001thank you Happy New Year welcome to the Thursday's January 19 2023 regular meeting of the Ford event of the Apex Central School District can I get a motion to open the meeting can I get a second second all in favor aye can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please Allegiance flag of the United States of America public trans missible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you very much thank you for coming out tonight thank you for those at home watching uh we have as usual pretty um pretty uh robust agenda um and let's see what is the first item here I think I'm moving it over to you okay um I'm going to uh introduce our first presenters thank you president look good so um this evening math Honor Society moo Alpha
002Theta and their advisors uh Mahopac High School teachers Kelly Posh and Ed turnintrov so I'd like to invite you to the podium to share with us about your uh your organization foreign [Applause] chalk we are the advisors for new Alpha data math Honor Society we're here tonight with our cabinet who's going to speak to um tell you guys a little bit about what we have done and we're here also to request that we are added to the appendix fee um so we are going to start with our president Brett Ferguson thank you Miss Posh Mr chanchuk without your support this wouldn't be possible and thank you for the board for allowing us to speak tonight my name is Brett bergerson I'm president of moo Alpha Theta which is the national math Honor Society for high
003school and two-year college students um we're here today to show you what we do as a society um just a little bit about ourselves we our first inducted class at mapac was in 2018 and 2019 and um we would like to be added to the appendix fee um so one of the things we do is math night one of the values of moo Alpha Theta is developing a passion for mathematics and we do this through math night so pre-covet we would get the all the schools together and do math games and math activities and the participation in math night helped connect the community and cultivate that love for math we would love to be a part of bringing this back postcovid some feedback from moo Alpha Theta participants I like that quote I like that
004all ages and schools came together it was fun to see old friends and teachers I really liked how excited the kids were about participating in games as the games are very engaging the kids had so much fun doing math and now our vice president Monica Lazar we continue to cultivate a passion for mathematics in our community by participating in the mmsd fair this year we are facilitating activities that will show how math is connected to the other areas of steam students will create their own tessellating shapes use tools to engineer mandelas and analyze the Fibonacci sequence as found in nature around May attack new Alpha Theta members are required to complete peer tutoring hours after school by attending Algebra 1 geometry or Algebra 2 Algebra 2 extra help sessions or tutoring a student in the
005community individually students and teachers have found it really beneficial and here's a quote from Miss meganelli who's an algebra one teacher and she really likes this program and now here is the treasurer Monica Lily Jacobs so to expand more on our peer tutoring students in luafa Theta are required to complete peer tutoring sessions or hours after school and they can complete these hours by attending extra help sessions hosted by Algebra 1 geometry algebra two teachers and pretty much how this works um the student will go to the extra help session and they can tend to students who may need help but are unable to get help from the teacher who might be unavailable and they can also get their peer tutoring hours by tutoring a student in the community individually we've received a lot of
006great feedback from this and here are some quotes from students who have benefited from it from it this student from Algebra 1 said I really like when the Honor Society students come in because it helps me to hear hear it from someone else and they are nice and easy to work with work with and in another quote by a geometry student they said it hopes to help them move off with theater students at extra health because if my teacher is working with someone then I can ask them the question instead of having to wait I'll now pass it on to our secretary Nola Roberts okay our future plans are to continue to participate in the steam Fair bring back math night bring in guest speakers expand our peer tutoring program and fundraise to support math
007scholarships for my students thank you for the time and opportunity to share about our chapter [Applause] thank you all for presenting tonight and thank you for your service and your peers and your Honor Society for all that you do to help the students at Mahopac high school and we all look forward to seeing your tables at the ski Fair on Saturday so thank you all for being here you're welcome to uh go home and get ready for school tomorrow thank you guys hear me yes okay the best one the best part of these vas is when the students come in percent uh foreign counts all right so next believe it or not it's January and we are starting to talk about the budget so with that I'm going to turn it over again to superintendentona
008and the interim superintendent of business uh Miss Christina Howe thank you presidential um who has the clicker thank you Mrs Howe she's going to move the presentation along for us so um this evening we're going to be talking about a budget development process budget priorities looking at enrollment um having a preliminary conversation about our tax levy limit and looking at some cost drivers so here you see the budget development process highlighted is January because that's where we are now with tonight's presentation and you can see what's coming up so February's meeting is going to look at estimated Revenue projections March's meeting will have some presentations by our Department's Transportation facilities and Athletics uh and April 18th is our budget adoption date and prior to that we're going to have all of our building principals attend
009and uh share with Board of Education some highlights in their buildings and um some new highlights for next year's budget as well and then May 4th is our annual budget hearing and the budget vote trustee election is on May 16th so the budget priorities that I recommend to the board of education for the 23-24 school year are to maintain all academic programs and extracurricular activities expand upon the opportunities for our high school students through looking at some curriculum Pathways this will probably take us a few years for full implementation but the high school is looking at the coursework that we currently offer if there are any additional electives that could be added so that students who have an interest in a specific area such as engineering or education or health field they'd be able to
010have courses a course projection that would prepare them for uh Beyond High School in those areas um we talked about in Prior meetings reorganizing our administrative team to continue to build stability in the district so we looked at our special education structure moving towards a director an assistant director and continuing with our uh two special education administrators one in elementary and one in secondary looking at a adding a director of Technology um and then that person would be also in charge of our data and would oversee our technology team who does a terrific job having an administrator for safety security and compliance and that individual would be responsible for communicating with all of our buildings communicating with our BOCES representative that helps us make sure we have safety plans in place as well as communicate
011with the sheriff's department because we have our sros and spos as well as our security guards from bribery that here in the high school so this individual will help coordinate our safety and and just bring it even tighter we're looking to have a dedicated Elementary assistant principal in each of our free elementary schools currently we have uh one assistant principal at Austin Road and one assistant principal that's shared between Homer Road and Lakeview so we're looking to add a third so that each building has their own assistant principle to help with the administration of the building and help to keep our students safe and then we're also looking at Key cabinet roles such as our assistant superintendent for finance and operations this is Howe has been a wonderful addition this year but she's an interim
