June 16, 2022 KLSD BOE Meeting

001second one good evening everybody welcome it's so nice to see so many of you students and parents members of our staff welcome tonight is thursday june 16th this is our last board of education meeting of the school year and we are really looking forward to two fantastic presentations it's my pleasure to make a motion for the board to return to public session if i could have a second thank you rory all in favor please say aye aye aye thank you 7-0 and would everybody please join us as is our custom for the pledge of allegiance [Music] thank you so much and as i mentioned we are really looking forward to two presentations this evening and we just want to take a moment to acknowledge the amazing presentations and energy in the foyer shortly before we

002entered this meeting thank you so much to our students for your research your knowledge your dedication to important matters related to sustainability and climate change and our environment and for caring about the world in which we live and for teaching us a great deal even before we walked into the meeting and for staying for those of you who are able to stay for our meeting and who are about to present with us here tonight we're very grateful this is quite a celebration and really the culmination of so much hard work on behalf of our students and our staff and we take great pride in seeing all that you've accomplished and we're really grateful that we were able to make these arrangements for tonight so thank you so very much and congratulations especially to our students

003we're going to hear two substantial presentations tonight one of course related to sustainability which is um the culmination actually of many years of work and just an opportunity to update the board of education and our community on where we are and to celebrate um some terrific achievements and also to look ahead to the future of our facilities and to anticipate some really exciting opportunities and um you know tonight really is the beginning of a broader district-wide conversation and we're so grateful that many of you are here to join us and to our committee members who are um supporting this work and who have been terrifically dedicated throughout the year so again thank you everybody for being here before we turn our attention to the presentations i'm just going to pause briefly for any board announcements

004um it's my pleasure to invite board colleagues to share a few words about the humanities research symposium please yes so i went to the humanities symposium the other day i was only i was sort of sad i could only go to one room at a time so i had to quickly look at the pro program and see which room i wanted to go to and it was just very very impressive i am positive that i was not capable of doing this type of sustained research they would work on something for years and it would become from a poster to a presentation to a paper for high school students to be able to make slides and stand in front of somebody and speak for 20 minutes on their research is just fantastic and uh will serve

005them well but which is very impressive terrific thank you so much anybody like to add or perhaps have another board announcement yes please catherine it was so exciting to see the buses and all the really really beautiful people that were getting into the buses tonight for senior prom which is something i know that has been sort of at a stall because of covid so i also think it's really exciting that next week we'll celebrate so many moving up celebrations in person and our graduation next week so um weather looks great we can't wait to celebrate that in person thank you so much catherine and and thank you to our administrators many of whom i saw boarding the bus those and so yes thank you for um for reminding us that we can't take these things

006for granted and that it's wonderful that our students are out celebrating tonight thank you anything else before we move on if not then we would love to hear some announcements from you please answer thank you i'm going to keep the brief tonight because we've got these terrific presentations to get to uh but i'll echo catherine's thoughts and wish a safe and happy prom to our seniors hopefully they're not stuck in traffic and already enjoying the problem um we had a really nice celebration yesterday afternoon for our senior athletes who were going on to play their respective sports at their colleges uh they were with their families and siblings on the contest field grandparents in some cases yesterday that was really nice thank you to chris mccarthy and others for organizing that event they're just a

007reminder that our schools are closed on monday in honor of the juneteenth holiday this is the very first year the public schools all across new york state are actually required to be closed in celebration of this holiday last year it became a federal holiday as we know for the very first time and this is the day that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the united states so a very important holiday for us to celebrate and actually this week i know that across all of our elementary schools students were reading books about the day learning about it so we're happy to be joining in the celebration and making it a learning opportunity for our students and again as catherine just mentioned uh next week is really a culminating week we have the john jay high

008school graduation at caramor on tuesday at 11 moving up for the middle school on wednesday at 9 30 and moving ups in all three elementary schools on thursday at night at 9 00 am so busy week and a very exciting and joyful week too so a nice end that's it for tonight wonderful thank you so much we appreciate all of that um good good energy and this very exciting time of year and now it's my pleasure to turn our attention to the first presentation and to invite mary to please set the stage for us thank you thank you so good evening everyone and thank you and it's so nice to see so many people here and so many people who came out for the celebration so thank you to everyone it's totally merry but please

009for those family members who might not know mary ford is our assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and an integral member of our sustainability board subcommittee and thank you please thank you so i'd like to begin by introducing if our clicker will work this evening um to be sorry on the side okay let's see yeah that should be it there we go there we go okay so you'll see on the slide a list of this evening's presenters um so we have several teachers our director of facilities paul christensen and we have some of our student leaders named there as well although they're not mentioned on this slide i'd be remiss if i didn't mention our board's sustainability subcommittee members they're an incredibly knowledgeable and passionate group of people and i've learned so much from them

010over the past few years so thank you and their work that they've been doing for many years has really informed all of the work that you'll hear about this evening so we'll name them a little bit later but i just wanted to thank them so this evening we are joined by melissa brady melissa is one of our new curriculum integration leaders and middle school family and consumer science teacher they mentioned paul christensen director facilities lara monash who's the school psychologist at meadow pond and also meadow pond's recycling matters club advisor jim panzer is not here this evening but he is the other curriculum integration leader for secondary and some of his students were presenting tonight steve zoller who's our k-12 staff developer for steam and sustainability and i will say in large part tonight's celebration

011is thanks to steve he really such tremendous effort to make sure that happen he also works with the earthrise sustainability club as an advisor and then we have our student leaders we have ava nola and fiona from elementary elena caitlin and grayson from middle school and carolina cerna for high school caroline is also the president next year of the earthrise sustainability club so just wanted to start this is a slide i know you're very familiar with but thinking about the big focus areas for our district the things that we think bring the learning commitment alive um and those are we see them as opportunities to really work on the learning commitment these are the places where the big problems in the world exist for sure and you'll see diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning

012but you'll also see sustainability name there as one of the things we want to focus on even more as time goes by but you also see that's interconnected we try to kind of shade them so they blend together because there is an intersection between dei sel and sustainability work and that's some of the interesting curriculum work that our faculty is doing right now and this is a framework that we've been basing some of our work on the cloud institute has been doing this work for many many years and you'll notice that it really starts with the self so in the center each person has to kind of work on their own knowledge and reflection about their own practices and how they impact others and impact the earth and our environment so and then it moves

013out into thinking about classrooms schools and the physical plants so you'll hear a lot about that from paul this evening and even in communities so it really is you know a comprehensive look at how everyone around this work supports it but for tonight's presentation we'll focus on three main areas community curriculum and campus so we'll start by speaking about community and just giving you this timeline and as i mentioned before our sustainability committee board sustainability committee has been doing this work for many many years so you'll see there it starts back the the committee was formed in 2009 and we've been doing lots of work we actually did show this slide last year but we've added um two pieces to it for 21 and 22. so in 2021 we added the sustainability in our schools

014committee so we now have a committee in addition to the board subcommittee that's made up of faculty members our students often attend from the earthrise sustainability club they've been really helpful to us steve is there lara i'm seeing a lot of the teachers who are here this evening are the teachers who attend consistently but helping to think about ways that we can embed sustainability into the curriculum and also into everything we do even into our routines alexa kaufman is a guidance counselor at the high school she's another member of the team and she's actually an advisor for relay for life so she's thinking about ways to make that event more sustainable right thinking about recyclable products and things like that so you know we're trying to really embed this in the fabric of everything we

015do but you'll also see up there the appointment of our new curriculum integration leaders melissa brady and jim panzer so that was something that was new in october of 2021 and of course in 2022 actually in the beginning of the year the release of the greenhouse gas reports which paul will speak to later on but also the community voting to approve the electric bus and van so that's really exciting work so when we think about school community we think about leadership and so of course our board's leadership has really helped us to lead the way for all of the other work and you'll see two policies mentioned there and they have been in place one was adopted in 20 well it was revi 2008 excuse me and it was revised in 20 twice in 2012

016and 2016 and another was adopted in 2009 so you can see how long this work is going on in terms of our faculty leadership those leader positions that i mentioned steve's staff developer position and then all the members of our sustainability and our schools committee but then we think a lot about student leadership and you'll hear from them this evening so that earthrise sustainability club at the high school meadow ponds recycling matters club and this year we took a trip to a recycling plant in stanford where our recycling goes and our videography club came along and made an instructional video which we'll show a little of tonight so it was interesting because we had representation students from every school and we started talking about like a district-wide green team and wouldn't that be great so

017we're trying to think about what that would look like for next year but we feel like student leadership is really important in this area and then we think about the larger community and we were so fortunate tonight to be joined by some of our partners so bedford 2030 our louis louisboro sustainability committee members and sustainable westchester um and so we thank you all for coming and supporting our work tonight we also are part of the climascope project so we've been working with a consultant cheney munson and he is trying to create a site that curates different projects and work around sustainability for teachers and students at all levels and actually some of our student work has been a part of that so it's really interesting they're leaders for others across the nation and then in

018terms of curriculum some of the work our curriculum integration leaders do they develop an awareness of for example the un's sustainable development goals that's another context that gives us a lot of opportunity to solve the big problems in the world also the cloud institute which we mentioned earlier they have standards and a framework and also developing and sharing resources for teachers connecting those teachers across the district and working with that climascope project and cheney munson and in terms of professional learning we've been offering opportunities for teachers to learn at superintendent's conference days summer there was last year in the summer and then follow up in the fall and winter there was an ongoing course called designing curriculum for sustainability so teachers could design a unit of study or even revise an existing unit of study

019and think about how they'd embed sustainable ideas into that work um staff developers consultants and then just sharing as you saw tonight of teachers sharing their work and really spreading the good news so we will begin to hear a little bit from each level and we'll start with our elementary schools so as we transition so if you want to come on up and thank you neil my pleasure yes and you can if you want to describe your name and bring them over so before we hear from our elementary group i wanted to just mention that we about this recycling road trip that we took so this was back at the end of march and melissa steve and jim before the students left gathered everyone in the high school cafeteria and gave them a little mini

020lesson to kind of get their knowledge going like what do you want to know about recycling what do you think you know already and what do you hope to learn and so you can see a picture of that there some of the charts they used and then we went to the recycling plant so it was really an interesting trip i know i learned quite a bit um and it was great to have representation from each school but rich if you wouldn't mind we'll play maybe just about a minute of the video so you can see what the videography club put together [Music] so [Music] thank you so it was really interesting to see those really large bales of plastic and paper um and the manager at the plant was wonderful he actually does this quite

021often for groups and they have a little classroom and they they really helped us to understand the whole process from beginning to end so that was really terrific but with that i will turn it over to lara monash who's going to lead us in some discussion about the work that's happening at our elementary schools welcome thank you thank you good evening my name is laura monash and i am a school psychologist at meadow pond i've actually been running this club for approximately 10 years it started out informally by trying to help some students who are having some social difficulties during recess they were gathered refundable bottles and cans around the school and donated the monies they got from them to the charities they chose this gave them a positive activity and a sense of accomplishment

022thus the name recycling matters came about i have always had an appreciation for our environment my awareness of the negative impact our societal actions were having on our planet grew as i experienced poor air quality in mexico city due to the lack of emissions controls when i was a freshman in college to viewing firsthand the melting icebergs in alaska in the late 90s with the encouragement of don pomeroy my assistant principal who is a staunch environmentalist it seemed like the time was right to start helping students understand the importance of taking care of our environment the club provides an opportunity to become more knowledgeable on environmental issues as well as helping other people who could benefit from the collection of gently used items such as clothing games or books so they can use their financial

