title and role. We had politicians, heads of state, influential business CEOs. This took place in our learning comments. You can see the steps behind them by Mr. Paulson and his students there. They served in delegations and the UN took up residence on the second floor of the learning commons and the Chinese government officials and businesses sequestered in the iLab. So pretty cool simulation began with simple premise and an invitation for students to identify the priorities that they were most committed to, who their allies and foes would be in achieving those priorities. And throughout the experience there was a news ticker document that was public to those participating and provided

226certain key information secrets and trade secrets and so on to change the dynamic. So pretty cool activity there. Congratulations, kudos to the social studies team and the students for making that a powerful learning experience. This may be another update, but there were the first two of three events with national speaker on substance abuse and prevention and mental health awareness Stephen Hill have taken place in February. He spoke with ninth and 10th graders here at the high school and shared his story with parents and a separate event at Scarsdale Middle School. And he's gonna return to the district in April, to speak to middle school students. This was made possible by our partners at the PTA PTC and say for their support of this event and really grateful for that. Faculty at the Heathcote Elementary School

227met with facilitators from Sarah Lawrence College's Child Development Institute. This is an idea that eVision and STEP brought forward to us, our art director about having authentic community adventure play experiences. So these experiences help bring students back to the basics of play with, I think there's equipment that will be out, temporarily out on the playground and so forth for them to have a more authentic experience of play, problem solve using found and recycled materials. So the teacher training took place for this to then be rolled out to the school in partnership with Sarah Lawrence. One of the cool things that, you know, ideas that came to fruition just started as a little bit of a concept or an idea. So those are some pictures of that learning experience. And then the hundredth day of school

228happened. It's an amazing experience where students think about the hundredth day of school and they think about it in terms of stories, games, celebrations, especially with the math focus on that. At Fox Meadows, students celebrated 100 days in stations. Things like, how many jumping jacks can you do in 100 seconds? How many times can you write your name in 100 seconds? How tall can you build a tower in 100 seconds? At Greenacres, kindergarten students posted 100 acts of kindness around the building. These are some of the 100 acts of kindness, including opening the door for somebody, picking up litter, helping with dishes and filling a friend's water bottle and first graders decorated shirts with 100 items and wore them in a parade around the building. So it's a real tradition in elementary schools to celebrate

229the hundredth day and we wanted to make sure you saw that. And then finally, this is special. As you know, February is National Black History Month. We've just ended, I know we're in March now, but I wanted to share this that last week our colleague in the data services department, Valerie Lloyd, shared part of her own personal journey with us. This picture, which appears at the beginning of a PBS American Experience article entitled "Briggs versus Elliot brought us Brown v. Board of Ed. Here's how." And that article includes Valerie's grandparents and mother. They're located in the bottom left. Valerie's mother is the bottom left front and grandmother and grandfather standing behind her, Benny Parson Jr. Plummy Parson and Celestine Parson. The article recounts the story of how black parents and children in Clarendon County, South

230Carolina risked everything to end legalized segregation. Valerie asked us and I asked our broader community to please join her in remembering them and thanking them and the other black parents and children of Clarendon County for their action, their courage and their determination. You can read more about this history if you're interested by searching American Experience Briggs v. Elliot. And I want to thank Valerie for sharing this with us. She's part of our data services team. And then real briefly, I was gonna do a longer version of this, but I just wanna let the board know that the strategic planning process does continue. Just to give you a little bit of the numbers. We've, as you know, I think we had over 530 faculty members contribute input to this process. We had nearly 50 parents attend

231our in-person and Zoom World Cafes and we had 130 parents respond to the survey that was really the same questions as the World Cafe. It's resulted in over 3,700 pieces of feedback and we have organized those. The STI class that I'm leading and about 60 faculty members and some leaders are part of have like touched every one of those post-its and are synthesizing that. And we look forward to the vision statements that are kind of coalescing around that which will merge into a single vision statement. And then the identification of strategic priorities based on all of that input. There was really, really similar overlap between the parent and faculty input around what's important for kids if they're to be prepared for the future. And that's gonna really drive those strategic, the strategic priorities. So we're

232excited about that. Looking ahead to dates and observances that we've come to talk about here at the board table that are reflected in our calendar, in our recognition of holiday's calendar. Friday, March 8th is International Women's Day honoring the cultural, economic, political and social achievements of women and the call to action for accelerating women's equality. This year, Ramadan will begin at sundown on Sunday, this coming Sunday, March 10th and end at sundown on Tuesday, April 9th. The final evening of Ramadan consists of a celebration called Eid al-Fitr when the traditional month long fast is ended with a feast. Nowruz meaning new day, the Iranian New Year, also known as the Persian New Year, which is celebrated worldwide by various ethnolinguistic groups in many countries occurs typically with the vernal equinox. And that's on March 21st.

