001good evening welcome to yorktown central school district board of education meeting for march 14 2022. can i have a motionwood executive session to discuss tenure and matter specific to the employment history of particular individuals and contract negotiations so move second all those in favor aye opposed thank you can i have a motion to go back into public session someone second all those in favor aye aye opposed good evening everybody thank you for your patience welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for march 14 2022. could please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence for our armed forces and those in our community who have lost loved ones especially for the brother of steve atiri i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america
002and to the republic for which it as a nation under god prison and justice for all thank you everybody again for your patience we had a long meeting before going to start with our first public comment which is on the gender related items only and judas stevens hi good evening first of all thank you for the public comment section we always appreciate that and thank you for all your work as always appreciate that as well um i am here for this uh session to talk about the uh regulation 1420r i want to thank you for tightening it up and clarifying it it's good to see specific timelines attached to the steps for reviewing the challenged books given how long the current review is taken so far and that we don't have any resolution yet i
003think it's very important to impose deadlines on the process going forward what i don't see that i would like to see as a conduit for information to the school families and to our community i appreciate that there's a page on the district website for the book review committee but it's sparse to say the least and hasn't been updated in quite some time there's no timeline listed no steps taken no list of members of the committee or even an expected date for the conclusion of the review this gives the appearance of the entire process going into a black hole i know that's not the case but from the outside looking in it's hard to hard to tell sunshine is the best disinfectant please keep all of us updated on the process itself and not just on
004the outcome thank you so much thank you we're going to move on to the superintendent's report okay good evening everyone welcome so i have a few items to update the board and our community on prior to our last installment of our presentation on on budget which will be delivered by our several members of our central administration team that presentation will be on instruction general education public personnel services and technology so prior to that i just want to give a quick word of recognition and acknowledgement a quick shout out to the students who participated in this weekend's production of fiddler on the roof for those who attended and i saw many families attended all three performances it was absolutely dynamite if you haven't had the opportunity to see fiddler yet i'm sorry um it was terrific
005and what i would tell you is there there is a dvd that will be available for sale part of the copyright restrictions that we have did not allow us to live stream the performances but our students were nothing short of spectacular and and kudos to mrs stock in preparing the students to the pit that was performing right there i can see it now that was a high quality presentation i've been attending these things over the last 20 years and i don't think i've ever seen a high school production that good so that is dynamite and and i'm just so proud of our students it's a long show it's it's about three hours or so so part of the consideration in not canceling saturday night's performance is that our graduating seniors have not been on stage
006for a spring performance since their freshman year so the show must go on fortunately we had an o m staff who were very willing to come in and then make sure that the grounds were safe and cleared of the snow and i'm so grateful to our opera and i'll come back to our o m staff in a moment but scheduling two three hour performances in the same day is probably not ideal for our students it's not ideal for our families so the show went on it was a great show i'm so proud of our students i'm proud of mrs stock and as i wrote in my letter to the students i wrote a letter today to each student in the production the future of our performing arts programs very bright here in yorktown so congratulations
007to all of the members of fiddler on the roof whether you were on stage back in the tech crew in the pit or in the wings assisting in the production everyone did extraordinary with just a few other updates from the weekend you know the weather wasn't so cooperative on saturday we it was a rough weather day i just want to shout out our operations and maintenance staff our facilities department was extraordinary we had the sat here i believe just about every school district in the region cancelled tests that day yorktown did not we were able to keep the tests on not disrupt the schedule we had about 200 children come here to take a test and those children who were registered it was very important to them that they take the test at the schedule
008time so that they could have the results in time before the deadline closes to register for the next test so it was important for the students who registered and i'm glad we were able to make that happen and we were only able to make that happen because of an outstanding operations and maintenance department they were here clearing snow so that the children taking the sat and their parents can leave safely and then they were here preparing the campus for the arrival of hundreds of people for the performance of fiddler on the roof and they were back here on sunday for fiddler on the roof and for state playoff basketball games they parked thousands of cars this weekend now those costs i do want to reiterate are covered by the section so they're they were reimbursed
009for anything related to the basketball hosting and i'll come back to that those are all covered costs with with regard to our o m staff thank you thank you thank you i just there are no words to thank them for how selfless they were and then moving forward we also hosted skate basketball games here four of them it was a terrific day for athletics it was a terrific day for our community our gym was the centerpiece of it all throughout the entire process we are no county center we're not the county center it's a different venue and we recognize that but yorktown stepped up to make sure that children across the region had the opportunity to participate for a championship and participate in the sport that they love and we're proud to have done that
010and thanks to athletic director rob barrett for all of his work all of the game supervisors who just gave of their saturdays and sundays to be here to support the effort our o m staff again dennis for boys for his leadership and his logistical planning jen forsberg for coordinating with the yorktown police department to make sure that the security presence was was here and and could be enforced with regard to sports spring sports start today this is one of my favorite days of the school year when spring sports start the excitement in the air the energy in the air on this campus where you have a softball team that's out practicing and a baseball team that's out and the lacrosse team that's out and both boys and girls and the tennis team is up and
011running and golf gets going it's just such an exciting time of the school year for us so we see the netting going up around the fields and the tarps coming off the fields so it's quite exciting to be at this point and it's hard to imagine that we are already at this point where we're beginning spring sports just a couple of other items transitioning away from now spring sports and some of the wonderful things that our students are doing i do want to share that our science olympiad team at the middle school is going to the state championship which is dynamite we're so proud of our students at the middle school second year in a row they're in the state competition in just a couple short weeks our robotics team will be competing and i
012visited with them last week and they have designed a robot that can collect a ball and then throw a ball a pretty far distance so it is just phenomenal what our students have been able to design their creativity and and innovation coming out of the robotics team we i talked about our facility and i talked about our gymnasium and that is purely a function of the capital reserve fund that the board had the foresight to create in 2017 and that is something that originally the original term was a 12 million dollar reserve fund over a 10-year period and there were so many benefits to that approach saving the costs on interest saving costs on bond council saving costs in so many other areas and it allowed us the opportunity to really enhance our facilities that
