Board of Education Meeting 04/13/22

001good evening and welcome to the april 13th board of education meeting at this time we'd like to entertain a motion to move into executive session in accordance with the open meetings law to discuss personnel matters collective bargaining and litigation do we have a second all in favor we're adjourned okay good evening everyone and welcome to the april 13 2022 board of education meeting please welcome emily crowl who will lead us in the pledge of allegiance please stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you there are no changes in the meeting agenda today of course this is ladies and gentlemen this is the um most wonderful part

002of our board meeting where we get to recognize our students and staff and we are going to begin this evening with a nasa keg student and i it is my pleasure to introduce the principal of nasa cake elementary school miss heather living thank you very much to our board of education i am truly honored to introduce mr prinzo who is our 6th grade ig teacher mr prinzo will introduce and talk a little bit about emily curl's honor this evening but i would like to recognize him for all of his hard work and dedication for our sixth grade ig students at nasa keg as well as all of the financial literacy and invest right opportunities he's provided for his students so please welcome mr prinzo [Applause] i'd like to thank the board of education for having

003us here to em to uh honor emily crowl uh and specifically mrs petticich and dr scanlin for coming to nasa cage to help us honor her in a ceremony uh where we had members from sifma who who allow us to they offer the stock market game and the investor a program um and so they wanted to honor uh emily there and so we had a beautiful ceremony and thank you to mrs levine for helping us organize that and mrs parata and of course our pta who also bought decorations they did just did a fabulous job it really was wonderful i just want to tell you really quickly a little bit about the program every year since i've started we've been playing the stock market game and basically what that is is they get a hundred

004thousand dollars in a virtual portfolio that they can invest uh in stocks bonds mutual funds they can buy long they can buy short and so we start from ground zero not knowing anything about it and we go through learning all about it and so we did play in the fall and as a secondary piece of that they have a literacy component called invest right and this is where they get to respond to a prompt that they change the prompt usually slightly each year and basically they get to you know talk about what they would do in their future and it really is the the crux of the whole program because you know you can just go in there and just push buttons and buy and sell things and really not know what you're doing but

005to be able to articulate it into an essay is something else and the the thing that makes this really super special is that since they've started invest right they've had over 250 000 essays submitted each year they have over 6 000 professionals in the financial industry that are the judges for these essays and this year um not only did they have over 5000 essays but in the category that emily won which is grade six to each is competing against six uh seventh and eighth graders uh there was almost 1300 essays so out of the 1300 essays that were reviewed by these professionals she was selected the fourth place winner nationally which uh to date i've never even had an essay win at all or even be taken to the next level so this is a

006amazing achievement so i'd like to congratulate emily and have her come on up here so we can give you a beautiful certificate [Applause] i just want to tell you really quickly two things about her essay that i thought was really great i'm not gonna have her read it because um it's a little bit long and she had oral surgery so she really can but she did a great job with the pledge um so this year they were supposed to kind of think about their future and what they would do and they were supposed to look specifically i believe into technology medicine and also uh space exploration which would be right up your alley then um but she she wrote uh i'm just gonna read you two two lines from it just says think about the

007future what do you see when i look to the future i see greener energy better medicine and space exploration like i've never like it has never been before and then she goes on in the second paragraph and this is what really got me she said when i think about the future i picture a better world and what i have seen being in the classroom i've seen kids you know they're they're losing that they're losing that luster of the the future and so to have her still see it and and write about it and articulate it it was very touching and i knew when i submitted this that it had a really great shot because it was a super comprehensive essay really wise beyond her years and it was recognized because it really is superb so

008thank you [Applause] if mr and mrs crowl would like to come up and join us for a picture that would be wonderful and and mrs parata too if you could thank you and um mr prinzo i'm going to ask you to send um a copy of emily's essay to miss germano so she can distribute it to the board it was an outstanding essay and very impressive so thank you and congratulations emily it is now my pleasure to introduce uh mr william bernhard who principal of ward melville high school this is a really exciting evening for ward melville high school and the three village school district i was just having a sidebar conversation with amber law's mom and she was saying thank you so much to the high school and to the school district for providing

009this this opportunity and what i mean by this in a few minutes you're about to hear things like number one in the state 150 000 scholarship number three in the united states of america in a world renowned contest abc interviews things of that nature and we have someone to thank for this who has put her heart and soul into this program and has created it really to be not just number one in long island but one of the top programs in the united states of america our science chairperson and in-star coordinator dr marnie kula [Applause] hi everyone i love the podium thank you so much it's so nice to see all of you and not worry about people sitting behind me so amazing improvement thank you so as mr bernhard alluded to it has been

010quite an amazing year in science for word melville and considering everything that we've been through it really does restore our hope in the future and much as emily was writing about in her essay for that banner by the way is really nice that invent right is a really nice banner but i'm assuming i'm going to see you in instar as well and it just re uh invigorates our our hope in the future and i am here to talk about two of the instar seniors who i think will convince you that we may be okay so as mr bernhard was alluding to the regeneron sts which is the sound science talent search this year was um i think they received over eighteen hundred submissions or eighteen thousand amber eighteen hundred whoa i almost won eighteen thousand

011eighteen million no okay um and so nearly two thousand students across america did research that was uh of the caliber that they could write a scientific manuscript and they could fill out an application and telling the judges a little bit about themselves and what the regeneron committee really likes to know about is how the students see themselves in the world and how they see themselves fitting into the future and how they see things that they might be able to provide solutions to in that future so i hate to have to talk about the pandemic but i am just briefly because i just want you to realize what these two students have been up against so they are the class of 2022. one of the most amazing classes to graduate from ward melville i think mr

012bernhard can agree they are top notch when they came into instar as sophomores they were already nipping at the seniors heels wanting to do things that the seniors were doing and we were already amazed at how you know driven they were already but driven in a great way just wanting to be involved wanting to do things and then march 13 2020 came along and so this class really has endured the pandemic in bookends sort of they started their sophomore year at word melville and we were just getting to really know them and in-star starting to do our in-house research projects as sophomores and we went home on march 13th never to come back and then junior year was awkward because it was part virtual part being home but the worst part was most of the

013research opportunities for students went online and so many students had to fall out of the program because they didn't have the ability to do projects virtually so that's where the two candidates who we're going to talk about today billy zhang and amber law come in to just shine in this condition they took disappointment and they took a hard scenario and yet they were able to turn that around and get themselves into positions where they could identify problems and create actionable solutions to those problems and i'm going to let them talk just very briefly they're going to give you extremely layperson summaries of their work but they are truly creators they created the the projects that they're going to tell you about so yes they were guided yes they had some help along the way but

014uh these two really do stand on their own in terms of a lot of this came from them so while i appreciate the credit they are they are what they are on their own as much as as they are because they went through ward melville and because they went through the instar program so first um i do have my uh my little my little uh pla certificates that i'm going to give them um so first i think i'm going to have them call i'm going to call them up so william zang will william goes by billy so let um i'm going to let you hold on to this [Applause] okay so uh billy was one of our regeneron scholars so he was one of the top 300 students out of the 1800 plus field that

015originally applied to the science talent search and billy created something called hydra and i'm going to give him the mic so that he can give you a quick little summary of what he did what's up guys um yeah i was just told about this speech like 10 minutes ago so i'm just gonna i don't know give a rundown yeah so um so yeah my research has to do with cyber security so i kind of asked the question when we talk to computers when we outsource computation from like um a client to a server normally the server like google or amazon they'll execute the computation and we kind of just have to trust that it's accurate right so i don't think that's cool because essentially we're giving all of our trust into these very centralized authorities

016so so yeah i made a protocol that essentially forces these servers to provide proofs that the computation is correct so these are kind of like cryptographic mathematical proofs that the server will give to the client such that the client can be statistically convinced that the server has indeed performed the computation correctly so um so yeah that's uh that's pretty much it i have a question so so does this protocol can this protocol be forced for the server to observe the protocol or is this a third-party thing that the yeah the server is forced to observe the protocol and it's pretty much like a a conversation between the server and the client and at any point if the server provides an incorrect um response to a challenge then the uh the client will reject the proof

017wow that's incredible congratulations yeah thank you not bad right that was an excellent layperson summary i said you know how computers talk so amber had given me that little line earlier today she says yeah they talk the computers talk i was okay so billy is going to be traveling next week trying to decide on which university to go to but he's got you know he's got some really hard choices you know yale harvard you know mit you know so he'll have to settle for one of those i guess all right and now amber uh law also shared in becoming a regeneron scholar so she and billy were two of our our scholars this year and then amber went on to be selected as one of the 40 finalists for the science talent search this year

018that meant that she traveled down to washington dc for five days where she took her show on the road and she would presented her research in front of renowned judges who are experts in their field and really was able to do the stand and deliver so it's one thing to write a manuscript it's one thing to create great essays and submit your application online it's another to talk to people in person and have them question things about your research and you need to think on your feet you need to quickly troubleshoot you need to wonder where they're going with the question you need to maintain your you know decorum and you can't really get too upset and she was able to do all of that and as i'm sure you're all aware she was selected

019third in the nation so i think we should just stop right there and just think about three out of over eighteen hundred students in the united states and she was selected number three which is absolutely fantastic [Applause] yeah so um as you as you may or may not know this program was started by george baldo back in 1998 and george did very well until everybody started copying the instar program and now we've got competition all over the island but he really was a a you know trendsetter we the last we got was i think fifth place in 2009 i believe so this is really quite an amazing accomplishment so amber why don't you come up and join billy and i will give you your certificate so amber did go on the whirlwind tour and it

020was much like it is like she's being followed by paparazzi so soon after she was named uh the regeneron uh finalist we went to lyseff and lysef is held at in nassau county and all of the kids who knew about amber they were waiting for her and so we come into lysap and we're in this big catering hall and we're setting up our posters and we're making sure everything is set and there is this pack of young men and they're just waiting right they're just waiting they're watching her they're being respectful they're letting her set up her poster because she's amber i mean she is an amazing celebrity she's got paparazzi following her these young men came up to her and were so just amazed to be in her presence to ask her what it

021was like what you know to just kind of do that six degrees of separation thing where you know we talked to amber so they can go home and tell all their friends so that was really endearing to see that she has such a following because of the work she does and one thing about billy and amber they're both smart kids right they're really smart but it's what they do with their smarts that really sets them apart and it sets most of the kids that are in the instar program apart so um again it's the the the fact that they look for actionable solutions and then they put those into work and they get those things done and they persevere so i am going to um give up the podium to amber for one quick second

022so she can give you a layperson summary of her work you may have seen her on news 12 you may have seen her on abc news and i can report here that she will be featured in the new national geographic series called science fair so if you didn't see the original which came out a couple of years ago i believe in 2017 she is going to be one of the students that they're going to be focusing on for the new series they'll be down in atlanta with us as amber is our isaf finalist and she will be going to the international science and engineering fair in may and she'll be followed with a bun by a bunch of cameras so it's going to be great fun so amber why don't you tell everybody about what

