001Okay. Call to order the regular meeting of the board of education. Today is Wednesday, September 17, 2025. Please rise for the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'll start with a reading of our mission statement. We are committed to academic achievement and success for all students in a safe environment in partnership with families and our community. Our mission is to promote confidence, inspire a passion for learning, and to prepare our students to become responsible global citizens. Is there a motion for the approval of the revised agenda? >> Motion. >> Second. So all in favor I motion carries. >> Questions or comments from interested citizens? Please come up to the podium. Is there
002is there a speaker addressing the board tonight that would like to come up to the podium? >> Okay. Okay. Is there any update on questions or comments raised from prior? No. >> So, next is the approval of the minutes. Is there a motion? >> Motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. Motion carries. And Mr. Cahill. Presentation school property tax aortionment and the impact on tax rates. [Music] Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Uh, good evening everyone. So, uh, I want to thank the board of education for allowing me to present to you this evening. And tonight, we're going to talk about school property tax aortionment and the impact on tax rates. And if you recall at our August 13th meeting, uh, the board approved the tax warrant and the tax rates for the current
003year. And at the end of the meeting, I had mentioned in passing, if you will, equalization and the impact that it can have on tax rates. It sort of like a factor sort of distort the tax rate. And I also reminded everyone that our levy, which is the part of this process that we control, increased by 1 and a.5%. But the actual changes to the tax rate were more than one and a half% and actually less than 1 and a half%. And that has to do with equalization and the aortionment process that we have to go through. So we decided to get into that in a little more detail tonight. And I tried to simplify what's a fairly complex process and there's a lot of numbers. I've I've gotten some very simple examples to try
004to sort of distill this down. Uh, but I'm I'm thinking because it's kind of complicated, if folks want to ask questions during this or be a little more interactive, that's fine with me. So, moving on, I thought it made sense to just talk about property taxes in New York State. Kind of an overview, a little background. Uh, not everyone knows a lot about the property tax system. Um, but it's a system based on value. It's called advelum tax system, and that just is Latin for according to value. So, um, it's a local tax. So, New York State, it's administered, it's raised tax, uh, and spent locally. It's the largest source of revenue for local governments in New York State. Approximately $26 billion annually. And no part of the real property tax goes to the state
005or federal government, uh, as far as I know. So the uh property's assessed value is calculated by multiplying the market value of property by a level of assessment. And in New York State, the there's fractional assessing. So what that means is there's no requirement for towns and cities to assess at market value 100% of market value. So the assessment, as I said, is calculated by multiplying the market value by the level of assessment in the community. And all that's required is that it be uh equitable and uniform. So in other words, if you assess all properties in your town by 10%, that's equitable. That's fair. So long as everyone is assessed at 10%. And when there's a problem is when some people are assessed at 12% and some are at 8 and the average level
006of assessment is 10. So that's inequitable. So in New York State, it's legal. And in fact, I don't know exactly, but I would say probably half the towns and cities in the state assess at a fraction of market value. And in fact, the five towns that comprise our school district, all are assessing at a fraction of market value. No one is assessing at 100% of market value. And I have an example there, a $500,000 market value home, let's say, and the level of assessment in the town is 10%, their assessment would be approximately 50%. So due to the differing levels of assessment between towns and cities within taxing jurisdictions such as school districts, an equalization process has to occur using New York state equalization rates. So what do I mean by that? Well, the school
007district is a taxing jurisdiction and we comprise, as I said, five towns. Not entirely, but we call it segments of those five towns. And each of those five segments and five towns is assessing at a different level of assessment. So we go through this process with those towns and those segments to bring them all up to market value and and then we can fairly aortion our tax levy. And that bringing them up to market value is the equalization process. And we use something called a equalization rate which is uh developed by New York State every year. And in general, the equalization rate, I have it there, is the total assessed value of a town all over the total market value of the town. So it's it's actually it seems complicated, but it's pretty simple. If
