February 24, 2022 KLSD Board of Education Meeting

001good evening everybody welcome it's so nice to see so many of you here with us tonight it's february 24th it's my pleasure to make a motion to return to public session i could have a second thank you julia all in favor please say hi hi 5-0 thank you and if everybody would please join us for the pledge of allegiance thank you we are really looking forward to an opportunity to hear an overview of the superintendent's proposed budget tonight and i just want to start by briefly acknowledging how great it is to be joined by members of our administration and staff in person and um what a pleasure and that we don't take it for granted because just a year ago we were on zoom and unable to do this in person so thank you so

002very much for being here we are aware that there is a weather advisory and we promise to do our best to keep everybody safe and to be efficient and please feel free to make your own decisions regarding your need to leave whenever you need to leave to get home safely we really appreciate you being here with us at least for the beginning of the meeting and for however long you feel you can stay before we turn our attention to the proposed budget i'm happy to pause for board announcements if we have any board announcements i did want to say um i had the opportunity to attend the robotics tournament in peekskill to watch a lot of our students participate and compete in the robotics it was a fantastic event such good energy an amazing um

003mc i guess that would be the right term but it was it was a lot of fun it was great to see so many of our students participating in it it felt um kind of like a festival it was uh it was a wonderful event that's wonderful thank you so much liz and thank you to all of you who took time out of your weekend to go and support our students other announcements i had just two announcements tonight i wanted to congratulate our 10 seniors who have their artwork on display at the katona museum of art i know we mentioned this at the last meeting but i can't help but bring it up again because the exhibit is ongoing through the end of this weekend so if anybody hasn't had an opportunity i strongly hope

004and encourage you to stop by the katona museum of art we're so fortunate to have that museum right here in our school district and thank you to mrs nerwin and mrs stockfield for their ongoing support and inspiration to our students the artwork is extraordinary there's artwork from all across the region and we've got community members who are on staff at the katona museum of art thank you also to them for their support of our students and their artwork and i hope that everybody has a chance to go and then i also really wanted to thank our septo leadership for facilitating and hosting a really terrific presentation earlier this week a woman named alexandra morris who is herself an alumna of katona lewis pro schools spoke with us from if i'm not mistaken england and she

005is a graduate student pursuing research on representation of disability in ancient greek art and artifacts and she shared not only some of her doctoral research and provided fascinating slides but also spoke with us regarding topics ranging from preferred language for individuals with disabilities and options for how to invite people into conversation around how they would prefer to be talked about with respect to their disability or how they prefer to represent their disability in language and how to be thoughtful about the language that we use how to be aware and critical of media representation and exploitation of disabled individuals in the media it really was a terrific presentation it was well attended i want to thank so many of us who were able to be there and i think administrators have been at events every night

006this week so thank you very much for all of your support of our students and programs and i also just wanted to offer that this is a really amazing model for perhaps other ptos too to be able to celebrate alumni who are so accomplished with their work and who have so much to offer our community and i know we've been talking a lot about things that are um worth keeping from the pandemic and things that are not and um this use of zoom and the ability to be in dialogue with alums who are engaged in worthwhile efforts that can really help our community it just seemed terrific so again thank you to septo and thank you to our administration for your partnership and for supporting all of these initiatives and that's it for me so

007if there are no other board announcements andrew we'd love to hear from you thank you thank you marjorie starting tonight on the somewhat different note sometimes we hear students describe school as a bubble not just here in ketone whisper but probably in any school sometimes students will describe their experience as somewhat bubble-like and i would say sometimes students are probably right to describe school in that way it's one of the reasons why here in catonaspur in our learning commitment we aspire to classroom learning that is relevant and authentic so that students see meaningful connection between what they're learning in the classroom and what's happening in the world around them and where their lives might take them but at the same time i'd also say that sometimes school very intentionally and appropriately works to be a

008bubble and to be a place where children are protected from the challenges of the real world so that they can focus with minimal distraction on the skills and knowledge that they are working to attain so that they can function most effectively when they do go out into the world and for educators there's a constant back and forth thinking about when to create that more protective bubble and when to welcome the world outside into the classroom and in fact it was several years ago now but we actually had a learning cafe here in canton-lewisburg on this very topic of when does the world outside come into the classroom when is it most appropriate and relevant and helpful and when might it not be so with that in mind it only feels appropriate to start tonight's meeting

009by at least acknowledging the fighting that we learned about today that started today in the ukraine to acknowledge these events at the beginning of our meeting before going straight into talking about school news that's very important to us and appropriately so very important to us but that's also relative to the context of the larger world around us i know that some of our social studies teachers incorporated today's news into their lessons today and i thank them for that and i appreciate that and tonight i really did simply want to acknowledge that today's news touches all of our families and all of our colleagues in some ways and i'm quite sure that it touches some of our families and some of our colleagues with much more impact than others and we want those families to know

010that our thoughts are with them and and personally i want to express my wish for the quickest possible restoration of peace in europe and that's really what i wanted to say at the start of tonight's meeting to acknowledge what's going on in the world around us and to at least allow that space for it to enter our meeting before we do now go on about other business which again relatively speaking can seem mundane but it obviously has importance to us so thank you thank you for allowing me to say a few words on that thank you a little i will admit it's a little difficult to transition uh but that transition we must because we have a lot of work to do tonight and work that we're excited about i wanted to start though um

011with an update relative to the wearing of masks that we're all continuing to wearing in school because there was in particular a date at the beginning of this week of february 21st that under previous regulations had been indicated as a possible end date for the mass mandate in the media the governor has much more publicly talked about the beginning of march as a time when she will look and and look at metrics and think at that time about where the mass mandate for schools might go and so there have been some questions about what happened to that date of 221 and what happens in the interim between and it's understandable that there are questions about it because there hasn't been a lot of publicity about it but in fact the department of health did pass

012another regulation that extended the 221 date for another 60-day period doesn't necessarily mean the mass mandate will be in place for another 60 days but it gives the state the authority to continue it until such time that they make a different decision and that may or may not be what the governor is uh alluding to when she speaks about revisiting the mandate in early march uh as we've said uh and i think i said it at our previous meeting it's our intention it's my recommendation to our board that we continue to follow the guidance provided by the state including if and when that guidance should change so that if and when masks are allowed to become optional then we estimate that they would become optional in our schools and i know that our administrators are

013already thoughtfully thinking about how to help students and staff colleagues transition if and when that day should come we still hope for some lead time around that announcement um and in the sense we have the lead time of at least the indication that it may be coming soon even though we don't have a definitive date so that's i don't know if there's any questions from board members about masks but otherwise i'll move on um i wanted to echo marjorie's thanks to alexandra morris for the really terrific presentation that many of us heard earlier this week i was lucky enough to have a chance to thank her directly last night because dr morris also participates in our equity and racial justice committee so he was with about 40 of us last night in that meeting and

014i did want to actually just call out that meeting we had a really terrific and productive meeting about 40 members of our school community came together around the topic of equity and racial justice and i want to say thank you to that group we will be sharing more information about the work of that group but we had a particularly productive and thoughtful meeting this week so i wanted to express my thanks to everybody who was involved in that work last night we know that our sports teams continue to be active in the playoffs we know in particular that our hockey team is playing a game tonight we wish them all the best i see chris out there maybe he'll even give us an update at some point but we continue to wish the best to

015all of our student athletes who continue to compete and a quick shout out tonight to our middle school in the event that the weather cooperates and the superintendent makes the right decision in the morning whatever that might be if school is open then tomorrow night there's a seventh grade uh wreck-and-roll event at john jay middle school all seventh graders welcome and thanks to the pto at the middle school there's no charge for those seventh graders who might choose to attend so we hope we hope that will be a possibility for them but we'll find out more early tomorrow morning that's it for my announcements tonight thank you so much thank you very much thank you any comments or questions before we move on thank you andrew abigail welcome back it's great to see you hope

016that you enjoyed the holiday weekend and if you're ready we would love to hear your student board member report campus congress um we are currently preparing to have elections for our new board which will happen at the end of march and that board will have a chance to work with us and be prepared to take the lead in the fall our last meeting was yesterday and we split everybody up into groups by grade so they could each propose one thing they really wanted for next year and something we recently passed was being able to vote on games to play in gym in between sports units so in the high school our dance team competed at battle of the squads hosted at peekskill high school on january 30th the freshman play the election was held january

01730th as well and it was directed by seniors and the cast was all freshmen the chorus and orchestra concerts were held january 31st after being rescheduled due to a snowstorm on february 5th sorry students participated in the annual wrjshs science competition which is held at our high school with students from across westchester and rockland the young artists exhibit opened at the ketona museum of art on february 6 which contains art from several john jay students and was put together by other students workshop wednesdays were held for the first three wednesdays of february where seniors could attend 50-minute workshops of their choice on topics such as stress yoga dance cooking and sustainability just to name a few this was a successful pilot and the workshops will now be offered to sophomores and juniors for the month

018of march i believe in the middle school eighth graders in earth science got to participate in a zoom with nasa scientist noah petro on february 8th and on january 31st students on team tenacity had their ancient egyptian and mesopotamian museum where they got to present what they have learned from these units at increase miller the whole school celebrated the 100th day of school kindergarteners dressed up as hundred-year-olds and first graders learned about everything related to the number 100 all students participated in a webinar with marley diaz who is a 16 year old founder of 1 000 black girl books to talk about reading and how she works as an activist and an author and students especially second graders celebrated tuesday february 22nd by wearing tutus ties and tie dye um in meadow pond the principal's

019coffee and pto meeting was february 9th abraham lincoln visited the second graders to share stories about his childhood lincoln was acted out by author and performer lou del bianco and students here also celebrated tuesday by wearing tutus and ties and in katona elementary the pto evening family event was held february 4th and lastly the annual pto science fair was held virtually tuesday and wednesday of this week which is a fun opportunity for students to present a project of their choosing wonderful thank you so much it's terrific to hear about all of the events happening across the district we really appreciate the overview are there any questions or comments can we offer those workshop workshop one day wednesdays for board members and parents it's very hard to get home thank you abigail i think with the

020board's permission i'm going to suggest we postpone board committee reports so that we can move right into our featured presentation and begin our conversation about the proposed budget and it's my pleasure to turn it over to you andrew thank you thank you marjorie and as you've already mentioned we have a number of our administrative colleagues in the audience with us tonight i want to say thank you to all of those folks both for being here tonight and for all of the work that's gone into preparing uh the budget that you'll hear about tonight and of course to danelle who you'll be hearing from shortly uh who and she and her office as well as my colleagues mary and neal there it's it's very much a team effort that leads us to present a budget tonight

021that we're really very excited to present to the board we think there's a lot in this budget for the coming year that creates opportunities to really strengthen experiences for all of our students across the district we're excited about that uh and we look forward to talking through it with you in great detail over the coming days and weeks tonight is really intended as an overview so it's relatively high level to begin with and then following the process that we followed for a number of years following the overview we'll begin to go through some of the individual pages of the budget tonight and then continuing on saturday we go page by page through the entire budget and a number of our leaders will come to the podium and speak through their portions of the budget with

022you and certainly we'll answer any questions that you might have so we begin um i don't know who's danielle you're moving this okay there we go thanks danielle so uh we begin with our learning commitment uh which is as you well know is our driver uh for so many things in the district i referenced it a few minutes ago when i was speaking uh that we are continually working towards engaging relevant and acting learning active learning environments for all of our students i'm going to say more about that in just a moment so we won't stay on the slide for now your goals are very important to us in the development of this budget your leadership goal in which you continue to support that same work around relevance and engagement that we speak about and

023building the sort of culture that's very important to us to build not only here at our meetings but in our schools and in our classrooms every day and again we think this budget that we're presenting tonight will help move much of that work forward and then the second board goal which is particularly relevant to the development of the budget is that around fiscal responsibility fiscal stewardship and in which you ask us to adopt a budget that is fiscally responsible and one that does not exceed the tax cap and tonight's budget that we are presenting the proposed budget does not exceed the tax cap and we will say much more about that in the slides ahead as we move on you see here the timeline for the development the budget process is truthfully a year-round process

024that we're working on all the time but it begins in earnest each year with with those two board goals developed at the start of the year uh by our board of ed and then uh this year we did the budget condition survey a little bit uh presentation a little bit earlier than usual in november where we share with you those conditions in the world around us conditions in the world around us have continued to evolve as we well know and you'll hear more about uh how some of those things have shaped the budget tonight and then as i mentioned the folks who are with us in the audience tonight along with other administrative colleagues do an enormous amount of work through the fall as they determine their needs and think about the coming year they

025think about the student population they think about colleagues and their needs across the buildings and we meet with them regularly as we develop the budget into the winter we have our central office review team meetings and we continue developing the budget until tonight when we present it to you moving on now we begin enrollment is obviously a huge driver in our budget process so this is a slide that we have been showing for many years you can see here going all the way back to 2010 11 and what we all know very well by now was a significant population drop in the district over that period of time you can see there in the box second from the top that from 10 11 year school year to next year's projected enrollment it's a decline of

026almost 25 percent of the school population but we do also then call out the more recent years to show that the decline that was steep a steep decline in those earlier years has become a shallower decline more recently still still a decline but not as not as significant and steep as in those earlier years and when we move to the next slide we want to point out the fact that the numbers in green towards the bottom so what this slide is showing you is population breakdown by level elementary middle and high school and it's in those green numbers at the bottom there that you see in the most recent years that the elementary schools are actually showing some growth but we want to be totally transparent about this that growth is not leading us back

