001Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Please rise for a salute to the flag followed by a moment of silence for Rosemary Giardino, the mother of Maria Giardino. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. There were two communications to the board this month received from S Trago and Ella Harrington. I'd turn it over to Mr. McNamara at this for the superintendent's report. >> Great, thanks so much. Good evening everyone. Thank you for attending tonight. I'm John McNamara, superintendent of schools. Uh and as uh is our tradition, uh we always like to start our meetings with some uh some good news from around the
002district. Uh we just had the opportunity uh over the past hour uh in our tenure reception to recognize uh some of our outstanding uh staff members that received tenure or receiving tenure at this meeting. Uh so we're going to uh make that official in a few moments. Uh and I just wanted to recognize those folks. Uh they came over from uh the reception over by our cafeteria to hear. Uh so just um uh we you know, what I what I said over in in the other room is uh you know, we were truly fortunate uh 4 years ago to have such an outstanding group of educators that have have joined us. Um and uh you know, it's with great confidence tonight that I can recommend to the Board of Education uh that that they receive
003tenure. Uh we have um just a a group of folks that uh truly care about the profession, truly care about the students they're working with, and are doing outstanding things in our classrooms every day. Uh we have our largest group uh since I've been here receiving tenure. Uh we have uh 13 uh teachers and and four administrators. So I just wanted to recognize them tonight. Uh so um I'll do that by school. Um if you wouldn't mind, if you are here, if you could just stand to be recognized. Uh Forest Lake, uh we have uh Jessica McNiece. Congratulations, Jessica. >> [applause] >> Uh our our outstanding school psychologist, Emily Bogart. >> [applause] >> Nicole Silvar. >> [applause] >> Yes. Tara Satnick. >> [applause] >> And Jaclyn Rossi. >> [applause] >> Congratulations to our Forest Lake
004crew. Uh Mandalay, uh Melony McKenzie. >> [applause] >> And Emily McCann. >> [applause] >> At Wantagh elementary school elementary school, James Brotawski. >> [applause] >> And Karen Pass. Wantagh Middle School, Thomas Brody. >> [applause] >> Erin Smith. And Missy Beckler. >> [applause] >> And at Wantagh High School, Nick Roberts. >> [applause] >> Uh also receiving tenure tonight are four of our administrators. Carol Ann Weinants, our executive director for curriculum instruction. Mr. Thomas Burke, Forest Lake elementary school principal. >> [applause] >> Miss Miss Rachel Quattrocci, Wantagh Middle School assistant principal. >> [applause] >> And Dr. Maureen LaChance. A supervisor for special education. Um Congratulations. Congratulations to all your families. Uh and in a couple minutes we'll make it official. Um I also am uh thrilled tonight uh what we have another appointment that we're going to
005be making. Uh last month at our meeting, uh we recognized uh Mr. Frank Muzio, uh who has just been uh an outstanding uh director of guidance, guidance counselor, coach uh of our of our in our district for the the 30 plus years. Uh and um and you know, we were certainly concerned when Frank said he was retiring. Happy for him, but concerned for us because it was really such big shoes to fill. Frank is is just such a dedicated member of our staff and and and does so much. And I was thrilled when one of our current counselors, Chris Nyberg, expressed interest in the position. Chris is a extremely talented guidance counselor, extremely dedicated member of our staff, does unbelievable work as a counselor each and every day, and has all the attributes that that
006we would want in our next director of guidance to fill Frank's role. So tonight in a few moments, we're going to be appointing Chris Nyberg as as our new director of guidance K-12. Congratulations, Chris. >> [applause] >> And then also just teacher appreciation week for is this week. Just huge shout out to all of our talented teachers. We are our fortunate. They are the the backbone of everything that takes place here. And we have such a talented group. So I just wanted to express from myself, the administrative team, and our Board of Education, huge thank you during your teacher appreciation a teacher appreciation week as well. >> [applause] >> I'm going to invite Dr. Gazone and Dr. Whitman up to the podium. They wanted to share a little bit about the the great work they've
007been doing. The there's been about 4 years ago they came to us with an idea of forming a 9/11 committee. And we've we've developed a really strong partnership with the Gary Sinise Foundation, had an opportunity to experience an unbelievable uh trip with them with our World War II veterans. And out of that grew a trip to our 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan for our students. And they've been doing work behind the scenes to make that happen each and every year for our kids. So, I invited them just to speak a little bit about that initiative and give an update on on that work. >> Thank you, Mr. McNamara. Good evening, everybody. Welcome. I'm out here going to be plugging our third annual 5K. And if anybody's experienced before and you've been here for the previous
008two, it's a great community event. It's an opportunity for everybody to come together for a great cause. And if we could just move the slide there. It's going to be on Sunday, September 20th, 2026. And when we first started this um initiative a couple years ago, we had a couple of goals in mind. And those goals were to build a lasting memorial here on our grounds to honor those from the community who perished on that day. At the same time, we wanted to be able to give our children in the 11th grade, our juniors, the opportunity to be able to go down to the 9/11 Memorial down in Manhattan and experience it themselves because we began to realize over time this is the 25th anniversary this year that most of our all of our children
