Events from the Pelham Public Schools BOE MEETING 4-21-26

001loud. Okay. >> Okay. Good evening and welcome to the April 21st, 2026 meeting of the board of education. Let's rise for the pledge of allegiance. >> I aliance 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. >> Natalie, would you please reiterate our executive session motion? >> Hello. Yes, we met in executive session to discuss the particular employment history of particular individuals. >> Okay. Thank you, Natalie. Um uh I'd like to highlight a few uh key items from tonight's agenda. First, we will be we will be voting on whether to adopt the budget that will go before voters in May. When we reach that item, we'll briefly we'll briefly review the budget and then each board

002member will have the opportunity to comment before we vote. This is an important moment for our community. It's when the superintendent's budget becomes the board's budget and is ultimately presented to the community um to vote in May. As a reminder, the board's guidance was clear. Maintain the district's robust programming that delivers the level of excellence this community expects. We are um a topranked high-erforming school district. Our students are meeting and exceeding standards and they have access to a wide range of opportunities including AP courses, college level coursework, pathways like the seal of civic readiness, science and humanities research, strong and numerous athletic programs and extracurricular programs. We consistently deliver outcomes and opportunities that exceed what would typically be expected for a district of our size and resources. We continue to provide personalized learning through MTSS

003support and interventions and maintain appropriate class sizes. We also remain firmly committed to supporting our special education students. Finally, we ask the district to deliver a tax cap compliant budget in in a very in a highly inflationary environment where costs are rising much faster than revenues. To do that, the district made difficult but thoughtful decisions. They did not backfill retirees which continues to reduce headcount. They identified operational efficient um efficiencies. They reduced spending on consultants and certain software licenses. In short, they reduce costs without reducing what students experience in the classroom. I believe these steps reflect a careful and responsible approach. The district is operating efficiently and these decisions were made thoughtfully. Um, I also want to address athletics. There are currently no additional funds in this budget to expand athletic offerings. And I raise

004this point again because we've received requests for new sports and increased funding for sports. Decisions around athletics are based on interest, cost, equity, and program sustainability. Even when parents graciously offer to fund a program, there are still real costs to the district. Those costs are often tied to staffing and administration and right now the district does not have capacity to expand its athletics program further. That said, during this transition that we're going through in the athletic uh director leadership, the district will ask that the interim athletic director bring forward a plan to build on what has been a tremendous success driven by Mr. Tombs in our community in achieving record levels of student participation in athletics. If the community chooses to expand athletics in the future, it must be done thoughtfully with investment in staffing

005and with a clear, sustainable plan. This will be an important priority in the coming year. From a long-term financial perspective, this budget also reduces the district's reliance on fund balance. We've we've removed the interest payment and deaf surface appropriation tied to short-term borrowing associated with the bond projects since that will fall into the next budget cycle. And we've avoided proposing one-time expenditures that would draw on reserves. This is intentional. It ensures we maintain sufficient reserves for unexpected costs, brings our use of fund balance more in line with historical norms and strengthens the si sustainability of the budget. It also helps protect our AAA bond rating, which allows us to secure the most favorable long-term borrowing terms for the capital improvement projects. There are also some targeted additions um in the budget we we're looking at

006this evening and we discussed them the potential for them um last budget meeting. The budget restores funding for Pelum Together a strong partner to the district that pro provides speaker programs, internships and opportunities like student advocacy trips to Washington DC. It also restores um con contracted communication support for Alex Wolf, recognizing that clear and effective communication is essential to building trust with our community. And the district has determined um it can accept up to five tuition students at the high school level pro provided there is no additional cost to the school district. This is something we've done in the past when space allows and it provides um a modest revenue benefit. Dr. Champ can speak more to that process. Um we also had uh so moving off the bud budget we also had bond steering

007committee meeting last week. Last last week last week yes as part of our communication protocol updates from that committee are shared at board meetings and then summarized in our board wrap-up. The key takeaway is that all projects remain on schedule and within estimated timelines and budgets. The district also held a community meeting regarding the colonial and prospect infrastructure work which will begin this summer and has um continued to prioritize transparency and communication. The most significant outcome from the bond steering committee uh meeting was the consensus reached by the committee to proceed with traditional um fully on-site stick built construction um for the senoi edition. We carefully evaluated the hybrid modular option um with the hopes that it would uh be available to us to help reduce um disruption on site. However, it it was found

008that it would likely add at least $500,000 in costs, potentially more given the recent prevailing wage leg legislation, and would create significant logistical disruption in transporting the building modules into the small residential neighborhood where Simon School is. In addition, the height limitation for transport would limit flexibility that may be needed to ensure the floors connect smoothly between the addition and the main building. For those reasons, the committee reached consensus to move forward with the traditional um the traditional building approach. Um we also have the technology team here with us this evening um to present an overview of the district's AI guidelines. I'm glad the district is prepare is preparing our students for a world where AI is becoming an integral part of how we learn, work uh and communicate. It's important that we provide clear

009and thoughtful guidance. Um there was an earlier session in alumni hall just before this meeting and I hope many were able to hope many turnout >> good. Finally, I want to address uh the swatting incident yesterday at the middle school high school campus. Um while it was ultimately determined to be a hoax, it was treated as a real emergency, as it had to be. Um the safety of our students and staff is always top priority. We also recognize that situations like this are unsettling for students and families and staff. Um Dr. Champ will speak to how the district handled the situation in coordination with our first responders as well as um the support that was available to students and staff afterwards. Um we are grateful to our entire school community and to our first responders

010for keeping our children safe. Okay. Um, do I have a motion to take 3.1 and 3.2 as a consent agenda? >> So, move second. >> Okay. This is for the approval of March 25th and April 8th meeting minutes. Any comments or questions on those? All in favor? >> I I none oppose. So, those minutes are approved. Dr. Champ. >> Yeah. Thanks, Jackie. That was uh very comprehensive. So, I appreciate that. Um, so I'm just going to add a few things. Um, touch on a couple of the same. Um, and there's a couple more. Um, so yeah, I did want to speak to the swatting incident. So, first off, just want to again thank everyone who did exactly what they were trained to do. Um, from our teachers to our students, our security staff, our clerical

011staff, um, and of course our local first responders who were just tremendous. Um and Tom Drake who really was our on the spot liaison um through Alteras who uh the training that even he and Alex had uh conducted with Alteras uh representatives had just conducted a incident command training with our administrative team um uh just over a week ago. So that training was uh could not have been more timely and um lot of great lessons learned there that we were able to very quickly implement. Um, and just want to really uh say kudos to our students and our staff who were in a really put in a very difficult position. I think as as we've all kind of realized with um with the with the drills the way that we're required to run them now,

012we give everyone a heads up when it's a drill. So, when you don't get the heads up, it sends a pretty strong message. So, um just wonderful job to our students who did what they were supposed to do as hard as it was um and they cooperated and very patient and um got through it together. and to our teachers as well. That's a lot of pressure and stress on everyone in those moments. Um, but thanks to them, uh, we we're just really thankful to have gotten through it. And to Jackie's point, um, for it to be a hoax is probably, as hard as it is, that's one of the best outcomes because we never, the fact that it was never an actual threat is, I hope, something we can find some comfort in. Um, we

013trained for these things hoping to never need it, but we did and folks did what they needed to do to get through it. So, just a quick kind of run rundown. Um the middle school main office did receive a phone call which is what triggered it. It was a threat call that was threatening in nature. Um the front office staff did exactly what they were supposed to do. Um and it was very quickly building was put into lockdown and police were called. They came uh pretty immediately and we went through the different stages of our drill uh of our protocols um with clearing clearing each of the classrooms room by room. Um once we got to the and uh as uh hopefully uh folks know in the community, Alex was u pumping out communications from

014the beginning as regularly and pacing those out so that we could keep folks a breast of what was going on, when it was going on, and what facts were actually uh happening so that that information could hopefully uh keep folks in the loop and just continue to build a sense of calm and reassurance that u the situation was under control. Um, once we knew that the building had been uh swept and uh that there was no on-site threat, verified by the police, we were able to send out messages to that uh uh effect as well. And after that, we uh the police then worked through with the administrators again to open doors and to begin to release classes and let them know that um everything's fine, no threats. Um so at the end of the

015day, I I know that uh Miss Sabia and Dr. Thompson held uh grade level assemblies pretty much right away yesterday. Mr. Llewellyn held assemblies today with each of the grade levels. Um really important opportunity to talk to students and just to reassure them of uh their safety help process uh everything that happened, remind them of the supports that are available to them, their school counselors, clinicians, trusted adults. Um and just to give students a space to know that it's normal to have those kinds of feelings. um but to also remind them how to how to process them so that we can all continue to move forward through what's a very difficult uh situation. Um they also held faculty meetings in both schools. The same thing to debrief with staff because it was very difficult for

016staff as well. Remind them of supports, remind them of any protocols, lessons learned, things that we can do better. Um so uh each time we go through this that it's not only um a difficult situation that we get through, but we also learn from it. and that's part of the processing. And then um today we also held a debrief this morning with uh safety teams uh local PD folks that were involved in uh the safety committees. Um and through that is the lessons learned. So a full debrief of what happened, how did the timing go, how did the communication go, what worked well, what were maybe some things that were unique to this situation that caused us to, you know, do some things a little differently. um lessons learned um and things we excuse me

017that we that we can convey to continue to put those uh lessons into practice. Um I am incredibly thankful to continue our partnership with Alteras. um that in this case served to be very proactively helpful um because you may have seen in the news Edgemont uh school district was dealing with swatting incidents recently and we've been given a heads up on their experience their lessons learned how they handled things um how the first time how they handled things the second time because it unfortunately is something that's hitting our area a lot more often hitting schools and often these become repeated situations which just adds to the stress and anxiety Um, but having now indicators to look for, we kind of thought it was a swatting incident from the beginning because Alteras had shared that information

018with us a couple weeks back and Jim actually shared that out in our staff newsletter just uh beginning of the month. So, the information was fresh on people's minds and for so for us, we kind of thought we heard was going on, saw was going on, we thought it's probably swatting, you can never take a chance. >> Yeah. So um so that was helpful to us then to even as we debrief to know uh you know that that what was what we're experiencing we were not the first um and it also gives us insights into how we may handle that should it happen again. So, um just really appreciate that partnership and the expertise that comes from Alteras. Um and Tom was just a phenomenal uh liaison uh yesterday. Um you know, between, you know,

019on the walkie-talkies channel, you know, we've got an emergency channel with police, we've got the local channel to coordinate the schools. Um you know, we're able to seamlessly communicate regardless of where we were so that we could work together and bring it um to closure. And Tom was really that critical link in the middle of it. So, uh, thanks to him. Um, so moving off from that, uh, to a maybe, uh, still a lot of opinions on this, but certainly a much lower level of concern. Um, signs at Sonoi. Um, we did just to put out there, we put some clarification out as I know the board is aware. Um, so we were contacted, um, some folks shared that there was, uh, some discussion on Facebook. We were also contacted by the village of Pella

020Manor village administrator and PD. Um just some uh concerns about uh clarification on signage. Uh it would happen to be at Sonway. Same signs are also at Hutchinson. Uh long and short we have play the newer playgrounds have some signage there that's got some rules on it and those signs have been there for we figure anywhere between two to 10 years is our best guess. They've been there for a really long time. Yeah. >> Um and uh there was apparently a situation with some older kids on the playground, younger kids on the playground. Parents saw the sign and um you know spoke to the the older students uh eventually wound up calling the police to uh obtain some enforcement. Uh because the signs do say that no bicycles were allowed on the pro on the

021playground. Um in looking at it, the clarification there is those signs are in reference to the play sets, not the entirety of the playground. So, our rules did not change. Bicycles are still allowed on the playgrounds. They're just not on allowed on the rubberized uh surface around the play sets. So, we've got safety committee on Friday. I'm sure they got a big agenda after this week. Um they will be looking at that to decide whether do we change it, do we up, you know, just put a correction clarification on the signs, take the signs down, put placements up, right? >> We'll get those straight. Um but we certainly have clarified that with Pelum Manor. um that are you know the signs are specific to the play sets the principles of the respective buildings send a

022note out to their parents too. We don't want confusion out there but we also don't want folks to think that we're banning bicycles because that is actually been a large part of the design conversation at the Sonoi site plan advisory committee trying to make sure that there's a still open space there black top for kids to learn how to ride their bikes. So um also another follow-up item um just several parents have reached out to us and this is part of the annual process u at the elementary level each year we look at sections as we've been talking about with the budget and as Jackie already mentioned we're not replacing a couple retirements um and we have the opportunity within the board guidelines to collapse um some grade levels in some buildings from three sections

023down to two so that we stay within our budget constraints and stay within board guidelines and still have appropriate class sizes. That is an ongoing process. So tonight we will be setting the budget, but that doesn't mean that's the end of the story on looking at those sections. Um, every year as we go through this because of our neighborhood school setting, we're always watching monitoring the enrollments at the elementary level. Literally, I want monitor them on a weekly basis as students move in and out between now and the end of the school year and over the summer. That absolutely can change enrollments uh again as they're within the board guidelines. We also do look at the makeup of classes. We try to keep our younger grades smaller so that we get the stronger foundation. The

