001[Music] Good evening. I'd like to call to order this public hearing for the New York State Monitor for the Mount Vernon City School District. This is the third and final of the required public hearings. Today is Tuesday, August 5th, 2025. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This evening's hearing will focus on the physical status of the district. I will now open the floor to Superintendent Dr. Deario Strickland as moderator and Dr. Kimberly Young Wilkins, New York State Monitor. >> Great evening everyone. >> Great evening. >> Yes, I know we're talking about finances, but it's still a good evening. Uh I am Dr. Deario Strickland, a
002proud superintendent of the Mount Vernon City School District, and I will serve as your moderator for today's public hearing of the monitor for the Mount Vernon City School District. Today's public hearing is on the subject of the duties and responsibilities of the state appointed monitor and the financial status of the Mount Vernon City School District. My role as monitor, I will explain how this hearing will be conducted, call upon speakers who wish to make comments or ask questions during this public hearing, and if time permits, give the monitor an opportunity to answer questions that have been submitted. I am joined this evening by Dr. Kimberly Wilkins, Young Wilkins, the monitor for the Mount Vernon City School District, and Dr. Dr. Jamal Dogget and Miss Lan White of the district. Our agenda today, our agenda for
003today's meeting is as follows. I will explain how this public hearing will be conducted and how persons may participate in this public hearing. Next, Dr. Wilkins will do a presentation on the financial matters that are covered in the legislation so that we can have some common information about this topic. Next, I will provide an opportunity for persons who are participating in this public hearing to make comments regarding this topic. And then finally, if time permits, persons who have not signed up may come forward to make comments or ask questions. After Dr. Young Wilkins has finished her presentation, we will open it up for comments from everyone who signed up to speak. As you could see, there is a sign-in sheet or signup sheet to speak on uh this door and there's also one on this
004door. When the time comes for public comments, I will call upon each speaker in the order they signed up. When I call your name, you will come to the podium and be given four minutes to make your statement. When you have one minute remaining in your allotted time, you will be informed. After four minutes, I will thank you and I will thank you for your statement and move on to the next speaker. If anyone wants to submit a comment who did not speak, you can still submit your comment to K. Young Wilkins at mountveroncsd.org and your comment will be made part of the record of this hearing. If time permits, we will allow persons who have not signed up to come to the podium to either make comments or ask questions. And with that being
005said, it's my honor to welcome up our state monitor, Dr. Kimberly Wilkins. Young Wilkins. >> Yeah. >> All right. I'm so sorry. No, you over there. I can't do that. I'm sorry. All righty. Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Strickland, and welcome to all who are participating in tonight's hearing. I am Kimberly Young Wilkins. I'm the monitor assigned by the commissioner to Mount Vernon City School District. I have more than three decades of experience. It sounds like a long time, and it is, and assistant superintendent, um, educational leader, superintendent of schools, deputy commissioner. I've served about everything in a K12 setting. I'm very familiar with the academic and fiscal challenges faced by the districts such as Mount Vernon. This hearing is being conducted to meet the requirements of the new state law that directs commissioner
006of education to appoint a monitor to the Mount Vernon City School District. Mount Vernon School District is not unique in this regard. Similar provisions of law also require the commissioner to appoint monitors to Hemstead, Rochester, and Wendance School District. A somewhat different provision of law establishes monitors in East Rambo East Ramapo school district. As a Mount Vernon monitor, I'm charged with providing oversight, guidance, technical assistance related to academic and fiscal policies, practices, programs, and decisions of the school district and the board of education with your superintendent. Next slide. Not sure who's doing slides. Keep going. Okay. Appointment of the monitor. Okay. Just stay there. Yeah. There we go. All right. On July 1st, I was appointed by Commissioner Betty Rosa to be the monitor of the Mount Vernon City School District. And go to the