009who go to school here were not alive at that time. So, it's something that's just in the history books for them. So, for the past 2 years, we've been able to bring a large number of students down there. We brought 160 students down there this year because of the generosity of everybody who participated in the race and our sponsors. And so, it was a great experience for the children to go there. We also brought a bunch of our teachers there as chaperones. Um the other thing we've tried to do with the money that we've raised for the race is we've wanted to be able to give scholarships to deserving seniors. And last year, we were able to give out five scholarships to deserving seniors of $500 each. And this year, we're going to give seven
010scholarships of $500 each to uh deserving students here at Wantagh High School. Um and so we're going to have to show a little video here for those of you who might not have been at the race. And this video here is just a little time lapse of what our race was like last year. Uh-oh. John, say it. Penny. Okay. All right. There we go. >> [applause] >> Uh with the support of the Board of Ed and Superintendent McNamara, this has been a very successful event that we've run the last 2 years. Uh and it's one of the things that we are very proud of and we've had over both years we've had over 750 runners and then add in the vendors and the other people came here. We had, you know, 1,200 people here on
011the grounds for those days and it's a it's a great community event. Uh I'm going to turn over to Dr. Zone who's going to talk about some of the things we have coming up in the future. >> Yeah. Sure. If you could you just go to the next slide. Just to put it in perspective some of the things that we've been able to do with the money raised. We just wrote a $10,000 check out of the memorial fund take our students down. I mean that's how much money we paid out of the the memorial fund. We paid $7,000 and over the last sorry, $6,000 the last 2 years in student scholarships. We have $3,000 teacher curriculum grant program all through this race. So we've been doing a lot of stuff. We were also able to
012sponsor the FDNY NYPD lacrosse game here in the fall out of this fund. So we've been doing a lot of great things based off of these initiatives. And I just have to I do have to give a big shout out to the Gary Sinise Foundation. They don't They see something in Wantagh and it They don't have like a battery districts where they do the level of work that they do with us. I had the fortunate opportunity to to go down to the foundation in in in Nashville and and meet Mr. Sinise on behalf of the Wantagh community. And when I was in the office Wantagh was a very common word in in that office in Nashville. Everyone knew who we were, what we were doing, and it was just just an amazing experience to be,
013you know, part of this whole journey and knowing that, you know, Mr. Sinise knows exactly who we are as a as a town and, you know, I can promise you nobody else gets the level of care that we get from them. They consider us the gold standard in in the country in in the type of work that we do. So, I just had to say that. Um the next I just want to talk about is, you know, the progress of the Wantagh 9/11 Memorial Fund. When we first started, you know, we we were on a path of long-term goals of this memorial would be a a 5-year project. We've we started thinking that it would probably budgeting hopefully to raise $100,000. That cost has raised by more than 50%. And now we are on our
014way hopefully relatively soon to meet the benchmarks to establish the memorial hopefully by early this fall depending on you know the level of sponsorships that that come in in the in the next few weeks. You know, and so we're just we're excited. We're very excited. Good things are coming at a much faster pace and thanks to all of our sponsors. So, if in the community for for running and signing up. So, if you're interested in sponsoring or anyone who wants to sponsor, you know, you can find us in the corner. We'll be pushing out a lot of information about how to run through our through our public communications office. And yeah, so thank you. >> [applause] >> Great. Thank you both. I'm just going to before I move on, I'm just going to ask the
015board to take one item out of order and vote on which is the personnel agenda for tonight. And we're going to make it official for those uh are here for the 10-year reception. Uh so um Mr. Greco, if you wouldn't mind voting on that item. Uh it's item G. >> Item G. Approval of personnel items. We have a motion. >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> All right, it's official, folks. Congratulations. >> [applause] >> All right, we're just going to uh we're going to uh pause in a second. Um I also want to uh recognize we have um some some members of uh the the Josh and Kurnaz the own committee here um that uh is uh has been doing a lot of great work uh in memory of Josh. Uh
016Josh is uh uh Wanto student uh that uh tragically passed. Uh and uh they've been uh putting together a memorial basketball court in his honor. Uh and we're I'm thrilled tonight to be able to recommend to the board that we proceed with that project. Uh and that's going to be over at Mandalay Elementary School. So, I just wanted to Members of the committee are here tonight. I just wanted to thank them for the work they're doing. And uh and and and we look forward to uh to getting that court off the ground for you. So. >> [applause] >> All right, we're going to take a brief pause before we we're going to move to the budget hearing portion. Uh so, I know many of you here for the 10-year reception, this is the time to