024classes generally do see larger sizes as the children get older and that helps as well for them to get used to a larger class size as they transition to secondary. So, it's a moving target. We will continue to look at it. I'll continue to keep the board aware of that. Um, as of right now, we are um, you know, we're staying with what's proposed within the budget. And as we've talked about in the past, we do have two contingency budgets should we have situations where we feel it warrants to uh to add another section. So I think we've got about three or four class grade levels around the district at different buildings that are at that cusp. Um we've had advocacy around one in particular, but that's by no means the only situation. So again,

025we're wa we're watching all of these and we'll continue to do that through the next months. And uh one other final piece to that, Dr. Fitzgerald's office does uh work on bringing in student teachers, observers, um some different folks and they often are uh we are useful person. If you've got a larger class or a class that's got some challenging uh needs in the class, we often can try to align those additional resources with those classes. So, it's an extra set of hands to help make sure that students get the level of attention that they need within the class. Um, two more items on the Nope, I missed one here. Uh, uh, the Appellum Middle School principal search. Now that we have closed out the Sonway, we've been focusing our attention on succession planning for

026middle school. My hope is to come to the board with a recommendation uh, at our next meeting uh, for uh, for the middle school principal. So, we'll talk more about that leading up to next time. Um, and then two student awards. And I hope I'm not stepping on Emerson's toes with any of these uh things. These I'm hoping these are things that maybe in addition to your report, but we were very happy to get the news uh this Monday that our >> forensic speech team competed at the New York State Speech Debate Championships that were held at Bronx High School of Science. So, congratulations to the qualifiers, Sierra Lynch in original oratory, Thomas Alves, Aaron Bourne, and EMTT Cho in junior varsity extemporaneous speaking, and Finn Mullen and Thomas Spataphora in congressional debate. And special

027congratulations go to Aaron Bourne for advancing to the quarterfinals and Thomas Spataphora for uh advancing to semifinals. So, fantastic job there. And from Mr. Schl. And I have to say, I forgot to mention this at the beginning. I think most of us got to the uh uh the school play this past week, the musical um Pippen, and that was >> three times. So um yes, congratulations. They're phenomenal as always. I'm always impressed um the singing of uh the lead narrator in the show. Kudos to Miss Banano um and all the cast. message just a fantastic job as always to the directors. Um, at the same time, I also received an email last week from Mr. Schlifer and Mr. Beck with uh we stating we're proud to report that the fall production, The Imaginary Invalid, was

028honored with 10 Eastern Student Arts Guild Awards. It was from a field of 32 participating school productions ranging throughout New York and New Jersey. So, the awards cere ceremony will be held actually just held yesterday um in Terrytown the Terrytown music hall. But just so everyone knows just a a wonderful uh list here. We've got uh best performance by a student in a comedy. Edward Puchala as Argan with gold recognition. Samantha Banano uh best performance by a student in a comedy as uh Twinette that was gold with recognition. Um, for supporting performance by a student in a comedy, Quentyn Meyer as Dr. Peran receiving gold level supporting performance by a student in a comedy, Lucy Ring as Louis as silver level ensemble in a comedy, the full cast, gold level. Comedy production, full cast, gold

029with recognition. Uh, classic production, whole cast and crew. Uh, those uh, the comedy production and classical production were cast and crew. Want to make sure the crew gets recognized there. Gold with distinct with recognition for supporting performance by a student in a comedy. That was Will Will Will Relo as Thomas Dia Forest silver level. Supporting for performance by a student in a comedy Tea Certia as Angelique gold level and supporting performance by a student in a comedy went to Ryan Feldman as Cleante. And uh that was it. That's a huge list. So, I just continue to be so proud of our um our Sock and Buskman program. They just do an amazing job. Kudos to them. I don't know how they have the same hours in the day because Mr. Schlifer and Beck were also

030the forensics >> Yeah. >> people. So, they have somehow cloned themselves for I don't know what it is, but they do it. So, congratulations to them. Thanks for all their hard work. And that ends my report for this evening. >> Thank you. Um, next we have Emerson in our student board report. >> Um, so it's kind of busy time of year definitely. But um yeah, first off, regarding the lockdown other day, I thought that was a great representation of our school district and how we come together in something like that because at first I know many I mean in my class at least a lot of students were very nervous at first and there's a few that usually get emails from the guidance counselor like ahead of time like me like letting you know this

031happened. So, there's a few people with a lot of anxiety regarding it, but just seeing how the teacher was able to handle it and like calm us all down. And then even watching the students come together to help calm each other down. Like, everyone was whispering, "It's okay. You're okay. Do not worry." Just watching how we came together, like that was really great to see because I know this protocol like we've been and doing this since I've been here since first grade. So, there's only been one other time I was in a lockdown, which was not a that was at Prospect, but that was a while ago. and just seeing how the protocol really works, I think. And it just is a great system that we've set up and then also just how interconnected we

032are was great to see. And I think that is handled very well. And then next up, this Friday is junior prom and it's going to be very exciting because well, we I mean, not to brag or anything, but I think my class has I mean, I think my class has some of the best adviserss that we've seen. It's kind of the dream team. It's four of the most well-known and fun science teachers in our school. And Beltus is probably the head of that. And he has many, many great ideas. He runs a science research program and he's always coming up with ideas for that. So, this prom is going to be something that our district has never seen before, I want to say. >> Wow. >> Um, first off, we changed it by moving the

033prom to the middle school. So, it's going to be a different experience than because usually it's in the high school. So, it's going to be >> He had so many ideas for this, but there's it's we're kind of cuz we won Olympics, so we're kind of sticking with the theme of junior class carnival, and there's going to be carnival games there, prizes to win, uh, animal cracker cookies, Walter hot dog truck, ice cream bar with a bunch of different ice cream, uh, a lot of dancing, and it's not going to be like a sit down table. It's going to be like bar tables cuz then we have so many different types of food. Um, so many different prizes that we ordered today. glow stick. It's It's going to be insane. Um so yeah, we're happy

034to have that. Um don't know if anyone will be able to top us necessarily, but it's going to be a very fun time and I am very excited to see how that's going to go. And also uh this last Saturday was senior night for girls ac lacrosse. And in general, for most varsity sports there, or for every varsity sport, there's a senior night and that's where you celebrate all the seniors on the team. And the underassman or freshman through juniors, they get together to make posters for the each senior. And they all get their own board with their name and a lot of photos on it. And it's just a really like joyous time. And that is a very fun like very sad for the seniors. They most of them end up in tears usually

035because it's just like reminding them that it is coming to an end. But it's also very fun because it brings everyone together. And then right now with APs coming up, a lot of teachers are doing practice AP tests. Like I was here till 6:30 doing a physics AP test today. But it really makes our school stand out from others because it shows the dedication our teachers have really to ensuring that we're successful as not only a class but just individually just how they work with each of us. And like my physics teacher, he had he has a daughter at home that he loves. He always talks about her, but he spent two nights here yesterday and today just staying with us and doing these physics tests, which is amazing because it really helps us as

036a class like understand the content better, but it just helps us prepare and shows the dedication that all teachers have. And then this last Monday, senior assassin started for the seniors. So this is a >> which is not a school event. >> It's not a school event. >> Not endorsed by the school. Let >> me be clear. But that's a fun event for seniors also. Nothing happens on school grounds. Nothing. It's completely outside of school, but that's very fun for them. It kind of marks the end of the school year a little bit for them also. And then also schoolwide uh schoolwide government applications happen this week. So, whoever that's open for all grades, freshman or not all grades, the freshman through junior year. so they can apply to be on the schoolwide student government

037if they in case they didn't get on their gradewide government which also those came out last Friday for who got elected for those. But yeah, that's what's going on right now. >> That is a lot. >> Thank you. >> This is a great update. >> Yeah, it's going to be big. >> Okay, thank you. >> Um, >> next we have the AI guidelines presentation. All right. So, yeah, I uh while uh Mr. Sabalos and Del Miss M Dastro are coming up, just want to um uh start by thanking them for being here tonight. Um they were here actually earlier this evening at six o'clock in Alumni Hall doing a parent session. Um as the board knows, we've been trying to set up um a series of parent uh education uh sessions throughout the year at

038the elementary level. Um, this one was technically K12, but we had a great turnout from parents, especially elementary level. Um, as the evolving technologies in the world certainly are something we're all staying a breast of. Um, and AI is one that is moving faster than any of us can keep up with. Um, but the district has been uh not on the bleeding edge of this. We've been taking, I think, a moderate, thoughtful approach uh under the leadership of uh this dynamic duo that we're going to hear from tonight. Um, working with Dr. commerred um to really think be thoughtful about um how should we as educators approach this? How do we equip uh our students to live in a world of AI and be prepared to be successful in that world? Um and then how

039do we work what kind of expectations do we set around that for students and also how do we equip our staff? Um because teachers are in a very critical position as we deal with this. um and you know what should they do, what should they not do, how do we approach this from an educational perspective um and a healthy perspective. So um just kudos to them, the uh AI uh user group that they've set up and been working with for almost two years at this point in time. Um so we're really pleased to have them with us tonight just to provide uh kind of a similar presentation to what they did with parents. Um, but a kind of a a a brief update for the board so you can understand all the work that's gone

040into it, our approach, the guidelines that have been developed uh for students and staff that were rolled out at our recent superintendent conference day. So without any further ado, I'm going to let you hear from them because they're much more interesting than me on this topic. So thank you Mr. Savalos and M. Del Mastro. >> All right. Well, thank you to uh Dr. Champ, the administration, the board of ed for having us this evening. I'm John Spouse, director of tech. Um, I'm joined with uh Alicia Delmastro, our K through2 instructional technology specialist, and we're really excited to show the work that we've been doing over the last four, it's actually four years, but um the work of our AI user group specifically, which was a lot of teachers K through 12 to create guidelines that

041are going to help shape uh the framework of what we're looking to do with AI. I know there were some members of both the administration and the board of ed who were at the parent workshop earlier. So, thank you for attending. I apologize if this is a little redundant. We'll try to keep it up here. But for tonight, we just want to talk um really briefly about the mission and strategic plan and our instructional technology goals because that's what helps drive the work of what we're doing in AI and how that can help support our mission uh in Pelum. We're going to give some general resources and some research uh for the board that they can access and then we'll allow a little bit of Q&A at the end. Um so again this is something

042that you know the board is already aware of our mission which is inspiring a standard of excellence for all students and that's supported with our strategic plan and what we do in our strategic plan is followed by these three pillars personal growth and achievement belonging and wellness and facilities and sustainable learning environments. Um while we you know we have the strategic plan that helps anchor the work and our mission, we do have new instructional technology goals that help support the strategic plan to carry out the mission of our district. So one of the first goals, and this is new um as we go into the next three-year cycle, is creating AI literacy and digital fluency for our district. Um, we're going to look to integrate AI literacy um and advanced skills and interweave that within

043our K through2 curriculum, ensuring full alignment with the New York State computer science and digital fluency standards. Uh, the last time I spoke up here about computer science and digital fluency standards, there was not a lot around AI um and there was not a lot of work in this space. So, one of the things that Alicia and I will be doing this summer with the work of some of our colleagues and administrators is what can we do to integrate AI literacy within our computer science and digital fluency standards. And we we know that this will help support our priority of personal growth and achievement by providing rigorous and uh relevant environments that foster critical thinking and flexible problem solving. Um to go along with that, our second goal is creating a robust and future ready

044infrastructure. And we're not just talking about the devices and the wireless. We're talking about being future ready. Um I know many of you are under are aware of what we're trying to do with the bond steering committee. Um looking at our infrastructure. So looking at newer clocks um you know IPbased technology future future ready when you look at Hutchinson like bringing those kinds of environments into what a future ready infrastructure can look like and we know that will help with our facilities and sustain environments as well. Um, and the last one, and this is really a driving piece for the work that I do every day as a director of tech here in Pelum, is making sure that we are, you know, maintaining a safe and and comprehensive digital environment for all users, um, with

045data privacy and really strict adherence to New York State at Law 2D. Um, we know that, you know, this is really a really big anchor for what we do and our work every day. and none of the things that we do um really work without making sure that we are, you know, that we are making sure that our community's data is safe. So, the reason why we're here tonight is to discuss artificial intelligence. Um I'm going to turn this over to Alicia and she's going to talk a little bit more about what is AI and the work that we're doing right now. >> Okay. So, in answering the question, what is AI? We wanted to first just start with telling you that it refers to a computer system designed to perform tasks that are typically

046requiring human intelligence. In summary, um it includes learning from data pattern recognition and understanding language and it impro improves through exposure to examples rather than explicit instructions. And it's different from typical and traditional software um that follows predetermined and fixed rules. So AI learns from data and then adapts behavior based on these patterns and learning behaviors. Um and it handles upgra up unprogrammed task and improves without manual code changes. Um so believe it or not we're all using it. I think we know this now at this point in our everyday tasks. AI is all around us. um in things like search suggestions, social feeds, voice assistance, um spell checkers, photo recognition, predictive text. Um it it's really built into our everyday lives. Um the shift came in November 2022 when Chat GBT launched and it

