001e okay good evening everyone Welcome to our March Board of Education meeting can everyone please stand for the pledge of legance I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice thank you please take a seat okay now we'll have um Miss he Hall who will recognize the regeneron science Talent suchar Scholars and this year we have four um in saset and um many of us already met them in the hallway which sounds absolutely amazing so uh Miss Hall it's all yours evening thank you for having me I'd like to start by thanking the board the administration the teachers and the community for their continued support of our research program this year our research program submitted 27
002projects to the regeneron science Talent search it is my honor and pleasure to be here tonight with four of our outstanding research students who are recognized by the science Talent search this program has been supporting High School research since 1942 and is one of the nation's oldest science fairs the students here tonight were selected among the top 300 High School research students in the country in a year of record-breaking number of applications each student will present a brief summary of of their project for you tonight our first student is Griffin Han he was recognized as an STS scholar but he is currently competing in a testing event for Health occupation students of America future health professionals competition um so was unable to be here tonight but in lie of being here in person he's recorded
003a presentation for me to share with you hi my name is Griffin Han I'm a student at CET high school and I studied a potential dietary solution to intestinal bowel disease one of the major problems with intestinal bowel disease is the destruction and debilitation of crucial intestinal stem cells causing a plethora of problems or gut healing recently certain dietary compounds have been found to boost stem cell activity and I want to see if this phenomenon could be utilized for intestinal bowel disease treatment so I studied the effects of two dietary compounds aroic acid and proen 2 on the intestinal Crypt and I found that both significantly upregulated genes associated with wound healing and Metabolism showing that stem selectivity was enhanced pren 2 in particular had an especially interesting result it seemed to revert mature cells
004back into stem cells effectively reversing the cellular aging process within the intestine a further studied this could be a breakthrough for regenerative medicine overall my work shows that both compounds are promising solutions for intestinal bow disease treatment and prevention importantly both of these compounds are found in really high levels in none other than chicken and eggs now I'm no dietitian but take this as you will uh thank you so much for this opportunity to let me present my work and thank you for listening hi my name is Griffin Han I'm a student at s okay our next STS scholar is Alex Chen hello my name is Alex Chen and my research investigated the effects of spearmint oil on Alzheimer's disease I chose to research on spearmint oil because Alzheimer's disease is a condition that affects
005people all over the world and treatments to these conditions need to not only be effective but also accessible to a large amount of people I conducted This research at Sasa high school Under the advanced research program I explor the effects of spearmint oil on a Model organism called SE allant which is a good model for human aging and is also a type of roundworm I found that when these worms were treated with spearmint oil they showed lower levels of aging and I also identified a signaling pathway in the cells in which spearmint oil acted on in order to provide these potential health benefits I also found that when worms were exposed to Spearmint oil after 8 days they were more resistant to toxicity induced by am protein which is a Hallmark of Alzheimer's disease my
006research shows that firstly spearmint oil is a good candidate for further research regarding aging related conditions especially regarding Alzheimer's disease and it also provides more information on how spearmint oil may act within humans which is crucial for its clinical applications perhaps in the future when looking for treatments to aging related conditions we can turn towards the farm instead of the pharmacy thank you our next STS scholar who's going to present to you in person is Arian sha hi my name is Arian sha and my project concerned gerrymandering which is a method of drawing congressional districts in order to benefit one political party or group and how that impacts representation of constituents across dist in districts around the us so I my study concerned two the two different types of gerrymandering and how those each impacted
007representation when compared to each other I studied packing and cracking packing being uh packing being when members of the minority party in a state are all put into one District so that the majority party can win all of the surrounding districts and cracking is essentially the opposite it's where members of the minority party are all are spread out across multiple districts around the state so that the majority party can win all of the all or most of the districts in the state and gerrymandering is a very big problem that has been present basically since the founding of the US and it's been extremely contentious in the Supreme Court with cases like Baker vers Carr Shaw vers Reno and recently Allen vers Milligan which is currently still being debated over racial packing in Alabama so now
008in my study specifically I studied 40 congressional districts from around the US 20 of which were packed and 20 of which were cracked and how each of those impacted representation I did that by analyzing approval rating data from 2010 and 2012 2010 being before new maps were implemented and 2012 being after and found that with pack districts there was generally an increase in uh approval ratings which I tied to representation whereas for craft districts there was the opposite there was a decrease in representation which means that although Jerry mandering is generally recognized as something that is negative and has net negative consequences on uh the US political system because of the because of the decrease in political efficacy that it causes it's uh it's still being used extremely widely by politicians by both in both
009parties around the country and it has been allowed by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions in a political sense this study provides a unique uh unique data on how one type of Jerry mandering packing May potentially be better than cracking which is the other type of Jerry mandering thank [Applause] you our final student tonight is Vincent Wong Vincent is currently in Washington DC at the STS finals he was recognized as one of the top 40 research students in the nation and has spent the last few days competing and sharing his work with experts politicians journalists and the community with the opportunity to win up to $250,000 that is going to be awarded at a black Thai Gala tomorrow evening you can actually live stream it on their website if you would like to check it
010out um so but before he left Vincent recorded a video for us to share a little bit about what he did hi I'm Vincent h a senior here at sass high school and this is my regener on STS project where I developed the computer program computer application to interpret the crystal defraction patterns of x-rays for Crystal identity and Crystal orientation which can then be used for things like computer chip manufacturing basically when you take an x-ray VI and fire into a crystal the internal structure will will defract it in all directions creating a and my program we can interpret and analyze the pattern as well as simulate exactly what it should be and what it should look like using the basic mathematical principles of geometry where each plane thens the beam in a certain direction
011and it's repeated for each individual plane in the in the internal structure creating the full pattern based on this pattern you can then derive for example the orientation and identity of a crystal so for example if you wanted to verify if a diamond ring was actually a diamond you could theoretically do this as well as identifying the orientation of the internal structure which is not cut along the physical service or rather along their inter which could also potentially be a major breakthrough in chip manufacturing as well as semicondctor thank you very much thank you very much for allowing us to have the time to share this with you tonight and if you'd like to hear more from our research students you can join us at our research Symposium on May 28th at the high school
012thank you General semi-finalist and and finalist and your remarkable accomplishment exemplify dedication and excellence in scientific Explorations and uh best of luck to Vincent tomorrow we hope that uh he takes a top 10 thank you and those two seniors who are sitting in audience we do understand that you have school tomorrow so if you want to make a graceful exit now will be the time and we are going to continue with our budget information and we will have Dr ruo to give the presentation thank you and thanks again [Applause] congratulations good evening and Welcome to our second um budget presentation for the 2425 school year um last month we met I went over the um capital and the admin components of the budget and we took I guess a very quick look at um state
013aid the governor's proposal tonight we're going to take a preliminary look at benefits and again a quick look at Revenue we don't have a lot to update in terms of the state but we do have some other um information to provide in relative to reserves and potential Reserve use and then we'll go through the program and the instructional codes so at last week's meeting I'm sorry last month's meeting we went through the budget goals which obviously our overarching goal and particularly in tough years like this year and next year is to preserve our existing programs and services for kids and to expand opportunities where we can while we're managing all of the inflationary um pressures we began several years ago supplementing our staff that provides social and emotional uh well-being for our students and we'll
014continue that in the 24 25 school year and we'll go over in the program section what specific areas and services um that relates to we plan to maintain our aging facilities both um in large scale Capital work and in the smaller scale projects that we talked about at last month's meeting and we always want to provide um maintain our fiscal stability it helps us to um be more agile and better react to changes in our fiscal environment our enrollment um in our growing enrollment environment we went over some of the budget challenges um that we're having or the overall climate that's really led by By changes and increases in um benefits which we'll talk about tonight um both health insurance increases in pension costs in both ERS and TRS and then our enrollment growth our
015continuing enrollment growth so we submitted our preliminary tax cap to the osc controller and that's 3.23 and I went through the details of that calculation last month and overall over the last I guess since the Inception of the tax cap we've been under the cap by about 11 million and you can see that depicted in the chart on the right hand side where you can see the calculated cap and then the red orange color is where we came in and um while in the I guess the last five years we you've see a lot of space in between our calculated cap and where we've been able to um bring our Levy C uh Le actual Levy in we can also see that last year and likely this year it will be very difficult to have
