South Country Central School District Board Meeting 04/23/2025 PART 1

001United States nation indivisible and Okay. Well, good evening everybody. Please take note of the emergency exits and the sides in the back of the room in case of an emergency. Please uh follow directions of our staff in an orderly fashion. Reminder, we are smoke free and vape preschool district. Smoking and vaping are not permitted in the building or anywhere on school grounds. This is also a free and a bullying free schooling free school district. Moving on to item. The administration requesting approval of four consent items reflected in schedule C17. C137. Yeah. We have everybody else gender presence. Is this ready? You want to pull the April second. I need to make it in. Okay. So let's just pull let's just pull item two. We don't have a motion yet. So why don't we just pull

002item two okay with that and then vote on the next recommendation. The administration requests approval of course items reflected in C1 and C37. Can I have a motion second by Mr. Barry? Any discussion? See none. favorite. [Music] All right. Thank you all. Thank you all for coming. First thing I want to start off by saying that um I sort of appreciate everyone coming out and the show of solidarity for sort of the uh struggles and challenges we're facing. Uh one of the toughest things in leadership is to balance polarities that exist in life. What I mean by that, while there are a lot of well there's a lot of tension in the room, there's also a lot of joy in our districts and that's why our students are here, a lot of great things happening

003um in our school buildings and across our district. So I want to present my superintendence report with enthusiasm and fun. Not because I want to invalidate some people may be feeling today, but to validate the feelings of students, the teachers who have been impacting these students uh due to some of these remarkable and extremely positive events that have happened over the course of the last two weeks. So, having said that, I want to get started. First and foremost, I have the privilege of stopping by the Julia Noi scholarship fundraiser at Bel Park Middle School. Um I've been here three years and unfortunately the first two years I had conflicts, but this year I had the opportunity to stop by. I was really impressed by the skills displayed by the staff. Um though I don't know

004if I was too happy with some of the aggressive plays that I witnessed. Um but the event was really well attended. We have a great community that came out to support from our youngest learners to our oldest learners from staff members from parents. Of course it's always a pleasure when some of our notable alumni come like uh Mr. uh Miss um heric Brontes who currently is in the WNBA and plays for the Chicago Sky. She's always very supportive of our school district and appreciative of the time she spent here. Um during the game I was approached by Mr. Glen Mack Makavoy who helps organize the event and he asked whether or not I'd be interested in playing next year's fundraiser and I committed to him that I would. Um but I just want you to

005know that I do have amazing basketball skills. Moving on and that yes students that's AI generated. Moving on I had the privilege of attending Melport High School's college and career fair. There's a lot of interest and enthusiasm shown not just by the students but by the colleges employers and the armed services and uh civil service uh people that were here. It was such a great event. I think a great opportunity one certainly that I didn't have as a student to really explore some future options. Again, we emphasize in South Country that we want our students or our graduates to either be enrolled. We have plenty of colleges represented, enlisted, and several branches of the military service present or employed. We have community members and community organizations present to help sort of uh guide students in

006making choices and even seeking out immediate employment for the suburb. Um so very thankful for everybody who participated. It's always a great show um of support for our community and community organization. um trusty police there had a good time petting a horn lizard from Australia which is pretty cool which was provided by SEO another local organization and very thankful for our local elected officials who come out pictured there is our legislator Dante that comes to a lot of our events and Gersio's office is also represented a great event kudos to the high school staff and everyone participated not photo but deserves a shout out is our culinary program that put out a wonderful spread and for all of our visitors. So, big shout out to our culinary program. Some more general happenings. I got to

007participate in Belport Villages St. Patrick's Day parade, which ironically was April and we had some representation from our high school. Actually, our Latin dance club came out for the St. Patrick's Day parade, which I love because it just shows Aprility of our community and how we get to celebrate each other's culture. Um, Mr. Frank Prada Prada who was a Belport department chaplain was honored and he was a grand marshal of the parade. We also had some elected officials there as well. A great event. I got to hang out with Wolfie from Stonybrook. I also had a fantastic time at Brook Kingman. I went to visit the building for uh just a small visit with Dr. arment and I got to walk around and I was invited to a PE class and I got to tell

008you um you know being a superintendent can be stressful but when you get to hang out with young learners it's pretty fantastic. I got to part participate parachute fun. Um it's the first time I did it in my life and little did I know you can actually have a dance party underneath the parachute. The kids were having an awesome time. The credit to M Miss Venudi Mr. document really provided the students with a great experience uh that was really enjoyed by everyone who was there. Some of our high school students got to participate in the EF tour trip to Europe over the April break. I just got to share some of their photos. They had a fantastic time. I'm not going to front. I was somewhat jealous. I wish I would have been there. But

009they got exposed to great history, culture, food, and perspective by visiting Paris, Normandy, and London. And of course, if you travel internationally, especially your friends, it creates lifelong memories. I also wanted to update the board and the community on our strategic plan. Many of you here participated in planning process that occurred in the fall. Um, we haven't forgotten about it. We received a draft uh of the plan, which is pretty marvelous. We brought that plan to our local strategic planning committee who's working on some edits on the draft. we're looking to launching for the 2526 school year. Included in this uh manual for this action plan, our revised vision, vision, and core values. An action plan that spans five years for the school district with measurable goals. Quarterly updates that will be held at board

010meetings in the upcoming school year. That's 2526. And this process and this product here which features actual photos from our district which I which I love and even we use stock photographs but this process is a culmination of input from the entire South Country community including parents trustees staff administrators and lots of teachers. So I want to thank everybody for their efforts. We look forward to unpacking it and launching it for the 2526 school year. Talking about a blueprint for excellence. I also got to visit the high school last night for Belford High School's evening of excellence and it was a very much an excellent evening. Um, we love studying or observing and acknowledging student achievement. It's one of the most favorite things we do because our students make us really proud and do some

011pretty remarkable things. But what makes tonight even extra special is the fact that our students the class of 2025 acknowledge teachers that were being impactful in their lives from each of our buildings. So, I just wanted to give a shout out to uh Brooken Elementary School's Christina [Music] Politano Burn W. Current's Jac Elementary Schools Frankie Long Schools. Nicholas Perillo middle school teacher Brienne Tory and high school chemistry teacher Christine Milante. Again, this basically demonstrates the impact teachers make and an impact we do not take for granted. Not for my end, not for the trustees. Um, so thank you for all your efforts and being so impactful for these children's lives. I can't imagine what it's like to be a first grade teacher and having a senior recognize the impact you had from years ago. And

012I also want to give a shout out to our top three students, our valadictorian, Kashi Shaw. She's also a West Parade scholar, one of a handful from the country who's getting a full ride to Rice University. So fantastic accomplishment. My saludiatoran, Maya Dixit, is going to be attending my alma moater, Cornell University. Really proud of her. And my SIS, Lily Scythe, will be attending Bingington in the fall. was a big accomplishment. There really [Music] is again a credit to their K to2 instruction here in South Country. Moving on, um I want to give student athletes a big shout out. There are some here. I'm going to give you accolades in a minute, but I want to share something that we really don't talk about that much, which is academic accolades for our students. First and

013foremost, if you look at the boys varsity uh basketball team, the top 75% of the teams averages were 92. That was the average of 75% of the team. Overall team average 87.58. The numbers speak for themselves. Boys varsity track, girls varsity bowling, varsity cheer, girls varsity track, boys varsity wrestling, boys varsity bowling, and girls varsity basketball. This is remarkable. In all, 112 winter athletes had a 90 or above GPA and 31 of them had a 100 or above GPA. So huge a huge accomplishment for our student athletes, for the coaches who inspire them, and of course for the teachers who support them. So really big shout out. And on top of that, Dport High School ranked third with the third most winter scholars in Suffach County. So it's a great accomplishment for our school district.

014And yes, we retired for third with Welville High School and Kovac High School. But uh exactly right. Thank you. Um it's a great accomplishment. But here we have some guests in the audience because we had a pretty remarkable winter sports season. So um I want to begin by giving a shout out to our winter track team which was coached by Dan Jennings and Matt Rossi. And I want to call up Ella Med. Come on. I didn't realize Ella had So, I don't know if I've called your sister Ella, so I apologize. All right, that's what I figured. Congratulations. Ella has been impressing us for the last few years. She's all stage in all generations for 1,000 years. Also, AAZA 55 years, all county, all state, and all federation for a long job, which I have

015no idea how you do that, but impressive. And for our sprint medley relay, we're going to call on AI Rodriguez here. Congratulations to them track team. You guys can stay up here. We got more. Next, I want to make a big shout out to our sort of trend setting revolutionary girls wrestling team host Kate J. So big shout out to number all state by [Applause] annio. Come on down. Congratulations. And there you go. People love you guys again. And I don't want to take anything away from our boys team, but you guys wrestle hard. So, it was amazing to behold and we witness it. So, thank you to the coaches. This picture here was like at the beginnings of the process and who would have known what it would have left to. So, congratulations to

016you all. Very welld deserved voice to coach by Charles. Sorry, I get so tongue twisted when I say the name. It's a beautiful Italian name. and Robert Cuffy. They also had assistance from Jamie Fabian and Kevin Maloney. But I want to call up Henry Sares all county all county and last but not least county state and manual champion at a record time hitting someone in 11 seconds. How's that even possible? Gavin Howard. He's at wrestling figures. So, congratulations to you all. Would love to get a photo of you guys together. Oh, and the coaches, too. My bad. We have certificates for the coaches, too. So, please do uh Mr. Cuffy, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Shioli, and Mr. Rossi right now. You want to go in front of the Jackson? [Music] Yeah, actually right there. I'm just

