BOE Meeting 5/8/24

001e e for thank you everybody I'm so sorry to keep you waiting and you all look freezing so I really apologize for keeping you waiting uh at this time we would like you to please rise join us with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Nicole PL aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all thank you so much Miss Jano any changes to the meeting agenda there's one change there's a um item added for a uh appeal for adasa in regards to the confidential schedule egg thank you okay and we turn it over now to item 58 Dr scandin so it's my pleasure to once again introduce Mr Doug Elliot the head the adviser for our

002mock trials team you got to speak absolutely you thought you could get rid of me uh last time so I I just want to congratulate the group that's standing to my right uh the suff county regional mock trial champions for 2024 um just to give you a little idea about what a mock trial season looks like it's 5 months of grueling uh Saturdays and Wednesday nights and uh you eventually go and compete against other teams with the same case uh hoping to get into the sweet 16 bracket uh and then you fight your way through that and if you uh are successful you wind up like these kids next to me uh so I'm I'm so proud um of this group I'll introduce them in a second uh I I feel like they were a

003bit of a gift to me this year to remind me of why I started teaching in the first place uh and have continued to teach um you've all reminded me uh of why I have the best job in the world uh and I thank you for that uh so I just want to introduce them one by one uh first our sophomores um Olivia Miller and Lyla pessier and Rebecca Ms and Grace Hammond and matd Gallia to FY to Fury and our Juniors Jordan Conrad Ellie Schneider who was uh named the star witness in s County this year which is like Player of the Year in s County so it's pretty exciting and Olivia gamees and our uh outstanding seniors this year Elena bti Jack zazzer and our captains uh who goes first well she's got

004the plaque so Anna Pekin and uh L Connor who's got our plaque we brought our Hardware uh just to show you guys so I I just want to congratulate all of you in front of everybody um and we still going to go up the states and see what we can do uh but um thank you for the recognition and for the support we we appreciate it very much um and I'd be remiss uh if I didn't introduce you to our secret weapon uh and you'll see a guy standing back here in his suit uh that's Joe pro cop and Joe is an Alum of Three Village uh Joe's daughter started our team 10 years ago with me when she was a ninth grader Joe helped out uh for the first few years and when she

005grad uated uh Joe stuck around and has been an unbelievable resource uh and and source of inspiration for the kids uh in terms of Law and volunteers almost every Saturday comes from his office and works with us and and uh has become a dear friend to me and and Joe I just want to thank you uh for the decade you've given to the kids I I appreciate it so much um and now we'll take a picture so thank you should we come up there or stay here okay e e from here so congratulations to the whole team best of luck in Albany right we're going to Albany Al Albany so they've got a long road ahead of them still but we're confident that they're going to do very well in the states so good luck

006to all of you and congratulations Mr Elliott once again thank you very much yes leaving on a high note for all right thank you so much we're just regrouping here a little bit okay for the best part Nicole what's going on at the high school hi everyone I can't believe we're already a week into may this year has flown by and it's insane and I was just thinking about it that after tonight I only have one report left that's crazy that's crazy senior year has flown by so fast um I can't believe the AP exams are already here AP exams are underway happening all this week and next week good luck to anyone taking AP exams this past weekend the three village community came together for a Star Wars themed Color Run to raise money

007for senior scholarships the May the 4th be with you course spanned 1.5 miles around W mville high school with multiple color stations placed throughout students and families wore white t-shirts to show the vibrant Galaxy of colors they ran and walked through nasc took home the the first color run shoe trophy for most attendants as part of site based committee myself I'm so happy that this event was a success and hope to see it come back next year on Friday night the warmel players present murder mystery if you haven't seen the players definitely try to come to one of their shows good luck to all those performing this weekend next Tuesday May 14th our annual data shine event will be happening at w mville high school special needs students from each of the district's buildings will

008gather for a day full of athletic events and outdoor activities they will participate in fun events including a 100 meter dash a hurdle race and lots of field games this is going to be another great event that I know many of our students are excited about with the end of the year approaching quickly there are lots of fun activities happening really soon the Dei committee will be hosting an exhibit about the settle cot Nation at the sataka neighborhood house on May 29th and 30th come learn about their history as a group and impact on our community admission is free and all are welcome to attend at the beginning of June events such as the the art show presidential volunteer Service Awards senior Music Awards senior scholarships and the Pops concert will be in full swing

009at w mville and last but not least the highly anticipated College decision day is right around the corner due to delays with ffts of form scholarships and other Financial concerns decision day was moved to Wednesday May 22nd although pushed back a few weeks seniors are super excited to wear their shirts and celebrate the next hu huge chapter coming up in the fall [Applause] excellent thank you so much all right we'll move on to 6B the budget presentation Mr Carlson thank you um so this is uh What uh the the official term for this uh presentation is the budget hearing the budget hearing has to be between 7 and 14 days prior to the budget vote um and it's just a a presentation of the budget uh this is what's being put forth to the voters

010uh for anybody that's uh attended or watched any of the PTA meetings uh that uh Dr scandin and I have uh been to so far uh or the civic association which we're at uh Monday evening it's the same presentation we just go over the uh specifics of of the uh proposed budget so uh whenever we put the uh start working on the budget of course the first thing we do is we have to uh figure out how much money we're going to have to work with it used to not be that way with schools it used to be before the tax cap it used to be uh well okay here's everything we have in place here's everything we want to add all the extra programs and let's see how much it's going to cost and

011that was what the tax levy would be well with the tax cap now it's more like the way the rest of the world budgets just like we would do at home we have to start with how much money we're going to have and work from there uh so that's that's what the tax cap does and then of course the biggest piece of Revenue we have is our tax levy so we always start with that and as as you all know because I say it every year the tax cap even though it's sometimes still referred to as the 2% tax cap is not 2% uh one of the um variables uh can be 2% but sometimes it's not um and but there are other factors that go into the determination of the cap or it's really

012called the maximum Levy increase and it varies from year to year in District to District uh sometimes it's more than 2% sometimes it's less than 2% in uh this case for us for this coming up year our cap is 2.84% so the budget that we're putting forward for our voters complies with that and would require the simple majority in order for the budget to pass simple majority meaning 50% plus one of the people who come out to vote on that day to vote Yes because a tie vote does not pass the next biggest piece we have of Revenue is of course state aid state aid is an umbrella term is made up of a number of uh Aid categories uh the big biggest piece uh biggest single category of state aid is called Foundation Aid

013and in the news we all know what the governor uh in in her original uh budget proposal back in January uh made her proposal would have made made changes to Foundation Aid and that would have resulted in uh state aid to overall uh decreases to more than half of the school districts in the state so thankfully that did not make it into the final budget um we got that we were hoping for some increase in Foundation Aid um but if you recall to um the um meetings we the last meeting we had when the board adopted the budget we said well the state budget was not done yet we were still hoping for some what of an increase but we put the budget together assuming no increase we knew we pretty much knew we had

014it on very good um Authority that we would not get that decrease to Foundation Aid so that's what we built the budget with with we didn't anticipate uh we didn't assume an increase and it turns out it's a good thing because we didn't get an increase um so the budget that the board adopted was uh using no increase to increase to Foundation Aid and you'll see uh when the budget newsletter goes out and or if you look on the uh District website at some of the budget information we have in the revenue section there is an overall decrease in state a it's not because of foundation Aid that's because one of the other categories of state aid is building Aid and one of our older bonds uh was just paid off so we save on

015the expenditure side for that but we also lose the associated building Aid with it that's something that we knew was was going to happen uh and does not affect operations and then other revenues um some are increasing uh the biggest piece that's increasing is our interest Revenue our interest rates are rising uh so so on the one hand when we borrow money it it costs a little more we do our annual tax ipation note uh but we get our money in bunches uh our state aid comes in bunches our property taxes come in in bunches so we put it in interest bearing accounts and as interest rates rise so does our uh interest Revenue uh we're also increasing uh fees that we charge to keep Pace with inflation for things like Sac summer wreck Etc

016uh and then uh the tuition that we charge the tuition rates are set by the New York State education department it's known as the non-resident tuition for um special needs uh students are the rate for this year is about $102,000 is what we can charge other districts for so we do have some districts that send uh children uh to Three Village schools that they pay tuition for and it's when it suits when it fits our program um so for example if we have a let's say an 811 class that only has six kids in it and Smithtown says we have a child that we'd like to send to your 81 in one class our special ed Department looks at it they looks look at you know our program the child if the child is a

