001We usually do start on time or approximately their spot. Okay, with uh we'll call the meeting to order. Uh again, we are sorry for starting so late. We'll try to move things right along. Uh Dr. Kelly, why don't you jump right in? Oh, hold on here. I think I probably need to do a couple things. Hold on. Thanks, Connie. So, first things first, we a motion to accept the uh recent election results. Motion. Second. All in favor? I I didn't even get to make a comment. Yeah, I just want to congratulate uh the uh three board trustees that were reelected, particularly Mr. Lennon who garnered uh well over 700 votes. I think a real vote of confidence from the community. But thank you all for showing up and particularly for approving the budget uh with
002overwhelming positive yes and the referendum for the new construction project. Thank you very much. Now I think we can move to a motion to accept the reorg meeting in July. Thank you, Connie. July 8 p.m. July 8, 6 p.m. Can I get a motion, please? Motion. Second. All in favor? I. One more before going to Rachel. We need a motion to accept the draft minutes from last month. for three meetings. May Goodness gracious, I am really messing up this evening. What would I do without Connie? Uh, our district clerk, by the way, uh, Connie Lawrence, where would I be? Where would we be without her? Uh, motion to accept the draft minutes of the three meetings. Motion. Second. All in favor? I. Third time's a charm. Dr. Kelly, take it away. Thank you. Just a
003few quick highlights. Good evening, everybody. Happy June. I want to start off, pardon me. The Bronxville School's been awarded and has been designated a green ribbon school. The application was extensive and broken down into three pillars. Pillar one speaks to reducing waste, recycling programs, and conserving. Sorry, that's quite all right. That's Connie, our district clerk. I got it. um and conserving water and energy. Pillar two speaks to the health and wellness of our students and staff through school gardens, fresh produce and student lunches, and improving air quality through new technology. And pillar three speaks to environmental and sustainability education, which is evident through our STEM projects and strong civic and economic skills of our students. I commend this district's dedication to submitting this extensive application. And I want to thank two parents specifically, Laura Van
004Thovven and Maria Tarenian, as well as our director of facilities, Mike Lee, and our middle school science curriculum leader, Jen Zop, who were all instrumental um in this uh in this application. all under the leadership of Anne Meyer who um took on this tremendous feat of writing that application. So today was the ceremony in Albany during the board of regents meeting and I recorded a clip of Regent Fran Willis granting us this honor [Music] the first talking about Bron New York State Greenation is Bronto. school district and we have here today assistant working on instruction science teacher and team parent and it's wonderful to have you here and I'm going to read a little bit first about the program uh as as you stand because this is a great honor for all of us for
005the state and for you to Union School District is a strong example of how educational leaders can integrate conservation, community engagement, environmental sustainability into both daily operations and curriculum. Armstrong has taken several steps toward environmental sustainability through completing nera recommended energy audit improvements and maintaining a focus on energy efficiency with the building energy management system. Dorsville implemented water conservation measures such as rain sensor equipment irrigation system for the front lawn and water bottle refilling stations throughout the building including at the football field. The district encourages a healthy lifestyle through comprehensive wellness policy promoting nutritious meals, physical activity and nutrition education. Rockville emphasizes environmental education through composting programs, chemical management initiatives and partnerships with like the green nature center. The district has an outdoor classroom and a learning garden that is used for project based learning
006experiences across grades and disciplines. Bronst also implemented environmental stewardship and sustainability throughout the curriculum by using the Bronx River as a living laboratory. Students in all grades K through 12 participate in hands-on river studies that focus on water quality, ecoss, and impact of human activities in the environment. Through their experiences at Bronxville, students gain the skills they need to become responsible citizens, protect the environment, and make positive impacts on the world around them. Uh, please join me in congratulating Orangeville Union Free School District for their extraordinary efforts in sustainability. And I want to mention the superintendent, Dr. Rachel Kelly. I know she has been a steward of this process as well. I know you also went through um an environmental issue where you had I believe a storm. I remember when that happened and there
007was flooding in the school and there was just one school in Bronxville. It's and I know what it took to get that school back. Uh and and part of that I'm sure was this whole environmental thinking. So I congratulate you and I would like all of us to take a moment to congratulate Bronto and thank you. Thank you. And Ann Meyer was kind enough to bring back the signed certificate naming us as a green ribbon school for the 2025 school year. So thank you everybody. Um, I also want to congratulate all of our students who have performed in our endofear concerts in elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as our student athletes who have had a wonderful season, many of whom have played in postseason competition. The depth of our students talent, whether performing
008in the auditorium or out on the fields, is quite extraordinary. Congratulations to all. And before I end my remarks and hand it over to our student exeicio board member, I want to take a moment and thank the community, specifically the board of education, the PTA, the foundation, the mayor Mary Marvin, and the chief of police Chris Satrieli for hosting what I thought was a perfect evening on our front lawn honoring my 30 years of service to this incred incredible school district. It's the students, the faculty, the staff, the parents, and the broader community that make this place so special. Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge what I love doing. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, [Applause] Louise. Hi, everyone. Um, I have a few updates from the past month, um, in the high school
009and just in the school in general. Um, so AP exams were May 5th to 16th and sophomores through seniors who took AP classes participated in these. And on May 16th to end out the two weeks, we had junior and senior prom. Um, there was a prominade before and this whole event was planned by the junior class government and I thought it was very fun. Um, SFL field day was May 19th and there were many different lawn games for all the students to participate in. There was a dunk tank that Dr. Levero actually went in. Um, and there also were food trucks provided which it was really good. And on May 19th was the arts festival hosted by the art society and PTA. And in that event, there was an open mic night for high school
010students as well as an art show. The week of May 19th was senior week. Um, seniors went on a field trip to Boundless Adventure. They learned about different safety procedures as they were heading into college. And there was also a guest speaker, Poda Copy. Um, senior shadowing began on May 27th for seniors and different seniors got either a job or an internship um to fill their hours. Clubs have been choosing their leadership for next year and different clubs such as the SFL and Athletic Council held elections for those positions. The last day of classes is tomorrow and the spring varsity awards are also tomorrow for sports. Um on Wednesday we have the all school awards ceremony where different high school students can receive recognition for things they've done throughout the year. Uh finals are June
01112th to 25th. Baloria is Friday, June 13th. And graduation is Saturday, June 14th. And that's everything. Thank you so much for your time. Um, and as the community is aware, we are dedicated to bringing the Bronxville Promise to life and um, at our public meetings um, having students represent what the Bronxville Promise has meant to them in the specific areas. And this evening, we've asked some students to join us to speak specifically about their independent studies and how that probably taps most into critical thinking. So, come on up. And Dr. Levero is going to introduce everyone. Thank you. [Music] Okay, good evening. You're in for a treat tonight. Uh so, uh Dr. Kelly, Mr. Branded, members of the board of education, um we're very pleased to uh present a showcase of some of the work
012that took place at our research and independent uh independent study symposium. This was on May 30th. Um the projects you're going to see this evening really illustrate a lot of the tenants of the Bronxville Promise focusing on critical thinking. Um they showcased a lot of innovation and they demonstrate how students are interested in the work that they can use to make a difference in society and in people's lives. It also shows their terrific capacity for collaboration um and supporting one another. Um, so this year we had about 73 different independent studies ranging from genetic engineering to the intersections between literature, music, and art throughout history. Each year, our students have the opportunity to propose a topic they'd like to perform an independent study on, and they identify a faculty advisor. They create a full proposal
