BOE Budget Study Session #2 2023-3-6

001Okay, we got everyone. Yeah. Okay. I call budget study session meeting two to order and note that all board members are present except for Jessica Resnicalt and I would like to, and Dr. Patrick and his cabinet are present and I'll turn it over to Drew. Okay. Thank you Amber. One second to get this started. Okay, well thank you and good evening. Tonight we will continue our presentations on the proposed budget plan for the 2023-24 school year. After a brief introduction, we'll begin where we left off in February 13th, with draft budget number two, albeit with a few minor tweaks. After that, we will present the following budget components, curriculum instruction and assessment, special education and student services, safety, security and emergency management, technology and innovation and finally, facilities. At the end of the facilities portion

002of the presentation, we will revisit the high school auditorium project and share a shift in our thinking by making a revised recommendation. We will then turn our attention to a number of additional considerations for reductions to the budget draft number two, that will illustrate how the administration would propose getting to a level of expenditures that falls within the state imposed allowable tax levy limit before concluding with the budget timeline, questions and discussion. By way of introduction to start this evening's presentation, it's important to remember that our budget is a means to an end. In the broadest terms, the essential work of our schools is to provide a world-class education, ensuring our students are well prepared for their next level of education. We're also increasingly concerned with the importance of student wellbeing and recognize that our

003work must contemplate ways we can help our youngsters to be good at learning and good at life. Our philosophical belief in the importance of educating the whole child encourages us to seek ways we help our students flourish. Together, these broad objectives serve as an important decision making lens, especially with respect to our budget. Tonight we will present in detail five specific areas of the budget as I previously mentioned, and tonight's study session comes on the heels of our staffing presentation from a couple of meetings a ago. These next slides, we've seen these before. Just introduce some of the key elements of our process and guiding principles behind our decisions and the key components of our school budget development process. I won't spend too much time in those 'cause we've seen these at our previous sessions.

004Okay, so here we are at budget session number two, March 6th, and this is the second of three budget study sessions. The next one being March 20th, and then budget forum on March 27th where the public will have another opportunity to weigh in and then the regular board meeting for the adoption of the budget on April 17th. And with that I'm gonna turn it over to Stuart. Thank you very much Drew. So our next slide is our updated projected fund balance, which actually hasn't changed except for one number down at the very bottom, which you can't see at this very second until that goes away. Oh, and we still missed it. Go back one. So the 3.67% is a little bit higher now since we in our draft, two of the budget has a decrease.

005Other than that, our projections remain constant with what they were at our last meeting. I'm gonna try move this up. Here we go, okay, so this is our draft number two. Again, as Drew mentioned leaving or picking up where we left off at the last meeting. So our budget is now a slightly over 183 million. Our budget to budget increase is 5.65% resulting in a Levy of 3.14. Our tax levy limit is still 2.89. If remember, in this iteration, the auditorium renovation is still in this draft number two budget. That leaves us a bit over $700,000 over the projected tax levy limit. In addition to those changes that we made last year, you'll note in the bottom I was able to go through along with Lisa and continue to tweak the budget and it's really

006going in literally line by line of all of our 100 of lines and really just tightening up to the budget, to the tune about, well exactly $112,000. And looking at our revenues and just sort of seeing how that formula works. Again, you can see that total budget of $183.1 million. You subtract out the other revenues such as state aid, property tax, bisected dwellings, items such as that. County tax revenue is a big one, transfer from reserves. You recall that we are suggesting and recommending the utilization of some of those reserves, including the transfer from debt service and support of the auditorium project along with the assigned fund balance of $1.1 million, which is that number that we're all things being equal trained to strive for on a year to year basis, leaving what needs to

007be raised by the tax levy of $164.7 million or a 3.14% increase from year to year. And this question came up at the last board meeting and Drew and I both looked at each other and said, "Wow, that's a great question." So we decided be important to put a slide in. So a threshold for a budget approval. So a normal budget that is below at or below the calculated maximum allowable levy just requires a 50% plus one voter approval. And that's the type of budget that we've seen in the most recent years. A proposed budget that goes above the calculated maximum levy requires a 60% voter approval or super majority. And then if the school budget fails on the first attempt, in either case, the district may submit a second budget to the voters and

008if that vote fails, the school board be required to adopt a contingency budget. So that second vote could be a second attempt that the exact same budget or any other variation. And then it's important to keep in mind if that second budget fails, again, it'd be a contingency budget and a contingency budget requires that the tax levy actually be kept level from the previous year. There's the three components that you may have heard us talk about. Administrative component, capital component, program component. The administrative component will be required to stay at below the current year's level, and then equipment purchases would be limited and then facility use feeds would be required to be charged of all outside groups. So our first component of the budget this evening is curriculum instruction and assessment, and I'll turn it

009over to Dr. McIntosh. Thank you, I think I need the... Thank you board of education Drew and the entire cabinet and all those in person or remotely who are joining to this budget. I appreciate the opportunity to highlight the essential areas of the curriculum. I'll start with our guiding principles. Students are at the center essential that we check back to see that we are using our financial resources in a way that meaningfully and positively influences development. And in all ways and ask the question, can this be connected? It is. The lights on. Oh, okay. Can you hear me now? So it's essential that we check back to see that we are using our financial resources in ways that meaningfully and positively influence student development in all ways and ask the questions, can this be connected

010to student learning and student thriving? It is important for us to connect the knowing and the doing. Knowing is what research in the field tells us and what our internal assessment tells us. And the doing is the application of the knowledge to make the appropriate adjustments to our instruction, curriculum and assessment. None of the educators and Scarsdale work in isolation. So the principle creation and cohesion require collaboration. We rely on a wide range of expertise and perspective to create the best possible curriculum for our students and engage in the most effective instructional practices. This budget is also guided by the important principle that multiple perspectives and authentic experiences enhanced learning. The heart of program improvement is using internal expertise and harnessing experts in the field in designing and updating our methods and curriculum to better

011meet the needs of our students. The vast majority of this work is done during the summer months when Scarsdale residents will notice that our parking lots are still crowded with teachers cars. Some upcoming curriculum work includes the development of more performance based assessments, meaning ones that measure knowledge and power skills, interdisciplinary work, fueling powerful and more real life learning experience that cross discipline specific boundaries. Wide work, meaning work and wellness, inclusion, diversity, equity and belonging, grading practices, mindful technology use, curricular alignment. This is one that is recurring every year. Next steps with advanced topics, sustainability, elementary mathematics, expanding to fifth grade through the Reveal program and further work on our structures of multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS and early literacy and media literacy. The arts are strengthening and affirming for our students and essential

012to a whole student approach. We've been expanding the in-person opportunities for visiting artists and visual and performing arts who continue to model and inspire creativity in our students. I'm calling attention to the pictures on the slide. Alvin Ailey is in rehearsal up there on the top right, and then a group of our students are taking it to the hallways, participating in MLK day and excerpt from the opening section of Alvin Ailey's signature piece, Revelations performed by members of the Scarsdale High School dance company. Estelle, Chen Yu, Hannah, Ivanna, Linda and Melanie are featured there. The Interdependence Institute fosters the development of intercultural skills that teachers and students need to deepen global understandings and broaden their international perspectives. Through partnerships and exchanges, students and faculty develop the skills needed to successfully navigate the complexities of an

013increasingly interdependent world. The Interdependence Institute has also sponsored author and expert visits to enrich and inspire the student experience. As I mentioned in a recent education report, we are expanding our engagement with a global education benchmarking group and we currently are applying for full membership in Round Square, an organization that connects multiple international schools in meaningful and globally important ways. We will also have be having our third meeting of the Global Entrepreneurship Challenge this Thursday with high school students. In this upcoming session, students are doing mini pitches of their work and will be receiving feedback from experts as well as their out-of-state and international peers. There will be schools from Italy, Argentina, Indonesia, Shanghai, Florida, and Virginia in this iteration. The international piece of this challenge ends on the morning of April 28th when teams

014from schools participating around the world will join us virtually and in the auditorium to present their final projects. I'm looking forward to that. The Scarsdale Teacher Institute or the STI provides continuing education to Scarsdale faculty. STI is funded by the district in teacher tuition. The district funds the administrative salary of the STI director and provides an allocation for support of the STI program. The funding level for STI is contractually negotiated with Scarsdale Teacher Association. Our STI is an important element of the work we do in Scarsdale. To highlight a few: The STI reflects the needs and interests of diverse educators. The courses are informed and generated by Scarsdale initiatives and values. There's deep coordination between the STI leadership and district. This is important. STI director Anne Marie ne, Dr. Drew. Patrick and I meet regularly

015to coordinate resources and work hand in hand to align and support district priorities. The STI provides essential interdisciplinary collaboration across content and levels with educators. New learning can and does results in course creation and structural change and the stack classes are going strong and engage external and internal expertise. This continues to be a responsive and effective way to support our teachers. So stack classes are like mini STI I courses. They just can be an hour or so and they add up towards a full STI course after you have enough of them under your belt. The purpose for the Center for Innovation is to reimagine teaching and learning, develop new models of instruction, explore the role of technology in transforming instruction and foster widespread change beyond a single classroom or teacher. In deep partnership with new

016district leadership, William Yang and Jeanie Crowley, we are taking a close and critical look at the pathways towards innovation, the connection to authentic teacher inquiry and meaningful partnerships in the field to expand and explore. We have been involved in ongoing discussions with Project Zero at Harvard as thought partners to deepen and embed innovation practices in all corners of our educational spaces. Another opportunity for us to partner with the STI just today in this room and up in the high school for the rest of the day, the CFI funded a well regarded innovator and changemaker Dr. Thomas Guskey, who is professor and author of several books on grading and the impacts of professional development. His extensively research findings are powerful guidance for meaningful student-centered changes from current traditions. More on this at a later meeting. Professional

017learning happens in a variety of ways. Teacher grants support the professional learning needs of teachers. The district professional development committee reviews and acts on teacher applications as well. We work with various organizations and consultants. The budget supports the professional learning of the elementary grade teachers to help cohesion across the schools. This allocation will fund professional developers, consultants who are working with classroom teachers in all five schools on strategies for implementing the district's comprehensive literacy approach and science and math programs in a consistent supported and coherent manner. In this proposed budget, we are looking for an increase of $130,000, $50,000 for towards responsive classrooms. That's two sessions at 25,000 a piece and $80,000 for support for DEI professional development, including Dr. Derek Gay. Our sustainability initiatives, this budget is to fund gardening sustainability initiatives in all

018seven schools. This year you can look for impressive physical impacts on the Fox Meadow Garden as part of a responsive improvement rotation. Opportunities for us to support the work of our educators who have weighed in on improvements to better align with our curriculum. We also have found a partner through the sustainability experts and educators from Vermont's Shelburn Farms. They have led interdisciplinary work with our art teachers and are a destination for an STI in Vermont on their Vermont campus this July. We are looking for an increase of $19,000 to take over the community initiated sustainability efforts, 15,000 for high school recycling bins and 4,000 for battery recycling bins. One of the district's ongoing goals is to use meaningful data to improve instruction. This budget includes funds to bring in committees of college professors to work

019with teachers to develop, validate, and assess high school curriculum offerings. This bus budget also provides funds to assess the district's strategic initiatives through our Tri-states consortium. And as appropriate alumni surveys. Back to connecting the knowing and the doing essential in the field of education, we know, for example, through ongoing research in the field of literacy, that beginning readers benefit from both systematic and assured instruction and decoding skills, phonics, veemaqua word study, and attention to comprehension and joyful engagement in a range of developmentally appropriate texts. By aligning ourselves with current research, adaptations are responsive rather than abruptly reactive. Early literacy is receiving quite a bit of attention in the news lately with podcasts, news articles, and even my personal book hero, LeVar Burton weighing in, I can say with confidence that Scottsdale's approach to literacy instruction

020and curriculum adaptation is both evidence-based and response to the complex needs of young learners. This budget supports the ongoing professional development and teacher collaboration and reflection that ensures that this happens. Multiple perspectives and authentic experience enhance learning through critically examining different voices, ideas and opinions, and having the resources and educator support to do so, students get a deeper understanding of history, current events and social and societal trends that shape our world. This connects to the work in diversity, equity, and inclusion and strategic plans related to global competencies, interdependence, and non CV. On the slide on the right, you'll see our consultant, Dr. Derek Gay, holding a student focus group with some of our fourth and fifth graders and their perspectives on inclusion and belonging as well as other students throughout all of our schools provided

021important information to help guide our work. Authentic experiences are ones that are engaging and meaningful to students. Ones that relate to their own sense of purpose and experiences, which connect to our goals on student-centered and project-based learning and the exciting social entrepreneurship and science research that's fueling and motivating our students. Quite simply, both by engaging in multiple and diverse ideas and engaging in authentic learning experiences. Our students get smarter, more skilled and are better equipped to thrive and are globally connected world. This slide is straightforward and shows administrative salaries across the district, principals, APs, as well as their support and clerical needs. This is the professional development learning section and the areas in which I've just described and includes the proposed increase in sustainability and professional development and SEL and DEI and the contractual increase

022in program improvement. I would like to provide some context for the overall numbers and the large percentage reflected here. The increase reflects a change in accounting practices and how the STI is recorded. A portion of the STI expenses are funded through member contribution and tuition payments. In the past, these contributions were netted against the expense resulting in a lower amount budgeted and ultimately expensed. In 2023-24, we are grossing up the expenses to reflect the actual full amount of expenditures and recording the contributions and tuition receipts as separate revenues, which are estimated this year at $183,650. And the instruction of the day school programs. This slides represents the salaries of our educators and materials needed as a pie chart and we represent a large portion of the budget. So that is the end of the curriculum

023instruction. I will pass this over to Eric. Thank you. I can also advance them if you want, whatever you prefer. Can we go straight through? Thank you everyone. The next slides will take us through special education and student services. This really includes the salaries of all special educators within the district related service providers, psychologists, all of the non-general education instructional staff. It also looks at our contractual expenses for related services, behavioral out of district placements, and our BOCES costs associated with special education programs. Before we get into the numbers, I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of our philosophies and practices. I think it's important to recognize that we try and work on a strengths based approach. All students have abilities and strengths that can be built upon to help them achieve

024success. We believe that the vast majority of those students can be accommodated in a regular education classroom with appropriate supports and the vast majority of them can participate in our buildings programs. Whether they are self-contained or inclusionary. It's important to recognize classified students have a civil right to receive all of their accommodations and modifications on their IEPs and parents play both a regulatory and very important role in any decisions made for classified students. So as such, we always look at our continuum of service within the district and try to expand it in a sustainable way in order to have the greatest amount of our students within our programs. Just to give you some quantitative data on where we are as far as demographics go, we have 4,677 students currently our current CSE classification rate is

02512.67 and 14.64504s, which means we have approximately 1100 students who receive some sort of accommodation or modification. You may notice that the 504 number has risen fairly dramatically in the last few years. That is something we are seeing regionally post pandemic students who have had difficulty and needed accommodations and modifications coming out of the pandemic. We hope that number kind of returns to a more normalized number as we move through the years. As a rule of thumb, 1% of our students is about 46 students. So every percentage rise, that's the additional student count for that. As you can see in the charts to the right, I'm sorry they're a little bit small. We've had an increase in students with autism and students with other health impairment over the last 10 years or so. That other

026health impairment is really indicative of the increasing anxiety that we're seeing and mental health issues. You will notice that emotional disability or emotional disturbance is there that is a fairly rarely used classification and most of the mental health classifications do kind of reside in that OHI category. LD and speech and language are also major components of our student profile. We have expanded our current programs happily over the last six to seven years. All of our elementary schools host learning resource centers, which do both consultant teacher services, resource room, and facilitate MTSS services. They are jointly shared on the elementary level between the general education budget and the special education budget. Our integrated co-teaching classes have expanded also in the last number of years. As you can see, we started our two school plan really last

027year with Fox Meadow and Quaker Ridge having two sections a piece in kindergarten. Next year, Heath Coat and Green Acres will host our kindergarten classes and those are the sister schools that will bounce back and forth each year. So over the next five years you'll see that become a more patronistic set of programs. Our self-contained, we have two sets of self-contained classes. We have our bridge program, which is in Quaker Ridge and Edgewood has an 8:1:2 intensive support program. We expanded that from a K2 program to a K2 and a three five last year. The Scarsdale Middle School also has a learning resource center. The resource teachers at the middle and high schools are only accounted to the special education budget because they only do consultant teacher services or resource room for classified students. So

028they're a hundred percent accounted to the special ed budget. We have our parallel program and the development of Parallel Plus, which is our students from the bridge program are coming up into the high school and we're looking to adjust the parallel actually on both ends, focusing on PD in our ICT classes there to bring alignment to kind of the ICT practices in the elementary school and our ICT practices on the middle school. And then also looking at strategic special class, self-contained classes for students that need more intensive support in academics. The budget has a contingency position in it for special ed in the middle school. That is mainly to cover what we think we will need for additional students coming up from the Bridge program and having a more self-contained program for those particular students.

