001Good. LTV. All right. Good evening, uh, Springs Board of Education. Uh, we're streaming the YouTube. You are being recorded. The phone lines are open. You may begin your meeting. Thank you very much. And thank you for everyone attending and thank you for your patience starting a little later tonight than usual. Uh, Vicki, would you do roll call first? Sure. In attendance tonight, Eric Frederickson, Patrick Ra, Emma Field, and Derek Quinn. May we stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flags nation. We're going to start right now with our public comment number one. Uh this is for comments from the public on agenda items only. And as always, I just like to set the table for our public comments. Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to convene into the public comment period
002of our meeting. It's absolutely crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns and issues and appreciate all of your comments. While we may not be able to respond to your concerns and questions tonight, we do take them very seriously and want to have sufficient time to process and research issues if need be so we can respond thoughtfully at a future meeting or have the proper staff member get back to you at the appropriate time. I also want to point out that under state and federal privacy laws, we are unable to entertain any comments or questions about school personnel or any individual identities. on these matters. We would ask you to go through the appropriate administrative channels. Finally, we intend that our schoolboard meetings serve as an example to our students that
003our members of our school board and members of our community can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and demonstrate mutual respect. In that spirit, we ask that all speakers and members of the audience maintain civility and respect for any divergent views that may be expressed. We ask that speakers please address their comments to the board directly rather than the audience. Thank you. And with that, we will have public comment number one on agenda items only. If there's anyone on LTV calling in, uh that is welcome. Is there anyone present tonight or on LTV that wishes to make a comment on agenda items? We have no callers on the line. Okay, thank you. Anyone in the crowd? Good. Okay, so we're going to move to our consent agenda items. Uh, I ask for a
004motion to approve items 3.1 to 3.6 on our consent agenda. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries for our consent agenda items. We're now going to move to our business items section. This is agenda. Consent agenda. Did it go is it just at 3.13 all the way down? I did 3.16. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we That's what I said. You said 36. 3.16. Right. 16. I said 3.16. I said 1.6. 3.1 to 3.16 on our agenda or a aka 3.6. 16 we are dealing with decimals. So okay there people. Um anyway the motion is carried and it's understood. We're now moving to our business item section. Uh if you want me to say this differently I will because I was just
005about to say 4.11. Uh I can say I ask for a motion to approve items 4.1 to 4.11 under business items on our agenda. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? Second. All right. Thank you. Jonathan, would you move these business items for us, please? Sure. We'll start at the top. Um, we have our regular March reports coming through, the board minutes um from the prior meeting, the treasures reports, the updated appropriation status and revenue status reports, um the March warrants, and the March claims audit report. Um follow that we have our PSSE and PSSE reports for special education. Um we are disposing of buses um that we determined are obsolete um there are two buses and two vans um that are just not costefficient to keep um keep in service. Um
006followed by that we have an updated 403 plan. Um this would add a Roth option to the uh district's current 403P. Um following that we have an intermunicipal agreement with East Hampton um to take over transportation services for the one um bus route for the driver that we lost. Um, we have a amended resolution to reclassify the property tax exemption that was approved in February. Um, Sam could probably speak better on this, but the state changed some things with the, uh, the law, right? Uh so uh the board adopted a property tax exemption on February 11th that would grant uh a property tax uh reduction for those folks who are members of the uh ocean rescue squad who are live in the district and own a homes of primary residents. It was passed as uh
007it was adopted as per the state legislation authorizing it as section 466A of the real property tax law of New York state. 2 days after the board acted, New York State legislature passed the bill and the governor signed the bill which reclassified the section of the real property tax law to 466 P I think it is N. Excuse me. So it's the exact same exemption. the the uh town assessor has assured me that everybody who applied uh will be still able to have that for their taxes just we have to change the section of the law that the exemption refers to. Thank you. And then that description was worth more than the entire thing. Then we have an upin agreement with Erie Wosis. Um we use them for a uh we do a cross contract
