BOE Business Meeting 2023_10_2

001Good evening. I call this audit committee meeting to order. Note that all audit committee members are present except for Bob Klein who could not join us this evening. We are also joined by Dr. Patrick in administrative cabinet and joined by our external auditors from EFPR Group. Could I have a motion to appoint honoree as Secretary Pro tem? Amber at 06:32, can I have a second? Jessica, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Okay, I believe I pass it over to Andrew now. So first I wanna say thank you to Lisa Zareski for all of her work getting this audit ready this year. This evening, we've got Thomas Smith from EFPR, who's our external auditor to go over our financial statements for the 2023 fiscal year. Thank you, Andrew. Hello, everyone. Tonight I'm gonna

002go over the financial statements for the June 30th 2023 audit. I'll go through the financial statements as well as the audit results. We put together a small pack. As you can see, the financial statements that are behind this pack have gotten quite large over the number of years have gone by. So put this together, be a summary of everything. So on the first page, we have our audit team, myself on the left as well as we always put a second partner on all our financial statements review. That way you have another set of eyes that look at everything independently. On the next page is a summarized timeline of our procedures. We were on site the week of August 21st and we're able to issue the draft financial statements last week. The following page is the

003audit results. We're gonna be issuing what call clean unmodified opinions on the financial statements, the single audit, which is your compliance audit of federal awards, as well as the extra classroom funds. All the information that we needed was readily available from Andrew and Lisa and their team, which I really wanna thank them for making that so accessible and easy for us to be able to go through everything. And as part of government auditing standards, we also have to put together a two page report in the back of the financial statements. If the board needs to be aware of any type of internal control, deficiencies or weaknesses, non-compliance laws or regulations, we would report that there. I'm happy to report that we did not come across any of those type of issues that I need to

004be aware of. On the following page, we do also issue a report called a management letter. That's essentially a catchall letter. Any type of recommendations we might note that isn't a required communication, but we feel that might behoove the district to know about. We are issuing one new one this year on the extra classroom activity funds. There are a number of inactive clubs from year over year, which is very typical, especially since we're coming out of COVID and a lot of these districts, the side of the funds might have been forgotten about. You do have seven inactive clubs in the last year. We just ask that the board look at those potentially if they need to be closed or that the money needs to be moved around. On the following page, we always do follow

005up on prior year marginal comments. We had two in the prior year, one on your accounting software. We recommended that the district looked at modernizing the software, which you have started to move forward with. As well as we had a comment on the athletic department billing. We did note in the prior year that there was a receivable booked. However, the district never billed other districts for that. What I do want to point out though is during our '23 audit, we looked at those billings, everything was billed. So we did not come across anything else that you have to be aware of with that. The next few pages, I'm gonna go quickly through the numbers. Pretty high level, you have your district-wide statements, as well as your fund level statements. The district-wide statements incorporate everything, including

006items that are essentially beyond the district's control, including the New York State Pensions, as well as the long-term health insurance. So you're gonna see that those two items are really gonna dictate the district-wide statements. You had total assets that decreased by $86 million from the prior. That number seems very large, but that's really the New York State Pensions. They were assets in '22, liabilities in '23. You have no discretion over those numbers. Your total liabilities decreased approximately $5 million in the prior year and that's related to the OPEP valuation. On the following page, you'll see that your net position actually increased by $4.3 million and you had to have that broken into three buckets, which we broke out. Net investment capital assets increased by 4.1 million and your restricted decrease by $4 million. That's really

007related to the fund level, which I'll go through in a little bit. And the rest of that falls under unrestricted net position. On the next page, just a little recap of the revenue expenses. Your program revenue increase by $700,000. Your school lunch fund had a very successful year. There was an increase in sales. Your general revenue increased by $9 million, which was mostly tied to your real property tax increase with the levy. And your expenses increased by 13.5 million. Most of that is employee benefits and budget salary increases. On the next page, I'm gonna go through the general fund. Really that's the area I like to focus on a little bit more 'cause that's where you budget the operations of the district. Your assets decreased by $6.9 million, most of that is due to cash

008and equivalences, and you had a decrease in your liabilities of 5.6 million and those really offsite each other. As the cash goes down, your liabilities go down as well. Your general fund fund balance decreased by by 1.2 million, but you were planning on using 1.9 in your budget. So I'd really like to point that out on a $179 million budget, that's very good to see that you were that close to that amount you were planning on using. The following page breaks down the fund balance a little bit whereas you can see the restricted fund balance decreased by 1.2 million as you plan on using the health insurance and tax tertiary reserves. And you can see that your revenue did increase by 6.7 million. Again, that is related to the real property tax increase, but you

009also had a $2 million increase in interest revenue due to the increased rates nationwide and your expenses increased on the fund 9.3 million. Those are also related to the salary employee benefit increases. The next couple pages are the reports of the board communications. These are communications we have to have with the board every year that the significant accounting policies are described in note one. And that they're, all those estimates were reasonably supported and we were able to look through those without any difficulties. We didn't have any difficulties in performing the audits. We will be obtaining a management representation letter, which is the last step in the audit. I sent that over to Andrew and Lisa this morning. So after we obtain that, we'll be able to issue the financial statements. And really the last thing

010I'd like to point out is that we didn't have any significant changes to our audit plan. If we did have changes, that means something went awry at some point, but we did not come across anything of that nature. So really at this point, I wanna turn it over to the audit committee, the Board of Education. See if you had any questions on the financial statements or on the audit process. Thank you so much for that overview. Are there any questions or comments from the board? My only question is just can we have a PDF copy of this presentation? Absolutely. So we could post it to BoardDocs after the meeting. Sure, I'll get that sent over tonight. Okay, thank you so much. I turn it over to Andrew for the corrective action plan. Sure, as Tom

011mentioned, there was three items, two of which were repeats from last year. The first related to the extra classroom activities fund where there was some funds that were, there's no activity. So the question was does the high school or the district review those clubs from year to year? And there is a written process at the high school for that evaluation. We'll do a better job in my office making sure we document that going forward. So we marked that complete. In terms of recommendation two, which is the transition to the new financial software. So thankfully, as you all know, at the last meeting, we approved that. So we've marked that complete as well. We are in the process of transitioning, but the decision has been made to move forward with Envision. And then the third one

012is the athletic department billing. The business office has begun overseeing all of that billing so that that part of the recommendation is complete. However, the recommendation notes moving a transition of that billing process into the new financial software because it notes that kind of ultimate goal of being in the new software. That's gonna be in progress until we get to July 1st, 2024, when the transition is complete. Thank you for that update, Andrew. Any questions on the management correction action plan? Okay, we will move to item 4.01, the action item to have the audit committee recommend these reports to the Board of Education, which will come back to us as part of the consent agendas, tonight's meeting. I believe this is Colleen. Yeah, just the resolved. Is this working? Alright. Be it resolved that the

013audit committee recommend to the Board of Education that it accepts the external audit report for 2022/'23 fiscal year as prepared by EFPR Group LLP and the management's corrective action plan. Thanks, Colleen, is there a second? Jim. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. Could I entertain a motion to adjourn this audit committee meeting? Colleen, second, Amber. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye, okay, motion carries. We adjourn the audit committee meeting and we'll be moving into the business meeting. Does the IT group need any time to transition or anything? Okay, okay. Good evening everyone. I call this business meeting to order and note that all board members are present, except for Bob Klein who is unable to join us this evening. We are also joined by Dr. Patrick and

014administrative cabinet. Thank you to those in the audience, thank you to or the many people in the audience tonight, as well as those watching the live stream for joining us this evening. Before going into my specific comments for tonight's meeting, I would first like to thank all of the faculty and staff and everyone around the district for managing our schools on Friday and ensuring everyone was able to safely get home. I would especially like to thank our custodians, bus drivers, security guards, and the many other people who were out in the rain, helping our students safely get into the buildings and then get out of the buildings on their way home later that day. I think the community would also appreciate knowing that even after most people went home on Friday, there were custodians in

015all seven of our buildings that stayed overnight to ensure any additional rain or flooding was managed. While this is some of the work we don't often see as parents or community members, these efforts are what keep our building running in all types of weather and keep our students safe. So thank you to everyone involved. Earlier this evening, the board met with officers and representatives of the Scarsdale Teachers Association or STA. Our teachers are critical partners in helping to deliver the best educational outcomes to our students and we greatly value this opportunity to have these discussions with them. Since this is a negotiation year, this meeting was held in executive session. So I cannot go into the specifics of the meeting. The purpose was to kick off the beginning of the negotiating year. A brief update

016on telecom or cell service. Work continues at both the Village Hall and public safety locations. The antennas have been installed at both locations and Verizon is working on the next steps to bring the additional service locations online. Once both locations are online and reception has been tested at both the high school and Fox Meadow Elementary School, we will provide an update to the community. And if you are not already signed up for Village Communications, this may be a great time to sign up for their alert and press release system as the Village will be communicating about these upgrades as well as they are managing this project. In addition to improving cell service, the district and Village are jointly working on a number of other items. As part of our continued collaboration, Suzie, Drew and I

017met with the mayor, deputy mayor and acting Village manager the other week. We discussed a number of items including safety, security, and emergency management items such as emergency message systems and safety for our students walking and biking to school. Just as one example of the collaboration, the district, which Eric will talk about, did a test this weekend. And while the district put out our own communication, understanding that people who live around the schools may not have students in the schools, the Village put out a press release about this event as well. So this is just one small example of the collaboration around communications on important issues to our community. We also talked about the field study as well as short-term field work that is underway. No idling signs on streets adjacent to school buildings, capital

018projects and other current and potentially future joint items. We hold these joint meetings throughout the year in addition to the many joint meetings held between the school and Village administrators and staff members. Thank you to the mayor, Village board and Village management for their partnership and collaboration on many items on behalf of our community. And lastly just prior to this board meeting, the board met as the audit committee to review the external audit report or the financial audit and also review the corrective action plan for identified items. With that, I'll hand it over to Drew. Okay, thank you very much. I have a number of updates tonight and I add my welcome, my expression of good evening and welcome to everyone tuning in and those in the audience. So earlier this afternoon, I returned from