017exit. If you Unless you like to stay for a budget hearing. >> [laughter] >> All right. Thank you for the brief pause. We're going to move on with the budget hearing portion of our meeting. Our school budget vote is is coming up on May 19th and I just want to you go through the process that we used to put together the school budget as well as uh to uh of the details of the budget tonight. Uh so uh it'll be myself and Anthony Sedrone, our assistant superintendent for business, uh that will be presenting some of the budget details. I want to thank all the members of the community that participated in our budget process. Um one of the the the nice pieces about uh you know, putting together the budget uh that that we go
018through is we do a series of budget forums. Uh we do some budget focus groups. We put out a budget survey. And it's a great way for us to kind of collect some data and get a really good understanding of what some of the concerns are from the community, uh some of the things that maybe we could look to address through the budget. Uh and it's really helpful uh to us in in going through that process. So, we thank all those that attended our our forums. We did uh three of them uh throughout the month of March uh and um focused on different topics. We did an overview to start, and then we really focused on some of the capital projects. We'll touch on some of that. Obviously, not in the level of detail that
019we did at the budget forum. Uh and then personnel. We did kind of a high-level overview of of of uh of personnel as well. Uh and then the budget focus groups are just small group meetings. We do those virtually. Uh people uh sign up on a Google form, and then we we set them up at various times. And they're small group conversations with myself. Anthony Sedrone often joins those. Uh and we just talk to residents. We give them an overview of of some of the things in the budget, and then talk to residents about some of the concern concerns they may have uh regarding our budget. Um and uh and then the survey, you know, the survey is a great way for uh residents to participate uh in the budget process. Uh they're quick. Uh
020and and and they can kind of express uh any uh any questions they may have for or or um any concerns about the budget. Um you know, one of the things when we we kind of always frame uh the the the the forums, you know, is really trying to create a a strong balance, right? Uh in terms of the dual mandate, being fiscally responsible to the uh school district and the community and and the taxpayers, as well as providing great program and opportunity for our students. And that's always the challenge, you know, trying to strike that balance. And I think this budget really kind of strikes that balance and the ability to provide great program for kids at the same time and do that in in a fiscally responsible way. So, we'll highlight some of
021that tonight, some of the outstanding programs and opportun ities as well. And then and then we'll talk a little bit about the capital projects and we'll talk a little bit about the Beach Street sale as well, which is one of the referendums that'll be on the the public ballot as well. Starting though, you know, I always like to highlight outstanding, you know, the outstanding things that go on here. You know, we we try to continually provide great opportunities each and every day for our kids. You can see our students are are are performing at very high levels. Our last graduating class, 95% took at least one college course. 91% took at least two. 88% of our students go off to attend four-year schools. We had 694 AP exams administered and you know, some outstanding results
022that are highlighted here. I mentioned Mr. Musial before. He one of his responsibilities is managing the AP administration. So, those 694 exams, he was involved in them in terms of the administration. 95% return for second year of college is a nice stat to take a look at. You know, not only are students attending, but are they going back and are they meeting success when they arrive? So, you know, well above the national average there. Some of the new programs, you know, starting with first as a baseline, you know, we're maintaining all of our existing programs, where and then expanding. Uh We're really excited. I'll highlight a little more detail. Adding an additional section of UPK for next year, and I'll go through that in a in a second. A new literacy program in K to
0235. I thank the literacy committee and all the dedicated work they did in in in in thoroughly researching that for our district. The special education program continues to expand. You know, going back you know, 10 years one of our goals was really to to maintain as many of our students in district and provide some additional program as we possibly could. And I'm really excited about the direction that our special education program has progressed as we continue to expand our LEAP class, our EAST class and at the secondary level and the strong foundation that our Mandalay program has provided. So, it's it's really been watching that program grow over the years has been nice. We have almost 30 students in district now that going back 10 years would have been in an out-of-district placement because we
