BOE Business Meeting 2022-9-12

001Welcome 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. It was wonderful to welcome our students, faculty, and staff back to school on Tuesday, September 6th. Although the weather was a bit rainy, the excitement and energy were abundant. This school year has begun with a sense of optimism that I hope will carry throughout the year. Thank you to all of our administrators, faculty and staff, custodians and groundskeepers and bus drivers for your work preparing for this school year. And I wish all of our community the best for the upcoming year. As noted in my opening comments last month, the board remains committed to keeping the community updated on

002items related to the tax matter. Board Vice President Ron Schulhof and I met with the district's new treasurer, Lisa Zerek, interim superintendent, Drew Patrick, and assistant superintendent, Stuart Mattie. Among other things, we discussed and reviewed expectations around communication protocols. Additionally, Lisa will provide the board with monthly reporting, which we anticipate will begin in October. Our internal auditor, Naraki Smith, has provided the audit committee, which consists of all seven members of the board with a status report. Much of their internal audit work is complete and they are currently preparing the draft report with the target presentation to the audit committee, on October 3rd. Last week, the board held the first of three retreats. The board met with its general counsel to review our legal responsibilities and to review relevant regulations and legislation. The board also used

003part of the retreat to foster collaboration with our cabinet. This Friday, the board will hold a second retreat with Dr. Ellie Drago-Severson, and we will focus on discussing board norms. The board will hold a third retreat for later in October with Dr. Marty Brooks, where we will develop board protocols and discuss the superintendent evaluation process. Oftentimes, the board begins initial discussions on its annual goals in September. this summer, the board has spent much of its time preparing for the superintendent search. As a result, we anticipate beginning discussions on board goals a little later this fall than usual. The board will provide a detailed update on the superintendent search process later in the meeting. However, I would like to take this opportunity to remind the public that the board is committed to conducting an inclusive process

004in its search. We encourage all stakeholders in our community to take the time to complete the superintendent search survey posted on the Board of Education website before this survey closes on September 23rd. A link is available on the Scarsdale School's homepage, under site shortcuts. Thank you. Drew? Thank you very much, Amber. Well, good evening and allow me to add my welcome to all tuning in to tonight's board of education meeting. As this is the first meeting since the school year began, I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year. I want to take a moment to thank our incredible staff for all their hard work this summer, preparing our classrooms, our hallways, cafeterias, our outdoor spaces, fields, bus routes and instructional technology for the start of the year. Our facilities, technology, food service, transportation, human

005resources, and business office teams do monumental work over the summer to get ready to welcome our students and faculty back to a new school year. I'm delighted to say that it felt wonderful to welcome our students back to school. I do wanna acknowledge that the routines of arrival and departure at our schools can sometimes bring frustration at the start of the school year. Our building leaders and their teams work hard to create safe and efficient systems, but they do take time to learn, especially at the start of the year. I would ask our entire learning community to exercise a few extra ounces of patience for the next few weeks and continue to make smart decisions on the roads, especially when running a bit late or when things get a little backed up. We do seek

006feedback regarding improvements to these processes as the safety of our student, staff and parents is paramount. As we embark on our first full week, I wanna reiterate some of the key priorities I shared with our faculty and staff and with our parent community. I introduced the phrase connecting our wide community as a structure for collaborating this year to fulfill our mission. Connecting refers to both connecting the dots, which is helping our educators to see the full K-12 picture and to recognize how their individual goals and work support the mission and the larger purposes of the education we provide. But connecting also refers to working with one another in partnership. Our best work happens when we are working well together, sharing and learning with and from one another in order to advance something greater than ourselves.

007If you are on Twitter, one way you can get connected to our new K-5 math program is to follow @ScarsdaleMathK5. I can assure you it's a good follow. The acronym WIDE stands for Wellbeing, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity. This reorganizes DEI to include wellbeing as a co-equal partner in the work of creating an even more inclusive, diverse, and equitable learning community wide reflects both a fundamental precondition for learning and an ambitious goal. We want our students to be good at learning and at life, and we all must seek to thrive, not just survive. Thus, we must find ways to make everyone in our learning community feel like they belong and are included. And finally, community is our fundamental charge as educators and human beings. And it is the surest route to wellbeing. We will be challenging

008ourselves each day to think of ways we can build community and help our students, families, faculty, staff, and leaders flourish. Finally, September is an important month of observance for many of our students, staff and families. September 11th is one such observance and is a date that can surface a range of emotions in us, especially those who lost loved ones on that tragic day or in the months and years since. On a more joyous note, we know many in our community will be celebrating the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in two weeks time. As a reminder, our schools will be closed on September 26th and 27th. Since this is the first holiday of the school year, I expect some in our community will wonder how school holidays are determined. We will

009talk about that in more detail as we begin to prepare the 23/24 school year calendar later this fall. But I invite the community to read about this process by visiting our district calendar one page summary website where there's a description of the entire calendar development process. Thank you, Drew. Do any board members have opening remarks? I might have one. Thank you, Amber. Excuse me. Amber and I happened to be at the high school this past Thursday, September 8th when the school conducted its first fire drill of the year. It was a beautiful morning and I'm pleased to report to the board that the fire drill was well organized and executed with all students, faculty and staff and visitors evacuated from the building in an orderly, efficient manner. Much appreciation is due to our village partners

010at the Scarsdale Fire Department as well as to our school administrators, including Eric Raschenbach and Drew Patrick to our head of security, Michael Spielere, sorry if I said that wrong. As well as to all our faculty, staff and students for successful fire drill, and for working together with regard to our safety and security. Education law 807 requires that New York State public and non-public schools conduct four lockdown and eight evacuation drills each school year, September through June. Thank you, Susie. Does anybody else have anything? Okay, great. So let's turn to cabinet updates. Drew? As you recall, we're iterating this experience of cabinet updates. So based on some feedback. First you'll note in the agenda, there are a list of bullets from each of the topics that you'll hear to each of the cabinet members you'll

011hear from tonight. And we will create the space after each report for questions that you might have based on what's shared. And we're gonna go ahead and start with Edgar with curriculum. Great, thank you. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the exciting summer improvement work that was done by our educators across the district, which was rich and varied. We had 180 different activities and projects, 49 projects and planning focused on integration across disciplines, 30 projects and planning, focused on special education, supports and partnerships. 74 projects focused on the development of new courses in review of existing programs and systems and enrichment and alignment. And 27 projects and planning focused on training related to adopting a new curriculum. This includes science in fifth grade, work on the newly updated and phonemic awareness phonics rich

012units of study and reading kindergarten through second, and the elementary adoption of reveal math. So speaking of reveal math, the rollout is going well. We are following the best practices in professional development, meaning that the professional development is ongoing, differentiated to level and responsive, meaning that it's assessment driven. And we're also looking to bring in families in as partners in this work of the adoption. So we have a traveling road show, is what we're calling it, where Vivian, Robert, Nancy, Pavia and I are gonna be visiting each one of the elementary schools. Those dates are out and are being shared in various ways. That district will be sending out a reminder very shortly. And we're also communicating about the math in a variety of ways. And Drew just mentioned that there is a very lively

013Twitter thread that's ongoing. And also this math program really does focus on the social emotional learning and the community components of math and the math community. So we're happy about that. Drew also discussed the importance earlier of connecting the dots as it relates to our strategic plans and priorities. And one way that we're looking to do that is by educational reports that are organized through themes. So for our first educational report, we'll discuss topics under the themes of transformations in curriculum. We'll be discussing the launch of reveal math in more detail, DEI integration in text and student-centered courses. The next educational report will be under the theme of thriving students with a focus on assessments, wellness updates, and the multi-tiered system of supports that we have in place to support all of our students. And

014also, we're going to do an educational report. We're calling innovation in action. And I'll be inviting my colleagues, Jeanie Crowley, and William Yang to talk about some of the exciting work going on in libraries, computer science and NCTE, a presentation that we'll be doing on digital literacy. And also to discuss the next 10 years of the CFI. The CFI, the Center for Innovation is celebrating its 10 year anniversary and we're looking forward to the next 10 years, and imagining what that's gonna be like. And finally, an educational report on optimizing learning. We'll have an opportunity to do some deep reflections on AT and a recommended pathway forward, but also review the expanded programs in special education. And I believe, Carol, you're next. Thank you. So I am pleased to introduce three new faculty members tonight.