008a town, like in the example I have there, the level of assessment is 10%. That properties are essentially at 10% of the market value. Okay, I have a caveat here which happened this year. Falling equalization rates, everything else being equal, mean the market value is rising faster than the assessed value. And the truth is in this system, mostly the assessments are not changing. They're at a level at at that they were the last time the town or city did a full reassessment. So again, sort of a confusing idea. Um, but through the equalization process, as I said, we get the full value. We can then aortion our levy. The levy is like a pie. I I've used this analogy and I actually show this later in this presentation with a chart. And the wedges of
009the pie in our case there would be five pieces are the segments the towns and the equalization bringing everything the taxable assess values up to full value helps us or really drives the dividing that pie up really. So a lot there. I know that's sort of the general background property taxes in New York State. any questions or anything we want to kind of cover again there. Okay. So, let's move on. So, what I tried to do here is have a very simple example hypothetical school district uh with the portion. And so, it's school district AB and school district AB is made up of I'm going to use my pointer here, town A and town B. In the upper uh half of the slide, we're showing the uh aortionment without using equalization rates. We we're just
010taking the assessed value of each town. In each case, it's 10 million and 10 million. So, it's 50% uh to each town and the levy, hypothetical levy would be a million dollar. So each town would pick up $500,000 of the levy and the tax rate is calculated as this part tax raised by each town all over the taxable assessed value times a thousand. So it sounds like a confusing concept. It's called the mill rate. But just understand when you go through that math, it would be $50 per thousand for each of these towns. That would be the rate with a million dollar levy. So that's without equalization. That's just looking at the assessed values. With equalization is the lower half of the panel. And the uh assessed value of each town is the same. But
011in this case, we see that the equalization rate for town A is actually 33%. Town B is 50%. And when you actually do the math, the equalization process, you take the assessed value divided by the equalization rate 333. The full value, the market value of town A is actually 30 million and the market value of town B is 20 million. So in this case with equalization really instead of 50% of the levy going to town A and town B really should be 60% of the levy is raised by town A and 40% by town B. And when you go through that process to calculate the actual tax rates uh the fair and equitable tax rate would be $60 per thousand per town A and $40 per thousand for town B. So in the absence of
012equalization, we see that town A is paying too little and town B was paying too much. So it's the way it's the process we have to go through to fairly and equitably aortion our levy out to the towns. Any questions? We're good. So in the next slide, I'm using the same example hypothetical school district in year two with a decreasing equalization rate. So that's what we experienced to some degree this year in Monro Woodbury. And you see here the assessed value for town A and B is the same 10 million, but the equalization rate now for town A instead of being 33% is 30%. So when we divide the taxable assessed value by 30% we get a market value of 33.3 million town B has not changed B instead of 40% of the levy is
013actually picking up 37 a.5 and when we bring this all the way down here to the actual tax rates instead of being $60 the actual tax rate for town A is 62 a.5 half and town B instead of being $40 is 37 A2. So just based on a decreasing equalization rate for town A, they're experiencing a 4.2% increase in the tax rate and town B is experiencing a 6.2% decrease in the tax rate. No change to the levy. So that is the issue, one of the issues with falling equalization rates. And the way it works and the way it worked for us this year is it's really dependent on uh the proportional change. So I'll I'll show you this in a sec. If if the five towns in Monro Woodbury, you're the town that had
014the greatest decrease in your equalization rate, everything else being equal, you're going to see the largest increase in your tax rate. Um so let's keep going. Any questions or any comments on this slide? >> Patrick, I have one clarifying comment. I just want to kind of check my understanding. So the AV is something that is an assessed value that only changes every few years, right? Because it's a would need a town reassessment. Correct. And then the market value is dynamic. I mean that's changing all the time as home sale as homes are sold, right? So we have one factor of this that's dynamic and changing a lot and the other one that's pretty static and changing only every couple years. Is that right? >> Exactly right. Okay. Thanks. >> And and the AV, the assessed