017fit and it's not going to cost us more or minimal cost uh but we're able to get that $12,000 in uh tuition then it works out great um so as of course as every year our course increase so it is the tuition that we're allowed to charge so that's that's going up some too if uh Mr Carlson if I may for a moment for next year uh for the elementary level um we've indicated to Mrs uh Connelly with the PPS Department we are not taking any more new cross contracts from other districts reason being is uh the prek program the number of students coming in from prek to kindergarten we already have 37 students which is more than 10% of the incoming kindergarten class that are going to be in self-contained classes so that does

018not mean we would stop it from at the secondary level where we do have space but we need to make sure that we are keeping the programs here for the students that we have um and maintaining the programs as we move forward so I don't want to use the word closed but we're we're closed to any new cross contracts for PPS in the elementary for next year secondary will be more than willing to take where space permits as Mr Carlson had indicated we have to be cautious with that because as at this time of year where we project what our R will be we're leveling off um we need to be in the summer we we rected that we were going to go down by 125 students last year to this year and we went

019only down by about nine students so if we get another influx we may wind up uh increasing some class sizes which is what we're experiencing right now at the elementary level and why we need to add some additional Staffing and those levels which we'll talk about in a moment actually we're up to Staffing so Dr scandin if you'd like to uh continue so so we're adding three elementary teachers there we go um uh two of them would be at one at NAS R down to balance out the class sizes the two at um mount in particular are to handle the increasing enl numbers that we've had coming in and also to um address some of our special needs population nasake situation is that we have a sixth grade class that only has two sections in

020it so as it goes out the fifth grade class coming in behind it has three sections and the incoming kindergarten class right now we'll probably have three sections and if that enrollment goes up then we have to probably increase those sections as well so um this year as you recall the uh we offered a a retirement sented to four of our units the administrative unit the teachers unit the nurses uh the um sorry the M unit and the clerical unit um so out of that inclusive of other retirements as well from other areas we had 75 retirements occur this year 33 teachers five administrators 11 Paris and Tas uh nine clerical and 10 m uh so that's a lot the rest came from other units so tremendous cost savings with that which Mr cars will

021cover a moment but out of that through attrition we're not going to replace 15 positions so no one is losing the job but we we don't have to replace all those positions and this is accounting for that enrollment decline as we've started to experience we are not going to have to do it over time as retirements come across in the next few years the next four years we're anticipating about 117 teachers potentially retiring or at least being first El will retire um and then will retirements in other areas we may not have to replace all those positions one for one and that will obviously offset some of the costs the the administration restructuring that we've been talking about uh even with positions that we're putting into place right now is still saving us a quarter

022million dollar right there there may be potential retirements throughout the course of the year in this area which could also this number could go up uh some of the areas of uh expenditures we had uh some of the larger expenditures um of course health insurance goes up every year um unfortunately uh and retirement system costs sometimes go up sometimes go down because they're a percentage of salaries as determined by the two Retirement Systems there New York State teachers retirement system and New York state employees retirement system and they set the rates uh and there are times when those rates go down uh it's not happening this year uh but those two combined um dollar amount is about a $3.3 million increase in next year's budget uh we are we are always looking to improve our

023security uh Security in our schools is something that we take very seriously um we're we're very proud of of the security uh protocols that we have in place uh that have been put into place by uh Mr blam who's uh sitting behind us um in fact so much so that the Seer County District Attorney's Office uh when they took to school districts about their security uh they recommend following our protocols that we have in place um and we're as I said we're always looking to improve it um and this is not just uh people uh it's also things like surveillance cameras um theyve they have proved uh very useful uh in in uh in improving all of our security districtwide um and then things like we have the um the card readers the um uh

024when somebody visits a building and they go through they go through security and um we do the check for whether it be sex offender or orders of protection those kind of things um and so as I said we're always looking to improve that uh in the textbook uh code we're adding uh a new literacy program that you know is one of those things that just cost cost money when we put it in uh so there's an increase in the it uh area there's always you know coer or just increasing astronomically you know in in all areas of life we all see it in our daily lives and and we see it here as well uh the Chromebooks that we all of our kids have of course they they need repairs sometimes so that that's always

025an increasing cost and cloud storage is also uh increased uh tremendously and then of course in the area of special education and enl or English English as a new language um we always know there's going to be uh additional needs that we don't even know yet that we're going we know they'll they'll be coming but uh in those areas for instance if a family moves into the district and they have one or two or more uh kids that require those Services we have to provide those we can't say well sorry we don't have the money budgeted we have to find the money in the budget for that so we have to we have to be prepared so at this point in time we are right now proposing at least one new special education teacher based

026upon those internal numbers and one new enl teacher so that's that's a given at this point um going to the literacy program I want to thank Dr bcare for his work with the uh literacy committee this year that's worked tremendously hard um they have made a selection of a program which we'll be bringing to the board's approv for board approval very shortly um this is because the Lucy ckins program is going out and as Mr Carlson said when you bring in a new program there's always initial startup costs in addition to the year cost for those type of programs over the over the duration of the contract uh then we also have some budgetary reductions uh Dr scandle mentioned the retirement incentive for the four units that had that and that's saving us a lot

027of money in next year's budget about 2.9 Million uh so that that helps a lot um we're using looking uh for Grants as much as possible to fund uh things that would have otherwise been in our budget now in the past we have not been very successful in finding grants a lot mostly because they're income based meaning wealth of the district based and we simply don't qualify for a lot of the grants that are out there however uh since covid a couple of things have happened one is that there are more grant opportunities um just like anybody who's been through through the um college scholarship process um we all know there's a lot of scholarship out there that just go untapped because nobody applied for them so that's what's happened since Co there are more

028grant opportunities and we're going out looking for them another thing that's happened too along with the more grants is a lot of the grants were always well they could could only be used to supplement services not supplant so we couldn't say well we're going to let's say it's a special uh special education type Grant we can't say well for the special ed teachers that we already have we're going to pay from the grant we weren't allowed to do that we could add new things and part of the grant process was we had to show we did not whatever we're using the grant for we did not have before we only have it because of the grant so some of those rules have relaxed too though so we're able to use uh sometimes grant money for

029things that we otherwise would have had in the budget so we're we're using that as much as possible and we'll continue looking for those in all of our areas of supplies materials equipment contracted services and including bosis when I say bosies I'm I'm not uh speaking about uh the the um kids that we send to bosis programs I'm talking about Services we get from bosis um we've told all our um uh administrators they have to they can't just get oh I need this and I need this and I need this they have to make the argument to us the cabinet uh to us about what they need and why they need it um so um you know as as a as building administrators we would probably all you know try to get as much as

030we can um but you know we we we simply don't have the money for as everything that everybody wants and and our administrators are are good with that and they understand that so the bosis just to give a sense to the board and the community that's looking at last year around this time we had had approximately 30 students in Bose's programs with great encouragement by our guidance department and several of our special Area Teachers um we we had 77 students make application to bosis this year uh we get capped like all the districts because bosis doesn't have enough space for all the students from every school that wants to go there so they took 54 of the 77 so the numbers for Bose going to and these are the Career and Technical education programs that

031exist at Bose's um so we're having more students that are taking advantage of that opportunity it's a split Day from the high school and the academy going to there uh we're very proud of those students the work they're doing um many of whom will probably go either on to careers in those areas or potentially to college and uh major in those areas that they're interested in also included in the budget is uh some capital projects so the capital projects are not just maintenance projects or repair projects on our buildings there's a whole process uh involved and it starts with uh including them in the budget uh as aign capital projects um upon um voter approval of the budget which also means voter approval of those projects then our architect can draw the plans and specifications

032for those whatever the projects are submit them to the uh New York State education department where they and I know I've said this before and I'm not trying to be funny when I say it this way they sit on a shelf for six to nine months waiting their turn in line to be approved uh because the state uh education department is always so short staffed it takes forever uh finally we get the approval back then we we can go out to bid and then do the work so while it's a convoluted lengthy pain in the neck process uh the the uh benefit to it is that it generates building aid for us and um our Aid ratio 66% means that's the the percentage of approved capital projects approved meaning approved by the voters approved by