015We have Eileen Cunningham. She is teaching English at Scarsdale Middle School. Eileen is a career changer and left a career in law to become a teacher. Maryanne Lynch has joined the faculties of Quaker Ridge and Fox Meadow as a point four art teacher. So she's splitting her time between the buildings. And Daniel Zigerk, I'm sorry, Zelliger, yeah, Zelliger, is teaching English at Scarsdale High School and he comes to us from Yorktown High School. Thank you. And Stuart, you're next. Thank you very much. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly welcome Lisa's Zoretski, who's in the audience, to the district as our new treasurer. Lisa has been focused most of her attention on getting up to speed on all things Scarsdale Finance and the financial year ahead. Jeff Martin, while he's certainly is preparing

016for his retirement in the upcoming weeks, has been focused on closing out the 21/22 financial books, which he has done in time for the external auditors whose arrival was today. And they'll be here all week. Although Jeff isn't here this evening, I do want to publicly thank him one last time for his service and dedication to district over these past 25 years. In addition to the external auditor's work, Amber mentioned Milwaukee Smith. The internal auditors charged with a audit pertaining to internal controls over payroll withholdings is finalizing their report, which will be presented at the audit committee's meeting on October 3rd. In addition to this report, the audit committee will be asked to review and accept the corrective action plans related to the 21/22 internal audit reports. From facilities perspective, the facilities department's been incredibly

017busy prepping our buildings for the return of students and teachers, custodians and cleaners has always had the buildings looking tremendous despite the annual obstacles of our variety of different projects. Although I will be sharing a more detailed presentation at your next meeting, I would like to share some great news, which is that the Heathcote, rooftop air conditioner has finally been installed and is up and running. Hooray. And finally, I was looking forward to that one being done, with the completion of the summer's bond work, it does mark the end of all the work that was authorized in the 2018 bond. At the meeting in October I will share a brief summary of the work and a financial update of what will be very close to final expenses at that point. I am happy to report

018and can say that the project came in well under the 64.867 million budget. Also at the October 3rd meeting, I will share the updated building condition survey and the internal work to incorporate this into what will be a new facility's master plan. And last but not least, the High School Auditorium Committee will be meeting next week to review an updated scope of work, which includes major improvements to this space. This scope includes, but is not limited to the replacement of all seats, flooring replacement, major acoustical improvements, lighting and electrical updates, and dressing room renovations. This is exciting work with much of it originally identified and approved by voters in the 2014 bond only to be deferred due to cost overruns at that time, a full presentation of this work and recommendations is scheduled for the

019first board meeting in November. And we'll have the architects at that meeting, and food service, just an update on our hot food rollout at the elementary schools. We're still holding onto our schedule, but we are having some employee staffing shortages. We've had some individuals back out late last week, so we're still hoping to onboard some individuals and we'll keep the community posted as we get closer. That's it. You want pause for any questions? We've gone through a bunch of these and I forgot that we were gonna pause. Quick question for Stuart, what is the reason for people backing out? Is it generally salary? Yes, generally we are looking at possibly increasing that. I'm looking for a updated financial report from Tara, so we can cost that out for the rest of the school year. But

020we are looking to increase that, you know, food service is very challenging and you know, if you look at McDonald's and Burger King or wherever it may be, they're offering very competitive hourly wages compared to what we're paying. So just to remind people that is a contracted service, they're not our employees. Right, right. Okay. And then I just had one question for Edgar. Obviously one of our main focus areas is global learning and having, creating global citizens. Is there gonna be an education report on global learning or on language teaching, or where do you see that fitting in this year? Well, you know, I didn't go through everything that's gonna be woven into the themes, but we will definitely be touching on global connections, global citizenship, especially as it connects to our work in diversity,

021equity and inclusion. Thank you. All right, your question for Edgar too, and there's been a lot of, I guess, media reports about concern over gaps coming from COVID, education gaps, sociological gaps, social behavior gaps, things of that kind. You mentioned in one of your education reports you will be talking about, I dunno exactly the words you used, but assessments. Yes. Is there gonna be an effort to try to report out on our experience of what gaps may exist and how we're dealing with it? Yes, exactly. In fact, it's under the theme of thriving students. I put assessments under there because I think it's very important that we talk about how our students are thriving, but within that, how we're making sure that we're assessing where they are, both academically, but also in the realm of

022social emotional learning and wellness. So we're tying that all in together. Other questions before we move on to Eric? Thank you, Eric, take it away. Good evening. Thank you. Two quick updates. I'm happy to report that the day automation project for lockdown integration, we have been put on the list of first responding jobs, which pushes us somewhere closer to the front of the list for these control panels. So originally we were hoping to receive them in December. Now we're going to receive them hopefully sometime sooner than December, which should open up our December break to start major work in the schools. That being said, this year's Christmas or December break is a little bit shorter. So the actual days of work on that break is pretty limited. So my suspicion is the majority of the

023work will still be completed during the February break, but those controllers are closer to coming to us, which is good news. We kind of bumped up the list a little bit. And then secondly and happily, I wanted to just relay the first opening days of our new program in the middle school. The SSP program has gone quite well. We're still waiting for a little bit of new furniture, but we've outfitted that room with serviceable furniture until the last of the new furniture comes in. Our new section of the eight to one two class at Edgewood is up and running with bright eyed and bushy tailed kindergartners there getting acclimated to the school and everything is going quite nicely. We have a couple of new sections in different places of ICT that are also up and

024running. So all of those things have gone well over the first couple of weeks of school or first week of school. Thank you, and next will be Ray with some athletics updates. Thank you, Drew. Can everyone hear me okay? Well, it's been a busy summer, which had incredible results. We have about 40% of our high school student body participating in athletics at this point, which for a school of our size is quite incredible for one season. Some districts can't boast that number across three seasons with about 36% of our students who identify as male participating and 44% of those who identify as female participating. At the time this report was created, all of our varsity A teams had not lost a competition, which is incredible. Our varsity volleyball team won their tournament this weekend. Varsity

025tennis won a tournament this weekend at Half Hollows East High School. And our boys soccer team is currently ranked first in the state. So looking forward to an incredible fall season. And the kids have been incredibly wonderful. Prior to the season beginning, we had, excuse me, two pieces of legislation that came out. One that focused on cardiac arrest risk and the other that that focused on concussion management. I'd like to say that these regulatory acts that came out did not impact the way we function. We've already been operating in very safe ways as far as the way we look at our students' health history. The way we train our coaches and the way we clear students through pre-participation and after there is either an incident or we see signs or symptoms. However, one that focused

