SOCSD - Board Meeting 05-19-2026

001to a public meeting at 7:46. Okay, I have a motion. >> Thank you, Katie. Second. Thank you, Tracy. All in favor? I. >> All right. Please stand for the pledge. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening everyone. Um, just start with any board announcements anyone has. >> It's been a quiet week. We just were here last week. Um, thank you all for coming out. Uh, we can go on to superintendent announcements. >> Good evening everyone. Thanks for being here. So tonight, I want to again take this opportunity to thank everyone for working so hard to put together the South Orangetown Central School District budget for the 20 2026

00220227 school year. The budget supports maintaining small class sizes, enrich enrichment opportunities, extracurricular activities, summer programming, funding for CEK seats, while also enabling us to retain all of our teachers and staff. Hopefully everybody went and voted already. If not, the polls are open for uh a little while longer. This evening, we have students here from South Orangetown Middle School and Tapenzee High School who will present on our financial literacy program, which is new to South Orangetown Middle School this year, and along with students from Tapenzy High School's business pathway and program. We're also delighted tonight to have one of our students, Elise Quan, who's here for having won the New York State Law Day competition for her artwork. And you can see her artwork is displayed right up there. I'm going to tell you a

003little bit about Elise and her project. So, Elise, if I could just ask you to come up and just kind of hang out by your piece of artwork. I'm not going to put you on the spot or anything. I'm going to do all the talking, but I just want everyone to kind of see who you are and what you created because there's people watching from home. We've got like thousands of people from home watching this on the live stream. So, on April 30th, Tapenzy High School senior Elise Quan was recognized at the Rockland County Courthouse following her first place submission to the New York State Court's 2025 Law Day Art Contest. Her artwork titled Epuribus Unum, a tapestry of democracy is now on permanent display at the Rockland County Courthouse in the jury room. For

004the past several months, Elise's work was displayed in the Capitol building in Albany. Elise, it was an honor and a privilege to attend the ceremony at the Rockland County Courthouse along with high school principal Melissa Luciano, District Clerk Anne Quigley, and of course, your mom was there um to celebrate this amazing achievement. We met a lot of great people including the Honorable Judge David Frerieded, Sabrina E. Vargas Greco, who's the commissioner of jurors. She's a good person to know. She told us that, right? And members of the Art Council of Rockland. So, I want to take this opportunity to read what you wrote, which is on there to describe your creation. This is uh Alisa's description of her artwork. My artwork is inspired by the idea that America is a nation woven together by the

005people, laws, and shared responsibilities. I used to have a quilt from when I was younger that was woven together by my grandparents and had lots of different types of fabric from my childhood. old clothes, blankets, etc. That's where I got the idea to create a quilt showing how in America there are different communities, beliefs, and civic duties that come together to form our country, just like how individual and unique fabric patches come together to form a cohesive design. Each section of the quilt represents a part of our democracy. For example, there are patches to represent our government, civic engagement, our rights, justice, and national unity, depicting the Constitution's promise of how there is, out of many, one. Every stitch in a quilt holds meaning and keeps the entire piece together, which is why different people

006from a variety of backgrounds, identities are working together to stitch the quilt. This is meant to show that every person's role in democracy matters and that despite our individual differences we remain as one nation. E pluribus unum means out of many one. So in lease alise in light of the 250th anniversary of the United States we've been working on a variety of curriculum projects and I'm pleased to share with you that we've made three duplicate copies of your work. One of which you're standing next to. We framed them to be permanently displayed in our district to grace the halls in central office and at Tapenzy High School. We made a third copy for you to keep as a keepsake. So, thank you for creating such a wonderful piece of artwork that means so much to

007our community. We are incredibly proud. Wow. And so now without further ado, I'm going to invite our financial literacy middle school and high school students. I just have a little brief introduction. If I could find my glasses again, which I lost. Here we go. You guys can come up while I introduce you. So, I had asked uh yeah, you guys could all come up. Yeah, you're all presenting, right? Whatever whatever you guys want. So, I had asked uh a couple months ago because we have a financial literacy curriculum now that we put in place at SS and we've had the business program at the high school that uh Mr. Flynn and Mr. Bamonte have been leading. And so when we hired Miss Richmond uh to teach middle school last summer, all the teachers came together

008to look at curriculum, to map the curriculum, to make sure that we were really scaling things up. Um if you saw any of our videos, we had a little financial literacy clip in there. So I just want to thank Miss Richmond and Mr. Flynn and Mr. Bamonte for creating the robust curriculum and pathway for our students and really um just building out our electives and program with real world application. And so I'll turn it over to you. Dr. Cory, did you want to start? >> Oh, you know that's how we operate. >> I just wanted to thank um Okay. So, um as as Dr. said, um, I'm Lindsay Richmond and I was brought on, uh, last summer to teach the middle school curriculum for financial literacy. Um, it was brought into the middle school uh,

009for many reasons, but the incoming freshman next year, I believe, um, and, uh, middle school students need to be exposed to, uh, personal finance requirements. Um and as we know personal finance uh gives us a lot of life skills and it's an introduction and hopefully a pathway for many of our students to be engaged and motivated about business courses um when they leave the middle school and therefore hopefully um our business program at the high school will flourish. Um I wrote curriculum last summer uh to teach a sixth grade financial literacy course. Seventh grade is financing careers and then eighth grade is entrepreneurship. Um all sixth graders and all seventh graders participate in our explore program which is eight-week cycles. Um so these are eightweek courses. I see all the sixth graders, all the seventh

010graders and about half of the eighth graders. The eighth graders that don't go into studio art or DDP are taking explores. Um sixth grade financial literacy. Uh these are the major topics that I have been working with. Um the over the last couple weeks I took part in a task force at Boseies with other financial literacy teachers um across the county and uh the purpose of it was to really make sure that we are covering all of the new uh required standards. Uh I am happy to say that going into this um I was able to note that I was covering 20 of the 23 standards already um between sixth and seventh grade. So I have a little more work to do um but well on our way. Uh so you can see there we

011start out basic in sixth grade um understanding money uh spending decisions um becoming smart consumers and then we move on to uh learning about budgeting and saving our money. Um I have introduced thank you to Dr. Corey for getting me a little bit of extra money and um I the kids love to play the financial lit literacy board games. Um so they often like on half days and things like that I bring out the board games and they get to play. Um oops uh these are just a couple of quotes from students. Um, you know, I'm not going to read through all of them, but uh, one person said, Arya said, uh, something I learned from this class was how to maintain a budget. They learn about the 5030 20 rule, which means 50% goes

012to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings. Um, and they have an idea now how to uh, manage their money better. I do have a few students, my sixth grade students, if you would come on up. Um these are just some of the things that I just screenshot some of the activities that we do in sixth grade. Um some of the games that we play, digital games. Um they create uh ads using different persuasion techniques so they become smart consumers. Um and there they are a few of them creating their own board games. So um I have Tiana and Kylie and why don't you guys >> Thank you. >> share what you've learned. >> Hi, my name is TA. I'm in sixth grade. During our financial literacy explore, I learned many fun things. One

013thing I found extremely interesting was how to calculate unit price. I found this interesting because it didn't only translate to my financial literacy class. It also translates to the outside world um to help me shop, find the breast products to save, and be a smart consumer. Hi, my name is Kylie. I'm also in the sixth grade. In financial literacy, we learned many cool things. One thing we learned that I enjoyed was opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the next best thing you give up when you make a choice. We've learned a lot of fun things in financial literacy that will help us when we get to the real world. >> Um in seventh grade, uh we focus on careers. Um the first unit is really finding out who we are as individuals, our skills, our strengths.