027to the kind of enrollment that we had up at the top of this slide the the middle school and the high school are going to continue to get smaller for several more years most likely they'll settle around about 600 at the middle school and around about potentially down closer to 800 at the high school as we have classes of roughly 200 students per grade but they are the numbers are beginning to increase now at the elementary school so we wanted to draw your attention to that and that does have impact all of those different numbers have impact on staffing and other decisions as we move forward moving to the next slide now we start to get towards the budget itself and the sorts of things that we're including for next year so there are four

028broad categories of drivers that we speak to the board about each year and they're they're named here again these are the things that really drive the vast majority of the budget school program obviously being very very important the programs that we offer to our students and what it is what what is it that makes up the school day professional learning and and the learning of our colleagues across the district enormously important to us so a significant investment in the budget every year as we've just said enrollment is a huge driver and very much related to that is class size and the maintenance of favorable class sizes across the district is another very very important driver of the school budget it's it's often said that salaries and benefits make up about 80 percent of a school

029budget in a given year those are driven by enrollment and class size largely and then finally the environment in which our students come to school every day and the classes in which they learn every day and in which our colleagues work every day speaks to the infrastructure and maintaining healthy buildings and maintaining modern buildings and safe buildings and technology technologically effective buildings is also very very important to us so together those four broad categories really drive what we're looking to add to the budget each year as we move to the next slide other thoughts now within those categories this is a chart that you've all seen before at the center of it is our learning commitment which is a focus of all the work we do and then surrounding the learning commitment are these three

030focus areas that we've named a number of times and that our staff faculty and staff are well aware of and they are focus areas around diversity equity and inclusion social emotional learning and sustainability and we call those out tonight because we want the board to know that they have been very influential also in our thinking about what we wanted to include in next year's budget and mentioned there also on the slide is the fact that as we emerge from the pandemic our unifying focus all the time is that desire to support every single child every day in their in-school experience so we wanted to call that out also and all of those things together go towards the decisions that all of us collectively have been making as we present this proposed budget to you tonight

031so now we start to get into some of the more detail as to what's included in this budget uh some of the more detailed categories of items so here you see both school program and professional learning opportunities called out that are supporting by supported by next year's budget first item there you see learning and leadership related to race equity and inclusion so we we've called this out a number of times as being a very very important focus area in an area of learning it's actually also a mandate from new york state that schools throughout the state should be focused in this area and we we believe in it very much i mentioned earlier our equity and racial justice committee we could we could speak at length about the work that our uh principals and our

032staff developers and our new uh equity leaders are doing around the district there's a lot happening we're proud of that work and there's a lot more work to be done still so there's lots of learning to be done that requires consultants of in in various different categories there's more leadership work to be done we leave open the possibility of whether or not at some point in the future there might be a position there but we're not looking to add a position just yet but we are we are putting we are asking to put significant funding into that category to support the ongoing work in those areas that we think are so important the next bullet you see their continued piloting of the next generation science curriculum at our elementary schools you've been hearing about that

033for a couple of years there was some delay through the course of the pandemic but we continue to want to see that work evolve and we think it's very important that that continue also very important we've had an innovation cohort now for a number of years that's more professional learning for our colleagues and the opportunity to innovate and think about new practices so we ask for more support there you've heard talk lately about um the need for books in our classrooms we we actually increased funding for books a couple of years ago and now we're further increasing that amount um as we as we really see the need always to be refreshing uh the books in the classrooms you see here also in in ways that are increasingly representative of all voices and experiences so

034we ask the board in this area to support an increased request to support even more books in our classrooms additional opportunities for mental health support and increased extracurricular opportunities you've heard a lot about that through the course of the pandemic it's always important to us and we want to make sure that we have every opportunity available to support our students in those ways you've heard quite a few times about the challenge success program the program out of stanford university that thinks about the stress that students undergo and the ways in which they live and learn in schools it's a it's a survey tool along with the support of folks from stanford who help us think about the experience our students are having we want to continue to support that program along with other tools potentially

035survey tools potentially other tools that help us understand and respond to student needs in our schools and then finally on this page we know it's very important to our district and now we also see at the state level the importance of sustainability initiatives you're going to hear more about that in very concrete ways later in the presentation here on this page we're talking about curriculum work and professional learning as well as after school clubs that help our students become very active in these areas so very excited to be presenting all of that work under program and professional learning as we move to the next slide now we talk about the same categories but now we're talking about positions uh some new positions uh that we're excited to speak to the board about tonight the first

036one and and the first one being a very significant uh request we want to acknowledge that we haven't you know in my time in the district we have not made a request like this we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't think it was a really important and a really substantial opportunity to continue moving good work forward into even better work for all of our students as we move forward so we're referring to this position as an assistant superintendent for student support services and we've given a lot of thought to that title there are a lot of different titles that are in this general area around the county and around the state we selected this one because we think it's an appropriate umbrella for a number of different things that we see this position being

037responsible for so in the description there we say and forgive me for reading but we say that effective programming that includes and supports all students who receive services in our district whether through special education english as a new language or response to intervention benefits the learning experience for all students and to most effectively integrate articulate and make cohesive the work of supporting all students student support services is recommended as a cabinet level position so again this is a really substantial ask those three areas that are identified there special education english is a new language and response to intervention those three areas alone touch more than a third of our students at any given time but we're also trying to make the point here that the work that goes into supporting these students has benefit for

038all students because as we grow these programs as we learn how to better support these students we're also learning how to better support all students and the integration and the inclusion of not only these students but the work of the colleagues who support these students is really important to us and that's particularly why we're talking about this as a cabinet level position because we want this work truly to be integrated with all of the work of the district not to be separate and i want to be absolutely transparent here we're not talking about replacing any positions in the district this is a new and additional position to bring further support to programs that obviously already exist and that we see potential to make even that much stronger than they already are and to better support

039our students and i think just to call out one area in particular the students in english who are served by english as a new language that population has close to doubled in just the last couple of years and that's true in our district but it's also true around the region and so it's not unusual and you'll actually see it reflected in a separate staffing increase later in the in the budget presentation and it's it's not just quantity but it's actually the type of work that needs to be done there that we also want someone dedicated to be thinking about and thinking with us uh as we move forward so there's a lot of different reasons for that request we're very excited about the potential for it we know it's a big request but we thank

040the board for considering it along with us and then on the second part of the page there you see continued support for expanded curriculum leader positions these came into being this year we're excited about them and and we look forward to those positions moving forward you see a part-time nurse position at the middle school a request for that to become a full-time position obviously through the course of the pandemic uh nursing staffs have never been more important they've always been tremendously important to us and never more important than these last two years and additionally what we found is that uh and you i'm sure you you know this well maintaining people in these positions is very challenging in the current circumstances and maintaining them in part-time positions is even that much more challenging so wanting

041our students and our staff to have the best possible services available there we're asking the board to consider an increase of a part-time position to a full-time position there at john jay middle school which would which would give us two full-time nurses at the middle school we're also asking for an increase in the school resource officer position uh from what also was a part-time position uh to one that would be full-time and would have the opportunity to support all of the schools in the district and then at the bottom there you see the teaching and other positions are given more detail later in the in the presentation tonight and will be spoken about in even more detail uh later in the evening and then throughout the day on saturday so that's the slide about positions

042as we move on uh that next driver that very important one about enrollment and class size throughout the budget we have staffing that we believe supports favorable class sizes and elective offerings those continue to be hallmarks of our district and very important to us so we ask for the support there and then consistent with uh recent prior years we're asking for the inclusion of four contingency positions in the budget only to be allocated if it becomes necessary to open additional sections perhaps at an elementary school if there's an enrollment shift that we don't anticipate today or if there are course requests or other circumstances at the secondary schools then those positions give us flexibility to maintain programming and to maintain favorable class sizes so that's why we include those and then finally under the topic

043of infrastructure and there's some some we're very excited about some of the things on this slide also the first one being a full-sized electric school bus you may have read recently about governor hochul's initiative for schools to really be moving in this direction over the next quite a number of years we're excited to be trying to take this step for next year we do call out there that as as is typically the case when we make transportation requests they don't come from the general fund budget they come in the proposition and and you will see this bus reflected in proposition number two but we wanted to call it out here because we are very excited about the possibility of an electric school bus and it is significantly more expensive and we'll speak to that a

044little bit later when we speak about the proposition itself but we also point out that the proposition proposition number two takes the funds from the existing year's budget assuming that they remain towards the end of the year it doesn't it doesn't add to next year's budget however coupled with that a full-size electric school bus will need a charging infrastructure that we don't currently have on campus we are the board is aware that we are in process of implementing an electric charging infrastructure for personal size vehicles and that's that's funded through prior years and we're very excited about that but a bus this size requires its own separate and altogether different and more powerful charging infrastructure and that is included in next year's budget proposal it's not in the separate proposition so we called out both

045of those items there also next item down flexible furniture for classrooms this request comes to us through our school leaders and we're very pleased and excited to be able to include it in the budget it creates you know exciting opportunities in classrooms and how they're set up and different experiences for our students and then some of the other you know we talk we talk about how it's important to keep our buildings in good shape and keep them up to date and these last three really speak more to that area so we're looking at flooring replacements around the district bathroom upgrades also around the district and where they're necessary renovations or improvements to the domestic water supply system so and that's actually not everything that's included in every infrastructure but that's a number of what we

046see as the uh more important items that we wanted to include on this list for you tonight so all of that brings us to this next slide where we actually summarize and we'll go into be much more detailed later on the proposed budget so you see there at the top current year budget of 113 million 242 the pro the budget we're proposing for next year 115 million seven hundred seventy eight thousand nine hundred ninety dollars that is an increase of two million five hundred thirty six thousand a hundred and ten dollars it's a two point two four percent increase we put the asterisk there and we call that right away because we know that there's sometimes this concept that there's a two percent tax cap and people might think that that number is over the

047tax cap it is not that number is within the new york state tax cap limit we'll explain more about that later on tonight but we also want to point out in the very next slide the budget to budget increase is that number that i just spoke of just over 2.5 million dollars more than 50 percent of that budget increase is accounted for by a projected increase in state aid which is quite a significant increase for us of 1.386 million dollars as a result of that the projected tax levy increase in other words the the increase that our taxpayers will be asked to carry is a 1.25 increase and you'll see later on when we put that increase up against prior years increases it's a relatively low tax levy increase compared to some of the other

048years that we've had recently so although the budget to budget is a little bit higher and it's higher because we are asking for a number of things that we think are really important in the budget um it is offset by a state aid increase which is larger than we've seen and we are also very mindful of the fact that that state aid increase may not be there in future years and we can speak more to that later on we have we have contemplated that we didn't wouldn't want you to think that we're not contemplating that but we also want to take advantage of the state aid when it's provided and and use it to the best ends we can for our students so those are some of the highlights from the budget now we're going

049to go into a bit more detail about enrollment and think about it by grade and by school and we start out as we have now for a number of years without kindergarten we we stopped several years ago attempting to separate kindergarten out by school because kindergarten is the most difficult number to project in the district for the obvious reason that the students aren't yet here we found that we could be a little bit more accurate if we presented it as a whole rather than try to break it out by school and and get closer to the right number of sections so what you see here is the kindergarten number that was enrolled in october of this year and for consistency's sake we used that beds date number in october all the way through the presentation

050we used we have 10 sections of kindergarten this year for next year you can see the projection is almost identical to the number this year and as a result we're projecting the same number of sections 10 again for this year no change from the number of actual sections to the number of projected sections but in fact in this current year's budget we we projected or we budgeted for 11 sections we only ended up using 10 so you'll see later on budget to budget is actually a decrease of one but from actual to budget it's staying flat so there's kindergarten enrollment and now we go into each of the elementary schools and because kindergarten was taken out each elementary school starts in first grade and total enrollment looks a little bit smaller than it actually is

051because the kindergarten is not there so you see first here is increase miller and we generally encourage people to look on the diagonal from the columns on the left of the columns on the right because obviously this year's first grade becomes next year's second grade and you can see at increase that in each case the number of sections in the grade this year is moving to be the same number of sections in the grade the next year even if there's some slight variation in the number of students has projected so for example four in first grade becomes four in second grade next year we're very comfortable with the class sizes there you can see at the bottom the total increases by one section and that is because we have a three sections in fifth grade

052this year they're moving on to the middle school and we have four sections coming in into that first grade class there next year so that explains the 21 sections next year versus the 20 this year so that speaks to increase miller we go to the next slide which is katona same sort of concept here one difference that you'll see here in second grade this year you see four sections whereas in third grade next year you see three sections this is not unique in our experience over the last few years this is because there's a change in our guidelines around class size as we move from second to third grade so in k through two we have a goal of 20 students class size and a maximum of 25 when we get to third grade it

053moves to a goal of 25 and a maximum of 28. so we're we're well within those numbers we're still very comfortable with that class size average of 24 but we do understand that for families sometimes there can be questions about why are we losing a section as we move from one grade to another uh but that's you can see that we're we're comfortable with that number uh and we're comfortable with the number of sections in the school and it's because of the change in that one year that the total at the bottom is going from 16 sections this year to 15 sections next year moving on meadow pond similarly metapond here you see no changes on the diagonal so whatever the number of sections is in a grade level this year will be the same

054in that grade level next year we know that the number that will draw some attention is in next year's fourth grade because it stands out as being higher than the other numbers that you see on the page however in the same way that i just explained for increase in fourth grade and fifth grade the goal is 25 students the range is 30 students so even though the 26.5 is a little bit higher than the other numbers on the page it's still just 1.5 over that goal of 25 and we also are always quick to say it's in situations like this where we think about those contingency positions that we have available so these numbers are projected numbers it's still just february of the year we will keep watching and if those numbers should grow over