012and um she she will not be able to continue beyond June 30th so that's definitely a position that is key for the district another priority is to continue the district's bus replacement schedule that's been in place for several years with a brief Hiatus during covid we have six buses that are new this year four have arrived and we're waiting in the next couple weeks for the next last two and we'd like to be able to continue that as a separate referendum so that we can make sure that our buses are in a rotation basis and we have safe vehicles on the road for our students and finally we want to balance the needs of our educational program with the fiscal needs of the community it's very important this board of education has had that as
013a priority in Prior years so this slide takes a look at our current enrollment of 3815 I think this is as of December um so you can see the breakdown by building and by grade level and then if you look at the projected enrollment where we took our kindergarten through 11th grade students moved them down to the next grade and then made an estimate a projection for our incoming kindergartners we've been told that the live birth rate for the kindergarten students that are entering for the 23-24 school year is high it's projected to be high so we did bump up those numbers a little bit but even with bumping those numbers from 22 23 to the 23 24 school year we're looking at a prop an approximate decrease of students of about 41. and then
014this next slide looks at our Elementary class sizes of this year and the number of sections and then projecting for 23.24 so this year our kindergarten and first grades are at no more than 20 students um we go up to 24 in one particular grade level as an average class size of Palmer Road at third grade with 76 total sections across our K-5 buildings for General Ed and integrated co-teaching classes so projecting for the 23-24 school year a slight bump up in enrollment at a kindergarten level but still maintaining 76 sections with the higher grades in the elementary with no more than 24 students so it's important for us to maintain small class size because we we value that opportunity for our students to have personalized instruction with their teachers and now I'm going to
015ask Mrs how to talk to us about the tax levy limit which is an estimate at this time thank you very much good evening everyone um as Miss Tony said this is a estimate because we are expecting our state aid numbers as you know the governor had her say to the state address last week and we expect those runs to be coming out next week but we'll try to go quickly through this formula the top half of the formula starts with the prior year's tax levy limit that's the 2223 the current tax levy limit to that you have you can add the prior year offset which fedpack didn't have to that you multiply the tax base growth factor mapac's tax base growth factor is 1.0061 that's actually down from last year which was 1.0085 that's
016your brick and mortar the growth in your community you could see how that corner was applied to that you add the prior to your pilot which is a payment of lieu of taxes may impact does not have one so the formula carries down to that you subtract your prior Year's exemptions this line one million nine hundred and fifty one thousand seventy two dollars is your mortgage it's for any of The Debt Service that the district has for prior capital projects so roof replacement the bus replacement plan following down the formula you get the adjusted prior year Levy of 90 million eight hundred and thirty eight thousand eighty seven dollars to that you apply the CPI that's the two percent test cap as everyone knows you can see it when you go to the grocery store
017CPI is well over eight percent um and the cost of inflation has been certainly more than two percent this year but because we're the school district we're under the tax cap that formula is multiplied by 1.02 to that number you add any coming years payment include taxes of which manpack has none you carry that down again there's no available carryover and you get your tax levy limit that number is 92 million six hundred and fifty four thousand eight hundred and forty nine dollars now the next number is your coming Year's mortgages as you know we have the 53 million dollar project and we've borrowed some money we've done what's called Bond anticipation notes we haven't secured the mortgage yet we've done short-term borrowing because that's more financially beneficial to the district when you do a
018short-term borrowing you could do that for up to five years during the construction project and you only pay the interest on that money so that's a financial benefit to the district so you could see that the coming years debt is larger than the previous year that number is in red because the debt has to be reduced by the state age you're going to get and those are the numbers that we're waiting for so we anticipate the numbers to be close to this 448 but we'll know that for sure once we get the state Aid Drugs hopefully next week the next line is the coming year exemptions for pension because our pension rates have not increased more than two percent for the Retirement systems for All District employees there is no exemption for pension that means
019that the district's maximum allowable tax levy limit is 95 400 and 3 297 that's a three million sorry three million one hundred and seventy six thousand seven hundred and twenty dollar increase over the prior years let me that first number at the top that amounts to a 3.44 levy to Levy increase those are best just very preliminary numbers that's what the formula allows that not to indicate that that's what the tax levy is going to be when the board adopts the budget that's just based on the formula how high the tax levy could go what you consider all these factors thank you Mrs Howe so the next slide here shows cost drivers for the 2324 school year budget so we have contractual salaries two of our bargaining units will be in negotiations this spring so
020um we do need to project salaries that we know of based on the bargaining units contracts that are in place and then we also have BOCES Services OC services are very important for the operation of the school district they have been informed us that they estimate a two percent increase for the next coming school year and both these Services include our services through the rip which are our technical Technology support services special education when we send students out to BOCES for special education programs or we bring some support from BOCES itinerant teachers to support the students that have special education accommodations that are attending our schools and then our Juniors and seniors at the high school some of them participate in Career and Technical education and that is programmed through both seats so all of
021those cloths were estimating uh two percent increase then we have employees retirement system our non-instructional staff members the uh it will be 13.1 percent will be the cost for the district for 23.24 we already have that information currently this year it's 11.6 so that did go up and teachers retirement system the employer contribution will be between nine and a half and ten percent for 23.24 and uh that is down a little bit from 10.29 percent our health insurance costs for our staff uh we're looking at average rate increase of about five and a half percent which is not too bad considering what it has been in Prior years we're looking at two percent increases for transportation costs as well as utility costs and then we also have to take a look at the unfunded mandate
022that is associated with any mascot changes because we have a lot of signage throughout the district that I'll speak a little bit about the mascot change later but um if if this comes to pass we have two additional school years from this one to make all those changes but there's a significant cost involved so preliminarily looking at our Revenue we're waiting as Mrs Howe said for our state aid run I'm a governor that's the governor's proposal we typically get that mid-January so it's due any day now that's just the first step in the budget process and state aid process because then our state legislators meet and is supposed to adopt a budget by April 1st and typically they've made some changes to the governor's original proposal and so we build a budget based on the
023governor's proposal and then by the time the board adopts the budget in late April typically the New York State Legislature has already provided us our final state aid runs then we have some Federal grant monies that I'll talk about in the next couple of slides and um that money is not part of our general fund it is not something that the community votes on but we're grateful to Any Grant monies that we receive because it does help us to fund some supplemental purchases and one-time purchases then we have New York State Foundation Aid and so you may have heard a lot about that recently in the news because the governor has pledged to make all of the districts whole this year our district was pretty close to being whole in the past couple of years