014They do a personality assessment and then we take that and we connect it to careers that are um out there and so we research career clusters. They research specific careers. They do vision boards. They do career project. Um then we take a look at different job postings and we match our skills to potential job posts. um difference between hard and soft skills. And then uh towards the end we get into the finance aspect which where I focus on um being able to read a paycheck, calculating gross and net pay. Um some quotes up there from some seventh grade students. Um but I'll call up Declan and Tommy. >> Hi, my name is Dean. I'm in the seventh grade. I believe finance and careers is an essential class. I've learned how to calculate gross pay, how

015to read a pay stub, and how to calculate overtime hours for when I get a job. The career lessons gave me a sense of what I what I want to do in the future. >> Uh, hi, my name is Tommy. I'm in seventh grade, and I thought finance careers was a very helpful class. I learned many, many things about how to manage money and how to calculate how much money I can actually take home on a paycheck. Doing the LinkedIn profile template helped me know that not everything happens on texts and now I know an option when looking for job postings. Overall, I really love this class and thought it was a great addition this year. >> Um, you can see there examples of uh vision boards and they do a LinkedIn template on a

016Google slide. Uh, so I give them a template and they edit it. Um, learn about smart goals. Um over there they did uh career infographics for their projects. Um and then in eighth grade we focus on uh more of the business um less about the personal finance, more about the business world. Um concentrating on what an entrepreneur is um knowing that you know the problems that we have in life are opportunities to create a business and we follow the design thinking process. We go through basic again only eight weeks but basic business plan uh strategies. They write mission statements, create logos and slogans and do a 30 secondond elevator pitch. And if we have time towards the end we get into what is marketing and uh target markets and the four Ps of marketing some

017their logos on the left that students created. Um on the right I gave them three um three random they got a product uh and they got uh a product a target market and then a twist and they had to create a presentation. So that was some of their presentations on the right. Um we do a little we do watch a little Shark Tank um and they really see how problems and solutions can help them become an entrepreneur. >> And I have where' she go? Hi, my name is Jacob and I'm in eighth grade. I believe that Miss Richmond's eighth grade entrepreneurship class is an amazing way to develop problem solving, leadership skills, and all the overall fundamentals of creating a business. It gives you great knowledge of creating a business. And I believe that this

018class would boost my chances of becoming an entrepreneur in the future. I'll turn it over. >> Hi everyone. Uh >> yeah. Yeah. Good. Hi everyone. Uh my name is Daryl Flynn. Um I teach um team leader for the high school business department. Uh it's my seventh year. Um I first wanted to um thank um Dr. Corey um for finding Lindsay. She is amazing. Um for her second year, as you can see, what she's doing at the middle school. Um since I've been here, we didn't have one, and now finding her is just awesome. As you can see, what she has. So, Lindsay, you're doing a great job. Um I also want to thank uh Dr. Koulot, Dr. Dr. Arietta, and Melissa. So, we I came in with these guys. So, Rudy was my principal and

019Melissa was assistant principal and Dr. Koulot hired me. Um, and in those seven years, they have given me everything that I need to succeed. And, uh, it's not just those guys, but obviously the board of education as well, seeing value in what we do. Um, and I just feel like that needed to be said because from what we've started with seven years ago to where we are today, um, really is because of the support that I have with the district and, um, my administrators as well. So, I want to thank you guys. Um, this is, uh, Mr. Monty. Can't forget about this guy. Um, so he came in a couple years ago. Um, so Mr. Monty and I um coached years ago. Um, and then once we had found a an opening, um, I got

020him out of Connecticut and brought him here. Um, I apologize for the way I look. I just came off the flag football field. We have a big uh sectional semi-final. Mr. Roanti cleans up a little better than I do. So I would not dress like this usually. Yeah, we were both at practice. Um and then with the heat index our practice got pushed back. So um so um what I have here is three different pathways. These are just very samples of what we give to the guidance department. And basically we take a look at we have several classes for 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade and 12th grade. Um with the senior u I'm sorry freshman seminar uh we do have cycled classes to help freshmen get exposed right away. And then with Lindsay's program

021in the middle school, uh we now see that continuation from sixth, sixth grade all the way through 12th. Um which I think is huge. So here's one uh sample. We have built it out where it's like students can kind of go with what they like. So you know, marketing or finance or um entrepreneurship and there's a lot of different pathways that we can go. So uh this is the second way um second pathway that we have a little bit more u financial with accounting and uh we'll talk about AP business a little bit later. Um and then the third way here this is more of your marketing uh aspect that you can go with as well and we do vary between cycled halfyear and full year. Um so Mr. Vont is going to talk a

022little bit about career financial management. So when we start, it's a lot of the same concepts at the middle school level and we kind of are doing um the similar topics but a little more in depth and now students are getting ready to potentially go to college. Uh they kind of have an idea what their career path might be. Um so we start out with just the um the financial decision-m um topics, the values, the needs, the wants, how that really is the building blocks for our financial lives. Um, and what we started to do, um, after that is we kind of jump right into investing. Um, it's probably one of the more difficult topics, but we noticed that when we play the stock market game and the students have $100,000 of fake money to

023invest in a portfolio that if we wait to later on in the year or or the semester because it's a semester course, um, they don't really see the growth. They don't really see what their investments will end up being like in a little bit of a long-term sample size. So we kind of jump right into it and then it gives them about four months of the growth and then when a student sees that their portfolio has grown 10% in two months uh they might have gotten lucky but they might have taken the steps and got to see the actual what time does for your investments. So after we get into that um then we hit the uh budgeting, the banking, credit cards, um we get into a little risk management with insurance. Um but the

024the kind of the capstone uh project that we do is we take um what the students want to do for their future, what kind of career they want, um where they want to go to college, and we look at those the income and we take the deductions out. We build what we call a 25-year-old spending plan and it's where they where students see themselves at around the age of 25 when they're on their own. Uh they research apartments, what kind of car they would like to drive. Um they take out the the fake loans just to kind of see what those monthly expenses would look like. Um, and then they put together uh the spreadsheet and then they put together a slideshow kind of talking about their life and then uh they do a reflection

025on it and they just talk about you know what what are the changes that they would make if maybe they have a deficit or if they have a surplus. Um and in that presentation they do talk about um what banks they would use um what their plans are for college, who's paying for their college, if they are paying uh their own loans. We kind of we calculate the the amount of loans they might have. Um and we account for scholarships and and and federal aid and things like that. Um the oops sorry um Claire's here. Um Claire Chi, um she was a standout student um for us in the business department. I had her as a freshman uh in entertainment and sports marketing and she um wanted to take uh career in financial management. And

026this is just an example. Um I don't know if the actual slideshow part's going to work if we touch it, but um this was her budget. So she wants to get into the medical field and what we did was we try to find um a comparable salary to what she might make around 25. Uh so the students do the research and they build out their what would be their monthly budget with their uh hobbies, a car payment, groceries, um along with some insurance and then they build it out and then if they have leftover money uh for that given month then they tell um in the reflection what they would do with that extra money. uh and we focus on saving and investing and um how that time element will help them um in in

027the long run with having emergency funds and investments. I don't know if there's anything you want to add about the project or anything that you >> Oh, yeah. Okay. So, uh like Mr. B said, I've been a student of his for two years and to be completely honest, when I first took career in financial management, I was like, okay, it's just another business class. but it genuinely wasn't. And I was I was really surprised at the end um how much I genuinely learned about managing your money. Like this kind of budget in my head I was like, "Yeah, when I'm an adult, I got that." But I didn't realize like, "Oh crap, I have to think about Medicare and like state income tax." There's so many other things like insurance. Like I never knew that

028that was like a fixed expense. I like there's different things with um your groceries like I was like for sure yeah you put money away for that but like when you really look at it and you look at a comprehensive budget and you think of yourself in the future. I really started to think about like when I was when I was a grown-up it wouldn't just be like I got all this grown-up money. It'd be like I'd have to work for these things and how you'd end up living that life that you always thought you'd want to live. How it ends up organizing itself. It's something that um I really wouldn't have understood without Mr. Be's class. And um it's even better that like I've had him twice, so I already understand his teaching styles.

