Board of Education Meeting - February 06, 2023

001e e e hi can everybody's attention hi everybody we're going to get started can everybody please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and can we please take a moment of silence for Ben daget everyone just a moment thank you so um obviously we've had some uh wonderful successes in the science to celebrate this evening and so uh it's a great opportunity for us to see the kind of work that our students are doing the level of work that our students are doing and of course celebrate in their success so the board a number of years ago made the decision to uh invest some Grant

002funds and some local funds in revamping our science rooms and in creating a research space for our students who wanted to explore science research that investment has paid off and we're going to hear a little bit about some of the young people who have taken advantage of that opportunity and really maximized it so I'm pleased to introduce our science research teacher Miss Veronica Aid who will introduce uh the students who are going to present a very brief uh Snippets of their projects for us tonight uh in Layman or women's terms please thank [Applause] you good evening Dr Rogers Board of Education Administration and the sosic community tonight we get to formally celebrate the accomplishments of the 6 2023 regeneron Scholars this year just under 2,000 students named Nationwide applied to the regeneron science Talent search

003of which 18 of those applicants were from saset high school we put a great deal of emphasis on our robust program one which we are all very proud of especially when we get to honor the accomplishments of these six students saset High School is honored to have the most Scholars on Long Island and tied for the most in New York state with only one school Nationwide with more Scholars than us the six students among the top three 300 Scholars Nationwide each will receive a $2,000 scholarship in addition uh the school will receive $2,000 per student to put towards the research program tonight our students will briefly present their projects um and in addition their posters were on display when you walked in and they will still be there later this evening first we have Sabrina

004guo um she researched at Malloy University under the direction of Dr alvia uh Kubin uh unfortunately Sabrina can't meet with us tonight but I have just a brief couple of sentences here access to emergency contraception an essential reproductive healthc care res resource is limited by barriers to reproductive care such as socioeconomic background Sabrina's study emphasizes inequities in the US's reproductive Health Care system by examining potential relationships between women's use of emergency contraception and their race educational achievement and other factors data from Sabrina's results could potentially Drive Public Health policies legislation and improve access to family planning Services among women especially among the marginalized populations our first student presenter tonight will then be Zachary cam uh he conducted his social science research project at saset high school Under the supervision of Mr Andrew Manzo and Mr

005Brett klopp [Applause] there's clicker right here imagine having the ability to help fix societal and environmental problems while also making money well in the world of ESG and impact investing this is a reality hi my name is Zack ham and my product is on Trends in ESG and impact investing well first of all what are ESG and impact Investments impact Investments are investments that seek financial gain while also making a positive impact on the world last year alone the market for impact investing grew by more than 40% environmental social and governance Investments known as ESG Investments are similar in that they take into account ESG factors when Investments are made and ESG assets are projected to surpass $53 trillion by 2025 which is more than onethird of all Global assets so due to the increasing

006prevalence of ESG and impact investing in our global economy and a lack of research on what actually causes people to engage in such Investments my research sought to find the effect that four factors namely political alignment means of investment risk tolerance and investor experience had on the likelihood of investors to engage in esgn Impact investing in order to do this I created a Google form that was sent out to respondents through social media post and direct solicitation of broker chapes in my findings those on the political left were significantly more likely to engage in ESG and impact Investments than those on the political right additionally those who invested through online investment applications were also significantly more likely to consider themselves impact investors and to take into account ESG factors than those who invested through traditional

007brokerage houses finally and more counter intuitively those with greater risk tolerance and those with more extensive investor experience were also significantly more likely to make ESG and impact Investments these results are important as the identification of these Trends can be leveraged by governments organizations and portfolio managers in order to more effectively induce positive World change by more efficiently allocating resources when targeting investors therefore making the world a better place thank you [Applause] next up we have anuka sha her uh she conducted her social science research project again at saset high school Under the direction of Mr Andrew Manzo and Mr Brett Klo [Applause] hi my name is anuka sha and I study the effects of class conscious diversity on college campus racial diversity after reading that many US states had banned affirmative action policies from

008being used within their college and university systems I also noticed that Minority student populations at many public universities had been decreasing as a result in order to determine a method for these colleges and universities to use to increase the representation of lowincome and minority students without violating the state legislation I first compared the racial diversity index scores of test optional colleges which are colleges that do not require the submission of standardized test scores to apply test mandatory colleges which do require the submission of standardized test scores and the diversity of the states that they are located in and I found that the test optional policy results in an increased representation of minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students as when colleges utilize the test optional policy they better reflect State demographics in the top graph the red

009represents the diversity of test optional schools and the blue represents the diversity of the states that they are located in and both line up in terms of racial diversity index scores I also compared the socioeconomic diversity scores and the racial diversity scores of 100 public universities in order to determine if taking socioeconomic status into consideration during the admissions process would indirectly increase racial diversity and I found that colleges that that are racially diverse are also socioeconomically diverse which proved my hypothesis correct in the bottom graph the green represents racial diversity index scores and the yellow represents uh socieconomic diversity index scores and both line up in terms of their diversity index scores um my research proves that when colleges embrace the test optional policy and take soci economic status into consideration during the admissions process

010we can create more opportunities for lowincome and minority students to have upward Mobility and these are my references thank you okay next up we have Vivic trakia uh he did a science research project at saset high school Under the supervision of Dr Mary Hendrickson Miss Olivia laka and Mr Thomas Allen [Applause] hi everyone my name is vivex rakia and did you know that in 2022 there were 990,000 new diagnosis of Parkinson's disease which was 50% more than what was expected now with no development of a cure for Parkinson's disease in the foreseeable future the most effective way of flattening this curve would be through identifying environmental factors that have the ability to catalyze the onset of Parkinson's disease and limiting the exposure of our general public to these environmental factors so looking into one of

011these Environmental factors is exactly what I did in my study where I specifically investigated a prominent flame rarden chemical called aluminum hydroxide so aluminum hydroxide can be found in many aspects of normal household it can be found in wall insulation furniture and even children's toys and through my secondary research I found that there's a significant data Gap in the neurotoxic potential of aluminum hydroxide particularly relating to its ability to induced Parkinson disease in a living organism so I investigated this data Gap using a model worm organism where I exposed the model worm to aluminum hydroxide for a 24-hour time period during which I monitor the dopamine neuron levels of the worm as well as the alpha sincan protein levels both of which are key biological indicators of Parkinson's disease so after the 24-hour period I

012noticed that there was a significant degeneration of the dopamine neurons in the model worm and a significant aggregation of the alpha nucleum proteins both of both of which insinuate that the aluminum hydroxide chemical has the ability to induce Parkinson dis in a living organism so given the fact that all of my assets produce positive results I was able to conclude that aluminum hydroxide has the potential to induce Parkinson disease in a living organism which can be particularly detrimental to the countless individuals across the globe that are living in its constant presence so here are my references and thank you next up we have Alex Wang he conducted his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the research Science Institute uh under the supervision of Dr Ariel first so before I start can I get

013a show of hands of how many people have had at least one cup of coffee today okay so how does this connect to this weird gold leaf electrode system well basically the answer is that a cup of coffee costs about as much as this gold leaf system so what what is this well basically what I did was I created these electrodes which can act as a rapid sensor for basically any disease that you choose so I'm sure many of you are familiar with covid rapid tests well this is basically the same thing but you can choose your disease so it functions by basically using base pair matching which is similar to how you might have a lock and a key I choose to design the lock and if the key or the disease that we're

014looking for exists we actually get a fitting of that locking key model which results in an overall detection of the of overall detection of the disease so the overall cost for this system costs about $3 and we can build lots and lots of these systems on the same chip what this means is that we can actually detect multiple diseases at the same time so right now I have a two electrode and a four electrode system this means that even though I only worked on tuberculosis and influenza I'm able to detect four different diseases or four different strains of the same disease at the same time this is useful because in a lot of low resource settings which require these diseases and these diagnostic devices people aren't able to access these simple systems this could reduce

015the spread of lots of diseases and therefore by improving our current systems and providing affordable and reliable overall detection devices we can improve health outcomes across the world thank [Applause] you next up is Tian Jung uh she did her social science research at soset high school Under the direction of Mr Manzo and Mr CL oh hi my name is Tina Jong and I'm passionate about learning different languages uh so that's why I did my research on Linguistics uh it has been long assumed that relations between word sounds and meanings were arbitrary however uh recent Studies have shown that this might not be the case and this non-arbitrary relation is otherwise known as sound symbolism defined as a non-random connection between the phonetics or sound of a word and their meanings and I specifically focused on

016two types of sound symbolism imitative and corporeal and I wanted to look behind why sound symbolism exists so I specifically looked at whether sound symbolic words tend to contain more corresponding consonants than non-sound symbolic words across this specific indoeuropean language family group I was a actually able to find a significant difference between the constant correspondences of sound symbolic words and non-sound symbolic words and this St current study could Advance the understanding of word and sound relations and also just yield implications on second language learning because sound symbolic words have been shown to facilitate second language learning by infants uh these are my Ed references and thank you so that is our our six Scholars that we have this year thank you on behalf of the board I want to congratulate our six finalists but I

017want to point a couple of things out with them um as you saw them come up they're such eloquent speakers um they worked really hard um they have great personalities um and one thing that I want to point out is yes we have hardworking students yes they're smart but our students are the complete package because they also have their caring they're compassionate they have the right moral um compass and I think that's really important that it's not just I understand the science but what am I doing this for and I care so I want to commend you guys on that plus they're just great kids the other point I wanted to make and I think Dr Roger said we had 525 kids in the regener arm program that were in the new lab in the

018researchr in the research program and I also want to thank our previous board because they had the hindsight or the foresite to invest in our own lab where the students can stay here and do the research and I think that's important so I think this was a smart investment and obviously it paid off so thank you and thank you guys and good luck and hopefully you guys will win $25,000 correct oh they announced it I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry all right we're going to just set up on the board I did not know sry my fault yes unfortunately our students aren't moving on to the next round but uh in the point that I made in the Friday update is our job is to build a program students will take that opportunity as far

019as they can and as far as their hard work will carry them but um the reward is knowing that we prepared 18 students so well that they had competition worthy projects some will win some won't but this is like having a CrossCountry team where every kid can run faster than a six-minute mile one kid's going to win because that's the way races work but every kid who reached their best is a winner so we're proud of this program we're proud of these young people and the this regeneron is a single competition but it exists in a department that competes in a number of different ways and we're actually going to hear about some other success in that department from uh one of our newest employees our super our coordinator of science Miss Jill [Applause] Johansson

020thank you Dr Rogers um good evening members of the the Board of Education Dr Curry and the rest of our Administration and the community that's here with us this evening um it is my great pleasure to share with you the phenomenal success of one of our extracurriculars at the high school the Science Olympiad team um they have had tremendous success so far this year for those of you who aren't very familiar and here I'll quote from the Science Olympiad website um this is a premere team stem competition um in the United States and it provides standards based challenges to 6,000 teams at 425 tournaments um in all 50 states in the nation saset students earn their spots on our science o Olympiad team by um applying and taking tests and then once they're chosen they

021complete in subject specific events at several weekend competitions this year soset team was named the highest ranking New York team in six of the competitions that they've attended with teams from all over the United United States including even in Hawaii teams from Hawaii Those comp competitions were at Cornell in Lake Erie in fville Manlius in Albany and at MIT and at Harvard uh recently we hosted the regional uh the Long Island Regional event at saset high school on January 28th and our team came in first for the 12th year in a row and to date we have won 239 medals and based on our Stellar performance we will be competing at the state level in March um with the hope of qualifying for the Nationals so there are over 45 students in our Science Olympiad

022team and tonight we'd like to recognize five of the representatives um with a certificate of commendation for their exemplary leadership on their Science Olympiad team Miss castan who's the team's Mentor was unable to attend this evening however she wanted me to share with you that the following students are exemplary leaders on the team uh she describes them as enthusiastic detail oriented multitasking helpers and they are the soulle of the team um we are very very proud of them and um I'd like to call their names and have them come up for a certificate and then to take a picture so first we have Alex Chen and then dasas fan Simone limb isan Patel and Anthony Rodriguez congratulations to all five of you we are very proud [Applause] in case you haven't figured it out this

023month's theme is science so we're going to have a presentation to the board on Science and Technology but before we do that we're just going to take a couple of minutes to reset the auditorium so once again a round of applause for all of our winners on the Science Olympia team and then the regeneron competition e e e okay we're going to get started Dr ruo will you give us your first part of the budget preview please thank you just before Dr Ru will get started I'll um set some context for this conversation uh over the course of the last several years all school districts have dealt with some extraordinary challenges obviously the most notable among them being the pandemic uh and managing workforces and uh budgets through uh uncertainty about state aid and uh

024revenues uncertainty about the economy uh the good news is that um many of the things that we feared may come to pass during the pandemic didn't uh but as we're exiting the pandemic now we're finding that uh the challenge facing all school districts is uh how School spending is tied to inflation uh but the revenue side of the budget is very constrained so that is going to put all school districts in uh different versions of the same conundrum which is uh trying to preserve program while dealing with the reality of uh costs that have gone up faster uh than revenues can rise to meet them so uh a lot of this conversation over the course of the next several meetings will be talking about uh the uh work that we're doing to keep our budget

