001all right you okay ah how do i uh i think you just shrunk it is that better i'm just gonna hide it courtney's speech is good i was looking at the paper i am mm-hmm [Music] good evening everyone please rise for a salute to the flag followed by a moment of silence for the mother of colleen testa for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice is wrong thank you item d approval of minutes of april 7th and 26th and item e acknowledgement and acceptance of financial reports and budget transfers as printed do i have a motion second second all in favor aye aye imf communications to the board of ed communications were received from catherine and scott braun marilyn rich karen thompson david and vincent ciro item g mr mcnamara
002the superintendent's report thank you mr greco good evening everyone thank you so much for being here tonight i'm done activate the superintendent of schools um i have a few items to report on tonight but always like to start with uh with some good news we had teacher production week this week and i just want to take a moment to thank our entire teaching staff uh this has been a challenging few years for all of us and certainly for those in education and our teachers in in our school districts have just done such an outstanding job managing all the challenges that that have come with our pandemic and really it's nice to take a moment this week to to recognize all of their efforts so i thank all of our teachers for everything they've done i
003think our ptas and our parent organizations for really having outstanding celebrations for our our uh staff uh in all of our buildings some some really outstanding uh uh lunches that were done uh we're so thankful for for that so so thank you our teachers thank you for recognizing them um just about an hour ago we had a really nice reception for our uh newly tenured staff and in about uh five or ten minutes or so we're going to be making a motherboard will be making a motion to approve a number of staff members for tenure they're all here with their families this evening it was really nice to get to meet uh their their their families and and celebrate uh such an outstanding milestone in their their careers uh we are truly fortunate uh to
004be granting tenure to an outstanding group of educators an outstanding group of people uh we have uh just a an exceptional class of folks that that will be receiving tenure tonight uh so if i i would ask if they all wouldn't mind just standing and and being recognized and we can give them a round of applause courtney eisens off deanna yep deanna pepe megan prokesh danielle chavetta donna kathleen tunde and our administrators receiving tenure tonight anthony sejo nick pravis and julie rossly congratulations to them all [Applause] i'd like to recognize tonight uh is one of our board of education trustees keira mclaughlin um kyra notified us several months ago that she wouldn't be seeking re-election for the the board of education uh kyra served as a board trustee for the past nine years um she's
005been successfully elected by her community three times with significant electoral support several months ago when she informed us we tried to convince her otherwise but kyra would have none of it on behalf of our administrative team the board of education and our entire school community i'd like to express our tremendous gratitude to kyra for her dedicated service and leadership during her nine years on the board keira has held the role of board president or vice president served on the board policy and audit committees she's put in countless hours at endless planning sessions board meetings and community events she spent evenings and weekends away from her own family to serve her community but most importantly kyra has served on this board of education with one focus one goal one objective to ensure all students in manta
006receive an outstanding educational experience here is a board member that advocates for the creation of robust education educational programs our highest academic achievers and for our students that struggle academically she's a supporter of the fine and performing arts expansion of extracurricular opportunities and athletics cara has also been a huge advocate of new instructional initiatives to continue to enhance students experience within the classroom kiera's knowledge of educational programming policy law negotiations and a host of other educational topics is truly impressive she is a champion for students and a continual advocate for improvement cara is always prepared an average reader and always learning and growing she regularly participated in workshops with the new york state school boards association attending conferences and learning how to grow our schools she received the new york state school board's association board
007of excellence award as a result of her ongoing professional development some of the characteristics that i've made here an outstanding board of education member over the past nine years include her focus on serving all children her desire to represent a community not a specific constituency always honoring divergent opinions and always thinking upward and outward here thank you for representing the wanton community so proudly over the past nine years we will miss your valuable perspectives your sense of humor your kindness your thoughtfulness and the thoughtfulness that you brought to your work with the board every thursday evening it's been a pleasure to work with you for the betterment of our school community you've made a significant contribution to our district and will leave a lasting impact as you complete your service on the board i'd like
