001call to order the regular meeting of the board of education for april 14th 2021 will everyone please rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all 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 every year monroe woodbury marks autism awareness month with light it up blue day when teachers staff administrators students community members are invited to wear blue or whatever color empowers autistic voices the goal is to raise
002awareness acceptance support acceptance and inclusion of our neurodivergent members of the monroe woodbury community and encourage our school community to take small actionable steps to help these crusaders feel included and loved high school freshman evan pavignano wrote a poem what autism means to me which was brought to life in a video by the middle school safe school ambassadors the poignant video project was featured on new york nbc news in the morning show and also as a news segment the video can be viewed on the district website and our social media page we are so very proud of our crusaders and the work they are doing to create a more compassionate caring school community a special thanks to septa for doing their part to share these important messages and on behalf of the board i'd like
003to say a thank you we were able to get shirts for septa we also have some buttons um pta council gave us ribbons that i know most of us have put on our lanyards and also a pin from the interact club so thank you so much so all the board members should have that at their at their desk so thank you very much and i encourage everybody to go watch the video it was actually really great so that's on our website may i have a motion to approve the revised agenda motion second all those in favor all right questions and comments from interested citizens i just we have two speakers this evening i'd just like to remind you that comments are for three minutes each and before the second person comes up just pause for
004a moment so that we can clean the podium anna cordonez is coming up to speak in regards to the reopening plan anna you can go right to the podium my name is anna and my son is a student here at the high school i believe there is more iron than good keeping those kids home they are lonely and insulated they are distracted can move that thing for a minute yeah you can yes yeah they are distracted and they cannot focus my song my excellent student and now he is not motivated and he create the grace being dropper while teachers are trying their best they are not reaching is a student and giving their kids the attention they need it is just not possible for a teacher to monitor over 50 students online many school districts
005had in school learning with the proper safety measuring in place there is not a reason our school cannot do the same the kidney get out there out the house and be in school it's been over a year and they are not just suffering academically but also socially a school is a outlet for many kids maybe even escape from home at home they are boring and long and only looking at their own face on the screen for hours a day i believe that i am not the only speaker on my song and myself i say that i see a chain and hang or the worst we need some normalcy and going to school daily we're hoping give some back to the huawei's key thank you okay i want to take the reminding of my time so
006i came talking about a little personal experience i have a home the other day i choose not to go to work i own a two pharmacy in the bronco the day i say i stay to see what is my kid doing through the whole day i'd say the day to monitor my key step by step i'm sorry my english is really basic somebody's understanding i say please ask me and be more than happy to explain myself in different ways no you're fine so um when i monitor my song like the through the day i take the whole day to monitor my key i saw my key logging into google map into google classroom like oh they don't like la sahiha i saw him say when they mentioned my kidney they say here and then he
007get back to me the computer so i saw my son gaba on bay to sleep and the teacher kept talking and he milled the computer the device he moved the device i said what are you doing you're not supposed to be in front of the computer like the hotline for the class i say no they're fine i say bro they're not gonna be allowed to see your face my song is say everybody hi emojin like my song you have a little monkey i believe so most of the key you have emoji another teacher is lose to being fine with this they don't get to see the teacher i thought a piece work class no it's not everybody most of the key i went through the whole thing i saw a bunch emoji and my kids
008get by on b i say what is this does it scare me but i don't want to start hawaiian with my teenager i'm sorry i don't want to start arguing with my teenager yeah i say let me go through the whole day at the end of the day i addressing whatever i had to addressing we hang okay i don't want here to get or say and don't let me see what's going on through the whole day so as a second class is king same thing emoji my kids sleep in the second period it's really embarrassing but remember i can work hard i work in six days a week i work in ten hours okay running a pharmacy in the city so one hour commute at 12 hour outside of my house i don't know see
009all the parents in the same position where i am but i try to explain to you to you understand just a little bit so i saw the second period my kids sleeping through the second period soon and the emoji is there i say the teacher is okay with that they don't get to see your face you say yes everybody happy motion and this is the way running i say okay so i saw a i believe as a history teacher a history teacher the one he had all my respect to be honest anyhow my respect for this one specifically the only teacher i saw okay selling to my song like listen i want everybody in the chromebook i don't want any other device that teacher is telling everybody i want them chromebook i want to see