029And um also I also I also understand like um the way Mr. B teaches. No, no, wait. I'm sorry. I meant like um the certain things that he teaches you. It's um it covers a lot that you didn't expect to un that you didn't expect that you would think about like transportation whether you live in a big city and you take um the metro or you have to worry about all those different car expenses. It's like it's very comprehensive and it makes sure that you uh it really teaches you about um like your budgeting skills, learning where your money's going in and out and also um he makes you more aware of other like factors that you wouldn't have thought of. >> Um did you want to Yeah. So, uh, just real quick, um, so

030the state requirement starts with the ninth graders coming in. Um, there are these grade bands. So, I just wanted to bring this up with the portrait of a graduate. Um, we are in line, ready to go at the high school level, and we are ready to go for the next grade band, which is 5 through eight. Um, and then obviously the next grade band is K through four, but that's not until the following year. Um, but I just want to make sure that we are we're ready to go for next year. And we've already our department has worked with uh Miss Luciano um on how to get that done. Our career and financial management class um follows the state standards. Um now we um are bringing this in first time ever that the college board

031is offering an AP um business course. It's part of their AP kickstart program. Um so with this kind of um shift towards you know more of um internships and and getting students ready for careers or possibly at the high school level, not waiting till the college level. Um this kickstart program is this is the first part of it. There's going to be a lot more coming out. Um possible college credit just like all APs as well. Um thing that's different here is this thing called an employer endorsed credential. So the college board worked with I think as of now it's 500 companies and if our students reach a certain level on the AP exam they also get an a credential that can be used in their college resume. Um also it's something that could be

032brought with them to college. Um so I think it's just another aspect of how um our courses are preparing our students for the real world. Um, and then yes, we have uh Yep. Um, Annie, who I she'll kind of tell you her story, but uh Annie is not going to major in business. And I want to make that clear. And I think what I want I think Annie will talk about this how the and I have a son who's in third grade and who's in fifth grade. I love about this district is that at the high school level, right, you can have so many different options and so many different ways to go where Annie had this one idea, she still has it, but then all of a sudden she takes these electives and she's

033like, "Wait a second, maybe I can do something with this as well." So, um, Annie, if you could take it away for me. >> Hello. Um, I'm Annie Brandon. I am currently in 12th grade. I started taking Thank you. I started taking business classes my sophomore year. I started with accounting um and then junior year I took entrepreneurship. These two classes pushed me to take a college program last summer um which helps me with college now and living on campus and all of that. And I'm very interested in entrepreneurship. Although I'm not doing that in college, I still really want to own my own business. And these classes have taught me how I could do that without needing a college degree, which is very helpful and saves me a lot of money. Um, on top

034of that, I am currently taking career and finance, which has teached me a lot about how to save my money for college and for after college and will be very helpful in the future when I do decide to own my own business. >> Thank you. >> All right. Uh, next, finally, our last part of the presentation is Ronin. Again, a senior um who's been with us for several years. um he is definitely more towards the uh business um kind of u business pathway through college. So Ronan, >> how's it going everybody? My name's Ronan Hunt. I'm a senior here at TZ and as you can see, I've taken a lot of the business courses here. Uh all of them except entrepreneurship. Uh I wish they had that offered that AP business course, but that's all

035right. Um I think the two courses that have really been the most impactful for me were career in finance and the accounting. um career in finance I took as a sophomore and it just gave me like a real basis of like being an adult like just learning about how really expensive like life is you know um I'm not I'm not too looking forward to that but uh >> just wait for your first paycheck >> and then half of it goes to taxes but um yeah no just like learning things you know on my 18th birthday I signed up to get a credit card like that was one of the first things I learning how important investing is. We did many of the like investment competitions and uh Mr. B is even >> say you meant

036to say open up a Roth IRA at 18, >> right? I'm just kidding. >> But uh Mr. B is actually the advisor and Jaywan's our president of the investment club that we started. Uh Jay, sorry. Um and that's just been really fun. you know, we do a lot of other like investment competitions just learning strategies and stuff and that's something that most people should use like throughout their whole life. Um, and then accounting with I had that with Mr. Flynn. Um, that like showed me like, hey, I might be actually want to do this as a career, you know. Um, I found it like I'm actually pretty good at this. Um, and yeah, that's what kind of what I want to do. I I think I could see myself becoming a CPA. Um, and without

037that class, you know, I wouldn't I'd probably think, you know, people like, "Oh, accounting's boring." But like, we did things. We know we played we played Monopoly, and you know, we went we tracked all our buying the properties, tracking the transactions, and that's what accounting is. It's just tracking the transactions and all that. Um, yeah, that's all I got. Yeah. Uh, sorry Mia couldn't make it. Uh, Claire just talked. Yep. So, uh, again, thank you for your time. Thank you for giving this opportunity for us to speak about our program. Um, I think that's it, right? Thanks everybody. Thanks. Thank you guys. >> Thanks. >> Wait, don't run out so fast. We might have some questions. >> Questions? Yeah. >> Yeah. comments, questions. >> First, I just want to thank you guys for coming. This

038is amazing. Um, you know, we had this vision for the financial literacy program, like Daryl said, many years ago, to to really build it out at the high school and now to see it come to fruition at the middle school and to hear directly from kids and and all of you, it's just wonderful. Um, how do we register for your class? I'm asking Dr. Corey like if we want to register for the >> Can we sign up in P school? >> Open and >> Oh, okay. Good. I'll just open it up to the board for questions, comments. >> Uh we just recently spoke about another state, Connecticut, that has a robust uh business program because of their state, I guess, >> laws. Um but it's it's it's great to see us ahead of the curve

039here in New York and I can only see something like this getting bigger >> and I'm glad you guys are at the helm. It seems like you're doing an amazing work. >> Thank you. And um you know, we're not we're giving kids the opportunity if they want to see themselves being in in charge. There's people that want to work under somebody and there's people that want to be the leaders and and you know create the jobs for others. So, uh there's a place for everyone and it's great to see that we're giving these kids this opportunities. >> Just a question though. Is there like a plan to um have some sort of like AI overlay into like this whole thing or like start to integrate it because it's becoming >> exponential growth rate of like

040all businesses using AI, developing their own agents, things like that? >> Yep. So, um that AP kickstart program I was talking to you about um they are developing first right right now I think it's cyber security but their next thing is stepping into AI. Um we also use um I know for some of my classes and we're kind of going all in next year um we have this license through Stu Kent um and that is using AI as well where we so it's kind of two parts one is I think from your question we will eventually bring in how students can either build out or use AI in their career but also using AI for us is giving them unique scenarios and situations um which we have through our our stucant license >> because now

041when like the private sector you essentially are like encouraged to use like an AI agent that's >> and then all of the agents within the corporation become like integrated into one sort of hide mind. So you really to succeed in business very soon you have to understand like how to do that. >> Yeah. I mean that's um I think Dr. Kulock brings this stat up a lot, but so my son's in fifth grade, right? And I think it's what if you're in fifth grade right now, certain percentage of jobs aren't availed yet, right? >> So we kind of we all have that mindset of understanding that type of power that students have right now. So everything that we do is making sure that things are open-ended and that we understand learning hard facts is yes