008to present you with a small token of appreciation for your dedicated service thank you kyra [Applause] [Music] nope all right how do i go from that to a covet update i don't know how to do that all right that was that was probably on my part uh covet update is we'll make this a quick one uh we uh we saw a slight uptick in cases over the past uh month or so we had a total of uh about 24 cases uh so far in may and about 70 cases across the district in the month of april which is a you know slight increase from where we were i will continue to monitor that and provide updates to the board tonight is also our formal uh budget hearing so that'll be the bulk of my presentation
009and we'll do that at the conclusion of the business meeting so i'm going to turn it back over to mr greco thank you mr mcnamara item h reporter the administration item h1 personnel actions instructional staff h1a tenure administrative tenure recommendations and h1b tenure recommendations do i have a motion second all in favor aye all right it's official folks give another round of applause [Applause] item h1c d and e do i have a motion second all in favor i item h1f g h i and j do i have emotion second all in favor aye item h2 h2a appointments of civil service personnel do i have a motion second all in favor i item h3 contractual and other authorizations h3a b c d and e do i have a motion second all in favor all right and
010we the board would like to thank forest lake elementary pta for all of their generous donations item f g h i and j do i have a motion second all in favor i item k l and m can i have a motion second second all in favor item i unfinished business there is none item j new business j1 approval of committees on special ed preschool special ed recommendations and item two revised hours of school and report card periods do i have a motion second all in favor aye and i have a motion to adjourn to exec mr president i make a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss personnel matters we have a second second all in favor aye all right we have our student government emma angelina hi good evening um i just
011wanted to thank the board as we as we near the end of the school year i just wanted to thank the board for taking times out of their meetings to allow me and emma to speak um currently there are ap exams going on in the high school the junior prom is set for may 14th which is very exciting because it's the first junior prom since covet hit autism acceptance month was a success student government really highlighted the importance of this month and we look forward to keeping this tradition in years to come on monday members of the wanda high school community will be wearing baseball jerseys to remember long beach student laser lapenna who passed away tragically at the age of 10 during a little league game there will also be a blood drive on
012may 20th in the north gym so please try to donate if you are able to the band concert will be on may 19th and the chorus and orchestra concerts will be on may 24th sports night is set to be inside again on may 21st which all the girls are so excited for and we want to give a huge thanks to the board miss keen miss grange and miss pepe for making this all happen the departmental awards night will be on may 16th and there will also be a senior awards night on may 31st thank you all right do we have anybody from the foundation tonight forest lake pta mandalay pta juan do lpda scepter okay good evening um septa would really like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the entire wantagh school community for your
013involvement and all of the creativity that you put into your wantagh autism awareness and acceptance month i happened to see the display case in the high school last week and i thought it was wonderful i've seen so many wonderful things on the uh the school websites and and the instagram pages and um on behalf of the rest of the executive board and all the members of scepter we thank you i'd also like to uh extend thanks to all of the parents the educators community members who participated in our very successful boon supply fundraiser this last month um all of your um all of your participation led to funds that will be used for our scholarships this year if you were not able to make a purchase yet boone supply is still accepting um purchases and
014we will be able to get some of the funds for that for perhaps um some scholarships for next year or events or teacher grants so you can always go to boonsupply.com that's b o o n supply look for the wantos septa fundraiser make your purchase the delivery will go right to your home so we thank you for that um just a final note our septa last year last meeting of the year will be taking place on tuesday june the 21st and that will be held in the wonton middle school imc at 7 30 p.m it is our most sentimental meeting of the year it is when we bestow the friend of septa awards to the chosen nominees if you would like to nominate someone to be an honored recipient you can complete the form found
015on the wantos septa page located on the school district website thank you thank you [Music] [Applause] council booster club bandwagon and drama all right mr mcnamara all right thank you again um i'm going to transition over to our budget hearing portion of our meeting uh so just to give an update where we have uh been over the past several months doing some work to prepare for our uh upcoming budget vote uh which will be uh on tuesday may 17th so we're just going to provide some background on our on our budget our budget development process and provide just an update to the community about that um this gives you a little bit of an idea just of our process and how we kind of work through uh the budget we start uh back in october