024and so we don't anticipate that much of an increase based on Foundation aid but there are some other districts around the state that are looking for that Gap to be fully funded this year uh as Ms how I mentioned the tax levy limit CPI is capped at two percent uh but with exclusions and exemptions uh we're looking at a potential tax living that tax levy uh increase that can go no higher than about 3.4 but again we're waiting on final numbers to determine that and then that'll be a conversation over the next few months with the Board of Education to decide where we actually land on that then we have tax tertiaries um and that's an impact on Revenue not necessarily in a positive way we do have uh some Rebel reservoirs within our district
025boundaries Watershed that has been um in under question by New York City they get their water from our reservoirs here and they have been paying taxes to the district for many years to get get water for for their residents so there has been uh some challenges there by the city where they feel that they should not have to pay taxes on that and if that should come to pass that will be a decrease in revenue for the district and a potential for back Revenue to the New York City uh government so that's something that we're keeping a close eye on because that could definitely impact our budget in the near future and then another revenue is our BOCES Aid we mentioned before about the increase that BOCES is looking to have us pay next year
026for approximately two percent but based on what we use uh last year we will get some Aid back typically between 53 and 60 63 percent of all of our BOCES purchases we get back in Aid the following year so that's definitely helpful to us and it's a big piece of our state aid runs yeah so this slide shows our annual federal grants the first four are from our Consolidated title Grant so Title One Part A provides some money 100 almost 147 000 for academic achievement but that can only be used at our Title One schools and our Title One school is Lakeview Elementary so basically that money goes towards the salary of a reading teacher and the benefits associated with that salary so all of the Consolidated title grants they start on September 1st of
027each school year and expire on August 31st and that's something to get annually it could fluctuate the amount that the that the state gives us um it comes from federal money but it passes through the State education department and we find out in the summer how much money we get each of those Grant areas so title 2A is our it's for teacher and principal training we get about 62 000 there title free a is specific to our English language learner program to provide materials supplies and supports for those students and we get almost twenty four thousand dollars there and title four is for student support and academic enrichment we get about eleven thousand dollars in that Grant the idea 611 619 that is to support our education programs so 6 11 is for our students
028that are enrolled between grades K and 12 up to age 21 to support those programs we get about 941 000 and the 619 supports our preschool programs that for students who needs additional special ed accommodations and we get about 33 000 there so about 1.2 million dollars in annual federal grants and again a fluctuates each year it depends on enrollment lots of factors that the State education department takes into consideration there then we have our one-time federal grants and those are the American Recovery plan grants um the coronavirus relief grants so you could see here almost six million dollars in federal money came through and that was all because of the covid pandemic so we have spent about 3.6 million dollars of that to date and um in February at the next presentation we'll provide
029some more details there but um you could see the different funding sources they were all separate grants they all had to be written separately and submitted to the State education department we take a look at how much we've spent and what was the original application for do we need to make any adjustments based on the money monies that are left and what are the needs of the district so the our home was two supports the needs of our homeless students Esther 3 and you can see uh that Esther 2 and the Gear 2 they all support wide ranges of allowable uses so that could support salaries to provide additional support to our students materials and supplies equipment um if we have a reading program that needs additional supports and supplies we can purchase from from
030this as well as Material supplies equipment purchases to keep our buildings safe keep our students safe some of these grants were used for PPE when covid was uh definitely um a high level of coveted rates and we had all the closures so things to uh maintain that the cleanliness and health and safety of our students and staff that those could be used through these grants so you see the third fourth and fifth lines SLR summer enrichment that's the state learning Reserve where we had to put a certain amount of money aside to support summer enrichment so that Grant has been spent already because we've provided some summer uh enrichment for our students the comprehensive is for after school activities and learning losses for during the day to support any additional academic materials and supplies to
031close any of the learning gaps that our students have faced due to covet and then the last two on the bottom just like I mentioned on the last Slide the 611 and 619 are for our special education population so we were awarded additional Monies to support our students that are in the Gen Ed program as well I'm sorry special ed program during the day kindergarten through age 21 and our preschool students so again 5.9 million dollars that's very helpful but it is not part of the general fund these are one-time payments you see all the way on the right that they're multi-year grants so some of them sunset on September 30th of 2023 so we're finishing up our spending plan uh this year and the summer and then the balance of them expire in September
032of 2024 so we're definitely making sure that our plans are looked at often so that we can spend all of these funds before they expire so next steps see the dates of our February and March presentations the 16th of each of those months April 18th is budget adoption May 4th the budget hearing and then throughout the month of May I'll be scheduling various presentations with Community organizations to make sure that they're aware of the budget and then on May 16th is our budget vote and trustee election and then should anyone in the community be away on May 16th and they know that in advance they could apply for an absentee ballot and the information on how to do that is on this slide this presentation is already up on our website as well absentee ballots
033must be received by our district clerk related to 5 PM on May 16th and nominating petitions there will be three vacancies to fill on the board of education so you could see the seats that are up and um how one could pick up a petition and become a candidate on the board of education ballot for the 23-24 school year and three years in total and so that's this month's special presentation I just want to commend thorough layout of what's happening this is only January and if you paid attention to what was going to happen in the next in the next few months it's going to be building on this this presentation and okay I don't get so I urge people to pay attention because what sometimes happens is people don't pay attention until you know
034right before they go uh but you're gonna I have the most thorough view of a budget in recent history members you know the economy is struggling we're very sensitive on the board about that and we're going to make the right decision for the students and for the community but just want to commend all the hard work I mean it's a few slides here but I know there's hours and hours of work just want to come in Christina and Christina for okay um okay so what's next is the comments on agenda items we have two folks that just want to remind Eddie all the speakers now and later at the end to be mindful of the three-minute limitation you know 305 I'm not going to protect the capital but you know just be mindful so let's