013we've exhausted those monies that we can put in the maximum amount that we can deposit into the account and so the fiscal advisory committee of the board has been meeting to discuss alternatives and options and next steps moving forward now that um we've reached the maximum amount that the fund can do for us that we can invest in the fund so mr manyani shall i turn it over to you to speak briefly sure thanks dr hannah so as um dr howard mentioned and and was presented at our last board meeting um five years ago we approached the community with a proposition to establish a capital reserve fund uh at the time it was to run for no more than 10 years and be funded with no more than 12 million dollars we were fortunate enough
014to be able to fully fund the reserve within the first couple of years and as mentioned we've actually spent um all of that money on various upgrades to our facilities um and had done done so very successfully we were able to accomplish a lot of projects for that amount of money and it uh deferred or saved us a ton of money on um bonding everything in light of that the fiscal advisory committee met and reviewed what our options are going forward and what we'd like to propose to the board tonight is to reconstitute that essentially extend that reserve another 10 years and give the board the ability to populate it with up to another 12 million dollars we have a list of projects that you know could be done and should be done and this
015would provide us with a very effective way to accomplish that it also will help us as we uh move forward with our bond maturation schedule that we have coming we have bonds that are coming off of our schedule in the next several years so that may allow us money to populate the fund with again last time we were able to use roughly four million three million dollars a year over a four-year period and we got a lot accomplished for that so simply laying it out to the board if we want to put a proposition on the ballot in may we need to decide that uh soon and we would like to recommend that we look at again just extending the current period for another 10 years and giving the board the ability to fund up
016to 12 million dollars over that time frame just to reiterate the board decides each year whether we have the ability to put any funds away and all of the projects require voter approval to remove the money and do the projects so it's a it's a nice way to get feedback from the community on what they view as important we put out a few ideas they vote on them and then we utilize whatever funds we have available for those projects so none of this would really begin for another year because we have to get sed approval for all of the projects that we would be looking at but in order to get approval you have to have a method of funding so it's a it's a nice cycle so what we're asking is for the funding
017mechanism so that we can then put some projects up for approval and then once that's done we would be able to get the voter authorization to withdraw the funds and use them for those specific projects so i just want to uh reiterate the reason for using the capital reserve is the money we take out tom you can address this is we don't pay any interest it's a cash project so it saves us can you say how much interest have we saved on the 12 million dollars worth of projects we've currently done so we're estimating um at a very conservative interest rate of anywhere from one and a half to two percent if we had borrowed that 12 million dollars we would have paid over 1.5 million dollars in interest expense over a 15-year period okay
018and then as far as steering and the projects um we're working on compiling projects because off top my head i could probably come up with about 100 million dollars worth of projects there's always things that need to be done to be upgraded uh ron has been speaking with all the different buildings and the principles to get their top priorities and then it will go back to steering and steering cheryl was on staring we think we will hash it out and come up with the projects that we feel are in a priority order to start to work on that's good so thank you for that and and thank you truth be told to to this board for the determinations on the decisions that you made because some of the things we can see in terms of
019the investments that the board has made but there are other things that you can't see so for example the cooling tower at the middle school the central air works it gets hot out it turns on there was an expense that went into replacing the cooling tower at the middle school so that is just a huge huge asset to the building it may not be as visible as a beautiful new gym that that was also part of the capital reserve or the air conditioning systems that have been installed at the second floor of the high school and anyone who has had a child go through the high school knows how warm that the second floor of the high school can get also the air conditioning in our large instructional spaces in our large large building spaces
020cafeterias and gymnasiums because in our elementary schools they don't have an auditorium like this the cafeteria is their gathering space and that's where they put multiple classes together and many of the celebrations do happen either at the beginning of the year when we're first acclimating the children to the school building or at the end of the year when we're celebrating their accomplishments and at both bookends of the year it's quite warm so we certainly appreciate all the investments and and the consideration and the time that that this board's invested in preparing for the facility needs of our students and the facilities that our students deserve so this look ahead is something that i really appreciate and look forward to just a couple of other updates before we move into the presentation for this evening the
021just an update on the book review that that's happening i do want to share that there are currently nine books under review the parent me or the community members have been identified and we have um we have meetings scheduled at the end of this week the first round of meetings are starting at the end of this week so more information to come but the meetings have been scheduled thus far some meetings have been scheduled thus far so we continue to move forward once a determination is or a recommendation is formed by members of the committee they'll issue that recommendation to me where i will make a determination i will notify the individuals who initiated the complaint certainly notify the board and update our website to reflect the outcome so that's where we are in that
022process with regard to the cultural awareness and equity task force as the board is aware we met with about two dozen parents in the community or residents of the community i should say and we had a digital survey that was open for quite some time we had 72 responses to that digital survey and today our leadership team met to debrief what we heard it was purely to identify um just what we heard without adding our interpretation of what we heard or anything beyond just a very objective look at what we heard i'd like to present that to the board in early april i don't want to put a specific date on it i will notify obviously the community prior to my determination of that date i'd like for it to be as early as april
0234th however i will confirm that with the board and certainly with our community once our team is prepared to issue that presentation and it will be a presentation that we issue we'll also post it to our website and we heard as of right now our team has identified 14 unique points from the the members of the community with whom we met in the digital surveys that we received so we'll certainly um articulate those points that we heard in um in the presentation that we deliver and so so we're aware the individuals who are sitting on that team on that administrative team it's uh mr cole miss o'shea myself mr rosen as the director of pps uh mrs horowitz as principal of the middle school and mrs amerling is principal of one of our elementary schools
