001central school district board of education meeting from march 7 2022 can have a motion to go into executive session for to discuss yct contractual negotiations under the taylor law second all those in favor aye opposed thank you all right can i have a motion to go back into public session some move second all those in favor aye opposed good evening everyone welcome to the yorktown central school district board of education meeting for march 7 2022. we please stand for a pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence from armed forces and those in our community who have lost loved ones 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 we're
002going to start with our first public comment which is on agenda related items um i'm going to read before we s list uh we we have public comment so although state law does not require us to hold a public public comment period we have chosen to do so because we believe it is crucial to hear from 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 a discussion accordingly please do not expect the board to respond to your concerns and questions tonight speakers were asked to sign up on the appropriate sign up sheet with their full name address and email if your name is not legible and we can't read it you will not be called upon all comments
003must be addressed to the board directly not to the audience our policy 1230 public participation at board meetings clearly states we do not allow discussions involving or using the name and situ or situation of an 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 give 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
004you to conclude if you fail to abide by the three-minute speaking time we will turn off the microphone our first public comment period is 15 minutes in length each person has the opportunity to speak for up to three minutes about topics that are on tonight's agenda we will not be extending this first public comment period our first person is vishnu patel thank you everybody good evening superintendents of the school district dr harrell the board member this place looks different than when i was here last time so thank you wonderful to be here and now you have not to use the mask but i i was i was collecting the wood chips so i used my mask today you know so let me just say i just want i want uh just one or two just
005simply thing in reference to the is the energy uh solar first solar cell was invented right here in new jersey and then a second was here at ibm and ibm has accept you know started a project for five megawatts and i hope that you know we use something like this in our school district to save energy because the sun is going to last for another few billion years and other thing may go away so i want to thank you for your service because i did in my part now you do your part thank you and have a nice evening thank you um paul moskowitz hello paul moscow it's yorktown could you move closer to the microphone please is this better yes thank you okay um i'm representing yorktown 100. this is a group whose aim
006is to reduce the total carbon footprint of the town of yorktown five percent a year for every year until it's down to zero so what i'm speaking about is facilities at the yorktown school district in particular there are a lot of roofs on the buildings and these can be put to use for mounting solar panels to produce electricity i'll point out that the town of yorktown has passed the solar law not too long ago which has spurred a lot of growth in this area just a few examples the town is installing solar panels at the granite knolls parking lot ibm is doing the same thing at the ibm parking lot the jv mall without any prompting has been putting solar panels on the roof of the jv wall these people these organizations are not doing
007this for the goodness of humanity they're doing it because it's profitable and i would hope that the yorktown school district could look into the possibilities there are a lot of roof area there's a lot of roof area available for solar energy capture i i suggest that we don't just go ahead long into this but form a committee of people who have expertise especially those people who know how to count dollars and see whether this is going to be a profitable enterprise i point out that that recently many of the automobile manufacturers have been putting an emphasis on solar vehicles gm is spending billions of dollars to build a factory ford is advertising their f-150 pickup which besides being a truck can power your whole house so i i suggest that we consider as part of
008this committee's work charging stations for the vehicles that are parked in the parking lots at the school district facilities i think this also will add to the profitability and maybe we could even afford to have a podium for speakers thank you thank you mary jane killian good evening you hear me can you there you go sorry yes okay uh good evening superintendent hatter and members of the yorktown school board uh mary jane killian 32 year residents of the yorktown school district um and i'm also here tonight to speak on the issue of having the board consider creating what i'm starting to call a climate initiative task force that would study the ways that our school could significantly lower their card their carbon footprint um i realized that the district has looked into this issue to
009some extent but i think there are some recent developments that would giving reasons for they giving a closer more focused look some of the recent developments that would argue for the school districts to take a closer look would be there's been increasingly dire warnings about the effects of climate change and the urgency with which we need to act to save the planet and the growing awareness that this is our children's future and at the same time there's been a dramatic increase in the efficiency of solar panels uh and the reduction of cost and an increase in federal and state incentives also precipitous increases most recently in the cost of heating oil and electricity and significant advances in the technology with geothermal and air source heat pumps so uh i am a retired teacher so i
010would finally add that i tend to still look at things from that perspective and to think about [Music] students and i see having or trying to create a task force like this as an opportunity to involve our students many of them are very aware and very concerned and very involved already it is their future and i think that yorktown could be a leader in this growing movement and i think creating this climate initiative task force is an action that we could take right now and together with our young people uh you know have a more long-lasting and positive effect so thank you for letting me speak thank you larry killian good evening uh sorry husband of mary jane our daughter graduated from yorktown high school in 1996. um every time you pick up a paper
011you read of another solar installation it's simple why it's cheaper to make your own electricity rather than rather than to buy it and it's much better for the environment also it's much cheaper and much better for the environment not to burn fossil fuels so once in every 20 years you get an opportunity to replace a boiler and a heating system let's make a plan when that comes when that opportunity comes to replace the boiler with geothermal and air source heat technology many schools are already embarking on this journey the white plains school post road school has geothermal and solar panels the all of the schools in the river towns are into solar on their roofs so for example on december 20th hastings on hudson um signed a lease with a company to put solar panels
012on their hillside elementary school and they're going to get 45 000 a year but if you buy your solar panels they can it can be a lot cheaper a summer school district is using five million five million kilowatt hours of electricity a year and paying 10 cents per kilowatt at a cost of 500 thousand dollars around what we paid last year if you got a five hundred thousand dollar bond at two percent interest the cost to repay that in five years would be nine thousand dollars a month but the solar panels are not just sitting on your roof they're making perhaps five percent of your electricity that's going to reduce your monthly payment from nine thousand to seven thousand a month and on that 500 thousand dollar bond with interest you're actually only going to
013pay back 409 um thousand dollars so these numbers are just guesstimates um but we would suggest that you form a task force to figure out how we can get to carbon neutral by 2040 or sooner stay in the planet and save money and thank you for your service in these past very difficult two years thank you trish rothberg good evening folks um trish rothberg 16-year resident um son graduated last year you guys are amazing and you've had a tough couple years i have missed a couple meetings but i've been watching um i am tonight here in support of yorktown 100 and trying to go carbon neutral um i think putting a task force together would be wonderful i think you guys have a lot on your plate between the pandemic and everything that's been happening
014in the districts and districts across the country i applaud all of your efforts to really be in this time right now which seems so intense for school districts and i thank all of you for your service larry and mary jane are wonderful people um and and very bright and i think this task force would be wonderful for the community that's all i'm going to say there's other people that want to talk but thank you again and i could list all the reasons why but i'm just saying the same stuff that they're saying thank you thank you that's everybody who signed up for our first public comment period um because we have the facilities budget coming up we will address what needs to be addressed at that point okay dr hatter all right we're going to