233Purim celebrated the evening of Saturday, March 23rd until Sunday evening. Sunday, March 24th, celebrating and affirming Jewish survival and continuity throughout history. The Hindu Festival of Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors and Love marks the beginning of spring in the Hindu calendar and that will be celebrated on Monday, March 25th and Easter Sunday is March 31st and it commemorates the resurrection of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament. And as a reminder, our schools will be closed on Friday, March 29th and Monday, April 1st. That was a lot. Thank you for all those updates, Drew. It's always a highlight of the meeting to see what's going on around the district. We'll move to board member reports. I believe Suzie has a couple reports. Thank you Ron. A couple announcements, one from the PT

234Council. It is the time for the annual sports swap. It's taking place at this middle school on Saturday, March 16th from 9:30 to 11:30 AM. This annual community event raises funds for PT council programs, initiatives, and events. PT council is hosting a webinar with representatives from the Westchester County District Attorney's Office Hate Crimes Unit and the Westchester County Human Rights Commission on the evening of Tuesday, March 19th at 7:00 PM You could go see your e-blast for details in the webinar link. Lastly, from the PT Council Young Writers Workshop for students in grades three through five will take place on Saturday, March 23rd in the morning at the middle school, registration is open now. PT Council hopes that your children participate in the special and much loved creative thinking event. Join us to write out

235loud. Details are on your e-blasts. Also from the Scarsdale Middle School, PTA, the Scarsdale Middle School PTA is hosting a presentation on supporting students in the age of generative artificial intelligence immediately following the SMS PTA general meeting on March 8th at 9:00 AM. William Yang, K through 12 coordinator of digital literacy and learning and Lynn Tori, a technology teacher at Greenacres will be presenting. Ms. Tori has been part of a collaborative group with Ms. Cronk at the middle school and Ms. Dutra at the high school on researching AI in education. The presentation will explore how our children are using AI, how the district is approaching this new technology and helpful tips for parents on how to navigate discussions with their children on AI. Parents across the district are invited to attend. Thank you. Thanks Suzie.

236Does anybody else have any opening comments? Okay, we will move to cabinet updates. I believe this is Megan, I think Yeah, so a brief update, hopefully in the near future we'll have a bigger update. Our finalist round for the Edgewood principal is tomorrow, so it's a full robust day for our candidates and all those involved. And then the following day for our middle school principal candidates. So we look forward to sharing some news in the not so distant future. I just want to thank Megan for really leading a superb process. I'll get to say more of this again when the appointment comes forward, but she's really led a remarkable process and it's gonna bear fruit. Thank you for that update and all the updates throughout this process, both at the board table and to the

237community. That's all for cabinet updates, right? We'll move to item five hearing from those present, I will begin with the preamble. Members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district related items or other non personnel related matters during two separate public comment periods. When it's your turn to speak, please state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, now is a good time to log into Zoom and raise your hand. Please mute the livestream voice, turn on your camera, and then unmute yourself. Speakers will be asked to conclude their remarks after four minutes and will be given a verbal cue at the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via

238email [email protected]. 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 in question at its discretion, either during 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. I'll open it up to anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment. Hello everyone. My name is Leah Dembitzer, 345 Mamaroneck Road. I'm President of PT Council. I'm reading a statement from PT Council on the proposed executive budget cuts to Foundation Aid. This statement was released several weeks ago and has been mailed, sent to all of our state elected representatives and disseminated to the parent community. The Scarsdale PT Council Executive Committee, as