023resources on other matters the club provides a venue for the students to develop a greater sense of self-worth and the realization that they can make a difference for me it's a win-win as the club addresses both social emotional learning and sustainability i am proud of my club members for learning about the impact we as a society are having on our planet and educating both students and adults alike on how to reduce reuse and recycle please hear a few words from three of the members ava would you like to start good evening my name is ava rose and i decided to join the recycling matters club because i wanted to learn more about sustainability and helping our beautiful planet so i can teach and help others to learn how to respect our planet correctly before i

024joined i didn't have much experience with helping the environment however now my thoughts on sustainability are much different than they have ever been before by joining the recycling matters club i've made so many videos on reducing waste such as donating apples and carrots to a local rescue called rising star for the meadow pun report which is our daily news program also i've made posters regarding monthly collections to reuse items such as toys books and stuffed animals i've met so many people along the way and i've even got to go on a field trip to the recycling facility in stanford connecticut that field trip taught me so much about where to throw your trash away where it goes and even what happens to it and all that i learned i brought back to metal pond and

025shared it with the grades during their lunch periods by presenting a powerpoint to finalize my speech today i would just like to say that the recycling matters club really helped me because it gave me an opportunity to learn more about our planet and sustainability and i don't know what i would have done if i haven't joined it thank you to dr monash and my fellow club members for making my experience in the recycling matters club the greatest that they could ever be and now as i go off to the middle school my goal is to leave behind some of my great experiences and to continue educating students in the middle school thank you again to all the amazing people that guided and helped me throughout my experience in metal pond i will truly miss everyone

026i will never stop thinking about the 2021 2022 recycling matters club thank you thank you good evening my name is fiona lee i joined the recycling matters club because i wanted to learn how i could help the environment after i was in the club for about two months i decided that i wanted to teach students and adults about recycling so i got two of my peers who wanted to do the show with me and we created the gaff show gaff stands for our initials the gap show was our monthly show on our school news the metapon report on the gaff show we talked about different topics such as ocean pollution air pollution and earth day the gap show has been very helpful because it teaches students how to help the environment and how to recycle

027even if they are not in the recycling matters club i was also very lucky and had the opportunity to go to a recycling facility in stanford connecticut i learned a lot about what happens to trash after you throw it out and how i can reuse certain items thank you for listening i look forward to learning more as i continue my journey of sustainability have a good evening thank you good evening my name is noah hargrove and i joined the recycling matters club because i was interested in helping the environment teaching others about sustainability and reusing producing and recycling before i joined i had no clue what sustainability was and how recycling worked now some of my favorite parts of the recycling matters club are making videos such as being aware of how you can help

028the planet tips on gardening and a lot more i also got to make posters about our monthly collections for example gently use school supplies books and halloween candy i got to meet new people with common interests and most importantly help the environment as i move on to middle school my goal is to join another club to keep on reducing reusing and recycling to finish off my speech i want to give a big thank you to dr monash who has been one of the most amazing and kind teachers at meadow pond elementary school another thanks to my fellow club members of the recycling mattress club thank you for guiding me and helping me through all of my inventory elementary school thank you you know we're still mid-presentation and we have a lot to cover but please

029allow us to pause to say we are so proud of each of you and so pleased to know that you were able to find one another and to share your interest your curiosity your passion and that dr monash is able to bring you all together and provide learning opportunity and opportunities for you to teach your fellow students and to emerge as leaders in this work it really is so inspirational and hopeful and we really we thank you for taking the time to develop such coherent statements to help provide insight into the experiences that you've had through this opportunity really you've helped us learn a lot about your student perspective and your passion and commitment for our planet and the reality that you're able to also find community with one another which is really terrific and

030thank you so while we're transitioning and our middle school students will join us rich maybe you could play the video so we had one of the elementary things that's been happening is the kindergarten students are doing a persuasive writing unit and they've used sustainability as a lens and one of the things they did was create a video called cleaner greener meadow ponds we'll just show a few minutes of that i don't know if you can make it a little bit louder [Music] and we need more gardens and more trees for our environment it's not safe to cut down trees we need mostly and more gardens it it it gives us help and small and exercise it gives us happy and it gives us food jamie and dominica thank you so much bye okay klsd community

031can you please help us we would like to plant a garden along the path outside of the kindergarten classrooms it would look nice and pretty the flowers will give food and homes to animals we should also put up a hands to stop people from stepping on and picking the flowers and we'll take care of it by picking out the leads thank you for listening we hope you will help us from kh so monika and jamie what do you have there and what are you guys petitioning for um more trees and more gardens oh and why do you think we need more trees and more gardens and it's not good for the environment and the earth so that's really most reasonable diamonds great thanks rich so you can see there's several other sections to this video

032they talk about composting electricity some of our kinder kindergarten students were here this evening talking about electricity and how they want to conserve electricity at meadow pond but seven o'clock was their limit so so we will move on to hear from mary is that video available on the website somewhere or where could we get that so we yes i know all of the kindergarten teachers sent out an email to the kindergarten parents saying are you okay if we put this out so we can put out the link and you can see all of the different sections it was really adorable thank you and so now i'm joined by melissa brady and our middle school students elena caitlin and grayson and also natalie oh and natalie i'm sorry natalie microphone um we natalie was able to

033join us at the last minute i'm sorry that i wasn't able to introduce natalie probably so hi i'm melissa brady i teach family and consumer science at the middle school and as mary said earlier i'm also one of the sustainability integration leaders um for the district primarily focusing on the elementary level and tonight i wanted to introduce you to just four of the many students who this year participated in a food literacy unit as part of their coursework and the focus of our of the unit was to identify a theme where that food and the connection and explore the connection between food and either community wellness or sustainability and so the students that are here with us tonight chose sustainability as their area of interest and they developed inquiry questions they did research explored the

034topic and then they were tasked with um choosing a purpose for their for their work um so these students all chose to educate others um they selected an audience for their work and a type of media and so i have representing today and easley is also here with us she was one of the students outside in the foyer ainslie if you could please pass out the books so i think we'll have elena and katelyn speak first they are eighth graders who i was fortunate enough to have for two years in a row as a gift for me and they created this beautiful imaginative imaginative story which i'll have them explain to you and their audience was the elementary school and and i was fortunate enough to get some help from the district thank you to

035print the book um so that each of the schools can have one for their school library and um people can read it and share it so elena and caitlin will speak about their book and then we also have grayson and natalie who chose a different media format they decided to make a movie and i'll have them explain their audience and their and their media choice and what they were talking about so are you ready girls thank you and thank you very much for being here i'm i'm just so um proud and delighted that the students took this unit to heart and put so much effort into it thank you uh good evening everybody i'd just like to say two things before i begin uh one of them is me and elena um unfortunately we apologize

036because we didn't come extremely prepared because we knew about this a little late and also i'd like to give a huge thanks to miss brady because she's the one that made this all possible i mean me and elena didn't think we were going to get an actual book we just thought it was a it was going to be a project but miss freddie made it all possible and so i'm going to be talking about what our book is about so our book is called space kid from planet nebula and it revolves around our protagonist a space kid who was set on a mission to go to earth and try earth food for the first time and unfortunately space kid does not make the best decisions in choosing the food that he buys and he chooses

037this extremely not healthy for for people and the environment as well and when buying it he influences all the children in the store because they think that he looks like all cool and stuff and they wanted to buy it too so in the end the children buy the food and ten years later space kid comes back to earth to see what it what like how was how the children that he met in the store were doing and he comes back to a ruined place of like it was it was just extremely no apparent vegetation or yeah and there's many factories that were making these ships because after the children had bought ships they were they told all their friends like these chips are awesome we got it from a space boy or something like that

038and they started to make more of them which caused a lot of pollution and while exploring the area around space spacekit he found this time machine which he used to fix his mistakes in the past and go back in time to try and influence the kids into making a better decision in buying a food that is better for them and the environment and when he leaves he he knows that he's done the right decision and that he's fixed the mistakes that he's made and now the planet today is much greater than it was when he went when he went back after buying the chips so elena do you wanna yeah sure thank you caitlyn um our target audience was as miss brady said elementary school students and we wanted to show them in a way

039that they could obviously comprehend in a children's book and we wanted to show them that you can make sustainable actions and have an impact on the earth even though you might be very young we also want to show them by space kid not making the right decision that it can have consequences on the earth and you do have an influence even though you're only in elementary school and um i think it was a good decision because it was a challenge trying to come up with a story plot that would keep a kid intrigued and not bore them such as a space-time machine or a spaceship um and it was we had to work through it and think of a bunch of different components our storyline did change many times throughout the process but i think

040it was helpful and we did learn a lot about sustainability and about how to create a project that could have a big influence and we came up with a book and it's a book that hopefully is going to get put in the elementary schools that kids could read wonderful thank you both that's great it's beautiful and the illustrations are beautiful as well that was all caitlyn we haven't a real artist in caitlyn and then we have grayson and natalie who's um whose media choice was a movie and i wish we had time to see it but i know we don't it's extremely creative um we maybe we can add the link to the website or something you want to talk about your movie i'm sure yeah okay so basically our movie um new support well

041our movie we structured it like a news report because our target audience were elementary school kids and we thought you know the upbeat kind of fast-paced new support would help keep them keep their attention and we thought it would be entertaining and a cool idea to show um the impact that livestock has on the environment um because like cows and like a bunch of other um animals they like burp and fart a lot so it's really bad for the environment because like it contributes contributes to greenhouse gases a lot which obviously you know that's climate change and yeah it's really bad yeah um okay so um we also worked with another student david who can't come here today um i came into the project late uh i switched groups and i was worried that i

042wasn't going to be up to date on everything but i came in so easy and i felt like the project we graced and i have always been best friends and this was so easy for us to do it together and in the beginning we had a plan and once we started we kept on going it was like let's add a cow let's use this filter let's use that filter and we had so many great ideas that we were so excited to make we chose other audience katona elementary school because we were both we both went there and um we decided to show it on their kind of like morning show uh called good morning kas and we also showed it for a home bat home-based activity okay i don't know what to say we also

043have a third party member who's not here with us today her name is mitsy and she also did it had a huge contribution to making our story come to life the girls were thrilled that i put their pictures on the back thank you that was terrific and i think you take for granted how well prepared you actually are and there are things that we can hear and feel proud of with respect to the way that you're actually bringing skills from other classes and talents that you already have to the work of sustainability and to raising awareness so for example the artwork that we commented on earlier but also the ready use of words such as protagonist plot and audience and target audience i think your ela teachers would be so excited to think that not

044only are you encountering and understanding these concepts but then you're actually taking ownership and utilizing them to prepare your own book so we really thank you and i'm sorry we weren't able to see the film if we put it up on the website we would love to watch it and you're experimenting with different mediums and it's phenomenal so we really thank you and that was delightful thank you very much thank you mrs brady oh thank you and i think we'll move on to our high school uh yeah so steve zoller our k-12 staff developer and carolina cerna as i mentioned carolina is the incoming president of the earthrise sustainability club and she's joined us at several of our sustainability in our schools meetings as well wonderful thank you welcome hi everybody i'm carolina i'm asked