047AI was now accessible to the public. Um so tools can now do things like summarizing text for you. Um you can code and it can converse naturally. Um but there are capabilities and limitations. There's strengths that we like about it and then there's limitations that we're concerned about um and that we want to be aware of and we've embedded those into our guidelines. So some of the strengths um analyzing large data sets, recognizing patterns, summarizing texts, but then it can produce hallucinations and it can act like it knows what it's talking about um and lacks true contextual understanding. And I think the idea that um remembering that it cannot replace human judgment and it can actually um reflect training uh biases. >> So one of the things that we learned um in our research was

048AI's impact on jobs. And you're probably wondering where are we getting these statistics from? Uh there's two primary reports that we actually found this from. The future of jobs report in 2025 and the actual most recent world economic forum. uh by 2030 they're saying that 170 million new jobs um will be created by AI. 92 million jobs will be displaced by AI and AI is going to transform about 86% of businesses. We were actually talking about that on our parent workshop before and there was a couple software engineers and it was funny a lot of people used to talk about how coding was um was really the gold standard in terms of what we're trying to do with tech and every student should be exposed to coding you know now we're seeing that AI is

049becoming more forefront as that's starting to get into that kind of you know work within software engineering um so you're starting to see that like more top skills that where they sort of interject with each other is analytical and critical thinking creativity ity data and then a resilience, flexibility and agility and an ability to shift. Um, you know, so those are really big things that really came out in the world economic forum report along with the different insights that they're asking people to have as they go into careers. Um, and why is this so important for us when we discuss this in Pelum when you talk about skills prioritized over degrees focused on lifelong learning is because in Pelum where we talk about college and career readiness we were talking about that with our parents

050and this is why we're trying to look at some of this stuff as we move forward with what does AI look like in Pelum um and not just unique to Pelum but AI's impact on teaching and learning and I think this is probably everyone's biggest struggle um is the pace of change It's it's going by and it's changing every single day. When we started in November of 2022, we were only talking about chat GPT. If you're looking recently, I mean, the new flavor of the last few weeks is clawed, but before that, it was Gemini. Um, you know, and even a few months before that, the end of last year, it was Meta. It's it the AI around us the pace of change. It's just it's something that we haven't seen in this technological environment

051and it's so new and people really struggle about around the responsible and ethical use. You know, we're talking about teachers and students, but think about us in our daily work lives as well. Like what does that look like? Um, so it's hard for both Alicia and I when we talk about our professional development, when we look at digital literacy, um, but really keeping grounded that AI is to support and not replace human input or decision- making. And I think that's really one of the big anchors of what we're trying to do here in Pelum is we want to support and not replace. That's a really big key component into what we're doing. Um, I wrote this down here, tech comfy versus techsavvy, because I we, you know, we always talk about students that grew up.

052They talk about them being digital natives, and yeah, they are tech comfy, but they're they're not tech-savvy. Um, you know, they're they're not afraid to take a risk. They've been exposed to screens for a long time. They've been around technology, but do they have the savviness that's required and the skills that are going to be needed to actually be able to produce and succeed in the world? So, that's a that's an area that I always like to talk about. So the three other topics that we've discussed with our AI user group that have impacted teaching and learning um one being assessment. Um so we're going to talk about some strategies that we've talked about during our professional development with teachers on how um that may change in the classrooms. Um next ac academic dishonesty. What

053is that going to look like now with AI? and how are we preparing our students to be college and career ready in alignment with New York inspires and portrait of a graduate. >> So when we talk about Helen's journey through AI, one of the things that we always talk about and I've always talked about this um as a tech director is balancing innovation with integrity. And when you look at that scale, we're not just talking about AI. I mean it's the primary focus of tonight, but it's with any emerging tech. And how do we balance that with theCCL and academic integrity of what we do on a daily basis in teaching and learning? What does that look like when we start to bring in these technologies and we're we're private and secure with data, right?

054What what does that look like? How do we keep that balance where we're going to try to be innovative, but we have to have integrity to the work that we're doing on a daily basis? Uh, one of the areas that we started with a year and a half ago as a part of our journey and Alicia will backtrack a little bit of that journey, but was our AI user group and you can see the goal up here was to, you know, was to immerse a bunch of our educators in it. This was a K through2 uh group that met over six times over the past year and a half. Um, we piloted tools with staff, but um, we wanted to create a balanced and cautious approach to teaching and learning. There was a lot of

055unknown in this area. Um, we had really deep discussions around the ethical use and academic dishonesty. What does that look like? Um, I know that's been a really big um, thing for our secondary campus. It's been a really it's been a real struggle. Um, but we had really good conversations about what that can look like and it really culminated uh, in March of this year with our professional development day and releasing what's uh, what we're showing tonight which are teacher and student guidelines for use of AI. Um, this was again another year and a half, a lot of back and forth, and I'm going to allow Alicia to talk about our just our our entire journey from where it started to how we got here. >> So, we're going to take you through where this

056kind of all started. And so starting with our partnership um with the lower Hudson regional information center, we met with dis uh director of technology um leaders and other instructional tech specialists. Um so other districts in the region to kind of just talk about look at research, look at tools and just hear what other districts were doing because some were a little uh starting to use tools already in their schools ahead of us. Um and we wanted to kind of just sit back and listen and take their feedback from the tools that they were looking at. Um and then from there we developed our AI user group. We felt like we were at a point where we needed teacher feedback. We wanted to develop a set of guidelines for our teachers and for our students

057and at that point we wanted a tool to be able to have our students use something in the classroom. Um so we went with school AI and at that point we were then uh teachers were able to um talk with their students about what these guidelines could look like. So in developing those guidelines, we brought them to our administrative team. They were able to give us feedback. They went back to the AI user group for more feedback and then we were able to present them to our teachers on superintendent conference day. >> You know, in all at the same time, I'm just going to I'm going to go back to this for a second was uh one of the things that we did at the same time with our AI user group was Alicia and

058I did professional development K through 12 for all of our teachers. Um what is AI? very similar to what we're seeing today. We did a lot of prompt engineering. What do the tools look like? How does it technically work? Uh there were a lot of questions around it. We had to do a lot of education and like you heard Alicia say before, there were a lot of districts around us um even in the region that were that really started to kick off right away. And I didn't feel that was uh that was our approach. I I felt like we needed to take a step back and really sort of digest and have, you know, a different approach. We wanted to learn what people were doing. We wanted to see what it was going to look

059like and I'm pretty proud of the work that our user group was able to put forward. Um, when we talk about the superintendent's conference day, that's where we were able to um we were able to release our guidelines to all faculty and staff, but we also had two keynote speakers for the day. Uh, we actually had Amanda Baker staff. She's the CEO for um AI for schools or school educ uh AI for education, I'm sorry about that. And we had Jerry Kishi who's actually a former tech director in the region in Scarsdale. and he was also the co-founder for the center for innovation and he gave a keynote um that's called AI and 30 that he does not just regionally but across the nation where he takes about 180 or 200 slides and um he

060consolidates it into a 30 minute presentation about not just education but all the changes in AI and what's happening for that month. Um it's really unique and our whole staff got to see that and it was a really it was a really great um experience for our teachers to see. Um, here's some highlights from that day. Um, but one of the things, you know, that was most exciting for us was this, which is our teacher guidelines, and I'll allow Alicia to go through those first. >> So, yeah, we're going to start off with our teacher guidelines. So, we'll just walk you through um some of the highlights of it. So, teachers are allowed to introduce AI intentionally within the context of each spec specific subject. um explicitly teach ethical use and critical thinking, consistently re

061enforce expectations of AI, and model a growth mindset. Also, responding to developing technology, we felt like this was important because so many I AI tools keep coming out. we we won't have to keep revisiting this but um tackling and being a part of professional development and learning new technology we felt like is a good way to model a growth mindset um and then most importantly to monitor usage and protect data privacy of our students and then moving forward to our students student guidelines when they are invited to use AI in a classroom um students are allowed to use it for brainstorming they're allowed to use it for feedback back for assist of technology to document their work um and share with their teacher that they're if they have used AI they're modeling that transparency um

062they can use it for support and for verifying content they cannot use it for assignments or assessments um and they cannot share private information okay >> so you know with these guidelines there's there's two different trains of thought when it comes to where school districts went uh when it came to AI of guidelines versus policy and we favored guidelines but um we also wanted to look at some different areas where we felt um we're really flexible. Um when you create board policy as you know as a board of education you any changes or modifications can take anywhere between 3 months and a year. We felt that if we were to make changes to our code of conduct, which is always constantly being looked at, and we were to look at the student AUP, we felt

063like we had more power and more leverage along with our guidelines to be able to modify and adapt. As you saw with the changes in AI, I felt like that was going to be a board policy you're always going to have to be constantly going back to. I felt like with the guidelines, we had really strict parameters around what that looks like. And then with these changes in the code of conduct. So when we look at the very bottom line where it's talking about improper use of computers and calculators, uh the main thing that we're looking to do is we just want to call out uh artificial intelligence within the within proper use of technology to re just to restate it is to say pre-programmed devices to store exam answers. Use any device to photograph

064or copy assessment materials utilizing artificial intelligence or other emerging technologies to automate or generate academic content without authorization or violating the district's AUP. We feel like that will help really cover um a lot of the you know the academic dishonesty uh that's going on at the high school. It calls out really explicitly and we'll also be looking to make similar uh changes to the student acceptable use policy as well. Um when we talk about you know academic dishonesty this was a really big um focus of our work um over the past year actually was talking about detecting AI generated content. So this is a this is um just a little snippet from one of our higher from a higher education institute that when they talk about detecting AI generated content a lot of people are

065looking at AI detectors um and we had teachers actually come to us and they're like hey John you know we saw like you can you can do this and it can it can look you know for things that are AI generated and what we're seeing and what we piloted with some of our teachers well with a lot of them is that you know we took examples of things that we actually typed and ran it through an AI detctor ctor and they said it would be anywhere of upwards of 75% or higher AI AI generator when they saw us just type it right in front of them. So it's a big big issue that we wanted to discuss and we're glad we had a lot of those conversations. So when we look at this clip um

066and you take a look at the very bottom where it's currently set where it really says we currently do not recommend using current automatic detent detection algorithms for academic integrity violations. It's actually coming from Cornell University teaching and learning uh from their center of teaching and learning and it's a really big part because this is very similar to what's going on in higher ed as well. There's a resource in there where we were able to find some stuff from Arizona State and there's other research around it around AI detector tools and one of the big things that they're noticing around it is why they may fail false positives linguistic bias. So they're showing studies that it actually biases against ELLL way more than it does a normal student. Right. Right. a normal uh where English

067is their native language. Um in terms of writing and the grammar checks as well um it will activate the plagiarism or integrity detection system. It's really um it was a really big discussion that we had to have over the last couple sessions and we met with a couple high school departments and middle school departments as well on >> are can I ask a quick a quick question? Are the are the teachers you using any or like piloting any tools to look at look at the kids content? >> That's a great question. We do we do have access to one. >> Um it's called it's in Turn It In. It's actually built into Turn It In. Um and that again that that was meant to check if something was really being plagiarized like cop like copywritten

068and stuff but they had an AI detection tool that was built within it. um and teachers were asking us a lot of questions around it and we were trying to say you know we wouldn't suggest around using it. So those are conversations that we did have to have. Okay. Um and it is available here in our district. Um but teachers are aware of you know of what can happen if they start to use a lot of those tools. >> Okay. >> So in response to that our teachers this year have had a lot of questions about what are our options right now? Things keep changing. how can we assess our students in school um without knowing that they're using other tools as well. Um so we use GoG Guardian. It's our um software that we

069use to monitor our student Chromebooks. Um so just recently we met with our 6 through 12 faculty and just shared a tip on how they could actually send their students one document if you wanted your students to again it depends on the class and what the teacher is assessing. Um, but we have the ability to set the Chromebook so that they can just limit to one tab. So if teachers did have an assessment that they wanted to give students in class, we have the ability with GoG Guardian to set up what's called a scene and um the teacher just start pushes um and says start session and then they could send their students just one Google doc and when they're finished with the assessment they turn it in and they know that during that time

070period they weren't accessing any other materials. Um, so we're start we have to dive deeper into this conversation about assessments, but we wanted to just be proactive and as our teachers were asking and because they're familiar with this tool, this is what we um gave them access to right now. >> Awesome. So, as we as you saw and you um in our user group um and let let's disclose this again there there's no tools in Pelum that are open to students. So, we don't have Gemini open. They can't access chat GBT. They can't access Claw. They don't have access to any of the general um AI tools that you that you and I think of on a daily basis. Uh Gemini is Ed Law 2D compliant, but we still have it closed um for, you

071know, for reasons that we have a lot of concerns around. Um but when all of that stuff came out at the time, you know, software companies also started to develop things and the education space actually started to get, you know, a lot of different solutions. There was there were solutions like magic school brisk um diffit there was there were a whole bunch of different solutions. So we tried to pilot and look number one we wanted to make sure who's ed compliant right who can we actually partner with the Rick and purchase this from. So school AI ended up being one of them and there were a bunch of reasons why we actually picked them. Um one of the things that we liked was that it was age appropriate. It's ed law compliant and the teacher

072space creation. One of the questions that um that a parent had downstairs in our in our session was you know oh it's available for 6 through 12. that mean my child can just sign into school AI and just start chatting with a with an AI bot. That's not the case. Um it's only if a teacher allows them to actually use the platform or not. So they would have to create what's called a space or um or another tool that's in there for them to actually use the AI generated content. It's not just that they can sign in and go and do what they want in it. It has to be teacher generated um and it has to be teacher controlled. One of the things we also liked about the product was that the not just