029We also, thank you very much, started our Scarsdale support program because of the generous support in last year's budget for it. That has gotten off into a great start this year. Students are nine students in the program currently. Looks to stay about that possibly with the addition of one more for next year. And we have our first crop of eighth graders in the program moving to the high school. So all in all, a very successful endeavor. Scarsdale High School has our skills program, which is a classes that focus on the skills-based content knowledge of regions level classes. They are taught by general ed teachers, but our special ed teachers push in to those on a regular basis. We have our learning resource center and of course our SSP program, which started in the high school

030about six years ago. As you can see, the special education budget is proposed at $18,795,254. That's about a 3.64 percent increase from budget to budget. Really there's only one new initiative in this budget and that's an administrative reclassification in the central special office looking to move one of our CSE chair people from a teacher on assignment to a 12 month administrative position. This is really in response to the expanding of our programs and the expanding of the number of special ed students in the district requiring more administrative support in that field. That would be accomplished by taking the CPSE role, the CPSE chairperson role and creating a halftime position to cover just that part of the chairing responsibility that would allow space in the three other chairs workload to move this position forward. The major

031cost drivers in our special education budget are the yearly incremental cost of salaries, but also our mandated services, post pandemic costs, behavioral support speech have risen since the pandemic. They have started to plateau but they have not returned to kind of historical levels from a need standpoint. The other major cost factor comes from a relatively small group of students. We are still supporting students in very high intensity programs and that number of kids has increased post pandemic. Each one of those placements can reach into the a 100-200,000 range per program. So a small increase in those in those needs can go a long way in a special education budget. Student services is a separate part of the budget that includes our guidance counselors, psychological and social work services, and our nurses are health services. This

032year we are looking to increase the social-emotional supports at the elementary schools by contracting for essentially two full-time equivalents to split their time amongst the elementary schools to add social-emotional support for our psychologists. And that's represented in the psychological and social workers portion of this budget. Other than that, in this section of the budget, we have the Scarsdale Mont Family Counseling contract, which is approved separately by this board, but there is a 6.4% rise in the Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling budget this year. And that is from our continued discussions with Scarsdale Edgemont Family Counseling about the need for retention on social workers given the market for mental health clinicians, they have made the appropriate moves within their budget to work on retention of social workers. Our health services include all the salaries of our current

033nurses, including the nurse that we provide to the Immaculate Heart of Mary School. I think it's important to recognize while that salary is identified in our expense portion of the budget, there is a related revenue 'cause we at the end of the year build back for health and special ed services that we work with the one private school we have in the neighborhood. With that being said, any students who are in private schools that live in our district, we receive bills for wherever they go. So all in all it's an expense to the district and each year it works out a little bit differently and it's hard to tell depending on the services that are built back for other parental placed students. As a piece of the pie, special education and student services represents about

03414% of the total budget, which makes sense given our classification rate, our psychologist services, nurses, and the rest. As I move into safety, security and emergency management, I think it's important to recognize that safety, security, emergency management doesn't come from one section of the budget. It comes from parts of the facilities budget, parts of the student services budget. We have maintained really a three-tiered or three priority component to our safety security emergency management. The first is kind of a classic thought about it, which is the external layer of safety and security or the hardening of our buildings that includes our safety monitors. In the last couple of years, we're working towards an integrated lockdown system, digital mapping and camera access all got put into place this year for the district. This next budget maintains all

035of that funding and allocates about $150,000 to additional improvements, which are additional cameras, door ajar sensors, and looking at the next step of window mitigation. Those priorities are really set by the dirt team and they meet on a regular basis throughout the year. The second prong of our safety security emergency management is mental health and social emotional support. You just heard, we are looking to expand those supports in the elementary school that is part of this safety security, emergency management approach. And then finally, really looking at our policies, practices, and procedures. Our lockdown integration system should be fully functional by the end of spring break. So the 230-24th year will see us integrating those new procedures and that new lockdown system into our drills and practices to ensure that the SSCM responses are seamless as

036we change through through the new system. So the 22-23 approved budget for SSCM expenditures was about $1.23 million. This year's upcoming budget is a slightly lower. The reason why that is, is a lockdown integration system is a very large project that has been split over two budget years we don't see any other cost expected for the 23-24 season for the lockdown integration project. But we are replacing that with $150,000 of other improvements, including, like I said before, the door ajar sensors, window mitigation, expansion of the cameras over the next number of years. And that is all for safety and security emergency management. I thought we had a pie chart there, but we don't. (laughs) But technology and innovation is next. Hi, I'm Jean. Can you hear me? Yeah. All right. I'm Jeanie Crowley. I'm the

037director of Technology innovation. I'll be covering the three main areas of technology innovation, which are administrative technology, technical services, and instructional technology. Just a little bit of context, we currently have a very robust investment in our K-12 device program. This was accelerated by the pandemic and we have devices supported throughout the school, K-12. Now when you add more devices, you need more connectivity. So one thing that's really important is ensuring that there is the infrastructure to support those devices. Specifically wireless connectivity for students as they move through indoor and outdoor spaces. One thing we see a lot is the classroom is a teaching and learning space. The hallways is a teaching and learning space. Offices are teaching and learning spaces. So we really wanna make sure that we support wireless connectivity in all of those

038spaces. Another area is wireless connectivity is also a safety issue for our athletes and parents on the edges of the fields and parking lots. So I wanna draw your attention to this picture here. This year we were funded for a wireless heat map for all of the spaces. We have a similar map like this for all outdoor spaces and I just wanna orient you to what you're looking at. So this little squiggle is literally an individual walking up and down doing kind of a technical version of, can you hear me now? To see where the edges of Wi-Fi signal are on both of the fields. The yellow is where there's wireless connectivity at the time of the measurement. So you can see on Dean Field it was just a little bit around the actual home

039plate and some of the parking lot on Butler. You can see it's heavily clustered right around the building. We were able to actually use the existing wireless access points and turn them up, improve the signal on the existing ones. And that's what you see reflected in this red circle. So the current state after the study was done was to improve wireless connectivity to include on the dean's side the entire parking lot next to the administrative building and more of the actual, I'm not a baseball player, I don't know what the core part yet infield, thank you technologist struggling for that word. Appreciate that. And up to the 50 yard line of Butler Field. And you'll notice anything beyond that currently does not have Wi-Fi signal. Included in this budget as a proposal to increase Wi-Fi

040connectivity to the parking lot adjacent to Ding Dean Field along the third baseline. And then also on Butler Field to increase wireless connectivity all the way through the opposing end zone. Some context more for technology. We saw nearly a $100,000 increase in software spending during the pandemic. But these software, it still continues to support teaching and learning. Once you introduce something, you know it's amazing how much it becomes part of your practice. So it's not a simple matter of saying, "Well, we increased the a $100,000, let's snap it back a $100,000." And we have to be really thoughtful about how we look at our current spending and not just assume we can go back to pre pandemic spending. We do have processes in place to make sure that we're thoroughly reviewing usage levels before we

041renew subscriptions. So we may be looking at things so it's not so much taking it away saying, "Oh maybe this isn't a district level subscription. Maybe it's just for one particular school." So we have processes to plate for that. Sorry, I'm nervous. I'm just gonna take a second. Okay. Yeah, I know. It's my first budget presentation. All right, so the next part is we have a recommendation to have a new finance and HR system. It's in need of replacement. Our timeline for replacement will allow us to, and this is including the current budget, allow us to build the fiscal year 24 budget this fall in 2023 with an anticipated full cutover in July of 2024. We have a total of $125,000 allotted for that. $95,000 is a one year cost for implementation. $30,000 is ongoing

042and that would be offset by the removal of our current system. So just a little bit of context for that number when you see it. All right, the first of the three buckets we have here, administrative technology. The administrative technology team covers all of our administrative services, data services, infinite campus, our student information system and all the technologies that support finance, food service, human resources, transportation and facilities. They're also responsible for state and federal reporting of student data. The main increase you see here is salary related and related to the finance system. Technical services, that's all of the infrastructure. Cybersecurity, phone systems, computer hardware and audio visual equipment. You'll notice that very minor increase. It's $17,000. It's not an increase, it's actually just a transfer from a different budget. You'll see it in the next

043line. And the final area is instructional technology. We get almost 50% of this reimbursed by the state. The budget pays for mandated and essential services including website, internet filtering, one-to-one mobile devices, internet services and library databases. You'll see a projected decrease there about $20,000 was that move to that other budget that's just an accounting move. And about $50,000 is this proposal to reduce software to match current usage levels. And then finally the final area we're looking at for cost savings is reducing our annual lease purchase program from $1.6 million to $1 million. Sorry, take me one second, I'm almost there. And what this would do is not really have a material impact on student experience. Easier for the desktops in classrooms attached to the smart board. We would just replace the hard drive with the

044new solid state drive and then just push 'em back one more year in the high use spaces such as computer labs, the eMusic lab, we would replace those 'cause those are really high demand devices. And I will quote my predecessor Jerry Creasy, he always says, "Even though technology is only 2% of the budget, we hit a 100% of the community." So there we go. And then facilities. Very good, thank you Jeanie. So facilities, playing operations, I wanna thank John Antonelli and Nick Ferrero for being here this evening. Mike Pitera, director of facilities was not able to be here. Those are the three gentlemen who lead a fantastic team in making sure our facilities are open and operate safely on every single day of the school year and throughout the calendar year. Put my glasses on.

045Okay, plan operations is primarily the cleaning and custodians of all of our buildings. Also contains all of our utilities year over year. Increased budget to budgets about 3%. You have all the salaries of all of those employees in this category as well. So that's a large driver in this area. Year to year we do anticipate increases in our utilities cost, but we have baked in $250,000 in anticipated savings due to an anticipated relationship with Synergistics. And then just a reminder of all those employees, we do have 48 custodial and cleaner positions and four and a half additional support and leadership positions in this budget. Over 1 million square feet of building space throughout the district. And plant maintenance, these are the gentlemen and all of their equipment and tools that keep everything operating on a

046daily basis. So we have six maintenance workers and six grounds workers. We have an equipment budget in this draft of the budget of just short of $200,000. And this line item, a major driver this year is a large lawn tractor that is beginning to wear down. But you also note in bullet two we are converting over to electric and battery operated mowers and blowers and things like that with an eye on our sustainability practices and noise of course, contractual budget just short of $1.8 million. It's a decrease of $53,000 but that's for all those repairs that we're unable to do in-house. So mechanical, electrical, tree work, repaving, you name it. All of our water testing, air testing programs come out of this budget as well. We talked about the field study in our joint meeting

047with the village. Those funds $20,000 are contained in this budget as well as in addition to our interior painting and carpet replacement program that we take care of across the district. So in addition to the million square feet, we also have 118 acres of grounds, as you can imagine. As we think as we get to spring, there's gonna be a lot of mowing going on here pretty soon and they're very, very busy. Plan improvements and transfer to capital. So plan improvement projects, you can see that is zero anticipated for next year as we've moved those projects as they're a little bit larger to the transfers to capital line item. So if we go over there, it's obviously a very large number driven by that auditorium renovation project that we've talked about. The band room roof

048replacement for $400,000 that's see at the high school and that has been leaking and it is vintage '70s and it is time for it to be replaced. The chimney at Heath Co, that's actually the interior quarter of the chimney and you'll see a wonderful picture taken by John and Nick here in a second and vacuum condense er or over at the middle school for a $100,000. So on the left you can see the chimney if you can imagine the angle they had to get in to take that picture. So thank you. There's a big hole there. And that's like all the way up the walls until the right is the roof of the band room. And if you, that's in the one of the courtyards here at the high school where you can see that.

049And then just, we had talked previously about the lease with the village and that's for the shared maintenance garage. So just go through a little bit more detail on this. And we specifically have to call out to tell voters that this is actually in the budget as we'll be taking that as a deduction in our tax levy calculation. And that lease is up for renewal. So it was a reminder for everyone or a refresher for everyone. So the district has historically leased a portion of the Village Sanitation Recycling Center in Scarsdale, it's over up on Seacor Road. So we have a bus compound that we call it, or a bus tepo where we store all of our buses. And we also have the transportation offices at that facility. And across the road on trans on

050Ramsey, we have the central maintenance facilities, which is shared with, again with the village maintenance where our buses are repaired and fixed. And actually all of our maintenance vehicles, so our tractors and things like that, the mechanics that work on those, those are all employed by the village. However, our maintenance workers, grounds workers, their areas of business or operations operate out of there as well. So we have an annual facility lease of $126,305 that once it's in this budget for renewal, it'll be retroactive back to December. This actually December of 21 and it would go through December of 26. In this lease is also a provision that for any capital repairs, the district would share 50% of that equipment purchase as long as that purchase is related to district operations. In next year's budget, and

051this would also be a tax exempt levy calculation item of $50,000 associated with that. And the district gets that particular budget ahead of time from the village during their budget process, which is then timely for our budget process. And so this sort of revised contract with the village would come to you for approval after the budget vote. Thank you. And as a piece of the pie with the auditorium being a large portion of the pie or a 20% portion is 10% of the overall budget. High school auditorium project. Okay, so I'll just do an introduction and then now you can keep that 'cause we'll let you take those decks too. So we'll turn our attention now to the high school auditorium project and tonight we are strongly recommending that the project be removed from the

052budget and considered as a separate bond project. This shift in our recommendation stems from our continued examination of all the possibilities available to us and further discussion with counsel. In the end, we think it simply makes the most sense to go to the public to seek permission for this capital project as the current scope differs significantly from what was proposed back in the 2014 bond process. This approach would also to allow us to maximize building aid. Stuart will take a look at that and I will turn it over to Stuart who will remind us where we were and then what we are recommending. Yep. Thanks Drew. So the original high school auditorium renovation, as you recall, just over $4.7 million. We had offsetting funds about three and a half million dollars remaining from the 2018

053bond project, which is just closing out to help offset that. So about a $1.2 million delta. And we were proposing that that would be a line item as a transfer to capital as we just previously saw in the proposed budget with the offsetting revenue on the revenue side. So when we were initially thinking about this, advantages were, obviously the work has been discussed for over a decade now. It was long overdue, it did not require a separate votes. Project costs would be fully tax exempt. And then there are some savings when you do not issue a bond. You wouldn't have the interest expense obviously in any of those legal expenses associated going with a separate vote or with I'm sorry, instead of going into a vote comparative, just putting into a budget. Some of the

054risk where that is obviously it's a large item, it's a proportionate larger tax living increase. It's a project that the size, traditionally hasn't appeared in the budget. Usually it's been part of a larger project or a standalone. And then there's also, as we saw, the large fluctuations in the budget and the tax levy due to a one-time non-recurring expense could cause concern from some of the taxpayers. Sort of like, what is this? Where did this come from? So as Drew discussed or mentioned, we do have an updated recommendation. This recommendation would put forth a separate referendum, separate and apart from the regular budget in May. So proposition one would be the budget. Proposition two would be the authorization to issue bonds and support of the project. So just some of the facts. So obviously a

055bond would require principle and interest payments over a course of a number of years. The proposal would include the payments to be offset by a drawdown on that debt service reserve over time, which would decrease the taxpayer impact. And then, so sort of a technicality with this is that debt service, since it's associated with the 2018 bond, we would call out in the annual budget that'd actually be offsetting the principle and interest for the 2018 bond. But in fact, by doing so, you would create a gap or space to include the principle and interest payment for the auditorium. So it's a little tricky on the wording, but the net impact is exactly the same. You're creating room in that tax levy to take on the debt associated with the auditorium. So the advantage of that

056is, it separates it obviously from the budget process, it would stand alone on its own merits. It would eliminate the one time budget impact. So it would sort of take away that sort of the false increase on the budget itself for that non-recurring expense. And it spreads the cost of the project over a number of years, which would more closely match to the useful life of the project. And you heard me talk about that I think at the last meeting or two. And the immediate impact to the tax levy is obviously less severe than the original option. A risk is also a possible as a standalone it could prompt an easier voter rejection. And then obviously there's some related costs to that for legal cost for going out to a bond, municipal advisor and interest

057costs. So what could this look like? So a scenario that we put together for a 10 year bond using an assumed rate of just over 2% building aid. So building aid, it doesn't matter how long you borrow for the project, the state will say, "Well a renovation of this sort is worth 15 years." If you do an addition such as green acres, it's 20 years. So the aid would be paid back over 15 years. We would make the aid or the use of the debt service would be brought back to match the term of the 2018 bonds. As discussed, it really is linked to that technically. And then we would anticipate if the vote was approved, that we would borrow a bond anticipation note for expenses incurred next year. So those expenses would be continued

058Architect costs, costs associated with an anticipated going to contract with contractors in late spring of 2024 and they would have some initial costs associated with starting up prior to the next school year. So we would need to borrow some money for that. And then once construction starts, we would anticipate going to a full bond in the 24-25 school year, which means the first P&I payment would actually be 25-26. So there'd be a small interest payment associated with the ban in 24-25. And the first P&I payment would be 25-26. So you can see that chart below. So it'll be nothing for the current year. This is assuming the vote would be approved 24-25, you would have a small interest payment projected or estimated to be 8,000 in 25-26. You would have the first P&I payment offset

059by that first draw down. Then that debt service reserve that we talked about a 350,000, our first building aid payment of just short as 67,000 for a net taxpayer impact in 25-26 of $137,000. And then down below I just sort of added up over the life of the borrowing, what would it mean? We used 4.75 million in this example to sort of round it up. Total principle would match obviously the cost of the project. Estimated interest, 790,000 draw down in those debt service reserves of three and a half million, estimated building just about a million dollars. So not insignificant. And then over the life of the project, total taxpayer impact about a million dollars. Stuart, can you review an idealized timeframe for the actual construction? So you alluded to it for the start. Sure, so

060assuming a voter approval in May, that would trigger the architects to get right to work with their design in drawings. They would anticipate to have that ready to submit to SED. These projects obviously have to be approved in the late fall anticipated approval by facilities at SED in March and then going out to bid again right after that, going into contracts sometime in late spring, anticipating the need to borrow money at some point during the course of that. And then construction would start right after the school year in 24, June of 24. That construction would continue out throughout the course of that school year and finish up by September of the next school year, I think it is. So about a full school year a full summer? Correct. Okay. So I alluded to it earlier

061or earlier with this recommendation. The facility's portion of the pie drops to 8% from the previously mentioned 10%. Okay, so we'll shift to the last part of this, which are further considerations for reductions to draft budget plan two in order to illustrate to you and to the public what a budget that stays below the state mandated allowable tax levy limit would not fund. So these are items that we would not be able to do if we were to decide on a budget that ends up at or below the tax levy limit. So the reductions from what has previously been presented are in addition. So these reductions thank you are in addition to the $866,710 in reductions that we presented last time that were not funded in budget draft number two. So we've organized these additional

062reductions into three categories. So this, what you see on this slide is the first category totaling $478,884. These would be items that we're describing as items that could be postponed to the next budget cycle or deferred is another way to think about it to the next budget cycle. The reason we chose the phrase deferred or postponed is to describe that they are important, but should we need to do that? These things are less connected directly to students or student activities, which is why they would be on this list. So the first two items would be to postpone the four mentioned by Jeanie Wi-Fi improvements on Dean and Butler Field. Those projects are estimated at about $60,000 each. So we would continue coverage in those circles that appeared on the images Jeanie showed, but we would

063not be able to expand that if we postpone those two projects. So again, those total about $120,000, we would forego or postpone these special education reorganization that Eric just re described of the halftime CPSE chair and the reclassification to an administrative position that's $85,000. One of the proposals from the high school was to a percentage increase on our current counselor travel to colleges. We're currently doing X level of visits and this would result in not increasing that. That's a little over $8,600. Stuart just talked about the tractor that is reaching its the end of its useful life. We would defer that for a total of $85,000. We have a variety of larger and smaller furniture and other improvements, beautification projects at the buildings. This would include larger projects like the high school library furniture. We

064would postpone replacing that. No, not that one. We already did that one actually. So this is for a set of classroom furniture at the middle school and a set of classroom furniture at high school. Thank you. Sorry. Classroom furniture improvements. Thank you. And painting and some other types of discretionary improvements for $130,000. And an Eric's SSEM presentation, he talked about two projects, window glass mitigation, expanding that project. We would maybe delay that for a total of $50,000. Continue with the door sensor work, but postpone the expansion of the window mitigation. So that category again would be items that we would postpone to the next budget cycle. Just on the window mitigation, please remember that this is the second phase of window mitigation. The initial primary top priority areas have already been mitigated. This next section,

065these are items that would scale back our desired level of effort. Either the current scale back, what we're currently doing or what we had planned on doing next year. So in the area of curriculum first consultants, Edgar talked about an increase in his budget related to consultants for training for responsive classroom, we would do about half of that increase next year, slowing down our ability to expand that work to more teachers. And the second area would be to reduce by half the monies allocated toward our DEI consultant work, we would specifically seek to complete the highest priority part of that DEI work, which you've heard us talk about surveying next year, surveying faculty, staff, students and parents. And using the feedback from that survey to generate a strategy our longer term DEI strategy, that would

066remain, what would be eliminated is some of the onsite consultant work provided by this year, provided by Derrick Gaye presumably next year as well we would eliminate some of that. Also in the area of curriculum, we would make a short term reduction in the textbook budget. That line was increased in this current year to invest in our reveal math curriculum. We would step that budget back to the tune of $50,000 knowing that it may need to be increased again down the road. And then we, another consultant line, we work with a leadership coach who supports our building administrators and district administrators. We would cut back that work to 50% of its current level. So that category of scaling back would total about $190,000. And then the third category is a staffing efficiency. We are working

067to develop a more efficient school to school comparison schedule so that some of our part-time music and PE staff would be reduced a little bit, not reduced the service for kids, but schedule it in a more efficient manner so that we can meet the students needs with a little bit less staffing. And that would be a half a position reduction total across those two areas. So those three categories, again, the postpone, the scale back and the efficiencies total $723,884. So this slide shows an illustration of what we just talked about. The first line starting how we started this evening. Draft budget number two, which you'll remember already includes 866,000 in reductions. We came into tonight's meeting having already reduced the budget by that amount. We've just presented $723,884 in additional reduced expenditures. You'll remember last