024brookside so we have a secondary principal an elementary principal director of pps curriculum superintendent and business office because some things that may require additional considerations uh from expenditures that we may be proposing so we wanted to have tom's voice as part of the process as well that's the update that i have prepared to share with the board at this time i'm going to invite mr rosen and ms forsberg to to the stage here with us and i will turn it over to mr cole who will deliver the last installment of our budget presentation series next week's meeting i will be delivering my final presentation to the board for your consideration on budget that takes all of the presentations that we heard and it just incorporates them into one presentation so at this time mr cole
025i'll turn it over to you thanks dr hatter this evening we're going to have the presentation done in pieces it is a very large presentation but it is the most important uh part of the budget process so we're going to begin this session with mrs o'shea our assistant superintendent for curriculum who will deliver the first part of the of this budget so thank you dr hatter and mr cole so this is the instruction and technolo and technology review budget session and um this is the sixth presentation in a seven series uh budget process that we're going through what you'll see during the following slides is that mr rosen ms forsberg myself along with mr cole will really highlight some of the portions of the instruction budget going into the 2022-23 school year so the instruction
026organization chart reflects nearly 500 employees in various different capacities two curriculum supervisors were added this year we have ms chesser as our supervisor of humanities and mr miller is our supervisor of stem those were positions added to the curriculum line this year you've seen this slide before am i on the nope go forward yep thank you so the you've seen this district vision before it is something that was created about five years ago with some work that dr hatter started with our administrative team and this district vision ensures we have a path with clear expectations when planning for our students our curriculum and our programs along with implementing comprehensive academic programs we strive to build capacity creativity and critical thinking and to provide opportunities for students to explore varied interests [Applause] to that end all
027of the components of our educational program are important and valued as we consider the experiences our students will have through their k-12 journey in yorktown our overarching goal is to provide enriching learning opportunities that support the whole child therefore we continually focus on academic areas social emotional learning performing arts fine arts athletics and physical education character education and clubs non-academic teams not non-athletic teams and organizations the goal of the curriculum department is to ensure that meaningful instructional programs are in place k-12 this includes careful curriculum design based on the new york state learning standards in each area implementation of effective instructional strategies and student assessment practices that help guide teaching and learning student programs and services are in place to serve all of our learners and to support the philosophy of whole child education here's
028just a quick look of some of the boces and lyric services included within the budget for the 2022-23 school year all of these services are currently being utilized during this year as well instructional staffing throughout the school district includes teachers teaching assistants related service providers counselors clerical positions nurses library media specialists administrators school resource officers and safety monitors as we continue our plan for the 2022-23 school year there are certain areas of focus that we'd like to highlight we will continue our commitment to assess and review our curriculum and instructional practices to ensure that all students are provided with an educational program that will help to prepare them for opportunities in the future we will continue to ensure our curriculum is aligned with specific new york state content area standards and follow the requisite implementation
029timelines we will provide curriculum resources to teachers as well as professional development in order to help further this work we will continue to expand the implementation and the integration of esteem this will include the implementation of two new high school electives which we've spoken about previously data science and civil engineering in addition we will continue the planning for the implementation of the new k-12 computer science standards which are required to be fully embedded k-12 by school districts by 2024. we are looking forward to continuing the work of the cultural awareness and equity committee and these are just some areas that i wanted to highlight for you as a board as we move forward i'm going to ask mr rosen to speak to the pps part of this presentation thank you mrs o'shea ida requires that
030school districts provide a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment to every student with a disability through the age of 21 or earlier if a high school diploma is awarded the pps department is responsible for following the key provisions of the individuals with disabilities act in addition we have child find and committee on special education responsibilities for students who attend local private and parochial schools within the boundaries of the yorktown central school district this is the organizational chart for pupil services i am proud to be the director and we are lucky to have caroline almeida as the assistant director and kelly rudik as our new special education supervisor the supervisor position was added as of july 1 due to the increased demands within the departments this chart reflects the number of special
031education students from the october snapshot date for each year we use this october date for each year to show trends due to the increasing special education enrollment we have also included current numbers as of march 1st 2022. as you can see um the number on of pending cases as well we currently have 32 cse referrals pending 23 504s and we have the 33cpsc the yorktown central school district also recently welcomed 55 previously classified students into the district between january and november 2021 and students continually move in throughout the year it is important to emphasize that a major focus in this budget is based on the increase the number of students receiving services and the level of programs and services that are required to support students during their educational journey in the yorktown central school district
032the district continues to meet the needs of our students through a comprehensive comprehensive continuum of services that include related services consultant teacher resource room integrated coattail classes and special classes we also provide areas of life skills as well as a six week extended school year program for eligible students ycsd utilizes a variety of combination of special education programming supports and services to serve students within the least restrictive environment you can see those on this list [Applause] the budget includes the cost for tuitions for students who are recommended for out-of-district programs this chart indicates a number of students who attend other public schools putnam northern westchester boces southern boces private day schools and residential placements as previously noted in the chart we have 43 students currently attending out of district programs the pps department provides ongoing
033case management to the students who attend these programs which includes monitoring the implementation of the recommended programs and related services the pps department is responsible for arranging all mandated committee on special education meetings as well as arranging for reevaluations that are required every three years during the current year there was an increase of 1.0 special education teachers for the current school year we are currently monitoring our maximum capacity for certain programs and will require additional personnel for for next school year the budget for the 22-23 school year includes additional teaching staff clinical support related service support in the areas of speech language pathologists clerical staff and the additional support of a second behavior analyst position the additional behavior analyst is recommended to provide behavior intervention staff training completion of functional behavioral assessments and behavior intervention