007next slide. The public hearing we are conducting today is required by the state law that establishes position of the monitor. We are doing hearings this month because by law they must be conducted within 60 days of my appointment. And this is the third hearing which is to explain the role of the monitor and providing oversight and assistance in fiscal matters of Mount Vernon schools and take public comment on the fiscal status of the school district. All right. School district fiscal responsibility. In New York, except in the five largest school districts, school districts are self-governing entities in which the voters elect their own representatives to school boards that oversee the schools. Eligible residents are also, excuse me, eligible residents also may vote upon the rate in which property will be taxed to support the schools. School
008districts are funded in three ways. Through property taxes and other local revenues, state aid, and federal aid. In the average school district in New York State, the amount of local and state revenues are roughly equal and less than 10% of the revenue of the federal government. However, local and state shares can be dramatically higher or lower depending on the relative wealth and needs of your school district. In Mount Vernon, the percentage of the revenue from local and state and federal sources track fairly closely to the state averages. In 2025 school year, Mount Vernon had a general fund budget of two 274.2 million, which the state aid is projected to be 122.7 million. Let me just repeat the numbers again. Um, for the 2526 school year, Mount Vernon has a general fund budget of 274,000. Oh,
009274.2 million, excuse me. Of which the state aid is projected to be 122.7 million. I'm going to give some numbers, so I'm just going to try to go slow with that so you can kind of follow through with me. Mount Vernon spent 30,764 per student in 19 2019 2020. So that's just when the co started and then $41,55 in 2324. So in contrast, the state average of these points were 27,638 in 2019 for the state and in 2023 they were 38,641. So in those numbers, Mount Verden spent more. In Westchester County, average was 29,6 in 2019 and then 32,373 in 2324. So again, meaning Mount Vernon spent more per pupil than state and county averages. So again, just the bear bear witness to the numbers right now. it come more into play as we go
010through our journey of fiscal um monitoring. Next slide. Okay. Although I'm responsible for monitoring both the district's academic and fiscal operation, it is the district's fiscal condition that's the primary reason for my appointment, including concern that the district's severe fiscal stress could lead to severe academic declines. We can't have academic declines. We just can't at this point. Our kids are too important. For the 2024 fiscal year, the New York State Office state controller assigned a fiscal score to every school district in the state. The higher the score, the more fiscal stress a district is in. Mount Vernon received the highest score of any district in the state and was one of only two designated as significant fiscal stress. The district is in at this condition because of years of expenditures that have exceeded revenues resulting
011in the near exhaustion of its fund balance. That's like your bank account that you kind of go back to, but you don't want it to be depleted. As the start of the 2019 school year, the district had a bun a fund balance of 33 million. So that was back in 19 2019 2020. By the end of 2023 and 24 school year, that had dwindled to 7 million. The decline in the fund balance has been occurring at the same time that the district enrollment has also declined by 1500 students in the last 10 years. What is even more concerning about the situation in Mount Vernon is that the district district's fiscal situation has been detering at a time when most school districts have been able to improve their fiscal condition because of the influx of federal
012stimulus monies funds and fully funded full funding of the foundation aid. Indeed, many of the districts had um many districts that had problems is that it is now um excuse me. Indeed, in many districts, the problem is that their unrestricted reserve funds is exceeding the 4% cap. In other words, they have too much in their savings basically and we don't have that here. Um next slide. Designating the district as an significant fiscal stress was a political way of saying that if drastic actions were not taken, the district might not be able to pay all of its bills in the 2526 school year. Everyone in the community has been impacted by the drastic measures taken. Three schools have been closed. Voters were asked to approve a 3.3 tax levy increase. In addition, the district has received
0138 million in a spinup aid. Essentially, the district borrow against future state aid which must be paid over 30 years. Often when a district goes to Albany and says it needs a loan to avoid running out of money, the governor and legislature decide that they need to appoint a monitor to ensure the district digs itself out of the fiscal hole that is in that it is in our Dr. Strickland is very sim similar is had a very similar situation in Rochester. His former district also needed a spin up of loans when his monitor was appointed in 2020. But under the leadership of Dr. Strickland and his predecessors, Rochester has improved his fiscal situ situation dramatically and has been able to pay off his spin up early and now accumulate a fund balance on the order
