001gentlemen uh welcome to the Tuesday April 18 2023 regular Board of Ed meeting uh regular edit Board of meeting for Mahopac Let's uh can I get a motion to open the meeting please second all in favor let's please rise for this Pledge of Allegiance thank you thank you we have a very busy agenda I'm going to jump right into it I'm going to turn it over to our illustrious superintendent Miss Tona good evening everyone Welcome to our meeting tonight we're very excited to have our winter athletes who have had a very successful season with us this evening so we're very proud of all of their accomplishments and at this time I'd like to invite our athletic director Steve Luciana to the podium [Applause] thank you for having me and thank you for having our athletes
002here tonight um our winter season was very successful our girls basketball team made it to the County Center I was first time since 2014 that they made it there which is a huge accomplishment and it was the first time the County Center has been open since covid so having our girls play there was a great it was great for us um we had our wrestling coach was um honored into the section one Hall of Fame our hockey coach even though our team may record wise might not have had a great season but the way they played the way they represent Maya pack here in league coach of the year honors are uh we had two wrestlers qualify for the state tournament um we had gymnasts uh qualify for the state tournament we had gymnasts qualify
003as all Americans our cheerleading team had a great performance in the section one championships they won our own maypak uh competition here um overall it was just a great season and then um if you look at the you know student athlete part of it every single one of our teams made scholar athlete teams except for two so we were very successful in the classroom as well so great job by our winter athletes and a great job by our coaches this season [Applause] uh we're gonna bring up our athletes now who um earned all League all section and All-State honors uh first we're going to begin with skiing we have James B akini all league for skiing Noah bonder all league for skiing [Applause] Jack Edwards for skiing and Victoria hertzer for skiing our cheerleaders we
004have Mia calderella who is all league in all section thank you Ariana Kenneth canariata was all league in all section [Applause] uh Isabella tiotti all league in all section [Applause] a lot of our athletes had game today too so we have a good thing is we have multi-sport athletes so it's it was tough for a lot of them to come tonight uh Juliana Greco was all league in all section [Applause] uh Lila Greco was all league in all section Kieran McDowell all league and all section [Applause] Isabella mariello all League [Applause] Brooke Platt was all League at all section [Applause] and Alexis LeBlanc was all league in all sections we have Emma long for bowling Ollie [Applause] Misha contract for all league for bowling [Applause] we have Jay cousins all league for basketball [Applause] Liam
005Scanlon was all league for basketball [Applause] we have Laura bieberman who was all league in all section might take a second for her to get up here Jess durbins will be accepting in her honor Jess why don't you stay up as well Jess Durbin's all league in all section album mentioned Piper clamber all league and all sex all three of our girls basketball players that came up here are also going to be playing College athletics uh Lauren to be going to a Delphi for basketball Josh will be playing basketball at RPI and Piper will be playing soccer at the College of Saint Rose uh we have Christina Rush Ali thank you for hockey we have John martorano all League [Applause] on to gymnastics we have Lexi castrataro who was all League all section All-American she
006qualified for the state championships we have Leah demise who is all League all section and all-americans [Applause] we have Leah grapp who is all League all section qualified for States finished Allstate I believe third place in the bars third place in the bars and was All-American great season [Applause] Riley Hughes who is all set all League all section and All-American [Applause] Caitlyn palange all League all section and earned All-American honors [Applause] and Kelsey them all League all section and also earned All American honors next we have our wrestlers we have Charles prismilski who was all League all section and also qualified for the state tournament did a great job up in Albany for us Henry Henry Ramirez all League and all section [Applause] Pace Tyler all League as an eighth grader bright future for him
007we have Joe Ramirez uh captain of our wrestling team uh All-American I mean I'm sorry all all League all section and qualified for the state tournament did a great job up in Albany Nick Greco all league in all section [Applause] actually go back Joe is actually a section one winner um in his weight class which was a very tough weight class in sechuan and Joe did a tremendous job at the section one tournament to win that foreign and Chris Morris all League all section [Applause] those are all our winners thank you so much again for having me yeah so uh all of our athletes please come up for a picture with our board thank you okay [Applause] here it is really great oh my God okay the next is an incredibly important this is the
008last budget presentation of this year we are going to the board will adopt a budget tonight which is incredibly important and on May 4th there will be the um a public hearing where you can come and ask um make comments so I'm going to hand it over to superintendentona but I'm really excited because we have the murderer's role of Administrators we're going to present and if you don't know what that reference is it's an old Yankee hitters thing but it's the murder these are the best administrators in Putnam County I'll go on record of saying that in Northern Westchester why not so I just turn it over to superintendent uh Tona thank you thank you president delullo and I agree I haven't been here for that long but I am I am honored to work
009with the administrators in this District they're terrific so tonight we're going to present our fourth budget presentation and that will include uh our building administrators presentations as well as budget adoption this evening so um throughout the past several months we've gone through the budget development process so you can see here highlighted for April 18th um these presentations this evening and as president delullo said May 4th is our budget hearing and May 16th is the budget vote and trustee election so we've shared over the past several months the budget priorities and um all of them are important tonight we're really focusing on balancing the needs of our educational program with the fiscal needs of the community and without further Ado I would like to invite our wonderful Elementary administrative team to the podium [Applause] we are
010super excited to be here tonight to be able to share all the wonderful things that are happening at the elementary level Middle School level and the high school level um and we will tell our story through pictures we're going to start with Teachers College reading and writing project this is an initiative that was unrolled four years ago and is one of our proudest ones because of the support of the board to be able to do this unroll in a way that was smart that really provided to teachers when the materials that they needed but also the professional development we enrolled it with two grade levels at a time K1 then 2-3 finally with four or five and now it's actually middle school and grade six and Mr kazakhri will be talking about the continuation of
011that as we move forward even though that we are heading into year five of this unroll there is still support that we need a lot of work teachers we're continuous Learners so we're looking to be able to support our teachers with additional coaches to be able to continue this work going on along with looking at the materials especially within classroom libraries our kids are constantly using the books reading them every day so we know there will be upkeep as we continue to move this or to be able to replace books that are being used on a daily basis and you'll see upfront Middle with our teachers part of a PD um experience that they just had a couple weeks ago to be able to know that this learning is not going for everyone so we
012thank the board for your continuous support on this enrollment and we look forward to continue as it goes on in the middle school and continues in the elementary level I now turn over to Jen pontillo the principal of Lakeview to be able to talk about a reveal math program and I can just jump in and thank Mr Gilligan our principal of Boston Road Elementary School thank you good evening everybody um so I am here to talk about reveal math this is a picture of um some pictures from family Mack Knight which was a huge success and others from math and action and classrooms this is our first year of implementing reveal it's certainly um comes with its challenges as does the first year of any new program because it does make certain assumptions that you
013had the program last year and so as teachers are teaching the units um it's kind of going under the premise that last year when those students were in the grade prior they received the scope and sequence according to the program not according to the program that we used last year so for year one we did make a commitment to implement the program with Fidelity knowing that we will need to look at our own Maya pack scope and sequence for Math and that'll be some of the work that we're looking to do next year as we're making some adjustments um one to the program to adding manipulatives and three looking at the scope and sequence with the help of the consultant that will kind of work with our math committee to take a deeper dive into
014it just to make sure that it is going you know as successfully as it can using the information that we gained from this year and now I turn it over to Michelle tween who will talk about social emotional learning [Applause] as a little bit of background we did have in from 2020 to 2021 that school year we had a team of social workers and psychologists and myself attend ruler training to implement social emotional learning as a framework we did that training and the following year we really focused on introducing that social emotional learning piece to the teachers the faculty and staff administrators and then that the the 2021-22 school year we hired a school counselor for the elementary schools who traveled from building to building she had a very tight schedule and we've reworked that