016a space between our Levy cap and our actual Levy again the inflationary pressures the enrollment growth make that a challenge and when we also think about um the CPI and where CPI is both in terms of the state we got in a little bit into the executive budget proposal how they're currently using a 3.8% CPI the controller posted a 4% CPI over 4% and yet our expenses are capped at the 2% level so the benefits are minary um at this point we're just engaging well underway in our staffing meeting but just engaging a lot of the Staffing numbers and obviously benefits are related to Staffing and additionally you may recall that when we present our final budget we're required by the state to allocate benefits across all of the different components three components of the
017budget but I'd like for you to see them Al together because it just helps um give an indication even if it's preliminary where we're ending up and you can see that um benefits alone uh result in about a $6.3 million increase um to the budget over 9% driven P primarily by health insurance which is I guess the third from the bottom the 4.2 million uh dollar or 10% increase and you may recall that last year um we had it was a difficult budget year we had I believe we had an 11% increase in for our health insurance and it turned out that health insurance came in at 15% this year we have a little bit of savings we came in we're forecasting to be under budget a bit and for next year we have a
01810% increase um in the budget and you can see the chart at the bottom which the blue line is the um the premium increases for family um over the last um several years and you can see there's been quite um a variance which certainly makes it difficult um to budget so right now we're we're going with a 10% increase and that's um the resulting $4.2 million increase in that line item the first two codes at the top um State retirement and teachers retirement those together about a $1.3 million increase and we I guess over the past I seven eight years maybe 10 years we've been using our reserves to help offset benefit costs and so down at the bottom you can see in the Box on the left you can see the reserves that we've
019been using or at least that we used for 23 and 24 5.8 million and we we're projecting or proposing for 2425 based on where we are and that full amount of that $1.3 million increase is to cover the increase in TRS and in ERS and that's really essentially what your reserves are there for they're there to cushion the tax levy from changes and increases in expenses so that's a proposed increase and you can see that the percentage change in ERS is about 24% increase and TRS is 4.34% % increase and those are the district's contributions that we're required to make to those pension systems down at the um the bottom part is what I presented uh last month and our foundation Aid is about 220,000 less um due to changes in the foundation Aid formula
020and a change um to CPI um that's part of the calculation since that time the board um has uh advocated through a letter to legislators a restoration of the aid along with advocacy uh advocacy groups um the state budget deadline is March 31st we're not anticipating based on what we've been reading and information that's been coming out that we will have an on-time budget from the state so that will also be a challenge um to move forward with um potentially um minary numbers from the state so before we get into the the program section just while we have a lot of uncertainty and we're still working on the numbers our goal is to sort of address the um the gaps that we're seeing both from the revenue side looking of where we can find additional
021Revenue as well as the expenditure side going through the different codes that we presented both on the admin and the operation side to try to find um efficiencies to look at those um and when we look back at the projects that we have in the budget can we phase those and make some reductions so it it will'll continue to to look at those line items so the program section of the budget um makes up about three4 of the operating budget of the school districts it's comprised of all of those different areas that are on the right and overall the program SE section shows an increase of about 4.6 million or 3% at this time um the Staffing we could say that it's Staffing is a rollover we're projecting the current staff that we have now
022rolling that in and that's what's responsible for or the increase and that's what's um been factored in so I want to go through those areas that have a more material increase or a material change up or down the program codes on this summary page or the high level and then we'll go through a couple of the details the first is 2110 2110 at 88 million is the largest code in the district's budget it it accounts for about onethird of the the district's budget in total and the increase that you're seeing of about 2.7 million or 3% is largely the result of contractual salary adjustments as well as um changes among other codes including bosei Services bosei Services which is probably fifth or sixth from the bottom you see have increase of 36,000 and that's where
023we pay for things like Outdoor Ed um arts and education those types of programs so some of it is in increased usage and some of it we can anticipate um increase in Bose's um costs as they have similar benefits increases as school districts do special education 2250 um is increasing by 57,000 or one point I'm sorry 1.6% again this is all pretty much the result of Staffing adjustments um which are based on IEPs as well as all of the tuition costs these are preliminary as they're having their annual reviews and meetings so we'll be returning to this section um when we come together again in April and right now the values are based on um current placements summer school um provides uh remediation enrichment as well as extended um year program and you can see
024that that reflects a decrease of about 108,000 or 20% and if you look to the right you can see the expenditure trend from 1920 on and so the decrease reflects really what we uh closer spending that's more closely aligned what with our program for the the summer of 23 and it you can also see that we're kind of moving back to the preco um program level library media so all of the instructional media for district students are captured within this code so Librarians library books periodicals audiovisual materials were all contained in here and you can see there's 161 bottom line uh K increase or about 5.6% and that's again due to salary adjustments as well as a bit of increased overtime for the media Specialists who assist with live streaming and other events we also
025um in this current year added some additional support to the Middle School uh libraries to assist with maker spaces with some of the broadcast programs and also to assist the um kids with um Chromebook repair and maintenance instructional Technologies increasing by about 238 or 5% and that's largely a result of um projects that we're um planning on doing with bosis we have our Chromebooks for our incoming K kindergarten we have new iMacs or a planning for new IMAX for the Fine Arts and the technology classes and those two uh images are um digital images um we have you may recall we started our smart Bond last year and we're going to continue that um we've made progress this year and um and plan to I think we're about 78% done with the installation of the
026interactive boards and I spoke about while it's not included in this code it does impact our instructional technology and that is the Wi-Fi project through bis and I just remind you that all of these projects that we're doing through bosis do have the a component that we will receive in the subsequent year so one of our goals um that we talked about in the beginning was our overarching goal uh of supporting the social and emotional well-being of our students and that those services and those people um focused on that are included in among these codes and so you can see that we have an increase in guidance of about 319,000 or 9% and that's the result of an additional guidance counselor at the high school that was added in the current year the increase of
027105k or 4% in Psych Services reflects an increase of a 0.5 FTE also in the current year to provide additional social and emotional support um for our students we spoke about the inclusion of the northwell um Health Consortium and that was part of a presentation last month as well and so there's an allocation to continue that um into next year as well and then our social worker code reflects on the right um five social workers but we know that we have several more um that are charged to our grants and that we have a social worker um starting this year one in each school health services um includes of the salaries of our registered nurses our contracted services and the increase is related to the additional one nurse that we hired in the current year
028to help cover absences and to cover lunches of existing nurses co-curricular um contains expenses for the district clubs including the three new clubs that we added um this year the Korean language and culture Club and the physics clubs and you can see that there's a bottom line increase of about 15% and that relates to the first couple of lines that have to do with um salaries for advisors chaperon um and there's also travel costs a lot of our competition clubs are very successful and they're they're growing and they are becoming more successful which means they advance to um more competitions and that incurs cost so that's responsible for a lot of the increase here Athletics um also has an increase of about 6.7% and again that is related in in part to the success of
029our teams an extended season and adjustments for coaches um uh stiens additionally um you'll see the equipment line has also increased there's an allocation in next year's budget for wrestling mats a new requirement for lacrosse shot clocks replacement goal post for lacrosse and soccer and some protective netting up for the lacrosse and soccer field as well as uh backboards as well and replacement showcase Transportation um Transportation specifically contracted Transportation um appears flat um from budget to budget but that doesn't mean that there isn't an increase in that code as you um may recall our transportation contracts are tied to May CPI so when we um when we project it costs for transportation for this year we did it back when the CPI was pretty high at 6% so CPI actually when wound up um May
030CPI was 3.5% so we took our actuals and forecasted another about three kind of where CPI is uh now and came up with a number that really lets us uh keep Transportation flat um hopefully CPI will hold over the next month or two and we can hold that number to the left it gives you an indication of sort of the complications and the extent of the transportation services in the district just um how many buses we have we start at 6:00 a.m. in the morning our last bus is at 6: p.m. and so all of that as our contracted uh Transportation so April 16th we'll be coming back to you um with adjustments to some of the codes um that we um have already presented hopefully a uh firm firmer number on the state budget