017going to ask the student athletes to stick around for a little bit because I know the trustees may want to make some comments in recognition of your achievements. Um, moving on. My clicker. Hey, I want didn't want to leave our wonderful athletic trainer out, but it's Miss Gina Harris, who wasn't invited because I learned about this late in the afternoon and was recognized as the National Athletic Trainer of the Year. I know she's always on the sidelines looking out for you guys. So, congratulations to Gina Harris. We'll make sure we acknowledge her. Finally, please follow us on social media. We have various social media handles highlighting the many, many great things that are happening in our school district. Um, if you want our website and the homepage, again, I want to say this over and

018over, our website will be updated. We're be we'll be launching our new website July 1st. Um, but you can stay in touch by subscribing to the community portal. All of our social media links and handles are here at this link as well as the superintendence quarter which is updated on a monthly basis. My contact information, my social media feed and my weekly update for blog is also published on our website. So, thank you all for everything you do for the country. That concludes my superintendence report. [Music] comments. It was incredibly uplifting to see two things out of that presentation. One was the GPA for the students and the teams. And it demonstrates that our students are not just athletes also concentrate on their academics as smart as they go on the sports field or the

019other thing is to sit up here and look at the expanded opportunities for female athletes because it feels to me like it wasn't that long ago that the opportunities weren't And I'm so proud of our district and the participants to see where we come. Thank you. And the Howard family just walked out and I was going to compliment them to say I I graduated high school with their grandmother. [Music] That didn't give away my age, did it? Um, but I was I uh the first uh the first wrestling tournament I went to, I was just so overwhelmed with coaches and how much love they gave to their students in encouragement for those matches. It was I I grew up as a sports kid. I was one of those uh young girls who couldn't play baseball

020as a kid and my mother walked me into the village hall to sign me up for little league and I was told I was told little girls couldn't play baseball even though I could have competed very well with the boys and so I started my own league when I was 18 years old for little girls Petro um Petro youth Athletic Association I started that league so the little girls could have a place to play uh when they were denied opportunities. So, uh, I know. Thank you. So, I know what it takes to be a coach and what it takes to start leagues from the ground up. And I and I know what you guys uh must have had to do to start that league. And I and it I felt the moment I walked in

021that in the gym that day. So, I want to say hats off to you to everything you gave those students to get where they are today. Job, well done. [Applause] I just want to say congratulations to all the athletes. Uh the fact that our scholars again are so prevalent. I think that's terrific. I appreciate uh the time having two girls who are stellar athletes of the balance that takes and then working with teachers and coaches just give a shout out. You guys work really hard. Congratulations. Like to offer my congratulations to all of the athletes. I'm all very proud of your achievements and I'd like to echo uh Miss Feliz's memory of trying to sign up for and because I was involved. So very proud of the young girls in our school making these great

022strides um in athletics and I just want to touch briefly I don't know but I'll touch briefly on um uh the committee the health and safety community that I a few weeks ago and just shout out to the custodial staff and Mr. I have a um a laundry list of notes that I took of um work that they're doing throughout all of the various buildings in the district. Um and I just remember that when I was taking notes about middle school and work that was done on the libraries, I um because I was really [Applause] Just briefly want to uh comment on obviously the athletes but also uh how uh quickly time flies. Uh so last night was the evening of excellence and it was certainly impressive to see all those congratulations uh to the

023the seniors uh for all that they've accomplished in their time at the uh Buffart High School and beyond. And it was fantastic uh to see those teachers recognized uh who really made an impact and were above and beyond nominated for recognition at last night's uh event. Congratulations to the winter athletes and uh thank you a couple things as well. Um, first the superintendent and I had a meeting with some candidates like Dominic Thorne a few weeks ago. Mentioned that earlier. So we appreciate Mr. Thorne reaching out to us. He really just wanted to strengthen communication between the district and his office. He's also a part of an agricultural committee through the through the county and offering up some programs for elementary school students and some grants and things like that. We appreciate the uh communication

024and discussion with the legislative form. Um I also had the opportunity with the essence of the school board to attend the LAA event. Um featured EPA administrator Leldon. It was an education center. Uh we were invited fascinating I thought regardless of your politics to listen to a city cabinet member and some of the other workers in government. Um but again wasn't much other than some discussion about electric school buses which we talked about quite a bit here. Um in addition to that I did want to really just applaud those those athletes that we recognized tonight. You there's such a a great correlation between athletics and performance in the classroom. I did a lot of reading on this many years ago about it and I was spent my career in the sport industry and it's it's

025fascinating to see how the athletes mind works and how athletics really lends itself as well as other things such as music etc. But the uh the stat statistics on athletes there's a book called Spark that talks about the athletes performance on entrance exams into colleges and things like that and how they scored and I found it fascinating. So congratulations to keep that type of schedule up and maintain those grades and it's extraordinary. Um and then for those individual awards and accomplishments in athletics I mean being from sports family sports remarkable some of those ladies in track I'm a track guy obviously I can't run very fast but watching some of these times and some of the performance and the accolades is extraordinary. Um, when I was young, coach tried to get me to wrestle, but

026I wouldn't wear a singlet. So, uh, wrestling's a little foreign and foreign to me, but I I watched a lot this year. We've talked about a lot. And it's such an incredible experience to watch, specifically the girls team, how it came together and just the increase in performance over the last few years in our in our boys program. So, it really is a bright spot, but I think the district ends up and I'm involved in our schools. Everybody wants to ask about a wrestling program and a lot of people want to ask about Cam Howard and his accolades are well known throughout Long Island and probably the country by now. But it really is remarkable and I talked to the coaches and I think they just do an amazing job. Mr. She and I had

027a great conversation a couple weeks ago running into each other in town and u it just makes me feel good what goes into especially something that's new and to echo Misa's comments about opportunities for girls in athletics um it really is remarkable and you never really want to have types of time you want to you know research the academic performance but as well as the benefits that young girls have their adult of playing sports as far as being victimized and things like that. They're extraordinary. Um, so it's just a wonderful thing to see and that level is great. So congratulations to everybody. Thank you. [Applause] Uh, okay. So now we have public commentary or agenda items. Public commentary will uh uh excuse me occurred two times during the meeting. The first time which is now

028for agenda items, second for non-aggenda item later in the uh in the agenda. Comments for each speaker 3 minutes. Total time for public session is 30 minutes. Comments related to a personal matter or individual students will not be entertained with the public. Public commentary is a time for the board to hear comments from the public, not a question and answer period between the board and the public. If asked informational questions requiring short answers uh will be addressed. However, the board will not enter into dialogue with a speaker during public commentary. District residents who seek additional information will be provided to an administrator who will be address their questions. Uh for more you can see our pan in regards to the time. Okay. In regards to the time for three minutes, if you're speaking and the

029buzzer goes off, please finish your sentence. Finish your thought. Don't start a new thought. I hate having to interrupt you and tell you time is up but there's a handful of cards here and I want to give everybody ample time to speak and trustees to uh hear what everybody has to say. Um with that first speaker and if there are any students who want to take this moment to uh sneak out of the room you're welcome to do so now come on out you want to be here. Okay, this is the time and when your name is called, just come over here with the microphone. supportive information. Karen Howard is actually practicing. He's participating in the US Open this weekend. So, wish him luck. Show his clip of pride while he competes in the US

030Open. Pretty fantastic. Our first speaker is Pepper. [Applause] Thank you. My name is Pat Brady, president of Delpoint Teachers Association and special education teacher for 43 years at Del High School. Prior to spring break, myself, Mr. Hudsman, building principles had 43 meetings with my members informing them that they may be accessed. Today I had my 44th with a library media specialist to inform her that she now may be access library media specialist I spoke to today we have two other positions in that that may not be filled to library media specialists that's going to vacate or rid K through three of library media specialist. Our library media specialists go beyond handing out books and doing desks. I go I get go around the district. I flow drones in their classrooms. I've got three books at

031the high school level. Our library media specialist does virtual field trips. Just took my kid to Rome the other week. In the special ed world where I teach, we no longer have code taught forensics, code taught chemistry. Our connections classes are no longer co-our. Again, programmatic cuts to our district. If you read the Long Island events this past week, I was in. And my main point is that with we're here to support our students, cutting the front lines of us is not supporting our students. When the district puts out a poster for a job position, I ask two questions. One, is it necessary? And two, is it sustainable? Overwhelmingly, I'm told yes. What I'm asking is that you find a way to keep these jobs sustainable. We should not be the first place to cut.

