001Good evening everybody. Welcome to our May 13th board of education meeting. I love having the warm-up in the background. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. It feels very theatrical. So, this is great. Uh if you would please rise. We're going to have Hazel Kohas lead us in the pledge of 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. All right. Thank you again. We'll let Mr. Mono will get back to her microphone and let us know of the uh changes in our meeting agenda. We have several changes. The first one is item 5A talk at fire department. They had to be rescheduled because they have a live burn tonight. Um 7A for the proposal is
002rescheduled for the next board meeting. 11B was moved to June 4th. 11 O is an addition the memorandum of agreement between the three village central school district and the TVTA. um the additional of of 11P the termination of employee named the confidential schedule A that was spoken about in the executive session and number uh six is 11 Q Q the student appeal and that's another um item that was talked about in confidential in the uh in the executive session. Perfect. Got it. Thank you so much. All right. So that will bring us to item 5B. Mr. Carlson, thank you. Uh, you know what? Uh, thank you. On, uh, the afternoon of April 22nd, um, about 4:30 or 4:45, um, I got a call from, uh, our transportation supervisor, Kathy Cassella, and said, "We have a
003a bus fire." So, um, so I said, "Okay, where is it?" Barker Drive. Okay, I'll go. In the meantime, she was taking care of make sure uh all the parents knew. Uh got a hold of uh Mrs. Redden and Mrs. Horowitz, the principal and assistant principal from Arrowhead. This was a uh special needs uh bus mini bus uh taking kids home from Arrowhead uh again on the on Barka Drive. And so by the time I got there, um Terry Kio, we all know Terry over there, Terry was the first one there on scene. Um the police officer, no no disrespect to the police officer, young young police officer, he didn't know what to do. Terry took charge there. However, before anything even happened, by the way, Jack Blam and Tony Tucci were the next on
004scene um and started laying out hoses because as it turned out, Sat Fire District uh fire department was on another call already and Mount Sinai was covering. So, they were unfamiliar with some of the area and so Jack and Tony, both experienced uh firefighters, were laying out hoses. So, all of this would have been okay, all fine and good. uh uh but it would have still been a disaster if not for the actions of the bus driver and the bus attendant. So we wanted to pay uh special thanks to uh Joe Trapani sitting right here the bus driver. Joe, come on up over here. And Wana Nunees who is the bus attendant. Come on over here. Thank you. Come on over here. Thank you. Thank you. So, so we also have uh we also have
005a couple of representatives from Suffach Transportation, Joe and John Curado. Come on over. And Andy Camares, who is the uh manager of the uh Quorum uh bus depot. So, thanks for for joining us tonight. Um it was it was incredible. It's it's almost a shame that there was it was nothing in the news about it. Nothing at all. I don't know why. Uh it was like something out of a movie. The bus was fully engulfed in flames. Um when it after it was put out, all of the sheet metal on the sides and the roof of the bus were gone. It was just bare steel. That's all that was left. Uh it was quite a scene. Uh Joe and Wana, they got the kids off. Uh they kept them calm. Uh and one by the
006time I got there, one one child in particular was pretty upset. Uh where's Mrs. Redden and Mrs. Horowitz. I saw them here. Come on over. Uh, so they they Mrs. Redden was uh make made sure all the parents are notified because the last thing we wanted was for any parent to hear that the bus that their kids might have been on was on fire and them not to know if their kids were okay. So Mrs. Redden was made sure she spoke to everybody. Mrs. Horowitz got there as soon as the one child that was upset. Wana was doing a great job of keeping him calm, but when when uh when he saw Mrs. Haritz, he really relaxed a lot. So it was it was it was quite the scene. Um so anyway, so we just
007wanted to thank you and uh by the way and I know you had your your personal property on the bus that was destroyed. No, a matter of fact, I did take my bag off also. Oh, well, we'll leave it with your personal property was destroyed. We like that story better. Ah, we like the story better. Yeah. Yeah. You had a couple of thousand dollars in cash in your wallet. Yeah, we know. Yeah, the gold bars melted and they're gone. Well, we know I need to drive, right? Okay. All right. Well, thank you anyway. But we really appreciate it. So, we just like to We have a Dr. Scandlin has certificates for you. We just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate you. And we're just going to take a
008picture. We hear that a few of the students that were on the bus that day are here. So, we'd like you to come up as well. So, be part of the picture for uh for this event. And uh our driver and our aid on the bus are true heroes for this district. [Applause] All right, so let's all squeeze in. Where's Terry and Jack? You're in this picture, too. kind of. Okay, we got more people hopping in the picture. So, you guys can everybody just make sure if you're in the second row. Yep. You're kind of in between two people. Beautiful. Okay, I'm going to take a bun. Congratulations. [Applause] All right, guys. Hey, thanks for being here. Um, as as we all know, uh, school starts kind of early in the morning. Um, so they
009all have to get up super early. So, uh, I told them soon as we finish they can go and we would not be insulted for them to leave. So, um, Thank you everyone. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. So, we'll go from one piece of good news to another piece of good news. We're going to go on to 5C. Dr. Biscari. At this time, I'd like to introduce uh Miss Aer, who's going to come up uh director of music and just highlight some of the wonderful things that are going on in the music department. Good evening, members of the board of education, Three Village Central Administration, and the Three Village community. It is my absolute privilege to be here tonight to recognize nearly 200 of our exceptional student musicians who have been selected to
010participate in county, state, and national honors ensembles this year. There are simply so many of them that it would have been a very tight squeeze to fit them all in this room tonight. Uh so I do hope they are joining us on the live stream so that they can receive their recognition. These accomplishments represent the highest levels of musical achievement and reflect not only the talent of our students but also their remarkable work ethic, self-discipline and sustained commitment over many years. Our three village music students were selected to participate in numerous selective festivals this year. Skia, the Suffach County Music Educators Association, which serves students in fifth through 10th grade, and the Suffach Division of Nisc, the New York State Council of Administrators of Music Education, which offers an allcount experience for our 11th and