239well as the PTC Legislative Advocacy and PTC Budget Study Chairs would like to alert our school community to the following, the governor's executive budget cuts expected school aid. The executive budget change to Foundation Aid will reduce state aid to the Scarsdale schools in 2024, '25 by $558,720. In addition, and according to NYS PTA's analysis, high needs school districts will shoulder 50% of the share of the proposed statewide Foundation Aid cuts. Thus, the students who need the most support from the state will bear the burden of the loss of funding. Scarsdale PT Council calls on our community to take action not only for our own community, but also for surrounding school districts non CPI. As per the New York State PTs recent call to action, please note the following, the executive budget cuts expected school aid

240by more than $400 million in two ways. The executive budget terminates the safe harmless provision. The provision continues funding for school districts with declining student enrollment, funding them at their current school aid levels. This proposed cut would affect nearly 400 school districts and would amount to more than $150 million. Two, the executive budget changes the Foundation Aid formula by modifying the way in which the inflationary measure is calculated moving to an arbitrary and capricious averaging of 10 years from 2014 to 2023 of inflationary CPI numbers, excluding the highest and lowest years. This change would result in a cut of more than $300 million to New York State Public Schools. New York State PTA and the Scarsdale PT Council Executive Committee strongly oppose the cuts to school aid proposed in the executive budget. This proposal will

241cause irreparable harm to some of our most vulnerable students. This proposal devalues children and the work that educators do each day to support them. And this proposal compounds the difficulties in getting all students the support that they need to succeed. We encourage you to email Governor Hochul, email Assembly Member Paulin, email Shelly Mayor, our Senator, and please use your voice and take action. Thank you Leah, and the entire PTC Executive Council for your advocacy on this important issue. If there are any other comments? Yep, please. Hi, my name's Ranjana Saini-Chandarana and I'm at 1 Mercer Court, Scarsdale and I am the PTC budget study co-chair. The PTC budget study chairs have sent approximately 30 questions to the administration and board. The questions we've asked are on the PTC budget study website and linked in all

242the e-blasts that have gone out. I'll be reading a sample of questions this evening. I will also email these to you guys after as well. So the questions I'm gonna be talking about are basically mainly on four topics. So the first one is the tax levy. How does the board view budgeting to the tax cap in regards to the Scarsdale school's mission and vision? The values of the district, educating the whole child, the student experience, having sufficient resources and student support. The second question, Ron, you touched upon this earlier in the presentation very briefly, but are any other local comparable districts proposing a budget that exceeds the tax cap? If so, which districts? And the next question is just mainly, you know, the PTC we're quite interested in this topic. I think this has also

243been very briefly talked about today, but what is the history of Scarsdale going over the tax cap? Can you explain what it means to go over the tax cap and what would a revote entail if it was not passed the first time? Can you share what revenue streams go into the other revenues line item? What is primarily causing the drop of revenue streams and how can it be increased in the future? What is the impact of the loss of Foundation Aid? I heard someone say that it's not just for this year, but it's also going forward. So what's the implication now and in the future? The second topic is on special education. Eric, one of the first questions we had was the impact of the budget reduction on the SMS special education staffing from two

244to one. So you already answered that, so thank you so much. The next question is, is this move to include more special ed. support part of a larger public school movement. Also with the administration, please clarify and elucidate how special education teachers and various supports may also positively affect the school experience of general education students. How does the district evaluating the efficacy of the current special education program? What does the program look over the next five years? Has there been a comparison to other comparable special education programs? And can we benchmark success? We saw some staffing needs looking forward. Could you elaborate further on the special ed. program rollout for the next five years? The next topic is technology uses and awareness. In what ways will the tech survey results be included in aspects of

245the budget? Will the budget include education on mindful and appropriate use of technology for students as well as parents? And then the last question is just on the high school staffing, what is the ratio of students per dean at the high school? What role do deans have on student experience? What impact does not adding another dean have on the student experience? Thank you for the questions. We do have a response to public comment after all public comment including on Zoom. Anybody else in the audience wishing to make a public comment? Okay, we will turn to Zoom. Suzie. We have two participants, attendees on Zoom. I will be promoting Art Rublin to panelists now. Art, can you hear me? Art, can you unmute yourself and turn on your camera please. Hi, can you hear and see