073for the educator control, we had questions about like can the teachers actually see what they're saying, what what are they generating and so forth. We liked all the safety guard rails around it. So we felt that they were a really good safe partner for us to start with when it comes to um AI. >> John, quick question. Um so you said the open AI kids are are not restricted. Is that when they're on our network or is that when they're on our Chromebook? >> That's great. So they cannot access it both in our network and on our devices. Um what students do when they go home though on a personal device um we we do not control. So any Pelum any Pelum issued device anything in our network that the students are connecting on they

074they can't access any of those tools. So in in theory then tests taken within the school environment >> should be sort of protected like we shouldn't we shouldn't be concerned about tests taking within the school within the school building. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> You are correct. And that's with also with the New York State AP and the SATs. Um on the Chromebooks or even if you are on a MacBook, whatever it it it to use those programs for testing, uh it it activates what's called a kiosk mode. So what happens is they click on the application and it locks you out out of every other thing that you can access. You can only stay in that like test um in that like test um environment. So, if you're if you've ever been to like

075a testing center like they had for Pearson or anything like that, you're only locked in that environment. Um, but yeah, they even if they weren't in that environment, they don't have access to any of the other tools. Gotcha. I mean, I I've heard anecdotally, and this may just be not true. um that sort of teachers are becoming certainly within within Pelum are I guess out of an abundance of caution reverting more to kind of pencil and paper testing. >> You are correct. >> Reverting more to kind of traditional testing methods. They are >> just out of an abundance of caution. >> Mhm. >> But really the the risk is fairly low is is >> you you are correct. it is um and again I I don't want to speak to any individual teachers assessments because

076they have a lot of flexibility in how they want to assess what what are they assessing um but yeah that's really like there the the vulnerability is very very very low um in terms of accessing any sort of AI tool if they were to give anything on the on a computer. >> So I just want to quickly walk you through how school AI works. Um, so it's an application that the teachers have and they can send a link to the students to invite them to what's called a space. A space is a curated learning environment that a teacher sets up for students to engage with school AI around the parameters that they gave it. So they're giving instructions to the students and basically having them stick to the conversation that they're and the topic and

077the skill that they're um creating in that space and they can't really ask any other questions. Um so it goes going back to our student guidelines when we said students are allowed to use it to brainstorm when they're using school AI. um they're allowed to use it um in their classroom when their teacher is monitoring it through what's called a mission control center. Teachers have a dashboard when they're using school AI and they can see everything that the students are engaging with. Um and I'm just going to walk you through um two examples very quickly. So this is a high school example, a science lab that um one of our teachers set up. he aligned it to the NGSS standards and he put very specifically in the instructions um the AI so they the students

078were working on a science lab um prevent generation of complete plans so students create their own work only give hints when requested um and then another project this is from Sarah Williamson at the middle school she used this as a brainstorming activity for her students and she was able to give school AI all of the instructions. This is just a small portion of it. Um she gave it budgeting parameters um the materials that they're allowed to use the um that so this was for a shipping container design project um and the design framework that she wanted them to use and it says have a guide the students through the technology standards one setup at one step at a time in this specific order and the students basically had to follow through um those instructions. And

079then in this example with Sarah, what she did in this lesson, students engaged and brainstormed, had their ideas, and then she met with the students and talked about the ideas that they came up with in school AI. Um, so it was a neat way for her to kind of hear everyone's um ideas a question about Can you go back to that one? So, was it a matter of the prompts that the students were using as they were Henry? >> Oh, sorry. I should know by now. Um, when it comes to let's say like this example, was it a matter of the prompts that the students were using like as far as how they brainstormed? Because I can imagine as an adult how I brainstorm with AI, for example, but how does it act, what does

080it look like? >> It'll actually start in a conversation saying, "Good morning. You're an eco you're eco builder Sam, a sustainable construction expert. Um, and your pro your job is to stay in a budget of $100,000 and you can only use two materials and then they would have they would be guided through the frame framework that the teacher provided. >> Okay. >> Yeah. And um and if you heard Alicia and I um before we even started to look at this stuff, we talked a lot we worked a lot with our teachers with different AI tools and what prompt engineering looks like. So they had to learn how to actually prompt school AI to give good feedback to students. So there was a lot of practice that they had to also do in order to learn

081how to generate this content within it appropriately. >> Um and the last thing I also wanted to make note of was that school AAI we're only using this at grades 6 through 12. It's available for everyone in 6 through 12, but uh we started with a really really small pilot of this. Um but there's we're not doing any of this work in our elementary schools as of yet. Um, so that I just wanted to everyone to have a clear understanding of that. Um, but where are we looking to go from here? And you've heard the example of school AI and I like to call it like a walled garden. Sort of like our Google environment. Um, but one of the things we need to start to look at is our vision for the computer science

082and digital fluency standards, right? Of every student will know how to live productively and safely in a technology dominated world. It includes understanding the essential features of digital technologies, why and how they work and how to communicate and create using those technologies. Uh there's those three core competencies. I think they align really well with our strategic plan as well. But more importantly, um how do we connect our AI literacy when it comes to computer science and digital fluency standards, right? So creating a strategic integration of what that scope and sequence can actually look like. um ethical digital citizenship, you know, um by ex by addressing AI biases, um talking about that the ethical decision-making and the professional growth. Um one of the things you're going to start to look at more specifically at the high

083school and we had um someone actually talk about this was when when are we going to allow high school students to act when when can we open it up? When can we allow them to actually really look at like how does this work? because, you know, when they get to higher ed, uh, AI is completely open. How are they going to learn to really use this when they're not in our walled, you know, our walled garden, when they're not in our environment? So, again, it goes back to that balance scale, like how how do we do that? And that's where our next line of work with this AI literacy and these AI skills, we're going to hope to start to look at that. I know in some of our computer science and some of our

084other classes, they want to look at like what is it like to build a gem? what is it like to build these uh agents in AI like how do we learn about large language models there's you know the the framework the where AI has brought students and teachers has really brought us in a wide range of people who are really really comfortable they're leading they really want to go and people who are really hesitant they're still a little scared and that's okay um and I think that's what's been really unique to Pelm's approach is I think we're doing a pretty good job of balancing it um and I think that's the that's the way we want to go so far. So when we start to look at AI literacy, we're going to start to look

085at how can we start to embed a lot of this work working with our library media specialists, our staff developers and working where can we see some of this working within our our current curriculum right now. Um these resources and this research will be available for you to access um the school AI for parents. Um, and one of the things we talked about downstairs as well was Common Sense Media. And if you haven't used it, their a their ultimate guide to AI is a really good parentrich resource. We really like the material they have in there. And AI for education also has a lot of parentri resources in there for you as well. Um, we put links to, um, Jerry Krishi's site, the New York State Education Department for Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards,

086and the research from uh, the University of Arizona of what assessment in the AI era looks like. I think that's a great little article to start with when it comes to academic integrity and dishonesty at the at the higher ed level. Um, with that being said, I want to leave it open to Q&A for the board. Um, and thank you again for having us this evening. It it's really a pleasure. Yes, >> I have a question. >> Um, I generally completely agree with the approach, the philosophy which is, you know, the genie is out of the bottle. AI is being used by human beings everywhere in many many contexts and we have to kind of ease our way into that within the educational context. Totally agree with that. Um but I the one sort of

087bit that I want to poke a little bit if I may is um the the notion of detection and kind of I wouldn't say you know I recognize how difficult it is to implement detection particularly when you're sort of writing pros and you know essays. However, um I do think there are some instances in which you can be vigilant for AI usage in a way that's quite kind of effective. >> For example, I was speaking to a math teacher recently and a high school math teacher and that math teacher uh had a student who I may or may not know and uh who had clearly been using AI on a math test. How did the teacher know this? because the teacher had looked in Google Classroom and an assignment that would ordinarily have taken a

088student let's say 30 minutes was completed in 2 and 1/2 minutes >> at 100% accuracy you know and it's like you're clearly using AI and and that is that kind of detection I think is valid and can be applied and it's also helps mitigate against the kind of point you made which is uh when the student is out of the school physical environment kind of not much we can do right but I think there may be and I don't know what the answers are but I think we should keep a very open mind about things we can do on a sort of programmatic level you know using technology to identify when assignments are being done ridiculously quickly you know when accuracy or correct answers are at 100% when statistically speaking they just that would just

089never happen. So I just wanted to >> No, I appreciate that. I see Dr. Coleman it's getting to the mic. Um >> so great point. >> Okay. Um that's a great point and and um want to be perfectly transparent. I I know John and Alicia when they talk about AI detection detection tools, it's this idea of using AI to detect AI. So, it's um many educators, many people are thinking about what is there something that I can take this, plug it into, and it's going to tell me if my student used AI. And those are the things we're talking about that just they're not reliable. You know, just like we tell students, you can't plug something into AI and then present it as your own work. The shortcut doesn't exist for teachers either that reliably

090informs whether or not a student has used AI. However, that doesn't mean that we're just not going to try to detect AI, but we are going to have to use our our human elements to do so. So, what does that mean? It means knowing your students, knowing how they write and the language they use and the and the and the and the the level at which they write or perform math or how fast they do that. um and then using the technology that we do have to be able to show revision histories and show you know what is the process. The good news is it's it's it's it's also forcing us to do what we're already doing in so many different instances which is focusing on the process of learning um and not just the

091product because now the product can be completed by you know an LLM very quickly. Um and so therefore we have to double down on the process and make sure there are um scaffolds along the way where you can see progress and you can see where a student has worked and how long the student has. Um, and so that's I just we're not just saying, "Oh, you can't detect it. We're gonna forget it." So I want to be clear. However, we don't have a magic tool that is going to, you know, look at something and say this is AI generated because those have shown to be completely unreliable. >> So just wanted to say um a question is at what age are we introducing sort of some some of these AI tools for the kids? >>

092Yeah, that's a great question. And so there's nothing available um for anyone in K to 5 right now. So ideally the teachers in sixth grade do have access to this tool. Um we've done a lot of work with our teachers at that level. Um so realistically it is sixth grade where it becomes available for them. Um but you know we're it's not that that's the lowest that it's going down right now. If you look if you were to actually look at some different AI frameworks that have been developed right now, they don't even recommend um students interacting with a general chatbot below the age of like I think third grade. >> Uh fourth and fifth is where they even start to really talk about like the key principles of what AI is, how does it

093work. >> Um so I felt I felt like we did a really good job with where we wanted to model some of that work. >> Yeah. And you know, so I was downstairs at the presentation you did for the parents which was phenomenal. Thank you. Um, and I love the approach that the district has taken, which is very conservative, especially with the new technology and, you know, exposing our children to this. While it's going to be great at a certain age, we also have to be some, you know, careful about it. And actually, the New York Times just had um an article about law firms who unfortunately submitted briefs with hallucinations, they call it, from, you know, AI making up their own cases. So just a lot for us to be you know aware of

094in the world. Um one of the things that was um kind of the best part of the presentation you did downstairs was that it was uh for parents and there was a lot of Q&A. um one of the or parents who were there text me and said it would have been wonderful had it been um zoomed had we had that option to have it out open for other parents to participate either you know via like a a a Zoom meeting or um and I'm sure they could put this I want just want to say this is going to be video so people could log in but the questions at the end of the presentation uh when you did it an hour before was great because it was the parents kind of coming in and then

095asking those questions with other parents would love to hear. So, just something for us to think about next time because this is such a great topic. >> Yeah, we actually really enjoyed the Q&A with the parents. Um, >> yeah, it was great. >> I felt we really ease a lot of concerns of the general community. Um, >> you know, when you see a topic like that, if you're looking your parents like AI, they're like, "What are you doing in our schools?" >> Um, I felt like that like our approach is right. Um, we we eased a lot of those concerns. We're not opposed to, you know, helping with whatever forms we think, you know, we need to do, but um you know, it's it's a it's a tough topic. It's hard. It's it's always changing.