033the state education department um how the percentage that the state reimburses us for the cost so 66 % is this is one of those uh quirks in the state aid formula that works to our benefit um state aid is basically generally speaking the wealthier the district the lower the aid and vice versa and same with Aid ratios the lower wealth School District gets the higher Aid ratios in this case I won't go into the whole history of it um but if anybody's interested let me know and I'll be glad to explain it um it goes back to 1966 why we get still 66% of the the 66 and the 1966 is coincidence but it's it goes dates back to then why we get such a high building Aid ratio so we want to keep taking

034advantage of it um as long as it's there I have no reason to believe it will change but you never know especially with what the governor proposed this year with Foundation Aid uh we just never know but anyway so this budget includes $3 million in capital projects um approximately 2 million of that um we anticipate for the um uh Renovations at Ward mobille High School to accommodate ninth grade um if we can do it for less than that great um and then we always have to put something else in there just in case there is money left over we could still do other work that we would need anyway and still get the aid and two uh areas that we always need something bathroom inovat especially student bathroom inov ations and asbest abatement um there

035was a a question from the community came up about the asbest abatement uh like why do we still have aestus in our buildings it will there will it will be a n quite a number of years before there is absolutely none um but it's encapsulated we have our asbest uh management plan our um facilities director um is an espece compliance officer as is Jack blown uh and if anybody's or suus management plan goes to the um State education department every year and if anybody's interested in seeing it you're more than welcome to um and capital projects are outside the cap or exclusions from the cap meaning um it does not take the place of other money in the budget the capital project so it's not like and that that was done intentionally by the state

036when they put this law in in place in the first place so that schools did not have to choose between between uh taking care of buildings and educational programs the flip side of that is this money can only be used for capital projects if we say $3 million for capital projects after the budget passes we can't say you know what instead of doing the capital projects let's add a bunch of you know whatever um we can't it can only be used for capital projects uh so to summarize the budget to budget increase is 2.27% and the tax levy increase is 2.84 4% and as I mentioned the uh tax levy is within the tax cap or maximum Levy uh allowable and therefore requires a simple majority of Voters in order for it to pass by

037the way that 2.27% budget increase out of 123 school districts on Long Island uh 104 of them have a higher tax increase percent than we do uh so if the budget does not pass uh it's the same options as years um the board can choose to put the same budget up for a revote revise the budget put that up for a second vote either way if there is a second vote it's on the third Tuesday of June uh or not even have a second vote and go straight to contingency going straight to contingency is the same as if there was a second no vote and uh and that that means no increase to the tax levy at all and that would require from this budget that we're putting forward uh reduction of about $4.8 million

038of stuff I say stuff because well there's a couple reasons one uh exactly what gets cut in a contingency budget first would require us to have a lot of discussions with our um administrative staff to what we would recommend to the board and then discussion with the board as to exactly what gets cut from a contingency budget uh that's one the other and it's not that I think we talked about this uh Dr Lee asked last time um why can't we say what we're going to cut now well we have to be careful with that kind of thing because we as school officials can't advocate for passing the budget we can't say your kids will be better off if the budget passes we can't say such a thing um it's sometimes seems kind of silly

039you know we spend all this time working to put the budget together and we can't even say this is a great budget you should vote for it I did not say that I said we can't say that um uh but anyway so because that's a subjective statement right so we can't say such a thing I can we can only say factual I could say if the budget does not pass we have to cut $4.8 million from it that's a fact what gets cut I don't know yet and it's not that when I say I don't know or I can't say it's not because it's secret and I don't want to tell anyone it's because we don't know and we also have to be careful that we don't make it sound like a threat like you

040know if the budget doesn't pass can in the garden's going to be gone or sports are going to be gone it would some would view that as a like a threatening kind of thing so we can't say those kind of things we can only say it would require $4.8 million in budget reductions and then there would be a lot of discussion about that now also uh somebody might say well wait a second didn't our budget just fail a couple of years ago and I don't remember any cuts to the educational programs and you'll be right in making that statement uh but there's there's a reason for that and that was because at the time we had $6.6 million in capital projects in the budget so when the budget failed so right off the bat that

041goes to zero because you can't do capital projects on a contingency budget but that meant that all of that money was there so we didn't have to cut programs and all of that to meet the contingency budget rules but we don't have $6.6 million in capital anymore since that happened and that line went to zero we've been building it back up but it's nowhere near that we have fact $1.4 million in the current Year's budget so we don't have that to fall back on and that's one thing we had discussed three years ago when that uh at that budget time and we said if the budget fails your kids won't see an impact immediately now it doesn't mean that nobody lost anything in fact that 6.6 million in capital if we had that each of

042the past three years that would have been almost $20 million worth of construction projects that we could have done uh things things like the kpas and the parking uh parking lot Paving sidewalks uh curbing uh that need to be repaired uh the roof leaks we have some of those kind of things we could have been able to do those um but we couldn't so um those those are the options if a uh the budget doesn't pass the first time and then of course the vote itself is Tuesday May 21st from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. all the Voting is at Ward mobile High School in the gymnasium uh that works out really well as you know we used to have the voting in the elementary schools and from a uh security standpoint this is much

043better not just security um there not everybody voted for a school budget in the same building that they would vote for a general election so there was every year there was confusion people didn't know where they're supposed to vote so now it doesn't matter where you as long as you live in Three Village no matter where you live in Three Village you vote at the high school works much better and this year for the first time ever early voting uh is available too and we've already had what over a hundred people uh send in their early votes I think we have about 40 early votes but we already received about over 100 ballots which is oh okay higher than normal so um if anybody's interested in the early voting uh you can contact either uh

044Miss gano's uh office or on our website is information how to go about that so that's all I have unless of course there are any question questions Dr Pon okay um so just to some explanatory stuff here so the 2% cap is a is a hard cap for salaries it's not a hard cap for the the the budget as a whole but the the salary increases all have to fit within that 2% no uh no the the there is no um uh separation of well this part of the budget is subject to that and the rest of the budget is not it's budget overall and tax levy overall so two one of the um one of the variables in determining what the tax cap is can be 2% and in this year in fact is

0452% but there are other variables as well so for instance if if the uh retirement system costs are increasing above a certain amount then there's some relief in the tax cap because of that and we have that in places here so because of the when I talked about the retirement system cost increases before that that actually increases the cap sum uh the reduction in building Aid that we have that I talked about also that also has an impact on the tax cap so that those things combined as well as there's a another um another piece that's called tax based growth factor uh can also increase the tax cap and when you add all of those things together that's in our case why it's 2.84% but it's not that well salaries are subject to this percent

046increase so so I I vaguely understand that but but let's say nothing changed uh in all these other things right outside of the sort of running costs then you would be pretty close to 2% is that right probably okay so so the salaries ba basically the salaries are stuck pretty close to it the money that can actually go to salary is stuck pretty close to 2% to for an increase each year is that correct well yeah well but it's 2% of the overall tax levy which is not the same as 2% of the salaries so not just that 2% of everything yes no not just the salaries yes so we might have I I maybe a100 million in salaries but $175 million in a um tax levy so 2% on the one is more than

0472% on the other so but if your point is we should try to keep salary increases more in line with the revenue increases meaning state aid and if state aid is zero then the tax levy increase I agree with your point I think that's the point you're making well I'm actually it's a related point so so let's let's just for humor humoring me let's say that the amount of actual money available each year was about 2% right give or take to pay covered uh salary increases and and the average increase for salaries let's say that was 3.5% which is somewhere close to what was right how did we pay for that since 2012 how did we pay for that mismatch for all those years well uh as I said the the 2% on the tax

048levy I would have to go through and see since 2012 what our average tax levy increase was but the the percent increase on the tax levy as I said is on a bigger number than the 3 and a half% or whatever percent on the salaries so so Ju Just like when we say if there's um let's say the budget tax levy were both going up make up a number $5 million well there would if they went up the same dollar amount there would be different percent increases because the budget overall is a bigger dollar amount than the tax levy is so even if it's the same dollar amount of an increase they're different percent increases so similar but kind of in maybe in the opposite direction on when we're comparing tax levy percent increase to

049salary percent increase because the the overall salaries the dollar amount is less than the tax levy dollar amount so so so some of if and to to just use your numbers the three and a half% on salaries um maybe comes out to maybe maybe oh I'm sorry I may say it the other way around maybe 2% increase on the tax levy would pay for I don't know maybe 3 and a qu% of salaries I don't know I just made that up but it could be something like that because this dollar amount of salaries is less than the dollar amount of the tax levy uh but since then too 2012 well a couple of things have happened um now we've had decline in enrollment we've had some change in Staffing not a whole lot of decrease