008with Erie Woseis for our Google um workspace um which is referred to as the G suite um by Google. Um this agreement just in saying that everyone has taken um the necessary steps for third party um privacy student privacy within third party applications that are in the G Suite. Um so by opting in we're saying that the steps ER1 has taken we're okay with wonderful and I looking at Fortnite I just want to thank East Hampton and this is another example of uh the support and cost savings that our schools mutually in our community can provide each other. Uh we appreciate them picking up the route at a at a very fair rate. Uh, you know, it's it's just great to see the shared services continuing to work on all of our behalfs. I think
009it's just going to be something that is beneficial for savings in the community and also uh keeping the flow of business that we have a good bullpen of schools out here and we recognize that uh occasionally we mutually need support and we could we could step up and East Hampton in this case has done that for us as well. So, it's wonderful. Uh, does board have any questions on the business items? No. All right. Uh, all those in favor of approving business items uh 4.1 to 4.11 on our agenda. All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. Moving right along here tonight. We want to go to our budget presentation now. Uh Sam, can I invite you to review budget presentation number four? All right. So, thank you very much. We're here at
010budget presentation number four. There's an item on your agenda a little bit later this evening to adopt the budget. So, we've spent the last three meetings talking about the budget, what's in it, what's out it. So, what's not in it? So, we're going to go through right now. Obviously, we start with the accomplishments in the district every time. Seen this, you have a lot to brag about here at Spray with I don't mean to read these points to you suffice to say. A lot of great stuff that's going on here. uh you know led by your superintendent and uh and all the wonderful teachers and support staff that that and administration who work here. Uh we you know by now the budget formation process we broke the budget into three major uh areas or three
011evenings in order to go through it in a logical way following the charter accounts the state controller has laid out. We're following that pattern. That way our budget can be understood by us and by anyone else who's looking at it. you can see the process that we've used and obviously we did this before. We've seen the goals. The most important goal in in my mind and I I believe Nancy and the board feel the same way as well uh is that we design a budget that stays within the property tax cap. The district's voters have been very supportive of your budget the last two years and piercing the cap. We have committed that we are not going to do that. Asked them to do that for a third year in a row and as we've
012discussed we have designed a budget that has stayed within the property tax cap. So, in summary, everything we talked about in the previous three budget presentations is on that screen. We're asking the board to adopt a budget that's about $38.4 million to go to the voters in May. Um on your website, on board docs that will post on your website tomorrow is a line by line budget. People are curious what's in the budget. they can examine the line by line budget along with all of our previous presentations are all up there for public examination. I want to pay tribute to Jonathan Le Page your treasurer who has done a really terrific job in consolidating the number of lines budget codes that you were using which were quite honestly way too many for a district of
013our size and our budget uh size. So you'll see when you go online, we've also changed the budget codes to be in conformance with what the state controllers chart of account says. I think it's important that we follow the state's rules on this. And so you can see as a comparison every line, what we used to call it, you know, the budget number we just call it and the new code that we're calling it now posted on board docs. It will be on the website as well tomorrow. We'll make it available. Anybody wants to come see it be in the public library so people can go there and take a look. But it's all right there line by line. This is the summary broken down into the overall areas that we have been talking about
014for the last three board meetings. Obviously, that was the expenditure budget. How are we going to pay for it? This is how we're going to pay for it. The anticipated revenue budget. Couple of big points that I want to make on this slide. First of all, as we said, the yellow box highlights. This is a property tax compliant budget. We have property tax gap the first time in three years, and it's a great tribute to the board and superintendent that we're able to bring that together. The other big proviso here is the state a number. The state was supposed to adopt the budget on April 1st. They have not done that. It is extremely unlikely that we are going to see from everything that we read and obviously it's just all secondhand knowledge because none
015of us sit in state legislature. We are probably not going to see a budget at earliest until probably next Wednesday. It's my guess I think given the holidays coming up. So what do we do? You might say if we get additional state aid, you have several options. I think your best option and obviously we can tackle this when we see what the state aid is is the money can be used to go into reserves or perhaps pay down a little bit of next year's levy. We have to see what the number is before we get to invest in this conversation. But you have several options. At this point, it is my recommendation we're ready to adopt the budget. If we sat here and waited for the state be sitting here for a while. So, uh,