055time and if this budget is in fact approved then we know that we'll have a contingency position that we could add in the event that those numbers should grow to the point that we would become concerned about the size of the classes so it's sort of there in the background if we should need it that takes us through the elementary schools then we move on to the middle school and as we noted earlier it's in the middle school and the high school where we're continuing to see the declining enrollment not not at the elementary schools anymore so you see on that first chart there the top half of the page total enrollment at the middle school dropping by just about 20 students you see more fluctuation in the grade levels so you see next year

056sixth grade is quite significantly smaller than this year's sixth grade seventh grade on the other hand larger and eighth grade also a little bit smaller than it is this year what that accounts for altogether down in the second graph there on the page is a decrease of two sections in the school as a whole it follows the enrollment numbers so we're down two sections of the middle school and that accounts for some staffing changes that you'll see reflected later on when we speak about staffing and then next we get to the high school and i should say also the on both of the secondary pages we always try to say that unlike the elementary school numbers where we show those class sizes those class sizes in the elementary school are really close to what actual

057class sizes will be at the secondary schools they're not necessarily close at all i'm sure abigail could speak to that for us and that's because these are really averages of all the different electives and other required courses that students take you know here at the high school for example so you may have classes that are smaller than let's say that average of 19 in the english class you may have classes that are quite a bit larger but that's what the average comes out to when we take the total population and we divide by the number of sections that we're projecting so again like at the middle school you're seeing a decrease in total population at the high school for about 60 students for next year and that is accounting for some decreasing section numbers which

058also translates into some staffing changes that you'll see reflected later on and that brings us to the staffing section and so now i'm happy to turn over to neil thank you neil yeah thank you andrew good evening everyone uh so the next few slides uh will provide a high level overview of stacking changes and a more detailed rationale will take place saturday uh with our administrator colleagues so as you heard from andrew earlier we're proposing the additional position of assistant superintendent of student support services and we see the addition of the assistant superintendent of student support services as a way to support and oversee the growing integrative and evolving needs of the entire student support services office for the teaching slide this slide is is dedicated to highlighted highlighting staffing changes as they relate to

059teachers and just note as when we're going down the column there the front the parentheses represent reductions but before we get there there's an asterisk there to denote uh some of what andrew was speaking about with the four contingency positions that we are placing into the proposed budget and that allows us to remain nimble and responsive to student enrollment across the district and of course our income incoming kindergarten class on the first line and andrew spoke about this as well there's a reduction in the k-6 there which reflects the budget to budget reduction of kindergarten sections so there were 11 sections budgeted last year and but yet the actual sections turned out to be 10. and so based on current projected enrollment we're projecting 10 sections hence the the 1.0 reduction in in budget to

060budget but also as as andrew noted there's no change between the current number of sections and next year's projection at the middle school grade six due to some of the lower enrollment in our incoming sixth grade class and the use of sixth grade teams at the middle school we're proposing a reduction in the number of sixth grade teachers or the 22 23 school year the remaining areas and the subsequent increases and reductions are based on a combination of the use of shared staff between the middle and high school and the needs proposed in collaboration with our administrators and directors the staffing changes for for teachers continued as you see there there's a proposal for three special education teachers so at this time we are projecting to add one special education teacher to each elementary school

061and hence the reason for the proposal of three total positions adding these staff members will help us to provide additional consultant teacher and other special services where needed and i think my colleague dr mcnulty will speak more about that on on saturday also the line below a speech and language therapist we're hoping to add a district-wide speech and language therapist to our team as we project an increase in the number of students who will need services next year there's also an increase in rti reading and reading and reading our intervention or propose a 1.0 increase in this area to support the evolving needs of our elementary students and also as noted by andrew there's an overall increase in staffing in enl to support our growing enl student population a population of students that has doubled

062in the last few years the increase in staffing seen here is a budget to budget increase not an actual to budget as we had to hire in the middle i should say late fall to remain responsive to that growing population the next slide is for support staff a teaching assistant proposal we anticipate the need for additional elementary support services as you also heard from andrew in the next line a proposal to increase the nursing at the middle school the nurse staff to two full-time positions based on the increased job responsibilities of the nursing staff and we just have found it very difficult to maintain part-time nurse staffing so that that a second full-time nurse would be helpful the 1.0 clerical is to account for and provide support to the proposed assistant superintendent of student support

063services and the .25 increase in operations and maintenance is to create a little more balance at the middle school which will allow the director to uh to provide middle school needs to address the needs of after school and weekend at the at the middle school the overall so i don't have my glasses on but the overall there uh 1.0 of in the in the category of administration uh 4.2 in teaching and 2.75 increase for support staff for a total change of 7.95 at this point it's my pleasure to turn it over to danelle thank you neil so the next section of the budget we're going to look at different terms that we use within the budget so you heard neil mentioned budget to budget and andrew also mentioned it prior just to clarify budget to

064budget is the amount that we're proposed to spend in one year versus the amount we're proposing to spend in the next year um three other terms that you'll see in the following slides is tax levy this is the total amount of money to be raised locally by the school district after factoring in all other revenue in other words it's the total amount of money that we have to raise through the issuance of taxes tax cap will also be used this is the calculation that is required through new york state it's a limit the amount the school districts can raise the tax levy through a simple majority vote and then finally we'll be going through tax rate this is the amount you will have to multiply by the assessed value of your home in order to

065generate the tax levy uh this is a repeat of a slide that andrew previously mentioned but i thought it was a good segue into our budget conversation so our current budget is 103 million 242 880. we are presenting today a budget of 115 million 778 990 this represents a slightly over 2.5 million dollar increase or the 2.24 increase from budget to budget and as a reminder this does fall underneath the new york state tax cap this slide is always particularly interesting to me it shows our most recent six-year budget history the average budget change for the years reflected on this slide is point ninety percent so less than one percent and the average tax levy change for the years reflected on this slide is 0.72 percent so even though the budget to budget increase is

066the highest we've seen in a while our tax levy increase is one of the smallest increase we've seen in the past six years so in 1617 we did have a decrease in the levy and then in 2021 that there was a flat budget but outside of those two years this 1.25 increase in the tax levy is the smallest we've seen next i'll be speaking about the tax levy uh this is the total amount of money uh to be raised by the school after factoring in all other revenues in order to calculate the tax levy we need to speak about the tax cap calculation so a reminder that some people believe the tax cap is a two percent cap in fact it's two percent or cp hot cpi whichever is lower and that's used in the

067calculation factor so currently the consumer price index we need to use um in this tax cap calculation would have been four point seven percent but because we were capped at that two percent we use the the two percent and our budget calculation and our tax cap calculation another important uh factor in the tax cap calculation is the assessment growth factor which this year is 1.0066 percent the assessment growth factor is actually our brick and mortar and this represents any buildings or property that has been built within the district so in this next slide i'll walk you through the actual tax cap calculation we begin with our our tax levy from this current year so this current year the tax levy was 99 million seven hundred thousand three ninety four and then we add in that

068uh assess the uh assess tax-based growth factor from the what we just previously spoke about so that increases our our tax cap calculation to by 658 thousand 23 and then we were required by new york state to exclude some exemptions you'll see those are debt service exemptions building a transportation aid so that totals slightly over 1.9 million dollars that gets subtracted out of our our tax levy and then we multiply by the allowable growth factor which this year is capped at 2 so our tax levy before exclusions is 100 million 359 720 and you'll see in this next slide i carry that 100 million number over to the top and then we are required to add back in those exemptions but with the 20 20 22 23 expenses so that adds back in an additional

0691 755 506 dollars and that gets our tax lobby levy limit with exclusions so our tax levy limit with exclusions is 102 million 115 226 or slightly over two 2.4 million dollars we were asking for a projected tax levy of a hundred million 949 this is only a one million two hundred forty eight thousand seven hundred ninety eight ninety six dollars excuse me increase from the prior year so what exactly does that mean the tax levy increase of the one million two forty six seven twenty six is actually one million one hundred sixty six thousand thirty six dollars less than the tax levy limit so the budget we're presenting to you tonight would require what's called a simple majority a simple majority is 50 percent of the votes plus one if the board ever wanted

070to go a past a simple majority and pass the tax cap that would require us to do what's called a majority vote and that would be 60 percent of the vote in this next slide i talk about some of the other revenue sources that we have so during the budget development process we examine all revenue sources most revenue streams are projected based on looking at the current year revenue and prior year revenue patterns in additional we utilize the governor's projected state aid to make projections on state aid as you can see this year we have over 1.3 million dollar increase in state aid and andrew spoke about that before that's how we were able to present a increase in our budget of 2.24 but still keep our tax levy increase at only 1.25 uh just

071to break down the numbers a little bit our tax levy is a slightly over 87 percent of our total revenue state aid comes in second at 8.36 percent of our revenue we typically use some appropriations and our reserves to offset the tax levy and as a revenue source that's a 2.12 of the budget county sales tax comes in at 1.08 percent of our revenue budget and then all other of the items on this page account for 1.25 percent of the budget also it's important to note that state aid is subject to change based on pending negotiations up in albany [Music] um just another way to look at how we come to that tax levy is we take our budget of 115 million 778 990 we subtract out all those other revenue sources that i just

072spoke about including the appropriated fund balance and that's where we get the amount of money that we need to levy via taxes at 100 million 949 tax rate is the last thing i'll speak about in this section of the budget so the rate is heavily determined and dependent upon assessed values in the district we work closely with the towns but it's really important to note that the assessments change even as we're speaking tonight they'll change they won't be finalized until early summer so based on that our projected tax levy and the rates the current assessed value we have received from the towns you can see that there's some slight changes bedford's rate is currently estimated to be 186.6517 that's down 6.25 per 1000 of assessed value lewisborough's currently rate is estimated to go up it

073would be 217.9535 that's 6.55 increase per 1000. north salem is projected to go down 32 cents to 21.185 and then pound ridge is estimated to be 107.9764 and that's down 1.0 1.66 cents per 1000 i'm going to turn this back over to andrew and he's just going to summarize thanks danielle thank you so much i do want to just echo your words on that very last slide and for any taxpayers who are watching and thinking about those numbers and the rates they're projected and subject to change so we always caution people don't start doing too much math today because the assessors still have to finalize their numbers obviously the budget still has to be finalized and those things can change but we like to give people a rejection of what it's looking like at this

074moment but thank you danelle and thank you neil both very much for taking us through that part so we're getting towards the end of this overview of the summary on this page we just again summarize some of the key points of this budget uh it continues to support our learning commitment and our ongoing efforts to provide the best possible experience for all of our students we talk about those focus areas and this budget's opportunity to really support all of those those areas in ways that we think are really important and exciting it supports some really some new positions that we're very excited about and it continues to support existing positions that are very important across the district and that will continue to support uh new initiatives as well as the many existing initiatives in the

075district today so uh the budget we think is mindful about taxpayers and makes effective use of the increase in state aid that we're being provided uh while also uh creating these exciting opportunities so we do uh look forward to going through it in more detail with you uh and to answering any and all questions that you'll have this next slide shows as we always do the actual propositions that voters would see if this in fact becomes the adopted budget this is the first proposition that talks about uh the actual ability to levy the taxes necessary to fund this budget it gives us the permission to do that for a projected budget of 115 million 778 000 the next proposition number two is the one that i referenced earlier the one about vehicle replacements and again

076we call out the electric passenger bus at a cost of three hundred and eighty six thousand nine hundred seventy five dollars it is significantly more expensive to fund an electric bus if we're going to make this transition that new york state is asking us to we have to think carefully about how to do that we see an opportunity in this year's budget to do it for one a full-size electric bus which is why we're including it here you see a number of other vehicles that are more traditional propulsion vehicles and then there is one towards the bottom of the list there a full wheel drive electric vehicle to replace one that we currently use in the district so we're excited by that opportunity also to bring another electric vehicle into the district and to make

077this uh transition towards more sustainable vehicles with better significantly uh well with minimal emissions no emissions so that's exciting opportunity for us and the total cost there of all those vehicles the 921 975 dollars we always are careful to say those funds would come out of remaining funds in this year's budget they are not additional funds being requested in next year's budget that's the two propositions that would be on the ballot then we go to a calendar of next steps uh we still have a lot of opportunity to speak about the budget that we've begun to present tonight uh including the full day on saturday several dates in march a possible adoption date in mid or late march by the board of education we're required to do one final hearing of the budget that has

078to be within a certain time frame of the budget vote itself so that's that may 5th date and then the budget vote itself is on may 17th it's the same date in every school district all around the state of new york we will all be going to vote on may 17th this year and i think that brings us to the conclusion of tonight's overview of the budget i think we're going to probably pause now and take some questions before we begin going into the pages is that how we usually do it yeah yeah great thank you so much thank you andrew thank you neil danelle mary thank you to all of our administrators who are here and who we know have contributed greatly to development of the proposed budget we really appreciate the manner in

079which you provided this overview it's illuminating and helps us to hear how you are talking about changes in our student body how to meet the changing needs of our students and how best to develop a budget that will support the resources that we need to meet the needs of every learner so we learn a little bit about the the fiscal resources and also at the same time about the composition of our student body and how our student needs are changing so thank you very much for all of that i'm sure that board members have comments and questions i i will just perhaps pick up with something that i think you mentioned and whether we address it here now or whether it's something that we just continue to reflect on you suggested that conversations have been