01112th grade musicians. Our countywide ensembles for students in band, orchestra, and chorus, for which the selection process is rigorous. 78 of our music students districtwide were selected for schemia this year and 33 were selected for NISGAM. These highly competitive festivals bring together the top young performers across Suffach County and selection is based on students NISMA scores and teacher recommendations. A whopping 100 of our string students were also accepted into the Long Island String Festival Association, Lispa, and several took part in the Lispa Chamber Music Festival, a separate audition-based event for smaller chamber groups. This year, two chamber groups from Gelinus Junior High School, the 9th grade string quintet, and the eighth grade Wave Quartet were selected to attend after submitting recorded auditions. We even had two students from Ward Mobile High School who were invited
012to participate in the extremely selective NAFME National Association for Music Education. We love our acronyms in music. All Eastern Division conference this April. These students are Joanna Hang and Ariela Mossi. Held in Hartford, Connecticut. This conference celebrated the top performing allstate musicians on the East Coast from Maine to Maryland. All of these experiences challenge our students to grow not only as individual performers but as collaborators and musicians of the highest caliber. It is important to note that these high numbers of participants from three village are not the norm in other districts. And this is due to the talented students and music teachers in Three Village as well as the support we receive from the district and the community. What these students have achieved is nothing short of exceptional. But these milestones are not the result
013of a single year's effort. Rather, they are the culmination of a journey that begins with early music instruction in elementary school. Highquality early training leads to the development of more advanced musical skills, therefore developing a strong foundation and leading students to become more confident, expressive, and successful over their three village musical careers. Long-term success in music is built through consistency, patience, practice, and the ongoing guidance of skilled and passionate teachers. And increasingly that guidance also comes from within the student community itself. One of the most powerful examples of this is our music without borders program, a student-led mentoring initiative organized by the Ward Mobile High School chapter of the Triumph Music Honors Society. We have a couple members here tonight. Offered in connection with our music in our schools month, which takes place every March.
014This program provides free one-on-one music lessons to younger students of all levels, whether they are preparing for NISMA or simply seeking extra support and encouragement. Over the course of four sessions this spring, High School Mentors provided over 300 free lessons, including 85 of them for our youngest musicians and third grade band and orchestra, and another 125 for fourth and fifth grade students. This program not only fosters musical growth, but builds leadership, empathy, and a culture of mentorship that strengthens our music community from the ground up. Additionally, the timing of tonight's presentation coincides with the completion of this year's Three Village NISMA Festival held this past Friday and Saturday at Wville High School. Each year, we have many students participate from our district as well as several neighboring school districts. But this particular year, Three Village
015also hosted the area 5 allstate festival, which is the mechanism through which students are selected to participate in the annual all-state conference in Rochester, New York. Students selected to participate at the most recent conference were recognized at a board of education meeting earlier this year. We had 626 Three Village student musicians attend our festival this weekend, and we hosted a total of 860 students from Three Village and our neighboring school districts combined. This is an amazing accomplishment for our young musicians. While I've explained a lot of what we do here in the Three Village Music Department, as well as the countless achievements of our music students, the power of music is far stronger when experienced firsthand. In just a few moments, you'll see a video presentation showcasing moments of rehearsal, performance, and overall musical passion,
016offering a glimpse into what it takes to grow into a high achieving musician in Three Village. A special thank you to Miss Alisa Rabbit, orchestra teacher at Mount, for her hard work in putting together this wonderful video, and also to Miss Suzanne Calfano, orchestra teacher at Satake, for helping to come up with the idea for this. Following the video, you'll be treated to a special live performance by a unique ensemble made up of both our youngest and our oldest student musicians across the district, including this year's saludiatoran who exemplify the academic and artistic excellence that is possible when music education is a consistent and valued part of a student's journey. I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Scanland, Dr. Biscari, and Dr. Dresky for their commitment to collaborating with myself and the music
017department to create and continue experiences that have become so treasured by our students and community. We appreciate you. Thank you also to the board, the community, and the district for your steadfast support of music. It is because of this community's commitment that our students are empowered to reach such extraordinary heights. Please enjoy a video celebration of Three Village Music. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. A Heat. Heat. Stand your feet. Here you go. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] I'll be smiling to answer all the questions that you need to all the answers [Music] to when And I'll be your friend. I'll help you for it. I'm so [Music] Heat up [Music] here. Heat. Heat. [Music] It's pretty amazing when you have selections of music and you
018don't need to choose. use professional recordings. You can just use the recordings from your own concerts. So, we're very lucky. I would now like to introduce seniors Alexander Song, Luji Lee, and Mia Louu, and third graders Tessa Coffen, Ellie Pollson, and Elelliana Chancellor, who will be performing some short musical selections for you. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] Congratulations. Oops. Congratulations to our three village music students on their impressive accomplishments. We are so proud of you. Thank you so much. So um I just want to compliment the students. Um if anyone remembers John F. Kennedy when he was president of
019the United States, he was married to Jacqueline Kennedy which became Jacqueline Onasses. Jacqueline Kennedy started bringing back art artists to the White House for the first time in many many decades and they performed. So one of those performances at the White House, John Kennedy got up and spoke and said, "This is the largest group of musicians and musical talent that has ever been in the White House since Thomas Jefferson stood in his room by himself." So your musical talent is the reason why we do our jobs. So thank you very much for all your work. I also want to thank all of your teachers and Miss Oer for her leadership with the department. The music department in this district is second to none in this state and I will go to the bat for you
020all any day. Now, just want to go on the record. I did play musical instruments. I played the guitar and the bag pipes. I don't have the legs for the bag pipe kilt anymore. So, I'm not going to get up and never play it again, but I've been asked several times. So, I might clear the room if I play the bag pipes in here tonight. So, thank you very much to our students and our teachers for coming for this wonderful event and congratulations to all the students who were honored uh through all the different competitions and programs that that occurred throughout the state and and the country this year. We very much appreciate you and are so very very proud of all of your work indeed. And on behalf of the board, we're so proud