045mary issued a wonderful introduction but i am the new elected president of the earthrise club and just to go into a little bit of what we've done this year we um essentially kind of broke up our agenda or our targets into three separate groups changing consumer habits resource reduction and sustainable awareness how we targeted these goals was essentially for changing consumer habits we decided to have a sale of diy all-natural skincare products and we did really well with that we were able to raise over 500 500 sold 36 lip balms and 36 lip solves skin solves apologies and for our sustainable awareness target we decided to essentially kind of spread um information about recycling and our recycling system to the student body at john jay high school and additionally we were able to go down

046well we weren't able to go down but we were able to film ourselves reading sustainable books to elementary school students and we got a lot of good feedback from that and then for our target of resource reduction we had this was kind of our main event was being combined with tree planish which is another organization essentially what our goal was to sell 260 trees to offset the 2.6 million pieces of paper that our school produces annually we were able to almost double that goal by selling 463 saplings we had um a bunch of different types of saplings and those are some pictures of the event of people there and getting their saplings carolina maybe if we pause for a minute we can show the tree plenish video yeah so this was the um video that

047was kind of the promotional video for the tree plenish event and some of carolina's peers are in this as well we are earthrise and we are the sustainability club at john high school we reform climate perspective policy and practices in our district we conduct local projects and fundraisers we educate our community k through 12 and we run a club column instagram and more through all these environmental efforts we hope to drive long-lasting environmental change we are hosting a tree plant event which provides three types of trees for us to come together as a community to plant through retreat finish we will offset our school's annual paper consumption by meeting our goal of 260 saplings our tree finish day is saturday april 23rd the day after earth day all you have to do on the day

048of the event is come to john jay high school and pick up your treat you have a choice of three saplings a red maple a flowering dogwood and a common apple tree we need your help though purchase your sapling for five dollars in advance before the deadline of march 20th 2022. if you can't purchase the sapling you can still come to our event to volunteer and help distribute them i hope to see you there if you have any additional questions whatsoever do not hesitate to reach out to the leaders or email us with anything [Music] thanks rich and so that's essentially um what our club was able to accomplish this year we plan on doing replenish for many years to come and hope to continue our focusing on our targets and doing our um monthly

049um projects to make sure that we're making progress to our goal of making our community better through our club thank you carolina so my name's steve zoller i've been in the district uh seven years and this is my eighth year and within a different role i'm a staff developer for steem and sustainability and so i'm working with k-12 teachers throughout the district to start integrating sustainability into their curriculum i guess i got interested my daughter actually just recently graduated and when she started her program at university of vermont for environmental studies was kind of like an eye opener for me and i think what i'd like to point out to all the students that are sitting here is that sometimes the uh the tree doesn't far fall from the apple so what i mean by

050that is that you have very powerful voices and can make a big change in the community starting in your own homes and so that's how i got interested in it i then took a course at the children's environmental literacy foundation and what i realized was that i was pretty knowledgeable about sustainability i just wasn't doing anything about it and so my goal in the district really is to create agents for change and i think in the different things that you've seen today you've seen that there's agents for change that are reaching out to the community to to impact what's what's happening in the environment and so i'll continue to work with teachers one example was the uh the pollinator garden so i worked closely with jill hirschfeld and so the idea was she was gonna

051handle the pollinator garden but it's part of it we want to make an educational board and so we worked with the kids to actually do all the construction starting with digging the hole pouring the cement and actually they designed uh the um the display board and then we built it so trying to tie it into different classes just to make it more exciting for the kids and to be more place-based so we actually can use the the community um to actually create change to a product that's created wonderful thank you and that was a real collaboration between steve and jill and paul getting all of the the materials together so it was really great so thank you wonderful carolina just even a subset of those goals seems like it would have been a lot for

052your club to have accomplished in this year it's very impressive i don't know whether looking back over the year there are certain activities that you feel you would want to expand and and and perhaps grow next year and others that you feel you know less successful do you have ideas for how you see the club evolving going forward yeah i definitely think that it'd be really nice to go to elementary schools because we what we wanted to do was go to the elementary schools and read those books in front of them and kind of post an assembly adjacent to that unfortunately we weren't able to do that because of restrictions but we definitely want to be able to go visit elementary schools and just other schools in our district to make sure that we're not

053only making change for us but we're role models for them so that they know that they're able to make change as well that's great to hear we hope we can help you with that as conditions continue to improve yeah yeah that's really great thank you and you can see on the slide just a listing there of several other projects many of them were at some of the tables at the celebration tonight but our humanities research students our science research students um and hydroponics is interesting it's in our principles of engineering classroom but also melissa brady has it in the family and summer and consumer science classroom at the middle school we thought about bringing it up here this evening but it was a little too delicate to move so but you did see some of

054the greens from the hydroponics in the middle school um served tonight um i can touch on the hummery if sure please um so well right now i'm in harmony too but basically in homer one we have a um basically almost semester dedicated to a specific topic depending on what the teacher wants to do at that point and one topic that has been continued the past few years is sustainability i um in the hallway there's a couple of students who had their sustainable their hummer one sustainability presentations out but i remember um last year is very interesting because we read this book that was really impactful by naomi klein who really just opened our eyes to what climate change could be on a more i guess you could say systemic scale and it was also very

055interesting to see the so many different ways that my class was able to go about it i specifically put focused on sustainable urban developments and um which eventually led to my harmony 2 topic and in hummery two what we essentially do is we spend the whole year dedicating um to dedicated to finishing a research paper of about 30 to 40 pages and my topic ended up being sustainable architecture i don't know if any of you were able to see my poster but i had my poster out there and um it was just not only um enjoyable to just share my desire of building sustainably but also there was other individuals there who also share the same desire to share their thinking of ways to change systemically to make life more sustainable and to make certain

056decisions more just sustainable and i think hummery has been a great place for students to share that thank you for making that connection for us and for explaining the path from homery one to hungry too that's great thank you thank you okay so as we transition paul christensen so if you remember we focused on three different aspects of sustainability or in this framework that we're using so we talked about community we've talked about curriculum and now we're going to talk more about campus wonderful thank you so paul is going to speak to us tonight about the greenhouse gas emissions and some of the nice sort of benchmarking reports that we have as well as our facilities and then danella is going to help us learn a little more about transportation wonderful thank you good evening

057operations uh serves the board and the students and we help become the foundation so these programs can build so the first thing i'm going to share with you is some new legislation that will affect all of us in new york state the new york state climate leadership and community protection act clcpa we tend to just call it the climate act of 2019 this is going to impact building codes residentially and commercially and it builds on almost a decade of leadership from new york state and the latest climate science setting up rigorous goals across the state and this slide shows the highlights a 40 reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 85 reduction in the same gases in carbon neutral by 2000 excuse me 50. trillion btu reduction of energy by 2025 that's approximately a

05823 reduction in energy used by all buildings in new york state and 100 fossil free electricity by 2040. these are big goals um but there's some good news because from 2008 onward this school district undertook some pretty big steps so can i have the next slide please this slide shows greenhouse gas emissions that have been monitored since the school year 2008 and nine through a third party that was hired through the sustainability committee to audit the inventory of gases a very comprehensive study not just emissions from our school boilers but commuting cars our waste stream our water use very comprehensive and every five years we've repeated the study now you can see in the chart there's a red line that represents that first goal 40 reduction of greenhouse gases and that was remember that was

0592030. our school district is almost there and then at the bottom you can see the great big goal 85 reduction that's a target that's 2050. we have a little time but we're very anxious to get there um this progress is supported through initiatives that the board has undertook through this last 12-year period some very comprehensive some having to do with energy purchase some having to do with energy performance contracting and some having to do with good sense initiatives that everyone knows about changing lighting out using lighting controls the easiest way to save energy is turn it off we practice all of those things but greenhouse gas only represents one piece of the picture total energy utilization in other words what does a building use it's necessary to take advantage of understanding that metric to hold

060against the progress so we take advantage of a program that's offered to us by nyserda to benchmark our buildings and we do so also about once every five years now what they do is they use an epa scoring 1 to 100 with a score of 75 a building qualifies for the potential being designated energy star we all know energy star from buying appliances and how things are scored and the higher the score indicates the more efficient the appliance will be all of our schools average a total of 80. the national average for schools is 63. this is a significant step towards that 2050 goal of 85 percent reduction and we're going to be working on it over the coming years to reduce fossil fuel use in our schools facilities is responsible for large areas of

061the operations and maintenance of the building and i just wanted to touch briefly on some of the techniques we use in operation and maintenance we use utilize sustainable practices across all areas that we supervise in building maintenance we use total cost of ownership taking into considering energy use and life cycle analysis in our decision making process in terms of purchasing we track four waste streams composting recycling non-recyclable trash and building materials taking care to weigh them and keep records we monitor our energy use and utilize third-party studies for benchmarking and greenhouse gas emissions we track our water use and quality we are phasing in replacing gas powered tools with electric tools and equipment for our landscaping and maintenance use in new york state education has very rigorous standards for green purchasing that we meet or

062exceed in all of the maintenance supplies including waxes and hand sanitizers and all the things that you see that are used throughout the school excitement solar wind and powered lighting across our district we have solar wind and powered lamp poles much like the account iconic windmill we are familiar with throughout rural america the pumps water out of the ground ours pump electricity into a battery it provides the sole source of power utilized by the led lamp and other equipment mounted on these poles these poles are completely off the grid and they have become the center of case studies for renewable energy for our students and i would be remiss if i didn't say that paul has really become a celebrity especially at meadow pond where i think maybe some of the students here have interviewed

063paul and videotaped it so yeah we are so thankful for all of paul's knowledge and expertise and he's sharing that now with lots of stuff i got the petition and i got letters and i responded thank you very much we're going to work together great even this evening out in the gallery we had two students in mrs emig's class whose presentation was really an homage to the work that you're doing there was a drawing of the wind turbine and one student had a model of a piece of a solar panel and told me about the process related to the battery and basically how the wind turbines are working so clearly the message that you are sending to our students and the education and the educational benefit afforded by some of these infrastructural improvements is you

064know it's really it's inspirational and it's it's taking effect it's taking root so thank you yeah our campus has really become a learning tool which is so wonderful to see thank you paul thanks for watching and i'm gonna invite you to stay because we'll be we're going to speak facilities in a little bit so sorry to both here but next up um we have some exciting advancements with uh as it relates to transportation and electric vehicles so back in may the voters authorized us to purchase our first electric bus this is a pilot program thank you it's a pilot program it's one bus we are working with our vendors and state contractors on the best way to purchase the vehicle we do understand that just like other cars there is some purchasing delays with getting

065that delivered so as soon as we get an update we will share that with the board on an anticipated date when we can see the electric vehicle one thing that goes along with the electric bus is the infrastructure towards charging the electric bus and we will begin working on that and have that set up prior to the uh the bus being delivered but also exciting is um paul's department and my department have been working with a vendor to do charging stations for commuter and student electric vehicles so that will be coming to the middle school and the high school campus hopefully shortly next slide so what is our next steps in the journey the campus will continue to meet and hopefully exceed the explanation the expectations of that clcpa or the climate act program uh

066sustainability members are representative on our board of ed uh facilities committee later on tonight you'll be hearing about our facilities committee so um we'll have some exciting news to share as it relates to sustainability um and then we hope to strengthen and expand our community involvement you saw bedford 2030 was here um and then mary mentioned in previous slides some of the other community organizations we've been working with so we will continue to do that and look for other opportunities with the community and then of course we'll continue to expand our curriculum work that will impact students at every level and also expand any professional learning that we can do with our teachers and faculty to help support sustainability i'll turn this over back to mary yeah and i just wanted to end by thanking