080had around um how we might look ahead beyond this year when we can't anticipate that we'll continue to have this degree of support from new york state um so i'm not sure if that's something that you want to address or whether you want the conversation to evolve but but it might be helpful to hear a little bit about your thinking there so we're happy to speak to that so when we when we think about both existing positions in the budget or both existing funds in the budget as well as uh future funds we think about recurring costs and we think about costs that either are one time or could be one time if necessary and we think about balancing those things so when we if and when we commit to a new employee for example

081most likely a full-time employee we think of that as a recurring cost something that we are adding now and we're going to want to support into the future um but but then there are lots of other things that are in the budget you know one example quick example comes to mind the flexible furniture that's being proposed in this you know we're thrilled if that's an opportunity that we're able to meet and provide for this year it doesn't need necessarily be something that's ongoing in the budget uh there are quite a number of items like that consultants you've heard mentioned throughout so we would be thrilled to have that opportunity to bring those consultants into the district if we're able to do it next year it doesn't mean they have to all be repeated or repeated

082in the same quantity the following year now and many other items like that so we've we've looked at the budget carefully enough that we think that there's enough in there that should there be a decrease in state aid which is quite likely in the following year it wouldn't have to touch core parts of the program you know it might mean that other parts of the program that you know wouldn't be able to be repeated in the same way but the balance to that is we don't want to not take advantage of this increase in state a the governor has been very clear in saying that schools are a priority for her she's working hard to deliver more funding to schools so that it can support students throughout the state it's a little bit of the

083dilemma that's created in a tax cap environment as to how you use your funds what you ask the taxpayers to provide and what you don't ask the taxpayers to provide so we're trying to strike the right balance where you know we don't want to um you know not take advantage of these funds that we are being given this year at the same time we're trying to be mindful about the future so yeah i hope that illuminates a little bit yeah thank you so you're comfortable that if the aid decreases down the road um that there's enough non-recurring costs that those would fall off but the aid would still we wouldn't we wouldn't lose any recurring expenses because the va goes down the the extra aid is going towards non-recurring things correct we think we think

084there's enough other places in the budget where there are things that could be reduced without having to touch the positions that we're asking to add for the current year thank you other comments questions every year i learn it for like 30 minutes and i don't forget it um the tax rate that health knows it's coming the tax rate if the assessment for whatever reason goes up the tax rate goes down well there's also an equalization rate that um smooths out all the different towns in our area so for example north salem is at a hundred percent equalization rate um and that helps uh helps with the calculation of the proportion of where each um each where the taxes are are levied so there's an equalization rate that plays a part in that tax rate calculation

085and then is per thousand so if your asses assessed value of your house changes if it goes down and you're you multiply by that tax rate um and your tax rate has increased and might be a net zero for you um and on the flip side if your uh assessed value went down and then you're in a town where the tax rate went down then you might see a slight decrease in your bills okay so the the things that are listed here for just as an example on your slide was louisboro 2223 would be positive 3.1 percent and bedford minus 3.22 that doesn't mean that louisboro residents are going to see a three percent increase in their school tax and bedford zergozia 3.2 decrease in their taxes correct that just means that the tax rate

086went down so it all is dependent on their assessed values so we'll do it one more time next year okay i'll be ready thank you also for taking us through the tax rate uh the tax cap calculation really helpful to see that come into focus especially when some of the external factors are very different this year than in other years so thank you if there aren't high level overview questions we are scheduled to continue moving on to a more detailed budget analysis and i'm sure there will be clarifying questions that come up along the way so perhaps we should just move on we really appreciate the overview i know we'll have other opportunities to step through those slides yet again in future board meetings um so if questions arise down the road we can always

087take them up then and in the meantime we will turn our attention to uh this is item 9.02 and we'll start with the pink pages please vanilla am i diving right in here uh sure okay yes okay so for those for those who may not have experienced this before what happens now is we start to go page by page through the entire budget it's divided into these different color-coded sections so you'll hear us refer to pink pages and blue pages and yellow pages uh that and we will name uh what they are identifying as we go through them and different members of our administrative team are going to speak to different sections of the budget i think are we going to go through about a dozen pages tonight something like that and then pick up

088on saturday and go through the remainder of the budget in the hours that we have allotted on saturday right so we have a dozen pink pages and then chris mccarthy will join us at the end with a few of two blue pages okay so we have some pink pages and some blue pages tonight so i get to speak about the first four pink pages tonight so we're first looking at pink page one this is actually the board of education section of the budget and you can see when you go to the bottom right hand portion of the page that the total increase in the board's portion of the budget is 700 you can see on the top half of the page those funds that are allocated for the camera operator for the purpose of these

089meetings you see no change there in the budget from this year to the next year and then on the bottom half of the page you see various contract services for the school board as well as legal liability insurance funds allocated in the event that the board chooses to use a consultant for board development or for other reasons and funding that's been earmarked for electronic board of education minutes uh they're used to keep track of all minutes and agendas for our board meetings uh there's a small increase of a hundred dollars there from this year into next year but total uh in budget the budget is roughly the same a 700 increase in the board of education section of the budget now help me to remember here do we typically pause for questions on each one

090of these pages we go through a few i think and then we pause we go through a few so i think if you want to pause at your end of year four all right we'll ask questions and i'm gonna go through four pages and then we'll pause if you have any questions we'll be happy to answer them at that time so that was the board of education's page the next page is the district kirk district clerks page in the budget and you'll see here these are all the costs associated with the district court employee compensation on the top half of the page you see an increase there 2 357 these are budgeted funds and you see on the bottom half of the page funds for travel conference and supplies associated with the district clerk's office

091you don't see any increase in that portion of the budget so total increase on that page of 2 357 that's pink page two we move on to pink page three this is a portion of the budget that is devoted to funding district meetings um this is actually it's it's a little bit of a misnomer it's called district meetings but it's actually the costs associated with annual district election and budget vote and here you do see some increase on the top half of the page funding for election inspectors you don't see any increase there but on the bottom half of the page you do see increase the contract services as well as increase in advertising legal notices um a minor actually not nothing there in travel conferences but in both these services that support the election

092that piece of the budget is flat you do see increase in supplies and postage that increase is associated with uh the increasing number of absentee ballots that the district is processing it is an increase on this page of just a 17 835 dollars and um board and the facilities committee is aware that as we're thinking about facilities and potential increases there's potential at least for additional voting in the future and so these increases account for that possibility should it should it come to fruition so that accounts for the increases on this page that's why there's the increases yes yeah in the in the event so this is that page is really about votes and how we manage those boats and how we have the fees that we have to pay etc and should there need

093be an additional vote we need to have additional funds ready there and then the final page that i will discuss tonight in the budget is that page devoted to my office the chief school administrator's office and on the top half of the page you see uh salaries both for myself and for my executive assistant and you do see an increase of just over ten thousand dollars in those salary lines and then on the bottom half of the page where there are funds for equipment contract services and contract services can include the various memberships uh et cetera that come out of my office as well as travel conference and supplies you see a decrease of five thousand dollars 250 cents in that bottom half so that the overall increase on the page is five thousand four

094hundred and eight dollars so that's the end of the four pages that i'll be speaking about if there are any questions on those four pages at all happy to try to address them thank you sure i have a general question as we're going through lines is how do we know if there's something that's sort of adjustable or something that's sort of a contract or an obligation and just big picture wise how much and this doesn't have to be answered now but and when we're thinking about the budget how much of the budget is already committed to things contractually obligated and how much is actually could be adjusted if we chose to adjust it in either direction yeah that's a great question in some cases you please always be welcome to ask the question about any

095particular line and we'll answer it for that line but i would say in general salary lines are going to tend not in every case but in many cases are going to tend to be contractually obligated but not always then most other lines well benefit lines are also going to be contractually obligated in many cases correct but a lot of the contract services and supplies we cannot obligate a board without the budget vote so those bottom sections of the pages generally speaking tend to be where there are room for um changes if the board so chooses that makes sense yeah okay yeah but please on any you don't hesitate to ask about any particular line and we're always happy to answer the question just even broader strokes salaries and benefits and retirement you know and health

096insurance and energy costs i mean a large swatch of the budget is basically spoken for correct correct yeah the amount that we have control over is a relatively small portion of the budget any other questions on pages one through four not we can always circle back if you think of a question later but if not we'll move on and i think danelle picks up from here yes thank you so now we are looking at pink page five this page is associated with the operations of the business office over overall you'll see this budget of the operations to increase forty thousand six twenty one um but if you look at last year's you'll see that we did decrease in this department by forty eight thousand four hundred and eight so the top half of the page

097is associated with the salary for the assistant superintendent for business the school business administrator payroll and benefits coordinator an accounts payable person a part-time payroll clerk and and the other half of the salary is an account clerk a bookkeeper and then a 0.2 fte of a secretary who is shared between my office and mary's office on the lower portion of the page you'll see funds associated with equipment contract service travel and conference attendance and supplies contract services include check printing software subscriptions asset works appraisals and updates demographic updates 403 b administration compliance and funds for our financial advisors contract services and copiers include funds related to the copy machine at the district office and a maintenance contract track for check writer equipment and fees for additional copies outside of our maintenance agreement traveling conference lines

098includes fee for attendance at various conferences which ensures that our office are properly trained in all modifications related to business office operations the boces service lines and includes the subscription to state aid planning supplies include offices office supplies as well as postage and shipping associated with the operations of the business office and then finally on this page you'll see a fiscal agent fee bond this is our fiscal advisor who would help the district if they had if we have any bonding needs such as issuance of a new bond or refunding the bonds on pink page five this page is related to auditing we are required to have three separate types of auditors our claim auditor comes to the district office one once a week and reviews every single disbursement before it leaves the district the

099claim auditor serves as the final checkpoint before disbursements are set out the claims auditor reviews all supporting document documentation and any relevant bids to ensure that vendors are paid in accordance with agreements and terms uh you may recall last year that we went out for an rfp for claims auditing services so the increase in this line reflects the projected increase the in the per hour rate associated with claims auditing the internal auditor conducts an annual risk assessment and works with the school district's audit committee to identify an area of audit to be conducted at least once a year the internal auditor will review all financial policies procedures and practices and test the district's internal controls and then finally on this page the external auditor reviews the district's annual financial statements and determines whether the annual

100statement is presented fairly and in an accurate representation of the district's financial position we recently secured rfps for both from multiple vendors to the increased cost is associated with this is based on those projections so on this page we see an increase of five thousand two hundred and fifty dollars pink page 7 is related to cost for our district treasurer the top portion of this page is projected to increase and that is based on salary requirements and the lower portion of the page you can see is related to travel conference and some supplies so a total increase of 2 936 dollars for this page pink page 8 is our purchasing um the overall you'll see that this increase is 3 123 the top half of this page is the salary for our purchasing agent um

101in that salary about 5500 is budgeted for overtime expense that occurs during the summer when we do have rather large volumes to conduct at the time and on the lower portion of the page you'll see funds associated with contract services um advertising and legal notices in district mileage reimbursement and boces competitive bidding we partake in various supplies and reference material and those on the second half of the page have remained budget to budget neutral pink page 9 is a legal is our budget associated with legal representation so this is always a difficult projection to make the figures could change rather significantly as we experienced over the few years depending upon litigation brought against the district or label labor matters which may require involvement of our attorneys the cost represented in the expense to pay attorneys

102for other hearing officers in the first line include special education hearing officers superintendent hearing officers and labor hearing officers the next line is our retainer these are legal services for which we pay one fee and can then use a lot utilize the lawyers as much as we need our retainer covers items such as policy questions and guidance bidding costs contract negotiations vendor contracts and i have budgeted a fifteen hundred dollar increase in our retainer other fees and reimbursables by attorneys these are fees that are utilized to pay the non-retainer matters excluding special ed matters labor matters which we result in a disciplinary hearing or attendance at a superint superintendent's disciplinary hearing are examples of items which are billable to budget for this item i averaged our monthly fee to date and then i multiplied the

103average by 12 by 12 month i annualized that and then considered an escalation factor and that is also budget to budget neutral our don attorney fees for bond council these are specific councils that represent the board of ed when we refinance or borrow funds in the event that the board of education wants to consider a pr proposition which may result in an issuance of bonds the bond council will help prepare all the necessary legal documents for that and we also have attorney fees for cse litigation these are specialized attorney that represents the district in committee on special education matters the combined monthly fees for special education litigations over the past 18 months and some pending litigation led me to keep this budget neutral so overall you'll see a slight decrease of 3 500. on this

104page um i'm going to turn this over to neil for quick personnel yeah thank you or did we win please i was just in the categories i was just looking i i was on page nine um you just go through the columns again so the the first the column twenty twenty twenty twenty to twenty twenty one actual and two yeah what are the what do the two columns mean i think it's i think the first one's supposed to be 2019. is that what it is it was on the face page the first one okay it's just typo yeah and then it just reverts oh my you know what there was a formula and it must have not carried through my sincerest apologies before we get this out as a uh the board budget we will

105fix that that um the first column is 1920 yes 2021 actual 2021 budget and it's and then the two have only happened in the pink pages and the in the um pages to follow and then just that's correct and so just understanding that the 21 to 22 budget is actual proce plus projected at this point or what like whereas it's just the budget number yeah so we're not finished with this fiscal year so we can't give you actuals right so it's 1921 1920 actual should be that first column okay 2021 is the also actuals because we've closed that fiscal year and this current fiscal year 2122 is our budget so when we talk about that budget to budget versus actual to budget if you're looking at 21 22 and 22 23 that's budget to budget