015move on to the superintendent's update good evening everyone it is great of you to join us we have changed the venue for this meeting and just the way this board is i really appreciate and admire our high school drama club was practicing for this weekend's performance of fiddler on the roof which we're looking forward to we're looking forward to giving live theater back and continuing live theater in our schools and having our students be able to put on a performance in front of their families and friends and have that opportunity as they should they needed the gym this week they needed the auditorium this week so when i presented the board of education with well they will move because you are the board of education and if you have to meet in the auditorium uh
016we can make alternate arrangements and without missing a beat this board just said no we're gonna move we move the children stay in in their space rehearsing so i really appreciate our board for that so that is why we're here at the brookside cafeteria our students for anyone who has a child in the play you know that your child is there at the high school auditorium practicing rehearsing for this weekend's performance speaking of fiddler on the roof we have a 7pm performance friday evening that's march 11th we have a 7 p.m performance saturday march 12th and a 2 o'clock performance sunday march 13th that's the one that i plan on going to um and and it's sure to be great and i really hope that our community can come out and support our students and
017and really give them an audience to to perform too with regard to a couple of other acknowledgements for our students my congratulations to sydney leightoner sydney finished sixth place in the state track and field championships country championships so wonderful for sydney to compete at such a high level and perform so well we're proud of her our high school cheerleading team finished state third in the states in rochester at their competition and we're just so proud of our high school cheer team we had two wrestlers perform at a really high level in their state competition so we had a gymnast go off to the state competition and do really well so our students are really thriving in so many regards and we're so proud of them and so proud to be able to provide uh continued
018support of our students in addition this past weekend was a well you know before i go off away from our students i'll come back to our students our middle school science olympiad team finished third in their competition this weekend so they have qualified for the next level of competition and we're just so proud of what our young scientists are doing there's an upcoming collaboration in our engineering program between crom pond and our high school engineering program so we're looking forward to those opportunities for our students some really really exciting things happening in our schools and right here at brookside in this room we held two wonderful writing celebrations and we had parents in to read their children's writing and and it was just a great great event for our third grade student many of our
019third grade students and i want to just acknowledge mrs amberling who's on the back of the room she oversaw both celebrations and she graciously opened up this facility for the board and and for our administrative team this evening so my thanks to mrs am mrs amerling for that we this past school weekend we hosted the section one basketball championships that that was a really big event in the region and it's bigger than just westchester county it uh the section one basketball championship compass 67 school districts across section one and it was wonderful to hear the complimentary remarks of those who visited the facility how beautiful the high school gymnasium is how well run and how well organized the event was and we had thousands and thousands of people visiting the campus so my thanks to
020our athletic director rob barrett for really orchestrating the entire weekend and it was 12 days 12 hours a day each day so my thanks to mr barrett my thanks to our staff who worked that event i know mr rosen was there for 12 hours on saturday and 12 hours on sunday mr verbois had a big role in coordinating the parking and all of the logistical details outside my thanks to the supervisors who work the games our athletic trainer our administrators who came out certainly the yorktown police department who really came out in force and made sure that it was a really well run and safe event for everyone who was in in attendance so a good weekend all around in that regard and then a couple of other items we released the calendar for the
0212022-23 school year the board approved it at their last meeting and last week i shared that so that's been posted to our website it's also available in my last update from march 4th to the community there was the eighth grade pta is trying to raise money for a end-of-year dance that our middle schoolers do our eighth graders do so i i volunteered a prize to be raffled off of that superintendent for a day so we have a third grader actually from brookside who won the award he has already told me his agenda for the day which is to alter our lunch menu because he'd like to see some more variety included at brookside mohansec in the elementary schools so i look forward to that and certainly will ask him to attend a board meeting as
022well with the state tests just for a moment those are upcoming so i'm just going to ask mrs o'shea to take a moment to provide our community with the uh on the three through eight new york state assessments so you may recall that in 2020 the new york state assessments for grades three through eight and ela and math were cancelled and last year we were in a remote hybrid model and the state decided that districts only needed to administer the first part of each of the assessments not both so we really have had two disrupted years and we are now going back to 2019 format when uh before the pandemic so we will have the grades three through eight ela assessments on march 29th and 30th and we'll have the math assessments for grades three
023through eight on april 26th and 27th each test is two days it's estimated that each testing session on those days would be between 60 and 90 minutes for the students depending on the grade and just to add a letter will be going out for me to all parents in grades three through eight this week very good thank you finally what i'll share before we turn it over to our budget presentation and our budget presentation this evening talks about general support employee benefits and our facilities budget is also presented within the scope of the presentation that mr cole will deliver we'll also be talking about capital reserve and extending the capitals are reserved so there'll be a separate additional presentation for that as well that mr cole and i will deliver mr cole will lead the
024presentation i'll certainly contribute to it as well but before we go there i just want to update the board and our community on two items first the assistant superintendent dual search that we're running so as you all know um mr coleman so share retiring at the end of the school year i wish it weren't the case but they are and um we're in the process of recruiting thus far our consultants we've worked we're working with putnam northern westchester boces to identify um suitable replacements i don't know if that seems almost oxymoronic at this point but we're certainly proceeding with the search the consultants have held two virtual forums for our community and there was an online forum that was open for members of our community to post their feedback and share their feedback i've also
025posted the timeline to our website and that's available for our community to review so the feedback that we gained through the virtual and and the digital forums will be will be used to craft the posting the posting i anticipate will open this coming monday provided that we hit our target dates which i anticipate we will and we'll be accepting applications for both positions middle of the month toward the end of the month and then continuing on with the process as outlined on our web page and finally on the book review i wanted to give an update to our board and to the community so the board last met on monday march 7th monday mor uh tuesday march 8th um all of the books were available in the library on the following morning so the books
026continue to be available in the library five of the eight i want to clarify were always available digitally that just the hard copies were not available so there was never a lapse in the availability of five of the eight titles and then all of the titles are there the committee continues to review the books we've found alternate means to review the book some have checked out books from the library of the public library some have purchased them on their own in some instances we've had people kindly let us borrow their copies of the book and we appreciate that very much and i anticipate i would say a couple weeks until we have the first determination we've identified parents we've met with parents who are on the committee there was a staggering of when the committee