031and then um some more information on on planned use of reserves okay thank you Dr ruer for that comprehensive um presentation um I just want to make a comment that um I know every year um especially this year with the uh State uh Aid uh being cut um it's really not easy to come up with a budget and especially um now after the presentation knowing that uh n the programs for the kids is being cut and I just want to commend you Administration and of course Dr Rogers for working so diligently and so hard um preserving all programs for our students so thank you so much thank you and um with that um anyone with uh have question anyone has questions for Dr uh Mr greo thank you Dr rufo um one point about ERS
032and TRS you mentioned that it was going up by 1.3 million and you also mentioned that the use of the restricted reserves are going up by the exact same 1.3 million correct I'm proposing to uh to use the reserves to offset that yes okay um one of the other points you made about the tech updates in Bose was about $238,000 you mentioned that uh a portion of that would be Chromebooks and iMac um it's it's all reimbursable from the state including the purchase of that equipment yes that's all part of the Bose's um Bose's Aid yes um I had a few things I'm sorry oh Summer School uh you mentioned uh the what looks like a substantial decrease in the budgeted amount for summer school this year and you talked about how it's going back
033to preo levels I mean Dr Rogers this may may be more for you is that because you're seeing less of a need for summer school since covid because of parent interest or less of a need for summer school um for students in general I would just um clarify one it is actually an increase over where we were this past summer 20 um summer of 2023 it's not presented there because it's a 2023 actual but the what we're forecasting for summer of 24 is an increase over what we did in summer of 20 um 23 so you did so you budgeted High last year expecting more enrollment okay understood um um that's it for now thank you uh with the proposed draw Downs in the uh ERS TRS reserves what would the balances that you're projecting
034be at the end of the year based on that approximately the balances are we drawing down 20% and half of it I was less than 20% less than 20% and for both of them yes um because I'm also I believe that we'll be replenishing as well Mr Gro you mentioned uh the letter that we sent to legislators regarding Foundation Aid um Dr Rogers do we get a response other than uh thank you for sending a letter uh we did get an acknowledgement um Senator Martin sent uh email communication back to me had some suggestions uh for shared with us some of the things that they're doing uh to uh Advance their advocacy in the legislature things that he was doing so uh I did get a response from his office I also know um that
035a meeting was held with a number the superintendent's conference was last weekend in Albany and so a lot of superintendant went up and met with a number of elected officials so uh that was commented on there at the end of this week Friday there's also going to be a rally outside the um believe the the uh legislative office building in hog uh in the morning for uh state aid Restorations and at the conference the commissioner of Education referenced the progress in the state budget process I was going to refer to this in my superintendent report but this is a more R time the the way the process works in Albany is um the governor proposes a budget then the legislature works on uh their own what are called one house budgets so the assembly will
036put together a budget that illustrates their priorities the Senate will put together a budget that illustrates its priorities and then they will do conference committees where uh Committees of staff from the Senate assembly and Governor's uh office will work on each of the topic content areas so education Transportation the environment uh criminal justice Etc so the one house budgets are anticipated to come out this week uh typically there are three session days in a week Monday Tuesday Wednesday so I anticipate that we'll see a one house budget report from uh the Senate and assembly before the end of the week this week um from a sense of how their rules work perspective that's important because if it appears in either of the one housee budgets then it's fair game for negotiation if it doesn't appear
037in either of the one house budgets then you assume that it's it's not going to make it into the final product so I think we'll get a good sense of where the two houses priorities are uh for restoration so um I had the opportunity to uh see some former colleagues uh from the legislature who still work in Albany in in and around state government and they shared that the state has um recast its Revenue forecasts and now is projecting 4 billion more in Revenue so that means that the legislature has additional money to use for Restorations and that the um the big picture question will be um just as it is in our budget how much of the new Revenue will be allocated to healthcare spending and how much of it will be allocated to
038education spending so those will be the two big priorities so we'll have a sense of where each of the two houses uh where their priorities are in terms of how they allocate that 1.4 billion and then we'll have a sense of how much might be restored to uh education budget so I even though we won't have a final answer this week I I do think that um we'll we'll see more of the table in terms of what to anticipate and then as Dr rufo alluded to um it's helpful for our planning for your planning if the state budget is on time because if the state budget is done by April 1 and you adopt a budget in April then we'll be able to factor in the exact dollar amount from state aid um if the
039budget is late which used to be typical in the uh early and late 90s uh then we will have to make a guess at what we think those Restorations will be and hope that our guess is accurate in order for you to adopt a budget on timeon just a follow up on that is there anything we send a letter I'm not hear about the rally but there's anything else we can do to Advocate yeah I think um certainly sending more letters or emails uh to our legislators Senator um Martins and assembly blue MCR can't hurt and it's important for this to remain top of mine for them uh my State Association has been interacting with the particularly with the Senate education chair uh Shelley mayor who is from Westchester uh her um email Communications to
040her constituents uh have been full-throated defenses of restorations to the state budget and uh both of the leaders of the Senate and assembly have been saying publicly that it's a high priority for them to do restoration so I think that the window is at our back in terms of uh not having to convince the legis but I think we're sort of competing for the allocation of resource with Healthcare spending so the more um we can continue to encourage them to keep education a priority the better we'll do in uh that allocation so to follow up on Miss Abramson yes to the extent it wasn't clear when we asked you to send the letter absolutely follow up if you think it has not going to ask you to go to the rally but follow up if
041you can to make sure they know um our position on this as often as possible and and uh Dr rufo I should say I I ask a lot of very uh narrow questions I don't want that to to take away from the fact that I appreciate what you've put together I know this year must have been or is a very difficult budget year and I appreciate all your hard work thank you m Mr asri just just two more quick questions for me Dr R the 9060 hospital medical dental insurance is that strictly premium premum payments or is it other uh line item parts of that line item there are other parts to the line item there's certainly the premium payments there's um Medicare reimbursements that we are required um by law to um to provide
042there are um BuyBacks for those employees that don't um take the coverage is there's incentive for them to um disincentive um and those those are the line items but clearly premiums are the the largest component can I just one more thank you Dr I I I thought they were the vast majority but I just wanted to verify my understanding and then the last thing I wanted to ask you is um between this presentation and the next one the next for presentation forum is the next one of forum between the next this meeting and the next uh what the line items where we're potentially going to see significant Deltas that we should keep an eye on positive or negative away from the state aid line we certainly when when if we need to make reductions I
043we're going to be looking at um operational areas um we'll be looking at um equipment we'll be looking at in addition to um or instead of reductions sort of the strategy that we adopted last year to look at what's being proposed and what's being asked for and saying well can we phase it can we reduce it rather than eliminate something and phase it over time but those those would be the areas that we would um that we're looking at great thank you again Dr huo next is the approval of minutes of February 12 2024 for Education meeting can I have a motion Please Mr Greco seconded by Miss l 10 are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions okay and we will give Dr l a minute to get back and Dr Ru
044um when we have the treasures report and Appropriations Ms please the treasures report in the treasures report the cash on hand for the month end January 2024 is 17,490 33695 it shows that bank balances for all cash accounts were reconciled um to the book balances and were collateralized in accordance with the district's investment policy and banking agreements thank yous and next will be uh Dr Rogers superintendent report um Dr Rog o so just to finalize the thoughts about the state budget and the reason why there's speculation it'll be late this year uh although there's um the state fiscal year runs April 1 to March 31st uh typically the legislature works well when there are deadlines looming and uh because of the way the two holidays fall this year uh Easter is a little early and
045Falls uh the two days prior to March 31st will likely be holidays for the legislature and so it's unlikely that they'll do the budget early in anticipation of finishing before those holidays so once uh they've kind of gone over the line and sort of punctured the April 1 deadline the next thing that looms as a potential um uh uh deadline will be uh the break that happens at the end of April for Passover so I think that I'm I'm hopeful that uh the legislature will resolve things in the first week of April uh but having watched them work I think there's a possibility that without some sort of looming deadline they may um you know feel like they can push one more day one more day one more day and then they'll once they push
046up against a potential break they'll feel the need to to close things out before they leave so that's not my hope that is just um my observation of how the legislature has worked and that is um again talking to some former colleagues in Albany that's kind of the sense up there um it's March 11th there's still the potential for things to move quickly but um they're not as far along as I would hope they would be with just two weeks left in the budget process um I did want to also comment on our uh regeneron Scholars obviously incredibly proud of uh the four winners and very hopeful for uh Vincent tomorrow night but um my job is to evaluate programs uh for you and the big win in this for me is that we had