032And I feel that we are. You're going to hear from some of my colleagues today expressing this the same frustration that I'm having. Please, I beg you for our students, the culture of our district to save any clip of pride that we may have. I beg you before you endorse a budget. Make sure that the impact on our students and my colleagues is minimal. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] Hi everybody. My name's Amanda Perry. I currently teach at Beler High School and I teach English there and I have for the last eight years of speech. Sorry. Even though this isn't going to change much, I wanted to come up here to represent myself and many other teachers who are in the unfortunate limbo of unemployment. For some of you, I may be a familiar face of

033a former student or colleague. But for our community, I have been a teacher in the district for what would be eight years this September, not including the years that I spent substitute teaching and teaching summer school. The last time that I spoke in front of the board, I was reciting an article that I wrote for the Long Island Advance about my mother for Mother's Day. I had won a writing contest and my third grade teacher, Barbara Shepson, made it a point to make me feel worthy and validated for my work as all of us great teachers do. South Country has been my life for as long as I can remember and it has been a pleasure to impact the thousands of students I've been lucky enough to know. However, I am here speaking with a

034much different tone today. Given the current state of the educational culture here and everywhere, it is extremely concerning to find that our English, reading, and literacy teachers are the ones being cut with the budgeting issues. We have always been always been an underpopulated department. And as the need for literacy increases, it simply does not make sense to cut areas of such need. For me and many others, it is a ground shaker. As mentioned earlier, most of my life has been vested in this community. My two young children have attended South Country celebrations since they were born. Not yet walking, but wearing Balport Red and Blue. Uprooting my life to seek employment elsewhere wasn't anything that I anticipated after 10 years into my teaching career. Nor should it be. Why is it that the English department

035has the fewest hires when locally and federally our initiatives are focused on the science of reading, writing, and improving overall literacy? Quite frankly, it's baffling and it is a loss for so many. For co-workers, they are losing positive peers who make them laugh and helped keep them motivated. They're losing core collaborators who have helped keep the passion for teaching burning bright. For students, they're losing trustworthy, safe adults who have helped to instill school spirit and cliffer pride into their high school experience. They're also losing essential pillars in their educational support system. For our overall community, we will suffer greatly. Morale will further decline as fingers continue to be pointed elsewhere for fall. Trust in the school system will continue to decrease and enrollment will continue to drop. It feels as though the decisions are being

036made for the areas of cuts are senseless and empty. And though we're being told otherwise, I do fear that these cuts will be detrimental to student success. I hope that standing here right now raises awareness that FTEES are not just letters and numbers. We are active members of this district who feel disheartened and betrayed. I just want to say thank you to my supportive department who's been there for all this craziness. um and they've become my second family. So, thank you all so much. Thank all of you for listening today. And thank you to South Country Schools for being a foundational part of my life. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Good evening. I've been a teaching assistant at Belport High School for the last 15 years, but more importantly, I moved to Belport 9 years ago because

037of my deep love for this community and this town. I've worked uh 20 years for the city of New York. And in that time, up until Mike Bloomberg became mayor, every year, hundreds of New York City cops would transfer and switch over to the fire department. But why? The money was the same, the benefits were the same, the danger was the same. In my mind, the reason why is that the FDNY operated as a family. Firefighters, lieutenants, captains, chiefs, they all operated as one. They worked as one. They ate meals as one. They enjoyed success as one. and they suffered hardships as one. Police department was different. The police department was more cops and bosses. And it was more us and them. And I feel that when something drifts into us and them, it's very

038hard to get back. And I see this community that I love at a crossroads right now, right here. And I see families in my neighborhood sometimes put the house up and move out and enrollment is dropping. And I don't have any answers for why, but I do have answers that I work every day with some of our reading teachers and librarians, English teachers, and I see every day with my own eyes the connection they make with our students that you can't get with money. and and to lose that it would take forever to try and get back. So I would ask if it was at all possible if you were able to go back one more time and rework the numbers so we all felt these cuts as one family to try and move forward.

039Thank you for the opportunity. Can you hear me? Is it better? All right. Good evening. My name is Frederria Council and I am an ENL teacher at Tor Haven Elementary School. I initially planned to be a behind-the-scenes advocate, but as a true New Yorker, my heart reminded me that if you see something, say something. So, I stand before you deeply concerned about the decision to potentially access more than 40 positions. On April 17th, 2023, alongside a small group of my colleagues and cherished administrators, I met with Mr. Santana and Miss Doyle advocating for the dual language coordinator position, a role I still believe remains crucial to strengthening our dual language and ENL programs. At that time, Mr. Santana, at that time, Mr. Santana, your enthusiastic commitment to sustaining the position was so admirable, inspiring even.

040Yet two short years later, I find myself advocating for the role currently fulfilled by 40 plus outstanding educators whose absence would create an immeasurable void in our Clipper community. You know, I actually believe the dual language coordinator position would grow as robustly as that of a literacy coordinator where we would have multiple across the district. I even allowed myself to dream that we would one day have multiple restorative practices coordinators who can further support the work being done to foster supportive and inclusive environment for all members in the district. But I guess we're slightly okay with just scratching the surface. ENL and special education teachers who were initially declared safe are now facing outright dismissals or the looming threat of a pink split. What is the plan to ensure we don't go through this again?

041Keep in mind concepts of a plan is not a plan. We would not have been so blindsided by a 3 million dollar deficit if we had a foundation of ethical transparency and accepted that hope is not a strategy. How can educators the wheels of education confidently move our district forward if our tires are being slashed and simultaneously filled with hot air? You're supposed to keep our tanks filled with the best fuel so we don't burn out along. Each board meeting seems to reveal an even larger roster of potential cuts. How can you say programs will not be impacted but meet with almost 50 people who may not return to the district? The proposed discontinuation of positions, letting go of educators and teaching assistants, and reshuffleling remaining staff to satisfy the bare minimum requirements is a

042disservice to our students and completely undermines our district's identity that claims to be rooted in pride. Who is truly accountable if our voices remain unheard? It's time to put the camera down and pick up a mirror. Is this the decision a true reflection? Is this decision a true reflection of your Clipper pride? I'd imagine it to be the implementation of strategic and meaningful changes that value every student, educator, an opportunity we have to enhance our district, not getting rid of more than 40 educators. There are alternative paths from more intentional transportation planning, I'm almost finished, and improving current curriculum to reimagine our our to reimagining central office pay structure. In the past, our bargaining unit has endured pay freezes out of a devotion to our students. So I ask not if but when will central

043office share that [Music] sacrifice. I'll be sending all [Applause] My name is Karen Kierney and I am one of the kindergarten dual language teachers at Brook Haven Elementary School. And I am speaking not only as a concerned educator but as someone who has invested deeply both professionally and personally in the success of our schools, our students and our district. It is no secret that out of 124 districts, we are ranked 123rd in math and 124th in literacy. This is not just a number. This is a wakeup call. But more than that, it is an opportunity, an opportunity for us to make meaningful adjustments, to reflect, and to reimagine how we serve our students and our community. It is a chance to ask ourselves tough but necessary questions. Are we doing everything we can to support

044student success? Are we investing in the right places? And are we listening to the people closest to the work? And in the face of this critical moment, we hear the plans of excessive teachers. Dedicated professionals who show up every single day despite enormous challenges, limited resources, and a growing list of responsibilities that extend far beyond the classroom. We've invested our time, energy, and personal resources because our students deserve the best. Whether it's adapting to program on short notice, translating lessons to meet diverse needs or buying classroom supplies ourselves. Every decision we make as educators is rooted in what's best for our students. We have accepted pay and lean freezes and even allow the district to borrow money from us, not for credit, but because our students rely on us every single day. We would like

045to better understand what financial steps central office has taken to support the district as a whole. Are there any sacrifices or adjustments being made at the level at that level to help ensure that those on the front lines, our educators and staff are supported, protected, and empowered to continue doing their important work, which ultimately comes down to what is best for our students. Cutting teachers is not a solution. It's a short-term move that will have long-term negative consequences. Larger class sizes, lower morale, reduced support for students who are in need of actual more support. These outcomes do not move us up from 124 or 123. They hold us down. Additionally, taking away the singular dual language coordinator position would be a disservice to student, staff, and this community. Dual language students are among the top

046performing students within our district. Because of the strategic support we currently provide, this program is not only academically successful, but it also is ahead of the curve academically and culturally. Fostering an inclusive and forward thinking environment, our approach demonstrates innovative and adaptability, thinking outside of the box to effectively teach two large groups of students within a limited time frame. Why dissolve this position? Clearly, our dual language coordinator and program should be looked at more as an example to follow, not as a target for cuts. Why are we taking away from a program that is succeeding? Shouldn't we be investing more into it? If we want a real change, we need real investment in the people who are directly impacting student lives every single day. It too often feels like these decisions and these cuts and

047excesses are being made based on lines and numbers on a spreadsheet rather than an understanding of the inner workings of a school and the direct impact it will have on our students. This is our moment not just to react but to rebuild not just to cut but to correct. Let's not waste this opportunity. Rethinking accessing teachers and dissolving a court position that makes significant positive changes to our district is a disservice and from last place, not by cutting corners, but by lifting up the very people who make Thank you. [Music] Okay, moving on. [Music] All right. Good evening. So first I want to acknowledge that um everything that was sort of expressed by the Spirit's council was married I can't disagree with the notion that teachers are not valued is a false notion sometimes we

048have to make in leadership positions really difficult pos decisions because our task or we're tasked with a lot more than supporting teachers or a lot more than promoting our programs. We also have to respond to the financial realities that we're facing. I, for one, having spent a third of my career as a classroom teacher, appreciate the value teachers have for our students, for our community, to be honest, for our country as a whole. When I was enthusiastic, for example, about our little language coordinator was genuine. Two years ago, we didn't see or have foresight, not because of lack of planning, that we'd be in the situation here. The point of today's budget presentation is to further articulate the budget process, how we came to make these decisions. I want to emphasize that there is a

049lot of misinformation out there. The decision to reduce staff is not because we want to provide minimal standards for our students or minimal programs or supports to meet state mandates. It's because we have no choice. And hopefully I'll be able to convey that to you. None of this work is easy for myself, for the trustees for administrative staff. Certainly not for the BTA, BTAA, the SCAA or the CSEA and the ST SCGA which is our guard association who all have to sort of share in sort of uh what's happening. I can't emphasize enough how difficult this is because I do value teachers. Many of the teachers that we've hired in the last few years I met with individually. I visited their classrooms and they do fantastic work. There's no doubt this is heartbreaking and it's