050in Staffing somewhat but there's different Services we have to provide too now that we we didn't have to in the past are uh enl or English as a new language Services have changed dramatically in the last uh 10 years as as in in more recent years um even the term Scythe students with interrupted formal education we never even heard that term before and now we actually have some students with that so we have we always have to figure out well how are we going to pay for that and and as you went back to 2012 with the tax cap it it it it it has to be and this is this is one thing I I Kevin will say I say all the time if we want to add this something else has to come

051out to make room for it so to answer go back to your original question how did we pay for that over the years basically it's by other things going out to make room for something new to go in plus the state the amount of money that the state was going up was more than 2% the state on average was contributing a bigger increase than 2% per year sure and then we we have had uh state aid increases over the years yeah this year we're not getting one but we have had increases though okay so so given that the state's decision that is probably going to be that we're not going to get those whatever that was and that three let's say it's 3% I don't remember what I don't think we either of us know

052what it is exactly on average so given that we're losing that state increase given that we've got a declining the rate of decline of enrollment is going to be slower going forward given that we will have some mandates coming up is that going to make it harder to close the budget each year going for uh yeah well sure um then we have to well one thing we know is coming it's probably not going to happen next year we know it's coming in the next several years is we're going to see a lot of retirements especially teacher retirements is not I'm not picking on teachers I don't mean it that way uh but we have more teachers than anything else so um there like a almost like a like a 30-year career cycle so the district

053came into existence in the mid1 1960s 1966 lot of hiring done throughout from then through that the remainder of the 1960s 30 years later a lot of those people started retiring so but then they got placed so Dr scandin you started hearing what year as a teacher 96 and you were one of how many new teachers 75 75 and that wasn't just a onetime crazy year it was that year and then 97 there would have been a similar number 98 99 2000 so when we get to 30 years later a not doesn't mean on the dot 30 years people retire but that's when people start retiring so we're going we're going to see um it doesn't help us it wouldn't help us next year wouldn't help us the year after if this not going to

054take place for another three or four or five years but we are going to see a lot of teacher retirements and even when we replace them we save a lot of money on replace even replacing a senior teacher with a junior teacher we save a lot of money so there's the the loss of experience the whole brain drain all of that and and I I get all of that um but as the person whose you know job is to to worry about the money um that's something I would look forward to as far as the it will uh create tremendous Financial opportunities for the district to whether that be to add programs um or to Simply fund more reserves put in start putting money in capital reserves those kind of things a lot of opportunities

055for the or maybe not even increase the tax levy as much all of those are the opportunities that will be coming um but back to your point though Dr McKinnon um we still need to get to that and um so it's it's it's not going to be easy for the next couple of years and Jeff the first blush it looks like for the next five years just first eligibility alone which we know is not a predictor is about 131 people so I know you worry about the money I worry about the bodies that's a lot of people and that doesn't include the people who have already passed eligibility so that number could be significantly higher depending right so okay can I you yeah so let's say we try to put together this 5year plan so

056we're going to need like Trends right we're going to need in real dollar MK the the increases in the state that we got up till now the the previous ones I I understand what you're attempting to do but there's there's factors that like this year we it's a Gamble and unfortunately some of the districts gambled wrongly know 35 of the districts on Long Island didn't get an increase like we we did so trying to I would not put any faith personally in any increase at all in the near future with the governor's budget proposal no no I'm assuming that yeah so I think we need to be very cautious and because we were that cautious when we came to the board with this initially that we're assuming we're going to get our state aid back

057which we had a pretty strong inclination of that from the lobbying we did the advocacy that came from the community um we knew that was going to be reestablished there was no guarantee of an increase and gratefully we did not count on that and we didn't budget for that and therefore that's why we're not in a position as some districts are right now because they were not only spending Co money that didn't exist anymore they were planning on those increases coming so I think we need to be agree exactly 5year plan not plan for those type of increases if they come no I I understand I I and I applaud you for for not was not a degree of Clairvoyance and all sincerity we just knew that that and the idea of offering the incentive

058while some people say oh why are we offering incentive in this particular situation that incentive saved us the ability that $2.9 million we saved actually saved us the long run of not feeling to the point where cutting 15 people by attrition is pretty good as opposed to last year when we had to cut 30 people because just to get to the budget so so so my point is more so we understand the history of how we funded things under the tax cap I agree with you at a at best case scenario we should plan for a 0% increase from the state right going forward I just it would be good for the board to understand the trends and how we covered these mismatches in apparent mismatches in revenue and costs okay so if we can

059get that if we can get it converted to real dollars the various costs how they changed over time I plotted out like the the the um enrollment right I was actually surprised I agree with you guys that the enrollment is leveling off right y right now and which is going to cause US problems right unless of course we want we wind up with an increase in enrollment which an increase enrollment while me I think oh it's wonderful increase enrollment comes with costs no no that's that's what I'm concerned about yes so I mean I know I know my family I have a niece that moved into the community she has two children she's pregnant with a third so my family's doing its part I don't know what the rest of you doing but then it's

060time to get moving a little bit if you want that those numbers to go up um and we have to be cautious of what some things that are going on in the community this whole Northville piece has a lot of concerns for a lot of families in our community a lot of residents in the community what that could turn into a 150 residents uh residencies coming in um could have an impact on us um it certainly that that area is zoned for NASA and the considerations of potentially closing the school may go out the window if 150 more kids minimally are coming from that area not sure if that's going to happen could be several years before that does but we need to be prepared for whatever that outcome is I I think just from

061the board's perspective we need to understand how everything got paid for over a long period of year I mean I've only been here a year Karen's only been here a year we need to understand how these Trends developed and we need we all talk about the 5year plan it's pretty clear the board's going to have to be the one that makes the fiveyear plan and well I I disagree with that I gave you a 5year plan in your board packet two months ago and we still haven't had a discussion about it yet about what we should be looking at as we go forward so I gave you a Five-Year Plan you you have not yet to discuss that at any of the meetings yet so if you wish to discuss it I would love to

062have the opportunity to discuss that but it has not been addressed At All by anyone okay so don't I didn't mean it in that sense I meant in the sense that we need to sit down and understand the numbers ourselves we can't rely on the back to do that that's just way beyond their ability the an investment of time it's it's us that have to do that but I understand what you're saying as well but that that was not a financial plan that was more a goal plan is that fair to say well was goals associated with unfunded mandates that have been coming our way which will have Financial applications for us as we move forward because you as as we said 2027 our transportation company districts that have their own buses have to only

063purchase electric buses so we're going to see increased costs probably in our contracts with those with those with that company in addition to that by 2030 you have the universal pre mandate which we'll have L and I think Karen may want a job in on that one but and then by 2035 you're going to have threey olds on that one too yes but these these are all the things that we need to to understand how it's getting funded over time right not just that we may have to do this or we'd like to do that but how are we actually going to pay for it over time agreed right I mean just to jump on that um I agree with you that we need to understand what the financial impact is but we also need

064to understand that that's going to be generalizations because we're not going to know exactly what these numbers are going to be we're not going to know how much benefits go up every year or how much the retirement plans change or you know uh exactly how many teachers we might need for enl or special education you know three years from now so the information that Dr scanland gave us which we absolutely do need to discuss was great um conceptually so so we could see what we want to do in the next five years and we could put generalization numbers to that you're never going to get down to the Dollar on what our budget's going to look like but we can have an idea of what we want to do and and what collectively as a

065board and cabinet want this the direction of the district to go to and to see roughly how much money we're going to need um you know I don't want to people to think that we're going to know exactly well next year we want to do this so we need $213,000 you know we're not going to know that um we'll just know generally you know and a lot of the things with the mandates and everything coming up um seeing exactly the the wording of those mandates so we can make sure we're doing what we can and maybe not exceeding what we you know deciding if we want to exceed or not exceed what that mandate is you know we need to see real things when that comes out absolutely okay so just on that issue the