035uh ask uh I ask Candace did John I don't know so again Hardball public speaker even in the small group of people so forgive me if I falter at all I would like to start by thanking the administration the Board of Education members the librarians and anyone else who has worked on the issue of book Banning and creating a more and a more than fair policy to address the issue a parent does not want their child to read a specific library book they can simply call the school and tell them they do not want their child to read it seems like a simple solution that should end this ridiculous and costly process this is not enough for some members of the community apparently some members of the community want to continue to waste invaluable man-hours
036and flush our much needed tax dollars down the toilet to that being said there are three issues with the continued request to review books despite an existing simple and effective policy one to reiterate book betting is not something that should be happening in modern day America and represents the silencing of voices different from your home and an attempt to destroy the many worlds and viewpoints that live inside of books if you don't like a certain book as a parent you're welcome you're well within your rights to tell your child not to read that two it occurred to me that there may be a cost associated with the request for a book bag I asked the board to provide me with the cost to date this process has frivolously drained 23 554 tax dollars let me
037say that again twenty three thousand five hundred and fifty four tax dollars and wasted forty four hundred and forty six point five administrative work hours I think that most community members would agree that this is a tremendous waste of time and money that could be much better spent elsewhere we already have a policy we already have a tight budget where the money where there is money where is the money coming from to cover these additional costs what are we losing behind this blatant ignorance the books that are being targeted are overwhelmingly about the experiences of people of color and members of the lgbtbq community and represent an attempt to silence these voices in our own community we should love thy neighbor and work towards a betterment of our community not trying to create villains and
038a fear of the other it is my hope that the opt-out option will be enough to stop the insanity and bleeding of our precious time and tax dollars all 23 554 of them and continuously counted thank you okay next is Jerome Mitchell cleared your statement I would defend the board um for um choosing a path of free speech information intelligence really comes to the issue of access to literature so the books the books being voted on today are stamped Earl Martin and all-American boys the common narrative within these books are inequality discrimination and the policing within black communities narratives are important everyone has one it frames their personality and their perspective I submit to you that the best way to understand someone's perspective is to know their narrative my grandfather was one of the first
039black police officers in a small town that grew up in New Jersey my father was a police officer my uncle was a police officer much of their disappointment I became a lawyer but that's another story I have nothing but respect and appreciation for the men and women of law enforcement that protect us now despite my father being a police officer we had to talk this talk is common to most black parents this talk consists of what one should do during an encounter with the police although I have not spoken with every non-person of color in the United States those that I have spoken with are not familiar with the talk nor have they ever had to have the talk with their children that's their narrative the last time I stood here I spoke about how
040book Banning and schools is detrimental to development of critical thinking skills and a promotion of a free and open Society I also spoke about how it is important for students to have access to literature for marginalized groups because it promotes understanding compassion and empathy I've always liked the word empathy the ability to understand and share the feelings of others unfortunately this word is consistently absent in most discussions regarding the treatment of people of color in this country their narrative within these books are not to undermine the men and women who protect us it's not some anti-American agenda their narratives these narratives are the everyday narratives of people of color when they encounter different things in their communities and should be shared with all Americans because the issues raised in these narratives cannot be fixed by
041people of color alone it's going to take all of us so to those who raise the issue with these books I say to you it's not too late to become an empathetic per empathetic person take the time to learn about others teach your children about others and don't allow them to make the mistakes of the past thank you thank you very much we will have a couple other people speaking at the end all right all right so now we're going to move to uh Financial section of our agenda we're going to look at the reports of I've said this many times these reports are details of every the transactions of the district I urge you if you are interested in our finances to read these they're not necessarily the easiest pieces of information to read
042but they're there for public record and they are there's a couple of these reports that includes every single so you can see where the money goes and actually where the money comes from so with that I'd like we're going to go through the motion to accept these additional reports I'm going to go one by one I'm gonna go one by one clear so can I get a motion to accept the treasury report of November 2022. so second please second any questions all in favor uh motion to accept warrants of November second please second all in favor motion to accept revenue reports for November 2022. second please seconds all in favor uh motion to accept budget transfers November 2022. so it moves second please second all in favor uh motion to accept claims audit report of
043November 2022 so move second please any questions all in favor aye motion to accept work session all right now we're going to the minutes we're going to accept the minutes of the last few meetings we had in December we're so motion to accept the work session minutes of December 20th 2022. second please second any questions okay um all in favor aye and one apps um motion to accept regular minutes of December 22nd of 2022 motion to accept please okay so move second all in favor and one abstain I want an abstention by uh Lucy okay thank you very much uh with that we turn it back a glass of water here drink of water after a presentation uh with the superintendent report uh superintendent Tona thank you presidential so again it was wonderful to have
044our high school students here from the math Honor Society boo Alpha Theta several months ago right in this room uh the newest members of their Honor Society were inducted and it's wonderful to hear about how they give back to their peers in the high school and provide support for them so for those of you that have Elementary Middle School students remember that there is peer tutoring available and your children get to high school and it's okay to ask for that and hopefully some of your students will also be part of that Honor Society in the future and can give back to other students into high school as well and as mentioned as Steam fair is this Saturday from 9 A.M to 1pm at middle school so I hope everyone can come out and take a
045look at the projects that the students have put together they'll be judging on Saturday it really is a full District effort tomorrow our fifth graders are heading up to the middle school to get a sneak peek at the steam fair so that they can learn about what they will be responsible for doing when they get to Middle School and then our high school students serve as mentors for the middle school students as a particular projects and last night the music department just doesn't cease to amaze me and you know as as a newbie here it may Alpac I put things on my calendar and I really don't know what to expect until I get here and in this room last night each of our High School Musical ensembles that meet during the day are performed
046and they they were amazing this was a packed house and then after listening to each of those musical groups we went down to the gym and it was decorated with student artwork our jazz band was phenomenal performed and the friends of music put on an amazing spread for all of the attendees so it was truly a wonderful night so next year when you hear about the Pops concert make sure you come by it was it was really phenomenal so thank you to all of our music teachers and all of our students for the time that they put into uh providing us with a lot of entertainment that is absolutely wonderful so uh you may have heard on Tuesday I I plan for looking at our mascot I'm not going to go through that plan again