050not easy. So I want to begin by going through this process. The point tonight is to kind of give a summary of the whole budget process, how we came to these conclusions and to hopefully give a understanding of where we landed, where we landed. Tonight we have to adopt a budget. Uh we'll have a budget hearing on May 7th and a budget development election on May 20th. But to get right to it, I want to give some context to our budget process. First and foremost, not just once, twice, we visited our budget line by line, multiple times, we looked at any areas, whether it's supplies, software, where we could make cuts to expenditures. That was our first approach. what did we feel was sort of you know extra that we didn't need from these budget

051lines. I can assure you this process was done by myself a cabinet administrators department chairs to ensure we looked at every possible budget line to see where we can make reductions to address our financial situation. Above and beyond that we looked at our services and contracts. We looked at what services we could perhaps eliminate consulting services etc. what contracts we can perhaps reduce and renegotiate to again reduce costs. And finally, as a last resort, we look at staffing. Staffing happens to be the largest component of our spending in a school district budget. So, it's almost impossible not to look at it. And when we say we wanted to do so in a fashion that has minimal impact on programs, we meant it. And as you'll see, a lot of the cuts that we're proposing spread

052across departments because we didn't want to target one department or one program. The idea is to maintain all of our programs moving forward. And all of this was not done in a vacuum. This was done by virtue of working with consultants or professionals in their fields, other educators in other districts who are going through similar challenges. input from stakeholders including our administration, our trustees, our teachers, community members. We've got a lot of feedback that we've appreciated and we've considered. But ultimately, one of the most difficult things for us to appreciate and understand that our current financial situation is real. Throughout my career as an administrator, I've been in this business for 27 years, almost 20 of which was been in as an administrator. I've heard about budget walls and somehow miraculously these budget goals never

053seem to manifest. It surely manifested in 2012 when I worked three village and we had to excess almost 20 teachers from one building which is really large to that point that happened again years later. This was because of the gap adjustment or the tax cap that happened. In fact, one of our employees here was excess from my building back then. So this has happened in the past, but it's almost rare that the situation is as dire as it is now. The rising costs of operating the school district is outpacing the increases or any increases we have in revenue. Our revenue structure is very strict and rigid. We're not a for-profit business. We're not a private school where we can raise tuition to meet these operating costs. And we're not a private business where we've raised

054prices to meet these operating costs. So, let me take you through the budget process from beginning to end so that hopefully you get an understanding of how we got here. That's going to make you feel better. There's nothing I can say that's going to make anyone who's in danger of losing their position feel better at this point. As much as I can offer my assistance moving forward in terms of helping you land a position, you use me as a reference. I'll do anything possible to help out, but nothing I'm going to say tonight will make those people feel better or your colleagues for that matter. I feel really badly about that, but that's not about me. So, let's get to the process. On January 2nd, we had our first budget presentation. We talked about the

055challenges that we're facing. Some of these challenges are very familiar to us. First, it's inflation and the tax cut calculation. What I mean by that is inflation has been astronomical. We all know it. We all joke about the price of eggs. Cost has just simply been going up year after year. What has not been going up is our ability to raise tax cap. The ability to generate revenue. So imagine inflation being super high. Our ability to generate revenue staying static. Sacrifices need to be made. For the past three years, we had the benefits cutting this federal grant. and the total of $12 million 12 $2 million one year, $6 million one year and $4 million one year. Those grants were used to offset expenditures which provided a cushion. We also have differential and building state

056aid, but it's building a bond payments. This is the financial cliff that we're talking about that we're in the second year of. These things were anticipated and we planned for it by doing different things, by using our reserves differently, by making it cuts to expenditures and other areas. But this is what we anticipated. Decreases in foundation aid was not anticipated two years ago when we instituted some of these positions. What I mean by decreases in foundation aid is last year our foundation aid was flat. We got the same aid last year that we got previous year or rather this year last year's budget for this year our foundation aid was flat which is basically like a decrease because our operating costs are always going to go up. There are salary increments cost of operating goes

057up. So it's essentially like a flat sort of or even a decrease if you look at it from that perspective. this year in the governor's initial proposal. And this is something that we're lobbying for because it's almost criminal that we don't have a proposal yet at this date because our foundation aid will change. Now, that may change where we stand with our staffing, which I'll talk about later, but we got allocated 2% in foundation aid. It's about $800,000. Even with that increase, because of our building a dropping, we are suffering a net loss of 1.2 $.2 million in state aid for the upcoming school year, coupled with rising expenses. We've also had significant increases in healthcare, transportation, and special a education costs. More and more students who are registering in our district despite our declining

058enrollment require special education sources that come with a cost. And I hate saying that because I don't want to demonize these children who are really they deserve our services. So please don't mistake what I'm saying. They just come associated with costs. This year alone we have new entrance 11 who have outside placements. They're very costly to a school district. So again it's not about demonizing these children. They they deserve those services. We want to best support them but they come with costs. So how are we planning to mitigate these sort of challenges at this point in our budget process? Well, obviously we're looking at our programs and what I mean by that is supplies, instructional supplies, programs, software where we can see where we can reduce the expenditures. We're looking at ongoing um exploration of

059alternative revenue sources. We've even contemplated tuitioning kids in special ed because that generates revenue for school districts. looking at some of the spaces. Do we have extra classrooms that we lease out to BOSEIS for example to generate revenue? We looked at that and we also looked at the use of our reserves. Can we use the reserves to a greater extent or assigned fund balance which I'll explain in a minute to a greater extent because that could be used on the revenue side in the balance budget. And finally engage in capital improvement projects. The reason that benefits this whole process is because when you engage in capital improvement projects, you generate building a 20 years ago or 15 years ago, 16 years ago, the school district engage in a bond at about $und00 million, I believe

060it was, if I'm wrong. So, obviously, you take out a loan and you receive building aid at the rate of almost 75% and that building aid is spread out over 15 years. the school district, which is a very common practice, took out a bond for 20 years, which meant that there's going to be a 5year differential between making bond payments that amount somewhere in the uh in the area of about $6 million a year. So during those years, we're going to have that differential because that state aid was dropping, but we'd have these bond payments. Typically, school districts will take out another bond to continue to work. So you always have that influx of building a coming in. And the truth is, anybody who owns a house knows you have to keep maintaining the house

061because the cost to make repairs starts becoming sort of um unsustainable. Capital reserve work too, I'm sorry, capital improvement work too is budget neutral. Capital improvements come out of our capital reserve which is already in our general fund. So it doesn't represent any cost to our taxpayers or any additional monies. And yet we receive state aid. So since I've been here, we have two capital reserve notes. One for 2.6 6 million, one for $2.2 million. We're finally breaking ground on all those uh projects this summer. We also engaged in the energy performance contract which is budget neutral at almost $9 million that will receive state. The way that works is engineers study our district for breaking ground this summer on this to increase efficiencies. And basically what happens is you're going to get state aid

062for that work and you're going to have a reduction in your operating cost in terms of energy. and that sort of becomes budget neutral. We also added capital transfer or capital transfer budget line. What that enables us to do is you embed a line in our budget that the voters vote on when they approve our tax that allows us to do an amount of money's worth of capital work each year. Two years ago, we added a $1 million transfer capital line in our existing budget so that we can engage a million dollars worth of work every year with the hopes that if you do that every year, you're going to start generating building aid for subsequent years. And each year that you do a million dollars worth of work, that doesn't have to translate to

063a lot of money. We spread that over 15 years, it's about $100,000 a year, but in a second year of getting building a you get 200,000 and 300,000 and so on and so forth. So that was a very deliberate plan and we have capital reserve bills and we also have to consider future bond proposals because the cost of maint maintaining our buildings is becoming sort of unsustainable as things keep falling apart. At this point we talk about staffing reductions in terms of attrition. How many staff members going to be retiring? How many staff members maybe we're separating from? and would there whether or not that would be enough to sort of reduce an expenditure in a manner that we could sustain and propose a balanced budget. That was our first presentation. Our second presentation I'm

064going to rush through, but it was basically about the tax levy. The tax levy is the amount of money we get from our taxpayers to help fund the school district. Across the country, that only represents 46% of our budget or our revenue. 54% comes from state aid and miscellane miscellaneous uh revenue. The tax levy limit is based on an eightpoint formula that's banded by the state. There's no wiggle room that basically tells you how much you can ask for in terms of tax levy that would require a simple majority vote to get approved and anything beyond the tax levy limit of what we like to call a tax cap requires a super majority vote. Um so we proposed two scenarios at this time. Scenario A which had a 3.48 tax levy limit did not include

065a transfer to capital line. And the reason we provided that to the trustees at this time is because we knew we had some financial challenges. Scenario B included a transfer to capital line of a million dollars which raised the tax levy limit to 4.9%. or $71 million or $71.5 million to 7424 million obviously $1 million increase. The only caveat to that is that extra million cannot be used to offset expenditures or to pay for salaries. It can only be used for capital improvement projects. So when we looked at our revenue sources, we saw again that we had a little over $1.2 $2 million decrease in our revenue from the state. This meant we'll be happy to look at the story we can't read it. That's a list of our reserves and assigned fund balance. Assigned

066fund balance is basically the balance of monies left over for one year that could be assigned for use in in the subsequent year. So we knew we would have to look at this see if we increase the use of reserves for a couple years to sort of close that gap. maybe provide more assigned fund balance to help close the gap. But knowing that our expenditures were going up and that we would not be able to use a transfer capital line um to offset expenditures, we strongly recommended to the trustees that we go with scenario A because we knew in all likelihood that we'll probably go be going up right up to the uh tax levy limit in our proposal. And if we're going to propose a tax levy limit of 4.9% in this current climate,