015this year so she again is traveling to all all three buildings which he's spending 13 weeks at a time at each building which is very helpful she gets kind of made a lot of connections she is working through making sure that every student in the Elementary's has access to the ruler framework is exploring um new social emotional language emotional vocabulary which is helping little people who had a really tough time all of us had a really tough time during covid and the challenges that we all faced for that social emotional piece making sure that that Wellness is brought to the classrooms every single day and we started that with the teachers now we are we continue to roll it out for the students through lessons that are brought in by the counselor and the teachers
016now have started to adopt some of those lessons into their daily routines and classroom we do hope that with the budget we have further online access to the resources we are looking to make sure that we bring on the family engagement piece so it's not just something that we're talking about at school but the families have the language that we're using so that everybody is speaking a Common Language around social emotional learning and that is really that will create better emotional mental and wellness around everything that we do at the elementary schools all through the middle school and high school as well now I introduced Mr Chadwick um [Applause] thank you Michelle said the two topics that I'm going to speak briefly about the first one being steam which is an educational acronym for science
017technology engineering art and music and currently students in Mahopac elementary schools have been receiving instruction from Mimi Murphy for the past five years and so moving forward into this budget cycle what we've done is taken a couple of positions in what we're recommending is that we have a steam teacher in each of the three elementary schools so that the students we in theory are getting three times the amount of steam instruction as they currently are and we don't need to pack up materials and move from school to school to school over the course of the Year and that every teacher in every student would get Triple the the instruction and also have one person designated to deliver that structure in the building on a daily and weekly basis the second thing is science 21 science
01821 to give you a little background on that 19 96 when I was teaching fourth grade there was a science New York State Science assessment so from 1996 1996 until present day that assessment has changed absolutely zero and so what we are doing is planning for the future this is the first year since I've been in the field of Education that fourth graders will not be taking a New York state Science assessment and we are in the preparation phase for this assessment which will be in fifth grade beginning next year it will be strictly computer-based testing and part of the preparation that we're doing is the investigations which are a number of Hands-On um lab slash experiments that need to happen in both third fourth and fifth grade so that all the students have the
019necessary experiences so that they are prepared for that assessment kind of like the number of seat minutes in lab minutes that you would need on the secondary level in order to sit for a Regents exam I'm now going to turning it over to Mrs blessing hi everyone said so there we go so as you can see in the pictures on this Slide the libraries at Austin Road and Fulmer Road are currently go undergoing some construction and renovation as part of the capital project the work that has been done so far is absolutely amazing this just gives you a little sneak peek actually there's actually more progress since these pictures have been added but this is to just give you a little preview of what's to come the new design of this space is going to
020provide our students and our staff with an environment where collaboration and exploration are at the Forefront the design includes an open floor plan flexible seating and also breakout rooms with that being said the addition of a library media specialist at Austin Road a shared library media specialist at Austin Road and Fulmer Road are a central part of this budget we feel that the addition of this person this teacher will just be instrumental in the exploration the collaboration and just supporting our teachers in the area of curriculum design technology and of course accessing the best books that our kids can have to support curriculum and also for enjoyment um construction at Lakeview hasn't quite started yet but it is planning to we are planning to start that this summer and we are currently getting ready for
021that I'm just reading through our books finding the books that we want to keep and discarding the books that we no longer need that are probably 30 plus years old um so that kind of just sums up our presentation as you can see at the elementary level we have a lot of great things going on in the areas of math reading Ela um social emotional learning and then also our capital projects that are really going to just transform each of our schools to make them more modern and really exciting places to be thank you very much okay thank you to our elementary team and at this time I'd like to invite Mr kozakria Middle School principal to the podium [Applause] thank you very much superintendent and school board thank you Elementary administrators uh I'm going
022to talk a little bit tonight about the middle school and the amazing things that are going on there at the middle school um as a middle school administrator and anyone that works in the middle school we know one of our main things is Bridge all three levels of Education together from the elementary to the middle to the high school and a lot of the things that are going on at the middle school are now carrying over to going on at the elementary schools it's not carrying over to the middle schools the first of those is the reader's Writers Workshop as Mr Gilligan mentioned it was started four years ago at the middle school at the elementary school and is now carried over to the Middle School this year this was our first year of implementing
023it at the middle school starting with our sixth grade uh our sixth grade uh it was something that was thought about and talked about over the last few years and done in a very strategic way as Mr Gilligan said um really thought out on from the book ordering to how we are go we were going to get professional development to our teachers um to how we were going to implement it to our students some of the pictures here you could see our teachers hard at work not only throughout the school year but coming in over the summer to prepare their libraries to have a true understanding of what their lessons were it was helpful having it at the elementary school for the last several years and it helped in the way that our students understood
024coming into the middle school readers Writers Workshop and what exactly those lessons looked like we're excited for next year in seventh we'll be implementing it in the seventh grade next year and we thought this was a really strategic way to do it rather than just putting it in all three grades at one time but instead doing it one grade level at a time making sure our teachers understood it and our our students also had a good understanding of the reader's Writers Workshop and some of the chains that were going to go on in their reading and writing courses a second area that the middle school has been working on is our accelerated courses in the middle school we offer two uh courses that end in a regions and those are living environment and algebra um
025due to some of the work being done at the elementary school and at the middle school we were looking at ways to give opportunity for our middle school students to take some of those courses in the previous year in our current eighth grade there are 25 percent of our students that are taking algebra after taking a look of how can we increase that being again strategic thinking about how we what's most important is that our students are successful we have raised the amount of students that are taking the accelerated course to 36 percent that's an 11 increase of seventh graders that are taking that same accelerated course and will be able to take algebra in the uh in the eighth grade next year uh the third area that I'm going to touch on has to
026do with the steam program as Miss blessing was talking about earlier and and the things that we're doing there we have the Gateway program that is in the middle school at this time and that's a program that is the Middle School equivalent to Project Lead the Way uh Dr Lawrence's program at the high school for engineering um so by implementing the Gateway program it gave students some of those skills that when they get up to the high school and are able to take the engineering courses but we thought it was important not only do we just uh implement the Gateway program but that we continue some of that traditional technology and steam have become such an important fight part of our middle um that we do offer it to all three grade levels of our
027Middle School our sixth seventh and eighth grade get it and from some of the traditional things they do like an egg drop a uh a box oven track cars um which are some of the pictures that you see over here the bottom right being the track car and learning some of the traditional working with woodwork working with simple tools so that they can go home they can work on some of the things that um you can't add a household but not only that but talking about some of the science engineering math skills that are so important for today and some of those things that they're learning about injured where we went renewable energy micro bit and snap circuits tinkercad designings homes using tinkercad and puzzle cubes using 3D printers would you like me to continue
028with it or just wait to see you get get it going okay there we go all right savior's over here thank you very much thank you all right so as I was saying so melting the two of a traditional woodwork using tools working with tools building things using making race cars um making some uh egg drop box ovens and now not only that but using our uh steam technology the information they're learning in elementary school as uh Mr Chadwick said for Mimi Murphy and now carrying it over to the science and engineering courses that we're doing at the middle school to do things like renewable energy uh micro bit and snap circuits tinkercad designing homes using tinkercad which you can see over there puzzle cubes and the use of 3D printers so it's pretty amazing
