001May 19th business meeting for the Patrick Linton Board of Education. Would everybody please rise for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Mr. Believe would you please go over the ground rules and the welcome? Sure. Good evening and welcome to the May 19th, 2025 meeting of the Patrick Metford Board of Education. In the unlikely event of an emergency, please use the exits located at the front and rear of the auditorium to exit the building. Please be advised that smoking and the use of vape products are strict strictly prohibited on school grounds. There are two public comment portions to the board of education meeting. The first will be for comments relating to the
002consent agenda items and/or presentations. The second public comment section will be open for any topic you would like to bring to the board. During each of these public comment times, each speaker will have three minutes with no sharing of minutes. Please state your name and address when you approach the podium. You'll be warned when you have 30 seconds remaining and asked to conclude after three minutes. Please refrain from discussing specific students or staff members. To protect their privacy, these matters should be discussed with the appropriate administrator. Please direct all questions or comments to the board of education president. Thank you, Mr. Lever. Okay. Before we move on, uh, I'd like to take this opportunity in presentations and our reports to say that I'm honored and privileged to on behalf of the board of education for
003the New York State School Boards Association's presentation to our trustee Francis Salazar for the board achievement award for his excellence and the recognition for all the continuing education he does to be the best board member he can. [Applause] Stand. Okay, congratulations against again uh Trusty Salazar. Okay, next up we have a presentation by our ASUS students. May I? Absolutely. Dr. John, just just as Dr. Rosillowitz comes forward, I it is so delightful to see so many of the students who we know so well. I see our opera singer here, Manny, the famous Manny. Hi, Manny. He sings opera at so many of our basketball games and he the just the the the ASUS students just are bring sunshine to any day of the week and it is just an honor and privilege for them to
004be here. I know that there was a game tonight so some couldn't make it. I'm just so thankful that any of you could make it. Even if you couldn't, I would have understood. But to see you here and to bring this whole presentation to light is just a delight to be here. So, thank you. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Brazilowitz and and the other administrators, Mr. Mloud, um is here somewhere. Yes. As well. Is he Oh, yes. Your profile. I couldn't see them. Sorry, Dr. R. Thank you. Now I see them. There you are. All right, Mr. Cracker. All right, spot. All right, please proceed, Dr. R. Okay, so um yes, you know, we're calling it reimagining homecoming because as we know, nobody does homecoming like we do. Um so I'm not
005going to say reinventing homecoming. We're going to reimagine it. And I think the beauty about education in life, sometimes you find these incredible things that happen that you never thought would would occur, but lo and behold, it it changes everything. And I think you're going to kind of see what I mean by that at the end of this presentation. So certainly before I get started, um, Mr. McCloud, Mr. KCKO, Mr. Nunan, Mr. Greco, our advisers, Mr. Commandzo, assistant principal at the high school. There's been a lot of work that's been going on behind the scenes, certainly with uh Dr. Jones's support as well throughout the entire process. So, let me see. Can we advance the slide, please? There we go. So, introduction and need in our postcoavid world. There's been a lag in many aspects
006of society. Uh co again being the the culprit of this and what people may not realize is that homecoming there's been a lot going on behind the scenes that the community would never know. Uh there's been issues with regard to securing float sites. It's been a challenge. We had one uh last year where we didn't have a tow truck driver that morning of and we finally got somebody. Um which obviously you have to pull four floats and not three, right? Um there's advisor interest in recruiting the next wave of advisers for each incoming ninth grade. Uh securing of those float sites. So I think the beauty of it is that on the forefront the community didn't know that was going on, but certainly Dr. Jones and myself many conversations about you know sustainability and moving
007forward. Um so before I go on I just want to acknowledge you know the the Patrick method uh all the patchog firehouse uh the the waste management the various companies that have have helped us but it's becoming more challenging and it's not sustainable. We got to kind of figure out what do we do moving forward. Many changes happen at our high school and the last thing I certainly want as principal is we get to a point where you know something negative happens. So it's time to start strategically thinking looking forward being forward thinking of you know how do we keep that mantra you know we've set the bar high of no one doing homecoming like Patrick Meford and to do anything less would be a disservice to what everybody knows in our community. So we
008have to keep that bar high. So we have to uh reimagine ourself. Can you forward the slide, please? So, you know, homecoming, people think that it just happens. It's one day and it's there. But the reality is that homecoming is not one day. Homecoming is it happens over several months. You know, we have to pick the theme, which comes out in the spring. We got to figure out what the shirts are that represent the theme by the classes. Uh there's bulletin boards. We have our raidable, which is our battle of the classes. We have our float design, the creation of skits. Again, as I said earlier, you have the secure the float sites, which is nuts. Securing of tow truck drivers, the coordination of the float sites, the supervision students. People don't realize that there
009are seniors driving to these float sites. And all the years that we've had that, we haven't had anything, thank God, of somebody being hurt with regard to that. There's the selection of the homecoming court, uh, coordination with the village for the parade. Uh, then there is homecoming day. And if and if you've been to homecoming, you always see me. I'm just like the Tasmanian devil running around right before that parade making sure all those pieces are in play. Um because somehow over the years I guess that's been my role to make sure that it all goes off without a hitch. So it takes all of that over months to finally decide. Now people show up for homecoming and think that's hey they just there's a lot that goes behind it and uh again we have
010a standard and we we don't want to lessen it. We want to keep raising the bar for ourselves, for our students, for our community. Can you advance the slide, please? So, problems with sustainability, fundraising of several thousands of dollars by each class to purch uh product uh most notably lumber. Uh as we know coming out of uh co lumber was probably the same cost as gold. Um and then as we know those floats uh get thrown out after homecoming which is is a is a crime in many ways. Um it's the securing of the float sites. As I said earlier, the tow truck driver, chaperrons, advisor interest, and the stress it is it is a big job uh to to do um supervision at float sites. It's something that over the last several years we've
011been adding more chaperones there because it's you know it can be challenging when you have uh you know more than a handful of kids and being responsible for all them. So again the job has become overwhelming. So as principal I have to say okay uh how do we keep what we have or raise the level and at the same time we need advisor interest we need faculty interest we need community support in securing these sites and uh listen I could tell you as principal and you've probably seen it as well prior to co and I don't want to blame co for anything but it it has really such a huge impact with the amount of things that are not being done in schools anymore because as a result of co certain companies stop doing things
012and there's nobody to pick, you know, the baton up and and and we we lose out. So, um again, how do we keep this moving forward? So, not sustainable. We need to reimagine homecoming. So, we have to resolve the one thing is the float site locations and transportation of the floats to the the parade route. Uh we need to build floats that are sustainable due to cost. We want to we have to repurpose the the wood that we're using for our floats. Certainly after homecoming, uh we need to develop a plan for supervision. Uh in addition to trying to create more school pride and assistance amongst our student body and staff in a new way. One of the challenges that we've seen uh over the past several years, we have 600 students in a class.