047this evening however tomorrow uh in the newsletter I have a letter to the community outlining the whole process along with a link to the presentation which is also already online in board docs but that will be available on the website tomorrow as well so um the New York State education department they've recently prohibited the use of indigenous names mascots and logos by public schools and I'm new here and I in a short amount of time and I've been here in this District I recognize the passion that this community has for um for the district and for in some cases for the mascot for the logo and just the pride that is evident so we definitely want to continue that Pride and we don't want to lose state aid that's an important amount of money that
048helps our district operate and without with any loss of state aid that would be a huge uh difficult situation for the rest of the community to be in so we have to create a plan and this plan has to be in place by June 30th and adopted by the Board of Education with full implementation by June 30th 2025 so we have two additional years because it will cost us some money and some time to make the changes because if you look around the district while you see a different logo than what originally was in place if if we have to change that level that's going to be a huge undertaking so what I propose was to have a district committee formed with community members as well as students and in tomorrow's newsletter there'll be a
049link for those in the community that are interested in participating so I encourage you to complete that I'll be reaching out to our ptos and our septo and MSA our staff members at each of our bargaining units in the in the district and asking them for Representatives but then this survey is a way for our alumni and other members of the community to be part of the process so I anticipate this mascot selection committee find uh coming up with several alternative mascot ideas and it won't happen in one meeting so they can go back and talk to people in the community and get ideas and bring them back and we'll narrow that down and then with the decision um preliminarily in the hands of our students K-12 where they'll all have an opportunity to vote
050on a narrow field of choices that the committee comes up with and then presenting that information to the board of education on May 18th for potential adoption by the board and then once that's determined we could take a look at the logo so the State education department has opened a public comment period and that runs through February 28th and that information is in the letter tomorrow as well will be on the website with who you can the person that you can contact her name is Christina Coughlin she's the assistant commissioner of the New York State education department the address is there her phone number as well as an email address of reg comments r-e-g-c-o-m-m-e-n-t-s at nysed.gov and they are inviting the public to provide data views or arguments related to the regulation on the mascot
051once that public information period ends on February 28th then the Board of Regents is going to meet sometime in April and they're supposed to go through all of these public comments and then provide us with more specific guidance because we would still like to use our logo if possible we feel that it does give a nod to the Native Americans that were here long before we were and if that's possible that we could keep the logo I think that's the direction we hope to go in um so that is an update on the the mascot I know that for some people it's a it's a difficult concept to to have to face and I apologize that we're in this position but unfortunately it's it's out of our hands I will be reaching out to the
052Native American tribes that are within New York State and getting their input but I've heard from One Tribe that unsolicited they just emailed me and they did not support our using an indigenous mascot so um the last thing I want to say to my report is good luck to our varsity cheer team they left this afternoon they had I went to visit them in the gym at full school they had their luggage in hand they were heading to the airport they were flying to Dallas Texas for national competition so we wish them well and we look forward to learning that they do very well there and uh perhaps we'll have them in a future meeting absolutely thank you is going to add and add two things really quick one I was also at the uh
053the Pops concert and they're just they're just uh the music department needs to get more publicity listen so I promised I forgotten who I spoke to one of the teachers right here that I would actually present uh some of the dates in the future it is online it's on the website so February 1st 2023 is a small Ensemble concert February 8th there is a district string Festival February 9th the district chorus Festival uh March 8th is bandarama so if you're not even tweaked with interest by bandarama schools all right so I may not be at all of these but I will tell you it was amazing and middle of the week you kind of wound down and you're tired take a 10 well 10 minute drive you sit in the back and it's just amazing
054it's just amazing it's a jewel it's a jewel and that we need to and you don't have to the parents are there watching their kids but you don't have to and I just also want to have a shout out to one of the sons of our board member Joaquin martinet Martinez excuse me uh and he was terrific so that dad's uh providing some support there that was providing support for his son he was actually terrific he was in the Jazz Band and a bunch of other places as well the other thing I just want to make real quick with the uh with the the mascot it is a sensitive issue and I'm not going to add more than what I want to say we're going to do this the right way we're going to include
055as many people as possible we're going to listen to everybody the bottom line is though we are not going to risk state aid it's just a significant amount of money we cannot run the school district we can't run the schools without that stating so but we're gonna we're gonna do the right thing I I promise you that we will look at this thoroughly before one thing I'm very proud of this board uh in the fashion now as we look at these issues as thoroughly as possible so I promise you to do that and we're going to include it you want to be included or your kids want to be included Sona has a plan uh it sounds like a ton of people but we've got a there's a she has a great plan of how
056to do that and we're going to turn this what a potential obstacle into an opportunity so stay tuned and we'll keep you informed oh but if I could just add one other item um I forgot today I spoke to assemblyman Matt Slater he reached out to me and we talked a little bit about the mascot issue and he asked how he can help and I did um ask him if there's any advocacy work that he can do for the unfunded mandate for any expenses that the district will have to uh incur based on any mascot or logo change so I appreciate his reaching out so we said the magic Works in advocacy and uh we're going to talk about that a little bit too so with that uh thank you superintendentona uh we're going to
057move on to our board committee reports we did have a I think every single committee met so I'm going to start uh let's start with the HR committee so vice president Savino want to take us through that most of it is executive session but uh wherever you have to share with us we're good so the HR committee met on January 10th at 5 45 president was myself trustee Martinez and the sapra assistant superintendent for HR uh Salgado and superintendent Tona as president Lowell mentioned we did discuss the HR agenda which is on tonight's more thoughts and we discussed some of the uh business office openings such as the superintendent assistant superintendent search and how that process will lay out we adjourned at about seven o'clock and that was all I have thank you thank you
058vice president Savino next is uh the facilities committee so uh Mr Farrell okay you want to take a look through that sure we also met on the 10th prior to the HR meeting um in attendance where trustees Martinez Martin uh Savino and myself we met with staff and Miss Howe as well as Chris Walsh Tim Walsh sorry about for Christmas yeah uh we got an update on Capital um we met down at the fall school we also got the review we're in the process of moving our office as our administrative offices from building in anticipation of the sale of that to the fall school so the staff here in general is doing that work themselves which is great saving the district a lot of money it's a really very talented group of individuals here who
