001Thank you. Welcome back to the uh March 18th, 2025 meeting of the Hop Union Free School District Board of Education. Kindly 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. Thank you. Number uh four on the agenda is the superintendent update. Dr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Bar. I do have a couple of student updates before I share. Just want to say thank you to uh first of all members of cabinet who joined me yesterday in in visiting the buildings uh the teachers the principles um you know we've we've made it this kind of ritual of of visiting on St. Patrick's Day and having some
002fun with the kids uh and everybody seems to kind of join in on that energy. So, thank you to this group who always uh dress up and get get along with the program and and uh of course the the teachers and principles and students most of all. There's videos out there and we had a great time with the kids. Uh so, thank you. Um next is some individual student news. Uh just tremendous. So, uh Reagan Henselder has been accepted to the the United States Air Force Academy. uh extraordinary achievement. Uh admissions to the academy require a congressional or senatorial nomination as many of you may know. Uh and Reagan received both. Uh out of 11,000 applications nationwide, only a thousand students were selected for the incoming freshman class. Obviously a testament to her uh dedication,
003leadership, and commitment. So congratulations to Reagan. Next, congratulations to Noah uh Noah Hutsler. He he recently earned all state honors uh for his performance in both the 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay at the New York State Swimming and Diving Championship. Uh Noah, congratulations also to Smithtown Hop Hawk Bulls. They won the 2025 ice hockey state championships and are headed to nationals which is in California. Uh so congratulations to that team. Also on Sunday, March 2nd, our middle school science Olympiad team uh this a couple weeks back competed in the Eastern Long Island Regional Competition placing 16th overall. Two members of our team, Prrenav Ramkumar and Jackson Schwarz earned fifth place in entomology. Congratulations to those students. And then finally, um, just want to recognize, uh, a middle school student, Natalie Green, uh, from
004February 7th to March 7th, uh, organized and ran a community food drive to combat food insecurity among her peers, uh, using social media, handing out flyers. She also partnered with the, uh, Hop chapter of the Smithtown Children's Foundation. uh clearly motivated the community and and uh to donate a moving truck's worth of goods. So, congratulations to Natalie. Thank you, Mr. Borch. Thank you. 5C uh 5P on the agenda rather is presentations. Uh we have our 2025 2026 school budget by Bridget Sienna, our assistant superintendent for business and operations. Okay, so tonight's focus is on the revenue budgets. So this is a slide from March 4th presentation. This is just the percent of budget that each of these revenue lines are. The tax levy for half is the largest source of revenue for the district at
00573% of the revenue budget. Um this is just we'll go slide by slide after this in detail on each of these. State aid is next at 15% pilots or payments of those taxes. 5% other includes um building rentals interest for banking and some other uh points there. And then historically hot has utilized reserves and fund balance totaling 4% between the two of a total budget of 138 390 328. Districts have to present a budget that is balanced. So revenues and expenditures have to total and meet and match which they do. So looking at the large source of revenue for hot, this is the tax levy limit calculation. You start with the prior year's number. You multiply it by the taxbased growth factor. That number comes in from the office of real property services. You add
006in your prior year pilots. You subtract your prior year exemption, which is the capital levy. Capital levy includes your debt service, your building aid, and capital work. you um multiply that by your allowable levy growth factor. That number comes in from the state controllers's office. You subtract your projected pilots um projected pilots point on that is that anybody on the tax role that is looking to come off and no longer receive an exemption by March 31st has to file paperwork to either town of town or the county. Uh so between March 15th and March 31st is when we'll receive our final estimate for what we will receive in pilots for 2526. Uh as we have that information and as that information is revised you'll see more than likely a change between this presentation and the
007next one. After that you get your tax levy limit for exclusions and then you add in your capital levy share. As I said, that's debt service, that's building aid, and then a gap to your grand total tax levy limit of 133083 or a levy to levy increase of 3.77 as it currently stands. The next largest source of uh revenue is state aid. There's a lot of data that goes into state aid be foundation aid or or other. Some state aid categories are expense driven, others are enrollment driven. The largest source is foundation aid and then universal prek is a part of the total uh but we back that up because it's a different revenue source. So the revenue plan as far as the aid is 20.7 million. This is a snapshot time based on the
008October 15th um little snippet that becomes the governor's initial proposal on or about April 1st. will see the next proposal and final proposal um for any shift between the October 15th database and April 1st for other so interest banking between co times and now we've seen interest rates at roughly about 5% so that means more revenue in for the district tuition and health services so other districts is 350 there building rentals for this building and uh the high school and some other uh places as well and then miscellane miscellaneous is self- insurance recoveries um Medicaid e- rate reimbursement and refund of prior year bosses. So the two final uh points of revenues for hot we use our fund balance and our reserves. We've historically utilized Eblar. Um this helps us meet financial obligations for people