067we have to be mindful of taxpayers, we thought in our opinion it wouldn't be the right thing to do if that increase would not help save jobs in our district. So the tax levy limit at 3.48% or 4.9% allowed us the same revenue to be used for expenditures. There was no difference except for the million dollars that we could have used to make improvements to our buildings. That was the second presentation. Our third presentation, we talked about three budget lines. The 1000 code, that's administrative cost, everything it cost to administer the school district, transportation, and unallocated. Unallocated is basically government obligations, debt services, employee entitlements. Um, and at this point in our budget process, we're already alarmed. And at this these three categories, the 5,000 goal, which is transportation, the most alarming, there were significant

068increases at this point in these three categories out of the four category scores we had. We were showing a 7% budget to budget increase, which considering inflation, considering the way the economy is going, doesn't seem that remarkable. But when you consider that our revenue structure is so rigid that we can't really increase our revenue that much, it was a cause of alarm for our team. So then we went on to the curriculum code which is 2000. The 2000 code is our largest budgetary code. It represents all of curriculum instruction salaries general sorry general education classrooms special education classrooms and all extracurricular activities. At this point at this presentation on March 5th we're looking at a 3% increase. And if you look the 2000 code currently it's about $73 million. That's basically half the budget alone

069comes from that code. But altogether budget to budget it was a 5% increase which again was remarkable for us because of our rigid revenue structure. So we knew the next step in our next presentation just happens to be staffing. So what can you do in terms of staffing with minimal impact to programs so we can reduce it perhaps with attrition maybe more in a manner that's going to help reduce that budget to budget increase. What we considered when we came to staffing I said this before is we want to continue to meet the academic and social emotional needs of our students that goes without saying and that continues. We also wanted to make sure that we are in compliance with special education mandates, ENL mandates, and SED mandates. In South Country, we offer more than

070what's mandated. And even with our proposal today, we're still going to be able to combine more than what's mandated. Maintain academic and extracurricular activities to the greatest extent possible. I can say with confidence that we're not cutting our programs. Still have a dual language program. We're still going to have our restorative practices program. We're still going to have all of our extracurricular activities. We just have to sort of rethink in some areas how we support it, how we deliver it, but we're not looking to cut any programs. And we also have to respond in a responsive manner to our declining enrollment. We've lost 600 students in the last 10 years. From last year to this, we've lost 111 students. We continue to have transient students. We're registering students. I feel like we register students almost

071every week. But we also are losing students. And of those students who are registering disproportionately, they're English language learners and special education students, which are all wonderful kids that we're going to support, but they also represent additional costs. So given those rises in expenditures, we have to look at making staffing reductions that align with our staffing or sorry our declining enrollment. And our plan, which is not a hope, it was a plan to sort of reduce staff to sort of write the ship. Long-term attrition and retirement separations was sort of upended because there's urgency and we had to sort of make tough decisions. Now, so on March 19th during our fifth budget presentation, we wanted to preserve small class sizes as much as possible. We looked at our available um revenues and gradually adjust given

072the declining enrollment. So during this time, we proposed a reduction of one administrator and two teachers on special assignment, which we referred to before. We proposed a reduction of 7.2 elementary school teachers. Again, our average class sizes with these reductions are relatively small when you compare it to Long Island. School districts don't reduce staff unless they need to. Because if we can maintain small class sizes, even if they're disproportionately small, why not do it if it's sustainable? Why not do it if you have the revenue to support it? Again, we're not a private business. And at the secondary level, this is across middle school and secondary school. We propose a 15.5 FTE. And again, this is not people. It's the FTS reduction across departments. So when you see that there's reductions in ENL, special ed,

073it doesn't mean we're losing people. It's just we try to spread the reductions out as much as possible so that not one just area is impacted disproportionately to another [Music] area. Again, I know this is hard. Existing programs are still going to exist. The way we support students may look different, but we're not eliminating programs in our school districts. Even when we refer to the library program, we're not done with the staffing process, even with the adoption or the potential adoption of a budget, which I'll get to in the end, what it means for us moving after that. But as we said, on this point, we knew that we needed to continually look at our staffing. And so we're going to look at the non-instructional staff next and continue to look at expenditures. The idea

074at this point was can we save some of these jobs, the 25 jobs in any manner. Again, just to review, we knew we're going to have deficit over three years. We had a deficit this current year that we mitigated by making sort of budgetary reductions. I cut the program budgetary reductions that took effect this year. This school year, we're expecting a deficit of about $1.3 million. This was all expected. And again, this year, we had a reduction of state aid of $1.2 million. We planned for this. What we didn't plan for, and what's new, again, just these four areas, these astronomical increases that are yeartoyear. There's no gradual increases in these areas. We're looking at over a $5 million increase. that doesn't include increases like salary increments, um salary adjustments and all those things that

075go up or the cost associated with operating school districts. So this is what was new. This is what was alarming to us. And after that staffing presentation, our next presentation was to go over our revenue and expenditures and provide an update. So at this point, we looked at our revenue again. We saw that we had a reduction in state aid of about $1.2 million. We needed to look at the appropriate fund balance. We had proposed initially a reduction in that because what that means for us is that you may have more funds available for contingencies cuz things do happen. When a sewer line breaks, that's an astron astronomical cost to maintain. You want to make sure that there's cushion in your budget to address these things. You don't want to propose budget that's extremely tight.

076it just doesn't serve the school district well. So, we knew we would have to look at our reserves and our appropriate fund balance at this point already. When we looked at the expenditures, this change, if you recall, it was about 5% in the last present in the last presentation. We reduced it to about 4%. This is inclusive of the staff reductions that were already produced. But what I want to emphasize is that we still had a $3 million budgetary gap even with the 25.5 FT reductions in the BTA. We still had a $3 million budgetary gap because of the unprecedented increases in these expenditures. So what that meant was we had to again go back to the drawing board look at expenditures in every budget line,000 the 5,000s and the 9,000s and as well as

077potential staff uh reductions. The reason we met with 40 plus people was because we have a legal obligation to inform staff of the potential of excessing the staffing cuts. So we wanted to cast the net widely to make sure we were legally covered. Not to upset people, not to create fear or any sort of ambiguity in your future, but basically we were required to do so. So we had to go back to the drawing board when it came to staffing. We renegotiated contracts with our transportation. We were able to reduce it by half. The contract alone, the 60% increase in transportation, twofold. First is the contractual increase which is 9%. The rest of the increase was the increased need of small buses. Each small bus we use to transport education students cost the district about

078a little over $100,000 a year. So we had a sort of unprecedented increase in use of these buses. And we did look at routes. We work with a consultant to look at all aspects of transportation to make sure we're as efficient as possible. And that process will continue because again the goal is to continue reducing expenditures. The problem is maintaining a 10 to1 student teacher to student ratio is certainly it's just not sustainable. How do we arrive at this ratio? You divide the total number of classroom teachers not BTA members by our enrollment. And currently just to give you a sort of sense of where we're at refer to my notes. We currently have 379 classroom teachers. This not to mention support staff, counselors, speech pathologists, psychologists, social workers, and our current enrollment is 3759.

079So you divide 3759 and the amount of classroom teachers give you that ratio. It's a pretty low ratio when you compare it to the average in New York State, which is about 12%. and I'm sorry 12 to1 which doesn't seem that remarkable but it is when you look at the totality of the teachers affected so we have to revisit our sort of staffing proposals and this increased increased because we had additional retirements um we also had some reassignments but when you look at elementary staff it went up to 13.6 FTEES secondary staff 18.6 so total of 35.2 to FTEES reduction. Again, this doesn't represent bodies, it represents FTEES. Secondly, we looked at the non-instructional staff, which includes 16 reductions across all of our collective bargaining units. To break it down, that represents 12 TAs, three

080of which are retiring, nine of which are potentially accessed, three safety officers, and one custodial is retiring. Again, all really difficult decisions to make. If and when the budget is adopted, we have to revisit this because we're going to work backwards. This is where we collaborate with our administrators, collective bargaining units to see how we can deliver this in a manner that's not going to affect or minimally affect our programs and the manner in which we support students. So, the process continues. It's not just as easy as saying we we adopt a budget, this is cut positions. we continue with the process. We're also going to continue exploring revenue sources, other expenditures we could cut because again what we budgeted for in terms of staffing, it's not and I don't want to give falsehood, but

081it's somewhat fluid if things or situations change. If by empirical the governor puts out a proposal that gives us a 5% increase in foundation aid, that may change things. We don't have the proposal yet, so we can't answer that question. And again, I want to say existing programs, our goal is to maintain them. We're going to be running all the programs we run. Again, the way we deliver it may look different, but we're going to be maintaining our programs. Even if we went with this full reduction, even if we reduce everybody, our student teacher ratio will be 11 to1. It's still low. With this reduction, we go down to 352 classroom teachers. And again with our current enrollment that would be the ratio across the district. And again I want to emphasize school districts don't

082reduce staff unless it's absolutely necessary. So I want to go back to my initial points. We've worked many many hours looking at our expenditures looking at budget reductions. All of us, Sige, so Hagen, Sir Mr. Huntsman, administrators, we've spoken to teachers. We've got input from teachers and community members. We looked at what services and consultants could maybe not use next year and make cuts in those areas. And we also looked at staffing and we're going to continue looking at staffing and make our final determinations which will happen in the next few weeks. I want to emphasize again, financial challenges we're facing are real. We cannot sustain the financial ability of the school district without making these hard decisions. I was appointed by the board of trustees to provide that leadership to make these tough decisions.