059work in the district they're really really superstars putting together almost Flow by level we're starting to go over there so it won't be a major transition it'll be a nice little calm transition we're able to walk through the fall school and see some of the work they're doing really uh it's very impressive great stuff and go well done thank you thank you okay next is the finance of the finance committee Jonathan trustee Schneider you want to take us through that please sure thing uh finance committee met on January 12th at 6 pm at the district office the members present were myself trustee Musafa trustee Savino and president delullo as well as superintendent Tona and interim assistant superintendent of business how there were no others present at the time we began the meeting by reviewing the
060grants where we reviewed the federal grants as well as the one-time federal grants that were through covid those were also reviewed tonight at the budget and um going forward what we are going to have is the superintendent interim superintendent business preparing a plan of action for the spend down on the remaining covered grants that were awarded to the district we're detached that has the awarded amounts the amounts that were spent and the amounts that were that are still remaining out of balance through the uh we then had talked about November Financial reports which we had received a little late so we will do those and for approvals tonight updates from previous meetings we were in discussion on the school district development property and we are still a appraisal then we reviewed the budget presentation where
061we had gone over this presentation I've seen tonight as well as one of us on Tuesday presented here at both the superintendent and intern superintendent business will continue to develop that presentation through the budget cycle which will be tonight there are no additional items that were added for the next meeting's agenda you close the meeting at 7 40 pm and our P.M in the district thank you oh yeah all right trustee McCracken will give us the rundown on the ad hoc advocacy committee which will give us both details yes so it wasn't an official meeting so we don't have minutes for it it was more of a training session for the the members of the ad committee to learn how to navigate State legislation up in Albany in the two houses of the state legislature
062so it is an ny Senate dot gov training about an hour session we have a video of it which we will probably look to put on the Committee website so any citizen in the community can use it to engage with State policy affecting education but honestly if you learn the training it can be used for any type of legislation but we focused it on education and how to research that legislation see what certain bills do see if it has a chance of passing how to advocate for it so it was a good session not an official meeting our next official meeting will be next week Thursday at 7 pm in the Falls PD room there's no opportunity for participation yet but on the agenda we're going to be talking about ways to take input from
063the community so we make sure that the priorities that this driving our advocacy doesn't just come from the committee but we're using our committee members as references ambassadors of the community so that will be on the agenda and I'll obviously add our next report announce how any Community member can get engaged in our process I'm very excited to get started so this is just a report thank you trustee I just want to I was lucky enough to chair the committee last year with um Christine McCracken it is critically important to have your voice heard and this is a way using this advocacy committee it's a little funnel all the ideas of the community through these folks on the committee it's really important and now we have a whole set of new politicians that were newly
064elected we just heard that via supplement Slater reached that you had a conversation they need to pay attention to us because they're just we have a new Congressman we have a new everything right I think everybody's new so here's an opportunity to for us to do that and with our man in Albany uh trustee McCracken we have an opportunity to to use his expertise to follow this this energy through this and and I think it's a great opportunity and I know they're going to do great things yeah you know as but he's going to do it well is to focus on one or two issues because you can't just carpet bomb them whatever they got to be very focused I will try to be there at the next all right 26 26 26 next Thursday
065thank you okay uh we're gonna move on to new business so here is the three books that are uh were presented I'm going to read the resolution I apologize we're we're prior we're fired to read all of them separately so I'll read this and then I'm going to ask for a motion to approve and then we're going to go this way to approve approve or not approved so it's a yes or no a and a on the motion to approve okay um do you hear more whereas the book dear Martin by Nick stone is Dean the challenge book and it's currently included in the 8th grade reads section of the Middle School library and a general circulation at the high school whereas placement of a book in the middle school was challenged on December 16
0662021 whereas a district curriculum book committee convened reviewed and provided a recommendation to the superintendent of schools on November 14 2022 resolved upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools the book dear Martin will remain in the eighth grade read section of the Middle School library it further resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools the Board of Education approves the process of the superintendent of schools providing that a parent of any student that does not wish for their student to borrow this or any book they notify the people building principal or librarian in writing and an alert will be placed on the student's account to notify the librarian during book checkout and I get a motion to approve please so I'll move can I get a second any questions I was just going to
067explain my vote before I do it yeah so I'm going to abstain because I believe in the spirit of education but also parental rights and I did obviously advocated for a motion to have a process for all the challenge books required parental permission before they were taken out not forcing parents to deem each book what they don't want to be reviewed by their students so I'm going to abstain because I don't believe we should be removing the books but I've obviously advocated for further protections uh there's not enough votes to have that so I'm going to abstain it's gonna be my vote thank you to Steve McBride Fernando yeah yeah yes Court of the motion yes I vote Yes thank you so I just want to talk a little bit about this so um I'm
068going to say no and the reason I'm saying that because I read through these books and I understand how this is a sensitive topic and I am not the volcanic and the committee recommended all these books to stay in the schools I feel the anti-please content topic matters and terminology in the books do not belong in a school but in a local library when parents send the children to school they trust us to educate their children and protect them all thank you thank you don't ban books just ask for parents permission no no okay Melody do we have thank you we're at okay so the next one is all-American boys okay uh bear with me here whereas the book All American boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kylie is deed the challenged book and it's
069currently in general circulation at the middle school and the high school libraries whereas placement of the book in the middle school was challenged on December 16 2021 whereas a district curriculum book committee convened reviewed and provided a recommendation to the superintendent of schools on November 14 2022 be it resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools the Board of Education hereby approves that the book All American boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiley remain in circulation in the Mahopac Middle School library and placed in the 8th grade grief section via further resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools the Board of Education approves the process of the superintendent of schools providing that a parent of any student that does not wish for their student to borrow this or any book we notify the building
070principle or librarian and writing and an alert will be placed on the student's account to notify the library book checkout so can I get a motion to approve please second anyway we have a second second all right thank you any questions yeah I'm gonna do it all right abstain okay yes yes yes okay okay all right the last one whereas the book stamped by Jason Reynolds is deemed a challenge book and is available in this General circulation of the middle school and high school libraries whereas placement of the book in the middle school and high school was challenged on December 16 2021 whereas the district curriculum book committee and being who have been viewed and provided a recommendation to the superintendent of schools on January 12 resolve upon recommendation of the superintendent schools the Board