019the fall New York State Superintendent's Conference in Saratoga. While there, we were asked by our colleagues in Farmingdale to wear a green ribbon. And my green ribbon has a music note on it in honor of the teachers who died and all who are suffering as a result of the tragic bus accident that took place on September 21st. So I'd like to start tonight by just asking us to take a brief moment of silence in support of our colleagues in Farmingdale. Thank you, I appreciate that. I'd also like to reiterate President Schulhof's appreciation for our meeting with the STA earlier this evening. And for everyone who helped make Friday's early dismissal run as smoothly as possible, given the situation. Our facilities team was on hand over the weekend to make minor repairs and get the buildings

020ready. And I wanna send my thanks to Matt Hilgendorf and the Grounds Team for getting Butler Field ready for last night's rescheduled football game and contest today. I want to thank Ray Pappalardi and the athletic staff for their work to reschedule contests and transportation, which is not easy. You did it quickly as possible under the difficult circumstances. So thank you. During tonight's cabinet update, we will review the emergency response to the injury that took place during the homecoming football game on September 22nd. In these opening comments, I would like to say that the actions taken by school personnel during events like that one and the flooding that occurred on Friday stem from emergency response plans that we have in place. We take care and effort to try to ensure that our plans cover the range

021of emergencies we might encounter and that our responses go and follow that plan, those plans. No matter what, we're in the practice of gathering all parties involved in debriefing events after they occur, to identify strengths, what went well, and opportunities for improvement to both the plans and how we followed them. So as I just outlined, as Eric will outline later, we will debrief the football game. And we've got a scheduled debrief of the events of Friday with the dirt team a little bit later this week. Keeping with the theme of emergencies, just so everybody knows to this effect tomorrow, on Wednesday, October 4th, the Federal Emergency Management Agency in coordination with the FCC will conduct a nationwide emergency alert system and wireless emergency alert test. The test includes sending a test message to all televisions,

022radios, and cell phones at approximately 02:20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, all powered on cell phones within range of a cell tower will receive a test alert message as part of FEMA's nationwide test of its integrated public alert and warning system known as IPAS. I didn't know that before today. So that will happen during our school day and we'll make sure our teachers and students are aware of that as well. Next, I'd like to say a few words about dedications to two important educators that we have recently lost. Last Thursday, September 28th, the Scarsdale Middle School faculty held a memorial after school for former SMS principal, Mike McDermott, who died in April. And that Thursday was his birthday in fact. Four of our music teachers performed and several people spoke, including Meghan Troy, members of Mike's

023family were able to attend, including his wife, Nadine. A plaque has been donated to remember Mike and a beloved potted tree that he had had in his office for years has returned to SMS to honor his legacy. The SMS community will also construct a mosaic in honor of Mike's impact on the students and display it proudly in the halls. Next week, former Fox Meadow Principle, Joan McCann will be honored with a dedication as well. On Wednesday, October 11th, we'll be gathering to share memories and stories about Joan's impact as a kind, intelligent, caring, compassionate, gifted and beloved principle who created a community for all of its staff, students and families. A tree and a plaque that have been donated that this board accepted in her memory will be dedicated. Okay, now some happenings around the

024district and once again with Michelle Verna's help, we'll have a few images to go along with it. Hopefully, as everybody knows, the Greenacre School was announced on September 19th as a US Department of Education Blue Ribbon School. This is a designation presented annually to a collection of some of the best schools in the nation and affirm the hard work and dedication of students, educators, families, and the community to exemplary teaching and learning. And here's a photo of Ms. Hill, Ms. De Lorenzo and Ms. Lamadore's reaction to hearing the news. But even better than that, here are our students' reaction. (lively music) The top left, the schools are being cycled through. These are the New York schools. (children cheer) (lively music) So good vibes in the Green Acres Elementary School. Green, sorry, Quaker Ridge students made

025a visit to the Weinberg Nature Center. They explored the hiking trails, learned about the local ecosystem, and about what they can do to help protect local habitats. Students in Mr. De Barry's POPM 6 English classes have been exploring various storytelling formats from graphic novels, novels in verse and more. And in just five weeks, POPM 6 students have read over, I had to double check this number, 900 books. And then kindergarten students at Heath Coat learned about how to compare and contrast by studying apples. Sorry, we'll go to that, by studying apples. They were able to examine, slice, and draw their apples to show their similarities and differences. And of course, no comparison of apples is complete without a taste test, so. All right and then a few reminders about upcoming dates. Monday, October 9th, our

026schools will be closed in observance of Columbus Day and Indigenous People's Day. October 16th through 20th is NYSSBA School Board Recognition Week. So we will spend some time on Monday the 23rd, just after that week, recognizing our own school board members around this table. And I look forward to that. And finally, in November, we will be hosting a series of interactive opportunities for community members to come together with us to think about the future of our school district as part of our strategic planning process. Called Our Future Together, these world cafe style dialogues will take place on November 15th, November 29th, and both of those events will be in person. More details to come and on December 6th via Zoom for those who are unable to make it in person. With the help of Michelle

027Verna, again, I recorded an invitation that will be sent out to the community later this week, but I thought it might be nice to observe that invitation here at the board table tonight. So here is the invitation. In the Scarsdale Public Schools, our mission is to sponsor each student's full development, enabling our youth to be effective and independent contributors in a democratic society and an interdependent world. As a community, we are proud of our tradition of excellence and of the exceptional education we provide to our students. We can also feel that mission becoming more challenging to achieve in our rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain world. This past August, we welcomed our newest learners to kindergarten, the graduating class of 2036. Can you even imagine what their future will be like? I'm Dr. Drew Patrick, superintendent

028of Scarsdale Public Schools and I want to personally invite you to do just that. I believe now is the time to engage the Scarsdale community in a conversation about the future we imagine for our students, so we can plan proactively and strategically and make well-informed decisions. While we can't predict the future, we can engage with it to better understand what might emerge that will affect our students and their education. My hope is that together, we will develop a powerful and informed view of the future to define our vision for learning that will help this generation to thrive. You are cordially invited to share your voice, values, and vision at one of our three world cafe dialogues about the future of our school district. Our future together is about uniting our community to not only prepare

029for the expected, but to adapt to the unexpected. I hope you'll join us in this exciting journey to empower our students to be the effective independent contributors our world requires. I look forward to seeing you at our world cafe. It's our future, together. (calm music) So I just wanted to share that as much as I hate seeing my own face and hearing my own voice, did want to extend that invitation. We'll be engaging our faculty in a similar conversation on November 7th during the Superintendent's Conference Day. And we have plans underway to engage our students in a similar conversation as well and use that input to help among other inputs to help guide our future plans, a strategic set of priorities for the next five or so years. I will note that these three events

030are identical. So you shouldn't feel like you have to attend all three. Certainly welcome to, but they'll be, it'll be on repeat for you if you do that. But we'll send that out along with how to sign up and the dates and times and locations very soon. Thanks so much, Drew. Are there any board member comments this morning, this evening? Jessica? Hi, yes. Yes. Scarsdale Safe Coalition met today and I just wanna pull up my notes really fast. Here we go. The focus for today's meeting was to discuss the advertisement of the group's October program, as well as its social media campaign for National Bullying Prevention Month, and to work on further plans for this year. So the October program, which we encourage everyone to attend, is part of the Safe Coalitions, Everyone Knows Someone

031program. So in this program, the Scarsdale Safe Coalition and the Pace Women's Justice Center will present a seminar on financial abuse and the dynamics of domestic violence. It will be a revealing discussion on how independence and self-sufficiency can be taken away quickly. The program is virtual and will be held on October 27th from 12 to 01:00 p.m. and more details will be available. Thank you, Jessica. I think Suzie has a report. Yes, I do. Thank you. The New York School Boards Association or NYSSBA provides a range of services and supports for public school boards in New York State. Among other things, NYSSBA provides member boards with skill building and informative education programs. And I'd like to highlight a few of them that our school board members have recently attended. During the summer on August 14th,

032there was a DEI lunchtime webinar on the Hidden Biases of Good People, presented by Dr. Bryant Marks, which I attended. I also attended on September 19th, another lunchtime webinar titled Mass Shootings in Schools, Lessons from Tragedy and Opportunities For Prevention and Response. On September 22nd, Ron and I both attended a NYSSBA hosted superintendent evaluation workshop, which was a live virtual meeting. And we plan on October 6th, Ron and I plan to attend Board Officers Academy, improving board leaderships for all students. These webinars and workshops are great opportunities to learn what other districts are looking at and current best practices with regard to a wide range of school related topics and I found them all very helpful. Thanks so much, Suzie. I have one more, sorry. As the PT Council liaison, I just wanted to give

033out a public service announcement. There will be a special district share out series on Wednesday, November 8th, at 07:30 in the Scarsdale Middle School auditorium. The PT Council, Scarsdale High School, and Scarsdale Middle School PTA will be hosting a joint program. The committees invite you to join for an informative two-part program as presented by district administrators. First, our own Dr. Drew Patrick and Dr. Edgar Macintosh will introduce the Belonging Survey, building on our theme of connecting our wide wellbeing, inclusion, diversity, and equity community. Dr. Patrick and Dr. McIntosh will outline the district's plan to engage students, parents, faculty, and staff this fall in a survey focused on belonging. They'll explain how the survey fits into the district's DEI work, describe the survey measures and elements and review the timeline for survey administration. They will also

034discuss how the results will be communicated and utilized to inform next steps in the work. Next, Shene Crowley, director of technology and innovation and William Yang, K through 12 coordinator of digital learning and literacy will share a selection of the survey results from the technology survey administered in June, 2023. The technology department solicited survey responses from faculty, parents, SMS students and SHS students. The anonymous surveys were collaboratively developed by the technology department, the PTC and the STA. In their presentation, Ms. Crowley and Mr. Yang will highlight how the district artifacts can be used by parents, administrators, faculty, and students to learn more about the technology experiences of Scarsdale Public Schools community members. And that's it. Thank you so much, Suzie. Are there any other board member comments? Okay, we will move to item 6.01, cabinet