025in Balance uh and the effort that we're making to close some of the gaps that have been opened up by inflation and as we go through each of the sections of the budget Dr rupall will pay particular attention to uh the areas in the budget that are tied most closely to inflation and therefore uh over which we have the least amount of control so I don't mean to start us off on a somber note but I thought it was important for us to have a shared context for uh what this spring is going to look like so Dr rufo thank you um and good evening and so tonight is the first discussion that we'll have on the 2324 budget followed by subsequent uh discussions each month leading up to the May 16th uh budget vote

026and tonight I'm going to present the preliminary tax cap for 2324 a preliminary look at the capital codes and the administrative codes and then uh the first look at our state aid the executive proposal was released last week so when we formulate a budget we want to ensure that it's properly aligned to our goals and that it has a multi-year focus to ensure that it's sustainable so for 23 24 our budget goal is to continue um the programs and preserve the programs and services for our students to continue our investment in instructional technology over the last I guess um decade we've been working on uh our facilities so we want to continue doing that work to upgrade and enhance our facilities the last couple of years we've added um staff to support our students social

027and emotional well-being and we can intend or or certainly our goal is to continue that in the next school year we've we're managing our recent enrollment growth and we want to accomplish all of these goals in light of the fiscal constraints that we're under and including the record levels of inflation and we want to ensure the fiscal stability again not just this year but in subsequent years we always want to have a multi-year approach to our budgeting so this graphic I I hope that it it makes a bit clear the factors that are driving the budget and every year there's some factors that are pushing up and some factors where we're getting some relief and there are some declines so you can see by this graphic there's a lot more um there are a lot

028more factors putting upwards pressure on the budget this year so um we do have some reductions that we're anticipating in Debt Service as we have a uh an issue an old debt issue that is rolling off we have some reductions in some non-instructional operating expenses on the increasing side we have a significant increase in health insurance premium that actually uh came into being this year and we're anticipating another estimate uh another in significant increase next year we've had Staffing increases due to enrollment we are projecting an increase in our tort Bing cost and we've had uh a higher interest rate than we had in our budget for this year as well our transportation line item is going up and again we have those inflationary cost increases such as Transportation um those contracts are tied to

029the inflation rate and those are State contracts for transportation so just to just to give you a sense of the magnitude this is a a chart from the controller's office and sorry if you can't see it but in the bottom right hand side uh with the red circles around shows what the allowable Levy growth factor and this goes into the the tax cap formula for school districts who have a July 1 to June 30th fiscal year have been capped at the 2% allowable growth factor when in 2022 inflation grew at 4.7 and 2023 8% so clearly our increases have been nowhere near that but we are certainly um feeling the pressure this slide uh shows where the district has been since the Inception of the tax cap in the 1213 school year the First Column

030is the amount of the of applying the tax cap calculation with our factors the second column to the right is the actual tax levy that was put forth um by the district and you can see in in all years the district has been below that cap which means we have never uh exhausted the full amount of our tax levy so while we're still deep in in the budget process it's it's hard to imagine a scenario that doesn't have us right up um against that cap um where Staffing discussions are underway and those meetings are starting I'm not going to go too um too in detail for the of the tax cap formula you've you've seen it before but essentially the tax cap works I'll go to the next slide where it um is our actual

031numbers you start with the prior years Levy there's a tax-based growth factor that's given to us by New York state which represents growth in The District in housing and then you have the the ins and outs of pilots and your Capital exclusions and that is the amount the adjusted prior year Levy is what the 2% or the lesser of inflation or 2% is applied to get to your tax levy limit and then you add your estimated coming year exemptions essentially your capital and right now although this is not final um we're at about a 3.08 um tax cap however there's an important component of that that we we're working on and that's our final building aid number and as we go through the final projects that we have to submit to the state it's likely

032that that amount will come down as we um as we account for that additional building Aid again this is too small to read but it's just it's a screenshot from the um New York State Control on March 1st um osc established the deadline for submitting the tax cap and and that is the calculated cap and they also now over the I guess it was three years ago they started require requiring you to put in what you thought was your estimated Levy were you going to be over or under the cap and what's an approximation of your Levy well in fact the Board of Education doesn't adopt the budget until April and the property tax report card is submitted to the state however osc releases the preliminary data for the tax cap um before it's adopted

033by you and filed so um what I've done in typical in the last several years is because we're we're still working on the budget I will wind up putting the number in that it comes right up to the cap until we we know more information the capital the this form is final after the board adopts the budget and property tax report card is submitted in April but I wanted to make you aware of that because they do release those numbers so we're going to go first through the capital section of the budget so the capital section makes up about 14% of the district's overall budget it includes operations which is maintenance uh operations maintenance security so that includes our custodial teams our utilities for all of the buildings our maintenance team our groundskeepers and then

034a variety of projects that we do repair projects and smaller uh capital projects security is included in here as in this component of the budget as well as Debt Service and the transfer to Capital line these are in our choices this is what the state how the state organizes um this threport budget and just before we go through it just a really quick overview of how how the coding works um schools are organized or the chart of accounts is organized by function and then within that there are um object codes so anything with a 100 is a salary code 200s are equipment 400 is contractual or things that we buy from others we don't do it in their contractors so that's an easy way to remember it and 500 is supplies so supplies are more

035disposable type of things from year to year versus equipment which is more which is longer term so the capital codes overall you can see are expected to increase by about 1.8 million or approximately 6% so several factors are driving this and if you look up at the top the first is the 2324 compared to this year's budget the dollar then the percent change in the columns and then 3 years of actual expenditures and then the estimated uh FTE so the increase here if you look at that third column is driven by several factors one is an increase in the capital projects fund and then an increase in the operations of plant and then it's partial and then you can see there's also a significant increase in the tax anticipation notes the F third fourth item

036down and these are partially offset by declines in both our debt service and then security and I'll go into them in more specifics so custodial operations uh this contains custodians for our 10 buildings the cost for the staffing um for cleaning and custodial Services as well as districtwide cost for utilities and supplies and equipment for the buildings so the increase you can see that's about 465,000 or 4.2 is the result of several factors including higher allocations for contractual Services that's the 400 code that's H maybe a third way down the page we're also projecting an increase in electricity expense kind based on what we're seeing in our um current consumption and we also have an increase in contractual salary adjustments so we use the US eai Energy short-term energy forecasts which are pretty much showing

037declines in utility prices after for for 24 after pretty significant ific increase um that we're seeing in the current year uh we also then speak with PSC and G our local people just to make sure that there isn't any local circumstances that are happening that might be moving in a different direction um and of course the severe weather Global events impacting supply chain and production are always uh potential are always potentially there to ca cause some volatility in prices you can see that the budget shows a decline in fuel oil you may recall one of our capital projects was removing the um fuel oil tanks at the schools and our natural gas line is also lower reflecting expenditure Trends and again anticipated decrease in in pricing security contains all expenses for districtwide security it's our

038in-house staff our contracted staff as well as any security infrastructure over the last several years we certainly have um experienced increases and you can look at the actuals and see that increas uh in the presence of both inhouse and contracted guards and the decrease for next year doesn't represent um a diminishment uh of our security services it's really just a different it's an adjustment for actual expenditures a reduction in contracted a little bit more in uh inhouse as well as the rolloff of some projects we were doing with locks um through and uh and surveillance equipment through bosis the next category is maintenance and this includes our maintenance workers and our groundskeepers and the codes increased by about 163,000 or 2.5% mostly in the area of contractual Services as well as contractual salary adjustments so

039a preliminary list at this point in time the equipment list is preliminary the projects are preliminary but this is this is a starting point and at they may require adjustment as we move as we advance through the budget but let's just look at the equipment that's currently included in the budget HVAC equipment hbt Library Furniture which is Phase One of a two-year Pro planned project um High School Courtyard Furniture playground equipment um for Village a new gym curtains for Southwoods and hbt and some replacement maintenance equipment so if you look up here you can see there's a um halfway down 400 contractual Services an increase of about 200,000 and to the left the Box on the left shows the contractual services that are I would say more routine done on a routine basis and the

040Box on the right would show projects that are that are probably accounting or are accounting for that variance so these are um projects that we're doing through the budget and for for years as part of our maintenance plan we've always done a portion of our capital projects through the maintenance budget and that's our plan for the coming year one of the other ways that districts are able to fund Capital project is through the transfer to Capital line so this line shows about a $1.6 million 1.6 million or 53% increase um for projects and those are the planned projects um that we're looking at right now and again this is preliminary so it includes the South Grove Roofing and masonry project dust collection systems for both hbt and the high school and then districtwide roofing repair

041and uh masonry and Paving in the other slide you saw the equipment for the library redesign at hbt this is more of the capital work to do that redesign as well as the high school Courtyard this is the the capital side of that work and just while we're we're talking I just want to expand a little bit more on the different ways that school districts can accomplish capital projects so we talked about some of them being part of the maintenance budget and you saw that we also have have the transfer to Capital fund and those would be somewhat larger projects that are than rather than those that are included as part of the maintenance budget and one of the reasons we want to do them either as part of the maintenance budget or through the

042uh transfer to Capital fund is that ultimately it does save us on borrowing costs so for those projects that can fit within the budget we um we have chosen that as an option we also in the district has used all forms all these different forms to finance all of the capital work that we've done over probably nine or eight or nine years so we've also used our capital reserve and using the capital reserve requires a separate proposition both to establish the reserve and then to use the reserve and it can be used for any projects that were part of the resolution that established the capital reserve and typically you would do larger scale projects um as part of this and the resolution all also contains parameters on the time frame and the funding limits when

043you're putting money into the reserve and then the last item is the uh bond issue which is done as a separate proposition typically always very uh the largest scale projects and these projects are financed through the issuance of bonds and then the district pays the principal and the interest payments as part of its debt service line in the budget and this is just a um an example of in the last since 19 uh 2016 up at the top just shows how the district has managed to complete a variety of different projects using these different mechanisms so we've used the transfer to capital capital reserve funding in the next section and then Bond funding for all of the different projects as well as the individual projects that are through the maintenance budget and the considerations that

044um that help determine where you might do one particular Capital project versus another depends on the scale of the project the borrowing costs when we did our um borrowing costs on our two recent debt issues we had very favorable interest rates of 1.99 and 1. 66 it's unlikely um that we would see those rates um in the near future one of the other considerations is the building Aid ratio so while interest rates are higher good news is our building Aid ratio has increased so from on the left hand uh red circle from 24% in 1819 all the way up to 40 almost 41% in the current school year so this means for that those project the proportion that is aidable that gets applied at 40% rather than um 25% so that's that's good news for

045us too the other factor is the timing of the debt and the impact that it has on the tax levy and the and the tax cap so I'm moving on now to just our our debt service and up at the top is the estimate of debt service for the 23 24 school year which is a decline of about a million and that represents a a bond issue I think it was from 2005 and then it was refinanced in 2013 and so a portion of that is rolling off and you can you can see that decline from this year to next and one of the the um ways that districts uh use is this rolling of of debt service and ensuring or trying to ensure that when one project rolls off another one can come on

046if there's a need to do Capital work and that way it keeps the and as you can see from that chart as you go out past 2023 you can see how it sort of levels off to where it was before and that helps keep the the tax levy more stable and so what's presented on that chart in the on the bottom or the brown is the old debt service and you can see that coming off and being replaced with the new Debt Service which is in the blue and a at the way toop is the energy performance contract and that debt is is different because it's it's structured differently so that cost savings from the utilities and from the energy efficiencies are required to offset The Debt Service and that is the way those projects

047are are structured and approved by the state so tax anticipation notes is the final um code in the capital section so tax anticipation notes are issued by the district to um as a a cash flow mechanism so the district has obligations um beginning July first and the district gets its tax revenues not until November December so therefore um there has to be a way to finance those required expenses and the tax anticipation note is is the mechanism for doing that and it's a year note and we borrow in Consulting with our bond counsel and with our fiscal advisor as they review our cash flow statements to ensure that we only borrow as much as as much as is needed so the in the significant increase about 800 55,000 is is due to interest rates so

048the estimate that's in there at this point is for 30 million which which is the amount that we borrowed this year at five and a quarter perc now I had a conversation over the weekend with our fiscal advisor in hopes that rates are stabilizing but they're still going up and so um they're they are monitoring those rates and we'll see where where that goes as we progress in the budget process okay the administration section of the budget accounts for about 99.6% of the budget and on the right are the different areas that comprise um the administration section it's not just administrators it is um legal costs public relations costs auditing Insurance the required services that districts um have to operate so overall the administrative codes account um there's a 2.98% increase 571 th000 some of

049that is uh contractual expenses the largest increase is insurance and I want to just jump to that so liability insurance that first box has an increase of 190 almost 16% and so we we met with our nyser who's our insurance carrier officials and they representatives and they went through the different reasons for why they're anticipating a 15% increase so it's it's they're seeing a significant increase in claims activity activities particularly um related to CVA cases they are also seeing uh increases in both numbers and the amounts of sett El ments as and those are really the the primary Market forces driving this increase so we'll be in communication uh and just to point out this is not a situation for saset that saset is experiencing an increase um in volume it's their exposure is just