023you did okay so thank you dr kula for the introduction um this is my first time speaking at a podium like this so kind of scary uh but hopefully everyone can hear me okay uh so before i give like kind of a lay person summary of my work i wanted to kind of talk a little bit about the rigor and kind of what went like behind the scenes of applying to regeneron sts so regeneron sts likes to call themselves like the most prestigious science and math competition in the nation and they've earned this kind of name through the rigor of their selection process so when billy and i and everybody here in the senior in-star program applied to the regeneron sts we didn't only submit like a 30-page 20-page research manuscript we also had to

024submit like seven or eight essays recommendation letters it was a holistic review process to see not only the work we've done but also the way we think and how we innovate and solve scientific problems so um going to washington dc cool is absolutely right that like it takes an incredible amount of like like i don't really know how to say like poise and kind of like courage to be able to face against these judges who have read your paper like like probably like tens of times and like ask you the most difficult questions that you've ever been asked about your research and a little bit about the judging that happens at washington dc so there are three days of judging and on the first two days they give you what are called panel interviews and

025this is like the scariest part of judging because there's like five different rooms and each room has three judges and these judges are like they're mathematicians they're computer scientists they're physicists like i'm a biologist right and these people are asking me questions about physics and computer science just to see how i think on my feet and how i can answer types of scientific questions so i just feel like i just want to like obviously nobody from the s from the science talent search is here to hear me say this but i think that the science talent search is really one of the like best and most rigorous ways to like bring together students who are passionate about science and just being able to be in washington dc with all these phd scientists and other students

026who are so excited and passionate about stem was really like truly the best week of my life and like the energy it was always overwhelming in washington dc so i just kind of wanted to say like it was applying to a general on sts was a very long arduous exhausting process but it is so worth it so for any parents here like sophomores juniors like do research apply to gender on sts it is the best thing in the world anyway okay so about my research um so basically let's consider like a regular healthy cell so in our body cells carry out a variety of functions like from dividing to secreting hormones and all these functions depend on certain proteins and so we can like basically say that proteins are responsible for the functions of cells

027and so cells have to precisely regulate the types of proteins that they produce so that they can function in the proper ways but in diseases most notably cancer and sometimes in some neurodegenerative disorders this process of creating proteins is dysregulated meaning it does not function properly and one of the main goals that researchers want to obtain when learning about a new disease is how does this process of protein synthesis how does it change in this disease state for every single gene within our human genome and there are like 19 000 coding genes inside of our genome so you can imagine how much data we have about like how this protein synthesis changes across conditions well the problem now that we face is that we have so much data but we don't have any reliable computational

028tools to actually understand how does the process of translation otherwise known as protein synthesis actually change in disease states so we want to precisely understand these molecular changes that occur and so in my project i created a new computational tool and i called it ribobays the name comes from ribo for ribosome which is like a very important molecular machine that creates proteins and base for bayesian mathematical techniques that i use so basically what ribobays does is it scans like these large volumes of data like you have like it would crash my computer sometimes but it goes through these humongous data sets and it picks out these very important regulatory sites called ribosome pos sites which are responsible for ensuring that the process of protein synthesis occurs correctly and ribobays is able to tell researchers for

029every single ribosome pasta it finds in the genome how does it change in for example a tumor state and why is this important for for us researchers and doctors to know and so by creating ribobays i hope it'll like highlight novel molecular pathways and proteins that can help doctors and researchers create new drugs and therapies to treat patients [Applause] all right i was wondering if anyone would have any questions but i don't think she has any questions how long did it take you to come up with ideas yes so um [Music] this is all right so a lot of people who applied to the general on sts work on their projects for like two or more years i started my project in july of 2021 so i worked on it for like four about four

030months um so the way i like started my project oh this is also very important for anybody who's interested in getting into research so uh what i did is i applied to a summer research program and i applied to one called the research science institute and for people who like want to like get into research applying to summer program is one of the best ways to do it um so i applied to this program called rsi or research science institute and i was accepted and then the staff like read my essays and like in my essays i talked about how i wanted to integrate my passion for mathematics with my interest in biology to create like mathematical solutions to biological problems so i write about all this in my essays and then the people who

031run rsi like matched me with a mentor from the university of texas at austin um and then i started my research like i was matched with him in may of 2021 and then i started it in july and i worked on it until around like late august and then i started writing my manuscript so in total like i really only like did the coding for the project in about two months uh the reason why it took me like such a short amount of time was because the rsi is an extremely like intensive research program and i remember like people don't see like what goes on behind the scenes of research but i would stay up until like 4 00 am like coding my mom knows i did not sleep at all during the summer and

032like it makes me it was a very fun time for me like being able to explore and just like chase my scientific ideas was very like it was just the best time of my life it was also very exhausting i don't recommend like not sleeping but yeah so it took me about like two three months for the coding about a month to write the manuscript and prepare the presentation yep thank you oh yes i had to borrow one of my mom's laptops because mine kept crashing yeah i just want to say that the two of you billy and amber have such amazing and awesome personalities and on top of that being so incredibly intelligent and smart and passionate um your personalities that's the key and uh you two are absolutely amazing and we are all

033very very proud of you um and wish you only the best and we have no doubt that you're going places especially with those great personalities and and high energy and you're you got the full package thank you [Applause] you nailed it on the head that's exactly what they've got so they're able to talk about it they're able to communicate it and that's going to make all the difference so so if your parents are here i know amber's mom is here i don't know billy if your parents are here we're going to ask them to join us for a picture okay billy amber i just want to say i know you've had so many um you know accolades and congratulations from the faculty and the board of ed and teachers i want you to know that

034the senior class even people you would never think we are so proud of you i am i've never met you before and it's an honor to be in your presence philly i've known you for a while but people you don't even know we're just so happy that you're in the class of 22 we know you're going to make such an impact on the world beyond what any of us can understand and everyone talked about your accomplishments like sports people people in student government that i know and literally everyone's just amazed we're so happy that you're in our class [Applause] hi it's still me so one thing that's really uh i think fitting about the fact that we are about to honor our next group is that billy and amber have been active members of this

035next group since it's in since they were able to be members of it back when they're in the junior high and it's uh amazing because the science olympiad team and the work that they do is often where i find people to join instar and i tap kids on the shoulder and say hey how come you're not an instar okay why don't you apply it instar but the things that they do in science olympiad really does foster great thinking when we start to do our own research and we start to tackle our own questions so without further ado i'm standing in for jenny saragano the infamous jenny saragano who unfortunately is home sick tonight but her partner in crime is here and mr sooser if you'd like to come up [Applause] all right the list is

036here okay and i'm just going to be this all right thank you very much we're really happy to honor the science olympiad team this year thank you to the board thank you to stem foundation thank you for the community for their support um i've been doing this for over 20 years now and this is one of the the top teams we've had come through the school their achievement of first place in new york state is only the third time we've done that in the history of the ward melville high school um team okay and uh so it's a huge accomplishment for them and uh it just goes to their dedication to the team their commitment all the competitions we participated in they're overcoming the the virtual you know covet experience you know it's been it's

037been a little surreal this year but it's been amazing at their accomplishments at all the competitions we did and to finally go to states in person and for them to perform after being away from it some of the students had never even gone to a state away for a state competition and the way they performed there that's really where i saw them shine and rise the occasion and that's not easy to do when you're for you know if you're online and you're comfortable in your house that's one thing taking these tests but when you're there and you have to have all your gear and equipment together make it to the event on time with your partner and sit there amongst other peers there and take the test that's really a challenging thing to do and

038they really rose to the occasion they came through and we couldn't be more proud of them this year to achieve first place in new york state so they're a great team and we'd like to honor them with certificates this year and to the seniors who are graduating best of luck you made the team this year really what it was and of course there are two captains claire and amber this year they were absolutely superstars this year in organizing this team and getting to them to commit their time and energy to really performing at their best and of course miss sergano can't be here tonight she holds a team together she really works with them upstairs in in the science wing there and together you put together this team and it's pretty pretty amazing accomplishment so

039um we'd like to honor them all so first up um alexander uh alexander lin come on up congratulations buddy great year um alexandra doan congratulations great i love the fact that they're wearing blankets amber [Applause] benjamin pauldy billy zane [Applause] another one for you claire yang congratulations claire david liang oh he's not here tonight okay emily [Applause] okay uh so johnny's not here okay uh kate son [Applause] michael meliakin yeah we get that one right uh neil okay neil's not here neil carpino um owen dot [Applause] come [Applause] last but not least terrific we're going to take a picture but um we're also going to ask the parents to join us because a part of this triangle between the teachers the students is our amazing parents so we're going to ask you to come up

040and join your children in this picture [Applause] lead the way captains lead the way arrange your people tall guys in the back you're gonna have to do layers like it's gonna be like a wedding just one final piece of information uh it's ironic but absolutely serendipitous that on this team today of people you heard could alexander lin and claire yang just rise for one second please rise for one second today alexander was announced as ward melville's salutatorian and claire as the valedictorian congratulations so we we congratulate all of our amazing students who are here this evening their families our staff thank you you you are impressive and we wish you well we also know that you get up very early in the morning so we will not be insulted if at this point you would

041like to leave but you are certainly welcome to stay however you um if you want to depart we will give you an opportunity to leave at this time all up to you so good luck with your national competition thank you so we just came off if you haven't watched obviously what just occurred the most favorite part of all board meetings i'd like to take this opportunity to to say a couple of things the kovid 19 pandemic has presented challenges that could have not been anticipated or conceived and yet our district remains steadfast and devoted to providing the best academic social and emotional supports possible to our students despite these overwhelming challenges as a district we are proud of our accomplishments and fully recognize that this achievement was one of teamwork collaboration and dedication from all

042stakeholders our teachers served on the front lines and deserve our respect and admiration which they have our amazing families stood behind us and trusted us as we navigated the absolute unknown at the time a group that must also be applauded and acknowledged is our exceptional administrators who made certain that student needs were always addressed and so we take this moment to laud their efforts it is important to recognize the moment the important contributions that they have made and continue to make to our district we must also always remember that it takes a village to create an environment of success in every stakeholder in our district district students teachers administrators parents community members have an integral role in our district mission so thank you for your continued support here and at home we remain most hopeful

043that we are on a trajectory that will bring us back to pre-pandemic routines and restore the classroom social environment that we have come to know and value and this is on behalf of the board of education thank you all um very very much [Applause] i i have to i have to have it in writing all right it's just me um okay so all right so now we're going to go into number five reports uh a student representative report riley meckley from the high school hello everyone i'd like to start off with the senior trip since we just got back this weekend hundreds of students have come back talking about how much fun they've had at the universal theme park in florida the trip was lots was very memorable and everyone enjoyed walking around the park

044going on roller coasters and seeing their favorite movies come to life it was a wonderful way to spend time with our peers and we all came home with lots of memories sunburns and laughs some sports updates now that the spring season is in full swing i'm happy to report that girls badminton girls lacrosse and boys tennis are all undefeated and they have not lost a single game so good job to them a little info on student life by now the sophomores and juniors have chosen their classes and electives for next year many juniors have started drafting college essays in english class and the seniors have come to the sad conclusion that we only have a few more weeks left at ward melville by now most know what college we are attending or what we plan