016working with our different budget managers november and december we're really compiling and putting the budget together for our first draft for january for the board of education to review uh in february we're really we're focusing on our staffing as the middle school and high school are completing some of their scheduling the course requests for kids and we put that data together as well and then we start our community forums march and april are when we're really uh sharing with the community where we are in the budget process getting some feedback i thank all of our community members that attended our forums uh we held four forums throughout march and april uh and then we held a series of focus groups as well the focus groups are just small group conversation we had a number of
017folks that signed up myself and mr cedrone are assistant superintendent for business met with small groups of community members and just got their feedback about the budget and the budget process we highlighted several things and and it's helpful it helps inform some of our decision making so once again thank all the members of our community that participated in those focus groups as well and then in april the board adopts the budget uh and uh tonight is our hearing leading up to our budget vote on the 17th i also want to just take a moment to thank our ptas we we did a presentation for uh 612 council septa bandwagon uh last week and we met with the wanto lpta on on monday evening and then we'll be meeting with the mandalay and forest lake ptas
018at the beginning of next week as well and it's just once again another opportunity to discuss the budget and hear questions and concerns so we look forward to those upcoming meetings our goals for the budget for the 2022-23 school year you know we had some challenges last year with our budget with our budget not passing on the first vote and going to a second vote unfortunately we lost some program along the way and had to make some real difficult decisions about about program so really our primary goal this year was to make some restorations to our budget to the lost program uh and and we're excited that we're able to do that uh and add some additional uh a new program as well um so um you know every year we you know we review
019course offerings and we look to enhance program uh so we we did that um but we also this year i wanted to focus on mental health uh all of our students have faced some you know a challenging couple of years uh and really looking for some ways to provide some more supports and we did that through an addition of a social worker for next year that we're recommending in this year's this upcoming budget as well as a partnership with northwell health to provide some additional mental health supports for for our district as well um we also last year through the the budget process had to reduce some of our infrastructure projects for technology uh you know those are our computers and smart boards in our classrooms primarily our chromebooks so um we are recommending uh
020the addition of some of those infrastructure projects as well some capital projects some facilities projects that i'll touch on in a second and then also to to enhance some of our security and in our buildings which um is is you know we made some reductions this year so we look to enhance that next year um this is where we currently stand uh this is the budget the board adopted uh a couple of weeks ago we are at a overall tax levy increase of 2.12 which is just below our tax levy limit about 2 000 below that our approved budget for last year was an 82 million budget it was 82.7 million dollars uh this year we're proposing an 84.9 million dollar budget which is a 2.2 million dollar increase the that's being offset by some
021increases in in state aid that i'll touch on in a moment um and then our tax levy increase the tax levy is the portion of the budget that our our taxpayers pay uh that our homeowners pay that are paid through local property tax um last year it was a 62.3 million dollar tax levy uh and we're proposing a 63.6 million dollar tax levy increase for a total tax levy increase of 1.3 million dollars and that's that 2.12 percent um these are some of our big uh you know estimates in terms of revenue uh always important to take a look at that i really highlight this um just to give you a breakdown of some of the different sources of revenue the bulk of our budget is paid locally through our our tax uh property taxes
022that's the um 63.6 million dollars we're proposing uh but then that's uh offset by by our our state aid right our state aid uh is increasing pretty significantly this year for us it's been something that's been fairly flat over recent years you can see last year we had 18.4 million dollars in state aid this year it's increasing to 19.2 million dollars which is an 850 000 increase that's primarily coming from one category which is something called foundation aid uh foundation age is the biggest portion of aid that we receive from new york state and it's really unrestricted aid that we can use for various uh various things new york state had frozen foundation aid for a long time going well back to 2008 and our governor made a commitment to reinstate foundation aid to the
023levels that it should be at and that's really this is the first portion of that they're proposing in new york state to do that over two years so this is the first increase and we hope to receive a similar increase next year as well that's what they've promised so this will help offset a lot of the big drivers in our budget to give you a sense of that one of them is healthcare our healthcare premiums are going up 12 which is significant that's almost a million dollars in our budget so speak to that in a second these are the programs we're looking to restore security i mentioned some additional support in our ict model at the secondary level with some increased contact time that's our our co-taught model for special education mental health support i