024didn't have an appropriate program to provide support for them. So, that's that's really exciting in that initiative and and and to watch it grow has has been tremendous. And then some new electives at the high school including our science research academy at Watauga High School. Program that we started 3 years ago will be in its fourth year. It's our first cohort of students that'll be four years in that program and we're really excited about the directions heading. They did a really nice presentation for us this year. The students came in and just talked about some of the success that they've had and highlighted the the really really in-depth research they've been doing. Really really talented kids and and and it's been great to see that program flourish. And then expanding some of our our electives
025in terms of broadcasting and our and our theater program as well. So continuing to look to to build. This is the UPK initiative that I mentioned earlier. I just like to look back a little bit at this just to you know see the growth. We were adding a ninth section this year. We received additional funding from the state to provide that. This is a program that you know as soon as funding became available to us from New York State this Board of Education said we wanted to jump on that initiative and they did and then and and we've been able to provide that program now for for for several years and and we're going to have 162 students receiving UPK. And we started with 64 in 21-22. So it's really great to see that growth
026and see that program continue to flourish. We're close to meeting the demand. We do a lottery system. We're really hopeful that within the next year or two we're going to be able to fully meet the demand of the of what the community needs. But we're getting there. So I thank the board for their support with that initiative. And then I'm going to turn it over to talk a little bit about some of the financial details in the budget. Anthony Sedrone our assistant superintendent of business. >> Thank you sir. Um I know the joke gets old but I I'll continue to say it at some one time when you're in a school when you want to see a report card that has a zero on it. Um in this case the zero represents a fiscal stress
027score. The New York State Comptroller every year takes our previous years audited financial statements does a whole bunch of calculations on things that they would consider you know if the number was bad you're you're more susceptible to stress and if it's good you're not. And as you can see our number is zero and it's been that way for a couple of years. Hadn't been for a few years and went up and and we worked hard to get it back down. So the zero is definitely a number that is a positive thing for us in that regard. Uh one of the things that helps that uh number become zero are the numbers listed here um on this slide. These are all uh different reserve accounts that the school district keeps. Um I don't even know if
028banks do it anymore, but I remember the days of like vacation clubs and and uh you know, holly Christmas clubs, holiday clubs kind of a thing. So, that's kind of what these are. Every item on that list is for a particular purpose and you can only use it for that purpose only. So, a little bit at a time you put money in there, it builds up. Um has legal maximums that you're allowed to put in there, right? So, most of these are not just infinite that you can put what you want. Um but they're important in terms of getting them to those maximums because they give budget flexibility. Uh and we needed that flexibility this year. It was a particularly challenging budget. Um and what I mean by that is for as these expenses come
029through the budget, then you can use money that you have in a reserve to off some of offset some of that expense and avoid some of the peaks and valleys you might otherwise experience when you're putting a budget together. Um the numbers on the left are actual from the end of last year, June 25, and the numbers on the right are projected for this year. Um they won't end up exactly at that, but they should be somewhere in that neighborhood. Uh those are usually finished in the fall uh when the the external auditors are complete. Uh this slide just picture speaks a thousand words, just kind of illustrates um a lot of the repetitive, but this year in particular uh challenges that we face when we put a budget together. Uh there's with the tax
030cap that's been around since 2012, there's only a limited amount of funding available in terms of a potential increase to the tax levy. And as you can see on the right side of that seesaw there, um the expenses that we incur or experience year over year far outpace our ability to pay for them. So, it becomes a challenge and we manage that each year. We go to each one of the categories that are listed there, and we're always looking for ways to make it more efficient, save costs. Um and there's a myriad of things that we would do to to try to control those, but that becomes a challenge every year um when you're up against sort of a funding in terms of a tax cap error. Um these three we have been highlighting uh
031three expenses in particular we had been highlighting over the forums and budget presentations that we've done previously. Uh liability insurance, health insurance, and transportation in particular um have gone up 178% over about 9 or 10 years 10 years. Uh and the other two have almost doubled 100% over 10 years. Um and when you're raising your revenue 2% a year in those 10 years even if you just did very easy math, right? That's a 10% 20% increase in the amount of money that you're using to fund these types of expenses and they've doubled. Um and those are real numbers. Uh this year again you know, 9 10% increases in these categories and it continues to make it a a challenge year after year uh to budget for those and still maintain everything that we have. These