027convened to when we involved the parent member because the committee had to read eight books the parent has to read one or the community member has to read one book so there there was a natural staggering of when we began the um introducing parent community members into the process but we've had those meetings and we continue to move forward on that i just wanted to provide the board with an update as to where we are currently that concludes the updates that i have for the board some really exciting things are happening in our school district and it with regard to the masks i believe prior to at last meeting the masks were still required so this is our first meeting in a mask optional setting and i want to share that our students have really
028responded the way that i thought they would there have been no reports of mistreatment or bullying or or inappropriate comments toward those who made their own decision whether it was to wear a mask or not and and i knew our students would do that and i knew our families would do that and our staff would do that thus far all of the reports that i have heard have been nothing but positive and people have been very understanding that it's a personal decision that that everyone is making so i just wanted to report back because at our last meeting masks were still required so although the sample size is relatively small we've only had about four days to look at this the thus far the data that i'll share with you or are no reports that
029have risen to my attention of um hurtful comments or any type of behavior that that would be anything less than respectful of each person's decision so that concludes the updates that i wanted to share with our community at this time i'd like to turn it over to mr cole who will deliver the next installment in our series of budget presentations and for members of our community please know that all of the presentations that we have are not only available in the videos the archived videos that we have but they're also available on our website under the budget section of our website in the business office so if you do miss a presentation or if you want to catch up on presentations they're available not only in the board of education meeting videos but they're also
030available online on our website mr cole thanks very much dr hatter and good evening everyone tonight we will review the fifth public information session in our seven part series in the following slides we will discuss the general support and employee benefits sections of our budget the general support section also includes the facilities department operation the board of education section of the budget includes the office of the district clerk as well as the mandated cost of the annual vote and elections we continue to use the bold software system an automated means of tracking and controlling the voter rolls the cost of this software is captured through our boces cooperative rendering it subject to state aid in the subsequent year the matter in which the annual vote will take place in person or by mail as was
031the case a couple of years ago will be determined this year but we believe everything will be in person as we see as mass mandates have been lifted these sections encompass the office of the superintendent in the entire financial operation of the school district in the finance section money is budgeted for the settlement of employee contracts across the breadth of the school district central administration and finance includes the equivalent of seven employees the contractual expense includes the section of a fully integrated accounting system called envision the cost of our outsourced medicaid services educational data cooperative bidding services outsourced independent asset management services and the cost of irs compliant administration of the district's convert deferred compensation plan one clerical position has been reassigned to the curriculum department next year as part of that reorganization two more
032areas related to finance that capture the cost of auditing both internal and external and the cost of the claims auditor all of which are unfunded state mandates the cost of the treasurer's office and legal counsel services are also represented here human resources is home to three employees all of the costs associated with recruiting benefits management and employee relations are captured here the special items section of the budget which is the second section on this chart is where we find liability insurance costs the cost of our xerox workstations throughout the district and some of the boces-related administrative costs the liability insurance costs include the general liability coverage crime coverage and in and the fuel storage tank insurance premiums we entered into a lease agreement for our xerox workstations in 2018-19 a new lease will be executed
033for executed for the 22-23 school year the cost of document digitization increases as we restart those efforts in the post covered era this line item had been eliminated in a budget reduction effort in 2020. note the last two items on this page are related to the boces budget we are part of a boces consortium made up of 18 school districts in our region these costs administrative costs of the boces operation and the boces capital project costs are apportioned to each district based on a formula that includes primarily assessed valuations in each district now we'll move along to discuss the facilities section of the budget just a brief description and summary of our school buildings under this umbrella our french hill elementary school is still idle but being leased out to 11 individual tenants the school
034district's wrestling program is located in the building and we retain a series of rooms for storage purposes we currently generate revenue from tenants sufficient to cover routine maintenance for the building and the campus and provide a modest positive cash flow that reduces the tax rate the operations of the physical plant includes costs related to all staff salaries heating and cooling energy costs and all the materials and supplies necessary to support operations the cost of snow removal operations providing access to outside community groups and the oversight of the french hill school building idled since 2010 are also captured here the heating fuel contingency is being restored based on the volatility of the oil market this item had been removed from the 2020 budget as part of the overall cost reduction effort in general the huge spike
035in energy costs is putting pressure on every cost element that is dependent in any measure on fuel the upkeep codes reflect the large amount of work we're now able to do with in-house labor in the form of carpentry hvac hvac systems plumbing electrical work and site projects we also utilize outside contractors obtained through bids and requests for proposals to perform more in-depth work on heating and cooling systems items of note include the cost of re-tubing one boiler at the high school and increased boces costs related to water testing in total the entire general support section of our budget is estimated to increase by just over half a million dollars or 5.56 percent we'll now discuss the benefits section of the budget these costs listed here are not allocated to the individual areas of the budget
036in 2022 23 total benefit costs will rise by just over 1.6 million dollars or approximately eight percent the primary cost drivers are the pension system contributions an unfunded mandate which increases by just over two hundred thousand dollars net and health insurance cost estimated to increase by 1.2 million dollars the district has established a reserve fund to help mitigate the rising cost of the pension system we are asking the board of education to once again consider contributing a total of one hundred of one million dollars five hundred thousand dollars from the ers reserve and five hundred thousand dollars from the trs reserve to directly reduce the cost of these two items providing tax relief as a result next week we will present the largest portion of the budget instruction general education special education and technology and
037we'll be more than happy to answer any questions you might have um before i get to the the board questions do we can we talk a little bit about the solar and what we've done in the past i don't know if dennis wants to join us we've talked about geothermal we've talked a lot of about some of these items sure um i don't know whether you know yeah we'll ask mr boyce to come up anyway because he'll be able to answer answer some questions let us just be hit the uh watch that button yeah just go into the ring but yes we have looked at uh on high density i'm sorry we have looked at solar um solar panel installation both on our roofs on our campus and we've even investigated areas off campus to
038be able to put solar arrays up and we did bring one presentation before the board years ago uh with a solar company from upstate new york uh that the board ultimately declined to participate in but we've looked at this in a variety of different ways and and dennis perhaps you can provide more detail but we looked at the the available space on our roofs the impact on the roofs themselves in terms of what it might do to the warranties of the roofs and we looked at using about a three acre array on our campus for which we didn't really have the room uh and that's what drove us off campus to a section of the boces property here in new york town did you understand what anything like that no you pretty hit uh you
039hit the highlights uh it was a company called solarcity and it was roughly i'd say five years ago um so yeah they went quickly from the roofs to um solar arrays on ground looking for property and that kind of pushed them to the boces property we just don't have a lot of available space you'd have to clear trees up with the property that we have to do to do that or um our roofs are very full they're not flat like a a normal roof if you see somebody's home roof it's a flat space we have a lot of equipment on our roofs there was not a lot of area real estate i would say to put solar panels is that correct you are correct and and most recently with these hvac units uh just this