013If you've ever come to our Raider Bowl, which is our battle of the classes, we probably have about half of each grade level, 300 kids probably for each grade level come to Raidable to compete. But yet at the float sites, the numbers have continually dwindled, which means more student uh less students have to do more of the work. Uh and it can be very challenging. So again, in the midst of all this, if we're going to reimagine homecoming, how can we also boost uh school pride? getting more students to participate in in our programs, uh getting more of our teachers involved with it. So, we really had to think outside the box and saying, "Okay, we have all these variables. How can we tie these in a a knot, if you will, and say we
014we can meet all of the things that we want to do." So, here's our solution. So, our students that are here, can you come up here? Because this is the part where I want you up here. And remember, this is a representative. Yes. Best best students. They are the best. Come forward all of you Lely's here so we know we're in good shape. I know. Come on over here. Angelissa, we have some on this side. We'll have some on this side. Okay. Where where are you going? No, no. You're you're part of you're part of the plan. You tell her. You can take a couple of pictures, too. That would be good. Okay. So, we talk about finding something that came out of nowhere and is going to have a lasting impact on the Patro
015Method School District for many years to come. And lo and behold, um what started out as Raider Bean for the last several years and like in school Door Dash as we call it. Um maybe they'll send us a cease and desist letter, but that okay, we'll have our lawyers take care of that from Door Dash. But with that being said, they've been generating funds for a larger project that even they or I did not know was coming. And we found a solution to all this stuff, whether it's school pride, getting more voices, student voices involved, uh doing something incredible for the community, incredible for ourselves, not only as parents, but certainly as educators and as principal. Hit the slide. So, with their funds of I think close to $40,000, we have purchased four trailers, four
016tents, and we will be building our floats on our school property. So, just to step back a minute, $40,000 uh came over a few years of What are some of the things you guys make in the kitchen? Cookies, coffees, and dog biscuits. And dog biscuits. What flavors? Pumpkin and peanut butter. Pumpkin and peanut butter. And they sell out. The cookies sell out every day, right? Yeah. Oh. Um, fruit cups. There you go. Fruit cups. So, you can go into the kitchen, be greeted with a smile, get impeccable service, delicious cookies, desire. Don't act like you're embarrassed. Lee, you know it's true. And all of this service with a smile each and every day. They sell out of their cookies and $40,000 later, we have a solution to our problem thanks to these amazing students. Yes.
017And and an an incredible Yes. Give him a round of applause. And an and an incredible solution at that. So, what is that going to equate to? So, our high school property, we will have four tents uh with floats being built on our property spread out. So, it takes care of the supervision. It takes care of the students that drive. Um it it it allows us to now we're not going to be building floats in the evening time. Like float sites would start anywhere from 4:00 or 5 work into the evening. Now, we're going to have the opportunity when school's over to have students come out and build our floats right on our property. We have late buses. So, I think I saw Mr. to we won't need any additional late buses, but we'll have
018two late buses of students to be able to help out. Um, some of our faculty is here uh will be there to be able to help out. And we're looking to spread out the build season. Uh, obviously it's it's challenging enough, but uh we want to create more school pride. There's been some talk of of a pep rally. Uh, again, a lot of different things that we're throwing around, but again, these four tents will be on our property. they'll be built there and we're going to be doing a lot of building inside of of the school as well. So, it's not solely for that. So, we are going to be So, but here's the other thing part of it too and I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but it kind of lends itself in there.
019In addition to this program, our CTE program is right now they've built the um the fabricated model uh for what we got the first trailer in now. They're building that now. uh and we'll have the tent set up in two weeks to kind of see with the advisers uh what they're going to need with regard to the building at. So now our CTE program construction program is building the base of the float the core of it so that the advisers and students can then build on top of it. They will also be taking that apart now. So, we're not we're going to repurpose the wood. And then after this year, we anticipate of even going even further looking at more lightweight products um that are just as strong uh and more durable that we could
020reuse every year. So, they're our trailers, they're our tents. We no longer have to secure float sites throughout the community. Um and because of that, and I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's okay. These will be along with the other students in the program will be our grand marshals for homecoming 2025. The grand marshalss because they saved the day and and we broke the news to them. Uh the picture you saw a few slides back was when we shared this with them and you know this is truly a case study, right? that if you were in a master's program, how do you resolve a problem? And what we did or what the students did, they raised the money and then we we talked about it and the CTE program purchased the wood and
021then they could construct in their classrooms so that we don't have to rely on outside agencies. The tents, the wood, the lumber, the locations, the funding is all resolved by our students, which in and of itself builds pride and celebrating the students who were responsible for raising the money. And just so you know, they are so amazing. They had a basketball game tonight, which I hear was a tie. a tie. I'm used to you guys winning, but a tie. I'll take a tie, too. But they still came here tonight, and I told them, "You don't have to come because I know you're just getting off of a game." And they're still here. That's how dedicated they are. And I couldn't be more proud of them, all of them, for all that they do. And you
022know some games Manny sings the national anthem. I know one time I posted it on social media and I don't know how many thousands of views it got. But people don't even believe that's Manny. I said that can't be Manny's voice but it really you are amazing opera singer. Manny, how did you get that voice? Amazing. They are so gifted and talented. We're so proud of them. And we're so proud that they will be the grand marshalss because they save the day. Yes. And certainly just to add to that, we're also going to invite um the personnel out in our community that have assisted in past years with their sites. We don't want to think that because we've reimagined ourselves that, you know, they they no longer are are relevant. They certainly are and we
023want to bring them in and we'll we'll have more to say with regard to that going forward. Uh before we go to the next slide, I just want to say uh thanks to Mr. Mloud again with the CTE program. He was the point person with regard to that. Certainly uh Mr. Nan and his team uh going forward. So again, it's just it's really a a team effort. Okay, you can advance to the next slide. So some of the stuff I've already said already. So again, homecoming, self- sustainable uh repurposing of wood and materials, CTE classes, more effective supervision, float sites uh at our our high school, uh custod maintenance staff will pull the floats in the parade, uh float building after school, less pressure on advisers, be we're going to expand the window of building