096So, um it's it's where we are right now. >> Yeah. >> Um Oh, go ahead. >> Do we need to wrap? I just have two questions. >> Okay. >> Um so, I echo everything everybody said. I think it's happening. We've got to jump right on it and be ahead of the curve to learn and understand. So I I I commend um our approach to it. I'm curious too as young people are learning AI that understanding like what are you finding because there is that we're teaching them to think there always needs to be a human behind it and yet it's everywhere whether you're talking to Alexis or do you know like I mean so what are you are you finding young people are really get grasping like yeah this is good for AI but I

097need to you know like um think about what that is or it can only get me. I'm just like where they're at in their development as they're learning the AI. >> That's a really good question. I think we struggle with that as adults. >> Um I I'm I'm being very honest and transparent about that. I I want you to think about yourselves in your everyday worlds, right? >> In your careers, you're like, "Oh, you know what? Let me plug this in and let me see if this if this will generate something for me." I think we have to one of the skills that we want to develop with our students here is like having them to be able to have that similar thought process. uh we don't want them to become reliant on it. We

098don't want them to we don't want the AI to take place of their work. We want them to be able to critically think which is why when you look at assessment, what does it mean? What are we trying to assess? And that's why we talk about the critical thinking process, the actual process of what they're going through, we don't want to replace that. We do think this will be a tool, but we don't want to replace that human element. They're going to need that um in whatever environment they go to. Um it's just a matter of trying to find that balance and we want we want to have ideally if you were to ask me that's what I want students to do like oh I wonder if AI can help like generate something like this

099like I want them to be able to critically think like we do um when they go into higher ed and when they go into the workspace of being able to decipher is this good or not to be able to use it and then when they look at the AI content is this good >> like they got to be able to understand like is this good content and that's where a whole library media component comes around that as well. Yeah. >> Um, so it it's multifaceted. Um, and it's something we're going to take a a deeper dive into >> and we have to teach into that. So some of the, you know, the strongest, um, instructional practices around AI that I've seen is when teachers are engaging students to evaluate content produced by the large language

100models. um and and you know have them use it to create and then have them to the next step is to assess what it produced um and then compare it to their own work. So in some of my research it students eventually get to the place where they they say they like their own voice better >> right so I mean but using it you know unless we do that it remains this kind of secret cheating tool but if we start opening students eyes to this isn't perfect it does hallucinate you could probably write something better um and start critiquing the products and the output and even better you know here's your assignment here's the rubric have AI do it first, great AI, and now go think about what you might do. So, I mean, you

101know, kind of you have to teach into these skills that we all need um to be able to use it effectively. >> Thank you. And part two question, um as we said, it's moving fast, right? Faster than probably like, you know, Claude is today and then something tomorrow. when we think about the next year or two years as far as resources and support to be able to manage to keep up right like that we're diving into this like what's come up for you or you know how are you thinking about that? >> It's a really good question. Um obviously as we start to develop our AI illiteracy and what that can look like I think that will drive a lot in terms of what resources we would need. I'm not going to lie to you,

102I haven't really thought about that component of it yet because I just don't even know what it can really look like in terms of the interwoven and the approach to the curriculum. Um, but I I definitely the support's going to be needed for that and um we'll be sure to be clear with what we're going to need for that as we start to develop a little further along. >> Thank you. sort of related to that. Um I've seen a lot of talk at least about aspirations of sort of AI tutoring and and you know sort of supports for for students using um AI systems. I I'm curious what you guys are seeing in terms of whether there's anything that's really available that does that in a in a useful way at the moment or not.

103Um I don't not that I not that I've seen. Um it hasn't made it like really wide range into this region yet. I know across the nation there are some schools that are actually looking I mean if you look at some of the schools out towards the Midwest they have those virtual schools and I've seen a lot of the AI tutoring in those areas. Um but again that's that's in a whole different environment in terms of where we are in public education here in >> in New York. I haven't seen any of that stuff actually used yet. um and not well. >> Mhm. >> So, um and I don't even think we're there yet. So, >> okay. Thanks. >> Um what is the what is the avenue um to to get to get feedback from

104how using AI in the classroom is going? Is there a um a feedback just email or did you want to talk about our staff development day like the feedback? I'd say even feedback from students on how >> that's that's our next area is we want to start to pull students involved in this. So not just within the development of AI literacy but like what what do you what do you want to say? >> Right. >> I I want to get student perception on that. I know uh Mr. Lualan has offered us some time with uh with the student council to see what those conversations can look like. So he's going to invite us in for some of that. >> Um so we're looking forward to those discussions with our students. Um, I know at our

105professional development day, we receive feedback from all of our staff, uh, not just on the, um, on the keynote speakers, but on the actual guidelines, um, we ask all of our members of our user group to also get feedback from their peers, uh, so that they can report it back to our user group. >> Um, so that way we can adjust and do what we need to do. Um, and it's really helped guide a lot of our work. >> Yeah. Because I really think I the kids should be making their mistakes with AI here and not when they get to >> college because it'll >> the consequences are, you know, >> Yeah. And so this is the first full year where school AI was open through 6 through 12 for all teachers. Last year it

106was just a small pilot. Um and as we as we roll it out even further with the student guidelines and the teacher guidelines, we'll we'll build in feedback mechanisms for both teachers and students and also parents. Um so that we have a sense of you know what what everyone you know what everyone's feedback that can further our discussion. >> Sure. >> Yes. >> The list of resources that you Well, I guess are these slides going to be available? >> Yep. I will make sure that uh Dr. Champ has them for the board docs or wherever you guys share them. And um I'm also posting it on our website. >> Okay. >> Uh so it's it's identical from our parent presentation. The same stuff will be all up there >> and it will it'll be under

107the parent and community tab. >> It'll be under technology under teaching and learning. >> Okay. >> Uh we'll be sure to have that communicated out for the families in the in next week's update. Like if you attended or you missed, you can uh find the slide deck over there. >> Okay. Great. >> Yep. >> Great. >> It is a great presentation. >> Yeah, it really is. No, thank you. >> And this is part of our I mean I guess just to remind people this is my understanding is this is part of our we are pelum education series. That's correct. >> Do you want to just talk a little bit about the goals of that series just to remind people of you because this is such a great >> presentation um and it really will help

108foster that homeschool connection or understanding. And I know that that's my understanding of what the the goal of the series is but maybe Claire I guess is the question for Claire guys. Sorry. Um, can maybe just remind everybody what that is? >> Yeah. And that that's something that emanated out of our strategic plan. Um, ways that we can how do we take our different priority areas and work to strengthen ties across the community, not just with our students and our schools and our teachers, but also with our parents as well to provide relevant learning opportunities uh for parents. And we think specifically of our elementary parents um because of the four schools and wanting to strengthen those ties across the district. Um so that there's uh you know shared learning across the district, common uh

109experiences that parents and students um can get as they're progressing through the elementary years so that when they get to middle school they've got a similar foundation and hopefully some connections and relationships that maybe outside of their own school. So that's kind of the the genesis of that. This was certainly K12 relevance, but I think that it sound I was down there the uh for the presentation and it seemed like there was a lot of elementary parents there. Yeah. >> So, really thinking ahead about their child's experience, which is great. And I will just another plug to Dr. Cmerford is going to be I think have we identified students yet or we're looking for a we've got a couple students from our high school identified to go to MIT with Dr. Cumberford this summer >>

110to um to represent and to be thought partners uh at the national level on AI policy. >> That's excellent. That's cool. >> So cool. >> All right. Uh thank you very much. I really appreciate the time to be able to share the work that our group has done. So, thank you again. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. >> Okay. >> And next we have um board of education committee reports. >> Finance committee met briefly on Monday to look at the final nips and tucks to the budget. >> Got two. >> Y >> that you're about to talk about. >> Yep. >> That's it. uh policy. No, >> we we didn't have policy since last meeting and we talked about bond steering. >> Yeah, we had bond steering steering spoke about it. You had advocacy. >> Yes,

111we did have advocacy advocacy. >> Yes, >> stepped away at just the right time. So our advocacy committee did meet uh last week and we talked about uh we took a deep dive into the scope survey results uh similar to what the board had seen at our prior presentation. Um so the committee I think very much appreciated that and saw the uh the growth that came out of that. So it was good kudos to them and their uh advisory role with us over the last couple of years. So good areas for growth. Um and uh Alex shared a little bit of the thinking about you know some of the the next things we're going to be doing. Um Katherine gave us an update on advocacy efforts uh the importance of those and where we were

112shaping those advocacy efforts. And then I believe we ended with the uh kind of an overview of what the budget activities were and some of the strategic thinking behind that. um how we're looking to uh what what the message we're looking to get across and how we're looking to get that across in a a more digestible and u more um just more understandable way than uh recognizing not everyone has the time energy >> uh to get into the weeds and all the detail. They kind of want topline notes. They want to understand what's in the budget. Um and also at the same time making all that information available for those who do want to dig in deeper as we as we do have a very sophisticated community when it comes around finance. >> Yeah. >>

113So trying to strike that balance um and continue to uh help the community understand the value that the schools are bringing to the community. Um yeah, I just want to add one thing because it um just to highlight I guess uh that came up as well is just the amount of work that um you and the team does to go out to the community of where they're at around that process. And so meeting different uh community members and groups to do that. So that was um that was really just good to hear, right? You know, like that we're we're doing that and still thinking about how can we go further? or how can we make sure it's more digestible to um folks beyond, you know, like beyond the school parents, you know, that are here.

114So, anyway, I I just wanted to reiterate the work that happens to make sure everybody has an opportunity to hear about the budget, to be informed by it. What is that messaging um was something that, you know, came up. >> Yeah. I mean, between now and the budget vote, you'll basically be on a road show, right? >> So, we affectionately call it. Yes. So, yeah, that'll be to all of our PTAs, um, SEPTA, PTA council, all of our civics, um, the formal formal community organizations, Rotary, etc. >> Um, I've got, we just set up a staff meeting uh, for next Monday. >> Um, boosters, >> uh, think of a group, you'll be busy. Let's just say you'll be busy. That's right. It's that time of year. So, I mean, it's a great they're great touch

115points with the community to stay, you know, to stay in touch, continue to build the relationship and again help them to see the the quality education that students in Pelum are getting. >> Um, and even meeting with the real estate agents um and I I can't remember I I think there was something that came up in our conversation that I thought that was particularly relevant. Um I think just the last several years with all the different efforts that we've been taking especially around at the high school level around dual enrollment and increasing APS and the um you know the platinum designation and we've talked about this through the budget process the seeds that we planted you know nine 10 years ago when we started about investing in in early education investing in at the younger

116level expanding opportunities for students in high school are what's driving a lot of our increased standing on US news and world reports and niche and great schools. So, we're seeing the the dividends there and that is translating to that's what it was. >> We we had a brief conversation about how the um home prices in the community, >> yes, >> are is a notable shift going on right now and there could be many things. >> A new elementary school probably is a piece of that. >> Highly ranked schools, increasingly highly ranked schools. >> That's something parents look for. So I think all these things are working together for us plus many other things that you know as well. But I I think you know the the board I think should be proud too of investing

117in prioritizing those resources. It is having an impact on the community in very positive ways. >> Yeah. >> So >> thank you for that though. Appreciate that. >> Um we've got safety coming up this week. We've got another bond steering coming up. >> Three, four weeks. Yep. Um, PGA is coming up, professional, personal growth and achievement. >> 28th. That's right. It was in the the near future. >> So, >> maybe outside of >> That's true. >> Why not? Okay. Um, next we have assistant superintendent update on personal growth and achievement. Speaking of that, >> great. Thank you. Um, so this is the time of year where we ask teachers to think deeply about the summer curriculum work they might do. We send out a full call for proposals and ask for teachers to work individually

118or in teams on projects that um impact uh preferably multiple buildings aligned to the strategic plan, district priorities, state guidance. um and and and we we call those together and review that work. In addition to teacher-led work, we are also putting out a call for four district supported projects this year um that align with state guidance and mandates that are um uh that are coming down and that we also agree with as a district. So the one project is K12 financial literacy um in which we are teacher teams will design comprehensive K12 approach to meet the state's new personal finance requirement. Um and we hope to have you know do a gap analysis see what we're already doing where the areas for growth are and then come up with an implementation plan. Uh the next

119is K K12 climate education in alignment with New York State education's expectations. again looking at where we do this well already and then thinking about where we could create a more aligned and systemic approach to K to to climate education across the grade levels. Um, we're also looking for uh a K a K5 team to think deeply about culturally responsive education um to in accord in alignment with our uh strategic plan on belonging and ensuring that our learning environments are um uh inclusive and create a sense of belonging for all students. And then finally, we're looking for um teachers to participate in a K12 Revolutionary War 250ear local history initiative. um so that we can spend, you know, the ne the next school year um engaging students across the grade levels in our our local

120and national history on this momentous occasion. So, uh we're extremely grateful the summer curriculum work um is an important strategic investment. It creates the conditions for stronger, more coherent teaching and learning during the school year. And we're very grateful to the board of education for supporting that important work over the summer. Um, we also, just a just a plug, we have STEM movie night tomorrow night at the Palm Picture House. We'll be screening Flubber uh in partnership in partnership with uh Mindset. Um, also Steam, our elementary teachers, teams, instructional coaches, and administrators are actively preparing for Steam Day planned for June 11th, which is a day of celebrations and displaying projects and presentations, and then an evening for fourth graders to display their work at Hutchinson. Um, and then I finally wanted to share our

121update for um, student registration digitation. or updating existing registration records. Um we've been working uh on this transition from paperbased to student digital registration and records. Uh the implementation implementation is underway. Um we did have some additional delays because we had to hire a new registar and train the new registar and and get that going. But the process has begun as planned with our incoming next year's incoming ninth grade families. And then once they're almost complete, we'll move on to sixth grade. And so right now, um, as of April 15th, 31% of, um, students in the incoming 9th grade class have responded and updated their records. Very grateful to those who've responded uh, quickly. That's 71 families. We still have an outstanding 156. Um and then because some of those families who did it had

122um siblings, 4% of our incoming sixth grade class is also complete. >> Um and so we're looking um we we're we are looking at um how can we increase our communication around this thanks to Alex. He partners with us and helps send out reminders regularly. We have um sent out messenger reminders and now we are um actively engaging one-on-one with families um which is people are responding. So uh just a blatant call and request to um please do respond. It it is a it is a a very efficient and quick process of just um updating the digital records and and uh confirming what we have in our system. Um, and it's an important step towards improving our record accuracy, accessibility, and just the operational efficiency of the district. So, we're very grateful to everyone who