040past summer we put on our high school gym 280 ton hvac units with ductwork to open the space beneath it we're doing the same this summer at the uh the middle school and then each of these elementaries we have heating ventilating units that will be adding cooling coils so that does occupy some of our roofs uh ductwork and mechanical equipment that we have to get to to service and what have we done as far as talking about geothermal and trying to retrofit our buildings for that well the the one most of the time that we've talked to our professionals about geothermal with regard to new construction would you agree dennis that you have retrofitting is incredibly expensive absolutely um i've been here now 18 years and just before i came the district invested a lot
041of monies in these terminal unit ventilators that you all hear about so they're they're roughly coming on 20 years of age and typical lifespan is plus the years these terminal units would have to be replaced with the geothermal system because you're you you focus on pumps we don't have the pumping system for these unit ventilators so boilers are one part of it as well um in my tenure we've replaced every boiler system with with the exception of this school which work hopefully we do in this summer we did it 10 years ago replaced the burner so we are just replacing boilers at a cost of about a hundred thousand per boiler two boilers um so geothermal is not just you know sticking piping in the ground it's a it's a hefty expense on pumping systems
042and tying it into your boiler system what have we done to reduce our carbon footprint well we do have efficient boilers so we have state-of-the-art boilers for all schools but this one they've they've been done in the last 10 15 years so the water tube boilers they're very efficient um the drawback is we rely on fuel oil this is the only building in the district where we have another yeah we have a gas so we can go back and forth between gas and oil we have been running on gas this year because we found it cheaper than the oil the result you've also done over the years that the the lighting more efficient lighting done every room in the district is on the automatic light switches uh we have several hybrid vehicles now in our
043fleet and facilities electric vehicles for security personnel so to the extent that we can we integrate a lot of those yeah there have been there are other mechanisms outside of solar panels and geothermal and i understand that and that's all important and it's something that i'm sure we'll continue that conversation on but that's not the only mechanism and that's not the only consideration so the high efficiency lighting the timers the sensors the programmable thermostats the insulation that we've done the caulking around the windows to keep hot air out in the summer and cold air out in the winter and vice versa along the seasons so those are the recycling programs all of those other things that a school ought to be doing are certainly in place here um and i'm sure there are a few
044steps that we've taken that i've left out but in terms of so we were in the gym i'll share with you we were in the gym we had about a thousand maybe 1500 people in and if you were watching last night's broadcast i would ask you to just forward right ahead on local live to um the poughkeepsie lords game our lights went out our lights went out in the gym i i am in all seriousness our lights went out in the gym and the officials had to stop play because our sensors had not there's a sensor in one of the corners of the room someone was standing in front of it for a long period of time and so it tricked our systems work so well that the entire lighting system went out in our
045gym in the middle of a championship basketball game so that was the only hiccup that we had during the course of mr rosen you were there and you remember that it was right i didn't want to say it so we do have in spaces like the gymnasium where you can burn a lot of electricity on lights we've upgraded to led which is so much more energy efficient than what we've been using prior and one of the other things is looking at led lighting throughout because that is a big driver for electrical costs our lights when children are here the lights are on and that's something that we also need to have as part of the conversation moving forward as well and i know that we have investigated that we continue to look into that that
046technology so that's just one other element i would add to the conversation and as as we meet with steering committee and we we come up with the projects it's always what is the most efficient and i know it would be lovely to say we can just go carbon neutral and it's very hard when you have buildings that were built in the 50s and the 60s and they really aren't capable of doing that um but we do try and i think you know like for instance the gyms are getting air conditioning this summer we also added in retrofitting the lights in there even though we've replaced them not all that long ago we're retrofitting them because now there's new technology now there's leds that that can go in there and be more efficient um so we
047are doing where we can um i wish we could say more and i wish we could do more but uh you know we is there more we can do as a there's always more we can continue the conversation yes i think that's the important um element here to keep the conversation going and look for opportunities where we can not only is it cost effective especially in this climate but it's also the responsible approach for us and uh you know we do do a lot of things dennis you do the energy throw down right with the schools to build awareness and things like that so uh it is a constant conversation yes can you speak to the energy we call it the energy through affectionately here um but can you speak to that sure sure so
048it started um i want to say 12 years ago and every april uh right through earth day in may we we task all our schools they take it as a challenge to reduce our carbon footprint and a lot of it is turning off electricity when not in use but even even the paper the recycling and i i can keep track of it with the electricity bills and i must say in that one month you do see some savings there they're really aggressive in that one month so um they have fun with it and we give an award on earth day to the the school with the biggest savings and i base it on square footage so it's not always the same school uh winning year after year so they have fun with it okay um
049now we can go to board questions uh lisa do you have a question on the entire budget presentation yes i do have a question but while we have mr verboise here i just want to thank you for all the hard work you and your team put in um i think a lot of people came to our campus over the weekend that had never been here before and i heard from a lot of outside district people how beautiful and clean and neat our facilities were and i know that wasn't just this weekend that's all of the time but especially this weekend when there were thousands of people there that's a huge compliment to you and your team so thank you for making us look good yes of course thank you um i have a question tom
050about the digitization sure what are we digitizing what have we done where are we going what is that in the in years past the pre-pandemic we had spent a good deal of time energy and money digitizing student records employee records and things of that nature we had taken this money out of the budget two years ago in an effort to reduce the 2020 budget uh in the midst of covet but we now we still have believe it or not some payroll records that are on microfiche and um this money will be spent to digitize those records because they have to be kept in perpetuity so uh that's the next project we're also applying for a grant and if we receive the grant we'll expand uh the scope of what we're looking to do but we
051hope to have everything digitized and be in a current state of just doing the current year's uh documents going forward so once we catch up with the past records would this line item amount be reduced do you think that lineup yes will be reduced this money um is is being used to digitize an incredible volume of information um but then it will become an annual thing and the and the amount of money will be far less thank you you're welcome sure i have a question tom uh regarding the upkeep of the alarms um i would imagine that these the alarms get older uh the upkeep would be more expensive but i'm noticing that the cost of the upkeep is actually declining what is the reason behind that sure no that's a great observation um we
052actually we had a service vendor for many years red hawk they changed over to adt so two years we jumped on their central station monitoring service so this budget is reflective of a pretty much the right sizing of that uh code um so these will be the prices we see going forward they're much more equipped to do the central station monitoring but we find him be an excellent vendor wonderful okay thank you richmond uh i have a question um but before that i i want to give an update i know we talked about energy and reducing our carbon footprint so uh senator peter harkin had hosted a call to talk about the zero emission school buses i was open to superintendents board members so he's looking at companies uh based out of either california or