050increased with all of their clients bosis also has a material increase about 8 8% on the ad Min fee and 7.4 on the capital expense and this represents the um the charge that Nas 's charges to its component or shares among its component districts and ours really reflect some inflationary cost increases for bosis as well as the increase in our um in our enrollment that gives us a a greater proportionate share of that we have an increase in in supervision um of about 3 point almost 4% and some of that uh is related well it's all related to contractual salary increases as well as the expansion of the elementary uh principal day going from 10-month year to a 12-month um 12-month year I would now draw your attention to the bottom box and you can

051see that there is a decrease of about 220,000 and you I'm sure you're aware that the district has been using the teachers College professional development model for for a number of years and at at this point the district has built a substantial amount of internal capacity and in the over the last couple of years we've been going to outside consultants for that service and the this reflects using in internal folks who are trained to provide that service and that would save $220 um th000 so it's continuing the program but with our internal um uh staff so as I usually I do Revenue in March but I just wanted to this came out uh last week we're still looking at all of the details and formulas but um I wanted to just share where we were

052so the the biggest new news that you can see is the increase and if you look at the first line of foundation Aid it's up by almost $8 million which is which is great news for us this is um not unanticipated because we have been um over the last three years have been seeing increases while it is important to to note that state aid this year makes up 10% of the district's budget so while we're absolutely um very happy to have this and this will help us um manage through those significant increases that we're we're seeing in some in some lines it's just important to understand just the magnitude in terms of uh the percent that that makes up for the district's budget the other good news is uh this is uh next year will

053represent our um third year of of the upk program I think I might have the dates a little bit I think 2122 was our first year and you can see that the number went up significantly we started with 90 let me just see we started our first year we started with 119 slots and then it went up this year to 197 and that amount that 1.6 reflects the addition of 112 seats so that is good news as well and then next month we'll be doing the bulk of the district's budget which is in the uh program or the instructional component of the budget we'll go through the rest we'll give an update on on state aid as well as the rest of the revenue items will have any updates to the admin and capital codes

054that we went through tonight and then like I said we're still working through building Aid and some other pieces of the tax cap component so I'll give an update on that as well so thank you Dr rupo I'll just um draw the board's attention to a handful of high points from the presentation the first is Dr rufo said um just the district has had a long-term capital strategy so when I arrived in 2014 the board and I undertook a building condition survey so that we would have a sense of the condition of the facilities uh saset had at the time uh deferred a lot of Maintenance over a fairly substantial uh period of time and uh that deferred maintenance uh produced um pretty daunting backlog of capital work that needed to be done and recognizing

055obviously that it would be challenging uh to underwrite the cost of all of that through some sort of borrowing and then subject the district to a lot of interest costs uh we came up with a plan that essentially broke it into what we called at the time three buckets uh bucket number one was obviously to do some through borrowing uh the larger projects bucket number two was to find uh any maintenance work that we could do and incorporate into the energy performance contract which is then self- financing would be something that we wouldn't have to finance uh through the district and then lastly to try and do as much of the work through the transfer to Capital and annual maintenance budget as possible uh that particularly with the annual maintenance budget because we're using in-house

056labor the labor costs are already paid for and so it's the least expensive way possible uh to do this work because we already have the the labor cost in the budget and that's the strategy that we've been pursuing here since 2015 and we've uh addressed and Dr rufo's summary slide shows uh how much of that accumulated backlog of work we've accomplished uh but the district is coming up on a second round of building condition surveys that are going to spark uh new conversations about uh additional work that needs to be done because these facilities are aging and because uh there there had been such a long period of time when uh major work had not been addressed by the district so we'll be constantly in sort of a catch-up mode I think probably for at

057least another decade or so until we kind of uh work through the backlog so that's one important thing the second is um the district had uh some hopes for some spending initiatives that we thought would uh improve the classroom environment you'll recall in September we had a presentation on uh marrying some State uh Grant funds with some local funds to try and create a model classroom in the high school we're still pursuing those State Grant funds for the technology side of it but we're going to defer uh the purchase of the furniture until uh the fiscal condition improves a little bit and obviously there are a whole bunch of costs in the budget that are just super sensitive to inflation and I just want to again go through them just to tick off on my

058fingers uh the first is transportation the way the state law Works uh if you uh allow the transportation contract to go up at the rate of inflation uh you don't have to rebid uh Transportation uh we're leery of rebidding Transportation because the last time we rebid Transportation uh the bid came in 14% above what we were already paying and so uh as um uncomfortable as accommodating inflation would be we still think that it's preferable uh to taking uh the risk of bidding Transportation the second is of course interest cost directly on the borrowing that we need to do to cover short-term cash flow problems um the third is the healthc care insurance uh oddly the state's health insurance program operates on a calendar year basis the school district operates on a July to June basis

059so half of the cost for health insurance appears in the current fiscal year and then in the second half of the year we get the first half of the new State Insurance year so we planned aggressively for a large increase I think we put 10% into the budget uh but the state's increase passed along T us was more on the order of 15% so uh at present we don't see an increase in pension costs but anticipating that the weakness weakness in the equities Market will impact uh the rate of return that is experienced by the state's two major pension systems that we participate in TRS for teachers and administrators and ERS for civil service employees uh we should an anticipate that uh at some point that will be uh a cost that we have to

060accommodate and then lastly as Dr rufo said our insurance carrier is experiencing losses across all their clients and so of course uh they pass that along to all of their clients in the form of Premium cost increases so um these are you know challenges that everyone every school district faces because every school district is subject to the same rules that we are and um we have to continue to maintain uh these facilities because they're the only ones we've got and uh we have to find a way to preserve the program because the program is uh what we're proudest of and what we had a chance to celebrate earlier tonight but as I uh started the conversation this is going to be a challenging budget year it's going to require some uh difficult choices for us

061and uh you know as Dr rufo said she has a list of goals our goal is to preserve uh as much of our program as we possibly can continue to maintain that physical plant and um set ourselves up for long-term success with a budget plan that is not shortsighted but looks down the road for multiple years to come so that uh we don't accumulate problems in the current year and inherit them in the subsequent year so thank you thank thank you Dr rufo does anybody have any questions for Dr rufo Brian thank you Dr rufo I have I have three questions I'll try to be short um the first is on the Tans we have a 30 million at five and a quarter is what we're projecting and I think you said that's about 800,000

062more for the year obviously we don't have flexibility on interest rate but is there any flexibility on the 30 million dollar number in other words have we been overly cautious with that number we're maybe trimming it or is it tied to something else that we have no flexibility my second question is about electricity um obviously it's almost $300,000 increase with psng or Ps um I guess my question is is there any since it's a $2 million a year bill is there any flat rate or hedging strategies that we can Implement um that may not help this year but may help in the future and then I guess my last question is related to insurance and Dr Rogers you just mentioned this um the increase in insurance is not based on soset it's obviously based on

063the pool itself uh of all districts and I guess my question is is there anything we can do um you know sometimes you put a sign outside that says you know shoes and sneakers are mandatory and you know you get a lower premium for slip and fall just some creative way to knock our premium down I know that's a lot and I apologize and my example was terrible um thank you uh for the questions uh let me start with the last one the um nicer nicer increases as we said are across the board for for all districts they gave that um to all of US during a meeting with business officials they also on an ongoing basis reach out um to the district and have training programs for the that the district participates in we

064I believe um Mr Hamilton went around with the nicer representative I want to say fairly in the last year or two and they go around and they look at your operations and they looking for I'm not going to say hazards but things that could be improved to tighten so we do participate with them and they are a partner with school districts so they certainly will make us aware of things that we can do should be doing things we should be looking at um to to um to lower incidences you're Dr rufo before you leave that question I'd just add two other things to it uh about four years ago I believe the district rebid insurance we were with a different carrier at the time and uh that rebid did save the district about half a

065million dollars a year in premiums by going to nyser so even though uh this premium increase is uncomfortable it's still considerably less than what we had been paying beforehand and then the second your example actually not so uh far off um and while we we did walk the facilities with nicer to see uh through their eyes if there were places where we could make the facilities safer uh one of the things that has remained in the capital budget is Paving projects and while Paving projects are not glamorous they literally are the antidote to slip and Falls because you don't want uneven pavement tripping somebody up who's uh maybe looking at a phone and not looking at their feet so um you know we're going to try and maintain that in there so uh that we

066protect people from exactly that kind of accident and then your second question I just consulted Mr Hamilton that there is not a um a flat rate or for electricity the um was there was that a two-part question or was there another part to that the electricity question you work with the fiscal advisers on cash flow in order to know how much to borrow for the Tans oh I didn't get to the Tans yet but I meant if there was a part two to the electricity I guess my question was is is it flat rate or is it something we should be looking into maybe long term uh for hedging since this is a $2 million uh annual number if it's going to stay 2 million and up going forward is there a way we can

067flatten it maybe not get a flat rate but lock in a rate at some point but that this would be for the future not for yeah I mean certainly something we'll look into but that's not our understanding but we Mr Hamilton's in uh in discussion he talks to the our representative um often so he'll he'll check in on that regarding the Tans so as I as I said during the budget presentation the Tans um are done in con consultation with our fiscal adviser and one of the documents um that they ask us for of course is our um is our cash flow and so your cash flow is for those that don't know is your statement of in inflows and outflows your uh items for your cash to determine how much cash you need at

068any point so that is something that is is highly scrutinized both by our fiscal adviser and bond counsel because they're all rules Arbitrage rules about how much you can borrow so the the amount that we borrow what we need so so we I I can't say that you know that 30 million typically if your budget goes up in a given year you might um you you might anticipate an increase all all else being equal in in your T borrowing we also have the situation this year of being we were I think we said 29 million in the budget for this year is what we estimated at the time but then our number was a little bit so we're actually 129 because of interest rates and we were 29 we actually came in at 30 are

069over uh over budget in in Tans so we we do our best estimate of cash flow don't have a lot built into it in terms of if you're we are conservative because we certainly want to ensure that we have cash available to pay our legal obligations ly sorry I I just want to clarify something and I'm might if I'm overstepping let me know but I think Brian mens is kind of like U for insurance like if you have car insurance you take defensive driving you can lower it is there something like am I wrong is that what you kind of meant like the signage or something we can look at as as to look at for that or is there a way they can look at scasd specifically and our incidences and do a specific

070rate sure they they they do look at when we do our renewal process each year which is an extensive process where they will look at um they you know they will look at our number of vehicles the number of people who are using our vehicle just to go on with the the example of the defensive driving um and and they will produce rates that are soset specific so the 15 is sort of the broad rate of what they're seeing in the market and then during the renewal and they're telling you that so that you can put it into your budget um and I guess beyond beyond what we've already stated about um talking about ensuring that you're one of the most important things you're keeping your facilities up and you know and and little workshops

071that they offer that I attend that Mr ham Hilton attends um we do that the defensive driving I you know that that's something specific we could we could speak to them about that anyone else Jack sh so in the operations of plan um there's 40% decrease in water and gas also is going down MH um you explained why the fuel is going down but is that realistic yeah it it's interesting the the water we took down and if you look at the actuals you can see that we have not spent that much during uh on water and we're waiting for back um we from Council on confirmation there was there was an allocation held in that water line there was a um a court case Nassau County was attempting to at the time uh pass

072off a a sewer I'm going to call it a sewer tax to school districts and other municipalities that in 2019 or 20 there was a decision and then there was potentially an appeal so we have to so we we brought it down as a reflection of actuals and might be able to bring it down once we have more once we have confirmation that this is we don't need to be saving this for the potential tax sewer tax right and I'm in the same group of line items it's interesting that electricity the only commodity um that's increasing do we know if it's a result of higher kilowatt hours or just prices prices this I'm sorry finish your question it's all right it is um it is really an adjustment to actuals this year where we experienced

073a significant increase in kilowatt hours I'm sorry in in in the price and so that's really what that reflects because in 2024 they think that it's going to go down a little bit but we're adjusting to our actual expenditures um the the the rate increase this year is what's driving that so one of the thoughts and I just wanted to piggy back on something that I think Brian was talking about in relation to the account if we are considering additional facility improvements as Dr Rogers just outlined potentially there are efficiency green lead all kinds of um hers rated savings programs that are both federally funded and state matched related to efficiency so in principle There's Hope potentially hopefully something that we can work with psng PS uh on um taking into account around future facility

074construction yeah we would be enthusiastic about pursuing uh any of that I know you know uh some school districts will do serial energy performance contracts they'll do one contract and then after that contract is completed find other efficiencies and perform another energy performance contract so um I don't know if there are further efficiencies for us to gain but certainly uh in any future Capital work we do we should have an eye towards um our usage costs it's especially true if we change the envelopes the the building construction parts um so Dr Roff I always asked the same questions but I love the uh building Aid so can you because in the past it was very low can so just for everyone can you just explain what the big Advantage for us is having our building