042good but unique scenarios in business and using the power of AI or some type of search engine is open-ended projects that we have >> soft skills >> yes >> and not obviously hardes are But teaching soft skills because no matter what career you go into as far as middle school and you know it's very limited as to what we can do for example, the mission statements and the logos. They have to write it and then I have a mission statement generator that they plug it into and then it helps them rewrite it and then I make them rewrite it a third time using what they wrote and the generator. Same thing with the logo. They design it, they have to sketch it, then they have to create it in the Google slide using um you

043know Google tools and then they're allowed to put it into the Canva image generator and it has to look something like original creation, but they're beginning to use those AI tools to do. >> Yeah, I think that would be like the for me is like the overarching thing probably across like the spectrum of the school would be instead of viewing as like AI as like an easy way to get out of like having to do your work, the people who will succeed are the ones that realize that AI can accelerate their own like thoughts. So like what is Annie's business? if it's stage set design and she can mi build her own AI agent that she can deliver to all the production companies in New York, she might be like the only person offering that

044service right now. >> So I Yeah. So I I can't I got accepted to but I'm not going to do it this summer. I'm doing it next summer. Um New York State offers a um >> I would be a it's called a teacher ambassador program. So it would be for an entire month. um they're going to hold my spot to next year because I can't do it this summer. But basically what I do is um New York State Labor Department and they are going to give me information to bring back to you guys about like what what's the next industry in New York State, right? What are the hot spots? Where do you want to go? And then that relates to our course in career and financial management where we take a look at the

045occupational outlook handbook and take a look at careers, right? So um if somebody wants to be a certain career, what's that growth look like in the next 10 years, right? What do you need to have? What skills do you need to have? I think that fits as well with this concept of AI and how we can kind of get out in front of it and understand what industries are growing and what industries are stagnant. >> Yeah, I think like districtwide, at least my my opinion as one individual would be like just how this financial literacy is awesome for the students. everyone's leaving the district competent with their own personal finances, which is great. I think we need to put in some place over the next two to three years like some sort of AI literacy.

046Not trying to get >> Yeah. >> You know, kids hear that be like, "God, they'll just do all my homework for me." Maybe, but that's not what we're trying to do. We want them to like be entering the workforce ahead of the students who are just learning AI for the first time, right? but >> not from the way have the AI do their work for them, but it says as a tool to accelerate their own capacity as a >> well, it's going to in in my view from what I've seen, it's going to be like reading, writing, arithmetic, you know, and and AI. If you it's going to be it's going to have to be part of a curriculum at some point because if you don't know how to use it, you're going to be

047behind. >> Yeah. And I'll just I'm sorry that was loud. I I'll just add there are certain classes and electives at the high school that are using AI with students and exactly what you described giving them specific scenarios so that not to use it as a crutch but to accelerate um their learning and what they're producing. So that is that is happening along with training um and Dr. Arietta and I just went to a tri-state spring conference. It was all about AI with all our component districts. So we're definitely um aware of it and pushing ahead. I just wanted to commend the teachers that are bringing these programs to the school and commend the students for, you know, trying out the course and taking a risk because it is something new. Um, but what I

048heard tonight was that we have some students that are pretty confident going into college, which will take them into the workforce later on, um, that they have explored a career that they think that they would be good at or that they're going to enjoy or to be your own boss. That's amazing. So, it's just truly inspiring to hear you guys speak. So, thank you for coming and um I just encourage the teachers to to continue bringing new programs and opportunities. So, thank you guys so much. >> Thanks everyone. >> Great. >> Oh, can I just add one more thing? I'm sorry, Dr. Corey, you may want to stay. >> Sorry. I just uh for the board report, um my son was on the DC trip. Um it is an absolutely incredible trip. They are going

049non-stop. >> Um we're getting reports and photographs from the chaperones. Um it was just way more than I expected. Um and the chaperones are volunteers which to me is absolutely incredible. Um he had the most incredible time. So thank you to Dr. Corey. Mr. Sher played a very big role in that. I'm not sure. Did he co-do that with somebody? >> Mr. Sullivan as well. Right. I was going through my emails to try to find the name. Um, but a number of chaperones. Um, so thank you so much because it really is incredible and the teachers continue to volunteer their time to go on this so that these uh kids can have that experience. So thank you so much. >> Thanks for sharing that Tracy. >> All right, so that brings us to our next

050presentation, our last presentation, which is going to be on transportation. And so I'm going to invite uh Miss Stevens, Mr. Brady, myself, Candace, everybody up and we will do our transportation presentation. All right. And then I'll read the rest of my report, however you want. All right. >> I just want to tell Juwan he could leave. Hang on. >> Good evening everyone. So, um, it is with great pleasure that I'm with our transportation committee and we're going to be presenting on K to2 transportation in South Orangetown. Um, I'll just begin by talking about the transportation committee. We have never had a transportation committee in this district and this actually came about through public commentary which uh you'll hear one of our parents talk about in a few minutes. And the question was just asked, do

051we have a transportation committee? And I said, no, actually we don't. We were on the phone and next thing you knew I said, well, we can create one. And that was at the beginning of the year. That was in October. And here we are at the end of May and we uncovered a lot more than we planned and we addressed a lot more than we thought. And I'm really happy to be able to present uh with all of them tonight. So you could see it's myself, uh, Mr. Brady, Miss Espanel, Miss Stevens, um, who's our assistant superintendent for business, assistant superintendent for technology, our transportation coordinator, and we had three parents, Candace Varian, Tara Canatori, and Amanda Leven. And I don't know that Amanda, she couldn't make it tonight, but she has been in every

052meeting with us and and um, very much wanted to be here. So, these are the times that we met. Um there's been a lot of work in between these meetings and what we did was we reviewed our uh South Orangetown Central School District transportation services. We looked at the history here. There were two transportation studies done over the past 15 years. We reviewed those. We looked at bus safety and expected behavior. We looked obviously at our transportation budget which you know is now over $7 million a year. I had to say that loud so that the microphone picked it up. $7 million a year we're spending on busing children to school. We also created a transportation survey that we put out because we really wanted to hear from parents if we were going to do

053anything with transportation um what could we possibly do to make it more efficient? What could we do to save money? What were parents um willing to do to help us out? Especially if they live close to some of our schools. So, we have some of that survey data and then just looking at um ways to make transportation more efficient. You heard last year our computer science kids presented on the way to Go app that they presented um at Project Invent in Manhattan. And so we've taken all that information um working with our current transportation vendor and we are implementing two applications for September, although it'll be probably a little bit later. Transfinder and Wayfinder. And with that, I will turn it over to Michelle Stevens, our director of transportation. >> Hi, good evening everybody. My

054name is Michelle Stevens. I've been the coordinator of school transportation here for six years. Um, we put together a little bit of a transportation overview to give everybody an idea of what we're currently providing here at the district level. We're currently providing transportation 928 miles a day for our own school district students and 77 miles a day for out of district students. That is spread out between three providers. student boss Peter Brega and Bosey's transportation handles our most vital students. Um they are primarily in Boseis placements but we do have some private placement students as well. This is our the a breakdown of how many students we have per building assigned to buses. Um, so our total is 2,489 of 2,900 approximately because we do have a non-eligibility zone at Tapen High School and those

055children are are not able to use our transportation services and we also have um students that are transported out of the district so they're not in account because this is in district. Um, so we have 12 big buses and four vans, one of which has a monitor on it for student behavior monitoring at William Schaefer and we're currently transporting 535 students. At Cottage Lane, we have 10 big buses and five vans. We also have one wheelchair van with a monitor um and they're transporting 624 students approximately. Um, middle school we have 13 big buses and five vans. We have do have one van with the monitor currently and we're also utilizing three late buses, one big one and two smaller ones to get students home in a timely fashion because four o'clock we want our