045on doing next year and for those who don't know big decisions have to be made by may 1st because that is when colleges want you to accept or decline their school today student government hosted the battle of the classes this was the first time a battle of the classes happened in years students in all grades came to the gym right after school and participated in different games and events the junior class won and everyone in attendance had a great time this event was a fundraiser with all the money going to support childhood cancer for the saint baldrick's foundation the ward melville career fair was a great success dozens of businesses came and hundreds of students flocked to the gym in interest of learning about possible jobs the three village industry advisory board did a wonderful

046job advertising and running this event the trium music club did an awesome job hosting ward melville's got talent earlier this month lots of students went to see their peers perform in a variety of acts and staff members were the judges and they got to pick the winners coming up on may 5th student government is hosting a school-wide blood drive and i should have more to report on end of the year activities at the next meeting thank you very much and thank you mr bernhardt for taking 250 seniors to florida 305 oh excuse me it doesn't matter at that point and survived and there were no incidents and everybody was on their best behavior no one was hospitalized it was fantastic to hear so we're all very very happy about that thank you okay next up

047on reports is letter b technology plan right our director or executive director of technology deirdre rubinster hi everyone how are you hello three village thank you to the district administration as well as the board of education for having me here this evening to talk about my favorite subject which of course is technology we are going to take you through the 2022 to 2025 technology plan this evening and give you some oversight into how that plan was developed what our objectives are going to be for the next couple of years but also the visioning and the purpose of technology with inside of the district itself so first our planning process one of the most unique elements of our department is the fact that we recognize that technology is not actually about tools technology is about augmenting

048our daily lives uh the invention of fire was a tool we're really just taking something innovative and applying it to the process of teaching and learning because after all that's what this is all about we needed to reflect on the previous plan how our initiatives impacted students and teachers both positively and negatively because of course anytime you add something you've also taken something away so really taking a critical eye towards what technology integration has done for students and teachers and families in three village we had to engage with various stakeholder groups and there are many they include our curriculum curriculum development committee program review our leadership team both professional development and professional steering which i'm so grateful to be a part of because it allows us to be a part of the visioning process for

049the school district and of course the technology committee we engage with many different curricular components as well both elementary and secondary curriculum english language and multilingual learners and our pps department taking a look at how technology impacts our special education students additionally technology is the most intersectional department inside of the three village school district it touches every single individual whether you are a student a teacher but also human resources our business department our security department we really get to see the unique interlocking pieces how they fit together and how they move as one we also needed to analyze covid of course the most overused word of the last two years in a lot of ways covid was a catalyst and while many of us reflect on covid negatively i have the unique position to reflect

050on covid positively because it did what i could never do it created a sense of urgency inside of all of us to become better users of technology to innovate in that sense i'm a little grateful for the pandemic it's my sincere hope in the same way that we had a reopening committee that we also debrief from this experience because it's incredibly important for us to get everyone together talk about what worked really well and what practices we need to give people permission to let go of i hear people talk about going back it's been nearly three years there is before there is after and then there is what comes next and we need to take some time to decompress from this situation in order to determine what that next step is going to look like

051being in technology is so inspiring to me because it allows us to really take a strategic position in guiding the district to what's to come in terms of action we took a look at both techniques we wanted to translate through technology tools as well as components of effective instruction so we knew that we needed to use technology in order to improve direct instruction class discussion group work and differentiation because our teachers told us that those were the most impactful teaching strategies we also knew that we needed to find ways to re-imagine student-to-teacher contact checking for understanding collaborative and authentic work products as well as to be able to innovate i think the collaborative and authentic work products is something that we're going to hear so much more about especially as the board of regents makes

052their transition away from standardized assessment to more project based assessment and technology is going to be integral in what that looks like so what's our presentation going to cover today oh i was a little out of order we went through our planning process already we'll talk about the core values that guide the technology department we are an extremely strategic group we align ourselves entirely and consistently measure ourselves against our objectives we'll talk about the goals and the action plans and then i will actually give you an opportunity to meet some members of the team because of course this isn't the type of thing that you can do alone so our core values we've redefined technology technology is no longer a tool it is applying innovation to teaching and learning to engage in the process of

053continuous improvement i want to take a moment actually to highlight a book that i read this year that was recommended to me by by gina varacci she's one of our educational technology coaches she actually ran a professional learning circle around this text and it's called think again by adam grant and the one thing that this book really drove home for me if you hadn't have have not had a chance to read it please check it out was the idea that i could never marry myself to one of my decisions because something that i made today could be entirely different tomorrow as the parameters change and i the only thing that i could count on was that i was going to have to constantly redevelop myself redevelop my team redevelop our goals and find new ways

054for us to get there we've attributed this quote to kit i would like to take a moment to call out the art department at ward melville high school which designed this logo which we have affectionately named kit inside of their branding unit the students developed lots of artwork for us in order to brand our vision and our mission and they really came up with some beautiful results so thank you so much to the art department for doing that for us we have some guiding principles around technology integration and we marry every single use of technology up to these principles we do not use technology for the sake of using technology we do not learn how to use a tool so that we can say i know how to use a mouse i know how to

055use a keyboard i know how to use nearpod i know how to use padlet technology should be used for one of these reasons to create efficiency to increase engagement to foster independent learning to improve achievement or transform teaching simply put if the tool does not do this it should not be used there are some things that are not broken and we don't want to touch those but we do want to find the entry points where we know that we can increase efficiency engagement learning and achievement technology integration needs to be deliberate continuous and purposeful this is not about tools this is about strategy this is about envisioning the kind of district that we want to be and taking incremental steps in order to get there envisioning what we want our teaching to look like and

056what we want our students to produce not to consume but to produce so uh we have some goals there are three of them inside of the 2022 to 2025 technology plan and the first goal is centered around teaching and learning we want students to seamlessly use technology as it augments your life should never be clunky uh it should never feel awkward or out of place but we want them to apply it at the earliest practical point and then to continue to use it throughout their educational careers we want students to use technology to be critical thinkers we want them to collaborate with one another and be creative we know that this innovation not the tools but the innovation of technology is going to further our educational plan but it's also going to result in measurable

057outcomes teaching and learning so here's how we get there our first step planning uh planning for this vision is going to include input from many of the different groups that you've heard about before professional steering professional development the technology committee grade level meetings department meetings district leadership union leadership parent involvement one of the latest initiatives that we've had the pleasure of being involved in which is going to expand greatly next year is parent university so i'd just like to thank erin connelly for inviting us to be involved we know that parents are partners i could not possibly police the internet i need parents to tell me what's going on to keep that open line of communication about what's working well in their home so that we can supplement a child's education as far as curriculum

058goes we are into an integral part of curriculum development and we will continue to be so that includes meeting with the assistant superintendent of educational services the director of secondary curriculum directors department chairs grade level and content area specialists it is important for us to understand how technology marries itself up to curriculum because again technology for the sake of technology is a pretty useless skill but technology to advance curriculum is incredibly important we're going to evaluate this um by taking a look at both the quantitative and the qualitative data so we can look at utilization data from our various software programs we can survey our students our teachers and parents to find out what's working well and what need is in need of improvement and also our benchmarking data and our state assessment data which

059you saw at the last board meeting presented by the incredibly talented laura pimento our second goal is designed around building capacity so we need to take teachers and continue to promote their comfort with the use of technology and also their competency with using technology you can know how to teach you can know your content and you can know how to use a tool but partnering those two up to come up with something transformative is incredibly difficult to do so we aim to provide continuous professional development and what's so unique about our model is that it includes observation modeling co-teaching and collaboration this is something that many other coaching models don't actually employ but we'll talk a little later about uh about our co-teaching initiatives we also need to equip teachers to use technology to create

060a student-centered environment to enhance their learning process we have to build scalable processes we have to align our schools and our departments and our grade levels and we have many living resources that we use in order to do that one of them we very affectionately refer to as the playbook now it's intimidating to stand here in front of all of you today but what's even more intimidating is that my husband's at home watching me on youtube and when i get home i will say to him how did i do and he'll be like so i borrowed this idea from him of building a playbook something that he does in his corporate life something that i had done in mine our playbook has been so successful that we were able to present it to the eastern

061suffolk boces curriculum council and there are many other districts who have reached out in order to copy the resources that we have created what's most important about a playbook is that it keeps us all aligned it keeps us moving in step with one another and it continues to build that team capacity so how are we going to get there well first there's research but my version of research and your version of research are probably a little different dr scanlon just created his dissertation i'm sure that he was reading lots of academic sources whereas i'm listening to podcasts in my car of the latest and greatest educators telling me how they're incorporating technology tools technology is always so much so on the cutting edge that we have to find it we have to find inspiration on

062twitter on reddit on podcasts experimenting with one another really in order to to stay abreast of the latest and greatest we want to continue to expand upon our communication documents yes of course that includes the technology playbook which is an internal resource for our staff members but also our use our user agreements our parent resources our parent university we also do a very fun tech tip tuesday i almost started this presentation with the theme song i just you know coming out to music seemed like it was going to work for me as well as our quarterly instructional technology newsletter we are taking a look at changing our professional development why because professional development needs to be focused on content and not on tools so how do we do that we have meetings with grade level

063experts we really dive deep into their curriculum in order to marry up tools in the best possible ways and develop these transformative lessons create opportunities that we never had available to us before we also offer this kind of training in so many different modalities but again the most popular one has become the co-planning and co-teaching it is an extremely unique element and finally you know leaning on the support of our staff so our teachers benefit from access to peers from building specific grade level specific department specific coaching we're going to evaluate this in similar ways we'll take a look at the utilization data from our software programs we'll take a look at our touchpoint data what do we collect when we are talking to teachers face to face when we're giving small group instruction virtual

064one-on-one presentations as we're training and creating these tutorials we'll take a look at the quantitative data that's produced from our professional development course enrollment completion and feedback forms we'll survey our students our teachers and our parents we want to partner with our administrators to see what they're seeing as they observe teachers who are integrating technology and also take a look at our assessment data our benchmarking and our state assessments sorry i'm getting a little winded there's not much room left in my abdomen these days no i'm good thanks our third goal is based around infrastructure and security and i have to call out infrastructure as the unsung hero and also the one that's taken for granted the most you never appreciate your wi-fi until netflix goes out kind of like that so we need to

065maintain and upgrade our already robust network by constantly evaluating it against what we're trying to do and we also need to create a culture of awareness of best cyber security practices and that really runs for both teachers and students as far as infrastructure goes we have a very big infrastructure project coming up this summer we have 330 access points that will be reaching end of life that will be upgrading but we're going to also take a look at transitioning from a reactive to a proactive maintenance structure which is going to allow us to be much more responsive to to bandwidth needs security security doesn't just deal with the staff it also deals with the students one of the things that i've learned from some recent ward melville graduates is that password that we gave them