021of all of you and so appreciative. Just keep playing, keep singing, keep doing it. It's a beautiful thing. And we're so glad you shared your art with us tonight. So, thank you. Congratulations. And you don't have to stay. It's okay if you want to go home. You won't hurt our feelings. Before you go, the next time we So, we have uh a couple more recognitions this evening. Um, a couple of our board members have managed to achieve some uh components from the New York State School Boards Association. Uh, Dr. Stanley Back and Dr. Shi Lee have been recognized for board achievement awards both for completing 75 points for ongoing association professional development and accepting additional leadership roles. So, congratulations Dr. Bach and Dr. Lee. Thank you. Done. In addition, our board president uh Sue Rosenwag
022has also been uh uh awarded the board mastery award. So this is the board of excellence recognition award uh conferring more than 250 points through ongoing professional development and accepting additional leadership roles and it comes with a complimentary training. So whenever you can figure out your schedule to do that, here you go. Congrat. Thank you very much. All right, we will turn it now over to Hazel Kohus for our student representative report. Good evening everyone. I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day weekend and I'm once again excited to be back up here tonight giving another report on Word Mobile. Everything from student recognitions as we already started with to some senior events and some other fun events coming up. Um, I was going to start with recognizing some of our music students, but I
023don't even think I understood the full um, scope of how amazing everyone, not only in W Melville, but in our district is music-wise. Um, so nothing I was going to say compares to what we just got to see. So, just another big congratulations to everyone from W Melville to the elementary schools on all their amazing musical achievements. And it's just so clear the hard work of everyone and the teachers. Um, at school this week, we got to welcome in some therapy dogs again, which were kindly brought by the organization Love on a Leash, which carries dogs through the certification process of becoming therapy dogs, who are then able to help so many, including students and faculty here in Three Village. I want to thank this organization for being so generous with their time and bringing
024these dogs in multiple times this year and in years past. The experience puts a smile on everyone's faces, especially during a stressful period in the school year with finals and AP exams. While this time of year can be jam-packed with exams, it's not it's no doubt exciting with many fun activities to be looking forward to. For one, next week we'll be having our annual spring spirit week, which will consist of days such as USA Day, dress like a teacher, spring fling, and a college shirt day for seniors with sophomores and juniors wearing their Patriot Pride. Moreover, in some other senior events in the upcoming weeks, we have our athletic college recognition assembly on May 21st and our senior assembly where we'll get to see our senior video and announce some fun senior super superlatives, etc.
025Well, these are just a few. You can view the whole list of upcoming senior events on the word mobile website under all things senior. As we begin to wrap up the school year, which is so crazy to think about, many clubs have begun preparations for their induction ceremonies. Student Government, Key Club, National Honor Society, and Triam, just to name a few, will soon be inducting their long-standing dedicated members. And lastly, in this sort of shorter report, and just a couple of other events and reminders, this week on May 15th, Word Mobile will be having our day to shine, which is held for special ed students from around the district where they're brought toward Melville and fizzed teachers work alongside student volunteers to make a field day or special Olympics type event. Um, this is held.
026This is always a fun and super exciting event for the students involved and I have no doubt that this year will be the same. I also want to remind everyone that the art and tech show is coming up on June 4th at the high school. Thank you so much. Thank you, Hazel, as always. All right, that takes us to 6B, our budget hearing. Mr. Carlson. Okay. Thank you. Uh some of you have seen this before. Um uh so just indulge us. Uh once again, this is our actually our official budget hearing. It has to be between 7 and 14 days prior to the uh budget vote. Um, which by the way, if some of you are wondering why our board meeting is on a Tuesday uh to have a board meeting this week, tomorrow would
027have been too late. So, we had to do it Tuesday of this week uh in order to meet the requirements of when the uh budget hearing is held. So, when we uh first start looking at the uh budget, the first thing we have to do is figure out, well, how much of a uh tax levy are we going to be able to have uh based on the tax cap formula? Um, and as you know, I've I've said over the years, uh, even though it's still commonly referred to as the 2% tax cap, it's it's not one. There are number of variables that determine what the cap is. Uh, one of them can be 2% uh, but isn't even always 2%. Uh, and and as I said, there are a number of other variables that go
028into it. And the cap varies from uh, year to year and from district to district. So in uh so for example uh uh items such as building aid which are a piece of state aid that's tied to capital projects and bond referendums as well as cost for capital projects and uh cost for bond uh bond payments uh in both the uh initial year and the coming up year the way they uh change uh all impact the uh amount of the tax cap. So, if we kept the same uh $3 million that's in our current budget in next year's budget for capital projects, uh our cap would have been 3.64%. So, we had uh discussed that it was um a couple of months ago and the board uh did not like the idea of a a
029tax cap above 3%. Uh so, we lowered the the capital projects in next year's budget to one and a half million and that brings the cap down to 2.78%. and the budget that we're putting forward complies with that cap. Um so um then the other that's the big uh uh revenue piece that we have. The other big uh revenue piece is state aid. State aid is an umbrella term. It's made up of a number of uh categories. Uh biggest of which it's called foundation aid. One of which uh another one as I mentioned is building aid. Uh so when when a lot of times when we give state aid numbers and even when the state education department puts out state aid numbers they'll separate building aid because it's tied to capital projects and it can
030otherwise skew changes in building aid from one year to the next. So in our case we had um uh a bond a bond referendum that was done back in 2007 and we're getting the last of the aid on that aid is paid out over a number of years. uh we're getting the last of the building aid on that in this year. So, we knew we were going to have a drop in building aid for next year. So, that that by itself is not a problem. It's not like when we see, oh no, our our aid is dropping by, you know, millions of dollars. What are we going to do? We knew that was coming and that was planned for and that's just part of the way a bond the life of a bond project works.