029the wide range of things that our students are doing in their technology classes all right so looking at the enhancements for the budget this year and some things that we are looking forward to implementing at the middle school next year include the readers Writers Workshop as I said in the seventh grade and bringing it up one more grade and then a social worker um Miss blessing touched on some of the I actually I'm sorry um touched on some of the social and emotional needs that that the uh children have had since coming back from covet and we do see a lot of that and do think it's really important having an extra social worker in the school and giving opportunities for children to have a place to go to talk about some of those needs
030is really really important and then finally some of the enhancements that are coming through the capital project as we know the capital project was voted on and passed several years ago the middle school got to see a great new parking lot out there where it could fit more Cars and Cars can come in and out much more safely as well as a beautiful turf field that is now over at the middle school our students are able to get out there for recess a lot more often a lot of the time it was often muddy out in that field and we couldn't really get them out even days after it rained now we try to get the kids out there as much as possible due to that turf field some of the things that are going
031to be going into the middle school this year is our beloved planetarium that if anyone that went through Maya pack uh and and went through Mahopac middle school that is generally the first thing they remember and the first memory they talk about and it has been a sad to tell them that it is no longer in use and hasn't been for several years years but we are replacing that making it a mini mini theater for our students to go into a place for uh presentations a place for uh students to present for presenters to come in and talk to small groups uh groups of about 80 students in all which we are really really excited for um and if you ever been into the middle school it's certainly an area that can be really really
032useful for our students along with that we are getting a new library media room and moving a little bit away from that traditional library and getting a more that uh one that is more updated with uh in a media type of way and how students use a library at this time along with that we have a big steam lab that'll be put into uh into one of our rooms and finally I think the kid when the kids are most excited about the cafeteria upgrades and new selections for meals from them I know that got them the most excited stuff we are really really excited for these upgrades and these things that are going to go on in our building throughout the summer thank you very much thank you Mr casabria and now I'd like to
033invite Dr Lawrence our high school principal to the podium foreign [Applause] okay we're present board vice president superintendentona thanks for the invitation uh always very very excited and welcome to come and and talk to you a little bit about what's going at the high school and and thinking about what to put together in terms of a budget presentation I'm like a kid in the candy store because there are so many things happening here at the high school to talk about and programs that we're putting in place and initiatives that we're putting in place I really struggled on what I was going to highlight in five to seven minutes but the most important thing for me to in terms of the lens that I'm looking at is programming is the heart of a stable school right
034when we talk about when we talk about successful schools programming and courses that are aligned or the center of the of our students experience and when we have these things in common the students have these things in common and the teachers have them in common it unifies the school building so the presentation tonight is focused on things that we've been able to do thanks to the board support and the community support through and most of the things I want to talk about is celebrations of our students celebrations of our of our teachers as well and things that we have coming up on the horizon so first and foremost we've had MHS life for quite some time now um and one of the new additions that we had this year is that we're able to do
035a team building exercise at BOCES for our incoming ninth graders Focus completely on unifying them as a group introducing them to the core values of Mahopac High School and having them spend a lot of time with their MHS life teachers so they're the teachers that they would have an MHS life ran the ran the um the groups at BOCES the students had a tremendous experience every time the students came back there were three different groups I personally met with them here and got their feedback about their experience and quizzed them on how they were implementing the core values of the high school during their time at BOCES and it was really a great kick off to the school year so we're really happy to have that addition at the start of this school year so
036that's the second phase of our MHS Life program the third phase right now is that we're we're all year long the climate committee has been working on a Grade 9 mentorship program so that is in progress we're we're hoping to have a model to put forward for this coming school year not a full-scale model but but a trial model for us to see the the you know the Kinks and the things that we need to work on but again the focus would be for our incoming ninth graders to have a a faculty Mentor throughout their throughout their ninth grade experience so very very exciting and I think it's important to support our our ninth graders obviously as they as they come up we had many opportunities this year and it's one of the great things
037about about the high school is we're it's the culminating event for for the district and these students are well prepared to be our voice at the high school and they've done an amazing job in doing various presentations they if you remember our pltw or Engineering Group did a presentation of our new engineering space for you amazingly eloquent and very very detailed and I think they gave you gifts as well uh which was tremendous we had a a new a new initiative this year because our parents didn't get a chance to see the renovations that were done during the bond you know because of because of the obvious closure so we put together a MHS parent tours completely student run we had about 40 45 people show up parents and prospective students middle school students and
038some students that are going to private schools that are considering coming to Mahopac High School broke them up into groups and our students LED them around the school building to the various areas that were renovated where they were met by their fellow students most of them were Honor Society students in in that in that um in that core subject and the students the Honor Society students explained the impact of the renovations in the science classrooms uh in the engineering space in a library media space in the music space um perform in the music area they performed um some some songs for for the visitors uh they just did an amazing job and as principles it's great to watch our students take ownership of this building ownership of their experience and just be so just be
039so eloquent about it and specific about it and genuine genuinely explain the impact of the programming here at the high school for them personally and as they are thinking about the future a couple other program highlights we had the honor of having our wise program come and present to you which is a huge program here at the high school as you know and I already mentioned our pltw presentation some of our student celebrations again are it's the the the the culminating event for our kids and in in specifically in science and in music there are County State and National platforms for them to put themselves out there our science research and our our musicians every single year make a huge Splash and we should be very proud of it this year we had eight of
040our MHS musicians named to area Allstate that means the best in Putnam Northern Westchester we had three of our high school students named conference Allstate which means best in New York state and we actually had one of our musicians who presented to the New York State band directors conference so uh the band director's conference is a professional development opportunity for teachers and one of our students presented to the teachers at that conference so again um a testament to the programming here our science students every single year present amazingly well at the various um the science competitions the regeneron high school membership program we have one student win that six week full-time internship the Eastern Junior science Humanities symposium three of our students were given that award nine of our students got the weissf award winners
041eight of our nine students won awards for a total of nine Awards during that competition that the ycef is the the biggest science competition in in Westchester part of Northern Westchester to have nine of our students walk away with Awards is a huge huge accomplishment four of our students selected for a STEM related New York State scholarships and switching over to the College Board two of our students were named nationally commended students again all as a result of all the great stuff happening here and the support of the board and our our budgets some of the celebrations of our teachers which is always great to point out we have two of our teachers named New York State Master Teachers this year Kelly Posh was one of our Math teachers and Jen Calder is one of
042our science teachers and two more of our teachers have applied to the New York State Master teacher program just speaks to the to the professionalism the drive the focus of our instructional staff here so I know I know when I went to high school um you kind of just got your courses right what's that phrase you you get what was that you get what you get you don't get upset um and modern day high schools have the ability and are encouraged to offer programming where our students can have themed transcripts themed resumes as they move through their High School experience it's amazingly powerful when our students are able to have a theme to show a theme to a college admissions office in their transcript so so just to point out a couple of our Pathways