024the floats, so it'll be less hours over a longer period of time. Uh right after school, again, we have late buses. Uh I think more increased opportunity for staff and again like I said earlier new times require new methods and opportunities to move forward. Next slide please. So conclusion and thoughts as we said our students will be the grand marshalss for homecoming 2025. After this year's bill we'll look to further transition to more modular floats. We they are modular now but we're going to look to increase that uh increase our school pride and community and maybe just maybe somewhere along the line a middle school float. not going to be not going to be judged, but certainly there's opportunity to increase that pride because again, we want to get some of our middle school students
025to get excited for the high school. So, we believe we could still live up to nobody doing homecoming like Patrick Meford can. Next slide. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Stay positive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll get you both at the same time. We got to We got to slow. We salute, right? I just want to also thank uh Mr. Krakco, Mr. McCloud, Mr. Nan, uh Mr. Maisy along with Dr. Rosilowitz. They worked tirelessly on this project to reimagine it. Does the board have any questions or comments? Just thank you. Amazing. I just like to say one last thing. You know, behind the scenes in all this, I cannot thank Dr. Jones enough because in the times I would go to Dr. Jones say this is where we're at. This is what we
026need. This is what we expect. And and and she was always there, no questions asked. And I certainly want to thank her publicly for all the stuff that we've been able to do privately. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Dr. R. Any questions for Dr. R before I'd just like to thank you for the the creative solutions to all of the and just create a whole new wonderful thing. It's great. Thank you very much everybody. Good. Thank you. Thank you Dr. R. Next, I'd like to uh welcome up to the uh podium our director of uh transportation, Mr. John Tups, to introduce Mr. Adam Calfman and Wendell Energy Services for a presentation on battery transition plan. So, I just want to take the opportunity to introduce Adam Kaufman. He is from
027Wendell. We are going through a bus electrification plan. um they're coming here on site. They'll be doing some um planning um and just yeah so without further ado let me introduce Adam Coffman. So I have to follow up that act. This is going to be tough here now. Okay. Um, so yes, my name is Adam Calfman and I am an engineer with Wendell Companies. We're an architecture and engineering firm. Um, and we've been doing work throughout the island um, around the transition from a internal combustion engine, a diesel bus fleet to an electric bus fleet. and it revolves around the state mandate that's out there right now which is um basically you know having school districts in New York State transition from their existing bus fleet to electric bus fleet by 2035. So that's what
028this I put a little presentation together. It will overview what uh we do. Um you know we've worked with roughly over a dozen other school districts on Long Island and probably 50 to 60 school districts throughout New York State. So we've been doing this for uh a while now. and I'll give you a rough overview of what that is. Um I guess I'll do this, I think, because I don't think this is working right now. It does. Okay, nice. Um okay, so agenda, uh I'll go through it. I'll spend as much time on each of these sections as we need. Um you know, I usually like to keep it free. I guess we can save questions to the end if we need to. If people felt they wanted to interject during it, I have no
029problem with that. Um so start about who Wendell is. Um we'll go into what the goals of a zero emission transition plan is. Uh what the typical scope of work is uh how the utility comes into the picture. Uh NIARTA uh the program they have around this and the funding that's available to do this planning and then uh questions and discussion. So Wendell like I said we are a full-ervice architecture and engineering firm. Uh we also have core businesses in construction management and energy efficiency. Uh we are focused in New York State. We're headquarters in Williamsville, Buffalo. Um if you visit, you should go get some wings because they're the best in the world there. Um so we have offices all throughout New York State. I think 13 to be exact in the state and
030the local offices in hot. Um we do work nationally. Um shaded regions are where we're actively doing work. uh how we see ourselves. So we see ourselves as a trusted advisor. We don't represent any product. We don't represent any chargers. We don't sell any buses type of thing. So we're really vendor agnostic. Uh we're technical experts and we try to propose the best solutions for each of the people we work with. Um a little bit about our experience. Again, we are full service architecture engineering and we cut our teeth on electric vehicles and the zero emission vehicle space in transit. So, transit is a little bit ahead of school districts. Um, they have been working on this mandate to a cleaner fleet and transportation for a long time. It started with hybrid and they've transitioned
031to electric vehicles and there is some hydrogen products out there in the transit space. Um, we've done a lot of work in Connecticut and New York State. The bottom right is some of the transition plans to highlight some of the school districts uh we've done locally. Um but we've done many more as well. I had to fit it on one page. Um so the zero emission bus mandate as it stands there's two key dates to be aware of. It's kind of fluid. It's changing. There was recent releases on this. Um but right now the dates are 2027. That date represents when all new school buses you purchase are to be electric vehicles. So no more internal combustion engine vehicles or diesel vehicles. They want it to be uh electric by that point. Um so that
032would mean, hey, if you're going to start to purchase vehicles, you got to have the infrastructure to charge them for that to make sense. Um the other key date is the 2035 date, which is when all school buses on the road, it's actually pupil transportation, so it's bigger than school buses. Some of the small vans are included in there too. Um would need to be 100% zero emissions. Uh they say they define it as zero emissions. That that opens the door for uh hydrogen products and uh battery electric products. Right now the market there's no commercially available hydrogen products. So it leaves you with one option. The last bullet here is about New York State Energy Research and Development Authority um Naerta. So they're tasked by the state to provide the technical assistance. They're the
033ones that are leading this uh initiative throughout the state. Uh they subsidize the study. We work very very closely with them in their technical approach and reviews and you know available funding. So a little bit about what we do. Uh this is a standard scope. We define it in seven tasks. I will say this study has been used by other districts to evaluate other aspects such as solar, such as site selection, such as uh you know other aspects that may be adjacently related to your fleet or transportation um that they we were able to get included into the study. So just adding that here, but I'll touch on the the standard approach here. Um and it's really we'll have a kickoff meeting. Uh there's there's a whole pre-process of getting approved with NAERTA, but once