034plans at mohansak and crompon elementary schools we continue to monitor staffing in the areas of occupational therapy and physical therapy and based on the results of the recommendations for upcoming for incoming kindergarten students and the results of the reviews for the rest of the year additional staffing may be required areas of focus moving forward for 22-23 we continue to review all cse procedures to ensure compliance with state mandates as part of the eligibility process for special education the csc reviews all rti data which can include building level interventions in the areas of reading math speech occupational therapy and social emotional supports the pps department in conjunction with the office of curriculum and instruction plan to closely review the process and implementation of services through the instructional support teams in each building uh when planning for
035special education programs we consider future needs over a multi-year period for example based on current trends in the area of social emotional functioning of our students we continue to explore programs and support services throughout the district do the programs and services require for incoming kindergarten students additional special class programs and support services are recommended as well as working again with uh southern and southern westchester boasts in northern boces probably the biggest area of focus is the last one which is concerned in the area space we continue to meet with building administrators and staff to review new programs and services to determine not only staffing needs but the space needs for the implementation thank you and i would like to turn it over to mrs forsberg for technology thank you with a relatively small technology and
036data staff we are able to manage a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure that provides access to an ever-growing number of digital tools for over four thousand users and our families this year the data and technology departments merged this was a smooth transition as the departments have worked closely together over the years and the data team was added to our online help desk ready to support our faculty staff and families we also collaborate on numerous projects together in the technology department we plan to add an additional technician from edutech next year to support our ever-growing hardware and software needs in the district the additional support will also help us with supporting the new phone system new security camera system as well as additional cyber security monitoring and day-to-day operations there is very little that happens in our district
037that does not involve either the network and or access to the internet during school or after school updates this year include an upgraded district-wide phone system with brand new phones an updated security camera system with new cameras across the district and additional interactive boards and classrooms that replaced smart boards the video streaming for sports was updated to huddle live cameras indoor and now outdoor and additional hardware was secured for classrooms which include but is not limited to additional chromebooks larger monitors for middle school technology and additional hardware to support specialized programs at yorktown high school our bandwidth was recently expanded and now includes an additional one gigabyte second or redundant connection both first light and light path are our vendors and have built-in ddos monitoring to keep us going during the day our avigilon camera
038system has proved to be very clear and useful with access via a mobile app as well as anytime any more online access to our security cameras when needed this list of software on this slide and the next slide are a sample of the many software tools the technology and data department supports and manages to keep the district safely connected many different types of technology outside of the instructional software tools are also supported by our team here is a small sample of over 150 apps software and extensions that are supported in the district for the past two years all software extensions and apps are vetted through an approval and review process the review process ensures smooth communication budget planning and approving vendors against edla 2d data privacy regulations some of the newer online tools were launched
039during the spring of 2020 when we were in a remote environment and proved to be an essential part of the regular instructional or administrative day-to-day operations our district experienced a cyber attack on in october of 2020 the investigation revealed the malware attack which mirrored a similar attack in another school district in our area with the increase in these types of attacks in our area and nationally we've upgraded our security fabric to include a host of tools with upgraded analytics monitoring and protection additionally the district contracted with blue orange to conduct a series of testing and vulnerability scans the information from blue orange testing assisted us with improving the security of our network 2022-23 will see a healthy focus on esteem digital fluency and computer science across the district full implementation of the new york state
040standards for digital fluency and computer science is set to take place in the fall of 2024 and i will continue to work with our assistant superintendent supervisor of stem chris miller the building principals and teachers to review the excellent work we are currently doing and future plans we will also refresh our print management system this summer and add new multi-function printing machines district-wide this system includes translation software and cloud faxing and we look forward to greater efficiency and the opportunity to save time and money this will also be the final summer in a five-year implementation plan of replacing aging smart boards with interactive sharp tvs now we'll turn it over to mr cole thank you mr sportsberg and we're just going to review the total costs of everything that we've discussed this evening the total
041instruction portion of the budget is estimated to increase as a result of our continued investment in teachers in the classroom environment total instruction investments will increase by just over 4.5 million dollars in 2022-23 an approximately 7.4 percent increase we've captured the cost of all known retirements new hires and replacements in this summary chart we continue to add new teaching and support positions in the budget to respond to any increases in enrollment or mandated services that may arise as the school year unfolds note the reorganization in the curriculum office has a minimal impact on the entire budget there are direct cost offsets to these costs and two other areas of the budget at this point we'll be glad to answer any questions you might have regarding the content of tonight's presentation first i want to thank
042you all very much i know this is the big part so thank you i appreciate it um and start with questions mike do you have a question any questions start i guess one thing that um i was thinking about um miss forest berg was you mentioned hiring an additional technician through edutech what would that position be utilized for so we currently have four technicians and with five schools as well as central office pps transportation o m and french hill so we have other physical buildings so it would be some we would have one technician per building which would be optimal to have five technicians one per building with the additional increase in cyber security monitoring it's another layer to the day-to-day operations we also have so we have our google administrative console that changes it
043used to be on a monthly basis now it feels like it's on a weekly basis so it's making sure that we're up to date and as safe and secure as possible and just we would like to reduce the time so we have our help desk and the tickets come in we would like the technicians to be able to help our teachers and students as quickly and efficiently as possible joe yeah i have a question for lisa can you talk a little bit more about the reorganization in the curriculum office and um how those added costs were offset by other areas of the budget and how we handled that just a little more detail around that please sure i'll answer it and tom if i leave anything out please jump in so through the end of
044last school year we had a director of data position in the district when uh mr elise resigned to pursue an opportunity another district that gave us an opportunity to look at our administrative team and consider the needs that we had moving forward to continue to provide the best opportunity for our students in terms of curriculum instruction so at that point we decided to not fill the director of data position and as mrs forsberg said we rolled the data personnel and responsibility into her department and as she shared earlier that those two departments had worked so closely together previously so it was a seamless transition that gave us an opportunity to see what we needed to do moving forward and the supervisor of stem position was was created and that replaced the director of data position