068time we presented the consideration of applying $1.281 million in reserves to lower the tax levy. A million dollars of that out of the health insurance reserve. And then the other component out of TRS and ERS Reserve will talk in a little bit about why we feel comfortable with that recommendation. Then of course, we've removed the auditorium from this version of a budget. So that brings us to our new totals. If all these things were to come to pass of a draft budget, number three at $177.6 million or 2.5% budget to budget increase and a tax levy of $162.7 million, which is just a hair under the allowable tax levee limit at 1.93%. Just to see all of or at least several of the versions that we've talked about. This slide sort of includes our original

069draft that had the auditorium in it, in the budget as a budget item, the same draft budget, but without the auditorium. That's what we were calling draft 1a, draft two, which we entered the evening. Having started, that was our starting point and the presentations that you heard tonight from my colleagues are included in that draft two. And then what we've just talked about is draft two minus those $723,000 of items of expenditures, and that brings us about $3,000 underneath the allowable tax levy limit. So to summarize, we do strongly support shifting the auditorium project to a separate bond referendum. We think at this point in time, that's the most prudent thing to do and still get essential work done. We do believe strongly in the project and that it's a important capital undertaking for our

070students. We continue to stand by the strategic application of reserves. So of that 1.281 million, that million dollars from our health reserve is strategic. We are anticipating a double, the normal rate of increase, double the long-term average rate of increase in our health expenditures and looked at that total amount of money. And the $1 million represents about half that increase. In a normal year, we would only have a $1 million increase. This year we're looking at a $2 million increase. So we're looking to offset that higher than normal increase with reserves from the reserve that's designed to support fluctuations that we experience. Stuart, do you wanna say anything about the TRS and ERS reserve pieces of that? Yeah, sure. So the TRS and ERS we're drawing down on those to keep the budgets flat year

071to year. Those are, again, fluctuating expenses on an ongoing year to year basis. So we thought it prudent to utilize the reserves with the same sort of thinking as we did around the health insurance reserve. Thank you. And then when we turned to overall the draft budget plan, the considerations that went into draft two of 866.7 million, I'm sorry, $866,710, and the new reductions of $723,000 together result in a delay or scaling back of things we want to do. But we're looking also to understand there's a balance that we took, we tried to minimize impact in those reductions on student programs. But again, yes, those are things we would like to do. The choices that are available to us, to the board, I think basically, or three, we could look at those reductions that we

072proposed. Restore some of them ultimately propose a budget that exceeds the allowable tax levy limit. Ultimately, we could look at our reserves, apply more of those reserves to restore some of those things that we might want to do, but remain below the tax levy limit. Or we could substitute reductions that we've put forward with other different reductions that we maybe haven't thought of or haven't considered. And so with that, we thought we'd turn it over to the board for questions and discussion. Thank you Drew. And thank you everyone who presented this evening, appreciate your coming back to us with both the draft two and the draft three. So I've, for my fellow board members, I've given some thought to how we should kind of structure our conversations right now. And so I just want to

073share that with you. I'd like to give you all the opportunity to just ask questions about what was presented tonight. I have a statement from Jessica who's not able to be here that I'd like to share with us before we start actually discussing things. And then I have a series of questions for my fellow board members in terms of how we'd like to proceed. I'm gonna ask for your thoughts on the auditorium recommendation that's been given to us. And then I'm going to ask for your thoughts on the possible reductions that were presented this evening. And I'd like to see where we come out as a board, and then maybe we can discuss after that how we, if we go over the tax cap, how we're funding that? Are we using reserves? And so like

074I said, I'm gonna start with the auditorium, but recognize that at the end of that conversation we may need to circle back, look at the whole picture. So just to give you a sense as to how I'd like us to proceed. So with that, I'm gonna start with if the board members have questions on anything that was presented this evening, I'd encourage you to ask those now. Thanks a lot. It's a lot of information, so I'll do my best. So one question I had for the auditorium, just to make sure I'm clear on this, the projected $4.7 million is the cost to renovate the auditorium, would there be or should we be considering a cost to maintain those services for the year that that auditorium is being constructed? So to me there's a construction cost,

075and then what I think of as a project cost, meaning to deliver the project, you may need to do something other than the auditorium. You may need to rent or whatever. I mean, I don't know what the, the plan B is for that, so I just wanna make sure that we've incorporated that so we have, it's an inclusive plan. So that's one thing. Should I just maybe rattle the questions or just stop? I think those costs would be included in the 24-25 budget. It would be included in the next, Because it's over a year away. Okay. Okay. Is it common, I can't say I know the long term history of these bonds, but it seems to me that looking back on, say the 2018, typically you bundle bond projects together. You don't necessarily do each

076project on its own. And are we saying that the only near term big project is the auditorium? Or should as long as we're gonna go to the trouble on frankly expense of hiring people to do this, should we be bundling other projects? So I don't know what they would be, but it just seems to me that there's sort of a certain degree of savings by consolidating these projects together. So that was just a thought. And then the last one, which is really more of sort of detail. I mean, I know that the school and the village have pushed quite hard for cell service, and I'm a little confused why we are budgeting, $120,000 for Wi-Fi when I believe we are first in the docket. Correct me if I'm wrong in the docket to get the

077cell service. Why isn't that being covered through that initiative? Or is there a big gap between, it just seems that it's double dipping. Like why do it, if we're gonna do it anyway, it's gonna be done for us theoretically? Maybe we'll take that one first. That ideally the improved coverage that's achieved through what the village has been able to do would solve our problem. I guess potentially there's a way of thinking about this deferral as one that may be deferred and then not needed. I think the proof will be in the lived experience, right? And as a reminder, it is just one carrier so far that they have an agreement with. Not everybody uses the same carrier, but there is a hope that that project could be done by Verizon as soon as the start

078of the 23-24 school year. So I mean, it's just, again, I'm not saying categorically not to do it, but if you're looking at trying to we're getting kind of quite finite on what we're cutting out. So that's $120,000 that could be for instruction. I think one thing I personally wanna say is that I'm very appreciative of the strategy you're using, which is not to necessarily eliminate things, but to reduce things. So I think that to me strategically is very important. And I really embrace that, whereas we're not cutting out DEI for a year, we're just dialing it back a little. So it keeps a certain momentum going. So I think that's important and I really appreciate that approach. Thank you. To your middle question regarding lumping potentially bondable projects together. I'm just gonna share like

079my unvarnished view of that. So the work of the auditorium project has been many years in the making and we feel confident in the scope of the work. I can't think of another project that is there, is that particular point. We are poised to embark on a comprehensive engagement process about our next set of capital projects. We do have some wishlist items, definitely we showed some of those in the November presentation. We have definitely more work than we will be able to accomplish in that at that time when there's sort of room, if you will budget neutrally for about $40 million of work, there's needs to be a very thoughtful strategic process to determine which projects get priority. And I would prefer just one person, but I would prefer to have the time and space

080to engage in our community-wide visioning for the next 10, 15, 20 years to help inform the strategic decision making around no, this project because of that, this project is next. I'd hate to jump into something that we regret. Yeah. I, by the way, I support that. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I just wasn't sure whether there was any low hanging fruit, something that categorically needs to be done that were kind of just hanging, waiting to kind of roll it into that exercise. Things that are just, again, maybe there isn't anything I think divisioning definitely needs to happen. I totally buy into that. But it was just an observation because there is expense and effort, frankly for a relatively, I mean, it's a big amount of money for that project in my

081opinion, but it's also relatively small for maybe a big school district bond. So it kind of double-edged, those were my- I think I go along with Drew. I think it's clear, it's concise. The work has been true. It's been a focus for 10 years and I honestly feel like why complicated? We've sort of brought it here. That's the project and starting in another six or seven months that comprehensive work will begin on trying to put together the scope of items for the next bond. Do other board members have questions? Not on specifics of the potential reductions, but just on the material that was presented this evening. Stuart, I have a quick question about the 2018 bond. When does that mature approximately? Can I look. I'm trying to understand if in the out years or? 2035.

082Okay, so we it goes beyond the 10 years of the auditorium where we would be doing that matching of the debt service. And actually no, we actually pull it out so it does match then the building aid actually will continue on and some additional time period after that bond matures. So there'll actually be a sort of the gap of taxpayer effort in those years. So I'm sure when that if this passes, the planning for that bond would take that into account, the next bond if you will. Okay, but basically that three and a half we'd be able to apply it every year of the bond. That would be the plan that we would propose to put forth. There's no wording, there's nothing in that proposition that would allude to that, but that would be the

083plan that we would propose. Thanks. And I just had one question for Edgar about responsive classroom. If I understand it's, right now it's in Fox Meadow what does the proposal for next year? Is it expanding beyond that building? Is it more in that building and then out years are in other buildings? Sort of what is that plan? The plan is really about continuing a partnership with the STI and bringing in the trainers. And it isn't specifically for Fox Meadow. There was a really a critical mass of Fox Meadow teachers and the leadership that were interested and they helped coordinate the bringing in of it. But there were teachers from other elementary schools who participated. The plan was to go beyond just another cycle of training and leadership training to having another cycle of teachers being

084able to participate through the STI partnership model that we have, which was partially funding by the curriculum office, and then also funding coming through the STI source. So what it would do is it would take half of those opportunities away for the upcoming year and not stop the process, but slow down the rate in which we can maximize the number of training trainings. Which is a ballpark 25 teachers per? Yes, of course. Yes. Okay. That's, it's really helpful. And then there are two levels to us. So there's a leadership, there's the part two and there's part one. Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Thanks. Is that for you? Well, for me, yeah. Thanks. Were there any other questions? Okay, I have a couple questions on the budget. So Edgar, on slide 31, you gave an explanation, which

085I think maybe I wanted Lisa to give an explanation for. You explained why the amount was so much higher and you used, I'm guessing it wasn't you who wrote that language. I mean, that's I'm sorry, but I'm just guessing it wasn't. I am flattered that you know me so well. I thought did well. I was really well actually, did you hear your own words coming out of my mouth? I didn't hear you. Okay, I was paraphrasing. Yeah, well you did a great job reading that. I can read. It wasn't a natural I had this sense that maybe. Kind of glind my- So I was wondering maybe Lisa, if you could explain what Edgar said. It's essentially, it's just a change in the accounting of it. So the full expense, we'll use round numbers. The full

086expense is 400,000. A portion of that is made up in revenue, a contribution from member districts, tuition payments for participants. So a substantial portion of the total expense is actually made up by revenue that comes in. In the past, when that revenue was recorded, it was recorded against the expense. So it ultimately decreased the total expenses. What we're going to do going forward is we're going to record the full expense and then a corresponding revenue separately. The net effect is the same, it's just an accounting. Okay, thank you. So basically you'll see a corresponding increase on your revenue side to account for that increase on the expense side. Thank you. Thank you Edgar. Eric, you mentioned, you talked a little bit about parallel plus and the contingency teacher. And my question was, do we have

087this space? I think you were talking about the middle school with that one and I was just wondering do we have the space if we need to add a program like that? Yes-ish. Yeah, no, so really it's about, yes, there are classrooms that can be used for the differentiated programs. This is not a program that will require its own dedicated separate space. It really falls into the scheduling and usage of the classrooms that teachers are already using. So might there be a set of teachers sharing a room and one period it's being used for one thing in the next period it's being used for another class, yes. So it's not gonna have its own dedicated room and space, but it's a period based program so it can be folded into the rest of the rooms

088that are there. The technical term for that is Tetris. Yes schedule. Hey, as long as we've thought about it, I just wanna be sure. And Stuart, I have a question for you too. So you spoke about one of the options was the tractor, but the other one was converting to electric and battery mowers. I think that was or something. Electric and battery blowers may be, my handwriting is bad. Whatever it is we're converting and I know that our village staff does some of the maintenance on stuff. So I'm wondering is the village staff gonna do maintenance on things that we're converting to electric and do they have those skills or do we have the skills in house for that kind of maintenance? Yeah, we're really talking about like small hand operated items or smaller items

089and we actually do a lot of that. Our own gentleman do that. So we've actually already started that conversion and haven't had any issues. Okay, great. Good question. I'll just dad that the village has converted to electric as well. Thank you Ron. Okay, so that was all the questions I had. If nobody else has any questions then I'd like to take us back to the auditorium and have a discussion here. Oh wait, sorry, I have to read Jessica's statement. So I'd like to read Jessica's statement, "To the Scarsdale community. I am unable to attend tonight's meeting due to a preexisting professional commitment out of state that I was unable to reschedule. I'm so appreciative of the efforts our administration has made to revise and put forward the budget and to my board colleagues who are

090present to review it tonight. I recognize that at this meeting our board will likely have fruitful discussion that will be nuanced and will involve weighing multiple, very complex decisions. As a result, as I reviewed the budget this weekend, it seemed that a substantive pre-written statement could quickly become confusing or outdated. In light of this, I have sent the board my thoughts on key aspects of the budget in advance of their discussions and have let them know that I fully support the decision. This thoughtful group ultimately reaches, I've carefully reviewed the budget and continue to be supportive in of an auditorium renovation to support all of our students. I believe the board will move toward an agreement tonight on the most responsible and achievable way to action this." So those were Jessica's comments. Just wanted to

091share those. Okay, so going back, let's take a step back and look at the auditorium and we've been given some recommendations. Sorry, I'm just gonna get on my screen 'cause it's a little hard for me to read that up there. So we've been provided with some recommendations from the district administration in terms of moving the auditorium at its present scope out of the budget and into a bond vote for this May. So I'd like to ask my fellow board members how we feel about that? I support that wholeheartedly for the pros that were listed. Take up please. Oh, sorry Bob. I think that bonding the auditorium renovation is a great idea for all the reasons that Stuart mentioned, but most importantly, I think having the community weigh in on this and give their input through

092through a vote is the proper thing to do. I think spreading out the cost over more of the lifetime of the expectation of the use of the auditorium is also the most judicious. And I think bonding it now is necessary because we have been putting off this project for so long, I don't wanna delay it any further and I don't think I have more to say except I think we should move ahead with that proposal. Yeah, and I will second that because I also think it's important to move forward with the proposal. I think I've said at other meetings, I think how valuable it is to do this work and I do think that it's important to do the work sooner rather than later. Not to put it off for years while we brainstorm and

093put together other potential capital projects requiring a bond. I think that would be a disservice to the community of our students and others who use the auditorium. I do think it's important to do the work that we've been committed to doing and put all the time in, put all the study in the due diligence in. It seems like there's been a lot of thought into doing it through a bond. I think there's good reasons to do it through a bond. I think we've got the time to gather support for it for the vote in May. So I think now is the time to make the decision and I fully would support that decision. Thank you. First of all, thank you so much for all your work on this budget. Budgeting is never easy 'cause you

094always have to make sacrifices and it's hard to cut any of these things. So I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the time that you guys all put into this. I agree with my fellow board members. I would really love to move forward on the auditorium project given the impact the project has on all the community members tax levy. I think we owe it to the community to let them make the decision. So I appreciate the work and the proposal and I would love to move forward. I just have a quick question, something Jim said. Do we feel we have enough time? I just wanna make sure we that like what in past bonds they aren't obviously have been much bigger but the district has put together reams of pamphlets and documents. So 'cause I am

095struck by the fact that many of the people that most see the need for this, but it's unfortunate by the time we do it, they're kids or some of their kids might graduate and the people that would be some of the biggest beneficiaries have kids that maybe have never stepped into the auditorium before. So I just want to ask about the timing, not for the bond itself, but for the engagement of it with the community. Yeah, you wanna start? Well, we would see this as being obviously some public relations and getting the information out. I think we're fortunate, we've been talking about this for a lot of years, so if anyone has been paying attention even just a little bit, they probably have heard about the project to some extent. So we would obviously need

096to ramp that out. We would certainly make sure all of this is included in any of our budget information going out. I think we can piggyback off of some of the video type work and everything that we did as part of the recommendation report and getting that information out as well. I think the fact that it's a standalone project and it is sort of what it is, it makes it much easier to sort of communicate and we've already done a lot of that like investigative work. So that really is just a matter of getting that message out. Whoa. I think separating it out and doing it the way the they've recommended with a bond makes a lot of sense. So there's no disagreement on my part. I support it. I'm happy for us to bond

097this project. I've said before, my view is I think this is a worthy project and I think if we're gonna do it, we should do it right. This is gonna be a project that lasts for the next 40 years. This will be the space for a very, very long time for generations of families and students. The only thing I would add is that my comments right now are a little contingent on our next conversation. I think we're about to embark after this on some discussions about other items and to me they are different but they're all taxpayer dollars and I'd like to just see where that conversation goes. So I just caveat my comments with that. Thank you everyone and I hope the rest of our discussions are as straightforward and easy as this one

098was. I do have one quick question, Stuart. So generally when we do bonds they're to replace existing debt, right? And this time it's just new debt we're taking on. Have we done that in a while? Has do you know when the last time was that we did something like that? I don't, not since I've been here. I'm sure it has happened 'cause they have to start out somewhere and quite frankly if you do a major bond every 10 years, the cost of construction escalation, it gets more and more and more to do the exact same thing. And that's going to be something that the board and community will have to think about when you're looking at that 40 million roll off. I think Drew mentioned it back in November or whenever it was, it may

099need to be more than that to get that scope of work done that eventually is identified. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I agree with my fellow board members. I appreciate the recommendation to separate out the auditorium. I think this scope of the work that we're proposing is significantly different from what was approved by the voters back in 2014. And I'd like to give our community the opportunity to express their thoughts on this directly. So it sounds like we have consensus with the reservation to revisit at the end for the auditorium to be put into a bond at the proposed scope in May. So with that I'd like to turn to the proposed reductions that were presented or deferments that were presented tonight. And I'd like to go through them and first ask, I'll go through each

100one and ask my fellow board members if they feel they need more information. And then I'd like to ask you your thoughts on each item. So I'm going to start with the Wi-Fi improvements to Dean Field and I'm gonna lump it in with the Wi-Fi improvements to Butler Field. However you're welcome to separate them out. Does anybody need more information on either of those items before they share their thoughts on keeping those in the budget or removing them? I have a quick question for Jeanie. Once you start a vendor starts installation, about how long would it take to get them up and running? So this would be a summer project. So if we started in July, it would be ready by the school year. So two to three months at most, I would say a

101two months time period. Can it be done during the school year or is this somewhat disruptive and really needs to be summer work? There is a little bit of trenching involved. So when the fields are in heavy use, we could do it in off hours. We would pay off hour pricing for labor, which is not, roughly $125 an hour instead of $90 an hour for doing off-hour labor. But it could be done during the school year. Yes. And just last question, I didn't think about this till while you were presenting, but does this cover like the e school parking lot from the Butler Field, does it go that far? Does not go that far. Okay, thank you. Okay. Oh, did you have a question, Colleen? If the village moves forward with their, like initially I

102was like, no, we need to improve the Wi-Fi. That's like a non-negotiable, but now with the progress that we're making with the carriers, I'm a little more comfortable with it if it will fix the problem. But then if it doesn't fix the, so I'm this one I'm having, I'm going back and forth because it really depends on the village progress. Sorry, I should have just stayed up here. I can give a little bit more flavor to that. So one doing this is it, we know the timeline, so if it's approved, we know this is something that will happen, over the summer we have, vendor bids lined up and we'll be able to service all carriers. What Drew alluded to earlier is we're only in contract, only in negotiations currently with Verizon. So we won't necessarily

103meet all the members of the community who are out on the field. And I'm not exactly sure of the timeline to have all carriers go out. So, it's not cellular coverage it is Wi-Fi, which is accessible to every member of the community. Can I ask a question and this isn't exactly related to Wi-Fi, it's more about cell coverage, but I happen to have AT&T and I get a little bit better coverage around the schools than Verizon people do, do we know if we get any cell service out there where you're proposing adding Wi-Fi? Not that I'm aware of. That's why we wanna put the Wi-Fi out. Okay, so you think there's no cell coverage out there? That was the driver of this is a request for services. They're not actually able to even make calls

104out there. I just wanted to ask add one other piece of context from Colleen's comment. So when Verizon came and Amber and I were at the meetings, they present coverage maps. They have a current one which is I think pretty good. But the potential one is a simulation and this building does sit in the middle of where the two new cell service cells are gonna be. So that's why I sort of asked about timing. I think it's possible it's gonna be improved from what we understand and if needed Verizon will come and do what it takes as we heard from the mayor earlier. But those things can take a little time. Who knows what will happen with chip shortage and all that stuff and then what the actual reception will be, not only when one

105person is out there but when a few hundred people are out there. So I can't answer that question. I just wanted to give that information 'cause that was sort of talked about at the village meeting and the coverage maps is we're discussing it. So Colleen, I know you started with you're not sure, so let's start with you. Any thoughts how you're feeling? No, no. That's okay. You know what? That's part of this is a discussion that we hear each other. It's like I understand your reservations. I think one thing and I'm trying to reserve my opinion for the end, but one thing I'll say that gives me a little confidence about considering deferring these two expenses, it's right now our coaches, my understanding and Drew you can probably add to this, but right now our

106coaches have walkie-talkies, right? So if there is something that happens on these fields that's truly an emergency, they do have a way to communicate and yeah, Eric's nodding his head yes, and so when I look at the maps that Jeanie has provided and I think okay, if it's a parent and there's no coach out there and they can't get Wi-Fi, they could run the 100 yards to where there is Wi-Fi. I mean they may not know that. I guess I'm less, it's an possible emergency situation where I think it would really be needed. And I feel like we have, at least the district has tried to cover that right now. If we're not covering the eighth school, what about like the tennis area? Does that also not if we expand this, it's a Butler Field.