010faces i don't want to see emoji i say okay finally i see the teacher the rest of the teacher for the my song say night classes because he called it at the beginning of the year the concert he said i want to graduate in three years i don't want to be here for the whole four years they call me i you know it's okay to me he wants to do a little competition with eliane causing he wants to graduate and they ask me i say it's okay he say night classes basically i believe the normal sigh i believe he'd say nigh so i saw that they say finally this i teach you know it's a cover and telling he wants to see the key face no emoji no login from the other device that key
011is open the crumble so my song open the chromebook then he have another computer you can take it to my jar in my longer home yeah i saw my key putting one computer in here logging all the rest of the key in the other screen the teacher talking in here and my kids play my crash with a bunch of frankie he had from junior so i kind of scared him but i say what did he learn i saw my key with a bunch of zero zero zero zero zero i'm talking about my kid in passing all the crazy you logging into mikey he passed away i say jose what's going on here you have a bunch of zero in this class a bunch of students like you are hungry and this one ninety-five and this
012for a lot of class don't worry i take care that's all i get from my kid don't worry i take care i say okay i'm at this point i'm a little bit you know panicked i adjusting what's going on he told me don't worry my friend you hooked me up i hook you all my friend if i tomorrow i'm gonna get back to that great to have a hungry i say okay justin what have you been doing i'm being working but i had to pay a bunch of people like everybody else morgan everything i have to worry i cannot be monitoring my kid 24 7. to be honest with you but then the whole situation is cured i'm being punished i'm being scared i said what have you been doing this is my experience i
013don't know see all the firing what did they went through but this is my personal experience so i try i'm being freaked out for a couple of days i don't know how to handle the situation i don't know see i go into a school and throw my key under the balls you know like i doing right now you know i say okay see i say what kind of example i teach into my key what am i teaching to my kick at this whatever he doing is fine they're not fine with me to be honest with you okay i'm being sacrificed myself in this country i'm being a workaholic my husband here raised herself every day getting it getting worse he lieutenants in the police department what am i doing what am i doing with my
014child so i keeping that thing to myself so yesterday i said no i'm not going to keep quiet i'm going to go to the high school unfortunately they told me i don't have no appointment i make a couple of phone calls like break down almost to a school at one point i believed in answering my phone call because i see the call id but i say i want to spoke to the principal in my situation okay i need to let someone know what i see in my own house so i think i don't have the attention i'm looking for in the high school oh i get a couple of security guards in the front they told me i cannot go to the building because of the kobe i don't have no appointment i get to
015see is to talk with my song counselor my son consulate i telling like i she told me oh your song is doing really good i say this is freaking me out again my song is doing really goofy i know what's going on yeah i know how he's been cheating on her friend he'd been cheating and they pass the word one to another one and doing a screenshot of the word and all those kind of things yeah i say okay this is not work for me i don't know see working for another powering but at least for me it's not working so i decide so i don't see no answer the answer i want from the high school i never receive a phone call from the principal by even when i let my name i'm a
016number so i can try to get in touch with someone so i decide listen i'm not going to stop here i'm going to go to the district to see somebody can listen to me in the district we appreciate when i don't i don't know the support but i was so nervous i hear a gentleman screaming outside don't go inside the building way outside you have appointment i say okay another link when i criminal all i wanted to talk to someone he went inside he got me a piece of paper with a phone number i say try to get in touch with somebody in this number i say jesus christ what am i doing right now i way too many outside i put an angel in front of me one would stop from you that guy
017he gave me too many or listening and it's mean the whole world to me like at this point oh i feeling myself was so frustrated super duper frustrated agenda make it here today i don't want to say nobody or anything but thank you thanks a lot but he listened to me i spent my situation i telling i want to go to the meeting the gentleman from before told me no you cannot go to the meeting because you're not registered i say okay how i can register myself say call the number and they're going to provide you some information and say okay the first thing i said to that gentleman what about good morning sir how are your day going i thought i don't see the kind of behavior in the body of education i had
018a lot of complain a lot of angry inside me because whatever happened in my house to be honest with you with my child so that gentleman told me i'm gonna get someone to call you i gonna get someone sign you off for the meeting you can give your usb thank you you know who you are thank you thank you for those who many who listened to me yesterday but i want everybody to know what is going on with the online classes this is not working for for our key we appreciate that working well with you yes i i we i definitely say that you know we appreciate you coming forward and speaking and i know mrs rodriguez is taking some notes and and perhaps she'll follow back up with you directly as well so thank
019you thank you so much for coming and speaking yes did you can ask one question have you received a phone call back from the building principal no okay can i still waiting for that phone call okay i spread myself can i ask that if we give you your paperback you can put your phone number on here please because there's no number on it it's just i can give it to you if you want okay nope don't say it no don't say your number out loud don't say your number you'll get lots of calls miss batucci will come down and you can write it on the paper please you're very welcome thank you for coming we appreciate it thank you very much thank you we have another speaker lorraine loaning but just wait one moment while