026on the cardiac arrest prevention, the legislation did focus on specific things that we needed to put in place related to health history training and clearance. We do all of those, and with concussion management, the courses that we have, our teachers, coaches and health care staff take, we're just affirmed in this act. And the act also just updated the ways that district administrators, health professionals and supporting personnel follow guidelines. But because our school physician is as conservative as he is, we've already been meeting those standards. Some of the initiatives within the department are focusing on really on communicating more with students. So we have a captain's council, for lack of a better term, we have not named it yet, which will be meeting periodically as well as another student leadership group, which will be meeting with

027me on a regular basis to try and tighten up just communication between the administration and students. Our department is pretty, pretty large. We have a pretty big program and so we just like to hear from kids more often about what their experiences are on a regular basis. Section one, as I shared with the board just prior to the weekend, section one released their diversity, equity and inclusion policy last week. It was approved on August 30th. And it specifically establishes expectations of acceptable behavior and a level of increased accountability at the section level. It basically invokes the school's district code of conduct. But then there are specific items that it asks for in the case of an adverse event where the accountability is increased at the section level. Prior to this coming out, usually the two

028school districts would collaborate on resolving, there'd be an investigation on both district parts and then the resolution would just be come to between the two school districts. But now there may be in the case of an egregious event, additional accountability at the section level. But the language here is not inconsistent with what we already promote at Scarsdale. And if you would permit me just to read the short introductory paragraph, I'd like to just review that. Section one athletics, and its member schools are expected to provide a welcoming and affirming environment for student athletes, coaches, staff, and spectators with respect to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected class. Such protection is a shared responsibility and a

029core value of our athletics program. Consistent with the New York State Dignity For All students Act, DASA, section one and its member schools are committed to provide all students with a safe and supportive environment. Free from discrimination, intimidation, taunting, harassment and bullying. It specifically calls out acts against the dignity of opposing team members and specifically talks about spectators not singling out any athlete during a contest, which would include using derogatory comments including the use of a player's name or uniform number. So throughout the year, section one will be having several meetings with athletic directors across the section to discuss the implementation of this policy. And I'll be keeping the board informed as well as our coaches, our student athletes, and our community. Thank you, Ray. Any questions for Ray or for Eric? No. Okay. Thank

030you, Drew. And you to everyone who gave a report this evening, I think this new format seemed to do well. Okay, let's move on to item 4.0 before 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 non personnel related matters during two separate public comment periods. When it is your turn to speak, please state your name, address, and if you are speaking on behalf of an organization, for those commenting remotely, please mute the livestream voice, turn on your camera and then unmute yourself. Speakers will be asked to conclude the 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

031writing to the board via email at [email protected]. The public comment period is reserved for comments only. The board will not engage in dialogue. The board reserves the right to respond to comments and questions at its discretion, either during response to public comment or at a later time and place. Response to public comment will take place after the first and second public comment periods. 4.02. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a comment? Okay. Seeing no one, let's turn to the Zoom. Ron, is there anyone on the Zoom? There's one attendee but nobody has their hand up. But maybe we just wanna- We'll give them just a few seconds. Nobody has their hand up in the Zoom. Oh, sorry. Now there's one hand up. Okay, great. I'm going to promote Miss Singh.

032One second. We're ready for you Miss Singh. Thank you. Good evening. Reshma Singh from Griffin Avenue. I just wanted to bring a report to the board's attention, National Center of Education Statistics, NCES, conducted a special administration of NAEP long term trend in reading and math assessments for age nine students to examine student achievement during COVID-19 pandemic. The report came out on September 1st, Average score for age nine students in 2022 declined five points in reading and seven points in mathematic compared to 2020. This is the largest average score decline in reading since 1990 and the first ever score decline in math, the report has considered nation's report card education report card sampling close to 15,009 year olds from 410 students across the nation. While there was a decline across the board, special education cohort were

033disproportionally affected as reflected on the report. Education secretary Miguel Cartona said states and district should steer federal relief funds even more effectively and expeditiously to proven strategies including high dosage tutoring after school programs and summer programs. And better train our teachers and fire professionals. I guess my feedback for the board or the administration along with my question is where do we fall in terms of such data? Are students reading and math scores from two years ago to what it is today? And what's the vision for our superintendent and his team, especially the special education team as it relates to our learning loss and recovery efforts? Are we spending our state foundational and federal aid towards high impact tutoring? Are we spending it on training our educators, our paraprofessionals? What is our learning loss report recovery

034effort? What is the vision and game plan? Where is our report card? Thank you Miss Singh. Is there anybody else, Ron? There are no other attendees. Okay, then I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment and we'll move on to item 5.01. Address matters raised during public comment. Yeah, we obviously, Edgar alluded to a future education report that will include some assessment information. Our focus is on each student, full classrooms of students, full grade levels of students as it should be. Our focus on MTSS is one of the parts of our vision for how we're going to continue to support students. We're not at liberty at the moment to talk about the spring state tests that occurred, but we will when the embargo that the state sets on those results lifts. Obviously we've come to

035the board in the community with programming needs most recently in this particular past budget cycle to support special education programs to support some of our mental health programming for students and hire the very best teachers out there that we can find to support students. So is there broad general strategies invite Eric to share anything in particular about special ed and Edgar to share anything more generally? So, you know, I think you'll hear later in the budget transfer conversation that last year we saw an increase in students who needed support throughout the school year and responded with those services accordingly. We've had an expansion of our ICT program over quite a number of years. Part of that is due to the pandemic, part of that is due to an increasing trend otherwise, as Drew mentioned, I

036think the MTSS work is really important 'cause it's focusing on kids who are having more shorter term support needs that may not be disability based, but maybe situationally or environmentally based. And those are pieces that are ongoing conversations this summer. Some great work has been done as far as looking at engagement strategies for general ed teachers to use and providing that out in a website format to all of our teachers. There's been a number of steps to address what people are seeing in classes. You know, I think the hard numbers will come out once the state tests come out and we can take a look to see if there are, given that it is one measure and somewhat there are some issues with that measure from a validity standpoint. But our star reading and star

037maths have not seen major drops in in the last, and we've been administering that all through COVID. So those are good signs as far as that goes. Yeah, and I would just say that along, one of the more high leverage ways that we're spending funding is through teacher training. So there's been a great deal of, and I talked about the best practices around professional development. It's ongoing, it's rigorous, it's responsive as we focus, and particularly in reveal math right now. Just to follow up, we did receive American Rescue Funds last year from the federal government specifically for special education in the amount of about $225,000. Those were spent mainly on additional services, related service, behavioral service for students in need throughout the school year. As you, you know, we don't get overwhelming support from the

038federal or state government, you know, due to the sort of socioeconomic status of where we are. I would just add more generally, COVID was hard and continues to have a tale of impact and effect on individual kids. So I don't want a mistake us saying that we look at the NAEP results that Miss Singh referred to, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. We don't have those particular results for our students 'cause they didn't take that assessment. It's sort of a random sample across the country. But our approach here has been consistent in trying to identify the individual needs, gaps, holes in learning and try to address them. We heard from our teachers throughout last year that, you know, kids were coming back when we came back to full days in person that there were gaps,