043and our themes obviously our engineering program 60 of our students over the last three years I've gone into the have declared engineering as a major we have project risk taker which is a very Advanced program offered for our for a select group of 10th graders the students travel as a cohort they take Algebra 2 honors they take College engineering and honors physics for engineering they have the same teachers they travel as a court as I explained and the teachers actually co-teach in the classroom so the students get the opportunity and the experience to see how these disciplines are all interrelated Math Science and then the production phase in engineering again through the support of the board and the community or budget this program is possible it's been outstanding our second year of it now this
044coming school year we're adding a fifth course for into our business track business calculus obviously we're going to continue our wise internships every single one of our cores or World languages and arts have National Honor Society accreditation that's a big deal again the these accreditations the ability to have these honor societies all help our students to theme their resumes and theme their transcripts for when they apply to colleges so things to come as we're looking forward to next school year the intent of impact I'm not going to I'm not going to go too deeply but one of the guiding principles of the decision making for the administrative team and our department chairs um is centered around the research of John Hattie and John John Hattie is an educational researcher who I'm not going to go
045to Jesus video but talks about the the variables that impact student learning um and one of them the primary the primary impactor is the actual intent of the teacher when the teacher walks into the room uh and the intent of the student sitting there but it applies to the administration in educational leadership so everything that we have that we've done over the last six years has been focused on an intent what is it that we're trying to accomplish right so we're trying for the for the next school year in recognizing now a second very popular major that our students are going into being the field of Education we have 85 students over the last three years declare a major in education a huge Testament again to their experience here at the Mahopac schools their interactions
046with their teachers the programming that they receive so we're looking to add a pathway for for students um that would again help them theme their transcript if they're looking to to declare a major in education increased student interest in the field and affect their programming and prepare them for the wise internship so we're looking at moving into uh or creating a human behavior a child development course for education and that will be as the discussions are happening now for 10th graders a course called topics in English composition the social or in or topics in social studies back with instructional methodologies so the idea there and all of us who had been through an educational program you typically get a topics of course right where you have to devise instructional methodologies to relay that to relay
047that content so we're putting together a course that would mimic that college course to give that Stu to give the students an opportunity to experience what that is like um and then obviously we have all of our students who move into wise internships in the field of education so again the intent of impact is to Foster our students interest in the field of Education to prepare more Educators for the future and to give them this opportunity on this pathway we're pretty excited about it again intent of impact to increase elective offerings decrease study halls and building an AIS for Math and English for our incoming 9th graders so this coming school year the and the scheduling is already underway our ninth graders will have now two English electives three social studies electives and one math
048elective that they haven't had in previous years so this coming in incoming ninth grade ninth grade class is going to have an opportunity to pick up another credit in their freshman year more choices for them and we also want to support our incoming ninth graders who are not not as successful as they they could have been maybe um in eighth grade math or 8th grade ELA so for our students who were not successful in grade 8 math or Ela they're going to be automatically enrolled in what we're calling a fundamentals of course so fundamentals of math fundamentals of English in addition to their Core math class so their core algebra class and their ninth grade English to offer further support to help them be more successful as they move forward and if we have some
049students who weren't successful in either math or English we're going to give them both fundamentals of math fundamentals of English and we're just going to have to do some creative scheduling offering the math opposite these science labs and I know all of you have seen this and I'm not going to go over every little bit of it but it's just so important and we as as as the educational Community here um K through 12 ought to take some time to look at it and be amazingly proud um feel very fortunate that our students are able to meet this level of success year after year after year the primary reason obviously comes from the families that we serve their focus on education our great instructional staff our wonderful students and the support of the community and
050the board in in helping us with get the items in the budget that we need to make all these things possible thank you all very much thank you Dr Lawrence and thank and thank our administrators that are here with us this evening like they demonstrated tonight we we have so many wonderful programs to offer throughout the district and this budget will only enhance them and provide additional opportunities for our students so we're very excited about the possibilities ahead so um this slide shows budget highlights and curriculum and instruction of which many were mentioned this evening the next slide talks about special education and student support highlights in the budget including additional content special classes at the high school in content areas Mr kozukriya mentioned a social worker at the middle school an additional 812 Elementary
051class A board-certified behavior analyst a transition counselor which is very much needed for our high school age students in special education as they move out of the high school and Beyond so we're looking to fund that position through a Federal Grant and we'd like to expand unified Athletics currently we have a basketball program and we'd like to expand that to include bowling which will provide additional opportunities for our special needs students and some highlights in athletics facilities and transportation Athletics we're looking to create a girls ice hockey and a boys swim program through mergers with other districts an assistive coach for field hockey and girls volleyball because their numbers have increased based on interest looking at facilities there's quite a few items included in the budget many of which will be the work will be
052done in-house because we have such a talented buildings and ground staff some that would be would require us to go with outside vendors include looking at our high school gymnasium floor doing a sand and refinish and abatement and flooring replacement of various classrooms throughout the district in transportation an additional bus garage lift because we maintain our own Fleet and an additional Transportation dispatcher so that we have coverage in uh dispatch so people can communicate with the transportation office throughout the entire day uh you've heard me speak about in previous presentations about our Administration restructure which is technically budget neutral so those positions include the renaming of our assistant superintendent for business to the assistant superintendent for finance and operations currently we have our interim assistant superintendent here with us and we're in the process of
053hiring a permanent assistant superintendent for the 2324 school year a director of special education last year we had an additional assistant superintendent for pupil Personnel Services and Technology when that person left the district it was not replaced this year instead we brought on an interim director of special education that's Miss Gatto she'll be with us next year as well but that is a new line of director of special education in the budget we're looking to reconfigure our other administrators that support special ed so we're looking to include an assistant director for special education and we currently have two administrators for special education one in elementary and one in secondary as I mentioned the assistant superintendent for pupil personnel and technology that was a big job that oversaw two very large departments so with uh not
054replacing that position we're looking to add a director of Technology we are also looking to eliminate a contract consultant that will help us fund that position we have a K-12 administrator currently and that individual is going to become our administrator for safety security and compliance we think it's very necessary to have a point person that will pull all of our safety resource Personnel together be a point of contact for all of us in the district along and with our outside agencies that support us between Putnam County Sheriff's Office and town of Carmel Police Department and a dedicated assistant principal at each Elementary School currently you saw Dr tween and Mrs blessing this evening and Dr tween is at Austin Road and Mrs blessing is shared between former Road and Lakeview so we are looking to
055have a third assistant principal so that each of our elementary schools have a dedicated one and this slide I showed I think in our second budget presentation first or second about your presentation shows the dollar amount of our most recent positions on the left and our plan for the 23-24 school year and you can see in essence it's budget neutral and as we looked at this even deeper we realized there's probably a savings here because the positions on the left if those positions were to continue to next year they would have contractual increases which would bring their projected costs higher than what our projected cost is in the budget right now on the right and then this slide you've seen before but this is updated to include our March 31st enrollment numbers so district-wide we're