020he just cleans the podium please i'll take this time to say thank you again to the high school staff for hosting us and the custodial staff for setting everything up and cleaning and making sure that we're safe up here so we appreciate being able to be at the high school again hello my name is lorraine loning and i'm a district resident and for the first time in almost 30 years of speaking at a variety of board meetings tonight i'm a little nervous but i'm here because i want to model behavior for my kids i talk to them about this and when we see something that needs to be addressed i want them to know that they need to speak up about it so ah here goes uh no amount of time or money this district
021spends on combating racism or promoting social justice and equity will matter as long as this board board gives oxygen to racist and xenophobic viewpoints i am referencing the march 24 2021 regular board of ed meeting at the one hour and 11 minute mark board member don buehler started questioning the safety director he led with what is going on at the southern border where a lot of people don't have identification then continue to do with what do we have a process to filter out the large influx of people with no identification and he just kept going i was appalled when i saw this my children were shocked that this could be said publicly at a school board meeting the only responses to his questioning were rather benign comments about the registration process this was very disappointing
022considering what the district has said publicly it wants to achieve going back at least as far as august 2 2020 regular board of ed meeting miss shelby seth representing the hudson valley coalition for change spoke about the challenges facing black and brown students and requested regular checkup meetings with the superintendent and board of ed members to discuss initiatives that ensure the well-being and safety of those students along these lines the district has a district activity task force and the high school has according to its website a social racial justice and equity student union both presumably meet regularly in addition on august 17 2020 the district signed a contract with eye-opening enterprises using the freedom of information act i requested and received a copy of this contract this organization is to provide professional development and consultation
023on policies practices and processes across the district related to racial equity and diversity equity and inclusion at large some of their deliverables were a keynote address student meetings parent meeting and various workshops one of the scope of services that stood out to me was that they will provide teachers and staff with the tools to build psychologically safe and brave classrooms brave classrooms think about that that's a really powerful thought this district is paying hundred eye-opening enterprises thousand seven hundred fifty thousand dollars this year and then again next year on september 12 2020 the previously mentioned eye-opening enterprises delivered a workshop to the board of ed at the board retreat and on february 5 2021 the policy committee met to discuss a policy regarding equity inclusivity and diversity in education the minutes of that meeting says
024input would be requested from dr pickens of eye-opening enterprises the district equity task force and the social justice social racial justice and equity student union to date no policy has been adopted by this board all of this brings me back to mr buehler's comments from last meeting statements like those could potentially place undocumented students into a spotlight that they do not crave and could damage the entire latino community let me remind you of the mission statement that ms mccleary reads before every meeting 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 students not students based on their academic achievements their athletic
025accomplishments family connections gender race religion or immigration status all students once again all students that should have been the response to mr buehler that would have been the brave response remember the brave classrooms and the brave students this district is trying to build let's be brave people thank you i don't think we have any updates from previously i think we've had anybody okay so there's no updates on questions or comments that weren't answered at the previous board meeting and we're going to move on to our budget personnel presentation which is being given by mr matt kravitz thank you very much i'm going to stay here that's okay i'm going to shield everyone from the glare from the back of my head so i'll start with that so good evening thank you for the opportunity to
026present this year's budget for general personnel considerations before i begin something like this is a total team effort thank you to a bunch of people but in particular shonda merrill and payroll tonya mulrad in the business office carol spendley who always helps when looking things over donna vittucci who picked up an error and patrick for all of his assistance so thank you very much over the past few weeks we've heard a number of different budget presentations and as you've seen in those those presentations we have a large number of activities for for our students here opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom making this district what i believe i think what we all believe is one of the best school districts around we're a large district we have over 1200 employees and a large
027pool of substitute employees and yet we can often feel like we are one of the smallest big districts around where everyone seems to know everybody else and that's because of our people the people who are the ones who work closely with our students the ones who are up early to drive kids who at times are half asleep particularly high school kids the ones who are up late lesson planning configuring and connecting the ones who are serving breakfast and lunch to all who want and need it or answering phone calls and making sure that concerns are addressed the ones who are preparing our rooms each night so that we can serve our kids or leading our buildings trying to account for all and that can go wrong while celebrating the things that go right and those