014of $400 million. They have a higher um fund balance because of the of the size of their district. Okay, next one. responsibility of the monitor. So, how will I help the district with the fiscal issues? I will, by virtue of my position, serve as a member of the school board with the right to attend all meetings, both public and executive sessions, and to participate in in discussions on all matters come before it. I expect to be present at all board meetings. This means I will have the opportunity to weigh in on every fiscal action taken by the board. It should be noted that the monitor is not entitled to vote on matters coming before the board of education nor is my presence considered in determining a quorum for the board for the BOE. Assuring that
015no employees or board members has conflict between their official duties for the school district and their outside interest is critical to the maintaining the fiscal and operational integrity of the district. Therefore, one of my first tasks will be to work with the board to ensure that the district conflict of interest policy is up to date and rigorous. It is crucial to the academic and fiscal um stabilization of the school district that long-term academic improvement and financial plans be developed to guide the Mount Vernon school into Mount Vernon schools into the future. This is the core work of the monitor. The fiscal plan will contain a series of recommendations designed to improve fiscal stability. The plan will also include addressing provisions contained in any corrective action plan set forth by the department. That's the state department,
016state education department. A draft financial plan will be subject to public review and comment prior to being finalized. Should there be a disagreement between the monitor and the board on as aspects of the plan, such matters would be brought to the commissioner for resolution. Once a plan is approved by the commissioner and the recommendations in the plan become binding upon the school district which is required to implement them to their fidelity. If there are any issues in terms of the plan implementation, the district may seek to have the commissioner approve an amendment to the plan. The plan is a living document and there are also up opportunities to update the plan annually. Next responsibilities. A key way in which to monitor which which I will monitor the district finances is through a review of the
017district proposed budgets. Beginning in 2627 school year, I will be responsible for submitting findings and recommendation to commissioner regarding whether the proposed district budget is balanced in terms of expected expenditures and revenues in align with the academic and financial improvement plans. As I review the budget, I will be asking the following questions. How much of the 2627 budget plans require the use of fund balance or reserve? How does the proposed 2627 school budget plan for the unknown such as unsettled contracts or major expenses? Now, this sounds like what we do at our house, right? It's the same thing we do at our house. Does the budget make reasonable projections regarding state and federal revenues for the 2627 school year and succeeding school years? Is the district proposing to move expenditures from the federal budget line
018to general budget or vice versa? In dollars and percentage terms, which categories of expenses is showing the largest increase in the proposed 2627 school year budget year-toear? How does the budget reflect changes in enrollment? Are there any are there new expenses or revenues categories included in the proposed 2627 schoolyear budget? If so, what are they based on? Are there immediate short-term operational basic needs that have been identified specific to building grounds, physical plans, and other operations, operations specific issues such as equipment, safety, and security? Has the district updated its long-term financial plan with the proposed 2627 school year budget numbers and projected 2627 school year expense and revenue? Proposed number, projected number. Does the district cash flow analysis project adequate resources to meet all expenditures through needs throughout the school year? Is the district proposing
019any borrowing for capital improvement? What would be the fiscal or programmatic imp implications of the voters approving the bond? And what would be the implication to the voters if they did not? Has the district prepared a contingency budget in event of the budget being defeated? Does the proposed budget align and support implementation of the academic improvement and financial plans? Of course, that would be my first one. I really want to see how it impacts that. Answers to questions such as these will guide the findings as well as any recommendation I make to the commissioner regarding proposed budget. Another authority I have regard I have regards is dispute resolution. Overwhelmingly when disagreements arise between the superintendent and board members or amongst the board members themselves such as such disputes are able to be resolved internally. In
