May 5, 2022 Board of Education Meeting

001good evening everybody welcome thank you so much for joining us we're so pleased to have members of our community here with us tonight it is thursday may 5th 2022 and it's my pleasure to make a motion for the board to return to public session if i could please have a second thank you ilana all in favor please say aye aye aye 7-0 thank you and would everybody please join us as is our custom for the pledge of allegiance wonderful again thank you and welcome thank you for joining us we're very much looking forward to our presentations this evening we are looking forward to hearing from our technology director chris nelson who has joined us to provide an update on our technology plan um as we look to the future into an opportunity to adopt a

002revised plan perhaps this summer we're looking forward to yet another opportunity to review the board of education's proposed budget to the community this is our required mandatory budget hearing and we're very much looking forward to welcoming and hearing from our candidates for the board of education upcoming election before we turn our attention to those presentations um we're going to just take a brief moment for some updates and announcements and tonight actually with the board's permission i'm going to just ask to go slightly out of order and invite andrew to please start our meeting and say a few words sure thank you thank you very much marjorie um until until a couple of hours ago i was looking forward to coming tonight and presenting a number of really joyful events of which we're enormously proud in

003the district and i will still talk about those things because we're still proud of and feel joy about those events however a few hours ago today we learned in our middle school of some truly unconscionable and awful racist graffiti that was discovered in a bathroom in the middle school i do want to credit the student who immediately upon finding that reported it to the school principal mr sweaterwitz immediately notified the police both local and state police came to the school and will begin to have begun an investigation principal svadowicz spoke with all the students before the end of the school day to appropriately condemn this behavior and let everyone know our complete lack of tolerance for this kind of behavior and he has then uh sent a letter out to the middle school community and

004i have since sent his letter and forwarded it to the entire school community along with my own thoughts on the matter um it it it saddens us deeply uh and should set us back on our heels when we hear of something like this uh we know that we are working uh ever in the direction of greater inclusion uh and better uh more understanding and compassion we've been doing that work for a number of years and an incident like this points out to us absolutely clearly how much more work we have to do we happened to have a meeting of our erjc yesterday and i said in that meeting that we are always humble in the face of this work uh never thinking that we're done never thinking that the work is perfect never wanting to

005brag about the work we do we simply talk about the work that we do and we acknowledge and recognize that sadly there's hate in the world in the world around us and that that comes into our schools despite our best efforts and we will continue to already today principal sweaterwitz is thinking about some steps to take to more closely monitor movement around the school and movement into the bathrooms and right away that causes us to reflect on the kinds of experiences we want to create for all of our students the kinds of warm and welcoming environments that we want to create and it saddens us to think we're going to have to take some steps in a different direction and at the same time we recognize the necessity of doing that uh so it's it's

006important that our entire community reflect on this moment this is not as i wrote just a little while ago to the community this is work that schools absolutely take on uh and as i said we take it on with humility and we know that if we're doing it alone we're not going to be successful in this work because this is a community's work a country's work a world's work to keep moving forward to try always to reduce hate to increase compassion and love and that's the work in which we're engaged so we will continue we will absolutely continue we will redouble our efforts to the extent that we can and will keep moving forward working to continue to maintain the hopeful and the joyful environment for our students that we know predominantly is what encourages

007good and compassionate behavior for all of them which leads me to still want to speak about those other events because we do have things many things to be proud of uh this past weekend we had a phenomenal jfest here at john jay high school uh that that started off with a really great pep rally in the in the uh high school gym and was followed in the afternoon by a unified basketball game that was heartwarming and testament to the kind of work we want to be doing as a school district i want to say thanks to the many many parent volunteers the boosters who helped to put that event together and the many many staff who contribute to an event like that and then there are other joyful events upcoming you know more performances to

008come next week at increase miller and at our other schools um and last week we had our learning cafe on the topic of inclusion uh my thanks to all in the community who joined uh i couldn't be there my thanks to mary and neal for facilitating that that evening from everything i've heard the conversations were thoughtful uh appreciative of all the staff and community members who could be there and engaging around topics that again from today's events we know are complex and will challenge us for a long time to come but we remain committed to working ever forward so um a few other thoughts on other topics um this all this week we've been presenting our budget road shows you're going to hear the budget presentation again in just a little while my thanks to

009all of our ptos for supporting those events uh we'll continue again next week with a uh presentation for our septo bto as well as one at kes i think septo is on tuesday and ks is on wednesday evening thanks in advance to those ptos for hosting us i want to make mention of the fact that this is teacher appreciation week around the country as well as here at caton lewisburg again i have to say thank you to our ptos who i know are really doing a phenomenal job of expressing their appreciation for our teachers we want to at the same time express our incredible appreciation for the work that our teachers do and have been doing through really trying times and they continue to be unbelievably dedicated uh and and caring and supportive towards all

010of their students and next week is uh school nurse appreciation week so since we won't be together next week i want to take a moment now to this group of people who have been so enormously dedicated and continue to be as sadly coveted numbers have been higher of late they have been busier as a result of late so we want to thank them also for their always incredibly diligent and dedicated work on behalf of all students and staff and i think artery that is the end of my uh comment for tonight thank you andrew we really appreciate your um words and um your emphasis on our humility in the face of this work and our sense of urgency around this work and thank you also for the celebratory words about many of the joyous events

011and thanking our volunteers our teachers our staff i know that my board colleagues in just a moment are well prepared to underscore your comments and sentiments and perhaps to even say some words about other goings-on around the community but first i would like to invite abigail to please share with us her student board report if you're ready thank you so at campus congress the new executive board was elected and they successfully led our last meeting on april 20th and overall we've had a very successful year as we made many changes and recently assisted in the planning of jfest at the high school the science research symposium was held on april 22nd the jazz and band concerts were april 25th and the composition showcase was april 28th jfest was held april 29th so students had a

012shortened day and went to the pep rally in the gym at 11 30 where dance team acapella groups and the piece from the spring musical were performed sports teams could also introduce their seniors and their upcoming games following the pep rally students could go outside do temporary tattoos draw with chalk listen to students sing participate in relay races and much more the day ended with a senior versus staff kickball game where unfortunately the staff won overall jfest was a huge success and will hopefully become a tradition at john jay may 2nd through 13th there are ap exams the orchestra and vocal jazz concert was may 3rd and earthrise sustainability club sold 455 trees to opposite offset the school's paper use and this is the seniors last week of classes before we begin our internships at

013the middle school rock the halls was held on april 22nd to raise money for arts alive the state math test was held april 26 through 28th the fifth grade parent orientation was held on april 22nd 27th and then miss matroba science class hiked around campus on earth day to learn about wind and solar lights at meadow pond the science fair was held april 21st recycling matters club collected uneaten carrots and brought them to rising star horse rescue at katona elementary kes kindness day was april 23rd and students enjoyed playing disco-aerobic bowling in their gym classes and lastly at increase miller students planted peas and beans on earth day and kindergarteners have a reading marathon where they read for 26 minutes just like the 26 miles in the marathon wonderful thank you so much for the

014update and overview of events going on around every school building and um in honor of earth day and speaking of internships i imagine you must be preparing to head out on your own internship would you mind sharing with us what you'll be doing yes so i'm interning at rail yard art studio so i'll help out with like kids art classes and just work around the studio and then i also have friends interning at all the schools in the districts they're also working at companies like in finance and i even know someone who will be working on wells so you can really do whatever you want that's really great thank you so much for sharing that did anybody else have a comment or question for abigail before we move on the next item on our agenda

015technically is board subcommittees but why don't we stick with board announcements for the time being and then go to subcommittee reports did board members have other announcements they wanted to share please liz uh i just wanted to reiterate um andrew's comments about the unified basketball game it was pure joy it was so fantastic to see so many students there um and it was just you know it's a great day when you can root for both teams um and you can see such joy in in everybody in that gym um last joy but also important i've been attending the budget road show which has been it's been great to get in the schools and talk to people about the budgets and priorities and then just one last thing i do want to mention that the katona

016elementary school pto fundraiser dancing under the stars is on saturday i am unaware if there um are tickets remaining but it looks like an amazing event the john jay homestead thank you liz other announcements julian i just wanted to um echo andrew's sentiment about jfest weekend and acknowledge all of the parent volunteers our student team volunteers who supported their peers our performance groups that were part of the pep rally and and really the boosters just did an amazing job of kind of rethinking jfest this year after the kids have been so isolated to really make it um an opportunity for kids to get together to support each other to be with their peers and it was really obvious that that meant a lot to the kids so thank you very much to everyone for that

017and um and also andrew mentioned the science symposium which was really quite impressive and it's just amazing to hear the type of work our students are doing and you know thank you to all of our staff and at every level these children clearly were prepared to get to the point that they're get through great science education throughout their career and um you know i think they're really just enjoying it it was so nice to see how passionate they felt about the work they were doing and seeing some of the younger students who are just starting the process talk about their initial exploration and what they hope to study it's really exciting to see them passionate about the work that they're doing so thank you to everyone for those two events were great wonderful thank you

018julia margaret i i can't help but feel like the disco aerobic bowling was probably the most fun event and i think we all missed it so um perhaps next time we can get some warning on that one um i went over to the middle school for rock the halls on the 22nd of april and it was a blast i don't know if any of you guys got to go there but it was very dark and it was very very packed and it was a raucous crowd jesse weiss would just did an amazing job with his band there were 45 students from the both the middle school and the high school because of cover they weren't able to hold it for the last couple years so some high school kids came back and it was just

019such a rocking time it was really great i had such a such a fun time and the community was there in full force and it was standing room only literally there was no place to sit it was great the next day i went over to the earthrise where they were thanks for letting everybody know abigail they pre-sold about 450 trees to offset their paper but it really is just a great way for the students to start to think about sustainability and to think about their carbon imprint um jill hirschfeld ran it um and just did an amazing job uh there was also a young man there named austin owen that i spent quite a bit of time talking to he's a representative on the town board he's a student rep on the town board and

020he was there supporting the town's food scrap recycling program and i really just thought he was such an articulate young man he's he's engaged with the town it's just so warming to see that even at the student level we have such a good relationship with our town so two wonderful events it does feel a little bit dampened by the news today at the middle school um i i can only echo andrew's words that we need to redouble our efforts and condemn the behavior and i really hope that we can uh find out who's responsible and get them the help that they need um and you know i i it just it sort of put a put a damper i think on on the whole evening so we really need to continue our work and redouble

021our work in that regard um but otherwise yeah it's been quite a hectic couple of weeks as we near the end of the school year i suppose yes thank you rory thank you well said any other comments or board announcements before we move on i'll just provide a brief update regarding our unified basketball team although i love the sentiment that you articulated about rooting for both teams nevertheless we are undefeated another victory today and an away game where our students are traveling to other districts and their season calendars available from the athletics website and from community members who maybe haven't had a chance to support the team um you know please please check it out please do um if there are no further board announcements then we can turn to um subcommittee reports briefly this

022is item 7.01 i wasn't sure is there anything new from audit no okay thank you facilities the facilities committee met on wednesday which is yesterday um it's been a long week already um and we continue our discussion of the needs of our buildings uh with focus on our elementary schools yesterday the work continues um and i think we're making good progress thank you liz more to come um parent counsel have you met since we haven't had a meeting we're meeting tomorrow morning great okay thank you policy committee do we have that policy as a first read no next next week okay so we are working on a policy that will have a first read next time great thank you our sustainability committee is meeting tomorrow we did have one meeting between the last meeting in

023this meeting where we started to talk about the impact of some legislation that didn't exist when our charter or board policy was drafted almost 10 years ago and we're talking about how that might change our approach to the policy prospectively and i imagine we'll continue that conversation tomorrow and then with regard to westchester putnam county school board association it's also that time of year that we just recently voted on the budget for next year and the slate of officers and that will be provided to boards of education to be voted on at our next meeting so we can be on the lookout for that i think that's it and that brings us finally to our opportunity for our first presentation there is a quick update on finance oh i'm so sorry that i skipped finance

024thank you uh so the finance committee met last monday um the meeting had been moved so maybe that's why uh you didn't think it through you didn't think of it um there are two charges to the finance committee this year uh one of them is to use the normal analysis using the commissioner's report um to evaluate future expenditures or potential future expenditures and to find areas where there may be specific volatility across certain expense line items and the second charge was to look at the peer report so that we're comparing our expense line items to peer districts on the first one we're making very very good progress so much so actually that i think we have a whole new tool that we think will more accurately provide potential future volatility to us we've gotten some

025really stellar input from a number of community members who are very knowledgeable in this space it's really wonderful to work with them um however all of that good work has kind of put us behind track a little bit and we're now contemplating whether we'll even make it to our second charge or not so i'm kind of preparing you for our june presentation to the extent that we get to the peer report it might be a little bit light but the first piece of it will be uh really thorough okay that's really exciting thank you for letting us know that's great thank you to the finance committee rory thank you okay does that cover us for board subcommittees great okay thank you then without further ado let's move on to presentations and discussions i think we're