035updates. Okay, we have a number of updates tonight and we're gonna start with two updates from the curriculum arena with Dr. McIntosh. Thank you, Drew. I wanted to give a quick update on the fifth grade health curriculum. Representative committee from all five elementary schools and made up of physical education teachers, health educators and elementary classroom teachers came together over the summer to begin redesigning and updating the existing fifth grade health curriculum. This work is ongoing through an STI course this fall. The first sessions will be spent building on their summer work, completing a fifth grade curriculum that attends to both the New York State and National Sexual Education standards, while using modern resources that are inclusive, affirming, and supportive of all our students. Susan simultaneously negotiating social media, unprecedented information access and puberty. An evening

036parent information session will be held at the end of January or the start of February to describe the outline of the updated curriculum. The exact date will be announced later in this month. Students currently in sixth grade who do not receive the updated curriculum are covering essential topics with their sixth grade health education teacher, Brooke Busey. One of the resources that the committee reviewed over the summer was the Puberty Podcast by Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennet, a pediatrician and a puberty educator. The Scarsdale Middle School Community Book Club is excited to announce that their book, "This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained", is their fall book selection. Interested parents should feel encouraged to join them on Thursday, October 26th at 03:00 p.m. in the SMS library. And just another brief update, the New

037York State test scores, the individual reports have been made available to parents, third grade through eighth grade. The state still has the embargoed all of the results. So we cannot talk about any trends, we can't talk about all the test scores altogether until the state has given the okay for that. Thank you, Edgar. Any questions for Edgar? Thanks for that update, Edgar. The state embargoes those test scores every year. Why do they embargo them? What are they trying to do? (board laughs) It's a tough question to answer, sorry, but I am just curious like why does this happen every year? Well, a couple things are a little bit different this year. The embargo usually happens where there is a pause between when we get the results for the individuals and then we can talk about

038it. But they have also held back a cut score, which means the score at which there's a determination where we look at students for additional services. It's kind of a marker. And the reason that they gave in a memo that came out a little while ago was that because they've changed the test to be much more next generation standards aligned, that they needed to do some internal evaluations to make a determination about where the cut score is. In the interim, they're allowing us to use our internal measures to make determinations about additional support. So at the elementary level, we have groups of teachers through the MTSS committees coming and looking at students who had scored a one and a two to see if there were students who through other measures, internal measures we have merit

039a closer look for additional services. But that gap in the embargo has always been a little bit of a mystery to me. I don't know. Drew, do you? Yeah, my read is they, the State Education Department makes a presentation every year of the statewide reports statewide averages and trends and so forth. And they like to have whatever story it is they're gonna tell polished and ready to go before they release the results to the public. And it seems to be taking a little longer than... The scores have come out later than this time in the past, but the time between when the student reports go and the public release happens, this seems to be longer than usual. So I don't know whether they're having conversations with the big city school districts or something about what

040that narrative is or what that story is that they want to tell. Okay, thank you. And just to confirm once that data is available, you'll present it at the board table like we do every year. I'm sharing that for the community that may not know that we do that. And that would normally be the second meeting in October. So our tentative plan would be to present that on October 23rd Yes. Provided we're allowed to. Yes, if it's there and then I will work that into the presentation. Great, thanks so much. So we will shift to Eric who has a healthy dose of updates. My apologies for the long cabinet update, but we have really three updates and then one discussion on the football incident earlier this month. So this weekend, as you all heard from

041the multiple community notifications was our integrated lockdown system testing. That testing went relatively well. There is some additional programming that needs to be done for one of our triggers. That will be completed this week and we should start training all of our administrative and BERT teams next week with hopefully going live before the end of the month. So that's really where we find ourselves at this point. It was also a good opportunity for our custodial staff and our facility staff to re-look at all the PA systems in the building to see where volumes had to be adjusted and if any PA's were not working. So there are a number of punch list items that came out of that testing, which is exactly what we had hoped would happen, and that's why we tested it. So

042all in all, good. We do have good news on the delay front, with day automation. We were able to negotiate with them and receive a $10,000 credit to the job due to the delay and the requirement to purchase additional hardware and the labor to install that. So all in all, we basically saved the cost of that external, the extra hardware. So that was helpful. This last part is taking a little bit longer than we had hoped. This programming is something that I feel should have been done earlier, but they have picked it up and are fixing it now. The most important part obviously with a system like this is that it functions flawlessly from the time we go live. So that's the work that's being done now. Two meetings have happened since our last board

043meeting. One was our meeting of the dirt team, which was our inaugural meeting this year. We did our first tabletop exercise, which included how would we respond to a gas leak at one of our schools due to an accident. We reviewed evacuation routes, evacuation protocols, how we would inform community, and then ultimately reunite with parents as well as coordination with our fire and first responders. In that dirt meeting, we also reviewed for our new members of cabinet, the incident command positions we have, we focused in on how our redundancies work within those incident command structures and took a look at all of our building emergency response plans and making sure all of the dirt teams had access to all of those, which they do. So it was a productive meeting, the first of the year

044and as Drew said, later this week we will be meeting with dirt to review and debrief Friday's wet weather. We also had our first inter-agency meeting and that's the meeting between the school district, SPD, Scarsdale Edgemont Family counseling, really to focus on any topics of mutual concern and shared interest. Got an opportunity to introduce SPD to our new, this is superintendent for business, Andrew, and Jeannie joined us there to talk with them about our impending switch in internet filters and internet identification software that identifies students who may have typed, searched for or created electronic documents that have concerning information in it. So that is that our new system is, is not an AI interface. So it is an AI interface that is then vetted by human beings on the third parties end and then classifying

045those types of hits for us, including ones that may go directly to the police if there is, if there's a reason for that to be the first call, especially if it's off hours. So we wanted to connect with SPD, make sure they understood how that worked and they were thankful for that engagement. We debriefed the Edgewood area robbery that happened before school last week and reviewed our communication protocols with the PD. When an incident happens in the vicinity of a school, it's, you know, it's always a judgment call on those types of situations whether they are informing us. They wouldn't inform us of a robbery that happened three or four blocks away from the school. But it's always a judgment call, especially with a situation where school is starting, whether or not they think there's

046a danger. In this case, they were fully aware that the perpetrators had fled the area. There was no remaining danger. They did keep police in the area throughout the morning and through the afternoon. So that was handled very well on their end. We did talk about whether communication could have been earlier to the school district and moving forward, that will be the case if it's in the area of a school. Other than that, we are seeing some anecdotal evidence, both from the police standpoint, Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling and the school district that there are less students and people in the Village having major mental health issues requiring hospitalization, use of residential programming. That's not to say that the counseling need has diminished, that we are still seeing kind of at historic levels, but we are

047seeing a little less on police wellness checks, Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling and RS are seeing less needs to refer to hospitals and residential programs. So that is good news. And then finally, talking a little bit about the injury that happened on the field during the football game. We engaged in a debrief that was pretty extensive after that, both including talking with people involved in the care during the injury, reviewing the video of the game, which gave us a minute by minute understanding of how the response took place. We also asked SVAC which they complied with to get us the 911 times and response records for the calls. I'll give a couple of basic fact points of what the response looked like and if there are any questions, I'm happy to go over that. And I'll

048just start with the, the athlete is fine. Yes. Fully recovered just so, if the public was here and witnessed the, you know, scary moments that the athlete is fine. So I'll start at the end. There was approximately 12 and a half minutes between the time the player was injured on the field and the ambulance arrived on the field, approximately three minutes to three and a half minutes of that was, and the student within 10 to 15 seconds of being on the field was attended by the opposing coach, the athletic trainer, and the orthopedist who is at all of our football games. There was approximately a three to three and a half minute triage of the situation where they were interviewing the player who was lucid during the entire, during the entire time and judging what

049the next steps would be. They decided not to move the student and they would call the ambulance. The ambulance was called at 06:54, SVAC. So when a cell phone calls 911, it goes to the state. 911 system is then transferred to the county that it needs to be in. Those transfers take approximately one to one and a half minutes. So at 06:56, county dispatch received the call for the ambulance, at 06:57, SVAC received the call to release an ambulance and the ambulance left the garage at approximately 06:58. The ambulance arrived at the high school entrance at 07:01. So you have between a seven and a half and eight and a half minute response time for the ambulance once it was dispatched from the 911 call. In general, this is the timeframe that we can expect

050in Scarsdale for a response to a 911 call. Those all happened effectively. The student left the field at 07:21 and arrived at the hospital at 07:46. So all in all, it was a short duration. Now if you're sitting in the stands, that can seem like an interminably long period of time, but this is why we do those debriefs. We did determine that the emergency response plan was followed by the people on the field and the school districts, so we feel really good about that response. Obviously there are conversations to be had about whether or not we want to increase the amount of response in any given game. Do we want to have people on standby? That would require financial cost. Right now, we have athletic trainers and an MD at every football game, which is

051more than is required for the sport. Varsity? Varsity. Okay, happy to answer any questions or. And I'll be honest, it felt like an hour to me. Yeah, but it was when, you know, when we went through the timeline and it was basically 12 minutes from injury to ambulance on the field, that I felt a lot better. Any questions on any of that? That was quite a bit of... So thank you Eric for breaking down all of that piece by piece and the way you did. I really appreciate it and for carefully considering the response, I appreciate the fact that we're above, you know, the requirements. I guess I'm wondering, you mentioned that we're above the requirements for varsity football. What is our availability, for example, of a doctor and trainers for other sports? Is that

052consistent with what varsity football gets or does it vary from sport to sport? I'll let Ray talk about each sport specifically. Tackle football and ice hockey are the only ones that have required medical personnel. And a person qualified with an EMT certification is required for ice hockey. And then for football, you're required to either have an MD, an athletic trainer or EMS standby. And if you're looking at availability for every game, we have two athletic trainers that are on duty and cover games across the district. We added this not too long ago, the board with, you know, we increased the coverage substantially so that we have that coverage at all times. But we do not have doctors or EMTs at other contests 'cause that's not required. And is this the, how often has it happened