045we also had up until that point we had a teacher on special assignment for at least five six years prior to who was an ela curriculum coach we turned that position into a supervisor of humanities to encompass ela and social studies and that gave us an opportunity to to have these two supervisor positions on so we added two but we removed two positions from the budget as well and therefore we offset the costs and that's how we were able to get mr miller as our supervisor of stem and miss chesser as our supervisor of humanities did i leave anything out mr coleman that's it exactly in terms of cost and this is just another example the superintendent has us look at every position as it becomes available in the school district to see if it
046is necessary to move forward or to be repurposed in another form and this is an example of that lisa yeah my first question is for lisa um you talked about the new um high school electives data science and civil engineering architecture how are those classes selected um to be offered and um can you tell us a little bit more about that whole process and then how is it financed okay so when we think about opportunities for our students moving into the future and we look at the job opportunities that will be available to them data science really encompasses any area of any business there's the aspects of data and data analysis that go into it so we felt that that would be a great opportunity to offer our students and that kind of came up
047organically as we talked with building administrators dr hatter and myself in terms of the civil engineering architecture course that we're adding two three years ago we started with project lead the way with an introduction to engineering course the year after that we added a principles of engineering course and we were always planning to create a three-year sequence we took a break during covid to not add something new last year now the students who are enrolled as second year students in that class they had some say in where we were going with our third year course so we've decided to go with civil engineering and architecture as our thirds in a sequence of engineering courses at the high school very excited about that in terms of how it's financed [Music] for next school year the first
048year of the courses will be when you have the most expenses because it's all the professional development for the staff that are teaching it so we will have i think that i'm going to look at mr miller in the audience it's about twelve thousand dollars up front for the data science and about eight thousand dollars up front for the civil engineering in year one in year two when some of the professional development drops off and it becomes more of maintenance of software and materials and supplies and consumables that are used in those programs we'll see around a three thousand dollar a year cost for that now that's not including um both of these courses fall within the math department and mr degennaro will monitor while they're scheduling their math teachers for next school year if
049we're going to need to potentially add some fte in the mathematics department moving forward thank you um this is for for mike um i know when you came in december i kind of was poking at you for um you you were it was you said you're having difficulty planning for the 22-23 school year and we understood um based on the information you have now are you able to have a better projection for what your staffing needs are going to be i i know it's you have a a line item but are you able to kind of predict what you need or is it still based upon needs of the students that are are unsure it's becoming clearer we know that we need a new special class program for our children with autism we just we've
050run one over the years at brookside um a class of eight we're definitely going to need a second class um and we're looking at you know whether we can move that to mohansek we're going to need an additional ict classroom for third grade at mohan sick the numbers have grown we're also looking we've over the years we've combined our second and third grade special class students the numbers were low the needs were similar but the numbers are growing the needs are not as similar so we might look to split we are looking to split second and third grade so those are some areas of need and with as you saw the increase in the numbers it includes additional speech and language support the clinical support one of the things that come with the number of
051students is also evaluations we're looking at how we can read have evaluations done every three years with the mechanism that we have in place right now we're sending a lot of vowels to boces this year we had an additional psychologist help us out we're looking to continue that position to keep them in-house clerical support in our office it's just keeping up with all the mandates has become more and more difficult we will need more teachers where they go and what grade levels it's still the rest of it's still a little bit to be determined we still have students who move in we haven't had kindergarten screening yet that is always leads to numbers we have more and more students who as you saw the numbers through the committee on preschool special education so we're still
052having those meetings so the exact these are the definites that i shared with you but we will need some additional teachers in different places exactly where and that's the hard part for me to say because i've always been able to share that i'm not sure where the ball is going to fall at that point we're still examining all the numbers okay um mike oh anthony did you have a question he's good so thank you um so tom as as mr rosen just pointed out we um have to craft a budget with a lot of unknown variables and that means we typically have contingencies in the budget in various locations in this particular section i guess we would be talking about contingent faculty positions um can you explain a little bit about what those are that
053we've built in and how they're utilized in this budget sure well those contingencies that we place in the budget are in several areas so we project enrollment for next year internally based on information that we have historical trends and so forth and we placed three positions in the budget this year that were applicable to that now i say three not because they're going to be used but because it was a a number that would cover us at each one of the elementary schools we believe the enrollment numbers um are are solid at this point but i have one word of caution five years ago we thought they were solid too and then over the summer we had almost 70 children move into the district in two months and then with regard to special education and
054and the needs mr rosen has a general idea of what he needs as he was talking about at this point but his needs won't become crystal clear until we get closer to the beginning of the new school year so we estimate um a dollar amount based on average salaries with every special education teacher comes an assistant a cta so we estimate those as well at this point we we have 1.455 million dollars in the budget for estimated contingency positions throughout the budget they may be employed and they may not be i just want to speak to that if i may in addition to what's already been said because i understand the line of questions that are coming and the agility i think that we're hoping for within the budget to be able to meet the
055student needs and ultimately it's a student's needs that will drive all of the expenditures when it comes to staffing so the meetings have not concluded at this point for our pps department so depending on the student needs what services are required is there a one-to-one situation that's required those all drive costs but also i want to add for every elementary section that we add there are the special area subjects that we have to be mindful of as well so it's a section of music it's a section of library it's three sections of physical education per week it's a section of art so those all accompany the calculus as we make those determinations mr cole miss o'shea our team and i and certainly in conjunction with the fiscal advisory committee have really looked at historical trends