107Sorry, Jeanie. No, it's fine just. To square you with the tennis courts. It's not included in the current proposal. That would be included in our phase two proposal, which would be for the following budget year. So we had actually phased into two components here. How would you mind sharing? I'd be comfortable postponing the Dean field just given usage of that space. I guess I view this as a little bit of an iterative process that's sort of going through and seeing where people are interested in. I would be interested in considering the Butler Field one, it's just gets such use heavy use all the time all year from students, faculty and staff, parents, visitors. So I would be in favor of keeping it for in a preliminary way while we discuss the rest of these. But

108I'm good with deferring Dean Field one. That was actually my next I feel com I think Butler, I would feel more comfortable including if we could include Butler at least to expand a little bit. Is way you could speak up sorry we can't to hear you. Sorry. I'm sorry. I would be comfortable including Butler Field if we could find a way to include Butler Field I think I would feel a little bit better about it. But again, I- Well again, we'll I mean I'd like for us to to be done in a reasonable time, but we can go back and take a look once we have our list together. Sorry Bob, were you gonna? No, I was just gonna say, I guess the way I'm thinking about it is if we think holistically, if you

109keep one thing and then another thing has to come out. If we're assuming we're shooting for a target. So knowing what I know about the safety precautions that are being made, I personally think we should hold off because I think the kids are safe. It's not as convenient as it would like to be. I get that. But I'd rather perhaps transfer that 60,000 to something else. In my mind that's how I'm looking at it. And if there was a safety issue, yes, this is sim sounds like more like an inconvenience issue, not a safety issue. And to me some of the things we're cutting out have more long term impact to student service delivery than parents having to scuttle around with their phones. Just my feeling. I think I'm picturing it more of we've seen

110a rise in the community support around the athletic program and I'm picturing like the football games on Friday nights where there's tons of kids running around and tons of parents and everyone trying to find each other and no one being able to communicate. So that's the thing that I'm envisioning, which is why if there's a way to include the Butler Field, I would feel more comfortable with that. Well my thought in that, and I share Ron's thought about bifurcating, I think Butler should be a priority. I'm not so comfortable postponing that, mainly because of the reason you mentioned Colleen, but also because I know Butler is used by a lot of people in the community. Not just students and parents, but a lot of residents who use the track every day and older residents and

111people who could suffer injuries who if they had a cell phone that worked could get help. But if they don't, may not. So that is also something I'm worried about. Susie. Well I certainly appreciate this discussion. I had come into this thinking that, well if the cell service will be improved that maybe we can delay this a year. And I'm actually curious for Eric's thoughts a little bit, if the cell service were improved, would you feel comfortable in terms of the safety aspect of it? If we push this off a year, but listening to my fellow board members, I think it probably would be prudent and nice to include Butler in the budget. I'd like to hear Eric's thoughts actually. Everything that has been discussed at the table is absolutely true. There are older people

112walking the track, there are people who use it. There could be instances where someone has fallen on the track and those are possibilities. I'm from a sports contest practice standpoint, I don't believe there's a current impediment to getting help for students who've gotten injured or during a school sponsored event. There's always someone that can get to a phone quite quickly. So I'm less concerned from a safety standpoint. There is a piece, at the homecoming game, there are a 1,000 people here and parents are letting their kids run around. Yes, it is harder if you can't text them and say, "Where are you?" Where I do see that as a little bit more of a convenience type situation. I think there is a certain intuitiveness 'cause let's think about what these recommendations are for is to

113work the budget into a a under the tax cap place. And that is what we're trying to do here. We wanna do all of these things. That's why these are next cycle postponements. And it's a need that needs to be filled. It may be filled through the cell service coverage and then yes, maybe we've been redundant. And so that's where the thinking comes in that these are pieces that we wanna think about in this postponement, is the cell service going to be perfect that much better? That it negates the need for Wi-Fi? I mean, we'll know when we know, but I wish I could say more like, have a better feeling. Can I just add one technical thing and Jeanie maybe you can check my understanding, but there's a difference in how the two services

114work. So like if you have a phone and you're on cellular coverage, it just connects. If you're relying on our Wi-Fi, you have to take a positive action to connect to it. You have to open your phone, find the network, and know the guest password to connect to it. So it's not a ubiquitous solution for community members. It's something that requires an action. That was something I was thinking about because I know the high school's been very good about distributing the password when you come in for the Wi-Fi network, but I wonder how many community members that use the track that don't have high school students know what the password is. I mean, I would err on the side of deferring this, but it sounds like there's deferring both, but it sounds like there's four

115members of the board who would like to move forward with considering Butler Field. So for now, I think let's leave it with everybody seems to be in agreement about deferring Dean Field and I think, like I said, we seem to have a majority that would like to move forward with Butler Field. So let's proceed with that for now and we'll take a look at the end and see where we're at. The next item is the 0.5 FTE for special education administrative reorganization and reassignment for the 0.5 FTE. Does anybody have any questions for Eric on that item before we discuss it? Eric, can you just give us the elevator pitch? I know you've gone through this, but you know what this change is going to do vis-a-vis students? Yeah, so we've had an increase in

116the number of students under special education and in preschool that's obviously increased the amount of meetings that our chair people are leading on a yearly basis. It increases the process, the testing, the general load. We've added quite a number of programs in the last five to seven years. Every time you start a program, there's upkeep and maintenance on that program. There's the most recent PD that needs to be organized. There's evaluations of those programs, observations, support for students on whether they make sense to move into this program or that program. So really this is a look to increase the focus on program development, program improvement by freeing up some people that are eyeball deep in the process of the CSE. So I really look at special education administration as both the legally required process, which

117requires all of the discussions, the meetings, the testing part of it, but that doesn't actually build any programs. And you have the programmatic piece of it, which is actually helping teachers, giving teachers the support to work with kids of all different stripes, all different abilities and challenges, and building those within the buildings that's an ongoing basis. So really we're reaching our capacity with the number of programs and the number of kids we have, and we need someone else also in a decision making standpoint. All of our CSE chairs and CPSE chair are teachers on assignment. They don't have administrative authority or budgetary authority necessarily to make calls on a additional services, additional aid, things like that. This would elevate someone into a place where they could focus on making some of those decisions. There is

118a bit of a bottleneck in the office. Thank you, Eric. Any other questions before we start our discussion? Okay. Thoughts? I think watching the growth of the special ed program, not only in terms of the number of students who are classified, but the types of programs that we offer, it makes to me complete sense that this administrative reassignment is necessary. I do think that this would impact a student experience to not have, like if they're not getting services as fast as they should or what if there's a consequence to not having this, I would feel very bad about that. I actually think this is an important one to keep and I know we're trying to stay under the tax cap. I appreciate all the work that, has gone into looking at every budget line and

119trying to find every last dime. But our children need, to be supported and I think this is an important one. Yeah, I don't disagree with what you said, Susie, but I was listening and I tried to pay attention, Eric, to what you were saying. I still don't think I understand concretely what the student experience would be as a result of this expenditure that it isn't now. I mean, I understand what the administrative experience would be. You were very clear on that. I think you were extremely clear on how this change would help the process and the supervision and sort of administration of this program. But it just wasn't clear as clear to me what the student experience would. I think it's really a downstream effect when we talk about the bifurcation of the process. Right

120now the process is taking up the vast majority of time for our CSE chairs and the support to teachers, the PD teachers, the program development and improvement piece is going slower than we would like. And as you increase programs, you multiply the need for those things. So I do think there's a downstream impact on students. I don't believe it's a acute downstream impact on students. So we're not talking about if we don't do this this year, that next year's program is gonna be appreciably worse than this year's program. That's not what we're talking about. But we are talking about, as we think about improving programs, working in the latest PDs, working in the latest supports, doing the consulting with the teachers in the room, those things are slowed down as we have more programs and

121more people, this was to relieve that. So I'm here and I'm supportive of our budget draft three. So it wouldn't be on there if I didn't think it makes sense for a postponement till the next cycle. Well this is really hard. I gotta tell you. This is not easy at all. It was hard in cabinet too. And I see others on this list that I know I am gonna feel really bad about. And I think it's hard to look at this in isolation and I don't know that I'm gonna be able to support a budget that gets rid of all these things. I don't think know if I can. But this one I think I could see myself supporting the deferment of that, of this particular expense. So this is one where I agree with

122Susie's comments. I would support keeping this, I guess I should take a step back for a second to express. So my fellow board members and the community know how I think about all of these. I think what the direction we gave to Drew was to bring us items that would get us to the tax cap. I'm not personally looking at which one, trying to figure out how to get under the tax cap. I'm trying to figure out how to deliver the best services to our students in a reasonable, financially prudent way. But this might be iterative. So we might have to come back to some of these, but as of now, I would like to see us keep this, I think I look at the numbers of special ed students, even just the last two

123years we talked in many ways about special ed and mental health, and one of the things I hear about this is that this would not only benefit our students in special education, I think it would benefit all of our students because making sure students are in the right place and teachers have the right training is beneficial to the general education students in those classes as well. So I would like to see us keep this in there at least for now. So as I'm listening to Eric kind of describe his own thought process, I think if I'm understanding correctly, the debate we're having, the administration has had, and these are the items they feel could be deferred. That is what he was saying. And I think what I'm hearing is that the degree of change and

124process improvement that we would like to see will be slowed down. It's not gonna be stopped, but it's gonna be slowed down. And, honestly, there could be pros and cons to slowing things down in the sense that it gives you more time to observe and look, I'm not defending slow, but I'm saying I don't see it as cutting out a service. We're just not going, I mean, so I'm looking at these as very rational recommendations and frankly, I rely very strongly on, let me put it this way, not rely, I trust very strongly the judgment of the team that made these, and I could be wrong, but I believe there's nothing on here that they don't feel can be deferred. Okay, that doesn't mean we can I just throw them- I think it's deferred to

125get to the tax cap. I just think it's really important. They did, the administration did not present us a budget, the first budget of what they think they should deliver to the Scarsdale taxpayer and student. These were in there. This was a reaction to us saying what would it take? So I just want to, that nuance that feels- No, I think that's a really fair point. So let me backtrack then. I think personally I think this debate is very interesting and very useful because it really, as we're going through it, it's very hard. I mean, we kept moving so fast, I couldn't really process it. So this is really helpful because now I'm really understanding what I'm reading. But I think it's coming down to, based on just what Ron said is, do we wanna

126go through an exercise of coming under the tax cap? If we all agree, forget it. It's no big deal. Let's not worry about it. Are we agreeing that we wanna do that? In which case, we need to go through this. If we're saying we're gonna exceed the tax cap, then we don't need to necessarily kill ourselves and go through every line item because we're kind of agreeing in principle to do that. Or maybe I'm missing. Well, what I think that we said last time, and the way I feel is that, should we go over the tax cap, I think we need to be able to defend why we're going over the tax cap. And I think going through this exercise, the cabinet eight has gone through and said, if you want to, we're 800 over,

127this is what that or seven, whatever it is, this is what that 700 is. And now we're talking about each of those items to say, "Okay, if we go forward with a budget that requires a 60% vote, we need to understand exactly why we're asking our community to support it. And let's have that debate here and talk about it. I think one thing I said at the start is, I'd like to see where we come out on the numbers at the end, to determine is this something, I think there's still a question, if we come out at 400,000 over, are we going to push our community to say, "Okay, we want a 60% vote on $170 million, where we're 400,000 over? Do we believe in this much that this is what we're going to do?

128Are we going to fund it through reserves? What are we going to, what is recurring, what is not recurring?" I think unfortunately there's still a lot of questions, which is why we are going through this exercise. I think as a group, we've been through these types of exercises before in executive session with superintendent search items. So we know how we operate. So I think we will get there. It's not going to be Okay, I hear you. Sorry, but I think it's important. Yeah. Let, let's keep going. So did you have a thought on this particular position in terms of whether it's okay to defer it or would you like to consider it? Well, I guess here's how my mind's working right now. If we're gonna go over the tax cap, we absolutely should include this.

129If we're really trying not to go over the tax cap at the end of the day, I can live with, based on, I have a comfort zone in putting it all for a year personally. Okay, don't have a category for that on my sheet. But at the end it'll sort itself out. It'll all sort itself out to your. Okay. All right. That's what I'll do Colleen. I think we should have a comfort zone category. Look, it's really hard to cut anything that is related to student support. That's a really a challenging one that I struggle with, but I'm trusting in Eric's assessment of the fact that he thinks we can still meet the student needs and put this off for a year. Then I support that opinion. If there's a way to make it work,

130obviously would love to do that. But if you feel like it's something that we can hold off for a year and figure out a way to meet the student needs, then I support that opinion. Thank you. I think, Eric, when you said you understood that this was something that we could defer, that to me solidified my position and that I'm okay with postponing this now. So we have three that are okay to move forward. Two that would like to keep and Bob in the middle. So I don't know what we do with that, but let's- (indistinct) Okay, we'll leave, we'll keep you in that little thanks. Just to keep us moving along. This is why it took us months with the superintendent search, just so that you know. All right. Let's move on to the

131high school counselor travel. Any questions on this before we discuss? Okay, open it up. I think given the times we're in and the changing landscape of college admissions as presented earlier this year by Orrin, I thought in an excellent presentation and hearing Ken actually mentioned that he would be asking for this at the time. I absolutely think that we should find a way to put this in the budget. I think our students need all the help they can get to figuring it out. And I think it would be very beneficial to our deans to have the opportunity to visit these schools and get the real story on what's going on and bring that back to our schools. Thank you. I just wanna clarify, this is just for an increase, right? They're still doing their visits

132and getting out. They just wanted to do a few more. I'm gonna trust in the process and feel like if the deans feel like they can get out and still do what they need to do with this, take it out of the budget, then I'm okay with it. Thank you. I guess I'm okay with this. I mean, I have a hard time sitting here trying to understand what this really practically means. The deans are going to colleges. Maybe this means they're not going to as many, maybe this means they're not staying as long. Maybe this means that there's, a secret lunch that they're not gonna get invited to 'cause they didn't stay the extra Monday. I'm not really sure what this means, and that's part of the reason why I guess- College visits, it's fewer.

133Fewer, no new- But I don't know which colleges they currently visit. So it's like, it's just hard for me to get a firm grasp on how this is gonna impact anything, which is why the trust part comes in and yeah, I feel like I can trust that if this was recommended, it must be because people believe that this is something that will not impair the services we deliver to our students. Thank you. I just want to make one clarification 'cause it's coming up. So I don't believe any of the cabinet views these as recommendations. These are considerations if pressed to do this. So this is a better choice to me for a reduction than a laundry list of other options. I just wanna be clear on that. Not that that would change opinion or anything.

134Yeah, my point is kind of the same, which is we don't have the visibility so we- I'm gonna try to give some of my board members a hard sell on this one. Some of 'em, I think, I understand our disagreements. This one I'm gonna give a hard sell. I don't hear more than anything in this seat than about college admissions right now. And the stress and changing landscape and the expansion of schools our students are looking at. I think that, to me is the key. We are in an age now where people are looking at schools they may not have traditionally looked at from Scarsdale. That's great. I think to give our students the best information about those schools, the dean should visit them. And this is $8,695. I think we should absolutely keep it.

135I would put more money into college, but I don't think we need to do, because though Deans can't travel too much, they need to be here for our students. So my trust is that this is the right amount of expansion, but I'm gonna give the hard sell on this one. I think we should keep this one in. Bob. I'm comfortable deferring it. Okay, well, and I'm strongly in favor of keeping it. So now we have a split on this one. I think for me personally, just to share my thoughts, I think that this is an investment and that while we may not necessarily see the return this year, I think deans go to schools, they establish relationships, that expands what they share with students in every year. And I see no reason to put that

136off. I see the changing college landscape, and to me I think it's a wise investment, but it looks like we're split on this. So let's table it and come back. It's fine. I'll circle back for a second. So my view of this list is that you're right, it's not a lot of money. So when I see this, I'm assuming that the cabinet set down and said, "We can do what we need to do without this money. So we'll add it even though it's not a lot of money." I agree. The changing landscape, and we hear a lot about colleges and I'm in support of anything we can do to support the kids that way. I just wanna be clear about that. I'm reading this as it's not a lot of money, let's put it on

137the list, because we feel like our deans can still do what they need to do. But if that is not correct, then I agree it's not a lot of money and it's worth trying to squeeze in if we really feel like the impact is so great that it maybe shouldn't be on this list. You know what I'm saying? I think this is where fundamentally, we all come at each one of these items slightly differently, And to me, I would put $9,000 towards Dean's travel before I would expand Wi-Fi on Butler Field. But that's why we talk about these and everybody has a different opinion and I think it's okay. I think, again, we can come back to it at the end and see where we are. This could be one of those things that after

138we talk through everything we say, "Yeah, maybe it's worth putting back in or no, it's not." So I'm gonna leave it, we're split right now. It's okay. Yeah. I think that makes sense, Amber. I'd like you to do that because I think this is gonna be iterative. So I think, it's helpful. We're gonna start to see more categories of things that impact students more than others. And I think, it will resolve itself once we go through the list. I think so. And we will eventually take a break, but I'd like to get through this list first. So let's move on to the next, which is the equipment, the replacement of aging lawn tractor. Any questions we need to ask before we discuss? Okay. Thoughts? Defer. Yeah, I'm okay with deferring this. I agree. All right.