016that's essentially that's the only figure out there that we don't really know for totally certain. We've used the governor's projections. Historically, the legislature has improved on the governor's budget slightly. We obviously don't receive a lot of state aid. So, whatever that number ends up being, it'll be modestly anticipated, modestly higher. Uh, so that's the budget. In addition, what else on the ballot? Obviously, we've talked about this. There are two propositions on the ballot. One is a 5-year tuition contract with East Hampton School for the education your high school students here in Springs. You can see what the tuition increases are that were negotiated. In addition to Springs, the other sending districts are also uh going to their voters for fiveyear tuition contract. So districts in East Hampton that send their East town that send their
017students to East Hampton School District, high school all going out with the same uh contract proposed contract. And number three is a repair reserve. It has been a very long time since the voters in this district were asked to reauthorize the existence of the repair reserves fund. Uh so we have uh the board has adopted a resolution to put that to the voters so that they can endorse or not their choice about whether they want to continue to use that fund as a way of maintaining your building and taking care of structural infrastructure problems when they're small rather than when they become big. Uh and the fund the remaining fund will be funded from excess fun balance from time to time which is done by a board vote and from funds that are remaining existing
018repair reserve. We're going to basically spill everything over reserve as the voters approval. So next steps obviously as I said we're going to continue to monitor uh for any changes to state aid and see when that timeline becomes clear. And then the last step is the two last steps will be a budget hearing on May 13th when the public is invited to comment on the budget. Assuming you adopt the budget this evening, there are no changes anymore to that budget. That is what the voters will be asked to consider on May 20th voting from noon to 9 right here in the school library. If you need an absentee ballot, you can call or email large district sitting right there. Happy to help facilitate that. We want everybody who has potential to vote to participate. and
019to make their voice heard. Thank you very much, Sam. A couple questions. Yes, please. Yeah, Sam. First of I just thought about this other dates. May 13th, the budget hearing. We approved the budget. Correct. You put the budget tonight. We approved the budget tonight. So, the mail and cards go well prior. everything once assuming you adopt the budget. Tonight, we're going to get started on the rest of the stuff that that you know we do on the back end, which is the newsletter that goes to every mailbox, the six day budget notice that goes to every mailbox. And we're also going to create and we did this a little bit last year, but we're going to create a what we call budget binder that has information the line by line expenditure budget, the line by
020line revenue, anticipated revenue budget, the property tax report card, uh administrative salary disclosure, which is mandated by the state, the school report card, all that stuff that is required by the state to be attached to the budget and will be available here for people to examine and in libraries and all posted on website as well. Second question. Yes. Propositions. Yeah. So a proposition gets voted against we cast it or that is that you can you cannot do it on June. Uh there's an official budget revote day. You would have to defer your council on this question. Maybe referring back to me. You would have to essentially call for another public vote. Cannot do it on that day in June. Let's revote. I believe that's again I think folks obviously have a right to vote way
021of the public has some questions about what the proposition means or its impact on their taxes or their life obviously contact us and we'll try to hash that out you know explain as much as people question sorry I'm just asking the question does happen no you would have you can call for special you can do it on any position? Yeah. Yeah. Is it like 20 days later? I believe. Sorry. It's like 20 days later, you can do it up. I don't know the notice. You require yourself. Not sure of the notice. Um, typically in that situation, we make the decision whether or not to go back out to vote and then we'll lay out all your options for you and give you the timelines. I think one of the important things to pick up though
022is that if the public has any questions at all on the budget itself, it'll be posted on the website, but these propositions as well as the budget to reach out to our staff or administration that they're going to be so helpful and giving you the information that you need to make the right decision for yourself. Superintendent's email and phone number right there contact questions about the budget. want people to understand what you're voting on and have as much information as they feel comfortable when they registered their Thank you. Are there any other questions from the board? Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Jonathan, and everyone on the administration's a lot of work every year to come up with a budget and uh I think this one is streamlined and makes sense and uh it's within the