067our community members who serve on our board of ed sustainability subcommittee janet harkim mark dielking and steven weissmuller and also to our board members to rory to catherine and to marjorie so thank you for your sustained commitment to sustainability but we really it's been a wonderful journey and we feel like we're just getting started thank you mary and thank you paul thank you dr monash mrs brady mr zoller and the teachers who were with us earlier out in the gallery and for those who are still with us today our staff and administration i know for years we talked about how could we try to take some of the sustainability efforts and make them more systemic and really think about a culture of commitment to sustainability that wasn't just infrastructure or just a pocket of learning

068here and there i think tonight we really are able to feel it's palpable the manner in which this is becoming systemic and the traction that you're really developing at every level of the school district and it's so exciting to see the involvement of our students and to see our students as spokespeople for this work um they looked awfully comfortable up here at the example they're doing an amazing job so articulate and so well educated and knowledgeable and it really was a pleasure to see this come together thank you mary for pulling this together you pulled from many different dimensions of the district and we really appreciate the opportunity to have an overview and also a celebration we all needed it and it was terrific delightful thank you all everybody who contributed to that um i'm

069happy to turn it over to my board colleagues for some questions comments and we have a handheld microphone and if our presenters would like to you know either come up to the table or roll their chairs forward um they'll be available for your questions as well wonderful thank you i mean margie maybe i'll just have a quick comment i mean for me this is some of the most important work that we do and uh obviously we do a lot of important work at the board table but saving our planet is probably chief amongst all of the work that we do and um that's why i was encouraged to join the board subcommittee in the first place and when i joined the board subcommittee it was evident to me that there were sort of two branches

070of sustainability that we were thinking about one was the really good work that paul had already been undertaking with the help of mark and steve and janet and others that had been going on since 2009 the other was the opportunity to develop the thinking of the 3 000 students in our district and at the time i felt like that was kind of taking a back seat to some extent to all the great infrastructure work that we were doing but it really just warms my heart and gives me such hope for the future having seen both the exhibits uh today before the meeting and to see our young students show up in the way that they did and articulate themselves so clearly and and what struck me most was the opportunities that they're taking to educate

071other students in the district the middle schoolers going down to the elementary school the elementary kids and educating and moving up to the middle school and hopefully doing the great work there too i mean just absolutely fantastic so i just wanted to say thank i mean i really felt like we had such great momentum within the sustainability subcommittee but it hadn't really been articulated clearly i didn't feel like the school district had really gotten a sense of what was happening and more i felt like the community maybe wasn't aware but events like tonight and and seeing our students and uh listening to everything that they've said really truly gives me help and i just wanted to say thank you to everybody involved thank you i really i appreciate that response and that's so nicely observed

072i couldn't agree more and i think i would only add thank you to our central office administration for developing what i think could be characterized as a distributed leadership model where we now have other leaders among us who are really dedicated to this and who are inspiring our students and collaborating and we couldn't do it without you obviously um it's you know in large part a reflection of your commitment to this work and we're very lucky to have um leaders on our staff who feel equally passionate and who feel urgency and are inspired to do this work with our students so thank you very much it's very obvious yeah it really it really is thank you thank you all and thank you to our committee members all of whom are here with us tonight in

073support and we really appreciate that so good to see you in person all of you um and thank you yeah any other comments questions for our students or the committee yeah i don't have a question i just i think it's interesting to think about the educational process of of our students and sort of we think about how does math evolve over over the course of 13 years and how does reading and and and all the sort of core subjects and i think it's so interesting to see uh some of our students that were here tonight were juniors and i remember from when they started the composting program in elementary school and it was a new program and they were really excited about it and really learning about reducing um the amount of garbage that was

074going into our trash and i don't remember the numbers from sort of those first years but they were really proud and excited about the fact that they were composting and it became this great thing at the end of lunch you got to be the kid that picked the garbage you know made sure the things that shouldn't be in the compost weren't in it and you know i see sort of that developmental learning where now um you know when we hear from our high school students thinking about some of the more global aspects of that they really are using that foundational knowledge and it's growing and so i just feel really excited to see that formalized more and and spread more through the district because i think we will really see that impact grow over time

075so it's it's really awesome so thank you thank you julia yes well yes please liz just one quick comment uh i think you called it out earlier marjorie um about the students using all of these concepts from ela and then writing a book about environmental stewardship and i thought that was such an interesting thought we've learned a lot about cross-cutting concepts and and how the curriculum is changing in new york state standards are changing and this was such a nice illustration of that and how those you know foundational subjects that are taught in every school can be used then to support other initiatives and really deepen learning and uh these students were so wonderful in demonstrating exactly how that happened so thank you all thank you liz thank you that reminds me in terms of

076cross-current i saw something in one of the presentations outside that i don't think i've ever seen before or thought i would ever see i saw an actual practical use of trigonometry i still remember sohcahtoa i don't really mean i remember that uh so it was one of the presentations around um you know a more sustainable house and how you can block the sun at the right times and let it in at the right times and right there in front of everything was the trigonometry to show the math so wonderful thank you bill well believe it or not we have even more exciting work ahead and we thank you to our students our families for joining us we will not take offense if anybody um feels that it's getting late or toward bedtime um so we're

077going to go through yet another transition we're going to again thank all of the members of the sustainability in our schools committee and thank our students and to you mary for pulling this together and for all of your leadership in this area and um what a terrific presentation thank you all so very much we really appreciate it happy summer thank you and we'll just take a second here to regroup but we are about to turn our presentation our pardon we're about to turn our attention to our next presentation which is an opportunity to hear from our facilities committee very exciting to be able to update the board of education and our community on the work of a committee that was comprised of administrators staff members and quite a few members of our community who volunteered

078an extraordinary amount of time not only in meetings but in building tours and uh took the time to really become very well educated about our infrastructure and our facilities i got him no problem try to be quiet and i'm happy to turn it over to liz and danelle and welcome to our guests and thank you for being here tonight and for your patients we realize it's gotten a bit late and we really appreciate your willingness to join us for this very exciting opportunity fantastic thank you thank you all for for staying i would just like to start by saying this has been a long and productive work that we have done with this committee we are joined tonight by rick ganci from cma and russ davidson from kg d um i just want to say

079thank you for the opportunity to present the work of the facilities committee tonight we are going to share our recommendations for bond that focuses on improving educational experiences security and infrastructure i'm proud of the work the committee did to put forth a proposal that enables us to make these important community investments while keeping a very close eye on the bottom line so i think it's really important to introduce this whole concept by reminding everybody that investing in schools is really investing in our future um just a couple of quotes that i found really spoke to me and russ actually shared them with me you can't expect children to learn 21st century skills in schools built for the 1950s ironically some of our schools were actually built in the 1950s um we need schools designed for

080the 21st century success and then um let's see we are currently preparing our students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't yet been invented in order to solve problems that we don't even know our problems yet i feel very confident after listening to our students that we're gonna be okay um but we need to create the best environment for them to get there um so if we could just go to the next slide there's a lot of good reasons to invest in facilities there are positive impacts both direct and indirect from investing in school facilities direct impacts like improved air and water quality better lighting more comfortable classroom environments and outdoor spaces all positively impact students and staff additionally indirect impacts like more efficient systems could realize operational efficiencies better teaching environments

081are good for teacher retention and high quality amenities accessible to the community and a high performing district can lead to increases in property values sure so back in october the board decided to create the facilities committee and based on the facilities committee we met and had a charge similar to how we have charges in our other committees so the facility committee's charge this year was to review klsd's five-year capital plan in conjunction with other facilities learning needs and opportunities identified by administration to consider options for future facilities maintenance and enhancements and then the committee also studied the feasibility of various financing options to support the needs and opportunities identified through the course of this review the committee was composed of mr celesnek myself the director of o m paul christensen who we heard from earlier

082today russ davidson our trustees on the committee was liz rory rory and marjorie and then we also had a handful of community members which we'll mention towards the end of the presentation but the community was well representative we had increased miller kes meadow pond middle school and high school members on our company our approach was to first look at the building conditions survey um this happened back in march of 2021 uh kg d came and presented our building condition survey this is a requirement from sed that every five years we take a look at our buildings and then priorities are assigned based on work that needs to be done priority number ones are health and safety priorities it's important to note that there we did not have any priority number ones in our five-year bcs

083um however we did have uh priorities two through four and that was part of what the committee was reviewing are were those certain priorities based on the building conditions surveyed the board then adopted what's known as a five-year capital plan since the building condition survey is done every five years we develop a plan of how we are going to address those issues within a five-year span when we took a look at the total cost of everything on those priorities one through four it was over 121 million dollars by the time we looked at all those uh costs o m had already started working on some needs that required immediate attention and 11 million dollars was identified and completed by our in-house operations and maintenance department so based on that then the committee took a look

084at that five-year capital plan and prioritized and looked at remaining uh projects that needed to be done so with that we partnered with kg and d russ davidson is here today and i'm going to turn over this part of the presentation to him so i was asked to talk a little bit about our firm and relationship with uh katona so um there's full thank you for your continued trust in uh our firm we've been reselected i think four or five times uh by katona through a competitive rfp process and a qualification space selection so uh we uh we're thrilled to have have again been uh reselected we we have done a lot of major projects and my first major school project uh was here in 1995 um and then again in 2003 and those projects

085were completed on time and on budget and actually both were received design awards from the american institute of architects we did do your most recent building conditions survey and the team of architects and engineers uh really know your buildings well we have a great relationship with uh with paul and his team and michael boy so does a great job with your hvac work uh we're we're just for a little background we're right here in mount kiska we're a regional leader in educational facilities design we design and get constructed about 50 million dollars worth of k-12 facilities a year um so some of our school district clients include somers chapel quad scarsdale pleasantville bronxville knockers greenwich darien um but our longest standing k-12 client is katona lewisboro so we're very proud of that uh we actually

086have four or five employees who are parents of students and we just hired a summer intern and i asked her to start to work on some imagery for increase miller and she said i went there so we have another college intern who is now drawing up her elementary school um you know we played a role in leadership uh me personally i've testified on school safety before the department of homeland security um i also convened a conference in new york city with national leaders on social infrastructure including public schools because what happens with a lot of social infrastructure library and public schools is every community deals with these problems as if they are unique but when the sub the subtotal if you could aggregate that public schools are the single largest building type in the country

087and new york state being settled so long ago has on average the oldest schools in the country so what you're going through is actually very common but because school districts are disaggregated it all seems unique it all seems like you're each individual uh struggle it is not unusual and then a lot has changed in school design um you know we look back at things in 1995 and say we wouldn't do it that way it it does change but i would say with the advent of these things these individual devices in front of everybody except for me maybe um the uh the the schoolhouse has changed and we've been a leaders in that uh we also do a lot of not-for-profit work some of which you may know the jacob burns media arts lab first lead

088gold building in westchester i heard all your great talk on sustainability we've been leaders in sustainability for a long time and we do other work for not-for-profits including your new mascots the wolf conservation center down the road and the community center of northern westchester i just also wanted to expand a little bit more on the first point that russ made that we did go out for an rfp process for an architect um kg d is our architect on record um but every five years uh based on the state comptroller's recommendation we do go out for what's called a request for proposals or some people think of them similar to bids but they're for services so um russ's firm did uh come in very competitively and the board i believe just at the last meeting had