031Uh so not counting the building aid piece, our aid in the governor's budget proposal which was released in January had us getting an increase of about $238,000. So more state aid is good. Uh of course we would have liked some more than that. Um you will see in the in the news you well you have seen especially with the state budget uh having recently been completed when they when when they talk about record amounts of of uh uh state aid the schools and these enormous increases and yeah there are some school districts getting enormous increases um not us and it's not that somebody the governor or somebody at the state education department looks at three village and says no we don't like three village we're not going to give them more money it's based on
032formulas. And uh if you follow that that stuff at all, uh you'll see what they the formulas have been geared towards uh trying to steer more money towards the less wealthy school districts and away from the wealthier school districts. So in our case, that just means we're not getting much of an increase. There are some districts, there's one district on on Long Island, for example, that in the last uh four is it either four or five years, I forget now, uh their annual aid went from two about 260 million to about 520 million. Uh this year coming up year, they're getting an increase in an increase in their annual aid of $44 million. So when you see a news report that says, "Wow, these school districts are getting so much more money." Yes, some of
033them are good for them, but that's not us. So, um between the two um the this 238,000 plus the the tax levy increase of the 2.78% which comes out to a little over $4.8 million, it gives us a little over $5 million in additional revenue to work with next year. Now, normally, almost always, in fact, I I I can't remember off the top of my head a year when this did not happen, is that the governor's budget proposal is the starting point for state aid to schools, and it goes up from there when the final state budget is done. Uh, unfortunately, that did not happen for us in this case. So, our aid in the final state budget is virtually the same as it was in the governor's budget proposal, that $238,000 increase. again, not
034counting building aid. Um, so that's what we had to work with. So when we started looking at expenses, um, we knew we would have about $5 million um, uh, additional revenue to work with. So I I'll I'll get to that part in just a second. Uh, but there are a couple of items in the state budget of interest to us. One is free lunch for all students, which is fabulous news. Um the school boards association, the superintendent association, the school business officials association have been advocating for this for a long time. Uh and by the way um currently about 90% of school kids in New York State get free lunch already. Uh not because their parents uh meet the income threshold for free lunch, but because of what's called a most of them are because
035of what's called a community eligibility provision. And that says that if at least 25% of kids in a school building or in in a district qualify for free lunch, then everybody in that building or in that district gets free lunch. So that's great for them. And it has nothing to do with how much money those kids' parents make. So they could be millionaires and their kids would still get free lunch because there happen to be 25% kid of the kids in in their child's school that gets free lunch. So we none of our schools fell into that category. So that's why we did not have that. So but going forward to next year now that's in the state budget. So all kids will get free lunch. So that's that's a a fabulous thing. Uh the
036next item is uh we have to work out all the details. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Scandlin is the bellto bell. Every time I say this I mess it up. Belltobell cell phone ban. So turn over to uh the governor in her original proposal put in for a bell-to-bell ban of all cell phones in all grade levels in all uh public school all schools and throughout the state that has gone through. Now uh those of you recall we changed our cell phone policy this for this year with a committee. We are going to now have to reconvene that committee um and bless you and create a uh recommendations to the board for a policy on a cell phone ban and what that would entail. So the committee has to be comprised of
037students, staff members, parents, community members, administration um just as the committee was formed before to discuss how we were going to move forward with this. Um so we will be allowed to use our current lockers to do this. Um so that could be a a big help to us. It doesn't have to be some special program or device that we purchase in order to put the cell phones away. The band is not just on cell phones themselves. It's also on other electronic devices with internet capabilities that are not issued by the school. So that includes these lovely things, the smartwatches and also uh any other type of electronic devices they may bring to school. They're all banned starting September 1st. All this has to be done uh by August 1st, the policy change and put
038into effect and must be implemented by September 1st. And we must also communicate to families and students in the district multiple times throughout this process that this is coming uh and what the proposal will be. Uh one of the interesting things with this students cannot be suspended for this policy. They are not permitted. It's written into the thing. So it's going to make it very interesting how it's going to be enforced uh as we move forward. Um, but we have been talking about some things that the committee will consider, including confiscation of the phones and calling the parents to have them come up and pick them up. Um, as I've indicated before, it's not the phone that's the problem. It's the social media on the phone and the other stuff that's the problem. So, we
039really should be addressing that. The device is just a tool. It's the other stuff that goes on with it. Most of our discipline on on uh bullying that goes on in this district and many other districts is due to social media, is not due to what the device is. So students will always seem to find a way to do the things they want to do. So we need to be cognizant of that. We're not buying pouches and having students uh put phones in pouches. That's just going to be a huge expense to us uh to the district. Plus the students in other districts that have had those systems have figured out ways around it where they bring in dummy phones and drop them in the pouches and still carry the phones around them all day
040long. So this was already implemented in the elementary level to begin with. the junior high school levels, uh, which will be middle schools next year, will have to tweak and high school will be a little bit more enforcement. Good luck to us all. We'll see how this goes. So, so, as I had mentioned, uh, the additional revenue would be about $5 million for next year. Uh, so then we look at, okay, if we took everything we have in place right now, same staffing, same program, everything, and roll it roll it forward to next year, how much more would that cost? Well, our biggest uh cost is always salaries. That's what we do. We're a service business. We provide we hire people that provide a service. We're not a we don't manufacture goods. We don't have