015value, it's not even changing every few years. It's changing if you modified your property in some way. You added a deck or an addition. Um, and that's what I was trying to get to before. For the most part, like we'll see in a in a minute, the town of Blooming Grove, their equalization rate is eight about 8 and 3/4%. So, it's probably many decades ago the last time they actually did a full-blown reassessment and we're at 100% market value. >> Um, but that's exactly right. You you got it right. And that's why every year there's a new equalization rate. if you know if the market wasn't changing equalization rate would kind of stay the same but it but it is changing especially in Blooming Grove Town Blooming Grove is seeing a you know a lot
016of new construction and uh sort of a big increase in market value. Now the solution like one of the solutions would be everybody reassesses and we go to market value 100% market value there'd be no need for equalization but you have to maintain that too because the market as you said Candice is changing typically what happens is every 3 years you'd reassess you'd go to market value and every few years you'd update um based on you know changes in the market. Okay. So, in this slide, uh, we're actually looking at Monro Woodbury, uh, levy and tax rates. And I just want to sort of focus on this, the bottom half of the slide here for a minute. And I won't go through all of this because it's sort of tedious, I know, but here are
017the five towns that make up Monroe Woodbury School District. Blooming Grove, Chester, Monroe, Tuxedo, and Woodbury. Here are the school taxable assessed values. Here are the two the most recent 2526 equalization rates. So, I'll just read them off real quick. So, Blooming Grove is a is 8.7%, Chester uh 36.5, Monroe uh 10.8, Tuxedo 11.3, and Woodbury about 27 1.5% equalization rates. And that's roughly that level of assessment. It it should be the same. We divide the taxable assessed value by the equalization rate to get the full value. So, I talked about that. That's that equalization process bringing each segment up to full value so we can then aortion allocate our levy. So the the full value of the entire district based on the taxable assessed values and the state equalization rate is $ 8.1 billion.
018So based on the full value of each segment here over the the total we get the percentage tax to be raised by each segment. And when I initially did this uh presentation, I had this only going out two decimal places. And I noticed based on rounding that it wasn't coming out exactly to to be the levy. So I so I added we we go out to six decimal places with that percentage tax to be raised to be more precise. Uh the levy as I mentioned is here is 133.3 million went up 1 a.5%. Keep in mind that was below the tax cap which is approximately I think it was like about 3.2 rate of inflation. Our our increase in the levy was approximately half the rate of inflation. Um 1 and a.5% that's the part
019of this whole equation that we have direct control over. So so based on the portion here of the levy to each town we calculate a tax rate. And in this case because it's a rate per thousand we call it a mill rate. Now I just want to point out one thing. If you you were to do the math of this tax levy for each segment divided by the school taxable assessed value, it could be a little different because there's something and I'm not going to get into it, but I have an asterk here called rollbacks or omitted taxes which are basically taxes that were not collected in the prior year typically because of exemptions. A property sells, the prior owner had an exemption, the new owner is not entitled to that exemption. So we relevy
020those taxes in the the subsequent year and those tend to reduce the tax rate a little bit for those segments. And in this case, Tuxedo had a very large uh relevy or roll back. I'm using the term roll back. There's multiple terms. Um and that sort of distorted their their tax rate, brought it down, made it a little lower than it would have otherwise been. But the the takeaway I kind of went through how that process works. The takeaway over here I want you to see is this final column is equalization rate percentage change. So we see that Blooming Grove their equalization rate went down almost 9% 8.8%. Chester's equalization rate went down 7 and a half% we'll call even a little more 7.6. Monroe 6.4 4, Tuxedo 3.74, and Woodbury went down 2.9%. So
021I I made a note here. Although all the equalization rates fell, right, we can see that percentage change, the towns with the largest equalization rate decreases saw proportionally larger increases in tax rates. So the takeaway is that the equalization rate changes seem to have a bigger impact even than the increase in the tax levy. So we saw the change to the equalization rate here and here is the change to the tax rates based on that. So Blooming Grove saw a tax rate increase of approximately 4.8%, Chester's 3.3%, Monroe a little over 2% increase. Tuxedo partly because of that large roll back that I mentioned saw a decrease in their tax rate of approximately two and a half percent and Woodbury s is seeing a decrease in their tax rate of approximately 1.65%. The levy went