023tax cap and it's really keeping our students in mind uh but also being mindful of our budget, the community as well. We really wanted to stay under that this year and thanks to the community in the past for supporting our budget. uh this year, you know, we're we have a great number under the cap and excited for our students and our school. With that said, I ask for a motion to adopt the 2025 2026 budget and approve the real property tax report card. Do I have a motion? I have a second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Budget Uh so let's move on to the uh superintendence report. I think this is just uh 61 to 62. So let me ask for a motion to approve items 6.1 and 6.2 under
024superintendent report and recommendations. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? Nancy, can you please review items uh under your report? First, I do just want to mention um in response to some things Mr. Schneider was saying that um I have been invited to go to the springs community advisory committee meeting on Tuesday at Ashwa Hall. So we will be there to present the budget as well as to answer any questions members from the community. So um first uh we're very pleased to accept a donation from the Montto Union Free School District. Uh Mr. ODM uh was kind enough to let us know that uh the teachers there and a lot of the community who knew the Payne family very well uh would like to donate a tree to the school. So, we're
025happy to accept that donation. We'll be putting it in the courtyard uh the main courtyard where we're having a lot of additional garden work done that I'll talk about soon. So, we thank them very much for that generous donation. We also have a donation from the Springs PTA. Um, we're very pleased, as you're aware, we needed to get a new refrigerator, our old refrigerator went that we keep our milk in and some of our lunches that come from East Hampton. And East Hampton had lent us a refrigerator while we were waiting for a new one. The new one did arrive and the PTA is donating $1,500 towards that. So, we're very appreciative. PTA supports so many things that we do in the district and once again very, very thankful for their donation. And then um
026I just want to continue with some news and updates. Uh first I'd like to start by congratulating uh Sam. He is being recognized as New York State Business Official of the Year. And the award will be presented to Sam at the annual ASBO or Association of School Business Officials Education Summit in Saratoga on June 8th through 11th. And we just want to say um and me particularly as a superintendent that I really appreciate all the work uh Sam has done for spring school as well as Jonathan. Um it's just been a real pleasure for me working this year uh getting the budget in order and working with people of their caliber. So very pleased and congratulations to Sam once again. And um really good news is the new spring school entrance signs are now installed
027and uh encourage you all to make sure you look at them. They look terrific and I think they blend in beautifully with the character of our community. Uh we also have a family that would like to donate some landscaping around the sign. So uh just these very generous donations saying so much about who we are as a spring school community. And we're so thankful to these families uh who are contributing this and donating to beautifying our campus. And uh very hard hard to believe, but this Friday, April 11th, March the end of the third quarter, the year is truly flying by and students will have a half a day that day, our staff will be participating in professional development activities as well as some CPR training. Um there'll also be no school next week as
028uh most of you are aware for spring break April 14th through 18th. So uh we do wish all our families a wonderful time during spring break. Uh parent conferences are going to take late uh take place when we come back from spring break on April 24th and 25th. And then we have our annual state testing which is going to begin on April 29th and run through May 15th. Uh so we have a very busy spring ahead of us. Uh we had a wonderful event this past Friday at the Spring School of Worlds Fair. Um it was a packed house. It was a terrific celebration bringing together many different cultures of our school families. Food was absolutely delicious and it represented cuisines from all over the world. We even had a bonic table with homemade clam
029chowder and clam pie. We had a table from New Orleans that uh Mr. Kelp brought to just delicious food and Mr. Shimpus, our AP, uh, brought Texan barbecue to the event and we had families. It was really, um, Mr. Dermit Brin um, I had his beef stew. It was, uh, terrific and, uh, just food from all over. It was really, really wonderful. And, um, we also had lot of activities that showcased all the different traditions, music and art. And I just want to say a very special thank you. So many people volunteered to make this event uh, what it is. It's really spectacular. It was almost standing room only in the in the gym. So, thank you to everyone who contributed. Once again, I just want to mention the Springs Historical Society and Art Committee
030are celebrating on Springs Young Artists at the library through May 4th. We have a number of our students who artwork is being exhibited. So, if you're in the area, anyone stop by and uh take a look at the artwork. It's uh it's it's really incredible some of the uh the work that our students uh do. It's it's very impressive. Um just so everyone's aware, during the April break, we are going to begin some of the projects that were approved by the board through the repair reserve fund. Uh the library ceiling is going to be replaced. The painting of the entryway uh uh the entryway on school street will be completed. Our old and damaged blinds and classrooms are going to be replaced with new shades and removal of our dead trees will begin. So, we