075Aid go up so much so so building Aid is is a form of state aid and it is based on the um amount of the project that's allowable the allowable cost of the project multiplied by your building Aid so um the fact that our building rate went up from 24 to 40% will mean significantly more building Aid than we would have gotten um at that lower rate so um we and as as I also mentioned our building Aid um for this year what's projected in the state budget is likely to go up as we are now reconciling all of the um outstanding projects or projects that are in uh in route with the state date that have not yet been recorded as of as of this last run which was a November because we finished

076a lot um I think Carol said 12 to 15 projects that were fin final cost reports were filed right so now we're going to get reimbursed from the state at a bigger amount than we typically got in the past which would help us with our absolutely it helps offset and the concept is that that the building Aid is aligned with your debt service so that as your debt service comes on your building Aid comes on as an offset as a revenue offset to The Debt Service expense and that's the way it's structured to work my other question was again another one um I know in the past two we had our foundation Aid that has been going up um and I know it's kind of we went up last year it went up this year

077is it going to hold at that level or could they reduce it or once St because I know we're still behind right I think our number was like 21 million we were supposed to get we never got yeah this they said we would get right yeah and 2324 is the is is to make everybody to make us whole right and I think the the challenge or the the concern is given um given the state's fiscal Outlook and this year all of the federal all of the covid and the federal aid that has been propping up the state as they provide essential Services um to New Yorkers um that that Aid is that Federal funding is going away so I think it there is concern about how sustainable these increases that we've seen and this particularly

078this amount for 23 24 will be in the future and is that also hold true for the uh Universal pre or or is that again a number that they'll keep that 1.7 the the one the it that I cannot comment on what I what I have asked the state because we had last year when we got the inquiries we said well can we count on this for years going forward correct and they said well we we can't tell you that we can say that there haven't been decreases um that that they have seen however from our perspective we haven't seen increases like this and we've only had upk for several years so there's our third year right okay I would just say uh I'll go a little deeper on the answer it's the board knows

079I began my career working on this exact topic for the legislature in Albany when the governor releases uh her executive budget the they also release a fiscal plan with it that has a 5-year projection uh what's interesting about this current year is not withstanding some of the bumpiness in the economy uh the current year budget is essentially balanced and the the proposed budget was um the estimates for the proposed budget budget were balanced going into this budget cycle that's unusual usually the state enters every budget cycle with a345 billion structural deficit that they have to close and they are ending the current fiscal year uh which expires on um March 31st with uh I believe an8 and change billion dollar Surplus a lot of which of that Surplus is going to be allocated to reserve

080so is very unusual for New York to end its year with a budget surplus so in the short term and uh the state is also seeing still uh record sales tax revenues so if fiscal conditions remain unchanged um the out-year projections for uh out-year budget deficits are in the neighborhood of three3 and5 billion dollar uh to put that in context when I was working in the legislature and the state budgets about half the size we were looking at $5 billion annual deficits to close so from a sense of magnitude these appear to me to be small but if the economy worsens they grow quickly and so the real question for whether the state can sustain this will be whether we slip into a recession or not uh because then the state will be forced to

081contend with it last point on state aid specifically to school districts the payment the full payment of foundation Aid and the aid that's given to schools now was done in response to a essentially to settle a lawsuit so for the state to back away from the funding level that it's at now would mean the state would have broken the settlement conditions for that lawsuit so I think that the state would be very reluctant to reopen that lawsuit having spent a lot of money to settle the lawsuit so it may be one of the last things the state looks at as a gap closing uh initiative but nothing is sacran but it does operate in the context of this lawsuit thank you okay thank you Dr any one up I'm sorry go ahead jar I just

082had a followup question to Dr Rogers about that the lawsuit settlement is there a duration for which the state has to continue or we would we would imagine the state would likely continue um that level of state aid is there a period of time where that um where the settlement covers or is it solely based on WE settled it this was the level of state aid and then going forward there are no other conditions under which they would be backing out from it yeah it's a really good question I don't know the answer to it but I do know the exact right person to ask so I will find out and get back to you with an answer okay thank you Dr thank you okay may I have a motion to approve the minutes of

083the meeting on January 6 2023 and January 9th 2023 seconded by Brian any questions all in favor opposed any extensions Dr rufo back to you the treasures report and Appropriations please okay the treasur report um the cash on hand for the month end December 2022 was 120 m933 7158 all bank balance balances on the report uh were balanced I'm sorry Bank balances for the cash accounts were reconciled to the book balances and were collateralized in accordance with the district's banking agreements and investment policy thank you Dr rufo I please have a motion to accept Dr rufo's treasury report Lisa seconded by Lynn any questions all in favor opposed any extensions next we'll move to Dr Roger superintendent report please great we have uh two presentations for you this evening as I mentioned earlier the theme

084for the night is uh um technology and uh we're going to have and science we're going to have a presentation on K12 coding and Robotics uh followed by a presentation on um the changing uh demographics of our younger student population and uh some state requirements that uh we're going to have to address so I'll introduce our assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction Mr Ray lso thank you good evening members of the Board of Education Dr Rogers Dr Curry and the administration I'm happy to kick off tonight's curriculum presentation for building algorithmic literacy the field of computer science is rapidly growing and there's a high demand for computer science Professionals in a variety of Industries learning computer science helps students develop problem solving skills that can be applied to a wide range of fields from business to

085healthcare and if this was not compelling enough you should know that much of what I just said was generated by chat GPT chat GPT is a language model it stands for generative pre-trained Transformer and it's essentially an artificial intelligence application of course here in saset our vision predates chat GPT since 2014 our district has had an ambitious Vision we wanted to give students an opportunity not only to learn how to code but to learn algorithmic thinking as a literacy we believe that in in the future this literacy will be on par with English and numeracy literacies yes computer science is a growing field but it's not where every student will find their passion or their purpose we provide our students with the tools they need to build literacy in many fields like coding and then

086we support them by allowing them to go as far as their interest will take them saset is pivoted towards teaching coding not an isolation but as an algorithmic literacy to deepen learning and to align to Industry standards we've also pivoted towards create creation and creativity allowing students to extend their experience Beyond kits and code blocks to developing their own programs robots and drones and lastly saset is pivoted to agency not just in computer science but in all content areas allowing students to take the lead in their learning simply put we are giving students the tools they need to Define their own problems rather than having the problem Define what students do the new computer science and digital fluency standards are a great opportunity for us to take inventory of all of our progress and to

087look to the Future to dive deeper into these standards and how they connect to saset vision and Mission excuse me vision and Mission I would like to introduce our K12 coordinator for administrative and instructional technology Miss Christine Payne thank you good evening it's been let me this it's been nine years already in 2014 the district formed a Technology workg Group with the ambitious goal of not just teaching coding but what we would do to prepare our students for the global workplace the work group continues to learn explore and pilot technology in our learning spaces in 2016 we created a technology wise statement to guide us as a district we educate to ignite curiosity we want our students to ask why and what if and to have the tools to succeed we believe that problem solving

088is the price of admission to success in an everchanging World algorithmic thinking uses problem solving to break down complex problems into smaller steps or an algorithm to find a solution it involves analyzing data identifying patterns and developing a sequence of instructions to achieve a goal it requires critical thinking attention to detail and a clear understanding of the problem it involves creating models and simulations so students can visualize and test ideas algorithmic thinking stimulates creativity and Innovation by generating fresh and inventive solutions to problems in 2020 the computer science standards were introduced computational thinking digital literacy and cyber security are what we consider the power three of algorithmic thinking computational thinking is problem solving using computers more and more job opportunities require competency in coding languages and digital applications we believe in providing a wide variety

089of opportunities for all students to learn these skills through collaboration competition and Hands-On coding experiences every day there are more and more news reports of data breaches and cyber attacks cyber security education helps students understand the dangers and consequen of cyber bullying identity theft Financial theft and hacking it empowers students with the skills and knowledge to protect themselves from a student's first experience with Google Classroom to writing the college essay or job resume their digital footprint will follow them what they post share and search online creates a digital footprint that can have a lasting effect on their personal and professional lives a positive digital footprint can enhance their reputation increase opportunities and promote good relationships the power three of algorithmic literacy supports students to problem solve to use technology and to take agency now we

090would like to share our earliest Learners pursuing their passions through technology it is my pleasure to introduce Kelly Panos our staff developer thank you Christine just as with language literacy our students begin in kindergarten constructing their algorithmic literacy students learn that instructions can take on forms other than words thank you kindergarten students create directional instructions to code a bbot to travel through a grid the target is the site words that they are learning students code oo robots using Color to follow a maze or to simulate events such as the world of a tornado students create musical instruments using everyday materials and coding to send electrical signals to produce sound our elementary Stu students are encouraged to play to be curious to experiment and to work with others from the primary grades through Upper Elementary in

091scasa we Foster an inclusive culture that values diverse perspectives Ives encourages experimentation and collaboration as students play and begin to deepen their knowledge of algorithmic literacy they build relationships with their peers both in person and online we believe that students take agency by learning to stay safe online by creating a good digital footprint by respecting others and using a Safe digital space technology is not magic igniting curiosity and helping students develop problem solving skills so they can pursue their passions is magical and now let's take a look at how middle school students move from basic algorithmic literacy as they explore more complex tasks test boundaries and deepen their relationships it is a great pleasure to welcome our coordinator of Science and Technology Joel Johansson thank you Kelly because saset students receive such a strong foundation

092in algorithmic literacy begin in kindergarten once they get to our middle schools students are able to engage in online and offline tasks of significant sophistication for example instead of using pre-made robots to complete a task given to them students are choosing the tasks they want to accomplish then they design build and code the robots themselves they expand their computational boundaries by using online software to design three-dimensional objects by writing algorithms using pseudo code a variety of coding platforms Andor languages and by analyzing data using multiple simulation software programs as middle schoolers further dip their toes into what it means to have a presence online both in school and at home cyber security concepts are grappled with more intentionally and topics include ethics and legality around student data privacy our digital Footprints how to avoid fishing

093scams and the need to protect our financial information and assets will throughout all of the curricula at this level are thoughtful considerations of the social emotional skills necessary for our interactions both on and offline our overall goal at this level is for students to transition from learning to use Technologies to using Technologies to learn to explain how the high school further develops our students algorithmic literacy please welcome our coordinator for mathematics and business Dr John chova algorithmic thinking is evident throughout the student experience at the high school our students use the scientific method to engage in countless cycles of idation exploration and iteration please watch in the lower Center as students create unique digital systems with custom user inputs tailored to the problem they've elected to solve circuitry coding and network design were used for

094students to build game controllers create interactive maps and other unique designs it's this kind of thinking that forms the basis for our student work throughout the program not merely memory of a body of facts in 2016 scasa High School made the Bold move to blend the academically abstract with the concrete in its stem program by developing curricula and courses that merge mathematics technology and computer science asking departments to collaborate in both planning and execution of these new courses was unprecedented our hypothesis was that this was the best best way for students to gain experience in true cross cutting opportunities and gain agency with tasks that would prepare them for an unimagined future the enthusiasm our students and faculty have responded with drove early success in our system one course where for seven years students have

095been developing their Thinking by creating terrestrial robots that you can see in the bottom left these robots are custom fabricated by our kids without blueprints of any kind and need to be modified and directed by code depending on the task to be solved so many cycles of computational thinking need to be engaged in as students design build test and evaluate their own work until the task is complete the early success of our Blended robotics course was reflected in competition enrollment growth and energy which drove us to wonder what we might do next the answer was to create a drones course that enabled students to extend learning on the ground to the skies the two rightmost images show our students constructing coding and testing drone to complete novel tasks we know that our kids comp we

096know that our kids computational thinking is not at its limit with the ongoing rise of artificial intelligence we formed an academic partnership with Liu to provide our system 2 students experience with incredibly current Concepts access to current University equipment and software and the next level of Technology I'm super excited to report back on the future on what our students will do next thank you for the opportunity to share this amazing work and I'll yield to Mr LSA who will conclude our presentation so I've I've been in a rush lately and um when I asked chat GPT to write me an ending to this presentation it started with in conclusion computer science is an Ever revolving field that is playing a crucial role in shaping the future that's what chat GPT says it's very obvious chat

097GPT is is great at saying things that have already been said that's its job but it cannot help our students explore discover and dream that will always be our job I hope we've been able to demonstrate for you how we've been working to actualize our technology wise statement this is not a wise statement that we're ever going to accomplish it's a rallying call a reminder that the future is going to be a challenge and that every day is another precious opportunity to ignite curiosity and passion in our students I thank you for your time and attention this evening and I I welcome any questions thank you so much Mr levera great presentation and the team anyone have any questions no oh shorty please are we meeting the demands of the students in terms of the

098number enrollment are we meeting the demands of the students who want to take these courses or do they have to wait for the Dr Park for the most part I would say that yes we are when we're Staffing to need so if students have an interest in taking a course we we do run the course and that includes computer science classes um robotics classes any any class that's that that would be involved with algorithmic literacy computer science coding there are no other questions from board members I'll just make two observations uh the first is um I think that we are somewhat unique in starting our program in kindergarten and that was framed by this idea of looking at this as a literacy not merely a body of knowledge to acquire and just as the literacy