034we are approved, we have a kickoff meeting. We'll introduce the team, the timeline. Um, and we'll go over the scope a little bit more detail. Um, task two is a data collection. Um, so this is the biggest lift on the district. John, this is my biggest lift on you here. So, I'm going to need to get all the information about your routes, your buses, your site, your electrical capacity. Um, things like that. I know all the PSCG people, so we won't need to worry about that contact information. Um, but task two is really, hey, I need to learn as much as I can about who Patchhog Bedford is. Uh, route analysis. So, we look at each of the routes. How long are they? What's their duration? What's their distance? Can an electric bus product uh
035drive that route? And how much would it need to recharge for the next route that it was going to do? Uh, task four, like each of these tasks kind of build on each other. So, task four is about a charging strategy. So it looks at not just one route or one bus but it looks at your whole all of the buses together at that site and says okay how much power would I need to bring to this site to be able to charge all the buses as per the routes that are provided that each bus needs a certain amount and so then we know how much power is uh required at the site and we start working with PSCG local utility we say hey PSCG do you guys have this amount of power and how
036much would it cost for you to bring that power here after that we put together a concept plan. It's kind of like a 30% schematic design. It lays out where your buses and chargers would be laid out on site, what that cost would be. Um, and you know, obviously we'll work closely with you guys to make sure it aligns with kind of your vision of that space. Um, but it gives you guys a lot of information to really make plan decisions and understand what does this transition plan mean for Patchog Medford. Um, and the last task there is a cost estimate. It is a detailed cost estimate line by line. Um, it's broken out into phases typically, so you might not need to do everything at once. You might be able to get a couple
037buses, then a couple buses, and so on. All of that gets summarized into a lengthy report. It's usually a couple hundred pages, 50 pages of core content. Um, and it summarizes all of, you know, the work that we did in the analysis. It summarizes our approach from a concept perspective, the costs, uh, and it and it summarizes all of the incentive money that's currently out there around this space. It's very comprehensive. Um, on the screen I flashed a couple. These are, uh, some of the most common commercially available battery electric bus products on the market today. Uh, you may know their diesel counterparts. Um, highlight it just to show that there are certain operating ranges they list here. Um, when we do our modeling, we're looking at, uh, worst case conditions. That's cold weather. That's
038when they're not going to drive that far. So, what we'll say they'll drive is probably half that. if that. Um, so again just the emphasis that the models are, hey, this is not what they put on a piece of marketing material. This is what we see from real life, you know, uh, on-road driving data. Okay, so here's an interesting part. Like I said, New York uh, NICERTA, New York State Research and Development Authority, um, has incentive money around this space for this program. They have great incentive money. Um, they have two programs that you can get funded under. They've actually been merged, so they're all flexible technical assistance program now, but the the brackets still stand the same. Uh, you are either at 75% funded for this plan or you are at 100% funded for
039this plan. Hatchog Medford happens to be 100% funded for this plan. So, it is at no cost to the district to do this study. Uh, what's great about working with Wendell is Wendle is an approved partner. It's not a reimbursement to you guys. You never have to see the money come out of your paycheck or your pockets. It goes right direct payment to Wendell. Uh, a little bit more about it. Funding programs. Oh, that didn't come over right. Nice. Um, so we'll we'll stick here. Um, the main funding program here is a New York school bus incentive program. It's broken out into two brackets. It is the school bus incentive program and it is the charger incentive program. Um, so basically they're they're giving you money for each of the chargers you buy and for
040each of the school buses you buy. The goal is to, you know, subsidize the capital impact on the district and get it cost competitive, comparable, um, or even, you know, uh, more cost advantageous to the district versus their diesel counterparts. That's their goal. There's also uh, other tax credits. There's federal money out there. We typically don't present that because we're less confident in its longevity. Um, but these state programs we're very confident in NERTA has large commitments to. Again, those didn't come over great. I apologize. Um, so the last things I'll talk about is kind of what one of the schematic designs can look like. This is for a school district upstate by our headquarters. We've actually uh built the first phase of this plan, which is great. Um, but essentially it breaks out their
041school district. I think they had something like 70 buses and we basically outlined how we could approach their existing site and where we would bring charging chargers and power in a phased approach. So the first phase is on the left. We bring it up on the right side of their transportation site. Then we bring that lower bottom uh section in. I think the next ones have the next ones as well. Exactly. And then we bring that top left uh corner of the site in. So essentially it just outlines that everything doesn't have to be done at once. We'll break it down into into pieces and we'll present it in that way and we'll work closely with you guys to say does this fit what you guys you know envision and that's all I have for
042you. So any questions thoughts? So very many not not to you. Um like we don't own most of our buses. We contract out. Um I welcome your thoughts on that. Yeah. Um so I think having a you know small fleet is fine and we do studies that are 10 bus studies which is no problem five bus studies right to understand still you got to understand your site and what it would take um there's also school districts that choose this as an opportunity to study what that impact would be to spring some of those contracted routes in house right so you said hey if I wanted to study the contracted routes as well figure out what that capacity that power impact would be on our site if our site is even feasible for it, things like
043that. People take that this as an opportunity to evaluate that. Um, but it's really, you know, based on what you guys want and envision for your school district. It's very okay and acceptable. You wouldn't be the only district. Many districts do it that don't have a large fleet that just want to study their buses. Um, is it what I'm thinking of the high school specifically because they have a very large use of buses. Um, and it's over the course of a day that would be needed to be charged, but it's the other company's buses. So, would we have charging stations on our property for the vendor to be charging at? Yeah, that relationship there gets very interesting. So if that's your in vision for it and I see I don't have any vision whatsoever. I'm
044just questions. Sure. Sure. Um you know in in that scenario I think it's more common to see you know the school district refer us to the vendor and say hey because the vendor really has an interesting study that bus is not just used for Patchhog Medford. That bus is used all over the place. So you know it almost becomes a your contractor specific study about how they operate their fleet. It would really be more for if you guys envisioned bringing those buses in house. Okay. I have a question about the time frame here. Sure. So that was 120 minutes for on a on best case scenario was the charge. Is that what we said? 120 miles. 120 miles. Is 60 miles you said. So 60 miles. You said about half on right. We would be