056middle schoolers home. Uh at the high school we have nine big buses and five vans. Um one of those vans is a wheelchair van with a monitor and we also we have two late buses at the high school level. It's utilized actually a little bit less once we get to high school. Um, this is my favorite part of the entire school year is steam camp. Every summer we're not sitting, you know, just routing for the next school year. We're currently actively transporting students. Um, every summer we transport about 140 students to steam camp. Um, we have an ENL summer enrichment program that we roughly about 13 students. Um, Rockland Bosey's Regional High School. That is where students can recover credits in high school so that they can graduate in time. Approximately 25 students per year

057utilize our shuttle. It's a van and it only goes between Tapenzy High School and the um the school that's hosting for the year. Uh, traditionally it's been at Fieldstone, but there has been other places utilized. Um, our summer literacy program, we transported approximately 80 students last year. And then our extended school year program is a full day program that goes out of district to different proposed programs and we currently are about 45 students per summer that are going to extended school year services. Field trips. Field trips are an important part of our curriculum. They really are. Uh our Piermont trips are especially I love watching the kids go down to the pier and experience our local biology, but they're expensive. We don't own our buses and our drivers are not our employees to delegate responsibility

058to. So we have to contract the the bus companies as a separate contract for field trips. Um this year to date there was 42 field trips for the high school, 13 for the middle school, 14 for College Lane, and 12 for William O'Hafer. And again our our field trips have to tie into the curriculum. So unless it's a um trip that's going to, you know, like the Boulders game or something like that. These trips are tied into our curriculum and are an important part of the curriculum, but the cost is continuing to rise on top of all of our inschool in district transportation. We're also providing transportation to this list of private schools. Every one of the private schools on this list is within 15 miles of a student on the bus route's home. It's

059not the center of the district. It's a child's home as it is currently written in the law right now. So, we have students ranging all the way from the uh opposite side of Westwood on the other side of Route 17 all the way over to uh we have children in Westchester. Um they run on their own schedule. We do um limit their access to transportation services um to what our schedules are. What our what our transportation schedule for our district is is the transportation schedule for private schools. The last bus out for our district is the last bus out for private schools. William Oo Schaefer has the most wonderful book about school bus expectations. And although it is written for the K through2 grade range, this is my favorite one that has ever been done

060because it discusses all of this, the safety expectations on a level that not just kids, parents understand. We've got a lot of information coming from school. This is a partnership. When we allow children to ride school buses, it's a partnership between the district and parents to set expectations to for the district and the bus contractors to provide a safe ride. And we're also asking for everybody to keep a commitment to being in communication about what's going on. Not just parents calling me, but we I communicate out all the time when there's something going on with the buses or if there's a delay. Communication is actually the number one most important thing when it comes to transportation. So back to bus safety and expectations. Um unfortunately but fortunately this committee um was implemented by Dr. lot

061due to uh my experience with my son the I want to say the second week of kindergarten where he was injured on the bus. Um I love this district. I love this community and um I wanted to know why that happened, how that could have happened and how we can do better. So I did ask Dr. Pula and thank you so much for implementing uh this committee and having me on it. So, um, as far as bus safety and expectations, the safety and well-being of our students is always a priority. Um, one of the, uh, major areas where safety, responsibility, and respect are essential is on the school bus. We request partnership from our families and reinforcing appropriate behavior on the bus. Students are expected to follow those rules and help create a respectful environment.

062We are committed to keeping the lines of communication open. Um it's important to remember that taking the bus is a privilege. Um it is not a right. So um back to what Michelle was saying, this is the William O'Hafer uh little book of rules. Um which thankfully uh Miss Beglin and uh Mr. Alvin distributed and went to the classrooms to discuss after the incident with my son. Um each year we work with the students to make sure they're aware of appropriate stuff and bus safe and bus behavior. Um at the beginning of the year the staff members ride along on the bus to help them teach safe and appropriate behaviors. Um, I know that there was several assemblies and classroom visits as well as bus visits throughout this year to remind the students of what

063is expected. Um, when notified of an issue, the principles um are responding immediately and there are daily check-ins with the students. I can say that um uh the principles at William O'Hifer did check in with my son um after that incident for quite some time and also there are safety drills three times during the school year. Um while we're discussing everything about this transportation committee and everything that we have done in a short period of time, um it's important to note that a lot of what we're doing is obviously um for the budget and um you know having to to meet all of the expectations that are required by the district. But also we are analyzing did send out the parent survey to see how we could save money. um and actually hire aids for

064the buses as it it is a continued problem even though we're having the assemblies and having the conversations. Um so thankfully Dr. to pull out a breeze and we hopefully that'll be the outcome of you know one of the many good things we do on the committee. Just briefly saying that regardless of what we do, one of the things at the end of the day number five, it doesn't really matter. You have a bus driver who's focusing on the road and we're asking a lot of aren't necessarily ready to ride in some cases for a very long period of time. It's just not real. Then we would look to some of that funding and matters. So, >> I just threw this slide in. So, Safe Roots to Schools is a club that existed at Tapenzy

065High School many years ago. Right now, it doesn't. We're looking to bring it back. I actually have an idea maybe even to uh expand this to the elementary school kids because I think they could probably help us a lot with this. But safe roots to schools is a New York State um initiative and it's all about creating safe routes to each school. So we have maps that were created by the students a couple years ago for each of our schools. So if you look at Tapenzee High School, what those students were able to do is from Tapenzee High School take a map and then work with us and the town to help uh enhance crosswalks, to build sidewalks, all that type of stuff. There has worked there there was work done um through this group

066over the past couple years and now we're looking to take it to the next level. So, we are looking to expand sidewalks from the rail trail to SS. We're hoping that that will get that project will get done before the start of school. I have met with the town about it. Um and we're also looking at the intersection at Western Highway and Erie. The town has plans to work on that intersection because, you know, it's not aligned well, build sidewalks out there, and we're looking at possibly establishing some walk zones around South Orangetown Middle School and Cottage Lane. Um, obviously making sure that it's safe for kids. But even just building this sidewalk from the rail trail to SS, coupling that with the summer project that we have for the upper ball field, we're going

067to be able to connect that sidewalk to a path that will come right across homes. and we believe it will enable a lot more kids to walk and bike to school. So that's the safe routes to school piece. Um and we have some Google images that we'll be sharing with the town and the highway department has also offered to help as well as the county legislature. >> Good evening. So as um we know New York transportation education law requires um that when school the school districts must provide transportation to students. These requirements are based on distance between a student's home and school. For students in grades K through eight, transportation must be provided when the student lives more than two miles from the school. And for grades 9 through 12, it must be provided when

068the student lives more than 3 miles from the school. So those are the mandated limits. Um it is important to note that these mileage thresholds represent the minimum obligations required by law. Transportation provided within these distances or under other conditions is not mandated and is subject to local decision making. So for K through 8 that would be if we provide less than 2 miles and greater than 15 miles that always requires voter authorization. And for grades 9 through 12 anything less than three miles and greater than 15 miles will require voter authorization. So, back to the budget while we wait for the votes to come in. Um, the district's transportation budget is largely driven by mandated services. So, this slide is dedicated to the required um to and from school transportation, particularly daily transportation to

069and from school. For the 2526 school year, the budget for contract transportation is 6.6 6 million and we project to spend 6.5 almost the 6.6 million. Um we project to be under budget by $108,644 at this point in time and the 2627 budget is 3% of the projected amount for this year at 6.7 million. And then I provided a little detail on the transportation cost. The average cost per school bus van, and this is taken across our vendors, our three main U providers, is approximately $95,000. Um, and then you have the different size of vehicles listed. We have up to a 72 passenger or larger, can range up to $112,000 currently and a daily average at a daily average of $610. Um, a 20 passenger van is a little less at 75,000 with a daily