123has already done so, and we are um uh in advance grateful to those who we know are going to continue um to respond and update their records. Thank you. Okay, next we have assistant superintendent's update on belonging and wellness. >> Good evening. Um uh in terms of uh special education in CSC and 504 world, um we're really, as I mentioned, in our busy season, um April's one of the busiest months in terms of meetings. Um we do our best to honor parent requests to move meetings, but it's really hard. Um but you have to stick to the schedule. I think between March and April, we've already um held over 400 meetings. So, fitting them in and getting everyone available is is really uh a challenge, but we are, you know, thankful we're able to do

124so. Thankful to the staff um and the chair people who do all the work getting ready for the meetings as well as um my secretaries who sent our invitations. Um the MTSSCL committee met um last last uh Tuesday um and we're continuing to do our work on theCL buildout of the MTSS plan. We'll have two more meetings this year to round out our work and we're hopeful by June we'll have a draft of a plan um that will serve as an addendum to the overall MTSS plan. Um so we're excited about that. Um we will be meeting next Tuesday with our district required pilot committee in terms of um piloting our curriculum that we identified. So we plan to share more about that information as that unfolds and see how um people respond to the

125platform and that pilot. Um uh as terms of our also continued work and data work with Bosey's partners, the Reov's grant is coming to a close this year. It was a two-year grant. As the grant comes to a close, um Dr. Cmerford and I are working on submitting our data that we're required to give to Boseis in terms of the information they want from us and then they push that data up to the state. Um, we're also making sure we're taking advantage of any monies that are still around for us to use in terms of the grant. So, um, we'll be, uh, we have, um, some, uh, lit literacy materials that we're going to be able to buy through the grant. Um, some other, um, materials that we'll be able to get for free. We'll

126get some iPads, whiteboards. So, we're not leaving anything on the table. Um we're going to take full advantage of what we can from the grant. Um in uh I met with our SEPTA co-presidents last week as well um to reflect on the current year and the final SEPTA meeting as Dr. Champ mentioned is scheduled for next Tuesday where Dr. Champ is uh maybe her first road show stop SEPTA I'm not no second um and uh Dr. Champ will be sharing with the special education parents and SEPTA um about the um the budget. Um the co-president shared that it's been a very successful year and they noted a lot of improved collaboration with building level PTA um organizations. Um SEPTA continues to support the community engagement providing zen zones at PTA events which have become really

127popular. Um and also uh SEPTA will be um sponsoring two scholarship awards for this year's graduation. They're working with Mr. Llewellyn on that. Um we also discussed their evolving partnership between SEPTA and Building Bridges. um building bridges sort of was a little bit on its own and I think SEPTA is getting a little bit more involved and folding in folding in that program with SEPTA just so we could have a more uh fluid um programming across the elementary schools. So that is exciting. Um and I'm thankful for the SEPTA's co-president's work in terms of that. Um in terms of school counseling, it is also a very busy time. AP test prep is underway. Um, as Emerson mentioned, a lot of students are getting ready for AP exams. Um, we're offering a lot of um, exams

128across uh, we're going to be offering 18 different AP exams across subject areas. Um, but when we tallied it up, we're going to be administering over a thousand exams to our students. So, that is a lot of preparation, a lot of work. So, I know um, Mr. Frell and his department are working vigorously to get ready for all of that. Thank you for that work. I know it's a lot. Um the counseling department has also been engaged in uh their continuing efforts around career awareness. Last Friday they had a workshop um which focused on careers and forensics. Um again this is in partnership with civics and the last career workshop again will be um uh the final one will be June 5th and that's highlighting careers in the trades and law enforcement. School counselors also

129have been working with juniors so pushing in and talking about again getting ready for the college process. Um they're also uh making sure that everyone the juniors are using score and that platform um in in terms of doing college exploration and getting ready for essays and things of that nature. And um Mr. Frell will be hosting a college fair that's going to be held here in June um as well. And some of the colleges that will be attending he mentioned are Notre Dame, Washington University, and University of Chicago. And lastly, our middle school counseling staff have started their road show um visiting elementary schools uh speaking to our fifth graders regarding transitioning to middle school. And um and again also we are um getting ready to open up score to our eighth graders. Um so

130that is something that um Mr. Frell and the middle school counselors are working on in the counseling department. And that's it. Thank you. Um, next we have executive director's update on human resources and leadership. >> Yes. Good evening and thank you. So, it's one of those bittersweet moments where we're closing out a school year and we're thinking about the next school year. So, we're starting some of that transition planning in my office right now. Um, the first is I'm really excited that Mrs. Vangoni and has been able to find five transition days this spring where she's actually going to be at the Sonoi school. The first one was today with the goal of shadowing Mrs. Kramer Gilbert uh meeting and building relationships with teachers and families and students. So, I'm really excited that that is

131now underway and it's planned. Um the Syonoi PTA has been amazing and they're going to help me plan a meet and greet parent coffee for her uh in June so that families get a chance to um meet Mrs. Mangoni as well. So that'll be a nice way to set her up so that she has uh the ability to then put in her entry plan when she starts in July. So that is well underway. The other thing I do want to mention is our AR task force has been really busy this year. We are going into our next and supposedly final meeting. Well, we're going to see about that uh next week. We're in that stage of our of our development of our plan where we are now gathering input from teachers. So we are implementing

132a needs assessment survey where we're asking some important questions around length of evaluation cycles um different kind of multiple measures that teachers may feel will be good measures to show their instructional strengths and and their growth. Um that needs assessment survey is being administered to elementary teachers tomorrow and I'm thankful to Mrs. Garcia and Dr. car who will be leading their own schools but we have task force members who will be at the other schools providing an overview and facilitating that and then we'll be carrying that forward into the middle school and high school. So the idea is for the committee to come together look at the data gathered from the needs assessment survey and use that as input as we work to develop our plan. Our goal still is to develop our new york

133steps evaluation plan next year. It will not go into effect next year. We will remain with our current APR plan. But the idea would be for task members to sort of pilot different components of the plan to see how they work, what pitfalls do we have, what do we need to think more deeply about so that when we go to submit our plan hopefully March of um 2027 that it then becomes approved by the state of New York. So that is still our goal. The task force members are they they want this to happen. um they're really excited for the change. They are invested in the process as well as um and I think that that's a really important piece because having teacher voice at the table when it comes to the evaluation of teachers

134makes it more meaningful. So, we're working on uh identifying our vision, identifying our multiple measures, and then from there, we'll do all the neat and tidy rubrics and scoring and all of the 60 pages of the application for the state to hopefully get that approved next year. But I did want to mention that because these folks have worked really hard this year to get to this point. Um, and I think, um, it's to be commended because it's it's going to be a big heavy lift. Um, but we have some great members on the team. So hopefully more to come in the next couple of weeks for that. And then lastly, I do want to mention that you um, you know, it's very bittersweet to see Maria A's House retire at the end of this year.

135Uh, Mr. Llewellyn and Miss Sabia have already interviewed candidates. And tonight on the board agenda, you will see that we are looking to appoint Thomas Maloney as um the next music coral director up here at the secondary campus. So it's everything is sorting starting to come full circle as we close out one school year and beginning to start thinking about um she has she's big shoes to fill for sure. Um but Dr. Cmerford and I were able to meet Mr. Maloney and we think he'll be a nice addition to our Pelum community. >> Great. Thank you. Um, next we have assistant superintendent's update on facilities and sustainable learning environments. >> All right. Thank you and good evening. Uh, so on the agenda tonight, we do have a budget adoption for the uh the budget that

136we put before the uh community. So, we have some information on that. I'll give a little bit of that later on. And I know we've got a small presentation uh when that item comes up on the board agenda. Uh, as mentioned earlier, we did have our bond steering committee meeting last week. Uh, right now our work is out to bid. So, which is great with our with our vendors. We're going to be getting those bids back on April 7th, excuse me, May 7th. And uh once uh those bids come back, they'll be analyzed. there'll be a recommendation made uh by our construction manager and architectural team uh hopefully for an award in the May time period so that we can get some of that work done at Colonial and Prospect Hill for the upcoming summer.

137Uh just to kind of remind people, some of that work includes a new new roof at Prospect Hill. Uh other work included HVAC systems which included air conditioning at both schools. uh moving the heating systems to hydronic heat versus uh steam heat and new windows. Uh we don't expect to see new windows happening this this uh upcoming uh summer. Those things have a a bit of a lead time. So that would be that would be expected to happen next summer. uh some of the HVAC work there could be some prep work that begins and some of that work could also happen uh in the afternoons uh when school is not in session during during the next school year at those at locations and if if successful it would continue if not we'd have to reassess

138and see if we can believe if we can get make that work happen successfully or not then it would have to happen over the over the summer time period and then we've got a at Colonial School we've got a small roof uh project and same work the uh the HVAC and the uh and then the and the work on the exterior, the waterproofing on the exterioring. So, we're going to learn a lot more in the uh in the May time period. And that was something else that we talked about at the bond steering committee meeting. Uh today, a notification went out to parents based on some triannual triannual yeah led testing every three years, >> not three times a year. uh that that we are required to perform uh per state per state regulations based

139on all water that's uh uh portable. So portable being water that that uh people can drink. Uh that level uh used to be 15 parts per million. Uh three years ago it was reduced to five parts per million which is the current uh testing level parts per billion excuse me was the testing level. Uh we did find that there were 11 sites where we found exceedences. Of that approximately half of those sites will be posted as non-potable water and they will be taken out of service for that uh for for use of drinking water. And of those other items uh we have to conduct some sort of remediation. And what does remediation look like? It could include putting a filter on that particular uh say it's a water fountain or or um or a sink.

140Uh it could also include uh reinstallation or removal of the fixture uh and then retesting so before it's put in. So, right now it's been taken out of service. If it's if it has not had a sign that says not portable water and if we if we want to put it back into service uh for consumption, we need to have it retested at that point in time. So, it's something that we've we've had to do for years and years. I believe there was an article in the December time period. Uh I think at that point in time, there's about 40 school districts in the lower Hudson Valley area that had been that had areas identified with lead in their um in their drinking water. And uh it's it's something that that happens and it's something

141where you do this, it's identified, you know it's there and you work and you work to remediate it. So uh but based on those exceedences, we're required to send out notifications to parents. So all of that has been sent out and on the web page under the parent notifications section, all the information is there as well. >> Can I ask you a question? Not all 11 of them were drinking. >> not all 11 of them were were drinking. And again, we we had four exceedences at Hutchinson School, all new fixtures. >> So, it's it's hard to predict. Um, Colonial Sinoi didn't have any exceedences. >> Jim, does it have to do with like the just the old piping in the ground like what's feeding the schools or we just don't know? >> We we really

142don't know. I mean I think when you talk to some people when they say lead free it may not mean completely lead free fixture that there may be traces >> and the and the the detectable level is >> 0.5.45 parts per billion. >> Right. >> So it's it's a it's a high threshold and and that's intentional and we're going to meet that standard or we're going to remove that item from uh from being available for folks to use. >> Uh interesting we have student showers. We have to we have to label the sh the showers as well or test them. Yeah, it's So, we didn't test them. We just labeled them. Everything that's labeled non-potable doesn't mean they've all they all have lead. It just means we may not have tested >> because there's there's

143an expense to that as well. >> On Friday, we are having a district-wide uh safety team meeting. Uh we found a spot at at Hutchinson School in their maker space. So, for Dr. Cford, >> that's where we've gone. >> U so we we have that from from 8 to 9:00. Uh our agenda has been set for some time. One of the items was a debrief of what was happening in Edgemont. So we're modifying our briefing to include what happened. >> Uh and again, just to kind of summarize what what's happened before or what we've said before, you know, a large part of our work is to make sure we build internal capacity to make sure that we've got folks that are knowledgeable and they know what to do when when an emergency happens or something

144and people need to act. So, I think we saw nice um nice examples of that uh yesterday. Unfortunately, we had to see that. Uh doesn't mean our work is done. It just means we're we're hopefully that that lets us know we're kind of doing a lot of the right things, but we always debrief after this. We come up we we we're critical of ourselves. Um and we try to we try to uh do better and also we learn from other schools as well when they when things happen. So, it's all part of that process again to to try to do better every time. Uh this evening the board's going to be asked again to um to approve we go from a preliminary budget to a proposed budget. Uh so that the biggest change in the

145budget really was the removal of the debt service for the ban that was a reduction of 900 the expense budget a reduction of 991,250 91,250. And what that that was is that was an interest payment uh related to u a $30 million borrowing for um for money to to do the summer capital work. Uh and that was in the budget originally because we had anticipated that borrowing happening in the June 2026 time period which then meant the debt service for that would be payable in the June 2027 time period which would be in next year's budget. As we look at the timing of the project, we don't see that happening in the June time period. We see that happening in the July time period. So really, it's not that that it's this is not going

146to happen. It's a matter of timing o over the course of one month. Also, in the original budget, we had proposed funding that the interest payment with the use of fund balance or debt service reserve. Uh because that's not happening, we removed that funding. We're proposing removing that funding source as well. So it's kind of we reduce the expense side by 991250 for related to the ban or the bond anticipation note and we reduce that funding source or the use of that fund balance by the equal amount. Um the proposed tax levy uh that was put forward put forward in the original budget remains the same at 3.72% for the year and this is really not a shift of not using that fund those fund balance dollars for the debt. It's it's a it's a