022up one and a half. That's what we control. And then based on equalization and also another factor I didn't really get into here but it's actually changes in the tax base. How did the taxable assess value change? I mentioned Blooming Grove is having a lot of new construction and things. So that's another variable. But basically based on equalization changes, a 1 and a.5% increase translates into this nearly a 5% increase and a a 2 and a half or almost 2% in the case of tax 2 and a half% decrease in your tax rates. Um, so I know that's a lot to cover, but I, you know, I was trying to sort of drive home the analysis and the theory that, you know, there's a little more at stake and there's a process to some degree
023outside of our control going on here with the calculation of the rates. So any questions on that? This is actually what happened, you know, for the 2526 year in the lower half of that schedule. Up above is is uh last year 2425 Okay, one more slide. So this is just two pie charts and the really the only thing I wanted to point out here. So this is a comparison of last year to the current year. Percentage of full value, right? So so that's what we base our aortionment on is the percentage of full value. And to get the full value, we go through that equalization process, which is basically taking the assessed values and dividing them by the state equalization rate. So takeaway here, the thing I wanted to point out is is look at
024Bulimigi Grove last year. So they made up 5.9% of the pie, right? The pie is the levy. This year the percentage of that pie went up to 6.2%. So that's because of that decreasing equalization rate. And then Woodbury at the other end of the spectrum, last year they made up 33 a.5% of the pie, right? And they decreased to 32.7%. So that is sort of and I know you can't really see in the pie chart but that are the two extremes for this year for us. Um and that's all we had on that one. >> And that's all I have complex. I know >> you made it very easy to understand. >> Any questions or comments, >> concerns? No. >> Thank you, Mr. K. Thank you so much. >> So easy to understand. Thank you.
025>> Good. Thank you, Susan. >> Okay. And for personnel, Mr. Burger. >> Good evening. I am respectfully asking for approval of personnel items 8.1 through 8.14. >> Any questions? >> Motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? I I motion carries >> for business and financial Mr. K. >> Thank you. Uh I also respectfully request approval of the business and financial items on the agenda uh which are I think it was 9 9.1 through 9.6. >> Any questions? >> Motion. >> Second. >> All in favor? Motion carries. >> Motion on committee on special education and preschool special education recommendations. Motion >> motion. >> Second. Second. >> All in favor? I. Motion carries >> and reports by board, Dr. Hassler. >> How do you get to go first? >> So, congratulations to everybody who was appointed tonight.
026Particularly, I'd like to congratulate our new registar, Karina Flores, who starts tomorrow. Very excited to have you. Uh, the registar is housed within the CNI office. So, we're excited to welcome you to the team. Um, great job everybody so far on open houses. We have a few more left, but the buildings look great and it's great to see all the families. Those that haven't occurred yet, I encourage everybody to please come out. Uh lastly, next Thursday night is our first home evening football game. Um we're having we're using the same process that we did last year for securing a ticket to the game. So, the high school's sending out that information as we speak. So, I encourage everybody to please register for your tickets and we look forward to seeing you next Thursday night. Good
027luck crusaders. Thanks. >> Thank you, Miss Novak. >> I just want to thank Patrick again for a great presentation. Very clear. Um and everyone have a great night. >> Thank you, Dr. Morales. >> Um similar to Dr. Hassler, I'd like to welcome Karina Flores to the team as our registar. Um it's been great getting to the open houses and having the buildings ready and seeing our parents learning about the different programs and how their students will be supported. Other than that, have a good night. Thank you, Dr. Santel. >> Thank you, Mr. Cahill, for such a simplified version of something complex. I'm still digesting, but thank you very much, >> Mr. Burgerer. >> Uh, good evening. I too want to congratulate all the new appointees and our new hires. The HR office has been busy
028since July 1st. We actually have hired 28 new staff members have come through our doors to meet with us as a district. So, I want to thank the the board and your support for the commitment to our district and our staff. And while I say new new hires, um, you know, many were for backfilling positions due to retirements or internal promotions or temporary leave replacements. We have substitutes in that number as well. Uh, but as a whole, we've been busy and I just wanted to thank the board for for their support with that. Um, I've also attended some open houses. It's great just to see the energy and the buzz back in the buildings, seeing the staff and the and the students returned. Uh looking forward to the the upcoming weeks. So, thank you and