04727 competition worthy projects and uh when I arrived here almost 10 years ago it would be typical for us to put in let's say 10 and to be very proud of those 10 so what we've been able to do over time is grow and expand the program and more students are having access to very high quality research opportunities you've heard uh the quality of the projects that the students are working on very high level research and all of those projects whether they want or not are at that same level they were competition worthy so uh We've broadened the program out of just physical sciences into social sciences and math that has given more students and different interests the opportunity to compete and it's included more teachers in the program and made them part of the
048research program and I I'm just I'm very proud of every one of the 27 uh students uh that were engaged in this and took the time uh because all of these students worked tremendously hard to put together competition worthy projects and so I'm proud of all of them and I think they should all be celebrated for their successes um we're uh in the middle switching to pre uh Universal pre uh we thank you board last month uh identifi the providers for the upcoming 2425 school year I had some questions about where we are process-wise uh we will make allocations at an upcoming board meeting the April board meeting uh once we have of how many registrants would have so right now we're in the process of registering uh new students for the program we know
049what our allocation of seats from the state is in the preliminary budget again we won't know what the final allocation of seats will be until the state budget is officially adopted so we are waiting for two pieces of information the state budget and uh the number of registrations uh next thing I wanted to talk about just briefly is as uh Dr rufo is working on the budget been working closely with Miss gwe as she mentioned on uh structuring the special education program making sure that we have the services that serve our students needs uh some of that has been uh ongoing work because this is um the season where we do annual reviews of students programs so that we can make sure that the program that's in place for them uh next year meets their
050needs and it's also an opportunity for us to uh look at the way we serve students and see if there are places where we can do it uh better for students or more efficient for students so um I think that we're going to um see some uh encouraging things that we'll be ready to talk about in a future meeting but uh I did want to point out that that work is a really thoughtful work and it's ongoing uh I've also gotten some questions about the solar eclipse and uh if you've been seeing the news you see that some uh school districts have chosen to close on the day of the solar eclipse um so typically the places that have decided to close are further upstate and uh what has been experienced in the past is
051that there are um tourists who will come to areas that are in the totality of the eclipse in order to see a totality and so the worry in those districts is that um they will be so clogged uh with onlookers that it might not be safe to do Transportation I don't think that we'll have that problem here and uh the very beginning of the eclipse is at 2112 so the high school will essentially be uh through dismissal before there's really any uh change in uh the amount of Illumination from the eclipse for High School dismissal it'll be a little bit more a little bit darker for middle school and for elementary school we've uh purchased uh glasses uh protective glasses for uh young people to wear and they're incorporating first of all the spaces in
052the first and fifth grade curriculum so it duet tailes nicely with what uh the students are already learning but uh we prepared a number of lessons and ideas for teachers to use with students to talk about what's going on but then we also have the protective gear uh to make sure that they can safely observe this since they'll still be in school so we will not have a totality uh here so there will still be ambient light we think that it will be uh safe for us to do dismissal then and actually kind of exciting to have our youngest kids uh here so that we can share um this really um magical Phenomenon with them so we uh we do have plans uh we've been working with the building principles uh and we shared some
053resources with the teachers when we get a little closer to the date we'll hand out the classes and um that for the elementary students and for the secondary students standard advice always applies don't look into the sun um and then um I just uh I was appreciating uh the comment one of our regeneron winners said uh I think Mr Chen uh Farm not Pharmacy so I got to kick out of that because you know I I love an literation than I love upon and he managed to do both so I'm just going to uh say I'm I'm proud of him for being a great scientist and also for being very literary so thank you all right thank you Dr Rogers uh any questions for Dr Rogers On The Board uh Miss fov um yeah I
054just had a couple questions so um for the prek do you think that you'll be able to accommod you might not have any idea yet but do you think you'll be able to accommodate everybody's interest so do you think there'll be enough spots for everybody who um wants a spot I'm hopeful we had enough slots for everyone who wanted a slot last year the year before that we had fewer seats allocated and so uh we weren't able to serve all of the need but last year we were able to serve all the need right now we're projected to have the same number of seats that we had last year so I'm hopeful that means that we'll be able to serve uh all the need um what H if there's less if you've more if spots
055go unused does that affect how many spots you get for the following year or no this is for us a new program so we only have the the two years under our belt uh but it did not affect it for this year and that has not been my observation for other school districts it is a Formula driven program and so you are not given the funds if we don't use all of our seats they don't pay us for the seats we don't use but the allocation Remains the Same and just one last question um in terms of budget for next year and the mental health I know over the last bun of years we've been adding extra mental health professionals um does the additional ones that we have added through this year seem to be
056um enough to cover the mental health needs I just was wondering if that have that meshed up so it's been your priority and one I share uh to get more mental health uh Staffing into schools and certainly post pandemic that's become an even higher priority so uh this year we were able to have a social worker in every school the year before half a social worker in every school uh we've seen tremendous benefits the social workers have been able to go from uh being reactive to being proactive and pulling groups and doing lessons uh that has been working well and I'm not prepared to uh recommend an increase in Staffing from here I'd like to give this another year and see where it settles out and see if there are anything things that we feel
057the need to shore up but uh I've been very encouraged about uh how thoughtfully the building principles have been using the capacity that they've been given uh to really uh get ahead of some of the things that sometimes um become problematic in a building you know ounce of preventions worth a pound of cure um I know when we sat here last month um the board gave you a lot of uh signals regarding facilities uh and sort of next steps I'm just wondering because you were asked to basically go get feedback just wondering on sort of timing when we can sort of sit around and talk about that feedback so we can uh move this ball forward again so uh based on the feedback that you gave us at the last meeting and the feedback that
058we got from the public we put together an FAQ we posted that FAQ to the website we're still collecting questions in real time and reviewing those and then we'll uh as we develop answers We'll add them to the FAQ so we see that as a living document we shared a lot of the feedback from the board and from the public with the Architects engineers and the construction managers uh we just got back some new uh cost estimates based on some of that feedback we have uh I anticipate that we're going to meet with them in the next week and a half or so and uh be able to put something together that we can come to you at the next board meeting and uh you can reflect and react to uh how we've Incorporated the
059public feedback that we've gotten so far misson sorry I'm just gonna back on all Brian's question so to that end there were some there were elements of the of the fac they were not um optional so to speak not that anything is optional but are any of those incorporated into the budget or we have to still keep that separate no matter what so I'll I'll let Dr rufo um go through what is in the capital part of the budget but the larger capital projects that we propos doing through the bond are because they're so much larger they're going to remain in the bond um but that doesn't mean that budget is without Capital work uh so Dr rufo can you just maybe go through some of the highlights of the capital work in this budget
060so we have some of the um Capital work that the larger projects are being done through the transfer to Capital line and those included the upgrades to the electrical service um at the at hbt and the high school we also have the classroom Renovations at Southwoods to make more uh to make more space and to move some of the business office Wing off site um we have uh a districtwide roofing electrical Paving about $4 million 4.3 million in projects that were part of that BCS that we're planning to do at this at this time um in the uh transfer to Capital line and then there are a variety of smaller projects that are being prioritized in the maintenance budget as well okay well good thank you Dr Rogers and thank you Dr ruo okay uh
061there are no legislative items and uh moving on to disc items um three members from the board have attended the naso poses budget hearing um Mr G would you like to uh give a brief summary I don't know if it'll be brief so I uh I served with uh Miss kosier and Dr Park on the naso Bose's budget Review Committee um there were two review meetings uh I think one of them was January 11th one of them was February 1st they're in person um great to spend some time with my colleagues but at the same time it's just really nice to not have to do things by Zoom um one of the best parts about being on the Bose budget Review Committee is you actually get a feel for what Bose's does and I don't
062think many people know what bosis does and actually sit in a room and sort of go through the same process we were going through earlier tonight uh with nasor bosis is um pretty invigorating um and and I really enjoy it and I know Dr Park and miss to do as well but the reason I'm bringing it up tonight is you know naso bosis develops and adopts like 26 or 27 budgets uh one for each of its programs there's there's budgets for facilities rental there's budgets for transportation services but as a board we have to vote on one of their budgets it's the uh uh administrative operations budget and we conduct that vote at the April 16th meeting so this is basically just me as part of this discussion and bringing back that information for us