246me now? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. So I'm Art Rublin, 22 Donellan Road in Scarsdale. First thanks. Sincere thanks to the board and the administration for all your hard work on the budget. It's not fun to be still in a meeting at 10:40, but what you're doing is really important work. I wanted to just talk a little bit about, the history in terms of the tax cap in Scarsdale and first is a frame and also just talk about budgeting in Scarsdale, more generally in the district. So over time I've accumulated various pieces of data. The average budget increase between 1981 and 2012, so we're talking 30 years. The average budget increase in Scarsdale was 6.33%. The average tax rate growth in Scarsdale between 1981 and 2011 was 6.2%. So I just think that's

247an important frame of reference. I imagine that during that time, not only did the district advance in those 30 years, but I imagine that home values rose so that there were benefits, not only for families with school children in the district, but Scarsdale residents more generally. And I'm not suggesting that you should be at 6.2% or 6.3% in terms of budget growth. I just wanted to provide that as a frame of reference in terms of how Scarsdale schools maintain themselves and developed over time. It didn't happen by accident and it didn't happen without investment in the schools. And there was clearly investment before the 1980s, the tax cap. And this goes to something that Ms. Hahn said in terms of Albany, the tax cap went into effect in 2011. It was clear at the time

248that it was Andrew Cuomo, sort of with a political move not based on the tax cap measurement wasn't apparently based on any kind of measure in terms of educational value. So that tax cap went into effect in 2011, the 2013 vote that Mr. Dugan referred to. And I certainly understand looking back at history that 2013 vote had a large controversy surrounding it relating to the high school fitness center, at the time referred to as the wellness center. There was a lot of controversy about whether or not the district should be funding that. So it could be debated why the budget was defeated in 2013. But I think it would be difficult to say that the fitness center didn't play a very significant role. Then fast forward over the last number of years there have been

249other districts in the state that have had successful overrides including Edgemont and Rye City in this region. And this gets back to again, something that Ms. Hahns spoke about, the principle of local control. There's a question of whether we in Scarsdale want to have control over our education, as was the case for many years. And has been expressed, the support for that has been expressed over time as chair of the Coalition for Scarsdale Schools, I and others worked to put together a declaration of fiscal independence a number of years ago that various former school board members and former village officials and others in the community side, we had several hundred signatures. So do we want to be a district that continues to value education and continues to value local control? Or are we really going

250to regress to a mean, be a generic district, a cog in the Albany system, which to a large extent the tax cap could make that happen. So I appreciate the comments from Dr. Patrick in particular in terms of the stakes here, in terms of Scarsdale education and just wanna express my support for your view and I think this may be the case with respect to all the school board members as well. You know, looking at this as a matter of what is best for Scarsdale, what is best for Scarsdale education measured against the importance of fiscal responsibility, not measured against an Albany mandate that can be overridden. Thanks. Thank you. Hello. Hi. You're promoted to panelist. Great, thank you. Good evening everyone. Robert Berg, 19 Carriage House Lane. I'm in the Mamaroneck strip now. Here's

251a little bit of history for the many new residents of Scarsdale. In the history of the modern Scarsdale school district. Only twice in 1970 and in 2013 have voters rejected proposed school budgets. 2013 was the first time after the tax cap was implemented that Scarsdale actually proposed a budget that exceeded the tax cap. Scarsdale voters came out in record breaking numbers and defeated that budget and those who voted in favor of breaking the tax cap didn't even reach the 50% barrier, no less the 60% of the vote that was needed to override the tax cap. The consequences of that failed 2013 budget were monumental. The then superintendent of schools was under tremendous pressure from angry residents and the school board itself. And he announced his resignation, a new budget was proposed under time pressure there

252and it came in under the tax cap. And that new budget stripped of the largess that put the prior budget over the tax cap passed overwhelmingly in June, 2013 when it was voted on again. Besides giving the old superintendent the boot, the 2013 school budget fiasco changed the thinking of subsequent school boards and the entirely new administration for the next decade. No one dared to propose a budget that exceeded the tax cap. And despite the substantial increases in the proposed budgets each year within the tax cap, the voters supported all of those budgets handily. And the district has not fared poorly in terms of support from the community. It passed, the community passed the largest bond vote in the history of the district in 2018. No one can say that the district has been underfunded