066in sixth grade they're still using and it's for their bank account now and they're using it at work yeah that's kind of scary so uh we are launching a new initiative um with our fifth graders that we're going to graduate up where we're teaching them about password complexity and we're rolling out more complex passwords for them that are going to graduate up we'll be doing similar things with our staff taking a look at threat notifications best practices conducting penetration testing everyone's going to be so happy uh when they when they get the knock on the door from me about uh whether or not i could crack their password so how are we going to do this again we're going to stay on top of the latest and greatest trends with research but communication here is

067really key because what i've learned is that in order for people to care about safety they also need to understand the risks people don't just blindly follow i don't say don't go through that door of course you want to go through that door i just told you not to go through that door so we need to make sure people understand that an 8 character all lower case password can be broken in a matter of minutes but a 12 character password that contains an uppercase letter a symbol and two numbers would take 63 000 years in order to break we need to give people that sort of context so that they can make really good choices about protecting themselves as far as evaluation goes we're conducting monthly penetration testing and also testing of our users periodically

068through phishing notifications in order to really train their behavior finally purchasing infrastructure has a price tag associated with it so we have to make very good choices about what we're going to replace and when and why in order to balance the fiscal needs of the district versus the infrastructure needs of the department we'll evaluate these by continuously quizzing users on during these educational campaigns but we'll also be able to take a look at utilization reports to make sure that we're providing an infrastructure that's supportive enough to manage our needs one of the final pieces of the technology plan was equitable learning everywhere all the time many people think of equitable learning as access to wireless to devices but it's also access to really well-trained educators who know how to work with these tools we've created

069the permanent resources we have expanded modeling and co-teaching we have absorbed assistive technology we provide all of the assistive technology consults for both students and teachers in-house which is you know just a really beautiful partnership and we do the same for our english language learners okay so i just want to talk for a moment about who we are because while i love to take the credit it's not me so uh i very affectionately call my team the dream team i am one of those very lucky people who really loves my job but also deeply respects the people that i work with and has very great relationships with them and relationships are everything so the first group of people that i'd like to talk about are our educational technology coaches so if anybody has a phone

070and would like to scan that qr code uh there is additional material there on what our coaching program actually does but we've taken a look at analyzing their output our educational technology coaches have and this is on the low side a 150 percent personnel to yield gearing ratio how is a gearing ratio developed well you measure your input to your output your input being your hours works and your output being your results in education where in knowledge work so we measure that with both qualitative and quantitative analysis we get to constantly benchmark ourselves against our achievements one of our largest ones this year being co-teaching our coaches have co-taught over 80 lessons in the past month alone that's 80 times that they were in front of students and teachers modeling coordinating planning and really producing

071some great work we also meet monthly to analyze how that output contributes to our larger scale operations we evaluate that monthly at our team meetings if you're interested in learning more about this program i'm always happy to talk but i just wanted to highlight some really great lessons that we've done recently so for example on the primary level recently we did co-planning and co-teaching letter sounds and digraphs using jamboard with reading teachers in our primary students on the intermediate level co-planning and co-teaching theme-based we video projects on different novels that students are reading having students produce work instead of just consuming text on our secondary level uh co-planning and co-teaching the how did we get here invention project with our social studies teachers using padlet in world language co-planning and co-teaching sign language using formative

072our coaches have taken the lead on continuing to advance our stem steam stream initiatives throughout the district whatever you want to call it co-planning and co-teaching aeroponics tower gardens particularly over at the entire fifth grade of minnesota also using formative and developing co-planning co-teaching emissions rescue from mars with fifth grade this one holds a special place in my heart because it's a cost save we used to pay someone else for an emissions curriculum and unfortunately it wasn't just wasn't working for us so we wrote our own and now we roll it out we developed it and we co-teach that in terms of assistive technology co-planning and co-teaching with resource room teachers to take students who have trouble writing and expressing their ideas in traditional formats to use technology to create alternate work products co-planning and

073co-teaching uh basic coding skills with ipads with a k12 alc class to have them maneuver the sphero robots co-planning and co-teaching an alc class on calendar skills using jamboard i've been most impressed by the initiative that you all they are here so i'm kind of talking directly to them i am most impressed by the initiative that you have taken to constantly embed yourself inside of content you are teachers first and you are technologists second and that's why this program is successful because you continuously lead with best teaching practice thank you for that so our technicians while the job of a technician has changed tremendously in the past two years we are just supporting so many devices we have over six thousand one-to-one chromebooks we also launched a one-to-one macbook initiative in specialized art classes at

074both the junior highs and the high schools using and also making use of adobe creative cloud why did we do that i don't know if you're aware but our art department those students are the number one scholarship recipients at ward mobile high school they produced some fabulous work but we knew that if they wanted to be competitive and cutting edge they also needed the best tools in order to do so our ipad supply is focused entirely on assistive technology so we are uh are maintaining a supply of of a hundred of those that are used by students as uh augmented communication devices i'm not really a big believer in one type of device i don't think that's reflective of the real world i think that i use my iphone or my surface pro or you

075know any piece of technology that i have available in front of me and i hope that our students through this kind of exposure are also learning the same we have had over 3 500 support tickets this year 65 percent of those related to chromebook repairs and about 35 percent related to other types of repairs so our technicians have really moved uh and transitioned from supporting pcs in our classrooms to supporting devices that are being used by students one thing that i'm most proud of we have taught our students to troubleshoot their devices first before bringing them to us for repair why do i love this because that is an that is a skill i cannot replace those students are absolutely going to be by themselves at one point or another and they are going to

076be faced with a piece of technology that just doesn't work is throwing up an error message is not doing what they want it to do they know how to troubleshoot from start to finish their own issues resolve their own problems it is one quite efficient but two that's a skill that's going to last them long long after they've graduated from ward melville so our investment plan our three-year investment plan is really focused around devices we're going to continue to marry the right device to the right program and the right software to the right program because it's really important that we give our students authentic experiences as they're here our interactive displays we are nearly entirely saturated with benq boards in our secondary buildings we'll be moving into our libraries and our sixth grade classrooms before

077the end of the year and next year we will be adding ben cues to grades four five and six i'm particularly interested in this for the elementary level because they are so tactile and i think that that board is going to allow teachers to what is a benq board oh it's an interactive flat panel display that's touchable uh andy you want to give a demonstration no oh all right all right we have one here in the here down the hall if you want to come and take a look um but so many students can touch it at one time that it really makes it that sort of engaging interactive manipulative experience and i think kids are missing that i think kids are missing touching and manipulating actual supplies and this board is going to mimic

078some of that for them and finally our infrastructure sure we're going to replace our wireless access points but also making sure that we have enough storage space and that we have the right security solutions considering that schools have been such a threat as of late as such a target rather as of late not a threat so um as you can tell i love to talk about technology so please if you have any questions about our program i am always happy to take a phone call or an email it is something that i am incredibly passionate about and that i feel really fortunate to get to do um so i'm greatly appreciative of of this opportunity thanks before i waddle myself away are there any questions that i can answer about our program now dear dr

079uh i don't have any questions but i i just want to take an opportunity to to thank you and and your incredible staff um through the last two years of kovid and we go back to march 13th which marnie kula dr marny kula had brought up in talking about our in-star students we it changed the landscape of education significantly and had it not been for our technology department um under the leadership of deodra and our amazing coaches we would never have gotten through the pandemic in providing the kinds of support to our students and our staff that was critical so kudos to all of you for making that happen you deserve an and a very high level of commendation and a round of applause thank you i will say 100 percent we could not have

080done it without the support of the district administration and the board of education without a doubt so thank you um for being so responsive to our needs and we look forward to what's to come okay thank you very much the letter c we're going to get our final report from the budget advisory committee ian farber no judy wallace will be speaking hi i'm judy wallace and i'm a member of the budget advisory committee for the past three and a half months our committee has attended countless meetings we've reviewed a migrated budget related documentation including past and current proposed budgets no budget is perfect nor is it likely for anybody to be one hundred percent in favor of any budget all the members of the committee have been able have come to the table with varying

081perspectives and ideas through this collaboration of varying perspectives we have provided the board and the administration with the framework that we will hopefully lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness in both the short term and the long term we would like to acknowledge the big step in the right direction the borders the board has taken by forming the bac we look forward to contin the continuation of the said committee for years to come we strongly encourage all of eligible voters to make it to the polls and take an objective and non-biased view when it comes time to vote on may 17th for the pa so here are some of our final recommendations for the year in regard to objectives no cuts should be made to the classroom teachers class sizes electives or programs unless it's needed

082for declining enrollment reduce all overall administration and reduce redundant positions throughout the district pay back the reserves that were used for covert and increase the overall reserve whenever possible in regards to administration positions consider further reductions in central administration that result in actual cost savings not reallocation of funds consider re-evaluating the number of administrators in each school to reflect a declining enrollment over the last 10 years consider reviewing the chair position structure to increase efficiency and promote better transitions and cohesiveness k through 12. in regard to line item budgets have departments have each department go through their budget line by line and reduce all costs that have not been used over the last three years this will lead to substantial savings to provide detailed costs for the proposed accessible playground and gym floor at arrowhead

083elementary which is budgeted in in the amount of 425 000 in the capital funds budget line start to reduce the 4.4 million appropriated fund balance that is budgeted for next year reduce the law the budget line items that consistently have the highest percentage of unused funds this will in turn reduce the appropriated fund balance for the next year to a reasonable level the bac recommended the district adopt a written fund balance policy to help guide when fund when fund balances should be appropriated this has also been the recommendation of the new york state comptroller's office division of local government and school accountability in regards to programs and staffing consider revamping the mentoring program from three ftas ftes with a budget of 450 000 plus benefits and legacy costs to include less ftes and utilize stipends

084from mentor teachers in designating and designated teaching disciplines this will allow considerable cost savings and give the ability to increase or decrease the services as needed without much added cost to the budget is a tough one considering return returning technology coaches to the classroom in stem or coding classes as they should be used for student-facing instruction assistance with using technology can be performed by nearly any i.t staff eliminate any mid-year hiring of new positions not disclosed to the public in the budget unless mandated by a child's iep or 504 our future recommendations for financial stability include when negotiating all contracts please keep in mind the future financial stability of the district and budget uh create a more transparent budget website and create a more transparent budget website including detailed budget information continue the budget advisory

085committee yearly starting in september have multiple budget workshops starting in january with a working budget create a program for high school students to be high i.t coaches this will save the district some money and will be and as well as a positive experience for the students with something to put on a college application investigate the possibility of moving grades to different schools such as ninth grade to the high school and sixth grade to junior high continue to periodically research the best use of district buildings this may include renting out a building closing in elementary school due to declining or stagnant enrollment and or other outside of the box proposals thank you [Applause] any questions or comments from the board or administration before we move on so i'd just like to say on behalf of the

086board of education um again that we thank all of the members of the bac including the high school student which was great we thank you we applaud you and we understand the amount of time and effort that everybody's put into this for a positive outcome we know the truth and we don't listen to to uh untruths okay about your about this committee that the board of education has appointed and we plan on absolutely continuing this um we're gonna clean it up and shape it up it was the first year it's never perfect never will be but it is always things that can be improved upon and the first year you guys did a fantastic job and we're going to work with you i think a little bit more next year and improve and improve and