099of reading allows someone to gain knowledge through Reading we believe that the ability to use technology in an iterative way to assign it tasks is also a skill that's going to be necessary ever more necessary in students lives in future and the sooner we start them thinking about that the more natural it will be for them the second thing that we hope to make more natural is by starting students as early as we possibly can uh we hope to uh expose all of our students to technology long before Ender any gender stereotypes take root and so that was a very intentional uh aspect of one of the district's work groups on gender Equity uh in our courses to um address what we saw as a gender imbalance uh later in middle school and high school

100and Technology courses so um that uh both of those things were very intentional strategies and we have seen uh Improvement in the gender diversity in uh the enrollment in the courses in the secondary schools so uh with certainly more work to be done uh but it's a promising strategy so with that I'll ask Mr levero to stay at the podium to talk about a different program and while the uh the next um slide deck is being queued up I'll just set the stage for this conversation as well uh certainly the board is well aware that soset uh is a diverse community and becoming more diverse uh every year the state has a requirement that when you reach a certain threshold of a number of students who are English language Learners and who share the same

101family uh of languages uh that the district is required to at least offer what's called a transitional bilingual education program and that is essentially uh an elementary school program that occurs in the home language as opposed to occurring in English so uh this year for the first time saset has reached that threshold and so uh because of the state regulation we have to uh explore this possibility parents of course are not required to take advantage of uh this option and as Mr levera will point out there are some pros and some um pretty significant uh considerations for parents to think about uh but we are required to offer it and uh so we're sharing this with the board now because there are some uh aspects of the program we have to set in motion soon

102in order to be in compliance so Mr so all right good evening again members of the Board of Education Dr Rogers Dr Curry and members of our Administration so tonight I'm going to provide an overview for a transitional bilingual education program that will be offering this fall as Dr Rogers has already stated um we're in a position where for the first time we have to offer this program our current enl program does an excellent job of addressing the needs for all of our enl students however nice regulations require us to present an option for a transitional bilingual education program to the community so this presentation is going to start by reviewing the structure of what we currently do in our enl program and then we're going to move to introduce a transitional bilingual education program

103requirement we will compare our current enl program features with that of a transitional bilingual education program and lastly we will provide you with a comprehensive overview of our needs for implementing the transition bilingual education program we already have many English language Learners in our district our current enl program does an excellent job of supporting them as they progress towards Proficiency in English and before I get into the differences between what we currently do for students and a transitional bilingual education program I'd like to provide an overview of the process we engage in to identify students who require enl supports whenever a student enters our district we provide them with a home language questionnaire and if a family indicates that there is a language other than English spoken at home we follow up with an interview

104the interview helps us to ascertain the level of English spoken at home and whether we need to administer an English language proficiency assessment the results of the assessment give us information pertaining to the students's English proficiency as you can see in the sample report there are five levels of proficiency starting at beginner levels and progressing towards proficiency entering being considered beginning and commanding being considered proficient the commissioner's regulations specify minimum hours of instruction per week at each proficiency level gradually decreasing as students become more proficient in English these time blocks are considered units of study and they could be they could be Standalone enl enl combined in different content areas or any combination of those two entering and emerging students have the same total number of hours with different types of instruction prescribed for their

105units of study as students progress through transitioning and expanding supports are slowly removed because students are gaining Proficiency in English and by the time students reach the commanding level students are considered former English language learners but they still must receive some combination of enl supports for 90 minutes per week it's important for us to note that the these units of study are minimums our staff provides the supports that students need which may exceed these guidelines our enl program consists of two components a Content area component which is pushing into classrooms and an English language development component which would be pulling students out of classrooms our goal is to help students develop their capacities in both social and academic communication students bring their own language of words in their home language and our teachers provide instruction

106that helps students establish a connection between what they already know and their English language development the length of time devoted to each of these blocks changes at each level and based on the specific needs of the student every student is different but all students will receive some combination of these components as I showed on the previous slide we use the mtss block for Standalone enl stru enl instruction which helps to develop students social communication skills and the content area blocks for integrated enl instruction aimed at promoting academic language communication skills based on these components we build a schedule for students that addresses their specific needs this is an example of a schedule for a first grader at the beginning level all the components of enl are scheduled into the day students receive Standalone instruction which

107includes Target of intensive language supports there are also times during the day dedicated to integrating DNL instruction which embeds language support in different content areas in this case with Ela as students become more proficient they gradually receive less enl instruction over time our current program is not only meeting the needs of students but we're doing an excellent job on average it takes about two to three years for a student to reach English language proficiency despite our performance we're still Bound by the state education regulations at this point Point we've reached the threshold number of Mandarin speaking students at a grade level which is 20 requiring us to offer a transitional bilingual education program and based on our enrollment Trends we must offer this option to students entering grades 1 and two this fall as Dr

108Rogers stated enl services are mandated by New York State while we're required to offer this program to our community families do have a choice families may choose whether they would like to participate in the transitional bilingual education program or continue with our enl program in their home school the focus of a transitional bilingual education program is to offer students an opportunity to receive instruction in their home language while they learn to read speak understand and write in English the ultimate goal is to help students transition to a monolingual English setting and to gain English proficiency this is an example of what a student schedule can look like in a transitional bilingual education program the main difference in this hypothetical example is that there are times allocated specifically for home language arts instruction this is where

109students continue to develop their writing vocabulary and comprehension skills in their home language the research tells us that we can leverage proficiencies in one language to facilitate the learning of a second language teachers do this with their early language Learners in regular enl programs as well as transitional bilingual education programs here I'm showing you a Continuum of instruction based upon student levels um as students develop their English proficiency and show growth on the NCIS slat assessment they receive more English language instruction over time the goal of a transitional bilingual education program is to transition students to instruction that is mostly in English there's a lack of Empirical research on the best way for L's to learn content the existing research on transitional bilingual education is mixed proponents suggest that this type of program helps facilitate

110learning English content and the critics say that prolonged placement in a transitional bilingual education program slows down English proficiency as well as entrance into mainstream education courses based on our analysis of District Trends and our current enrollment numbers if all of the eligible students opted to enter the program this coming fall we would need three additional teachers this would require us to hire three teachers that are either grade 1 through six certified or birth to grade two and in either case they would also need to have a bilingual education extension for Mandarin the program also would require space so there would be an addition of three classrooms that we would need as Dr Rogers shared at last month's meeting saset is a great place for kids and we have high enrollment in all of our

111elementary schools the schools most able to accommodate the bilingual program at this point are AP Willets and Village Elementary Schools we anticipate requiring at least two additional bus routes with an estimated cost of around $108,000 this amount could be higher or lower depending upon interest in the program and whether and the final routing for the buses our preparation for implementing the program would need to begin this school year and continue with curriculum writing over the summer we would also take this opportunity to retool some of our existing resources in order to meet the needs for students in the program this would include curriculum writing and vetting curriculum materials based upon enrollment projections if every student were to opt into the program that's eligible at the moment the current estimated cost is around $413,000 this includes

112three new teachers additional Transportation as well as curriculum materials and curriculum materials would include textbooks workbooks um curriculum writing um and in terms of teachers that number could be different depending upon the level of experience of the teachers that are hired and as I had explained on a previous slide about Transportation um that number could differ depending on the number of students interested and the number of routes that we would need there are some important next steps we need to take in our planning process first we need to hold information sessions with families of our Mandarin speaking kindergarten in first grade students the purpose of these meetings will be to inform them about this option and explain how the program will work once we've explain the program our next step will be to assess their

113interest families are not required to have students participate in the program but we're required to offer this as an option once we finalize our student numbers in terms of Interest we'll be able to go through a hiring process to find teachers we need to staff the additional classes there are several concerns we have about moving forward there are um the issue of social disruption is a very important one students will likely need to relocate schools in order to participate in the program and they may need to relocate again once they enter third grade the Staffing increase needed for the program will not be offset because we're going to need our enl staff at the home school so wherever this wherever the program ends up being housed we will still need transitional bilingual education staff as

114well as our current enl staff and lastly we're concerned about we have concerns about the minimal class size we don't know how many students would be interested in opting into the program and we would like to avoid a highly restrictive placement for students which means we would not want to have a very small class size so I want to thank you again for your time and attention this evening and I'll happily answer any questions you may have so um let me preface this with last week I was at a PTA meeting at Robins Lane and the enl department uh presented and I took in a lot of information I did not know uh I was very impressed I can imagine all of our schools are are putting in the time and effort and the resources

115for the current program so I guess my question comes down to the option that these parents will have and I wonder you know you raise concerns that the the two that jump out at me is the social disruption and the busing and I wonder if we need to make very clear to the families that may not be english- speaking at all uh what this option is and how great the current program is and obviously we can't nudge people but we can absolutely abolutely give them the facts and let them make the decision based on those facts so that's the first thing that jumped out at me um and then the second thing that jumps out at me was the last thing you said Mr levero about this minimum if if four people districtwide decide to

116do this are we forced to do it under the new regulations or can we make the decision that that program may be less beneficial to those four students and then scrap it so I'll field that question uh Mr levero has uh been on the phone with folks from the state education department asking that latter question uh directly and there is no hard and fast rule so what we've been doing is reaching into the rules around special education and um in special education only the most severely disabled students would be put in a class of fewer than eight students uh because the thought there is that being in a class with five or four students is not really a class anymore um you just don't have all that many peers to make friends with then it

117becomes a very restrictive placement so uh we're looking at um those special education um social constructs as uh a thought process for how we would think about what is such a restrictive environment that it does a disservice but um unfortunately it would be easier if the state gave us some guidelines but I think we're going to have to to work through that um yes so my one of my questions was what Brian was saying is that if we fall below that 20 um threshold if it could bump us out of being required to do it because if enough kids opt out then we don't have 20 kids who are going to be in the class so that was one of my questions um and since it's required that they sayate is there any shot there

118spunding from the state that will offset our costs to your first point um even if students do not opt into the program they still have to be counted towards the number that we would require that we need to have that that 20 they would still be counted towards that 20 um in subsequent years if there were 15 or less students in a Grade band then we would not be obliged to offer the program so 15's the thres the threshold in following year so if for example first and second grade enrollment Trends dipped below 15 we would no longer need to offer the program that is opposite of the trends we've been observing for the past four years but I'm just giving you some you know perspective there um in terms of funding there's there's there

119are always grants um most of those grants are not grants that we have we would um qualify for but um for the most part it is not uh it's not like Universal prek where there's funding associated with it it is something that we're required to do and you know there the the state gives us some flexibility in how we decide to do it but ultimately they they do not provide additional funding okay thank you for that presentation uh I do have several questions U number uh question number one is that um if this can the student opt out at any time uh once in the program um and the second question is that since we are holding a info session for families and then a lot of these families you know as mentoring as their

120you know home language are we going to have translators and all the Flyers going out um I do think that it's very important that you know it's being translated into that language especially having a translator a proficient uh you know someone's proficient in the language to be on site to uh to answer questions or to uh do uh any translation necessary and the third question is that um obviously this is new to uh new for the sias Learning Community I'm not sure if other districts on La island has that uh transitional or even immersion um bilingual programs have we looked at other data or you know um get other data even from New York City Board of Education um to see how we can support these kids or to see you know how the results

121will be after two years going back to the mainstream classes I do think that it is very important because Elementary School is the time that they develop their social skills and in missing that two years with a regular classes in their own school um it's very critical two years is a very long time as we see in the co years the the lack of social um interactions with students and it's creating a lot of mental issues after that and I hope we're hoping to help students with this program but we don't want to create more problems after thank you thank you for those questions um I'll take them I'll try to take them in order um I think your your first question was about opting out a student or family could opt out at any

122point so once they if they decided to opt in and October 15th came and they decided they no longer wanted to be in the program they would be able to opt out um I think your your second question was related to translation Services we will utilize all of our translation services for the information sessions we're already working on drafting messages to families and those will be translated as well um and we plan to do sessions during the school day at different times as well as evening sessions between now and the beginning of March um and then your last question about um resources and other programs on Long Island there are some bilingual there are some immersion programs um I visited one it was for for Spanish it's a little bit different um Spanish and English

123are a little bit more comparable in terms of their their their alphabet so it would be considered a category one and a category 2 language whereas for Mandarin the spread is a little bit more significant it's a category one versus a category 4 um difference because the the alphabet and the characters are much different um while my visit to the Spanish Immersion program was wonderful and I learned a lot it's not something comparable to what we need to be doing um New York City does have resources I there are um bilingual education resource networks we call them Burns I've been in contact with the Long Island burn and the Albany burn as well as the New York City burn and they have definitely given me recommendations for curriculum materials that we'll be vetting and utilizing

124as we uh move forward with curriculum writing um one thing to note about the home language arts instruction um just like with Ela where we have textbooks and reading materials we would need the same thing in Mandarin for students to accommodate them um in first and second grade so those that's an important piece of this and I've already been in contact with um someone from NYU in their bilingual Center thank you um other than that it is required by the New York state do you see any benefits of the transitional violing program versus what we have now first question and second is um why is it limited to just first and second when you accounting the families and if we have more than 20 families in third grade fourth grade in the future that's moving