026at 9.01 and welcome chris nelson thanks for joining us good evening everybody good evening it's always a pleasure uh to give you an update in terms of the workings of the technology department and and the investments in technology across the district um just as a sub note those of you that are following along uh rangers are still tied with pittsburgh so this after the first period so hopefully i'll get to see the rest of the game tonight thank you so tonight's an opportunity for us to kind of you know step away from the day-to-day activities of the technology department take a larger view in terms of the role of technology throughout the district and at the same time give the board an opportunity to give us some some input in terms of of where technology

027can advance and and where we can do a better job in terms of meeting the needs of of other goals throughout the district so this is an ongoing process that the state asks us to complete every three years uh the last presentation in this format was uh back in um the spring of uh 2018. sorry i had to shake up the dust on that one so uh that was more than three years ago because the state kind of gave us a pause year because of the pandemic and stuff so um it was unfair them to kind of ask us to go through that process where we're working through so many other challenges last year so so we pick up uh from there so the last plan that we submitted um was um a 2018 and

028then the next plan is a three-year plan that will be submitted in july so we have some time to have conversation we have some opportunities to you know highlight some things uh that we might want to include in terms of our goals and then the scope of this particular plan is focused on the instructional impact uh and learning outcomes for students so we know technology plays a large role probably impacts a lot of different facets of the organization but this particular process is to see how we can support teachers in the instruction and and give students an opportunity to learn technology so that's kind of the scope of this uh and again as the state has the requirements for specific charge areas they've identified and again i included the the website on on the presentation

029so you can dive deeper if you're curious to see um all the uh requirements that the state has uh we wanted to make sure that we were aligned with the learning commitment throughout the district as well you know we have local goals that sometimes are either broader or more specific than what the state asked us to do so so we start from there and kind of you know unpack uh from there to a final outcome in terms of a plan so so in general we we want to make sure that we're creating engaging and relevant learning environments for all our students regardless if they're using technology or not but there's a fundamental belief or at least a consensus among our educators that that technology can play a role in terms of that teachable moment opportunity

030maybe to explain things uh more visually or or in some different formats than perhaps uh other ways without technology so so with that we feel the technology could increase on teachable moments which then yields engagement within the learning environment and then if that happens then if students are more engaged does that then provide a deeper learning model that allows students to learn both inside and outside the classroom now that they've developed the technology skills to pursue uh their interests so so that's kind of summarizes kind of our fundamental belief in the district that the learning commitment is our anchor and we're finding the right resources to accelerate or at least move forward that model so and then this past year we um as the district decided to focus on particular areas uh if you were

031to see something similar in the last technology plan uh we were probably closer to the center because we had a lot of work to do at the last technology plan focused a lot on stabilizing and providing predictability uh giving us a good foundation in terms of the technology in such a way that it becomes seamless throughout the organization and we'll talk about the successes of how we achieved those in just a little bit but but notice we still are focusing on technology as a theme throughout the organization um it just becomes more behind other priorities this year but it's still connected to the work that we do so that was something we just wanted to assure that this is not something extra but if we do a good job with the technology integration it should

032support all aspects of the organization so all right so last technology plan yielded this technology commitment and i'm just representing it so it kind of gives us an anchor point of where the last plan was we might have to revisit this this is something that it's a living document you know at that point in time it had great value in terms of having common conversations early starting points uh uh with with um all the stakeholders in such a way that we can all get to an agreement um and and we pulled it as a couple statements here that we felt uh were important statements at the time and still continue to kind of drive the work that we're doing as a technology department and then we we understand that technology is a tool the tool

033provides us a lot of efficiencies in the work that we're doing a lot of productivity in terms of being able to either eliminate certain tasks because the technology can do it for us or it complements the work that we're doing that it just allows us to do that but but the second part of that is if it's in the learning environment it's a tool that can be leveraged to explore curiosity to explore creativity and those are essential elements that we feel is a commitment that we feel technology should play that role so so that was something that is there um and that's our pledge uh make the investments in the appropriate locations uh to the right environments in such a way that we can maximize that curiosity and creativity so that's the commitment that we

034made when we were in the last technology plan of course the technology planning in general is is really just two parts it's understanding the current state of where we are and then trying to understand a future state you know where do we want to be three years from now once we complete this plan and i am in some regards i appreciate the state continuing to ask us to take a pause with all these investments in such a way that we can kind of understand the tools we have plan for appropriate improvements and then look for observables or outcomes in such a way that three years from now that we can kind of get there so so in we had probably more comprehensive approach to this more so on my behalf because i was i was

035newer to the position got an opportunity to really understand the organization uh get some viewpoints from a lot of different areas more formally so we spent two three days i think it was with a consultant that had come in uh we kind of occupied a conference room rotated all different folks through the process of where are we now what's working well where are some gaps in terms of some things that we wanted to evolve to a current state and with that we kind of documented enough of it so that that could kind of drive the objectives for the technology over the next three years reflecting on that process i think we underestimated how much the world would change at that point in time so our goals were a little bit narrower um but because we

036had a good document place and i think a common belief in in all these areas um that i think we're nimble enough to adjust and plan for what we did observe as challenges throughout the whole pandemic era so so that part i think was was beneficial for us all all through there so so reconvening um this past fall we used a similar process it wasn't as comprehensive but we did pull out all the original documentation we went through we had some feedback from our technology committee over two meetings uh we anchored um you know the questions to say uh this is where we thought we would be did we achieve it uh in the same regards a lot of post-it notes as you saw on the last slide of indicators in terms of you know

037where might the gap still exist and so that gave us an opportunity to kind of get to this point today where we're just kind of sharing where some of our goals have been developed and looking for some input from the board to see if we're on on the right path are we missing anything and those types of things we have to submit a lot of this feedback in such a way that other stakeholders will give us more feedback i know the principles uh through their their meetings have been giving us some insight in terms of the systems that we're using in each of the buildings uh boces provides a lot of services they'll provide some input as well in terms of that and this is you know one part of that whole piece so that

038by july when we're required to report to the state that we have enough data to work with so so what did we find out um last uh the tech the last technology plan which is concluding we achieved a fully mobile infrastructure um which at the time we had a very narrow understanding of what that meant uh at the time if you think back uh the first step in the in the technology plan was can we be more mobile as a professional workforce we invested with laptops for teachers uh we put it in hot spots throughout the buildings uh we were hoping to take a slow steady pace to really understand a lot of what that shift would mean for all our professionals um a year later we accelerated that to fully immersing all our students

039and our community into a mobile environment and i say community because of the fact that the plan was focused on campus model we were just looking at our classrooms and hallways and common learning spaces uh we truly did extend into the community in such a way that we were supporting families and and and folks in such a way that we have mobile hot spots we had to create opportunities to create safe learning environments for our students in the community so so all of those learning opportunities to create that infrastructure is i think more than we achieved in our initial thoughts um but but we're glad to be there i think it kind of pushed us a little bit beyond it and that's what we're using this as an assumption in terms of what our next

040school and please allow me to just interject and say thank you i mean this bullet alone is just it is enormous and really this is our first opportunity and it's great to see you come up for aaron to be able to put together this presentation to apprise us of all that has happened since we submitted this plan and where we are now and we will please understand that i represent a much larger stakeholders group but we have a great team and that team consists of uh technicians and the network folks within the department our data management team led by maureen jones and the team there just done a great job um all our instructional leaders have come and provided so many so many insights to help us do a good job with that uh the

041pto's parents all the folks out there it's it's been a it's been a collective process so thank you for saying that but again thank you all right um some other things that we achieved uh obviously we built out the bandwidth uh to support uh you know i think our current inventory is about 3 500 mobile devices um again much larger than we were at the beginning of the plan um and we still get more demands for and we get more bandwidth do we get faster speeds when you do those so so it's it's a it's an ongoing process uh but still um great achievements throughout the last plan uh looking at different learning pro uh platforms uh this is something that that we had a very uh intentional list to look at productivity tools and

042and and learning tools led by our librarians for databases and research and those types of things opportunities for productivity uh word excel those types of things we had intentions of allowing everybody to have those tools consistently we scaled that so much broader uh when we introduced our learning management system in terms of schoology that's given us more connectivity to a lot of other programs and ways that teachers and students can stay connected through the learning process of both inside the classroom and outside the classroom so so we achieved a lot on that front and then um a lot of learning along the way uh that last bullet um uh this is uh a a reactive piece that i think was necessary to get through the pandemic i i wish we were a little bit more

043intentional in terms of being able to explore some other topics and some other themes uh but but none the same we have to take an opportunity to understand that there was a whole lot of adjusting and learning through this process as we go there and through there we achieved this through uh summer technology summits that we were very active in the summer months in terms of of taking a break from teaching and and giving our professionals a chance to learn uh we've we've held kind of pull in opportunities both through our model schools partnership at the lyric as well as hiring consultants to come in and do some coaching throughout the year uh we've had certification programs a lot of our teachers and our professionals have taken online courses that were credentialed so that they

044can better understand the tools they have and that was part independent study but then also small groups and a lot of collaboration in terms of we received um participation through a learning technology grant uh so we're doing some research we have an opportunity uh to kind of be more formalized in terms of some targeted outcomes um and then a whole lot of books i i'm really proud of of a lot of our um professionals in terms of asking for research and and and and uh i think last year we distributed about 15 different titles on various topics uh just gave folks a chance to do a deeper dive to kind of understand the changes that are going on in our culture but specifically within the realm of education so so very successful outcome i i

045really think the hard work of all the stakeholders has yielded us in a very good position which makes it a little bit easier for us to plan the next phase um which gives us some time to kind of talk about that tonight where we want to go now that we have a lot of these things in place great so here's uh the next piece we'll talk a little bit about sorry yeah the one thing that so we spoke to the state having expectations for technology planning so that's that's the role of actually having a document or at least uh a list of of of goals and what we want to achieve over the three years but parallel to that there's there were two major changes that took place uh you know since the last technology

046plan uh there's been the appointment in every school district for a data protection officer uh that person happens to be myself as well but in the same regards i expanded the responsibilities to ensure we're protecting uh all our resources from you know cyber security perspectives being able to protect data and those types of things so the infrastructure component uh it continues to be held accountable to some some standards in terms of what's there but then how we use technology is also evolved in terms of standards so so the state has kind of deemed the the state learning standards as focused on computer science and digital fluency standards so that's what they have labeled it and this is a little bit different than our digital citizenship curriculum that we established a few years ago in terms

047of allowing students to understand ethical uses of technology uh because um it it's much broader than that so we had a good support model in terms of our our students being exposed to dialogues around how we use technology this is a deeper dive in terms of developing mastery identifying specific skill sets that are important for each curricular area and such so i know this is kind of small font up there but it aligns very well with the next three years from the standpoint that this was just an awareness here where we're just basically put on on call from the state to say start thinking about it and and then the next three years kind of bring us into a perspective of being more formalized in that process so so that's something that will anchor some

048of our goals too as we look at the next step so great all right so all that being stated um let's take a look at where gaps are some some goals that we might be able to kind of focus on over the next three years and actually this started with three and then as we spoke more it became four um as of last week i think i presented five and now we're up to six so so come july uh it'll be interesting to see in terms of what we finally agreed to but that but that's good we know technology plays many roles and there's a lot of things we need to stay focused with but but for this presentation i i wanted to introduce you know the six goals that we think we we should

049put the most uh focus on over the next three years and and then we'll have an opportunity to kind of ask some questions to see if maybe there are some stuff or some deeper dives in some of these citizens um so i'll just kind of highlight a few things for each of these goals the state will ask us for some some action steps so assuming that these are consensus and where we are uh when we submit the report in july we'll we'll itemize so you know in year one we're hoping to achieve this in year two and stuff so there's more complexity to each of these goals but for tonight we'll do some big picture type understanding of what we want to have as outcomes so goal number one talks about equity and equity in

050the previous plan probably was just do we have the tools to provide everyone an opportunity to use the tools and again as i shared that with an acceleration um if if we didn't have the pandemic and provided devices to everybody that probably would have been our goal in this plan but equity from this standpoint is more about experiences does every student have a pathway to have the same opportunity to develop proficiency with technology as they go through their career here at kaduna woodsboro so that's when we say equity we want to be intentional that every student has the same experiences not just because they're interested in technology it's not just because the teacher may be interested in technology though we have some opportunity to kind of work through consistent experiences as it's listed here um