053that an ambulance has been needed at a football game or another athletic contest? We've never had an issue like that before. Okay and is our practice consistent? I understand that it surpasses what's required, but do most neighboring districts, for example, or most comparable districts have an ambulance on standby for football or for any other sports? So most districts will have one of the three. Okay. Either EMS standby or an athletic trainer or a doctor. Many will have two like, but most do not have all three. Thank you so much. I don't think there's a, there's not a school that I know of that has all three at all times. All right, I appreciate everybody's consideration of all of this. Thanks for those updates, Eric. Going back to your first update, the dirt team, I think

054last year we talked about having the PTC president on the team. Is that still the case this year? We have the exit, we have the PTA president as a member of the team when we are meeting regularly, not when we go into emergency response mode. In addition to the PTC president, we have our STA president as well. Oh great, thank you. Are they involved in the debrief as well or just? No, not during the debriefs. If we're in emergency response mode, which would include the debriefing of a situation. It's just the administrative part. Okay. People in the incident command structure. All right, that makes sense. One thought I had when you were talking about the robbery that happened recently near the Edgewood School and you mentioned that the police were going to, would consider making

055communication to the district sooner if the incident was in the area of the school. As I understood it, this happened sort of at bus pickup time. It happened about 07:15 in the morning. So it was about an hour before. So I think that there could be students that might be at a bus stop that may not be near a school when an incident happens. So I think I would encourage them to, you know, to be more broad and proactive in that case. I would caution us to... So when we're thinking about SPD's response to these types of incidents in the area, their main focus is to the victim and securing the area to make sure that it is safe. You know, part of their communication structure on what they need to do and who they

056need to tell will be determined whether they believe the area is safe or not. So in situations where they believe a piece or part of Scarsdale is dangerous to be in, that is when they are communicating out much more quickly to various organizations that might have people. But if they determine that the area is safe and they're doing an investigation following an incident that is no longer in process, you know, I would caution as Scarsdale's a big place, they are on calls on a daily basis. And I think we want to be in the position where when they are communicating, it is for something that's important and serious. I don't necessarily want to have so much communication out there, that it desensitizes people to those types of communication. So that's a balance and a concern

057we have to think about. That's a fair point. And I'm sorry I guess my question's for Ray. I shouldn't, next one, I shouldn't have let you sit down. So you mentioned for varsity football, we have what about JV or? That's for football or ice hockey. football in general? It's irrespective of level. Okay and even modified hockey as well? Modified hockey requires an EMT Okay. on the ice, yep, before the game we'll even start. Yes, that I know that one, yes. And then, sorry that was it for you, Ray. And then Eric, just one thought. I had asked a question to Drew earlier and you responded, so thank you. Just about how we do have SVAC present for Carnival and graduation, other large crowd events. I appreciate that we have EMT services or doctors, athletic trainers

058on standby for athletes. But at an event like homecoming where we have so many people in attendance, potentially it seems like we may wanna consider that accidents could happen to just spectators as well. So I think it's something that maybe we wanna consider for the future. I think we can certainly entertain those discussions with SVAC. SVAC is largely volunteer and they do have some paid staff. So there's limited times when they can just provide an ambulance. If we were to engage them on a more regular basis, whether it be football games, homecoming, four or five, we would need to come to a agreement with them 'cause they would need to hire a paramedic to man the ambulance in those situations 'cause they need their volunteers to be able to go on emergency calls. So when

059we kind of sequester them for long periods of time, that makes 'em less able in the moment to respond. I appreciate that. I just think it's probably worth considering from where I'm sitting and that's it. I think we agree, I just putting it out there is what the parameters around that discussion would be. Thank you. Okay, next we'll hear of a fall season update from Ray. So good evening. Thank you to Drew and and to the board this night tonight for the opportunity to update you on the athletic program. As you may know, many of the teams are competing really well and they're on their way to successful post-season runs. And while we do plan to prepare, while we do plan, prepare and play to win, I'll share other indicators of success tonight. The status

060of some current projects and plans for the 2023/'24 school year. Please feel free to stop me and ask questions as they arise or after I complete this presentation. So tonight's update, I'll just focus on four things. A little bit about participation, the things that are happening in supply field and our plans there, updates on the RFP related to the field study and then our involvement in the Inside Out program at section one. This fall, we have about 600 student athletes participating, slightly more at this time. Ae had some add mid-season with about 53% of them being female, 47% being male and about 40% total student participation just this fall. If we look at the numbers over time, we're probably at our highest number over the last five years in fall participation. And so we're excited

061about that. Last spring, I shared participation data that signaled a decrease in girls' participation. While the preliminary data was flawed and inaccurate, I presented accurate data later and had discussions with student athletes that revealed some facts related to shifting interests, perspectives and choice. While these shifts are more evident in girls lacrosse, softball and I believe in girls basketball, they're also present in boy sports and baseball is one example. So the department's making efforts to compensate for these shifts and better understand potential mismatch in the department and athlete's purpose or ideas about that, what we think about perceived importance of athletics and how we define success. Furthermore, we're seeing gaps in the ways of coaching and the ways that students wanna play and specifically the way we think about being competitive or we're taking two distinct

062approaches in addressing these issues, first we are looking at the way we level teams and we'll examine the phenomenon this winter in girls basketball. We requested competitive schedules for freshmen and varsity B Girls basketball in addition to the more traditional JV and varsity. This will give the department a better understanding and opportunity to match the level of play with the ability and interest of our student athletes. And then second, we'll be engaging in activities related to section one's Inside Out initiative and I'll go into that further later in this presentation. Talking a little bit about supply field. As you may already know, we're partnering with the Village to improve conditions at Supply Field. Marona White is contributing to the project, supplying the funds for a purchase and installation of a scoreboard. The Village is paying

063for the improvements to the playing field itself and the district is taking responsibility for the concrete slab in the dugouts as well as fencing around those areas and adjacent to the backstop. We're also exploring types of covers for the roof over the dugout areas. And I'll be making a gift request to Marona White for windscreens similar to the ones at Dean Field. The RFP are in the field study. So early in the process, we decided that prior to requesting proposals, it would be important and beneficial to identify firms that could successfully complete a comprehensive field study. So we issued a request for qualifications so that we could screen firms. The firms were evaluated based on professional qualifications, understandings of our project scope and the ability to meet our project schedule. Through the RFQ process, two

064firms were identified and a request for proposals was sent and received by both firms. Those proposals are currently being evaluated based on their stakeholder engagement plans and their fixed fees. It's important to note that the proposals are a quite bit over budget at this time. So now talk a little bit about Inside Out Training. Last year, I participated in section one's diversity, equity and inclusion initiative called Inside Out. Inside Out Training is based on the book "Inside Out Coaching" by Joe Ehrmann, a professional NFL football player whose reflections revealed that his experience in sports were primarily transactional in nature. More importantly, he realized that the most meaningful experience he had in sport were transformative in nature and based on long lasting memories and relationships. Last year's sessions were focused on interpersonal work for me and

065the development of a transformational purpose statement in an elevator speech, both precursors to developing common language, understanding and purpose in our program. And just to share with you my transformational purpose statement. So I lead by creating and promoting inclusive and competitive programs that seek to maximize participation and work to provide opportunities for students for the purpose of developing confidence, skills in self-advocacy, perseverance and resiliency. In the elevator speech, that's still a work in progress, but as it exists now is that interscholastic athletics uses competitive sports to provide student athletes with the opportunity to take risks and make good mistakes in an authentic yet unpredictable environment. Student athletes must leave the cradle of their comfort zone for the public exposure of the field, court, pool, course or track and must accept being vulnerable, exposed and unprotected

066from the public and personal scrutiny. Through that journey of challenges and successes, they learn about themselves. This year we're focusing on Inside Out Coaching 2.0, which focuses on coaching and coaches training where coaches will develop a transformational purpose statement as well. The training sessions are based in common language, common understanding and purpose, and they're rooted in the development of culture. They're based on four essential questions outlined in Joe Ehrmann's book. Why do I coach the way that I do? What does it feel like to be coached by me? And how do I define success? This year, there are other activities as well that I'll participate in as an athletic administrator. Two of them have already occurred. On August 23rd, there was a session on evaluation and surveys and I'll talk a little bit about how

067we've implemented those later. On September 27th, there was a session on hiring strategies that focused on creating purposeful and effective ways of hiring and retaining coaches. We've already to start and act on that learning that's occurred in these sessions and incorporated these actions into the issues related to participation that I discussed earlier. A survey was designed and started to be implemented with coaches and athletes for two purposes. The survey uses the four guiding questions of "Inside Out" that I referred to earlier to detect differences in coaches and student athletes' perspectives. Also the survey will look to examine my declared purpose and how coaches and athletes perceive its importance and the presence within our athletic program. Also I have bolstered our hiring process for head coaching candidates. Our next session on October 25th, we'll focus on

068the onboarding of coaches and we'll be aligning those practices with the hiring strategies and evaluations. Thank you for this opportunity and if you have any questions, I'm prepared to answer them now. Thank you, Ray. Questions for Ray? Yeah? Thank you so much for that, Ray. Super helpful. I just had a question 'cause you were, you referred to girls basketball as one of the sports that's dropping. If I heard you correctly, and you said one of the things you were doing was to look at how you level the teams and put them in more competitive. So are you assuming that the drop is 'cause the girls are not in competitive enough with other teams or they want more competition? I'm just trying to see the connection between how those would help. That's great, so I think

069what we've found through discussions with kids. And so last year, we added a varsity B girls basketball team and that was by request of student athletes who specifically wanted that level. We heard that in baseball as well at the end of last spring. So I'm tying it together and you know, a couple years ago, we didn't have enough kids to field freshman girls basketball. And so what we wanted to do is make sure we had schedules that would support any level, make sure that the word got out, that we're able to host and support any level that kids were interested in playing. So that there was adequate places to play, levels to play. And we wanna see how that plays out. So there's some signaling that maybe we don't have all the appropriate levels. There