070average of approximately $450. And then a 30 a little larger passenger van is approximately 90,000 at a daily rate of $57. Of course, we also contract for um suburban vehicles that can um meet the needs through the for our special needs students that may require a wheelchair or um onetoone aid to accompany them. The extended school year program is also mandated. 80% of that expense is reimbured through NISED and then 20% is um transferred to the F fund. It's a completely different fund for supporting 20% of that summer program. And then other transportation expenses include those ma non-mandated items which are um field trips, summer enrichment, and athletic trips. And there we have the average. I I looked at last year's actuals um that came in at those amounts stated 130,000 for field trips across

071all buildings, summer enrichments at approximately 18,000 and the athletic trips at $325,000. These expenditures are not required by law, but are essential to supporting a well-rounded student experience. Hello. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about um Transfinder. So, Transfinder is the platform that we use for our bus routing. Um they also do provide consulting services. Um so, we actually engaged them to see if we could realize some of those efficiencies that we've been talking about. Uh so, basically a breakdown on what they were going to look at is a walk to school analysis. uh taking a look at our current walk zones, um developing more efficient bus routes, right? So using and leveraging the the system itself to help find those efficiencies always with the intent that we want to shorten the amount

072of time that students are actually on the bus. Um and also the impact that it actually provides uh to the community. Um I remember one evening Dr. Kulot gave me a call. He was actually following on a bus and I don't know how many times you were stopping but you said it it it was just a constant stopping of the bus that was backing up so many cars behind him. Um and of course uh we heard a presentation from our students last year the the way to go app. They talked about the reason they were engaged in that initiative was actually to help reduce some of the environmental issues that are incumbent using buses that that run on diesel. So of course any efficiencies we can find certainly would lead to cost savings. So we

073looked at student wrership. Uh Michelle actually spent what two weeks working with our bosing our our busing vendors to take attendance uh of the number of students that were actually riding. So this is a snapshot. Um certainly this was in the spring. So um I think it it might be indicative of you know ridership during good weather. Um but one of the things that we would have to capture and one of the products that we're looking at will help us do that would be you know what's that writership all year long. So what you can see really quickly if you look at the last column it's the number of students not actually utilizing the buses. Right? So at the high school you can clearly see we have over half of our buses aren't being fully

074utilized. So, if you're looking at a a 60 72 seat bus, yeah, there there's 30 kids on it. Um, some days I I would expect that there's only a handful of kids. Um, we've seen buses pull up to the middle school and two or three kids come out of the bus. Um, as you get to the lower grades, obviously you see that decrease. That means more students are actually riding the bus. Um, but this gave us a good general overview to say, hey, you know what? what can we do to either increase the wrership or maybe look more efficiently at how many buses that we're actually currently using? So, one of the things that Transfinder and and their professional services group did was to look at those walk zones that I talked about. So, when

075we look at the high school, there is currently a 1.5 walk zone in existence now and that impacts about 212 students. If we increase that to a 1.75, excluding those hazardous roads, we could potentially drop a bus, but one of the things I'll talk about a little bit later is that it has to be paired with an elementary school. We're a two-tier busing uh program. So, in order to reap that savings, it would one would have to come from a secondary school and one from an elementary. If we did move up that 0.25 25 or quarter mile walk zone, it would impact an additional 100 students. So, what does that look like? In the red, you can see that's the current. And if we increased it by just a quarter of a mile, you could

076see where the outlying areas are. It's not a tremendous large lift. Um, but it is an increase obviously, right? Um, as I said, it would impact a hundred more students than currently are walking. Now, when you look at the middle school, we do not have a a walk zone currently. In order to reap a benefit of reducing a bus, we would have to increase it to a mile walk. Um, and that would only impact about 44 students. So when you take a look at the actual map, since we don't have one now, you can see this is the whole outline of what those walk zones would be. They're all relatively close to obviously the school itself. All right. Now, when we look at Cottage Lane, uh as I said, we had to re also look

077at the elementary schools to see a reduction. If we increase the walk zone to a half mile, so a half mile is roughly a 10-minute walk, right? If you do a 20-minute mile, um we could see that savings of one additional bus. And of course, when you look at it, this is sort of where that outline would currently be at this point. So, it just gives you a general geographic region of what areas that would be impacted by that. We didn't look at William O'Hafer because listen, we're we're not even thinking about changing any any walk zones at that point. But this really breaks it down. It's a summary of what we're talking about. We're a two-tier system, so we need to realize it at elementary and a secondary level. We have two options. It

078could be well, we have to do at least Cottage Lane since we weren't looking at Willie Mosha, but we have two options. It would be either the 3/4 of a mile at the middle school or increasing a quarter mile at the high school. Um, Cottage Lane itself wouldn't be able to realize a two bus reduction. So, this is the two possible scenarios and as Dr. Koulad said, this is not something that's happening overnight. Um, this is something that, you know, we wanted to take a first look at and say, hey, is there something behind this? There's still a whole lot of work that needs to go into this as we move forward. But we have two options. If we did Cottage Lane and SS the total number of students that would be impacted or 76.

079Um if we did Cottage Lane in the high school, it increases. It's about 132 students. So we looked at our sister districts in Rockland County and this is their current walk zones now. So Clarktown for K through 8 is 04. Um at the high school they do 1.4 4 miles. You have Nyak currently K8 is one mile and their secondary is 1.5 miles. So it's not we're looking at even less walk zones or distance than those other schools. What's really striking for me is Pearl River. So that's that's right next door. Um K5, they already have a a half mile walk zone. Six to seven, it's point8. when they jump up to eighth grade, it's actually two miles. So, we're not even entertaining moving that far along. And the high school is a three-mile walk

080zone. So, that's something that we found very interesting when we were actually pulling that information. So, on the bottom is is the potential things that we're looking at. Uh we have the we could keep the high school at the 1.5, do a 0.5, grades three through five at Cottage Lane, and then six through eight, maybe it's threequarters of a mile. with the other districts suffering in East Rampo have had universal transportation. Same thing with Nanuette. Um you have to think about the geographic regions. If you look at Nanuette, there's many major roads in those areas. So it's not a lot of safe walk areas. And then North Rockland, it varies between the schools. Some of the communities are tighter to their their buildings and some obviously face the same issues that we see at Nanu

081and the other two districts. So, we did do a community survey. Um, I want to tell you right now that this is preliminary information. It's really draft. We ended it on Friday. So, I have not had an opportunity to really do a deep dive, but I actually wanted to pull out some some highle things that I think would be prudent for us to talk about. So, we have 504 respondents, which I think is really good. Um, rarely do we see a parent survey hitting that high. Um there's a very strong satisfaction of our transportation services. Um you can see bus stop location 94% favorable on time 95% um pickup and drop off times seems to be good. So it seems to be very valued by our community but we wanted to you know be transparent

082and ask those questions about walk zone and safety right. Um, so here's here's the results. Um, when we asked would you be comfortable switching to a 0.5 walk mile walk zone, 88% said no. When we increased it to one mile, it's 94% and 1.5 was about the same. Um, the big thing that seemed to be tied to this is the feeling that, you know, it's not necessarily the the roads and sidewalks around us are safe and accessible. And you heard it there. There's many places that we don't have sidewalks. And that's one of the things Dr. Kulad has been working with the town on is saying where we could actually improve those sidewalks. If we made those improvements, it seems like it might be a 50/50 conversation to say, "Hey, is it worthwhile to save

083some money, uh, decrease the budget or actually reallocate it to bring additional bus monitors onto the buses?" So this is really just to start those conversations about what we need to be thinking about over this next year. So part of uh the project that we're looking at is increasing obviously our communication with our families. So we are looking at two products. Um there are enhancements to be added into our transfinder platform right now. The first one is stopfinder and it's really about communicating with families. Um, it will give parents real-time tracking. You'll get instant alerts if there's issues. It would allow for two-way communication with either the bus company or directly with our our bus department. Um, you'll see the live routes. You'll see where that bus is as it's transporting our students. Um, and