041those kind of expenses. Uh so, our salary increases alone for next year, we're with the current staffing, we're a little over $6 million. And then this coming up year, we're getting slammed with our health insurance increase. um as you know probably you you've all seen over the past couple of years especially since since co um we've seen seen um uh medical cost increase but this year in particular pharm pharmaceuticals in particular have really uh uh uh costwise have have uh increased astronomically um and and I don't say this to be to be funny but there's a reason why every other commercial you see on TV is for a pharmaceutical company as people see it and they say Oh, I need that. And they go to their doctor and they get a prescription and they cost
042a lot of money. And if you want to get yourself really aggravated, look up, do some research and see what uh other people in other countries pay for the exact same drugs, not at some other version, some generic version, a Canadian version, a Mexican version, whatever, a Swedish version. It's the same exact stuff. and they pay a fraction of what we pay for uh here. So, um we our our health insurance increase uh alone was over $5 million. Um what we're doing to mitigate that doesn't help us much this coming up year, but uh a couple of things. One, uh something the board has been working on for a number of years now is working with all of our employee unions uh to pay a larger share of the uh uh health insurance. uh and
043that's inc increased progressively over the years uh and and I imagine will continue to increase. Um, on the health insurance side, uh, a couple of things we're looking at is things such as, uh, increasing co-pays and deductibles, uh, to help mitigate costs and also, uh, for instance, uh, one one thing that was done recently is partnering with a a company that's based in Canada for certain prescription drugs. Uh, because our our employees and their families who are covered by our insurance can get the same, as I mentioned, the same drugs much cheap. it cost our insurance a lot less to get it through this company in Canada uh than it would be to go to your local pharmacy and get it. Um so so things such as that we're looking at. Um but as I
044said that that's not going to help us this coming up year and those are more long-term things. Uh other benefits um ERS and TRS are the two uh retirement systems that our employees belong to employees retirement system and teachers retirement system. Uh it's mandatory for all full-time employees to belong to the retirement system. That's not a three village rule. That's a state law. And it's optional for all part-time employees. And again, that that's that state law cannot be uh restricted in any way by the district. Um and then we pay a percentage of salaries into those retirement systems. That percentage varies. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. Uh so our cost for those those uh plans is increasing next year. and FICA is the employer share of social security. So, right off the
045bat, I mean, you see uh you know, somewhere around, you know, over $12 million in additional expenses and only about $5 million in additional revenue. So, that's what set us up for going over the last uh however many months we've been doing this now of identifying areas where we can make some changes. And for that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Scandler. So the largest part of our budget is staffing. Um so we need to be just cognizant of the fact that as Jeff mentioned, we are not in a business where producing a product. We're we're educating children and we have people that do that all day long. So when we looked at all these other codes to cut, we tried to do our best to make sure we weren't touching any of the instructional
046errors as much as possible, but eventually we had to in some capacity. Now, um, just to give you a sense of where we're at right now, the current senior class is a little over 520 students. As of this morning, the current kindergarten is 330. So, that's a significant difference in population. However, with uh the past couple of years, our overall enrollment has leveled off. We're no longer declining. And part of that is contributed to the fact that we added the UPK program in, which we've expanded even further. We only had five uh sections of UPK districtwide, one in each of the buildings. Um now we have six because we had number of students on a waiting list. We pulled them off. Um we are about to examine whether or not we are going to open
047an additional section somewhere else, maybe a seventh based upon what's on the waiting list. We're at 16. For every 18 students we get, we're going to try to open up another half uh section uh for the the program and keep it going. We do get aid for that. So that helps us a lot. Um, I thank Miss Harowitz who's here tonight who oversees our pre-K program. She's doing a remarkable job with that. And Miss Kersh, Dr. Kersh now, uh, who oversees our enrichment program as well and has been very helpful. So, um, a couple of board meetings ago, we looked at the board made some change to the original budget proposal with having the start time in and put the money from the start time back into the budget to reduce class sizes. We were
048originally looking at cutting almost 14 teachers in the elementary level, but we're able to reduce that down to 5.4. And this is based mostly on just attrition. With the low smaller class uh classes coming through, we've been able to reduce down and that includes in some special areas. The decrease at the secondary level is due to again the declining enrollment and also the fact that what we've done with the strategic plan. Moving the two middle schools into the one high school grade levels has reduced the number of teachers we needed and moving five elementary schools of staff into uh students into just two middle schools has also reduced down the amount we needed as far as staffing. Um and that saved us approximately about about $900,000. Uh in addition, we've been uh we've been cutting
049about 28 uh uh teach teacher assistants and some lead positions. Um we've also worked with the administrative unit. There's been some uh restructuring there and elimination of positions. Um we've avoided the 10 administrative positions because we wound up with a contractual concession which the board will vote on tonight from the TVCA. That's the administrative union. And I will also thank also the TVTA because they also have come through with a concession with their contract as well. We've been very very blessed that all of our units really see uh the the the crisis we're under right now with our budget. Uh the other eight units as well have worked very closely with us. But I have to thank all the leadership of all the units uh particularly our administrators and our teachers for helping us through
050this crisis and helping us move forward. If it wasn't for them, we'd be in a lot worse position than we are right now. So, thank you to all of them for all their hard work and uh and and helping us through this. Um some other reductions have occurred in the clerical unit, the maintenance operation unit and monitors. Um we we were able to restore based upon the last board meeting the summer reading program. So the summer math program is u still there um to not being running this summer. We are looking at the co-curricular activities and this is just something we've always had in place. We look at the number of clubs we have to see the average attendance is at least 15 uh for the year for the club and then we'll make cuts