039there were things that were missing both academically, and social, socially and emotionally. And our plan is to continue to work individually and in with our teams that exist, our MTSS teams, our child study teams, pupil study teams at the middle school and high school to address the needs of individual students along with those other things that Eric and Edgar referred to. Thank you Eric, Edgar and Drew. Thank you for that thoughtful response to Miss Singh's question. Could I just for clarification, find out when did the state let allow you to publish or when do they allow you to discuss those results typically? We should hear any moment. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Let's move on to written communications. Ron? Thanks, Amber. First, the preamble item 6.01. Please note that the board of education email

040is also 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 in an upcoming public board meeting. A board member will respond at their earliest convenience. Item 6.02 written communications since the last written communications update, two emails were received on district matters, three emails were received on board meeting and highlights. An email was received regarding focus groups in the superintendent search and a email was received regarding a board invitation and correspondence. The topics for each of these emails is in the details on board docs. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ron. We'll move on to item seven, the consent agenda, and I'll read the preamble. The board may conduct some

041of its business using a consent agenda and in 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 consent agenda is prepared by the superintendent of schools in 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 in 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

042moves 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. And with that, we will move to the consent agenda. Item eight. Does anybody wish to remove anything from the consent agenda? Okay, hearing done, I'll turn it over to Jessica. Thank you Amber. Tonight we have 10 items on the consent agenda. First of all, the minutes from the business meeting on August 22nd as presented. Second item is the personnel certified report, recommending that we accept the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign instructional personnel. Number 803, the personnel non-certified. Again, hoping or resolving that we accept the recommendation of the superintendent to appoint and assign non instructional personnel as

043listed in board docs. The claims an audit report from August, 2022, the 2022 to 2023 state and federal grants, which we recommend that the board accept as presented. 806, we recommend that the board authorize the assistant superintendent for special education and student services to execute contracts as presented for an excess of $20,000 for special education. 807, we recommend that the board accept the amended corrective action plan related to the 2019 to 2020 external audit. 808, we recommend that the board adopt policy and Regulation 1120 school district records with revisions as presented. 809, we recommend that the board approve the consulting contracts for Jerry Creche and Rachel Mosley as presented. 810, the final item, we recommend that the board approve the agreement between KBM and the Scarsdale Public Schools for a three year term, beginning September

0441st of this year. Sorry, September 1st of this year through August 31st of 2025 as presented. And finally be it resolved that the board accept the consent agenda as presented. Thank you, Jessica. Is there a second? Second. Thank you Jim. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. The consent agenda passes. Now we'll move on to section nine information items discussion. And item 9.01 is a staffing and enrollment update. Carol? (indistinct) Thank you. You'll see that we budgeted 479.7 certified positions this school year. We have a total of 485 certified positions, which represents an increase in staffing of 4.6. What I'd like to do is dive in a little bit more deeply to talk about that increase. So we show an increase in staffing at the high school of 0.8 from

045our budgeted amount, that represents actually a temporary increase. We have two teachers who are out on leaves, but they will remain on payroll until the paid portion of their leaves end. So we, you know, have two people in that position in each of those positions. At the middle school, we have a teacher on special assignment and also added a 0.6 ENL English as a new language teacher to create a full-time position there due to an increase in need to service students. We have a slight decrease in staffing at the elementary level to 0.6. Let me just go to the next slide. Oops. And we can look at our certified and non-certified staffing as compared to enrollment. Carol, just to go back, I think. Oh, you know, I'm so sorry. Just go back one slide. Sure.

046And the difference between budget and actual there. I think you said 484, but it's 481.5. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, I apologize. So we had that increase that you described to the high school, but decrease at the elementary. Correct. So looking at district-wide staffing, we show an increase in positions, but an actual decrease in civil service positions. So and that is accounted for. Rachel Mosley, when she was working in the district, was within the civil service group. Okay. So that accounts for the decrease in civil service. Her replacement, Jeanie Crowley is part of certified staffing. So that accounts for a shift into district-wide staffing. We also found 0.1 savings given the, our provider at the Immaculate Heart of Mary was budgeted in the, was budgeted for a 0.6 and they actually needed a 0.5. And if

047we look at summary of our elementary enrollment at Edgewood, we reduced by one section at second grade. And at Fox Meadow we increased a section at third grade. Green Acres you'll see was even as it was budgeted, proposed. And the same at Heathcote, Quaker Ridge did increase by one kindergarten section. The special education sections remained as projected at 22 sections across the Elementary's. And one thing to note is, if you can see the totals at the bottom there, we did have, we do have about 120 more elementary age students than we projected when we were building the budget last February. Okay, and just the last sheet, this provides a summary of our enrollment. We have, the district, a total increase of 134 students across the district. The middle school increased by 18 students and at

048the elementary we increased by 122 students. So points to highlight, we had a reduction in special education by 0.6 with a decrease needed in learning resource center. And then that 0.5 at IHM, that was budgeted as a 0.6. So there's a 0.1 savings. We did add one elementary class section because of increased enrollment and used our two contingency positions, partly with the ENL increase at the middle school at .6, the class section increase, and then parts of contingency through our shared staffing for co-curricular. So music, art, phys ed that we needed pieces of at different schools to service students. Do you have any? And that's, yeah, that's what we have. We have a total of 4,680 students. So thank you. Thank you, Carol. Just a quick question, do you have any sense, like in terms

049of the fact that enrollment is higher in the elementary schools than was anticipated. Is there any sense that, you know, when we were doing the budget, I think, you know, at least my understanding is a lot of families took their kids out of the public schools in 2020, 2021. Partly in relation to reaction to COVID policies and other reasons. But it was a spike. Do we have any reason to believe that some of those kids were coming back and maybe we didn't, you know, realize to a degree to which that might happen? Yeah, that's definitely a possibility. And we also had families move in, you know, that we know of through enrollments, you know, first time registrations, it's hard to gauge what families are gonna decide to do necessarily in terms of this. So our

050objections are based really, we look at two things. We have a multi-year demographic projection that our demographer prepares. But then we also look at cohort survival. The kids who are actually enrolled here in June. By the end of the year. And the kindergartners who we expect to come in. Our kindergarten enrollment was quite a bit higher as well than we anticipated, which would be new. You know, kids new to the area or new our schools. So it's really a combination. We did not do a deep dive to see who's come back, who might have been out during those, that would be interesting. Just haven't had a kind of a moment to do that. But yeah, it's a possibility. Thank you. Does anybody else have any questions? Just one suggestion for the future, sort of following

051Jim's comment, if to the extent that we have this information now or this time of year, if we could for the next time we do this, if we could add the number of private school students who live in Scarsdale. I'm not sure that we have a projected in actual for that number, but we probably have last year versus this year. I'm not sure when you get that data, but. Yeah, that data tends to be updated after bed's day, which is the first Tuesday in October. Gotcha. So in about a month we'll have an update in the state system on that. Okay, thanks. The other thing we know are transportation requests. Yeah, right. That's what I was wondering. Sort of just hearing that. But it's hard to gauge overall based on just what you're hearing. Anybody

052else? Carol, can I ask a question about the ENL? So have we seen that number rising, I mean, I know you're right now just in this role for a month, but I am curious, you know, the 0.6 jump at the middle school, there was no jump in the elementary schools yet. There was a large enrollment, higher enrollment than we expected. I'm just curious if we're seeing a trend there. Or we just think this is anomaly. I'm happy to jump in just being a little more familiar with it. So, couple of things, one thing that happened during COVID was they initially, they, for two years, they didn't give the NYSESLAT, which is the state mandated test that students, their progress is gauged on and their amount of required service is gauged on. So we had kids