024mentioned middle school athletics unfortunately this year we had to reduce our middle school athletic teams from where there were two teams a seventh grade team and an eighth grade team in some situations to just a a single team a seventh and eighth grade team that was part of what we lost when when the budget went down for the first time that was part of the program reduction in addition to a number of other reductions and this budget proposes to restore that as well we also reduced three administrative positions last year uh we're proposing the restoration of one of those which is at the elementary level to support our elementary curriculum and instruction we had two leaders of elementary curriculum and instruction uh in the last year and um and we're proposing restoring one of those
025positions and then the technology infrastructure that i mentioned earlier new items in the budget some new course offerings at juanto high school and area of business the arts engineering some i applaud our our art department for their continued uh creativity and and new ideas there so we look forward to the expansion there and then our business department is retooling some of their offerings as well so we're excited about those mental health support i mentioned and then some academic supports in reading and math as well we're also this year we're really excited to add a universal pre-k program at uh at all three of our elementary schools new york state provided us with a a grant last year to do that for 64 spots for students that that was 64 free spots for uh for pre-k
026um and we got word of that grant late uh put together a program over the summer uh we had a lottery for that we had about 130 families that applied for those 64 spots and as i mentioned had one class at each of our buildings we're going to be expanding that next year the grant has been expanded that we are receiving from new york state we're going to be able to service about 107 students from across the district we had a very similar response this year we in january we held the lottery and we had about 130 families that responded and initially only could award the 64 spots now with the additional monies we're going to be able to expand that we'll be hosting three upk classes at wanta elementary two at forest lake and
027one at mandalay so we're excited about the continued expansion of that program and our only concern really is is space going forward you know we're starting we've we've we've stretched our elementary spaces to accommodate those classes but we're starting to get to our our maximum there so um that's something if this funding continues uh in this way would be terrific uh but we're gonna have to address that as uh as that uh happens so we're working on that these are just some of the facilities projects contained within the the budget this year some of the maintenance you know it's it's uh carpets and painting and those types of projects one of the biggest projects we'll be undertaking this summer is art room renovations which we'll be doing at wanton middle school we have a couple
028of of our classrooms that are in desperate need i'm embarrassed to even put these pictures up here these are original cabinetry in these rooms that uh that we are going to be completely gutting and renovating we worked with senator brooks's office to receive a grant of about 180 000 to renovate these these classrooms uh we had done that work a couple of years ago the grant got held up uh as a result of covid they had frozen the spen they froze spending in new york state and they uh gave us the green light for this project so we were ready to go over the summer and we're really looking forward to the the renovated spaces there um in addition to the position that we're going to be putting forth to the community for our um
029our budget vote uh to vote on our budget we also have a second proposition that we're putting on the uh the ballot this year as well and that's to expend funds from something called our capital reserve fund our capital reserve fund is a fund that we set up in 2018 to fund capital projects facilities projects we identified a good number of capital projects that need to be completed we established a fund for 10 years that could be funded up to seven and a half million dollars any fund balance at the end of the year can be put into that fund to fund those projects um we're proposing an expense out of that fund so the money has already been uh set aside it's been allocated to our capital reserve uh and it's for six hundred
030thousand dollars uh to begin uh some renovations to our main gym here at wanton high school uh and it's to renovate our uh ceiling uh we have a drop to kind of an age drop ceiling in that uh location uh it's gonna be a complete removal of that ceiling and a restoration of the um the the original ceiling above that uh the um uh the steel beams uh to completely remove that and and update our lighting there as well uh it's also uh to renovate the original uh block windows that are in that uh that room as well uh so uh so that is a and then to restore the flooring in there to to do some uh flooring work there as well so um that's a separate proposition that's on the budget uh on
031the ballot and as i said that that will be a sep that will be part of the money already is set aside for that and does not impact our tax levy um as i referenced earlier these are some of the big drivers in our budget you know why does our budget go up annually we're facing the same inflationary costs that that all of you as homeowners are facing and the big with the biggest driver first this year is in healthcare as i referenced earlier we have about a 12 increase in healthcare uh cost healthcare premiums that we pay for our employees and that's that's about a million dollar increase just under that um negotiated salary increases that also includes that's all of our uh collective bargaining agreements that we've negotiated with our various units uh