020such a case when disagreements cannot be resolved, the monitor may ask to assist in resolving a dispute that involves implementation of an element of the academic andor financial plan. There are times when a monitor may identify ways that a district can save money. In such cases, the monitor may place a proposal before the board require the board to vote upon the proposal. While the board is not required to approve the monitor's proposal, the public is likely to ask the board to justify its lack of action. In addition, if the board does not act, the monitor can seek effectuation to these cost savings in following year through the inclusion of the recommendation in the financial plan update or review of the proposed bud budget. This plan has to come before you every year. So changes will
021will be tweaked out through that time frame. A violation of the five-year academic plan exists when a district fails to make good faith effort to implement an element of the academic plan. For example, if the plan stated that by April 1st 20 2026, the district shall complete a transportation service audit and by that date the district has not taken action to undertake the audit, that could be reason for the monitor to issue a notice of violation. In such case, the monitor would notify the board, the commissioner of the violation. The commissioner gives the board an opportunity to reopen um to reopen to the notice and then decide whether a violation exists and whether to order the district to take action to come in compliance to the plan. The legislation requires that the report be provided
022twice a year to the governor, New York State Ledge, Board of Regents, and the Commissioner of Education on academic, fiscal, and operation status of the schools. This rep the report shall include copies of all contracts entered in by the district financial plan. The plan that I develop in collaboration with the district will contain goals, recommendation, evidence of implementation. The focus of this plan is to likely be quick fixes that can be accomplished for the 2526 school year because we're actually living in that year right now. Um the plan does go to the commissioner to November 1st and then it moves through the system at that point. Um and it goes more in-depth recommendations that can be accomplished in the 26 27 school year. There may be um recommendations for long-term projects that may take multiple
023years to implement, but this is a five-year financial and academic plan. So with that, I turn it back over to our wonderful superintendent Thank you, Dr. Young Wilkins. When I met her, she was just Wilkins, and now she's put this young in it. It's just throwing me all the way off. Um, for the state, the overview of the state law and the regulation. Uh now that we have reviewed key provisions of state law that address the role of the monitor in terms of fiscal issues, I am going to ask those persons who would like to speak to please come forward and ask your questions or provide your comments. >> Um I have a couple questions. Uh, one is, is this a full-time job that you're gonna be doing like 40, 50 hours a week in
024the district? >> Say again. >> It sounds like I'm going to be doing 60 hours a week, right? >> Yeah. No, no, I would hope so. When does it entail also? Uh, can you hear me? Okay. >> Okay. Um, okay. That's my best side. Uh, and so that's one question. Now also will you be digging into expenditures that the district has has has you know expended in the past say two fiscal years. You'll be doing that as well. And um also I'm concerned too because uh I know years ago there was like 10 12,000 people in the district. This going back 25 years know and now there's there's what 7,000 or something like that. 7,500. Um, I'd like to understand why that's happening, why so many uh children in Mount Vernon don't attend Mount Vernon
025schools. I assume that would be part of because if they attended the schools, it would be a much more vibrant district. Um, and I'm hoping you'll look into things like that as well. Um, but I appreciate that you're here. Now, if this was prompted because of a low balance, uh, reserve balance, what triggered this? Um, let me go through the couple of questions that you asked. That's okay. Um, it is not full-time. I have been kind of uh assigned 25 hours a week, believe it or not. And I am here three days out the week. I'm actually live in Albany. So, I come down and I'm here three full days every week. And I will do more time if necessary, what is going to be necessary. and I will work from home as well. So
026that's the 25 hours a week is the average that I have right now. Um then you asked the second question about will we go into expenditures. I'm going through everything. So right now I am looking at your current budget. I'm going line by line if you sitting in there with highlights and questions and everything for the current budget. So, I'm doing expenditures, contracts, everything overtime. Everything that's in that budget I'm going through and I have a lot of questions and um so I'm doing that at this point. Um when it comes to digging into the enrollment, that's like historic. And so, you may already have something when it comes to the enrollment patterns because you did have somebody outside do that I want to say 18 months in order to get to where you were