070are some kids who may not be ready to play on the varsity level or want that level of competitiveness in their entire career here at Scarsdale, but the Varsity B allows a slightly lower level of competition. So as one easy fix, right? Low hanging fruit, we're just offering levels of basketball. Basketball was the first sport I believe that we lost that freshman level for girls participation. And since it comes in the winter before girls lacrosse and softball, we thought it was a good opportunity to test our hypothesis around this information. So you're anticipating more girls wanting to play basketball. That my hope is that-- Not a drop, but an actual increase. Correct. My hope is that adding the additional levels where kids can enter at their given level of skill and interest in participation that

071we should see more interest and more participation. Okay, great. My other question is, you referred to the survey with the "Inside Out" questions. In the spring, we talked about surveying the athletes with their experiences from the year and using that data maybe to drive decisions for this year. Did that survey ever take place? So that did not go out. We are looking to survey those students now and use that information at the beginning of the season to help create a common understanding of how that season should play out. And so by season, do you mean the spring season or the? Yes, for the spring athlete, yes, for the spring athletes, yes. That will occur before the spring season starts in an attempt to meet the needs of them at needs of the students on the

072way in and come to a common understanding on how that season should proceed. As well as at the end. Okay, so we should expect a survey at the beginning of the spring and at the end of the spring, Correct. Just for spring sports. Correct, so the plan for this new survey is to use it in a slightly different way. The last survey, the issue with the results from that survey where they were very difficult to act upon. Much of the information was anonymous and on the extremes of either extremely positive or extremely negative. The current idea around this, especially after going through some training on this is to use these surveys and share that information in aggregate so that coaches and athletes share in the analysis of that, in the discussion of that and in

073the construction of culture on their teams so that that opens up dialogue between coaches and athletes and then to again, assess at the end of the season to see if that actually helps come together. And so some of the things I talked about in the presentation was about common language coming to a common purpose. I think that's where the disconnect is right now. There's some people who see the value in sport, in playing time, in performance and you know, part of the training and some of the things we're seeing is that the real value is in long-lasting memories and developing relationships, which is very, very, very similar to what you'll hear later in the year when we talk about the developmental relationship framework. Okay, so then you said the earlier survey, the answers were extreme.

074So there was a survey given out, I'm just confused. So in the past, it did not go out this spring. Okay and then the fall and winter sports, is there a plan to give those student athletes the same opportunity? Yeah, so the fall survey has gone out in small bits to students already. We're getting feedback on that. The initial feedback was that we needed to tweak some of the questions and that it should roll out through coaches and that we should build some capacity in coaches to talk about this first. So we've seen it go out in small bits. We've got some data back, we've made some changes to the survey, we're looking to send it out at least one more time to captains again and to coaches before it goes out at the end

075of the season. Alright, thank you. Other questions for Ray? Thank you, Ray. Thank you Ray for this update. It's been great to watch how well our student athletes are doing this season so far this year. So just to make sure I understood everything clearly. I understand that we're trying some creative approaches to deliver to students an athletic program that they can engage with. As part of that, have you had time to look at what is working in teams that have particularly high year on year retention? Are there common threads that pull through the teams that didn't see those drop-offs? Yeah, so that's a great question. So, you know, I met with the captains this fall to talk a lot about this process and whether it would be interesting to them. And there was one team

076who felt that this might not be as necessary for them because they had a really cohesive group and they talked about some of the things that occur in their team that are norms or understandings. That whole team has a true understanding of how the team's selected, how playing time is allocated, when substitutes get in, and what each member of the team's responsibility is. So they talked a lot about that, a lot about their relationship with the coach and the coach's ability to hear that feedback from them and incorporate that into the next day's practice or into the next day's game. Even related to strategy and skill development. One other thing that was incredible to me to hear from them was about the players' roles, the starters who we would normally think of as starters, roles

077in playing well so that others could get into the game. And that it was understood that if it came to a specific point in the game related to outcome, performance, you know? Winning, you know, like a... I'm trying to think of, the gap between the, the specific gap, I'm trying not to identify the team. Specific gap between the team that was winning and the team that might be losing. It got to a certain point everyone knew that the kids who did not start were gonna have an opportunity to play and that no matter what happened at that point, that the starters could come back in and help out. But it was a whole team, the team was in it together and they all celebrated everyone playing. And so I think that that, that was the

078most striking thing to me is that there was a real sense of responsibility and respect amongst the team members that was grown collectively by the group. And you know, I can tell you even some of our other teams that perform extremely well, we don't see that level of cohesion and common understanding. Thank you and just so to make sure, just following on Colleen's questions to make sure I understand what's happening with surveying. Are we planning to survey our current fall athletes but only at the end of the season? So it wasn't like a beginning and end? Yeah, we've already sent out one pilot. There'll be one more pilot that will go out before it goes out to everyone. Just a little more tweaking. So, you know, it's gone to select coaches, it's gone to select

079kids, mostly captains to take a look at it and give us feedback. Right, but total, just go out once to everyone. And it'll just go out once this fall once I think we've got a pretty solid set of questions that are giving us information that we're really looking for. And then the hope is to use this preseason, like right at the beginning of season on the onset, once teams are made, to share that with coaches and with kids in the aggregate, intersport and across all sports and then do it again at the end so that we can see if there is actually a coming together of ideas or if we come closer together in the items that were surveyed. The other thing that we're gonna do when we analyze the data is to look really

080at my purpose statement and the things that I talked about in the beginning related to being competitive, inclusive, developing self-advocacy, perseverance and resiliency and see if that's really important to kids, right? If my purpose is off base and not what kids are looking for or not what they feel are important or not what our program is designed to do, then I may have to change. And I think that's the critical piece is what are the real needs of our kids and how do we meet those needs? And so the hope is that through a collective analysis or us all looking at this information together, that we can create a better program moving forward that's more responsive to kids' needs over time. And just one final question. I know there have been discussions right, of where

081athletes are moving and whether there's a fluctuation from one sport to another or to sports outside of school. Are you starting to get a sense of whether, for example, people might be moving from kind of more traditional team sports to one of the places we haven't really heard about a drop off at the board table at least is sports, like swimming, track and field, things that are a little bit more, teams comprised of individuals? A bifurcation there? Yeah, so I guess there are two ways to answer that. We've always been pretty consistent with our individual performance sports and really those sports we've, for the most part we've been able to take as many comers as are willing to participate, even if we have to modify some of the activities for student athletes who are coming

082in at the entry level. And if we look at other sports, we're not seeing a shift from one sport to another. You know, the only time we really see that is if a student doesn't make a sport during that particular season, then they'll go and they may do cross country or track, but we're not seeing a shift. So even if we look at the spring, last spring, we didn't see a major shift from any of the sports I talked about softball or girls lacrosse or even and a shift to like flag football, which is a new sport. Every new sport we've offered so far, we have captured new kids, which is amazing. And really, really I think important, I think the diverse number of activities we offer is great. We have had requests for fencing

083and squash and we're looking at ways to pilot those. And so I think we are seeing kids who are interested in participating in sports that Scarsdale has not traditionally offered in the past. So I think that's an important place for us to pay attention to. At some point we may reach a capacity but right, now it's really great to see kids voicing their opinion and interest and capturing new kids into the programs that we may have not offered in the past. Thank you so much for taking all the time to answer those questions. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Okay, anyone else for Ray? I just had a couple quick questions. Thank you for this overview. I'm not sure if I heard it right on the RFP. Did you see the proposals are coming in over

084budget? Yeah. So can you just talk about what is the next step in the process between this group and the Village since it's a joint RFP? Yeah, I mean I can talk a little bit about it. I might have to defer it to Andrew. So Ray's correct, they're over budget. I think one of the key things that we're gonna be looking at is what are are the scope of services that were offered in those RFPs to see if we can look at what we wanna hold onto and what we wanna jettison and really kind of dial that scope down to a more budget friendly option. If we feel after we've gone through that review that there's some non-negotiables that we have to have in there and it's just our budget was just not realistic, then

085we'll have to come back together both with the board and with the Village 'cause they'll be partnering with us on this to reevaluate the funding source. Okay, thank you. Is is this gonna impact the timing of this study and completing it this school year? It shouldn't. We'll just have to be flexible on our end of expectations. Okay, alright. Thank you for that update. Just a quick question on the survey. So will the winter sports get the pre and post? So that's the plan is for them to get both. Okay. Yeah 'cause I think we'll work out the bugs. You know, and I've shared this with Drew. I had grandiose plans at the beginning of the season to get it out and get it to everyone. And when I shared it with our coaches who were

086knowledgeable about it, they thought a slower rollout would be more effective than a surprise rollout. So we've been building some capacity in the common language, talking about the four questions and the coaches training, which I think we've got incredible support for, all the coaches who've had an opportunity to look at the training or hear about it have accepted with open arms. The great thing about the training is it's really based in personal, it's really an interpersonal look at what's important for you as an individual and then asking you to define that outwardly and openly. And so it's not a prescriptive plan. We're not adopting a specific program or set of behaviors that we have to give. So the request was to slow it down a little bit, send it out, make sure that it's good

087and we're getting back to real information from kids and that kids are comfortable with it and then put it out to everyone and that it would be more effective not only in the implementation and the participation, but also in the data that we get back from it. Okay, thank you. I understand, thank you. Have all coaches taken this training at this point? No, so it's ongoing. It'll be year long. So we've rolled it out for our fall coaches. They'll be doing it at part of their season 'cause it has to happen while they're coaching. So by the end of this year, I would say 95 to 99% of coaches will have completed the training itself or the opportunity to actually go through the entire training and earn the certificate of completing the Inside Out Training