087improve because you are a committee of the board and we are proud um to have you and we are proud of all of the work you have done so stay on your path and don't listen to outside noise because that's all it is okay we know the work that you have put in and we appreciate you as community members doing all of the work that you have done so thank you very much okay okay you know i'll also add that it was uh sorry that i i thought it was um reading through your recommendations was very interesting it was it was very validating i thought because uh a lot of these things were things that are in process some of these are are large especially some of the larger ones are things that we've looked

088at over the course of a number of years and having you having completed the deep dive that you did and you came up with a lot of the same conclusions that we did was very validating i think that you're going to find a lot to like in the budget that we're going to propose so thank you very very much for the hard work that you guys all put in we really appreciate you and we appreciate this partnership that that we've that we've had thank you okay so we're going to move on now to reports d the 2022-2023 budget review jeff carlson oh thank you i would just like to comment on the budget advisory committee the amount of work they did was unbelievable tremendous amount of work um the hopefully all of the uh information

089you requested uh i hope we got it we got it to you as quickly as we could um and um i hope that was good enough for you i'm you know uh it was really unbelievable the amount of work you did and it's it's really much appreciated as mr cornreich mentioned um a number of your recommendations um it's good to see that that we were are all on the same page with uh two um and um i but i would i would like i don't mean as a but uh i would like to address a couple of items that were brought up at the budget advisory committee board meeting that was held several weeks ago answers were provided to the budget committee but some people who might have watched the live stream of that may

090not have may not have gotten those answers so i would just like to go over some of those things that were covered just to um just just to address some of those issues uh most of it has to do with the uh the the um school funding transparency report from the new york state education department um and and really the the goal and and what i want to point out is in in some cases show that well we're not all that different from similar districts to us uh as far as what we spend um of course we think we're better than them anyway but um but in some cases absolutely we spend more than we spend more than most districts um and uh but i think because we have a more robust program than most

091districts on long island um and i i would like to uh just highlight some of the flaws in not in the budget committee report in the school funding transparency report itself um so for instance one of the items that was brought and and by the way just so you i'm speaking to the members of the uh budget advisory committee you as i if if i was in your shoes or anyone else would look at the the results of that funding transparency report and look at different districts and say well wait a second why is three village so much more in this then to use a one example comac uh and it would get my attention as well and i would just like to point out to some people some of the things that that in

092looking at this now i don't know what goes into another districts how they report it right i know how we report it to for this for this report uh now remember this isn't this fun and transparency a report it's not a report that the state education department puts together they get the information from the school districts and then put it on their website so it's it's self-reported information so and we know how things sometimes go with that you know some people read directions a little differently than others um for whatever reason um but one of the items for instance was uh labeled in that report central costs right so and it looked like our central cost meaning which kind of infers like central administration course are much higher than other districts well a couple of

093couple of items with that so in in in the number of districts that that we were compared to you know when you know when working with the budget advisory committee um some of those districts had well actually of the i think there's 20 districts on the list seven of them reported zero in district-wide staff so in my opinion the directions are pretty clear district-wide staff means uh staff and departments that have district-wide responsibilities and it specifically says in the directions such as i.t department athletic department uh we also have every school district uh school district has a pupil uh personnel services department it serves uh district-wide so that's where we reported those costs seven of those districts on this list reported zero and then contacting my counterparts in some of those districts some of them

094said well we weren't sure how to put it some said well we figured it would look better if we allocated them to individual schools instead of reporting them a central administration cost okay uh also along those same lines one of the lines in central course in that report is uh course for committee on special education and committee on preschool special education of those same 20 districts uh nine of them not all the same districts as the district staff but nine of them reported zero well that can't be possible because every district has to have a cse and a cpsc so for whatever reason they reported that as uh allocated that those uh costs to individual schools instead of reporting them centrally as we did um that's not trying to make the point that everybody did

095it wrong we did it right that's not what i'm saying in some of these areas they reported it differently than us another uh area within that central course was uh it's called all other post-employment benefits it's really the district's cost of retiree health insurance so now the the costs in these uh number of districts in the comparison vary from 1.9 million to 16.8 million right so why such a wide variety well i'll give you an example um one district i contacted whose similar size to us had about a third of the 8 million less in that cost than we did so i contacted the district and the answer i got back was well after your question um we reviewed it and realized we did it wrong and ours should be more like 12 million ours

096is 11.6 million so so those costs were there but they were allocated to schools instead of being centrally uh and then one more item just to show the disparity among some districts is the operations and maintenance of plant that's also part of that central cost so that's custodians maintenance grounds also safety and security now one thing about our buildings we're very proud of every school district i'm sure is proud of their buildings we're very but i'm only talking about us we're very proud of our buildings uh we take great pride in keeping them uh clean and safe uh our security department is outstanding we've had we've had department of homeland security come here because of the program we have and and work with our staff uh we've had the department of homeland security have our

097staff go train with them at all at their court federal government paid for all of it uh to train with them uh one of the only school districts anywhere in the country that has attended those programs because of the kind of security program we have here and then it's sad to say but we just saw in brooklyn yesterday the kind of things that are going on in the world and that's why and especially after uh what happened in sandy hook in 2012 that's when we really started ramping up our security program it costs a lot of money that's part of that cost if you were to look at the per pupil expense just that category you would see where significantly higher than than almost all the districts on the list uh there's one that's higher

098than us in that way uh but that's that's a big expense of ours um so so those are some of the the central cause so i would say just in my opinion uh to compare at least use or total cost uh if you want to do a per student course not just a piece especially if it's self-reported by the district so now if we look at total cost per pupil there are still some flaws within that that um report that the state does so i'll give you an example so the report starts with total spending and then certain costs are excluded from that before the per pupil cost is calculated so one of the costs that's excluded from it is uh tuition that's paid to boces private schools or agencies such as like developmental disabilities

099institute center for developmental disabilities those kind of agencies for private schools or other school districts those tuition payments are excluded from that district's calculation so um now to take us and and one district that i would say is is pretty comparable to us in terms of size demographics uh programs offered that kind of thing i would say it's comac we're pretty similar uh so um most of our special ed kids so boces and those private schools most of it's special at those there could be times where it's regular red but for the most part that's special ed cost but most of our special education kids are educated within district schools right so even if we spend exactly the same to the penny as a district like comac for instance who sends more kids to boces

100and private schools their costs are excluded because they're paying tuition to another district our course are not excluded because the district the schools are being educated in district i think that's a flaw in the the report itself because it would lead to uh uh it's misleading uh in in the terms of why would those same costs not count towards appropriate costs just because they're paid to boces does comack have a significantly different um percentage of classified students that are educated in districts not oh in districts yeah well i i well i would say so because that's the that provides the delta right well sure yeah so for instance so in the in the tuition paid to both these private schools and other districts in our case in for the in the year of this report

101it was 4.3 million right so that 4.3 million is excluded from our cost in doing the per-pupil uh allocation comac spends 12.2 million on out of district right so the 12.2 million is excluded from their total expenses now one thing that kind of goes along with that is transportation so all on all districts all transportation costs are excluded from the total spending before doing the per pupil uh cost right right or wrong it is okay but now you take us and come back again right uh and similar size districts as far as number of kids although we have about 200 more kids than they do right and actually uh geographical size wise we're 22.6 miles komac is 12.9 uh which gives us an enrollment per square mile of 259 kids comax is 459 right so

102all else being equal you would think their transportation costs would be a little less right but uh they spend uh 15.7 million dollars on transportation and we spend 10.9 million now part of the reason i don't know something flying around over there um at least a chunk of i don't know exactly what goes behind their number but a good chunk of it would be the course of those kids going to boces and those private schools they cost a fortune we have kids that cost a hundred thousand dollars a year per student just for transportation right so so by by excluding all of that that also skews the numbers a little bit so let's just say then and again just taking us in comac and say all right instead of excluding those costs right head back

103to private schools and boces and transportation to both of us right so and then do the per pupil allocation it comes out to where us and them are 14 different per student so we're higher but 14 per student more than that so my point in all of that is to show that well maybe we're not so different from the districts that are similar to us so some of the other districts though are certainly much different much different demographics um and and i don't mean that to criticize or or speak uh poorly of of any other school district um but some of the ones that that you know i don't think it's a really fair comparison based on the on the the demographics and the type of programs that are offered um like you know like

104like for instance one of the districts on the list is kopeg and there's no disrespect to copay copay is a great place i used to work for the kopek school district i was the assistant business manager there 28 years ago but it's it's it's a lot different than three village and yes absolutely we spend more than they do uh total and perpetual absolutely we do um and then and now this is my opinion i don't think it's fair to only compare us to districts that have more than 4 000 students if you were to look at enrollment of schools on long island right take them all plot them out and do your bell curve you would see in the um the measure of central tendency would show that a lot more districts would be compared

105comparable to us as far size uh than just districts with more than four thousand kids so if we do that if we include them again say that again yes say it again i didn't get it so using if you take all long island school districts right plot out the enrollment and all of them and do the statistical analysis and the bell curve and figure out what's a good sample size uh it would i think you would see a lot more districts would be fair game to compare to on a per pupil cost because now think about most of our costs the biggest piece of our course is teacher salary and benefits right and that's purely pro that teacher that part is proportional with number of kids in the district whether there's 900 kids in the

106district or nine thousand kids in the district yes there are central administration costs which can be a little different but a lot of it's proportional so again it's just my opinion i think uh to compare to more districts on long island especially with more similar demographics to us would be a fair uh comparison so is the implication then that larger districts are not necessarily much more efficient than smaller ones i'm not i'm not understood well like i i think the well i don't know um but what's kind of my point i i i don't think to just say i don't think it's a fair comparison to say well we only want to compare to districts with more than 4 000 kids so if we include more of the districts on long island and i'm not

107talking about the little districts fire island i think has 37 kids or something districts like amagansett or rumsenberg wayne scott they have very few kids i'm not talking about those kind of districts and i'm not talking about like there is some uh floral park melrose uh school district for instance has two elementary schools that's the whole district uh i'm not talking about those kind talking about more uh districts you know like a hot pog or cold spring harbor or districts like that and if we do that if if we include those in our comparison we would say there's a lot of districts that spend more per pupil by the same measure than we do so um that's that's just my uh opinion on on comparing us to other schools um and that is i don't

108think it's a fair comparison to say well districts with less than 4 000 kids um can't be compared to us that's that's just me and i think i think demographics um is a is a is a would be should be included in in the comparison um then uh some of the other things that we talked about with the budget committee um uh transparency um and i i think my opinion again um i think we're as transparent or more than any other district um uh in you know there might be difference of opinion and there's also a difference of opinion on on exactly what transparency means right so um and and just to take an a an example one of the one of the um things we we talked about was the north port school district