032and any new positions i reference a new social work position and a new administrative position that's all included in here and as you can see from the bottom line that totals up you know more than that tax levy increase that 2.2 million dollars and that's because as we worked through the budget we made reductions in other areas and then many of the other areas listed in there are really inflationary expenses as i referenced earlier you have some increases in uh just basic supplies that we're we're uh we're purchasing as well as our energy costs that have gone up significantly as as everyone else's has um and where where is our where's our money spent you can see here uh 75 percent of our money is human resources right that's that's where we're organization of of
033people and that's where we spend our our dollars um you know 25 of our our budget uh goes to the supplies and our energy and and facilities and all those types of things uh but uh the bulk of our dollars is spent on our staff that's that's where and and the the benefits that go along with that new york state aid i really spoke to earlier and that that increase that is helping significantly with this budget uh and we really anticipate new york state making good on that promise for next year as well so hopefully really presenting a solid picture uh going forward so in summary uh we're at 2.12 for our tax levy increase a budget to budget it's 2.69 percent uh we were able to restore some of our loss program that we're
034we're certainly excited about as well as introducing some of our new program as well as uh improving some of our facilities uh across the district um the vote will be on tuesday may 17th it will take place at each one of our elementary schools at wanto el we'll be in the auxiliary gym at forest lake and mandalay will be in the main gyms there the polls will be open from 7 00 am to 9 00 pm and if you're not registered to vote we have another voter registration day our district clerk elaine mcguigan will have that on on saturday morning at 9 00 a.m it'll be held right in our district office in our administrative offices we have great detail i want to thank mr cedrone for his outstanding work with the budget this year
035he has put together a comprehensive website uh with all of our presentations that we've done you know through each forum all the budget detail if you have insomnia and cannot sleep please feel free to go through all that detail it's all there for you and certainly if you have any questions about the budget at all feel free to reach out to us we're happy to answer any questions or any concerns you may have about our budget process as we go forward and that will really conclude our budget hearing for tonight i'll turn it back over to mr greco thank you thank you mr mcnamara the floor is open no questions on the budget tall so i have to move this up um good evening my name is lauren mchale i have two children in the
036wanta school district one in middle school and one in wanta el i wanted to speak tonight in honor of teacher appreciation week i hope by now the board and the administration has seen the two articles that were published this week in them the community wrote to praise over 190 wanta teachers and staff communities shared their stories and their gratitude for all that our teachers and staff do to make our district great but tonight i want to publicly acknowledge all of the unnamed teachers and staff i know that i wasn't able to reach every grateful parent and child and i know that those untold stories of love and gratitude are just as important as the ones that were shared so thank you so much to all of our faculty and staff they deserve it my son
037will be graduating middle school this year i know that many of these board meetings have contained comments about the social emotional learning curriculum that is used in the middle school i'm not sure if the community realizes that the district is required by law to teach sel under the dignity for all students act which was passed in 2016 but i am certain that you are bored and administrators are well aware of that and i am grateful that you are continuing to teach our students how to be respectful and empathetic and i hope you continue to make our middle school no place for hate i am also particularly thankful that you are making the mental health of our students a priority in january of this year an article was published in the american psychological association that stated
038prior to coven 19 the cdc data found that one in five children had a mental disorder but only 20 percent of those children received care from a mental health provider whether kids are facing trauma because of child abuse or loss of a family member or everyday anxiety or concerns about the virus or unpredictable routines they need even more support now all amid a more significant shortage of children's mental health resources and i applaud the district for looking for ways to help our struggling children tweens and teens i also know that none of these services will be available without parental consent proving the district is working with our parents and not against them for the benefit of all students thank you very much [Applause] hi my name is jill jansen i'm a wantagh parent i have
039two children who attend the school district i am here tonight to represent a perspective that i don't think is often represented at these meetings a recent npr poll found that among parents of school-aged children 82 percent agreed that their child's school handled the pandemic well and i consider myself a part of that 82 percent we're nearing the end of the school year the second full year of in-person instruction for my kids and i am so grateful to everyone on the board to superintendent mcnamara to assistant superintendent mark ferris to every administrator to every teacher for making in-person instruction possible for my two young children that was not the case for many families across the country and i certainly do not take it for granted no one was prepared for what happened early in 2020 but