088For Coaches. I understand. Okay, great. And then are the surveys still gonna be anonymous? They are. The only identifiable information will be by team, but you know, if we're sharing that information aggregately with coaches and then with kids by team and then by program, you know, there is some identifiable information in there. You know, some of the items are scored using a liquor type scale, but there are some other open-ended responses that may be identifiable. You can tell me if I'm going into too much detail on this, okay? I have a few follow up, but I can ask offline just about that. And then my last question is just on supply field. The timing of the district improvements. So where, you know, we have an April 1st start for varsity softball where we need to

089meet and our work needs to happen, my understanding is before the Village work 'cause they're doing field work. We don't want to drive trucks over, you know, cement trucks over their new field. So what's our timing looking like? Yeah, I don't know the exact timing of that to realize that the cement trucks are just for the dugout areas, which are on the perimeter and the fencing's on the outside. So I think once the Village gets all the information they need on where everything's gonna go, I think we're gonna collectively come together and figure out the timeline for all the work and when it can happen. I can actually add an update on that as well. So I had a introductory meeting with Brian Gray from the Village and he and Mike Petra and the team

090are actually working closely together to coordinate all those efforts so that there are not conflicts like you're suggesting, you know, equipment ruining others' work or what have you. Okay, all right, great. Thank you so much. And I would just add, you know, to the survey questions, I think your questions are good and I'm eager for Ray to come back and share it, but I wanna, you know, protect the trial and error that's going on right now. I think we recognized the survey that was in place about the seasons and student athletes experience, part of the problem with 'em is they were long and cumbersome and it was unclear how to use the results well. I think we were talking about a new survey on a separate track from the work Ray and the athletic department

091was doing with Inside Out and there was sort of an epiphany this summer that actually those two things should be the same. So I think Ray's really done a great job trying to work the inside, to frame the inquiry both with coaches and students around the framework of inside out. And then actually you heard Ray say to your question, Colleen, he talked about the developmental relationships framework, which is actually the framework that our belonging survey is built around. And you'll hear more about that at the table soon that that's a beautiful connection to make because it's transcends the activity you're doing, whether it's a class, you know, with a teacher or team with a coach. So I think that they need a little bit of space to play and figure this out before it becomes

092like a routine. Thank you, Ray. We're not done with cabinet. This is a long one, I apologize. The beginning of the school year has happened and a lot's going on, Andrew. And I'm gonna be guilty of adding a comment that I didn't plan on. So earlier this evening, as you mentioned that the audit committee met with our auditors and there was a statement in that presentation by the auditor about how well organized all the information was that was presented to him. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that is because of Lisa's Zareski and the business office staff and they've done a really amazing job of organizing our district reports and finances. So I want to just thank Lisa for all her hard work and that we would not be successful without her. So I know I'll

093speak more about facilities later this evening, but I wanna take a minute to say thank you to our transportation staff. On Friday, we were somewhat surprised by that storm and the severity of the road conditions. Many of our drivers had to travel treacherous roads just to get back to get their buses to pick up our kids. And it was quite an eye-opening experience for me to sit in the bus compound when that was happening. Multiple phone calls, phones ringing off the hook for hours while I was over there. And the teamwork and the can-do attitude of that team was really impressive. It not just the leadership there though, they were amazing in their own right. But our drivers who were willing to jump on another bus just 'cause they knew kids had to get home.

094So I really wanted to say thank you to our bus drivers and I'm very appreciative and in awe of the work that they did last week. Thank you, Andrew. And last but not least, Meghan. I wanted to give a quick update on the two principal searches that we have that will be going on this year, both at Edgewood school and at the middle school. So just so you know a rough timeline, this month, beginning this month, I'm going to be working with both building communities to gather information and input to help me build the leadership profile. Spending time, my goal is to really get to know, get in there and get to receive feedback from the faculty, staff, the community and the students when possible, both taking the form of surveys and in-person conversations so

095that I can really develop a and put into writing what the community really sees in their leader, in their future leader. My goal is to be working through that in October, early November, develop that profile, share it back out with the community. And my goal is to post those positions prior to the December break so that when we return from break, we'll spend January reviewing resumes and really the bulk of our interview process will be during the month of February. So that is the goals at this point, but just wanted to give you an update that you might be hearing that over the next few weeks, I'll be reaching out to those communities and gathering that input, thanks. That's it, thank you, thank you. Thank you for all those detailed updates. We will move to

096item seven, hearing from those present. I will read the preamble. "Members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district related items or other non-personnel related matters during two separate public comment periods. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization. For those commenting remotely, please mute the live stream, turn on your camera and then unmute yourself." Now it would be a good time to log into Zoom if you would like to make a remote public comment. "Speakers will be asked to conclude their remarks after four minutes and we'll be given a verbal cue at the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via email at [email protected].

097The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. Response to public comment will take place after both the first and second public comment periods." And with that, is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment? Hello, Leaha Dembitzer at 35 Foreman Eric Road. I'm President of PT Council. Good evening. I have a brief statement on behalf of the PT Council Executive Committee. "On behalf of the Scarsdale PT Council Executive Committee, which is comprised of the four PTC officers and the presidents of the seven schools, I would like to extend a deep thank you to the district

098and building administration as well as the faculty and staff of our seven schools, for your care of our community students and district buildings. A special thank you to our building custodial teams, the best teams around As it is National Custodians Day, the PTCEC would especially like to highlight the incredible work and care put forward by the building custodial teams. The impact of Friday's storm was unexpected and harrowing for so many in our community. The PTCEC thanks you for your sincere efforts and active communication under difficult and complicated circumstances." Thank you to yourself and the PTC for those comments. Is there anybody else that wishes to make a public comment? Please come to the mic if you wish to do so. Good evening, members of the school board. My name is Bob Harrison. I have lived

099in Scarsdale for 44 years. I have two sons that went to Scarsdale schools and four grandchildren attending Scarsdale schools. Could you also please state your address for the record? What was that? Please state your address for the record. Oh, I'm sorry, okay. I live at 65 Fox Meadow Road and if I didn't already mention it, my wife Terry, who's in the audience, our 44 year residents of Scarsdale and we have been very active in the community over that period of time. First, I'd like to congratulate Ron Schulhof for becoming president of the board. I wish you well, Ron. I known you over a number of years. I'm sure you'll do well. And I'd like to thank Amber for her commitment to our schools and our students over her period of time as president. Let's see,

100I'd like to congratulate Green Acres for their success and their award. I attended many meetings back a number of years ago when there was discussion on the restoration of the Green Acre School. And I think our district did an excellent job in restoring that school and importantly maintaining the field at Green Acres and the play area for our students in our community. I'd like to talk for a few minutes. I have my Penn State shirt on. I have been a volunteer recruiter for Penn State University in Scarsdale and Edgemont. Over 25 years I've helped more than 50 students go to Penn State. Many more have gone there, but these were students who needed help with their applications. And I'm also involved with a Bi Sigma Delta Educational Foundation. We have 30 scholarships a year for

101students who go to Penn State. And there was an article in the Scarsdale Inquire back about two weeks ago, inviting community members and students to attend the Penn State Iowa whiteout game that ended up with 110,830 fans at the game. Penn State did very well. They won the game 31 to nothing. I said both teams were undefeated going into that game. So I continue to be active in helping students with their applications to Penn State. You can contact me at my cell phone number, area code, 914-725, forgot the numbers. (bell rings) And I live, I guess that means I've got another minute left. Again, I live at 65 Fox Meadow Road and I'm happy to help any Scarsdale and Edgemont students in their application to Penn State to help them get accepted. And finally, I

102guess I'd make a quick comment. It would be helpful, I think the Village board lists their board members on their agenda. Your agenda doesn't seem to have your names. It would be, not that I don't know most of you, but I think it would be nice to have the names of all the members of the school board on your agenda would be helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else in the audience that wishes to speak tonight? Okay, we will turn to Zoom, Suzie. As of right now, I do not see any attendees on Zoom. Give everyone a second. I'll give everyone a second. Okay, any hands? Nope, sorry. Okay, we will close the first public comment period. There is a second public comment period later in the meeting

103and we will go to follow up to public comment, item 8.01. I just wanna thank our PTAs for supporting our custodians overnight. That was the outreach, you know, from you, the board and and the PTC and the PTAs to check in on us and see if we needed anything and being able to sort of direct that goodwill toward our terrific custodians was lovely. So thank you, we're really grateful and it makes me proud to be in this community. We will move to item, thank you Drew. We will move to item nine, written communications, Suzie. Okay, first I'll be reading the preamble. Let's see. Okay, to written communications, sorry. "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

104to 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 our last meeting, for written communications, we've had six written communications regarding district matters and one communication regarding board meeting highlights, board invitations or correspondence. Thank you. Thanks, Suzie. Move to item 10, the consent agenda. I'll start with 10.01. The preamble, the full preamble is available in BoardDocs, but the consent agendas and ability for the board to streamline items that the officers and the superintendent believe do not need additional discussion. But any board member's able to remove any item from the consent agenda if they wish to an individual action item. Is there any board member that would like to remove any

105item from the consent agenda tonight? See no one, consent agenda, Amber. Thanks Ron. There are 10 items on the consent agenda this evening. Evening 11.01, minutes of the business meeting from September 11th, 2023, 11.02, minutes of the special meeting executive session on September 18th, 2023, 11.03, the personnel certified report, 11.04, the personnel non-certified report, 11.05, stipulations of settlement, 11.06, contracts over $20,000, special education, 11.07, the budget calendar for the 2024/2025 school year, 11.08, the Southern Westchester BOCES contract 2022/2023 school year, the external audit report at 11.09, and 11.10, accept the consent agenda. I move we accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Amber. Is there a second? Second. Jessica, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Before we go to information items, should we take a brief break? I think this might

106be a good time to take a little break. This board has been going for three hours. We'll take a five minute recess and we're reconvene at 08:12, thanks. Alright, we are back from our brief break and we will move to information items. I will pass this over to Drew. And I will pass this over to Andrew for the facilities update. And I will pass this over to, oh, Amber's eating. So I'll take this one, Amber. So, sorry. So the summer break for a school district facilities department is anything but a summer vacation. This time is spent with much deep cleaning and high dusting and lots of preventative maintenance and renovation work across the district. So this summer, our facility staff was hard at work preparing our school buildings for the '23/'24 school year. So the