253despite the pressures of the tax cap. So it gives me great concern that the administration is proposing a budget tonight that still exceeds the tax cap by $2.15 million. It strikes me as a real challenge for Drew and the administration, given the presentation tonight. For me to support the budget, they really haven't explained why the circumstances are so dire at the moment that we have to exceed the tax cap. Certainly by this amount. I'm generally considered to be the public face or the ringleader of the group that rallied the voters to reject the budget that exceeded the tax cap in 2013. And you know, people came out in droves to reject that budget and there was no ability. The administration really never tried to convince voters at the time why the budget should exceed the

254tax cap. I think you're gonna have a tough sales job to do that here. A lot of the growth in this proposed budget comes from the addition of full-time employees, which really is concerning given that the district enrollment has declined over the past 10 years by a large number of students. And yet the full-time employees have been increased by 10% or more. I think there are like 66 new full-time employees with a decline in the enrollment. Full-time employees have increased by 70.4 employees while student enrollment has declined by 118 students over the past 10 years or so. That's a lot and it really is troubling to me when you make these full-time employee adds because they generally cost about $200,000 per position when you consider the wages, the benefits. So I think you're in trouble,

255you're inviting trouble here when you don't have to, if you propose a budget within the tax cap, it's gonna pass overwhelmingly and if you go in over the tax cap, you're gonna really have a hard time and it's the trauma to the community of trying to pass a budget in excess of the tax cap is probably not worth the effort. Thank you very much. Any other hands raised on Zoom? No, there are no other hands raised on Zoom. Okay, we will close this first public comment period. There is a second public comment period later in the meeting. We'll move to item six. Follow up to public comments. Thank you for sending in the question, the PTC budget questions. Appreciate the comment and the questions from our two zoom commenters, I think history is helpful. We

256will move to item seven, written communications, Suzie. Thank you Ron. First I'll read the preamble to written communications. Please note that the Board of Education email is also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk. Open meetings law requires all board deliberations, which may lead to action or policy changes 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. And since we last met, I hope I counted them all correctly. We had 28 written communications dealing on district matters and three written communications regarding board meetings highlights, board invitations or correspondence. Thank you. Thanks Suzie. We'll move to item eight, the consent agenda. Start with the consent agenda preamble. The full preamble is available on the meeting agenda on

257board docs briefly a consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of Education into a single motion. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. At this point, would any board member like to move an item from the consent agenda to a separate action item? I see no one, I'll pass it over to Jessica who has the consent agenda. Thank you Ron. Be it resolved that we adopt tonight's consent agenda which has 14 items. First, the minutes from the board meeting of February 5th, 2024. Second, the minutes from the special meeting and executive session on February 12th, 2024, 9.03, personnel certified, 9.04, personnel non-certified. 9.05, claims audit report from January, 2024, 9.06, the approval of construction change order S&L Plumbing and

258Heating. 9.07, the census report, 9.08, the Southern Westchester BOCES Cooperative bid. 9.09, contracts over 20K for special education. 9.10, stipulations of settlement. 9,11, Westchester County contract for electronic voting machines, 9.12, moving voting machines and 9.13 printing of ballots for May 21st, 2024 annual vote. 9.14, acceptance of the consent agenda. Thanks Jessica. Is there a second? Jim? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. We'll move to item 10, information items. The first item is the treasury's report and schedule of investments. And this is Lisa. In case you haven't had enough numbers, I've got some more for you. The reports being presented tonight for the month of December of 2023. Started the month of December with 76.9 million in cash. Collected a total of 28.4 million in receipts and dispersed 44 million resulting

259in a cash balance at 12/31 of $61,321,350 and 45 cents. As of December 31st, approximately 79% of the cash balance was earning between 5.28 and 5.3%. So one item to note, which most of you're probably aware of the village of Scarsdale had reached out in regards to the tax collections. Apparently there were possible issues with the billing and the collections have been a little slow this year. So basically the village is responsible. They send out our bills, they collect our taxes, they remit it to us typically once a month. So the collection period and when they remit it is usually the following month. So at this point, as of January 31st, 2024, there was approximately 13 million in uncollected taxes, which compared to previous years, it's usually about 2 million. Now what that means for