056projecting a decrease of 46 students but when you look at them across the buildings and then across grade levels 46 students is not enough to really see any Personnel savings there because the students are on all different grade levels so the next slide shows currently we have 76 sections in our elementary schools between General Ed classes and our integrated co-teaching classes and we are projecting the same number of sections for next year so no increase and no decrease now as we look at the budget you can see our proposed expenditures in this pie chart here and just about 80 percent of the expenses in the budget are towards salary and benefits and that's typical in all school districts because in order to educate students you need people to do that work and to support our
057students so the the bulk of our budget is in salaries and benefits and here you see a budget summary based on that pie chart but now you see a little more detail you see the dollar amount budget for the current year as well as the 23-24 school year and the difference in each so we are looking we're proposing a 137 million 960 937 budget which is an increase of almost five and a half million dollars and the budget components there are three components that the state requires all school districts to share with the public an administrative component a program component and a capital component and you can see in the yellow what is included in each of those components so in the administrative component that includes administrative salaries and benefits any related office staffing to
058support those administrators Board of Education expenses the Board of Education our all here as volunteers but there are expenses that go with uh holding meetings um as well as legal expenses auditing expenses Insurance our BOCES administrative and capital expenses and data processing costs all of that falls under Administration administrative component the program component is our instruction so that includes instructional salaries and benefits materials and supplies guidance Health Services BOCES programs into Scholastic Sports extracurricular programs and transportation Transportation so basically that program component is everything involved with our students and that's why when you see the three components program is the largest and the third component is capital and that includes our facilities maintenance and operations any transfer to Capital and any Debt Service payments so this next slide we look at our proposed Revenue the
059money that we're taking in to support the budget so the largest part of the pie is the property tax levy at 68.7 percent of all of our revenues and then State eight is next at 26.9 percent of Revenue and then here you see the actual dollar amounts that make up that 137 million nine hundred sixty thousand nine hundred thirty seven dollar budget so you could see the increase in uh state aid the increase in the property tax levy and all of the other categories that provide Revenue to us so that we can fund the entire school budget and this slide you've seen before this is our projected state aid amounts as well as our current state aid amounts so the second column after you have all of the different categories of Aid that come in
060with our state aid numbers the next column shows our current state aid budget and the middle column there is our Governor's projection and the last column is our state aid projection and some of those numbers are not exactly the same as the governor's proposal we do a conservative estimate because some of the lines the government provides us with a projection but it's actually based on usage so we don't know our usage until the school year ends and we don't want to get into the next school year and then find out that we didn't use everything that was budgeted in that particular area and we won't get it all the state aid that's due to us and then we would have a budget shortfall so we budget conservatively on a state aid to avoid being uh
061to facing any shortfall in the future so if you look there's two uh rows at the bottom total Aid and total Aid less Pre-K so we're using the total Aid less Pre-K numbers um Pre-K is something that the state provides state aid on for Universal pre-k program and here in Mahopac we have not had a universal pre-k program in the past uh or in the recent past and so we are looking to explore that for the 24-25 school year so there's a lot of steps that have to go uh into play before we can make that a reality but we are looking into that in the next school year for implementation in 24 25. this slide shows our different reserves so school districts are allowed to put money in reserve in case it's needed in
062the future it's important to have these reserves so if something um unforeseen should happen for example if we look at teachers retirement system or employees retirement system if those costs should project higher at some point in the future we could pull from those reserves for that specific purpose to help us in the budgeting process I just want to mention the third line reserved for tax reduction we are going to be applying 182 134 dollars from that Reserve as part of our our appropriated fund balance usage which helps us in the revenue category to meet the expenses of our school budget and I also want to point out the reserve for the tax tertiary at the very bottom is at almost seven and a half million dollars and that is strategic because we do know that
063there is an issue with the reservoirs within our school district that there may be some tax liabilities placed upon the district in the next couple of years and this tax tertiary Reserve will be able to help us meet those liabilities should they come to fruition in the next couple of years and this slide is the formula to determine the tax levy limit so the limit is actually 3.71 percent so we could go out to the community the board could adopt the budget with a 3.71 tax tax levy increase that is not what we're looking at but that is the the highest amount that the board could adopt and then this slide shows us the proposed budget of 137 million nine hundred sixty thousand nine hundred thirty seven dollars which is a budget to budget increase
064of 4.15 percent and there you can see the tax levy at a 2.81 tax levy so that is much less than the 3.71 percent which we are allowed to Levy and um it's actually eight hundred thirty six thousand four hundred seventy eight dollars less than the maximum Levy that's allowable and here you see a budget and tax levy history over the past five years so I'd like you to take notice of the second column on consumer price index I thought that was interesting when you look back at 2019 20 20 21 and 21 22 school years CPI was quite very much lower than it is now and those budget to budget increases in the fourth column were also quite low where if you look at the current school year 4.7 was the CPI last year
065and it's eight percent right now and our budget to budget increases are higher and that makes sense just like at home when we open up our electric bills we see that there's increases the oil bills there's increases because of the of CPI and the state of the economy so a lot of the school budget expenses also have increases this year that are higher than in other years so you can see uh the seconds of the last column are actual tax levy amount and the column before that what the allowable amount was so we have um in three of the five years where we've levied less than the allowable amount and the other two years at the exact allowable Levy limit which was uh a lower allowable amount than this current year and then the last
066column shows the difference so that's the amount of money that was not levied to the residents in the community that first half a minute on the last line so so well I I just want to point out we're asking the community for 2.81 CPI is at eight the budget percentage that has gone up is 4.5 which is under CPI and we are almost what was it eight hundred thousand dollars under the allowable limit so I just want to point that out so if you actually graph this out you can see what a tremendous saving well just a lot less than we than we could have gone up to but a lot very much a lot less than the CPI thank you thank you and and we didn't propose anything higher than that 2.81 because when
067we got the input from all of our administrators when we were creating the budget we were able to create a budget that met the needs of the school district provided opportunities for the students at a levy that was less than the allowable so we were very mindful of trying to provide our students with everything possible and I'm also mindful of of where we are financially with the community so this slide shows the estimated tax levy impact both monthly and annually and again this is an estimate um in the town of Carmel with the current proposed budget we're looking at a 24.40 per month increase in taxes for the residents of the town of pot Valley at 24.41 so these estimates we work with the assessor's office in both of those towns we get the information
068from them and they've indicated that these assessments will be changing final tax rates will be won't be determined until August so these are estimates and we also have to be mindful that the board recently adopted exemptions for increased exemptions for our veterans for our senior citizens and persons with disabilities and instituted um the exemption for our volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers so the town does not have that information for us yet so we will have that for the fall um when we're actually uh determining the final levy on on all of the residents and we have to include a slide about a contingency budget should the budget fail and we need to go to contingency we would only be able to Levy the exact tax levy that's levied in 2223 so we would have to
069reduce the proposed budget by two million five hundred eighty nine thousand six hundred sixty two dollars and in a contingent budget you can see there the areas listed that will be looked at um in order to make that more than two and a half million dollar reduction there will also be a separate proposition on the ballot for additional uh for the purchase of additional buses for our students for transportation so we're looking at eight 65 passenger buses that have air conditioning at a cost of one hundred sixty thousand six hundred seven dollars each and we're looking to continue our bus replacement plan we've replaced 40 buses so far since we put that plan in place and um we keep our buses on the road they they have an average of 80 000 miles and over