063to make a decision so you know one of the I think the key points uh to take away is Nas obosi is like any other organization and just like sass Central school district has um a lot of inflationary issues and has a lot of um ERS and TRS um costs it's for the administrative operations budg it's actually half of that budget so I have some notes but in that budget they're increasing it by 7.6% which is driven P primarily from the retiree health and employee fringe benefits they calculate the increase from Health at 9% uh and of the budget the other drivers of this budget are the fact that they were in a they were hiring in 23 24 but they never filled positions so now they're going to fill those positions and they're budgeting
064for those positions which is a large increase considering the size of this budget and they also have you know major costs of insurance you know 7% for workers comp and 10% for cyber but I think it was 16 uh 16% increase on their general liability which is a somewhat daunting number um so at the end of the day their budget increases by 7.6 but they're able to use some Revenue in this case interest Revenue to offset that so the cost to the constituent districts is only 5.7% that's the budget we're voting on uh as for some of the other V budgets that we're not voting on I'm not going to go into too much detail besides at these meetings you hear the word inflation tossed around a lot you hear a lot of about the
065increase in retire health and the increase in general liability I think they were very attuned to those numbers the same way I think every district is and none of us are alone uh to how difficult it can be to put these budgets together um I I think that's all I'll say right now Dr Park um I think you can agree with me to say it's just it's fascinating to watch them work uh and to learn about the many programs that naso bosis offers um especially like me as a stranger to the program and knowing very little about it and only recently even finding out that the Lisa School in saset is a part of massob bosis and having had a tour of it and being so impressed by it uh I you know I'll always
066want to be on this committee uh even if it's just to spend some time with their board thank you thank you thank you Mr GCO and thank you to uh Mr GCO Dr Park and Miss Kos for CET at the bosis budget uh review and the uh the second piece of our discussion pertains to NAS bosis board nominations and nasel bosis has a board of education similar to ours and three members of their board are up for reelection for threeyear term historically our board has supported nominations for members seeking re-election this year Susan Bertram who whom I have known since 2017 and she has served as the Bose board president since and she has been a tremendous asset not only to public education in general but also as the past president of the New York
067State School Board Association and the area 11 director and I'm aware that um some members of our board have had several occasions to uh meet with them um would anyone like to share a few words about the the three candidates Mr GRE please so in my in my three years serving on this committee I've spent time with all three three of them uh Susan Bergstrom Martin K and Michael wck and I mean it's an understatement to say how passionate they are about uh what they do so I would recommend nominating all three of them uh but I don't think we do that until next month but I would like to say now oh no we nominate them now and then we vote next month all right so let's nominate them now I recognize that this
068is an UNC uncontested election um however it's important for our board to demonstrate our support a resolution has been prepared for the nomination for the nomination so we'll do that later thank you okay now moving on to our new business a items is the approval A1 is the approval of the appointment of staff changes for March 2024 can have a motion Please Mr Greco second by Miss Falco are there any questions all in favor opposed any abstentions A2 is the approval of stiens and orite rates for 2023 and 2024 can have a motion please solo second by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions A3 is the approval of Co recommendation for spring 2024 can have a motion Please Mr G second by m lean are there any questions all
069in favor opposed any extensions A4 is the approval of appointment of interim director of secondary special education can the mo can have a motion Please Mr Mr Roo second by Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any extension A5 is the ratification of a stipulation of AG treatment for the SU School teachers can I have a motion please miss Le second by Miss f are there any questions all in favor oppos any exensions B1 and B2 can be taken together via the approval of the committee on special special education and the committee on preschool special education recommendations can I have a motion please miss miss Eon second by Mr rollo are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions is authorization for contracts for federal Part B fund can a motion please
070U Mr asri second by Miss Falco are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions fe4 is the approval of of the resolution for settlement agreement can have a motion Please Mr R second by Miss Eon are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions B5 is the approval of spr Club chars 23 24 can I have a motion please m f call second M Lon are there any questions all in favor oppose any extension B6 is the nas naso B boort nominations and we are nominating Susan BG from Michael weick and Martin K can I have a motion Please Mr Rolo seconded by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any abion C items C1 is the authorization of special education and or nursing contracts can have a motion
071Please Mr second by Miss FAL are there any questions Mr greo Dr Rogers you know how much um I or or we uh like Revenue uh and it's nice to see uh such a large number uh on the first of these two contracts but I I I got to admit it's also nice to see being able to do that in a way that is so helpful to Children generally and I appreciate your efforts here I would re I would be remiss if I didn't thank Miss bwe for the work that she put into making that possible and what this does is it allows us to partner with a neighboring School District to share the load of having a class that serves some of our neediest students so um it's a win-win for both districts so
072since I always thank the wrong person thank you to everyone that help get this done thank you all in favor opposed any extensions C2 is the authorization for Health and Welfare contracts can I have a motion Please Mr Roo second by Dr Park are there any questions all in favor opposed any exensions C3 is the authorization to participate in a join Municipal Cooperative biding program with Eastern Sul boses for Carpentry Services can I have a motion please uh Miss valov second by Miss Lan are there any questions all in favor opposed any exensions C4 is the authorization of service contrast can I have a motion please U Mr R second by Miss enson are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C5 is the extension of agreement of bid number 5 3- 22.23
073rental T can have a motion fee U Mr Grio second by Miss lvan are there any questions all in favor opposed any extensions C6 is the authorization to enter into a Cooperative with Amia city of tuxen for Gen janitorial and sanitation supplies can have a motion Please Mr Rolo second by Miss abson are there any questions all in favor opposed any exensions C7 is the acceptance of donation from regeneron are there any can I have a motion please um Mr crickle seconded by Mr fov are there any questions all in favor opposed any exensions C8 is the disposal of broken Surplus and or absolute equipment supplies in Brooks can I have a motion Please Mr Roto second by Dr Park um are there any questions all in favor opposed any exensions okay now moving on
074to uh audience to the public I just want to uh thank everyone for um their patience um and since the board has adopted new procedures um I will uh read the procedures um so please just bear with me um the S Board of Education Administration welcomes attend attendance at Board of Education meeting the board the bo business meeting will be live streamed and recorded a link to access to live stream is available and the board values Community input and provides opportunities to offer that input via email or in person persons who wish to speak during audience to the public must register online to speak in events of the meeting by 5:00 pm the DAT of the board meeting a link to the pr registration form will be Adit available on homepage on the district website
075and one week before the meeting and a community email has has gone out to the community with a link as well person persons wishing to address the Bo boore in person doing audience to the public must conform to procedures adopted by the board speakers remarks must conform to the following rules number one all speakers and observers are required to conduct themselves in a respectful and civil manner in accordance with rules set by the board two speakers must address the board only not members of the audience or the audience as a whole three three speakers must limit their comments to to issues concerning School District Operations School District Affairs or board board of education policy four because of Rights protected by state and federal law no speaker may speak about an individual student or staff member
076nor will the board of administration entertain questions in public regarding collective bargaining negotiations Personnel matters student matters or legal matters five no speaker may speak about decisions involving specific personel specific student if a stu if a speaker wishes to address the board concerning specific Personnel or specific students the speaker May write to the board six speakers may not use epithets slurs personal abuse L and obscene speech profanity liess speech threats and fighting words or gestures any person who violates the rules above will immediately forfeit the balance of their time addressing the board the Board of Education to be recognized to speak persons must register with their full name and and address and attest that they will comply with the rules stated above in addition only residents of the sayas school district are permitted to address
077the board each resident will have four minutes to address the board the board will not permit polling of board members by speakers after every resident wishing to speak has has had an opportunity to do so the board and or Administration May respond to Residents questions or comments no resident will be permitted to address the board more than once per meeting no one may record Another member of the of the public in a manner that is disruptive or confrontational and I just want to inform the audience that if these rules are not followed or if the audience hackles any speakers I will first give a warning and if there's a second breach of the rules I will end the audience to the public portion of the meeting furthermore for tonight's me meeting the audience to public