032are the actual budget numbers. I know the newsletters are out in the mail. If you haven't received it yet at your house, it'll probably show up in the next day or two. Um the proposed budget for 2026-2027 is $90,381,547. So $3.6 million increase year over year from the year that we're in now. Um the estimated tax levy to support that budget uh is $71.3 million um which is 3.48% more than the year before which is normally below the tax cap. So that excuse me, that tax levy number is below our our tax cap as it's been calculated. The difference between the increase in the budget 3.6 and the tax levy of 2.3. You might say, "Well, how do you bridge that gap?" Uh increases to state aid. You know, we did get increases to state
033aid. They're unfortunately not enough to absorb the other increases that come our way. Uh, but there are state aid state aid increases in there. Uh, some use of those reserves monies as a revenue source to plug that gap. And that's how you you make up the difference between the two. State aid funds about uh, 23% of our budget uh, comes from comes back to us from the state in terms of aid. Uh, next year it's projected at $23.4 million. Usually by this time in the year we have a better handle on that number. However, if you read in the news as recently even as today, uh, the state has not finalized its budget for next year and part of the state budget is obviously funding education. So, we do not yet have an actual number
034for next year. That number, the 23.4 is based on uh, what the governor proposed as her budget uh, back in February. Uh, so we're still using that. Typically the the state will it'll come in a little bit better, but that's it's anybody's guess what the final number will be. But that's what's in the budget right now in terms of a revenue source, the $23.4 million. Um, capital projects. Um, I I'm doing capital projects, right? Um, so capital projects are funded by a variety of different ways. You can borrow money on a bond. You can use money from a capital reserve. Capital reserve was one of the items on that reserve list. So, if you set a little bit of money aside over a couple of years, you can then spend it on a particular project
035or you can put money in the budget that you can transfer to your capital fund. Uh, the budget typically handles smaller type items. You you wouldn't put large ticket items necessarily in the budget as it would cause some pain uh, year over year in terms of a budgetary increase. Uh, the reserve you can you're only limited by the amount of money that's in the reserve. Uh, so for next year's budget uh, there's a proposition to spend money from an already existing capital reserve um, to do the projects that are listed. Some roof work here at the high school. The air conditioning in this space and field lights out on the turf field out in the back at the high school. So those three projects are are funded from the reserve and like I said they'll
036be proposition two on the ballot will be a yes or no question as to whether we want to do that work. Within the budget itself is a section for transfer to capital projects and you see the types of items that are listed there. That's the work that we're going to do. That represents about a half a million dollars worth of work. Expansion of the parking lot at Wantagh Elementary School in addition to creating a more secure security vestibule at Wantagh Elementary School. Some classroom renovations, flooring replacement. These are regular regular recurring types of things. Annual updates to the the gyms and and redoing the floors. Replacing the lift in our automotive class. That lift needs to be replaced when they work on the cars. Some asphalt work around this property. So those those items are
037in the budget. So if if the budget is approved those items then are also approved by virtue of the budget passing and that work would be done as well. Now we're back to you. >> Thank you Anthony. Appreciate it. Yeah so so Anthony highlighted the budget. That'll be one proposition voters will be voting on. The second one will be the capital reserve and the expenditure out of that. That's money that's already set aside. And then the third one is the Beach Street property. That over the past year and a half you know we've had ongoing [snorts] discussions about. We held a forum back last year kind of discuss it in terms of making some decisions about that property. The property had been leased by the district to We Friends the nursery school for about four
038a little over 40 years, starting back in 1980. And then the the the lease ended a year and a half ago, a little bit more than that now. And we had some decisions to make. It was in need of a significant amount of work. And is not it's a it's a smaller building that doesn't really fit the educational needs that we have. It is not up to code for us to house students in it. So it doesn't meet that need without a significant amount of dollars, you know, pushing $2 million worth of work that needs to be done to the property. So board really kind of weighed their options. We we we took a look at it, you know, possibilities. And one was to sell the property and then reinvest that money back into the
039buildings that we do use, the five buildings that we do use. That's ultimately where we landed. And put the property on the market last year. And received some interest, ultimately entering into an agreement with a developer that's interested in purchasing the property. So we're going to put that out to the voters for for sale, to approve that contract in order to sell the building. The voters would need to approve it in in May. And the purchase price was a million $75,000. And and and as I said, that'll be the third proposition on the ballot. And then just a one of the other parts of our forum work was really just kind of highlighting our staffing. That's really at the at the heart of our of what we do. Right, 75% of our expenditure year over