029have a good evening. >> Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. >> Uh have a great evening. >> Thank you, Dr. Vas. >> I had a pleasure to attend the open house at Sapphire and Central Valley. Um and it's exciting to see the families coming back. Um and have a good night everyone. >> Miss Down here. >> I've also had the pleasure of going to some of the open houses. Um I attended Central Valley Elementary with Dr. Vas and um middle school with Mr. Cahill and Smith Clove with Dr. Morales and tomorrow night I'm going to Smith Globe again and it's really wonderful to see all the parents and the kids coming back and I hope we're off to a great start because it looks like it feels like we are. Um have a great evening everyone and
030>> thank you Zoe. >> Good morning. Good evening. I hope everyone's week has been good. Um, as student representative, not much has been done so far since we're about two to three weeks into the new school year, but that will change very soon. I would firstly like to thank Miss Sudan for helping me out these past few weeks and answering all of my emails. Um, this Monday I had a small meeting with Mrs. Finley and she helped me hash out a few things so I could really dive right deep. Um, I plan to go to each of the seven buildings at least once in the first semester and then again in the second semester. I also today attended a webinar for student representatives all throughout New York State and I learned a lot. Um, it
031also planted some ideas in my mind on how I could connect to students a little bit better. Um, that's all for me and have a wonderful rest of your day. >> You miss Robinson. >> Um, thank you Mr. Fail for your presentation and have a good night. Thank you, Superintendent Norman. >> Good evening, everyone. So, just a few quick updates. Um, just to inform the board and the community of where we are. I'd like to start with the defra distraction-free learning update. Um, and I'll, you know, categorize by the high school and middle school. So, at the middle school, we're seeing positive momentum with implementation. Staff are following through with the protocols and students are responding very well overall. still working through a few consistency points, but nothing out of the ordinary at this stage.
032So, more to follow. As far as the high school, the high school's reporting that things are going extremely well. Also, student and teacher feedback has been positive. Arrival and dismissal are flowing with little to no impact. So, from their perspective and also my perspective, we've hit or even exceeded our goal of 90 95% compliance at this particular time. So, thank you administrators, teachers, and everyone for for doing such a great job. Students as well. So, I want to inform the community and the board that there was a fire in the basement at our education center. Uh, this occurred early Tuesday morning and the education center is located on Route 32 in Central Valley, not the Haramman Center. As a reminder to our community, um I'm sorry, a portion of the basement consisting of two offices
033has damage as a result of the fire. Um a crew has been working to assess the damage and we're airing out the building and we're going to u enclose the structure. Please note that the tax office has moved to the Herman Center which is located at 14 Church Street Herman and we'll be accepting tax payments daily from 8:30 to 4:00 p.m. Also want to remind our community of our field use protocols. Um there are protocols in place uh that pertain particularly to our facilities and field use. Uh and these include our gymnasiums, classrooms, athletic fields. We're asking that people please follow these protocols which are located on our district website. Um, we see our school buildings and grounds as a valuable community resource and we're committed to making them available for community use when such
034activities don't interfere with our educational obligations and programs. So, I encourage you all the members, community members to please visit our district website for more information. Our go gold reminder. All students, staff, and family are encouraged to wear gold on Friday, September 26, as the district commits to helping raise awareness for pediatric cancer. Lastly, schools close. Reminder, schools will be closed on Tuesday, September 23rd and Wednesday, September 24th in observance of Rashashana. We wish a very happy new year to all in our community who celebrate. Thank you. Have a good evening. >> Thank you, Dr. Norman. And I just also want to say again, Patrick, thank you for that very easy explanation for what you talked about. Um, and the Yonder Pouch's success has been a little surprising for me, but I'm happy to say
035that it's transitioned pretty well and and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Um welcome to our new staff and uh yes special shout out to Miss Flores for the registar position and to Miss Gentill's first official evening with us here as our district clerk. Um so welcome to you and thank you Zoe for the work that you are going to be doing this year. Looking forward to it. And with that I ask for a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion second. >> Second. >> All in favor. Reading turned.