053even in canada and i know this morning he was able to actually get a demo bus for anyone that was interested to ride i saw the pictures of that so they're looking at things like power range does it need to be charged during the day cost effectiveness all the all of that so that's something that he's looking at i did ask the question about what this would mean for us uh where we use a transportation contractor and don't own our own fleet he made a note of the question so um we'll we'll wait for more info uh to follow but i think there's some um work being done at the you know at the state level um in that regard too so my question is actually on health insurance so tom i know earlier in
054the budget cycle i think we had expected the premiums would increase by about six percent but tonight it looks like it's at about eight percent uh over a million dollars so can you give us some insight and sure sure um the our school district belongs to a health insurance consortium um that has 14 school districts in the uh in the consortium and that that consortium gets together and votes on and sets rates so earlier in the year uh it's at a rate of increase of about six percent of premiums based on the experiences of the plan uh what they saw as trends and so forth well in the interim from when that initial rate had been set uh they got another month or two worth of uh data points to uh coming in and it
055was in my opinion in the in an era when a lot of the covet testing was going on so the consortium team met a second time and considered increasing the rate by another two percent which they did our school district didn't support that measure openly but the majority of the consortium agreed to increase the rates an additional two percent so for us that was another quarter of a million dollars so uh that's how the rate went from six to eight percent and just to elaborate on that as mr cole said our school district does get a seat at the table we voted no on the increase and we thought there were other options that could have been explored before a universal rate increase of this magnitude so we thought that there were other options that
056the health insurance consortium could have more strongly considered than imposing this increase thank you i'll finish your sentence we got voted down unfortunately yeah uh i actually have a comment and then a question um with regard to uh reducing our carbon footprint and the steps that we've taken i think we've done a lot uh but i do think there's a lot more we can do and uh i remember when we looked at the last company for solar i believe my numbers will be a little fuzzy but it was somewhere around a 3 million layout for us and their savings were going to be somewhere just shy of a hundred thousand dollars a year and at the time that did not make a lot of sense to the board for obvious reasons but i know that
057things have changed i know that technology has changed and i know that a lot of the programs have changed so i do think it's something we need to revisit even if it's to the extent that we can't produce all of our electricity that we need whatever we can produce and save i think would be worth looking into so um i for one would like to not right now but i would like to figure out a way to you know tackle some of those issues might be a nice project to um include our engineering students and yeah i think that's a fantastic approach um to you know both include uh people from community and and and students for sure in how we look at things so anyway that's my comment my question um for mr cole
058is that our trs contribution this year is up significantly yet our ers contribution is down significantly can you help us understand why there's a big difference there between the two sure the the the pension systems in in the state of new york the trs the teachers retirement system dwarfs the ers system in terms of the amount of funds available there there's a direct correlation between the district's contribution on an annual basis and the relative performance of the stock market trs had a target investment rate and last year towards the end of last year which was a pretty good year in terms of the equity markets they decided to lower their target rate into the future so they took an opportunity in my opinion to piggyback on a healthy market return and reduce their return estimate
059going forward which increased our contribution as a school district so that's the difference between the two typically you would have seen flat or even a reduction in the rate and and that caused our rate to go up our rate of contribution to go up so that's why you see that effect in the budget um i have a question for dennis but before i do i want to piggyback on what lisa said because i did attend one of the games on saturday and your facilities crew is second to none it's i watched them in between games they were a well-oiled machine cleaning everything so you wouldn't know anybody was in there before the next group of people came in they were phenomenal it was it was wonderful our staff all over the district whoever volunteered or
060worked those two days were amazing and we've gotten a lot of compliments on how well it was run and that's i think a lot to do with our staff so i just want to thank everybody who did that and just to add costs that were incurred by the district for that event are being reimbursed by section one as well so i just wanted to make sure that that was noted for our community and every one of them is working today after they've worked so hard this weekend so thank you um dennis can you talk about the um the re-tubing of the boiler and um because is is that just a one-time cost is there more re-tubing to do what are we doing with the boilers sure so we we put a 50 000 or i
061think it's 50 or 55 000 uh we got a proposal earlier this heating season this would be for the high school we have three kawani boilers they are our oldest boilers after the replacement of the brookside boilers this summer they were done in so they're coming on 20 22 years and about this time water tube boilers you you get some decay in the water tube so this would be a re-tubing of one of the three boilers the hope is to do each boiler in the next three years so a similar cost for the next three years but they can extend the life of these boilers another 10 15 years but if we're talking 1999 boilers and we know that we're doing re-tubing is that something we might want to look at for more energy efficient
062boilers for replacement or would we just want to keep putting in tubes and running boilers i don't know if a 1999 boiler is more or less efficient than one in 2022 i would assume it's less efficient um true there's there's a lot of truth to that but you're talking about the these size boilers for the high school you know an initial cost for a more energy efficient boiler would run you close you know four or five hundred thousand dollars um initial cost each one and there's three of them right but is that something that you know it is worth at least looking into to see cost versus return just a question no without a doubt without a doubt becky i think it goes back to the comment that was made by one of the speakers
063and that is that as we know we're coming up on the end of some life expectancies having a comprehensive strategy that says here's what we're going to do when we get to that point um and not making these individual decisions all the time about how we're going to handle you know this boiler and that boiler but looking at the big picture and saying okay here's our schedule of when we feel we're going to have to replace things now how we're going to go about doing that what's the best way to do it so and i agree but if you're looking if you're looking at boilers and if dennis is saying we're re-tubing three boilers and we're doing one this year you're looking at 150 000 outlay over three years should we at least not start
064an investigation process yeah even if we start there and start to develop whatever i i just i don't know i just think it's worth a conversation with the engineers and the experts to help us without a doubt just a thought lisa yeah um tom i wanted to ask you about the liability insurance entry on the budget i see that there's an increase of almost thirty three thousand dollars what what's causing that well there's two pieces to that the the um last year the premium increases were not known to us until our budget had been completed so a portion of that increase is catch up to last year's premium increase um then there's a a smaller premium increase in the current year um based on our loss experiences so as we file claims those claims go
065into the loss experience and they'll have an impact on some of our premiums so that's what you're seeing there's a combination of those two things okay thank you cheryl i'm all set thank you brush me um i have a question on the upkeep of the air conditioning systems that seems to be that seems to project it to go up for next year what is driving that right so that's an increase of roughly 7 500 for the maintenance of we put split units in the high school gym three summers ago so we've added a lot of cooling components so it's it's just for for upkeep upkeep costs with all the cooling systems that we're adding okay so then after that year sorry one week is that filter and maintenance i'm just filtering maintenance oh sure sure