106increases and that's the change in the budget column that final one is this the time to ask more specific line-by-line questions um so for the hearing officers when there's a hearing we pay for the hearing off the district pays for the hearing officers so this would be based on just how many cases we have in front of hearing officers year to year right that's why that's one of the reasons that this is um a difficult page to project is you don't have know how many hearing officers you'll need but yes the district is responsible to pay for our hearing officers and then just looking so in 1920 it was very low it was much higher in 2021 we projected it higher for this year and projecting perhaps a decrease for next year it is quite

107a range of numbers there right and sometimes hearing um hearing officers can go on for multiple years so those carry over [Music] other questions on these pages and then just elana just because this is your for sure like you can always go back on saturday and say like it's not like oh this page is done we're closing questions on this page if saturday we have questions that we go back all the way to the beginning of the budget again right a few questions okay thanks thank you uh neil is going to just take a pink page 10. sure sure okay thank you so this budget page is associated with the cost relative to the operation of the office of human resources the budget for the operation of the office of hr is projected to increase

108uh by just under 23 000 and keeping in mind that last year was decreased by about 18 000. the top half of this page is associated with the salary for the superintendent for human resources the secretary for the assistant superintendent for human resources as well as one personnel clerk position on the lower portion of this page you can see funds associated with advertising contract services travel and conference attendance uh projected to increase by over 15 000 and i realize that's a large ask and i just have a couple of points to uh just to discuss here and happy to answer any questions uh today or or any day but the overall goal is to to really think outside the box when it comes to recruiting and hiring and one of the things i think we're

109trying to do is systematically broaden and deepen our pool of candidates to make that pool of candidates as diverse as possible the proposal here the increase is associated with fees um with some of the research i've done this year associated with uh with nationally recognized hiring platforms which gives us the the ability to reach and extend our recruiting efforts beyond of the region if we think of it as like concentric circles uh i think if it's like hyper local regional uh and and then nationally and even thinking internationally about drawing people to to this great place and it all helps to deepen the pools of uh candidates um uh that we can offer here for any position it also allows us to think a little bit differently about and andrew and i've had these conversations

110about how to advertise also in in some typical spots that we might not think of such as um on transportation hubs on subways on trains on buses for positions uh local newspapers regional newspapers we had an ad in new york times for the ap vacancies which is which is quite costly because of the the reach that it that it has the proposal for travel and conference is is really again to to be present to extend our presence on a regional and national level and be able to present and attend conferences that are really about personnel leadership um but also about uh networking and and attending hiring fairs that are outside of the the westchester county region which is important but i think it's also important just to think um to think bigger in in that

111sense and and in conversation with uh principals assistant principals and directors uh we're thinking a little bit about how to uh digitize and our workflow when it comes to hiring and there are multiple websites that and platforms that offer uh some really efficient ways and to make our our process more efficient for hiring people when paypal comes our way and we're uh tinkering with some ideas but all these are associated with with cost um and so this year i'm looking as an exploratory year to see what might work uh for not just me and and my office but also uh the principal assistant principals and directors as well uh the lower uh part of the page um associated with uh personnel costs with uh boces which has been extremely helpful thank you i think page

112unless there's questions i think we're shifting away from personnel let's pause thank you yeah that sounds very exciting about increasing the reach of recruitment and and sort of in line with the dei work and vision um do you interested like would you anticipate this as an ongoing thing i mean not beyond this year's budget or in i mean obviously we have hiring needs up over many years but if there was sort of a big push now would there be a need for a push later to kind of get our name out there as a district that i just wouldn't do you think this would be an ongoing thing it's a great question i think it would be ongoing but i think it would also have to see how everything feels if this is approved what

113what are the outcomes right and what do we learn from it and what are we able to learn and gather from some of these experiences and and extending our region extending our presence my initial reaction to you and it might change is is that i think it's ongoing because i think when you're thinking about systematically changing the structures of broadening and deepening our candidate pools it takes that's that's a lot of intentionality and work that we're dedicated to and work that that my office is dedicated to and i look at that as an ongoing process and learning from these regional hiring fairs maybe national hiring fairs and like i said reaching out abroad uh just to bring the the very best to the very best thanks yeah i think it's really interesting and and good

114that to broaden the reach i'm just wondering is this also kind of in response to um shortages in certain areas is this going to help us better address that if we if we face that in the near future i know that if you read the news it sounds like that could be a problem that we'll face soon it's a yeah you know that's a great question and i would think it's generated and born from actually a lot of time thinking about this pre-pandemic and even in my role as an assistant principal and principal and how to extend the reach of at that time this school and what it meant for a school to have um a diverse and very highly talented staff and so i think it's it's definitely generated for me before then but

115but you bring up a great point as as another layer of um you know looking at at the national shortage of teachers and and less and less students going into the profession as we did maybe four or five years ago i mean that's that's a that's a topic that's been like you said well documented and think about but yeah no i think that would help maybe offset any shortages um but yeah thank you i don't want to get too far off the topic but um i was on a legislative meeting last week and there was definitely talk about sort of new york state putting together there was requests in new york state to sort of put together um like a teach here campaign you know teach new york campaign and really try to think about

116things that will attract teachers to new york state whether it's through loan forgiveness and programs like that but really to help assist with attracting a broader pool of candidates to the state so hopefully that was a request and so hopefully that will be something that we'll get some help maybe from the state on that absolutely and you know there's a lot of exciting i think work out there that separate districts are doing to to to channel some of those funds maybe that are not in new york state that that and i think people are hearing about the success of those programs so yeah absolutely exciting work yeah great thank you so much very exciting neil thank you if there are any more questions i'll just i think we have two more pink pages to go

117through uh pink page 11 is records management uh there's a slight increase of 300 in this budget and that's related to the maintenance of documentations and records the district is in an endless process of transferring records into digital format when it's permissible so the funds have been included for the continuation of this project and then 1480 which is page 12 is our distribution of public information the budget associated with this is uh projected to increase three thousand five hundred and sixty dollars the district six secures the service of a public information specialist through p w boces uh we continue to budget this person to work with the district four days a week um this also includes the cost to continue to make our website accessible for all and the cost associated with the line is

118to set by experienced and pnw bow season their projected increases so this is the end of the pink pages and before chris mccarthy comes up to speak to a few of the blue pages were there any final questions on the pages um on that part about the public information part of it when you speak about making the website more accessible are there specific goals within that or how does that kind of get managed so a few years ago there was a mandate to have the website accessible to all i know kim monson worked hard on this to have different larger prints different translations and just the accessibility for the the website and the way it looks and does that apply to other parts of community is that does the mandate extend beyond the website to

119other forms of communication or is it is that is it specific to the website i think it was specific to websites school websites here things like you know we'd have pdf documents and you know some of them could be formatted a different way where they weren't readable and now we have to make sure that any pdf that's loaded is readable they use translation tools read aloud you'll notice an icon i think it's usually at the bottom of our website where you can access some of those tools great thank you any other questions on the pink pages before we move forward there are a few more pink pages um and paul christensen will be back on saturday to speak about those particular pages thank you great then should we shift gears to a couple of chris

120would you like to come up and join us podium or the table whatever you're comfortable with um thank you welcome thanks for joining us my pleasure uh update on ice hockey we're in the third up three nothing oh wow that's a little upset in the brewing wow thank you okay um first we'll start with our health services page which pages right we're starting athletics first this is blue page 27 are we athletics for school it's usually the other one first but i can do whatever you'd like thank you alright so that's blue page 27 for those who are following along all right this is for our our nurses budget and you'd see up in the registered nurses line an increase of 68 that's a combination of the new contract and the 0.5 nurse position that

121was discussed earlier in tonight's meeting at the middle school as we work down to the actual budget pieces the equipment line of 12 000 is part of our multi multi-year project of exchanging our aeds throughout the district we have our first set of eight coming in this year and then we'll get eight and eight in the next two years in order to get just the entire district covered over that period of time the exciting thing about the new aeds they actually come with specialized cpr pads that actually monitor the level of compressions and the success of the compressions that you give and provide feedback so especially for a novice they'll really help them be able to be more confident and in performing if they found themselves in that situation so that's a big um a

122nice new technology that the new ones will have next line is around contract services this is tied to the cloud that they use that takes care of all of our student records things of that nature anything tied to the different services that we provide in fixing their testing equipment and calibrating their testing equipment and things of that nature the school physician is dr casauro's contract um the health services for other districts this is uh parentally placed private school students and that gets some of that gets built back i believe yeah i i think the board is familiar you see those contracts come this time of year at multiple board meetings so any of our students who are in private schools were required to share the cost of the health services in the school district and

123on the flip side we do have a private school in our district we do bill out for health services for our harvey students for students who are outside our district that come in and then our travel conference is a combination of the various trainings and that they get throughout the year as well as some contractual obligations that are built into that and then obviously the supply code is around the needs throughout the district to keep all the offices up up to date and running with everything that they need any questions about our nursing page thank you for helping us to understand the impact of the part-time situation on the overall demands of on our nurses this year and for giving that thought are there any questions clarifications i'm not sure whether it's possible at some

124point but is there one budget line that you would refer us to to offset like sort of the revenue side of the health services other districts is there a revenue code that we should be looking at yes so that um that there is a revenue line for the health services that we bill out and if we go back i'm going to pull it up i think it's its own line um health services on the powerpoint presentation it was line two on the budget in the back of the book yeah so it's two hundred fifty thousand two hundred fifty two hundred and fifty thousand it's the second line underneath the property taxes thank you so that will jump to the other sorry can i just ask two questions absolutely um with the contract service i mean

125you this was approved last year but i was just wondering why the contract almost more than doubled the last year and what what the ongoing a big piece of that was the the new cloud that they're in the previous was antiquated and made it very difficult so there are larger expenses tied to that so that's probably the biggest major expense that they have that's tied to that okay and then and then i say there's a big equipment decrease also or supply increase at the bottom you know we went through obviously when we were going some of these things shift as needed and obviously we're going through the the middle that pandemic things kind of were adjusted in order to accommodate the needs of the school at that time so now we're we we like to

126use the term we're getting closer to normal so i think that's what you're seeing with a lot of that great thank you and a lot some of those supplies were covered supplies you know excess masks and things that we were we needed to provide our students thank you for that clarification okay the next page is our interscholastic page uh currently our budget support page 31. thank you yes good okay um currently our athletic program supports 77 teams at the various levels which is a high for us currently we have 16 male sports 16 female sports and overall we have 38 males teams and 39 female teams that support the program and are offered to our kids from grades 7 through 12. over the past couple of years because you do see some increases the majority

127of that tied into stipends we have added the following women's gymnastics which by the way were section champions this year which is pretty exciting in year two they're part of a merger of six schools we've also had our women's ice hockey program also section champions actually played in their first regional competition women's ice hockey is called an emerging sport in the state of new york which means that five right currently there's five sections of the 11 that support women's ice hockey and so once that becomes six they actually can move to a state championship but currently we have regional championships for programs that haven't met that threshold is that a shared team or are we yes yeah it's a large number of schools um that is spread out throughout westchester county right it was really

128helpful during coven to have the exposure as many schools as possible right um the uh we have also brought back our freshman boys basketball program our boys basketball team i'd be remiss if i didn't bring up last night played a thriller against higher seeded poughkeepsie when we ended up losing in overtime by two points on the very last play of the game we shot went in and out uh it was just amazing an amazing game to watch very high level skill coach tyler sarah did an amazing job with an awesome uh group of kids that really was so so impressive to watch last night so heartbreaker but you definitely left feeling pretty good about how they represented you know another point i just want to bring up before i leave that i could tell you

129that throughout this year it's been very challenging dealing with the masks and i can tell you with pride that uh and it's a tribute to our coaches and our kids that we were probably the only school of the 70 plus throughout section one that actually honored the requirement that we had both locally and uh from the department of health so our kids were playing with their mass up while most schools are playing with their mass off uh and that's really just speaks to the culture that the kids have created and the coaches and about the importance of it and what it meant to our community so we fought that fight throughout the year um and so i was really proud of our kids for for that because it does put them at a disadvantage um

130and so that's something we were really pleased with and you know you know i definitely want to give them a shout out for that because i'm sure they want to hear me say patreon but uh i had to do it less and less so they were great thank you we've also added over we've had like i said back our freshman boys basketball team our numbers in basketball are going through the roof uh we've had huge numbers i believe we had about 80 students trying out the high school level so you can imagine you're keeping about 12 kids on a roster in order to get them on the court so these are huge numbers that are coming through so we're very excited about that we've also added additional teams at both the modified level for boys

131and girls basketball for volleyball coach rizzotti shared with me today that there were over i think almost 40 students at an open gym with our middle school kids so it speaks to that it's it's inviting kids are excited about participating and he said it's a really great vibe so that's uh that's awesome for the program and to see more which was the board's goal to provide opportunity for more and more kids we're seeing that being realized in these budgets so we appreciate that and we've also added assistant coaches at the jv levels which has been uh enormous success it allows us to carry larger numbers provide better practices it also provides students with additional adults to connect with you often when you have a single coach they have one opportunity often when you have assisted

132coaches you may not love one coach or may not connect with one but then you may with the other and that's great um for our students developing relationships and commitments within the program so it's really uh really been a huge piece of the success uh most recently so we've had that in uh jv softball jv baseball boys and girls lacrosse and wrestling you know that along with the added teams you're seeing large numbers of kids participating i think we're up around so far this year up around 700 so it's a lot of a lot of great things happening that we're really excited about and chris i just want to clarify for the for the board members that these newer teams are for this year it's not newer teams that we're putting on for 22.23 correct