139That was easy. Thank you very much. (all laughs) Sorry. I know they're waiting in the audience with baited breath, are they gonna put in our new tractor? Sorry. All right, let's move on. Furniture forgo purchase of new furniture. Do we have any questions before we discuss? I just had a question. If I understand that this is some discretionary items from principles, is that correct? That's part of it right. And then furniture, some two classrooms? No, the library's actually in the first round of considerations. This is primarily two sets of classroom furniture is the brunt of it. Does this include the second set of cafeteria tables at Edgewood? Yes. I'd like to keep those tables in and defer the rest. Yeah, this is one where I actually feel that I support this expenditure and not deferring

140it simply because when for to two years now that I've been doing site visits at the schools, high school, middle school, elementary schools keep seeing the benefits of this new furniture in instruction and the way the kids learn and the way the kids position themselves to learn the classroom. We talk about it for a minute, like a good part of the tour is spent looking at classrooms that have this furniture and how it has enhanced the learning experience. And I've heard that over and over again in all these trips. And for me to sit here and say, "Eh, it's probably not really necessary." I can't do it. I just can't. I feel like I have to support this expenditure, so I do, I don't support deferring it. Is there a way for you to break

141it down a little bit more what's included in this cutting it out? So like the Edgewood. I could go off the top of my head, which would be relatively close included as $20,000, which is typically undesignated just for furniture needs that come up during the course of the year, just so we have some money for that. I think about 40,000 is for high school classroom replacement, 30,000 is for middle school classroom replacement, and 10 or 20, probably 20 for the Edgewood tables. And then there's some other bits and pieces. And this is in addition to what the Education Foundation is replacing, correct? So they're replacing two classrooms in the high school, the middle school library. Yes and that's it. Do you have any thoughts, Colleen? I don't know. These are impossible- I know this is

142really not a fun night, but I understand and Jim said it several times, this is not easy. And so I'll say again, I appreciate that the cabinet went through this exercise because I think it's important for us as well. I agree with Jim's comments that these impact the students and we've seen them, we saw them in the middle school tour. We saw them in the high school tour. I'm just wondering if we have some very generous PTAs and very generous foundations, and I'm just wondering if we have to cut some of this out, if we can find other ways, because we can't put all this back in. So I think I'm okay defying this one because we are getting support from other places to replace some of the things. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. So I

143guess I'm feeling less concerned about deferring, knowing how it's broken down, frankly. So I think we just have to remember, deferring doesn't mean eliminating, it means deferring. And I would say, the core of the experience is keeping our teachers learned and on top of their game. And yes, furniture, I'm an architect. No question, furniture does make a difference. But I think, as a hard question, I would say I'm comfortable deferring it. Thank you. I too remember going on the school tours and hearing how valuable this new furniture is, you can set them up in different configurations and it encourages collaborative work can be used for different types of styles of teaching and differentiating between different kinds of students, so it is so beneficial to our students and it pains me to think that we might

144have to defer on some of this, but I think making hard choices, I would say, I'm okay deferring this a year, even though I don't want to. And I agree. I think we can defer. When I think about this, this is sort of a very nice thing to have, but I think we have seen support from external organizations since this is more of a core plus type of item than a core item. And it's not like we're outfitting the entire schools, these are small steps, so I'm okay to defer it. So it looks like we are gonna defer that one. All right, safety and security hardware projects. Still a expansion of window mitigation. Any questions for Eric before we discuss? Okay. Open it up for discussion. I'd like it just a little more description of

145what it is. So we put in $150,000 to really focus in on two possible improvements, that being the door ajar sensors, and as much as we could do of the second window mitigation, second phase of window mitigation, the door ajar sensor, given recent happenings are really more of a priority, especially since the all, I can't go over where's been mitigated, but all of the priority areas that have identified- Explain what it is. Yeah, sorry. Window mitigation is the reinforcement of windows that would make it doesn't make them bulletproof flats, but it makes it harder for an intruder to break through a window. It would gain anywhere from one to three minutes for someone to really break their way through a window, which doesn't seem like a lot of time, but in an emergency situation is

146actually quite a bit of time, especially if we're instituting a lockdown. So, very important. The first phase that we did, the second phase, I think is a less critical endeavor, especially the door ajar sensors, I think would actually be really helpful, especially given what we know now about some of the ways that things have happened. I am comfortable with the $50,000 deferral on this. I think we can get most of the way there with the door ajar sensor with the money that we have accounted for now. Thank you. Thoughts? I think we can defer it. I think we can defer. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree. If there's no risk to a student's safety at this point, I'm fine with deferring it as well. I'm fine with, I'm gonna change the term I use.

147I was saying deferred. I do think it's important to note we're not deferring anything. Like we're gonna have to reconsider this next year in the budget. None of this is gonna happen automatically. All the things we're talking about. In fact, we're gonna have $500,000 potentially of items in addition to other stuff we wanna do next year. So I use the word as well and I just want to sort of state I think we should, we'll reconsider it for next year. I think we'd make the commitment too, to come back next year and remind the board what was discussed. Put forward in the budget just so you, so it's fresh. Yeah, no, totally understand. We won't forget this either. (all laughs) Yes, indeed. I'm going to- Neither will we who recommend it. All right, I agree

148with the rest of my fellow board members. So we have four more items if we can get through and then take a break, that would be great. So items that would scale back, current or desired level of effort. First item is consultants for responsive classroom reduced by half. Actually I have an old, I'm gonna, sorry, I'm gonna I have an old printout. Let me just pull up the way it reads now. Responsive classroom consultants reduced by half and DEI consultant reduced by half for $65,000. Do we have any questions for Edgar? I have a question. Sorry. I'm familiar with responsive classroom. I love it. With having to make this reduction, do you anticipate maybe perhaps trying to supplement that by having teachers who have been trained in responsive classroom, like having teachers visit their classrooms,

149like as a way to make up for pulling this consultant out. Is there something we can do to still allow teachers to grow and develop in this area? Yeah, I mean, I think that we're always looking to build capacity and there it happens, sorry. We're always looking to build capacity. And a lot of the teacher to teacher learning happens organically in sharing. It's been happening through faculty meeting sharings and also through the structure of the STI and stack classes. It's something that's gained a lot of traction and is moving forward. It would just be about the scale and the pace responsive classroom is wonderful and the trainers that we've gotten to work with us have been really good. So again, it's one of those things we, it's not gonna stop. It's just gonna move at

150a different pace. Well, if I could just say, I mean, this is one I really feel I can't support as a well, whatever the term Ron wants to use, I really feel I can't support it because I've been thinking through the last year and a half I've been on the board that we pride ourselves in our commitment to these initiatives SEL and DEI. We keep saying we do. I believe we do. I personally feel very strongly about it. I just see this as completely inconsistent with that way we see ourselves. And I understand that, we're in an exercise here, but I think we have to be true to ourselves. This to me would be turning our back in ourselves. I don't feel comfortable at all supporting this cut deferment consideration for next year however you

151wanna put it. Anyone else? I agree with Jim going to the Fox Meadow School visit this year. I was very impressed with the responsive classroom approach, especially coming out of COVID. I think it's especially helpful for our students, to learn how to empathize, how to be take social responsibility and nurture them and give them the tools they need to be good citizens. I don't think that's something we want to put off. I think it's very timely and that we need that now. I could go on I guess, but yeah, I'd like to keep that. So in principle, I agree with Jim and I agree with Susie, but I don't believe we're turning our back and I don't believe we're not gonna be doing it. I think we're gonna be doing it at a slightly slower

152pace, but we are gonna be doing it. If I heard Edgar correctly, and I think it's a very sensible as I said, I think the strategy of dialing back and I don't know the degree with which we're talking about dialing it back says reduced by half. That doesn't mean we're not going to be enthusiastically promoting these things, but the training will be dialed back. So I feel again, comfortable and trust that the teachers are gonna do what they need to do and the administration. So I support it. I would like to see us keep in the responsive classroom consultants. To me this is a direct impact for students. The more teachers that we can train and do professional development for in this, what I believe is an important area that directly impacts students. And I

153think you said it was 25 per session, is that right? And we're talking about two sessions. So next year's only 50. I mean, there'll be need a need for the year after and the year after that and there's a couple levels. So taking, slowing it down a year, that will impact many, many kids, my opinion. So I would like to see us put back in the responsive classroom consultant. And defer DEI or postpone or consider slowing down. Fund the DEI consultant to the updated amount. I do think it's important. I agree with Bob that we are not turning our back on this. We have a deep commitment to this it, that commitment is not just about hiring consultants. In my opinion, taking actions. I think you saw that through our calendar development and discussions in

154the books we've approved and we've funded this year in our partnerships with the PTAs in many, many other ways. I think our consultant is excellent. We've also had our consultant and been funding at a very high level for the last couple years. And I think we'll be able to continue this work and we have been doing this work. So yes. Thank you. I agree with Ron. I would love to find a way to keep the responsive classroom consultant. I think there's a lot of value and impact long-term impact from that program. I'm okay reducing the DEI because I agree we have a pretty good foundation to continue to build off in that capacity. So my vote would be to try to find a way to include the responsive classroom consultants and then reconsider increasing the

155DEI consultants next year. Thank you. You guys make this job hard when we give me new categories to fill in. But I agree with Colleen and Ron. I'd like to keep responsive classroom in next year's budget. I think this to me, it crystallizes in my head the same way as the college advisor visits. It's more of a longer term strategy. I think it's a little bit of a newer program. We've made some good progress with the DEI work in our district. We have a good policy in place. I think we've seen it in action. Ron highlighted some of the ways, so I'm comfortable, to Bob's way of looking at it slowing it down a little bit, or not advancing as quickly, I guess is the way. But I'd like to keep moving forward with responsive

156classrooms. So we have five people who are in favor of moving forward with responsive classroom. So I think that's what we will go forward with for right now. Textbook purchases, short-term reduction after the increase associated with the purchase of Reveal Math. Any questions? Okay, open it up a question. Oh, go for it. What's the latest in terms of how Reveals Math is going? I don't know. It's going well. I've been visiting classrooms and meeting with the math elementary leadership. And I think that an as anticipated, we're learning more and more about the program as we go forward. We've got the resources, but we also have a loop of feedback from the teachers to the coordinators. We're collecting more information from the teachers as we go forward to make sure that we're meeting the needs, their

157professional development needs. And so the trainings that we have coming up, the stacks and also the assured experiences are based on the feedback that we've gotten from the teachers, knowing that there's a learning curve for all of us. But we have very engaged, very curious, very committed teachers who are really doing a wonderful job with it. Okay, great. Thank you. I guess that my question is like these additional textbooks, like are they in response to feedback on the program or is are they supplementary or like? No. I want to just clear something up. So when we went and we did a large amount of purchasing and we had extra funds that we dedicated towards the launch of it though, a lot of those materials that we bought are materials that we are gonna have for

158the next three years. Knowing that when it says it's a temporary kind of deferment, you may find in a future year, because we need textbooks perhaps in a different area in science, in English, where in social studies I may be coming and asking for the budget to be adjusted for that. But because we put so many of the resources last year into it through the generosity of the board and the community, then if there is a year to just scale back 50 grand, this would be the year. Thoughts? Well, given what Edgar just said, I'm okay deferring it. Thank you. I'm also okay deferring it. I support that too. I'm okay. Reconsidering it for next year. I agree with Colleen. Thank you to my board for moving us along that one. Thank you Edgar. All

159right, consultants reduce the current frequency of administrative coaching by half questions before we discuss. Okay, thoughts? I can start with this one. I'm okay reconsidering this for next year because I feel very confident in our current leadership, (laughs) not just you Drew. No, again, this is my first year, but I've had the pleasure of spending time with all the cabinet and I'm very impressed by the leadership that you provide during our school visits and meetings. And while ideally I would love to give you these consultants to help you do your job, if you feel like a 50% reduction can still meet the needs of our leaders. And given what I've seen from this current cabinet, I'm comfortable reconsidering this for next year. Thank you Colleen. I agree with that. I agree as well. I agree.

160I would just add that, if we're not gonna do things that are like much, much closer to students, I just think it's prudent that we also make this change at administrative level. Thank you Ron and Colleen, thank you for articulating some of our confidence in leadership that we have. So I also support potentially considering this in a future budget. Last item on the list. Staffing efficiency, seek reduction in part-time allocations in music and PE based on efficient scheduling. Does anybody have any questions? Okay, I guess. My only question is, this has no impact on students, this is the way I heard it, but I just want to confirm that. No, it doesn't have a direct impact on students. We would need to do some reconfiguring of shared staff because what we'd like to do is

161partner some of those shared positions in schools to make it easier for scheduling. So that's really what we're looking at. So for instance, give you an example. Our for music staff that travel, if we were to keep partnerships of the instrumental music teachers and the band teachers send them as a partnership to another school, we can have efficiencies in scheduling because now the two elementary schools only have to worry about one other elementary school for schedule. Gotcha. Really they're not adding a third like building in there. And when there's tons of travel time, we're paying for that time. A more efficient schedule reduces that gaps of time where they're not teaching, they're getting from one place to another or prepping for one one place an efficient schedule. Their teaching load is connected and then they're

162not teaching. Okay, I mean if I'm understanding correctly, it doesn't have any impact to students. It seems like it makes sense to move forward this adjusted amount, this adjusted FTE count. Thank you Ron. Anybody else? I'm sorry Ron, were you saying it makes sense to consider this next year? Yes, I agree with that. Well, we might not need to consider it next year. It's an efficiency that hopefully will take care of itself and so I support it. Yeah, I would say I think deferring is reasonable. I think it's great. We all support efficiency, so. Okay, great. We've gone through the list. It has been two and a half hours plus, so I'd like to take a seven minute break. I'm gonna give us all an extra couple of minutes and then we'll reconvene and we

163can wrap this up hopefully. Okay, great. We're back from recess and I'd like to thank everybody for sticking around through that conversation and thank my board members. So we went through all of the items. Well first, as a recap, we as a board agreed that we were comfortable with the recommendation to move the auditorium to a bond vote at the proposed scope of $4.7 million in May. Ron asked that we revisit that at the end if there was, after we kind of had our full discussion, we talked about considerations for reductions to draft budget plan two, we went through every line item and there were two line items that we wanted to consider leaving in and one line item where we were split. Jessica's not able to join us this evening. The two line items

164that we wanted to consider leaving in were Wi-Fi for Butler Field at $60,000. Responsive classroom consultant continue at the originally proposed pace of $25,000. And the one item that we were split on was the additional travel for the deans to visit colleges at about $9,000. So I'd like I guess ask my fellow board members if we're comfortable where things stand. The Butler Field won, we were split on that responsive classroom. We were five mostly in favor. But any thoughts before we talk about funding? I'll share one thought 'cause I talked about Butler Field. In light of the decisions we made, I personally would rather shift that $60,000 to definitely the college deans and or the CPSE half FTE or even furniture for the schools. I mean, I think those are all things that are closer

165to students. So if we're not gonna move forward, the rest of them, I would change my view on Butler Field to shift that money somewhere else. I think if I had to put in order responsive classroom would be my first priority to keep in. After all the considerations and the conversations we've been having, I feel like I actually am moving to the other side around the dean. I'm seeing more value in that. So I would have to say that would be my second thing to keep in. Can you speak it's not a private conversation, please. We'd like to hear. Sorry, Mr. Harrison, the microphone is on. We will do our best to speak loudly. Thank you for letting us know. You can't hear, but please do be patient with us. Thank you. If I had

166to prioritize my- That's better. Thank you. If I had to prioritize my list, I would say responsive classroom would be my top priority to keep in. If I had to next on my list, I will be pushing for the deans. I've seen value in that after listening to my fellow board members, I go back and forth on the Butler Field, but given that it is only a Wi-Fi and not necessarily a cellular fix, I would be okay if we really had to cutting it. Thank you, Colleen. Does anybody else have any other thoughts? Jim, you're shaking your head no other thoughts? No, I don't know what is, I mean, I don't support cutting Butler Field, I think it's a safety issue, even if it's just Wi-Fi because of all the parents and children who are

167there when it's busy when it is on evenings when there's football games and the like and I just think it's a safety issue. I feel like it's a direct enhancement of the experience of the people who use the area. So I just don't feel comfortable saying okay, cutting it. I think I would agree with Colleen that yeah, I would not personally keep Butler Field, but I would keep the responsive classroom and the deans. I think for Butler Field in light of the rest of the conversation we had, I think I would con reconsider it next year, if I was down there as being for the Butler building. Okay, I've been trying to keep track of everybody's. So I think, and Drew, I hope you're also keeping track. We can compare notes. So I think where

168we have ended up is everybody is happy, trying to keep responsive classroom consultants in the budget for next year. I think we've had people shift on their thoughts about the deans, Ron and Colleen and it sounds, I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep track of who said what before. I was always in favor. Oh, you were always in favor. So Bob, Jim and Colleen were in favor of reducing the deans, but Bob and Colleen have moved around to keeping the deans. So we'd like to have the deans in. So we have the responsive classroom in, we have the deans in. Butler Field some who voted to keep it in have considered moving it out. Some have considered other items in place of Butler Field, which I'm not gonna touch that right now. So let's just talk

169about Butler Field. So maybe it sounds like Jim is strongly in favor of keeping Butler Field Wi-Fi in and Susie, I wrote down your name in Butler Field, but I don't know what you said about it, I'm sorry. I'd like to reconsider it this year. Right consider. So generally it seems like we've moved to reconsidering Wi-Fi for Butler Field for next year. Does that match? Okay, so it looks like the two things we have kept in our responsive classroom at 25,000 and deans at 9,000. Okay, all right. That was great. Thank you. I really appreciated that. And I'm going to say I hope that our discussion was helpful to the cabinet and the community to understand, where we're at. So and we did have a round of postponements deferrals from the original budget that was

170800,000. Don't worry, we're not gonna go through all of those, but I think it's just important. Maybe you, do you have those Drew, could you just pull those up real quickly? Thank you. So as Stuart had correctly identified, we did have the replacement of the high school library furniture on that initial list, some additional central office furniture. In the budget Jeanie presented tonight, there's a reduction in the hardware lease purchases that's 150,000 'cause it's spread over four years. Reduction in software subscriptions. As she also talked about within her her budget, we have 250,000 in energy cost reductions. We're gonna hear a presentation later this evening from Synergistics that we'll talk about how that comes to be if we were to adopt that contract. Then we had the proposed added custodian initially that we pulled back

171on. We lowered special education budget toward undesignated placements. This is a placeholder for the unknown. So we're uncertain. So we lowered that initially. Some supplies related to when we provide meals for employees and they work over their lunch hour delaying the purchase of long-term financial planning software to better time it with our primary system upgrade or shift. And then some additional funds and student activities that were new newly proposed to enhance that budget from its current. Okay, thank you Drew. So I guess at this point now we're requesting, I should do the math. I'm at 25 and nine, so that's 34. And adding back in $34,000 to the 177,620,490 budgets, it seems to me that going over the tax cap for that small amount of money would not be the best way to proceed. But

172I'm happy to discuss with my fellow board members if we have any thoughts on how we would like to fund that if we are comfortable going over the tax cap for that amount of money. This is probably a question for Stuart, but I think one of the things that I sensed from a projections point of view is that probably many of the categories have a certain contingency built into it. Like for example, when you were talking about the furniture, you said something like the well and 20,000 for unexpected requirements. It seems to me that a $34,000 overage on a $ 177 million project is a draw. I mean, that we're obviously not going to ask for a overage for $34,000 and it seems to me that we should be able to find $34,000 within our

173$177 million budget so that we can move forward. I mean that's just sort of the way I see it. I don't see it requiring a lot of shenanigans on our part. I don't know how the budget is structured, but no, I would be happy to have you answer that if you think there's a way that we could do this. I'm gonna channel my inner Stuart, it's a budget plan. It's our best guess of what we think our expenditures will be next year. We could absolutely go into the budget and fairly arbitrarily reduce a 41,000 off of 34 things. It's a risk and we could take it. Yeah, I'm a little. Revenues you talk about that. Well, Mr. Harrison please is I'm sorry I understand we're in our meeting right now. Mr. Harrison. Make some comments