040year is is staffing and and and the related benefits. You know, we're in the the people business. And I often, you know, hear different comments in terms of our enrollment. Our enrollment's down, we don't have as many students. We've been really, really steady at the 2,800 students across the district over the past over over 10 years. And that's really created some nice stability in terms of our our classrooms and our expectations and knowing, you know, grade level to grade level what we can expect. And as a result, it's created some consistency in our staffing. We've been able to add program where we're really maintaining staffing. This is our instructional staffing and our as well as our enrollment. You can see just kind of taking a 10-year look back. And over that 10 years, we're down
041one instructional staff member. You know, we but yet we've added a lot of program. We've added we we a couple of years ago, you know, the the board really made a a strong decision to continue to focus on bringing elementary class size down. And and have have been able to achieve that. You know, we we did that and and kind of maintained our staffing levels. We expanded our our elementary guidance program, steam program, all things that during that time period we added the expansion of ENL, the expansion of AP and college course offerings and elective offerings all while you're really doing that within the confines of our instructional staffing. And administrative staffing you know, has has really been consistent. You know, you look at the past 5 years, you can see where we we currently
042stand at 22 instructional administrators across the board. We were really fortunate last year also to one of our safety initiatives going back about 5 years, we made a decision we used to outsource our security. We used to work with a vendor to bring in security guards. We made the decision to bring in guards and have them be a part of our staff and and supervise them and and have them be part of our our more of a stronger part of our school community. Uh and it's something that's gone extremely well. And as over the past 5 years, we've also greatly increased the number of guards across the district. Uh in order to do that and do that well, this year we wanted to make sure that we had uh someone with uh expertise that was
043leading that uh department and uh and and overseeing that department. Uh so we added the position of uh director of safety and security. Uh Brian Hillman has been fulfilling that role. Uh experienced uh recent retiree from NYPD and really has been doing some outstanding work to enhance the overall security across our district. Um so, uh this budget continues to support that. So, overall summary, uh there'll be three propositions uh for uh for you to vote on. The budget itself, uh the capital reserve, the expenditure out of the capital reserve. Uh the sale of the Beach Street property, and then the trustee election as well. And then um all of that all of that is done within the tax cap. Uh and uh the budget vote will take place on May 19th. Uh it'll be each
044one of our elementary schools. Uh Wantagh, El Forest Lake, and and Mandalay. Uh if you have any questions about where you vote, feel free feel free to reach out to our district clerk. Uh she can certainly direct you in the in the in the right direction. Uh all of the resource and and the voting will be from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Uh all the resources, the budget detail, uh all the the detailed information you may want about the budget, you will be able to find uh on the district website. We have a dedicated page to that. Uh so, feel free and then if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Um and that'll wrap up the the budget hearing portion of the meeting. Uh and I'll turn it back over to
045Mr. Greco uh to do the rest of the agenda. >> Thank you, Mr. McNamara. Item E, approval of minutes. Do I have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item F, financial reports. And item F1, financial reports. F2, budget transfers. Do I have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Back to item G. Item G2. And item G3. Do I have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item H. Contractual and other authorizations. Item H1. Item H2. H3. H4. And H5. Do I have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item H6. H7. H8. H9. And H10. Do I have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >>
046Aye. >> Item H11. H12. And H13. Do we have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item H13 was donations. We'd like to thank the American Heart Association for their donation. A another donation from the Wantagh PTA. A donation from the grant donation from from the Institute of Technology to Wantagh High School. A donation from the Wantagh Fire Department for the Wantagh Warrior Memorial Run, 5K run. And a donation from New York Schools Insurance Reciprocal, also for the Warrior Run. Item H14 and item H15, do we have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item I1, policy revision, do we have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Item J1, approval of committees on special ed and
047preschool special ed recommendations, do we have a motion? >> Move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> Do I have a motion to adjourn? >> Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Aye. >> All right, we have our student government, I see he's not with us tonight. >> Taking APs. >> Anyone from Forest Lake PTA? >> Yes. Good evening. We are currently celebrating teacher and staff appreciation week at Forest Lake. The staff have been met with themed treats each morning in the staff lounge. Tomorrow we will end the week with a catered lunch. We are so grateful for all the wonderful teachers and staff that make Forest Lake such an amazing place. Tomorrow is our spring plant sale. Students will have the chance