051goal number two um is specifically developing student proficiency and what that means um there's some state standards as i shared with you in terms of digital fluency we can also rely on the iste standards as the national standards which defines different roles that students can work with uh but we we envision this as you know outside this classroom expectations that that students can make choices with technology to be productive and creative and create products in such a way that they can demonstrate their learning goal number three is to continue to expand our professional development model um before our faculty you know is our learning model flexible and and specific enough to meet the individual needs of all our teachers um and and that that becomes um an interesting a paradigm shift because before you it

052was a collective let's let's learn how to you know understand the menu that's on a tool or something like that right so it's very you know task specific and you could you know kind of approach that with with just everybody going through the process together uh seeing that we have so many different perspectives and uses the technology and all the different curricular areas this is really where our focus is is continue to support folks now that they have basic proficiency skills with the technology to to really apply it uh to other lessons within their curricular area goal number four uh that whole cyber security data protection what are we doing to provide safeguards for uh you know all our students uh teachers uh faculty um staff members uh even parent data that we collect and

053such uh we are uh stewards of all all the that those data sets and and do we have the right tools and and structures in place uh to protect it uh but in the same regards can we uh use that um to improve um unintentional exposure to content and those types of things so before the standard was internet filtering the state commands came in and basically said you know these are the things you can't have on your network uh from an internet perspective it's become a lot more complex now because we have so many different ways that companies are influencing um whether it's ads and i think we've talked about that at a previous a board meeting whether it's it's it's uh you know things that are emailed to them it's it's there's a lot

054of different ways the technology could be leveraged to you know expose kids to potential risks or or opportunities for maybe ways that hackers can get into our network and and we have to be very intentional in terms of what that means for us and how we can provide safeguards there um learning spaces um this was this kind of interesting it's it's our older model was to tool spaces we could create a computer labs we created spaces in the back of our classrooms rows of computers that that could be leveraged um now that we've become fully mobile across the organization uh what do we do with the extra space that's now created in our in our classrooms and and what happens to the computer labs if they're no longer computer labs and those types of things

055so so i think we'll be more intentional in terms of understanding how we can uh use the tools in some new ways but then also look at the physical space um out there as well and then goal number six is just do we have a measuring stick um the previous uh plan the measuring stick was did we have it or we didn't have it right so so i could pull out an inventory spreadsheet say an x amount of switches we have x amount of bandwidth and um when we're talking about using technology to achieve all these goals do we have a measuring stick that we can you know help people understand what they're learning and growing with with the technology but at the same time how do we know we achieved it if we don't

056have a way to monitor it and i think that's what we're looking to achieve in that last goal so so some broad strokes a lot of work to do under each of those categories in terms of specific actions uh but i think the thought here and i can open up the floor here a little bit is you know are we on the right track is this a good good next steps for us this organization uh in the same regards to certain feedback uh in terms of how we might be able to uh you know tweak the plan uh to get us to the next step with the technology thank you it's really exciting to think that we're at a point where we can consider these six and potentially some other goals but and i'm eager

057to hear from my board colleagues but thank you for framing these out um these are thoughtful relevant i think you've touched a nerve in each and every one of the goals and there's much to talk about but it's really exciting to think that we have reached a point of stabilization and mobility that would enable us to take a step back and to be able to reflect on where we want to go with respect to any one of these dimensions so very exciting and great that we have some time to think about it between now and july thank you so much for bringing this to us and i'm happy to turn it over for comments questions thoughts about the goals or what what's being proposed for the future i think um if i could that goal

058five particularly interests me uh from a facility's standpoint um it's really interesting to think about the fact that computer labs are a thing of the past um i know that i sent my first email from a computer lab many many years ago um could you just elaborate kind of more on the on the thinking around that another slide on youtube yeah so when we look at technology as a tool and we look at specific subject areas like your math and sciences and stuff which which have a lot of technology embedded in their learning do we have spaces that can uh provide opportunity for the applied skills right so so that's something that that might require more space it might require a different set of accessories that go with the technology it might require some personnel

059to help you push in and support those activities currently we're engaging a kind of an application process for this summer we're going to have a um a stream boot camp where we're asking teachers to come in for three days and kind of unpack um both what the state standards are for digital fluency but and then you know what can we do to start re-engaging in the process of of learning environments that are more engaging from a math science application standpoint so so it could be you know many robots it could be it could be creating code and coding it could be data collection systems that maybe monitor uh different environments differently whether it's motion or temperature or sound and those types of adapters that that are more common uh commonly available for students but perhaps

060maybe are out of context in terms of how it might apply to their learning so so we're still you know it's a goal we want to learn more about it uh but in the same regards i i we hear a lot from our teachers it's like oh we've got so much already defined in the classroom how can we expand and give students some opportunities to apply what they're learning in some different ways chris has organized visits we've the committee has visited a few different schools that have stream labs as well so we're getting some ideas i think one key is flexibility you know having spaces that are not just set in one way so that you know we talk about flexible furniture and things like that and the importance there is these spaces can have

061multiple purposes and that really even across a day you know it depends on the purpose of the lesson and having some of those things available like you know um i'm forgetting the names like bee bots and things like that so you know students can play with them working which is harder in the classroom um at least right now so it's interesting to think about how an active learning environment can really include the physical space and it can enhance that environment as well yeah and a few board meetings ago i think we shared the advances that we've had in kind of the higher level classes you know the things that technology education program and and the middle school as well as our ap classes and our engineering programs um do we do a better job of

062preparing students before they get there with better foundational skills or or at least experiences to better understand those opportunities when they see it in a course catalog and those types of things so so it's more preparing at the elementary levels but it's also giving more experiences in such a way that they can you know connect to their learning i have another question i i just want to say thank you for helping me master schoology this year um it is an interesting platform that does seem to have connected a lot of the other pieces of technology that we use uh for both students and um for the school teachers and and administrators i was just wondering i think that every parent has a schoology account um is there do you foresee an opportunity to kind of

063lean into that you know for delivery of information or you know will we be consolidating other pieces of technology under there i'm just interested in where that's going yeah um we experienced a bit of technology fatigue this year okay i don't know i don't understand i understand it it's still a lot of great use and and we're not retreating from there i think we're just taking a deep breath in terms of just understanding all the changes we went through so you're right we've provided all all parents opportunities to get more connected to that learning environment and we do have a good percentage of folks that check on a regular basis the thing is that we used it for a very specific need through the pandemic so it was it was you know whether it was

064remote classes at one point or hybrid classes at another point teachers are now just trying to understand okay now that we're in a traditional uh environment uh what does that this tool mean for that so so we've kind of gone through the last couple years of just kind of you know different understandings of what schoology could mean and then as you've mentioned we've expanded it to committee work we've expanded it to teams a lot of our teams now are starting to use i think the clubs are using it for their their postings and stuff so we've grown in some other directions and at the same time we're looking at it like right now we are trying to understand the grade book and and some of the other features that we didn't leverage fully uh through

065the other process so as we get a better understanding i mean short answer is yes we're going to continue to grow and bring folks into it i just don't know if we have a fully defined plan of what that looks like yet but that's part of the reason why we kind of put it up on there uh so that we can stay focused on it fantastic thank you chris hey yes sir um i'm really happy to see goal six on there i hope it wasn't an afterthought i think measuring being able to measure those other five goals and being able to report out on our achievement there i think is really important so i'm glad that i saw that there my question really goes to digital citizenship which i sort of think about as being

066both the responsible use of computers and internet as well as um you know ensuring that our students know how to filter information that they may be exposed to and to do the appropriate research so that they're not ingesting misinformation are we doing any training for the students in that regard or perhaps maybe staff development is as if not more important so that they can help their students as they go through i mean is that something that's on our radar yeah yeah i think our library media specialists in particular um have a very specific lens on that um but in addition you know any teacher who has a research-based course that's definitely a part of the conversation but i think it becomes more complex because students are inundated with information and some things that maybe look

067like a valid and reliable source may not be and you know what are the things to look for um you know there are just so many things to think about when you're you know thinking about the credibility of the source i know a lot of adults who struggle with it and so i'm really concerned that our students you know are getting the right level of training right because this is the world they're going to be launched into absolutely yeah and i don't know marvel movies you know spiderman in terms of you know where there's power there's great responsibility you know the whole problem with that right it's it's i it's it's a challenge because the the convenience and the speed and the ease of the tool is a great asset right it gives us instant

068information it gives us opportunity to explore things in a passionate moment in terms of what's there so so how do we develop um reflection points uh you know pacing balance those are all terms that we've been working with the teachers on uh to kind of start to find some ways that we can do that right so so we all know we have to live with the opportunities but are there opportunities for us to help students through that whole process to say okay yeah you can look it up and find it in in almost an instant second now but but why did you select that type so we're asking more why questions versus the fact that things just exist right so and and and that that's a deeper learning process i think that's where we had

069started there before we only had so much time so we spent all the time just providing you know opportunities for content now now content is is instant so now we have to take it to the next level and say okay how do we process that content now that it's available and that will take some time and it will take some practice um because there are some other direct distractions there as much as this is a learning tool it's an entertainment tool uh so whether it's netflix or or whatever other digital tools that that students have at home or or they they find valuable because they they are looking for some entertainment as well um how do you differentiate that from from learning and entertainment um and then we won't even start the conversation around social

070but but but yeah it's it's it's it it's more complex than just the the computer lab days where you came in you had a specific task you did it and then you retreated back to other learning environments so so it's a it's gonna be a lot of work um i'm hoping that we have the right avenues for conversations uh at each of our buildings we have as mary said the librarians play a large role with this our tech folks are more visible so i know in my offices in the middle school we have kids coming in all the time and asking some very challenging questions of both why do we have this and why why can't we get this yeah and we have opportunities going to learn through all that so so i think being

071visible having an opportunity to kind of work with adults to give us the right feedback loop of what they're observing and then you know challenging kids to to go deeper in in their activities i think is a you know long-term outcome for us thank you chris yep so i have a question thank you i mean i don't know how many times i've called you over the last two years and i immediately get a response um speaking about responsibility and accountability i'm embarrassed that i don't know this but do our students have the ability on their school devices there are means of doing that yes yes it's it's challenging because how they do it is it's going to be different for different students so it is an apple product if you were to put your credentials

072as your iphone is into here you you then receive the same opportunities that you would have on your iphone which includes texting and so it's a school device so do you does the school have the ability to then go into those school texts in a situation where we might need to find information out not easily because most text messages are even though you're texting through the machine the machine isn't the server of that right so so i'm a verizon customer verizon owns all the text messaging right if you're or at so so even those are there's a conduit to it um if the information is recent and it's it has been purged on here um we we could find it and probably do it but it's we don't own it so it's only you know

073the the breadcrumbs that might be remaining uh that are there so um it's it's a very gray area when we look at text messages and those types of things um from the standpoint of how to gather some of that um in in broader areas we rely on our legal team you know our lawyers have done a great job in terms of being able to work with the telecom companies to define things when we need it but it's not direct from the district's perspective something you know when we talk about the digital citizenship that um our students have to be aware that but they put you know what they write down what they type in is accessible information that they need to be held accountable and whether they're in whether they've stated it or they're in

074a group conversation they can equally be held responsible yeah and i think students are becoming more avid you know because there are other systems not just text messaging so like for example our internet filter it pops up when students can't go somewhere and there's a box on the bottom and saying please please give us some feedback if you think this has been labeled wrong and um and they think it's just some company in california that maybe is blocking and stuff like that so we get copies of the emails and stuff and it's just many times we've had to calm down say you know teach that professional you know language to be able to ask not that it's inappropriate it's just it's just they don't understand that it is really being read and it impacts you

075know a representation of what they're sending in and stuff like that so lots of teachable moments there yes chris just just to follow up on that for a minute the the text i understand can be difficult to access but in terms of the responsible use policy that students sign off on for something like email that is stored on our server they absolutely should know or do know and we do have the ability to retrieve whatever's there and whatever's written and students know that that's something that they are held accountable for and in theory it's the same with other things that are on our devices it's just more difficult to get to something the data yeah any services that we provide as like you know you know but we we have a full access to all

076the logs and resources so um but anything that passes through the device you're connecting to other resources we have to do more homework on that thank you but i'm sorry but technically speaking students are prohibited from installing their text messages on their devices just to clarify in our acceptable use policy i i think it's it's prohibited technically right so i don't know what what consequences are enforced but but do we routinely i mean i don't know what the practice is about i believe our next board policy meeting i believe we have that on on there to kind of resurface you know what the current policy is versus how the technology's impacted some of those changes yeah um because it's as things have become more interconnected it's it's not like they're installing a program it's like

077part of right what is the operating system so so it's it's harder to disable some of those things because it's just it just is and so um not that we can't hold that students accountable but in the same regards it's it's it's harder to just pull it out of the system so sure that makes number six all the more important to really drill down into that complex show you lana please um thank you for all that i it's amazing to hear um how much how far you've come we've come as sort of as a district being forced to and also have the opportunity to reflect and think about where we want to be going um i was wondering um i saw this in the last slide that didn't come up or i guess it's there