089appointed them as our architect of record so we were uh we used some kind of the committee came together and coalesced her on some guiding principles we do have to balance a lot of competing priorities when we think about how we choose these projects what's important to the community what's important for student experience we felt that these priorities really spoke to us in terms of how we chose the priorities we did one it was you know to be in support of the learning commitment and ensure that our student experience was as good as it possibly could be uh there are so we focused on some real interesting and exciting program improvements across the district we will see security enhancements at all buildings um we've kept a very close eye i mentioned already on fiscal responsibility

090it's important that when a project like this comes up we are careful with taxpayers money um while at the same time really ensuring that we are investing for our future and then also last but obviously not least i think you know there's somebody was talking about sustainability at some point earlier today um sustainability was a big portion of our conversation uh we this the bond that we're about to share with you has no new investment in fossil fuel burning technology um we have a pilot of a full geothermal heating and cooling system and um we are looking at doing as much building envelope upgrades and um replacing a lot of windows and and things like that that will achieve efficiencies for how we for our operational costs um so here's the big reveal the committee

091came together and decided to ask the community to support a 49.5 million dollar bond 45 percent of that spending would be for program improvements very student-facing items for infrastructure we do have some aging school buildings and there are infrastructure requirements things that need to be done despite not having any priority one which are life and safety those priority two and priority three can also be very important and then finally seven percent of that uh total bond would be for security enhancements at all of our buildings some of the highlights of the bond would be a significant auditorium upgrade at john jay high school renovation and really a reimagining of the b-wing at the high school i had we did take the committee on tours of all of the buildings um we even went into some

092of the bathrooms um it's some of the less exciting work but it was it was important to be seen um but we all went into the uh the b wing and and you can see that it is a little um ancient and ready for a big refresh uh also the renovation of the seawing science classrooms i don't know if we mentioned this but one person on our committee did actually go to high school here and sat in those rooms as they are right now um and so that is is long overdue we have the redesign and renovation of two step labs that are accessed actually just on the other side of this room which is an exciting opportunity to revisit some educational space that is currently underutilized because it's just not as flexible as it

093could be and there's some strange computer components i i just wanted to add liz since um we said seawing those are our science classrooms but just backing up b wings that um houses a lot of our um foreign language classes yes for those who aren't familiar with their building sometimes we get caught up in the swing in that way right it was b wing is our foreign language our tours are really interesting because we do have a number of parents that are just have elementary school students and so they've never stepped foot in the middle school or high school before so i think it was it was a lot of learning for everyone and there's not a whole lot of cross-pollination between the elementaries either so i hadn't seen some of them before i started

094on the board myself for john jay middle school we have a very exciting renovation of the tech labs maker space um renovation of the two of the um unified arts classrooms including home and career space and the new greenhouse which is really exciting because we just had uh melissa was it melissa brady just talking about family and consumer science i think that um this is a nice joining of the two presentations we have redesign and renovation of we have another step lab at the middle school it's very centrally located lovely classroom that's attached to the library that has also kind of fallen out of use air source heat pump air conditioning for the southwest wing which is where it gets very very hot in in the middle school for the elementary schools all three will

095see uh renovation and kind of redesign of the computer labs which is very funny to think that is completely a thing of the past as everybody has their own personal devices at this point um increase miller and meadow pond we'll see renovations and and air conditioning of their wing spaces which is just a great flexible space in those in those buildings um and i think maybe what paul is most excited about is that increase miller will have the overdue long long overdue replacement of two modular classrooms with three new classrooms and three smaller kind of meeting rooms um it will help ease the space crunch and i think that paul will be very happy to retire those modulars um kes as i kind of indicated earlier we'll see a full geothermal how am i saying

096this russ hvac heating and cooling heating cooling system heating and cooling system which is very exciting all of the equipment at kes needs to be replaced and so i the committee came to the decision that it didn't make sense to replace it with the same old stuff that we had before um so i think this is a really very exciting aspect to the bond project all schools will receive uh security upgrades and um priority infrastructure there's a lot of um you know smaller pieces windows that need to be replaced uh things that are out of code doors things like that um all of that does also fall into the bond and i just wanted to mention we were excited about increased miller replacing some overdue modular classrooms um in our previous projects meadow pond had

097some modular classrooms that were replaced um so this gets increased miller on par with metal pond and some upgrades that had already occurred at middle thank you okay so we can just go so now i'm just going to walk you through the bond spend by school so this is the entire thing you'll see that there's there's 25 percent for john jay high school there's a lot of renovation there this includes both infrastructure and program improvements it was important to us into the committee to ensure that there was parity among program improvements so the elementary schools will all get the renovated maker space attached to the libraries um but the the differences that you see in figures here really represent more about infrastructure and different needs um at increased miller obviously there's there's construction costs with

098the new classrooms so while this slide itself looks like things might not be quite even we were very cognizant of making sure that that all students would enjoy some upgrades in each of our buildings um and then by type here's where we kind of break it out we have program improvements and construction which is about 45 of the total bonds security again 7 and then the rest is infrastructure um and i think that you know we've come with with a very i think exciting package that um we can talk about um ross is going to go through more school by school with inspirational images and all of the exciting stuff now that we've looked through some charts and tables um we try to make them as exciting as we could with colors but you know

099there's only so much you can do um sure so um this slide it just shows the benefits of our chosen investments um so program improvements um will help utilize educational space and and directly impact the student experience and opportunities on the construction that increase miller will ease space constraints constraints and maintain program parity and of course the security we're very excited about security enhancement at all buildings for student and staff safety we spoke about the infrastructure there is hva hvac improvements for better air quality and additional cooling spaces to better foster a learning environment in those shoulder seasons and then sustainability as we talked about earlier um we're replacing some aging out equipment with newer technology to make the schools run more efficiently and and that we'll see most prominently at kes with the geothermal

100pilot program um and this is some highlights from john jay high school um i think at this point we're gonna turn it officially over to us for some detailed um with each school so we're not going to go through every room um but i am going to sort of get some of the highlights uh you know john jay high school um about 12.4 there's a good amount of program improvements here uh paul and his team have really handled a lot of the infrastructure and hvac work at this building uh already which is terrific so that allows you to focus on program improvements this is your floor plan um and don't ask me why the buildings are lettered not in any particular order because i don't know but we were responsible for labeling l and q

101because nobody wanted a building oh um the so the blue is new construction the purple is renovated one of the key things for security and also accessibility is to enclose the front entrance all the way across so that'll have a new secure vestibule and that'll provide an indoor pathway from the school to the gymnasium without going outdoors so just in case you don't know top left is your big wide carter that connects the cafeteria to the main entrance um but then if you're trying to go indoors to the gym you have to go through that very skinny three foot wide hallway on the right and past the main security booth which sits in the main lobby so it is you have good security but this will make it much better with a security booth that's

102not a walk through an indoor pathway that's not through an office c-wing is uh shown here it's sort of right across the hall from us it used to be a separate building so it's a comprehensive renovation of c-wing which will include air conditioning through electric heat pump systems replacement of case work in speaking with a high school principal even though these build rooms are a little bit smaller than standard because of the diversity of program offerings he needs this number of rooms and a lot of these rooms are used for a smaller class sizes and the larger class sizes are handled in the new science labs in the queue building and if you didn't know what it looked like i will just briefly show these photos these are recent so this is um these are

103from the 1950s i think that sync is definitely from the 1950s um and just sort of an inspiration this is a rendering of what new science labs look like so we can make it a lot brighter update the case work um so we mentioned b building and we sort of next generation learning so this was a slide that we use a lot just to explain that uh you know schools used to be double loaded classrooms lockers in the hallway that was it that was how they would have been done since the 1940s and 50s this actually could almost be a rendering of your b building and this is how they need to be today which is a variety of spaces informal learning areas um connections to outdoor space uh corridors that are active and not

104just uh passageways and so that's what we were uh we looked at as a group for b building this is some existing photos of b building uh you can see with the pipes and the lockers in the hall and the proposal is to actually open up the building and convert four classrooms to learning commons to create small collaboration spaces uh to link one of the learning commons to an outdoor classroom in the courtyard to have more flexible furniture obviously renovate them replace the roof air condition it and a complete refresh and you know it may or may not be the foreign language building at the end of the day that's going to be a decision made by the administrators as they sort of rethink the assignments but this will give you a really forward thinking

105learning environment to use in a variety of ways and just some of the inspiration this is a learning commons that we did it on another high school you can see the collaboration spaces where those large screens can connect to personal devices for students for collaboration this one actually has a little info booth where the ninth graders fix all the 12th graders computers and the built-in counters that tied to the columns which we're also showing here in your b building and the idea of popping up the roof over the corridor get some daylight into the middle of the building and also to put solar panels on the south-facing slope so really to transform b building this is actually an image from the office wing at the jacob burns media arts lab and then the small collaboration

106spaces at the end we showed four of them with glass walls which allow for group work but still to be supervised this is actually an image of where we built these in the brewster high school john jay middle school also has a good amount of program improvements but not quite as up to date with its infrastructure work as john jay high school so again there's the code with the blue new construction which is a security vestibule and the purple renovation there was the step lab next to the library on the technology space or old wood shop next to the cafeteria and on the lowest floor the consumer science and home and careers rooms and the blue is a proposed new greenhouse so the technology lab or former wood chop has seen some uh sort of

107improvements over years i would say they've been done in a little bit of an ad-hoc manner uh or incrementally um they look like this so on the center you can see it sort of still looks like a wood shop and the little rooms on the ends have been created i believe by you know local staff and need a little updating so the inspiration here is to make it a really uh exciting collaborative space this is a similar uh project we actually did at scarsdale which i believe the middle school has visited um and it has a collaboration space in the middle and rooms on the end for uh prototyping tools woodworking on one side and laser cutters and 3d printers on the other side so um and this is another sort of uh maker space

108collaboration space for inspiration the family and consumer science has really changed uh and a lot of that is renovation of the existing building probably the the centerpiece of that is adding a greenhouse is a renderings of a greenhouse that we recently uh are under construction with uh down at horace greeley and we're seeing a real uh return to interest in a for a number of reasons uh farm to table and the sustainability of growing your own food but the real advantage to a greenhouse in a school setting is it allows you to sort of flip the seasons a little bit so you can actually harvest food while the school students are still here which is one of the most frustrating things with agriculture programs and students without a greenhouse they never see the results so

109it's a kind of a key thing and the security vestibule you have a beautiful front hall uh but the security booth the security station is in the middle of that hall so once you're really in you're in and you're mixing visitors with students and this proposal would put a small security vestibule in blue off to the side so that after students are in the building all those other doors will remain locked and students will be let visitors will be let into a secure vestibule vetted and then let into the building and this allows students to bypass them safely which is the preferred arrangement we call these the stepped labs that's because they have a stepped floor they were originally designed as computer labs with sort of special uh case work so that the screens didn't

110block your view uh they've fallen out of favor and this is just a uh in both the middle school and high school to sort of update them with more up-to-date sort of lecture seating or auditorium type seating as another example of one uh at another high school nearby with some updated technology and they really can be put back in in use for a lot of different things so at increase miller as liz and danelle mentioned there's a significant amount of money almost half of the money being spent at increase miller is to add the classrooms that are needed to replace the modulars so actually when you look if you took the geothermal out of katona and the new classrooms that have increased miller you're spending the exact same amount of money on the three elementaries