109right their budget uh has many more budget codes than us okay so and that's fine and i'm not saying we shouldn't have more especially for like a budget committee who wants to look at all this kind of detail but just so everybody knows the reason we we did the budget in fact some years ago we consolidated budget codes to make it easier to read and more understandable and then and this is what i mean when i say this so the the northport school is not a criticism of them not at all but in their budget they have for custodial salaries right they have well let me tell you ours first we have four budget codes for custodial salaries we have custodial salaries we have custodial substitutes we have overtime and weather related overtime four separate

110budget codes north port has 71 for the same thing so now uh uh mr ehrlich you are uh um uh and i mean this in a positive way a super numbers cruncher uh i don't want to use the word nerd but i'll say you know i'm a school uh uh school business nerd so i i mean that in a positive way uh so to say well you want more details that's great i'll be more than happy to give you all the detail but i just want you all to know that the reason we did it the way we did with our budget code some years ago consolidating was to try to make it easier to read not the other way around so just want you to know that uh when it comes to the recommendations

111that the budget committee has on fund balance i couldn't agree more um you know after especially after what we used last year to keep schools open during covid um it's vital that we and we're beginning with this year this budget coming up now uh to start working towards that we have in the budget a line item for the uh first payment back of the reserves that we have to pay that we borrowed last year uh we're reducing the amount of the appropriated fund balance in this um proposed budget from what it was this year um and the reason by the way a year ago we increased that uh was because we said well if the budget remember when when we were going above the tax the reason by the way the reason we were going

112above the tax cap last year was so we could start doing that start replenishing our reserves and not just replenish the reserves from what we use from covid but also to have enough in the budget we didn't know what covert was going to be bringing last may june it looked like okay covets on the way out that was before the delta variant but luckily we're able to get through but but that's why we went above the tax cap in the first place last year and what did we say when the question because the question was asked a lot well what happens if it fails and we said we all the board and us we all said we're not going to cut programs and services for kids if the budget fails we will not do that

113and we didn't but how do we do that well we use more appropriated fund balance for it that's how we did that so um we always have to have some money left over in the budget you know the goal isn't to spend every penny that's just like this budget we're proposing tonight the goal isn't for in this coming up year to spend the entire thing uh and anytime we can save money we'll save money if we don't have to buy a new if we uh where we budgeted for some new uh whatever new desks it turns out we don't need them well fine we're not going to buy them then uh if we could save the money we'll save the money we always will do that and and and over time that's where the fund

114balance of reserves come come from so but but i think we we are all on the same page with that that we want to re of course we have to repay the reserves what we borrowed but we want to replenish the reserves over time we want to uh be in a solid financial position and hopefully we never have something like covert again but should it hit we want to be in a position to keep schools open uh every day for uh every student like we did last year whether other districts are able to or not we want to be able to do the same and we want to be in a position to do that um and then the last item i i think i want to mention before i talk about the budget itself

115is on the uh uh budget committees um as well as when you were talking uh the 425 thousand dollars for the um capital projects for arrowhead for the um playground handicap accessible playground and the renovation of the gym floor so the way capital projects work that amount goes into budget the amount was derived at in consultation with our architect after the budget so when the budget passes uh then the architect draws up the plans we submit them to the state education department uh they sit on a shelf for six or nine months up there and then we finally get approval on it then we can go out to bid when we go out to bid uh hopefully it comes out less than that if if it comes out more than that then we have to

116scale back the project somehow um so so we don't have the we don't have quotes we don't have anything like that the estimate is based on on the architect's uh uh estimate of what it would would cost of course in this case it's not like well this is the playground we want it'll be what we can do with the money we have um but on on any capital project just so you know when we go out to bid and again the goal isn't to spend all the money that was budgeted for it if we bid a budget a million dollars for a roof and the low bid comes into seven hundred thousand dollars great that's fantastic then we're not gonna spend the other three hundred dollars just because uh and as a capital project uh

117the state pays in our different amount for every school district in our case our building aid ratio 66 percent so the state will reimburse us 66 percent of the cost uh after the project is done it they they don't reimburse us all at one shot they used to but not anymore they do it over a number of years so that's that that's my comments about um the uh the budget advisory committee and your report uh but fantastic work and it was a pleasure working with all of you we didn't always agree on everything all the time but uh as i said hopefully we got you the information you were looking for and it's at least a somewhat timely uh basis uh and it said uh good groundwork for going forward um for next year and

118years to come so again fantastic work and i i really appreciate it and it was a pleasure to work with all of you so now i'll just uh jeff before you before you go on i just want to i just want to talk some more about that yeah i i i want to reiterate also that too short um that this was that this effort that we embarked upon with the with the bac i understand that obviously it came at a busy time of year during budget season and we had asked you at the onset if you could treat information requests from the bac as if they came from the board because they were really doing a lot of analysis and a lot of that heavy data lift for us and on our behalf and i

119know that the um i we saw the you know data requests going back and forth and i know they were extensive they were voluminous and they came at a very very busy time of year and all of us on the board are really appreciative of the efforts of you and your staff in your office for doing all that extra work for for us to help us understand through the efforts of the bac to help us understand more deeply thank you very much i'll tell you one of the one of the uh biggest projects in this was the uh it was a staffing report uh that was done and the vast majority of the work and that was done by by alan baum uh and also cheryl um but that was uh that was a tremendous

120amount of work so um thank you thank you uh but thank you thank you yes sir no no no no i'm so sorry we are you have to continue on i'm so sorry there's no not no not now after the meeting absolutely for public participation and then after the meeting all right jeff it's time for your budget president sure okay uh so uh as we've talked in in previous years about the tax levy uh it's not it's not automatically two percent varies from year to year and district to district however in this case for us it happens to come out to right at 2.0 percent this proposed budget uh that we have uh drawn up for you um would have a tax levy increase of 1.82 so this is the actual formula that when i

121say it doesn't come out to two percent for everybody however in this case that's the formula that makes it come out to exactly two percent for us um so state aid uh was actually pretty good this year um you know you read the stories in a paper about the tremendous amount of money that's going to school districts now most of the money that's additional state aid this year is in the form of foundation aid uh which is geared more towards the lower wealth school districts so they get the big numbers um we we did get some so i'm not not complaining but we didn't get the huge amounts that other districts got did we get the runs are in right the full yes yeah and and how did it compare with our expectation uh yeah

122a little higher um i i figured we'd probably wind up with somewhere in the million the million and a half of an increase and it came out too nice 1.86 million so yeah it was pretty good actually yeah yeah surprisingly uh enough but uh but i was because uh the governor and the and the state legislature said they wanted to steer the money towards foundation aid so but here's what they did which worked out well every district and the foundation aid is one of the pieces of our state aid that we get and every district got at least a three percent increase in that so that's that's why if not for that guaranteed minimum increase to that we wouldn't have gotten much right because we're on that whole harmless thing right well we where we

123get yes where are they where are yeah well that's a whole different argument but yes um so it's it's almost a four percent increase in the in the final budget so so we're happy with that uh the staffing as we did last time mrs patterson will go over that thank you mr carlson so i know um through the years you've heard me talk about declining enrollment um and now that enrollment at the elementary level is beginning to see a little bit of a different shift we're beginning to see our elementary enrollment climbing up gradually so at this point last year compared to our current year we have about 89 more students were anticipating that that number is going to go up and in order to keep our class sizes at our elementary level at um

124what i would say are optimal levels we think that's important we um will be adding one additional elementary class position district-wide in addition our enl which is our english is a new language used to be called english as a second language program we're seeing an increase in the number of uh students over the last two years significant increase in the number of students and and those students are also coming to us with academic gaps in their own native con from their own native countries and as that population has increased um they're also coming with a multitude of other um concerns that the district needs to support as a result on we will be hiring a 0.5 enl social worker who will be working primarily i don't want to say exclusively but primarily with that population

125across three buildings and um will is will be spanish speaking um so to support provide support to those parents in their home um appoint one of that social worker will not come from the district funding but from our grant funding um that miss connolly has been able to pull out for the the following year um so we're looking forward to that support for um that special student population we've been meeting with our administration secondary administration regularly over the last few months to look at our student course requests and also to examine um whether or not we need to actually have as many teaching staff positions at that level so without affecting on student course requests and also class size um we are able to make reductions in the areas you see there so a 3.9

126this is a across three buildings well actually i should say four buildings if you include our academy 3.9 in english a 0.7 in math 2.0 in science in global language um one enl which is english is a new language a 0.1 that was in overage social studies 0.6 and music 0.3 again these will not affect student course requests or will will it impact class size in any significant manner some of the reductions other reductions that we have you know if we want to go to the next slide okay um we had a resignation of one of our um i.t administrators earlier this year so what we were able to do was look at our i.t department and make some consolidation and we are not replacing that position but took some of the responsibilities um that

127well took all of the responsibilities that that individual had and spread it among three different members of the it staff so we were able to restructure in a positive way and save money for the school district the next position um that was a lo that will be eliminated with these um current with the upcoming school year is our director of elementary curriculum again we were able to look at the position evaluate how we could take those responsibilities and spread those out among existing administrative staff to include looking at one of our elementary assistant principals to take responsibility for the pre-kindergarten program which is a very robust program as many of you know it serves approximately 200 students district-wide we also looked at our sac program which on miss connolly is in the audience she'll she'll

128be assuming responsibility for that for next year and other responsibilities curriculum responsibilities will be a spread to other administrative staff the director of social studies stipend will be eliminated it's not an elimination of the position but we have a coordinating chair of social studies at ward melville high school who also works with the junior high schools and there are two leads in each of our junior high school the next item is our school nurses there is a recommendation for a 4.5 decrease i i want to talk i'll speak a little bit to this um i know that our nurses are in our audience and i don't want it just i don't want to diminish in any way everything they've done they are an integral part of what we do in three village they have been

129critical throughout the pandemic and have been a great support on the front lines helping our students and staff and we applaud their their efforts they they are an amazing group of individuals um prior to covet happening we had 17.5 nurses in our district and we have what we call float nurses those nurses are not assigned to any particular building but they would be assigned if a staff member was out or if we needed additional support in a building at any particular time to help us on field trips when um kovid hit we created an isolation room in each one of our schools and as a result of that the many of those float nurses were then assigned a particular building and again some of in 2019-20 we had more students that had one-to-one nursing then

130we are projecting for next year so the float nurses um that were assigned to the buildings would then become float nurses again um because we know field trips are going to start picking up we know that covid is evolving and it changes and after last year we also released approximately i'm going to say close to 31 teaching staff members that had been hired during the 2021 school year so that we could have students six feet apart so every time there is a change in covid we're changing with that those coveted regulations and if we do find that there is a need as things go on because remember last year at this time we were all feeling very very optimistic right july hit and the delta variant became apparent so we need to be able to

131say if things change we need to change with that as well but we can't be stagnant and and we have to recognize just like we did with our teaching staff that we could go back to having more traditional classrooms which is our hope for next year school year so as we did for the second vote last year or all the voting was at the high school we're going to continue that that worked very well uh if you remember we used to have the voting at each of the elementary schools and even just from a security standpoint that was a nightmare because as you know or may not know uh when somebody comes to vote whether it's in a regular election or a school budget vote uh we're not allowed to ask for id so we