013outlining their course of study. Um these proposals are reviewed for their specificity and the scope and sequence of their study, the rigor, the assessment methods and the what the f the final project will be and and the periodic assessments. And one thing worth noting is that the more specialized and specific students get regarding their interests, the less likely their study covers just one discipline. In fact, many of the projects you'll see this evening required students to take an interdisciplinary approach. So without any further delay, I want to introduce Mr. Kavari who coordinated our symposium this year and I hope that you enjoy seeing our students work in action. I think you hi everyone. So for the last couple of years, I think last year was the first year that we really formally did this, but
014we did this again this year and it was much uh larger as an event. We've been doing research symposiums and this was on May 30th. The idea was to have uh students present the work that they've done independently at the Bronxville School in a session that was multiddisciplinary and that involved uh a lot of people from the community. So this year we had about 40 45 Bronx River research studies, 15 or so independent studies and we also invited um AP literature projects and uh education equity projects. So one of the goals was to make this multi-disiplinary and sort of uh collaborate across disciplines. And what we did uh was we actually did a a virtualesque poster session where we set up posters on TVs and students would stand in front of their work on the
015TV at an assigned location for about 15 minutes and they would talk. Um the idea was for it to be interactive as if it were at a research conference. They would talk to people about their work. Um and so it was usually a few minute presentation and then more of a Q&A. And we had a lot of people participate. We had a few middle school classes come. We had teachers um K to2 um administrators K to 12 and even some community members including parents and some of our own Bronx River research advisory committee um all come to the meeting um and I think kids got great feedback and if nothing else it was excellent practice for them to communicate science like Dr. versa said um research is cross-disciplinary and I think um we want to
016expand our symposium and keep doing this year after year to make it clear that research is collaborative in nature um and it's collaborative across subjects and and even disciplines and so without further ado I really want to give our students we have uh four students here today some time to talk about some of the work they've done these projects range from independent studies that were done post Bronx River research um to to things that are completely separate um we have a math project. We have uh some people looking into crisper. Um so I'll turn it over to Charlotte who's the first student up. Good evening everyone. I am Charlotte Glimu and my independent study was based off of my work in Bronx River research. Um my entire project was aimed to assess the health of
017the fish within the Bronx River. Um, I spent about 16 weeks going to the Bronxure almost every single day and fishing, which is one of my favorite activities to do. And the fact that it could be for research was really incredible. Um, I collected data on all of the species, any biological conditions, parasites. Um, and I found out some really interesting things. So, as you know, the Bronx River has historically been a very polluted river and there have been many conservation efforts and these conservation efforts have clearly helped the river from the data that I collected. Uh, all of the fish that I caught were within normal range. They were healthy for the most part. There were parasites, but they minimally affected the fish. They caused human health effects, but not health effects to the
018fish, which is good. Um, there was even pregnant fish caught. There was about five different species caught even smallmouth and largemouth bass which are uh bioindicators they can't live in very polluted waters and small proportions of each fish caught had parasites um the opportunity yeah this uh research has given me great opportunity in life. I have been able to do something I love which is fishing and make it research which has been incredible and made me so happy. Um I had the opportunity to present at WEF which is right in the middle. Um this is a research competition where I was able to present my research to real scientists and get their true opinion on what my research was about and how I can improve it. Um and I even got the opportunity to tour
019some labs and things like that through a summer program I did where I talked heavily about my research. It has been a really incredible experience doing uh independent studies and it has really helped me grow as an individual and made me realize that I do want to continue this in the future. So next year when I'm off in Miami in the fall, I will be majoring in marine biology and continuing my love for the ocean. Thank you. Hi, my name is Emma Young and I'm a junior at Bronxville High School. Um, so my independent study was based on science research specifically in um, free surfer. So my independent study was with Miss Dow, but I also worked with lab mentors outside of the school that helped guide my work. Um, but Miss Dow was instrumental
020in helping me better understand the context of free surfer in the scope of neuroscience, which is like the broader field. Um this tool is in um so to explain um what free surfer is as a tool it's basically a software suite for automatic analysis and segmentation of neuroiming data. So what does that mean? Basically means you have brain data and you have an input image that you got from taking an MRI scan for example but you want to sort it so that you have its function based on different parts of the brain because otherwise you're just looking at a bunch of pixels. What Free Sofur can do is take in brain data in vast amounts, way more than a human could do, and segment it automatically and accurately, unlike any program that happened before. This
021is really important because this sorting process allows researchers to process brain data a lot more easily and um make really interesting findings about large amounts of data at once. As a result, Freoer's algorithms are both more accurate and also more widely used than prior methods. It's used in many research pipelines such as the human conneto project and the UK bio bank because it's needed to crunch such large amounts of information. So what was my role in this then? My role as a research intern was to work under the LCN or the laboratories for computational neuro imaging. What the LCN does is it's basically a collection of labs that are centered around improving the algorithms that already has and creating new algorithms that help sort this data in new and progressive ways. Um it's a lab
022at the Motino Center for Biomedical Imaging um which is associated with Massachusetts General Hospital MGH and HST which is the Hov MIT health sciences and technology um which is all based in Boston. Um what I did as an intern was I created manual vessel annotations. So what I was doing was basically doing manually what this software does automatically. Um like any algorithm it needs training data to base off of and I was someone who helped create that training data to help improve the algorithms in the future. Overall this independent study for me was a great opportunity to explore a lot of different interests that I had. I think Mr. Kavali mentioned this really well earlier. Um but it's very interdicciplinary um as a pursuit to study frontiers in neuro imaging because it combines things like
023computer science and machine learning and also like biology and anatomy and you need to be able to understand and synthesize all of these things to better understand where these frontiers can take us in the future. So overall, this experience working with a real lab and being able to get hands-on with such a big frontier in neuro imaging was something that really heightened my respect and my love for all of these different disciplines. And I was very thankful to be able to do this with both mentors outside and within the Bronxville School. Thank you. Hello, my name is Isabelle Yan and my independent study was completed under the mentorship of Mr. Kavari and two professional statisticians and my project used bioatistical methods to investigate surgical outcomes in pediatric surgical patients. So in my project I compared
024outcomes between patients with a cerebral paly diagnosis and patients without a cerebral paly diagnosis and I was able to use data from a national surgical data set containing real world clinical data from real patients um who had under undergone surgeries in the past. Throughout this project I learned how to to design a study to minimize bias um using a variety of statistical techniques. One statistical technique that I used was propensity score matching which aims to mimic a randomized trial and create patient groups that are more easily comparable. So how my mentors described it was initially when I received the data it was more an apples to oranges comparison between patients with CP and without CP as there were a lot of confounding factors from demographics such as age or race to other co-orbidities such as
025other diagnoses that they had that made the groups very hard to compare and really hard to identify. Was CP the really the thing that made them different or made them have separate outcomes? But using proficiency score matching, I reduced this bias by matching based on these confounding factors. And in this project, I learned the importance of reducing this bias in making more ethical decisions. I also learned how to perform logistic regression, which is a more, I would say, traditional method used in a lot of science research, especially in medicine. and I used it to assess the impact of different baseline patient characteristics on certain outcomes. And one of these outcomes that I found important was unplanned hospital readmission. So overall throughout this project I developed a proficiency in both statistical methods and how to perform