053who were in the program who weren't necessarily allowed by commissioners regulations to be let out of the program. We now have NYSESLAT scores like the others. They've just come in and you know, we're assessing those. We did have to add an ENL staff position in the 2021, 2020, 2021 school year. And then this reflects some of those students having gone up to the middle school and needing service. So when it was before Carol came, when the middle school presented their caseload and all the different levels or multiple levels of service that are required in their group size, we looked at it and said, we're not really able to provide the group sizes that we should be providing are appropriate given the number of students we have. So we increased the really from 1.4 to 2.0

054this year. Great. Thank you. And thank you, Carol. All right, let's move on to item 9.02, the budget calendar. And that's Drew and Stuart. Sure, okay. So the draft of the budget calendar for 23/24. It always sounds a little scary when you put that next year out there, but here we are. We've already had our first discussion with the administrative council at the end of August. Sort of to go through this calendar and prep them for the sort of main calendar dates as we go out throughout the school year. You can see in the first half of the year, it's mostly internal as the principals and cabinet members prepare their internal budgets. And we have various meetings throughout that process looking for major budget drivers and staffing requests that would move the budget, you know,

055more than just normal type of budget increases. We also do meet with each cabinet member to talk about their department budgets as well. And they're already on the calendar for sort of that last couple weeks of November. We do those with the goal of having that draft and number to the board in early January. You do see as we have done for the last earliest recent memory, the budget forum on November 17th in the morning where we ask for input on the budget from our community members. And again, all of that takes us through to our first board meeting in January where we'll go through the financial projections and some budget assumptions and also talking about those key budget drivers and staffing recommendations as presented to us and that have made it through the gauntlet

056of conversations before we present it to the boarding community. We do have a goal of releasing the budget book on February 13th. As you recall, Lisa is new to the position, Jeff, that was really his baby, the budget book and it's an incredible document. So we've been working with Jeff to understand sort of the ins and outs of actually putting the document together. So our goal is to have that looking as much as like the past budget book as we can with no promises that it will be identical. We have our budget sessions one, two, and three through February and March meetings with the League of Women Voters, budget forum, all leading up to the budget adoption by the board. What is that on here? It's usually, somebody see that, April 17th. April 17th. And

057the budget vote on May 16th. So come back in the consent agenda next meeting. Yep. Unless they're- Does anybody have any questions for Stuart? Okay, great, thank you. Let's move on to item 9.03, stop loss insurance renewal and Drew, Carol. Yep, I'm happy to take this one. I've kind kind of carried this one through from the last spring. And we've reported at this table some of the stop loss experience that we've had. So the renewal, and this appears both as information in action because the renewal year is September 1st. So we have used stop loss or been unfortunately had to take advantage of our stop loss insurance to the tune of over $4 million for this this past year. Which in the world of stop loss insurance drives up the cost of your premium. So

058we had only a single carrier bid for our business for this coming year. That was the incumbent Sun Life and the costs have gone up accordingly. So what we are looking at is an increase over the current plan of essentially 700, $750,000. And that reflects the increased risk that we've demonstrated through these few but significant stop loss cases. So with our consultant Pat Cowburn, we looked at this, we met, Stuart, Carol and I met with him and discussed our options. And what our proposal is to keep costs reasonable is to take the higher specific deductible so the plan wouldn't start kicking in until $300,000 in claims for an individual claimant up from our current 275,000. And we think the benefit there on the cost side would be calculable and advisable at this point. So we're

059asking the board to consider the renewal option at $300,000 specific deductible. Thank you, Drew. Any questions? Yeah, does anyone have any questions? Just wanted to make sure I understand. This is for this school year, correct? Yep. So, presumably we'll be over budget I would imagine for this item. Does this come back as a transfer? I mean it's all on balance with the claims. So if the health insurance- Got it. Expense item is over budget in total, then we would, if not, then it would just sort of balance out and we would absorb it. Okay, 'cause this sits within all the health insurance. So we may not see a budget impact. We won't know except for that this is much higher than we were planning. Okay. Got it. Thanks. Anyone else? Okay, let's move on to

060item 9.04, budget transfers. Okay, pretty good segue. The way we lined this up. So are three sets of transfers, however, before I get started, very important. So before I review the fiscal year and 2022 transfers requiring board approval, you would recall that we had previously projected a $1.5 million deficit in health insurance. However, due to claims being much lower than anticipated in May and June, which was great news, and a collection of 2.7 million in stop loss insurance, which we weren't anticipating at that time, there's now a surplus of three and a half million dollars big numbers and they went the right way, which is fantastic. So this has obviously had a tremendous impact on our end of year fund balance, allowing the district to return the one and a half million dollars previously transferred

061from the health insurance reserve back to that reserve and increasing our unassigned undesignated fund balance back up to 3.8% instead of what we had originally projected at 2.4%. So all fantastic news. All right, so having said that, and we do have three areas of budget transfers. The first one are what I would call general transfers, and that was a memo in your board packet. The first one, I'll just go through them quickly then there could be any questions at the end of course. The first one was related to the hiring of the search consultant for the search superintendent search for just bid over $35,000. The second one was for the payout of vacation days for Superintendent Hagerman. The third one was related to, is related to the IRS payment and outstanding. We had paid the

062hundred $43,000, we had received 744,000 back from the IRS. The $99,000 can't be booked as an account receivable as we don't expect to receive it back within two to three months. So we're charging that off as an expenditure for the 21/22 school year, and therefore need a transfer. And you'll notice the froms are all in that health insurance category. That's where we're getting the money from for these transfers. Principal's office salaries. These are secretarial position that quite frankly was just missed in the original budget process. Nurses office salaries, same thing. I believe this was related to a private school IHM placement increasing that position half time from half to full. So we capture that at that time or wasn't known. And remember, you know, a lot of these you have to sort of, if we

063think back to that budget calendar, you know, we're making budget decisions, what could be from up to a year and a half before we sort of see that expenditure for many of these or some of these anyways, this that's sort of the driving force. It's really difficult to have and predict that. Special education, typical for this time of year is the end of year transfers for special ed $851,000. And again from health insurance, teacher aids, various aid accounts. Again, a lot related to COVID and absences and making sure that we had proper coverage and in all of our classrooms, transfer of just over $290,000. And then some various health benefit, or I'm sorry, benefit accounts, TRS pension, ERS pension, social security, and Medicare of $570,000 on that. So that is the first set of transfers.

064The second transfer is a course, my screen went blank. Second transfer is for the volleyball account and trusted agency. I did put a little blurb in the back explaining what this is, historically been used for types of activities that fall outside of the typical experience in which require non-tax payer dollars to fund the activity. This type of budget transfer is unusual, is described more in the memo that Ray prepared as backup to this. And that's for $26,618. I think the important takeaway is sort of the corrective action plan that Ray listed in the memo to ensure that we don't have this type of situation moving forward. And certainly Lisa has been on board with this too as we think about these types of transactions moving forward. The 22/23 budget transfer transfer. So that's current year

065general music supplies. This is for the funding of five sets of coral risers to be placed at Edgewood High School. Moving the money from a contractual theater arts code to the music supply code to fund those. And those risers are basically end of life. They can be a safety hazard. So we really wanted to get those taken care of sooner rather than later. The other thing with transfers, you know, Lisa and I have been chatting about as well as we talk about those financial reports that'll be coming to the board of ed is looking to have transfers done, you know, more or less on a monthly basis as we need them. Just provide more transparency and not having them sort of all at once where you have to sort of digest them as well. And