027with the buildings closures. So, I had to go back. I don't want to reinvent the wheel if you already did an enrollment analysis. So, I had to look at that and that's coming to me. I don't think I have that yet, but it's coming. And then you kind got ding-dong by the controller. He you have to do external audits that go up to him or her the office and they go through and basically give you a ranking for all the the school systems and all the districts in the state. And unfortunately, you came up the bottom of the ranking, but we're going to change that because the glass is half full. We're not going to go half empty because there's things that we have we can do to tighten our belt and look at the
028expenditures, the contracts, and all that. So, that's where I'm going to be looking at everything. >> Okay. The other thing I want to mention too was that you mentioned these districts like wine dance and wine dance and Rochester which I know was like a not a successful district either you know education >> it's getting better. >> Okay. Well that's and and we're hoping that that will transate and transfer into Mount Vern as well. >> Absolutely. >> But we dance I'm sure is still not a a successful district as well. >> Well I'm going to tell you fiscally yes they are. >> Okay. >> Fiscally they they were not having academic issues. They were fiscally having issues and their fund balance is higher than yours. Okay. >> Okay. It was lower than yours, but now it's
029higher after their monitor has been there for since 2020, I believe he came or 2022. So, yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yep. You're welcome. >> So, I have a comment and a question. I'm glad that you're actually revisiting this current year's school budget because neither of you were here and so it is a wise thing to go over line by line to see where we are. And then I have my second quest my second my first my question is historically we've had the school district has had a problem collecting funds from the city for our property taxes. I know we now pay directly the school tax comes directly to the district. What plans are there in place to ameliorate the situation so it's not affecting the fund balance or you know your budget as such?
030>> Thank you for that question. So already I've been speaking to my interim superintendent for business who unfortunately could not be with us tonight and he is in the process of setting up meetings with the controller of the city. Um those meetings are going to be established to discuss the remaining payments that the city owes um the school district and how they're going to rectify those payments. So please know that that I was listen I'm I look at all the money. Okay? I look at all the money and I know that we're we're short in a lot of spaces. Uh so I want to be sure to do that. We're also um uncovering that uh some of the um past projects had not been refunded um by New York State. So, I'm going to be
031again meeting with uh some of our representatives for the Big Five and they are going to help assist me with uh figuring out what is the plan of action to uh present these items to the state so that we could continue to recoup funds that are belonging to us. So, I'm I'm coming from a mom of three kids, two, four, and six, entering the school district. I'm completely apprehensive >> to be completely honest. um because of the rumors, the numbers, all of the talk in the town. Um, I guess my question is, can you elaborate more on this fiscal stress and what the timeline will look like in terms of rectifying or even getting back to par because I'm entering we're entering the school system. My kids are, you know, they need to go to
032school. like when when is this going to fix itself? >> Okay. Well, a couple things. Um the last meeting we had last week, I talked about the academics and I want to repeat what I said then. Now, your academics are not matching where your fiscal is. Academically, your schools are in good standing and they're really moving along as they should. they probably could move along faster and a little bit quicker if the fiscal part was in match to that, but academically, no, you're doing well. And I said, it's going to be half full at this point. I I gone through looked at your your um your data for your state exams and your regents and everything. Is there um need for improvement? Every school district is looking for improvement, but where where you are with
033a monitor, my focus is not going to be on the academics. It has to be really on the fiscal parts of it and I don't want the fiscal actually in negatively negatively impact your academics at this point. So academically we're moving along. We're doing fairly well. I want to keep it up. I know there's movements and changes happening right now but we're going to keep us moving forward. As far as the timeline the plan is a five-year academic fiscal plan. So when I put it forward it's supposed to go out five years but each year we have to tweak it. Nothing stays stable. nothing in the district ever stays stable. So, we're going to it's a baseline and we keep tweaking it hopefully getting better and better um with predictability around the fiscal parts of