084it's multilingual accessible. The other piece of this, and this is really what ties it in together, is Wavefinder. And this is more on the operational end. Um, in essence, what we'd be looking to do are would be putting these readers on our buses and our students would actually have ID cards that would be scanned in as they got onto the bus. So, you would know when your child actually got onto the bus. Um, it also allows the bus driver to take attendance should your child not actually have a ID card. Um, it will give you live readership for us. So, we'll be able to track uh how many students are actually riding our buses at any given point. But it also helps with dynamic route optimization. So, should there be an issue with one of

085the roads, a water main break, um, it will help the bus drivers reroute. So, it's just like your Google maps in your car when you're actually doing your drive and it says, "Hey, rerouting." that could be done for our our uh bus drivers as well. So certainly maybe it's a new bus driver that's uh on the route. It will help provide them with the best route to get to where they need to go. >> It will also enable them to not stop at houses on the bus. They stop and then they realize signific on. So you would say my kids playing soccer for the next weeks right now. She's on the bus. >> So now if I tell the bus every Wednesday for that child. Sure. I mean, >> well, I would say this too.

086If we can track the amount that we're saving the bus company >> in negotiation with the bus company, I would hope that the next contract would be different. >> By the way, this all came about because of our students. >> Yeah. No, it's it's it was actually a tremendous initiative that they started. They're like, "Wow, yeah, you're on to something." >> Thought they were going to be on Shark. >> They're still working on it. Um, they're going to be doing a proof of concept as well, which actually does much of what what we're looking at here. Um, and I think the most important thing is it'll allow our transportation office to communicate real time. Um, instead of having to wait for that robocall to come out, they can easily push out a message to anybody

087that actually has the app. And that is our presentation. >> Thank you. My thought is about >> my thought is about the walkers. Um >> I I definitely think that walking is a good thing, but I I just wonder what is the current um conditions or I I don't know the the wording I want to use, but say a walker to the high school has a one and a half mile walk and it's a torrential downpour. What What do we do for a kid that's walking and is having a hard time because of weather? I don't know. I just it came to me talking all about this walking. I'm I'm not against walking if if that's something that you know >> I'm just >> I would like toss There's also people that are walking around

088this one walker that you know that live around this walker that so there may be a support system that those parents if they work early they can put into place to say hey on those days you help me out >> we all discussed with everybody a little bit earlier is the dynamic routing could potent could be the potential to make your transportation system anything you If we're finding 25% of the students are only riding the high school buses, but somebody in another building wants to start a program and there's no transportation. Well, we need we have a space or another school opens that we are required by law of transport to the transportation system going to be a moving a moving piece. But we really need to understand that the state has put a law

089in place that we are required to follow and that is to move towards the electric vehicle mandate. Um are they're traditionally called zones but they're actually noneligible. They're not ever asking and we are not ever asking your children to walk but one thing we have been working on that rule has been for years trying to get them is to give us the opportunity to walk. So the first part is we need the opportunity to walk >> and then we can look at is it feasible only allow them to walk or get a ride >> in those circumstances I mean it depends on the child what you're describing but if there's a child limited ability to walk to school >> no but I I think where my train of thought was going um is do we

090track the walkers and when they get to school like we track the accountability >> the the the buses I feel like the buses we have a bus driver we have you know seeing the students that get on and get off with walkers I would say that you know >> what what is our tracking system especially on days where we have inclement weather um where there's where I have concerns that you know of their safety >> I'm sure there students who walk to school now and they figure But is there a correlation between at the high school level like lateness and walkers? >> Is there a correlation between lateness and walkers? Like when you're when you get on the bus, you're doortodoor, right? So you walk right in the building and and according to the survey,

091our busing is on time. Um so they I mean they're just walking right in. What about those walkers? Is there any Have you seen any correlation between lateness and walkers or you really can't say right now? >> Or maybe that's something we want to have. school bus are taking them to school. But what I don't know is whether or not they have access to transportation. >> I think Leanne, what were you saying? Sorry. >> The back entrancees like Okay. And what time what time does the school day start? >> Oh, >> yeah. >> There is no difference. Okay. >> Can I ask a question? Do we have a cost idea of the apps or the programs that we use? cost >> implement. >> Was that literally invented here? >> They were actually a littlehead to

092be honest with you. They invented they invented their own program before we even discussed. >> Sure. crossing. >> Yeah. >> And we'd have to do additional crossing guards, right? To make sure if we're adding length. >> We're not adding just watching, >> we are not creating walk zones right now or um non-eligible zones whatsoever. We have uh as we showed on that slide, you could see well not that slide in South Orangetown K to8 there are no walk zones. We're not implementing walk zones. It would require a public vote. We just did all the research to show what it would look like if we implemented walk zones at 0.5.7 miles. It looks to me like cottage lane and zones would be the place to do that. We would also have to make sure the sidewalks

093are built out that we've expanded it. And then the hope is that people will opt to walk or bike and not want to get on a bus. >> That would be the case. We would have that's what I'm saying. Yeah, hypothetically if we do that then there would be additional >> um >> if we did that. Yes, we would definitely look to add crossing guards. When I was in the city as a principal and we had >> a square block radius, we had parent and grandparent volunteers that were out. So, I have a I have a long-term concept and plan for this. >> Um and if we do implement walk zones, we absolutely will have to add crossing guards. One other thing I do want to mention about the safe routes, we are putting a

094pedestrian crosswalk sign that is visible in front of Cottage Lane where that crosswalk is. So when you're driving over Eerie and you can't see it, that is happening very soon. Um and then we're also looking to um take care of the intersection over here right across from the rail trail where the the blvel belvelt um >> library >> by the library and the >> we also had speed bumps too. people do slow down before they get to the crossing guard. >> Well, I can't I can't put speed bumps on public roads, but >> maybe there >> um but we're looking at all that. So, by the time we get to a place where if we were asking the voters to come out and to and to implement a non-eligible zone for Cottage Lane or SS

095or quote unquote walk zones that we have everything in place so people are comfortable with it. >> Yeah. >> So, we're not there yet. Yeah. >> It's also part of the initiative from the state busing is to prove that we move towards less whether or not we ever do it. We still have to prove that we're moving forward and researching, >> you know, and I think the rail trail, you might have heard me say this, I know they have. The rail trail is really something that we could take advantage of over time because it goes all the way from Piermont to Spark. Does >> the town plow that? >> Um, >> yes and no. But again, if we if we got to that place, then we would put a protocol in place where we would

096have it cleared. So I do have a long-term vision where we would have a lot more kids accessing that rail trail to get to school to cottage Lane and SS. What method of transportation, whether that's biking, walking, or some other method remains to be seen, but >> I just want to make sure that every child >> definitely a more efficient way. Definitely a more efficient and more coste effective way to transport kids to school in my opinion than what we're doing right now. >> So I just have one more question. Sorry. Like do we offer the option if they are within the guidelines of transportation? Do we offer parents like an opt out like don't even route my child because >> we're that's one of the things we're looking at. That's why we did the

097survey. Technically speaking, you can't really opt out because we're required by law. But that is one of the things we're really looking at. Like if if you know that you drive your child every day, >> I tell you guys every year, >> but then you would be somebody that would say, "Don't put me on the route." And therefore, if you have a percentage, so more people would do that because the numbers, >> right? >> But again, a lot of parents aren't telling us like I had to tell transportation to stop coming to my house and I work here, >> right? That was a long time ago. >> But I think if people don't call her, I'd be like, "Michelle, could you please tell her?" I'm like, "She got her driver's license. Can you tell the