048to shop during school with their classes. We will have an assortment of flowers, veggies, and small gifts for them to choose from. The perfect chance to pick up a last minute Mother's Day gift. As mentioned last meeting, we are gearing up for our annual Ducks game. The students had a special visit from CrackerJacks, the team mascot, which really drummed up excitement. Band, orchestra, and chorus students have been diligently practicing and are excited for their on-field performance before the game. A night out at the ball game is always fun for all. Next Friday is our final book fair of the year and it will coincide with VIP day. Each student will get a chance to bring a special guest to school and have the chance to shop with them at the book fair. Our Adventureland trip
049with Mandalay is planned for May 20th and it's a night everyone is looking forward to. Hopefully, the weather cooperates this year. Plans are currently underway for our end of year bash. Students will participate in a color run and end the afternoon with an outdoor party. More details to come at the next meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mandalay PTA? Wantagh LPTA? >> Good evening. We also had our plant sale uh yesterday and today where students can pick out items from $5 to $15, which included vegetables and plants. Students also went to uh were able to go home with uh seed kits so they have uh three seeds, one two veggies, and one flower that they can plant at home for Mother's Day. We also have a pop-up sale with our plant sale um outside of
050school yesterday, today, and tomorrow where you could purchase outdoor garden signs for your the um spring season. We also have Adventureland Monday, May 18th from 5:00 to 8:00. Tickets are $40 for riders, $36 for non-rider for non-riders, and $16 for food if you want to purchase that additionally. And the park is closed for our school. We also have wellness week May 11th through the 15th um where there's activities for health and wellness for students to do at home all week. Some of the things they could do are go for a walk with your family, make a smoothie, and journaling. We also are celebrating staff appreciation next week. We have lots of special treats and things for the teachers and the staff at the school. And we also have two pop-up sales. We have Wantagh Warrior
051queen-size fleece blankets. They're $40. And all the proceeds for that go to the fifth grade class. They actually are a big hit now with spring sports cuz it's very cold on the field. And you can see a lot of people wearing them. And we also are selling beach towels. We have two different designs. We have Wantagh owl ones and Wantagh warrior ones. And those are $27. Our beautification committee is also starting to weed, mulch, and plant flowers outside the school for the spring. And we also have our next PTA meeting May 12th at 7:00 p.m. at Wantagh. Thank you. >> Thank you. From 6-12. SEPTA. PTA Council. Sports Boosters. The Performing Arts Booster Club. >> Good evening. Since the last BOE meeting, WPABC has hosted a reception for student performers and their families at the
052Tri-M Music Recital. We provided full lobby presence at both the middle school theatrical performance of Dare to Dream and the high school production of Annie including cast and crew boards, kisses bags, raffles, and concessions. We hosted a spring performing arts spirit wear sale and orders should arrive in the next 2 weeks. WPABC is happy to announce our 2026-2027 executive board. Outgoing and incoming officers were celebrated at our installation dinner last night. Thank you to those of you on the board, admin, and faculty who attended and celebrated with us. You can find the new board on our social channels, and we will post to our website at the conclusion of the school year. Looking ahead, the next few weeks will be especially busy for WPABC. While there are many events on the calendar, these are the
053highlights of how we're supporting some of our performing arts programs. The spring concert season kicks off on May 12th and continues through June 18th. WPABC will be selling concessions at all district concerts. WPABC sponsored the posters you see hanging in the auditorium uh honoring our seniors that are currently in our various performing arts groups. The NYSSMA festival will be hosted at Wantagh High School on May 18th and 19th. WPABC will be in the lobby selling concessions during all sessions. There will be about 35 to 40 Tri-M students volunteering for each 2-hour session, and to show our appreciation for those student volunteers, uh we will be providing a pizza dinner each day between sessions. On May 29th, we're excited for the outdoor pops concert and food truck festival. WPABC has arranged a great variety of food
054trucks. Uh come out to enjoy the food and support our student performers. Food trucks will arrive at 5:00, and the concert begins at 5:30. Don't forget lawn chairs and blankets. Those Wantagh L blankets may come in handy for that, as well as our performing arts blankets that we sold. On June 5th, WPABC will host an after-school party celebrating our performing arts seniors. On June 10th, the eighth grade Broadway Experience class will be performing Murder at Midnight, an original production, which will close out the district's theatrical productions this year, and WPABC will be there with full lobby support. And last, but certainly not least, WPABC is expecting to award over $5,000 in scholarships to our graduating seniors at the upcoming awards uh pre-ceremonies. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'm just going to interrupt you one second.
