001Welcome back to the April 21st, 2026 meeting of the Hauppauge Union Free School District Board of Education. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Number four on the agenda are our our updates. Superintendent's update, Dr. Murphy. [clears throat] Thank you, Mr. Barche. Good evening, everybody. Just a few updates from around the district. Uh first, as we hopefully move into full swing of spring, uh hopefully the weather will cooperate. Our school buildings are hosting a number of concerts and art shows over the coming weeks. Uh truly a packed calendar, so we hope that uh everybody can come out and stop by and
002enjoy the incredible talents and creativity of our students. Uh so, please look on our district calendar and our building calendars for information there. Uh last week, our middle school, this is uh uh this the second year in a row at the middle school, our annual international night. Uh I was able to stop by there for this event. It was truly incredible. Brought together students and families, uh staff to celebrate the many different cultures within our community. Uh thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to that night. Uh we had a lot of happy kids and a lot of happy bellies, mine included. There was a lot of food there that night from from all throughout the district. People made made different dishes and brought them in and some of it was catered and it
003was just uh a great night. Um so, that was Dr. Bilsky and Mrs. O'Connor who took the lead there. Yes, happy belly, Mr. Barche. Uh at the high school, IB and AP testing will be taking place in the weeks ahead. Uh those uh those dates are advertised by Mr. Whitehorse and [snorts] uh and sent out through the classrooms as well through our teachers. Uh so, families are encouraged, again, to review the testing schedule. It's also on the high high school website. Uh and just to make sure that our students come well prepared. We're very proud of our results. And our students uh always show up for for testing game day uh ready. So, this year we hope the same will happen. Confident it will. Uh for our incoming kindergarten families, uh screenings begin in May.
004Uh if you have not yet registered your child, please be sure to do so as soon as possible. Uh and we're also on the on the other side of the spectrum, we're looking forward to uh tomorrow night. Uh Mr. Tasmin takes the lead on our annual uh senior citizen dinner, uh which is held at the high school. Um meatballs and spaghetti as as usual. penne Oh, wow, it's a big twist this year. Uh so, uh are we expecting a good crowd? Over 200. Wow. Incredible. Um I think that that uh the the mailing uh program worked well, even though I I received a lot of I think I mentioned this last time, uh questions from people who received it who may not qualify as seniors wondering why they received it, but we wanted to make
005sure everyone got the message. That's fantastic. That's tomorrow night. Uh there'll also be entertainment. We always uh uh this is arranged through Dr. Landor. Uh so, while our seniors are having meatballs and penne, uh they'll be entertained by our musical students, our musical scholars, our students at the high school. Lastly, uh next week is our third annual uh Wounded Warrior Cornhole Tournament where we go up against West Islip. Uh all funds raised are uh sent to the Wounded Warrior Project. Um just to get an acknowledgement, there's so many great things that this Board of Ed, you know, endorses, supports throughout the year. We we had uh our students uh go to the city this year, courtesy of the Gary Sinise Foundation, uh to visit the 9/11 Memorial. We have our Hometown Heroes uh interviews and
006throughout the year, our parade our our uh parades are coming up, so um this is just another effort um on you know, it's not official district uh business, but it's something that I'm proud of we do with another school district who also uh is all in on this and and uh we learned this year that the Wounded Warrior Foundation is going to match all of the funds we raised. So, this is fantastic news. Last year we raised $10,000. Um so, we we hope to surpass that this year. And as we always say, we are the two-time winners. Last year, the top three teams were all from Hauppauge. I rub that into Paul Romanelli, the superintendent over at West Islip, all the time, and we hope to retain the title. So, uh so, yeah, so that's
007coming next week. Thank you. With that, I will hand it off to my friends to the left here. Thank you. Uh the junior prom was a grand success with no incidents of misconduct. Students were able to have able to have a fun night while following the mentioned guidelines. Any students who reported enjoying the night at Adelphi and are all already anxiously awaiting senior prom. Similarly, the junior class trip the next day is met with similar sentiments. Um Despite the heat and bus ride incidents, we're still able to enjoy everything that the city has to offer. Keeping the prom info going, the senior class has announced that their prom will be held on June 24th at Land's End in Sayville. Aside from that, they're preparing for the end with many fun surprises and events planned. That's