147push to next year. So, and we would anticipate needing those monies next year when we or for the for the 2027 2028 uh budget when we're funding those uh those interest payments. So, it's again it's it sounds like a big amount. Why isn't the budget being reduced? That's kind of where where that comes from. We weren't using tax dollars to pay for the interest payment of that of that interest. We were using fund balance or another way to look at it, your savings account. So, I hope that helps you um that that gives people kind of a visual visual way to see how that happened. >> Also, what we talked about, uh we had a finance committee meeting on Friday morning to kind of go over uh the final numbers of the budget. Um there

148were some changes from when the budget was originally proposed in February, and I can guarantee you that there'll be changes to what we know about next year from the budget that's adopted tonight to the budget that's approved by the voters, uh the eventual budget that's approved by the voters. Um and that's just that's just what happens. So uh we we mentioned at the last meeting we had an identified student need that we were u unaware of when the original budget was developed. We became made aware of it. We've identified that and included that in the budget. There's also ads and takes. So the sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. Uh but again uh we have a balanced budget. We're tax cap compliant budget and we believe we're able to address all of those uh all

149of those variances that happened from the uh from the proposed budget preliminary budget to the proposed budget that the board that will be before the board this evening. Our schedule-wise we started in February. We're at April 21st. You're going to see something on the screen. We're we're a little bit we're about halfway there with with the public meetings uh with regarding the budget. And as Dr. Champ mentioned there's a there's a a dedicated road show where we will go and explain the budget to folks uh community members, PTAs. Um we meet a lot of great people in doing this and hopefully uh we can uh share information and and uh give people information that they're looking for and better understanding the budget. I got lead testing. One other item after the bud, the board approves

150a budget tonight. They're going to be asked to approve the property tax report card. Uh that also includes a schedule of reserves that is estimate at this point in time based of the March 31st uh forecast. Um and also a recommendation of where where those listen where the where the reserves uh or the fund balances land at the end of this of the year. That of course is bound is leaves in the hand is left in the hands to final approval of the school board. So these are just estimates at this point in time based on our March 31st um our March 31st forecast. There's a taxi up for settlement this evening. Um it's not not a large one. There was of course remember the larger one in uh in December but this one has

151been around for some time and now uh it's been recommended by uh council that we share with the town of Pelum to settle this particular uh this particular case as you'll see um I hit safety I hit the property tax report card we talked about lead we talked about the budget I think I think we're there thank you very much >> thank Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Uh we don't have communications and comments from the public, so we can move to the >> Yes. And Jim saved us Jim just saved us some time. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> That doesn't happen a lot. Yes, very quick. Thank you, Jim. Thank you for the the detailed overview that actually honestly does save some of the updates. So, just a very brief presentation. I

152know the board has seen much of this, but tonight is our budget adoption night. So I always like to go through for one last time kind of the broadstrokes overview as Jackie shared with us the guidance that was given to us from the start of this process in October is what we aimed for and we believe that we were able to deliver on that. So again thank you for those parameters. This was a challenging budget um as we'll talk about because of many headwinds coming our way but we are proud of the budget in that we believe it does still provide um support our values and furthers the strategic plan. As we were talking earlier, um our uh schools are turning out incredible results for our students. We continue to see growth and we see

153the uh the benefits and the results of investments um in our earliest learners, investments in our programs, and investments in rich opportunities for students throughout their K12 experience. Um and that is paying off for our students um and our stature as a district as a whole. So, just a short list here of some of the many things that we offer for our students, most especially personalized learning opportunities um and uh school cultures that work to create a sense of belonging for all and to challenge each student to achieve their highest level of excellence. As we talked in prior budget uh discussions, we have had significant drivers this year uh headwinds uh that have made staying within the tax cap very challenging. Um these four areas represent those that had the biggest cost increases for us

154and that are largely outside of our control. Um we've done a really we've worked really hard to control those things that we can but these are things that either through uh you know prior agreements that are in place or escalation in cost that is beyond our control such as healthcare, special education, um transportation. um that we've seen uh increases beyond inflation, beyond uh consumer price index, and beyond the growth that's allowed in the tax levy. So, as you recall from our prior presentation, uh our original budget proposal to you was just over $99 million with an expense budget increase of $2.8 million, 2.91% year-to-year budget increase for the proposed tax compliant levy increase of 3.72%. that was the maximum allowable and that is what we were proposing to you. Um, and Jim's really touched on

155this is the area of time savings for us. Since our last conversation about the budget, you provided additional direction to us about some things that you wanted us to go back and uh kind of tweak a little bit and put back in the budget. Um, and also Jim's office uh and uh and I would say Tracy's office as well. A lot of work has been done to refine some costs and get updated both on the revenue as well as the um uh expenditure side. So as Jim talked about uh the change in approach to the ban um we did see some increasing special education costs again that were mentioned and the respective transportation costs but we also did get some right sizing on other special education costs there as well. um our conversation last time

156uh the areas that the board had pointed to were um some contractual con consulting services. So um the ones that we mentioned last time that were of concern those have been we found some space move some things around. So full funding for pellet together um in uh full funding for the communication support which is going to help us towards the board's goals um as I shared with some folks uh on the facilities uh finance committee call uh this week. We are also looking at um we're looking at it several different um communications related softwares um you know when I think of the board's goals all three areas still we're very much under the umbrella of communications so I think there are some tools that we may be able to find some space in the budget

157for that can help with board goals as well as delivering on the strategic uh plan goals of the district but we're still in the early vetting stages there. Just wanted to make you aware of that and we will keep you apprised of that. Um there's been some just staffing adjustments again from our initial to where we are now. A little bit of ins and outs. Um and finally some pieces of those updated revenues. Just wanted to take I know that Jim in his uh memo to the board shared uh kind of that full detail list of ins and outs just you had it. Most of that was very similar to what we had seen last time. Um, but then with some of the additional changes, uh, the board can see how it was that we

158brought those, uh, that back into balance. So, with that work done, the new revised budget that we're providing to you today for budget proposal for adoption tonight is 98,260,000. So, that is a decrease. um an expense uh budget-to-budget increase of 1.97 million year-to-year budget increase of 2.05%. So, a little bit lower across the board. The tax cap does remain the same. As Jim said, we made kind of corresponding reductions on expense and revenue sides of the equation. So, that number stayed intact. Um, and we are preserving some of that debt service that would have been used in this year's was originally proposed to be used in this year's budget um to strategically save that for the next year where it will be then used. And of course, we've been continuing to work with capital markets

159on a long-term strategic plan for use of debt service as we continuing to take on the debt from the 2018 bond as well as starting the borrowing and work for the 2025 bond. The breakdown of that 2.72% tax increase at this point now is adjusted to 2.28% related to the operating budget increases and 1.44% related to the capital exclusions that are included within this budget. Very quickly, this is the what does it mean for me as a home uh owner. So the middle example is the average home assessed value. 1.245 million is that purple in the middle. If you had a 3%, a 4.7% or a 9% change in home assessed value, you've got the different columns that run across. So, we'll go middle. Middle, which is the $1.2 million home with a $4.7% change

160in assessed value. That is a difference of about $684 in a year. And then it kind of goes either way, up or down, based on your home value. Either way, again, these are just estimates. Um but just to give folks a ballpark of what that tax uh means for them. We absolutely recognize that u residents are being taxed by all entities and seeing some significant um increases which is why the board tasked us on the in the the initial charge with staying within the tax cap. So we're cognizant of that and very respectful of that. Um just very quickly uh reminders of our revenue sources and other financing sources. The bulk of our our funding comes from property taxes. That remains the same. Uh the governor's budget is not yet settled. So we have not

161gotten any update on state aid in uh for the year. So we have we're in a position of having to budget based on the governor's original proposal. So I think they're out to August, not August, April 15. No. Uh where are we at? It was supposed to be today. Yesterday. today. >> They were up to the fourth extender that brought us to yesterday. >> They're on the 5th. >> On the 5th. I didn't get that. >> Okay. So, there you go. Unfortunately, the law requires us to adopt our budget by tonight. So, >> last year's budget was adopt adopted May 10th >> by the governor. >> By the >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we're probably in a similar boat. So, we work with the information that we have. Um, so that's this is where we are.

162So that is the 14% of our budget is revenues are based on anticipated state aid. Generally we do not see that go down in the governor's final budget. That's important to note. Um generally it goes up a little bit. We did get a very full funding lot on the first run. So we're really not expecting much of anything. Uh if any, you know, in prior years it was maybe a tiny bit in a year like this. But again, we're we're budgeting based on what's been given and think that is a solid place for us to be uh anticipating those state aid uh funds to come. So again, just smaller areas there, but the bulk of our funding comes from property taxes and state aid. On the expense side, uh some slight adjustments there again, just

163based on some of the ins and outs that we've talked about, but the bulk of our expenses continue to be in the salaries and employee benefits totaling about 75% of our budget. And we are a people organization, as we say every year. So that's where the bulk of our expenses come and then you see the uh the increases that have come through contractual BOSI services uh etc. And within that you can see some of the bigger areas point back to uh the areas where we've seen um growth. Uh those are the sideby-side changes. You can see a little bit more detail kind of what are the biggest uh revenue drivers, biggest expenditure drivers, increases in property taxes. Uh we did have overall even though we didn't get that final state aid number we did see

164an overall increase of 385,000 decrease in building aid increase in other areas uh in foundation aid the net was uh about 385,000 and then the ins and outs that Jim's office continues to monitor that's where we get to the things like the $184,000 um and you see on that side now the appropriation of debt service that was pushed off to it was decreased in this budget as compared to the prior year in light of the ban discussion that we just talked about. On the salary side, you see anticipated salary growth based on um current existing collective bargaining agreements and anticipated settlements. Um increase in Bosey's expenditures. Uh portion of that large portion of that being special education related um contractual again those are the areas that we've talked about also um related to a variety

165of different areas. insurance, transportation, some in special education as well and a variet and contracted security. We've gone through those areas in the line by line budget decrease in the debt service to correspond with the ban >> year to year, right? year-to-year. Um, and that was also uh, yeah, debt decrease in this was rel Jim kind of this remind me was this one related to the change in the bands or this is related to a drop in building aid because of an anticipated end of >> so pri compared to last year we retired some debt. >> Thank you. >> And then this also uh takes into account that we're not going to have the short the ban, >> right? So it's both. Yes. factoring in that net decrease of just over half a million dollars

166there. Uh then the increases in employee benefits that we mentioned before for an even budget change. So the total budget that is being presented to the board for adoption tonight is total appropriation of 98,260,000 uh a 3.72% uh tax compliant levy. That is the maximum allowable. That is what we are proposing um to uh to you tonight. uh with that same breakdown that as mentioned before uh as Jim said we're kind of halfway through the official budget uh discussions, meetings, etc. These are kind of the milestones and some of the board engagement. The road show that we've been affectionately mentioning is in addition to this, but you can see where our progress is through that. Um certainly we've got a board coffee coming up later this week. Um as well as uh I do start

167board presentations this week. Colonial on Thursday night, uh staff on Monday, SEPTA on Tuesday, I think Tracy said. So, yeah, we're already going to gear head, you know, gear up uh right away for that. And that will be the presentation of this budget that, uh if if the board adopts as presented tonight. Um key takeaways for you to remember. Uh this budget supports our highquality program. The educational programs that our community expects are included in this. despite the fiscal headwinds, they are real. This was a challenging budget, another year of that because of the rising costs, but this preliminary budget still maintains the high-quality academic programs that we expect. Um the support special education um so that all of our our neediest students have the supports and resources they need to level the playing ground.