07010 years of service so it's smart budgeting to have a plan in place where we can replace buses on a regular basis so that we don't find ourselves in a position where our entire fleet needs to be updated all at once because that would be a huge huge uh cost implication so how does this budget benefit our students you can see here and from our conversations this evening with our administrators we're looking to expand our commitment to steam education for our students from kindergarten through 12th grade we're supporting mental health providing social worker at the middle school very much needed we're continuing to provide our students with outstanding opportunities and art music extra extracurricular activities and Athletics we're looking to provide a library media specialist at the elementary level to support our brand new library
071media centers that we're very excited about and we're continuing our commitment to Transportation safety through the purchase of additional buses as part of a replacement plan so next steps May 4 is our budget hearing um May 20 throughout May and actually starting tomorrow I'll be presenting the budget at PTO meetings faculty meetings and different Community organizations throughout the district and on May 16th the budget vote trustee election is at here at the high school from 6 a.m to 9 pm if you'll be away on May 16th this slide talks about where you can go to get an absentee ballot and then the Board of Education trustee election there are three vacancies on the board of education and the following the candidates listed on the slide will appear on the ballot and three of those candidates
072the ones receiving the highest number of votes will serve three-year terms beginning with the 2023-2024 school year all right board of education do you have any questions all right thank you thank you and again I want to thank the uh the administrators for coming out uh to show us I think it's great that we did this and we should have you guys no joke here until you guys come out and talk about your uh your buildings and your programs um more than once a year so thanks again and thanks to miss Tona for talking for about 30 minutes straight here so thank you all right so moving on um next is Communications comments on the agenda items uh Miss Lorac I don't think we have any correct no no okay so now we're gonna go
073to the finance portion I'm going to um motion to accept a bunch of reports uh does anyone before I do that does anybody have any questions before I do that or comments no yes okay motion to accept um I should I'm going to do them separately all right motion to let me do them all in one shot I can't do that okay thank you motion to accept the treasures report February 2023. second please all in favor motion to accept the warrants February a second please all in favor motion to accept revenue report reports February 2023 second please or a favor uh motion to accept the budget transfers February 2023 second please all in favor motion to accept claims audit report February 2023 on sorry second please uh all in favor aye work session minutes these
074are the minutes from last month motion to accept the work session minutes of March 16 second please all in favor motion to accept the regular minutes of March 21st 2023 second please all in favor thank you all right now I get to talk for a minute and now we go back to miss toner with the superintendent report thank you presidential so uh you may have heard that today the State Board of Regents voted unanimously to ban the use of Native American mascots team names and logos in public schools during its morning session today in Albany so a document has been released with items shared during the public comment period that was uh start at the end of December ran for two months and each of those public comments are outlined in this document with responses
075from the Board of Regents ultimately each of those comments from and responses from the Board of Regents say no changes to the proposed rule are necessary so I would like to thank the many community members who contributed public comments because the document does mention Mahopac quite a few times that multiple Mahopac residents Express sentiments so I'll get that document up on the website if anyone wants to look at it but you can also find it through the New York State education department um if you put in April mascot you probably probably come up in a search so several items from the document include they talked about the appropriateness of logos that contain a feather and that it should be evaluated in context they're just saying that when school districts had an indigenous logo and mascot
076already that it's in their opinion it's difficult for us to continue with any Native American imagery and the department is not anticipating that any team names logos or mascots that contain vestiges of prohibited T names logos or mascots will be considered acceptable they also um something that they added was that they do not recommend the destruction or altercation of historical artifacts such as photographs trophies or banners so that's encouraging that we can keep some of our history alive and the intent of the regulation is and this I'm reading this all from the state's document the intent of the regulation is not to pretend that indigenous mascots were never used but to eliminate their use going forward so um that sounds encouraging that we have a lot of artifacts for things that we're proud of from
077from years past that we can still uh keep those on display with respect to extensions of time so the the state has already said that districts have to the boards have to adopt a resolution to change the mascot by June 30th of 2023 but that districts have until June 30th of 2025 to make all of the changes um around the district to to remove items that need to be removed or changed but they did add that with respect to extensions of time school districts can request an extension of deadlines uh based upon a showing of good cause so school districts that require additional time May utilize this process I can't guarantee that it would be approved but it does give us an option to request additional time if that's needed uh the state says that
078additional guidance will be forthcoming with more specifics um but we do have a wonderful committee that is made up of students as well as community members yesterday we met our second committee meeting so we are making progress in narrowing down mascot choices based on input from the community each of the community members have been encouraged to go out and talk to families friends neighbors that are in the district to get input and we're looking to narrow the choices down to three so that our students on May 16th during the school day will be able to vote on those three options so we're very focused on coming up with potential mascots and rationale to go with it so that when we present to the students and the community the committee has provided a reason for why
079that mascot was selected so um at the May meeting we the budget vote is the evening or the day of May 16th on May 17th we have a work session with the Board of Education and the regular meeting is on Thursday May 18th and student members of the mascot selection committee will present to the board of education on May 18th and then the Board of Education I believe you want to take an additional month and and deliberate and think about it and then the resolution would have to be on the agenda for the June meeting upcoming events that are not mascot related include the high school spring musical of Shrek on April 27 28th and 29th so looking forward to that and our students in grades three through eight will be taking their English language
080arts assessment New York State Assessment program this week and their math assessment during the first week of May letters have gone home to families with specific information and this Friday evening is the high school junior prom so we wish all of our Junior students a wonderful evening and tonight in our audience I'd like to welcome Jeffrey Cole who's on the agenda this evening as our new assistant director for special education so welcome Mr Cole [Applause] thank you okay all right so next is the committee reports as I've said many times we have um committees going on during the month and we will read out the reports the first one is the HR committee so I turn over to VP our vice president Adam Savino for that report thank you president good evening everyone the HR
081commitment on April 11th from 6 30 till about 8 o'clock present where myself trustee massafra president delullo superintendent Tona and assistant superintendent for Human Resources Miss legato we discussed uh majority was on human resources agenda as was Tony mentioned one of our newest hires is in the audience tonight to be voted on later or to be brought up later we discussed numerous resignations and we also went over the the current openings in the district office as well as the administrative team that's pretty much over and over um the details are contained on the the agenda for tonight that can be discussed in public so with that I'll turn it back to president well thank you thank you Adam okay next is uh uh finance committee with that I'll turn over turn it over to trustee
082Jonathan Schneider Jonathan if you could give us a report the finance committee met um April 9th at 6 PM in the district office president Moore trustees Schneider software Savino delulo as well as superintendentona and the internment assistant superintendent of business Howe no others were present we began with a budget presentation committee reviewed the superintendent's budget and as it was presented today we did a line by line budget review where the committee was provided the opportunity to review the budget with backup available assistant superintendent Hal as well as superintendent Sona were able to answer all questions and concerns presented at that time and the recommendation is that it was moved forward here to the board for a vote for approval tonight reviewed the claims warrants and treasurer's reports through the committee and those reports were placed
083on the agenda for our voting meeting tonight we closed the meeting at 8 35 pm and the next committee meeting will be May 11 2023 at 6 pm at the district office thank you very much okay next is policy that will turn it over to senior trustee Miss Lucy massafra good evening everyone uh the policy committee met on March 23rd and in attendance was myself as chair of policy trustees president Ben delulo vice president Adam Savino and trustee Tana McCracken in addition one superintendent Christine Tona and assistant superintendent Mike Trombley and a district clerk Melody larocca some of the things that we just discussed that evening we reviewed policy 3420 which has to do with the nomination and the election of our Board office officers we had several discussions regarding the process and trustee Tanner