133correct we've had everything we've done we've added already um so we're at we're pretty much at capacity right now um so from facility perspective it's things are pretty tight uh but we are excited for what we do have so no increases just kind of an explanation where you saw some jumps of all the things we've added over the past couple of years okay couple just a couple quick shout outs and that's our boy ski team uh went back to back with section titles this year they are heading up to states over the weekend so we're excited to see how they do up there um we talked about uh the other the other team so far we also have max goodman who has qualified for states max is one of our outstanding track and field runners

134um he's already well known on the cross-country circuit but now he's taking the winter indoor track season by storm so we're excited that he'll be representing us uh at the state champions coming up too so we're excited about that right as we move on to um some more of the itemized uh categories here the first one you see is our equipment which is uh right again at 24 000 as it's been we have to replace some soccer goals as that get have been damaged we have score tables that have met the end of life they've given us a great life and we thank them but it's it's over and we need to kind of move on replace those our contract services the big jump you see there is is uh 55 000 and that's tied

135directly to the uh acquisition of a second athletic trainer and that's been a an incredible boost to the program as far as coverage for safety uh rehabilitation for student athletes coming back but what we've also done we've offset that 55 000 which you're not seeing it's currently in payroll and that's because we took uh stipends from strength and conditioning which totaled around 24 000 in that range uh that were applied to help offset these costs uh in the big picture so you're seeing it's really not as big it's just it it's being realized in two places but it's been a real um the kids are utilizing it our strength training program has been off and running we actually have a time for just female students not just athletes for female students to attend in the

136fitness center to help them feel comfortable and uh in in training and becoming more confident so that's something we're really proud of this year that we've been able to do we have one male athletic trainer and one female athletic trainer so we're able to reach more kids we feel this way so that was that's been a huge success as we move down our the contract service is the same thing around equipment repair our big push when i came here about i'm in my 13th year we used to send everything out to be cleaned we now have we years ago put in our own laundry room which i happily say that i do wash wash laundry i'm here for the district don't launder anything but i do wash the uniforms um and that that's really kept

137our costs down so now we've been paying about 7 000 a year instead of over 25 000 a year over the past 13 years since we put in uh the washer and dryer so that's what that size so that's our football all our hard equipment that either has to be cleaned or certified gets set up so hockey helmets across helmets football helmets and then shoulder pads things like that that that's where that number comes from the next piece is it's a combination what you're seeing there and that's with our traffic service which is our police when our police come in and help work events due to the larger crowds um and also facility rental which is always a challenge for us we've been um we have facilities that we use for bowling and ice both

138ice hockeys for uh swim and dive um so we're for um our golf program so we're consistently saying a large number of teams because we obviously don't have those facilities here on campus so those costs obviously rise and uh create challenges for us but that that's where all those numbers come from the travel conference is that's the different um currently that's how we cover the cost of coaches heading up to states conferences that i attend things of that nature the boces services which you see that number is around 112 000. that is all tied to the boces fees and then all the officiating fees that are tied to all the different the 77 teams that we offer the one team that i did want to give another shout out they were very proud of and

139very excited for which is coming this spring is our unified basketball team takes back to the court after uh a year off so that's going to be an exciting spring um sport that's that's coming our way so we're looking forward to them taking they're very excited to take to the court and coach piccolino will have them ready to compete so we're excited about that and then uh the supply budgets again that's everything that helps support those programs from uniforms to balls to you know bat sticks shoulder pads you name it that we've been you know an example of that this year we've now for the first time we're required to provide shoulder pads for lacrosse teams that was always an item kids did on their own but now with new noxi rules we have to

140do that to ensure that they meet the minimum standards in order to compete for safety so now we're much like shoulder pads i now have to do for football and not do the same thing um for uh boys across so we had to purchase those inventory those and then so that's that's the type of costs that have been added on you know as they give us new regulations moving forward now it opened up to any questions that anyone might have thank you well also we thank you for not just joining us and providing this overview of your budget but also for reminding us that one of the really nice facets of how we perform these budget deliberations is that we are able to be joined by administrators directors principals and we so appreciate the pride

141that you take in your program and the manner in which you've updated us on the highlights some of the highlights of our student athletes and celebrated our coaches and our nurses and all of the staff members that you're talking about and the student successes and experiences so we really um are heartened by so much of what you've shared and we appreciate the opportunity to step through your budget i am just going to ask if you don't mind can you then clarify you mentioned that you want to bring in a second trainer but then i thought i heard you say we already have two trainers both a male and a female so are we actually now looking to bring in a third trainer no no no that that's that's what that's locked in that's how that's

142being in order for us to continue that that's how we did some reallocation in this year to make it happen okay and i can see that from the top to the bottom that there is a reallocation yeah that's a reallocated so next year it's taking on the cost so that we can realign everything else terrific thank you and then with regard to at the top of the budget the 30 000 projected increase in stipends is that representing an expansion of no i believe that's all the new contract ah thank you okay thank you very much other questions clarifying questions comments uh just a quick question um i'm glad that you mentioned unified sports because it was such a wonderful joyful experience for so many of our students i was just wondering in that area is

143there any expansion in the section or anything like that well there's a couple more teams in this section so we're seeing it grow each year which has been exciting so i think now we're up to about eight teams when we started out there's only four of us so it seems like each year there's one or two schools look to jump on so yeah it's expanding uh which is going to give them more opportunities to play and we're really trying to build it into some of our campus celebrations so that we can get a large student population there um so that's why it's also helpful that we get to a better place and some some things are lifted we'll be able to do more inside and now the gym will be able to handle some larger

144crowds to support them while they play so we're looking forward to that wonderful thank you thank you no further questions for the time being okay great thank you so much again for joining thank you again andrew and to the entire cabinet and to all of our administrators and staff members who are here to participate and contribute to the budget deliberation process i know we're going to see many of you again on saturday and i don't know what the weather is doing outside we welcome you to stay for the duration of the meeting but please know also that we won't take offense if anybody feels that this would be a great opportunity to also start to head home you know we really we respect your your decision and we really thank you i'm just going to

145pause here because we are scheduled to now move into public comment but we had also postponed our board subcommittee announcements so i think what i'll suggest is i think at the moment we have about six or seven people who have signed up to speak with us in public forum and if the board is comfortable with it let's just continue to postpone those subcommittee reports let's hear from our community members who have patiently waited um and i will then transition to public comment so for those of you who are waiting to speak again thank you for your patience we request that you please introduce yourselves let us know where in the district you live if you have children in the district we would love to know that we ask that you please limit your remarks to

146three minutes and just please be reminded that we are all abiding by the school's code of conduct and with that it's my pleasure to invite mauricio chavez to please join us good evening thank you for allowing me to speak tonight my name is mauricio chavez i have two wonderful children in the district uh one in kes the other one in john jay middle school and uh of course i'm going to be talking about mass tonight so i'll go ahead and start what i need to say while all our neighboring states have set a determined objective at ending their mass mandates starting next week our governor relentlessly continues to stall without a threshold or implementing metrics like mental health decline speech degradation and other negative effects that are becoming more evident in our children it's time

147this district stops blindly following the unconstitutional and unscientific mandates of the state government and starts to stand up for students in parental choice i urge you to stand up for the people you are in place to serve by contacting the governor and writing her to end the mass mandate which i hope this administration has done so i understand the governor plans to re-evaluate the mass mandate at the beginning of march but change must come through representation the people the governor works for and not the reverse the department of health just quietly added two more months with a possibility to extend the mandate through april and even beyond if they choose to do so regardless of infection rates or realistic metrics the executive order governor hockle's extended this week contained exaggerated and incorrect information contradicting letting

148the universal masking requirement expire and it was entirely unnecessary she is basically abusing her executive powers to even declare a disaster emergency as it is clearly obviously we are not in we have complied to these force mandates for two years without a clear exit plan or termination date our governor and the health agencies have overreached their positions and are only moving us further away from normalcy with every extension of these mandates it's time to allow for our children to be free of the restrictions and end these abusive mandates not in a month or whenever albany decides it's ready to do so but clearly the time is now to end their powerful induced charade thank you thank you adelie black hi my name is addie black yeah hi my name is addie black i want to

149speak to you tonight about my experience learning to read and highlighting some issues i faced with certain reading techniques firstly independent reading as a dyslexic student silent reading does not help me already struggling to read fluently and slow pace at which id code makes understanding hard it also encourages errors because nobody corrects the way i decode and pronounce words in contrast reading aloud as a group can achieve allow teachers to monitor fluency decoding and pronunciation this is the best practice at one word secondly leveled readers this method can discourage kids and show them their level with which ranks kids of from lows to highest picture a classroom there are there's a bookshelf labeled books are in buckets labeled from a to z the higher you are in the alphabet the more complex your books are

150lower the when you're closer to the beginning the less complex the books are i i was embarrassed about my reading because i was one of the lower readers which i know no kid should feel thirdly using the pictures this practice is horrible for many reasons first of all what if the book they're reading it does not have pictures then what will they do do pictures do not teach children how to read words i have a brother and sister at catona elementary i'm happy to see them skywriting and talking about hegerty i'm also very happy to hear that the dis district has reached out to learn more about the free gomen dyslexics cell solution i hope you will consider my experience and keep working to do better thank you meredith black [Music] good evening i have

151to say the one positive outcome here is that she's learning to be a good public speaker so i thank you for your patience i wanted to just um start and just make some positive reflections for the board firstly i was also pleased to hear that the board and the district's outreach to boces to discuss the free 90-minute dyslexia simulation i hope that you all will have an opportunity to take advantage of the simulation so you can better understand the challenges struggling readers face and the reason i am so passionate about appropriate reading instruction i was also pleased to hear tonight about the proposed assistant superintendent position and the creation of it and how it could help children with these particular needs i also wanted to take a moment to applaud two teachers in particular that

152my children have dealt with at this school that really have embraced the science of reading and best practices that's mrs ashley slozinski and melissa conwell who my children have both had much success with separately um i do have still have some continuing concerns in october of 2021 i submitted a foil request seeking information on the contracts the district entered into with teachers college for the use of and training provided in connection with units of study i still am waiting for a response i mentioned this because as i've previously noted to the board units of study the program which the school district is using in general education classrooms and which was confirmed by the district december 2021 response to my foil request is banned in states where the science of reading has been adopted as the

153baseline for reading curriculum i would like to call your attention to this query because the proposed budget includes several line items to allow for contract services specifically 2010 400-10 curriculum development contract services and 20 70 410 in-service training contract services and over the class the course of the last few board sessions it's come to my attention that teachers are continuing to receive training from teachers college in these programs well i certainly applaud an increased investment in training for our teachers as a taxpayer i hope that our district refrains from continuing to invest in units of study and trainings in these program and other claukens design programs since research indicates units of study does not meet the baseline standards of the science of reading and since ongoing negative reviews regarding the efficacy of her programs continued

154investment and training in this program would arguably be a misuse of taxpayer dollars i hope that this board will ask for assurance from the district that its investment in our teachers is one reflecting the best proven techniques and practices and not one provided by vendors whose programming has been banned in other states and school districts i would also like to continue to request communication with the community regarding literacy in addition to the two prior requests for the formation of a literacy committee which are all well aware in which the superintendent has refused to entertain parents continue to raise concerns about the district's literacy program before tonight's meeting one parent posted on facebook expressing a concern about the lack of basic grammar skills taught in our schools and seeking a tutor to close that gap within

155a short period of time at least 10 additional people spoke and shared similar concerns tonight another parent called me specifically to note their concerns about this since they have pulled both their children from the public school and sent them to private school due to their concerns regarding literacy as we continue to encourage the district to consider these concerns maybe another way of looking at is to ask the parents themselves by doing a survey are parents satisfied with the literacy program are parents seeking outside support for their children in reading and writing do parents have specific concerns about the literacy program and if so what are they i continue to come here to each board of ed meeting because i believe the district can do better and i believe it has been taking steps to do

156better but i think each time you look at it you have to always turn around and ask yourself what's the next step you can take so that we can close the reading gap that exists thank you thank you erica glick good evening thank you for tonight's comprehensive budget proposal um i do have two follow-up questions uh the first regarding that line item for private tuition how many students does this cover um second question the line item for our attorney specifically for cse litigation how many cases does that represent um i will say however that i'm impressed with your decision to consider a cabinet level assistant superintendent for support services i hope that your search is nationwide so that we can capture the best potential candidates as opposed to some of the nepotism we've seen here

157from chapel claw i wasn't sure if i would even speak tonight especially since mr celeste nick responded at the last meeting that he would not entertain a literacy committee however i did spend a little time researching this response and with all due respect mr celesnek i don't believe that this is your decision to make based on what i read this is our board's decision not not yours further my research also pointed me to new york state ed more specifically the regulations of the commissioner of education even more specifically regulation 100.11 essentially this regulation requires a shared decision-making committee appears we are supposed to have a plan for the participation by teachers and parents in planning and shared decision making so i know that there has been a lot of discussion as to whether you feel

158our literacy program is even an issue you're quite satisfied with our proficiency rates but i will again point out that our students with disabilities only 25 to 30 percent are proficient our economically disadvantaged students less than 40 percent are proficient i will again point out these discrepancies here our curriculum simply does not work for all students in conclusion to our board of ed i look forward to hearing your response regarding regulation 100.11 and to hear how you plan to circle the community into our shared decision-making as the state requires thank you hope turbert hello my name is hope turber i have a child in chris miller i am an attorney who has spent almost a decade advocating for special education students i also have a five-year-old son who is autistic ironically i chose to dedicate