066yeah fan motors belts um pulleys yeah makes sense mike um tom i know we talked about you mentioned the um new copier lease um how does that cost wise work out for us with regard to our existing printers and and machines well the um it's a very good question and um we're very fortunate that our director of technology jen forsberg was on this one she did a wonderful job the where we will be signing a new lease with xerox for copiers for the next several years we're going to wind up at the end of the day with more units with a wider range of functionality than the ones we have currently and our price is not going to change so it will actually decrease slightly and some of the functionality is really important to us
067including translation services and things like that on these units so it's it's really a remarkable uh effort and we're going to get a big bang for the buck so we're excited about that um tom can you just talk about the boces administrative charge sure boces is i mentioned before that were members of the the uh northern westchester uh putnam northern westchester health consortium of 14 school districts boces is a um has 18 members component members of its school of the uh the consortium in general uh the boces in general it's designed to provide shared services they do a wonderful job with certain special education services and things of that nature they're unmatched than some of the things they can do they have administrative costs just like we do and they allocate those costs to school
068districts so of the 18 component districts one of the largest variables and the allocation of those costs is the assessed valuations of the properties in each school district so that line item that you see in our budget is our our portion of a very larger administrative budget for the boces operation so do we don't have any control over that we have no control over that we get to to vote you know some input into the budget process that boces has but just like any other school district they have um they have fixed costs for benefits and things of that nature there's also a capital component that's allocated in a similar manner which is also in our budget which is increasing because they have capital improvements to do on their own facilities and because they don't
069uh assess um and appropriate monies as an individual entity they allocate those to the school districts based on a very similar formula so you'll see an allocation and an increase for that line on them as well okay anybody else got more questions i'm good thank you just uh if we could ask one are you good with the increase for the oil contingency that's in the uh in the budget we think it's appropriate are we good with it no do we have a choice we think it buys us uh two additional weeks mr verboise is that um yeah i i do i look at the heating season as a 12 two week period from the end of november to the uh beginning of may and we are just entering uh the ninth cycle so to speak
070so we've averaged i keep my spreadsheets 200 uh 2.65 cents a gallon um i know in the last week they really spiked so we're hopeful we're not going to need much oil hopefully spring is here um but um yeah there's always that fear i mean um i look back um 2012-13 we averaged 3.37 cents a gallon so um yeah we're we're back you know that was so ten years ago but we're back to those prices right now but hopefully they're not here long but we have to plan for it and this is an item that we had previously in the budget you will remember was taken out two years ago on that same effort to reduce the budget and the beginnings of the pandemic and and we think it's something that um we think it's
071something that's wise to include here i agree you what do you do to try to mitigate some of like you try to pre-fill tanks we get together at the beginning of every summer and try to top off as many of the tanks as possible in the warmer weather when the price is typically lower although this year who knows what it will be so we tried to take advantage of that before the close of the current fiscal year um and then after that there's just so many variables that we can't control temp you know the average temperatures and so forth but i would say that the um uh the use of the automated controls helps a great deal don't you think it does it does we have to maintain 65 degrees temperature in the heating season
072that's that's a state regulation so we ideally shoot for the 6869 degree the energy challenge will drop it a little bit maybe we'll run that a few months this i'll bring sweaters in all right are we good with the contingency thank you thank you anything else thank you all right next oh the cap reserved yeah the cap reserve yeah i know we finished the budget you're doing the next one right thank you dennis okay so we're going to talk a little bit about uh a proposal to extend the existing capital reserve so tonight we're going to begin this discussion about the capital reserve to to fund projects as we move into the future the capital reserve fund provides a source of funding for capital improvement projects the use of the reserve saves taxpayers money by
073eliminating the need to borrow money at increasingly higher interest rates voters have total control over the additional withdrawal of money from the fund through ballot resolutions the use of the fund would not impact the annual operating budget the current capital reserve was first approved by voters in may of 2017. that was reserved was funded at a level of 12 million dollars and had an original maximum term of 10 years we estimate that the use of the reserve to this point will save taxpayers approximately 1.5 million dollars in interest costs over the next 15 years the repayment period had we borrowed the money instead you can see the substantial list of projects that have been completed using this reserve the initial projects were started in 2018. we are proposing tonight the extension of this capital reserve
074to complete capital improvement projects in the coming years in an environment of increasing interest rates we believe the use of the capital reserve will again save taxpayers a significant amount of money this on this chart is a brief yet incomplete list of potential projects under consideration to be completed using the extended capital reserve in addition to identifying appropriate projects to be included in the capital reserve we are asking the board's steering committee to consider the level of maximum funding for the reserve in the maximum duration our goal is to have a proposal on the ballot in may for voter consideration and we'd be glad to have a discussion about any questions you might have okay i'll start with mike i don't really have any questions um i i just will say that um this uh
075this approach that we took going back five years ago has proven to be extremely successful on so many fronts from saving taxpayer money to being able to accomplish projects in a timely manner and we've managed to do that very efficiently as well thanks to the excellent steering committee and facilities team that we have so i think it's logical that we would extend this and continue to try to essentially self-finance our own projects in this environment even though we have a tremendous credit rating which helps us in a lot of areas from borrowing perspective uh anything that we can do in-house so to speak with our own funds rather than borrowing from somebody else we should just makes you know good fiscal sense so i'm in favor of it where should we yeah i have no
076questions but i echo everything mike said i think it makes sense for us to um have the money to be able to do the projects that we'd like sure i would agree um just when i look at you know the top of the list of some of the things that we as a steering committee jackie and i are both on that committee um have had to have been able to accomplish over the past few years i look at the first two high school gymnasium upgrades i mean we were able to host section one uh you know the play the playoffs on on this past weekend so um that would have been something that we could have never been able to help out the section for and this was you know something that we we saw
077a need and we were able to help out section one because the county center wasn't available so that was really we have a beautiful gym state of the art and we were able to pitch in where needed i look at the air conditioning throughout many of the schools that was definitely needed we identified that that there were so many months that the students were there without air conditioning so um as we look into the future and look at some of the projects that we're looking at at this point um we had highlighted one of them or see you know some uh various upgrades and certainly the guidance suite different things and different ideas we had i think it all makes a lot of sense lisa yeah so um i don't disagree with anything anybody has
078said but tom let me ask you is there a downside to extending no not not that i can see that it makes perfect sense especially in this environment where we know interest rates will be rising um we do believe that i mean we had some terrific interest rates on some of the capital projects we had done previously we were able to refinance some of them below one percent those days are long gone so i think this makes perfect sense if you have the ability to do it and put money in over a period of years i believe that's the number one reason to have this capital reserve the number two reason which is probably one and one a is it allows the board of education to be really nimble to react to the environment that