084McCracken recommended a policy that would incorporate the President and Vice President process when they are nominated at the ryog meeting in July at present was attorney and he was concerned that there were some language in there that if someone nominated was not present that they needed to make some changes the process of the selection was further discussed and language provided was discussed and the first reading is on tonight's consent agenda the second thing that we did talk about was a board member configuration our board president Ben delulo brought recommendations to the committee regarding a reduction in board members from nine to seven it was discussed that perhaps a board of seven members would incorporate more effective and more efficient meetings the committee had different insights and felt that a limit of chances of field experts
085decrease in numbers marginalized opinions and the next steps was for the board president to present this to the full board which was at a work session last Thursday another item we reviewed was the review of the federal law on obscenity and this was a question to how attorneys pertaining to library material and the attorneys assured us that the law does not uh pertain to these book Library material another policy we discussed was residency policy requirements we discussed out policies regarding residency nisbah has a policy and next month we were going to review it accordingly more to come on that then we also reviewed former policy 1510 which is regular board meetings and rules uh we will be reviewing this policy and determine what is local and what is required regulation and provide committee with more
086information the next policy commit meeting uh we close at 8 39 that evening and our next meeting is on April 27th at 7 30 pm thank you thank you Mr Steve Mustafa very thorough we did not have a ad hoc meeting since our last uh board meeting so we don't have a report there trustee McCracken wants to send his apologies for not being here he is hard at work trying to get the budget passed if you're if you're paying attention the budget will not likely be passed this week they're still hard at work and there's some still some stumbling walks and uh Tanner gave me an update about the uh the free launch that is gaining momentum and may get may get some may get finally finally passed but just keep tuned in uh to
087that so thank you everybody for the updates all right next is a donation once in a while we get donations I'm going to call on vice president Adam Savino to tell us about the donation be resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the Board of Education hereby accepts the March 30th Anniversary donation from AAA carding for 1 500 to be used by the Lakeview Elementary school PTO I offer this in the form of emotion how can I get a motion promotion oh that's the most all right I'll second it why not you can't go over here okay all in favor aye thank you very much ben I did I don't usually get to do it all right um now uh drum roll pretty please we're going to move on to the the motion
088to approve uh the budget I'm going to ask for a motion and then I'm going to also ask if anybody has if anyone has any commentary so can I get a motion to approve the budget and I'll read it uh let me read it resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools that the board of education does hereby approve of the budget for the 2023-2024 school year in the amount of 137 million 960 and I get a motion to approve does anyone have any questions any comments can we do a roll call yeah yeah we can do that but does anyone want to say anything I've already said all right so let's do a roll call second please all right let's do a roll call vote please let's go tell you what let's start
089I usually start on that Jonathan why don't you go first uh yes all right this is offer uh so I just want to say as we approve the budget tonight I am a member of the finance committee and the finance committee as a trustee Schneider said we thoroughly reviewed each line of this budget we started at a tax delivery at 3.71 and when many discussions came down to the 2.81 tax Lobby I wish we could have found additional savings but we were informed by our administrators to continue programs and keep class sizes as is that this was a solid budget at this time I am improving this budget but now it is up to the community to decide when everyone votes on May 16th thank you thank you Adam yes okay I vote Yes uh
090Melody does all right motion carries very good okay second is the motion and I get a motion to approve the bus proposition for 20 20 23 2024 school year uh second oh let's do a roll call okay let's start on this side please uh trustee Martinez oh wait wait tell you what I'm sorry let me read it first oh I got to do my job here it's gonna get the big bucks uh resolve at the board of education of the Mahopac Central School District is hereby authors authorized to purchase various school buses vehicles and related equipment by for use by the district and to expend their thereof including preliminary costs and costs incidental thereto and to the financing thereof and amount not to exceed the estimated total cost of one million three hundred thousand B
091that attacks is hereby voted in the aggregate amount of not to exceed one million three hundred thousand dollars to pay such costs set tax to be levied and collected in installments in such years and in such amounts it shall be determined by said Board of Education and see that in uh participation of in anticipation of said tax bonds of the district are hereby authorized to be issued in the principal amount of not to exceed one million 300 000 in the tax is hereby voted to pay the interest on said Barnes as the same shall become due and payable can I get a motion to approve to approve they all right Dave can you just say all right abortion is right can I get a second all right trustee Martinez yes yes for the safety of
092students yes motion carries outstanding all right next is the uh property tax report card this is a requirement of the State education department and uh we have to approve it as well so can I get a motion let me let me read it here we go uh resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools that board of education does hereby approve the Mahopac Central School District 20 20 23 24 property tax report card as per attached it is attached to the um the um online you want to look at it and it basically gives the details that we've been presenting for the last three months three or four months so can I get a motion to approve second uh let's let's do a roll call on this one too uh Jonathan why don't you
093start on that yes all right okay I think that uh there you go grocery carry okay next are the agenda is consent agenda thank you all right so can I get a motion to accept the consent agenda all right second please okay we're good there all in favor aye all right now we're going to move to resident comments uh Miss loraca are there any residents who have signed up okay is it here oh okay let's I'm sorry I'm not on my game here here before public comment is opened up we asked there's a policy that's in place bottom line is you you have to be you have to be professional in the sense that there's public decorum here you addressed me or the board you're not presenting to the crowd uh no obscene language libelist
094statements threats of violence statements advocating racial religious or other forms of prejudice will not be tolerated comments in questions should be made in a respectful manner the board president will cut off comments deemed to be derogatory inflammatory and appropriate amount of order personal attacks or criticism of any person connected with the district will not be permitted and now open the floor for public commentary tires good evening first I'd like to thank the board and our administrators here for all you do superintendent I know we all want what's best for our kids I wouldn't normally come here and speak about my daughter who attends Austin Road she brought a concern to me and I felt the need to take action at least showing my face so um sorry so my daughter wanted my fifth grade daughter
095bought a book about cats called starting from scratch so here nothing you can really see it but it's a very cute looking cat book and uh it's actually nothing about cats it's more about step families and gender identity trustees after I read it I emailed all of you and they superintendent oh I'm sorry I emailed all of you and the superintendent and I received a response from trusting McCracken and uh district clerk uh larocco additionally my wife and I have been in contact with principal Gilligan and the head of the book fair who've been extremely understanding and helpful we received replacement books and the first book that I looked up which is another cat book is also seems to be deceptive the problem I have is not with the school not with the district but
096with Scholastic who is hiding these books what behind what are cute cat pictures um I think the school should consider having Scholastic at least accurately describe the contents of the books or the district look for another vendor and again principal Gilligan the the PTO or the book they've all been phenomenal um it's just I have an issue with them hiding this kind of stuff in these books so thank you thank you okay anyone else hi my name is Kate Bellantoni and tonight I'd like to discuss school safety coming from a security background focusing on workplace violence and active shooters my number one fear since sending my child off to kindergarten last year was wondering if he'd be coming home alive our schools need more armed school resource officers a dedicated security director they need risk
097assessments done and the school yeah schools need to cooperate with law enforcement requests sorsro officers aren't cheap we know this we are in the midst of budget right now talk about all the exciting things we need funds for none of that matters if you have a bunch of dead children lining our hallways or how about if you need to start budgeting to condemn a building that is the site of a mass murder stop thinking it can happen here stop waiting for Grants or state funding or guidance that comes after a disaster hire more sros I saw your note on the presentation tonight about restructuring the K-12 administrator to be a safety security and compliance administrator is this person educator tasked with many other administrative duties or is this a person with former law enforcement experience