132have to the door can't be locked and we can't ask for a date so at the high school by the gymnasium it works out perfectly there's plenty of parking come right in week it's easy to secure that area from the rest of the building come in vote and leave also it eliminates the confusion um as as we know not not everybody votes in a school budget vote every year and sometimes people haven't voted in the school budget vote uh ever maybe uh so there was always that confusion of they didn't really know where they're supposed to vote because a lot of people have it in their head that well i live here so on election day when i go to vote for the president or whatever i go to minnesotaki school but it may not

133be the same for a school budget vote uh so this way it's all at the high school hopefully it eliminates all the confusion uh 6 a.m to 9 00 p.m as usual tuesday may 17th it's always the third tuesday in may to summarize the the proposed uh budget we're at a 1.72 percent increase budget to budget which translates to a 1.82 percent increase on the tax levy again our tax cap is 2.0 percent so this falls below that uh so um not going above the tax cap again uh so since it doesn't it would require the simple majority meaning 50 plus one in order for the budget to pass now uh if it does not pass the first time around the options are the same as previous years present the same budget uh for a

134second vote revise that budget and put that up for a vote or go straight to contingency so this year going to uh contingency whether it's because the budget fails twice or uh after it fails once if the board chooses not to have a second vote uh it means no increase to the tax levy at all which is what we had this past year and from this proposed budget would require 2.95 million dollars in reductions somewhere along the line we don't know what would be cut uh that would be something that we would have to discuss uh with the board uh should should we get to that uh place hopefully we don't again but we'll see uh and that's it just remember i have a question for you yes talking about this with cutting and things

135like that what's the cost of our wellevil program which we are unique in and we are very innovative and innovative in so what's the cost of that uh in our in our budget uh well we have a full-time uh person there uh staff person so that's basically a teaching position one fte teacher yes and that's necessary you need one full-time person there to run i don't really understand the program very well uh maybe well that's the way it is currently structured and it has been structured since it's since its inception and there are different i'm going to say satellite um i'm going to say centers in each one of our buildings that are not staffed where a staff member could go and decompress and there are programs provided in each one of the buildings um

136through the um leadership of the person who is in charge of wellville but it has been that way um uh since it's so there's no there's no tea there's no staff manning the other schools just the high school that that is correct but the individual who is at the high school will go to the other buildings for programming after school or during the day programming i'm sorry um different activities that the staff would be involved in during their free period or after school okay is connected um to staff wellness health and wellness yeah i'm just thinking about the um the point five we just put on for the social work social worker for the um e l just a just a thought i mean she's point five can we put her full time 0.5 doing

137e l and point five running well though she has clinical experience she has oh that's true i don't know it's just a i mean and put the put the the full-time teacher back in the classroom um just um as a point of clarification on the full-time teacher um is in msw and does have a social work yeah no no i'm just well not clinical but but that's not the point just to you know another way to maybe save on the budget i don't know if what anybody thinks about that the teacher who's doing it now as a high school teacher no she she was an elementary teacher but she has a degree in social work but in theory then if she's an elementary teacher she could potentially slide into that empty slot that we needed

138for elementary theoretically yes i just think that we have to be especially when we're contemplating cuts and we're talking about talking about accessing people i think that we should approach it with the greatest sensitivity towards really looking at what's essential and prioritizing things it's a difficult situation with that because you have a definite need as being a language person you definitely need a spanish-speaking person in order to deal with our families that are moving into our area we definitely need a social worker that can speak spanish fluently we just had recent uh situations where we needed to have someone go to a home and speak in spanish to to the parents the wellville i'm not too sure if we can continue with that if we're going to be adding [Music] another social worker well the

139social work is a 0.5 so if you think about it you know if you think if that she's a 0.5 which she we desperately need her that's not exactly whoever she is without a job that's not that's not the so maybe you can have up the wellville can be a 0.5 that's the point and now you know we can reduce um i don't know gary how many teachers were we are we having to to hire sorry we have to hire three you talking elementary just elementaries three elementary teachers okay and then we'd only have to hire two and nobody's losing a job and no one's losing a job and then you have everything covered yeah yeah what would that do jeff i mean i know it's not huge but it's just saving another an additional

140yeah well that would save that would yeah that would that would save a of an fce um my suggestion if if that's what was going to be done my suggestion it would be to not even change the budget it could still within the budget so and if it wound up that we had an additional 0.5 fte you know we could always it would never hurt to have that position just in case some more kids come in over the summer and we need to add to the teacher position instead of removing the money from the budget now it the we could we could uh do that move the person uh into elementary and uh make that social worker a 1.0 we saved that 1.5 and we have it there as like a contingency half a contingency

141position should we need it okay so jeff regarding um the recommendation by the bac can you comment on what has already been implemented in the new budget and what we will be working on uh sure um well okay i'll just go down the list so we did not make any cuts to uh any of the programs or services uh except for as uh warranted by declining enrollment or um course requests by students uh uh we did do some uh two administrative uh cuts we do have a line item in the budget to begin paying back our reserves um [Music] we're always we'll always consider [Music] looking at positions if we don't need them then that's fine we'll win the item consider further reductions uh we will absolutely uh consider oh the that whole the administrative

142uh positions uh category the three items there uh sure we can actually absolutely consider that uh as we go forward uh and that's one thing with the with the uh change in enrollment that it might create opportunities that that weren't there some years ago and i i agree um the budget line items uh we did go through a lot of them uh and reduce um but budget committee made some some excellent points in that and we did reduce some of those uh and we'll we'll continue to do that absolutely i spoke about the arrowhead playground the fund balance i couldn't agree more on that we want to lower that appropriated fund balance we are lowering that in this coming up year's budget and we will continue that going forward and hopefully within a few years

143we have our reserves all paid back we're replenishing we get that down to much lower than it is in the appropriated fund balance and we'll be ready for a covetron 2. and hopefully it never happens but we'll be ready for it um the mentoring program well that's something that you know that that'll be for further discussion uh with the oh well the mentoring the technology coaches um that that would have to be more discussion with the board uh as we go forward um eliminate any mid-year hiring of new positions not disclosed to the public in the budget unless mandated by a child's iep or 504 um i'm not so sure we can make that guarantee because it could be yeah i i would if you don't mind don't interject on that yeah um there there

144are two scenarios in which um that would be almost impossible to do one could be at the high school where students have courses that they may not have passed and we have to create an additional 0.2 or a 0.1 in order to have a course for the student so that they could pass so those students may not be special needs students another time where that may happen is during the summer and i've i've said this many times before kindergarten enrollment is often very difficult to project we do pretty well in projecting all of the other grade levels but kindergarten enrollment is not one we had one year where in minnesota they had something like 20 some odd additional students and we had to open a class and that happened in august so we need to

145be prepared for those kinds of uh situations and that's why we do put um staffing and contingency for that purpose so i just adding on on to that i would like to suggest that if there is a contingency position um you know i'm thinking that in in our in the in the presentation before that miss rubenstein did you made reference to laura pimentel's presentation which was excellent and provided a lot of um data-backed conclusions about where we need to help support the academic program and it was very clear from that presentation that any additional support we can provide um to mat in mathematics at the elementary level is very very very very valuable and pays dividends for years to come and i think it's a great investment in our students so to the extent that

146there's a contingency position available i would love to see it used for supporting math at the elementary level we we do have um math leads in in each of of our buildings and we also have a very robust on math ais program right but i think that the finding what what i took away from that presentation that she did was that there's still a gap there's still a skills gap so i understand that we have some supports but i'm i'm personally just recommending further investment in that because we've seen the cumulative nature of math education that once kids start falling behind so as long as there's a gap that exists i say we push resources towards closing that gap do we still have the math lab in the elementary school i know we had in

147the second the secondary we still have in the elementary correct yes we have math as in the elements but we had at one point we had two teachers per building right now some of our buildings have two a few have only one with a ta that supports them so in reference to wellville and the the board is not trying to dismantle it we think it's uh extremely important and we are very supportive of that um for our teachers and staff um but as far as you know saving positions and not having to hire more than we need do we have a consensus from the board as far as utilizing a 0.5 um versus a full-time [Music] position in that role definitely everybody unanimous i i'm not sure on how that will actually translate um and

148we would on administration um members of the clinical staff would really need to look at that a little more carefully before i want yeah we should have to say that we should have a discussion in a seamless manner we definitely uh well i think we just want to have a discussion and and any other ways we can find the board can find ways to uh to keep everything status quo but maybe make some movement and i think it's um it's a win-win for everybody anybody else on the board have any questions or comments about anything uh additional access to a um to a multilingual social worker oh yeah i think that's great fantastic adding you know changing that from a point five to one i think yes absolutely she yeah agree i think we all

149agree on that one yes okay okay six items for board discussions turning this over to sue with um some good news report okay i feel like we had a lot of good news tonight earlier so i'll just add a couple more on to that free village celebrated music in our schools month in march that's an annual event engaging music educators students and communities across the country locally our events included hosting scamia eastern division festival concerts the amazing musicals at gelinas and murphy that engage more than 90 students in each school symphony sunday and ward melville's got talent at the high school and the nismo satellite festival and music without borders a program that matched our triam music honor society students with younger students in grades four through nine offering them free 30-minute music lessons so

150lots of applause for our young musicians and their wonderful teachers and an outside of school no congratulations toward melville's ava de la pietra who won the outstanding achievement in songwriting in the pop top 40 category for the great american song contest thank you sue [Applause] we love you your report your board report every board meeting um number seven items for board action policy sixty four hundred depositories of funds um mr uh dr alan bell to stand up you know all the presentations were terrific terrific tonight but i have the unique pleasure to offer the shortest presentation of the evening uh this proposed policy 6400 depository of funds uh is in line with the recent comptroller's recommendation to the district this puts into policy and allows the district to do online banking it allows us to

151do electronic and wire transfers it has appropriate checks and balances that there are only very few select people in the district that could uh trigger that and they're all under the direction of mr carlson's office yes i bet on that okay can i please have a motion second okay you good anger okay uh any questions all in favor motion passes 7b approval of a memorandum of agreement between the three village central school district and ups eu aids monitors union unit gary yes ma'am so this is uh submitted for your approval is the final memorandum of agreement that extends the contract for upsc aids and monitors until 2025. fantastic can i please have a motion second questions all in favor motion passes 7c adoption of 2223 recommended budget and property tax report card jeff carlson uh

152yes the the recommendation is as i uh mentioned to adopt the uh budget with a budget to budget increase of 1.82 which carries a uh tax levy percent i'm sorry budget to budget increase of 1.72 with a tax levy increase of 1.82 percent thank you second second or questions all in favor motion passes consent agenda a approval of consent agenda we're just gonna do our motion and vote at the end so motion first and promotion can i please have a motion first second okay anger's got that uh b and c minutes of march 9th and march 23rd nothing uh nothing unusual right okay d acceptance of donations we have two donations uh the first is a check for one thousand dollars donated by the long island community foundation matthew grimaldi memorial fund to the ward