125in let's say will that increase to third and fourth graders as well so in terms of benefits for the program um it's a program that I know we would be able to do and I know we would be able to do it well um if if families weren't interested in it I don't think that it would be detrimental in terms of their language development there are we do have the the social disruption issue is an important one and I I don't want to ignore that but in terms of learning language I'm confident that with our staff and and hiring new staff we'd be able to do a very good job in making sure that students gain language proficiency whether they remain in our enl program or if they go into our TBE program um and

126your other question was relating I'm sorry what was your other question why is it limited to just first and second graders well so our enrollment numbers over the past we looked at the trends over the past few years and the average in first and second grade has been over 20 so if that number were to go over 20 in third fourth and fifth grade we would be obligated to offer the program there as well however and this goes back to what I was saying about the effect iess of our current enl program we do notice that students tend to come in and they get enl services and by third and fourth grade they've reached proficiency and we don't see as many and this is not just unique to Mander and it's it's across all all

127languages so that's a testament to the effectiveness of the current program we have and that is for the children who come to the district from kindergarten correct or for first grade yes as to start okay but if a someone Moves In in third year uh third grade or fourth grade and that number increases then we need to implement those yes and it's it's it's also they give us some flexibility in calculating it in terms of so if we if we had 21 year we don't necessarily need to offer it the next year what you look for is is an average over three years okay and also one I'm sorry however one more question um the finances that you have calculated included only the staff and busing I believe um do we have plan to include

128soci uh social workers or psychologist who will have to help those children go back to their home school basically moving in to uh moving again within the district the current plan would be to utilize the staff that we already have in place at each School whether it's the home school or the school that's housing the program but um additional tutors and social workers are something that we can also look at hi thank you very much um you said that they can opt out at any time I just wanted to check if they could act in any time also if they initially choose not to be in the program is it something they can go into later my other part of my question is are there other districts in the same um situation as us and

129is there a way to partner with them so that maybe it's not four students in a class or it's more students in a class and we can share costs and things like that um the answer to the first question is that they would I I do believe they would be able to opt in if they wanted to um I think the more likely scenario would be opting out but I could see a scenario where they'd want to go into the program um there are schools that have transitional bilingual education programs um many schools as soon as they hit 20 that's their first approach they they do a transitional bilingual education program um in terms of partnering up with them I I don't want to say for sure that that's not something possible but I don't

130know of any programs on the island that do partner with one another I could double check on that Mr levero just a uh a thought or a question for you the children that would be entering this program and one and two their schedules look very similar to the the regular schedules of the other grades in the building so would these children be in their own PE classes music classes art classes by themselves or would they ever have a chance I know sometimes grades intermingle in some of the special classes would they have a chance to intermingle with the other grades the other first or second grades in the building and if that's the case since their lunch is the same time would it be possible for these parents to opt into allowing their child to

131continue at that elementary school since maybe they make friends in the special classes or at launch or recess well with our current if we have a first grader that comes in right now with our current enl program one thing that we Noti and this is something that I had been talking to the principles about um our current social work staff definitely works with students to make sure that they're playing with students at at lunchtime um there's a lot of visual aids at the elementary level that definitely facilitate that and for the most part you know kindergarten and first graders within a few days they are playing on on during recess and and and in PE um but in terms of just giving students the option to go into specials in a transitional bilingual program the

132specials would they would be traveling with one another in that program it's a very similar schedule with the exception of the home language arts instruction but they would also have it would be that they would still have opportunities at recess to definitely socialize and part of the program would be to develop the social piece of the language development um it's not just the academic piece it's also the social piece I don't know if I answered every part of your question almost thank you the last part of it is if they do um they transition well in the first and second grade would it be possible to allow those children since maybe they make friends and recess and whatnot to actually opt to stay at that elementary school from an educational standpoint it would certainly be

133my preference to give families and and students that option however as you know we've we've seen in our enrollment Trends um in last month's presentation that's not something that's always predictable so so it's not something that we can guarantee but it would all things being equal we would certainly want to want to do that to the extent possible so I'll just make some summi of comments obviously we've put a lot of energy into trying to think through this and notwithstanding all the effort we've put into it there will still be some open questions the question about what to do when these uh kids exit out of the program that may be exiting out because they've reached third grade or it may be exiting out because they've reached the commanding level uh in their English language

134uh proficiency and um I think we all recognize and worry about the social disruption of taking kids away from uh their peers in the neighborhood and busting them across town to another place so that they can have specialized form of instruction and then um how long that lasts and how you integrate into uh or reintegrate into a home Community I think the other challenge for us is um looking at this there are several chicken and egg problems uh with this program uh Mr levero promises that we'll do it well and I have no doubt that we will do our best uh but in a program like this in particular the staff is essential to success so I'm often asked you know uh about this school district or that school district and you know the strength

135of the school district and if you're an elementary student a parent of an elementary student I say do you like your child's teacher because that's the person person they're spending so much time with and I think that's exactly the case here uh we need to hire well for this program to be a success and um we're not just looking for uh an excellent elementary teacher we're looking for a an excellent elementary teacher with a very specific skill set and so I think uh even before we know whether there's going to be interest in that program I think we need to be out in the hiring season as early as possible so that the hiring pool has not experienced any hiring pressure uh when we enter that pool so uh I think we need to be

136aggressive about looking to hire even though I can't guarantee that uh there will be a body of students that are interested in taking this class so we're thinking about trying to calibrate um how many uh staff we hire how quickly in the pool but I I do think that that's a significant consideration and uh having spoken to colleagues who have U immersion programs bilingual programs um they will often comment that the challeng is in finding great staff uh because it by its very nature it Narrows the pool from which you can choose so the second thing that is kind of a chicken and EG problem is uh the curriculum writing that has to be done we will need to onboard Mandarin speaking instructional staff in order to do the curriculum writing project uh as smart

137as Mr levero is I I don't think he's up for the task so uh um we need someone who Mandarin speaking uh to be able to do that and this is going to be more than a summer curriculum writing project because you're talking about lifting an entire grade level worth of curriculum in a new language so uh I think we're going to have to onboard that person in the current uh school year and get them started uh in the short term on trying to um take soset program and um lift it into uh into Mandarin so that our the students in the new TBE program are having the same excellent soset experience not just sort of a homogenized off-the-shelf uh Mandarin program and I I think that's going to be uh difficult and then uh

138lastly just thinking through the logistics of the busing and while on the one hand uh we want to minimize the number of buses that we hire we also don't want to maximize uh time spent on a bus for very young elementary students first second graders no one wants to see them on the bus for long periods of time because the bus has to sweep through half of soset before it goes off to the school where the program is going to be located U so um part of the reason for wanting to have this conversation with you in February is because I think we need to start uh our search for candidates uh sooner rather than later so we can hire sooner rather than later so we can curriculum right and involve those staff members in

139the very conversations that you're talking about with uh parents to describe the program and uh to meet the people who might possibly be teaching in the program so um unfortunately and not withstanding some of the budget pressures that we're experiencing I think uh it's incumbent upon us to get started now for all the reasons that I stated so let's say we got very lucky we got three wonderful teachers that we wanted and they uh hired right away and started working on curriculum writing and when the time came um not enough people were signed up what happens to these teachers well I've been thinking through that scenario as well and I think one of there's the typical HR answer um the by the book HR answer and then what I think would probably happen in the

140real world um school districts exess based on seniority so the least senior person is accessed when there isn't a need so one of these people shortly after being hired would be accessed but that's certainly unkind to someone so I think what we would try to do is identify um classroom teacher retirements at the elementary level and if the people that we hired uh were not needed for the transitional bilingual education program they still have the regular Elementary certification um it would be a conversation with them about we had intended to have you teach this kind of program but it turns out that the vacancy that we have is in a regular uh general education classroom and if they're still interested in that opportunity then we would move them into that role instead and it is

141not uncommon for us to have three four or five uh Elementary retirements in a year so um I in the back of my mind what I'm thinking is um that that would be our uh shock absorber in in case um we hired these people but uh the program didn't run very quick question um are you observing any trends for any other language groups down the line that are approaching the threshold threshold or possibly will we we're no way near that Mr levera was a little closer to that I've been watching the overall population of a couple hundred kids but not any one language group I'd have to double check but I believe Korean is a close second but it's not near 20 does it make sense to proactively look for people who would be able

142to fit both needs so they could be the regular Elementary School teacher and they would be able to have the specialization in whatever languages we feel we're close on just so we cuz it seems harder to find the specific language that we need than it does to find a great Elementary School teacher because it's such a specific skill set so would it make sense to maybe proactively try to hire people who possess whatever skills that we think they need so we kind of have them in the wings waiting that we can pull them out and then we could just replace a regular Elementary School teacher which is less complicated to find I think uh an example um the last time we hired for an elementary school teacher um I believe we had 1,200 applications for

143the position so the pool is very broad but within that pool um I think there were about half a dozen people that had uh other language skills out of a 1200 person pool so I I think your idea of being on the lookout for um acquiring language skills is a good one and certainly one that we look for uh but um and you know in this particular case they have to have the regular Elementary certification we're just uh looking for the bilingual extension in Mandarin and we can certainly look for bilingual EXT extensions in other languages and uh a thing that a lot of school districts do and we as well is look for secondary and tertiary certifications because um they make people um easier to assign to different jobs so often we look for

144a special ed certification or a regular enl certification uh and a elementary teacher that has multiple certifications just ends up checking multiple boxes for us so um that's a good strategy and whenever we find someone with a second language skill they get a second look from us every time I have a quick question too when when do you anticipate that we would kind of have the pool of people who are going to opt in I would hope to have a decent idea of how many people would want tot opt in somewhere in March okay anyone else thank you so much Mr Laro thank you okay next Michelle Yan spokesperson for the citizens advisory committee for finance will report on the last meeting Michelle good evening I'm sorry my eyes are a little blurry so I'm

145going to try to get through this uh our last meeting was January 23rd uh we had a number of new members who joined the committee we made introductions and got started with the meeting the administration explained to the committee that because the district is considered affluent it does not qualify for a number of those grants that U might be out there which are based on financial need and uh we did discuss that we did have a grant writer and the cost of which the district had um hired the grant writer had been a break even situation so um we we did try that uh alternative sources of revenue that were discussed um with the administration and with the district's attorney Maryann Sadowski from Ingram and Smith um we spoke to she spoke to the committee

146regarding uh the limits that are placed on the district by law uh so the district cannot do fundraising uh the solicitation for donations would have to come from a separate Foundation if that was going to be done uh we discussed naming rights which is not allowed by State education law so you can have a nominal acknowledgement like by a brick um that's allowed but we can not go and have a billboard saying Eat At Joe's or Jersey Mike whatever else you want to say um rental of property uh that's not currently in use for operations can be done at fair market value that we already have District policies that cover a various number of Revenue sources so um we can look into the our policies that we have right now and we did have some

147ideas that uh might pass the state requirements but if those do cover uh are good for the state we have to consider local laws which could be Zone own in and that could limit us there then we had uh the district considering using two uh Cooperative investment uh organizations that have a potential for um alternative depositories for Investments of our district funds uh our attorneys had been reviewing those agreements for both firms and there were Representatives who came and made presentations uh one of them was in person and the other was virtual uh we had one from New York Cooperative liquid security systems which is called New York class and the other one was New York liquid asset fund nyf and that was the virtual one uh the committee asked both of those firms about

148their rates their fees the details of their services and the support functions that they provide to us the service related to Arbitrage calculations which is something the district might have to be looking into way uh that the rates are going is that the district's earning rates uh if they're exceeding the borrowing rates we discussed that portion um and possibility and both of them did have some um services are related to that uh guidance is available from The Office of the State Controller to assist the committee members to understand what investing and protecting public funds is about and about fund using fund reserves which we normally talk about in our budget meetings and then the administration uh is going to summarize all the points that came about from these proposals and give it back to us

149for an evaluation our next committee meeting will be tomorrow night at Southwest right here okay thank you thank you Michelle my eyes are blurry too so I don't feel bad good do you have any questions Jack does anybody right okay go ahead Le less a question than a statement so um I've been a member of that committee for five or six years I can't remember before that was the best committee meeting I think that we've ever had so kudos to Dr rufo to you to everyone who is in attendance it was um we don't often get such a high level of direct participation uh from community members with expertise um that opportunity through that committee structure is unique so far in the district um and what we saw I think in terms of the level

150participation and knowledge and willingness for folks to uh to donate their time and expertise to the district uh was phenomenal and opportunities like that I feel like number one um sort of have a value that the more direct participation that the board gets the more knowledge we're going to end up with from a lot of diverse sources we're going to end up making better decisions so that opportunity um is tremendous I think for us in terms of our own education number two the other thing that I think was critical and is really interesting to see is a lot of or several board members attended uh that meeting and one of the nice things about having board members attend committee meetings is that we can brief each other afterwards um so Michelle does a tremendous job