066the the idea here is of arabas right of we obviously we can't plan to the dollar we need to see worst case best case scenarios and how we going to deal with that range of potential out potential events going forward and just for 5 years five years is not that far ahead right but again remember as Jeff has pointed out multiple times the the tax cap is year-to year so we that that you're really going to be guessing a lot of that I I understand which is why we need to have a careful look at all the historical Trends here okay got it okay thank you anyone else Dr Lee did you have something this is not long enough yet um so dollarwise I think we're pretty limited by the cap and the cap is

067does not reflect inflation in the last two years we have super high inflation much higher than the cap so that's why I kind of um suspicious on this dollarwise plan but really it's within this 2% cap what we can do with our program whenever we have high inflation I'm sure something is being sacrificed that's what I think the board can do year by year it's really based on yearly decision um okay that sounds like a statement now my questions this actually from community members I think overall our um increase um most of items are within the 2% and I'm sure people like me read this line by line and I guess someone pick up two lines that increase a um shows a large increase and they conclude that the instructional salary increased by roughly 1

068million I didn't get a chance to talk to the person who has question but I maybe I can just ask right now so that do um Mr Carson can address one is um in this uh page three of that whole budget there's a secondary instruction salary that increased from 1.9 million to 2.6 million so if you can address I know actually overall we have very little increase I do think there might be something causing this or if you want to give an explanation about this it's a 33% change uh yeah I mean I I would have to look that up I I I don't know off the top of my head what's what's what's causing that but what what in some of these though um like right now we we have a lot of retirements

069and we're going to have a lot of new people and then there will be people shuffling around um so we make our best guess as to where the money is going to need to be next year now as it turns out when we get to a year from now it might have been well we were projecting this here but as it turns out that money was needed here instead so sometimes like it might look at like like for instance you see well that L well why is that line going up so much well you go a few lines down and there's a decrease of $33,000 overall it's very change exactly right and we try our best to that's sometimes the problem the more budget codes you have the harder it is you you you have

070those kind of well why is that one going up so much well because at the time we put the budget together we weren't sure who is going to be moving who you know because we try to track the salary to where the person goes if somebody gets transferred to a different building or sometimes you know we know um the retirement is Center so we know who's retiring but we don't always know um well what's the new salary going to be we don't know that yet um till the person's hired um sometimes the salary is lower than we you know budgeted for sometimes it's higher than what we budgeted for so that that's one I would I would have to look that line up and see why why that yeah just to give you a sense

07155% of our teaching staff is at 26 years experience in MA plus 60 credits so that is top of this almost top of the scale doctorates top of the scale we only have about eight teachers in the entire system that have doctorates so that that as the newer people come on at less salaries it's going to start to balance out but that that's a very expensive piece to that as we're looking at this so the other factors too as teachers get hired they take courses and every 15 credits Dr D bruski can explain there's incremental increases to the salary so we don't know how many people are taking those and they they only disclose it a couple of times a year when they provide that information to us for the salary increases so that that

072sometimes can offset some of these numbers as you're looking at it then there's another factor that happens when you hire newer teachers I'm not going to say younger I'm just going to say newer teachers they have this tendency to get married and have families and they go out on leaves so just to give you one one Department one of our larger departments in the district next year we know right now we have 15 leaves going to occur because of pregnancies so and now there's a paternity uh uh piece too so we can also have some our our teachers that will go out if their spouse is is having a baby they have paternity time that increases overall costs as well so substitutes have to be called in and those salary those things go up so

073as Jeff said hard to pinpoint based upon that one code we'll certainly get the information for you but those are just some factors right now that we we have to prepare for yeah of course okay thank you go for it can you put your microphone on sorry there's a 3.3 million increase in health insurance and retirement is it possible that that ever blows up like is that possible that that would dramatically increase in the future years sure it's possible uh there was a year I mean everything's possible but is it well yeah okay so yeah not just possible but well so um about I forget what year it was maybe 13ish um our health insurance went up by 15% um or maybe it was 2012 uh whatever uh it went up by 15% that was

074that that hurt a lot we had to actually uh that was one oh it must have been 2012 or 13 because it was one of the years where where that contributed to a number of the positions that we had to reduce um we had cut over a 100 teacher positions over a couple of years and that was one of the factors in that there was the Gap elimination adjustment which is the state's fancy term for we're taking Nate away from you um we had that and that but that was one of the things health insurance in one year went up 15% and sure it can happen absolutely yes and has happened yeah and we have any ability to hedge against that is there well we're part of a self we don't belong to the um

075New York State health insurance plan or the Empire plan nce ship um we're part of a self-insured Consortium so if you were to look at what most schools on Long Island are part of nich um if you would or the Empire plane it's you terms use interchangeably if you look at their increases over the last couple of years it's tremendous I mean 12 14 15% in each of the last couple of years um so we haven't had to deal with that we're part of a uh as I said part of a self-insured uh Consortium with a couple of other school districts so what that does for us is it enables us with it's not just that we set the rates of course we have to we still have to pay for the the benefits uh

076that are provided um but were able to to manage the benefits um in this case the the uh the trustees of the health insurance plan are uh well there's six of us there's I'm appointed as the Three Village management rep um there's a three village employee rep who is Sheila mcfaden who is a a previous uh tvta president who R who's retired um and then the other districts that are involved Smithtown and South Country they each have a management rep and an employee rep and we're the ones who decide on the benefits the um and it's administered by United Healthcare but on the benefits provided and what the rates will be so what's nice about this is we can put and we've done this many times over the last U well in the years that

077I've been there and and I'm sure they did it before I was there too but um we'll put programs into place that may save money and if they truly save money well then we continue it if they don't save money we can change it a a program like Empire can't make changes like that I mean they can make changes but I mean it takes a long time for them to make changes it's a Statewide plan now here's one a Mis A misconception I had uh when I before I started work here and I heard about this plan and I thought how could a plan that has its costs concentrated in the most expensive area of the state possibly compete with a plan with the course or um throughout the state right you would think well

078the upstate districts were the cost or I mean you could probably walk in you know whatever UDA walk into a doctor's office and pay a $20 not even a co-pay just the doctor's office doctor's uh office visit pay and um how could we possibly compete with that well so in trying to figure that out the one one year this is a number of years ago I did this I I took every school district that participates in the Empire plan and outside uh now New York City is by itself anyway so not cting them outside of Long Island uh Westchester Rockland dut Duchess and putam and the Albany region there was there was one school district and the entire state that belonged to Empire all the other districts all of them Upstate they all belong to

079self-insured consortiums because it's much cheaper for them because they were paying hot it doesn't matter whether you're in Rome New York or you're on Long Island if you're an Empire you pay the same rate uh the employer pays the same rate so they Upstate they said this is crazy for us because when now we're paying such high cost because of Long Island and and and uh Westchester and Rockland so they formed their own self-insured consortiums but what that did is it kind of concentrated at least school district-wise all the cost of Empire on Long Island and down state so so it's not that their costs are spread throughout the state they are concentrated too so that at least made a little more sense to me as to how we could compete with them um and

080in fact our rates are well our rates used to be actually significant highly higher than them but since we started making a lot of those changes uh cost savings measures um our rates are are significantly lower now than Empires and and no no um no reduction in benefits either so it works to our employees um in their coverage and it works to the district as well as Smithtown and South Country School Districts um and and the cost would pay significantly less than if we had Empire um and it's a lot of the cost sa it's not cutting benefits it's putting cost savings measures into place and I'll give you a couple of examples um Diabetic Care um there's no co-pay because what they found not just us I when I say what they found it's

081it's United Healthcare which is you know what largest healthcare provider in the country uh and they administer our plan they administer uh Empire's plan they found that um a lot lot of um people who have diabetes when they have to pay co-pays on their medication they they don't they just don't do it so a lot of people that have diabetes don't take their medications and that winds up costing a lot more in the long run so we don't charge a co-pay for those so we have much better um outcomes for those type of patients we have um programs um it's United Healthcare has a program it's called a healthy back program if you have back issues they do Outreach and try to get people in and take care of things before they become bigger problems

082so um it's those kind of things that are in place to help that have really helped a lot to keep our costs down and we continue to do that okay so just to be be clear you're actually micromanaging the health insurance is that a Fair Way micromanaging is too strong too I say that's too strong I'm I'm to them what you are to the district the pain in the neck well yeah oh yeah I would say probably I wouldn't I wouldn't say that to you amongst other areas I I say neck either I I I think I would say I I think anybody that's been on the it's called SSP it's the suffix schools employees health plan anybody that's been to any of the uh trustee meetings over the last 17 years would would refer