260us is as of April each... Oh, I'm sorry. Each month we get a payment remit from the villages and as of April they will remit their final collections. Anything that hasn't been paid by taxpayers is remitted. They must make us whole and it's up to the county to collect those uncollected unpaid taxes. So for us it's just a timing difference. So again, the money's coming in a little bit slower, but we will be made whole as of April. Any questions? Okay, I believe you have the next item, the budget transfers. Yes. Okay, so as we've been discussing, we've had between the budget process and prepping for new software, new sets of eyes, looking at things, we're doing thorough reviews of BOCES, bills where expenditures are being charged and that's resulting in some necessary movement and

261reclass and some budget transfers. So the first transfer being presented is shuffling those BOCES funds around, as we've discussed some of them, it's going through each BOCES expense to make sure, like we discussed with technology and library, a difference in where we're charging it. Budget transfer number two is again, we have the option of using a heating source of either fuel oil or natural gas depending on what's more economical. And right now natural gas is the better pricing. So that's where we're heating for this season. So we're requesting that all of the fuel oil budget money that's remaining be moved over to fund the gas expense and transfer number three is to move money from tuition lines. That's actually needed for contractual special ed related service costs. Kids were brought back so maybe tuition costs

262went down, but they're still in-house receiving related services. So again, that's moving that money to where it's needed. Thank you for those updates and the continued effort to match everything up appropriately that's been going on this whole year. Any questions from the board? Okay, we'll move to item 10.03, the budget amendment. This is Andrew or Lisa. This is me. So on the agenda tonight, we've asked the board to accept a insurance payment and also increase the current year appropriations. We had a vehicle, a bus unoccupied by students, unfortunately hit an overhang overpass and it damaged several of the support structures. Based on the age of the bus and the repair costs. It was significant enough damage that the insurance company actually totaled the vehicle for us rather than pay for the repair. So it is

263one of our newer buses, less than 10 years old, which is why we've got the replacement dollars for it. So we're gonna couple this money with some money that's left in the transportation purchase line for the current year to replace a bus that is in hand at our dealer. So as soon as we have this budget amendment process, we'll be able to issue the purchase order and then hopefully have that new bus in hand, which is an extremely short turnaround for us. To avoid a future question, it is going to be a natural gas diesel bus. I think it's natural gas, sorry, gasoline powered bus. We are just not able to accept any other kind of alternative energy source bus at this time. Thank you for that update and this item will be an action

264item on tonight's agenda. Any questions from the board? Okay, thank you for that update and we'll move to item 10.04, proposed new textbooks. Hi, I'm happy to present the adoption of a new science textbook. "Environment: the Science Behind the Story" seventh edition by Jay Withgott and Matthew Laposata. This would be for both Environmental Science 523 and Environmental Science Honors 524. I had a chance to sit down with Mike Jordano proposing this text to speak about its merits and how he would use be using it with his students. He pointed out the format of the book which is truly engaging, posing scientific questions through actual modern case studies. These stories create a sense of purpose and in many cases a sense of urgency. They're arranged by central case studies and then tell the science behind each

265story. I appreciate its natural connection across the discipline to social studies with chapters on policy, US environmental law. A relevant and complex resource that Mike can use flexibly with his students and as a springboard for student inquiry and advocacy. Thanks Edgar. Are there any questions? Amber. Edgar, I noticed you only have 30 copies of this ordered. Are there only about 30 students taking enviro between regular and honors? You know, the way that he's gonna use it as a... I understand he's gonna use it as a tool and a resource and just certain sections of it and then I think share it across students and courses. So in that flexible way that teachers often use. Great, I was not trying to spend more money or anything. No, I get it. Amber got the memo from earlier

266tonight. (all laughing) Any other questions from the board for Edgar? Okay, thank you Edgar. And that will come back to us I believe at the next meeting for adoption. Item 10.05, the advocacy letter regarding state aid. This one is me. During one of, I think it was at our February meeting, the board gave Suzie and I the directive to draft a advocacy letter to the governor regarding state aid that we discussed during budget and that Leah mentioned that the PTC executive committee is advocating about. So prior to even drafting this letter board members Drew, Andrew have had many meetings with our local legislators, NSBA, West Putt and many others, both to advocate on this issue and also to coordinate our advocacy because this change does impact so many districts around Westchester and New York State.