078portion will be recorded but not live streamed we will release the recording tomorrow after our attorney reviews the content for compliance and thank you for your understanding and the first speaker will be Teresa muralii the time so I'm going to put on so quiet sorry want just do this hi everybody oh I wanted to say thank you to the board members and the superintendents for being here especially the volunteers um I just wanted to say in terms of budget the um in light of the fact that the state aid is being cut across the board you know it's affecting all Long Island school districts for the most part I just thought it was I wanted to mention that the past few years probably four years I feel like we should all try to take it
079as a see the irony of it and the life lesson that can be learned from um the compliance with the the very hard covid mandates and the Mandate even in terms of changing our Braves name um one of the drive the main drivers of complying was the fact that we would we were threatened with loss of state aid and now it's happening anyway so at one point even it was asked by the board of regions could we change our name to Brave and it sounded like a unilateral decision was made over there no not brave even if we remove the imag rate the other question the other piece I wanted to just mention was um it's really kind of a question um in terms of security uh given the fact that there's sort of a
080new trend where some Long Island school districts are now either considering and investigating weighing the options um and some are actually implementing for the 2024 2025 school year um armed security patrols I was wondering if that's something that our district would be um willing to look into and possibly even using a new um request for proposal you know putting out new requests for proposals from security companies so we could at least see what our options are um we have a $4 million security budget um Half Hollow Hills a $1.5 million security budget as of 2022 2023 um but so we spend 4 million or work we did last year they spent 1.5 million they're adding a million for the armed security patrols that puts them at 2.5 million still far below what we spend per
081pupil on security we spend $596 per pupil they spent they spent 217 they still only going to spend in the 300s per pupil um so I just thought it's worth mentioning I don't have a strong feeling Pro or against but I'm leaning more towards Pro given the fact that the world is changing so quickly and we do so much in terms of safety measures education with the kids um about um you know this whole the the topic of active Shooters and um response also the fact that even at meetings like this we are all protected sometimes by the the police naso County Police who are armed when we have unarmed security and so many of our wonderful security are retired NYPD or retired Nasa County so I just think it's worth exploring bringing it up
082we have the budget in there already maybe we just need to no offense to wisdom security maybe we need to look into other others as well and get requests for propos out there um I know Half Hollow Hills is using I think covert security is from the articles that I'm reading so just wanted to put it out there and thank you for your time and thank you for everything you do um the second speaker will be Karen asri and Ena choy good evening uh Dr Rogers Administration Board of Trustees thank you so much for all that you do my name is Karen ostre and I'm a PTA co-president at Walt Whitman Elementary School and speaking on behalf of our PTA I'm here tonight with Ena Choy as well um to highlight three main points for
083you number one the current condition of the Walt Whitman Elementary School is a health and safety concern for the students the highest priority of spending the school board has outlined for its facilities project number two the idea that the bubble at Walt Whitman is going to reverse and the population is going to drop to where it used to be is based on faulty assumptions and number three the student population at the Walt Whitman is as big or bigger than any than the other elementary schools in the district but the footprint of the building is the smallest adding one classroom will not bring the building up to par and keeps Walt Whitman as a non-functional space for our children in 2015 I believe we had about 250 students then today we're at 401 40% higher the
084district's own projections which Walt Whitman is already running ahead of for enrollment and is estimated to fall out of the bubble territory in the next few years we think this belief is false while we no longer hold the title as the smallest student population among the cionet elementary schools our building size does Remain the smallest we now have as many or more students than most of the other elementary schools our students therefore are left to crowd into the smallest building which has had a number of negative consequences for them some of which are dangerous in our opinion when you drive up to the circle in front of our school the first thing you see facing the parking lot is an inviting wall of glass windows where students in the cafeteria congregate for lunch it is
085a long row of Windows without pylons and anyone who wants to do harm to our building would be drawn there no one has to even enter the building to inflict damage and endanger a large group of unsuspecting kids our children are not safe in this space in addition the cafeteria is almost unusably small only slightly bigger than our kindergarten classrooms the cafeteria currently serves lunch to children for approximately 3 hours of the school day because only one grade at a time can fit in it it used to be an hour and a half addressing the cafeteria and wal Whitman is not a function of a nice to have it's a need to have on par with other health and safety issues in the district the original plan presented by Dr Rogers to convert the space
086into classrooms and move the cafeteria to our interior gymnasium would alleviate the space and safety concerns simultaneously even though our gym is small it is still big enough enough to accommodate lunch but just like the other parts of the building the permanent growth in population has created an environment where the footprint of the school as the smallest in the district no longer makes sense in addition there is another safety concern with the gym it is currently used for elections and because it's interior and unsecured we have to close the school on election days because we can't ensure the safety of the kids without doing so not only is the gym too small to be functional for its original purpose given the new population it is also so woefully outdated and cannot be secured we can
087only assume that this is precisely why Dr Rogers proposed constructing a new exterior gym to the building so that the security RIS would security risk would be alleviated we urge the board to go back to the original plan presented for wall Whitman in August and incorporate that into the final facilities project list the plan addressed the health and safety risk for the cafeteria and the gym and correctly recognized that the population of the school does not fit and was unlikely to ever drop back to where it has been before parents at Whitman were encouraged to see the first plan that looked to address these risks the requests are a health and safety issue it is not a nice to have it is a necessity it is not a matter of things being uncomfortable we are
088in a Range we are in the range of disfunction we are not able to educate our kids and keep our kids safe equally to the other schools thank you hello Dr Rogers Administration Board of Trustees thank you for all you do my name is Ena Choy and I'm a Walt Whitman PTA co-president much of the board's discussion has revolved around the belief that our student population will drop back down after the bubble we're here to show we are not nearing it soon and we are at a new normal kindergarten enrollment as of today is markedly higher than it was at this point in March and previous years please also keep in mind Whitman is the only elementary school that is seeing a growth in new construction development Zone to the building with the three Kensington
089and 77 s Sagamore tow houses which will all be three to four bedroom homes they are not age 55 plus communities these homes have not be have not finished building yet but will soon the January 23rd superintendence report showed enrollment rections at an additional five students at Whitman between um the 22 2022 and 24 school years we already beat the pro projections having gained 14 students and show no signs of slowing we know these enrollment projections based on kindergarten classes are subject to error please do not put undue weight on statistics we know are unreliable yes there is an urgency for work to be done at the high school and and Southwoods it is likewise an urgency at this Elementary School now Whitman is small it's about 10,000 square feet less or uh 20% less
090than other SED elementary schools with similar student populations if an average classroom is about 800 square feet it can be said we are lacking 12 classrooms that other schools already have we have the tightest square footage per student but all our SED elementary schools need work and it will become urgent for other elementary schools in the district as their peaks return I remember listening to parents come up to the podium over the years because their child was in the classroom with over 25 students and had to eat at their desks because of a lack of cafeteria space and this was not during covid Whitman was not alone going through a period of time where we had music on a cart had OT and PT on the stage or had two or three different Services working
091at different corners of a room the facilities do not fit what we need and merely replacing portable classrooms with permanent ones will not alleviate the lack of space please note again we should expect the Peaks to return sooner than reports have shown as we all know anecdotally around us families with grown children do not tend to stay in siet while into their retirement years anymore why are we not building to accommodate our students when we know these Peaks will come but to the point tonight Whitman will not be dipping down to the 230s or even 330s in any foreseeable future it is stubbornly on the rise it is rising every year and even within this year we gain three students mid year this year and this keeps happening we are at a new Norm the
092new Plateau will not be at the 330s but substantially higher it is our sincere request while the district is proposing facilities work it should be designed in the most responsible way in a way to maximize value by doing the work when we are already working in the building thank you for your time thank you Tanya gets G not here right okay the next person will good evening members of the board and administration and panovich I at 39 Irving Drive think I have to say all that stuff right apparent and say AET uh I'm going to squeeze my four minutes to address your intentions to adopt more humoristic approaches to learning over algorithmic learning and then to Viewpoint neutrality I'd like to know um whether the board or the administration is responsible for keeping the international
093baloria or IB degree out of saset IB offers the holistic Global approach to learning that articulates Concepts vertically and in in in and interdisciplinary manner it culminates in a theory of knowledge course in high school that can only be described as heuristic International baloran solves for so many of the issues you described with algorithmic pedagogical approaches and yet you're not pursuing it but you invested time and resources into micr credentials for data analysis I.E to Showcase soon to be obsolete algorithmic skill sets why this choice this Choice concerns me as an educator and as a parent it concerns me as much as the board and administration's demonstrations of so-called Viewpoint neutrality when our Administration sends districtwide emails concerning acts of hate towards one group and never towards others and only enacts disciplinary action including calling