079exists currently um i think that's worth a great deal so i do not see a downside dr hatter did you i don't i don't we and this is and just to remind the community this is a fund that we already have we've already established this fund and with voter authorization we've hit the maximum so when you start a capital reserve fund you have to define two things how much money you're going to put in it and the duration of the fund how many years so we've exhausted the maximum that we identified five years ago so do we want to extend it and it makes perfect sense and i echo tom's statements with regard to the financial environment but in addition to that in a year in advance generally these projects take a long time and
080if you're going to go out and bond not only are the costs higher but it takes longer to do and and bonding is important and it has its place um however we can act a little quicker on smaller scope not a 30 million dollar project or a 40 million dollar project but on a smaller scope we can act quicker and when i look at some of the things we've been able to accomplish with the capital reserve fund to date we're one of very few districts where i would say that every classroom space after this summer when we add to the gym and to the cafeteria air conditioning every classroom space will be air conditioned that is so integral and we saw how valuable it was during the covet era when we were able to retrofit
081all of our filtration with merv 13 filters so actually the gymnasium i want to say dennis it's not merv 13. it's even higher than that number 14 in the gymnasium so we're we've been able to do that this facility that we're in was completely redone to give our students a better lunch experience the most exciting stage we'll get to the stage we'll get to the stage and we're looking at some other wonderful projects within our schools and and we have the flexibility to be able to identify those projects and the steering committee has done so much work and so many hours of design i'm in awe of the amount of time that you have volunteered to this district it is just remarkable uh because the the everything that we see is the product of hundreds
082and hundreds of hours of design time that that the committee spending together so i look at all that we've accomplished and there's more to be done and the capital reserve seems to make sense extending it and you do what you can in a given year and you don't fund it fully immediately and you present to the voters the projects that you're considering and you need voter authorization to withdraw the money and so there's still that element of engaging our community as well so can i just follow up i guess this question is really for jackie and cheryl who are on the steering committee on slide four there's a list of about seven items how does the steering committee decide what project is going to come next so one of the things that we have to
083do every year or every five years is a five-year bcs a building conditions survey and that is done by our architects and construction managers and it generates a list of things that need to be done in the district whether they're old and failing they're in danger of failing they're not no longer ada compliant and it generates a higher level which is that goes up to the state but then they give us far more detail plus we listen to what staff has to say what the administrators have to say in there ron is very good about asking with the building principles what do you need where do we need to go to help and it's always on a focus of what's going to make it better for students and staff and what of course safety and
084so i don't know how long we spent on that five-year spreadsheet it was a long time but that that's helped generate some of the things that we've talked about some of the higher need things when you look at for instance the guidance suite okay you know that that guidance suite went in when the buildings were built kids don't sit at tables and go through books anymore there's there's no there's it's not 21st century there's there's no way for them to act and do what they need to do within a guidance suite that should be more interactive we look at um the e steam lab in the middle school that was the old tv studio now it's just a room but it doesn't have all the pieces in it that it needs to become those spaces
085so those are the things we look at and the reasons for it so it's just a lot of discussion back and forth and we bring in whoever we need to bring in and ron's very good about bringing in principles when we need them and it's a give and take because the needs outweigh the resources that are available or the wants outweigh the resources that are available so you try to make sure that you put your fingerprints on each of the schools as well and that's important that we upgraded the cafeteria here we upgraded the nurses suite at mohansec and made some other upgrades there we upgraded the corridor ceilings floors and lights at crompond we've made some adjustments at the middle school we're going to be refurnishing that gym this summer we made an upgrade
086at the high school so it's ensuring our students throughout the district are are feeling the effects of the capital reserve that we've established and also across genres so looking at the auditorium our students in the fine and performing arts looking at our music classrooms to make sure that we can uh there was a conversation that we had at our last meeting and we look at the acoustical panels in in some of the music classrooms to improve upon that and then going into athletics and into the classrooms and making sure that across all areas where we're maximizing our impact yeah i'd just like to add you know to the question of um is there any downside to this there really isn't in that it provides the district with the maximum amount of flexibility and in addition
087to that if they're if the funds are not available we don't have to fund the reserve so it's not it's not like we're locking anything in you know if we say we're going to extend it just using as a number another 12 million dollars that doesn't mean that we're required to come up with 12 million dollars at some point it just means that we would have the ability to fund up to 12 million dollars if in fact we have the funds available so it gives us flexibility it doesn't tie anybody's hands um and so there really is no downside and it helps us react to the needs of of the buildings as as they happen i mean if anybody remembers what the brookside cafeteria if anybody's had kids go through brookside before this and and
088you remember the uh the carts that they used to wheel out and and the kids couldn't even put the trays on it you know it it wasn't a functional space for them and so it's all about function we've been here mike and i for 16 years and um the difference in what the buildings and the facilities look like from 16 years ago because we are able to react to the needs i don't know if you can talk about that sure and i think i agree wholeheartedly that we've been able to pivot to really important needs so in during covet it was the ventilation systems and air conditioning and things of that nature those are the types of things that we were able to react to very quickly because we had the reserve available to us
089and mike is absolutely correct funding of the reserve will be assessed each year depending on the availability of funds so i i think it in general it's an outstanding tool if you have the ability to manage it and i think we've experienced some we have some great experience over the last five years and doing just that right and again it allows the taxpayer some control because we can't take money out of the fund without their authorization on the ballot um and we have been so grateful for our community for supporting all of this but they do have control we have to tell them what the project is and they have to authorize the funds before we can start the work so it is a give and take with the community anything else i'm good thank
090you okay was that it for you ron yes next week i could present to you i can give some thought we can give some thought maybe even with fiscal advisory or steering we can give some thought on a duration and a dollar amount maybe we can talk about it at the next meeting because i believe by the 21st we have to have something on the board agenda so if it's okay with you i'd like to come back next week with some more information on the or some more recommendations that we can discuss yeah i think steering should should help design some of what it should be but i think fiscal advisory needs to be involved to help come up with the emails make sense okay all right we're going to go into the business meeting
091business office can i have a motion to approve the budget transfers that are listed below all those in favor aye opposed and can have a motion to approve the following contracts for health and welfare services provided to resident pupils attending non-public schools in other districts for the 21 22 school year come over second all those in favor aye opposed and we have gift we have a motion except with gratitude the following donation we have 500 in acme market gift cards from gen youth on behalf of the acme markets foundation and nourishing neighbors campaign second discussion go ahead just a question this is wonderful from from acme all the way around um but what do we do with these how would we use them so as we have so there were specific schools that were cited
092in the donation and then there were 50 gift cards that were provided to us so we've allocated them and they're to be used for a celebration with students and with staff the 50 buying power doesn't go too too far with regard to what we're able to do with the funds but certainly as we have celebrations and we're having more and more in-person celebrations with students and with families we can certainly use the monies to go toward providing refreshments so that's great timing then with all of our kids you know back and unmasked that's awesome it's very generous yeah all right all those in favor opposed all right we're up to board comments lisa um i just want to say that it's so great to see everybody's faces um haven't seen everybody in person without a