045more conservative. Again, different bus products have different ranges. Those are four common products there. So different, you know, different buses can go different ranges essentially. Some buses can go up to 250 miles. So at half that you know some of our buses we loop and loop and loop and by the time that loops over then we're bringing them home and we're looping right again. So I was just curious how did that and then infrastructure. Yeah. Do we know if the town of Brook Haven has the street capacity? Are the streets strong enough to handle the weight of the buses? Oh, I was thinking the charging stations itself, the streets, the capacity to for Yeah. the charging capacity. That's a more that's a typically, you know, more uh, you know, question that does need to be
046solved and I actually don't know the answer to that, but I can promise you that as part of this study, we will because even just with the solar panels, we've hit snags where we can't we can't utilize our plans. So, we're moving forward and coming up with options because our buildings can't even sustain the weight of the solar panel. I I think the beauty of what we're seeing here is the first steps to begin to explore the study to identify what the capacities can and cannot be, what we can and cannot do. What does this even look like? What are our options? Uh who we have to get involved? what various costs are are going to need to be had in order to make this work and how does the operation function and how does
047this affect the daily operation even even down to the routing uh for everything that needs to occur. So I think before we can even answer the questions that are very good questions that you've laid out uh we first have to explore and go with the study to identify and learn more about what is involved with this. What are the timelines associated with this? What what structural issues will uh be available? you know what what kind of retrofitting needs to occur and what kind of kinks are we going to run into are you going to run into along the way and so I think the first step is to have the study and so before we actually recommended for approval the study which is of no cost to us the first step was to have the
048presentation and um in In Mr. Maisy's absence, we still wanted to go forward with the presentation so that we can consider the contract which is currently under review with our attorneys and their attorneys to proceed just like we do with energy performance contracts and everything else. So, could you qualif clarify for me this the scope of the study? Um, yeah. I mean roughly I mean you had a slide on it but I didn't take a picture. Sure. Yeah. Um generally the scope of the study looks at your fleet. It looks at your specific buses and if they're viable with an electric count electric bus counterpart. It looks at uh the power capacity of the site and the requirements of that fleet. And it looks at the cost to install that electrical infrastructure and charging infrastructure
049at that site. And I'll add one extra which it incorporates the incentive monies that are available to help. Okay. So it's very sight specific to our properties. It is at your site at your property. Correct. Do we know who's doing the studies on larger infrastructure, larger government and provided infrastructure like streets, uh uh energy capacity, that kind of do we know who's doing that? Um, so there are agencies for it. I'm probably not the best person to answer that question, but I will tell you this that in terms of the roads, there is requirements and standards of vehicles that drive on that road and those bus manufacturers have to meet those requirements to drive on these roads. So, okay. In terms of road safety, the those manufacturers are really the ones that are focused on
050that. Okay. And have you uh done studies for school districts of comparable size? Yeah. Uh, definitely. And um you know this is uh so yes and from a bus fleet perspective much much larger right some of the districts we've done is 200 buses and that that's a whole different nightmare going on there um or or uh you know approach any questions trustees thank you very much take care so for the next meeting We hopefully will have everything fully vetted. There's no cost to the district to explore the study and to acquire additional information so that next steps can ensue from there. Thank you. Okay, moving along. Um, this would normally be the time when Ella McCann, our ex official student, would make presentation, but she's not here with us this evening. So we're going to
051move on to number eight, which would be public comments on reports and the agenda items. We're going to limit it to three minutes per person to total of no more than 60 minutes and no sharing of minutes by residents. And it'll be based on this the information has been presented to this point. When you come up to the podium, if you'd like to speak or ask a question, please state your name and your address. Okay. So, now we're going to move on to item number nine, which is the consent agenda. And um I would like to ask for a motion uh to accept the consent agenda. I need a motion. Uh Trusty Jennings and a second. Second. Trustee Salazar. All in favor? I opposed. Okay. Thank you. passes. Five nothing 5. 5. You got it
052right. Okay. Thank you. All righty. So, now we're going to move on to here. Okay. Item number 10. There were no items removed from the consent agenda for a separate vote. Number 11, there were no actions arising out of executive session. Um, number 12,formational items. Okay. First reading policies. Um, the following policies will be circulated for first reading. If there are no changes, the policies will be included on the June 23rd agenda. Um and they are 5129.1 artificial intelligence 5132 grading systems 6154 the homework policy. Okay. I'm going to now number 13 Dr. Jones for a superintendent report. Sure. Thank you Mr. President. Good evening again everyone. And I'd like to first start by thanking the trustees for approving the full agenda. Included on the agenda were the bid awards for a number of the
053capital capital and pro uh capital projects associated with the athletic field and gym improvements associated with the bond issue. So a lot of that work will start this summer. So, we're super excited that the uh state has improved the aid on those projects so that we could proceed. Um, a lot of work will be going on. Um, and in Mr. Maisy's absence, I just wanted to acknowledge that that was one of the items that was approved on the agenda. So, thank you for that. The next thing I'd like to say is last week was a super busy week in Patrick Medford. Um, it started and ended with a bang. I will say that it started last Monday night with our PMCT awards night. I'd like to publicly thank and acknowledge all of our teachers and
054teaching assistants that are part of that um unit under the leadership of Kevin Tulin and his executive board. It was an amazing evening. continues to always improve and be greater than we could ever expect each year. So that started last Monday night and um it was uh this actual room and it was standing room only. It was a wonderful evening to celebrate our our students. Um and then we moved on through the week with a multitude of concerts all throughout the week. Wednesday evening was volunteer recognition night. It was an amazing evening where we had the opportunity to showcase the talent of some of our students in in the music and arts area. They I know it's been it's amazing when they have me reminiscing down uh Westside Story and knowing all the songs. It
055was really really wonderful. Um it was there were well over 300 um volunteers that were administrators, teachers, aids, teaching assistants. Um all all gamuts, board of education. Um all of us were there to celebrate and and share the appreciation. We were able to also acknowledge our volunteer of the year, Miss Leela Singh from the Catchman area of Eagle Elementary who is also a volunteer but also uh works in in one of our schools as well. uh she was recognized. And then we also and as part of our uh desire to improve community engagement over the course of the year, we for the first time um had a competition for community engagement for each of our schools to participate in. And there was a rating scale um for them for us to rate the level of