026these methods and I performed a lot of my statistical computations in the coding software R studio which I previously had no experience with and it was really interesting to learn what goes on behind the scenes in doing these statistical processes and better ways to apply this in my research. Overall, I think my project was especially interdicciplinary as um which is definitely a trend we can see throughout a lot of these projects because it really taught me about the intersection between data science and medicine as well as research design and ethics in helping patients in the future. And overall, I'm really grateful for this opportunity to explore my interest in bioatistics throughout the school year. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Lissa Coker and I'm currently a junior at Bronxville High School. I'm so
027honored to have this opportunity to speak with you tonight. This year I participated in an independent study on crisper gene editing technology along with Masha Leavik and Cara Kachansky. Our adviser Mr. Kavari created an open and supportive space where we learned through podcasts, scientific articles, case studies, and group discussions. He really encouraged us to ask tough questions, think outside of the box, and connect this new science to the real world. My personal focus was on crisper in neurological disorders, specifically Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and ALS. I learned that crisper uses a guide RNA and an enzyme called cast 9 to act like molecular scissors, cutting faulty DNA at a specific location. It's exciting because of the potential to treat diseases that until now have had no cure. But it comes with serious challenges. For example, there's the
028risk of offtarget effects editing the wrong gene and ethical concerns like how this technology might only be accessible to wealthier communities or what it means to change something in the brain we don't fully understand. Just last week, we presented our final projects at the Brian Bronzeville Science Symposium where we shared what we learned with high school students, teachers, and multiple middle school classes. It was really exciting to see younger students so curious and full of questions. And it reminded me why this research matters beyond just textbooks. Even though my main interest is in endocrinology and reproductive health, which is the field I hope to work in someday, this independent study opened my eyes to how gene editing connects with many areas of medicine. It helped me realize how much I also care about neurology. Because
029of that, next year I plan to do my third independent study on neurological disorders and how they can affect prenatal development, a project that brings both of my interests together. Thank you again for the chance to speak. My research this year has been so rewarding. Hello, I'm Isabelle again and um in addition to my independent study on bioatistics, I also completed an independent study in real analysis along with my sister Emma. What real analysis is is that it's a branch of math that focuses on a more rigorous proof-based foundation for calculus. It focuses on why computations learned in calculus work on a more deep level. My study centered around the real number system, how sequences and series behave and how functions of real numbers work. One new challenge posed by real analysis was set notation
030which uses different symbols to represent sets, their elements and operations performed on them and you can see it on the screen under the definition of a limit where I provided the definition of a limit in set notation. I think the biggest change for me in this study was learning how to write a mathematical proof, which is something I had very little experience with before. I had to learn how to write precise definitions, build arguments in a step-by-step manner, and learn how to analyze the logical structure of mathematical claims. Um, to add on what what Izzy said, um, overall real analysis was really a deconstruction of the past work we've done studying mathematics. We learned about not only the tools that we use but also how to deconstruct them and then reconstruct them from scratch which
031really helped me appreciate and understand the tools that I previously learned better. Um an anecdote that felt very relevant to me was about the life of of Carl Wild who is considered the father of modern real analysis. He was a German mathematician born in 1815 and he made many contributions to the field of mathematical analysis um including pioneering the Bolzano Wild theorem which is one of the more foundational theorems of the course. One of his most famous quotes is a mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician. As someone who is a writer myself and has always been, um, it really resonated with me and really helped me appreciate what real analysis has meant to so many people and so many students, including myself. It's really opened my
032eyes to how creative math can be, and how much it does interface with all of the other studies I've been doing, even in humanities courses and even outside of school. Being able to study real analysis has been able to enhance my love for mathematics as a subject, and I'm very thankful that I was able to do that with the Bronxville School. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Um, it's a shame we don't have mics because I would let them drop them. That's pretty good. Um, if if you have any questions, I'm happy not to attempt to answer them. This is some very advanced work that I'm sure the students would love an opportunity to I'll I'll I'll u impress. Thank you. Um um Charlotte is my neighbor, so I'll I'll pick on you for
033a second if you don't mind. Um about 30 years ago, there was a rope swing over the Bronx River, and I was the unlucky one that took the swing and and the branch broke and I landed it. I can still remember the taste. It was not it was not fresh. Um what what's what what do you think has been the biggest contributor to cleaning up the Bronx River over the last, you know, couple decades? And and what can we continue to do to to keep that going? Um, honestly, I think one of the biggest contributors has been Bronx River research in total and complete honesty. We just did a two-day Bronx River cleanup um last week. And in that, we pulled out some of the most impressive haul I've ever seen in a long time.
034We pulled out two shopping carts, uh, about five or six tires. More than that, it was like 10 plus tires. Yeah, 10 plus tires. like there huge divers. Yeah, we pulled out really crazy things out of that river that are really trying to help clean it up to the point where day one we looked at our pile of trash and we go, is there anything else to clean up in here and we had to find different sections of the river that no one has been to because we just haven't had access to it yet to clean it up. So, Bronxer Research honestly is a great contributor and that two-day cleanup where we take all the middle school classes and some of the other classes we have down to the river is really incredible. But honestly,
035throwing your trash away in a trash can and not discarding it, not littering um anywhere within Bronxville cuz all of it goes directly into the river. So, things like that um not using as intense fertilizers, things like that are really helpful to keeping the river clean. Thank you. You said you caught um a largemouth and a smallmouth bass which indicate that the the water's clean. Do you know the last time that um how long that trend has been? How many years you've been able to catch that versus when the river was really polluted? When's the first time that you've been able to catch bass again? I'm not sure quite the trend, but I do know that when I first started catching bass 2 years ago or last year, last year it wasn't as it was
036nowhere near the population now. And now we even have eels, which I couldn't find the first year that I did research. Um, so that's a really good indicator, but I cannot tell a specific time when you could start catching bass in the river. Thank you. Great job, everybody. Great. Excellent job, everyone. Thank you so much everybody. I'm now pleased to um introduce Mr. Brad Ashley, our director of technology. Um he has been spending a tremendous amount of time this year on uh working on improving our website and he has solicited some um feedback from the community, from the board, uh from faculty and as a result I asked him to give us a little bit of a tease of what some of these improvements may look like prior to us launching the improved website. And
037certainly after we launch it, we um the community, everyone will have ample opportunity um to give feedback, but I thought we could get a little teaser this evening. So, thanks Brad. Great. Um really tough to follow that, but I'll try my best. Probably should have gone first. Just saying. Sorry about that. All right. So, uh website redesign. So, we started this project over a year ago. um kind of looking at we had some um a company come in called Final Site and they did some uh focus groups with people from the community. They did community members, parents, um they did teachers, they did students, uh they did administration and they kind of asked about the current website and how we felt about it. Um they came back with a lot of You can go to
038the top please. Yep. And then um so they were kind of working trying to find out what's not working, what is working and they have their uh their kind of system in place. So I was really along for the ride. I was fortunate to have some uh really strong people helping me out through final site. Um they're not watching but shout out to them. Uh so what we've got here is uh the very first thing we had to do was kind of analyze who was who was visiting our website and how often it was. And so across the entire year it's about 200 visits per day. and that varies based on the time of year. So, uh we were kind of looking at all right, where are people going and we're able to through Google
039Analytics look at which pages were being visited and we were also able to look at um pie charts of what kind of devices were um visiting our website. And what we've noticed over the past two years, there's been a trend of more mobile uh visits through our um to our website. So these are all things that we're kind of taking in as we were thinking about designing which pages are most important, what devices are people looking at. So all of this kind of goes into um creating the website. So if you could go to the next slide. So this is a preview of our homepage. Uh we have changed the uh navigation and I'll go through that on the next slide, but I just want to keep this on right now. We have a much