008all from us. Thank you. Really not much. Thank you. Five B on the agenda are presentations. Um Our 2026-2027 school budget by Dr. Donald B. Murphy, superintendent. Thank you, Mr. Barche. I ask the board to uh just look at well, in case of our agenda behind you there. Uh this is our fourth presentation. Um And tonight is budget adoption. Uh I want to thank uh everyone who's helped uh to put together a great budget for the following year. Um so, tonight is the the end of the presentation uh cycle. So, I will go through this. Um I again always like to focus on one of our core values. We have our Eagles core values that the board has adopted. I think tonight I'll just look at excellence. Uh we tried to put together a budget
009that helps us to recognize the excellence of all of our students. Um and I and I think we've achieved that, so I'm I'm just always proud of the work that goes into this and and uh I thank uh our teachers, administrators, everybody who kind of has a voice in helping us here, PTA, of course, the Board of Ed. Uh just big picture overview, which I've uh shared in previous presentations. Um I I'm proud to say that that we continue to offer just a comprehensive educational program. Uh our our class sizes, our course offerings, our support for I you know, technology in the in the classroom, and our uh and our security initiatives. Again, just talking about this today. Um the balance between uh keeping a safe and secure environment and uh having our kids have
010that kind of magic that we all felt as kids walking into their buildings, I think is uh a a great effort that's pulled off and and I really appreciate the effort of our security team who helps to make that happen. Um We also continue our partnership with Northwell and our student mental health programs, our college awareness, um gosh, our college trips. Uh the pictures that we receive, sometimes I I get them while they're on the bus or or at one of the campuses. It's just a lot of smiling faces and and kids who are having those moments where it crystallizes, you know, this is where I want to go to school or this kind of school, or maybe this is the type of school I I don't want to go to, right? So, the board's
011been supporting that for years and will continue to do so. Um universal pre-K, we're we're in the mix on on that right now for next year. And uh again, we've been fortunate to be able to offer pre-K to every Hauppauge student, uh really parent who's looking for that for their child. Our standardized tests, as I just mentioned, IB AP, taking that barrier away and funding it through the budget uh has been uh so well received by our our parents and our students and continues to just be an opportunity uh for our kids. Uh course advanced courses, uh some of those with with college credit attached to them. Uh we continue to look for opportunities for those partnerships with local universities. We have a number of students who who take advantage of our BOCES partnership. Uh
012you know, whether they're going for HVAC or auto science or veterinary science, uh we that that number continues to grow. Our students who are pursuing careers uh or at least exploring a passion early in their in their lives that they may pursue later. Last thing is we have some funds in our capital code for next year for district-wide classroom improvements on instructional spaces. Big picture again, this slide has been shared a number of times. Our budget to budget numbers 2.87% with the tax levy at 3.72%. Our state aid number could change slightly, but as of today the Albany is still spinning their wheels to get a budget done. So we every district is waiting on that news, but we lock in a budget with what we know to be true. A breakdown, this is not
013much different year to year in terms of the different pie slices of a budget. The top three all related to basically employee employees and costs associated. And then the rest of it, utilities and buildings and grounds, transportation, etc. Those Those may move a percent or a half a percent from year to year depending on different changes. That service, security, technology, etc. Obviously all together it has to add up to the total, you know, match revenue and expenses for the budget for next year. There'll also be some propositions on the on the agenda for voters to consider. Prop two is the establishment of a new cap reserve which is very comprehensive cap reserve which will open up opportunities for us to to make decisions over the years to fill in gaps in our district where we
014see need for improvement. The other propositions are related to existing cap reserves. Again, these are monies that are already put so there's no taxpayer impact. Prop three is about district asphalt repair or HVAC or roof replacement, window replacement. So we have ideas for that money. And then prop four is targeted for the high school locker rooms and gym bathrooms. Again, just of note the pool locker rooms are being redone as part of the bond work. In terms of remaining dates, we have our budget hearing on May 12th and then the actual vote on May 19th. Again, I just like to remind everybody that the the doors close here at Wibble Wobble at 9:00 p.m. on May 19th. That is all. Any questions or comments from the board concerning the presentation, Mr. Scredo? Dr. Murphy and
015Crystal, thank you so much. I mean, it's amazing all the things that the school district is doing and improvements as well as keeping some stuff that our other schools unfortunately are dropping. Can you go over any of the highlights here as far as conserving money as far as or also having some savings, please? Sure. So we're going to have less staff members next year. I'll just focus on our retirements for a minute. Um we have 14 HTA members. We're through attrition we will have we will be down three and change. I say and change because we sometimes have point two overages in different in different situations. Our approach is to try to save money and do it in a in a way that makes sense for us when we have retirements if possible. So it's