111so that's where you you really get the parity um [Music] there is a thought that there's about one classroom short at increase miller so the proposal here is to build three classrooms that you see in the blue and a few small rooms so we can eliminate some of the temporary rooms that were built in the wing spaces which are commonly known in the district as bump outs uh so there's the little uh addition it will actually create another courtyard or opportunity for an outdoor classroom outside of the kindergarten rooms and ease overall building circulation by providing alternative pathways through the building it'll really be a little easier to get around when we talk about new classrooms we'll do things with built-in storage and daylight it's an example of a new elementary school classroom we built

112a few years ago for the brewster schools the security arrangement in the increased miller is also acceptable but this improves it by putting the security guard off to the side and really making that vestibule separate so that visitors can be fully vetted before they're easily into the school right now at both increased miller and meadow pond you use an area that was designed as a weather vestibule for your security there's really no comfortable home for the security and vetting process um and then a common thing to all three elementaries is the updating of the library and computer room to really be sort of a next generation learning environment both metal pond and increase miller do have these open wing spaces three per building which have sort of been used for different purposes over the top

113over time and the goal here would be to sort of restore them as informal learning areas update the lighting the flooring um and add air conditioning to those spaces so while you're not going to air condition the classrooms you're going to air condition this common area which will benefit all the students and in times when it's really hot it'll give you a common area for them to get a little bit of relief katona elementary obviously the big cost item there about half of the overall cost is the ground source heat pump or geothermal heating so again the reason that was chosen is because a lot of the main expense of fossil fuel equipment is at the end of its useful life so either be replace it with other new boilers or make the conversion and

114that's why that building was chosen so it's not a it is sort of a pilot program but it's a full system so we're talking about um a well field probably on the upper field um probably something like 30 to 40 holes in the ground 400 feet deep is a closed loop system will have no impact on groundwater it's basically just using the thermal mass of the ground to heat and cool your uh your building this is not new technology it's been around for a long time it works um it does mean that the building will be fully air conditioned and you need to sort of balance your your heating and air conditioning load um you know there still will be some gas burning equipment in the building to help in the coldest winter days because

115uh ground source doesn't do well sort of below 15 degrees um but that's auxiliary and backup which is a good thing to have um but it's pretty exciting you have a lot of new energy recovery ventilation um and it's a completely new uh completely new system and then the program improvements there are gonna sound pretty familiar which is also a security vestibule um and the renovations the library and computer room to update them um the security vestibule the thinking is that it might work best at the lowest level because that's the accessible entrance but we're going to continue to talk about that with the building principle about the best way to spend that money at that building to improve the security and the library and computer room uh will be completely renovated we actually are

116going to incorporate a staff toilet into that same renovation because that is an important need for the building administrators and again just a little bit of inspiration this is once done at an elementary school and that's a connection between the library and the maker space and then meadow pond doesn't have the classroom edition or the ground source heat pump but as was earlier mentioned they did get their modulars replaced they've actually had two small building additions in the same amount of time increase miller didn't didn't have one so the focus really here is on the wing space security vestibule and the library and maker space so you can see that the program improvements are pretty similar again there's the security vestibule right out front it's uh making a good arrangement into an ideal arrangement uh

117their library and computer area is a little larger than others but it's still being fully renovated and then the three wing spaces we'll get the renovations and the air conditioning there's just another inspiration image of what maker spaces can look like this one has actually doors to the windows to the corridor and on the left you can see the 3d printers with windows to the corridor those students when walking by can see things being made on the 3d printers and that sort of accidental inspiration is really really successful in these types of spaces this has the barn doors that are also have white boards on them um and now we're going to talk about money which is sensitive so that's not my topic thank you for walking us through the buildings russ we really appreciate

118that thank you so uh we have rick ganshi nancy he's here from capital market associates they're our fiscal advisors and rick would take this first slide okay perfect yep so um just talking briefly obviously you know great presentation thus far um but the important part obviously that the reason i'm here is how much it'll cost the district obviously to um you know finance the project so we talked first about you know measured approach you know timing and sizing we'll talk a little bit in the slides about sort of how this project came about and we work with i don't know 180 schools throughout the state many of which uh with russia's firm as well as architect um and i must say that your process has been um you know very thorough and um you know

119well thought out so i think it's kudos to the whole team and the facilities committee that it wasn't just let's pick out a number of you know how much to do it was really identify the scope and the projects and then kind of arrive at you know what dollar might make sense um you know for a project uh the district does have a pretty large um uh debt service reduction coming up so i think you know most districts kind of looking you know out years it's important that you recognize that you take advantage of some debt rolling off because if you get too far close to that point by the time you vote on a project and get things going it's just a little bit too late you know other similar districts in in your

120area have done the same thing where the debt falls off uh bedford and white plains uh just voted on projects you know last month um so the same sort of concept debt falling off you know bring on a new project with um your local share going forward and then uh just briefly maximize state building aids so in your case your state aid ratio has been going up the last few years you're currently at roughly 30 cents on a dollar meaning that the state will pick up you know 30 cents of every pr a dollar that's spent on the project within what's called a maximum cost allowance the district has a cost allowance the state determines for each specific building we've done a lot of analysis you know with danelle and and russ and his team

121to determine you know what's being developed is is within as best as possible the uh you know cost allowance by each building so with this graph what we what we tried to show is not just what's been going on the last couple years and then going forward we went all the way back to you know 2014 and you'll recall that the district 14 15 and 16 is when the last capital project was rolling off so the district has had a depressed you know lower local share if you will since the 2017 fiscal year the thought process is now that we have uh in the blue bar which is another reduction we talked about between the 24 and the 25 fiscal year is the time where we bring on the new local share for the new

122capital project so on a combined basis which is the drop-off of your existing local share plus the new 49 million dollar project you're still much lower than where you were going back in the you know 14 15 and 16 years so i think to put those years in perspective i think it's important to show where the district's been over the last several years and where we think it's going to be with the impact the full impact of this project you know moving forward as far as you know the cost obviously 49 million dollars 30 cents and a dollar covered by you know state building aid what we did is in our analysis and working with with danelle and and her team is what would this cost um you know the average um you know taxpayer

123we work closely with with danielle and her staff to get you know the average home value um you know full valuation for each of the four towns and you'll see you know bedford just over seven hundred thousand lewisboro just under six hundred thousand and then north salem and pond ridge um what we came up with was a you know monthly impact you know to the taxpayers and this would be beginning in the 2026 fiscal year through the 29 fiscal year so a 14-year period um that the taxpayers in that first year um in 26 would be responsible for an extra 14 a month if you will um in bedford another eleven dollars in lewisboro just under ten dollars in north salem and roughly 17 in pound ridge and that would be not an incremental each

124year so once you're set at that you know 14 a month beginning 26 that'll carry through the 39 periods so it's not in addition to every year to get up to that additional level so i think we we kind of thought with the finance team and russ and others that this is a manageable amount um certainly um we think it's you know in line with what we've seen with other you know districts throughout the state so um we think it's an exciting project and you know at 49 million dollars um you know there will be an impact but you look at where the district was as far as local share going back in time and it's you know much lower than where the district had been in prior years i think uh it might be

125worthwhile to mention now though that at i think it was 27 million dollars was going to be tax neutral for the community so it would have felt like could we go back to the graph so it would have felt like those blue bars just kind of continued in perpetuity at that level um but when we really started to add up those projects that needed to get done the infrastructure it left no room for program improvements or student-facing educational improvements and i think it was the feeling of the committee that that felt short um it felt like we were doing what we could to keep things together without really thinking about how we could make things better for students and so if you look at this graph you'll see that those years where it's just kind

126of flatter and blue those were all years that debt wasn't replaced and and people enjoyed lower taxes so it's i think it's eight years there um and so i think given those two pieces of information the committee really felt we could maybe ask for some more and that's kind of how we ended up where we are right i agree i think this is really impactful um for people to take a look at that we the community has recognized some tax savings due to that debt that had dropped off um in between 2014 and 2016. and i think just to point out you know in the 25 fiscal year why it's also important to bring on local share in that year is that local share is as you know an exclusion for tax cap purposes so

127if you lose that exclusion and you fall all the way down to the blue barn 25 there's other complications with respect to the tax cap so it's important that districts think about you know um doing these projects to bring on the local share to keep things you know flat or you know relatively flat as they increase so that's an important piece the other piece that we kind of wanted to talk about is um with respect to timing of the vote i think knowing how long it takes for you know once the voters authorize the project um you know russ and his team will then obviously go through the process of designing the project bringing it to the state education department so that all takes quite a bit of time just to get you know through

128the state process so i think the thought about the the later vote this year was that it allows enough time to bring on that local share in 25 and not rush through the process to get approval and plans and specs so that that sort of thought process on you know why the um you'll vote in later this year as opposed to next year that was a perfect transition to this slide thank you so this slide i won't read it line for line but you can see that we the committee has done some significant work in preparation of presenting our recommendation to you tonight and then there's going to be some more work that needs to be done um in uh so we're at the june 16th um point of this presentation where we're uh presenting

129to the board of ed um during this summer we would uh need to do a secret review and russ can speak a little bit more to that but any um any school projects need to get some environmental approvals um this is a level two level type two type two um so it's different than a type one um approval process but we will work with that means it's the routine activities of a school district without much expected environmental impact the only thing that we'll really look at a little bit is the well fielded ketone other than that this is not an increase in population it's not a huge visual impact but it is a legal requirement you have to as lead agency complete that process before you can officially set a vote and once we get

130that review process um we will probably come back to the board in august and um in august ask for a board uh budget vote date which we are anticipating um in october of um october 18th of 2022 um so more to come on that um and of course we plan to go and speak with our pto and any communities who would like to hear more about this similar how we do the voting do our budget season and where we can have a little bit more intimate communication with our stakeholders that will go on through the through september and october prior to the vote and then to manage expectations uh just like rick said on november november 2022 provided that the voters approved this going into august of 2023 we would do planning and design this

131what we presented to you tonight is really a 30 000 foot view russ would have a lot of planning and design to move forward with we'd have to work of course with sed for certain approvals so we're looking for the construction phase to be in august of 2023 to 2025. and obviously that would be done without interrupting the classroom environment follow all the state restrictions on noise no communication with students etc most of the disruptive work will be done in the summer and of course this presentation will be available on board docs but we also plan to build a bond information page on our website um please don't look for it just exactly tomorrow um it will take us just a couple weeks to get up and running um we plan to do a tax

132impact calculator we're working with our technology department to that that'll probably come at the end of july when the board does set the tax rates so that we can have the most current and accurate information available but hopefully we can get some sort of interactive tool up and running for you and we'll of course keep all the links to this presentation and all this data for her community to um review at their at their pleasure i think i'm going to turn this quote over too great so i i wanted to close with another quote just really kind of reinforcing the message of community investment and the importance of of the school as the heart of the community and and how the entire local community benefits from good schools just a reminder that resources invested in

133improving the quality of public education should be viewed as more than current expenditures for schools and the students attending them such expenditures are long-term investments in strong families a strong labor force and strong communities and i do want to take this moment to thank the members of the committee it was an embarrassment of riches we had engineers and architects educators um so much talent and energy um so garish bahal james danilowicz lansing gatrell james hickerson joellen holbrook cassie hollander melissa sultana mark thielking a name you might recognize from earlier um nyle washburn and damian whelan um i just want to say thank you to all of the community members for investing their time in katana lewis borough school district and now we are ready for any questions you may have thank you thank you all