078now yes but i'm wondering i wanted this but yes okay if being even more spelled out in where we'd like to go as a district in terms of the things we're teaching and what i'm thinking about in particular is around the culture of technology usage both for students and increasingly digital world and what those specific things and values we might want to be teaching i think it's sort of it's i feel like there's hinting at it of like technology is a tool that can augment learning and it can be something that you learn about specifically but it is not maybe the end-all goal of it and that value that was articulated there that we want to use technology when it augments but not that doesn't become the primary learning platform but similarly in the usage

079part of it for students what are the things that we might want to be educating our students for because they're entering into a different world than the one in which we live in now and that we all grew up in what are the things that we want to be kind of teaching about that and how do we spell that out uh more specifically and i think what rory was talking about the digital citizenship and what i'm hearing about is curation and i think that that also like we're touching on it but i wonder if that can also start to get spelled out a little bit more we have these platforms that curate we have certain information that's available to it but how do we teach students the skills to discern what's appropriate as well as

080directing towards sites that are more curated because there's such a wealth of information out there and i just i wonder if that might become more of a specific goal within the plan because i think those are you know what we talked about with these like that they're very important goals but i think that it's the skills to be able to use those um technologies that are just as important as we go forward yeah i think actually you're really speaking beautifully to the slide that's up right now which is sort of you know the aspirational um nature of this you know what is it we're really striving to accomplish with this plan um maybe we should put this in the beginning of our plan right right exactly yeah the foundation with the technology learning commitment because

081i think i think you know that's i think that's critically important context for for all of what we're really doing here yeah the other question i just had about that that was sort of also touched on is as parents who have to help our children navigate and we want to kind of reinforce what's being done at school where are there opportunities to make sure that parents have training on whatever tools are going to be used for communication or for student um accessing the technology but also for parents to learn and grow as the technology grows and as the usage policies change and how do we how do we make sure that we're kind of moving forward and not let the students just kind of on their own at school on this separate track yeah yeah

082something we thought a lot about you know in the beginning of the pandemic in schoology was first introduced right we had parent sessions and um but it's a good reminder first for so we have new students every year and the technology changes here and there and then you know with schoology definitely very broad use and all parents and students have accounts but in our primary grades if they use anything they're probably using seesaw more often because it's more developmentally appropriate um so things like that you know just making sure parents are aware of the tools and have some training if they need it and we've been talked about like tutorials on the website we have some things there but definitely should take a look at that to make sure they're updated definitely so yeah a

083lot of good points and and i think that was a challenge to kind of focus the goals because there's so many elements that that technology impacts the learning environment and um and even if it's not up there doesn't mean we're not addressing it uh we tackle a lot of challenges that we didn't even anticipate just because it arises uh and and and hopefully we're responsive enough to be able to you know pull the right stakeholders in to make those decisions but but but we needed to at least have some guiding elements to say what's what's reasonable to expect over the next three years for us to continue the momentum that we have because i think we have some really positive momentum with a lot of the technology that we have um but but i also

084want to remind the board that we we're an organization that that works over 13 years and and and what works well at one level and one success that we have at a great level may not yield any results until five years down the road so so and i don't want to speak for all students but but you know i have conversations with with high school students that had a very low tech elementary experience um and perhaps learn some non-digital strategies that work very well for them um and so so if you were to ask them they're like well yeah it's it's it's nice but it's not not my learning mode and and there but then we you know when we talk about mice and and track pads with with second graders they kind of look

085at you like but we don't we don't use that technology anymore it's just not part of their domain right so so it's it's it's challenging to look at us as organization you know as what we want but then we have to recognize that that the skill development over 13 years hits different populations at different times depending on what experience we've provided in the past so so it takes time for that to kind of catch up um but that again it's part of the complexity in terms of what we're working with do you anticipate that the learning standards will address some of what you've just observed oh although definitely well they'll put a great foundation in it but but it's it's building the expectations around it right so so if we're intentional in creating an elementary

086experience that yields positive uses of technology we may not see the practical uses of that at the high school level for another five six years um so so so somebody at the high school level says well we're putting all our attention into developing this and i'm not seeing any change that's a that's a real reflection but it but it may not represent the outcomes of the work that we're doing so so that those are the things that we have to continue to work with our our teachers to be patient we have to also recognize that not all students receive the same experiences over their career and and how do we you know be patient but at the same time you know you know get them up to where they probably will need to for their

087whatever their next adventure is upon graduation so so that's always been the challenge with technology that it used to be that the technology changed every 20 years so as long as you you had the system in place you were confident that everybody had a common experience um and now it changes every five years so so you're looking at elementary middle and high school all being introduced to different technologies at different times and what does that yield in terms of practices and expectations and and those types of things and yes and as a parent that's even more challenging if you have kids at all different ages right uh in terms of what they what they're exposed to so it's an interesting process um but but like i said it's it's it's an interesting puzzle to solve

088and you just continue to ask great questions and keep charging us to do the good work and and we'll do our best with it thank you i think julia's waiting to ask a question right we've been a long discussion i just want to say thank you and i was actually just recently writing about technology and um i realized that something i would i wrote 300 words and covered about you know this much of what this discussion really is and um i just even seeing tonight and just all the layers from the infrastructure that supports the buildings technology itself the hardware that's inside of our walls and and all the way out to how children are actually using technology both in school and in their lives and and the fact that it's ever changing is really

089it just makes it a really big challenge for us and thank you for all the attention that you're giving to it and i hope we'll have more discussions at the board level great thanks is anybody else waiting to ask a question or make a comment well thank you so much yes oh no thank you i always appreciate the time thank you thank you thank you chris thank you me okay so this brings us to our second presentation of the evening and our opportunity to revisit the proposed budget yet again for the last time before we present it to our community for the annual budget vote on may 17th and it's my pleasure to invite our administrative team to walk us through the proposed budget please thanks marjorie thank you um so we're very conscious of

090the fact that our board is very very familiar with this presentation at this point and we imagine that some of the members of our audience at least are also very familiar with this presentation we've given it a number of times it's the same presentation we presented recently to our ptos and we'll be again next week just to give context to it new york state requires that we do what's called a budget hearing which is tonight's presentation one last time within two weeks of the vote itself so that's why we're here tonight once again going through the same presentation we'll move um fairly deliberatively through uh the presentation tonight but we as always if you have questions please stop us and we will answer them as best we can as we go along but we know

091that you've seen all these slides before so the first slide up here is our learning commitment chris just spoke very eloquently to it this guides our work always striving to create engaging relevant and active learning environments for our students so this drives our work around the budget too moving on we see the board of education's goals uh the first goal there the board of education supports our work uh in in also in support of the learning commitment and always working to create increasingly inclusive uh environments in all aspects of the district so we're very appreciative of that goal as we move on to the second goal we really get to the financial aspects and the board goals speaks to fiscal responsibility and to we're doing everything we can to bring forward a budget that is

092within the new york state tax cap and indeed the budget that we're presenting again tonight is within the new york state tax cap and we'll speak more to that as we go on the next slide is about the development timeline for the budget budgeting is really a year-round process but this speaks to the work of this current school year that again begins with the establishment of those board goals back in october we do a budget conditions presentation in november december time frame when we have a sense of what's happening in the world around us that might impact our budget um cpi or the the inflation rate being a significant factor uh this year and then we move into the november december timeframe we work very closely with our department leaders uh building leaders around the

093district to refine their parts of the budget we go through a central office review process to refine the budget and then we begin the many presentations with our board in february we spend a full day saturday going through every line of the budget without board we thank you for all the questions and the feedback that you offer us and ultimately that resulted in the budget that the board of education adopted uh and and is the budget that we are presenting once again this evening moving on we show an enrollment slide and as we've pointed out a number of times our district like many districts in our region and in fact around new york state has gone through a significant population decline we know that there are pockets of population growth in westchester county but by

094and large uh decline is more the norm the decline in our district was quite significant over about a 10-year period in more recent years that decline has been much shallower and as we'll see on the next slide where in fact in our elementary schools those green numbers that you see at the bottom of the column on the left the last four years we're seeing some growth in our elementary schools however we are quick to point out that that growth is not going to translate into growth in the middle school and the high school because the grade levels there are still larger grade levels being replaced by smaller grade levels coming out from the elementary school so we're going to continue to see some decline in the middle school and the high school for a number

095of years to come but overall relatively uh flat as compared to what was happening a few years ago in the district moving ahead we now talk about the things that drive the actual putting together of the budget the major components school program professional learning enrollment and class size and infrastructure and we'll go through each of those before we do that and again you've seen you saw this image just moments ago our learning commitment at the center of this uh focus and then surrounding it works in the area of diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning and sustainability important focus areas for us both in terms of the teaching and learning that goes on in all of our classrooms and what we put into the budget to support this work so in the next slide you

096see that we now talk about school program and professional learning and you see bulleted here areas that receive significant funding in next year's school budget uh in some cases a continuation of significant funding in this in this year's budget in some cases an increase in funding so the first bullet point they're learning and leadership related to race equity and inclusion we appreciate the financial support that will allow us to bring additional consultants into the district to work with staff and students and to increase our learning um particularly important and relevant in light of what we spoke about earlier this evening as we continue that work continued piloting of next generation science standards science curriculum at the elementary schools an innovation cohort we're now in our third two-year innovation cohort we're very proud of our staff

097who continue to commit uh to thinking through new ways of doing their work in a very collegial environment with colleagues k-12 who then go out and share their work and their learning after that two-year process with colleagues from around the district the next bullet point also related to our work in the area of diversity equity and inclusion a significant increase in funding in next year's budget to continue replenishing and refurbishing books in our classrooms and in our school libraries always now with an eye towards voices and experiences that are truly representative of all students in the district so we are very uh pleased to have the support to make that addition it has been important for many years and continues to be incredibly important that we have support for significant mental health needs and increased

098we put increased extra curricular opportunities there because we see those two things as intertwined we know that once the more students are engaged uh and engaged in things that they love and are interested in in their schools we know that that's good for mental health also so it's not just about clinicians and that kind of support it is of course about those things but it's also about making sure we have ample opportunities for all students who want to be engaged in many different ways in their school to be engaged the next bullet point challenge success and other tools that help us understand and respond to student need uh hopefully many in the in the in the audience and around the table are familiar with the challenge success surveys that you've been seeing for a couple

099of years how students see them and we want to continue working with this organization out of stanford university that studies uh the relationship between the school experience and stress in the lives of students and how they are managing the school experience it helps us learn about the experience how students are having it helps us reflect on and think about practices in our school so we want to continue that work as well as think about other tools that will help us better understand and respond to student need and then you've already heard a bit tonight about sustainability initiatives and you'll hear more about that in this budget presentation continues to be very very important to us but to prepare our facilities and even more importantly our students to enter a world in which challenges and opportunities

100around sustainability will only get more important moving on to the next slide now we speak about some of the positions in the new budget new positions that we are very excited about the first one being a new assistant superintendent for student support services uh we have seen growth over a number of years in the area of special education as well as in rti services and most recently we've seen significant growth as have many districts around us in the needs of students who are learning english as a new language or enl so as those needs have grown over a number of years as the intensity of that work has grown the opportunity to add this district level position allows us to think not just separately about how to support these students but how to integrate the

101support for these students into the work of the entire district and when we think about inclusion we want to be thinking about all of our students as included into the core of catona lewisburg into learning and working together and so we want to be learning and working and thinking together as leaders in the district about how best to do this work so we're very excited at this opportunity to bring on this new position and we think it will lead not just to better services for the approximately one-third of our students who were touched by those three categories that i named a moment ago but in fact we think it'll lead to better services for all students in the district over time underneath that you see uh continued support for uh expanded curriculum leader positions k-12

102those are teacher leader positions teacher leadership is really important in the work of moving teaching and learning forward in any school district teachers lead change they put in a great deal of time and effort we we revamped and revised some of those positions this year we incorporated for the first time equity and social emotional learning into those leadership positions as well as the more traditional math english science et cetera type of positions so that's what we mean when we say expanded and we're very pleased to have continued support for those positions at out at john jay middle school this year we have 1.5 one and a half nurses and through the pandemic it won't surprise anyone to learn that maintaining the part-time position proved to be very very difficult with the demand for nurses in

103the world around us it was hard to maintain a part-time position and frankly given the needs was very hard for a person to do all the work they needed to do out of a part-time position so we're really thrilled again to have the support there to increase that so that we will have two full-time nursing positions at john j middle school which matches the two positions that we have at john jay high school additionally there the increase of a part-time school resource officer position to a full-time position while that person is primarily housed here at john jay high school with a full-time position the person will also support all of the schools in the district become a familiar face with all the schools in the district and be have opportunity to be engaged with students