056five years ago my first year it was a bit of an anomaly where we had 70 new students enroll over the summer that was quite an interesting summer but we're prepared we believe we're prepared at this time based on historical trends and expectations moving forward to meet the student needs that we anticipate now should we get 60 or 70 more students to move in we may be revisiting the conversation with each other and with you but i do believe that there's some agility here to facilitate our meeting of uh the student needs that we anticipate thank you uh uh sure i have another question for tom um i know some of the coveted relief funds were used for new devices for technology um how are we able to support that moving forward well with some
057of the technology we have now built into the budget with regard to chromebooks and a cyclical replacement of about three grade levels per year so that's built into this baseline budget the balance of the monies that were provided by the federal government with regard to the uh coveted relief funds are being employed in a variety of different ways and they will continue over the course of the next year and perhaps even into the next year i can let dr hatter and mrs o'shea talk a little bit more about specifics if you want but it's a separate source of money outside of this budget but it is currently being employed and will continue to be employed yeah so there were certain one-time expenses when you buy ppe when you buy equipment or instructional materials yes those
058are generally one-time expenses however we've invested in personnel to support social emotional needs of our students so we've invested in clinicians in our schools multi-year we've invested in summer programs after school programs and the federal funding has we've always offered and we have this conversation today we've always offered some type of either after school reading support or summer reading support for students specifically at the elementary level and the federal funding allowed us to augment the services that we were providing to students previously i assume we'll return to that baseline level once the federal funding is not available but while we have it we're going to service as many students as we're able thank you rachel yeah my question is for mr rosen um and i guess it's a follow-up to your question jackie um you
059talked about the increased needs of our students in terms of the support they need and the 504 plans why do you think that that's happening there are a number of reasons um one we talked about just the number of students who continue to move in we've had 55 most recently but we had a summer before i think when mr cole talked about those 70 students moved in we had a lot of students that year who also moved in with plans we're also seeing more and more students at the younger levels coming through the committee on preschool special education we've seen over the years that number at the end of every year is just growing we will finish this year close to 140 classified preschool students what we're seeing when we used to come to the
060meetings that was speech and language therapy occupational therapy we're seeing more students who are non-verbal have other needs that require to be classified when they come into kindergarten as opposed to getting some building level services or being declassified so that's two pieces we're seeing more students with high levels of anxiety we're seeing more students with mental health needs that are getting in the way of their learning so they need supports um some have needed hospitalizations out of district programs so we're seeing that piece um and you can't rule out i mean there was some learning loss with kovid i mean there's still the dust is settling there we've done a great job supporting students with the after school programs with virtual pieces the summer program we had transportation this year so i think we've helped
061with some of those but there are still some students who have come through the committee on special education who may have been impacted in some way may have come anyway it's hard to know um but you put all that together and we're at numbers we've never seen before thank you um lisa can last year we we put the two supervisors of curriculum into your office uh into your division can you talk about their role and how has it been working out so our building administrators are instructional leaders they're strong instructional leaders and they see the importance of the k-12 vertical alignment of curriculum this two supervisor positions were brought on to work collaboratively with the building administrators and with me to look at uh ensuring that vertical alignment ensuring that our programs are consistent across
062our buildings that there are equitable opportunity opportunities throughout our buildings this year our supervisors have been able to formally evaluate teachers and provide feedback to look for instructional resources that can help support our our learning journey i can give a couple of examples of how that's looked more practically so for mr miller we talked about his involvement in understanding the upcoming required k-12 computer science and digital fluency standards in addition to that he's had an opportunity to meet with the middle school science department on a regular basis and to prepare for some upcoming professional development for that department so that they can be ready for the change in standards coming their way with the science eight testing uh in a couple of years in addition he's looking to how will he build that into the
063high school so those are how are we kind of bridging the building with the work that we're doing and then ms chester as our supervisor of humanities has worked tirelessly this year to make sure our teachers at the elementary level have what they need to implement a true balanced literacy framework for instruction and she took on the uh task of helping all of our teachers better understand the fontesom panel benchmark assessment system and then that's kind of the k5 work some of the k5 work she's been involved in however she's also looking at the secondary level what writing resources would be beneficial to both the english and the social studies departments as they move forward and have identified some shared needs across that curriculum so those are the tasks that we're looking for really building
064the bridge between the buildings at this point so it sounds like a tremendous benefit to the students i believe so yep most definitely thank you um anthony okay he's good mike [Music] uh miss forber forsberg i i believe it was last year that you spoke uh about a review of our technology and uh recommended an upgrade to the phone and security systems and i'm just wondering i think some of that work we were able to accomplish last year within the budget but where are we in that process and and what is the problem what does the timeline look like there sure so uh this time last year we were moving forward we were discussing it as you said i was recommending it once it was approved both projects took on a similar plan so i
065met with different vendors they did walk throughs we talked about a lot of meetings and presentations from three to five vendors for the security camera system and the phone system then it was narrowed down to they would give us quotes and their scope of work and their implementation plan and then we selected the vendors once we selected the vendors we were able to place the order make our own internal plan internal communications and plan it out there were some supply chain issues with the more of the camera well more the cameras than the phones because they were happening simultaneously the projects were but we were able to cut over to our new phone software system before the hardware came in which was great because we had a very an older phone system that we were
066worried about and then once the phones came in it's a lot of coordinating and planning to not disrupt the instructional day so a lot after school and then with the security cameras those have been up and running longer than the hardware for the phones and again that was after school as well so we didn't want to disrupt the students so i would say at this point in march of 2022 we're about 95 complete um so there's just a few things left to do but i would you know we're not quite a hundred i think we'll always be working on it but we are everything's up and running that's great sure this one's for jenna as well um i have a question a little bit i have a question about the nicest digital fluency and computer