040larger what they call hero image and we have the ability to put much more text than in previous years. So um or in in our current site. So, just some of the little changes. Um, I'm not going to be able to go through all of them, but I want to highlight some of the things that really kind of draw it out. Um, at one point, one of our final site um uh mentors or or um people that were helping me out, uh they they had a really great idea to uh weave in pictures with the Bronxville Promise, but we couldn't because we didn't have the amount of text ability. So it was like one of these things that was just like the limitations of our current site which we're still on moving to a more
041uh updated site gives us the possibility to do some of these um textbased things. So this is the brand new landing page and if you go to the next slide please. Thank you. Uh we have a reorganized navigation. Um this PDF is also available on the board docs website so people can see better pictures. Again websites aren't meant to be uh seen on a 65 in TV at the end of a of a hallway. It's supposed to be on your uh device. So everybody can kind of take a look at that. Uh on the very top of the main page we have parents uh calendar class link and then infinite campus. Those were the main pages that people said that they would like to visit and those were also the most uh website hits looking
042at our analytics. And then under parents we have a parent zone, we have athletics, lunch and attendance. And again these were all things that when they um surveyed the community these were the main points that people wanted to get to. What is my kid eating? How do I take attendance? Uh how do I get to the athletics? And then the parent zone is kind of a nice catchall that we didn't have before. Um as you can see, um on the far right hand side next to menu, there's the three lines. It is called a hamburger menu. Not making that up. But when you click on the hamburger menu, it opens up and you can see we have this nice kind of navigation of simple things. You click on the plus and it kind of expands
043out. There's two different ones. There's the main tech district page and then one of the schools and then if you go down to the very bottom you can see athletics and athletics really we try to just say okay weekly schedule when does my kid have practice games when are those games and then the live stream to be able to watch. So just some uh reorganized navigation trying to make it simple um and easier. All right, next slide, please. Perfect. Thank you. So, um, we also updated the Bronxville Promise page being kind of our northstar. So, what we, uh, did is we attempted to take the newer language that was developed back in October and kind of put it into tabs along the bottom. And so, it really kind of outlines what the promise is. The
044main uh tenants are the tabs and then you can go through and uh what we're going to try and do is attempt to find ways to um we don't have staff photographer but we're going to um enlist a lot of people to try and take more pictures so that we can have it uh more idealized on the different tenants of of the Bronxville Promise. All right, speaking of photos, we have an updated staff directory. This was a big ask of seeing uh who is my teacher and what does their face look like? So, we've got uh our staff directory. Um, this was a big project kind of uh uploading everything on the back end and I'll I'll show you that on the CMS in a few slides, but then um finding most recent yearbook photos
045to put uh there's some people that we had to chase down to get a newer yearbook photo and we we couldn't get them all, but we got a majority uh comfortable enough to put out there. And what's really nice about this is that we're able to since this is uh this isn't in a single page, it's built into the uh the CMS itself. So now we're able to on the first grade site target the first grade team. On the middle school English site, we're able to target the middle school English teachers. And so each site is going to be more uh directed and going to have everybody's pictures so you know exactly what you're uh who who the teachers are of each subject. All right. Thank you. Next one. Uh curriculum maps. This was another
046big ask. We have these wonderful uh PDFs that are year-long and they're just kind of static on the page. You can click on them. You can look through them. But we had a few asks from the community of trying to figure out make it more dynamic and interactive. Uh this was actually a interesting problem because it was uh we didn't have a great solution immediately. And so really what we wanted was we wanted three filters and so we kind of came to an ability to do two filters in a search bar. So hopefully we're getting there. Uh we're also uh looking into employ some AI to be able to upload all of the um curriculum maps and that be able to search. So that's doing a little tweaking. That is not for our launch. That's
047probably more of a fall thing. Just putting it out there. But uh the curriculum is put up there. You can see this is uh just an example of K through8 curriculum, the tabs. And then you can filter by month and you can filter by subject. And then when you click on one of them, next slide. When you would click on one of them, it would pop out and give you a pop-up window showing exactly what they're doing and uh some information on that. Uh this also has the ability to have hyperlinks. So if there's a textbook uh linked to it, you can click on the link and it will take you to the textbook if available. Next slide. Thank you. We also have uh we also reorganized our calendars. So we really leaned into the
048calendar module and uh we're able to find and update as many calendars as possible and link them. And so what that means is that now all of our calendars are Google calendars and which many people at in each building in the district have access to. So people can update those when there's a change, when this when field day is um delayed until the next day because of weather. You can update that and it will automatically update to the calendars. All of them uh have the ability to be subscribed to. So anybody could go on, they can subscribe to it and you'll get it as a Google calendar or an iical on your phone. Um if you're familiar, we also have a couple different layouts of all school events at the top. And so a nice
049way to kind of read that that um cycles through in a carousel. And then below we have the multiple tabs that have all that the athletics which I didn't go into. Um our final site people were able to grab each individual uh sports a uh athletics calendar and be able to put that into the website and then be able to filter that out and then we were just informed that they're moving to a new uh platform. So when we when we get ahead of that new platform, when we get access to it, we'll go ahead and do the same so that um all the calendars are up there. And again, all of these calendars are linked. And so when the athletic calendar is updated by uh Boseies who's in charge of our game schedule, when
050the middle school, the high school, the elementary school, when those calendars are updated, it will take about 5 minutes to push to the regular um to the to the public site. And then um and one big thing uh one big challenge was uh ADA compliance. And so our website is now 8 years old. And so think back on 8 years ago, what kind of technology was out there? And now we have uh much more advanced technology. And we have a lot more rules in terms of ADA. So the accessibility uh uh aspect. So um we have a uh audio eye which is uh the little icon with the person. If you click on that, I don't know if anybody's played around with this on different websites, but when you click on that, it gives you
051a bunch of accessibility options. That's the uh menu on the far right hand side. Uh it can change the text, the size of the text, the uh there's a dyslexic font out there. So if you're dyslexic, you can click on that. You can show that and it will and it'll bring up a font. It has uh screen readers that will uh black out all but a single line so you can really focus. But the problem with all of that is that it doesn't work well if your website isn't organized. So we went through a big organization pro uh project u making sure that every page kind of has the same headers, the same um SEO, so the same search engine opt optimization to be able to find these different places. And then of course uh
052a little over a year ago they uh announced um that uh everything's going to be built towards mobile. And so fortunately when we're updating to this newer site everything's going to be automatically built in. And then our final slide. Yes. Final slide is our content management system. It's updated. So um CMS is content management system and this is on the back end. Um, I wasn't going to go through a GIF and show you all the ins and outs, but ju just wanted to point out and uh it's very small to see, but on the far right hand side it shows you all the updates that it's constantly going through. And so this is Final Site, somebody else uh uh the product that we use keeping up to date and making sure that we're ADA compliant
053and making sure all of those things. So we have assistance in that um as we kind of move forward and continue to uh improve our website. So, uh, this website, we hope for a launch on, ironically, reorganization day. Um, so I I on Tuesday, uh, July 8th. Um, so I'll be working on that in the first couple days of July. And as Dr. Kelly mentioned, when it goes live, there'll be a pop-up window. There'll be a form that we can fill out with all the great things and the things that you might want to tweak. Let's keep it in that order. Um, and uh, you can give us feedback. And as we soliciting uh uh feedback from the uh the community, we'll go ahead and implement it as um as it deems appropriate. Any questions?