055Just wanted to thank all of our PTAs for uh the teacher appreciation week and and all the the great things that they've they've done for our staff. Staff really appreciates uh appreciates it. I just wanted to recognize they put so much thought into it. So so thank you. >> [laughter] >> Only one left. Wantagh Foundation. All right, the microphone's open to public comment if anyone has a question. >> Hi, good evening. How are you? First um thanks for all the work on the due diligence with regard to the sale. I am curious though um what is the guarantee in the contract that that'll remain single-family residential zoning? Single-family residential. >> [clears throat] >> Yeah, I'm happy to speak that. So um once the property So right now uh the the property is not on the
056rolls of the town of Hempstead uh because it's district-owned. So we uh you know, we're permitted through SED uh the State Education Department. Uh we really don't have anything to do with Town of Hempstead and their zoning requirements. Once the property is sold, uh it becomes a it becomes residentially zoned. That that neighborhood is a residential neighborhood and the sale once that property transfers to a private owner from the district, it becomes a residentially zoned. Any zoning my understanding is any zoning that that's changed then has to go uh through all the the zoning uh requirements uh and progress through the town board for that. Just like if you wanted to have a change in zone for your own home, you would have to go through those same requirements. So um we've been guaranteed by
057the Town of Hempstead that upon sale it becomes residentially zoned. We had buyers that were interested in the property for commercial use uh for example for um for you know, nursery schools, people that wanted to use it for other purposes. But once they learn that it would become residentially zoned, they they weren't interested >> So specifically the contract calls for single family residential zoning only because there's a lot Excuse me, I know the process really well. It's guaranteed to be single family residential zoning. >> let me clarify. So the the the the contract doesn't do that, right? Okay, the the contract doesn't do that. The reason why is we we can't we can't require that, right? We can't It's it's town of Hempstead zoning that regulates it. And the town has told us that that
058property is residential. Once it's once it's sold, it becomes residential. >> Did [clears throat] the district hire a land use attorney to get that in writing from the town? Legally? >> No, we we Our attorney spoke with the >> Is it a land use attorney that we hired as the school district? >> It is not. >> So in this thorough evaluation that's in the letter, very thorough evaluation, why didn't we include a land use attorney on our behalf? The the community that pays for the school, why wasn't that included in the contract? >> We can we can do this or we can just just share with me what the what the concern is. What just feel comfortable sharing it. >> a single family residential zoned lot, not up to the town of Hempstead because the
059Bra Company Bra Property >> Yep. >> they're not registered in the state of New York. There's no corporation, there's no website, you cannot find who the principal shareholders are of that corporation. I'd like to know who they are. >> That's on the contract. I can provide you with that information. >> It's not available at New York State's website and it's not they do not they do not have a website. >> I'm saying the owners >> Who are they? >> are in the contract. So and that's on our website. So I can share that with you. I don't I I can't do that off the top of my head, but I can share that with >> Okay, I think for us to take a vote, you know, getting this done so quickly on what next week
060practically, none of this information is available. Where is it available so the community could review it? >> It's it's all publicly available on our website. The contract is available. It was approved by the board. That's publicly available. It's on our It's on in our on our website and on in board docs. Um >> But that wasn't referenced in this material anywhere. We looked everywhere for it. Not just myself, a whole bunch of people. >> Okay. >> I just got lucky enough to come up since I'm the most knowledgeable about it. >> Okay. >> I think you need to really be a little bit more transparent about who the owners are, what the terms and conditions are of this contract of sale. I'm sure you did an RFP or you got a good price. I mean,
061a million dollars for that property is, you know, debatable if it's a good price. But I do think it's a little important for you guys to be a little bit more transparent on the contract. We're the ones that have to live with it after it's all built. Whatever it is, it could be a eight-story condo. It could look like Greenpoint, Brooklyn or it could look like Wantagh. And I think you all >> It's >> would have to be a little bit more transparent about the contract. We don't even know who the owners are. >> But just just for the record, it's it's residentially zoned. It's going to It's It's the same as >> But there's a very many flavors of residential zoning. If you don't have a land use attorney on your team, you should
062get one. >> But But I'm telling you we the the town has told us that. Just so you So you're aware, it's not That's when we sell it, that's what it becomes. >> Okay, so it's in writing. You have that in writing from the town. >> Yes, the town's told us that. Yes. >> In writing? >> No. The town We had We had conversation with the town about that. >> That's not in writing. So it sounds like a verbal >> there It's in there It is specified when that property is sold, it becomes residential. I I I can't do it Look, I can't do any more than give you my word on that. >> No, I understand, but residential could be a three-family house. >> sharing with you what the direct conversation with the >>
063evaluation wasn't that thorough cuz if you didn't include a land use attorney, you couldn't really have a contract of sale that includes the kind of zoning that's required. That's fine. At least you were transparent about that. Could you at least put together a website page that shows who the owners are and what the drawings look like or what their plans are? >> There I can I can share with you the contract that's on the district website and that has all that information in there. It doesn't have drawings. We we're not privy to that. >> And we should vote on this because somebody told you they're going to build two houses and it's not in writing. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. >> require right? We that's not part of this process. We look we we
064vet that we vet them we they bring it an offer to us and then that's not part of the anybody can purchase it and then make the decision they want to make about how that that property's going to be used. And as far as just not being transparent and not and springing it on people there's been an ongoing public discussion about this for the past year. We we we've we've we've posted material about it. We've we had public forum about it. Every single board meeting for the past year I have had a very similar slide discussing the sale of the property and discussing the options and and I I feel badly that you feel like this is being sprung on you. That that certainly is not our intent but this was a thoughtful decision made
065over many months by the Board of Education. >> I'll just say people were aware of it as far back as last 4th of July. People were asking me about it. It's on the website. It's on the contract. Their names are there. We disagree. >> Sorry, please do not scream from the gallery. If you'd like to come up to the microphone you're welcome to. >> There's no other questions. Thank you for coming. Happy Mother's Day to everybody, and we'll see you next month.