151with the minutes so thank you um and you had to stay late to do it especially tonight um one of the things that we may be able to do going forward is board members uh a few of them who may decide to attend that committee can brief the others in public that's one of the benefits of committee work is that we can divide and conquer we can keep everyone up to date instead of having Michelle stay late and we can brief each other uh in reasonably good detail that's something that I think we should consider going forward especially given the value that a committee like this and other committees might have for dividing the work among the board I'm going to nominate Mr ostrich to be the one to report back to us after these

152meetings but I think he's right in a lot of ways because Michelle you do a wonderful job but I think if we're going to work in committee and there's going to be multiple board members that are not in attendance I think it's it's up to us from our perspective as board members to update the rest of you on what happens at these meetings okay thank you okay okay thanks Michelle see you tomorrow night okay anyone else okay so we're going to move to um Board of Education update um it has been a very difficult few weeks for the daget family it is unimaginable the pain that they have endured the Board of Education the school district the Sasa Community are all very sorry for your loss and we grieve with you we are all heartbroken

153we are all parents we love our children and we love the students as they are our own children this was very difficult for us to deal with was a beautiful young man shining star with a Magnetic Personality so much potential everybody he met instantly loved him and he made a lasting impression at the high school in such a short period of time we are all heartbroken our Learning Community has come together to support Ben and his family they rallied in so many ways they went to the hospital they set up a makeshift Memorial they posted beautiful pictures and stories about Ben online all expressions of Love caring and compassion I want to thank all our students our teachers our staff our guidance counselors our mental health professionals for all their support this is our worst

154nightmare we have an excellent mental health professional staff to speak to and when you're ready if you need to speak to someone maybe tomorrow maybe next week maybe next month we are here for you we are here for the dagged family we will never forget Ben his siblings or his parents and he will live in our hearts forever thank you I wanted to give an update too on some of the boards um going on I guess um some of us attended the Nassau suffk School Board Association Along with the Nassau and suffk superintendent Association conference on the status of the New York State economy featured by the New York State Controller Thomas denapoli he gave a general positive overview of the effects uh I'm sorry of the of the state economy on our schools budget

155currently Dr Rogers had spoke about a couple of them previously however the next few years would be challenging because of the unknowns and the districts will continue to cautiously spend money next order was that we were very fortunate to be able to go on a tour of the new facilities at the Hicksville High School we were invited by the superintendent and the president of the board um they're very gracious to have us there they did an excellent job they even gave us a pamplet uh summarizing the work that they had done on the auditorium on the Aquatic Center um touring this facility for us was very useful since we had a lot of questions and to be able to see uh dreams come to fruition excuse me um would help us in our future Endeavors

156um we also toured the cafeteria which they did new um and again it was nice to see what things could look like and it would help us plan um second thing was that the board came back and we actually did our first Workshop um we broke up into small groups we discussed items we had we had um interactions between both between the various board members on various topics back and forth um we will summarize all of the ideas that were brought forward thank you Dr Curry for facilitating everything um we had some feedback um from some of our community members about not streaming um this was because in this particular case since it was the first first time um and we were working in small groups we did not feel at this time that it

157lended itself well to live streaming but we took note of your comments and we welcome them um and we appreciate your feedback as always you um last but not least the board uh on February 1st uh we celebrated World read loud day uh it's a day that's dedicated not just to reading but to the art and practice of reading aloud which is so important especially um something that's fostered in you know very young years in in an elementary school uh we were invited to read aloud at Village Elementary School um we just wanted to say that we're honored to be viewed as role models for our young readers in the district and we always enjoy the opportunity to be invited into the schools and into the classrooms um I had an adorable first grade class

158I enjoyed reading to them very much and I think it's nice for them also to to see other adults in the district and learn about you know who other people are as just opposed to their you know elementary teacher that they're with all day so it was a great experience and we're happy to be part of um world read aloud day so thank you thank you Lisa does anybody want to add anything Brian um I think it's wonderful that we're invited into the schools uh and that we get a chance to read and I I thoroughly enjoyed uh doing that I just um you know maybe this is coming out of left field Dr Rogers but it reminds me of a lot of the comments I've got since I've been on the board about parents

159access to the schools into the classrooms and you know I know um you know obviously there was the pandemic and then we moved to get back to the prepandemic level and you don't have to answer me right now but I'm wondering do you feel that we're at that point when it comes to parent involvement especially in the elementary schools um you know parents that aren't on the school board and I just I just wanted to know if if you thought we were close still working on it um or there my impression is that we are where we left off prior to the pandemic and uh I know that uh I saw a lot of invitations go out from elementary schools for the curriculum celebrations that are part of uh the elementary curriculum uh when they

160finish certain units um the nice thing about the way that's structured is that it's not all at once and so it's a much more manageable group uh I know I've attended a number of uh different events from Halloween parades to Multicultural events to um uh tiny house exhibitions uh at Barry Hill and the gyms and Fields and uh cafeterias have been just full of uh parents in the building so I feel as though there's been a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm and frankly a lot of appreciation for what we got back after having lost it for a couple of years so I think all of our principles have been working hard to find those opportunities to reintegrate our educational community and uh to miss Chang's point from earlier the you know social

161impact uh of the pandemic is going to take some time to undo in some ways I think that the social impact uh is going to be harder to uh address than the academic uh loss that some uh may have experienced so uh that's that's work that's going to continue but I I do feel like there has been a very intentional effort on our part to create um wonderful opportunities for parents to be part of the Learning Community one other question and thank you Dr Rogers I put you on the spot on that one um with we approved two minutes today right we we approved January 6th and the 9th are we going to when we distribute the write up because obviously it was decided not to record the goals meeting will we do it as

162minutes that we approve at a future meeting or will this just be sort of a summary of what we did so um I don't think that there were actual minutes taken where someone recorded verbatim the words that were spoken by everyone but as you know you uh wrote a lot of things on poit notes we did uh organize and take um notes on that and then uh the cabinet as a Cabinet exercise uh debriefed the meeting and tried to distill the conversation of the board into themes and we're working through processing that now and I hope to make that uh summary available to the board so you'll have access to that um and it's our attempt to uh synthesize multiple conversations into more cogent themes uh that the board would then react to so these

163this is our processing of all that language uh to try and get to as you know uh some pretty piy cogent goal statements that will drive some of the work that we're doing around facilities obviously as we've talked about quite a bit and um diversity equity and inclusion so uh I hope to have that for you soon actually just to follow up I mean I know you would give that to me I just want I was wondering will that be made available to the public will it be minutes that we make available to the public public that we approve once we've had a chance to look at it um I don't know that I could characterize them as minutes but Our intention has always been to make them public yeah so I actually think that

164not recording this was a big Miss by us and uh the fact that we've had as many people come out to talk about these two particular topics as we've had had in the last two years and the level of interest in the community um about these two particular topics I feel like it was a real missed opportunity for us and I wasn't quite sure if I heard that we decided to or not to live stream and record the next working group meeting that we're going to have I know that we decided to accept feedback but I'm not sure that I heard what the next step about that potential feedback might be right so at this point Jack we haven't made a decision we're just we've just gotten the feedback and we're taking into consideration great

165so let's have a discussion about whether or not we as a board think it's a good idea to potentially live stream and record that meeting I've already made my point clear I think we should absolutely be doing that okay thank you okay I think maybe the way to do this is maybe we don't have a goals meeting planned right now so why don't we make sure before we have that me we're we're streaming every other meeting so right before we have our next goal meeting let's have a discussion item and have this discussion absolutely okay okay um there is no legislative items next item is audience to the public Thea Board of Education and administration welcomes your attendance at the Board of Education meeting audience to the public affords residents of the districts the opportunity

166to address the Board of Education residents must enter their full name and address into the register located at the microphone before they speak each resident will have four minutes to address the Board of Education the board will permit polling will not permit polling I apologize of the individual board members by the speakers after every resident wishing to speak has had the opportunity to do so the Board of Education Andor Administration will do their best to provide responses to the res residents questions or comments after every residents has had a chance to speak the chair May recognize residents who wish to address the Board of Education a sec second time after their initial 4minute turn no speaker is permitted to address issues concerning any individual student or staff member all in attendance at the Board of

167Education public meeting must conduct themselves in a respectful manner does anybody want to come up for answer the public yes please should I sign this thing first uh my name is uh Kenneth Malloy Jr and um I live on uh 27 Renee Road um what I what I want to talk about I I I read the minutes from the uh January 29th meeting and uh I didn't really want to let um knowing what I know about indigenous people and my interaction with him I didn't want to let that some people's words stand um I I've been in the district 35 years uh my son and daughters went here they were on ABS opposite ends of the academic um Spectrum but they were wonderfully treated at the school and I I thank the board and everybody

168who um is associated with this um I went to Syracuse University played uh lacrosse with four indigenous uh anagas uh and um one of them actually is the Taho of the uh iroy Nation right now the chief of the entire iroy nation which is uh sanaz anadas Mohawks uh a few other um onidas cugas tusor anyway I asked his cousin who I played with Ron Hill about um what he felt about the the name Braves he said he had absolutely no problem with that okay that's the micro of of the people I've known the macro is I understand this uh the State Board of Education is uh trying to withhold funds from anybody who won't change some of these things okay but what I read about is that the Sena triod the uh tribal counsel

169from the sakers was who they um referenced and asked about what would be offensive okay so it there was a little bit of um with all the school boards they they didn't really understand like what what was expected so the um canadao School Board who happens to have the same name sasid the Braves okay brought in the tribal counsil from the senas who were the ones who advised the New York State and they were asked and they asked them what do we do with our name the Braves they said we have no problem with the name Braves now I understand that there's the names here okay and there's these images and caricatures over here okay but in the last meeting people were conflating the two okay they're not the same thing so my so some

170of these people who spoke probably their only inter interaction with uh indigenous people you know what do they do buy cigar uh taxfree cigarettes out in the Hampton I don't know but what I'm saying is that um really consider okay that you really don't want to change the name Braves because what we want to change is the um is the the caricatures the images and everything that the the profiles of indigenous people but as far as the Braves go okay I can tell you that the Sena Tribal Council the people I know the indigenous people on the a andgas including the tahu the chief I can tell you that it's not offensive to them thank you I'm sorry thank you so much for coming up anyone else okay th this will close audience to the

171public thank you for your comments um at the last meeting I made the point that uh the state has put together an advisory panel and I'm my understanding is that that advisory panel is a subpanel of a Native American advisory panel that is supposed to advise the Ed department on a whole number of items of which the mascot is one so I'm waiting for some uh information from the state as to whether that panel has met and if so if they've offered any conclusions um and uh you know what as soon as I'm given that information I'll share it with the board just so you know some of these um issues are in flux and you use the term Native American okay there's indigenous people out there who don't want to be referenced to some

172Italian explorer who discovered reendo just so you know okay so that brings us to unfinished business the board of education has unfinished business from the last meeting we had discussed the use of Native American team name and mascot um does anybody have any comments yeah no I just I think it's prudent to wait for the results of the advisory panel like Dr Rogers just said that's my opinion anyone elseis when is The Advisory panel I was told that the umbrella group was supposed to have a meeting uh two weeks ago and they were supposed to set up a subcommittee from that group and I'm keeping in touch with someone from my State Association who's watching this issue for us and that that subcommittee has not met okay um I'm a assuming that we had had

173this on here as unfinished business because we were wanted to vote on this um I'm proposing that we vote on it in the March meeting we've had now two months um that we've had this up for discussion it's not something we really have a choice over it's um mandatory um my other thoughts on it are that I would like to involve the current seniors in the new name selection so if we continue to weigh then those students are not going to have the option to weigh in um I don't know how anybody else feels but I would like to propose that we vote on it in in our March meeting does anybody have an issue with that I have a question yes before I could answer that one um Dr Rogers are you do you

174have a vision of what uh that committee when the time comes provided we have the decision of the subcommittee on the state um what our um our committee if you call it committee where um the entire Community will have um a chance at the table so to speak um perhaps um if we are again I don't know when this decision is going to come so it's hard to um plan really but maybe we should um you could suggest um the the the format for that committee and also the timetable for um round taes if you will similar to um what was really effective in my opinion is um with the Comm community community meetings um over phase one phase two if you recall be few years back um I personally would love to see that

175level of participation not uh you know a 10 to 12 people committee on something like this just my suggestion so perhaps we could start you know brainstorming that prior to our vote so I think um should the board take the decision uh that we would need to have a new mascot and um team name then we can certainly do a lot of public engagement and my presumption would be that we would do a lot of public engagement I think that engagement would probably take several forms uh the last time saset uh looked at changing its mascot there was a a smaller committee that was tasked with the role of narrowing down ideas to a handful of ideas that would take some broader consideration so um I think we'll end up getting a lot of ideas

176um when we have wrin candidates for elections sometimes the right-end candidates are names of cartoon characters Etc and I worry that if we have a very open-ended kind of a process we'll need to thin out some things that would be inappropriate for several reasons um but and I think that a a group that's tasked with thinning out things that would not work for a school district for let's say um but then narrowing it down to half a dozen likely candidates and then taking feedback from the public on that engaging with students I think the students would have a lot of thoughts on uh how they'd want to be represented certainly we'd want to make a vehicle for alumni to share their thoughts on the subject available to the school district as well assuming that many