051from there. This will also allow some other clubs to come into effect that may be more popular, have more students in it. Um, but you know, it's getting tougher to run clubs with single-digit numbers of students in them. At this point in time, we've cut district-wide uh overtime as well in a lot of different areas and we have looked at a lot of different grants that we could apply for. Uh, we're still on the verge of some things with CTE right now that we might qualify the per for the Perkins grant. Uh, remember that we are often when we apply for these grants considered a high wealth district. So, we could apply for them, but we might not qualify to get those things. Um, so with the one announcement we'll make this evening, which we
052made earlier today at the PTE uh council and we've made to the board, through the hard work of Miss Aer and the music department, we were able to restore the third grade instrumental program for next year. So, we were able to put that back into place. So, with some tweaking that's occurred by the department. Um, she did a remarkable job with that and worked with her team of teachers to do that. um she's a miracle worker in that regard. So, um it'll probably see me a lot more phone calls tomorrow morning and someone flattening my tires before I walk out into the parking lot tonight. So, I'm going to turn it back over to Mr. Carlson. Thank you. Uh so, to to wrap it up, our budgetto budget increase is a 0.84% and a tax
053levy increase of 2.78%. Uh the reason for the disparity it deals with uh reduction in building aid on the revenue side. Uh also reduction uh some reduction in our debt service payments on the uh expenditure side as well as the that reduction in capital projects on the expenditure side. So and as I mentioned that complies with the tax cap. So it requires a simple majority in order for it to pass. simple majority meaning 50% plus one of the people who come out to vote to vote yes because a tie does not a tie vote does not pass. Uh so if the budget does not pass the options are uh same as same as usual uh one is to present the same budget for a revote. Uh another is to revise the budget put that up
054for a sec uh revote uh or for a second vote. Uh either way if there is a second vote it would be on the third Tuesday of June. And the other option is not to have a second vote at all and go straight to contingency. So uh going straight to contingency is the same as if it uh it would have failed the budget were to fail a second time. Uh and that means no increase to the tax levy at all. So that's the part. Oh, that sounds great. Uh the but that means a reduction from this budget that uh with uh the uh reductions Dr. Scandlin just went over. We'd have to reduce another uh little over $4.8 million. Now, on a contingency budget, the one of the rules is state uh law is no
055capital projects under a contingency budget. So, the first million and a half would be that those capital projects, but that still requires another more than $3.3 million in reductions. Now, if we get to that point, then we'll be meeting with all of our um uh building administrators and the board of education to determine where we can uh come up with that $3.3 million in in further reductions. Um so, the um vote itself a week from week from today, all of it uh in the gymnasium at Ward Mobile High School in the north side of the building. uh it works much better there than when we used to have it in the elementary schools uh because when somebody goes to vote whether it's in a general election or a school budget vote with the door can't
056be locked we can't ask for ID we can't vet the people coming coming in uh so when it was in the elementary schools especi especially arrowhead mount where they would have to go halfway through the building to get to the mini gym um it just was not a good from a security standpoint uh so it works much better at the high school it's a lot easier to secure uh that area off from the rest of the building. Uh there's plenty of parking, although I might suggest maybe avoiding 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. That's arrival and dismissal. Uh it's kind of crazy around there traffic-wise. Uh but other than that, uh there's there's plenty of parking and it shouldn't be a problem for anyone. Uh so one of the things
057I I've I I like to say though about the budget is as as school officials uh including us as administrators and the board of education uh we we cannot advocate for uh for anyone to vote yes on the budget. Um we can't make subjective statements such as oh if the budget fails your child's education will suffer or your property values will go down. Those are subjective statements right? That's not it's not I mean it might happen but but it's it's it's a subjective statement. We're not allowed to say those kind of things. Uh but uh neither can can someone say oh you should uh a board member or a member of administration say you should vote no on the budget either. Goes both ways. Uh but one thing we can say is all I ask
058for is if you think you and your family are better off if the budget passes, vote yes. If you think you and your family are better off if the budget fails, vote no. But do it based on what you think is best for you and your family, not because somebody said, "Oh, so and so said this or so and so did that, so you should vote no." Do what you think is best for you. So, uh, I'd be glad to take any questions. Uh, actually, I just have one clarification. Um, we're thrilled that we're able to keep the third grade, um, music program, so that's great. But I just wanted to clarify that we're we were able to do that with no increase in cost. Um, so that was just done with scheduling and yes,
059that's exactly correct. We did not increase any of the cost to the district with it. It was done within the current staffing that we had projected with the reduction that was already happening within the music department. We were able to do that. It was through some tweaking of the schedules and the uh and the uh practice schedules that we were able to conduct that. Great. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, early voting is available. Still early voting available. If anybody wants to take uh advantage of that, see Miss German or district clerk. Thank you. Any other questions or comments about the budget? Just to the point of last year we had out of 38,000 registered voters in this community, we only had 3,300 people vote. So, we really would like to encourage more people
060to please vote in the budget. Vote whatever way you want to vote, but please vote. And you know, this is a country that's had the right to vote since its inception 250 years ago. And we have some of the lower lowest voting turnouts for elections. Countries that haven't had the right to vote for less time have higher voting rate. So we really need to exercise this right that's given to us. A lot of people fought and died to get get it for us. So let's keep it. And if anybody wants to see the budget presentation again, we're doing it two more times tomorrow night and once Monday night. So it's always a good show. Thank you. 11 times. That's right. All right. With uh item 7A having been tabled till the next meeting that brings
061us to 7B, um our wonderful student newspaper, Kaleidoscope, I want to say great job to Claire and Andrew who wrote a nice op-ed piece about AI in our schools. Very thoughtprovoking, very interesting. Um but just a couple of points of clarification that I wanted to make. Uh the board never gave any indication on chat GPT or Gemini in or out. That would be way overstepping on our behalf. So that was not a board decision. Um and uh the other thing the point of it was you know that we need a clear AI policy for our student use that does exist. Um it's reflected in our code of conduct and um it's very clear what uh what our academic honesty and policies are and they are reflected in there. So just wanted to point that out.