083Not because it's easy, but because it's necessary. I visualize the teachers that may be a affected. I say it over and over again. None of this has to do with how we feel. And I'm sure I can speak about the trustees about the value teachers have. I highlighted it in my superintendent report. I highlight it in all my superintendent report. I owe my life to public education. And you all know what that means. I owe my life to the teachers who helped inspire me and take a kid out of poverty who's English language learner and achieve success at least in this profession. So when we looked at our balance budget proposal, our final balance proposal, just to review, we're proposing a tax levy of $71 million or $71.5 million. We're using our appropriate fund balance

084to a large larger extent and all of our reserves to larger extent, which is sustainable for the coming future. So our final proposed tax levy limit for the proposed budget will be 3.48%. [Music] When we look at our budget to budget increase year to year, we landed at about an increase about 3% or [Music] 3.87%. And finally, the fund proposal tax levy is going to be at the cap at 3.8%. So the question was raised number one, I think I answered, why not go with scenario B, which was a 4.9%. because those monies allocated for capital reserves cannot be used to offset expenditures. It can only be used for capital reserve work. The idea appears to the cap each percentage point represents about a million dollars or about point and a half. In order to

085preserve the jobs proposing cutting, we would have to propose a tax levy close to 10%. We also have to be mindful of our taxpayers because again only 46% of our revenue comes from the taxpayers. And that would just sort of put this financial crisis into the next year. Please don't interrupt me. You're not going to interrupt the presentation. You know the rules. You've been meeting before. You know what you want to speak to. So I'm going to say this, right? It is. Yes, it is. Please let us finish the presentation. We're not lying. Dr. Odon, with all respect, I'm not going to go back and forth, but I ask for your respect just like I give it to you. Mr. Odicon, conduct yourself appropriately. You're going to be asked to leave. It's that simple. Excuse

086me. The only option is that No, excuse me. So, we're not taking comments from the audience. We have an opportunity commentary. So, let me conclude. So, basically, I'm going to say it again. Piercing the tax cap is just going to propel the crisis because of declining enrollment. We decided to foundation aid another year. At a certain point, we have to sort of have staffing that we can sustain moving forward because part of my responsibility is a financial stability of the school district. So, our balance budget proposal is again a budget budget increase of about 3%. A tax increase of 3.8%. Above and beyond this, on May 20th, we're going to have a proposal for us to approve the tax levy and a second proposal for a capital reserve bill. And again, these funds cannot be

087used to offset expenditures that designated for specific purpose to address our track because it's unsafe. We want to be able to host events and have our students work on a track that's safe and accessible. The windows in our gymnasium continue to leak down to the floor, which represents more additional costs. They're not glamorous, but replacing two boilers at the high school that are pretty decrepit. The cost of maintaining those boiler boilers is pretty astronomical. And what we're planning to do is not just remove the old boilers, but salvage their parts to use those parts to repair other uh uh boilers that may go down. All of this is very well thought out. And I want to say that um sort of um this idea and some of the input I received um some of the

088disparaging comments, it doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't change our situation. When I hear comments like people are so upset that they're not going to vote on budget day, I want people to think about what that's going to accomplish. We need to support our teachers. We need to support our school district. These are really difficult times we're facing. None of this is easy. If we had an option, we would not be doing it. Have an option. Just go to I don't know how many times I got to remind you. Conduct yourself appropriately. You're going to be asked to leave. It's that simple. I appreciate that, Dr. Mr. President. Um, so that's it. Our uh budget hearing will be on May 7th, May 20th. We both again want to just validate how people are feeling and hopefully

089you have an appreciation of the process and where we're at. Um, financial situation is extremely real. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Questions for the board, trustees. Let me just start my question. When I took this job as a board, maybe let the microphone closer to your mouth. When I took when I took this job seven years ago, put a job in quotation marks. Um, I have this intellectual understanding that my first obligation was to the children of this district, each and every one of them, but that I also had corresponding obligations to district employees and taxpayers. And sometimes the interest seemed very difficult to balance. And that's where we are. needs to be tonight. It demonstrates extraordinary challenges that are faced by this board and this administration and the administration that's charged with operating

090the district because we're presented with a financial situation that's not in our control. The entire system of financing in the state of New York has contributed to this problem. The way they do the foundation aid, the various state aids, the fact that we can accumulate reserves equal to only 4% of a budget that would be available in times like this. And in times like today, that 4% just was not enough. So, um, I just want to go have you perhaps repeat or maybe emphasize a couple of points that I think are really critical because I've heard from a number of people who share my concerns about the impact of this proposed budget on the delivery of programs and services to our students. And since I've been struggling with these for the past few weeks, I

091want to ask you through each of them. So, I've got a series of questions. And the first is, could you explain a little further about how the change in delivery of services can still provide the service? in this district over the last few years be like more specific in terms of which there's so there's such a wide spectrum of services so we talk about special education services how best we talk about electives for example losing the code to our classes that MR brought up how best can we support the classroom teachers that is also not a typical practice to have uh co- teachers in electives um even if they're graduation uh requirements. The idea is how can we differentiate and make these courses more accessible to students. So working with uh so Hagen in terms

092of our instructional delivery how can we provide support to the teachers to best support our students. Um we talked about dual language or in the options potential options of the dual language coordinator. Can we minimize that role to the chair position? Can we provide uh additional sort of support in other ways? That's what we have to look at when we talk about uh special education. We're mandated. So those reports aren't really uh sort of changing. Um and aside from that, we're not reducing any programs. We're still going to be offering art if there's a reduction in librarians or information specialists as spoken about Miss Brady. Can we keep librarian and split them between the buildings so they still can have access programs and perhaps maintain our librarians or information specialists at the high school or

093intermediate level? But it it runs like the whole gam. Um I hope that answers that question. Can I go to my next question which is could you elaborate just a little bit about or emphasize the fact that the transportation increase and the health insurance increase basically popped up after the initial um association process started because We had our transportation contract that increase initially 9% of the contract 16% because the additional use and that came up after our budget process started. Correct. So that was basically sprung on us in the middle of your plan. In addition, we have insurance, right? Way beyond any expected% increase. Is that correct? Yes. Well, we had a miniear increase this year that we budgeted for 5%. We weren't expected to rise another 10% for the next school year. And um

094so my final question is really going to be the one that you heard me ask you. In spite of this very difficult situation, are we still going to be able to provide the programs and services to our kids that we're currently providing as well as the new classes at the high school that were the subject of our presentation? That's correct. the guns. So, I'm just gonna say this seems to be a situation where it's out of our control. It's not anything that our district did to create this It was a combination of the way the state does our funding and the way these increased costs went up in a way that were unanticipated. And unless there is no way to find more money and what you presented is been an exhaustive look at it. the

095only we're left with the only opportunity of having the staff reduction that you have described to us and that puts us in a very awful situation that I don't see a choice in order to keep us presenting to the taxpayers a budget that is within the tax. I don't see anything other than the alternative. Trusty Hayes, if there was an alternative or if any confidence is an alternative, I'm proposing it. I'd be the first one to be proposing it. Not that this doesn't make anybody feel better. I engage in conversations from other superintendents. There are multiple school districts going through this. I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges, but this is not only unique to us. This has been sort of a remarkable year. not remarkable in a good way. I value teachers and

096again school districts don't reduce staff because we want to operate in a leaner fashion. We don't staff that's basically the last thing you do. That's why even with declining enrollment if you can sustain a certain amount of staff you maintain it. If our K to3 classrooms average in some of our buildings about 18 students with 16 students and you can maintain it, why not? But this year the situation is real and we cannot increase despite people's beliefs finances increase the cap tax cap people are in financial distress. We also have to be mindful of our taxpayers and so we have to be mindful of our taxpayers as well as part of our sort of a fiduciary responsibility. Less than half% or 46% of our revenue comes from our taxpayers. the undue burden to put the

097entire burden on the taxpayers with the staffing levels that are not sustainable moving into the future. How many subsequent years of piercing the cap are we going to propose to keep staffing levels that don't really match up with our enrollment? And again, I'm saying that not because I don't value teachers. I'm saying that because the situation, the reality of our situation has gotten to us to this point. M yes superintend I'd like to go back to your slide number 13 actually that slide twice in the beginning and yes where you say it's um a careful comprehensive analysis And I'd like to thank Trusty Hayes for her comments and she sells herself short. Miss Hayes asked for a special board of directors meeting, board of board of trustees meeting to go through the budget more so

098that we could look at other other ways that we could um to look at the budget to see if there were other ways in which we could find some savings. We get a trust we get a treasures report every month. It's 50 some odd pages. We we were we did not have that special meeting. Clarification. I'm sorry. The request of the meeting was not to discuss the budget. Okay. There was no request that special meeting for budgetary purposes. Any trustee Mr. Odicon and like what is it like 10 times? Like you just you're the only person who gets to talk here. Stop interrupting people. There's rules. You don't know you're not talking. All right. Let me clarify my state. The request of the meeting was for something else. I answered the I answered the request

099to say that I was going to need for the purposes of budget strategies. That just to clarify, um I was willing to meet more because I didn't feel like we were meeting enough about the budget um and that we were needing to meet with the superintendent individually about budget issues. I am frustrated over the process here and I and the question I have for the superintendent here, the comprehensive analysis that you did and the and the people that you met with. You said you met with um with consultants. What consultants did you meet with and input that you get from professionals in education and various stakeholders? Sure. So basically I want to make a point of clarification. At each step of the budget process, we made ourselves available for trustees. We had many individual meetings