034it. But the first part of it is for 20 256 and it I have to do lowhanging fruit when it comes from February to June. The real kick goes in for 26 27 but we have a five-year plan. I would hope that I'm going to put it out there. We're going to be in a lot better shape than we are in three years than we are right now. We have no place to go but up. We ain't going down, so we're going up. The main goal is next to make sure it does not negatively impact the academic instruction for all of our kids. So that is primary. So thank you for your babies. Hi, good evening. Um my question is concerning the academic school year that's coming up. Are we looking at additional layoffs and
035are we looking at additional school closures? Um, and also will we have a breakfast and lunch program for our students and will there be academic afterchool power hours for our students as well? Well, at this point, no additional closing of any schools? No, at this point. Um, and as far as I know, no layoffs unless something very strange. No layoffs. Like right now, we just got we want to get the schools open. But the other things I don't know about. So, >> so just to answer your question, so that's where the fiscal piece comes into play. So we want to offer after and before and after school programs. We want to make sure we have athletics programs that are competitive. We want to do modified sports. We want to have instrumental music. We want to
036have um want to give all of our babies all the things. However, when the finances are not there, that's when our babies miss out on those things. Um, as of right now, we have to I I am still kneede in the budget. >> Um, big- time kneede in the budget. And it would be my hopes that we don't um cut those programs that are going to help families and it's going to help the community. Um, but you know, those promises can't be made. Um, as far as layoffs are concerned, I believe that work has already been done. However, after beds day, um there will be a reconciliation um to determine whether like do we have full classes in all these schools? Do we need to possibly shift uh stu uh not students, do we need
037to shift staff members? um because uh traditionally, at least in um you know, the city of Rochester, we had not done that and that actually yielded cost savings that allowed us to have that fund balance um because we were able to cut some positions that were actually vacant in the budget. And the goal would be hopefully we get to that space again where we have enough space um for all of our students and we don't need to uh cut anything. Uh I will say a lot of our costs are um really um our expenditures are due to the enormous special education cost. So, there's going to be a large emphasis on uh tier one instruction and um multi-tered systems and supports uh in our schools because what uh happens is every small self-contained classroom. It
038takes away more resources from every everyone. So, we need to really practice a least restrictive environment. really trying to get our students to stay mainstreamed because every student does not need to be in a small class. It does not help every student. Um, and once we start getting those things under control, uh, I think we'll be having some better outlooks. And I'm just going to let you know, I don't even like I don't like spending money. So, that's that's going to be very beneficial for the district. I do get a new pair of new shoes here and there, but I'm not um I'm not one to throw out dollars uh all over the place. >> Can I add one thing? >> Sure. >> Um just so you know, normally >> for when you start doing
039cutting program is usually the last thing you want to touch and it's all you look at your pie chart on Mount Vernon website and it looks at the um budget. Look at that pie. Your biggest expense is staffing. So, you really do have to look at staffing. Nobody want lose a job or whatever, but it's about getting fiscal balance on there. Um, if you can't pay the mortgage, guess what? You're going to lose your house. You're going to lose your apartment. So, we got to be able to pay the mortgage, which is our kids. And if you look at that pie chart, the largest part of there is your staffing and faculty. So again, it's sometimes a hard hit and sometimes you're going to want to hit me, but I'm just going to tell you
040right now, we got to get through some of these hard conversations. And also for special ed, you need to look at your numbers because you have a population of 25% of your student body are under special ed. That's a very high percentage. I'm just letting you know it's overidentification. I'm not sure what's going on. And then you don't have the I call them integrated classes where you have like um well ICTs right there's two teachers in the room you have maybe eight of the 25 kids are special needs and it's really very robust. You don't have a lot of that. So but somehow something happened where you have a lot of self-contained. I'm trying to wrap around that right now because you're not giving those students the least restrictive environment. They deserve to have the