062Okay. So that will bring us now to our public comment period and we have several people here to speak and a couple that I will read aloud. First up to the microphone if you would please over that way. Uh Leanne Strom. Um hello Dr. Scanland and to the board of education. Thank you so much for your support in continuing our third third grade instrumental programs which is why I was coming to speak this evening. Um the positive effects of this early approach as you know on our talented three village students were evident tonight with their performances and through their amazing and passionate teachers and to our lovely director of fine arts here in our district. Um, my own child will be going to Word Neville next year as a 10th grader and is just completely
063thrilled to be part of the chamber orchestra and as an educator myself and orchestra director in Half Hollow Hill School District of the last 20 years. I've always seen three village students and teachers in this music department with the utmost respect. um in attending festivals like Lispa and Schamia for decades now and seeing the the talent that we have in this school district and having my own children be part of it has really come full circle for me. So I appreciate your support of the arts and know that you made the right decision in in continuing our programs. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, next up to the same microphone, Suzanne Allen. Good evening. um board of education, Dr. Scallan, um and everyone who sits here. We are um esteemed as a district
064to have you guys serve for us. Um I was also coming to speak to you about the third grade music program and um so we will take that as a thank you very much for that. But I did want to highlight um we have over 60 testimonials that were gathered in a very short period of time from the kids themselves. Um, so I know you guys have heard from um, a lot of the parents and some of the teachers um, and and just overall um, work together to make this happen. But I just wanted to let you know that um, over 60 of our students um, compiled uh, drawings and uh, and uh, just why they love it. And I just wanted to highlight just a few. There's no way I'm going over this, so
065don't worry. I only have three minutes anyway. Um, so the biggest ones to me, um, I just wanted to read, um, from Haley Leapley, an eighth grader at RC Murphy Junior High School. Dear Board of Education, my name is Haley Leapley. I'm currently an eighth grade student at RC Murphy Junior High School. In third grade, I chose to play the cello. This was in September of 2019. My teacher was um, Miss Amaroso. Um, from September 2019 to February 2020. I had so much fun learning to play the cello. I look forward to my lessons and hearing all the new sounds that I was making with my instrument. In March of 2020, not only did the entire world shut down, but my world shut down. I no longer went to school, ran on the playground with
066my friends. I was now home behind a screen. Being an only child and having both my parents working full-time from home, um, home was lonely. My cello became my everything. I could not wait for Miss Amarosa to post work class work. I played it all. My favorite is when she posted Star Wars. Um, I played that over and over and I loved it. I would put on concerts for my cousins over Zoom. Music was how I was able to connect during a difficult time. I will never forget um my cello uh needed to be tuned during COVID. My parents tried and so did I. It sounded horrible. I sent Mr. Hamaroso a note over Google Classroom and she came to our rescue. She walked us through it um until my cello was tuned. The kindness,
067support, and guidance I felt during my time in third grade orchestra is unparalleled. There were times I was lonely during co um and music was always something that made me smile. It made me feel whole. Um I do I am running out of time. Um so I just want to say um that if you guys would like to see it, this is here. Um and our students, thank you tremendously. My own family um thanks you guys tremendously. My daughter wanted to be here, but she's um at uh gosh, I can't color guard right now making sure she does all that. and um her um her uh youngest sister who's in kindergarten um knows her teacher on or her ensemble teachers by name and asks to be with them all the time. She asks for Miss
068Hill, she asks for Mr. Hayes, she asks for all of them. And so I can't wait for my kindergartenner um to be able to join my older one in the music program. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And if you want to give the binder to Miss Shermano, we will be more than happy to see those wonderful testimonials, especially if there's drawings involved. [Music] A thank you so much. All right, next up to the microphone, Alex Despinite, please. Kind of protrusive right here. Uh, hi. Thank you everybody for uh letting me speak again. I know I haven't spoken in a few months just cuz I was absorbing and enjoying that fact that you guys were all taking the security matter seriously. I didn't want to just keep coming up here and uh
069butchering the same points and belaboring the the point. Um but as of the last board meeting uh which I believe was the last one that was in attendance where um you guys spoke about how or presented rather the staff survey and it came back in favor of I just wanted to highlight that and then also just kind of double click on the fact that uh Mr. Blau uh Blau over there um also said that his AI was in he desired back in October I believe he said in the in here that he desired the AI to be a multi-prong approach and that was one of the prongs. The other was that he was also in support of it. So I guess my question or my thoughts and my reason for being here is if we
070have the staff on board and we have uh security the head of security of the three village on board and we clearly have some support here. I just wanted to feel like I just wanted to see if like um that we're not just stop kicking the can down the road now push now you're pushing it to the whole community and who knows what's going to happen with that. It just seems like you guys don't want to make the decision that the staff and that the security guys are all presenting to you and I think that that would be a uh a dereliction of your duty there where you're not uh listening to your cabinet so to speak or your your supporters and everyone else that is that is trying to make this happen for us
071to keep our schools safe. Um, I didn't want to I don't want to keep coming up here all the time, but I just felt that after the last meeting, I felt like it was a good time to come back up here and maybe uh touch base again. So, thank you so much for the time and have a great day. Thank you. All right. Now, we have a few uh letters that were submitted to be read aloud. This is from Rachel Nagel. I am the parent of two three village students. I'm aware of the difficult budget season and the decisions needed to be made as restructuring of the district has come at the same time. I'm writing to discuss the impact removing our third grade ensembles will have on the quality of our music program. While
072buildings have been K to6, we have had the unique opportunity to provide students with four years of consistent instruction and collaboration. So this change is unnecessarily twofold. I understand that you're discussing the addition of an extra section of general music for third graders in lie of the current instrumental ensembles and small group lessons. We have extra grade level general music in the school district I work in. This is an effective scheduling solution for classroom teachers. And while it has proven to be a productive period for musical learning, it is certainly not a substitute for ensembles and small groupoup instrumental instruction. The problem with a change like this occurring at the lower grades is knowing it will affect the quality and retention in the upper grades. But we won't be able to see this difference for
073years at all levels. The number of students sent to NISMA, Lipma, Scamia, NISKM, and all state will decrease. Once the difference is qualitatively and quantitatively proven, it'll take several years to amend and again must begin in the lower grades. If you do move forward with this change, I encourage you to notice the mark difference over time. And I hope, as I will, you will find it very disappointing. I encourage you to look at the talent and pride of the students taking part in all grades and parts of the music program and to find the space to continue the third grade ensembles which set us apart from other districts. We are really doing it right and I am proud to live here. The next is from Suzanne Allen. Do you still want me to read that?