056engagement. And we were very proud to acknowledge Kanan Elementary School as the winner of uh the the most engaged school by the the uh rubric that we had identified. They will be hosted with a barbecue that will be from district office, superintendent um office and we will be at Kanan on the date in June to be selected to acknowledge Kanan the Kanan community for all of their efforts. Uh so congratulations to Leela Singh volunteer of the year and to Kanan Elementary School under the leadership of Ray Ruez for uh outstanding community engagement. Uh I would also like to thank the community partners. There were so many community partners the night of volunteer recognition. We will be, if we didn't already, highlight them on our social media uh page for the district. They provided all of
057the food for the event. And so our community got the opportunity to have entertainment by our students. They were fed uh by our community partners. So truly exemplifying community engagement at its best all around. Also, the ROC brought the color guard. Just an amazing uh allaround with our Glee Club and their spectacular performance as well. And we rounded out the week on Sunday with Hisp Hispanic Heritage Parade down Main Street that um I had the good fortune of attending. It was going on for hours. The parade was incredible. And it and I don't know what time it stopped, but I know I was there a long time and it was there was no end in sight. What a wonderful way to celebrate on a beautiful day Hispanic heritage here in Patchog. It was just a
058wonderful, wonderful day. One of the students, there was a student that was an honore in the parade. He is one of our top 10 students, Kevin Halgo, who will be going to Yale um in the fall and he is of Hispanic descent is um descent and he uh was an honore in the parade. It was wonderful to see him, to hear him speak about his heritage and uh to celebrate his ancestry because he, as he put it, he stood on their shoulders to get where he was. And so that was wonderful. I'd also like to acknowledge that the top 10 students have been announced. We will certainly highlight them on social media, but I will acknowledge the top three. Um, the validatoran is uh uh Val Gor um I mean I'm sorry validatoran is garb
059dishwash with a GPA of 105.25. Isaac Vergis saludiatoran with a a GPA of 103.87. 87 and our SCS Aaron Diamond with a GPA of 103.47. Congratulations to our top three, our top 10, and to all the the graduates that will be coming forward uh next month. Um I would also like to say in that very busy week, we had a visit from the state education department. They wanted to see the work that we've been doing around cultural competence. And the director, the executive director of the office of diversity, equity, and inclusivity for the state education department came to tour several of our buildings, three shes, a middle school, and a high the high school. and she was absolutely blown away at the work that we do. It's not a check the box work. It is
060who we are. It's ingrained in the fiber and DNA of how we function. And no one person owns that ability to move the district forward. In that way, we have created a culture of care that is notable by the state education department and other districts as well. So, we were very proud to tour her around and for her to see the incredible work of our district. I'm also excited to share that our girls flag football team completed an outstanding regular season. They finished as an undefeated team and are earning the title of conference one champions. Wow. The they're only a couple of years old as a team and they are the conference champions. They now enter the playoffs as the favorites to win the Suffach County Championship. Congratulations to head coach Brad Wyman who was
061named coach of the year for his leadership and success. Both of our base our baseball and softball teams secured playoff births with key victories over conference rivals during the past two weeks and we look forward to a strong postseason performance for from both programs. Uh I could go on and on and on um because there every day there is another update to our athletics uh program and the the amazing um victories. Um Mr. Krakco, are you there? Did I miss one? Is lacrosse u girls lacrosse are playing tomorrow at um summ at 4 o'clock. Baseball will be home tomorrow at 4 o'clock. as well as girls flag football will be home tomorrow at four o'clock. Are there any potential other placements? Um I think it's those as for team sports it's those four and then
062we'll have the individuals from the boys and girls track that will be going into the qualifying season and um the county championship season. So kudos to Mr. Krakco under his uh leadership we have been able to improve uh in so many ways our athletic program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your fine work there as well. Um I know I thanked um all relative to the presentation for this evening, but I also once again want to acknowledge Mr. Nunan for all the work he contributed to the homecoming presentation because there were a lot of bid specifications that were necessary in order to acquire all of the equipment in order to reimagine Homecoming. So, thank you as always, Mr. Nan, for all that you do behind the scenes and certainly to Mr. Mloud. Uh there
063was a lot that was necessary in order to embed this work in the curriculum which he was able to seamlessly do and um enable our students to build, construct, deconstruct, save the wood, repurpose the wood so that there would be ingrained savings for years to come with the manner in which we've reimagined. I'll also say the art and music department, there were art shows uh um last week and into this week. So, if you haven't had a chance to see the amazing artwork as you came in this building, note that you can walk into any of our 11 buildings and see amazing artwork that is displayed in all of our buildings. So, thank you to Mr. Brinkman um and all of our art teachers for the tireless efforts with the art, our music teachers with
064the concerts. And um I think that concludes the tremendous week of just last week. I could go on and on if I went back more than one week, but I think I will stop there in the interest of time. That concludes my report, Mr. President. Thank you, Dr. Jones. Okay, we're going to move on to item number 14, which is committee reports. And we're going to first start with buildings and operations, and that's going to be Trustee Kger. Um, we had our meeting on May 6th. Uh, we went over, we pretty much are going over a lot of the updates for the bond and the bay edition because we're rapidly moving ahead with them. Um, as we said, the lighting, the stand, the scoreboards, the sound systems. We have approvals from SED for them. We're
065opening the bid. We've opened the bid. Um, so the numbers look promising and under budget, which is always good. The secondary schools and the music and lighting, we should have the high school worked on in October, Saxton in November, Oregon, and South Ocean in February. The bids for those are now open, right, Mr. Non? The bids are open for those as well. Um, and then the HVAC upgrades. We had a slight hiccup with the roof and the solar for South Oceans. So, we just kind of moved ahead to Tmont and Eagle. So, we're working on Bay and then phase two simultaneously. So, that's good. Rather than waste time waiting, we're just moving plowing ahead with that. and we work went over the EPC update and we're working on uh revised suggestions on how to handle