054That's great, Brad. I put you up there with our genius students. I did use the word trend. So, try to get a little science in there. Computer science. Really appreciate all the very thoughtful and hard work on it. Um um in July sounds great. And did you say the curriculum page would you you think you that might be ready in the fall? So the curriculum page will be ready on the launch the AI component and I don't know if that's going to be ready because uh Final Site is working on their own AI component. I'm trying to work on another bot in which we're able to upload all of those um curriculum maps and be able to search. So the reason uh for that and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself because this doesn't happen.
055This is now on YouTube live. But um what I'm trying to do is get it so that we can upload all of the things and I can and a user can go in and say, I have a fourth grader and an eighth grader. What are they doing in September? You can't do that on the site because there's no way to match up all that curriculum, but an AI bot could. And so a chatbot could because it could search those different things, pull that information, and put it together. So that's what I've been working on. I can't promise that that's going to be ready in July, but I'm going to work on that for September because I think that would be a great a great tool. And even if you're like your your child's out sick,
056great. Here's the lesson from the like at some point in the future. Here's the lesson from the day. This is what you missed, right? I mean, that most of that's going to be on Google Classroom from the teacher directly. This the the the website uh curriculum maps are more of like a general overview, but absolutely if they're missing a week, then we're going to be able to see what they've missed over that weekend. Terrific. Well done, Brad. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. Perfect. Um, so there's um quite a long personnel agenda before the board this evening. We were able to discuss all aspects of this in executive session. I do want to point out uh just a couple of the items A through double I and first and foremost that is the appointment of
057our interim elementary school principal. So Adrien Leman is coming home. Um she was a master teacher here in fourth and fifth grade. And I truly believe, and this is anecdotal, I should do another dissertation on this, but I believe that the best administrators were our best teachers. Um, I think master teachers make just exquisite administrators. And we did promote Adrienne uh to assistant principal and she served in that role for six, seven years uh before she retired. And then in retirement, she went over to the dark side and went to independent school administration and has decided that she's had enough of that. So, we were able to scoop her up uh precisely when we needed her. So, uh I appreciate the board considering your appointment um this coming year. Um also before you are a
058number of new hires uh due to resignations and retirements. This is also the agenda where I ask you to consider the uh salaries of the administrators as well as the salaries of our managerial and confidential staff. It's also the agenda where you have all of our part-time teachers because they are appointed annually um as well as some of our summer help which are students who um help with our technology help desk. And then we do have um our our special education summer program employees that I'm asking you to consider as well as a few new coaches for the fall. Um and I wanted to just end on a note that um we have a teacher who uh was in need of uh sick time to get her through the remainder of the school year and
059not to have her health insurance lapse. and um we negotiated a side letter uh that would allow employees to donate a day um for her. And although we only need 30, we received over 90 um days. So I think that just is indication of the type of place this school is and um we wish her well. Uh so with that, I'm asking you to consider A through double I please. Thank you, Dr. Kelly. A motion to approve personnel action items A through double I. Motion. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back. Welcome back. [Applause] Um Mr. Carlin, I think we are on to you. We'll start with uh the financial report for the current year um at least through April. uh projection for year-end surplus has grown to almost uh $2
060million based uh almost entirely on revenues. Uh we continue to see expenditures forecasted near break even, but we invariably pick up some more surplus uh as we close out the year as smaller budget balances are are closed out. um non-resident tuitions, special ed tuition, interest, um income and uh health services billings uh will be favorable this year. Uh this surplus sets us up nicely for the uh half million dollar appropriation from unassigned fund balance that we had to offset the 2026 2027 tax levy uh in the budget that went before the voters in May and uh to keep us in a strong position regarding our reserves going forward. Uh I would anticipate that uh we can significantly fund the capital reserve uh in anticipation of upcoming field replacement uh within the next 5 years um
061after using um uh the bulk of that reserve to fund our upcoming D-wing project that was also just approved in May. So, it's it it's it's going to give us a little kickstart on uh replenishing that capital reserve. It's great news, Dan. Thank you. Um the audit committee uh met uh last on May 29th and reviewed the uh attached risk assessment update uh with representatives of Cherry Beckart who is our internal auditor. Um, it was the consensus of the audit committee to recommend that the board of education accept the risk assessment update and authorize the audit plan with debt, investments, and cash as the focus area for the internal audit uh for the 2024-25 school year. Okay. I think we'll hear a little more about that later during committee reports. I get a motion to
062approve the risk assessment internal audit plan. Motion second. All in favor? I I Okay, Dan. Uh got action items. Sure. As is customary in this meeting and then the reorganization meeting in July and then the first September meeting, there's a number of uh financial action items as we prepare for the next fiscal year. uh they include some contracted services which we tend to renew on an annual basis. Uh some have been competitively bid and some are considered professional services which are not subject to competitive bidding requirements. Um I'll start with uh uh first item is two additional foundation grants. uh an increase in the size of the curriculum redesign in the age of AI grant of $27,417 which more than doubles the size of the original grant uh to uh $51,942. Um and that's uh
063that's based on interest from the faculty which is you know it's it's really a grassroots effort to kick uh kick uh kickstart this uh this uh AI uh project. Um and then the second one is uh funding for a plaque dedicating the special education community garden to our own Dr. for Rachel Kelly. Uh, honoring her 30 years of service to the Bronxville School. Uh, so if I can have that one first, I'll take the next four together. Okay. I get a motion to approve the foundation grants. I think it should also be noted uh, and I see it here in the small print. Dan, the Bronxville School Foundation has provided the school with nearly $400,000 in funding this academic year. Amazing. Just tremendous gratitude could not be expressed. May I have a motion to accept
064these two grants? Motion. Second. All in favor? I. Thank you, Dan. Uh the next uh four items B, C, D, and E, are all uh kind of annual items. Um we uh finally have a contract for our substitute, our new substitute and field trip nursing uh services provided by Cynthia Bothwell ready for approval. Um there's been some legal back and forth regarding uh insurance requirements, etc. Um but uh you know she's already been on trips and has done a fa fantastic job. So uh uh you know we hope to use her going forward as well. Um CRP Sanitation uh we're hoping to renew our contract with them with a 2% increase. They were the sole bidder two years ago. Their service is excellent and I think every time we've bid uh this particular service there's