134to each of you who is presenting tonight and to our community members one of whom is here with us this evening um and all of whom participated throughout a really sustained process of collaboration and inquiry such a deep dive into our infrastructure and liz thank you for your leadership throughout this process danelle liz together i mean it was really a pleasure to be a member of this committee i know we're very eager to hear from the rest of the board we are very excited about this proposal um really eager to hear your thoughts and questions and it's you know my pleasure to turn it over to anyone for comment or question um you know we welcome your your thoughts at this juncture please bill i mean this is this is fantastic i think points to

135be emphasized i think you put it very well is that the the ask is not bringing us back up to the ask we had before the debt dropped off you know it's still less than it used than it was so in terms of it being tolerable and affordable and uh certainly not excessive i think i think that's a that's a very powerful message as part of it um i i think in you know the what to change and how to change it seems uh very well thought out one question i have it's always been like a pet peeve of mine is that schools aren't air conditioned and it seemed cruel and unusual you know i gave my kids free probably two free a hand to say but it's too hot you don't have to go

136because i used to hate going to school when i was that hot with all of that's going to be work when it when we're done what percent of the space or uh in their various schools would be air-conditioned would it be enough so that on brutal days people can go there and just get some relief that type of thing um paul do you want to answer that or russ well i don't think we know an exact percentage we can we can work on that but i can say that at middle school and high school you're going to see considerable improvements uh in in uh common areas and classroom areas so there will be significant classroom areas in both the middle school and high school that will now be air and here at seawing and b

137wing and at the middle school it's that southeast uh classroom wing it's west facing it was built in 2003 which is in a little bit hot yeah as well as the 1970s three-story edition is getting some electric replacement the strategy that uh uh paul and mike and our engineers worked out together is wherever we have systems that are failing let's put in a new alternative energy system and in this in the case of the middle school in high school it's electric heat pump and provide the ventilation and the air conditioning so we're not trying to throw out equipment that still works but when it's being switched out we're going to electric heat pump in the middle school and high school and then and of course the library and computer maker spaces at each of the

138elementaries will be fully air conditioned so that's the space to go for relief which is considerable and then the wing spaces at increased miller and metal pond and um you know katana elementary is uh actually the older portions of that building are pretty nice and cool yeah yeah actually i've noticed that it's like they used to know how to build it because it has an attic yeah we're adding ventilation back to the attic okay it sounds quite reasonable yeah we try to think of like common areas so you can feel here in the library it's a seed here so a space where students can go a common area just to get some relief yeah yeah this this sounds um i i also applaud the the you know hyper transparent hyper transparency of it of having

139a page a tax calculator all those types of things i think even without doing the math people will be reassured that this is all being done with careful thought well done thank you for asking about the air conditioning we did talk in our committee around questions that parents might have and concerns that might be on the minds of parents and this was actually a topic um at several junctures and also trying to balance the desire for cool spaces um in the world that we now live in which takes us back to the sustainability presentation but also with our objective of not replacing or introducing any new fossils equipment it's really exciting actually that that we're able to um cool some additional space but in a very responsible manner in every building yes in every building

140i think um from the from the capital plan that that number that we threw out there the 121 million i that was a big chunk of that was for air conditioning and i think just balancing both sustainability and then you know kind of the the benefit that for students to be in a more comfortable environment for learning yeah um we really thought very carefully about how to do that and and to do it in a way that um a lot of common spaces or you know spaces that students cycle in and out of like the maker spaces and things like that would be available so it is a balance i mean i think you struck the right balance because we didn't actually touch on the presentation and in my mind i'm thinking that we probably

141need a cheat sheet that we all need to get behind these ideas and be very clearly able to articulate what the ideas are and which of them call swat and maybe not at the very lowest level of grain but i think it's very important that we highlight that the way in which the community participated in the work that we did i mean i know we just named people who said thanks but we really did have a very very strong representation across the entire community and we literally walk through every single building i mean i i don't know how you pulled it off liz you did a phenomenal job leading us but the scheduling of all of that and kim i know you participated there as well the scheduling of getting all of the community members

142into all of the buildings and we actually had to have multiple sessions in some of the buildings right where people weren't available and so we had multiple sessions and it was so eye-opening to see what needed to be done right it's easy to talk about it's easy to look at slides but to actually physically go to the space and to understand why that c-wing needs to be changed to understand what b-wing looks like and why it needs to be improved was just tremendous and the fact that our all of the community members on the panel on the committee joined us through all of those it really made for some very enlightening um conversations then when we came back to the committee table and i just wanted to highlight that you know in my opinion we

143didn't leave any stone unturned even though it was a fairly short span of time it was a very engaged committee and i think the outcome is really just phenomenal i don't i don't think we could have done any better and be as fiscally responsible as we're being i mean there's there's two parts to this i really think we've you've the committee has done a great job rory i'm so glad that you highlighted that because i think um we didn't mention in our presentation as well that we did seek student input and um pto representation uh russ sat down with paul myself and the building principals and um students and and some of the pto representatives here and uh also we met with the special ed group as well to get their input and then prior

144to that even when russ was creating the five-year building condition survey um he did meet with each and each principal at their building levels and toward the buildings so not only did we have this facilities committee with some great um great members on it but we also did see the the students input and uh some of them were really great that was so evident because when we went to the buildings at least on at least one tour of each of the buildings the tour was led by the principals themselves by people who are in those buildings every single day right and and not by our architects or not by our administration but by the people who live live and work in those buildings and it felt so important i think and a lot of committee

145members were asking well what is the principal thing what does the principal think and then we saw firsthand well this is what the principal thinks because there they are telling you so it was i mean it was just so thorough and i think we really did get all the right input yeah unfortunately we didn't get the slide um in the middle school as one of the students had wanted to put a slide to get from one classroom to the next but there was no standard unfortunately we did have to scratch off some of their suggestions i do want to say thank you to kim monson because she was instrumental in scheduling those tours and thankful to oh yeah and to all of the building leadership um all of the principals gave us fantastic tours and

146you know just really showed us around the buildings and um i jeff sweater with brought us right on into a boy's bathroom and um i think that really kind of ins inspired that the committee in a way but it was it was great and i think there was so much learning for the committee together and it was really important to hear these things directly from the principals and the the people who who can see the needs because i think it was also a really happy accident that we were on the same night as the sustainability presentation tonight not just because of the obvious connections in the subject matter and the kind of building but to see the students here tonight and to see the kind of learning that they're doing yeah all of which will

147be enhanced by the work that you just and your committee just described not just from the new kind of maker spaces but we saw them learning from the from the windmills that and the light turbines that we have currently think of the learning that will happen from the geothermal work at kes and some of the other projects that are happening so it's it's a really great extension ultimately of what we want for our students and the kind of work they do yeah i think when we did the ground source heat pump at the post road school in white plains you can buy a little uh little screen that that shows you the temperature in the ground so we we can get that put in you can see in sort of real time the heat that

148you're pulling out and the heat that you're extracting you can throw that in for this price though right and i think that another important um when we do the road show when we really start talking to the ptos and the rest of the community i would like to add in uh you know a student focused road show for maybe both the high school and the middle school so they can see it and get excited about it as well because i think there's some really interesting projects going on and because so much of the program improvement is going to happen at the middle school and the high school all of our district students will be able to experience that and those ones that are in the middle and elementary schools now i mean this is this

149is their future so i think it's really exciting absolutely one more one more angle if i understood you correctly with the [Music] debt coming off it's sort of now or never where if if we don't pass a bond and our debt goes down to a certain level in a tax cap environment it would be hard to do it again you have to get up again yeah it it it really is a good opportunity now so um during the budget presentation you often um i often walk you through that tax cap calculation and we have that exclusion that we take out and then we put it back in well that exclusion um deals with the debt that that is involved so um it's it's always a good idea opportunity when debt falls off it's it's sort

150of like when you stop paying um if you if you have a car and you have a loan on it and you let that debt fall off after you know whatever the terms of your loan is it's hard to then get that momentum to take on a new debt where this is you're right you're leveling it out and and we're still not going up to that to that point that we were in 14. yeah because if you look out like the tax cap calculator not just this year but like working out and if denial did like a stress test of what if the exclusion went away it would really mess up the formula and cause undue uh issues you know budgeting issues elsewhere so that might be an interesting angle also because you know if

151people say why now you know the current economy is just the time to do it i think there is a sort of a greater fiscal responsibility reason to actually do it now no doubt okay that's that's good feedback we will yeah thank you the point so if i understood correctly our next opportunity to revisit this effort would be in august there will be another brief juncture right correct and maybe at that time we will have built out the website where some quick facts and even the timeline so that our community can understand sort of where we've been and where we're going and getting that date out there for the vote um will be terrific it really has been i think especially a pleasure to be so focused on the future of our school district coming

152out of the recent past and having the opportunity to get back into the schools and to really be thoughtful about how we envision transforming our physical space to best support the learning needs of our students you know it it really was um serendipitous that this work was our work at this time and thank you liz for being willing to step into the role of chairing the committee it feels great to have apprised the board and that we're all now sort of on the same page about where we are and where we're going and it'll be exciting for the community to get up to speed we're very fortunate to have had so many talented ambassadors already working with us and partnering to develop this proposal and thank you for your partnership everybody seated at this table

153this really has been a collaborative exercise sustained over months and we've all learned a lot and we're very fortunate to have pulled together this opportunity here at the last board meeting of this school year um we really made tremendous progress in a short period of time and we're well positioned hopefully for october it's very exciting are there any final thoughts questions it really only seems fitting to give a round of applause because thank you thank you so much wonderful okay i think then we are ready to look ahead and we thank you again for staying with us and being with us at this late hour travel home safely um and we can just move forward with the rest of our board business and then hopefully move to adjourn so this does bring us to 9.01

154which is our opportunity for public comment and whether anyone has signed up or not if you're waiting to speak please join us at the podium and introduce yourself we um look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your patience [Laughter] we will go into listening mode and the floor is yours thank you um it started in 2004 doing this and in 2005 i brought the word sustainability to the district and alice cronin was leading in a curriculum forum for the district and no one knew what sustainability was it was still to this day it's difficult but then it was much worse and karen benedict the assistant superintendent of curriculum curriculum then um after a long process like these ones that you have with the public um gave us the ability to have a

155framework for cr for a curriculum for sustainability we have lived in the framework of curriculum for a really long time and today was like the most amazing breakthrough for the students in the future and i was just totally blown away that finally everyone in this district is doing what i was doing when people were bringing their kids to cancun i was bringing my kids to the murph you know and i was like look at these cool recycling things but i i'm really moved because in 2008 i ran for school board on the platform of sustainability started that sustainability committee that we still have we created the goals for reduction and the idea that now it's not just like one person with a banner like a sustainability sustainability that i'm that i got those two little

156kindergartners like i have there's a lot of people now and it was just so unbelievably incredibly moving and you should all realize how rare it is districts all over this co you know country are not aware they're not doing what you're doing in a holistic fashion it's so important it needs to be modeled these kids are going to think it's normal that this happens here it isn't so it's really important that you guys show them the possibilities and that they you know turn around and they can teach it and that's what they're gonna they're already doing so anyway i'm really moved i think it's so incredible that it's finally taken a real systemic approach and it's um it's holistic and it's wonderful and i really appreciate it and and i'm grateful now the part that