066our solar panel for over at South Ocean which may include car ports rather than uh roofing options. So that was it and just a reminder that you can see all of these updates on the website and the little button that says capital improvements. Thank you Trusty Kger. Okay, next up we have finance, but neither Mr. Maisie or Mr. Daf Trusty Denafry are here today. So, Dr. Jones will just make some comments on the finance and moving forward. Sure. Thank you, Mr. President. Again, I will just say that the only update that I think that's relevant to share is the state finalized their budget. They enacted their budget for Patrick Midford. That meant approximately $1.6 6 million increase in our overall uh state aid allocation. That's great news, but don't get too happy yet. And I'll
067say that we know that with the current climate and the recession, and I don't want to say the R word, but we know that there's a lot of increases that are unknown in terms of cost of doing business for next year. And so this helps us to better position oursel to have a little bit of cushion in the event that the cost of doing business um increases because of the overseas tariffs and um just the high price of getting um various resources that we we know we have to just be prepared for in the event that that does occur. So we have analyzed very carefully the numbers and feel that this is certainly good news. It provides a little bit more of a buffer. Um but um as we know there are always um things
068that come up unexpected. So it's good that we have a little bit of um a buffer built into the budget. But we also know that there are unforeseen costs that are on the horizon. So I think that is the major thing. We know that the vote is tomorrow. I encourage you all to get out from 7:00 a.m. to 900 p.m. uh to um to get out and vote. I can't tell you how to vote, but certainly encourage you to vote. Um, I I thank the PMCT for their efforts of going around all throughout the community. I can't say thank you for telling folks to vote a certain way, but I could say thank you for being advocates and being supportive and taking time out of your busy Saturdays to walk the streets and make sure
069that folks are aware that there is a budget vote tomorrow. It's important. and what you said from there, I'm not going to know because I wasn't there. But thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jones. Okay, next up we have uh districtwide technology. We had our last um meeting for the year on May 14th. We discussed a number of topics. Um first um we talked about the digital AP exams were successfully administer administered with no issues across the board. Uh the computer-based testing ran smoothly. Um except there was an initial issue with everybody signing on at the same time throughout the state and it locked up the system. And what Patrick Medford and another couple of other communities did was waited two days and went on and had no issues being able to um get to the
070test and successfully complete it. Um the AI policy was shared with Dr. Jones and Mrs. Kennedy who sent it to the our attorneys. The policy was reviewed by the attorneys who recommended removing one bullet point. Um it was already addressed in the academic integrity policy. The revision has been made and has been updated on the AI policy which was part of the first reading in tonight's agenda. Um the m Mr. Richro discussed the move students move as an MOV student attendance um tracking system. He reported that it worked very well at the Raider Academy and at Saxton. Students are able to enter the classroom and in the front of the room there's a reader where they tap their ID badge in each classroom and that will provide an accurate real-time assessment of where they are
071and what their attendance is and it gives them uh gives the school district an ability to understand where the students are at all times. Um they will continue to deploy this types of scanners at both Oregon and South Ocean as well. uh if the student forgets their their uh their ID badges, the uh teachers can still continue to do attendance the way it's always been done. Um kindergarten, first grade, there's the onetoone devices that going to be changes. Their transitioning kindergarten and first grade students from laptops to iPads to better support their instructional needs. The iPads will remain in the classroom will only be sent home when necessary, such as in a weather related event. Each uh K1 class will be equipped with charging cart to securely store and charge devices. Um there will be
072an improvement with student needs to use the iPad over utilizing um the uh computers, userfriendly for K1 kids. The iPads will also be set up uh for students prior to them receiving it. Looking at the possibility of possibly going to second grade, getting them as well in the 2026 27 school year with the keyboard attachment. phasing out smartboards and smart um notebook software. Currently, the school district has Promethian boards in 349 classrooms. Um smart boards in 92 classrooms and ENO boards in 140. The district will continue with the installation of Prometheian U boards in the classrooms with the goal of installing 70 to 100 units per year. And this approach will support a seven-year replacement cycle. So the technology will always be um at the uh cutting edge and there won't the high cost of
073upgrades in the future will be minimized. Additionally, we are planning to phase out the smart um notebook software due to a noticeable decline in usage and we will also begin retiring the old smartboards and eno boards. The need of the software significantly has diminished and the Prometheian has its own software to utilize. With that, that completes my report for the technology committee um from our last meeting on May 14th. Next up would be extracurricular, which would be Trusty Jennings. Um we didn't meet, but we'll meet again in June and we'll send out the date. Thank you, Trustee. Instructional and student support, that would be trustee Salazar. All right. Our last meeting was uh May 8th at 4:30 in South Ocean Conference Room. Uh the committee reviewed all changes to the grading policy. They're going to
074be due up and are going to be uh in our first reading. Uh that was just announced earlier. Um these new changes include new ranges for formative and summitive assessments capping at 70% decreased by 10% from our previous policy. uh new range for the percentage of department discretion. Uh setting a max and minimum for the combined percentage for summitive and formative assessments and adjusting late assignments moved from percentage to points uh taken off for late assignments. Uh this ensures that deductions are excluded for in-class assessments and homework. Um we also reviewed the homework policy. Um, we reviewed updates to kindergarten, which uh the committee was in favor of allowing for up to uh at max three homeworks per night for kindergarten uh with that does not exceed 10 minutes a night. This allows teachers to
075send home uh small little things that reinforce instruction such as site words without uh creating any type of um penalty for uh students not doing it. It just allows teachers to send little little things home with them. uh percentage of homework was updated from 10% to up to 20%. Uh this will now be part of the grading policy. So this is reviewed from the homework policy. Uh also reviewed that homework was not to be graded uh since this will also be addressed in the grading policy. It's kind of just like um not a grade number but a completion uh that they will uh that goes into the homework um part of the grading section. Uh so further information on this is in the policy that's going to be up for the first reading and our
076next meeting will be Thursday June 12th at 4:30. Uh we have discussed um perhaps doing this in the Zoom meeting but we will contact our committee to update them with that information. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Trusty Salazar. Uh next up is legislation and that's Trustee Smith. Uh we didn't meet um we haven't rescheduled our next one yet, but we I guess we will. Uh we have had some discussions about continuing to meet through the summer, but that's still a discussion happening. There were some notable achievements in the state budget as free. So there were some notable accomplishments that did happen. Okay, moving on to item number 15, discussion topics. Uh Trusty Jennings would like to talk about um policy. Um this way. So we got our on on on boarding this way and