041least restrictive environment and they are they are accountable to the state exam as well. So then third grade they got to take that third grade test. So we have to do better. So that's a big more a big um conversation and I have a lot of questions. So, >> I was I was just going to quickly say in studies that I've been doing to um study districts that are in fiscal distress, most times district enrollment is decreasing and staff enrollment is increasing instead of doing the same thing. So, I'm almost certain, believe it or not. I mean, a lot of people say, "Hey, downtown is over staff." Listen, I've been walking around this building. People are working. People are stressed out, burned out. But I bet you as a former principal, I know where the
042the staff that doesn't have that full load is and and we're going to be looking at all those things because right now it's about our finances and making sure that we are sustaining the progress in our district. Sir, she she had another one. >> Oh, this is just to to piggy back. I was I was curious about the num the 25%. Do you have the the average >> for districts? >> I mean, just the top of your head. >> Off the top of my head, it ain't 25%. >> Okay. Like my former district, I think we were, and I was in Albany. I was superintendent in Albany at that time, we were about 17%. And that was high. that was high, but we also had 10,000 students >> and it was all across the continuum
043from um resource room straight through to um self-contained. Um so yeah, so that's 25 is high. >> Yes, >> it's 25% and a lot of them are in most restrictive environments. So in my previous district, we were at 24%. However, there was integrated co-eing almost at every single school with a sprinkling of self-contained classrooms uh based on abilities. But, you know, too often even um we know that autism is on the rise and but guess what I mean the identification of autism is on the rise. However, that's not saying that that student cannot function in a general education setting. You know, a lot of times people they can math before we even thought about it. Um, but we're choosing to put them in small settings and that is not what's best for the child. >>
044Another question. So in terms of the afterchool programs now we all know that there was a mismanagement of the grants in the district and so I am hoping that you have something in place for management of grants and for elimination of no-show jobs. um because we need to do we have the money we need to spend it on our students not for no show jobs. So I'm hoping there's some money in place and uh the other question on the overidentification of students for um special ed usually that comes from a lack of support in classrooms. Now when staff gets cut usually our social workers are the first to go unfortunately. So I'm hoping that we have sufficient support staff to assist in the general ed classrooms because when we have students usually class put into
045self-contained for behaviors. >> So we need a robust MTSS program in the district that's provides academic as well as behavioral supports. So I'm hoping that that's something that is being looked at. I don't know if I agree with your social work or you know um statement about them being the first ones cut because we have an obligation under the IEP. So that normally is not the first group that goes. >> Okay. But the social workers typically are you know working with the IEP the classified students right >> and in the classrooms in general I think teachers gened teachers tend with the large groups that they have with the behaviors they tend to need a little bit more support than they get. >> Yeah. Because their time is actually um taken up by but they're not
046the first ones to go. >> Okay. But I'm glad that's changed. Yeah. >> But, you know, before before they get >> for real. >> So, so that's my, you know, I'm just hoping that we have those supports in place, you know, four gen ed classroom teachers with the RTI with the MTSS because if you don't have a tier, a proper tier one, >> kids are going to go into tier 2, tier three. I mean, that's inevitable. So if you can provide teachers with that support, then you're kind of eliminating a need for tier 2 and tier three instruction. >> You know, it sounds like you're so knowledgeable. You need to come back into education again because this >> I have left. >> This is a retired principal right now. >> I have I have I
047have a left. >> Thank you. >> Any other thoughts, questions, comments? All right. Well, just a reminder, you are more than welcome to submit comments for the public record. Um, it's K. Young Wilkins at mountveroncsd.org. And, um, at this time, uh, I believe we'll have our board clerk close us out. >> Okay. If there's nothing else, this public hearing is adjourned. Thank you and good night.