083to me as a being a pain in the neck I would good to say so so okay I have one other last question the asbest I know this gets people very anxious I've walked around on asbest tiles for the last 30 years is the asbest mainly in the tiles or is it some no we have some uh actually Jack probably could talk better about this uh or or Jason uh than I could um we have some asees floor tiles so if you're in a school if like these tiles down here 12 in x 12 in those are vinyl tiles anywhere you see the 12in tiles those are vinyl if you see the 9in tiles those are asbest tiles pain asbest small percent right it's it's called acbm asbestos containing building materials now it's actually not

084Frable ASB bestus that's in there that's the point I was going to try and make this that kind of asbest is perfectly safe no it is however it's only when you remove it and and not only is it safe those tiles are great these kind of tiles they wear out 5 to seven years we have to replace them the asbestos floor tiles which in they if they're in our buildings they're original to the buildings we stripping wax and buff them they look brand new they're terrific um and that's why ESP bestus was such a uh Wonder material for so many so many years um but it's not variable asbestos um and um we do have some probably some of the pipe insulation maybe most of our buildings have a heating pipe that runs around the

085perimeter of the building and feeds all the the radiators that are located on the outside wall that piping around the building does contain Frable asbest both linear and in joints but it's protected it's it's in a place where it doesn't get damaged if that pipe was in this room it would have the potential of damage we would have that Abad immediately and the good part about three village all our boiler rooms are clear of asbest that was finished up around 1994 1995 we one of the few schools that our boiler rooms are no I think it's just important for the parents to hear that these are not this is not a big issue it's something that every building deals with is floortile for instance even though it's not Frable so and if it were in

086your home probably most of us would just if you wanted to get rid of it scrape it up and throw it away uh we can't do that here it's still an as best as a baitman project it costs a lot of money and if it's one classroom or two classrooms uh we we could do that over a break an extended break whether it be you know in uh winter or the winter recess or uh spring recess we could do over a break like that um any of if it's a little bit bigger of a project we have to do it over the summer because we know nobody wants to see their kids getting even though there will be no prohibition against it nobody wants to drop their kids off or see their kids going to

087a school building where in a different part of the building you have Hazmat uh workers and hazmat suits going in and out nobody wants to see that and we get that even though it would be allowed we would we we don't do that so and that's part of the reason well and and the cost why it takes so long uh and it will be some more years before there is absolutely no more es uh esus containing building materials anywhere in our district uh but as I mentioned we do have the our um esus management plan that's uh reviewed and approved by the state education department and if anybody's interested in seeing that more than welcome okay thank you we're not going to give you a break though because we're going to stay with you for

088the Bose space rental please Bose space rental so so uh bosies had contacted us uh inquiring about if we had any um classroom space available for them so uh Dr scandin and I met with um couple of well what I want to say when when when Bose's comes they don't bring a person or two it's a whole Entourage so um so we met with their whole Entourage and um so we looked at a couple of buildings um we do have an area at um NASA where there would be five classrooms that potentially um we could we could maybe uh rent to them um so we showed them that th those rooms um they seem interested however uh then uh bosei said well the the rate we pay for rentals classroom rentals is $487 per square

089foot that's the annual cost um and I said well but if it does include like the hallways bad oh no no no no and and our what we're permitted to pay I don't know if I shouldn't say he didn't say they're permitted to pay I I got the impression that that's what they're allowed to pay I'm not going to sweare to that but he said that's what we pay 1487 per square foot so for those five rooms it comes out to a little under $60,000 a year so um now okay sure money coming in is better than no money coming in um however this is really what we wanted to talk to the board about I'm not so sure that little amount of money is worth it for to have um people from another District

090attending schools within our within our schools so now that doesn't mean if and when a bill if if is big if and I'm not saying we're closing a school that's you know that's one of the things that you know as as the board has said to us we we you know need to be prepared to at least consider that and look at the ramifications of over the next several years um that doesn't mean that that couldn't happen again and we have done that before with bosis in fact this building used to be rented to bosis for a long it was about I think it was about 22 years this building uh except of the back hallway uh was rented to bosis um and then they moved out in 2008 we move we Consolidated our Administration

091and moved in here in 2009 before that we had some administration at the Nichols Road building we had this back hallway here our maintenance and operations was at satet school if anybody remembers what those buildings look like between satet school and the Emma Clark Library it looked like something out of the TV show Green Acres um uh we had Transportation was in um the portable classroom outside NASA uh we consolidate here um so we have done that before with bosies um so really that's we just wanted to bring that to you and and see what you thought thoughts anybody yeah um the what does that include do we still have to pay for custodial staff the lights putting up probably a wall or something separating the two so we would have to pay for construction

092security so basically we would probably end up paying more than what they were giving us because just because it's we wouldn't have to we wouldn't have to add a custodian because of them but we wouldn't be able to reduce a codium because we're not using those room now it's only five rooms so we probably even if we just said we're not using those five rooms anymore let's say we wouldn't reduce our custodial staff because we're using five less rooms so it's not an additional CA to us but we are still maintaining those areas they're not paying for any of the right we're and then they wouldn't pay for any construction costs because obviously we would have to separate those two areas that would be us school that would be us and did they discuss what

093type of program they wanted to put in there not yet we assume it's a special education program no one one thing we did say to them was um that that would be up to us whether we felt whatever kids they wanted to put there we felt would be a good fit for the whatever building it would be age appropriate of course right okay thank you very much wait wait before you move on we got to we have to know whether whether or not that's something you're consensus from the board we have a consensus from the board on whether we're interested in that at this point I have no interest in that and I thought in the beginning when we were discussing this we were talking about exactly 100,000 each classroom so we went from 500,000

094to 60,000 so they provided they provided their rate what they're going to pay us what we were saying was this is what we would charge them they then provided their rate of what they they were willing to pay us so I would say my vote is no my vote is no also is there any room for negotiation not with bosies I I I don't think we should vote on it now we should table it and actually get the actual numbers like how much we think we're going to spend to maintain those rooms but I agree it doesn't sound like a very good deal I don't know what Karen thinks what do you think now I think for five classrooms I don't know if it's worth the cost for what it's going to cost us to

095do and and we still need to maintain it so I don't find it that being very very beneficial to us if we wanted to talk about a whole school that's a different story five classrooms that's still attached to our school we're not sure what programs are going to be put there I I I don't see that that's beneficial so they give an example a district in the West in our Cashman area for easn S bosis is renting to Bose's right now um they're renting for a dollar a year for three years because they're renovating the entire building and then in the in the fourth year the rate for the entire building that bosis is paying is $500,000 so do we want to make a motion to table or do we want to call a vote

096are you motioning to table okay I'll make make a motion okay do we have a second second to table no want to okay I move we vote no okay we we moved call a vote all in favor the call the vote no in favor of the Bose's proposal oh no any no any opposed any exensions okay okay so no to bosis sorry sorry bosies okay at this time we're going to ask Dr scanland to give us an update on our transition teams I will try to be very brief considering the timeing what we are right now and what we still have to cover this evening but I I do we presented um information from all of our transition teams and I have to thank the administrators and teachers uh that participated in these transition teams

097for the past two months to gather this information I'm just going to summarize a little bit of the information for the good of the public um the board has a much more extensive report and we're not done yet so we still have the meetings are still going on we'll have another report next month as we move forward with any further developments so in terms of Athletics sixth graders moving up to the middle school will not have any impact on the modified Sports programs at the junior highs ninth graders moving up to the high school will not change our current Varity un Varity High School sports programs so um there will not be the need for busing as many of the the junior high school students over to the high school uh based on the fact

098of how many uh the ninth graders will be participating in the JV Sports however there may be some eighth graders that might be participating based upon ability levels for the data and state reporting team uh we have areas that were we're looking at including uh data transitions in uh dashboard and reports uh data integration and third party systems federal reporting Infinite Campus online registration and state reporting uh there there's going to be some changes for Infinite Campus we we're discussing what the sixth grade report card may look like there are going to be training needs for this for the sixth grade teachers Sixth and Ninth Grade programs will also have uh of study will have to be finalized and then we have to inform the state at least one year in advance of any of