100where I went over our budget lines. We also provided itemized budget lines for their entire budget at each step of the process. In terms of the consultants with we have transportation consultant, we have financial advisors. We have internal auditors. We also reach out to who are they? Who were the financial advisor? Who was can you help with the name? I don't know the name of the uh firm off the top of my head. I I don't think they can hear. I don't think the audience can hear. Well, I think so. The name I can provide I can provide the names of those consultants in our update. So, um but we but I'd like them now. We have to vote on this budget now. [Applause] Our internal orders are Smith. Okay. And what did they advise

101you? So we look at all of our sort of expenditures and what could be cut and why it's sustainable. So when we look at with a transportation consultant which is an individual they look at busing routes they help with the negotiations. We also work with a consultant and I apologize for not committing these names memory that helps us maximize our state aid in terms of state uh professionals in education. It's other superintendent our professional coaches. I give individual names for those people but it's inconsequential. Um we work with other business officials. We also have our associations. We have Suffach County School Superintendent Association. We have ASPO which is the uh business association. We talked to all these people throughout this entire process. In fact, tomorrow I have a a conference with Suffach County Superintendent talk

102about aid budgetary that's happening tomorrow. Tomorrow is too late. But it's been going on. It's been going on. Mr. Chantel, with all due respect, you know, I've been frustrated with this process from the beginning. The treasurer's report that I referred to before has and and I think we spend too little time uh too little time on the process going forward. We need we need a full report on this treasurer's report. We need to be given a full report. We need to go through it every every meeting that we're addition to line by line on what's in it. For for example, they we we go through it. It's every single budget line is in here. Um contracted building and ground services, salary of responders, every single budget line is in here, personnel service, uh supervision of

103uh of regular school, four $4.6 million. And it and it goes through how much is in the budget, how much adjustments have to be made to it, expenses, expenses that are encumbered. This the last the two budgets that we approved tonight, the two treasures report we approved tonight, the last one we approved was February's. So in here and the encumbered money that that is approved should be taking us through the end of the school year. The last page because there was a glitch in the system. The last page wasn't given to us until what two days ago page 57 gives us a balance report. We we also from this report, we we put a fund balance into the next year's budget of $4 million. So, we have to make sure that we don't spend $4

104million. So, it gets put into the to the to this year's budget. Correct. Did we do that? We put it into the budget. What we're going to end up, we're not going to go to the end of the school year when we get finished. So, when we finalize our our fund balance projects to come, we're filing the reports in a timely fashion. So whether or not we're going to go over every single budget line, that'd be sort of a monstrous task to accomplish. Um like you said, it's 57 pages long. Trustees are always welcome to ask questions about our our treasurer's report or the treasur. Do I do that? Do I do that about this report? Uh you didn't ask me. Yes. Okay. Do I do it on a regular basis? Um yes, I do.

105I do it on a regular basis. And even that's not enough. Um because it's a very cumbersome report. And that's what I'm saying. I don't think we spend enough time. I don't think the board of education spends enough time to understand this report because there's a lot there's a lot of lines in this report. And this table is not as big as my dining room table. And that's why I have tables all over the place. But and I have I have three lines this report to see. There's many lines in here. Foster homeless tuition regular school and budgeted $45,000 adjusted budget $45,000 available. $45,000. Is there $45,000 in that line available? Yes. Basically, the budget is a tool know if there's $45,000 in that line. So, the budget is a tool. It doesn't represent actual

106money. It represents money allocated for specific purposes. So we have to allocate certain funds for certain purposes. Whether or not they're used or not, we determine at the end of the year. So if we don't have to provide force or home tuition in this current school year, that goes into our fund balance. So So that's what I'm asking. These professionals that that you consulted with, did each and every one of those were each and every one of those lines comb through? We comb through every budget. Yes. were all the lines that so all the lines everyone [Music] encumbered and encumbered everybody knows what encumbered means are the money that you need to the end of the year gets put aside so that you don't use it so I would assume that all the money can

107a question be asked of miss but for this you could ask me this was this was so all the money that that is needed through the end of the year should have been coming for this report. That's correct. Okay. So, we shouldn't be surprised that we, you know, oh no, we have another expense. Well, no, because things can happen. We stopped our purchasing in about end of February, but if something breaks down, if we have some sort of catastrophe in the school building, okay, we have to respond to it. What's also mostly encumbered are all the costs associated with end of year activities like graduation. We haven't spent money yet. We should be encumbered. Uh here's here's another here's another group of of u expenses that I highlighted. Library books. Now now we're talking about

108uh accessing library specialists. Who's going to be responsible for the for the uh budget and expenses of library books? So we have the curriculum office looking at but one of the things that we're looking at in terms of reducing expenditures is whether or not we could do the moratorum or board review books for a year to reduce those expenses. So that's another budget line item that we looked at to reduce. So that decision's been made or it hasn't been made. We reduced the amount not totally but the amount of books because again it's between you know what's ideal what we want and what's needed. So with this budget, $147 million budget, these so the lines that are here, you went back into into all of these lines and these budget lines, you appropriated each one

109of these budget lines. We went through it. So Aan did it, she did it with staff. We did it over a two week period. Yes. What I'd like to propose going forward for the for the trustees. This is something to talk about further. This I think this report should be given to the board and actually gone through it so that we know so that this so that this report is fully understood each and every even each and every time that it's that it's given to us as you see it's given to us in a consent agenda. We don't discuss it and and I think that's wrong. I think you know having having experienced this uh sudden onset of a of expenses that came on to us suddenly as Miss Hayes said after the budget presentation

110presentation started we need to be more prepared the next time around so we're not blindsided um the also the health um consortium that we are in with three other school districts is that I think we should be given quarterly reports on those meetings as well so that we stay on top of what the costs are to th for those expenses as well. Um that's also something that we were again unaware and it and we were blindsided by it. Um as I many people know I was a former president for the civilian workers in Suffach County 6,000 active members uh with 10 other unions in the county. We had 48,000 lives in that in our consortium for self-insured program. We met monthly and uh and stayed on top of all the expenses there. So health insurance

111very important to all the employees something that we should stay on top of more regularly and then we won't we won't be blindsided in those uh in those situations. Um Secondly, third, where am I? Uh the blueprint strategy planning day that we had with our strategic planning. You mentioned it in your in your report. Also think we really missed an opportunity here. you had on January 9th over about 70 80 people together at the high school that got together for the strategic planning with the with the uh with the mission statement with the v vision um talking about value respect giving doing our very best solutionoriented equitability morale that day was at an all-time high putting that strategic to plan together. Again, we didn't know this was going to hit. And now I just I

112just feel all the money, effort, time, volunteer time that teachers, administrators gave, community members gave to be there that day to come together as one, as a team, united. I'm speechless. I'm really speechless. as to the effort that went into that strategic planning that to me seems useless now. to really seem useless and I'm frustrated with the process because I also asked and I don't know why any any board of any board of education member in asking for information to understand this process and I explained to my board of education members earlier in executive session that I was very much a [Music] part in 2012 a massive layoff in um in S County under the then county executive leading and county executive long. 370 layoffs. That was not a pretty situation and it was useless

113and I worked very hard to get all those people their jobs back and it was very disruptive and unnecessary. And I struggled to find the right words tonight for what was going to h have to happen here. And I and I'm I regret the process here. And I don't feel like the process was well thought out. The one document that I wanted and not all my board members agree with me that I wanted to see is I wanted to see an employer list of every job that we have in this in this school district and I was denied seeing that list and I can't wrap my head around not getting a full picture of where our employees are, what those titles are so that I can get a grasp when we asked superintendent when only

114one bargaining unit was being laid off or access whatever you want. I wanted to see where all the bargaining units where all those titles were and I was denied access to this and that's when I started to doubt this process and don't respond. Please don't respond. Please don't respond. Please don't sharing sharing my feelings about the process. Why would they? And so because so I'm I'm struggling to find the words. I'm not a words fan. My my my good friend Ann is the words. I'm not a wordsman. So I had to so I had to look for for for a book and I picked up Amanda Gorman's book and the only thing I can say tonight is art wonder is going to become your burden. And I'm and I'm sorry for that. As a board

115of education member, I I would have to support the budget out there to support our school and our students. And I joke about how I I make grandmother jokes because of the age group that I happen to be in. But there are, you know, as a teacher, how many grandmothers out there help their kids and their grandchildren in and um bringing their kids back and forth to school and acting to help their families. And they're the ones who come to me and and uh and bring their issues to me. And I take that with a great sense of pride. And like like Miss Hayes said, you know, when we took this job, we took it with a dual role or a triple role of not only the students but the community and the taxpayer. And

116I'm very serious, you know, and I take my role seriously when those those grandparents come to me with their issues. And believe me, there are plenty of them. And they have already come to me with these with these issues. And so I take it very seriously. And so I I am not in support of the process that happened before you today. And I think there were better ways we could have gone about it. And it has and I know it bothers the board. I'm not saying it doesn't bother them. It bothers every single one of us, but I just have I just have a personal I just have a personal uh reason as to why it bothers me the way it does. And I'm sorry that it had to happen this way. Those are my

117comments. Thank you. So, President, if I could just respond. First and foremost, um I found some of the comments on our strategic planning process a little disparaging to all the efforts we put into it. We provided the trustees with a draft copy of the final product. All the trustees had access to it. We also met with our local strategic planning committee to review the entire plan to make any necessary edits. The reason we delayed the launching of it is because we've been focused on the budget process in the last couple of weeks. Initially, we wanted to look logic around this time, but we're just delaying it a little bit, not to diminish the work and not to diminish the purpose of the plan because the plan's going to be executed over the next 5 years.