093mask on in a long time thank you all for coming out thank you for the discussions about the yorktown 100 i think it revives conversations that had happened on this board a couple of years ago and it's because of community members that bring these issues to our attention so that we can look at them as well so thank you to all of you for coming out sure i agree it's nice to see everyone here tonight and i do remember some of the solar panel discussions we had right when i started on the board it was probably about six or seven years ago so maybe it's time to start you know as we we always do we're always very um environmentally friendly as we go through our projects but maybe it's time to revisit some of
094the old the you know the solar discussions that we've had in the past i also wanted to talk about on thursday night i had the absolute pleasure of being able to attend wes f's practice night our science research department put on a fantastic presentation virtually i was shocked at how well it went because i really thought to myself how is this going to work i'm attending five different different presentations and typically you think of the groups in the gym because i typically do it every year but last year i wasn't there i'm guessing we probably didn't host it or maybe it was virtual and i missed it it was so exceptionally done i think the science department science research department did an excellent job of organizing it and i will say these students are i
095mean really unreal and some of the topics they've come up with and some of the presentation their skills are really top of the line i'm very impressed with their skills their topics they range from covid and and the effects on mental health too and i had to write this one down fresh water micro allergies and morphology they were at sparkle lake taking water samples a very impressive group of students and really piggybacking on some of the discussions that we had tonight about energy conservation and environmental issues they that was at the forefront of really most of their presentations so i commend them i wish them much luck and i really thank the department for having me as a guest judge that night it was an absolute pleasure the two but two hours went by so
096quickly i was ready to do another two hours um if i would have had the opportunity so thank you and uh bet all the best to them i'm good it's just good to see everyone and all the smiles and the faces so good to see everyone thank you for coming out mike yeah i agree with everything that was said so far and it is great to be here uh i'd also like to thank our community members that came out tonight and spoke it was important to hear from them and i also want to thank our community members in general who have even though there have been some hot topics over the last couple of months and years even we've really been able to maintain a very uh civil conversation and discourse and i really truly
097appreciate that and thank everyone who comes out and supports that thank you yeah i i i can echo every thing people said i'm grateful when the community comes out and speaks because if we don't hear from you we can't react and i know we don't react to you right away but it doesn't mean we don't have the discussions afterwards and and we do and our purpose of listening is if we're trying to respond we're not hearing what you're saying so we're just listening without trying to form a response so and i'm grateful to everybody's respect i'm grateful that our kids are back unmasked and i'm grateful to the kindness and compassion that everybody's showing to each other with no issues with the unmasking so that's it just shows what a great district this is and
098i'm just so proud to be a part of it oh ron lisa tom anything so we're going to go on to our last public comments um since it doesn't look like anybody new came in i'm not going to read my speech again because i think you all know the rules i'm just going to say that our second public comment period is 30 minutes in length each person will have the opportunity to speak to up to three minutes and the board may choose to extend this comment period by a majority vote i only have two people so that's not going to happen we're going to start with janet jaramillo hello it is essential that the public's voices are heard and i wanted to show my appreciation to the board for keeping these meetings civil respectful and
099organized and also extremely informative thank you very much i support the initiative to decrease yorktown school's carbon footprint in any way possible yorktown 100's work is hugely important and i am excited about the prospect of utilizing solar energy and looking into electric buses and school vehicles with input from a possible task force thank you for filling us in on the progress the district has already made towards a smaller environmental impact i'm looking forward to hearing more about how we continue that conversation i have spoken at a previous meeting about the books that are under review thank you dr hatter for touching on that i'm glad that the books have remained in the library up to this point i want to say i hope that the determination is that all of the books remain in the
100library for the kids who need them and i mean that students who could relate to the characters and stories and feel understood in those books need them this is crucial for developing a sense of belonging and these students mental health in my opinion if students can be involved in researching the solar initiative which i think is a brilliant idea they can choose for themselves which books to check out of the school library yorktown students are so smart thank you as always for supporting them and thank you for your time thank you uh katie schmidt vader hello hi everybody it is great to see everyone's faces um it's nice to see everyone's faces that's what i was saying um i want to thank you so much for your work especially on the budget i my mind
101i can't even comprehend how you begin to all those budget items and meeting after meeting and so appreciative for that work that you all do um i did have a question as far as the capital reserve i just wondered if it was invested if it's um i know you can't answer questions but um is it invested in the stock market is it just an interest-bearing account i just really didn't know so i was just curious about that um and then i just also wanted to address once again um with gratitude the way it's being handled the review of the books i thought there was wonderful transparency in the way the parents were chosen to participate on the community on the committee um dr hatter made it very clear we all knew what was going on
102very appreciative of that the only thing i would be curious about is what the timeline is like when the decisions will be made and just so that we can move on i know that additional books have been added to the list so i also thought perhaps maybe something that could be considered is an annual time frame in which books can be brought up for review there's an amount of time so there's so it's not just an ongoing query because it's a lot of work for everyone and you know maybe this is something that could be done even over the summer when the books can be taken out of the library without a concern the other thing i just wanted to bring up is the diversity equity and inclusion initiatives the culturally responsive sustaining education outline
103program that was developed by the state four years ago now and i'm just really wondering when we're going to get going on that um i think it's important i think it's so important we have such a wonderful diverse community and i want every kid here to feel honored and respected and i also want our kids to have the education they need and so i haven't really gotten a clear sense of where that's where that is right now i think it would be helpful for us it is hard to not be able to have a discussion with the board i don't know how any of you actually feel about that program and that's kind of frustrating to me i mean we get to ask questions here but we don't get to hear your answers and even
104though you go and discuss it afterwards we don't hear that discussion so i would like that for there to be a way that we could have a discussion about all of this even in the community i hate when one group gets up and speaks and the other group gets up and speak but we don't have a discussion so i don't know if it's possible i have attended charette's which are you know as a planning board sort of structure wherein a community can discuss i would love if we had something like that in this community so i'm just putting that out there if if it's all possible that we can hear how you feel and we can all discuss at some point thank you thank you you want to answer the where the money goes yes
105do you invest the money in the stock market that's a good that's actually a good question there are specific parameters around it and it's probably a great time to just remind everybody how that is handled so uh the all of the money of the school district is um subject to the limitations of board policy with regard to how it's invested our investment strategy is no more extravagant than a simple bank money market uh simple interest bearing account so we take no risk with the with the taxpayer money and that's where you'll find it earning a whopping 0.35 can i have a motion to adjourn all those in favor thank you very much everybody thank you you