098whose sole Focus is Safety and Security increase the budget where it is needed last night I attended the Putnam County Putnam County legislator meeting because they were discussing school safety there was a gentleman who is a former NYPD captain and septed certified which is big in Florida and created after the Parkland school shooting he's offered his free services to conduct a thorough site assessment at our schools in fact he just did one at Matthew Patterson Elementary School without needing to jump through a bunch of red tape it was approved by the superintendent within two weeks of him reaching out to her Miss Tona I'd love for you to consider doing the same I am happy to share's info with you and I hope there would be no delay in contacting either him or another private
099company or firm like altaurus to do an assessment there's no harm there's no harm in knowing our buildings vulnerabilities it's a free it's free there's no harm cooperation with the Sheriff's Department I have my own questions with the sheriff and how they run business over there and why the two million dollars earmarked last year for improving school security in Putnam County has yet to be rolled out to our districts properly the last night Sheriff mcconville he let it be known that mayapak has not yet agreed or for that many they're given any effort unresponsive radio silence regarding sharing access control system keys and their CCTV feed to help assist in active shooter response install a panic button for quicker communication amongst other things why what I'm wrapping it up then that mother that mother that
100mother my child needs to come home alive at the end of the day why do I need to stand up here and beg for you to start allocating funds to increase legitimate security do risk Assessments in our building and cooperate or at the very least respond to our law enforcement okay okay you're a minute over it's my last sentence God forbid something happens here I'd like for every single one of you to think how you would feel knowing you could or should have done more [Applause] okay thank you for the comments uh I just want to let you know I'm not obviously I wasn't there with the sheriff I was in contact with the sheriff I'm not going to get into the details of what I talked about I'm not sure why he presented it
101like that okay so with that I'll just stay so I've talked to him and I know Miss tonos talked to him and that characterization of what is here is not accurate Okay so what I know but you're taking it as as gospel so it's not necessarily the truth so with that I'll turn it over to miss Tona thank you yes um thanks for sharing that um that was shared by the sheriff last night because I have been in constant contact with the Sheriff's Office since I came into my position and he has talked to the superintendents in Putnam County about various initiatives and we've provided him with all the information that he has requested and um in some cases there are things that need contracts and we have not received those contracts from the sheriff's
102office so I will definitely be in contact with him tomorrow so I appreciate you sharing that with me because what you shared is very different from the conversations that I've had with the sheriff thank you hey thank you anyone else well good evening superintendent and a board um I listen listen to the work session um on from 4 13th related to the budgets presented that and actually as we saw today um I realized I probably attended every school board meeting pleading for the district to take a hard look at what they're spending and try to curtail what they're spending try to look into areas where money could be saved work process is streamlined duplication eliminated but I think it was for naught even though we project almost a 2.8 million dollars additional state aid 710
103000 from property rental reduced student population of 46. the increase in spending is still 4.15 percent although the actual tax levy is 2.8 we also have the capital Improvement for the buses of 1.3 million which is apparently going to be almost an annual uh basis based on the presentation on how we need to replenish our our Fleet um and this doesn't even deal with the governor's decree to about having electric buses in the not too distant future I thought it was also interesting about the 15 million dollars of Reserve fund that we have for various items it seems like quite a large contingency um I was also intrigued by The Mention now of universal Pre-K for the future since we would get more state aid for the program the question is how much would this
104pre-k program really cost and do we really need it I guess this is for the future budget um I did appreciate all the advancement in the programs in the elementary middle and high school I definitely think that the the Steam and all that's very very important um but now that we have libraries in almost every classroom I'm not sure why we have main libraries anymore I know they're using them for media centers but maybe they're something we could have done instead of spending all that money to renovate them um I am not sure what reveal math is I I don't know it wasn't I mean they talked about the program but I don't really know how it's different from math um early in the year superintendent Tony presented some of the district's results on standardized
105tests they showed mostly declines which after covid and lack of input person learning I would expect I didn't see other than from the I guess transition to from ninth to into ninth grade how we're dealing with any of these uh deficits or deficiencies [Music] um also um you got about 20 seconds okay well okay I also didn't talk about any areas about uh trades and there's 14 of the school that doesn't go to college opportunities for trades these can be highly lucrative paid careers electricians Plumbing welders Carpenters um there's a drastic shortage and we should be looking to partner with organizations that can provide that on the other areas the social and emotional learning which I really never quite understand to me it seems like that's personal and it's a parent thing I'm not sure
106why the schools are now involved in that so I'm just hoping that the community will understand what all this budget means and we'll vote accordingly on May 16th thank you Franklin everybody else is slow Rocco good evening so looking at everything that was represent was presented to everyone today I'm a little disappointed that mayapak continues to use teachers College um it is said that about maybe a third of our nation it's fourth graders okay are not reading at grade level that's a lot okay but we continue to use this widely Nationwide program by Lucy Hawkins there has been so much research okay about this program that we as Educators myself as well know that it has failed our children and we see it with the scores plummeting the scores are just dropping and dropping and
107forget about covid before that they kept dropping so if one thing about this program that I see from the research is that um they started to use a phonics component that's not really there they're lying to you phonics is very very important for emerging leaders on readers um the research shows that they are not developing good reading skills with this program and we are putting it on a pedestal and it's really really not where it should be at all so which is setting up our kids in our town for failure bye promoting it and you know making a wonderful presentation you know thinking that it's like one of the best curriculums out there I think there are many more that we can explore together um it also does not help children develop vocabulary and last
108the struggling readers they're going to be completely lost with this program ESL children are going to be completely lost with it so I think Maya pack needs to do a little bit better at reviewing um and looking at another curriculum for the young ones I don't have young ones but you got 30 seconds yeah I know Ben um second I'm the book Mom right the book banner and everything like that but let me tell you it would have made it would have been so much easier if you would have taken three of the board members recommendation and said all challenged books books that are appropriate would need parental permission I had to go through like a circus to have my daughter blocked she she had she still had access she still had access to all
109of the books when I requested that she didn't could have been taken care of if you would have taken those books and put them aside and if John comes up and says I want to read The Bluest Eyes about a young girl being raped by her father from the rapist point of view of course because you don't like to hear the truth you don't like to hear the truth you're right you don't like to hear the truth Ben I never I you don't like to hear the truth you can tell me after okay you can talk to me after you got three you're at 350. but parents and and the public should know that my child still had access to pornographic material all right come on stop all right thank you anyone else Melody all
110right as always I commend the people who come to the podium because their parents and they're advocating for their children and that's all you do as a parent you've given your your give your life and that's the reason all of us are up here so I I commend you and I like the exchange of ideas so I appreciate it and I I always appreciate that coming up so I just want to thank the folks who come up I also want to wait very quickly before we we wrap up here the budget is an incredibly important part of the work that we do here and it's an incredibly important part of the community and we've just adopted it that means we support it uh the story is going to do literally a road show she's gonna
111go on the road and I want you to go vote so um I am running for the for re-election but I'm not asking for your vote now because it's not appropriate it's not professional but yeah I want you to vote because last year complacently really nip this in the butt if you if you you make your decision but go and vote there's not many places where you can say hey I went in and I and I voted there's a lot of things out of our control in our lives in our careers and in in just the world here you have the control and um that's what I'm that that's what I'm telling you I'm asking and pleading with you to do again I thank all the folks who came here tonight and I again thank
112the administrators um and we'll we're going to close now so I can I get a motion to move to Executive session to discuss uh Personnel matters second please all in favor thank you very much and we'll see you next