074Okay. Thank you. And that that's all of the correspondence that we have. So, thank you everybody for that. That takes us now to our second read of our policies. We turn it over to Mr. Misti. Um the board policy committee has reviewed uh 39 policies in the 200 series of the board policy manual. Uh the policy committee has met. The these policies have been reviewed uh and commented on by uh legal counsel. Last meeting they were on for first reading in accordance with our policy. Uh this is uh these policies on for second reading tonight. Uh I'm available if there are any questions on any specific policies. Do we have any questions? Okay. In that case, do I see a motion to approve these as stated? So move. A second. All in favor? No opposed?
075No abstensions. So thank you. Those policies are approved and we get now to our consent agenda. Do I see a motion? Some move. A second. Second. All right. So, we have tabled uh B. So, that brings us to C. Mr. Mano. Okay. These are the appointment for the board of registry and election workers for the May 20th, 2022 school board of vote and election from the Suffach County Board of Elections. Thank you. Any questions about that one? Thank you. All right. And beginning with D, Mr. Carlson. Uh item D is approval of extension of contracts with outside service providers for for special education services for the uh 2526 school year. Item E is uh new contracts with uh outside service providers uh for special education services for the 2526 school year. Item F is the
076approval of special education tuition contracts with two organizations that provide uh services to our students. Uh again for the 2526 year. Item G is approval of a health and welfare services contract with the HPOG school district. This is for a uh three village resident student who attends a private school located within the HPOG school district. Uh item H is donations. We have two donations. One is a check for $250 from Munistat Services. They're our fiscal advisor. They help with our um tax anticipation note borrowing and anytime we do a bond uh any kind of bond borrowing. Um and that's for the Ward Mobile High School senior scholarship fund and uh check for $2,000 from the Three Village STEM Enrichment Foundation to the Ward Melville Robotics Team. Item I is declaration of surplus equipment. We have
077uh some items from uh the uh ceramics department at Ward Mobile High School. That's it for me. Thank you. Any questions about any of those? All right, then we'll continue. Item J, recommendations of the committee on special education subcommittee and 504 accommodation plan meetings as dated. and K recommendations of the committee on preschool special education meetings as dated beginning with L and continuing through our three walk-ins of OP and Q. Dr. Dresky. Yes. L memorandum of agreement between the TVSAA and the three village council school district. This is the um this is the contractual provision um that we're you are scheduled to vote on tonight. In terms of the reopening m personnel items, uh we have personal items instructional. We have four instructional resignations, one instructional leave of absence for a nurse, uh several instructional
078substitute appointments, appointments of hourly and daily assignments for the 24-25 school year. Uh we have teacher, teaching assistant, and administrative tenure appointments. N personal items non-instructional. We have two non-instructional resignations, uh a leave of absence, five non-instructional substitute appointments, and several appointments for summer wreck and extra hourly assignments. Um O MOA between the three village school district and the teachers association for the contract negotiations. That is a walk-in. P an additional walk-in termination of the employee named and confidential schedule A as discussed in exact session. and Q, who has the who has the student appeal, Chris? Uh, that's the appeal uh for the uh student uh that we discussed in in executive session. Thank you. Any questions about any of those? All right. All in favor? No opposed? No abstensions. And that carries. Yes. If
079I can have a moment. Um I think a few people left actually a little early than uh than expected but um we know that the tenure process is not easy. I'm sure some people start shaking their head in the audience and and agree with that. Uh we have extremely high expectations here in Three Village. Um our staff that we're about to recognize this evening have exceeded expectations. Uh we know that personally because each one of the cabinet members has has observed them throughout their time here. Um, we expect that they're going to continue to follow the same trajectory and continue to demonstrate their leadership and expertise here in Three Village. So, I would like to congratulate the following employees uh who the board just voted on for their tenure. Um, I will start with teaching
080assistants. I'm not going to embarrass anyone to stand. Uh, we'll we'll save that for the June 4th meeting. We'll embarrass you. Um, so first with teaching assistants, we have Kathy Bazanka, Lori Drier, Mary Gar, Donna Hunter, Josephine Marangolo, Donna Randazzo, Shelantry Reyes, Gina Scarpulla, Joanne Walters, and Alisa Wernern. For teachers, we have Logan Aravanian, Kayla Cosg Gro, Raymond Epoquin, Tina Marie Fricia, who who still stayed, um, Holly Hal, uh, Rachel Laroo, Caitlyn Luizu, Luke Mishko, Alicia Robles, Frederick Sudama, Sarah Tibil, and Danielle Wilkinson. And last, but certainly not least, we have Brian Biscari, our assistant superintendent ed educational services. I'd like another vote. Well, I just had a check with Brian. I go, "Didn't you get hard with me in 2011?" Um, could couldn't we have done that vote at the beginning of the meeting?
081Um, Marilyn Hydrickch, principal at Mount and Stacy Zidman, assistant principal, Welville High School. So, congratulations everyone. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much. And again, congratulations to everybody. That's fantastic. That being said, do I see a motion to adjurnn? Second. All in favor? We are adjourned. Thank you everybody.