094the police on children of color are they exercising Viewpoint neutrality when a white Rabbi and Pastor were appointed the co-chairs of an anti-bias task force with no representation for Muslim Hindu sik Buddhist indigenous black brown or other communities of color was this board or Administration interested in Viewpoint neutrality when a body was put together with voluntary community members without any experience or credentials in the social sciences diversity equity and inclusion or culturally responsive teaching and social emotional learning was Viewpoint neutrality considered on December 4th I attended a meeting of this board of education that was recorded and live streamed and immediately scrubbed off the internet after our community members were verbally threatened and assaulted here this Administration did nothing and I know this because I was here instead of this border Administration doing something to
095keep the members of our community that are attending our Board of Ed meetings safe from actual threats of violence you are now preventing us from recording them our meetings are public documents timestamps that allow our children and community members to refer back to what happens here you not only enabled and allowed that December meeting to escalate into an unsafe environment for the Muslim attendees you erased it and acted like it never happened you are having an attorney scrub footage moving forward is that that Viewpoint neutrality this board Administration is very aware of the acts of hate taking place in your schools towards children of color your own students have stood here and recounted them to you and yet you're not taking any measures to maintain a safe or neutral environment all of your faculty is
096white and all of your curriculum is eurocentric and Euro descended how is that a neutral Viewpoint when your holiday boutiques are taking place around judeo-christian holidays in every one of our schools and everyone else is told they can't talk about diali or Ramadan how is that a neutral View point when our community updates didn't mention any curriculum around indigenous people's day or Haitian Independence Day I emailed all of you multiple times throughout February to see when are you going to address Black History Month and Dr Rogers didn't follow up until March is that a neutral Viewpoint our board lacks representation our Administration lacks representation our entire District's hiring practices lack representation and the only people feeling the repercussions of that are the students that are under represented and unrepresented I hope every parent of a
097child that does not benefit from the status quo of eraser and indifference finds their voice and doesn't just accept things quote unquote the way things are in our schools things can change we can build community and soset that reflects every family and appreciates every child here even if the board or Administration do not thank you the next speaker will be Ramadan Mubarak Muslim Students and parents have no way of being heard by this board and this Administration besides this monthly Forum where we get to speak four minutes and what does the president of the board do she relegates the duty of cre ating rules to an attorney who has crafted them to silence Muslims the purely discretionary nature of the rules give unprecedented power to a board president that inevitably prevents Muslim parents from expressing
098their true feelings for fear that they will be S excuse me censored and banned let's not forget the endemic and persistent islamophobia and saset we're here to improve the schools my criticism is not against you NE necessarily it's to improve its constructive criticism we have already discussed how there's not one not one Muslim teacher in any of the nine schools here in saset there's not one Muslim guidance counselor nor nurse nor any other full-time staff member what we do have are Israeli Flags throughout the elementary middle and high schools to remind our students where their faculties allegiances lie back in October Dr Rogers sent out multiple emails when 1200 Jews died how many emails have we received now that 31,200 innocent Muslims have died more than 15,000 children double our District's population have been slaughtered
099I recall emails about Ukraine and yet there's nothing about Palestine if Sasa does not have an islamophobia problem then why have our actions thus far pointed in that direction how many meetings has this saset administration had with Muslim parents since October I know many members of our community have tried and tried to connect and been met with silence silence no responses to emails besides one maybe when I was trying to email someone about appointing someone to the anti-bias task force and by the way we haven't heard a peep about Muti fhan at least as far as last week goes I don't know if any happened in the last few days should we have to file a foyer request for a breakdown of suspensions by ethnicity or faith how many non-white students have been suspended since
100October as far as I know from the Muslim parents that I've talked to only Muslim Students have been suspended beware that if you're a Muslim or Asian student in saset suspension is almost guaranteed if you stand up for Palestinian rights here in saset suspensions are not just do out by the superintendent the attorney the school has been working with encourages and defends each and every one of these unw suspensions with over 50% of our population being non-white that puts the majority of our students at higher risk of disciplinary action Perhaps it is time to assess the qualifications of the school district attorney and whether he should retain the privilege of representing scasi when he doesn't represent the majority of our district moreover as you know two billion Muslims around the world including here in saset
101are celebrating the holy month of Ramadan when the Holocaust remembrance month came around we received at least four emails maybe more mentioning it and describing what the school was doing to ensure students are taught about the Holocaust that's fine I'm not saying that we shouldn't we haven't received one mention of Ramadan in a district-wide email and as far as I know no schoolwide lessons or districtwide lessons about Ramadan are being taught to any of the students in any of the schools the Sasa Muslim Community is ready to engage with the administration but this Administration has ignored and delegated any response to an attorney who is Not Elected and has no interest in thinking or representing the Muslim Students or Muslim population of this District thank you for setting an excellent example of equal treatment of
102all saset residents to the student population this closes the audience to the public uh I just want to make a comment that um the district both the board and administration have taken the safety of our staff and students that's our top priority um it has always been the top priority uh in the past and going forward uh so I just wanted to uh reiterate that and um with that U Dr Rogers would you like to address some of the comments sure I'll try to address things in the order in which they came uh Miss melli thank you for your comments it's great seeing you at the play uh Friday night the we don't know what's going to happen with the state aid Cuts I think I addressed that earlier in terms of security uh after
103Parkland the district made a number of changes we did have a Community Committee to talk about security at that time and the muscular approach that we decided on at that time was to go with the upgraded doors that are in all of the buildings um longtime Watchers of these meetings know that I'm reluctant to talk about the security measures that we have taken because the more I talk about them the more I assist someone who might be surveilling us and trying to make a plan um what I will say is the advantage of the approach that we decided to take is that the doors are everywhere and the doors can be operated instantaneously uh the high school is a quarter mile from one side to another so no matter how capable the individual is of
104engaging a suspect that individual will be limited by the speed at which they can travel across the large building the advantage of the doors is that they can be operated electronically simultaneously and that everyone behind one of those doors is in a safe place so uh we do meet uh regularly with the Nassau County Police Commissioner uh he sets up forums for school district superintendent uh and we talk about uh tactics and PRI priorities and Investments and then they also set up trainings for building principles around Incident Management so uh this is something that we take very seriously our two director and assistant director of security here are with covert investigations they are the company that manages uh all of our security Force whether they're on staff or contracted and uh we stay very close
105to them uh in terms of their recommendations so uh I would say it's something that we're constant thinking about um but I also know that we have uh in our approach with the doors what was inexpensive but also incredibly muscular uh approach to keeping all of our students and staff safe um terms of uh the facilities approach um Mr Rolo is reminding me that um the Homeland Security Office also assigns an officer to every one of the school districts for the purposes of doing um site reviews of all of our sites so um I'm proud to say that uh we get compliments for uh the work that we've done here to harden our infrastructure and um again without going into detail on some of the things that they have uh complimented us for uh when
106they have uh made recommendations we've Incorporated those those recommendations immediately uh into our security planning and we're uh very complimentary of them and very appreciative of the time and effort that they uh take with us and uh what happens during any incident uh whether the incident affects us you know we've had a couple of lockout situations this year already uh our security directors are in immediate uh communication with Homeland Security so we have an a better understanding of the nature of the threat and so we can calibrate our response uh accordingly and then uh just last point on this uh my philosophy on how we Implement Security is to uh be more muscular at first until we have a good sense of what the situation is and then we can uh relax the layers that
107we put into place as we feel confident that that is a safe thing to do so uh we try to get that Cal ation right and uh until we're certain we know what we we're dealing with we tend to take the most protective posture um we need to uh in terms of the facilities work um the board is I won't speak for the board but the board is in a um a listening phase right now for Community feedback uh we put out an initial proposal a draft proposal to the community we got a lot of electronic feedback from the community the board is uh taking in the feedback that they're hearing tonight and uh electronically and will continue to do so uh and then ultimately from process perspective uh we will propose to the board