040i believe that you should all be incredibly proud of how you navigated the challenges that you were presented and the decisions you made to make sure our kids could get back into the classroom stay safely and stay in the classroom we saw this last march the light at the end of the tunnel and it was such a relief that things were getting back to normal so i haven't taken the opportunity to express my gratitude and my appreciation to thank you and that's what i wanted to do tonight and i do have one question i understand that new york state wants schools to address diversity equity and inclusion by setting data targets reviewing curriculum and potentially creating a committee of all stakeholders including students and i'm hoping that you can share sort of where you are
041in that process and any details that you can share with the community thank you all so much [Applause] hi my name is denise belling i've lived in wanton since 2006 and i have two children that attend wansa high school i wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to the administration and the board for all that you have done to get us through these past two years i believe that our district used sound judgment to navigate the pandemic and kept health and safety at their utmost priority and for that i am very thankful looking back on the spring and summer of 2020 i can remember that people were genuinely frightened for their health and the health of their family and friends was a very difficult time for all of us filled with uncertainty and
042dread there was no road map on how to handle a pandemic yet we all knew we need to push forward with all that in mind the plan that wanto school district put together for the fall of 2020 returned to school was well thought out and comprehensive we were able to return students in k through 6 full time and our students in grades 7 through 12 with a hybrid schedule and live virtual classes the days that they were home both my children children were in the high school at the time and while it wasn't ideal i knew that our schools were doing all that they could to keep everyone safe and learning for that and for that i am very grateful i think that care and caution but also a drive to push forward carried through
043in the district's decision making each step along the way when it was time for the oldest students to return to the school full-time it was done only after a plan was put in place to do so safely and in the fall of 2021 when it became all about the mass mandates i once again appreciated the pragmatic approach taken rather than make rash decisions that could backfire on the district letters were sent to new york state in june of 2021 and again in february of 2022 asking the state for the metrics for our community to use as a guideline to assess our local situation these guidelines would help us make determinations on when and how to use mitigation strategies and would allow us to make more objective decisions as we know the situation was constantly in
044flux and i'm grateful that our leadership was looking for ways to make sensible decisions and non-emotional ones i would also like to thank you for not taking up the fight against the mass mandate in the courts and for not wasting our tax dollars on a lawsuit that cannot be won i understand the concerns that were raised it has been a challenging time for all of us but i think that your decisions have kept in mind what is best for the greater community throughout you address the things that could be controlled and steered clear of what you couldn't control so thank you i think that because of that our district is emerging from this pandemic in a good position one we can build and improve upon i am also grateful that the administration is staying the
045course on education and book offerings in our schools i've heard repeated requests to pull a specific book off the shelf in the middle school library and to limit learning material offered in an ap elective class in the high school i've listened to and read responses provided by dr ferris and i'm encouraged by our district's commitment to keeping in a variety of viewpoints in our school libraries and for trusting our education professionals to set the curriculum and i hope that continues as happy as i am about the decisions being made there has been a lot of discussion in the community on social media about transparency and communication while there's a fair amount of disagreement there does seem to be a consensus a consensus that communication between the district and parents could be improved many insist that
046their questions and concerns have not been answered this past year so can you please explain the procedures in place for answering questions one at these board meetings and two when answering emails that are addressed to both mr mcnamara and the board for example should someone expect to hear back from both the administration and the board when questions are sent to both in an email and what about at meetings thank you so much for your time [Music] [Applause] i'm so moved and inspired i have no prepared thoughts but it's quick i am also my name is jennifer viznon i have one student in middle school and i do also want to share my appreciation for this district and the work that you have done i have friends who live in jersey and are also in new