107next few slides that I'll take you through are just some visual representations of that work that happened in our school buildings over the summer. Here at the high school, rooms 1N4, I'm still learning the rooms, and 1N6, we made into a new home for our A-school students. So some updated lighting, flooring, and some new partition walls that are going in I believe this week to help that space be a nice new home for the A-school students here as part of our main school building that was completed, the majority of it over the summer and those last few finishes are happening this week. Room 373 and the general office at the high school received new casework and cabinetry to provide more appropriate storage for those locations. And that was installed by our district maintenance crew. At

108the middle school, a real showstopper, I think is the new morning broadcast for the middle school is presented from this new wonderful stage in the Great Hall where a live broadcast of the morning news is presented daily. And that's was done thanks to the work of our district carpenter, Brendan Buckley, who really made it an amazing space there for the middle school production staff on the morning news broadcast. So it's a proud, you know, little addition to the middle school building. At Heathcote, the Heathcote the main office received a major update with new flooring, ceiling, lighting, some furniture and casework. Finishing touches are still being completed but the staff has already moved in and they're making use of their new space. I want to thank the Heathcote staff and principal Stile who's here for her

109patience as we face some delays due to contractor material delivery delays and the like. But it's really a beautiful new space for Heathcote and we are happy to have it done. Quaker Ridge, an original office space in the building, room 10B was most recently a storage location, excuse me. Oh you got it. A storage location and the facility staff took that space and basically renovated again so that we could have meeting spaces for staff and small group instruction for students returning that space into a functional educational area for our kids at Quaker Ridge. So we thank the facility staff for that. This next slide is really just a collage of many of the other projects that happened throughout the district this summer. One or two that I'd like to to highlight first is the Quaker

110Ridge and the Heathcote courtyard areas, which were funded through PTA donations. So thank you very much for our PTAs at those respective buildings for that work. I also wanted to highlight a space reconfiguration that happened here at the central office where we made much better use of our district copy room and provided an additional member of our curriculum staff with an appropriate office space by using underutilized space in that copy room in central office. The the work is notable because it happened all while we were still working all summer long in the central office and you would really hardly know what happened. So hats off to Christiano from the maintenance department and his team for really kind of using surgical precision in when they were doing their demo work and their construction work there. So

111it did not interrupt the busy schedule of the high school or the central office staff during the summer and we appreciated that very much. And then this last slide, I won't read, many projects happened that I didn't mention as there's probably more that I missed as well. But I really wanted to just commend the maintenance staff and the custodial staff and the ground staff that did really an amazing job this summer to get our buildings ready for students and staff to return in September. It certainly comes with great leadership from John Antonicelli, Nick Ferraro and our facilities director, Mike Petra, as well as all of the maintenance grounds and custodial staff who really worked diligently over the summer to get our buildings ready for students. So thank you to that staff. I also wanted to

112give the community an update, I'm sorry, I'm two slides behind here, on the auditorium project. It's an update of somewhat more of the same 'cause we just haven't hit the next milestone. But BBS, our district architect is working diligently to put the finishing touches on the final construction documents. Those are scheduled to be available within the next few weeks. We will review those as part of central office and likely bring together the auditorium committee that worked previously on this project just to make sure that all of the district's wants and needs have been factored into those drawings and plans. And then they will get submitted up to SED hopefully in November. Right now SED is taking about 14 to 16 weeks to approve construction projects. I will note that that may change as Bond Pro

113or projects that were approved with voter approval in May. A lot of districts start submitting them now 'cause the design work much like ours is getting done and the holiday breaks also put a little kind of crimp in the schedule there. So we anticipate that the projects will be approved by the state sometime at the end of February, early March, allowing us to bid those projects and award them in April for a June start date. It is anticipated based on the original schedule that we will start construction at the end of June as school starts to let out and then we will continue construction all the way through the summer and into January of 2025, at which point we'll have that auditorium open. I'm a bit behind on the details of this project, right? So

114I'll be working closely with Mike Petra's team as well as Ken Schutner at BBS to understand the logistics implications and I'll share that as appropriate with the board at future meetings once we know more about that project. And then I just, I do wanna say thank you to the facility staff and I know the PTA did a wonderful job of thanking them on Friday evening for their time and efforts. We had some known trouble locations that had some serious water that we were able to keep at bay, quite frankly because of the staff working diligently overnight and over the weekend to clean up those spaces. Thankfully we think all of those spaces save a few surprise roof leaks that are minor in nature, that our buildings are largely back to the way they were pre-storm

115on Friday, which is a real testament to the hard work the staff did. I have a long list of trouble spots and the way that the staff dealt with it, but I won't bore the board and the community this evening with those details. But certainly I wanna thank the staff and certainly having the football game here on Sunday is also a testament to the ground staff who quickly put that turf field back into playing condition on Sunday. So we thank them for all their hard work. So with that, I will stop and ask if the board has any questions. Thank you for that overview. Are there any board questions? You mentioned some of like the known trouble spots and abating water in those and I was curious, just tying together the auditorium project and a

116known trouble spot. How did the costume room slash storage room behind the auditorium do? And are we still on track? I'm trying to remember exactly, but I believe we were on track to get that roofing fixed before the auditorium was repaired so that those two don't have any sort of interplay. So I just wanted to see how that was going. My recollection, it may be wrong, so I'll double check it. But I think in the project we will do the roofing work, but it'll be to prevent any future damage of that space for sure. My understanding is that area was being dealt with as the water was coming in. So we did a lot of kind of, we were. Real time bailing. Yeah. We were bailing the boat as we were floating, but our, or

117actually didn't say we, the custodial staff were really taking it. There was a lot of pumping, vacuuming and mopping that was happening throughout the storm on Friday to make sure that we controlled the amount of water that was coming into the building. Certainly in the basement of the lobby of the high school, there was a significant amount of water and some equipment was down there. But for the most part, we were able to contain the areas so that no new major damage or anything like that would've happened. So we're pleased with that. Thank you so much, Andrew. You're welcome. And thank you to all the staff that was working on that too. Any other questions? Amber? Not a question, I just wanted to make a comment and share that I had the opportunity to visit

118the Heathcote, the new courtyard and it is really lovely. So I think thank you to the PTA there for getting that in our building, is wonderful. Great and I saw some pictures of the Quaker Ridge courtyard which looked, knowing what it, how uneven it was before, to see it flat and a usable space is just fantastic. So thank you to the PTAs for all of those projects and the future ones that are coming as well. Okay, we'll move to item 12.02, the NYSSBA, New York State School Board Association 2023 proposed bylaw amendments and resolutions. And I'll pass it to Drew. Sure. So on October 16th, Colleen will have the chance to represent the board at the NYSSBA virtual meeting and cast votes toward the proposed resolutions of which this year, there are a total of

11932. As has been our past tradition, we, the cabinet, has made recommendations just based on our experience where maybe appropriate or necessary or what felt meaningful, we added some comments or implications. By and large, we're in support of these resolutions. The only exception is really just kind of a technical one with resolution 20. I think we probably mostly agree with it, but just put no because there's this Blue Ribbon Commission right now poised to make some announcements about recommendations related to graduation requirements, which directly impacts the high school testing, potentially the high school testing regime, which is what this resolution is about. So it's more of a logic puzzle recommendation than a belief recommendation. So happy to discuss any particular ones if the board is interested and they seem a little more straightforward this year.

120Yeah. I just first want to thank you and the administration for going through all these and putting these comments and making recommendations. There's a lot of resolutions here. They're all different. They're all, they come from districts, they come from NYSSBA. So this isn't one where this is all one category. So it's a lot of work and we really appreciate it, but it's very meaningful because these are the resolutions that are gonna guide NYSSBA's advocacy work on behalf of school boards and districts. So what we vote on and then all the other member districts vote on is really gonna guide NYSSBA's work and it's very impactful work. So I'll open it up to any questions or comments about any of them. I have one question slash comment. Item resolution 31, which if anyone is following along

121in the Google Doc, which you can access on BoardDocs, it is a resolution that NYSSBA would support the ability, but not the requirement for districts to offer early voting. And your recommendation is not to support this and I see the note. So is, let me just start with my comment. I think your note is very rational and I think it would impact other districts. Bless you, but if I am thinking about this from the mindset of just Scarsdale Board of Education member, personally, I think allowing early voting, notwithstanding the additional administrative work that I understand it would require from our administration and our district clerk, is a positive thing. And so I just open up to others or to hear the other side that I might be missing. But I would be, I would like

122us to propose voting yes on this one. So let me pause there. Yeah, Amber? This is something that I've been, I've thought about a lot about this last year actually. Not specifically the early voting, but the fact that the Board of Elections decides where people vote and not every town or municipality has voting in their schools. But our Board of Elections has decided that voting in Scarsdale is at our schools rather than at municipal buildings like the library or the fire station or Village Hall. And I think when we were thinking about the calendar last year, it kind of struck me that, you know, we have to have a superintendent's conference day on that day. We're bound by the 180 days, yet we have to take this day off or we don't have students in

123the schools that day because of safety reasons. So there's a very long explanation for saying, I actually would prefer longer term not to have voting in our schools at all. And I don't know if I want to get into, I would be inclined to vote no on this because I don't know what the risk might be to early voting to our schools in terms of having people in our buildings because that's already something I'm sort of passionate about getting out of our school building. So that's just my opinion. Sorry, I have a very fundamental question. I understand very basic question, which is I don't, I can't access this Google document through our agenda. What's attached to the agenda that I-- Microphone, please. I'm just talking about accessing the Google document. I can't do it through

124our agenda because what's attached to my agenda is a PDF. No, I know, but-- it's a hyperlink in the agenda. It's not, there is a PDF but you'll see about halfway down the agenda item, it says Proposed NYSSBA Bylaw Amendments and Resolutions Worksheet. And that's the Google doc that. Jessica, were you gonna raise your hand or did you raise your hand I should say? I did but I just wanted to clarify with Amber's question. I guess I had understood it a little differently. I had not thought that it meant early voting in the schools. I thought it was early voting for school board roles. Is that I, maybe I misunderstood what they were-- I misunderstood it too. You're both right I believe. So it is early voting for school elections, which occur in our schools.