066it helps keeps our books and accounts, you know, very current at any given moment. And I will say as far as transfers, we always look, I mean the goal is not to have any transfers, which means you budget perfectly. So as we go through the budget process, and again, Lisa's first go at it and you know, my first really going in line by line will be trying to, you know, make corrections as we see it based on actual expenditures and trying to reduce the transfers as much as we can. But also knowing that it's our best estimate of what could be a year and a half out at that time. You know, you could have a pandemic come at you or whatever it may be. Yeah, just kidding. So that will be, or that is

067always the goal. Any questions? Questions? I just have two quick questions. I just wanna confirm sort of my understanding, it looks like most of these large transfers are kind of one time items. They're not things that are gonna be we expect to be recurring even though they come in things like salaries. It was due to things like the pandemic. I just wanna confirm my understanding of that. That's correct, I mean I think you'll also see, I think some of the transfers you'll see this year will be inflationary related. You know, you should expect to see some in transportation for gas and fuel expenses. We are really, I am really, and therefore everyone is really, you know, looking at what we spend staying from within their budget. You know, they're hearing no, people are hearing no

068a lot more often really, I'm really asking them for, you know, detailed rationale for that purchase and if they need it then, such as the coral risers, you know that I asked them to make a choice. Do you foresee any other expenditures this year needing that other budget code, it was their budget code and they decide that that was a priority. So you know, that's that type of transfer that, you know, makes perfect sense to me. It's their code, that's how they choose the money, how they choose to spend the money. And we can move forward, but quite frankly, I don't want anyone coming to me and say, well, can you just find the money somewhere? That's not going to happen. Thank you. And then my other question's on the volleyball trust, presumably other sports

069have preseason trips, is this corrective action plan applying to sports in any extracurriculars that have similar setups? I'll ask Ray to come up and then I can help out if needed. Yeah, when possible. The service provider. So in the case this year with volleyball, the only initial expense that did not work this way were for students who were unknown, like students who had not yet made the team. But other than that, parents are paying directly to the provider and we're asking them to get trip insurance. So we don't have this issue, we're looking at a basketball trip where there they'll be contracting directly with KSA. And for times where we can't necessarily do it or have the families do it directly, can we limit the liability of all taxpayers to have to fund these items

070which have apparently, I don't believe are supposed to be funded through our budget. Correct. You're looking at like over the course of three years, first the hurricane that that hit in, I guess it was late August and then COVID restrictions over two years. So we haven't had an issue like this prior. So yeah, I think the only way to truly limit that is to make sure that families know and understand what the risk is and to strongly encourage them to get trip insurance in advance. Okay. Appreciate that. 'Cause again, it's not, I don't have a personally operationally whatever makes sense of how it gets booked, but I do think we have to be careful about expending budgeted taxpayer money on items that weren't budgeted. Agreed. Are there any other questions? I have a follow up

071to rounds question quickly, Ray. I understand that these were unforeseen circumstances, but I guess I'm curious about what is bringing it to our attention now since some of these were for trips several years ago. That's great. So for the first two years we were able to hold onto credits that would extend and so in the 2021/22 school year, we were told that that those credits would no longer be honored. Right, it was three years past the time, so. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And my next question is for Stuart. So Stuart, I'm curious, you said that that IRS payment, the 99,362 could not be booked as an account receivable because we don't expect to get it in the near term. Should there be a taxpayer expectation that we will get reimbursement over the long term

072at this point? Or is that truly no longer considered a receivable? As I reported at the last board meeting the tax attorneys, we have documentation in our favor that that money should be coming back. We're trying to find out when. So right, so- The decision has been made. So taxpayers should not see this as necessarily an assumption that it is permanently off our books. Right, it would come in as a, I'll let Lisa speak to that, okay, yeah Yeah, so it will come in when it comes in in 2223. We'll record it as a revenue, as a refund of a prior year expense. So the expectation is it will hopefully come in. Thank you. I just wanted to make that clear to folks who may not have seen the August board meeting. Does anybody else

073have any questions? Okay, great. Thank you, Stuart. Shall we move on to item 9.05? Propose new textbooks. So I had a chance to talk to Ron Woodlock, our teacher of AT constitutional law about his recommendation to use this textbook, "American Legal History" by Hall, Finkelman and Eli with his students. He's promoting this text because it's concise and it organizes case law thematically and chronologically so students can see the evolution of law through landmark decisions. For example, there's a chapter that follows the history of civil liberties and civil rights. While this third edition was published in 2005, Ron sees this as a great textbook of legal history, which will help launch and engage students and analysis of more recent cases, which he'll be accessing through other means. That's it? Oh, okay. All right, great. Any questions

074anyone? Okay, fantastic. Let's move on to item 9.06. The MOA. Carol? Yeah. So we entered into discussions with MADSA and the Scarsdale Teachers Association to discuss additional responsibilities that have been identified since the approval of their collective bargaining agreements. So the MOA with MADSA represents a stipend for the head bus driver and transportation supervisor who have completed a special certification called 19A certification. The certification allows them to provide state required safety training to the district's bus drivers. The district would be able to conduct in-house training and would will no longer require the services of an outside vendor for the training and testing of our drivers. The next MOA with the Scarsdale Teachers Association provides for two stipends during the 2022 and '23 school year. The roles and responsibilities for supervising and managing mental health staffing

075and 504 committee meetings have expanded at Scarsdale High School. We would like to recommend the creation of a mental health department chair and high school section 504 chair with stipends corresponding to Article 16 of the STA collective bargaining agreement. Thank you, Carol. Are there any questions for Carol? Okay, great. And we're gonna see that right later for an action item? Yes. Okay. Item 9.07, superintendent search, and that is starting with me. So the board is committed to conducting an inclusive, thoughtful, and transparent process to find the next superintendent of schools for Scarsdale, in an effort to provide transparency, we will provide regular updates to the community on the superintendent search, during the summer, the board focused on planning and preparing for the search. The board's plan included multiple opportunities for significant stakeholder input to help

076develop the leadership profile, which will be used by our search consultants to recruit candidates. I would like to ask Ron to provide an update on the focus groups being held together input for the leadership profile Ron? Thanks, Amber. As a reminder to everyone, focus groups began last week and will continue throughout this week and next week. The search consultants from HYA are conducting those focus groups and they will report back to the board the themes and comments all anonymously. No board members are attending any focus groups. In addition to these focus groups, knowing that we couldn't reach everybody just through focus groups, there are a number of open forums and those are coming up. The three community open forums are September 14th at 9:30 AM at the Scarsdale Public Library In the Scott Room, that's

077the morning forum. There's an evening forum, September 19th at 7:00 PM at the Scarsdale High School in room 170 172. That is this room. And the third one is an evening forum over Zoom, virtually on September 22nd at 7:00 PM over Zoom. A link is available on the board webpage at scarsdaleschools.org/board. There is also a separate forum for faculty members on September 19th and a separate forum for staff members on September 22nd. And details of the faculty forum and staff forum were sent directly to all faculty and staff members. And of course, as a reminder, if you cannot attend one of these open forums, the survey is now open, which Susie's gonna speak more about. Thank you, Ron. Susie? Thank you Amber and Ron. Sorry. This past Thursday, September 8th, the superintendent's search survey was