174on this. Thank you. Okay, well I think we're still talking about what the board has to do right now in this meeting, right? Yes. Okay, so I don't quite understand why in this meeting at this time we have to decide or maybe we don't, it's clear to me why we have to decide that we're gonna break glass and smash the glass of the tax cap levy 'cause of these two things we're leaving in. It just seems a little like that's not really the decision we're making tonight, is it? I don't think so, but I- No, I don't think so. Look, I think the purpose and Amber, thank you for leading that process. I think it, I dunno, I learned from it. I think the point was is this in the tens of thousands dollars? Is

175it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or are we a million or more dollars a apart on this at the point where we're 34,000, we're gonna figure it out if the direction is to is to meet the tax tax levy limit, we'll do it. Like it's silly, right? Yes. On $170 plus million dollar budget. Yes, I sure hope we don't spend every single penny of our proposed budget. Our revenues are an estimate of our revenues. We haven't even presented those yet. We don't have the final state aid numbers yet. So I think what Drew said, we're close and I think that's for our purposes. If the board wants to be under the cap for $35,000, we'll sharpen the pencil and find $35,000. I think from where I'm sitting, yes. I would not want to

176go over the cap for that amount of money. I would hope we could find a way, maybe the revenues come in more, I don't know. But it does seem like a pretty big hurdle to try to clear for something that it's smaller. So I guess is that enough guidance for you now going forward? Ron, you wanted to revisit the auditorium at the end just once you saw where we fell. Are you comfortable? Yeah, unless anybody else has any comments. Everyone's good then with the plan moving forward. Okay, fantastic. Do we have anything else on this budget meeting or are we adjourning. Just to point out our timeline. So we will have a full budget plan update and presentation at budget study session number three, which is two weeks from this evening, March 20th. Obviously we'll

177update you on any of those things we just mentioned, revenues, state aid included in that. Anything we learn in this time and come back to you with that. Thank you. And I'd just like to point out that we have the budget forum and review on the 27th, which I know is only a week for the public to evaluate and provide comments. And later tonight we're going to have a proposed board calendar for next year and we are proposing two weeks between the final budget study three and the budget forum. So we will hopefully be rectifying that issue in the future. But we understand and appreciate that this year the community doesn't have as much time to provide their input. So we thank you for following along. Okay, can I get a motion to adjourn the

178budget meeting and move to the business meeting? Thank you, Susie. Is there a second? Thank you, Jim. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, great. Let's move to the business meeting. Okay, I'll get started. Welcome and thank you to all those attending this evening's board meeting, whether in the audience via live streaming or watching later on demand. I call this meeting to order and note that all board members are present except for Jessica Resnickalt. And we are joined by Dr. Patrick and his cabinet. Earlier this evening. The board met with the mayor, members of the village board and the village manager as part of our commitment to continued collaboration. This was the second joint meeting held with the village board this school year. We reaffirmed our goal to foster even stronger communication

179and collaboration between the village and district. Back in October of 2021, my predecessor, former board president Karen Suski, reported on a joint meeting with the village and noted in her opening remarks, areas for potential exploration and collaboration such as cell service, pool, facility, and field improvements were also discussed. These areas for collaboration have remained a focus for our work with the village. Since our last meeting board Vice President Ron Schoff and I have attended two village meetings related to telecommunications. Ron and I read the letter signed by the full board of education, advocating for the closure of telecommunications gaps around our schools to improve safety for our students, faculty and staff. I'm pleased to report that at the February 28th meeting, the village board took action to move forward with plans that should address the

180gaps in service around the high school and Fox Meadow. In our meeting we also discussed the respective plans of the village and the district to include funds for joint field study next year. And Mayor Varon provided an update on the village's progress with respect to the required pool upgrades, as is our standing practice. We also discuss safety, security, and emergency management in our meeting. And later tonight, after discussion with our counterparts in the village, our board is expected to take action on the proposed senior tax exemption. Collaboration with the village board of trustees has always been important and this year it continues to remain vital that we connect regularly. Our residents directly benefit from our collaborative efforts. Thank you to the representatives of the village for taking the time to meet with members of the

181Board of Education, Dr. Patrick and the cabinet. Also, before this meeting, we had our budget study session number two, during which we looked at and discussed needs related to curriculum instruction and assessment, special education and student services, including safety, security and emergency management, technology and information technology and facilities. As part of the facilities discussion, the high school auditorium project was also discussed. The board provided guidance to the administration on a path forward with the budget. If you miss the presentation and discussion, please know that you may view it in the Board of Education's meeting videos library. In our meeting this evening, the board will have a first reading on some newly required policies. Please note that the board generally requires multiple readings of a policy before taking action. However, tonight we will take action on

182the senior tax exemption policy. This item was first discussed on December 5th, 2022, and a public hearing was held on January 9th, 2023. The board took action on the resolution related to this exemption on January 30th, 2023. Per legal counsel, this Board of Education policy needs only one reading. As the decision and adoptive resolution on January 30th by the board confirmed the statutory change, the maximum income threshold. Also tonight the board will have the opportunity to review true draft calendars for board meetings for the 2023-2024 school year. One of the calendars moves the board's regular meetings from Monday evenings to Wednesday evenings. The board will discuss this option but will not take action this evening. This will allow the community the opportunity to provide input on the possible change. In closing, I'd like to thank

183those who have provided feedback so far on the budget process. We are truly appreciative of the community's engagement and support, Drew. Thank you very much. I add my wish of good evening to everyone and my welcome to those of you joining us in person or online. As has as my habit, I'm gonna share some sampling of the great things happening around the district. Starting with this past February break. We saw the return to international travel for our students, which was eagerly anticipated. The high school orchestra toward Italy and Switzerland, completing a trio of sold out performances with local orchestras. They also enjoyed master classes and visits to elite instrument makers. The SHS Wind Ensemble and Chorus toured together through Spain, also completing Trio sold out performances with local ensembles in Valencia and Madrid. And our

184students also completed a long delayed exchange with Italian students from Edu Condado Statarea Uchales, who visited Scarsdale in September. Students enjoyed homestays and visited Udnie, Venice, Florence, Orvieto, Piza Rome, and Pompei, and even enjoyed private audiences with the mayor of Udnie and a university president. I want to extend my congratulations to two of our high school faculty members, Meredith Dutra and Lisa Yokana, who were both honored by the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center with their tell Award for Outstanding Innovations by a teacher. This is the second year in a row that Scarsdale educators have been honored in this way. And the first time two teachers from the same school have ever been recognized. So congratulations to them. Quaker Ridge. Our fourth grade students enjoyed a field trip to Phillips Manor in Yonkers and they learned

185about what life was like in Colonial New York, including learning about indigenous people who lived in the Hudson Valley at that time, Students in grades K-2 have also enjoyed the return of the Tinker Fair, which is a fan favorite. Today, Edgar mentioned earlier this evening, Scarsdale High School had a visit from Dr. Thomas Guskey, who's a world renowned educator and educational thinker on a variety of topics including grading and professional development. Dr. Guskey met with the high school teachers and leaders who've been examining the research and best practices around grading, as well as with teachers and leaders from the middle school and district office. Dr. Guskey concluded his visit as a guest speaker at the high school faculty meeting this afternoon. Looking ahead this weekend, the 28th Young Writer's Workshop returns at Green Acres Elementary.

186I suspect some of our board members might mention that, but we just want to put our support behind that and that event is extremely exciting to see back. And I will note our athletes have had another great season with post-season play continuing this past weekend, including the sectional final at the County Center for Boys basketball last night. I will to our next meeting be happy to provide a, a nice overview of the entire season with our accolades and all counties and all of those things. Those things are still being finalized, so I won't say too much more about that. Similarly, the middle school Science Olympiad was this past weekend and hosted by our incredible middle school teachers and supported by our incredible parent volunteers. And I'll provide more details on both of those things at

187the next meeting. And I know Susie's gonna share a little bit about that. Finally, a few important dates and observances I would like to call attention to. First Purim is being celebrated today and tomorrow, March 6th and 7th, celebrating an affirming Jewish survival and continuity throughout history. The Hindu Festival, Holy, also known as Festival of Colors and Love Marks the beginning of spring in the Hindu calendar will be celebrated on March 8th. International Women's Day is also celebrated on March 8th, honoring the cultural, economic, political and social achievements of women. And the day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. This year, that same day, Wednesday, March 8th, is also a Superintendent's Conference day. So there's no school for students, but our consultant, Dr. Derek Gay, will be presenting his keynote to

188faculty and staff focused on the ways in which we foster inclusion and belonging in our classrooms and in our spaces. And Dr. McIntosh will say a few more things about that during cabinet updates in a minute. So thank you. Thank you Drew. And we look forward to hearing some of the updates on the Athlete's performance this season and the middle school Science Olympians. So lots of exciting stuff. I've said this before, but that's my favorite part of the update. So thank you. Are there board member reports? Susie, would you like to go first? Hi. Apologize for repeating the information that you already shared, but I wanted to urge everybody to register for Young Writers' Workshop on the registration closes tonight. The PTC is once again hosting its Beloved Young Artists Workshop, open to Scarsdale Elementary

189students grades 3-5 and will be held on Saturday, March 11th at 9:00 AM at Green Acres. Thank you, Susie. Ron. Thanks Amber. Colleen and I had the pleasure of attending the basketball game of the county center last night. And in addition to being a great game with not the outcome we may have wanted, but a great game nonetheless. It was just so fantastic to see such community spirit and support from students, from parents. Many faculty members and administrators were there and students of all ages saw people, kids who were out late for their bedtime to high school students all cheering on. And it was just such a wonderful event to see the community come together. And I know they do in many other ways and many other events, not just in sports, but I just

190wanted to highlight that. Thank you, Ron. Are there any other board member reports? Okay, drew, I'll turn it over to you for cabinet. Sure we'll start with Stewart on a food service update. Sure. Yeah. So we've been talking about the food service bid for three, four years now. It was delayed due to the pandemic. However, we are now required to issue our bid for food service operations. We're going to be doing that here in the next month and a half. And we would hope to come back at the May 8th meeting with a recommendation. We'll be reviewing the specs before we issue them with the food service committee later this week. They've actually been sort of ready to go for quite a while now, so we'll just refresh everything and get it out to bid

191and hopefully have a good result. And turning to Edgar for DEI update. So as Drew mentioned, we're thrilled to be spending our Superintendent's Conference Day on March 8th focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and specifically creating brave spaces in our learning environments. Our classroom educators, nurses and specialists will begin with a keynote given by Dr. Derek Gay on the scholarship of facilitating difficult and complex conversations with all our students and each other. After that, this group will break into small groups by level that will be facilitated by Scarsdale colleagues. We'll dig into case studies, case studies that were suggested and developed by Dr. Gay and inspired by focus groups he held with students across the district. In the morning, our teacher aids will be engaged in a variety of wellness, safety and technology workshops. Shout

192out to Carol for the thoughtful coordination of these learning opportunities. Dr. Gay will hold a second keynote in the afternoon for our teacher aids and the rest of our school teams, our custodians, our technicians, our transportation folks, our secretaries and data experts. And we look forward to this. Dr. Gay will return on the ninth the next day for work with leadership on the climate survey, feedback on focus groups and parent meetings and elementary curriculum. Thank you very much. And to Eric for an SSEM update. Happily, this is a good update from day automation and our lockdown integration system. All of the prep work for all seven of our schools have been done. The cutovers have been completed for the high school for Fox Meadow, Green Acres, Quaker Ridge was finished today and Heathcott will be

193cutover later this week to our new swipe system, leaving only the middle school and Edgewood for the next two weeks. We should have all of the swipe systems up and operational by the start of spring break, which will and spring break will allow for day automation to do all the testing on the lockdown notifications and automatic integration of all of the systems. So they'll be spending most of spring break putting our schools in and out of lockdown to make sure everything is working. And at that point we should have a fully functional system. So all moving pace. Great. Thank you very much for those updates. I will move on to hearing from those present and I will read the preamble. Members of the public are cordially invited to speak on district related items or other

194non 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 livestream voice, turn on your camera and then unmute yourself. Speakers will be asked to conclude their remarks after four minutes and will be given a verbal cue at the three minute mark. If at this point a speaker has additional comments, they may send them in writing to the board via email at boardofeditsscarsdaleschool.scarsdaleschools.org. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time in place. Response to public

195comment will take place after the first and second public comment periods. And with that I will open up public comment to those in the audience. Hello, I'm Alyssa Baum to Sullivan Lane, president of the League of One Voters of Scarsdale. And I just have a few questions on revenue considerations. You spoke about the higher the normal increase in the health insurance reserves. Are there any risks to adjusting revenue using the TRS, ERS and health insurance reserves? Do you anticipate needing to use these reserves to adjust revenue for the 24-25 budget? CPSE staffing, what if any costs are associated with the deferral of the CPSE staffing reorganization, especially in terms of potentially higher costs associated with delayed or reduced services for students? Consultant reductions. More specifically, how will the reduction in DEI consultant expense specifically change

196the current DEI work plan over the next couple of years? Both res with respect to Dr. Gay's work and work in the classrooms, how will it affect teacher training in this area? And lastly, the auditorium. Will the auditorium project be on the same timeline, whether it's included in the budget or a bond? Will the $1 million taxpayer impact be distributed over 15 years? Thank you. And I would encourage you to send those questions to us. I will. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience? Good evening. My name's Bob Harrison. I'm a 43 year resident of Scarsdale living at 65 Fox Meadow Road. My wife Terry has joined me. We've been attending village board meetings and budget meetings. And we were here several weeks ago at your last meeting, but it went on so

197long that we never could stay around to talk. I'm very disappointed that you did not ask for public comment on your budget discussions. Why should we sit out here and not have a chance to comment? Doesn't make sense at the village board meetings. The mayor opens up the meeting to the public that are in residence. Do you want to hear from us or not? I'm very serious about this. I think you've left a lot out to be desired of your budget discussions. So I think you can find enough money in $177,620,000 budget to get under the cap, which you should. There's a potential recession coming in our country. Wall Street has had many layoffs recently, and there are more to come. Our community is heavily oriented toward the financial community. So I think you should

198be working in every way possible, first of all to have the lowest tax increase. And also you want to get your budget passed. You should do it with 50%, not 60%. Interest income, I don't see anything in your budget papers about interest income. I've been talking to the village for months actually since the Fed started to raise rates and they're gonna continue to raise interest rates more. What are you the school board doing with the funds of the school relative to interest income? You have nothing in your papers related to it. The Fed will be raising rates another two, maybe three times where over 5% return on US Treasury bills the safest investment in the world. What are you doing with your unassigned fund balance and all these balances? It looks like you have in

199different categories here. I don't really have them handy in front of me, but what happens to that money in some of these funds? Do you have it to invest or what? So I think there's some serious answers here. The village and their first cut last March they had, what was the number? It was like 200. Anyway, they're up to now. They finally got religion and they work with my Nili and Myla and maybe you do too. We're looking at over 2 million of interest income in the village budget up from 750,000 in their first cut. So let's get some answers to my questions please. And I hope we're managing our funds properly and efficiently for all of our taxpayers so we can keep any tax increase to a minimum. And one thing I see a

200talk about the tax levy increase. I wanna know what's the projected increase for our taxpayers individually. What's that number? I hope you'll present it and I hope it'll be under 2%. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Harrison. Hi everyone, my name is Juliette Schneider. I'm a senior at the high school and with Synergistics presenting later tonight. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for me to introduce something that I've been working on for a long time. So I work with a sustainability student led initiative called Westchester Green County USA. And we have the goal of making all schools in Westchester County, carbon neutral and eventually net zero. And we're already in White Plains, Edgemont, Yonkers, Masters and we have a comprehensive strategy that includes mitigating, educating, adapting, and advancing equity. So tonight I just

201wanna focus on the mitigation aspect of it, which have broken down into three steps. So the first one is to measure our carbon emissions, which we've actually already done. And then the second would be to reduce our carbon emissions through short-term and long-term reduction plans. And this would really work well with the work that Synergistics will be doing in energy conservation. And then the third step would be to offset whatever emissions we cannot avoid with investing in the UNFCCCs emission reduction projects in developing countries. And so with this in mind, bridging what the work I've been doing in some of the other schools and what I would like to do here with what Synergistics is gonna propose later tonight will be really beneficial to our school. And this is just an introduction and I just

202wanted to bring this to this meeting tonight as an introduction to what Synergistics we'll be presenting because I have a lot more to say about this work. And please let me know if anyone has any questions. Thank you. Julia, thank you for staying so late and sharing your thoughts with us. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak before we turn to Zoom? Okay, let's move to Zoom then. There are currently no attendees, but we can give everybody. Let's give them a few. We still have no attendees. I was hopeful, but we still have no attendees. All right, then I will go ahead and close public comment and I will suggest again that the speakers who had questions about the budget, please feel free to email them to us. And I'll

203just comment that is typical with our budget study sessions. We do not have public comment, we only have public comment during our business meetings. But we do encourage and welcome feedback from the community, either during public comment at our business meetings or via email. So again, if you have questions, please send them to us. Okay, now, unless you have anything to add, Drew, we'll move on. Yeah. Are we doing? This is follow up to public comments. Okay. Okay. So with Ms. Baum's questions, you'll email those to us and we'll be able to add those to our list. Okay. That's great. Mr. Harrison? I would just say the revenue forecasts are in the board packet. There's a full budget listing of our revenue, projected revenues and expenses including interest revenue. And we did address that at

204our last meeting in terms of the projections. We can talk more eventually about how we invest that. Yeah, and I know Mr. Harrison's already talked to Lisa on occasion, has talked to me as already, and we've provided him some information so we can further talk about that at the next board meeting. And I'd very much like to thank Juliette for coming to the microphone. She was part of that leadership group. They had a Zoom session for students throughout, not just the region, but the world on Saturday morning. And I was able to attend that. I learned a lot more about what she's working on. And very much appreciate your bringing this forward to the board. Great. Thank you, Drew. Let's move on to written communications. Ron. Please note that the board of education email is

205also viewed by the superintendent and district clerk. Open meeting law requires all board deliberations, which may lead to action or policy changes to occur in public. Therefore, your written communications and emails will be reported at an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience. Since our last update, the board received 12 written communications on district matters and the superintendent search and two communications on related to board invitations, publications, board meetings, and highlights. Great. Thank you Ron. We'll now move on to the consent agenda and I will read the preamble. The board may conduct some of its business using a consent agenda and an effort to achieve greater efficiency at board meetings. A consent agenda condenses some of the routine business of the Board of education into a single motion. The

206consent agenda is prepared by the superintendent of schools and consultation with the president and or vice president of the board. Items are selected for the consent agenda when the officers of the board and the superintendent believe there is no controversy regarding them. The items on the consent agenda will have the same background material as ordinary items on the board agenda. If any member of the board feels that any item on the consent agenda requires discussion prior to action, that board member may remove that item from the consent agenda, merely by requesting same at the meeting. The exempted item then moves to the regular agenda, however, all non-exempt items would be moved, seconded, and voted upon without discussion in order to provide greater efficiency to conducting the routine items of the business of the school district.