159my career to advocating for special education students long before my son was even an inkling of an idea sometimes i think i was called to this work in preparation for this his eventual arrival my son has severe deficits in communication skills and requires assistance in almost all daily living skills he cannot speak and it is unknown whether he will ever speak he wants so badly to communicate what is inside of him but his sensory needs are so severe that he constantly needs to stim in order to ground and soothe himself and this prevents him from being able to engage in a communicative way he often has meltdowns where he will cry scream bite kick and hit not because he is trying to hurt anyone but because he is hurting and he does not know how

160else to tell us people look at him like something is wrong when he is stimming sometimes people seem alarmed by his hand flapping and rocking and humming they might think he is weird or they might feel disturbed this world was not made for him and he will always be othered by society i love my son more than anything in this world and i am incredibly proud of him he is sweet clever tenacious and curious what i respect most about him is that he is fully himself in every way he will never change who he is to conform to what society wants him to be some may view this as a bad thing my husband and i view it as the best thing about him he is constantly looking for ways to adapt his world to

161fit his needs while society tries to adapt him to fit into the typical world it will never work and thank god for that don't get me wrong raising an autistic child who cannot speak advocate or care for himself is all-consuming i spent hours every week on top of my full-time career and caring for my other two children advocating for him and trying to protect him he is undoubtedly among the most vulnerable population prior to sending him to kindergarten here i learned of two extremely concerning incidents of physical and emotional abuse towards autistic kids in our district i also learned of the life skills class in the basement of the high school where autistic and other disabled children were placed the class that he attends is the same one where physical abuse occurred i was petrified

162i was also angry some people may feel that we should stop harping on this the point some people might have missed is this is a civil rights issue let me say that again this is a civil rights issue if you do not understand why this is a civil rights issue then you are a part of the problem i am so grateful to have met the founding members of the kosd special education advocacy group we are caring parents who have bonded over the new mutual need to protect our children and fight for their safety and education alongside these new friends i've advocated for kosd to do more to educate and protect my son and all students in the district with ieps and 504 plans as you know one of our asks is for the district to

163hire an independent outside consultant to audit the special education system although he never said it i think mr seleznick hired dr volkmar to come to our school in response to this ask we were proud to be the driving force behind bringing in a professional of such high esteem however we had questions about the scope of the relationship and they went unanswered mr celesnick following his usual mo made sure to provide as little clarity and transparency as possible after his visit dr volkmer held a zoom webinar that was open to the entire klsd community the webinar format assured that we would have no ability for audience members to directly interact in my public comments at the last boe meeting on february 10th i stated that this format felt dismissive of my concerns about the program my

164child attends i wanted the opportunity as one of a very small handful of parents with a child in this program to speak with dr volkmer about his impressions i wanted dialogue instead i sat through a powerpoint presentation that explained what is autism i live autism every single day dr volkmar's presentation was fine but the fact that mr seleznick paid him seven hundred fifty dollars an hour to give a autism 101 powerpoint presentation in response to our concerns about the program our children attend felt like an enormous slap in the face after my boe speech two weeks ago mr celeznick stated that he would not allow me to besmirch dr volkmar he went on to gaslight me in real time he failed to acknowledge how as the parent of an autistic child i was insulted by

165the presentation he lacks the empathy to see that i'm a hurting parent who wanted answers about the program not an autism 101 presentation and this is not disrespectful towards dr volkmar rather it is mr seleznick who disrespected me and all autism programs in this district he took our very real and valid concerns and turned them into an opportunity to stroke his ego he dismissed our concerns by providing an introductory presentation on autism with no real life application i stated at the last boe meeting my child's safety education and life are not an amusing anecdote to me autism is not an interesting powerpoint presentation or an academic exploration for me autism is every second of every day every breath of air i take every decision i make context matters here i'm sorry to interrupt but can

166i ask if you're about ready to go i'm almost done thank you the context in which this presentation came about was incredibly insulting and this is not on dr volkmar this is on you andrew this is a valid feeling for me to have but you chose to belittle me falsely accuse me of besmirching the renowned expert you hired gaslight my feelings and patronize me while i most certainly am not nor have i ever besmirched dr volkmar i did find it hurtful that he was telling amusing anecdotes about his autistic parents in a presentation meant to explain what autism is if you do not understand why this was hurtful then you will probably never understand as a parent of an actually autistic child i am 100 entitled to feel this way without being publicly shamed by

167the superintendent of this district for besmirching the expert he hired shame on you andrew thank you mark abrams good evening i'm mark abrams i've had four children go through this district and now i have two more step children going through this district i guess that makes me an official blood for punishment when i look at the declining enrollment over the last 10 years it's stark we have an empty school we have increasing tax dollars and we have a board that's trying its damnedest to make squeeze the most out of the bucks neil i appreciate you talking about thinking outside the box i would suggest that we're putting the cart in front of the horse and that is an educational system should first and foremost focus on what are the best practices based on science and

168implementation of science of educational curriculum mr celesnek has been asked many times to try to address that we have a literacy program that doesn't work they don't even bother to teach grammar and yet somehow it's not needed this should be the foundation of anything if you want to attract people you should create an atmosphere of excellence not the impression or the false impression of excellence when it really isn't the case i think back to the speaker who talked about ableism who came through this district and what struck me was she talked about the repeated failures of the special education department to meet most of her needs consistently i can't even begin how many people have come up here time and time again to point out how that is still the case all of these years

169later i've spoken to board members i've spoken to mr celesnek everybody under the sun we've asked for an independent audit to try to correct it we have millions of dollars being spent to send kids out imagine if we actually had millions of dollars coming in because we actually had programs that worked that attracted people to want to move into this district that were willing to get the bang for the buck rather than to pay the tax dollars and send the kids out it's atrocious so instead of an audit what do we get we get a renowned expert who comes in who does a cursory look at some classrooms makes a cursory presentation that is not an audit we still expect an independent audit of the entire special education department and we will not stop until

170we see that happen make no mistake about that the board is accountable for holding the superintendent accountable for best practices in all areas and clearly that's not been done marjorie i'm very happy that you talked about the creativity and the use of zoom i would love to see the zoom open in these meetings so everybody in the community can participate so the people who have don't have babysitters the people who are taking care of special needs children and other people can actually become part of a larger community so that we all work together to see that that's done i hope that you do that please thank you ashley lamonic hi my name is ashley lamonic i live in katona and i have a preschooler i have a few comments reflecting on the last boe i

171really liked alana's idea of supporting the transition to mask choice and providing an opportunity for dialogue to make sure it does not become divisive what are the options for the school community to do this i was also glad to see the update on the district specific on the district website specifically that the district will not tolerate teasing or bullying related to masks to mask choice when that happens i was also glad to see the board discuss the literacy committee uh ask i wonder uh if the if one of the issues is that there are too many committees and perhaps this is simplistic but why not pause one of the less directly needed or more educational committees if needed until you can solve the issue of how to educate all students literacy is one of the

172most basic components of education and if students need to leave the district to learn literacy the district is failing those kids some other things during the board during the budget presentation it was mentioned that there is an increased need for there's an expected increased need for speech and language services what do you expect that is that be related to math squaring i don't know there was also mentioned an increase increased job responsibilities for the middle school nurse what are the increased responsibilities uh finally what are you teaching students about the way our political system works marjorie mentioned some of the numerous social studies lessons that could be taught around january 25th the day when the mask mandate was not enforced the mandates you were enforcing were put in place by the governor not elected lawmakers

173oh and dr rifkin i assure you the governor is receiving ire as well it is not the job of the executive branch to be making laws the department of health proposed regulations regarding asking the department of health is not elected it is overseen by the governor still the executive branch again it is not their job to make laws their regulations are meant to help enforce the laws that have been passed by the legislature what does this have to do with you you are elected and your job is to focus on creating a positive educational environment student environment for student for all students if the student's speeches at the last meeting are any indication you are not doing your job you are on this board to be thinking about the students what are they learning by

174hearing you say that you will be dictated to happily by the executive branch mr slesnik you mentioned the last meeting that when districts choose not to enforce the mass mandate they have been given stern warnings from the department of education what kinds of warnings what are the consequences for a district that chooses to not impose mandates on their students i'm almost done there may be consequences but everyone has a choice whether or not they can follow along with orders that are wrong and in some cases harmful like now it's the consequences that most people on the board don't want to face it's not that you don't have a choice it's that you don't want to make the choice that would risk any consequence or affect your current status by not risking the consequences you automatically

175pass the consequences to the kids thank you i'm not aware of anybody else waiting to speak but i'll pause please okay thank you would you like to come to the podium my name is michelle duravage can you hear me yes thank you my children attended kes and john j middle school in high school i'm an educator who holds serious concern about the ongoing practice of strict harsh proven measures that have been taking place since the schools reopened in september of 2020. my general question is why hasn't the district applied their critical thinking skills an important key skill that the district espouses as one of the instructional goals of the student's learning experience shouldn't we be displaying the same behavior and intelligence we support in our curriculum serving as role models for the students critical thinking

176requires you to use your ability to reason it is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information critical thinkers will always rigorously question ideas arguments and findings doing their own research to come up with the best solution to the given problem and you do have a choice so a second question why has the district passively accepted and embraced the severe coven measures including compulsory masking physical distancing testing constant use of toxic hand sanitizer quarantining etc using the weak explanation that they're merely following the guidelines of the cdc and other health authorities why hasn't the district applied their critical thinking skills to determine what is best for their students after all children have virtually zero risk of becoming ill with this virus i have presented the dire effects of masking our children

177in both for former public comment platforms and in written correspondence via emails so i won't report them here hopefully you have carefully read this well-researched information so critical to our children's health development and well-being and have deeply considered that these severe regulations not only are inducing trauma on our sensitive children but threaten our basic human rights our bodily autonomy health and bodies and my last question is how much money has a district received from the arp esser cares act or the american rescue plan elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund that was a mouthful since the reopening of schools in september of 2020. from what i've learned the district needs to submit a plan to the government every six months and could continue to receive funds until september 30th of 2024 each esser fund has

178its own time period of when it needs to be used by the states the districts and the schools they are as they're one september 30th 2022 as are two september 30th 2023 esther 3 september 20th 2024. um some of the requirements that schools must adhere to are universal i'm almost finished universal and correct wearing a mask physical distancing quarantining isolation vaccination testing etc so again my question is how much money is a district receiving and projects to receive from the government for this wrongful and hurtful treatment of our children thank you for your time and serious inflection on these questions thank you thank you is anybody else waiting to speak okay thank you again to members of our community for sharing your comments and thoughts i'm going to suggest that we close the public comment

179period at this time and let's turn our attention briefly back up to board subcommittee reports this is item 8.01 and i'll start with audit committee i don't recall whether audit has had any activity we have not we're reading we're trying to propose a meeting hopefully in a couple weeks actually to review some rfps great can everybody hear julia no no i think is your microphone working hello there that was better yeah better okay um no the audio committee has not met and we expect to meet sometime in the next two to three weeks great okay thank you facilities committee uh facilities committee met last week where we continued to go through the five-year building condition survey um and we have uh brought all of our community members along with us to really understand um where

180we are with that and and what the different pieces mean we are looking to go into focus groups soon and um we'll be meeting again in the next or actually on wednesday great thank you danelle would you mind saying a word about finance committee did you all meet last week as well yes we met on tuesday we continued to look at the state comptroller's tool which projects out of five years from this budget season to make sure that we are properly budgeting throughout the next five years we continue continuing that discussion next month on i believe march 16th thank you so much parent council we had another snow day meeting it seems like every time we're meeting it's a snow day um we had a really interesting discussion where andrew asked for a lot of

181feedback from the parents and just kind of some communication stuff and i think i've really seen it reflected in in the recent communication that's gone out around explaining how the snow days work every time there's one coming out around the february break or not break so the how the calendaring works i think it was really a helpful discussion for everybody um we also as you saw there was some feedback there's some discussion around how to distribute the test kits that have been provided to us um for the by the state to give out and those were distributed in the last week or i got them at home for my children so that was great nice to have after a break when people probably saw other people again to make sure that kids can go back

182to school and people are symptomatic no to stay home and stuff just another reinforcement to keep our schools open and keep everybody healthy and safe the parents brought a lot of interesting questions uh we talked about classroom libraries um how to make sure that kids walking to school have can get their safely i guess and katona in particular um and we talked about committees and a little bit there were some questions just sort of what the next steps were in the iemes stuff but there was no information yet so we had a really really nice meeting and i will just say that at the end of it um it is apparent reflected on how uh how grateful they were for the parents who were able to participate who have continued to participate in all the

183um various ptos and how it's been a challenging year for parents and yet the parents are still sort of showing up even on a snow day to contribute to participating in their student and their children's education and benefiting the all the students in the district and it was it was nice to kind of hear that again that's great that's really great to hear thank you and it does seem to be the case that our snow days have fallen on fridays disproportionately i don't know why thank you very much that's that's great to hear i don't think sustainability met in between the last opportunity to update and this evening so we'll look forward to meeting again an upcoming friday and with regard to westchester putnam county school board association as julia mentioned earlier this evening she

184and i both have had the opportunity to meet with assemblyman burdick senator shelley mayer senator pete harkum and we extend our sincere gratitude to each of them and to wesput for facilitating opportunities for school board members across the region to share our perspectives and to really spend time helping our local elected regional elected officials understand some of the needs of our school districts and to crystallize some messages around advocacy whether with respect to clarification on guidelines for masks whether with respect to anticipated shortages and hiring and also even with respect to helping school districts connect the dots between what has been characterized as a very ambitious goal of electrifying our fleet by 2035 with actually a milestone as soon as 2027 while also recognizing that um you know this is to a certain extent a