104and staff at all schools so we're pleased to be able to support that and then just at the bottom there we mentioned and there's going to be more about this later on additional teaching and other positions that will come up in just a few moments moving to the next slide enrollment and class size are significant drivers of every and any school budget continues to be incredibly important to us to have staffing that supports favorable class sizes we are very pleased to have that in this budget and the four contingency positions are essentially that's money that's in the budget not initially defined for particular positions but available to the administration should the need arise so if we see a spike in enrollment at a particular grade level or if our high school students make some unexpected

105choices in elective areas and we want to make sure that they can have the courses that they need then these contingency positions allow us to put staffing where we need it so we really appreciate that support moving on to the last core area of infrastructure i'm actually going to start down at the bottom here because we just have so much excitement around this so proposition number two and we'll say more about this later uh when when the voters go to vote on may 17th they will see two propositions prop number one is for next year's budget itself prop number two is about a host of transportation vehicles we're always careful to say we're not asking for new or additional funds to support proposition number two the money for that proposition comes out of this year's

106budget out of remaining funds at the end of the school year that we are allowed with voter permission to transfer and make these purchases and we are very excited to be able to include our first full-size electric bus in this proposition i would imagine many have read about the legislation coming out of albany that in time is going to require school districts to convert entirely to electric fleets of buses uh we see that as as exciting and promising and daunting quite frankly because uh the cost and just the just the overhaul of making that kind of transition so we are excited to be able to begin to get ahead of it and to begin learning about what the experience will be like how our district is is is uniquely large and has some unique terrain

107uh and those things you know there's there's no one has yet had an electric school bus long enough to really know what the long-term experience is like so we will uh assuming that the the budget passes and we're able to make this purchase uh we will be trying this bus out on all the routes in the district on a rotational basis uh so that we get a sense of how it functions on all those different routes and also so that as many students as possible get to have the experience of both learning from and experiencing what it's like to ride on this electric bus so very excited about that and then moving back up to the top included in next year's budget is necessary charging infrastructure to support that electric bus flexible furniture for classrooms

108which is in line with some of the work that chris was talking about a minute ago in terms of new and more innovative classroom spaces and then maybe some more traditional infrastructure type work uh corridor flooring replacements you see bathroom upgrades around the district there as well as important water supply upgrades that's particularly true at meadow pond as well as at john jay middle school where we need to do some upgrades to our water supply system so support for all of those things are in next year's budget and that leads us to the summary slide that shows the current year budget of 113.2 million dollars is proposed to increase next year to 115.7 million dollars that's a 2.5 million dollar increase or an increase of 2.24 in the budget itself we're quick to point out

109that in terms of the tax levy we are well below uh the new york state tax levy limit we're going to show that on the next slide and why and how and why that is so on the next slide you see once again that same 2.5 million dollar increase in the budget but in the next box there you see that thanks to a significant increase in state aid for next year that quite honestly all districts in new york state are experiencing but that allows us to offset the taxpayer contribution so that the tax levy increase for next year is just 1.25 so we feel that the benefits included in next year's budget for students and the experiences that they will have are really terrific in light of a 1.25 tax levy increase as we move

110forward now we're going to talk about enrollment very very important factor and a driver of school budgets to a large degree starting with kindergarten next year you're seeing a very consistent numbers there next year this is district-wide kindergarten we pull it out rather than showing it at each school because it is the hardest number to project and over time we have found that we can project a little bit more accurately if we do it for all three elementary schools rather than trying to do it separately at each one so currently we're projecting very similar numbers and the same number of sections in kindergarten next year as we are this year moving on to the elementary schools we first see increase miller our largest school in terms of enrollment and what you see there uh if

111you look at the column most to the right-hand side are the average class sizes we consider those to be very favorable class sizes at all grade levels uh inclu including at the bottom you see the two sections of the sc stands for the self-contained classes that are at increased miller and you if you look on that we always encourage people to look on the diagonal so this year's first grade of four sections moves to next year's second grade of four sections and that's true uh all the way down uh the grade levels for increased middle of the same number of sections moving ahead for the following year moving on to katona you do see one difference here if you look at the bottom you'll see 16 sections this year and just 15 sections next year

112and where the change is is if you look at second grade this year and you see four sections and then you look at third grade next year you see three sections the reason for the change is that there is a change as we move from second grade into third grade uh in respect with to our what we call our goal and our range numbers uh for class size so in kindergarten through second grade our goal is 20 students our range is 25 students when we move to third grade the goal becomes 25 and the range becomes 28. as you move into fourth and fifth grade the goal is 25 and the range is 30. so we that number of 24 at third grade uh next year at katona is still below that goal of now

11325 in third grade so we feel comfortable with that number even though it's larger than uh the same students are experiencing this year in second grade we will continue to monitor it and this is where those contingency positions uh can prove to be very helpful to us so if there's a spike there and we become concerned about class size we have funding available to allocate a position should it become necessary moving on to meadow pond and you will see i think one number there will likely jump out at the audience and that's the number in fourth grade and again i'll remind that the golden range in fourth grade is 25 to 30. so even though that 26.5 number is larger in part you see you can see that the our demographer is projecting an increase

114of two from this year's third grade to next year's fourth grade so we're going to watch that closely and again if we become concerned about the size of those classes we have contingency available should we need to put it there but you can see at the bottom that overall the sections are the same that met upon next year as they are this year 14 to 14. moving on we go to the middle school and then the high school after that and we always say middle school and high school where those class sizes at the elementary school are in fact will be quite reflective of the actual class sizes next year when it comes to middle and high school the numbers you see on the screen now are much more averages and and less likely to

115be the actual numbers in class sizes and that's because in middle school and high school students start to choose electives some students go to french and some students go to spanish and some students go to orchestra and some students go to band and as a result class sizes are going to vary a bit depending on choices that they make but these are the average numbers and we are comfortable with the average numbers and they are still well within those golden range numbers what you can see here on the slide is that next year's sixth grade is quite a bit smaller than this year's sixth grade as overall the school is a smaller two and as a result when you look at the sections you can see that we're reducing the sections from 10 to eight

116in sixth grade and then also increasing the sections from eight to ten in seventh grade because of the growth in that grade so we do continue to try to match the sections to the enrollment and you see there down at the bottom the self-contained class the single section of self-contained class at john j middle school also moving to the high school again really these numbers are average our high school students would tell us that their classes really can range quite a bit from classes that can have 28 students 29 students in them classes that could be as small as 16 17 students so a big range but the averages are what you see projected there on the screen for the core subject areas again you see overall the high school is declining in enrollment uh

117from 980 uh to about 9 20 next year and over to the right there you see also the single self-contained special class that we maintain at john jay high school and you can see the enrollment is pretty steady in that class from this year to next year and that takes us through enrollments and now we're going to talk about staffing and i will turn over neil thank you steve thank you yeah no thank you andrew very much and on the first slide and as andrew mentioned we're very excited to propose the additional fte full-time employee of assistant superintendent for student support services and as andrew mentioned that has a lot to do with the growing and evolving needs of that department as well as enl and rti the next two slides have to do with

118some staffing changes in uh uh of our teaching staff and uh here just a real quick note um that uh as andrew mentioned there are four contingency positions that allow us to remain nimble uh to situations with enrollment at each of our schools uh in the coming months so that you don't see them included in these numbers here they're included within the budget so as andrew said thank you for for thinking about that on the first line there for elementary uh as andrew pointed out it had really driven by student enrollment by grade and by school uh in in parentheses there is a budget to budget reduction of 1.0 and for middle school grade 6 and i think if you had uh if you saw the previous a couple slides back about the incoming projected

119grade six um is a lot less students and therefore it's a reduction of um not necessarily two teachers but two sections uh fortunately we don't have to reduce the number of teachers just to do with the sections in each of those grades for the rest of the lines there really has to do again with driven by enrollment in numbers and a lot of the collaboration that goes on between the middle school and high school administration based on their needs at each of their schools uh we're also really excited to propose three new special education positions that one would go to and they're in theory to each of our elementary schools and we hope that those positions will drive a more uh continue a more inclusive model and consultant teacher services speech and language and reading

120rti and increases there and as well as increases um in enl for our support staff we anticipate the need of another teaching assistant driven by our needs in special education andrew mentioned the increase in the for the middle school nurse to go from one uh 1.5 nurses to a total of two nurses so the increase there is from 1.5 uh nurses to two clerical we anticipate the need for an additional clerical staff due to the new position for the assistant superintendent operations and maintenance the 0.25 there is to better balance staffing at the middle school which will allow a little more a little more ease when there's staffing needed for evenings for evening events as well as weekends uh and for the summary you see there are a total uh change edition of uh proposed

121proposed edition of administration of 1.0 teaching a total of 4.20 support staff at 2.75 leading to the a total of 7.9 and i think i hand it over to danielle thanks neil so the next few slides will go over a few the numbers that you'll see throughout the budget um as andrew mentioned before we are seeing a 2.5 million dollar increase from our current 113.2 million dollar budget to 115 million 778.99 that is a 2.24 percent increase but again it is a 1.25 uh increase to our levy which we will see this history on this next slide so this next slide shows a number of years back of our budget history and it's always interesting for me to see the average of the budget changes and the average of the tax levy changes throughout these

122uh these figures on the slide so of all the figures on the slide we are still showing the years reflected only a 0.9 budget to budget change and our tax levy change is a 0.72 and on the bottom of the screen that's where you can see our budget to budget increase is 2.24 and our tax levy increase from prior years 1.25 increase um speaking of tax levy new york state does require us to have what's called a tax cap calculation there are several factors involved in the tax cap calculation um in the beginning in inception people associated with a two percent uh tax cap in fact it's two percent or cpi whichever is lower and as we saw this year two percent was what uh excuse me the consumer price index was well over two

123percent so we were capped at the two percent in our calculation another factor in our tax calculation is our assessment growth factor and on this next two slides you'll see this calculation this is the calculation that new york state sends over we take our prior year tax levy and we multiply that by the tax growth base factor this is actually our brick and mortar advances in our assessed values that gets us at a base value we are allowed to take out some exemptions for our debt service in this calculation so we reduce that and then we multiply it by that allowable tax allowable growth factor of two percent we carry that over to this next slide and then we have to add back in those exemptions but at the 2223 exemption rate and overall that

124gets us a tax levy limit with exclusions of 102 million 115 226 or approximately 2.4 million dollars higher than our current tax levy we are not proposing to go near that 2.4 million dollars in fact uh the budget that we're presenting to you is uh 1.166036 lower than the tax levy limit and ultimately what that means is we're required to do a simple majority which is a fifty percent plus one vote to pass the budget um had the school board decided to go to what's called a super majority we would be required to have a 60 um voter approval for that in our next slide you can see um along with our uh taxes we do have other sources of revenue the second highest source of revenue is our sale excuse me is our state

125taxes these the state has projections of what our state taxes will be and we use that in the calculation in this slide you'll see that we start off with our total budget and we use other revenue sources we subtract that out we do plan to use some appropriated fund balance and reserves reserves are essentially our savings accounts that are heavily restricted by the state on what we can use them for so we plan to use a 3.2 million dollars of those funds and then that gets us to the amount that we need to raise by a tax levy prior year was 99 million 700 394 and what we're presenting in 2223 is a hundred million nine forty nine one ninety our next um slide we'll talk about our tax rate what's important to know about

126the tax rate is in july our um it's not advancing let's see if i can get this advance the board does um does not set the tax rate until july um after uh the uh the budget is passed um at that time uh we do do go back to our assessors and find out the assessed values and calculate the tax rates so this slide is a moment in time and it's your tax rate per 1000 what your assessed value will be calculated on so these numbers will change um they change um on a monthly basis when we touch base with our assessor's office and they will change slightly from now until july so we will continue to monitor those now can i can i put in there for a moment and just try and say

127this in my lay person language and have you correct me if i'm wrong because i always worry that people look at these numbers and they see a negative number and they think oh my taxes are going to go down well they see a positive number and they think oh no my taxes are going to go up as i understand it what this means is that the assessor is balancing or the assessor of a town is determining the total assessed value of the property and usually in one of our communities the total assessed value will go up and as a result the tax rate may go down a little bit there and it may be vice versa in the other community but doesn't necessarily mean that my own personal taxes are going to go up or

128down they may stay just the same right right so it's dependent on your assessed value of your half of your property and then they multiply that um by the tax rate so this is the tax rate and that's that number on your tax bill that goes out several digits long so it's it's this doesn't reflect that bedford will see a reduction of 3.22 it's just a reduction of 3.22 in that tax rate thank you i hope that clarifies and thank you for clarifying that i'm not i'm i'm not sure i did so we're trying i guess ultimately the important thing to to remember is that's a moment in time it does change periodically and ended july we will um we will set the tax rate and its assessors will bill accordingly right you think if