207Is there anything that any board member would like to remove from the consent agenda? Seeing nothing, we'll move on to item nine. And that's Colleen, the consent agenda. Okay. There are 12 items on tonight's consent agenda: 9.01, the minutes budget study session number one, business meeting, February 13th, 2023. 9.02, personnel certified. 9.03, personnel non-certified. 9.04 claims audit report from February, 2023. 9.05, printing of ballots from May 16th, 2023 annual vote. 9.06, census report. 9.07, newly required policy 4321.12 use of timeout rooms and physical restraints. 9.08 required update policy 4327 homebound instruction. 9.09, southern Westchester BOCES Cooperative bid. 9.10, civil service law Section 75, hearing right. 9.11, stipulation of settlement. 9.12, contract over $20,000 for special education consultant. I move the board except the consent agenda as presented. Thank you. Colleen. Is there a second? Thank

208you, Jim. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Great. The consent agenda passes. and now we're on item 10.01. And I'll turn it back over to you, Drew. Okay. Thank you very much. So you've heard a couple of times tonight, both in the budget presentation and then by Juliet, that we do have folks from Synergistics here tonight. Mary Ellen leader is going to lead this presentation to help the board and community understand a little bit more about this potential arrangement and relationship. Just gimme one second to pull up the presentation and we will be ready to go. And do you have the clicker? Yep. Pass them, oh yeah great. Thank you. We are ready to go. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Patrick and the cabinet, Madame President and the board members, we appreciate the

209opportunity to be here this evening. My name is Mary Ellen Leader. This is my colleague Lynn Pace. We're just gonna run through a very high level, couple of slides. We'll answer any questions that you may have. I know it's been a long night, so thank you for having us here. Okay, synergistic is Dallas-based organization. We've been in business for 36 years. We work throughout the United States, coast to coast, border to border. There's a lot of statistics up on the board there that talks about our accomplishments. But I think the important thing to point out is that we come into the district, it's a self-funded program. We provide you with an energy specialist that we hire. It's our headcount, not yours. We have proprietary software that we utilize for data driven decisions that will help

210guide the district. And we provide you with subject matter experts who will be a resource, again, part of our program. But it gives you access to all of these experts to come in and optimize the equipment that you have. So we're working with the equipment that is in place right now. We don't require you to make any purchases. We optimize the equipment that you have and move you to extended life of the equipment and better use that will result in reduction of energy. Okay. Whoop, sorry. So we take a very holistic approach to the district. We're looking at everything from your electricity use to your boilers, to your HVAC, to your irrigation. So we're looking at all areas throughout the district and again, working to optimize the equipment that you have here. I'm happy edge

211of the range of this. I'm having a delay we doubled, okay. So as I mentioned, we will have a dedicated energy specialist here. You will have access to our experts. And then the software is really the key component that's going to provide you with that data driven decision process. So we have patented technology. It's unique to our organization. Only our customers have access to this. We can also become a vendor neutral resource for you. As you're evaluating any investments or changes that you're making to your structures, to your buildings, to your equipment. There's a whole set of equip technology that you have access to. You can do it. Okay, so the important thing is are these numbers here over the course of the five year program, and again the program investment is self-funded through the

212energy savings. We are projecting a $2,442,000 net savings to the district. That would be accomplished through the means that we've talked about with the energy specialist, the subject matter experts, and the technology. These are estimates, of course, we don't know exactly what those numbers are going to be, but based on our 36 years of history, that's our estimate. We like to underpromise and over-deliver. And again, the program investment is guaranteed to be funded by the energy reduction. So we look at that on a rolling 12 month basis. If we were to fall short on that, we would write you a cheuque for the difference. Why not? And so it is a self-funded program. This is just a summary. Dedicated energy specialists, we're always very conscious of the learning environment. We will never compromise the education

213environment for the students and the faculty and staff here. So we are always conscious of that and working in a very collaborative effort to make sure that we set the guidelines with your input and that we're protecting the learning environment for the students. I'm gonna skip to the next slide. We have a community aspect, which is the education component. So just to dovetail on what Juliet spoke about, we have curriculum that's available, for age appropriate for K-12. Every month there's a different topic. So Energy Awareness month is an example that's up there. We have the ability to provide the district with social media feed, we'll do press releases for you so you can get the information out into the general public as well will help the students with green teams. Just providing as much support

214as we can through the education component. And then I've got a couple of samples here to share. So there's different ways that we can get the students involved. It carries over into the home life as well. So student-led awareness campaigns are a big part of it. I use an example of Iona University since they're local, they did a dorm challenge. So that's a little different than what you're going to be doing here, but you can do building challenges. You have the ability to take a look at how your schools are performing against each other, knowing that there's lots of variables in there. But what are the top performing schools doing that can be shared with other schools? So I just included Iona since they're a local name and you'd be familiar with them. The energy

215specialist can participate in science classes, helping to assist the teachers with the education component. And then finally, this is just a sample of some referrals that we provided to Dr. Patrick and the team. I know that they had an opportunity to reach out to some of these local New Jersey, Pennsylvania clients that we have provided them with. You can see the success numbers up there at 30, 44 and 49% in terms of the performance of these programs. On average, we save the districts on average 24% throughout the country. And we're excited to have an opportunity to work with a district like Scarsdale where there's already so many great initiatives in place. Student involvement is already high. And to deliver the savings that would go back into the classroom to ultimately benefit the students. Happy to

216answer any questions. Thank you. I apologize for the Zoom one. I don't see that Zoom window that's up there on my screen. I can't move it. So I apologize that that was blocking some of the things. So just to give the board a little bit more information, we've had multiple conversations with the Synergistics team to learn more about the program and have made some of those colleague to colleague calls to kind of find out what this program has looked like in other places. This idea of putting a sharp focus on our energy use and working with a partner to help us do that, I think has, sorry, has us energized. I know our facilities team who's here earlier tonight has asked many, many, many questions about how this is achieved. And I think they've reached

217a level of comfort to understand that this kind of work is achievable. And particularly working to think about human behavior and how we think about our devices screens, classroom spaces that use energy when we're occupying them, but we don't always remember to turn things off or even to communicate when something is not working right. Some people just don't want to say anything. Rock the boat. This would give us the opportunity, or a program like this would give us the opportunity to dig in pretty, pretty deeply in terms of trying to make some real savings and do something better for the environment and help our bottom line. Stuart, I don't know if you have anything you'd wanna add, but please open, open the floor to questions. Before I turn it over to my board members to

218ask questions. I'd just like to say thank you to both of you for being here this evening to give your presentation and provide us with this opportunity to ask you questions directly. So I'll open the floor and say, does anyone have any questions? Yeah, I do. I just wanted to say first off, that this sounds like a really exciting, I guess, set of software and programs that you're providing. As the only one in my family who tunes turns off lights in unused rooms, I kind of feel like I'd like to know more about exactly what it is you're gonna be doing and maybe I can bring some of my children and my wife into this too, but just, just kidding. What I'm curious about is like, in terms of how, I mean, so there's software

219is software provided to a bunch of people in the district who then are your liaison people who are the ones responsible for, I guess, implementing what the monitoring is suggesting should be done? Right, so, well, Dr. Patrick would determine collectively who would have access to the software on the team. But the energy specialist would get alerts through the software to let them know where there's someplace that needs to be checked. So just to clarify, also, I talked about, protecting the learning environment. About 60% of the energy specialist time is spent during unoccupied periods. So when the students aren't in the classroom nights, weekends, breaks, when you're getting ready for spring break coming up in April. So the software is running analytics constantly. These energy specialists will be uploading your energy bills, your utility bills into

220the system. And that allows those uploads to create the alerts for times when equipment is running, when it shouldn't be running. And also with having that extra set of boots on the ground, if you will, what the system says is happening on the computer screen is often different than what's happening in the buildings themselves. So the energy specialist is walking those buildings to make sure that that equipment isn't running, that the lights are turned off, the windows are closed, et cetera. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. Okay. Yeah, this is incredibly intriguing and I guess it falls to me in the almost too good to be true if to be frank, but I know from Drew's due diligence that it is true. What would help me just to kind of get a flavor,

221is to get a little more specific about how you manage to do it. I mean, like, it's not just a matter of training people to turn off lights when they leave a room, although that may be part of it. I mean, because we're talking big numbers here, like really major impact. So if there's any way, just to give me one example of what it might be, I'm just really curious. Absolutely, so you're right, there's a behavioral component. Getting people to understand and be aware, like our families at home, you know, doing the same thing. The technology gives us the ability to track what's happening and make those data driven decisions. And I mentioned earlier you've got a team of subject matter experts who are gonna come through the district on a regular basis at your

222request, or it might be something where the energy specialist prompts those visits. So we'll have the boiler technicians coming in and working on the equipment side-by-side with your team, doing some training with your in-house team as well. So you're building institutional knowledge. So again, we're working with your existing equipment to optimize those units to extend their life and to reduce the amount of energy that they're using. So really that technology and the experts give us that combined approach that's going to deliver those results. So I'm just to dive out just a little bit deeper, like I know, I think like Jim, I have a personal, well most of us have houses, when I get chilly, my wife says to me, put on a sweater, don't turn up the heat put on a sweater. But that

223requires cooperation and I can ignore it or not 'cause I have control of that thermostat. So if we're talking about, for example, saying, well we know now that the school has kept it, I don't know, 68 degrees, but you can save $50,000 a year if it's 66 degrees. Okay. So that's a decision. Someone's gonna make a climate decision that may be embraced or not. People may whine about it or not. I'm just trying to get a sense of, again, it's gonna have to be something pretty major, so I'm just curious, do people have to, are we going to talk about lowering the ambient temperature in rooms and how do we agree what that is in order to deliver these savings? I'm just curious. So yeah, absolutely. So it is a very collaborative approach. We'll come

224to you with recommendations based on the CDC and ASHRAY guidelines and all these experts that we tap into and we'll sit down and make decisions. Now, not every building is equal, right? Based on the student population, based on the age of the building or the equipment or different factors. So it's not gonna be a one size fits all solution. So we'll work with you to kind of tailor it accordingly. Another thing that is important is the energy specialist handles the comfort complaints, the comfort calls. So if there's always a problem in a particular wing of a building, not just to resolve that issue in the moment, but to dig into it and really find out what's going on. Is there a problem with a piece of equipment or something event that's not working or kind

225of dig into it. So it's a very comprehensive approach that's going to look for the root cause of challenges and again making sure that the learning environment is protected. And again, we're gonna get our greatest savings during the unoccupied periods so that we do protect the learning. So I mean, for example, if you do take that deep dive, which sounds perfect, and you learn that, well, this is an old school and the windows are old and they should be double lazed, but some of them are only single lazed and they should be cocked, but they really aren't, and those shades aren't thermal, but they could be or will Scarsdale be required to do those upgrades and how does it work? So we will be able to make recommendations to you and we'll be able to

226attach a return on investment with those recommendations. But ultimately the decision is yours. And there's no caveat that says if you didn't follow a recommendation A, B, or C, there's no penalty for that. So we have that ability to give you the... Well, one of the things that we do with our technologies, we build mathematical models of each of your buildings. So you might come to us and say, "We know we've got a problem with these windows, what if we fix them?" So we could run a scenario that shows you what if you replace those windows or the lighting or the roof or whatever the case might be. So you've got that data to help with those decisions, but the decision is yours. Okay, thank you. I think it's that last part that had our

227facilities team excited is thinking about more data-driven decision making about investments that we might make that Synergistics wouldn't require us to make, but that we might be considering even at a discussion like we had tonight. So I mean, at the end of the day, would you say I'm an architect so I have some interest and knowledge in this, would you say the, because we have a lot of buildings, what a million square feet or whatever, it's a lot of architecture would you say at the end of the day we're gonna have what I'd call a smart set of smart system, smart meaning, at any moment in time in every building what's going on and you can monitor that. So we'll be working with the team and the equipment that's already in place, you're building automation

228systems, making sure that they are working correctly because it's like anything else. You have a system that's set up and then there's overrides to it, right? So somebody says, "Oh we're not gonna, we're gonna keep it running tonight 'cause it's gonna be really cold." Somebody has to go back and check it to make sure that it's running according to the spec that it should be. So it's that combination where the energy specialist is really tasked with those types of responsibilities to make sure that equipment is running according to code and that sort of thing. I just have a quick question. In general, for school like ours, what breakdown would you expect between the savings to come from the behavioral change side versus the fixing equipment and physical change side? Everything that we've projected, pardon me,

229everything that we've projected is based on behavioral from the standpoint as Mary Ellen was saying, we're going to optimize the way you're using what you currently have through basically hyper management of the way you use utilities right now. So what we've projected is if nothing is changed in your equipment from the standpoint of you're having to upgrade or replace or anything of that nature, we're working with what you have right now. Gotcha. That's I appreciate that. I'm trying to articulate a slightly different question, which is the behavioral as in the challenges the school to school challenges versus coming in and saying we're optimizing your existing equipment. That was kind of the balance. I was trying to understand the difference. In my 19 years of experience with this. Driving a culture of conservation within your organization

230will ultimately be the key and where the greatest return on the investment occurs. Getting everyone on board with the idea of being conservators and not just consumers. Yes, we're going to be able to help you do better with what you have, but that is multiplied, tremendously when everyone is on board and behind helping to make it happen. As Mary Ellen says, "We don't compromise the integrity of the learning environment for energy conservation." So everyone needs to understand that, but there are things that everyone can do that can contribute to conservation. And part of what we do in communicating the results of the program frequently, regularly to staff and to the community is designed to help everyone want to get on board with this. Is that- Yeah, that's very helpful. And that sort of leads into

231my comment, which is I think what makes me most comforted about this proposal is that Drew and his team are involved in hiring the person that will ultimately be here. I mean, at the end of the day that based on what you've stated, that seems like a very key part and making sure that person understands our schools and our culture. So I think that's really exciting. I'm sorry, I missed that. So the person isn't coming from your company, you're hiring the person I that was not presented today? Yeah, so the energy specialist is our employee. They're dedicated to this district, but Drew and the team will have the opportunity to help select that person. So we'll present a couple of candidates and say, "Here's a couple of people that we think have the qualities that

232we're looking for." And then collectively, we'll make the decision so that it is the right fit culturally, it's gotta be, this is the face of the program. So this man or woman needs to be the right person that's going to fit in here, sitting side by side with your existing staff. And can I point out, can I point out she's speaking to the individual, the specialist that we will embed in your organization that's not counting all of the specialists that live their lives out of a suitcase about three or four nights a week and travel around the country working side by side with our clients and with the energy specialists that we've embedded in your organization. So I just have one other question, sorry. So the numbers you shared with us, Atlantic City, West New

233York, Pocono, are those reflective purely of like the behavioral changes that you suggest when you come in? Or does that also represent maybe they did decide to change their windows or change their buy a new boiler based on your recommendations? That's a great question. So we establish a baseline that we're going to measure against. If you decide to make investments, a roof, windows, whatever it is, we back that out so that we don't take credit for that. That's your investment and you get the credit for that. We do not take credit for that. So it's a very transparent measurement and verification process. You'll have somebody assigned to the district who will work with you on that. But that's a great question. We do not take credit for that. So this, this information that's up there

234does not take into account that they added any equipment or did any upgrades. I just have a couple follow up questions. So related to Colleen's question, you I think mentioned that 24% was your target at most places. And then you use these examples. Do we know what number you're targeting or what percent you're targeting for Scarsdale? I'm sorry if you shared that and I missed that. Let me just back up to that. There you go. Do we know what percent that is? I think I do. Hang on, I have it in here. Give me a second. Let me put my glasses on so I can read my writing. One moment. Here I have it hang on. So well actually this, this isn't exactly the answer to your question. So our estimate is that 55% of

235your savings, of your gross savings will be what you realize. But can you answer that question? Yeah, let me speak to that. We're conservatively estimating working from a base of about a 25% reduction in your current energy usage and that translating into those savings over that five year period of time, we won't see all of that in year one. We'll see more of it in year two and then on and on from there. Okay, great. Thank you. And then my next question is just on process in terms of if we signed this contract with you, how does that work? Do you come in and look at all of the schools at the same time? Do you start at a particular school? Generally how do you do things? So we have an implementation team that would

236come in and we would have sort of a stand in energy specialist until that person is identified and hired. So we come in with a process and target dates for building those mathematical models for giving everybody access to the software and for getting the whole program up and running. So typically when we come in for the welcome meeting, we would meet with the team and then our implementation folks would get get started right away. So getting their security clearance and access to the buildings, walking the space with Nick and John and the team. So it's a very comprehensive and front loaded process so that we get up and running as quickly as possible so that we can start delivering those savings. Okay, so and and really it's all buildings at the same time? Yeah. Okay.

237Yeah. And your team will prioritize for us, like let's go look at this building first kind of a thing. Great, thank you. Are there any other board member questions? Thank you so much for your time this evening. We appreciate you coming. Thank you very much. So Drew, in terms of this contract, it's in our budget or? Yeah, so not quite, so the majority of that first year of savings that they're predicting is one of our budget plan number two reductions. We would have steps to take between now and the start of next school year. Well July 1st really to go through the process of reaching an agreement, signing that contract and moving forward with it. Okay. So basically we're looking for this sort of, yep, this seems the not no big red flags to not

238pursue this type of work. And then we would come back to you with really with a contract as a discussion item and then ultimately an action item. Okay. So because it's essentially a contract over $20,000. Board members, any thoughts? So Drew, it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, that you have called around and you've done some due diligence so to speak 'cause obviously we haven't, and you feel you've spoken with other locations that have had a positive experience with Synergetics? Yep, we have. And the facilities guys have talked to their counterparts as well and we'll okay, continue to identify any additional questions we might have. We haven't confirmed exactly what our next step would be. We have a decision to make about whether this is a sole source service that wouldn't require a competitive

239request for proposals or it may require a competitive request for proposals. We have to make that decision, really in the coming years. You made the comment that it would be over $20,000, maybe a misunderstanding, but I didn't think it would, there would be any- So that the money slide showed a total amount of savings. A fee to Synergistics as a reduction in that, as their take of that savings basically. And then the bottom line, their take in the savings is a monthly fee that we pay them. So it's a in a sense it's calculated based on an assumption because obviously we don't know ahead of time. It's like, you can do your monthly average for your energy bill at home or not, but so there's an estimate, right? And that estimate is what they're predicting

240and- They're predicting and our safety valve is if we don't meet their prediction, they still guarantee us the savings for the life of that. So is it it considered technically we are paying? Yes, we will be. It is. Yep, we would have a contract in which we pay them a monthly fee for 57? 57 Of the 60 months we're committing to, yeah. So we have essentially 57 months to kind of see if it actually happens. Yeah, well the 57 months they would get a guarantee payment from us. And we live the experience. And Marilyn, can you just talk about the point at which you decide whether the annual savings is met or not and then. Yes, sure. So we do guarantee that the program investment will be funded by the energy savings that the district

241experiences. So we'll look at that after the first 12 months we'll do a true up and make sure that was covered. When Drew references the 57 months, we do the first three months fee free so that the district can start to realize some savings before you start paying us. So it's spread out, it's a five year contract, but it's spread out over 57 months instead of the 60 months. So we don't take a fee for the first couple of months and during those first couple of months we're in here with heavy resources to get it up and running because we wanna see that return for you come as quickly as possible. I'm ready to have her come. (laughing) Yeah, well I have to train my husband and my kids too. I'm like, who's sleeping lights

242on? I work for an energy conservation organization, so yes, absolutely. Anybody else have any questions or thoughts on direction we can give the administration about researching this and perhaps moving forward to, with presenting us a contract? I think I had asked you Drew earlier, just for the public, we'll say, I'd asked if five years was the term that we had to commit to and you shared with me. Yes, that was the term. I think maybe just one quick question I have when we're talking about the savings and realizing them, you had sort of a graduated plan each year, so is the expectation, and maybe it would be laid out in the contract, but you know, if the first year is 200,000, that's the savings we expect to achieve and we only achieve a 100,000. That's

243the number you use. You don't use the full amount, the 244 whatever, over five years, you use the annual amounts. Right, we're looking at it on an annual basis because we are going to be building momentum over the year. So as Lynn mentioned, we're predicting that your savings will grow over the course of the five years. And the other thing that I wanna point out that's really important is, the projected net savings, it's just a projection and anything that we can do over that goes directly into the district. So our fee is flat, it doesn't change. So we could triple your savings, collectively working as a team and all of that extra goes into you. So as I said, we like to underpromise and over-deliver. These are conservative numbers and anything we can do above

244and beyond together benefits the district directly. Thank you. In actuality it would be money not spent at really right on energy costs? Energy reduction and instead of writing that cheaque to the utility companies, we don't wanna give ConEd any more money than they. (laughs) And I'm and just, Lynn is from our Texas office, as you may have noticed, a little bit of a an accent there, but I'm a local Westchester gal. I grew up in Rockland County, but I live here in Westchester. In fact, Eric and I discovered we're somewhat neighbors in Cortland Manor area. So I'm your local person and we have a team here. You'll have a local client manager who would be assigned to the district who would oversee the efforts of the energy specialist and who would help coordinate all of

245these specialists who come in to work on the equipment and work side by side with the team. So if anything happens, Eric can always find me at the local grocery store. Sorry, just to clarify, the guarantee is to get to breakeven is is for the fee amount, it's not for the projected amount. Correct. And that's a good point. So if you think about it as a breakeven point, you've still had the benefit of the energy specialist, those experts coming in and the utilization of the software. So even at that break even point, you're farther ahead of where you could have ever dreamed of being without the program and those resources. Okay. And it looks like the expectation is to save so much money that you're not really concerned about energy prices or anything like that.