071of Education hereby approves that the book stamped by Jason Reynolds not be removed from the high school library and copies placed in the eighth grade read section of the Middle School library he is further resolved upon recommendation of the superintendent of schools the Board of Education improves the process of the superintendent of schools providing that apparent of any student that does not wish for their student to borrow this or any book May notify the building principle or a librarian in writing and alert will be placed on the student's account to notify the librarian information check out okay a motion to approve a second please any questions you want to start us abstain okay yes yes oh sorry sorry I support the motion yes yes okay all right thank you very much appreciate everybody uh walking
072through that um all right now we get to uh a percentage generally again the purpose of the consent agenda is to do a routine business again I urge folks to go through this because there is a lot of activity in there and you can see the the results of the work of the the HR committee isn't here in terms of hires and appointments things like that uh there's also special ed reports and and hiring some equipment but again I encourage you to go through that so can I get a motion to a pro approve of the consent agenda so moved second somebody decided all right thank you Jonathan uh any questions all in favor all right all right all right now we are president's comments so this little rocket do we have any residence comments
073all right before we wanted to start walking up I'm just gonna do a couple little notes here so before we open it up just remember the public comment period will not exceed 30 minutes I'm not sure we have that many speakers you know we the policy is one five one two and respect here's a couple of points in respect to three minute time women allowed it's these address myself as a board uh obviously we'll look at the Civility and decorum which I know which I know everybody will do you're not allowed to use a c language obviously and I'll just read this liable statement the threats of violence statements advocacy advocating racial religious tolerated comments and questions should be made in respectful manner and I I the board president will cut off the comments need
074to be derogatory inflammatory inappropriate or large order personal attacks or criticism of any person connected with the district will not be permanent all right go ahead thank you for letting me speak this evening um in your whatever that you know little approval that you do there was a meal changing meal charge whatever I just thought it was odd that's called meal changing meal charge and prohibition against meal shaving policy policy meal charge policy before I'm not sure why people are very meal shape two of the items that um were in the equipment it says no longer used it doesn't say that broke it or anything there may be value then so I don't know if we try to no sorry okay um so I don't know if there is some value for those I mean
075one of them is 67.50 when I looked on the internet another was 34.50 the mixers so I don't know before we just toss them maybe we should look into that um okay um so for the budget I took a look at the update of the historical enrollment decline from 2012 um to to the projected 2024. um it's almost 25 percent the tax increases that I'm showing just from 2017 to 23 or 10 percent um I I really don't understand the the mathematics of that um with a 25 smaller population um we should be considering um like lower costs not just constant increases a recent article from The Wall Street Journal said public schools in the U.S lost more than 1.4 million students since the start of the pandemic prompting some schools districts to close buildings
076because they do not have enough students or funding they say it's due to declare birth rates homeschooling competition from private and charter schools have we studied the reason for our decline could we function effectively with fewer schools um also as regarding the budget I just took a look I had printed out just from the website a um you know some cost saving um policies it was like a 15 or 16 page uh thing from a state college some things to always consider or solicit cost savings cost savings from District staff members the community as and perhaps offers incentives for implemented savings savings are where you find them look all the time you may have to overcome culture and politics to get savings bid in purchasing of all services including fuel electricity the board mentioned they're
077joining some kind of buying Cooperative there's always more negotiating power with larger numbers so hopefully that's going to help zero-based budgeting instead of justification for justification annual review and justification of positions not just a lot five percent on top of what we have start from zero and build up possibly try Outsourcing custodial Services maybe in one test building uh review procedures and protocols for duplicity redundancy strive to create efficiency remember the job expands to fit the time another thing that I've always spoken about is transportation the New York State Education website has a section on Pupil Transportation that's a very detailed three-page guideline about Pupil Transportation economics and efficient practices has the school has the Mahopac School District considered these practices multiple tripping of buses Cooperative Transportation full utilization of buses prepare a study of
078Outsourcing of Transportation would be more cost effective and efficient than running it in-house we are in the primary business of education on Transportation buses Sid idle when school is out the Mahopac School District should perform an evaluation to determine if it if the maple School District best interest is in the transportation business especially when you're asking this to consider more spending this year after a million 160 in 2023 in addition to 883 500 in 2022. okay um and there's also significant cause lifts for maintenance and buses and maybe we should evaluate sharing maintenance facilities with other bus facilities so I'm basically just asking you to please please please um you know we can't just keep costs going up in populations go it's going down and there has to be a cut thank you [Applause] okay
079by the way Mr President that policy that's just changing the number of the policy correct on the consent agenda policy language changes that uh are in line with the State education department what what they've told us we have to have um they're minor language changes uh basically it memorializes what we currently do for students so we make sure that if a student does not have money that particular day to purchase their meal to make sure that they get fed that day so that's the spirit of the policy thank you thank you thank you so did you hear that was the answer to your question right I understand we should help them but to write a write a policy that's called Shane you know to prevent students shame no exchanging students that was passed down directly
080from the state okay all right go ahead okay I'd like to oh there we go all right I want to thank the school board for allowing me to speak uh last month and this month too and I'd like to thank my fellow Veterans for coming here and support uh myself residents there we go our requesting the school board to put to a vote uh matching the better exemption that the town provides veterans on property tax on our school tax I made a mistake all right so uh I'll try to hold it okay try that again all right so I think you know why I'm here I think you know uh what we're asking for um I made a mistake last month I attempted to paraphrase math and uh president delullo you have to hold them
081pronounce that properly as I sat down you said I'm unsure of the math and um the point is it's not my math in fact it's the interim superintendent of business how and that math was derived from the town of carmel's assessor Greg DeRose so I won't do any math today okay I will do numbers so um one number for you is three that's the number yes it gets me upset when I think about it because my son had to go to three different high schools three different high schools because Mike 27 years of military service but he graduated from APAC high school and he's doing fantastic very very proud of my son it's gorgeous another number for you 161. Christmas gift the same Sun if I'm in a telephone pole near you but that's 161.