031have a lot of projects being done over spring break. The rest of the projects that were approved, the repair reserve will be completed this summer. So, we're very excited to get all this work done. And then just want to mention some upcoming events. The annual eighth grade speech competition is taking place on Thursday, May 1st at 6 PM here in the library. Mr. Kelt, Mrs. flight and I'll be the judges. Our students get to showcase uh topics they're passionate about along with their public speaking skills. It's a wonderful event. Uh we participated last year and really uh once again very impressed with the talent of our students and how they're able to speak publicly in such a mature way and share their opinions on some very uh very challenging topics. Uh May 21st, our Rew
032Wild and volunteers are coming to plant the garden in the courtyard. We're looking forward to be a being able to enjoy the courtyard as hopefully some warm weather arrives and the tree as I said uh previously that was donated by Mto in remembrance of Megan Kane will be planted there as well. So this is a really nice time. The courtyard has been cleaned up a lot. It's already looking so much better. We have flowers coming up and very excited to have all this work done there. And then also um on May 22nd at 1:30 p.m. here at the school in honor of Megan Payne, uh there'll be a schoolwide run for me color run. And this is going to be a time of remembrance for her really bright spirit and just a time of fun
033for all the kids in at the school. Um it is very messy. So parents, please uh don't dress your kids in any expensive clothing. And then um we have another exciting event coming up, an outdoor movie night, and that's going to take place on the softball field on May 30th from 6:00 to 9:00. And it's a fundraiser for our eighth grade graduation. There's going to be popcorn and cotton candy, and the movie uh hopefully will be announced in the upcoming weeks that uh we're going to be viewing. And then uh just uh Vicki if you'll put the enrollment up. Uh as has been in the past our enrollment is basically uh very steady. We do have a slight increase in our prek through eight students of three three students and we have an additional student
034at the high school. Um so we've really remained steady throughout the year with our enrollment. Um we're also fairly steady with our incoming pre uh prek is now at about 42 students which is already a little more than we have uh last year. So we are our enrollment is staying steady as we're moving forward. That really helps us with planning. Uh Mr. Kelt's been working non-stop on the schedule for next year. It's almost complete. We're we've already shared a lot with teachers and we're just tweaking things to make sure we have last year we were not we were didn't get to it I think till the summertime. So we we started early so that we would be prepared. So, um, that's where we're at and very excited for springtime coming and all the activities we
035have and just once again wish all of our families and students a wonderful spring break and very excited uh to start enjoying warmer weather as we come back. PTA did well too. What's that? PTA did very well on the break. I they I I they made a lot of money. Yeah. Social media. Thank you, Nancy. Really appreciate all that you are doing here as well as everyone sitting across from us. Uh I want to speak on behalf of the board, all the hard work that you guys are doing and all that you're accomplishing. That's just a microcosm of everything that the budget goes into and and how we use that money. I mean, the fact that we have all this going on over the break, nothing ever stops here, right? So, you coordinated a lot
036of wonderful things and we thank you for that. And I just want to second uh this is very meaningful that the donation from M talk remembrance of meg uh that's just uh just another example of of how people step up and thank you to Montalk for that and of course the springs PTA you know another great contribution first the kiln and now the refrigerator. So they're they're just a wonderful uh they do so much for our school. I don't I don't think they get recognized enough. So, um, just wanted to to to make those two comments there. Are there any questions from the board about any of the updates? All right. So, we just have to approve, uh, 61 and 62. So, uh, there are no other questions. All those in favor of approving uh,
03761 and 62 on the superintendent report and recommendations. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. I actually also wanted to mention that you know we had a couple of uh folks retiring tonight and I think we'll be recognizing them in our June meeting for their service. Recognize we'll recognize them at future meetings. We actually have uh one of our teachers uh is retiring at the end of May. So we'll recognize her at the May meeting and we have um our head bus driver retiring at the end of June. So we'll recognize her in our June meeting uh thanking them for all the years of service to the district. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Um, all right. So, we're going to move on to public comment number two. Uh, this is for items that
038are not necessarily on the agenda. Uh, LTV, if we have any callers, let us know. And is there anyone in the crowd tonight? Sure. Okay. Uh, so yeah, let us know. Public comment number two. We have no callers on the line. Thank you, LTV. Uh, so going once, twice, three times. All right, looking over there. All right, guys. You don't want it. Uh, at this point, I'm going to make a motion to adjurnn. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.