267So in addition to this letter, there has been a lot of behind the scenes advocacy work going on. We wanted to bring it back to the full board 'cause we had a meeting and see if there was any questions or comments and then get just consensus that the whole board, since we can do this at a meeting, could come from the whole board to the governor. So anything else to add, Suzie? Okay. Any questions or feedback? Just thank you to you Ron and Suzie and everyone else who participated in creating this letter. I think we've seen how important this advocacy is for our district and as we do our budget planning. So appreciate your efforts. Thank you for that. All right, so we will work with honoree to have this letter sent to the governor

268and the appropriate folks from the full board. And I just, I also want to express my gratitude to Shelly Mayer and Amy Paul and our local legislators were there. They are advocating heavily on our behalf and have also provided a lot of guidance and insight into the process. And also thank the PTC for both your advocacy and getting the word out to the community to ask residents to advocate. This is very important for all of us both here in our district and really around the state for public education. With that, we will move to item 10.06 and 07 policy reviews. And this is Drew. Thank you very much. This is the first and only read. This comes back as in each of these next two items come back as action items later. This enshrines the

269resolutions you've already passed on February 5th, first related to the tax exemption for seniors over 65 income definition, the resolution that was adopted will be enshrined in the policy. And then the second one is the tax exemption for certain disabled homeowners knowing that both the income limits were changed for that because. that was an oversight from last year and the income definition was changed there. Thanks Drew. Any questions? This will come back to us shortly as an action item. Okay, we will move to item 11. Action items, first one 11.01, budget transfers, Bob. Yes. Resolve that the board approve the attached budget transfers as presented. Thanks Bob, is there a second? Colleen? Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Move to item 11.02, the budget amendment. Jessica. Resolved that the board

270adopt the following resolution as presented. Thank you Jessica. Is there a second? Jim? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries item 11.03 policy review, Policy 6215 and this is Jim. Thank you Ron. Resolved that the Board of Education adopts amended Policy 6215, tax exemption for citizens over 65 as presented. Thanks Jim, is there a second? Jessica? Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries, item 11.04, Policy 6215.1. This is Colleen. Resolve that the Board of Education adopts amended Policy 6215.1 tax exemption for certain disabled homeowners as presented. Thanks Colleen, is there a second? I see Jessica. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries, and our last action item, for the gifts is 11.05, the FOIL appeal. Amber. Thanks Ron.

271Resolve that the board adopt the following resolution as presented in the agenda. Thank you Amber, is there a second? Colleen? Any discussion? And this was discussed during executive session. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. We'll move to item 12, gifts, 12.01. A gift proposal to the Greenacre School Library. Bob. Resolve that the Board of Education accepts with thanks the gift of approximately $4,000 to be used in the library of Greenacres Elementary School as presented. Thank you Bob, is there second? Jessica, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries with thanks. Item 12.02, gift proposal to Edgewood Elementary School. Jessica. I resolve that the Board of Education accepts with thanks the gift of $900 for the manipulative madness gift for Edgewood Elementary School as presented in the attached

272letters. Thanks Jessica, is there a second? Jim, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries with thanks and as always, thank you always for the gifts to our schools on behalf of our children. We will move to item 13, response and questions from those present. This is the second public comment period and the preamble from the first public comment period holds as well. Anybody in the audience who wishes to make a public comment? Okay, we'll move to Zoom. Suzie. There are two attendees on Zoom, but neither of them have their hands raised. Okay, just give it one second. Okay, still seeing no hands raised on Zoom. We will close the second public comment period as a reminder to the community, if you have any feedback about the budget or any other

273items, it is very helpful to email the board at [email protected] that will also go to the superintendent. We always appreciate your feedback throughout this process. There is no follow up to a second public comment. Item 15, wrap up items. None from the business meeting. (all laughing) How about that? We will move to item... Thank you Drew, 16, meeting dates for the coming month, Suzie. Okay, we're still in it. Monday, March 11th there will be a special meeting or executive session at 5:30 PM in this room. There will be budget study session number three at 6:30 also here in this room. On Monday, March 25th, there will be a special meeting or executive session if needed at 5:30 PM followed by a budget forum, education report, and business meeting at 6:30. Thank you Suzie and as

274Drew mentioned before, we'll discuss whether there's a need for any additional meetings given what's before us. Thank you to everybody who's been sticking with us for the whole night. Could I have a motion to adjourn? Amber. Bob, second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. The motion carries. Have a great night everyone.