125Right, okay. All right. And this is silent on where it would be, but yeah, I mean that is a fair point. It is silent on where they would be. So because Amber had planted that idea in my head previously about, about locations and the calendar constraints of voting in our schools, I actually had thought that this resolution was a good one because it could take voting off of being for one fixed day in one fixed part of our school. It could be, you know, an early ongoing process in the district office or somewhere else. But obviously I'm not, you know, sorry. Or in the Village hall or in the firehouse. Did you just say Eric's office? But really in all seriousness, if you wanna differ on it. If the board feels strongly about voting yes,

126I just, that's something that, you know, has been a thorn in my side since we started talking about the calendar last year. And I was thinking about what days we have to not have students in our buildings for safety reasons, so. But if we're all yes, that's totally fine with me. After hearing both sides of the argument, I actually would agree with Amber that just, you know, having days that students can't be in the school are just so hard to, you know, come by. You know, although generally speaking, I wanna give voters every opportunity to vote and I understand, you know, not everybody can come into the school on a specific day. I just think that if they were to be in the school, it'd be challenging. Any other comments? I tend to agree with

127Amber and Suzie. It would be nice to give everybody the opportunity to vote in any way, shape, or form. But I think logistically right now, we don't need to add this to all the other things we're trying to get done right now. One thing that next year's board may wish to consider is many of these resolutions come from school districts. And so this board, we would, well I just have to look at the timing, could propose a unrelated to this conversation, a resolution about moving elections outta school buildings. I second that one. And this year, that deadline was July 14th. So I'm sure it's around that rough timeframe. And I can't remember the context, so I don't remember if it was through the NYSSBA resolutions, but I feel like that has come up in the

128past. Yeah, so we can go back to, we can also ask NYSSBA if somebody has proposed it and what's happened. But we have time for that. But just something to keep in mind for next year if we want to or next year's board would like to propose that. Okay, are there any other comments on any of the other resolutions? Whatever we come to consensus on on the spreadsheet is what Colleen will take and vote on behalf of our district in a couple weeks. Okay. Well Colleen, thank you for attending that virtual meeting as our delegate and Drew and all the administrators, thank you again for all your work putting this together along with the thoughtful rationale so everybody understood how you were thinking about it. Okay, we will move to item 12.03. The second reading

129of policy 5152, admission of non-resident students, Drew. No changes from first reading. This just adds the one change to allow a reduction or waiver of tuition for upon demonstration of extraordinary family hardship. In the case of a student who becomes a non-resident just prior to their senior year. If there are no additional changes, this would come back as an action item in a moment. Just for the community, since this is a second read, we would take action on, unless there's any changes. Are there any comments or questions from the board? For those watching at home, this is a policy the board discussed at the last two meetings. So you wanna see any of that discussion, those are available online. Okay, we will move to item 12.04, the second reading of policies 8413, 8414.5, and exhibit

1308414.5E and Drew and Andrew. Yep, again, these have been reviewed, these are policy changes related to transportation for non-public school students. Really kind of to reflect what we've actually been doing and consistent with the, you know, recommendations of NYSSBA and then the alcohol and drug testing, those are updates again to conform with the best practices that that are out there. And again, these would come back in a moment as action items unless there are any changes. Any comments or questions from the board. And thank you. I believe it is honoree that does this, that had all the red lines are in there. So anybody who's reading at home and wants to see exactly how things were changing, any policy attached are clean versions, original versions and red lines. So thank you honoree for all of

131that. We'll move to item 12.05, board goals and the self-evaluation template. This one is me. This finishes our conversation from the last few board meetings around board goals for the year and primary objectives. We discussed this at the last few board meetings. So attached is the final version as well as the red line from last year, as well as the board self-evaluation tool. This was a tool that was, is not mandatory. Unlike the superintendent evaluation, this is not a mandatory requirement of a board. But this board, the Scarsdale Board of Education has done this for a number of years. A previous board developed a tool each year, which we update to reflect the current year's goals and objectives. So that is attached and something that the board would do a self-evaluation on later this year.

132Any questions or comments on either the board goals or the self-evaluation tool? Thank you for putting those together. Just one question. So I noticed the self-evaluation tool is a PDF. We won't actually have to use a PDF, right? We'll.-- No, we will use the spreadsheet that you created. Okay, good, just wanted to be sure that we weren't actually having to fill it out by hand. That is a great question. We are a paperless board as much as possible. Not surprised. Alright, thank you. But yes and we are standing on the shoulders of Amber and other previous officers that have created and then iterated this tool over the years. So thank you for all that work. It made my job much easier. Okay, any other questions or comments? We will move to action items. Item 13.01,

133proposed new textbooks and this is Jim. Thank you, Ron. Resolve the board of education approved the attached proposed textbook as presented. Thanks, Jim. Is there a second? Amber. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? The motion carries. Item 13.02, policy 5152 admission of non-resident students and this is Amber. Thanks, Ron. I move that the board of education adopt policy 5152, admission of non-resident students with revisions as shown in the attachments on BoardDocs. Thanks, Amber. Is there a second? Colleen. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. Item 13.03, policies 8413, 8414.5, and exhibit 8414.5E and this is Colleen. Be it resolved, sorry, be it resolved that the Board of Education adopt policies 8413, 8414.5 and exhibit 844.5 with revisions as shown in the attachments. Thanks Colleen, is there a second?

134Jessica. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, the motion carries. We move to item 14, gifts. Item 14.01, a gift proposal to the Scarsdale Middle School. Jessica. Resolved that the board accept with thanks the gifts of $500 for simple machine kits for sixth grade technology classes and $400 for a glass grinder for seventh grade technology classes as attached, as presented in the attached letters. So with thanks. Thank you Jessica. Is there a second? Jim. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, they are accepted with thanks. Item 14.02, give proposal to Quaker Ridge School. Jim. It is recommended that the board accept with thanks the donation of a bike rack to the Quaker Ridge School as presented in the attached letter. Thanks Jim. Is there a second? Colleen. Any discussion?

135All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries and accepted with thanks. Item 14.03, gift proposal to the Scarsdale High School. Amber. I move that the board accept with thanks the gift of $5,000 for use towards the creation of an acai bar in the high school cafeteria as presented in the attached letters. Thanks Amber. Is there a second? Jessica. Any discussion? I have one quick. Yeah. Which is back in 2019 I was on the food service committee as a parent and this came up then and Stewart was around then and I'm so excited to see that this is finally coming to the board. So I'm tipping the scales on which way I'm going to vote, but had to give credit to that food committee from a long time ago. Perhaps we can hold

136a board meeting at like noon one day so we could go enjoy it. Good luck getting in line, Ron. Any other discussion? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries and accepted with thanks. We move to item 15, response and questions from those present. This is our second public comment period and we follow the same preamble and requirements from our first public comment period. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to speak? Please approach the microphone if you have a comment. And sorry, Mr. Harrison, before you speak, if there's anybody who wishes to make a remote public comment, this is a good time to log into Zoom and raise your hand, thank you. Okay, I didn't lose any time. Okay, Bob Harrison, 65 Fox Meadow Road, 44 year resident of Scarsdale

137and speaking as the chairman of the Scarsdale Taxpayer Alert, which we established in 1989 to provide our taxpayers with information about both the school budget and the Village budget and inform them on issues that they should know about. So during the break, I had an opportunity to speak with Andrew Lennon, our new superintendent of business. We had a nice short discussion, a good discussion, and I wish Andrew well and welcome to Scarsdale and we worked with Stuart Mattie over many years and I'm sure you'll do well. And I think the project to get the high school auditorium up to date refurbished, something that many of our residents, including myself, have long awaited and will be a project that we all look forward to having it completed and have our students have a first class auditorium

138for their activities. And hope, I know in construction there are delays and hopefully there won't be too many. And so I wish Andrew well in getting this project to completion. I sort of garbled my comments earlier and I just want to make sure those in the audience and those interested in higher education that my activities with Penn State University over many, many years. So I'm available and my number, which I may have messed up earlier, area code, (914) 646-4054, that's my cell phone. I can be text. And my email address is proscars, that's P-R-O-S-C-A-R-S @aol.com. Proscars stands for Pro Scarsdale. So anyone that would like to get in touch with me, students, parents about their application to Penn State University, I'm available. I do not charge, like some people who help students with their applications.

139Look forward to hearing from anyone with interest in Penn State. Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else that wishes to speak tonight? Okay, we will turn to Zoom. Any hands raised, Suzie? Not at this time. Okay. So we will close public comment session and move to item 16, follow up to public comment. I don't believe there's any follow up. We will move to item 17, wrap up items. Not that I can think of. Nope, I don't think so either. Very efficient meeting. Thank you, Drew and the administration. So item 18.01, meeting dates for the coming month, Suzie. Thank you, Ron. On Monday, October 23rd, there will be a board meeting with the Village Board of Trustees at 05:00 p.m. There will be a special meeting and or executive session at six o'clock, and

140there will be an education report and business meeting at 06:30 here in this room. On Monday, November 6th, there will be a Board of Education Retreat at 06:00 p.m. in this room. And on Monday, November, is that a 13? My vision's so bad. 13th, there'll be a board meeting with Scarsdale, the Scarsdale Principals Association at 05:00 p.m. A public forum for the 2024/'25 budget priorities at 06:00 p.m. and a business meeting at 06:30 here in this room, thank you. Thank you, Suzie. Now could I have a motion to move into executive session to discuss pending litigation? Thank you, Jessica. Second, Colleen. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All right, the board is going to be moving. Is now an executive session.