098guy to stop >> blocking traffic?" >> So, yes, we need more. We definitely need more of that. >> The bus is still >> I have one more question. >> I would just wait. I just wanted to wrap that and say like this was a great for a brand new committee spun up by um uh a parent, a concerned parent is like really that will have a tangible impact on the budget is is cool to see. And I think this was like a really good first step on a big budget line costing us 7 million bucks that probably is right for efficiencies and and safety. And this was like a really good first step. And no one's saying walk zone tomorrow or a speed bump here. It's going to take a long time to do that

099I think. But the trend at least we're now in pointing in the right direction of like let's get transportation efficient for everyone, safe for everyone and supporting the students probably better and probably the district at the same time. So that's that's that's what I took away from this. >> Even when we go to electric, if you can pair down the numbers now, It's all slow steps to a bigger a bigger goal. >> So, so I saw the three providers and I know that some districts do in-house busing and when I hear that we have to pair when I see that TAP and Z really is the the place where efficiency could be made from this data. Um does it have to be paired if we have a different provider for those buses? Then if we

100can if we can remove buses from Tap and Z. >> So yeah, the only way to remove a bus because we're on a two-tiered system is we'd have to remove it from one of the secondary schools and one of the elementary schools, which is why we were looking at the Cottage Lane and Middle School. We couldn't just take a bus from Tapenzy Elementary School because we still need it for William O'Hafer and Cottage Lane. It runs the later run. That's the challenge. Can we >> You pull one bus off the street, you'll save a h 100,000, but that bus services secondary and elementary. >> Well, we would have to find a bus that would only serve the second would only serve the elementary >> the way the Yes. potentially down the line. I'll let you

101speak to that. But the way the contract's written, >> yeah, for the contractor, right, that doesn't that's not very productive because they don't want >> down the line in the next contract. If we find the the efficiency the high school then we have to see if they can provide that or somebody else or even in house >> right cuz even for field trips they'll have like a minimum number of hours that you're calling them for so they want to secure the labor. >> Sure. >> You know sometimes the summer the summer months become a challenge as well. >> We had talked about buying one so we can at least do these trips. So we'll look at that. The other thing is the electric bus was now officially extended by New York. >> Y thank you

102to all the school districts that I advocated. >> I do want to say thank you for taking the time though. It was definitely informative. >> Thank you. >> All right. Do we have any PTA reports or not tonight? >> We don't have any results, right? No, not any any PTA. No PTA. No. Okay. >> Okay. And nobody signed up for public commentary tonight. So, um, >> we can move on to board discussion. Were there any committee reports to discuss tonight? >> Were there any committee reports to discuss tonight? I >> think I think we hand Yeah. between last week and and today I don't think there were any committee. All right. Um so policies for review and adoption we do have the second reading and adoption of policy 1500 use of facilities and regulation. Uh

103this policy was up for first read on February 10th. The second read and adoption on 32426. It was approved by the board but the motion was not made. Um so with that we need we then received feedback on the policy. So the policy committee reviewed again made some minor changes and so now we have it up for adoption. Um so are are we all set to adopt policy 1500? Any discussion? No. Okay. Motion to read and approve policy and regulation 1500 use of facilities. >> Motion. >> Thank you Katie. Do I have a second? >> Rob. >> Second. Yes. >> Thank you. All in favor? I >> thank you. All right. Um, so I have the motion to make any revisions to the agenda. Um, we're adding a board appointment for an election worker to

104the consent agenda. Y >> resolution to appoint election worker for annual district meeting be resolved that the board of of education hereby appoints the following individual to serve as an election inspector for the annual district meeting on Tuesday May 19th 2026 District 1 South Orangetown Middle School John Skellyy do I have a motion >> motion >> thank you do I have a second >> second thank Thank you, Katie. All in favor? >> I one. Okay. So, then I have motion to approve amending consent agenda categories 8 through 13. Do I have a motion? >> Thank you, Katie. >> Thank you, Tracy. All in favor? >> I everyone. >> All right. Um, no new business, right? We just have the election tonight. So, if we can take a recess at this point to wait for the

105election results. Um, and then we'll come back with some news. >> Exact. You want to go to exec? >> Oh. Uh, did >> to exec. >> Do you guys still >> Yeah. >> Let's do that. >> All right. We can finish this to executive session. So, we do have uh some thing to discuss in executive session. So, we're going to go to a short executive session um before we get the results for tonight. So, it's going to be the same thing that we were in before. Motion to adjurnn. >> You did the consent agenda and everything. >> Good. Great. >> Motion to adjourn to executive session um to discuss the employment history of particular individual. Do I have a motion? >> Motion. >> Thank you. I'll take Rob and second. Katie. >> All right. All

106in favor? I. >> All right. Thank you everyone. >> So, we won't be doing any business when we come back. So, thank you guys for being here. You don't have to stay unless you want to see us come back. I will definitely text you once we get the >> the results. You could wait for the ballots. You guys are good. All right. >> All right. And >> thank you so much for being here, everybody. And just for clarity, that motion was at 9:18 p.m. >> I wasn't talking. >> So, let me put that in here. So, just so you know, we did take it in executive session. I did make the motions. >> Um, >> okay. Are we good? All right. Um, so I'll just say we we had our executive session and we made

107a motion to adjourn the executive session at 9:35. Then we were on our break. Um, so now it is 10:10. So I do I need to make a motion to come back. Yeah. Right. I guess to a public meeting. Yes. >> Okay. So, let's do that motion to reconvene to a public meeting at 10:10 p.m. >> Make a motion. >> Second. >> Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Katie. All in favor? I >> All right. So, welcome back. And we have some results. So, annual district meeting, board of education, South Orangetown Central School District, Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Resolution declaring the results of the May 19th, 2026 annual school district meeting, budget vote, and election of board members. Whereas, the annual school district meeting was held on May 19th, 2026 to vote on the budget proposition

108number one for the 2026 2027 school year. Proposition number two, 2026, 2027, use of capital reserve funds. Proposition number three, 2026, 2027, funding the repair reserve and for the election of two members to the board of education. And whereas the inspectors of election have duly counted in canvas the votes on the budget proposition and election of two members of the board of education and have delivered to the district clerk signed statements of the canvas of the vote setting forth among other things the total number of persons who voted as shown on the printout of each voting machine and by the said inspector's records. the number of absentee ballot votes cast and the total number of votes cast which is attached hereto and made a part of this resolution. Therefore, be it resolved that the said

109board of education declares the results of the said canvas on the proposition for the 2026 2027 budget as follows. Votes in favor of budget proposition number one, 1498. Votes against budget proposition number one, 410. Votes in favor of capital reserve fund funds proposition number two, 1,411. Votes against capital reserve funds proposition number two, 515. Votes in favor of funding the repair reserve proposition number three, 1,535. votes against funding the repair reserve proposition number three 376 and be it further resolved that the said board of education declares the results of the canvas on the election of two members to the board of education as follows board seat incumbent Katie Graino votes in favor favor of Katie Graino 1348 votes in favor votes for others none board seat previously held by Diana Corbel. Votes in favor of

110Leanne Porrett, 132. Votes in favor of Denise Dejardens, 889. Votes in favor of others, none. And be it further resolved that the district clerk shall record the results of this vote upon the budget proposition and the election of two members to the board of education as hereby announced and declared. >> All right. So that's the results. Thank you everyone for coming tonight and listening. Thank you to our entire entire school community for coming out and voting and for passing our budget and propositions. We greatly appreciate it. >> Absolutely. Motion to adjourn the meeting at 10:13 p.m. >> Thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Katie. All in favor? >> I. All right, everyone. Have a good night. >> Have a good night. >> Good night, everyone. >> All right. Congratulations.