185challenging cost-benefit proposition for school districts until such time as the state really you know is in a position to help school districts all school districts i should say because some districts are eligible for more assistance than others um you know and so we need some plans and some assistance for for that if we are to meet the aspirational goal uh for 2035. we're in the very unique position here of having already done some of that work um previously to be very well positioned to um take steps forward in a in a pretty responsible manner so we're very fortunate any comments questions about subcommittees okay then if not we can go back down to the consent agenda item 12.01 and all the way through the rest of the consent agenda i'm not aware of any items

186that need to be voted on separately so would somebody like to move the consent agenda thank you julia and seconded by liz was there any discussion or question i just want to comment on i believe there's a calendar item on the agenda tonight i'm sorry i don't know the number of it thank you um well over two over two we have a slight revision to the calendar that the board adopted last couple of weeks ago for calendar year 22-23 we recognized after the fact that january 2nd which is a monday because the new year's day holiday falls on a sunday this year the holiday has to be observed by state regulation on the monday so we've added that holiday into the calendar in order to accommodate the day we removed one of the weather reserve

187days that was otherwise there so it's still the same number of school days for students the same number of staff development days for staff and one additional vacation day uh added to the winter break thank you for mentioning that yeah thank you any comments or questions okay if not we can go ahead and vote on the consent agenda all in favor please say aye aye aye thank you five zero okay and this brings us to 16.01 which is our opportunity for some board dialogue and discussion um i'm not sure whether board members have any new topics that they'd like to introduce i did want to mention that at our last board meeting and also this evening we heard a couple of questions about the american rescue plan um and i'll start just by mentioning that

188there is a dedicated page on our website regarding our plan that was submitted for the american rescue plan act and also that these questions are timely because in between the last couple of meetings actually there has been some activity from the state in response to our plans so perhaps i could invite danelle or andrew to just say a word or two about where things are holding with respect to our communication to the state back from the state and how those funds are envisioned to be allocated sure so um so the american rescue plan we had to submit an application for that that application wasn't approved until december and then the second part of the application process it goes to a different division and the funding source gets approved separately so just in february early february

189the funding source was approved so we've just begun to look at the expenses i think mary if you wanted some more detail of the specific areas um mary can speak to that but just um for the american an overview of it we do have several areas in which we are looking to spend the money with the art funds at least 20 of it has to be used to address any learning loss associated with coven we certainly have built that into our proposed budget and that is on the website as well along with our whole application process thank you very much did you want to follow up with them yeah some of the things that um we've recently actually posted for three part-time response to intervention positions for elementary school to supplement the response to intervention

190services that we have at elementary to meet the increased need decrease group size so that we can more specifically target student need so that's something we're really hopeful about in the beginning of the year we were in the planning stages and danelle was applying for this we were hopeful that we could hire more interns through we have interns through our boces program who work with us four days a week and typically they're graduate students in education or recent graduates and it's a great training opportunity for them and it's really helpful for us but it's been very challenging we were not able to find additional people it's actually been hard to find the staff that we typically have so that's been a challenge but it's a hope going forward because as was mentioned tonight some of

191these funds will roll forward and we'll be able to use them next year and in some cases even the year beyond but some other things we've used them for after school tutoring so students especially at secondary who were quarantined and the teachers were working with them during that quarantine period and we were able to pay the teachers at an hourly rate through the use of some of those funds in addition we have some of the resources and supplies for in reading interventions actually so that our interventionists have increased resources to use more books more supplies for students and we've expanded the use or the access to digital tech so different digital subscriptions because thinking about students potentially i'm glad to say it wasn't needed as much as we thought it might be but students being

192at home more often just to increase reading volume and make sure they were able to read appropriate text which continues to be helpful and also some virtual teaching resources so some virtual lessons connected to our reading and writing lessons that students could access virtually and they were mirroring the lessons that were happening in the classroom so we were able to have access to those some of the things that we've used it for already and you know we're hopeful about the future as well great that's helpful thank you very much and then i i also have some um just the dollar amount so ultimately we were approved for 628 985 for the uh our funds um and then the funding source we they do pay um 10 of that upfront and then it's a reimbursement process

193with the state so when we spend the money we submit another application and get the funds appropriately and we have until september 30th of 2024 for those funds so it's a multi-year um program thank you okay thank you for clarifying the timeline for the expenditures if if if i understand correctly we we expend and then we seek reimbursement right after this initial upfront allocation thank you any questions about that yeah yeah just the clear to clarify so that that number you gave is the total for to be spent in that period for the our for the art funding yes over the three year period and then i'm just curious is that typical with the state contracts to get 10 percent up front or like for reimburse or most of our contracts reimbursement like that so

194with the federal funds typically we see we we get 20 once the application is approved and then um throughout the traditionally we would like we do quarterly reports to them and say we've spent x y x amount of money and in the next quarter we're projecting to spend a certain amount of money and then we submit the application but then that's capped at a certain dollar amount and we have to do a final cost report before we are made completely whole thanks thank you um also just thinking back to our last public comment period we had heard a couple of questions and we have actually repeatedly over time and i imagine this is a topic at the erjc committee meetings as well neil you spoke this evening with us about some proposed additional money in

195the budget to help us tap into some additional networks and even digital platforms to assist with diversifying and deepening the pool of our candidates was there anything additional or additional context that you wanted to say about that or did you feel that you were able to speak to it during the course of your budget remarks oh no thank you i mean as far as the the budget is concerned no i mean there are specific uh websites is this is this on it we can hear you but i'm not sure that it's on i can't hear you okay good um there are specific platforms that we've already begun to use um one is called nemnet and it's a it's a hiring platform that attracts uh a diverse range of educators from around the country where we

196now have access to uh posts so we've been able to post our ap vacancies through that platform it's the first time we were able to use it uh so that's where some of the funds have been uh channeled just for uh acknowledging myself for better uh channeled uh this year and even um you know just we've been it's it's forward thinking but we've also been working on a lot this year such as that and i was able to attend a zoom-based diversity job fair just a couple weeks ago with three other administrators and we were able to screen uh over 30 candidates from diverse backgrounds who are interested in positions that have may have openings here and the idea for districts who are participating is to have the people move into the hiring process if

197they did well enough in the screening so those kind of things are already underway and we we have some things lined up in the retention area as well and and the hiring pro the actual hiring process um related to erjc and some of the recommendations that came out of there uh such as that we've we've created about a 15-minute video that's uh i've labeled hiring for excellence in catona lewisboro and it's really about anti-bias hiring practices and in short to not belabor this too much but it's really about the biases that we all bring to us humans and what that means when you are part of an interview committee and interviewing people from any background and how those biases can can interrupt your uh your perception of a candidate so we're thinking that might be

198required watching if you're part of interview committee and uh just retention practices as well i've had the opportunity to reach out to every first and second year staff member for a one-on-one interview to gauge their sense of belonging and questions such as are they permitted and to what extent do they have influence and are they permitted to have an impact in their job and those elements according to some basic some some really good cutting-edge research indicates an employee's sense of belonging and to be able to gauge that and find themes and address it as a district is really important uh and for for not just really for any candidate for for i'm sorry for any employee uh first or second year that's great yeah thank you very much for that update i really appreciate hearing

199about that my pleasure any questions or comments for neil were there any other comments or thoughts can i just ask a follow-up question neil if you could can you touch on and if you did already and i missed it i apologize but i don't think so any of the because we've heard yeah and we appreciate suggestions that we hear about particular criteria that folks would like us to be looking for in candidates can you touch on the legal parameters that we have to abide by yeah yeah no no i i actually did not touch upon that so um really that what you're referring to is that we can't discriminate in in one way or another so for example um you know you we can't do we can't hire someone because of a known or perceived

200disability and nor can we deny them employment because of a known or perceived disability or really really any kind of you can't discriminate in someone's race sex gender color their skin but again i think it goes back to the conversation of the intentionality behind broadening and deepening those candidate pools but by law no we can't discriminate one way or or another no thank you neil yeah it's an important clarification because our discrimination policy you know i think is written to speak in a forthright manner to obviously anti-discrimination but i'm not sure that it also specifically proscribes you know what might be called affirmative discrimination or that sort of thing so that's that is an important clarification yes and we checked with legal counsel as well to ensure that we were aligned and our practices were

201aligned with the law great that's helpful thank you did you have any other topics andrew or did board members have other topics or comments that they wanted to make during our or discussion here that's fine i i wanted to just raise one topic um just for our awareness and something to think about as the weather is warming and we heard tonight about the terrific student engagement after school and so many students who are staying after and engaged in meaningful programming which is terrific i think we have a unique setup whereby our secondary students can also walk off campus and i think the board is aware that earlier in the year we had a little bit of discussion in our community around a need to remind our secondary students about expectations and respectfulness at the cross

202river plaza and i know we all really value our relationship with our neighbors and our business partners in the region and um i think with omicron now having receded and more and more students being able to spend time over at the plaza which is again you know such an amazing opportunity to experience some independence and to be able to spend money with our local merchants and um you know to take advantage of the resources but i think we might also be in a period where maybe some extra attention and effort on helping our students be reminded of how important it is to treat these establishments with respect and to always um be on their best behavior and representing katona lewis pro school district with integrity and being good ambassadors for the john jay middle school

203and the john jay high school i think that would be appreciated by the merchants had occasion to have some conversation with business owners who themselves have raised their families here in the district and who have sent their children through katona lewisboro who i think you know really welcome student customers obviously but also who i think see certain times of day where um you know maybe students would also benefit from a little bit more structure or reminder about how to interact with other non-student customers and that sort of thing so i'm not sure this is something that we can solve here at the board table or as a governance team but it is a community relations issue and i know we all really value and appreciate these relationships so anything that we could be doing i

204know now we have the sro there full time at the secondary campus i don't know if you know it's an opportunity for that individual to help us out or if there's you know anything else that we can be thinking about i do also want to share that i think our administrators have done a great job being responsive to this and that was also some feedback that was shared with me that you know i think there's great awareness that everybody's doing the best they can and that these are some weird times and with the weather getting warmer we'll probably see more and more um desire for students to spend some time at the plaza so just wanted to marjorie if i could just weigh in a little bit on that as somebody who did at one

205point have a retail store that attracted a lot of students and young people um i do really appreciate your willingness and effort to um you know take it on and have a conversation in the schools but that really also needs to happen at home um and i think that it is really important in kind of the school parent partnership that maybe that message is not just you know communicated here after everyone's left but also you know just a request from parents to remind their children that you know you just can't leave your cups they're you know picked up after themselves i found that um when i did occasionally have to reach out to someone's parent that was the most effective way that i could um you know get the behavior to change yeah i really

206i think that's an excellent point and i think this really is it's a it's a community solution and and it's and it's a it's um it's just another opportunity for us to maybe improve communication around an issue that really does affect all of us um maybe it's something that we could raise awareness with parent counsel maybe it's you know i know there were assemblies for the students but maybe there are also other communications that can include outreach to parents and also you know this is a different form of communication but surveillance cameras have now been installed all throughout the cross river plaza which is something that perhaps you know community would want to know and that also will be another mechanism of notification should issues arise music is also being piped in i think in

207an effort to lower the temperature so you know there are a number of things i think in play that you know really are outside the purview of the school district but to the extent that we can all be communicating and supporting students in being great ambassadors i think that would be terrific anything else any other topics with an offer that the hockey team won tonight congratulations john jay that's great thank you andrew we were filler about steering until we until the result came in that's great um all right then let's see what's next just bear with me it looks like we are ready to look ahead to future meetings the board of education will be meeting again on saturday morning at 8 30 a.m here in the library and then we'll meet again well actually

208we'll come back to that in a second the facilities committee is meeting as was mentioned on wednesday march 2nd so that's just next week wednesday at 7. i do want to draw our attention to the rest of the future meetings for the board of education upcoming because typically we do build in quite a few opportunities for the board to deliberate the proposed budget we don't always need all of these meetings and if you look we are scheduled actually to meet as soon as just this next thursday march 3rd one week from today and i guess we might just want to pause and ask whether board members feel that it's necessary to come back we can also revisit this discussion on saturday after we've gone through the line by line yeah so maybe that's something that

209we want to just keep in the back of our minds as we go through the budget on saturday and then sustainability is going to meet on friday march 4th board of ed would be scheduled to meet again thursday march 10th 7 30 p.m finance committee 7 pm tuesday march 15th facilities wednesday march 16th 7 pm board of education again thursday march 17th and again march 24th and then friday march 25th policy committee scheduled to meet at 9 00 a.m and i don't see parent council upcoming is that because parent council just happened i just don't see it oh because it's not on here sorry thank you not a board subcommittee okay um did i miss anything else can i just add tomorrow the policy committee's meeting in a few tomorrow morning tomorrow minutes okay thank

210you that must have been on the last school's delayed we're not if it's cancelled we are got it we'll figure that out okay wait what yeah and were you to say something just i just want to have a clarification in terms of notice that if on saturday we decided to delay and not have a meeting that next thursday but have our next meeting be the 10th is there any requirement for notice about that and do we need to make that decision tonight i know in in past years we didn't meet that first thursday so that like we could ask a lot of questions on saturday and then the administration had like the week to prepare and then we met the following thursday so i don't i just don't know whether we can can't i mean

211i guess we can cancel at any time if we have something that's come up that's happened okay and that's okay i just want to make sure we meet whatever requirement there is okay great i think that brings us to 18.01 would somebody like to make a motion to adjourn thank you ilana seconded by julia all in favor please say aye aye five zero thank you so much everybody see you on saturday