067science standards and they're mentioned a few times throughout the presentation can you just share a little bit about where you are in the process and the future plans sure so ms o'shea spoke to this as well so i might be repeating a little bit of what she said but the state has right now we're in this awareness and capacity building stage before full implementation in another two years so i've been working with ms o'shea and supervisor stem chris miller to talk about what's already taking place because a lot of wonderful things are taking place and how can we align it so building that capacity and awareness so there's been esteem committee meetings reviewing current projects and what's aligned to the five standards from the state and talking about what type what additional projects or lessons
068or assessments we might need to do k-12 and what coursework in the middle and high school would already accomplish some of this this summer we plan to work with alyssa arroyo and amanda burns who are our instructional tech specialists and some teachers and work together to talk about more of a gap analysis so what do we need to do and then start that planning for next year and also any professional development needs sounds great thank you lisa yeah my question is also from a sportsbook keep that on um you mentioned that now i'm going to show my a chair because i remember when the smart boards were being installed and how excited we were and how amazing that was and now you talked about replacing them with something else yes what are you replacing it
069with so actually there's an example right there so that is an interactive sharp tv so the first i came in the summer of 2019 and that was the first summer that they were the implementation started so we're hoping to finish that implementation so smart boards last anywhere from seven to ten years as technology grows the the boards needed to be replaced so the sharp offers the same interactive technology there are some teachers who are still using smart notebooks so they're able to continue with the software that came with the smart boards but with the new types of technology really anything can work with the boards so what can that yes they are less expensive as well and the first thing those on the boards are the touch capabilities so there may be a portion of
070the board where is no longer responsive to the the touch screen to advance the slide or to write on the board so when that starts to happen the boards in the early stages of um the smart boards in the early stages have declined so that's where the replacement comes about when you're early adopters they tend to go they tend to go before everyone else because we were first to implement the technology but these boards have more durability than the former smart boards that we were using so these would last as long as a a tv compared to um a smart board and and what what capability does does this device have like what what can it do i get it you can touch it and right yeah you can touch it it acts like like
071a tv um it's smart as um a smart tv would be as well as um you can just the teachers are plugging in their laptops and they can show anything on on their laptop and as um and instructionally if we're in a math classroom in a geometry classroom we can very easily pull up the graph paper module so i can turn my screen into graph paper plot points plot angles and triangles and so on and so forth if we're in a geography class i can plop up a map or an interactive map we can mark it mark it up together so there are so many backgrounds and so many other capabilities that are interactive that you can just refresh you can save the notes that you have download them export them share them as you
072need so it's not a lost um endeavor with the class so the and i'm just scratching the surface of the instructional capabilities that we have specifically um actually at any level at any level it's the um the versatility of the board that i think adds a lot of value and the other piece that's nice is it was it's a smooth transition to go from a smart board to the sharp so there's less training we're always there so we have it mapped out we would take the oldest smart boards and work our way um as far as the replacement went and then we would let the teachers and building principals know in their building when it was coming and then we could have amanda or alyssa work one-on-one with teachers if they wanted any support and
073the teachers are really great with sharing what they discover with their colleagues to what the board can do thank you [Music] thank you um so mike back to you um and and i'm not picking because i know the largest increase in the curriculum budget is is due to the special ed needs and um it's it's really just quite concerning the needs of the students and i know you start giving us projections from preschool and i know you start planning and and so i can imagine how hard this has to be when it's really out of your control because this was nothing you planned for four years ago i yeah you've come to us a lot of years um is there anything we can do i mean it's just it's just so concerning it's not the
074money it's the needs of the students you know this board has always been supportive of whatever we need we've added people in the middle of the year clinically teachers um i think that's what we need to be have on our radar going into the end of this year and into next year once the dust settles only start in september it's been a while since i've come back for teaching staff we might have added a clinical person or something else this could be the first year that we may need to add people in the middle last year you asked me the question um do you need anything else so a similar question i i thought we were good going into the year we were tight but the summer kind of threw us off if the summer
075goes the same this year when we get to october i'm not sure i think we could need additional teachers because the numbers are flying we're it's hard to keep up the meetings are happening we're getting seven referrals a week that are coming our way not all the students are classified but just think about every time we have to do an evaluation the time it takes and then once a student is classified there's so many steps that have to be taken and so many procedures that we have to follow i talked about the re-evaluations our psychologists share all of our annual reviews there's only so many re-evaluations they can do our speech therapists their caseloads are growing so you it's hard to give up seeing the students to do an evaluation so we're really trying to
076be proactive we try to utilize boces to do that we try to utilize utilize our grant money and we put money aside for that as well i think the main thing the sport can do is just be as you've always have been open to when i come forward and say we need to look at something in space i think that is really the next big thing of with all the students coming and the programs that we need and we can say we're going to need two more speech therapists where are they going to provide speech therapy those are the big questions that we need to figure out and i guess that that was my second part of my question is where is is are we already evaluating where in the buildings and how we're going
077to do it and what needs to be done over the summer in order to make space available if i know some of the buildings have space issues to start with so yes so i know there have been ongoing questions meetings with the architect mrs berry had her meeting with an architect really looking at the floor plan um and you know if it hasn't been updated things have been added more enl staff more speech staff so they have to update their floor plan where they thought there might have been an empty room now we have something going on in that room so i know that um mrs amerling and dr roberts are going to do the same okay and i i hope to once those meetings conclude i hope that we can come back to the
078board present to you what we learned what we found and some recommendations moving forward for space because as mike said that is a real consideration for us moving forward and the most important this is not a yorktown only it's the region all the districts are getting more student families are moving to westchester um so we're all seeing the same increase and for all the same reasons that i shared one uh i answered lisa's question okay oh mike cheryl i'm also thank you lisa i'm good thank you guys very very much ron did you have anything you want to add all right thank you very much thank you guys thank you um we're going to the policies um so the board will conduct the first reading and adoption of the following policy it's 2120 school board