129i could just add one thing to that i think i think what we're talking about is that we collect our levy from four municipalities and year to year the percentage of the levy allocated to or from a particular municipality might fluctuate somewhat based on the assessed values and sort of that municipality's share of the levy if you will and this is sort of the first piece of that puzzle and then it evolves over time and then we actually set these rates in consultation with the assessor in the summer correct yes thank you danelle thanks and i'm going to turn this back over to you now thank you so this is a summary slide which in essence says that we are very excited about this proposed budget uh we think it contains as i said earlier

130many many new benefits and continuation of existing benefits for students throughout the district we're excited about some of the enhancements and the changes in this it certainly continues our commitment to our learning commitment continues our commitment to social emotional learning as well as diversity equity inclusion as well as sustainability there are new positions in the budget that we think will enhance the services that students receive and we think it is a fiscally responsible budget in the way that our board asks us to present it so we're excited about all of that on the next two slides you see the propositions themselves as they will be written on the ballot uh when you go to vote on may 17th the first proposition being the one that authorizes the district to levy the taxes that we need

131to fund the budget that 115 million dollar budget and the next proposition as i mentioned earlier is the transportation budget uh it's very important to us to continue to maintain safe vehicles on our roads they do uh many many hundreds of thousands of miles every school year they're inspected twice a year by department of transportation and that's our guide to know when a bus is beginning to reach the end of its safe and useful life on the road so we do have this replacement cycle and as i mentioned earlier we're very excited to be replacing one of the traditional buses with an electric school bus for next school year and i will say even though the upfront cost of that electric bus is significantly higher than a traditional school bus there there is quite a

132bit of thinking around that over time the cost may not be as substantially different for an electric bus it's still somewhat unknown because no one has had these buses for so long but with the cost of electricity potentially and i have to say that because cost of electricity is fluctuating quite a bit these days but potentially being lower than the cost of gas and with the maintenance of an electric vehicle anticipated to be less than the maintenance of a traditional vehicle it's possible that over time those upfront costs may level off to some extent with a with a traditional bus but that's something we'll have to wait are you supposed to last longer i don't i don't know because um i truly don't know with with with buses it tends to be rust uh that

133takes them off the road before anything else so we're not sure if they'll have longer life or not we certainly hope that they might uh but there's there's a lot of learning to happen with those buses which again is why we're excited uh to be able to put one into our fleet moving ahead uh you see the dates here is the uh the process that unfolded and all the dates that have been checked off already and tonight we're at the public hearing and may 17th is when we encourage our entire community uh to go out to vote from 6am until 9pm at our three elementary schools the next slide i mentioned earlier our great appreciation to all of our ptos we are to at the end now of the tuesday wednesday thursday of the first

134week and next tuesday and wednesday uh evenings next week we have our special education pto budget presentation as well as our katona lmh school and we always say that uh these presentations are the very same presentation that you saw tonight but it's an opportunity to be in person with folks to answer questions that they might have and anybody is welcome to come and join us and hear the same presentation that you heard tonight if you're so inclined so last slide again is the date of the budget vote itself as well as our board of education election and i think that might lead us into the next agenda item thanks danelle and neil thank you both thank you we really appreciate your run through of the budget at a high level yet again we really appreciate

135the opportunity that we had on that saturday back in february to go through a line by line analysis of each budget item and we thank you not only for a budget that so thoughtfully reflects the evolving needs of our students but also a budget that reflects the collaborative leadership style that you have brought to katona lewisborough and the dedication of our building leaders who were integrally involved and also who were with us on that saturday in february and our staff who know our students well and are able to help you envision what we need to best serve them so we we really thank you for all of the above i'm happy to pause i'm not sure whether board members might have a question or two remaining or whether any additional thoughts um occurred if not

136i did just want to underscore a couple of things that we heard tonight if you don't mind just briefly with regard to the enrollment slide this is slide numbers um if we can look at slide number seven just for a minute i mean i do think this came up in another one of our conversations we were talking about the data that is provided to us on a weekly basis at this time of year from westchester putnam county school board association just to really underscore that a general decline in enrollment has been pervasive in new york state and in this region for quite some time i think we have a slide with a bar graph there that actually shows an uptick in our elementary enrollment and i did take the time to go back to some

137of that data just to be a little bit more concrete about the trend that is occurring and sort of where we are as a school district and just to note that you know there are about 46 districts in the county of the 46 approximately 30 districts had reported their anticipated change in what we call beds data which is enrollment data so 17 of the 30 had sizable enrollment declines that were significantly greater than ours actually and i'm not going to go through and name them because i don't think we really want to do that to our peer districts but rest assured you know these are our our close neighbors our high performing school district colleagues and families um and they too are experiencing you know somewhere from a small to a sizeable decline only seven

138reported anything in the neighborhood of an uptick some you know as little as 16 students and then you know we have a couple of districts that are reporting an uptick in the neighborhood of 300 some odd students and i would just caution there that that really creates significant challenges in a tax cup environment so actually we're quite fortunate that our enrollment is generally plateauing at this moment and having that small uptick in elementary where you know we have wonderful elementary schools and staffs to accommodate students you know we're in very good shape in the region i also just wanted to revisit slide number 31 which is where we show our history with regard to the tax levy and the tax budget to budget increase pardon me just to there provide again some context in the

139region which is to say that both the proposed budget to budget increase in the vicinity of 2.24 and the anticipated levy increase which is on the next slide 1.25 percent i know the clicker is really hard but sorry i i'm saying the numbers as best i can both of these numbers are well within the bottom quartile that we're seeing for increases in the region so when we say you know we really feel this is fiscally responsible budget which is the part i didn't say at the beginning when we were thanking you for the terrific budget that represents the needs of our students it also really is a fiscally responsible budget again with an increase budget to budget anticipated to be well within the bottom quartile of the region and that anticipated levy increase of 1.25

140percent is quite modest when you look out across the region so we really thank you for sharpening your pencils and bringing us an excellent budget thank you can i just say one other thing that just occurs to me in case anyone's wondering why we're not getting questions tonight that might cause us to go change something in the budget it's too late for that tonight tonight is the budget hearing uh the budget has been published it's out available for the community to see and we can't make changes at this point so while we appreciate any feedback and questions at this point the board's budget is what it is uh and this is the budget that the community will be voting on on the 17th thank you sure and with that i do think we're ready to

141move forward to our next agenda item which are our eagerly anticipated statements from our candidates thank you so very much to all of the candidates for joining us i will just briefly mention for community members who might also be waiting to speak with us in public comment that we are going to turn our attention to public comment right after the candidate statement so if you haven't had an opportunity you're welcome to sign up for public comment there's a laptop in the back near the circulation desk and you know please feel free to make your way there at your convenience and as we are getting ready to invite our candidates to share their thoughts with us again i think candidates are reminded to please introduce themselves and speak with us for approximately three minutes and i

142believe we are set to go in alphabetical order so it's my pleasure to introduce mark abrams please and invite him to the podium good evening i'm mark abrams i would like to share a little bit about who i am as a person i was inspired to a life of helping others as a child i often walk with my father or physician in our neighborhood as he made house calls watching him work and hearing the praise from grateful patients and their families was awe-inspiring i've worked hard throughout my education and career to fulfill my calling as a psychologist i have dedicated my adult life to helping people who are genuinely suffering and need the help support guidance and inspiration to find the courage to pick themselves up and thrive i have literally made a positive impact

143on thousands of children teens and adults i woke up this morning to an email from the parent of a teenage boy whom i worked with for several months for three months the parent wrote i am so grateful and want you to know he is really doing so well thank you so much for the work you've done with him some of you who do not know me can be intimidated by my passionate approach to life but those who do know me know that i love a vigorous debate and can openly agree to disagree while genuinely respecting and caring for that other person my friends neighbors and family know that if i can be of assistance regardless of the time of day i'm on my way to help i routinely work well with people from different countries

144and cultures we all inspire and push each other to achieve the goals we set for ourselves and look to go beyond what we believe is possible this board is comprised of dedicated caring people who have volunteered countless hours in their genuine desire to make our school district great they deserve praise and thanks for all their hard work my stern words and demeanor at board meetings is because i truly believe that this board can move beyond its self-imposed confines in order to better serve our community there we go in order for this transformation to occur i believe we need three new passionate deeply committed and caring people on this board they are myself matthew goglia and erica glick the changes we seek are not to be feared as someone like you to believe but to be

145embraced is a real step forward toward greater transparency compassion and accountability some of us some have tried to paint us as angry people who are difficult to work with in fact because of our efforts our school district changed its restraint policy but we did not stop there yesterday assemblyman chris burdick presented a bill that would change the state restraint policy throughout our state it passed the assembly unanimously this initiative was spearheaded by a member of our group alexandra stack we've proven that we can work well with others and we can create positive meaningful change if i'm elected to this board i will look at every child in this district as my own every tax dollar spent as my own i will work with every board member administrator community member and anyone else for that matter

146collaboratively as we push ourselves to always do better i want us to strive to look beyond what we currently view as limitations to what this board can and cannot do i want us to not only revision how we operate as a board but operationalize that in a manner that pushes the bar forward as we continue to work in our school district to make it the best place to receive a great cost effect effective education for all students in a safe humane and inclusive environment thank you one more sentence i want us i want to earn the respect and trust of our communities that we have through what we do not through words and promises i hope i can count on your vote thank you thank you now it's my pleasure to introduce roy burke please

147good evening and thank you to the board superintendent celesnic our administration my fellow candidates for the opportunity to speak to you tonight my name is rory burke and i'm running for a second term on the board my wife lisa and i moved to this community 16 years ago attracted by the excellent schools we have two children both at john jay high school who have been in the district since kindergarten during my time in our community i have been an active contributor to klsd i began attending board of ed meetings 10 years ago and became a parent advocate for smaller class sizes i later served as a community member on the finance committee for five years i was elected to the board in 2019 and i now serve as the finance committee chair and also a

148member of both the sustainability and the facilities committees i also volunteered as a youth soccer coach for many years in town professionally i'm an insurance executive with a specialization in i.t strategy governance and finance i have an mba from nyu stern school of business and i have an undergrad from pace university in my spare time i'm an avid ice hockey fan go rangers a beekeeper an irish language speaker and a winemaker i'm really proud of the work that our leadership team has accomplished together over the past three years we have moved mountains we successfully navigated covet we maintained a strong educational environment we launched several new strategic initiatives and committees and we've passed two fiscally responsible and transparent budgets with the third responsible budget to be voted on on may 17th i would like to

149acknowledge the commitment and dedication of our teachers nurses and staff recently many of our teachers have stepped into newly created leadership roles while others have participated in our innovation cohorts and other staff development opportunities i think our community will agree that our teachers and nurses were the front line heroes during covet and we would not have been successful without their commitment resourcefulness and resilience part of a board member's role is to be connected with the community although it was more difficult during the pandemic i have maintained and developed strong relationships with our community and that has helped to guide my thinking as i collaborate with my board colleagues and the administration so i want to thank the wide group of community members for your input and feedback over the years it has been my privilege

150to serve this community particularly during this historic time of uncertainty it has not been easy but it has been rewarding knowing that overall our students had the best possible experience that a district could provide under trying circumstances i am humbled by the opportunity and proud to have represented all taxpayers and especially our 3 000 students in good faith the road ahead is bright and i would be grateful for your support to serve you again thank you very much thank you and now it's my pleasure to introduce elizabeth garrity please good evening um thank you to everyone here your support and work on behalf of klsc over the past three years has been incredible during this really difficult time for students and for public schools i would like to offer a special thank you to our

151teachers as this is teacher appreciation week as well as our nurses i have to say though i i think a week seems woefully inadequate after the last couple of years we've had so big huge thanks to both nurses and teachers my name is elizabeth garrity i've served on the klsd school board for the last three years i've lived in this district for almost 20 years now i'd like to talk to you tonight about how i view my work on the board of education because what i can tell you is that nothing is as simple and straightforward as it might appear we live in a wonderful community that strongly supports public education and students we have the ability to offer so many more opportunities for our students than the vast majority of this country we are

152fortunate for this and i am so grateful for the experience my own students have had in the district i believe a lot of this is due to a culture of mutual respect constant learning and the ability to disagree without slipping into dysfunction obviously in this setting issues come up and during my time on the board we have addressed them swiftly and decisively always guided by the safety and well-being of our students teachers and staff the best training i had for serving on the school board was learning the five wise approach to problem solving in business school asking first why something is the way it is then following up with additional inquiry is the best way to achieve real understanding which will always lead to better decision making the theory that one cannot genuinely get to