168We are continuing to vest in and strengthen our MTSS process, support our extracurricular athletics, and I will have a conversation about that as well uh tonight as we open the up for conversation with the board and continuing with our capital improvements as well. Uh both those done in-house and then um planning for the onset of those through the 2025 bond. So that's it. I'm going to go sit back at the table and uh open it up for conversation um from the board tonight. Um if if you would like to make any comments or hopefully you don't have too many questions left on the budget before we take the before we take the motion. Um I open it up to the board because I spoke about the budget earlier and >> yeah I'll start um and

169it's my comments aren't much different from the last um our last meeting and first thank you to the administration. I know you've worked extremely hard and then in the last two weeks to make even more changes to keep the programming like Pelum together. um support for the communications department and Alex um and just want the community to understand that it's pretty incredible that we're able to provide the kind of program programming that we have and the results that we see every single week with the success of our students and our our faculty um on a very very tight budget. And I have to say I'm, you know, I like that we and I I think you've said it as well that we set the tone early on. So, you know, you all know what what

170what we're thinking. Um, and the fact that we were able to stay within the tax cap is, I believe, un I don't know if it's completely unusual, but I know many of our neighboring towns have not um done that over the past few years, not even just um, you know, the last year. So, I support the budget. I think that you've done a tremendous job in keeping things as close to the students, like you said, and not trying to cut things that are as close to the students as possible. Um, and thank you. Yeah, I I support this budget. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? We're good. >> I don't feel like I I just I'm gonna, you know, I just want to echo that. I don't think I have much to add. We've really

171talked a lot about it and Jackie gave a really good summary regarding um what we were able to do. Uh and I think uh the team worked really hard to make this happen. Um really gotten creative and thoughtful and it sort of forced us right to get really what matters most. Um but in an environment where health care costs are rising, special education, like it's pretty extraordinary to see that we've been able to do this given all the external factors that you know we have to navigate through it. So, um, uh, I kind of echo what, um, Ann Marie said, like I support this budget and I commend the team to really making sure that everything we requested to like came to fruition and being able to provide um the the curriculum, the education, all

172of those like amazing things that make Pelum Pelum district. Um, so same I support it. I mean, great job. There's I wish we could do more. There's a lot of things that we've had to say no to that have been tough this year. Um but you know that's also part of why we will continue to monitor um the next couple of months. The bottom line can't change. I think that's the that's an important piece. There will be more ins and outs between now and budget and between now and next year. The bottom line is is what really we're presenting to the voters. So those things that I think we've got kind of short lists of priorities that you know if the opportunities come those are the kinds of things I think that we're going to

173you know we'll keep looking to um but keeping kind of those same principles in mind what do we have to do to get where we are what do we have to pair and then how do those priorities then continue to drive to inform us if new opportunities arise to bring something in or bring something back that didn't make the initial cut. Well, that's important too to know what those priorities are so when the opportunities come. So again, it's so clean, but really knowing like when we have room or if there is something next like h having clarity around >> what we do want to add, you know? So >> yeah, >> we always want to do more. I mean that's just the nature of it, right? >> There's always more that kind of things to

174do, but that's not where we're at. >> Yeah. I'm not going to say a lot, but I will say um I I support this budget. I think uh we're at uh getting to a breaking point in terms of um you know, when we look forward to next year and what that budget might look like. If people want to maintain the program that we have, there areas that people want to grow like the athletics department. um you know there there's just not the room with the grow like you know as Darra said like you know healthcare costs aren't going to go >> start rising less than 2% a year so you know all those things are squeezing a budget to maintain just to maintain what we have and so uh I think we're going to have

175to have some tough conversations next year about what the right path forward is. Yeah. And to that point about the breaking point, um little bit of detail here. This is according to the internet. This may need to be fact checked, but um >> is it AI? >> Uh Harrison pierced the cap in 24, Ry in 24, Scarsdale in 24, New 20 in 25, the Marin in 25, Pearl River, which is across the river. It's not lower Hudson Valley, but but similar. um in 25 and I believe that East Chester is making a proposal to pierce the cat this year. So we have kind of pushed out the the pain as far as I think we can reasonably push it out without you know really making some difficult decisions on programming and and so to Sid's

176point to Anarie's point brace yourselves it's probably going to happen but I think we've done made every single effort to push it out as long as we can. >> I just wanted to say I support the budget. We've been having conversations from October and then put, you know, a pencil to paper in about February. So, this is a long conversation that's now closing and then you continue to do it with the community. Um, you know, it's a tough year and I think we're being very conservative and we're still providing as much as we can and you know, just hope everything goes well and you know, I'm sure it will like it does every year. So, thank you. I'll just I'm not going to say much either, but other than to say I also agree with

177everything all of you have said and I also support this budget and thank you to the team and for everyone's thoughtfulness and hard work and really figuring out how to remain tax compliant while also continuing to provide our students with an excellent experience. Yeah. >> Um, yeah, I won't repeat I won't repeat what I said earlier, what I said. I'm just thank everyone for their hard hard work on this. Um, like everyone's saying, the ability to preserve our preserve our program and still be tax cap compliant is an achievement. Um, and the other thing I just want to mention, the budget also strengthens our long-term financial position by um, lowering the use of of fun of fund balance and getting back more towards the the norm of the use of fund balance. So, I just

178wanted to point that out as well. So, I support the budget. >> Thank you to Jim and Jackie and the entire business office for >> great people, incredible work. >> Thank you to the board and the finance committee. Yeah. So, thank you. >> Okay. All right. >> We need to vote. Let's land this plane. >> Do I have a motion to adopt the 2026 2027 school year budget? >> So, moved. >> Second. All right. Do we vote twice? No. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Thank you everyone. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. All right. >> It's our budget >> now. It's yours. Yes, our budget now. Okay. >> Um, let's see. Can I take Do I have a motion to take 6.2 through as a consent agenda? >> So move. >> Second.

179>> Okay. Does anyone have any comments or questions on on these? >> I was just going to highlight I think a couple. Um the property tax report is that's your 6.2 6.3. Um we do have the opportunity to cast votes for members on the Boseis board. There are three openings and three people running for the three openings. >> Yes. So no one from Pelum. >> No one from Pelum this year. No. >> Yeah. >> Um so I think that motion would be voting for all three. Just looking at Valerie for verification. So that's the motion. If if you take I can take it as part of Should I >> I believe you can take it as a consent. Just wanted to highlight that in case anyone had a concern with >> Okay. With two of

180the three are people who they're they're running for additional terms. So they've already been >> experienc two of prior experience and one is new. >> Yep. And then 6.4 is again uh items related to Bosey's budget. Then we move into bid awards. This is kind of rolling things over, getting prepared for the coming school year >> uh with a variety of different contracts um and bids. Um we have two grants for uh continuing education tuition. Uh Jim, Jim, >> continuing uh doctoral program. Kudos >> in your spare time. >> That's right. U and also Jim Baker uh one of our tech department who runs Infinite Campus. Uh he's been actively pursuing uh educational pursuits. So, we're very proud of him and happy to support those efforts. Um, tax certiary that Jim mentioned earlier, disposal of

181equipment, budget transfers, um, and then, uh, yes, then 616 again, I these are folks that are, uh, being appointed to help with the budget vote on May 19th. >> Excellent. Okay. Any any comments or questions? Um, all in favor? >> I. >> None opposed. So, all of those are approved. >> Okay. Do I have a motion to deny the CEA grievance? >> Some moved. Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you. >> Okay. We move to policy now. We have one second reading for the duties of the school attorney. I don't think we have many changes. >> We didn't we didn't have any comments that we've received from anyone. Um so >> we could wave >> up to people, but if we want to wave the third agreement. >>

182Okay. Yes, >> that'd be great. >> Okay. So, um do I have a motion to wave the third reading of policy 1337 and approve the policy? >> So moved. >> Second. All in favor? I >> Okay, there's another one. Sid. >> Great. Thank you. We'll get a tally. >> Okay. Do I have a motion to take 8.1 through 9.1 as a consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Okay. Is this where we're appointing the new music? >> Yes. >> Yep. The new new coral teacher. >> New coral teacher. Yes. >> Welcome. >> Yes. Okay. Um, all in favor? >> I those are approved. Do we have any new business? >> All right. I I'm going to jump in for two seconds. Um, thank you for putting in summer availability. Um, it looks like as

183of right now, July 2nd, uh, is what we're targeting for reorg meeting. Um, question was raised, would we want to do it on Wednesday the 1st? And I think that's likely because the second is the Thursday before a long weekend. We could do it within regulations. >> Um, just one day less of preparation. >> I don't know if people care when >> doesn't matter. >> Okay. We'll we'll do it earlier probably. Look, it's looking from our poll probably more like five o'clock. >> So that way we got to get in get out on the second and then folks can get away for the weekend. >> So July 2nd, uh, we'll send these out in writing, but just as a summary of where we are. July 2nd for reorg. We'll do a midsummer uh business meeting

184on August 26th. Um and that's usually a lot of uh contracts and hiring. >> You can put me down. >> Okay. >> For the for July 15th, I think. >> Okay, good. Um and then September 2nd, facilities tour and August 26, end of end of summer business meeting. So I think we've got our meeting date set. The retreat date. >> So midsummer is July 15th. >> I'm sorry. We've got July 2nd reorg midsummer August 26. Actually, I take that back. >> End of summer is August 26. >> Oh, do we have a midsummer meeting? >> We did not have a actually Yeah, we do have a quorum for July 29th. >> Okay. >> For a midsummer meeting. >> Oh, July 29th. >> Yes. >> All we need is quorum. We don't need everybody. >> I'm

185fine. I'm good. Uh but then the only outstanding All right. So yeah, July 2nd, July 29th, August 26, those are our three meetings for the summer. The only thing we do not yet have finalized is retreat. So um that could we've got um it looks we could actually it looks like everybody did say they're available July 15th. >> Oh, did we want to do the business meeting and the retreat at the same time? We could align them. >> Yeah. >> Um July 15th is too early for a mid >> summer. >> So the qu I guess I didn't ask about availability for a retreat on the 2. Oh, no. I did. >> You did. >> We've got four people. Uh I don't think we have a quorum on July I'm sorry. We have a quorum.

186I don't think we have full board on July 29th. >> Okay. >> It looks like we'll have full board on the 15th of July and I think August 26th, which is kind of late, but we've done it before. Okay. >> I think you said you were available on that one too, Jackie. Right. >> And um you mentioned facilities in August. Uh September. >> September 2nd. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Um so >> do we know timing for July 2nd? I know we >> July 2nd. I think it's probably going to be five o'clock. >> I think five o'clock is the way things were kind of coming. >> Uh we do have a quorum for four, but I think we've got more people for five. July second. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, that's good to know.

187Um, yeah, I I can't I don't know how to open it right now, but I I'll let you know. So, it'll probably be it'll be either be five or six probably on July 2nd. >> Um, so I just we just need to firm up a retreat date. So, maybe we can I don't want to hold everyone up tonight, but it's looking like the July 15th or August 26 right now are the best dates for those. So >> I see. Okay. >> Okay. So we'll just circle back separately on >> much rather do it the 20 just to get it done earlier than right that I guess it doesn't matter. We'll see. >> Okay. >> All right. Good. >> Thank you. Appreciate the dates. >> Do you want to give an update on your conference? >>

188I was not prepared to do that tonight. So maybe I will pass. Okay. But it was really great and very valuable. >> Thank you for that. It's very cool that we have people on our on our board and in our district that engage in all of these very valuable learning opportunities and you have a leadership role >> in ASA. So, >> yes. Yeah, that's great. >> Which is also notable. So, if maybe next time because I because the materials that >> looked very interesting to Yes. >> Yeah. And I haven't had a chance to even to really unpack them with the cabinet. I've shared them, but we haven't had a chance to really synthesize where how they're going to inform our work. I saw the connections, so we've got a we'll do a little bit

189more talking, but I thank you. I will uh plan to do an update um maybe the next meeting or so. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Sorry. Um >> that's okay. >> Do we need to have a brief conversation about the electric bus? >> Also did not have a chance I didn't have a chance to review the revisions. >> What's the electric bus? Um that was some uh a lot of districts are passing resolutions um asking for some adjustments around the conversion to electronic buses. >> Um so I think I think we're agreed that it's a good initiative. Also agreed the state is not ready for it. Um we don't have our own bus fleet but we are impacted by that because buses are the companies are raising their cost anticipating the conversion. So

190the cost will impact us one way or another. So um Katherine was kind enough to do some revisions. So, I will take a look at those between now and then. We'll communicate that out as well. And hopefully at our next meeting, we can um we can pass we will bring that to the board for your approval. >> I I just noted I looked at one of the things that was in that in those materials and the letter or the form of letter that they proposed >> wasn't really targeted to a district like ours. It was really like >> the options were all about, you know, >> right? you own buses, >> what projects you're working on for depots and stuff and really wasn't. >> Yeah. So that's why I think I think I think Katherine

191had tried to make some adjustments. >> Catherine was working. Great. >> I I'm the letter and both the resolution. We there's there are a handful of districts throughout the state like Pelum that are that don't provide transportation on a regular basis that don't manage their own fleets. it's not the majority and so LHC was not you they don't really have us in mind so but it doesn't mean we can't still participate and also >> these the impact will impact Pelumin the way that Dr. Champ has noted, right? But also, if this goes through and the state isn't really prepared with the infrastructure, it will impact our community in other way in in a larger way. I mean, we'll have brownouts maybe with when the grid overheats or is overloaded. Um the there will be costs

192passed on to electricity like utility users, which is all of us as homeowners. >> So, those are the types of things. I mean, as a community, we might not manage our own bus fleet, but those are also things that this will impact uh in ways that it'll impact our community. And so, we can talk about those things. And also, we since we don't manage our own best fleet, we can't take advantage of any of the nice sort of initiative, you know, all of those any sort of cost savings. We won't be able to take care of like access those, but >> we'll still have to pay our transportation contractors you the increases without getting any of that benefit. So there's multiple ways that we've I did prepare or draft different language for both the resolution

193and the letter and sent that to Dr. Champ for review. >> So that's great. So Jim and I will because Jim's I know very steeped in this as well. So we'll thank you for doing that work. Um so I will do I'll prioritize that. to be clear like I took that I just >> read the letter and and recognized exactly what you said that this none of these options were um >> fit for us and if we were going to pass something we would want to have it more accurately reflect >> what our community situ like what our situation is here and so I did that and then sent it to Dr. champ as I'm not fully aware of exactly what our relationship is. So, I didn't know if I had all the details correctly,

194which is why I didn't send it out broadly because I just wasn't sure. >> Yeah. And that's what I wanted to be sure that we gave it a thorough look before bringing it to you today. So, just not enough hours in the day with the way this week has gone. So, thank you. >> All right. I think that does it for us. >> All right. I'll take a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Second. All in favor? Hi. >> Hi. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you.