157i'm less grateful for i think your presentation on the facilities is phenomenal i'm really impressed i'm deeply appreciative of the hard work and detail that you put in there but there are some things that i do have questions about um and i'm sure there will be time for those questions but you know some of the things like did you do modeling on how much fuel use the air conditioning will do what the greenhouse gas impact will be on that fuel use i mean you're going to add fuel to do the air conditioning the offset of the amazing amazing that you're doing one geothermal school but the the bond is till 2039 that is the clcpa that is not going to be fast enough in terms of state law so it's just to bear in mind

158that's one school i'm sure you're thinking along the lines if it works well here maybe we'll accelerate the thing but just really truly bear in mind that the the law that isn't fast enough for the law um and um i had some other things that i think are important oh these are things that i you know are less fun which is that um uh resiliency for the community places to charge places to be cool places to be warm are going to be more and more necessary because of the weather events so we're but you're building a school environment for the you know 21st century but what the 21st century what we're gonna have to deal with is much more in-depth and so the resiliency component of the school's capital plan if to be just thinking

159about what there is to offer all all cars will be off fossil fuels by then too so i'm sure maybe the regular budgets can handle um infrastructure for car charging but maybe not you know maybe you should be we should be thinking about not just bus charging but additional car chargers because all buses all cars will pretty much be very few cars by those dates will be uh fossil fuels but um i it's so fun to dream and it's really beautiful i wish we could do this with the vote and this with the like construction it's amazing and i think that's it except for i wanted to remind you of a really important thing which is that the school kds will be using no more fossil fuels that means no more fossil fuel expenditure you

160will not be paying for fuel it's a big cost reduction you have to remember the financial benefits long term are forever that school going forward presumably we're going to be educating long into the future and those schools from the moment you do that that geothermal will not be using fossil fuel expenditures and if you amortize that out to the future in all your schools this district will be sought after because that will be such a lower infrastructure expense it will be ultimately lower and if you amortize the costs over the like the last 20 years of like not having any of these bonds you're we're doing great we're doing great don't let the community or people tell you that this isn't the right thing this is so the right thing for the future of education

161for the future of this school district's education educating kids so i'm totally psyched can't thank you enough but do not want you to forget really what the the you know the eye on the prize is not just education it's also lowering all of our our our um dependencies on any of those outside sources so thank you you guys thank you thank you yes please hi my name is bob fishman i'm a south salem resident and it's sort of a happy accident that i'm here this evening i happen to chair the sustainability committee for the town of lewisburg so we had a table here for the sustainability fair the reason it's a happy accident that i'm here for this presentation is that past life if you will uh i was the project manager for the renovations

162in the 2003 uh bond issue that was done here through the district as the construction manager and the pre-construction manager so i had the opportunity to present it to an earlier board in an earlier administration as all that was happening i'm trained as a civil engineer and a sustainability management professional and in in the time that i was working on the district projects around uh i was looking at the katona elementary school and some of the issues that were going on there and it became very clear to me that geothermal was a very viable solution for that building at the time the school district was looking at how the district could take advantage of air conditioning and where would be most sensible and it seemed that the katona elementary school was the likely logical choice

163i also happened to have put geothermal in my own home when i moved into the district here in 1998 the following year i put geo in my home and i've been a happy uh user of that in in all those years since uh so i'm i'm very delighted to see this going forward uh if in fact the boat the voters will approve and i i would encourage my fellow citizens in the community to vote for this uh this is a an important engagement and uh and and i i take janet's comments very much to heart i work with state programs uh in my sustainability work uh you know on a daily basis and uh she's spot on when she's citing the fact that the clcpa goals are you know are not going to be achieved

164if we just do the one building uh and uh and i will say that uh in addition to the or the fuel oil saving the fuel savings that we're going to see at the uh at katona i want people to understand that the nature of geothermal is such that the air conditioning side of this is basically free okay the technology is such that you are pulling 50 some odd degree temperatures out of the ground and paul will tell you as a facilities professional that if he has a chiller he's looking for temperatures that are kind of in in that range to be able to provide air conditioning so you're getting free air conditioning when you do that so uh that that's the engineering geek of me uh in inside me talking but uh as a

165policy uh i i think this is a very intelligent decision and uh i applaud the district for for moving forward with that thank you thank you thank you anybody else waiting to speak please i am martial gang i've had had my foot in both committees so um i'm very pleased to be up here i want to before i speak though i want to acknowledge janet who um i've been on the committee with janet since day one and i think a lot of what's been happening in the district wouldn't have happened without janet being on the board starting the committee i think that should be acknowledged um publicly and as these things move forward seriously i think it's a lot of what's happening is because of janet so as i said i had both feet in

166both committees very pleased to see the long-term goals of the sustainability committee reflected in the capital clan i mean it's just fantastic to see that some highlights for me are that um obviously no no fossil fuel burning equipment's being invested in that has to happen going forward we cannot invest in more fossil fuel equipment because of what's happening at new york state level but also it's just not a good learning tool for our kids we have to move away from that it's the only way we're really going to address the long-term issues related to importing oil burning oil the health effects of burning oil all these components so really great that that's happening i think also the prudent approach by taking advantage of the end of life of equipment to move to this new 21st

167century technology makes total sense it does not make sense to rip stuff out that doesn't necessarily have any useful life left if what if it is burnt if it is dying we should replace it and use 21st century technology to to move the ball forward i've mentioned this on the committee as well that i'm interested in operating costs we need to focus on that i think that's an important component of selling this plan and operating costs will be affected by this it will be affected positively so i think that's an important component that we need to drill into i also want to mention that i've i've beat the drum on this as we renovate wings and renovate things if we don't focus on envelopes walls where we keep heat in or keep cool in we

168are really missing opportunity there as well because that will lower our operating costs going forward and these buildings last 100 years so we should be doing that every time we're opening up a wall and the b wing the c-wing very bad i'm just telling you so switching topics though two things i learned on this committee which was really really exciting is that i learned so much about the needs of our educators and the fact that modern facilities really help the learning experience and not modern facilities like we have 1950s does not it really does make a difference and the other thing that i learned is that apparently and this was informed by russ a general rule of thumb for school districts is that we spend at least two percent a year of the value of

169our buildings every year on capital improvements which would mean and according to russ our buildings are worth 500 million dollars we do the math we've been under investing in our buildings by a total about 150 million dollars since the last bond act how much are we sacrificing that learning experience based on the fact that we are way underperforming on the investment that other schools do and i know that we're trying to track the bond roll-offs and that's why we're doing it every 20 years but maybe we should think about that there's a there's a different philosophy that we need to think about if we're going to keep up with the high levels of education that our kids uh deserve and that we are here for so those are the last uh that's my last point

170i just very happy to be part of this and i'm hopeful that uh this is successful thank you thank you thank you get to take off my mask it's a pleasure um thank you to the board um i'm steve weissmuller community member member of the sustainability committee i guess the third longest running and thank you janet and mark and i've learned a lot since joining uh almost 10 years ago so i'm also the parent of three children uh one in elementary middle and high school so great to see the plans the sustainability aspects in the curriculum we teach at home i hope all parents are teaching at home about reducing reusing and recycling um they surely get it here with the compost and and other programs so just keep up the great work um on

171the facility side um oh let me before i get to facilities echo something janet mentioned about marketing i don't think we do enough marketing on sustainability in our district and some of it does get lost you teach it in the classroom kids get home what do they say how was school oh it was great and you know what did you learn and you know it was good it's like give me something if we can get it into the papers if we can do white papers if we can do youtube videos because everyone's on youtube these days let's get the word out if you benchmark our school district against austin texas berkeley california boulder colorado we are leading the charge here in sustainability um i've done some research i've shared it within the committee i think

172it's time to get out there nationally and speak to the volumes of work that janet started that the school board has embraced and supported over years the investments were making not just in innovative programs but also in the curriculum so i don't want that to be lost or forgotten we should also go for awards because awards are you know what you can put on the walls you walk into the school you can be proud of on the facility side great work um we'd love to see geothermal at all the schools if we could but understanding the returns may not be there initially there should be a plan b or second phase to this where if the pilot does work and it will after two or three years you start the next phase and you roll

173this in and sort of adjust over time you're going to see it pays for itself especially as we're looking at inflationary concerns and fuel price rising and everything else that in the news today i can't forecast the future but it doesn't look that great investing in this new innovative technology like geothermal solar and other technologies that are coming out again i've done some research through my work i think the time is now to make those investments the last piece i just want to mention is on security i do appreciate the front end you know embracing the front door i think there's other aspects to controlling security and in light of the tragic incident in texas and other locations that are occurring that we take a really deep dive into a full security assessment i'm sure

174that's part of what the architects have done but really take a look at and i have you to talk offline um i do sit on a security committee for a religious institution in the community uh we're taking a very hard look at that right now and there's very simple ways through training through certain things that you can do in each classroom and at each door in the event of a crisis type situation so thank you again for taking a look into that and all the great work that we've done this year have a good evening thank you thank you to everybody for taking time to join us this evening and for sticking with us at this late hour and for your um insightful perspectives and lending your expertise in public comment i'm going to close

175the public comment period now um because i believe everybody who might have been waiting has spoken and we will turn our attention to the consent agenda and as we prepare to do so i would just like to borrow a phrase from liz earlier this evening to observe that we too on the sustainability subcommittee have an embarrassment of riches and you've just met all of them as well as do we in our community and thank you for introducing yourself and for joining us tonight um and it's been a pleasure and thank you for coming this evening and for your dedicated um educating of the rest of us throughout the year and for your inspiration and for your feedback thank you with that we are going to turn our attention to the consent agenda we do have

176a resolution or two pertaining to the work of the facilities committee i'll just point that out and i'm not aware of anything we need to vote on separately so if somebody would like to move the consent agenda please do thank you liz and seconded by catherine thank you very much are there any questions comments before we take a vote if not then we can vote all in favor please say aye aye and zero thank you and that brings us to 15.01 which would be an opportunity for board dialogue or discussion if there is any i just want to say thank you to everybody for your work and really it was such a great night and for the staff and administration just for the pre-meet outside was really great but it was really wonderful to see

177our students and our community members and our staff all together really just moving our community in such a positive direction and so thank you for your leadership andrew and for all the staff for really helping to create that culture and it's just really refreshing and lovely to see so thank you thank you julia and with that i think we can look ahead to future meetings uh and sadly for better or for worse this is our last board of education meeting of the school year um so we will take this opportunity again to underscore julia's thanks to everybody here tonight not only for all that went into the two presentations and the celebration that took place before the presentation and for all of the conversation that we've been able to have this evening but also for

178the herculean effort all throughout the school year to keep our schools open it's um easy to forget that in january we were in a position to observe that our ability to keep school open was tenuous and yet we managed only through the tireless efforts dedication patience and just sheer force of will represented by everybody here at the table and by our building leaders our entire staff it really has been yet another extraordinary school year we really are hoping for brighter days ahead i think perhaps they are already upon us and we hope that you have a restful restorative enjoyable summer and very much look forward to an opportunity to reorganize ourselves on thursday july 7th and thank you so that is our future meeting the board will meet on thursday july 7th 6 o'clock p.m

179in the high school library and with that i'm actually going to recommend um that we adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn back into executive session to discuss uh the employment history of an individual if i could please have a second thank you julia all in favor please say aye aye 7-0 thank you so very much everybody have a great evening thank i'm gonna you