153the bottom of a problem without asking why five times it has served me well in this role i grew up in a family that values public service and education many in my family have taught school my grandfather was the superintendent of pontiac michigan schools during some times that even now after three three years of pandemic impacted schooling look extremely challenging and fraught there have been many nights these past couple of years that i wish he was still with us to share his wisdom my father well not an educator has a mantra that i really take into heart as well get the facts i may not admit this to him but i think he's right you want to solve problems you need facts i approach this work with seriousness curiosity and respect for all the people

154involved in making public education work i believe a good public education system is an investment in our children our community and our future i believe an educated public is critical to public education and i believe the best schools are those that strive for constant improvement and i believe the best districts are as well and i think klsd is one of those before i wrap up i also want to call attention to the fact that this is mental health awareness month as we continue to move past this emergency phase i'm so sorry of the pandemic we need to remember that it will continue to impact the community and particularly students caring for our young people in this time will require time and effort of the entire community and a strong partnership between parents and schools i

155am out of time but i just want to say thank you all for coming tonight and hearing what we have to say i hope to serve in good faith for another three years thank you so much thank you now it's my pleasure to introduce erica glick please good evening my name is eric erica glick for years now i've sat in those seats and spoken countless times at this very podium i've done so because i'm passionate about education especially about literacy instruction i hold a dual master's degree in early childhood education and students with disabilities as well as new york state teaching certifications for birth through second grade in both general and special education i also am the owner and director of a preschool katona village kids this passion for education has not only informed my

156career it's central to my personal life as well you see my family was forced to leave our district because our children were not receiving an appropriate education in our schools we've had to step away from klsd and its wonderful teachers and caring community we had to leave because despite being intellectually capable and afforded every opportunity they struggle to read and they're not alone but i didn't know that in the beginning i spoke with the teachers specialists and administrators and was repeatedly directed to just be more patient and trust the process i followed their guidance i trusted the process but after a few years that stopped making sense we did everything the schools were asking of us and my children continued to struggle this goaded me to action i read the work of researchers i went

157to conferences and met with experts i learned how the brain processes language how reading develops and what methodologies are most effective all children master reading and the associated skills more readily when they're taught using a systematic explicit and structured approach i learned that my children weren't failing they were being failed but i was excited armed with a strong grasp of the problem i began attending board of education meetings in order to share what i was learning and advocate for change despite hard-working teachers and administrators this issue affects more students than just those with learning disabilities i was startled to discover that hundreds of elementary students receive response to intervention rti services in reading but with the same ineffective instruction strategies as they receive in the classrooms i was also shocked to see that klsd spends

158a significant sum each year on litigation costs including multiple legal battles with families who are left with little choice but to send their children out of district simply for appropriate literacy instruction once again i trusted the process assuming our district would value the opportunity for input and collaboration but i was proven wrong and that's why i'm running for a seat on the board of ed after years of advocacy and dozens of meetings i've witnessed this trend of community members feeling passed over and brushed off this is a systemic issue and one we need to fix together by bringing new perspectives into the mix invigorating the discussions encouraging critical thinking over complacency and data over theories there's already so much to celebrate in our district and so much more potential and promise let's continue what we

159do well but be unafraid to critically reflect and examine thank you for your time thank you and now it's my pleasure to introduce matthew golia thank you marjorie um dr rifkin i regret to inform you we are losing 1-7 okay um my name is matthew golia and my vision for the board of education is based on transparency accountability responsiveness accessibility and a willingness to change i'd like to thank rory liz and julia for their service on the board these are good people we just have differing views about how the board should operate i'd also like to thank fellow newcomers mark and erica whom i've gotten to know well and who have been fierce advocates for children in the district they are also good people i want to thank everybody here for running because these are

160very important roles which deserve competition competition is a good thing and we need it to remind the board or any governing body that people are watching and people care we moved to south salem nearly five years ago my wife and i have two children we'll be in second grade and kindergarten next year my wife is also 18 weeks pregnant so i'm tight on time and not doing this as a hobby i'm doing it because i really care our family is multilingual neurodiverse and has different cultural and religious backgrounds my son is autistic and in special education while my daughter is neurotypical and in general education this all makes me keenly aware of the various points of view and backgrounds our community members bring to the table and that my own is just a fraction my

161family has been involved in district sponsored groups and helped create new ones i'm a member and former executive board member of septo i'm a co-founder of klsd special education advocacy i am also a member of klsderjc while my wife is a class parent at imes i recently partnered with the lewisboro pd and other town agencies to hold an event for special education students and their families in recognition of autism acceptance month so i have experience working collaboratively with our local governing boards and public service providers as as we know being a board member also means ensuring fiscal responsibility over our communities tax dollars i'm currently the director of capital markets for a 3.7 billion dollar company where i'm responsible for financing strategy debt investments budgeting and forecasting and hedging i received a ba in economics

162from boston university and an mba from the university of south carolina we need transparency and open and healthy public discussion amongst the members of the boe and the administration we need to ensure that all of our children are safe we need to provide academic excellence for our children and be able to provide an appropriate education for each child in the district we need to champion diversity equity and inclusion amongst the teaching staff administration and our committees we need to explore additional revenue sources through strengthened athletics and arts programs that make families want to come here and stay here we need a board that properly maintains taxpayer assets and develops positive working relationships with our local governing boards i believe if we can elect a board that functions in this manner we'll see greater community satisfaction

163thank you thank you now it's my pleasure to introduce julia hedlock good evening everyone uh i've been honored to serve the community as a board trustee for the past six years and strive to provide the best possible education to children in our community i want to thank our teachers our administration and all of our staff for everything that they've done over the last two years it has been an unprecedented time and i think we've weathered it well i live in south salem with my husband peter and our three sons a 2021 graduate of john jay high school and two current high school students i'd like to thank them for supporting my board service and understanding that commitment to our community is important and it does take the time from them quite frequently i have a

164bachelor's of science from cornell university and a masters of science from dartmouth college i've held leadership positions in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years and what i've learned as a leader of a mission-driven organization is that a culture of continuous improvement benefits from identifying what you're doing well and striving to do more of it it is critical to also identify where improvements can be made but it's most effective to identify inspiring leaders within your organization and to help others to watch their work i'm excited that andrew has created a culture of continuous improvement in our schools through his staff developers and our innovation cohorts our teachers are working together to improve the experience of our students every day my board service doesn't begin and end with our thursday night meetings i take very seriously

165my role in the community and the importance of my connectivity i've worked as a volunteer in many organizations i've been the chair of the new families committee i was a pto president i started the science fair at increased miller i've created sets for our productions i've worked with my husband and my son at the vol as a volunteer at the lewisburg south salem fire department where they're both firefighters i've worked as a leader in scouting i've helped it baseball track our service to veterans and our library fair i don't think i'm as omnipresent as michael portenoi but i do but i try my very best to be present in the community as much as possible and in this role i hear from our community and they share things with me that i'm able to share

166with my board colleagues and the administration i believe they trust me and know how much i value education and i value their children i'm grateful for this role and i'm grateful to be able to impact my community in such a meaningful way my family and i value education and this is the best way for me to ensure that our community has the best education possible thank you thank you to all of the candidates for taking the time to share your thoughts with us this evening we really appreciate that um we appreciate your perspectives and wish you all the very best uh in the upcoming election and thank you so much to our community again for joining us and for your patience tonight it has taken us quite some time to arrive at this moment for

167public forum public comment so we really appreciate you sticking with us i know at least a few people have signed up and we really are looking forward to hearing from you for those who haven't participated in a while or maybe never previously i'll just mention that this is the portion of the meeting where we take seriously and enjoy the opportunity to hear from community members to listen we won't be responding in any kind of back and forth discussion we ask you to please introduce yourself and to let us know perhaps where in the district you live or whether you have children in our schools um and to please respectfully keep your comments also to approximately three minutes um and to abide by the code of conduct and with that it is my pleasure to welcome

168our first speaker and i believe that's peter gallagher please it's uh it's very hard to follow the technology presentation the budget and the candidates uh so it's a it's a hard act to follow so uh i'm peter gallagher my wife lorraine is the president of booster club and i'm the vice president of the booster club and we wanted to um come here and talk about jfest for a moment thank you for all the comments i i think what was the best was what abigail said to hear what it meant to the students uh and there's the booster club's really excited to contribute to this and help take jfes and make it evolve from simply being an athletic type of event to an event that's inclusive of of everybody and we're really excited about that um

169there there's a lot of people that make this special but i wanted to take an opportunity to recognize what i'll call the silent heroes which are the maintenance and custodial staff and the operations teams um we got here very early uh saturday morning and i mean these guys were like bees all over the facility making everything perfect for our students it was really fabulous we had a couple issues at the field house with hot water it was addressed immediately and we have the opportunity to work with these eventual individuals all year long it really goes well beyond jfest and we work with the teams on the ground every day and this is a real cultural difference i think with our staff and what they do to try to make things special for the students so

170as much as we're all talking about how great jfest is i wanted to make sure this board knew and was aware of and takes time to celebrate those folks on our staff for what they're doing so thank you thank you thank you adrian kenny good evening my name is adrienne kenny and i have two kids at john jay we've lived in south salem for approximately i think it's now 12 years and i just wanted to take a moment to thank the board of ed members mr seleznick and all of the klsd administration teachers and staff for all of your dedication and hard work during these exceedingly difficult challenging times you have all been amazing and i am very grateful [Music] um i am sure that the countless hours of your commitment and effort may at

171times feel thankless or at least unnoticed so i'm just wanted to be here today to let you know that your positive work and devotion to our children is noticed and appreciated by many thank you thank you benjamin um my goldner is benjamin goldner i'm the golden jewish resident with three children's district two increased miller and one in the middle school um anyway today my son a black middle schooler came home and told me about the latest even worst racist offense his face clearly in plain i've never seen him look so heartbroken he then looked far away and asked do i fit in here do i belong here i have no answer really i wish i had a better answer this district has not been welcoming to him in particular and and it's only getting worse

172being a teenager is difficult enough without having the same time and environment it only plays lip service to his right to an inclusive walking environment i keep on hearing about compassion with perpetrators but there's not enough compassion for the victims i hear a lot about inclusion and adversity this meeting included but those are just empty words frankly this is not a place that properly appreciates diversity and many minority students do not feel welcome here and all i know is that i'm absolutely tired of the meaningless instance your words from the school and its administration the answer to racist institutions however is not to turn this the school into a monitored prison which is really what been proposed with monitored bathrooms it's ridiculous the answer is to actually hold the perpetrator accountable and do it in

173such a way that it's made crystal clear how unacceptable it is i will further state that this administration and this board is not up to the task the school is not a welcome place for many of our children and it's absolutely unacceptable you have failed them do the the appropriate thing there's another even worse incident i'm done with the inadequate response i'm tired of the incompetence i see demonstrated over and over again by this administration my children have every right to be in a safe environment where they feel like they belong i do not have confidence in the school administration repeatedly repeatedly denounce having responsibility for our children to do the hard necessary moral things and so they must be replaced with people who do we spend far too long tonight discussing morality and ethics

174in technology that's obviously before the school even implements it let's have some actual morality and ethics in this district for once thank you and marie calgano good evening everyone i didn't actually expect to talk so i'm a little all over the place sorry about that um i have two daughters at john jay high school one is a senior and oh my gosh only has two months of school left and the other one is a sophomore so first i wanted to just offer some perspective on one of the budget items that was discussed tonight and and i wanted to discuss it after hearing the presentation um just because of a perspective i have i'm a special education administrator at a um district in connecticut and an elementary school and special education issues are complex and challenging

175but they're also incredibly joyful so i support the budget item of a superintendent for student support services because i do feel that we need someone who can provide a cohesive transformative rigorous program i know in my own district we lean on that person a lot they work absolutely in tandem with the rest of the cabinet especially the curriculum uh superintendent so i would urge everyone to really kind of look into how this this role can support our whole district i do believe it will be a support for the entire district um but the real fun part of what i want to talk about is that the arts in katona lewisborough are back the last four to five weeks have been like a renaissance and a rebirth of everything that is great about the arts in

176this district that our kids were missing for so long um i would really like to i know there's going to be a retirement honoring for him but vinnie bell has just been the absolute best advocate for our kids um along with amy geiger and the rest of the um the the staff at john jay high school i know i've seen many board members come to a lot of events many members of the cabinet so i want to thank you for supporting our kids and getting them back out there because it's a mental health issue it's being able to do what you love and you know what you've been denied for so long i've seen personally the impact it's had on my own kids so i want to thank you all for supporting the arts um

177and again i just wanted to give a shout out to mr bell because he's a treasure and he's going to be missed and i hope whoever replaces him has the same passion that he does so thank you very much thank you mark abrams it's me again i was not expecting to talk um i don't think it's a surprise to anybody in this country that the mental health crisis with children and teens is out of control the none enough providers out there they're not enough resources out there and everybody is scrambling to do their best this week alone i've had two emergencies with youth that i've had to drop everything to come to the assistance the last couple of years have been out of control people feel disempowered people feel scared and not surprisingly people get