118It includes actionable items that came from the community, our stakeholders, our teachers. That work wasn't for that work yield a product that you've seen a draft of. It doesn't take away from the work. We have to look at it. We have to unpack it and present it to the board for adoption. Those are the next steps. Secondly, in terms of the budget lines, I have to say we provided detailed list of all of our budget lines at each step of the budgetary process. Each of our presentations included our current project proposals line by line. In terms of our staffing list, we didn't provide names of individuals. We have five collective bargaining units and all the positions are listed. So, the board has had access to that. And in our March 13th presentation, we actually had

119a breakdown of our staff per building. What was not included was a specific number of custodians and clerical. I give you that. We can provide that. But I don't want there to be sort of this u notion that we're hiding information because we're not. So staffing of our buildings is public information. We provided our staff analysis on March 19th. We had a detail of all of our staffing per building including support staff. Um we give you the total number of our custodians. Um if you like it by building, we can do that. But again, none of this information is going to impact our budget process or the situation we find ourselves now. We spared no expense in looking at every expenditure, looking at every contract, every consultant we work with that we paid for to

120see who's necessary to make those reductions before we looked at staffing cuts. So I just want to make that point of emphasis because certainly I think personally that there's some sort of air of some impropriy when there isn't. So trustees have made a concerted effort to speak to me, to meet with me, to ask questions. I've had a lot of meetings with trustees to explain about the process. I don't ever deny access to the trustees. We've been as transparent as possible. I apologize my tone, but I'll probably honestly I do take it personally. It's hurtful to hear those comments because I think I've been transparent to the nth degree and I respond to the trustees anytime the call is ready. Yes, I do want to point out obviously the reduction in stat is incredible, but

121I also want to point out that we all know the reasons they've gone over them. We went over them. We've all been aware of it the moment that happened shortly thereafter of the expenses that we're facing. It's not something that was in my opinion made up. Uh and that is why I would be voting in favor of this budget. Not because it reduces staff. That's not why. It's because you have to be responsible with this this funding and with the expenses that we're facing. So I just wanted to make sure to point that out. Sure. I felt that the budget process was frustrating but not the way. It's frustrating to me to go through and see year after year uh the impact that the state budget system has on the school district's finances. And then

122to have us put in that position because the budgeting requirements and not be able to address those popped up very large increases in transportation and health insurance. Precisely because the state does not allow us to maintain enough money in reserve in order to meet expenses that are unexpectedly. That's where we are. That's the frustration to me. And to be put into this position by the system, not by any individual at this table or anybody who works here, and then make a decision that tears at my heart and the heart of any other people in the room is just it's personally devastating and it's very difficult for everybody who's here tonight. And maybe Thank you. You want to read the rest? Resolved upon the recommendation of superintendent of schools, the board of education hereby adopts an

123expenditure appropriation of [Music] 147,164,277 to operate the schools for the 2025 2026 fiscal school year and present such appropriation to the district residents for approval on May 25th. Excuse me. May 20th, 2025. May Yane. [Applause] Yes. [Music] Moving on. I'm asking What I'm asking is item number four. I don't think discussions you want to take that now. You got Does anybody want to do the next two separately? We're going to do them together. They are the east and southern administrative budget and the slate of any objection together. two. Okay. Um, can I have a motion items F2 and F3? M second by Mr. Barry. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Motion carries. Item number four, letters to education leaders. Did you want to speak on this? start. Um, a week and a half

124ago, we got the weekly update from the executive director of the New York State Schools Association. And in it, it had a call to action requesting that each board member consider um basically informing our local federal legislators about our concern about some of the issues that are in the um federal budget process that's going on right now. And in particular, it's the one where there's a new idea that there'll be a new system set up so that people can get 100% tax credit for monies that they donate into this system that's then used for private school tuition um assistance and the um view of the New York State School Board Association is that this will have a disral impact on public schools which will further further impact the situation in um and there is also

125an association that is working out of the NYU Steinhard department um which is seeking input from boards and board members again in support of solid education And I think that it's um very worthwhile for us to support the New York State Schools Association in this call. There's a link in the letter. It makes it easy to um for each of us to vote and give our opinion about it. Um, and I've asked to have posted supporting information from the organization um at the at NYU and their loved ones there. It takes a long time to read through it and I appreciated the fact that our school boards association gone through it and distilled everything and made the recommendation to us to please take action and I wanted to ask all the board members to do

126that just for some clarification if I may there is a legislation in Washington it's called the educational choice for children act and it is uh it has the potential to send 136 billion of public funds to private schools by way of vouchers and tax credits. So this uh advocacy is asking us to sign on a letter to our local legis Congress, member of Congress to object to that. Me personally, I have no issue. I think this is they're asking boards to do this, not individual. Well, I think I think we can do either. We can both. Yeah. because um it's coming from New York State School Boards Association, but there's also this alliance where individual educators and community members and other people who support publication can express their concern about this. So I so I

127guess I would just sum I don't know if anyone interested that if there's any objection to this letter there's a form letter here which we can use which administration would have to help us objection to sending this letter to Congress. Okay. So we'll work on that. It might also be I'm sorry I said it might try to schedule with Congress. Thank you. Moving on to finish agenda G. Anybody any objection to GH and I together? Yes, I have an objection for which or H H. You want that separate? Okay, great. So, let's just do them separately. The administration recommends the approval of curricular items schedules G1 and G2. Can I have a motion? G1 and two. This second by Mr. Barrett. Any discussion? See none. All those in favor motion carries. The administration recommends the

128approval of personnel changes reflected in page one through 87. Page 1 through 7. Can I have a motion? Mana. Seconded by Mr. Barry. Discussion. Discussion. M. H3 one two and three. We just approved a budget that closed the layoffs in um two of the three positions that being proposed to hire in uh 31 and 32 and then an additional position that doesn't forget. Why are we hiring? We just approved a budget for layoffs. [Music] There's a mandate from the state on special ed. And then on on the third position there's there's there's an absolute need to hire in that position even though we just absolutely this avoids us using proprio service. Okay. And we uh and uh we have the ability to sustain that position. Yes. CSC CSA with the exception of retirement. [Music] I'm

129looking to feel comfortable with that. All right. Thank you for the explanation. Um yeah, any other further comments? All those in favor? Opposed? Abstain. Motion carries. Abstension. All right. The administration recommends approval of business items schedules 91 through 543. Can I have a motion? M seconded by Mr. Barry. Any discussion? Discussion please. Contracts have the ability to sustain the cost of these consult contracts? Yes, they're both Any additional questions? Seeing none, all those in favor? Motion carries unanimous. Uh to public, excuse me, public commentary to non-aggenda. This agenda item, but we'll certainly allow you to speak to you have three minutes. We don't have somebody help at that time. It's not tonight. Our BOE voted to destabilize our children's education. You want to talk to me about decorum, but you refuse to have honest conversation

130about our district's budget needs. Our superintendent tells us uh that you know each meeting that despite the loss of 40 educators, quote, we will maintain programs. Our board of education president, Mr. Pacini tells me the proposed budget is quote adequate to educate our students and increase performance. In what world does laying off 40 educators increase performance? Mr. Pacini, this is completely false. In real dollar terms, our po uh post-pandemic curriculum budget has declined more than the decline in enrollment. These 40 educators are doing work. Superintendent Santana, how does losing a math teacher improve our math education? make it make sense. Our district has many strengths, but it has many areas of improvement. We have declining graduation rates. The second highest absenteeism rate in Long Island. Second lowest New York State math assessment proficiency score in

131Long Island. The lowest New York State English proficiency score. Why discrepancies in postgraduate outcomes. We have a superintendent who talks about the needs of the taxpayer, but then tries to scare this board by saying the only options are 3.48% 48% tax increase or a 10% tax increase. This is not honest. Superintendent Santana, why aren't we having conversation with projections of a 5.5% increase? We'll put another $1.4 million each year into our budget. This will invol still involve hard cuts, but it would also save educator jobs. Why wasn't this ever on the table? Why wasn't this discussed? Our last budget passed uh something like 900 to 350 over 70%. Uh as a community we have to be honest about what are the impacts of these cuts to our children to our goals which you have not

132been superintendent Santana. You are not being honest with us on multiple fronts. You are not transparent and you have not been honest and take it personally uh because this is this is a personal thing. uh you are undermining our children's education when they need it the most and the board is being led by the nose with this. It's really unfortunate uh that there's no advocacy here um for our kids and and I will remember this for all of us because when we look at back and think what could have we have done more for our children I'll remind everybody that this board undermined our children's education. Um and you know this should have been dead on arrival tonight. I'm amazed that it passed. Um, but I want to remind the board our goal is to

133ensure the board's stated goal is to ensure that each of our students is academically prepared to succeed in college, career, life, and the global economy. And I want you to ask yourself tonight, did you do that? Uh, or was there another way to do that? And there definitely was another way to do it. You refused to do it despite multiple requests, despite multiple parent emails. Um, and you've turned your back on our community. [Applause] Anybody? I'll take a motion to adjourn. Can I have a motion? Mr. Seconded by Miss Kavanagh. All those in favor? Motion carries. He's over.