099the changes in school names uh for the elementary transition teams they've accomplished a lot they plan the fifth and sixth grade moving up Ceremonies for next year also the fifth and sixth grade students have parallel experiences so yearbook shirts events trips discuss with the PTA all the fifth grade and sixth grade activities plan for building room usage for sixth grade exiting the schools discuss departmentalization for fifth grade made preparations for room usage for uh for the upk for 2030 and discuss fifth grade guidance and fifth grade report cards facilities and Transportation uh the facilities team uh worked on determining what building modification will be needed to accommodate the nth grade of the high school transportation team worked on what has begun in analyzing the various routing uh configurations with the changes for the high school

100uh team that met and many of these teams just so everyone knows met jointly on some of their topics so they were combined the high school team with the academic team the with the middle school team and so on so high school looked at some electors for the nth grade So within uh within the math department computer science within social studies psychology social work uh social um sociology human rights and genocide uh within art crafts 1 and two media 1 and two drawing and painting um and changing of recommendations for teachers portfolios there in English public speaking news literacy science and fiction and graphic novels uh we're also looking at some facts uh needs for students with special needs that would move to the high school uh also Art of Animation was considered and what

101to do with health there was some open discussion about grades intermingling and uh there was a call for blueprint architectural blueprint which we know we cannot do until the board and the taxpayers approve the spending of that money for uh Capital Improvements Middle School looked at the bell schedule uh there's a major area of consideration for an advisory period uh for the sixth grade coming in also discussing uh whether or not to have honors levels teaming in for the sixth grade teachers uh the program of study will be reviewed certification extensions and things of that nature for teachers particularly in languages and Sciences uh would discussed and also grading uh system for the sixth grade moving from its current grading system to the middle school grading system for social emotional learning uh committee which was

102broken up into three subcategories the committee looked at planning for curricular updates coordinating with other committees and targeted support to bring professional development to the areas Elementary guidance was also part of the larger discussion with the committee and a multi-tiered system of supports with the more that permanently being established for guidance current struct the guidance staff was looked at from K through 12 potential of three new guidance councils at award Mel specifically targeted for the n9th grade class um so that they would help with the transition for that bubble year as they're coming through fifth grade guidance was also discussed for the 2425 school year and we certainly see the need for that with some of the mental health issues that the teams are experiencing there and also some of the data reporting that's going

103on k35 Elementary guidance position was discussed how how many and when we should we get adding some of those positions uh they contacted guidance Personnel at 12 different school districts including elementary middle school and high schools and discussed adding transitioning grade uh transitions in the grades some of the outcomes a timetable was required to create both specific orientation and transition programs to new uh grade configurations for the high school adequate meeting the incoming adequately meeting the nth graders needs during this very important time frame for the junior high schools a structure for the sixth grade program was discussed again at this level and for the elementary schools that that's again k 5 guidance curriculum what program will look like for that some of the bubble challenges were discussed within special education a big area concerned

104with speech therapy and the pulls for uh classes for sixth grade if we conf figure it appropriately we would avoid what we experience right now it's sixth graders being pulled out of core classes in order to get their um uh accommodations because we'd have the space we might be able to uh avoid some of that moving forward opportunities were also going to be allotted for sixth grade uh to to Forfeit speech if is part of the schedule um and then they looked at music and or projected numbers for six 7th grade and n9th and 10th graders in the transition years there was also a need addressed for multisensory reading program instruction at that level um enl program for classified students also has to be considered and assessment conver conversations about what that would look like

105for those different grade levels potential staffing needs were addressed um and they're looking at those and then some questions arised that they're going to combine with committees including what the Middle School model will look like uh the speech model for sixth grade the 151 uh classes in sixth grade and a timeline for alternatively assessing students pending self-contained classes within the Staffing area they did a lot of work as well they looked at the impact of schedule rotations and cycles of Staffing transition of sixth grade course programs responsibility to teachers moving from the elementary school to the Middle School Lang waral languages and curriculum needs uh curriculum development impact on Staffing staff determination based on program design structure of the sixth grade schedule transition support and philosophical alignment committee communication and house planning whether we're going

106to have a house plan in those levels special education student and support services uh elective courses for 9th grade the contracts and Staffing impact that we have to make consider and support for staff transition and Mission so again I thank all the administrators and uh teachers that participated in these teams that work is not done they'll continue to work throughout the rest of this month and into June it was incredibly helpful and and I think parents will also find it really helpful do you feel like at this point in um the exploration are you where you want it to be yes okay I think we're exactly where we want to be there are still a lot of questions which is good um there's also some questions that are coming from the teams that someone has

107to make a decision and sometimes that means that the cabinet or myself just says no we're not doing that we're going to do this and we have to fall in we we're we're uh Cog cognitively aware of the issue with uh the uh a lot of staff that the veteran staff that have been in schools for a long period of time um and there's some uh hope and and looking forward to the transition and there's also some fear and interpretation about look go which is natural in any type of change but I think I'm very proud of all the work that these teams have conducted and I think they're doing a tremendous job looking at these things they're asking a lot of deep questions um and the administrators that are chairing those committies I thank

108all of them in particular because there's a lot of work on top of their really regular daily responsibilities to consider some of these things so we're having a transition team chair meeting coming up very shortly where we're all going to get together and start to give some uh pieces to this that they can come back to the Committees and say all right this is what the decision is at this level questions or thoughts yeah I just wanted to say thank you to the administration team and all of the staff and and uh support people that worked on these transition um teams the information that we received was extensive and very impressive I immediately texted um emailed Kevin and said it it was unbelievable the amount of information and um the progress that was done in

109such relatively short period of time and the out-of-the-box thinking of some of these um issues that might we might be facing and how to solve these issues so I I think very impressive and and I'm thrilled that it's going this way um and I think once we get to that this point maybe I guess you said the end of June probably maybe if we can have um more of a meeting dedicated to this so we can let the parents know exactly you know what's going on and some of these great things that the administration and staff H has come up with I think that would be great um but it was very impressive and I'm thankful to everybody that was on those transition meetings excellent thank you all right so at this point in time

110do I have a motion to move our public comment period forward to this point in the meeting second all in favor okay so we will move to our public comment period we do have one Dr Barbara Rosati please come to the microphone good evening Barbara rosadi here I want to first of all reclaim uh the title of pain in the neck of the district here I think I deserve it I I deserve it totally um so so I have a I just have a question um I've been through a lot of budget presentations um uh well throughout the last five years and um I want to raise the issue of the discuss the issue of the costs of uh changing the start time so it's always been depicted as a costly measure uh first of

111all uh this only refers to the transport presumptive Transportation costs that are after all between 0.2 and 0.3% of the budget so we spoke about Savings of about two 1 2% probably more so I just wanted to put things into perspective and also highlight the fact that um when we speak about costs of uh the change in the stime we need to take into account the huge benefits okay and those translate not only in monetary savings but also in in better quality of life better more efficient um education system more efficient uh Sports etc etc so let's keep in this in mind I hear a lot I'm not saying it to you because I think in this room even the walls now know the deal uh but I hear a lot in the community con

112a lot of concern about the costs the transportation costs that may or may not be there I hope they're not there I hope they're smaller than we think uh but in the worst case scenario they are just let's remember that they are 0.2 0.3% of the whole budget and when I hear about um uh Mr Carlson saying about opportunities for the future I think it's important here to to make a point that um changing the start time is not only about uh cost discussing the cost it's also about priorities okay and it's mainly priorities so we need to make to acknowledge that the importance of this especially after hearing all the impressive work that's been doing uh by the transition uh committee to uh accommodate changes in great configuration it's very important to make sure

113that the kids when they move a building they actually we don't pile up problems for them so I just want ask to keep this in mind I didn't hear the s word here tonight so I'm just going to mention start time again and thank you very much for your patience in buing me thanks thank you Dr scanland so I just want to remind us that we still have the transportation consultant that's doing their analysis and we're hopeful that they will have their determination about what that would look like in presentation by the June 12th meeting hopefully is that a hard dat have they committed that that's the last meeting for this this yeah that's what we're trying to push them can we follow up on and try to get a hard di out of them

114absolutely you okay thank you so we're going to move on now to seven items for board discussion we have just one uh the New York State School boards Association Convention is coming up uh we don't have to go all the way to Syracuse this time it's going to be in the city um it is October 20th to the 22nd and um I guess I would like to open quickly those who've been there what what was a positive experience for you what did you get out of it and I will just say my first one was uh the last morning went to in Syracuse and as a new board member for me I found it incredibly educational and thought-provoking and really really purposeful however we do have to balance that against um you know the financial