079elections um can i have a motion second discussion cheryl do you just want to uh explain why we updated school board elections um i think i believe that in this one there are some inconsistencies as to the length of residency within the town um i think at one point it may have had 30 days at another point it's had mentioned one year and so we were just trying to uh make sure that we were abiding by the regulations um and making it consistent we were making consistent with school law right okay all right can i have all those in favor all right opposed um can i have a first read of the following policies actually um the regulation 14 20 r it's complaints about curricula or instructional materials did anybody have any questions on it
080on did you have any explanations going together yeah but what we noticed going through the process is that there were some differences between the policy and the regulation policy will always supersede regulation so regulations being aligned to uh better is being modified to better align to policy with obviously some more specificity to the language right can i just make a comment um i just want to thank cheryl as the head of the policy committee for jumping on that after um after we talked about it last week the week before whenever it was putting it on the very next agenda and getting it done thank you everybody else is good with it all right thank you oh we have personnel um personnel agenda upon recommendation of the superintendent a motion that the following be approved we
081have certified personnel appointments part-time appointments other compensation extra duty teaching assistant changing hours a leave of absence and a resignation and under classified personnel we have a civil service appointment we have a police monitors and a resignation business office a motion approved the attached resolution to cooperatively bid in the general commodities and service bids um issued by putnam northern westchester boces some move second all those in favor all right i opposed board comments lisa uh nothing really i think we talked a lot tonight so thank you and um tom you're coming to the end of your last buzz budget season so he's smiling i know you're smiling too much about that i just want to thank you thank you very much it's been amazing thank you cheryl yeah thank you to uh jen and mike
082and lisa and tom i know we spent a lot of time going through the budget tonight so we really appreciate your time and uh just another shout out i i hate to repeat with what dr hatter said but uh we had an amazing performance uh over the weekend three performances actually and each one of them was as good as the one prior this is the first time in three years that our performing arts has had a live or has had really any performance but it was live it was so nice to see everyone here on stage we could see faces people were singing we could hear them very clearly it was just very very special weekend full of three wonderful performances with that we had some very dicey weather on saturday and i really have
083to obviously i'm a parent of a child in the show because i have to give a personal thank you to dennis for boyce and his crew for having this campus looking like it did and me as a parent at a board trustee feeling actually safe coming here and feeling that everyone else was going to be safe as well we were dealing with a lot of parents that night and a lot of of our students so um i was completely at ease once i got here i was completely at ease i was very happy and i can't thank everyone enough for pulling through it really showed though in that show the smiles on the faces and the performances were outstanding so thank you to everyone who contributed to those performances because it really made a lot
084of students very happy and a lot of parents as well mike no i'm good all right um i just also want to say the last couple of weekends this campus has been enormously busy it's it's so wonderful to see after you know the two years we've had of nothing um and again i just want to say we have an amazing staff and our support staff is second to none and our custodians have worked seven days a week 12 hour days between the section 1 tournaments which were saturday and sunday then they showed up the next day they worked their entire week but oh there were tournaments going on games going on all week long they just continually clean they continue left our facilities in a space that everybody is proud of and everybody in the
085community in the area is talking about um and they were back this weekend not just with the shows but again with the with the section one tournament uh it's an amazing group of people and i can't thank them enough for their hard work so thank you it's a huge shout out to them we're on lisa tom okay we have our last public comments and i didn't read my notes like i usually do i will read them this time so um although state law does not require us to hold a public comment period we have chosen to to do so because we believe it is crucial for us to hear our community members about their concerns and issues please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed to be
086a discussion accordingly please do not expect the board to respond to your concerns and questions tonight the speakers were asked to sign up on an appropriate sign up sheet with their full name address and email your name is not legible enough and that we can read it we cannot call on you all comments must be addressed to the board directly not to the audience our policy 1230 public participation at board meetings clearly states we do not allow discussion involving or using the name or situation of individual district personnel or students anyone who speaks in violation of our policy will immediately give up their right to continue to speak speakers are expected to conduct themselves in a civil manner anyone using abusive or inflammatory language using offensive language or in any way causing a disruption will
087give up their right to speak members of the audience are expected to maintain civility and respect for the views of others we do not allow calling out clapping or other disruptions from the audience we will be tracking each speaker's time and towards the end of your three minutes we will warn you to conclude if you fail to abide by the three-minute speaking time we will turn off your microphone thank you for listening we just have one person signed up and that is judith stevens and that was not directed at you specifically it's just my usual spiel thank you and and i do appreciate those rules they are common sense um and i just want to take a moment to thank the board and uh i know mr cole isn't here right now but his service
088has been remarkable uh to our district and dr hatter and the board there you are yeah just fabulous um the financial management has been really above and beyond really appreciated and as a former i.t professional i am really impressed with the discussion of all the different aspects of it and how it's handled in our district and most importantly i am really impressed with how the needs of the students are constantly centered and it's really really nice to see so thank you all for that um i want to thank you dr hatter for the update on the c a e initiative similar to my concerns about the review of the challenged books i'm happy to hear you address the importance of communicating the progress on the initiative to district families and the community i look forward
089to the update that you mentioned and hope that the date of that presentation will be known in advance whether it changes from april 4th or not and i hope to be here to hear it um one question i have about it is are there any students or teachers on the ca and e committee um or involved with the initiative i would think that their input would be really invaluable we have as you know we have spectacular teachers and students here and also as you know instances of hate speech over the last couple of years and we've seen that right here in our community alone demonstrate the urgent need for cultural competency and increased representation in our schools this initiative is also critical to properly prepare our students for the business world that they will be
090entering where these kind of initiatives are also taking place across the board i know that you all work to ensure that every child feels safe and comfortable in our school and i believe the initiative supports that thank you thank you um that is the end of public comment so i'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn all those in favor all right i opposed thank you all very much for coming out good night thank you