065only been one bidder. Um, so, um, you know, they're they're doing a good job, so we want to stick with them. Uh, D authorizes me to bind our liability commercial umbrella crime and cyber insurance policies for the coming year at an amount not to exceed $251,239. Uh, that was that package was reviewed by the finance committee at their meeting last week. um and our contract with ANA maintenance uh in the base amount of 1 million uh $4,699. This package was competitively bid 3 years ago uh for renewal for a 5-year renewal period if we so uh desired. Um and uh we we like the service they're providing us. Uh any increases are based on changes in the prevailing wage uh which we pay. Um and uh Mike Lee also did a little research with another
066vendor which came in about $40 $50,000 higher. So if uh I'd be happy to entertain any questions and if not I'd like to take the BCD together. I had a motion to approve these financial action items BCD and E. Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? I. Uh the next item uh was reviewed also by the audit committee. Our new treasur, Albert Corbino, has been working diligently to get ready for our independent audit and he's recommending closing a number of old capital projects and redistributing the remaining balances as appropriate. um which will serve to streamline our project length schedule in our financial statements uh and also result in a $400,000 plus return to the general fund and a $38,000 return to the debt service fund. Uh once those projects are closed, uh the uh funding goes
067back to uh where uh it originated from. Um which is good news. is it will also help our surplus a little bit. Uh some of these projects are very recent and some are I think the oldest was about 10 years old. Um so it's it's good to get these out of our financial statements and close them down for good. Um let's see. And then G uh was also reviewed by the audit committee um or the finance committee, excuse me. Uh this is our year-end transfer authorization uh for any un unallocated surplus to appropriate reserves uh to keep us at or under the 4% unreserved fund balance limit. I would expect a bulk to go to the capital reserve. These um these limits are intentionally high just to preserve flexibility. Um so uh I I guess
068Yeah, let's take F and G together if there's no questions. Can I ask a question? Um, well, first of all, on the on the reserves which we reviewed in finance committee, these are estimates at this time and we'll have an opportunity to finalize them based on the year closing out in the fall. Correct. Yes. when when I get estimates from the auditors. Yeah. Uh we'll probably do that with the finance committee through email over the summer. Okay. And um on this memo that details the capital projects that we're closing out, which is very helpful. Um the flood mitigation project where we were authorized for a $900,000 project and it it cost us $861. Good, good news. We're under budget, but did we issue 900,000 in bonds for that? Yes. Yes. And so we've paid the
069bonds off. Yep. Um, help me just work through that. We uh we the bonds will be paid off in 2017. I believe they were paid off in 2017. Uh, no, I mean 2027 27. I believe it was a 10-year bond issue. Okay. It was part of uh I think it went together with the auditorium and science labs around the same time. Either that or Hazefield, I'm not sure. Um but once that's why that ser goes back to debt service because it was completely funded by bonds, right? Okay. Um, could you It would be helpful just to have the dates that these projects were completed. Doesn't need to be now for us to vote on these items, but sure be interested to do. I have in front of me. I'll circulate that. Other questions on GRH?
070Um, get a I'm sorry, that's F and G. Sorry, we're not at H yet. Get a motion to approve uh items F and G. Motion. Second. All in favor? I Okay. H uh is an agreement with our former treasurer Kathleen Lynch who was treasurer here from 2009 to 2019 uh to help our new treasur as needed over the next year to ensure a smooth and efficient transition. Um and that's as needed through the year uh through the eb and flow of his first fiscal year. I mean the first three months have been outstanding. So, uh, we want to make sure he makes it through at least a year with a mentor. Uh, and that would be as needed hourly. Uh, not to exceed um I think it was about 93 hours for 10,000 or 10
071and something hours not to exceed $10,000. Okay. Do you want to take it together with I and I setting our non-resident tuition rate for next year. Uh the rate uh is intended to be linked to the SE senica falls formula developed by SED. Uh however in the last few years especially since co the rate has been increased by the uh tax levy rate. uh and our rate has risen to be a little higher than the formula about 10% higher. So I'm proposing that we keep the rate flat to help realign it over this year and possibly future years. Take it yearbyear. Uh and the BTA rate continues at 5,000 per year as a result of the BTA contractual agreement. Okay, any questions? Dan, how much flexibility do we have with the out of out of
072district tuition rate? Not a lot. We're higher than we should be at the moment. Do we have the ability to move it up at all? Uh we should be moving it back. We we've been higher than the formula in the last few years and nobody's come knocking on our door. Okay. But that could happen. Uh the Senica Falls formula that you're referring to. So it could be retroactively looked at and we could be we could have gone out of compliance. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay. So I want to get that back over the next few years. Okay. And who and who regulates that? Is there a compliance um state education department? Okay. Got it. I think Eddie and I are thinking about the same thing, which is can non um can can students
073who are tuitioning in pay a little bit more which gives us flexibility on other areas perhaps um BTA bringing down uh teacher what teachers pay something like that. I would say no. In order to do that, we would have to come up with a uh a kind of a cost analysis of why that is. And then and there's certain exclusions in the Senica Falls formula, which is uh transportation's excluded, special ed is include excluded, athletics are excluded. You know, it's it's kind of a base formula for uh the cost of a student. Okay? You know, our per pupil cost if you to just take our $55 million budget and divide it by uh our 1,580 kids is over $30,000, right? you know, and uh the uh some kids are more expensive than others just based
074on the services we offer them, which is why the SED formula is intended to become a base formula. Mhm. And we'd have to come up with a a rationale that could be defended to uh to make it any higher than that. And saying that it technically I mean 30,000 per kid is what it costs if you break it down by the number of students in the budget. Yeah, that's not good enough. They're not going to that. Okay. Okay. Um last question. Sure. When was the last time we decided to um in some way uh direct questions around the Senica Falls um calculation probably about 10 years ago, right? And we created a dossier that we submitted and demonstrated that we should be bringing tuition up a little bit higher than No, no, no. We've never
075we've never um we've never applied to SED to exceed the formula. I see. It just it it just uh over the last few years just using the tax levy as an indicator Mhm. our tax levy rose higher than the formula did. Got it. Which is an indicator of what the costs are in the village. It's an indicator of costs outside of the formula. Yeah. increasing at a higher rate than our base educational costs because what what we say the average tax increase in the village this year is 4%. Exactly six six six% right? So if we're if we're flat this year we're we're making up for 6% of what we were over. Yep. Is this worth taking offline and take and taking another look at it? Is it possible? Are we running out of time?