115needs of this but I would like what what did you get out of it been Jeff any what you what Sher what were your experience I always feel that when you get something out of a conference that you go to I I love getting hearing people and if I get one thing that really is going to take me to the next level when it comes to kids that's what's important to me um but they are expensive I mean you know it does come with the price and uh now that it's in the city you know perhaps we can do something different as opposed to you know staying over if you want to pay your own hotel and you know go in for one day or two days you know like that just to you know

116alleviate the cost sure do you have anything to add no the uh School Board convention is always very very um educational because you get hearing from lots of diff different districts all over the state and their educational experience is interesting and also it shows how good our district really is and not lots of those people really admire our district and uh I've always felt that the school board convention is a very very good and uh enlightening thing for a members to go to to hear everybody and get to also meet the the president of the uh regions so it's it's interesting to hear her talk also Dr scandy did you have any thoughts I know you were at the last one it's it's very informative and it's very valuable for the board to have that

117um experience even from a collegiality standpoint amongst your and being part of it the proximity this year gives an opportunity perhaps to save some money um rather than the past if it's another city it's obvious that we have to stay over but since it's closer there's some considerations as Vinnie mentioned that you should consider As you move forward yeah so I was kind of thinking um the 20th is that pre-law conference the meat of the days are are full day the 21st and most of the day the 22nd um there's a discount if you register early um and you can pull out up to three weeks before so you can cancel with for a full refund up to October 7th so I'm kind of thinking maybe we want to register um at least for day

118one maybe also day two I don't know what everybody thinks and then we could always dial it back down the pike yeah I mean me personally I love learning everything that I need to about the board especially being new um I have no objection for paying for myself I don't know how that works um but for me I think it it would be very beneficial to meet my peers that are on Long Island and Upstate um and to be at the conferences I liked the pre-law conference last year I would prefer to do that because there's a lot of things that we need to know so I can bother Chris even more about stuff that I think that I know and that I don't um so so for me personally I I would like to

119be there the whole time and I have no issue paying for that personally so if everyone is amenable shall we register for the whole thing now and then we can dial it back later does that make sense always cancel okay perfect thank you okay moving on to um our policy piece right now we will hand it over to Dr B so for what it's worth my personal opinion the New York State School Board Association is an extremely valuable organization they're a great absy group you get a tremendous amount of resources not only do you have the collegiality with your colleagues across the state but you do get to hear and see the perspectives from different people and you bring back ideas and keep things fresh here if it was up to me I'd be attending

120the conference if I was a board member no so you have a number of policies before you I can be very brief um I could tell you that each of these policies has been reviewed by The District's uh policy committee which are members of the of the Board of Education where appropriate and warranted they were also reviewed by dist District's Council uh these policies uh many of them are just changing their Cosmetic in nature or they are implementing some uh regulatory requirements um all of these policies have language that have been written in large part by nisba um and I can go into more detail if you want but youve all have your policies before you it's it's up to you I just had one question um I believe K and N we were pulling

121because we needed to check the wording on so that language has been changed up to um to to make it age appropriate as per a student's IE okay okay because the last thing that I saw it wasn't changed it it was changed on on my policy and on what in has okay okay anyone else want any greater detail or have any questions about these policies would you like to give maybe a few examples what has been changed mainly just maybe two or three that would be yeah two or three policies yes sure you one has the biggest change the this is all sliding off so your student harassment and bullying is just clarifying the language and adding the clarifications to uh race and the traits historically Associated uh with race it's changing what we used

122to report as a beta report now it's it's it's a different school safety reporting mechanism that's pretty much the change there and most of these changes throughout the policy are similar in in nature um you know changing the words shall to will or must in in policies um adding the language to uh relations with law enforcement agencies uh it's acknowledging the fact that we do have a relationship with the sixth uh Precinct in law enforcement and it delates you know what they can or cannnot uh uh do uh relationships with non-public schools again all uh regulatorily uh statutorily required um uh that we're a public school district but we do do provide services to uh the private schools in our uh in our area such as textbooks computers lending of library books uh and so

123forth uh changing the evaluation of instructional programs it's removing some archaic things that we just don't do anymore uh adding languages like we use uh bars to help us inform our instructional uh uh uh programs that our courses are reviewed by uh the appropriate committees in our district uh gifts I think that I think we got the basic just a b I'm sorry I appreciate it no problem okay anybody else any questions or thoughts all right thank thank you Dr Bas always all right uh we're going to move on now no items for board action to our consent agenda do we have a motion for a consent agenda so move second second okay do we have a motion to add our walk-in item 10 W second all in favor all right so we will begin

124with uh b c and d Miss Jano okay those are the minutes from the past two meetings and also for the upcoming um budget vote and election the appointment of the board of registry registry in the election workers for May 21st the school budget vote and election okay thank you for items D through halfway down the page Mr Carlson okay so uh item D is uh e I'm sorry e is uh bid extensions uh we have four uh one is uh District or repair of District owned vehicles uh most um uh vehicle repairs as well as uh routine maintenance is done by our own um U maintenance staff um this is for work that's outside of the scope of what our own mechanic would do uh also elevator maintenance and repair uh kitchen Refrigeration repairs

125and uh Proto bid these are all extensions of bids in accordance with the same terms conditions and pricing as the uh just for next year as uh as they are for this year uh item f is authorization to participate in Cooperative bids and shared purchasing uh otherwise known as piggybacking agreements um we always look at various um purchasing cooperatives uh contracts that we can purchase off um a lot of times the same service items or services are on multiple contracts and we'll review and it might even be different prices so we review uh as many of those as possible um so this is our authorization to participate in in those uh Co Cooperative um purchasing uh programs uh the next item is approval of health and W Welfare Services contract this is with the hog

126School District this is for um a three village resident student attending a uh Private School located within the hog School District uh not for the uh tuition is just for the health services as uh we have a number of these uh for any of our students attending uh private schools located outside the district and then in turn we build those districts uh when they send uh kids to a a private or Parochial School located within our district where we're uh responsible for Health Services uh for those children uh the next item uh H is well actually hi J K and L are all um contracts uh for uh various special education and tutoring services in some cases uh actually starting this year and some most of the cases these are contracts for next year um

127and they would would all be for services uh in accordance with uh students IEPs items M and F uh appointment of bond Council and appointment of fiscal advisor for district borrowing this is the uh attorney and fiscal advisor for when we do our tax anticipation notes this is the appointment of them we do annually uh item o is declaration of surplus equipment we have one thing it's a stand mixer in uh fax room at galenus uh that is an unusable condition and item p is uh Declaration of surplus textbooks uh these are from um satet Elementary School um uh books that are no longer needed thank you any questions about any of those items all right moving on to Q Dr piscar uh this is just an update to the affiliation agreement with Stony Brook

128University for next year with their uh School of uh social welfare so for their clinical placements uh for their social work students thank you any questions okay item R recommendations of the committee on special education subcommittee and 504 accommodation plan meetings as dated s recommendations of the committee on preschool special education meetings as dated uh item T we and on down would go to Dr deeski unless we have a motion to table item t do we have a second second all in favor any opposed no extensions all right we're going to table item T and turn it over to Dr deusi for item U yes uh U uh instructional Personnel we have um we continue with some retirements we now have a a nurse and a teaching assistant uh retiring we have a one teacher

129leave of absence we start our hiring as we have always done now we have the appointment of two teachers uh appointment of four and instructional substitutes various appointments and adjustments to Spring coaching assignments and athletic supervision um several annual extra class assignments for the 23 24 school year um additional appointments to summer reading and math program positions and most importantly uh the appointment of uh your voting on tenure tonight for uh 25 of our staff uh V not instructional we have one non-instructional retirement we have a few changes in status for clerical as they are are um as uh as is the domino effect for clerical retirements and people moving throughout the district uh we have additional appointments of five non-instructional substitutes and various appointments for some wre employees for prep work thank you very

130much any questions about any of those okay item W is our walk-in item we'll turn it over to Mr mki uh that is a resolution denying the Dasa appeal as discussed in executive session all in favor of all the items in our consent agenda thank you so much and uh you have a motion to adjourn move second all in favor all right thank you everybody have a great night