047york city at the board of ed and their pandem experience was completely different and i told my son when you go to college it's going to be very strange you're going to have this entirely different story about how you got to go to school and you your district handled it in such a way that you could still be in person and not you know have that kind of experience and i'm very grateful for that i've just seen a report i didn't get to finish reading it about this grand experiment that has happened on our children and what happened to so many kids when they were stuck and not at school so thank you so much for that and thank you again for your attention to the academic needs of our students and their social emotional
048health and so much more that was so eloquently shared earlier i want to express my gratitude and thanks [Applause] uh budget increase the salary increases what is the average pay raise for the salary increases for the school we exclude new hires with existing employees what's the average increase okay i've seen seeing no more questions we'll end our public comment period thank you all for uh participating in that uh much appreciated um i'm sorry do you have a did you want to participate okay hi gene dbrc and i just i'm curious regarding if anyone has seen the documents dropped by pfizer they've been forced to they they wanted to hide it for 75 years and now they've been forced to drop it by 55 000 a month for the next nine months so this is very
049quick because it's so this is a fisa data dump is 270 pregnant women were tested and 230 away 238 went awol as of 32 remaining only one live birth at a 32 the others of various cases of spontaneous abortion or fetal death and this is coming from the fisa documents that were dropped so on that note i know someone here made a comment about thanking you for not being a part of the with the other school districts to write a letter for parental choice and being a part of the other school districts like massapequa i disagree i know that there's two sides there are people that believe it's fine other people that don't and those that right now with what's been going on all this time people have been forced to wear a mask that's
050one-sided those people are happy you have the other side that would like choice if you would like to wear a mask or get a vaccine it's their choice to put something in or on their body so we're asking and it should be this way because in the end this is america we have free we should be free to make our own decisions we would like the school to be a part of other schools fighting for parents and for kids if all of the school districts got together and did this i guarantee we would have a different outcome i think it's very important because when you don't have a lot of people coming together you see what's happening in other states they're coming together look at florida they everyone said oh it's going to be so
051bad look what they're they're they're doing better than any other state and south dakota please this is very important for kids and parents kids don't need to be in master not the problem and all the fisa dumps that have been coming out are why do you think they wanted to hide it for 75 years i think that is already telling and they had 10 pages small font of all of the injuries and death of people that are lifelong and will not be changed anywhere else before i close the public comment please okay thank you i'll close the public comment period thank you all for your participation uh just to respond to to some of the questions that were raised this evening um miss jensen thank you for your questions about sel and dei uh we
052are certainly working on that um we have a committee of folks uh working on our stl initiatives for uh for next year at our elementary schools we have a number of teachers uh staff members that are participating in that committee they're going to be evaluating some different scl options for various programs so we uh we certainly uh look forward to their report and their work and their recommendations um uh dr ferris will be working with uh with the team there um we i think there was a question uh misspelling about uh just procedures in terms of our board meetings typically during public comment period we after the public comment period ends that's when we would respond to any uh questions or concerns that were raised if it's something that i can't respond to immediately then
053i'll respond at the next day to that that that particular person that raised that question in terms of emailing um typically the way it works is if someone emails myself in the board of education i then respond on behalf of the board for uh to that uh the the board of education are volunteers they're not uh you know tied to their uh their emails if it's something that i have to consult with them on where it needs uh you know a response where i need them to weigh in on that sometimes that has to wait then until the next time we meet and then we discuss that and then i'll respond on the board's behalf and that's typically the way that process works there was a question about our negotiated salaries so the average is
054about 2.2 percent across the board if i had to put it to our average employee wage increase and then there's lots of different portions of that depending on the bargaining unit and and their particular situation some of our bargaining units have steps that are built in that they progress on and the steps have different values and then any uh increases in that salary schedule from year to year other units do not so that's you know just but to just put a number to it for you across the board would be an average of just over about two percent um and steviasi um i'm i'm not familiar with the pfizer uh information that you provided and i understand your your position and in terms of vaccinations uh that you've brought to our attention before so i
055appreciate your comments as well and i think that was it was there anything that i missed okay all right all right thank you all so much for attending tonight we appreciate it and don't forget our budget vote is on may 17th have a great night you