009that retire per their collective bargaining agreement via HTA or HIASA and then the employees retirement system. These two have historically been used for about a decade, possibly a little bit longer than that. And it just really helps to maintain a stable tax levy and helps to offset the burden to the taxpayer. Uh why is fund balance overall important? It's important because it's a measure of the school district's financial condition. Uh it improves your credit rating. Um and then ultimately, as I said, um appropriated fund balances is applied to the following year's budget, which lowers the tax levy. So going forward from this date, April 1st is the next um presentation. The focus on that night will be curriculum, curriculum and instruction, technology, health and safety. Um April 22nd is the budget adoption. May 13th is
010the budget hearing. And then May 20th is the annual budget vote and school election. And that's all I have. Thank you. Questions from the board concerning the budget presentation. questions from the community concerning budget presentation. Okay, thank you. [Music] S 5C1 on the agenda is uh the minutes adoption of minutes from the special meeting of February 25th, 2025. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Mr. Scaro, Mr. Buscarino with a second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Extensions. Motion passes 02. Mr. Baret and Mr. Michaels abstaining. Minutes for the budget community meeting of the board of education of March 4th, 2025. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Mr. Scrio. Do I have a second? Thank you, Mr. Buscino. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed abstensions 402 Mr. Baret and Mr. Michaels abstaining
011number six on the agenda questions and comments from the community concerning uh tonight's agenda only. Seven is the consent agenda. Are there any items that members would like to have removed from the consent agenda? Mr. [Music] Scrio would be um 7.3 Mr. Bar D12 and 3 please. 7.3D12 and 3. Any other items that members would like to have removed? With that, I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda minus 7.3D 1 through 3. I'll make the motion. Mr. Scrio seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6 calling 7.3D 1 through3. I'll make a motion. Mr. Scrio seconds. Any discussion? Mr. Scredo want to once again reach out and thank uh number one was a scholarship donation from the Suffach County Chapter of the New York State School Facilities Association for $1,500. Got another nice
012donation from Roseanne Estes. I hope I'm not that name. $1,500. Another donation to the New York Institute of Technology. We really appreciate that. Helps out all our students. So, thank you so much. Absolutely. Great. If I could just add uh that first one uh John Merrick uh came to meet with me for that $1,500 from school facilities. So um I I thanked him as we all know that name John worked in the district for years. So uh it was very nice of him to reach out and pick Hop uh for that donation. Really appreciate donations helped tremendously. Thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes the consent agenda. Uh number nine on the agenda is a you are correct. Thank you. I will call the vote on 7.3D 1 through3. All those in favor. Thank
013you. 6. Thank you, Michael. Number nine on the agenda is a uh legal notice. [Music] Um, and it's calls for the board of education to approve uh the notice is as uh stated in the minutes as recommended by the superintendent. I'll make the motion. Do I have a second? Thank you, Mr. Scrio. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6. Number 11, uh, discussion items. There are aren't on tonight. Number 12 is new business. Do any board members have new business? Mr. Scoro, I just want to thank um the arts and the my wife and I sort of mama and fantastic job. Um, it was nice to actually see some students, Dr. I graduated, they came back to help setting up and stuff like that. So, that was quite impressive. Um, and it's nice that we
014put on such a good thing. One thing I'd like to talk to Mr. Bar about, um, we have such a great facility that we should look into offering to, you know, seniors in our neighborhoods and stuff like that. Somehow we should be able to get them in. You know, we have a beautiful thing that we need to use it and I think the students are appreciative. Maybe that's something we can look into. Sounds good. We have market we're doing there. And then I had a pleasure working with Mr. B. We did a bowlon at the Forest Park Elementary. Another great success. That was fantastic. Kids seem to have a lot of fun. Dr. Murphy, since you were wearing your kilt the other day and you were thinking of gold and you know, you have that
015Irish luck. I'd like to make a motion tonight. You know, I took a look at the the levies and stuff like that. I'm going to challenge you to we got to find money now to ship down when I look at the newspaper. Anything we can do. We do have seniors out there and some people are struggling with the taxes. So, understood. If you need help on that, I'm more than I'll step up hours. I got to do so. I'm willing to wear a kilt as well. I'll wear a kilt. But if they pay me, yes, and then we'll put in money. Who Who's a better bowler? Me and Mike were just selling. Mike Wait, the rails go up. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Any other new any other new business or board members? Uh
016any new business from administration? No questions or comments from the community concerning anything related to the district whatsoever? With that, I will uh take a motion for an adjournment. Uh our next meeting is uh April 1, 2025. We have no executive session tonight as we finished our business earlier. I'll make a motion for the adjournment. Mr. Scrio seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? 6. We are adjourned. God bless Hopog and God bless the United States. Thank you. Good night everybody. Thank you.