076Uh, we don't really uh No, we can we can address it at the reorg meeting. Okay. I think it's a good project. I think so, too. The finance committee also, right? Take a deeper dive. Yeah. But would it ever be higher than 30, which is the average, the full cost? Seems pretty rational to me. I think we're if we're talking about per pupil cost, shouldn't it be what we charge on average? I mean, if we're paying 32,000 per student, I thought you said it was 30. If you're asking me if I agree with you, my answer is yes. If you're asking me if SED agrees with you, the state education department, they do not. Right. Right. I'd love to look into our degrees. Sure. And we can also uh consult with legal counsel. they might
077have more information about, you know, if there's an appeal process in place or, you know, how we could um attempt to address this. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dan. Um any other questions? Uh we need uh H if we're tableabling I table I tableabling I. So I am asking for a motion to approve uh H financial action item H. Motion motion. Second. Second. All in favor? I I Okay. Thank you. And Dan, we're right back to you on facilities. Yes. Uh work on the uh security vestibule will start after hours on June 25th. Uh the general contractor will begin prepping and removal for the uh abatement in a middle school office and classroom A203. Uh the pawnfield entrance will be officially closed to the public beginning on Friday, June 27th at 3:30 p.m. Uh and then
078abatement prep will begin in earnest on Friday, June 27th after 3:30 p.m. as well. Uh arrangements has been made to the with the middle school staff to relocate for the final few days of school. Uh the pump enclosure uh essentially has started. The general contractor and steel contractor have met on site for preliminary layout. electrician uh has all approvals from KED and has been on site already uh for the meter relocation and um we're expecting them to continue this week as you know working uh on the electrical condition in the um uh in the pump the current pump setup to relocate the meter can be done while uh school's in session. We have uh an action item and that's awarding the RFP for special testing services to special testing laboratories uh at the prices and
079rates indicated not to exceed a total of $20,000 and we see we received uh competitive pricing on that. Okay. I get a motion to approve uh this action item for RFP. Yeah. Motion second. All in favor? I I Okay, Dan. Still you. We have one other action item. Yep. Uh the RIC1 resolution, Brad. Tell me if I'm getting this right, which is authorizing RIC1 to enter data privacy agreements as part of our technology relationship with Southern Westchester Regional Information Center. It's okay. And that's they're streamlining data privacy agreements for organizations throughout the state. Okay, I get a motion to approve this action item. Second. All in favor? I I uh I think we're moving away from you, Dan. Thank goodness. Goodness. Thank you. Uh so we have uh three policies for first reading this evening.
080These are all newly required policies. Um uh the um policy subcommittee of the board has had an opportunity to look at them. Again, this is a first reading. we will have an opportunity to make any changes prior to the second reading at the reorganization meeting on July 8th. The first is the extreme heat condition days. Um, basically this is now law that um they want us to make every effort when uh classrooms get to 82 degrees um to take um some measures like turning off overhead lights, pulling down shades or blinds, turning on any fans, um opening classroom doors and windows to increase air flow and circulation. Um and then if it does reach 88° inside, they are asking us to consider removing students from those areas um to other areas or maybe in extreme
081conditions doing an early dismissal. Um we're very fortunate the vast majority of our spaces are airond conditioned. Um, if there does become a situation where we are getting close to 88 degrees, we can certainly relocate students from the few spaces that currently exist that don't have AC. Any questions on that one? Um, the next one is a good indication how uh Bronxville is ahead of the curve. It's now a requirement that school districts have exeicio student members. Um, so this allowed us to kind of put some of our practice in writing. Um, there weren't many changes to how we are currently um, handling this except that we are now naming that the SFL president will be an exeicio student member and that um, the high school principal, Dr. Ray Levero, has the authority to appoint
082alternates um, that are SFL members. Any questions on that? And then the last one, as many of us are aware, um student and personal electronic devices um in New York State public schools um is now um subject to the law. Um the governor had put this law in place as part of her uh budget proposal and uh we have spent considerable time um soliciting feedback from students and parents and faculty members. Uh I appreciate uh Dr. Levero's time and energy on this. Um I am pleased to say that the practice that we put in place in both the elementary and middle schools this year uh meet the requirements of the law. And just a quick recap in elementary uh no devices that have inter internet access are allowed in in school. If they want to
083bring a device that does not have internet access, it must stay um in their locker throughout the day. in middle school. Uh this year we introduce locked cabinets outside of each advisory. So every morning when they go to home room um they're required to put their devices um in that locked box. Uh we did feel strongly given our open campus that if students were leaving uh campus for lunch, they would have access to their phones and then after lunch uh they return them to the lock boxes. Um I give uh Mr. McCora and Mr. Ed Leica a lot of credit for just um making this change seamless in the middle school and I give our middle school kids a lot of credit because they've really been overall very compliant. Um the biggest change is really
084to the high school. Um and um after a lot of consideration, uh Rey and I have spent a fair amount of time on this. Um we believe that we are making a recommendation to the board that is um teaching our kids how to be responsible, which is I know one of our main goals, and also adhering to the law. And so what we're proposing is that um we don't see cell phones at all. uh cell phones have to be off and away. Um we will have um parking devices in each of the classrooms where they can put their cell phones. Um the cell phones can also be in their backpacks. We cannot see them. What's a big change uh for our high schoolers is that the law is clear that now it's even in hallways,
085cafeterias, study hall, learning commons, anytime during the day the phones need to be off and away. Um what's what did you come up with, Ray, that you're going to use with the kids? Come on. Off and away is okay. Off and away is okay. Say a taser. Um, the high school students are going to love that, right? I tested it out with them on Friday. Okay. How'd that go? As much as you appealing. So, what um what we are recommending in terms of personal laptops is that um all of our ninth graders next year will continue with Chromebooks. These are our current middle schoolers who are used to bringing Chromebooks, uh, districtisssued Chromebooks to and from school. So, we're going to continue that with the middle school cohort moving up into to 9th grade. However,
086with our 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, they can bring their personal laptops to school providing that they are being used for educational purposes. So when they are in the classroom and it's appropriate to have them out, they can use their personal laptops. What will be important is that their cell phones are off and away. Uh we do not want them using their cell phones as personal hotspots um because then that will give them access to potentially distracting material during instructional time. Um so they will have access to their personal laptops again and we are um expecting our students to be responsible and compliant um with this and uh Dr. Levero, Mr. Vaga uh working on some verbiage uh so it's also clear not only what our expectation is but also what the repercussions are um
087in terms of warnings and then um some discipline. Uh so we feel good about where we've landed with this um and uh so that's part of the first reading this evening. Ray, did you want to add anything? they would have to register the device that they're using it in accordance with our acceptable use policy. Okay. So, it sort of allows us to accomplish two goals at the same time. One reviewing the acceptable use policy and signing it and two putting that So that being, you know, they know that this is a privilege that can be revoked at any time if they're not using their personal device in accordance with the policy. Okay. Now, look, this is uh it's going to be ambitious in terms of the cultural shift within the school. I think it's going
088to be great for the students. So, thank you for this work. Uh and we are approving this for the first reading which means that we invite community comment uh on any of these policies. So please if you have comments uh please let us know. Uh I get the board to approve uh these three policies for first reading. Motion second. All in favor? I thank you. Uh we did the Rick. Okay. I think we are on to committee reports. Um I think you know why don't we knock the before we go to curriculum uh with with uh Ann Meyer. Why don't we try audit finance uh health and welfare? Why don't we just take them as they come and then we could jump over to Ann. Sure. Pete. Yeah. So, so, um, we met with our
089internal auditors and we saw a drastic, uh, improvement in certain areas year-over-year. Um, we were deficient last year in five categories. Um, information technology, we went from a a 225 risk waiting, which is high risk, down to uh, a 204. Uh our information technology was part of our internal audit last year. So it makes sense that it went down. Uh other things that were notable, student services uh was 244, which a high risk went down to um a 148, which is a medium rating. So we're happy about that. And the third area, uh purchasing an AP, we're at a 209 and that went down to 167. Uh the three areas that are still high risk areas are just the areas that you'd think are should be high risk. You know, anything dealing with money in