078launched and is now live. A communication went out to the entire school community with a link to the survey, which can also be found on the board's superintendent search page. The survey is conducted by a search firm, which ensures that your individual responses are kept anonymous. The survey is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Portuguese. And we'll focus on the following three questions. How would you describe the strengths of the district? What do you see as the greatest challenges facing the district in the next few years and what characteristics and areas of expertise would you like to see in our next superintendent? There will also be an opportunity to write in any input you may have, though anonymous, please note that any response may be considered public domain and subject to foil. Lastly, if there

079is an individual you would like to recommend for the position of superintendent, there will also be an opportunity to do so in the focus groups and on the survey. The survey will be available until 5:00 PM on September 23rd, 2022. Thank you, Susie. Bob will cover ways in which the board has worked to reach out to our faculty and staff about the search process. Yeah, I just, I want the community to know that on August 31st and today, September 12th, two board members attended faculty meetings within each school and we made a presentation not dissimilar to what you're hearing tonight regarding our schedule, some of the tools that are being used, and obviously encouraging all faculty to participate. Thank you, Bob. Colleen, could you please review ways in which the board has worked to ensure

080their community is aware of their opportunity to provide input. There, better. The board continues to work on creating a comprehensive and inclusive process for our superintendent's search. Communication is key in accomplishing this goal. With that in mind, we have done a number of things to ensure we reach as many members of the community as possible. Here is a brief update of the communications around this very important search. As Susie mentioned, a survey and search update letter was sent on September 8th. A letter to the community was published in both the Scarsdale Inquirer and Scarsdale 10583. A version was also sent as a press relief to other local news outlets such as "The Daily Voice" and "Hamlet Hub". All PTAs included a note about the survey and a link to the survey in their weekly communications

081that were sent on September 11th. A postcard mailer was printed and sent to the post office on September 9th and we are expecting it to to be delivered to all households within the next few days. A flyer has been drafted and we have 50 copies printed. We are planning on putting up flyers in all appropriate places. As a note, our note was to the community partners email list with information about searches, survey links, and a PDF copy of the flyer so they can distribute it to their different organizations. Amber and Ron presented to the MADSA Union last week at a special meeting. Board members presented at faculty meetings at Fox Meadow, Green Acres, Heathcote and Quaker Ridge earlier today. It is our hope that by using this multi-tiered approach to communication, we'll be able to

082reach as many community members as possible. So please continue to look out for future communications. This will allow all members of the community to participate and provide important perspective and feedback that will serve as a framework for our process to find a new superintendent. Thank you, Colleen. And thank you to all the board members for their reports. I wanna take a moment to acknowledge all the work that has been happening behind the scenes to keep this search process moving forward with the focus on ultimately finding an exceptional superintendent for our district. The board had two executive sessions over this summer and another one just before this business meeting to prepare for this search board members have spent countless hours drafting communications, planning focus groups, and attending meetings to help further this effort. I wanna thank

083my fellow board members for their commitment to this process and extend a special thank you to Ron for his leadership in this important work. There are also many people in our district offices that have been so helpful during this first phase, among many others, I would like to extend a special thank you to Michelle Verna and Jeanie Crowley who've both stepped in to help with tasks with very little notice. But we would not have made it this far without the dedication and commitment of our district clerk, Onrey Adams. That's you, Onrey. This is truly a team effort and I thank all of you for your hard work. Thank you. All right, so let's move on to item 9.08, which is the board review of the HYA addendum, and I will speak for that first. In

084June the board approved the contract for Hazard Young and TN Associates and board president Karen Suskie signed the contract with HYA. Over the summer, the board met with our consultants from HYA and the board requested that HYA add an open tax field to the survey that was released last week. HYA subsequently requested that the board signed an approved addendum that indicates that comments will be transcribed verbatim and may be subject to foil. Our attorney has reviewed the addendum and given his approval to sign. Since the survey is already in process and we do not have another meeting until after the survey closes, we've put discussion and action on this item in the same evening. Does anyone have any thoughts on this addendum? Amber, I'm so glad to hear you know that we have come to

085this decision and not without thought that we would include a chance for community members to opine on the search process openly. And I just wanted to clarify that although the comments may be subject to foyer or foil, they will still remain anonymous. Yes, we do not have, unless someone puts their name into or their child's name or that could be there. But that potentially would be redacted by our attorney potentially. But yes, we won't know who submitted it. So in filling out the surveys, people should make an effort to feel free to share openly but not include identifying personal details. Yes, and I believe there's a note in the survey that says such right before that field. Right, I just wanted to clarify for anyone who might skim directions. Thank you. Is there any other

086discussion on this? Okay, great. We'll see that later in the agenda. Let's move on to item 9.09, the NYSSBA area 10 director. I'm gonna turn it over to Jim, who's our NYSSBA liaison. Thank you, Amber. Try to keep this brief. So the Scarsdale is a participant in New York State School Board Association. We are part of Area 10 along with much of Westchester County and and Rockland County as well. The reason why this is up for discussion today is because we got an email from Cheryl Brady, who effectively, among other things, is a member of the Board of Education in White Plains. She was reaching out to us because there is going to be a position, there is a position open now in the New York State School Board Association for the Area 10 director.

087There was an election held for this position last year. I believe Scarsdale supported Cheryl, but I believe that position was won by Frank Harrington, who I think was a board member from Rockland County. Frank Harrington is no longer a board member, board of education member in Rockland County. So he is unable to continue, wasn't able to continue as New York State School Board Association director. So as a result, the position that he won is now once again vacant. And Cheryl has asked if we would be so kind, I'm not sure who else she asked, but she asked us, if we would be so kind as to nominate her to be basically the replacement for Frank Harrington. And if there are other nominees, that would be an election for that position. And that is the background

088here. It's a request of Cheryl for us to nominate her as a area 10 director. Thank you, Jim. Are there any thoughts on whether we should write a nomination letter for Cheryl? I would support nominating her just to make it clear to the community. This doesn't mean we are voting for her yet. We would find out if anybody else was nominating, nominated. I believe she needs five districts to nominate her. This board did support her last time, so we did extensive due diligence as part of that process. So I'd be happy for us to nominate her and then revisit the actual election when it comes. Thank you, Ron. Would anybody else be in favor or not in favor? Well, just because of, you know, the discussion we had last year, which I remember, you know,

089I do think it would make sense for us to agree to the request and nominate her if that's what there's a consensus to do. Thank you, Jim. Jessica? I agree with Jim and Ron on this. Okay. I'm okay with that. Great. Colleen? We weren't on the board at the time, but I did listen to the conversation that the board had at the time and I would be comfortable also nominating Cheryl. Okay. So it sounds like there's, and I also am fine with us putting her nomination forth. So it sounds like there's consensus to nominate Cheryl Brady for the open position. So I will work on that letter. We don't need an action item for that. Right, and just to be clear, the due date for when that letter is to be submitted is September 30th

090at 5:00 PM. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate that. All right, let's move on to action item 10.01. And this is, let's see who has this action item, Colleen. Sorry, my computer just froze up. Thank you. Okay, action item 10.01, 2022, 2023 stop loss insurance renewal. I move the board accept the Sun Life bid for stop loss insurance at 300,000 specific deductible effective September 1st, 2022. You recommended? I recommend. Is there a second? Second. Thank you Bob. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Item 10.02, propose new textbooks. And that is Bob. Yeah, so at the last meeting, three books were recommended for consideration and at this meeting we are recommending, or I am recommending that the board approve the proposed textbooks. Just to remind people what they are. The