177alumni or farflung that's probably going to be an electronic tool of some kind uh but I would see the the most important First Step being gather a lot of ideas maybe a 100 ideas try to narrow the 100 ideas down to half a dozen really viable options and then take a lot of feedback on those half dozen really viable options and then narrow it down to let's say cut that number in half and then have some sort of a a process by which students Express their feelings on it and again I'd want to be guided by the board on you know how much involvement you would want to have in that process as well but you'd certainly want to take some feedback from the students my understanding was 20 years ago uh when the the

178district last uh looked at changing the mascot uh the vote was held among the students and they chose from among a series of options and ultimately that was what moved forward and then uh a contest was held among the students to draw some imagery around the winning uh character and um that that contest was again judged by fellow students so that was the process 20 years ago I've seen similar things uh take place in other school districts that have changed their mascots over the course of the last 10 years or so um and basically there has to be a wide end of the funnel to collect lots of ideas there has to be a place where you thin it thin it out and you have to have some sort of way of getting a representative

179feel of where the community's uh interests lie and then ultimately the board has to make a decision this this conversation month after month continues to confuse me Dr Rogers the advisery panel what what are they going to be telling us I'll leave it at like that bro of a question I apologize so when we talked about this at the last meeting uh I speculated that the advisory panel is going to review names that I'm struggling for the precise right word examples of names that in one context might be considered offensive but in another context might not so for example I'm thinking of the NFL football team the Raiders uh the Raiders are I guess Pirates uh wearing helmets but they would not be seen as offensive uh to Native Americans or indigenous people uh but

180there are a number of school districts whose Raider name uh derives from the idea that uh Native Americans were raiding early settlements and therefore were in conflict with with um white settlers so that Raider name in one context might have no history associated with it and the Raider name in another context might have uh indigenous history associated with it and my understanding was that the role of this committee was going to be to try and parse uh some of these more uh challenging uh names and give guidance to the State education department the State Education Department of is of course the entity that has the authority to compel us and uh based on that advice that they were given I assumed that we would get even more refined guidance from the Department as to what

181would or would not pass muster so so it's possible that there are school districts in New York right now that may not know for sure if their name is going to be captured by this new regulation I mean I I think we spoke about it and you seemed comfortable that Braves was going to be captured but it you make it sound like they're going to go through the 70 odd names that are I guess arguably offensive and they're going to give guidance on which of those names are indeed offensive and are not offensive and then let these districts know then yeah I think that what the department would say right now um and they have had some um there's an advisory Council of school superintendents that meets with the Department rotates every year and this

182topic has come up and the Department's orientation to this is to be more aggressive in their interpretation rather than less aggressive uh By and By aggressive I mean uh to try and distance school districts from any mascots that have any um Native American history associated with them whatsoever so um if our mascot clearly has that history associated with it because of the imagery and uh that has been used in conjunction with it so there's no question where ours derives from so from the Department's perspective I think that they would say that um this is a very clear case if we were to ask say the Deputy Commissioner who wrote the um the memorandum but the department has indicated that they've set up this body uh to review so do I think there are school districts

183in the state that are wondering whether some of the changes they have made either to the imagery that they use or um I want to be careful not to call out a specific School District but um that have taken a name and removed let's say a word that might be interpreted um to be pejorative from the name but kept part of the name uh would removing the pejorative word even though the history of the name clearly derives from indigenous people would that not pass muster so and I'm apologizing for being intentionally vague about what I'm doing but I I don't feel like I want to judge my colleagues or other school districts by using anyone as an example but I can certainly think of uh quite a few school districts that have names that in

184one context might not necessarily be perceived as uh reflective of Native American history and in other contexts would absolutely be seen that way so um in the end uh the question will be how the department gives us additional guidance um but again if you ask my own opinion uh my own opinion is that I don't think that the St of the department would regard our nickname as being in question they would see its derivation as being uh dispositive so we know it's happening I think we've known that since November so when are we voting and what are we doing to make the change in the 2-year period we're given right that that's really what we need to talk about and I don't remember who asked maybe it was Anna um you know you're going to

185come back to us with what you think is a um best way to elicit feedback I guess from the community from students from staff um and is that something we're going to do next month is that something you'll be ready to report because it seems like we should have all of our ducks in a row by the end of June because that is our deadline I mean whether we vote now or we vote in June I don't see a difference but I do see that we should get started uh for the reasons Mr Rolo said we want to engage our current seniors so we should be able to get started on the process anyway it's late so I don't want to keep having this conversation month after month Lyn sorry in addition to process can

186we look at um can we look at the pricing can we start to look at pricing on changing everything uh where needs to be done we have done the um some preliminary looks at that Mr stuber and the athletic department and Dr rufo uh the biggest cost item will be the end zone for the turf field it will probably cost about $70,000 to replace the Braves in the one end zone and I'm assuming that we would either put the new mascot or the word soset there um there are some scoreboards uh that have uh Braves or Brave imagery on it um my understanding is they're relatively inexpensive to uh fix because they just have a magnetic piece of metal that would go over the existing scoreboard with whatever the new branding is so uh think

187in the neighborhood of hundreds of dollars as opposed to thousands of dollars uh the athletics department over the course of the last several years has been turning over uh uniforms and moving towards the we call it the varsity s so um we wouldn't have a a sudden uniform cost that would be associated with it there are some um aspects of the hardscaping here there's a mon a monument in front of the high school that was a gift of the class of I think 2008 uh that has Native American um bust on it and um there would be demolition cost associated with removing uh that glass gift uh but I think the biggest cost item by far would be the turf field uh renovation um is it possible I hate to demolish a class gift is

188it possible to look at a way to to sorry that was bad timing um is it possible to um look at a way to um fix the statue as opposed to demolishing it so it makes it appropriate for the new regulations but it doesn't destroy their gift yeah demolish was an unfortunate term so um yeah I I think what we would look at doing is um seeing if there was something that we could do with the sign obviously 99% of the sign would not offend the State Education Department so it may be possible to put a plaque over um the bust that is there or some other way of using that gift without having to remove it all together I'm just pointing out that it exists right okay yeah that would be great and then

189the second thing is is um to follow up with I think Anna's point I I totally understand that we need to make it manageable but if there's any way to include as many people in the process as possible um I definitely think that we want to you know go out of the box to include people that maybe perhaps aren't our normal go-tos and that we don't normally include and to make everybody feel that they have a voice and are part of the process because it's going to be it's a you know change for the community and I think people will want to feel like their voice was heard so as broad as broad a um group as we could muster I think would be great just an opinion L of a question okay anyone else

190so does anybody have an objection of not having voted on it next month I would like to see the decision from the state first okay personally okay anyone else sure um you Dr Rogers you have no idea when the decision's coming down right I don't um obviously I maintained good relations with the State Association that I used to work for and uh I've asked the staff there to track this issue for us and obviously there are 60 70 other districts in the state that are going through this as well so uh this is a priority item for them I'm sure as soon as there's a development to share they'll let me know and I will of course turn around and share it with you uh too the department I believe is going to adopt this

191at their April meeting so uh their time is running somewhat short for this um Advisory Group to have one or say two meetings before the board of regions adopts the final regulation so I would anticipate that there's some pressure for them to move sooner rather than later um also the we made the point to the State Association and they shared that they had made the point to the department staff that school districts are going through budgeting season right now and if we are to incorporate any of these costs into the budget that we're currently working on uh we can't really delay decisions um to the end of the school year because the budget process will have passed us byy is it possible to make the vote um conditioned upon getting the decision to say if

192we get the decision before the March meeting we vote or is that not procedurally acceptable I I think it's less about being a parliament parliamentary question and more about um making the decision when you're ready to set the chain of events in motion um because I'm anticipating if you make the decision to retire the mascot then the next step after that will be broadscale public engagement I think it would be confusing to start broadscale public engagement with um a contingent proposal to change the mascot sorry that's not what I meant I meant can we put it on the on the agenda to vote conditioned upon the decision coming down and if the decision doesn't come down then we can push it to another month I didn't mean voting contingently does that make sense I understand

193that parliamentary question better so uh you can certainly you know we the administration prepare a resolution a series of resolutions for you every month but the resolutions we prepare are the administrative functions of the district um this obviously is a board function so I feel um it exceeds my authority to decide when you're going to vote on this this is a decision only you can make uh what I will say as a matter of parliamentary procedure if uh you instruct us to put this resolution on your next agenda any member of the board may vote to table an item that is on the agenda and if you have a majority of the board uh agree with that motion to table the item is tabled until the next month so um if it was on the

194agenda that would be the Parliamentary mechanism for not neither voting for nor against it but tbling it until a subsequent meeting Dr Rogers I'm sorry Tom um I agree with Susan I think that's the simplest way to do this let's let's put it on for next month assuming the decision's made and if it's not we'll table it I don't know if we're going to say we're going to table it I think again I I don't have there's a I don't have a majority of people that are saying that they don't want to vote on it so it keeps asking the same question you know I'm proposing that we put it on for March to vote on it other than an as anybody else against voting on it next month because again this is like inevitable

195here then what was the purpose of the advisory panel that the state putting together in other words I don't want us to face a scenario where at the end of this of their committee they come up with a list of names including Braves that have a green light let's say hypothetically and we vote to retire right not to mention you know I I still maintain that for me personally um you know the imagery and the name are two different separate things yes that I you know so I am not re you know again being the only one but I still maintain that I would like to see this before I'm ready to vote go ahead I guess precisly if we put it on the agenda for March and somebody want somebody wanted to table it

196because the the decision didn't come down then we would have to vote at that time to table it right but you still need five votes at that time but I'm saying we could have we could have that yeah that vote in March yeah so we don't we don't I think I could be wrong correct me wrong but we don't have to vote now whether or not we we would p a vot or we wouldn't we can just put it on for March and then in March let's say the decision didn't come down and could say I want to table it and then everybody could vote then yes right am I saying that right go ahead please just a quick just a quick thought if we do if we do that which is fine we can

197put it on from March and we could table it the only thing is then I would suggest not wasting any of your time or administration's time thinking about Community input and how to go about getting that because then in the event that we keep tabling it and we get to June and then we vote on it in June we've now made it very difficult for the seniors this year to add input and now it kind of changes the whole system so I would say in my opinion to not start the idea of the the Committees and whatnot in other words no report to us next month about that we're going to have to see what happens with this committee and whether or not we vote once we vote on it then I think it's fair

198to say let's start the process of how we want to put the committee together otherwise there's no point it's like wasted time sorry uh respectfully no matter what we're going to have to change at least the mascot right is that so even if we start planning even if I mean I'm not saying what anyone wants or what anyone's voting for or who's comfortable with anything or anything else putting plans in motion we at least there's there's no there's at least one part if not both parts regardless of how everybody votes that have to change so if we put plans in motion or we start to plan I don't think there's a downside to it because it doesn't it's not gonna it's not I mean I just that's how I feel I agree with L I

199think we should get started Dr Rogers Li it is the lighting it is okay so now we have some new business a items is the approval for stand I'm sorry for staff changes can I have a motion please uh Brian uh shaie um any questions all in favor opposed any extensions A2 is the approval of the 2022 and 2023 stiens and hourly rates may have a motion please Susan second by Lisa any questions all in favor opposed any extensions A3 is the approval for coaching recommendations for our spring season can I have a motion please uh Lenn second B any questions all in favor opposed any extensions okay now we move on to B items is the approval of the committee on special education recommendations can I please have a motion uh Anna second and

200by Lisa does anybody have any questions all in favor opposed any extensions B2 the approval on the committee of preschool special education can I have a motion please Lynn seconded by shaie uh anybody have any questions all in favor opposed any extensions B3 approval of student Club charters for the 20122 2023 year can I have a motion please Lisa seconded by uh Anna does anybody have any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C items is the authorization for service contract can I have a motion please um Susan sec by Lisa does anybody have any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C2 the authorization for special education and nursing contracts can I have a motion please ly secretary by the shy does anybody have any questions you okay all in favor opposed any extensions

201C3 is the authorization for Health and Welfare Services can I have a motion please shy Brian any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C4 is the authorization for contracts for the federal Part B funds can I have a motion please shny seconded by Brian any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C5 is the accept of an award of the Nassau County director of school facilities purchasing Consortium Cooperative bid for the 2022 2023 um school year uh can I have a motion please uh Susan seconded by Anna anybody have any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C6 is the authorization for piggybacking with the Bayshore Union Free School District can I have a motion please Shan Ed by Lynn any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C7 are the acceptance of donations

202of a carpet and a router can I have a motion please Susan second by Lisa any questions all in favor Brian you don't have a question opposed any extensions C8 is the authorization for the dis disposal of broken Surplus Andor obsolete equipment Andor books can I have a motion please uh Susan I mean Lyn Brian any questions Brian yes I can't ask it was really nice to see that we finally disposed of an obsolete cam quarter it was very hard to part company with that camcorder but we did it anyone else all in favor opposed any extensions motion to adjourn thank you what wa what okay