016never easy because the truth is when you have a retirement that individual was in a a role and was valued. So it's a lot of coordination and work from the admin team, Mr. Tasman, Tim, Rebecca, principals, directors will get together to move those, you know, chess pieces around. I will tell you Rob that um this year I think more than ever I've been sending messages to the admin team about you know, being pragmatic with our spending and and being really thoughtful about every purchase, particularly as we're ending the year. And and just being proactive in looking ahead. So as as as I'm helping out and supporting the business office, using different forecasting tools and and looking at our reports from our auditors, internal and external. The different partners we have to support us to make
017sure that we're seeing things, patterns and trends before they materialize. That's where my mind is at all the time is I don't want to be in a position where we're faced with you know, severe cuts or decisions. And I think the way to do that is to be proactive and to constantly look at our our budget as as a family would do at home, but obviously at a much larger level. Thank you, Dr. I just wanted to thank you because I read the papers Bellport, Greenport, all these other school districts in Port Jervis financially in trouble here now. I'm just proud to be a board member as well as a community member knowing that our team and you're ahead of our team doing a good job. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Appreciate it. Any
018other questions or comments from the board? Any questions or comments from the community concerning the budget presentation? Concerning the budget presentation? Yes. I just want to follow up. And again, I appreciate your efforts, Dr. Murphy efficiency in keeping costs low for our taxpayers. Just had a question on the on the other Why is there such a huge Why is there such a large increase other which is banking, building rentals, CPSE excess cost. It shows a 12.4% So there is a a a big part of that is a transfer from from debt service that was possible this year. So it's when we have leftover revenue in a in an account that was borrowed, that amount can be applied there. There's also some some some good interest news that happened there. I could I could get a
019complete breakdown of the on that delta, but I think the and where it says CPSE that's refunds from our that we get back for the prior year for CPSE excess cost, but I think the bulk of that is from a some excess debt that became available to us as a revenue source. So it's a it's it borrowed money that is is no longer being applied. No, it's a revenue. Yes. So so it's money that is available to us from previously, you know, previously borrowed a previous borrowing that is now available to us to move into the general fund. Okay. Thanks. Any further questions or comments from anyone concerning the budget presentation? Five C on the agenda, adoption of minutes from the board meeting of March 31st, 2026. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Mr.
020Scredo. Do I have a second? Thank you, Dr. Krappa. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Abstentions? 402. Mr. Barshay and Mr. Mike abstain. Number six on the agenda are questions and comments from the community concerning tonight's agenda only. Questions and comments on tonight's agenda only. Do any members have items they'd like to have removed from consent agenda? Seeing that, I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda in whole. I'll make the motion. Mr. Scredo seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6-0. Number nine is the budget adoption. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Mr. Scredo. Dr. Krappa with the second. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6-0. Number 10 on the agenda is the school school property tax report card. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Mr. Scredo. Mr. Barshay with
021the second. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6-0. We have no discussion matters this evening. New business. Do any board members have new business? Does administration have new business? Just one comment. I wanted to thank the board for approving the executive agenda. One of the items was a donation from New Beginnings Preschool. They're they're putting a little play set out in the yard there for as a donation to the district for the little ones who I see out my window to use. So thank you to New Beginnings. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Any other new business? Questions or comments from the community concerning anything related to the district whatsoever? With that, I'll take a motion uh for an adjournment. There will be no executive session tonight as we completed all our business earlier. Uh,
022I'll make a motion for the adjournment. Mr. Scerrito seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6-0. Our next meeting is May 12th, uh 2026, which is a business meeting and also the hearing uh on the budget. We are uh adjourned. God bless Hauppauge and God bless the United States of America. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.