091first one is called "Unwind", which is for the English 10th grade skills course. The second is "This Book is Anti-Racist" and it is for social studies in English for the seventh grade. And lastly, the third book is "Subarani", which is for those taking Latin 312 or 313, would be a resource for that course. I'm sorry, did you make the motion at the beginning? Yeah, I make a motion to recommend. Okay, thank you. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Well, I will, oh, go ahead Jessica. Why don't you go first if you have a- I was just going to say that I had the opportunity to read "This Book is Anti-Racist" and ask some questions to Edgar and the middle school staff. And I'm comfortable with the content of the book and how it will

092be presented in our classrooms. So thank you. I do wanna thank the board for reading the book, for engaging in this important conversation. And I do wanna give a special thank you to Shauna Friesen, who was part of the social justice book club in the determination to choose this book. And is a champion of non-fiction reading and is helping to fill our middle school library with rich, diverse, engaging non-fiction and fiction, but lots of non-fiction. So thank you. I just wanna agree with Amber. It's one of the few that I have actually followed up and gotten a copy and read and it was great. I thought it was really thought provoking and I've already started implementing it within my family, so see how that goes. So thank you, Edgar. I wanted to comment on two

093of the books because I'm not much of a nerd. I looked, I asked Edgar questions about two out of the three. So Edgar, I know I had expressed some concerns at the last meeting about the Latin curriculum introduction and change and I think that you and the Latin teacher had both addressed those sufficiently, I'm very comfortable with moving forward with that curriculum. Although personally as a student of Latin, I loved immediate access to historical texts and I hope that that isn't lost in introductory Latin. Second, regarding "This Book is Anti-Racist", like other board members, I had the opportunity to read it. I had a particular, not unique at this table, but unique opportunity among those who've spoken so far to read it with my seventh grader, which is the age it's being suggested for. And

094while I don't agree with every single choice that's made in the book, I'm a grammar snob and can't deal with certain grammatical choices. I think it seems like it'll be a good addition to the curriculum and I appreciate that it gives our students an opportunity to discuss those things like points of grammar. And you really did answer my questions around it. Yeah, absolutely. I think the context is so incredibly important to the choices, the literary choices that she's making in this text. And it's important. I think that she explains it and goes through all the devices that she's using. Right, and I understand that and I appreciate that you've taken time to explain that to the board and to parents who had questions. Absolutely. Any other discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.

095Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Item 10.03, budget transfers. And that is Susie. Thank you. I'd like to make a motion to recommend that the board accept the proposal of budget transfers as recommended and outlined by Stuart. Thank you. I won't go through each item line by line, but the general headers being a summary of general transfers requested for fiscal year end 2022 from the health insurance fund of $1.9 million approximately to these various other accounts as outlined in the agenda. $19,426 specific transfer requested for the volleyball trust and agency fund of $26,618.53. And a 2022/23 budget transfer of general music supplies of those risers for the amount of $28,332. Thank you, Susie. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ron. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, Motion carries. HYA

096addendum. Jessica? It's recommended that the board approved the letter of agreement that was discussed earlier in this meeting between HYA and the Scarsdale Public School District as presented earlier. Thank you, Jessica. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Jim. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. Motion carries. Item 10.05 is the memorandum of agreement and that is Jim. Thank you. So we did hear from Carol all the detail here with regard to this particular action item. So I'll simply say it is recommended that the board approve the memorandum of agreement for the Scarsdale Teacher Association and the side letter of agreement with the Scarsdale Managers and District Services Association, acronym MADSA, which are attached to the motion. Thank you, Jim. Is there a second?

097Second. Thank you Jessica. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Onto 11 gifts and we have a gift proposal and I will turn it over, oh, back to you Jim. Thank you, Amber. So this is simply regarding a gift to the Scarsdale High School Athletic Department is recommended the board except with thanks, the gift of $1,598 to the Scarsdale High School Athletic Department for the purchase of two windscreens be placed on the grandstand fence at Butler Field. Thank you, Jim. Is there a second? Thank you. Susie. Any discussion? I'd just like to say thank you to Maroon and White for their gift for Butler Field. Okay, All those in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion carries. Now we're onto item 12.01 public comment and

098just as a reminder, members of the public are cordially invited to be present either in person or via remote means and to speak at designated times on the agenda, on agenda items or other non personnel related matters. Oh, I'm reading a little. Each individual has four minutes to speak and will be given a verbal cue at the three minute mark. And community members in present, community members present are invited to speak first, is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak? Hi everyone. (indistinct) I'm actually the co-president of Maroon White. I first wanna say thanks, I wanna say I'm very happy to be here. This is the first time I've ever been at a meeting, the entire meeting. So I applaud you all and thank you for your tireless service and my friend

099Amber, congratulations on being president. I knew her when she was president of Heathcote PTA. I'd like to say I inspired her to become president 'cause I was president of Heathcote PTA. Anyway, I just wanna say so there's a lot of excitement and energy at the start of the sports fall season. I'm sorry I didn't even bring my glasses, I'm such an idiot. We wanted to thank the board for accepting our gifts to the athletic department. First we had over the summer it was, we had gifted the gym equipment for the fitness center and we just did the windscreens for Butler Field, which all will be coming soon. Plus we have many more projects that we look forward to funding this year as well. And I also wanna thank Ray for his commitment and working with

100us to provide the best support for our athletes. And I also wanna say, I think it's great that we also are gonna have a public forum to find our new superintendent. I think it's great that people will be able to give their input 'cause I think it's really important. So I thank you all for that as well. Thank you for your service. Thank you, Amy. Would anybody else like to speak? Okay, let's turn to Zoom and see if anybody's on there. We have one attendee but no one raised their hand yet. We want to give it a couple seconds. I did send a message to the attendees to let them know this is time. We'll give them another couple seconds. Nobody has raised their hand. Okay, let's go ahead and close public comment and we'll

101move on to item 1301. Address matters raised during public comment. I'd like to say thank you again to Maroon and White for your gifts of the fitness equipment and the wind windscreen. We appreciate all that you do for our students. So thank you. I don't know if anybody else, Drew, have anything else? No, just grateful and exciting to hear, what a great start our athletes are off to and we continue to appreciate Maroon and White's support. I know there are other things in the pipeline that we got a preview of today. They're very exciting. So thank you very much. We really appreciate your partnership. Can I ask? Sure. Just in response to public comment, I understand that some parts of Scarsdale are without internet right now. Sections of Edgewood and Green Acres, and obviously if

102you are watching this meeting after the fact. We'll always take your public comment by email, right? Yes. You can always submit public- There may be people who were unable to- Absolutely. To engage. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I don't believe we have any questions that we need to follow up on. So let's move on to 15.01. Meetings for the coming month. The board will hold its next extra retreat at 1:00 PM Friday, September 16th in the high school at room 171-172. On Monday, October 3rd, the board will hold a meeting with a designated group at 5:00 PM in the high school learning commons, a special meeting and or executive session at 6:00 PM at the high school room 170-172, and a business meeting starting at 7:00 PM high school room 170-172. Please note the business meeting

103is a 7:00 PM start for this date. On Monday, October 24th, the board will hold a meeting with a designated group at 5:00 PM at the high school learning commons, a business meeting and education report and strategic plan update at 6:30 PM high school room 170-172, and a special meeting and or executive session if needed afterwards. And on Wednesday, October 26, the board will hold its third retreat at 5:00 PM at the high school room 170-172. Thank you Ron, can I get a motion to adjourn the meeting? Thank you, Susie. Is there a second? Thank you, Jessica. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. No one's opposed. So have a good evening. Thank you everyone.