246Like energy prices have gone up a lot. I don't expect this happen, but let's say it craters we're still paying a certain fixed amount in a fee and the maybe the expected savings would be less, right? Like just because of the, the price of energy. That's definitely a possibility. I'll tell you that we've not seen that with very many of our clients at all. I mean, there might be that anomalous year where they cut a really good deal on natural gas or electricity and subsequently the value of each unit of energy that we helped them reduce in consumption wasn't quite as high as what we would've projected. But in every one of those cases, eventually time caught up with them and the rights did increase. Thank you. I fully support this, I fully support it

247for the sustainability reason. So even if what you just said happened, we would still be saving the same energy. I think that's a community value. It's a district value. I also support it for the financial savings. We just went through an exercise of pulling a lot of things out of our budget and we have to do I think everything we can to respond to our taxpayers. And I think this does that in a very positive way. So thanks for bringing it to us. Any other board members wish to share their thoughts? I agree with Ron. I think, we teach our children that they have to take care of the world, that they're gonna be the ones taking care of it. So I feel like we should do what we can to model that. And I

248feel like if you're comfortable with it and you feel like it's a good investment, then I support it as well. I also supported, even though I did have some questions, but I in general, I think this is visionary actually of Drew to look into, does reflect the values of our community. And I especially like that there is a student centered aspect to this and obviously the financial savings would be beneficial as well. We work so hard to educate our kids, we wanna make sure they have a world to inherit. Bob, Jim, any thoughts? I support it. Yeah, I personally can't wait to experience it and projecting it out even into a bigger idea is that the kids are gonna go home and train their parents to do the right thing and not be unrelenting about

249it as they get used to it in school. So I think, they're gonna teach us how to do it, which is great, why not? So I really support it. Thank you everyone. And I agree. I think one of the benefits here is the we talk about sustainability and its importance and I think it's important that we uphold that value as well. And I look forward to the children modeling good behavior and the school modeling good behavior for all of us. So it sounds like we are in consensus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Do you have anything else on that Drew? Or are we on the next one? I think we're ready to move on. Okay, great. We've got a target of finishing by 11, so let's see if

250we can do that. Item 10.02, which is the policy 6215 tax exemption for citizens over 65 Drew. Yep. So we've talked about this, we've had a public hearing on this. What you're seeing here is the policy, you've already made a resolution. The resolution actually appears in the information item. So really this is the first and only reading necessary to the policy because the resolution accomplishes that change by resolution. So this will come back in a minute as an action item and then be settled. Wonderful. Does anyone have any comments on this? I mean, we've presented this many, many times, so I don't think there's any need, but appreciate that. Thank you Drew. Alright, let's move on to item 10.03 the first reading of the Parent Bill of Rights for Students' Data Privacy and Security. Okay,

251thank you. So as you know, we get updates from NSBA on changes to regulation and law and so forth. And there's a new requirement that the exhibit that you see here be presented as part of our policy. This is not a new exhibit. The Parents' Bill of Rights is something that we have been required to have related to data privacy and security. We have had that in place. You'll see the counsel's just made a few very really insignificant, non-substantial edits to the final two bullets. Just sort of changing educational agency workers to district employees or the educational agency to the district. So that first page is the bill of rights that appears on our website now. The second page is the addendum that we send to contractors and third parties that ultimately might have access

252to student data. They're required under the law to sign and complete this. So what's new here is that this document becomes attached to policy where it wasn't before as an exhibit. Great. That's very clear. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Okay, so this would come back for a second read and then action. Yes. Okay. Fabulous. Let's move on then to more calendars. The amount of work Honore has done to develop calendars deserves high praise. So she has helped to prepare several drafts, both in what we consider the grid view, which is the calendar view and the list view of board meetings and executive session holds. We're gonna call 'em executive session holds for next year for discussion. There's no decision to be made tonight, but to have discussion about the distribution of meetings, the

253timing of them, and then newly considered would be the possibility of holding board of education meetings on Wednesdays instead of of Mondays. So in addition to those two versions, there's then also when the meetings, the typical meetings with designated groups like the one we had earlier tonight. Was that yesterday? No, just kidding. Earlier tonight. An hour. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the other one. So maybe one way to do this is just to look at one example. So to look at draft Monday, draft one BOE Monday meeting calendar, just to kind of remind the board of key things. So we would start with the board reorg meeting. That's supposed to be on the first Tuesday in July. We have it here proposed for the sixth because the 4th of July happens to be that Tuesday. And

254there's some conflicts on the fifth. And it's also tricky the day right after a holiday, we would have to have a resolution to change that away from what's required. But that's perfectly allowed to do that. And then we would also propose, we don't always schedule it, but we know we need a meeting before school starts. We have hires to make and stuff like that. So we're just planning for it this year. So we have that on there. And then just take note that as we do follow the pattern that we followed in the past of typically having one meeting in one month, that would be a business meeting the next month having two, one that would be a business meeting, one that would be an education report coupled with the business meeting. We follow that

255pattern. But the reason you're seeing more shade red shaded or maroon shaded cells is 'cause we're holding special meeting or executive session dates in case they're needed. You've experienced it this year for sure, needing to schedule and find calendar times. But we thought we'd put some of those on there as a way that can be released back to you if they're not needed, but at least they're planned for. So you can plan ahead. And then following kind of our typical procedure of having a public budget priorities forum in November and then our staffing recommendations in January, kind of kicking off the full budget process only noting that that kind of a uniqueness of the calendar causes us to have that Tuesday board meeting in January. It's a little bit different of having the budget and

256staffing recommendations 'cause we need to get that done to kick off the process. You'll see a slightly different schedule on the Wednesday version because it conforms to the calendar and different days off and and so forth. But how about we pause there and see what comments or questions or discussions are. Can I just say about the Wednesday, I'm not sure where the impetus of Wednesday comes from, but speaking as someone who has a actually very quite busy full-time job, I'm not trying to suggest who doesn't somehow not worthy of consideration. That's not my suggestion. But I have to observe that it is the case in certainly in New York City right now, that many professional firms, not just my firm, but lots of businesses and professional firms and financial institutions have a three day a

257week policy. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. You're not expected to be in the office on Monday or Friday. You obviously can be if you want, but you're not expected to be. And that for me has been an unexpected and much appreciated feature of the way we schedule these meetings because I've been able to come to almost all of them and I didn't think I would, 'cause my job is pretty intense. But because I'm working from home, I don't have to leave the office at four for meetings that starts at five, which often our meetings do 'cause of the pre-meetings and everything. So for me it's been a Godsend to have the Monday meetings and that's just my perspective but I think it would also be the perspective of someone else who like me, yet a similar

258type of hybrid policy that they were dealing with. And I don't think I'm the only one. So I mean, that could be someone else who gets elected to this position might be in that position. So anyway, I throw that out there. Thank you. I think that's a fair comment Jim. I had suggested that we look at a different day of the week because I think that it can be very hard to start the week with a Monday night going to 11 o'clock at night. I also think coming from the role of president and all board members we get the packets or the information on Friday afternoon, I often spend my weekend preparing for this board meeting, writing an opening comment on Sunday. So I was trying to consider different ways that we know the village

259meets on Tuesdays, so that becomes not a great option for us. I think nobody's meeting on Fridays and Thursday seems a little late too. So Wednesday I proposed because it was time enough for us to, I think we discussed with Drew, if we went forward with Wednesday, they would still provide us with the agenda and items on Friday. It would just give us more opportunity to review things. That was the consideration. I did realize earlier this evening when I was thinking about it that yes there are those, my husband is one who works, in the city Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I definitely see your point. That's why we have discussions like this too. I don't know if anybody else has any thoughts. Well I'm not affected by that, but I absolutely do see, Jim's point.

260I'm trying now to walk in Drew's shoes versus my own in terms of the pros and cons to a Monday or a Wednesday. I think human nature being what it is, I think, I'm not sure I agree with Amber saying we would still get it on Friday for a Wednesday meeting. Yeah, yeah we would, I think we would commit to that. You would? Yeah, I think it's a reasonable expectation for us to continue that sort of timeline. And from our end, it would give us an extra day, day and a half to be responsive to something that was an oversight or that needed a little more explanation or just some revision or something like that. I think we would be. We did talk about it as a cabinet and I think we'd be comfortable with

261that. If that's a, you know. I mean, I'm just imagining human nature being what it is, Friday seems pretty early for Wednesday. I mean it's great. I mean obviously we would like that, but you know, I could imagine someone thinking, oh, but you know, I've got like a few more days. But I think from the point of view of Jim I think I've said all along, if I personally were working in the city, I couldn't do this, because I couldn't in the old days when you really had to be there five days a week, I couldn't do it. So I totally get where Jim is coming from. So I think in the long run, assuming that these three days a week, these hybrid models are maintained that I can see that Monday probably. Otherwise it's

262gonna preclude certain types of people trying to be on the board, realistically. I think maybe not, maybe people disagree, but to be here at five o'clock when you're in the city, it's just really hard. Yeah, I think this is a tough tension. I think what there's a lot of benefits to Wednesdays, both for the administration, the board, also the community. I think often a lot of people sort of realize the agendas out on Monday and then may not have the time to think about it or ask questions or reach out or plan their day. So I think there's a lot of benefits to that. I also think this board's always tried to be open to making sure anybody who wants to serve on this board, regardless of whether they work in the city or work

263wherever they work, can do that. And we've talked about that, how early can we schedule a meeting or how do we schedule additional meetings. And I think Jim makes a really good point. I mean the world right now tends to be Monday and Friday more flexibility and that would open up, as Bob said, who could join. I think that's an very important consideration. Susie, Colleen, I don't know if you have anything to add. I appreciate Jim's comment and obviously we want to include as many people to be able to participate and not create an undue burden on Jim, or anybody else in his situation to serving on the board. There are pros to moving the day. But I think Jim's point outweighs those unfortunately for maybe but wherever. Also as another point, which is not

264a main point, but a small point the West put meetings are on Mondays and as the liaison I can't really participate in those because they conflict with our board meetings. So if we do keep Mondays, I was wondering if maybe we'd consider doing like second Mondays as opposed to first Mondays generally. Like so that maybe we can the liaison, whoever that might be, can maybe make a couple more meetings a year. Do you know are they planning to keep that schedule again next year? Yes, I talked to Karen about it. She said that I guess the White Plains superintendent is on the board or something or White Plains board president is on the board of West Putt. So they try to not alternate weeks. Yeah, they try to alternate those weeks. So to the extent

265our board meetings kind of can look more like White Plains as board meetings, then we could then be if- They were in the same week, then it would be less, more influential, okay. Yeah, but I didn't see an official calendar out. Colleen, anything. So just this question, I know we've thrown out Wednesdays for the cabinet members. Do you feel like Monday is a tough day and Wednesdays would be better or is it pretty equal? You're gonna be late one day versus the other? And I'm just wondering like if I have no- I'll take it. I like it's hard to start. It's hard to start the week with a Monday like this. That's not, to me, that's not a bigger problem than the one Jim raised. Right. It's an inconvenience that we've lived with for a

266long time. Right, I mean I think there's value. Another reason I hate COVID, sorry Jim. Tell us how you really feel. I'm sorry everybody. I just feel like this is like sort of like- Jim, here's what I'm gonna say. We have this policy, this DEI policy 0105 and it's diversity and equity and inclusion. And I think this is an inclusion topic, right? I mean I look and I go, we have a lot of board members that are not working full-time, that are not working or working part-time. We do have some that work full-time. We need to be thoughtful about how they can work this into their schedules. And I appreciate that the administration considered a different day. I'm a little sad that it's not going to work out, but I think that we all recognize

267the value in keeping Monday so that we can have a truly diverse board, right? That we can be inclusive. So that said, I do think, Suzie's raised an interesting point. If we would ever consider changing that first, I'm not sure exactly how we allocate the Mondays. It has been a shame we haven't been able to participate in West Putt as much, but maybe we could confirm that that's their plan going forward. That they really wanna continue whatever their schedule is before we try to make any adjustments to our schedule. Yeah, that would be good to con confirm that I'm looking at some months where avoiding the first Monday is possible and some months where it's more challenging 'cause those Monday holidays tend to and even that January date is a departure. The 16th being a

268Tuesday. That's a departure from what we've done. But when Honor Ray and I were looking at that, we thought, well we really have to get that staffing presentation done and we wouldn't hold the meeting the Monday right after a break. That just seems too unrealistic. I agree. I do have a couple of questions. So the public forum that we have in November, I think that's, sorry, it's on the 16th on the Monday calendar? Yes, it's on a Thursday morning. Is there a reason why we do that in the morning? I don't remember. Do you remember Stuart? When we first did it, we had a morning one, and then we actually held an evening one as well. So it was open to anyone that could attend. So I think our, some of the feedback was there

269are a number of individuals that had troubles attending an evening due to childcare duties or something like that. And then it eventually just sort of morphed only into the morning. Does anybody have any thoughts about that morning keeping that morning meeting? I mean, I think there's value in keeping the forum itself as an opportunity. I think Drew, you had described it as a kickoff. It's like a kickoff to the budget process. I mean, I don't think there'd be anything to it. Like the meeting doesn't go that long, at least in recent years, that week, the 13th is a business meeting. You could always do a forum then if you wanted to do both a daytime and an evening, you could proceed the business meeting with a budget forum on the 13th and then have the

270morning version on the 16th as one option that reduces one barrier. Yeah. Any thoughts? Anyone? I don't know that I feel that we need to, because we now allow people to Zoom in and give their comments, so I would've agreed with that, pre allowing that. But now that people can Zoom in, I'd be comfortable having one and I'd be comfortable doing it on the 13th before the board meeting rather than in the morning. But I'm up to whatever people want to do. Anybody else, I mean, I tend to agree with Ron. I don't know that we need to, I'd be open to just trying to have it on the 13th. I think we've seen that many people work again and it's harder for them, even though they can Zoom in. I think that we're going

271with Monday evenings. It's a standard. So, and I just, before we wrap up this discussion, I just wanna make sure that the board that's sitting here is comfortable if we're going forward with a possible Monday date with the reorg meeting on July 6th. That's a thumbs up. Work for me. It's like a really tired thumbs up I think that is the way the board is looking. As we were laughing about earlier. Like that's several months away. That's not a year from now, right? Right. It's this July. It's this July. Okay. All right, great. So while again, thank you. I appreciate the consideration of a different day of the week. I appreciate Jim's perspective. That's why we have these discussions. So it sounds like we're gonna put forth, I guess an official draft and we'll vote

272on that, okay. Get the feedback from right Susie about West- Yes. Take a look. Thank you Susie, and thank you Drew and Honore. Alright, so let's move into action items. And this one is Susie. Okay, so, okay. Apologies. It is late. Okay. Action item. It is recommended that the board adopts policy 6215, the senior tax exemption with revisions as presented. Okay. Thank you Susie. Is there a second? Thank you, Bob. Any discussion? No, I'll just highlight that this is the senior tax exemption that we discussed many times before and had public hearing on and a resolution. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. The policy is passed and now we move on to our second public comment period. So I will highlight from the public comment preamble that members of the

273public are cordially invited to speak on district related items or other non personnel related matters during two separate public comment periods. We ask speakers to conclude their remarks after four minutes and they will be given a verbal cue with the three minute mark and the public comment period is served for comments only the board will not engage in dialogue. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comments? Seeing no one will move to Zoom. I have been holding out hope this whole time. That someone was going to show up. You still do not have any attendees on Zoom. We'll give them a few seconds just in case they're putting their children to bed or putting on pajamas. (indistinct) They're in bed right now. (all laughs) Maybe they're laying in bed watching.

274We are always prepared. If somebody would like to comment via Zoom tonight it looks like is not our night. We will close the public comment period given the late hour. And note that there is no follow up to public comment, review information, questions. I don't know, I think we're done, right? We've talked about a lot of stuff, so. I'll just put one thing out there. Okay. I'm not sure it'd be a bad idea to have a public comment during our budget study sessions. We haven't done it before, right? Well, I just, sorry to think to myself. I don't wanna, the person was commenting. Yeah, it's available, right? Because the business meeting follows shortly after. So you know what? It is an interesting thought and maybe it's something we can all think about, but I wonder

275where we would put it, right? Because you, let's say you give your presentation before board members discuss, then we pause and have a public comment without a response or we wait until the end and then we have another discussion item. I'm not sure how we would incorporate that. I would think so. Our discussion concluded, right? With some, Action. Yeah. certain places I would think right then and there. And just have a- Just so someone if the purpose of their visit to the meeting is simply to comment on the budget to give them that opportunity. Just something to think about. I mean I just. No, it's a fair point. I mean it is interesting. (indistinct) Cosmetically it's the right thing to do, probably. I just think it was a little ironic that the person was saying,

276I have no right to comment while commenting. It's just but. I appreciate your bringing that up and let's think about it and maybe I'll pull board members and we still do have another budget study session. We should probably also look at our policies because I think we can, I mean I know we've talked about it, it's been raised in terms of special meetings and we don't have public comment in special meetings. That's probably the reason. So I think we have to make sure that our policies That's a good point. permit comment, but we can follow up with the attorney and see. That's a good point. Thank you. Yeah, maybe it's a bigger discussion on the policy too, but then I think that requires a little more thought so it's late and it's a good idea,

277but we'll look into it. Anything else? Okay, Ron, you wanna give us meeting dates? I would love to. Our next meeting is another budget study session number three on Monday, March 20th, 6:30 PM in this room at the high school room 171-172. On Tuesday, March 21st we have a special meeting or executive session at 6:00 PM high school room 171-172 followed by on Monday, March 27th. A special meeting executive session 5:30 PM high school room 171-172, followed by the budget forum. Then an education report and a strategic plan update 6:30 PM high school room 171-172. Thank you, Ron. And I apologize for the late hour, but I appreciate everybody's hanging in there. Can I get a motion to adjourn this meeting? Thank you, Colleen and Susie, thank you for the second. Any discussion? All in

278favor, please say aye. Aye. Goodnight everyone. Thank you.