153melville high school scholarship fund and a check for two thousand dollars from the satorca pta to fund a fourth grade field trip to blydenberg park for an arts and education program through boces thank you e approval of addendum to contract with outside service provider for special education services this is to add some services to our an existing contract that we have with an outside provider okay fn fng jeff appointment of fiscal advisor an appointment of uh bond council for 2223. all right this is for our tax anticipation note thank you no we're not done yet h personnel matters non-instructional gary please yes ma'am uh for non-instructional submitter for you tonight is the resignation of uh two clericals um uh two clerical subs additional and a district additional district-wide non-instructional personnel we have four people requesting

154unpaid leaves of absence uh they are monitors and seas for a short term uh we are hiring additional security sac workers and sca's we have upgrades in clerical positions due to reassignments or promotions we're hiring three additional sub-custodians and we have a salary adjustment in i.t due to a change of responsibilities thank you also gary personnel matters on instructional certainly uh for that we have one uh teacher retirement uh we have resignations uh due to accept new positions or or substitute positions uh we hired uh one social worker one leave of absence for speech six sub teachers and tas uh several coaches co-curricular uh supervision for model un student government summer math ais region class reviews and we have two administrative salary adjustments due to a change in responsibilities thank you welcome letter j approval

155of the memorandum of agreement between the three three village central school district and the three village school administrators association regarding the changes to titles salaries and stipends for specified positions gary yes this moa is presented to you and it refers to the restructuring of several administrative positions and the abolishment of one administrative position thank you letter k approval of memorandum of agreement between the three village central school district and the three villas teachers association regarding the addition of a new coach gary yes we were fortunate enough to receive money i believe from the new york jets um to help us start a girls flag football team uh we now need somebody to coach it so we have to add the position okay tell all your friends see if you have anybody that you can recommend

156maybe you'll get a reward um be fantastic letter l extension of probationary period jewel agreement gary yes this is uh this is the agreement regarding the employee that we discussed in exec session to extend the probationary period thank you letter m uh and and the rec is going to be kevin recommendations of committing on special education subcommittee and accommodation 504 plan meetings of and recommendations of of committee on preschool special education meetings of nothing but that's just facts of meeting dates so does anybody on the board have any questions uh for b through n that you'd like to speak about okay so now we're go okay everybody um all in favor so the consent agenda is uh is passed moving things okay so the next board of ed meeting will be may 4th and now

157we're going to go over go into our public participation we do have one and i think i have our district attorney that's going to make a statement and then we will have our our speaker thank you the board of education has been advised that a member of the three village nursing unit may be publicly speaking this evening regarding the status of negotiations the board would like to remind the nursing unit that the negotiating teams have agreed to a ground rule in bargaining that the district would not engage in public bargaining unless and until the nursing unit engaged in public bargaining further any public statements on the status of negotiations are premature at this time since the nursing unit has not completed their presentation of its proposals and canceled the last bargaining session therefore the board

158of education has not had an opportunity to review and respond to any of the union's proposals during bargaining thank you okay so our um [Music] public participant um ann chameles thank you hi good evening um i get to make this nice and short because i only have three minutes just get your name please and chamelis can you hear me all right i don't really need the microphone i'm a high school teacher are you i'm betting you can all hear me without it but i'll talk into it anyway so i wasn't planning on speaking tonight i showed up in support of and to listen to the budget presentations and i saw a number of our district nurses here and talked to them and felt the need to stand up and speak i have 30 plus years

159of experience teaching i've had the privilege of starting as a preschool teacher and slowly but surely working my way all the way up to a senior teaching seniors in high school it's given me the unique opportunity to see how nursing works amongst the entire district buildings i also had the privilege of having a mother and an aunt who were rns who worked for the new york city board of education and the new york state department of health i'm just going to name some of the challenges that having only one nurse in a building will present if you get rid of four and a half nurses i've never seen a nurse have a real lunch period in 30 years of teaching it just doesn't happen you mentioned school field trips already that continues to be an

160issue we seem to have an increase of allergies across our society i'm not sure why but that necessitates a lot of work by our teach our nurses an increase in need for more intensive nursing care for students with advanced health problems who are now in public settings who used to be in private settings we also have after school activities in sports etcetera i happen to be soon to be retired comac teacher and our nurses at the secondary level and high school level actually stagger their arrival so that there's someone there before school and someone there after school there are a lot of after school activities that happen at elementary schools as well if you only have one nurse that's impossible for all the sports and clubs and all those great enrichment things that we offer

161our students in school injuries leave nurses offices unattended if there's only one nurse what if there's more than one emergency which i can tell you happens often you mentioned riding am pm buses uh you know on field trips parent communication was another thing that i talked to the nurse tonight about and is absolutely true i can't tell you how many times i've had a conversation with my daughter's school nurse this year if there's only one nurse that nurse is not going to have the time to make communication with parents unless there's a real emergency and just in case some of you might have forgotten covert isn't over we're still following state mandated protocols as good as things are as wonderful as it is that we're still here this pandemic has not passed i was going

162to end with something else but you started talking about the collaborative efforts and support needed to return to pre-pandemic life nurses seem like they should be on top of the list of those thanked and i'm glad that they were thanked after i wrote that this is still a global health crisis cutting nurses now while still living through this pandemic should not be a lima line item in plans to cut the school budget and i don't in any way mean that means i don't support the school budget i always support school budgets but i'm horrified to think that we're going to lose nurses at the elementary level it's just not tenable and it's really not a situation we should be moving forward as we've all talked about in the lengthy conversations and presentations we've had tonight

163we shouldn't be moving backwards thank you thank you [Applause] i have a email from a resident a mrs kim by ello that i'm going to read that she sent in good evening sadly i could not make it in person tonight but would like to address a few things that have been occurring since the last time i attended in person first would be the snide comment that the president of the board of ed made at the end of the march meeting when the public participation came around it was very small-minded to think that because the mask mandates have been lifted that parents do not have other concerns and or issues to address not every month can we attend and not every meeting in the past was masking the only issue that parents have addressed it makes

164the boe look bad when the comment was made second in another touchy subject but it needs to be addressed we have many dei committees within our district each of our individual schools have a committee and then the district level that works within all the smaller groups it has come to the attention of some parents that the parents in some schools that have signed up to participate have not attended many meetings and new parents that are looking to join are told there is no room there also seems to be no consistency in certain school committees meetings started out as virtual then went to a choice of in-person or virtual without notification in one school that i have been told parents are no longer given the chance to attend virtually and meetings are many times many times

165have been changed to new dates and times that the parent participants cannot attend this needs to be addressed we need these committees to have parents present in all capacities the other half of this meeting minutes uh is meetings meeting minutes and agendas have you taken a look recently at the district page there are barely any minutes posted from any of the committees the community should not only ha should not have to continually ask for minutes to be posted from these meetings the laziness needs to stop and the information needs to be put up things are taking place during these meetings and the community needs to be aware this is not the first time this has been addressed either so i would like either action taken on this and an update ready for the next meeting

166exclamation point next thing i would like to address once again is a hot cold issue but needs to be spoken about we have heard over and over again about diversity equity and inclusion within our district during meetings and on many social media pages i am all for our children learning new things and being educated on on all individuals in our community that is a huge part of dei to make sure we are all equally representative yet that's not the case us loud majority quote unquote has been told that certain religions are not represented enough and that many of our holidays and traditions are overrated and commercial a lot commercialized doesn't seem too equitable right we have had bulletin boards for one holiday not put up this year in order to put a bulletin board up

167for another one that had has never been celebrated or represented in the schools why couldn't both be represented why are we now taking away things to add new things why are our children having high school students come in to read books about ramadan yet we haven't had any books read or lessons about easter or passover why during the winter holiday season did our elementary students come home with a bunch of dreidels but nothing did but nothing in regards to kwanzaa or christmas if we are going to support and push for dei in schools we then need to make sure that each holiday is represented and spoken equally because it is not happening we cannot have the choir preaching for diversity equity and inclusion when it's more like we pick what we want to include and

168call holidays traditions quote unquote it's offensive exclamation point one last issue that needs to be addressed to certain staff and administration within our district not supporting a school dance due to the wording of it because it was not all gender inclusive yes many in the community are aware of what had happened in this situation this is in regards to an elementary school's special someone's dance where the pta was made to include at the bottom of the flyer that quote unquote this is not a district sponsored event this kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable and should be addressed although pta is a separate entity within the district normally building staff helpfully work with the pta to make things successful why is this kind of behavior being allowed why would the district not support something as simple

169as a special someone's dance these issues are not good or a good look for the district many are aware of it and it's just sad parents have chosen three village school district for our children due to its great reputation why are we so easily letting this go out the window so many families are moving or have already left new people are moving in but aren't fully aware of what is currently happening within the district we need to make changes and it hap needs to happen soon please also note that some items brought up are on behalf of parents that have brought these concerns up to me as in the past it was it was thought everything i stated was my personal opinion excuse me thank you for your time kimbaiello so i just like to

170make a quick comment the comment that i made at the march meeting was the first meeting we didn't have to wear masks we were happy we were excited so at the end of the meeting when it was time for public participation the district clerk to informed me there was no public participation so i said ah no public participation and no masks no masks because we all wouldn't have to wear it and i was excited to talk to to say that as everybody was very happy to not have to wear them anymore so i don't really agree that this was a snide remark it was a happy remark and um if you want to address um what you want to address and mrs baiello i know you're not here tonight but if you're watching from home

171my my contact information is public i would love to sit down and speak with you with my vice president sue rosenzweig and with dr gold anytime you'd like so we can have a conversation about dei and all of the concerns that you've written in your in your statement so i'll talk a little bit about the dei committee but i also don't want to take away from dr gold's presentation which will happen at the june board of education meeting um i i just want to clarify that each one of the buildings are building their own uh website within our website and and some of them are more fledgling than others we do not include minutes at all we we have our meeting agendas but minutes are not included and have not been and that was clarified

172on previously i also want to state that the district level committee has approximately 60 people it's probably the largest district committee in existence and right now we are not accepting any new members on that committee as people do drop off we would allow additional community members and parents and staff to join however at each one of the buildings anybody can join those committee meetings those are open and welcome and in fact if you even look at the arrowhead it says all are welcome in terms of some being virtual and some being in person we have been trying to transition more to um in in-person meetings as best we can however we're still in a hybrid mode so to speak in which some of the meetings some of the individuals are there virtually and some are

173in person we we are not putting any kind of um constraints on the fact that it must be in person or must be virtual we're trying to include as many people as possible as one of the subcommittees of the dei committee is a literature committee and i think um uh april hatcher and and betsy knox probably be the the two best people in terms of looking at our libraries and and making those accessible for all different kinds of literature for our students so that they can be exposed but i think that um if mrs balo has any additional questions um they could certainly be addressed to dr gold who is our coordinator of the dei committee and he would be very happy to address those thank you any questions or comments for the board on

174anything tonight dave did you want to did you have a statement that you wanted to make you good okay do i have a motion to adjourn first second all in favor thank you and good night