082I can tell you those 161 many of the people on telephone poles are not alive they're not with us so we're talking about a very small population of people in this town is that a VFW meeting just now we just left the VFW meeting a 17 January the VA changed veterans in a suicidal crisis can go to any VA or non-va health care facility for free emergency Health Care that's that's new as of two days ago why did they do that 2013-22 veterans took their lives each day 44 a day got one more number and then I'm gonna sit down at our veterans meeting tonight was a number 96 that's the age of Our World War II matter in chimney T policy that guy had the courage to lie about his age and go serve
083in World War II are you gonna make him wait were you guys going to exercise that kind of courage and put this to the boat to help the veterans of our community thank you very much all right how you doing um I just wanted to ask the board how maybe we could add something to a future agenda and I wanted to consider share my concerns regarding uh the kova 19 shot being required for School attendance in the upcoming future and I wanted to just say that if the shot is required I will pull my son for manpack schools be forced to move out of the state or seek alternative education arrangements and I know I'm not the only parent in this position so this is a deeply concerning issue for us and it's not out
084of nowhere recently the CDC added the covid-19 vaccine to the schedule of recommended childhood vaccinations and leave that leading to concerns if this will become legislated to receive an education in all of New York State schools it's not a long shot considering the SUNY school mandate for the Covenant vaccine so uh last year both the assembly and the assembly in the Senate uh introduced bills that would mandate the Covenant screenshot for all New York State students those bills have lapsed but there is a strong possibility that they may be refiled this year and many families are deeply concerned about this hello there we go um so all right so we're worried that these bills might be refiled uh this year this upcoming year um it's clear that these shots only provide protection to the people
085receiving them they don't protect the surrounding Community like previous compulsory vaccines that are effective in stoppable with infection and transmission given the risk benefit profile of these shops this Choice should only be between a family and their health care provider I did pull some I could email these as well but we had some oil request on last year uh December 5th of last year so according to the Putnam Health Department 98 of 5 to 11 year olds and 96 of 12 to 17 year olds would be considered unvaccinated or not up to date on the covert shots so this isn't a small minority this is almost 100 percent this would leave an enormous number of families faced with very difficult decisions about their child's education uh so what I'm asking of the district here last
086month we had five school districts across New York State uh formally draft a letter to the governor stating like we did last year with the mass mending that we want to retain autonomy with this decision uh that number has grown to 21 at this point uh both Brewster and Carmel our neighbors are discussing it um so I'm I'm here tonight respectfully asking on board to put this on an agenda um and in the future hopefully draft a letter to the governor you know stating our desire to retain autonomy in this decision thank you thank you appreciate it right now we're gonna sorry I'm sorry there we go all right sorry about that Dawn hi my name is John Kelly I have a son in the high school and I also have um nieces and nephews
087at Homer um and we actually seen some display of the sound quality this evening and I wanted to discuss the sound quality of the meetings as well as the videos we all have very busy schedules I make a point of coming here to these meetings because the sound is so bad when you try to listen to it live I cannot get to the work sessions but I do try to listen live and I will tell you just even this Tuesday I couldn't hear anything I had my volume completely up so my ask is that we look at the quality of the microphones that we're using or the the system in general but I also ask that as board members that you speak directly into the microphones especially when you're doing your work session I realize
088that you guys are talking amongst yourself but it is very frustrating when you are trying to listen in and you really can't hear anything I mean I actually got from the meeting when I was listening live I thought you guys already had 60 members of this mascot committee already chosen um and I heard that an alumni communication went out and I'm like I'm an alumni I never got any community um you know I asked my sister you know my sister nobody else got an alumni communication so I know it seems like something simple as just speaking directly into the microphone and trying not to turn your faces when you're speaking with each other I mean maybe it's a lapel microphone instead I'm not sure but um I just wanted to publicly you know ask that
089um that the board and the district looked into the sound quality and the video quality um for the meetings I would also like to publicly put my support in for the veterans and that there is a specific vote I know I said this personally to some board members but um I I really do think as a as a member of the community there are certain things in the budget that I may not be okay with my money going to but I can tell you 100 that I would approve paying more individually so that event did not have not having anything at all um a lot less and so I just wanted to um put in my support for that um as well thank you thank you very much okay thank you and uh I I
090can't promise we're going to try to do better on the bit of a challenge here and we'll try to do better now obviously if you are trying to pay attention that you can't hear it is difficult but uh I appreciate the comments thank you okay uh anybody else all right I want to thank everybody who came here tonight uh hopefully you despite the comments hopefully you got to hear us uh we are here every month we're a lot of things a lot of activities going around the districts if you have questions uh you know we want to have comments he said people have been sending this email but we are reached and this Tony cannot be more available it's available in the morning noon and night right in the morning yeah right all right so
091yeah nobody's more yeah accessible than her so uh but be polite and nice and with that I'd like to uh call for a motion to move to an executive session to discuss Personnel matter please all in favor aye thank you very much enjoy the rest of the month and uh Happy Valentine's Day