090or in or out should be have a higher rating. And we're we're still going to work on that. Uh investment debt and cash is a 221 rating. Revenue and AR is 219 rating. Government and grants, aid and grants is a 212. Uh uh the auditor recommended uh next year uh that the um specific area they should look at is uh investment debt and cash which is our highest highest risk rating this year which kind of makes sense. So and and I'll just add Pete that a lot of these ratings are not um specific to the Bronxville school. they're they're based on looking at exogenous factors like what's happening in the broader economy um and what's happening to other schools. So for example, if cyber security shoots up one year, it's because of what's happening in
091the broader climate around cyber security risk. So um some of this stuff is, you know, uh stuff that we have to deal with as a school too, but a lot of it is risk that's placed on us based on what's happening outside the school. Great. and most are and are high-risisk or the other similar to other districts. No, it's good context. Thank you both of you. Uh finance or finance, we reviewed the insurance renewal package which all but one policy are actual quotes. Um, our premiums are up 11% on average, which I think most of us know from personal experience is just what is happening in the insurance industry these days. Um, and we also reviewed, as I referred to earlier, um, estimates for year-end transfers, which will be finalized once the annual audit is
092complete in the fall. And then lastly, we the committee reviewed um uh policies related to the finance area. Um most of which had no changes. We review them on an annual basis. Um, I think one big update was that the district is going to add a district credit card so that uh where large deposits are required for trips, we will no longer be asking um individual people to uh front those. Um the credit use of the credit card will be very carefully controlled and I believe only Mr. Carlin will have the ability to use it. So, um, good for good developments. Thank you, Susan. Uh, how about health and welfare, Eddie? Uh, health and safety. Health and safety. Yeah, we met. Um, there wasn't there wasn't a whole lot of big announcements coming out of
093this meeting. Uh, we've done our drills for the year. Um, the the head lice population is at a manageable level at this point. Um, um, sorry. Excellent. Uh, Uh so so everything's good on that front. Um uh what else do we have? Facilities. We're going to have to change the order of these um these committee reports because Dan always takes all the exciting facility things from me. Um as he mentioned, we're getting the flood pump enclosure underway. It, you know, already underway, but it'll it'll ramp up uh as as soon as school is out. Same thing with the security vestibule. Um and the Bronxville School Foundation um closing up their year. They had a really successful year. They did a lot for the school as they always do. Uh we're extremely grateful for them. Um
094and everything that they can provide in terms of extra programming, things that the school budget wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. Um the new benches that are out front are are just one example. Um and um they're going to be putting in AC in the uh the cardio and the weight room uh which is great. Um that'll start pretty much after school is out as well. Um and I think that's all I have tonight. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Eddie. Uh Pete, anything PTA or uh No, just you know, on election day that that whole open mic, you and I were together. Yeah. And and your daughter was singing, but I didn't have a child singing. Thank God. if he was there. Um, but you know, the arts committee was there from the PTA, the
095whole Bronco that's made out of flowers. I'm like, what is what a great day. Yeah, it was tremendous. Besides you and I winning, of course. Also, no, say like the whole atmosphere was just amazing. So, thank you. Thank you. Yes, Thank you for that as well. Thank you. Yeah. And Memorial Day, phenomenal week of events. So, y thank you. Perfect. All right. Um, main event for the committee reports and Meyer, our head of curriculum and instruction, if you could give us an update on the work uh that we've done there. Sure. Um, so our most recent meeting, we invited the high school English department who piloted a new process for text selection that we developed this year. Um, so essentially with the middle and high school English department, we uh reviewed a variety of criteria
096that we want to make sure that when we're adopting a text, a text for an English course that we are looking at and evaluating before we move forward with the text. So that criteria includes things like the purpose of the title, alignment with the curriculum, scholarship and literary merit of the title, authoritiveness, accuracy and validity of the information if it's non-fiction, perspective, um timeliness or permanence, reputation of author or publisher. There are variety that have questions that we ask the department to consider within the criteria. Um, and it turned out that the English department was thinking about replacing a text in the 10th grade. So, they were able to pilot this process this year. And the process in terms of how that criteria is considered is we've outlined that when um the department is considering
097introducing a new text, they actually generate three possibilities for what might replace the text. And that they evaluate all three on this criteria. And that at least two department members review each text. and that the department comes together and has a conversation about the merits of each text in relation to the criteria and how it fits in the curriculum before a decision's made about which text they'd like to put forth to the principal and I and then eventually to the strategies and curriculum committee. Um I think we had the opportunity to hear from the department um how this process worked and I think what was really uh first of all I want to thank them for their openness to try something new and for all the work that went into this particularly during the school
098year to propose three different books and then evaluate them and they did so in a very detailed and thoughtful way. I think what they shared with us was how helpful it was to have this process in place because had they not they had an initial book they were thinking about and they said in the past they probably would have just gone with that book but because they really had to think about a few options. They actually had a very productive discussion as a department thinking more broadly across 9th through 12th grade what texts might add to the curriculum. And they actually ended up deciding on a different text than what they originally thought and then moving the text they originally thought they would go with to a summer reading um text that they're going to
099assign to the whole grade. So, I think they really commented on how um this process was helpful to them and I think um again I want to thank them for all the work that went into it and I think we ended up with a really uh nice outline going forward. So that was I think the main part of what happened at the meeting, right? And I I would hope Thank you, Ann, and thank you to the the English department and teachers for all the work they did. I I have to say what what Ann Meyers just uh described doesn't even do justice to the experience that the strategy and curriculum committee had when we sat there in front of these teachers explaining what they went through and how excited they were to work together to
100make this whole academic experience in English literature even more robust. It was like an exercise in critical thinking, but at the at a high at the teacher level, it was really fascinating to us and I think really rewarding and I just felt really good about this. We really didn't know where this was going. All right. And certainly it started with one book and then it it it evolved, but you could see how the wheels were turning in the room. Um, I hope at some point, possibly in the fall, as we get further along, that we'll have a a presentation so we could really lay it out because the things that they shared with us in the materials was really interesting. Uh, so this is very analytical uh, and not just anecdotal discussions um, but really
101impressive work. Thank you for your leadership and to Dr. Kelly for helping make this happen. Um, sure. Good. Ask a question. Um, will there be any followup after a year of teaching this book that it was all that they thought it was as far as student engagement and the themes that they were trying to get across? Is there going to be some sort of Definitely. I mean, they go through sort of a a review of their curriculum each year, but especially new texts. Great. Christina, I I don't know if you want to add anything to she was also in the meeting. Yeah. No, thank thanks. I I mean I think I'll just echo what Ann and Michael said. It was a really tremendous experience to see the teachers formulate this process and go through it.
102And really the you know the animating principle behind all of it was how to optimize the you know the students use of their instructional time and to sort of provide a space and a time for the teachers to be able to engage in this kind of collaborative critical thinking. And um it feels like we really did see an outcome where the book selections went from, you know, very good to optimal, which is a win-win. So again, just to thank and for her leadership and the teachers for for being willing to to really put their thinking caps on and go through this. So we're very pleased and thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Any other comments? All right, I think we're on to public comment. Any any nothing online? Nothing in the room. I think we have
103one person from the public here. Uh who's not administrator? You're okay. All right. Well, then uh may I have a motion to uh close the public meeting? Motion. Second. All in favor? I. That's it. Thank you for coming.