108a final um project that uh we believe uh illustrates all of the board's priorities and hopefully uh the board uh will be able to adopt that and then we'll put it in front of the public and if the public supports it then we'll uh adopt it so I don't know what the final Contours of that plan will be that really is uh the decision of the board but we will continue to provide the board with uh our best thinking about how to address all of the needs in the district and to do it quickly uh my one point would be that to the extent that uh there is uh rooms in the front of the building that have Windows rooms on the side of the building that have Windows all of our buildings have lots
109of Windows and lots of doors so no matter where they're located that that's a truism for all of the buildings so um doesn't mean we're inattentive to it but uh it does mean that it's the kind of thing that's not I think it would be very difficult for us to come up with a rule that says what windows are good and what windows are bad um in terms of the enrollment bubble obviously uh we had projections prior to the pandemic that uh were rendered obsolete by the pandemic then we had projections that we did after the pandemic typically what happens when there's a a demographic turnover in a neighborhood is that the h Homes are occupied by a new generation of parents with younger kids those kids will age into Middle School obviously and but
110the house will not turn over to a new group of elementary students so what we've seen is that enrollment tends to be cyclical there is a bubble and then those kids age into middle and high school the house remains unavailable for new El uh families until at some point the kids graduate and the house turns over what is uh somewhat different about the Whitman area is the presence of new uh development there so far those new developments have not generated enrollment which is what the enrollment consultant predicted but you've heard me say at previous meetings that uh tastes may change and at some point 10 years from now more uh those may seem to be more attractive properties for people with families than they appear to be uh right now so that's you know certainly
111something I'm attentive to and that I've mentioned to the board in the past um and I agree with the premise that enrollment projections can be volatile and unpredictable there's no good solution for that but we uh watch our enrollment closely we also monitor home sales to see if we can discern any Trends and we do monitor live births in saset um the challenge for soset Is that live bursts are not the biggest driver of our enrollment in uh migration into the district is the bigger driver of our enrollment so that makes it doubly difficult uh to predict so uh Mr sovic uh I appreciate the um discourse on heuristic and algorithmic uh thinking and I find that simulating to talk about so the international back program I'm familiar with and I agree with your analysis
112of um the holistic approach that it has uh the theory of knowledge course that it concludes with uh this district has made a large investment professional development materials Etc in uh the IB program that is uh where our investment has been the international Balor program is an expensive program to participate in there are lots of things that I find favorable about it so I think the question for us is um kind of a build by decision is it better for us to start building more H puristic work here or to buy it by uh taking advantage of a pre-existing program somewhere else knowing that it will require us to Tool up for a new approach that's a that's a uh meaty question to work into and something that we are talking about at the elementary
113level in terms terms of how to approach uh our teaching of interdisciplinary subjects and uh certainly it would uh be a dramatic change uh to work with the IB at the high school but the districts that are using IB are uh very enthusiastic about it so I think more to Common terms of thinking about what the best approach is there um I won't go Point by Point through the rest of uh your comments but I will address the live streaming and the challenges that we've had with live streaming we've tried to make this clear in the uh Communications that we had about the December meeting whether these are public records of the meeting um or not the district cannot violate federal laws so the district can't be a platform through which federal laws are violated
114by people who use the resources that are here so the district is stuck with a challenge the challenge is balancing our desire to be transparent with the public against our need to comply with federal laws so we do consult our attorneys and we do take their advice because their advice they understand the law better than we do we all recognize the challenge that's presented but in the end where Viewpoint neutrality comes into that conversation is if we pick and chose chose which parts of the meeting not to show then we will be exercising Viewpoint neutrality and so instead to avoid fura violations and avoid view violating Viewpoint neutrality the decision was made not to show any of it um and that I do think that that's unfortunate but I think uh the board has implemented
115uh I think muscular changes to how it engages with the public uh that are intended to keep the conversation civil and focused on uh School District matters and um certainly I'll let the Board address uh the points about the rules that they've created but I think U what I've observed is that it's not that the board has not been paying attention but quite the opposite the board has made a couple of iterations uh to try and keep this a forum where the Public's comments are welcomed uh I welcome the critique and criticism uh our critics often make us better so uh you know that's my observation in terms of where we're at with streaming uh the meetings uh Mr guaja Ramadan Mubarak to you as well um I would say I disagree with a lot
116of your premises um but I'm not going to talk about uh student discipline and the challenge with student discipline is again fura so um what I have to avoid doing is responding Point by point because in doing so I may inadvertently violate furpa but what I would say is um the school's attorney uh took a night of off and uh spent time here explaining how the rules are followed and how they are enforced uh in great detail that conversation was archived and I welcome you to look at it I do know that you've had the opportunity to meet with several members of my Administration of course those comments and thoughts are shared with me um I would also uh just say that um I'm happy to hear criticism that uh we could be doing more
117and um we're I think as a school district trying hard to appreciate and reflect the diversity that is in this community and I would say with respect of uh our Muslim families in particular uh since I've come to scos it's close to 10 years now um we've taken a number of mus of uh muscular steps to I think make our Muslim fam's experience here uh a more enjoyable and uh easier uh opportunity in the district so for example we are as you I'm sure you already know the first district on Long Island to adopt both elel out e Al feder devali and Lunar New Year as holidays uh that was something that we were proud of the board president at the time was recognized by I uh with an award uh I met with one
118of our parents who expressed some concerns about how uh his son's attendance at Friday pris would be recorded from an attendance perspective we were able to work on a way of making sure that there was no negative impact uh for th that attendance uh over time we've uh given our staff information about what to expect from students who are fasting during the month of Ramadan because as an athlete if you haven't had anything to drink or eat all day uh the coaches should be aware that performance may be a little bit different uh students may be tired students may have difficulty paying attention in class and we wanted to educate our staff so that they wouldn't misinterpret those cues from students as anything other than uh them following a sacred obligation to try and observe
119their fast uh we've had students approach us because they were uh looking for places where they could uh prayer uh do prayer during the month of Ramadan and the building principles have worked uh carefully with them to identify places where they could go some students felt uncomfortable during their lunch periods going into the cafeteria uh during Ramadan because it's hard to sit around other people who are eating uh when you're trying to observe your fast and uh again when those requests have been made we've tried to accommodate them and a student L initiative at the high school that I was uh proud of uh was the addition of uh vegan Halal and Kosher foods um one of the things that we noticed as we were uh watching the usage of those options was that there
120was a little surge at the beginning of the year and it dropped off over time and so two hypotheses emerged from that observation one is that maybe we had overestimated the market for that and and the other is that uh maybe we had uh overestimated how appealing the food was so we've talked to the students about the food we just finished surveying students about the food and uh I went and sampled the Halal food uh last year and found it appealing myself uh so we also understand that there is more interest in the middle and elementary school levels from having spoken to our parents and so what we're trying to do now with our food Service Company is identify a way that we can uh do Halal kosher vegan meals at scale and still satellite
121them to the elementary schools reason why that's challenge is because the elementary schools don't have kitchens so all of the food has to be prepared at the middle school or the high school and then truck to the elementary school so we're in the process right now of doing a new food service bid this is going to be one of the specifications in the bid that we anticipate the biders to find a way to accommodate uh within the current contract we've still tried to find a way to do this but uh this will be part of the bid specification going forward so um always possible to say that the district could be doing more that we could be better educated that we could talk about uh more things more frequently in different ways um open to
122all of those suggestions and thoughts and I just thought it would be useful to talk through some of the things that the district has done over time uh to try and serve well our Muslim families and um I thank you for taking the time to hear me out okay thank you Dr Rogers um I just want to make a comment that um uh like Teresa Mori said that we're all volunteers sitting up here and uh we are community members we care about our community we care about our kids and um being a board member here having the we we value the community's input that's why we have the audience to the public however that is totally optional it's not required by the law to have audience to the public but we do want to open
123that channel to the community so this way community members would have different uh ways to uh to uh address the board and if at any time you don't you feel that you can address the board uh doing the audience public you are more than welcome to um uh send this emails and but we we really uh value your inputs and we are constantly making changes modifications um to serve our community and to make this a better community so uh with that I don't know if anyone wants toh say [Music] anything if not um meeting adjourned thank you Dr Rogers thank you