077it says about summer approaches but policies year round. Seems to be there's another policy that we're supposed to do which is extreme heat which is due by September 1st. Yes. Extreme heat policy. We have like three policies we have to write maybe four. One is cell phone, one is exeicio, one is the extreme heat, and then there's other ones in here. So you guys can all read it when you get home. I would recommend that we talk with our attorneys because typically if there is one from school boards, um there would be some draft that we could look at. Sometimes they have it because they've drafted it. excuse me, for other districts of state. So, if those are uh what we you would like us to look into, we can certainly reach out to them
078and if there are some templates available um we can provide those to the board for discussion. Yeah, New York State School Board has whole whole office that does that. All kinds of templates we can we can start to look at. Phone and what was the official. I think we already 29th. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Trusty Smith. Number 16, community comments. At this time, the floor is open to anyone who would like to address the board on any topic. Please state your name and your home address. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak at tonight's meeting. It is my first one that I'm attending. My name is Laura Perini. My home address is 15 Evan Street, Patrick. I am currently under the residence of Kanan Elementary School. What I saw tonight from the individuals
079earlier regarding the homecoming was positive. However, I am coming to you tonight as a parent who is concerned and quite frankly uh disappointed in the school district. My child is a first grader, seven years old, and she was exposed to adult nudity, graphic images, pornographic of matter from the schoolisssued laptop from a loophole in YouTube through the class link website. My professional occupation allows me to see both the good and evil in this world. I did not think for one second that I would have to have the conversations and answer the questions that I'm answering asked by my seven-year-old child in regard to what she saw on that laptop. I was advised by the principal and the head of the IT department, Mr. Rick, that it was a third party vendor and that was a
080loophole and it was being taken care of and that YouTube is restricted access for grades K through five. However, my seven-year-old was shown these images on another student's laptop. I will spare the rest of the audience details, but it was adult nudity. So, my question is, what is the policy regarding school incidences? When does it go from a school investigation to a legal investigation? When do we notify police to come investigate? When does a CPS referral become a matter of investigation? Yes. So, thank you for reporting this. Obviously, it is always our intention to keep all children, students, staff, everyone safe. And we know that the technology is ever evolving. Students ability to navigate around is ever evolving. I need to investigate this and I certainly will follow up with you. Your your name and
081everything is for the record and we will follow up with you at the district level. Now, I appreciate that. Uh, I did involve local police based on the fact that again I am beyond disgusted that my seven-year-old had to see this. So, I appreciate the response and thank you for the followup. We will certainly get back to you in short order. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jones. Any other community comments? Okay, board comments. Trusty Salazar. Uh, first off, I'd like to um thank Dr. R for his presentation on the uh solution to our homecoming problem with uh our wonderful ACS students. It's great to see us being resourceful again and proactive and uh allowing these kids to uh help rescue our homecoming. It's great to see their faces here. Um beyond that, I
082guess uh I'd like to say hopefully everybody comes out and votes tomorrow and uh that's it. Thank you, Trusty Kger. I was making a very extensive list here of all of these wonderful events that we have to all divide and conquer with, but uh we have a a lot of events coming up. Scholarship nights, music gallas, we have a PTA council, we have graduation, we have moving ups, we still have concerts, we have our glee club musical showcase for those that got to see the preview at volunteer night. We have a full show of that. Um, so I'm just looking forward to wrapping up this year on a positive note. Um, I would love a lot of people to spread the word and come out and vote for the budget and for the candidates. Um,
083because I know when no one is running against somebody, people tend to sit back and relax, but it's really not the case and you guys should come out. That's that. Trusty Smith. I won't say a lot. I did have the the the privilege of uh seeing Dr. Jones at the parade on very very long parade on Sunday. Um I love that event. Um it would be great to see if we could get we had a our u Hispanic Heritage Club from the high school was also there. Um it would be nice if we see if we could get more participation in that. Um um I'm grateful to Dr. are and the entire team that create that fixing this uh homecoming thing. I look forward to seeing that grow more. Uh thank you. Thank you, Trusty
084Smith. Trusty Jennings. Yeah, I think it was great to um have the students come out and come up with a plan for homecoming. It's it's great to to see that and the funds that they raise at their shop. Um, I wasn't at the volunteer recognition night because I was at our community salutes which recognizes our some of our seniors in town of Brook Haven, especially someone in our district who are enlisting into the military. So, I went there to them and we have a lot of students that are listing into the military and I just have to say the high school concert number two was phenomenal. Um, that was just I don't know just it was awesome just to see them play and I really hope that we get an in at NASA to New
085York State school boards because they play that piece. I mean they'll will be the talk of the century but do we have an idea of when they're going to come back to us on that one? I think it usually happens over the summer. Okay. That's all. Thank you, Trusty Jennings. I wanted I want to jump in. I also forgot I wanted to thank Mr. Tulin and the union for every year they go out and they hit the streets and they hit the hit the doors to try to get it for to get people to remember to come out to vote. And we're not going to tell them how to vote, but turnout is is an important part of of um of uh helping elections work. Um and you guys are directly responsible for the increase
086in turnout that we have had over the past several years. And I'm grateful for you. Yes, to echo that, um the uh teachers union does a wonderful job to try to get the word out and get everybody involved. So again, thank you for all your hard efforts. Uh thank you to everybody that does everything in this district to ensure that our students continue to move forward and uh we're on the cutting edge and uh it's great to see our art and music programs doing so well, the concerts flourishing, uh the our sports and athletic program are doing so well. So, thank you to everybody, every teacher, every student, every administrator that works hard and every parent that encourages them to do so uh to continue moving forward for our district. Thank you. Um with that,
087uh number 18, I have a motion to adjurnn. I second. Okay. So, we have Trusty Salazar and Trusty Kger. Thank you. I All in favor? All in favor? I [Music]