178angry for teens when they feel disempowered what do they do they typically lash out the increase in acts of hatred in our middle school are not just reflections of bigotry but they're also reflections of the crisis that we are going through in this country i take my hat off to the principal of the middle school and the leadership that this administration has shown and what they did today and how they handle this i hope this is a beginning because we need to do things from k through 12 to really work to help develop communities where people really feel safe and connected and can accept differences and reject acts of hatred so once again even though it breaks my heart to see this act of hatred gang in our district so shortly after we've seen it

179again i would like to thank this administration for how they addressed it today and i hope that this is the beginning of a change to make things a lot better for students and parents can feel more comfortable sending their kids to school thank you hope herbert hi good evening um i wasn't planning on speaking tonight um marjorie liz it was interesting seeing you at the septo election last night um i mean you all know that i'm the parent of a child um with autism in one of our self-contained classes here i've come and spoken many times um but i just felt compelled to come up here tonight because people are hurting and i'm so glad that today when that incident occurred at the middle school it was swiftly condemned and it was strongly condemned and

180i'm relieved by that and i'm glad for that um but i would like to know what the plan is um going forward how the district plans to address this incident and what seems to be a rampant issue in the middle school in particular um [Music] it should be a safe place for kids where they don't have to feel the way they're feeling right now and i really hope that tomorrow when these kids that are hurting come to school that support is going to be offered to them um and that you know they're going to know that they're welcome here by the administration and by the teachers and by the staff and by their fellow students because i can't even imagine how they're feeling right now thank you cynthia ryan hi i also was not planning

181on speaking um i live in south salem i've lived here for almost 20 years my students have graduated or are beyond the the high school age um i'm here because last year i and two other women created equity for all lewisborough and the reason for doing so is because so many families of color in this school district and the community do not feel safe in the schools and families are afraid to speak up in fear of reap of repercussions we created the the the juneteenth event last year we got the town board to approve it and it became a town-sponsored event this year we are trying to promote inclusion and our concern is when hearing ben speak about his son and we've heard from other parents in the community this evening as well their children

182do not feel safe there is no one in the district for them to go to in each school that they feel safe with to create a bond they feel they can trust that they can share if there's an issue they're having with a a microaggression a a a a racist event like this that support is not present right now there's no one safe in the district for them to to go to they need to feel safe they need that support the district really needs to hire more diversified staff and teachers and get people from different backgrounds into the schools for these students to feel safe and to expose other cultures to our predominantly white community and this needs to start at a very young age in kindergarten because there is less bias at age five

183and the studies have shown by seven it increases and ten it really really starts going up and then we hit the middle school and now we're having this happen so i really ask that you you you take a stance and i know you're putting a lot of funds and work into it but it is really important every time something happens it's traumatizing it really creates trauma and even candy calls a microaggression a racist abuse for a reason it is a form of abuse so we ask for your support for the the children and families of color and this entire community to create an inclusive community thank you thank you is anybody else waiting to speak i don't believe anybody else has signed up but please don't let that prevent you from introducing yourself please hi

184lorraine gallagher i've spoken to this committee many times in the past on issues i've not agreed with the board and the decisions that were made but i really appreciate you providing this opportunity for public forum it's really important um and so thank you for that i have a child in the special ed program here at the school i have a son who graduated in 2020 not a difficult time to be graduating i have a daughter who's graduating um in a couple months and i've got a freshman um i i want to commend the special ed teachers in the school and the administrators they have taught my child to advocate for herself and her needs um they have listened to all of our requests and our requirements and have really done a commendable job and i

185i've been listening to a lot of the community over the past few months and my heart goes out to each one of you sitting around this table because based on our conversations in the past i know that each one of you is here to do the best for our children and um i just want to thank you for the best that you've given to my children but thank you thank you thank you is anybody else waiting i think i'm going to then close the public forum thank you again to members of our community for speaking with us thank you for your patience tonight we know it's getting late and we really appreciate the opportunity to listen to your perspectives and to reflect on what you've shared tonight so thank you very much to each of

186you um this brings us now to 11.01 which is our consent agenda we make use of a consent agenda to take action on a variety of matters pertaining to the district in a relatively efficient manner so i don't believe we have any items that should require separate voting and if that's correct then i would invite somebody to please move the consent agenda make a motion thank you catherine and seconded by bill thank you did anybody have any questions or comments concerns about the consent agenda okay then if not we can vote all in favor please say aye aye terrific 7-0 thank you and scrolling down now this brings us to board dialogue and discussion i'm not sure whether board members had any new topics yes uh not a new topic it was just something i

187missed in um board announcements i wanted to say that i attended the learning cafe was that earlier this week yes it was last week tuesday last tuesday okay good um and thank you very much mary and neil for um your mc duties i think that you did a very nice job um it was one of those uh events where i really took a lot away uh the presentations were thoughtful i have been thinking about a jagged learning profile ever since um and i just want to say thank you for creating that opportunity for dialogue and reflection and i you know the other piece that really spoke to me was um talking about blind spots and um i just feel like there was a lot of good work done inside me that day and i hope

188that everybody else that was there really felt that um just a lot of good important information so i appreciate it you were missed andrew or not no you were you were but i'm very glad that mary and neal were there and everybody else who came and thanks for saying this great thank you thank you for bringing that up liz and um we're so skillfully articulating what i think many of us experience and community members experience which is professional development for community members and parents you know you sort of feel yourself at work and engaging in these issues and really thank you for hosting it and thank you to the community for coming back we haven't been able to do this in a while um you did manage to host a learning cafe in the fall

189so we were fortunate and then you know kind of numbers picked up and then we were able to bring people back together in the spring and it you know really it has become a hallmark of your leadership style and we really thank you and uh very fortunate that we were able to pull that off so thank you mary and neal for stepping in and thank you liz for thinking to bring it up here any other topics comments typically i don't try to speak to things that we heard at the podium but i think there's some time sensitivity around something that both uh cynthia and hope said at the microphone which is ensuring we have appropriate support in the middle school tomorrow for any any students who might be feeling the repercussions can we confirm that

190we do have psychology psychologists available tomorrow and counselors yeah we can and jeff sweethearts and i will be speaking and he will be speaking with his team about what uh how how best to provide those supports in the morning thank you yes ilana building on those two comments about um blind spots and professional development for community and parents um i also attended the learning cafe and love the format of being able to speak to multiple people and have sort of deep dive conversations with the context that's offered for everybody um one blind spot i'm hearing and i think rory just spoke to us a little bit is as we send out these communications that were so timely and really i think spoke to what happened and clearly articulated the values of the community that these

191kinds of we want to create welcoming environments and racist anti-semitic whatever the thing is is not acceptable in our community that one place sometimes maybe it needs to be you know in that way that we're going it's going to be offered but students who are targeted by it maybe need to be if there's a way to kind of call that out also in the communication too so that it's not yes we i think we want to keep treat all our students as learners and people that have the opportunity to grow but the people that maybe need to be centered after an incident the people that are targeted by it even though it may not be intentionally but the impact of it is targeting so how do we as a community that's been pointed out that

192is majority um majority majority um how do we kind of keep that in the forefront that it's not exclusively um and it might be a blind spot you know and just as as we continue to do this learning just to kind of keep that up front thank you is there any further discussion i guess i just want sorry just to kind of add on to that i wonder also if at some point i know we did a diversity learning cafe a couple years ago but i wonder if with these incidents if there's another topic related to this that might be an opportunity for the community to delve a little bit further into thinking about blind spots around racism around anti-semitism or maybe i don't have the exact topic but perhaps it's time as we're doing

193this learning and it's such a focus at schools to kind of also bring the community along at the same time yeah i'll just say to that that at our next meeting we'll be having a presentation on our dei work for the year and you'll be hearing about some of the work that the subgroups from the erjc have been doing and we have subgroups there that are talking about ways to engage the community and different activities that they're thinking through to put on the policy committee's just been discussing a policy that touches right upon this that we'll present next week next meeting and i think looking forward to feedback on that and the policy includes and we did this intentionally some clear you know what do we believe what is acceptable what is the goal and

194it apparently we have work to do and we try to create this policy such that it will uh communicate to the community that we get it we're on it you know we're working on it we're doing things um and i guess see what the reaction is to the first draft thank you we're looking forward to that thank you okay if there's no further dialogue then i do have another topic please um this is going back to the budget discussion a little bit but also um there have been some news that they're in the budget in the state aid formula there was um universal pre-k funding included i was wondering how that affects our if we do offer if we don't offer it and also how that might affect our state date allocation but also what

195is the meaning of universal pre-k like are we required or is it um the opportunity to offer like what yeah it's a great question thanks alana and i think starting with the title of it is an interesting place to begin so the state does refer to it as universal pre-k there is however no requirement and no mandate to offer pre-k to all students in the district and the funding that the state we certainly appreciate that the state has begun to offer funding uh but in in communities like ours and in the part of the state that we're in the amount of aid that's available for uh reimbursement is nowhere close to what would be necessary to actually get a universal pre-k program up and functioning so uh there are i'm aware well at the moment

196only of one district that through a combination of state aid and grants that it's able to receive because it has needs that our district wouldn't qualify for that is attempting to on a very small scale not universal but to implement um aspects of pre-k for for certain population of students or for potentially through a lottery system something like that but otherwise i'm not hearing that many districts around us are able to take this funding uh to get a program off the ground just yet but it certainly you know it may you may see more of it upstate where the funding formula may be more effective um and i think you'll be we'll begin to hear more conversation about it as time goes on and i just wanted to add to that so when we do

197look at the revenue side of the budget and the state aid certain state aid is known as expense driven aid so that upk is an expense driven aid and we when we do get our runs from the governor and then ultimately the legislation we look look at those runs and where they may think that we are going to spend that money and have expense driven aid and we know in actuality that are we would not that is what we use in our actual budget and this is across other state aid components as well sometimes we boces for example is an expense driven aid and the state looks at our expenses in the past and what we're projecting but we may know that we're not going to spend that much and we'll adjust our state aid

198in our budget document to reflect that so in this current budget we we didn't reflect the upk funds um because it just wasn't projected at the time of the budget making and i just historically have we ever had any sort of upk program or explored it ever in any sort of just to kind of price it out or interest it out kind of i'm not not that i'm aware of um and then just to do we provide any pre-k for students that are qualified for it in any way like in like i know that for example ccc in our that's in our within our district offers a pre-k program in which some students come from other parts of the county and seem like my impression was that some of them were maybe funded by their

199districts i don't i'm i'm not sure so i'm just sort of asking like are there other i know in the city for example there are upk programs that are not run by a school district but by a private provider and so that the startup costs are not the same as of district running it and if there might be other options to explore well like you know we have space whatever but if there if there was interest if there was need if there were funding available even not within our schools if it might be something that would has ever been explored or would be of interest to explore again i'm i'm not i'm not aware of it being explored in our district atlanta uh and and i wouldn't be surprised again in the same way that

200there are districts that are eligible for grants based on the need in their district that that might be what goes to support a private pre-k program and allows district students to go to that program and be funded yeah could be in that way has the city gone to universal pre-k am i recalling that there is some was that yeah i think that's what is contributing to the confusion is that this is called universal pre-k but it isn't actually funding for universal pre-k right i think it was part of the de blasio administration i think it was i think it was yeah but it seems like they're doing it at least in part through other organizations yes yes yes i'm sorry through i didn't hear that or finding private entities yeah that new york city is

201doing yeah at least some of it apparently yeah i i would just i know we don't typically respond to to comments and i just i actually just want to say thank you uh to all the folks we had a real diversity of of uh public comment tonight and we i just want the community to know we appreciate you coming out uh of course it's nice to hear the very positive feedback that we heard tonight and it's also very helpful to hear the constructive feedback uh and and we so appreciate all of you taking the time to come out and share that it helps us move forward so thank you thank you yes and thank you again to our community if there isn't any further board dialogue then i'm ready to move forward to future meetings

202item 17.01 the sustainability committee is going to meet tomorrow morning at 8 and saturday there will be a special voter registration from 9 a.m to 3 p.m in the district office thank you very much kim for registering new voters tuesday may 17th of course our annual budget vote and election the polls open at 6 a.m and close at 9 pm and hopefully most voters are receiving postcards in the mail letting them know the elementary school at which they can vote wednesday may 18th the facilities committee is meeting again at 7 pm and then the next board of education meeting is thursday may 19th at 7 30 pm here in the library followed by a finance committee meeting monday night may 23rd at 7 pm and hopefully i didn't miss anything and that brings us to

203our opportunity to adjourn with somebody like to make a motion thank you rory seconded by liz all in favor please say aye aye wonderful thank you again everybody for joining us thank you