028are only a few examples of people here in monroe-woodbury and it's those people who i try to reflect in this presentation so tonight i'll be highlighting the overall salary information for the district i will point out specific areas and we'll explain and review some of the fringe benefits employees in our district receive at the end i'll point out the overall tentative district budget passing it along to mrs rodriguez to explain the district's budgetary story in totality so the first slide the first slide covers the overall amount of district salaries this this coming year 21-22 and it has last year's as well this includes anyone who works here in monroe-woodbury and is driven in large part by collectively bargained contractual obligations this current year we have one settled contract within the district which is our monroe
029woodbury teachers association that encompasses our teachers and teaching assistants and we are presently in negotiations with three other bargaining units our mwaa which is our district administrators our mwea which is our clerical safety food service monitors etc and our csea comprised of our bus drivers custodial staff and our buildings and grounds crew this number also takes into account those who are retiring and the money that accounts for the difference in salary of those who are retiring compared to those that we hire in their place and that's something that is commonly referred to as breakage and that will come up again in in the presentation and shout out to miss ferrara who is adam smith clove in this picture all right so this next picture what you'll see uh first more than anything you'll see uh
030mr jim horn for those of you that know jim he is the head custodian at sapphire elementary he's giving everyone a thumbs up um i did not ask him to do this for this presentation i was but i'm sure he would right so this slide focuses on the buildings and grounds department and you'll see a decrease from last year's budget in the amount of 127 339 dollars it's largely due to controlling overtime costs and continuously reviewing position control and breakage like i mentioned before due to upcoming retirements all right the next group this is temperamental patrick the next group uh transportation so this is uh these are our drivers our bus attendants our dispatchers our mechanics our trainers and our administrative team who make up this budgetary line and mrs russell who's our director of
031transportation she presented a few weeks ago and she talked continuously continuously but she talked about you know all that that everybody in that department is doing and when you talk about an all hands on deck approach to to getting through the day the transportation department certainly demonstrates that but what mrs russell also discussed in her presentation was the need to contract some transportation work outside of the school district for next year as a result that and also more accurate position control the transportation personnel budget will show a decrease of 10.92 percent um but i want everyone to understand those people who you know the thousands and thousands who are watching this at home um i understand that that minus 10.92 can probably be nerve-wracking for some but i want you to know for me that
032we need every single driver that we have we need every single substitute driver that we have that is that number is not reflective of staff cuts or layoffs and if we have if we could hire more drivers then we would wouldn't have the same need for contracted work next year so if anyone is watching at home and you'd like to join kim and and jeannie or or larry or darlene who are in the pictures um and if you want a job with flexible hours and good pay and the chance to positively impact kids while bookending your school day or their school day please please reach out to our transportation department we will train you we will help you learn to drive one of our buses so that you also can support our kids instructional at
033the end of the day we are in the business of what of teaching kids right so this budget line is reflective of all who fall into that category our teachers our teaching assistants our building admins our clerical staff teachers like like katie oppel from north main and people like linda miller and pervy and courtney down at smith clove this change of the 2.94 primarily accounts for contractual obligations includes benefits such as health insurance buyouts for eligible staff that are not necessarily seen as part of somebody's yearly salary additionally all extracurricular salaries are part of this line so coaches and clubs and the like are all part of this so there weren't really any very good pictures for fringe benefits i tried but i couldn't really figure ones out for health insurance and um and fica
034so the overall fringe benefits that the district pays are for things like health insurance the district has to contribute to the teacher retirement system and the employee retirement system as well as this also accounts for the employer's share of payroll taxes as you know the district contribution rates for things like trs and ers are dependent on an employee's retirement tier and most of our employees are in tiers four five and six so that determines how much money they have given to their own retirement or how much money we have to give towards that tier one is separate we do have one staff member who's tier one as of right now and that means that they they join the retirement system before 1973 but we only have one in in the district so additionally this number
035includes our staff obligations and any district obligations for our retired staff so people who are retired and they're still receiving insurance and health insurance and retirement and the like in addition to medicare which obviously comes into play in in retirement what i want to do is just pull out health insurance just out of the um out of the fringe benefit number because it is down 0.39 and the reason for that is you'll see we've and we by we i mean you know largely patrick and his office have been incorporating cost saving measures for for years now and they've really paid off in a you know in this line in addition in addition to stable health insurance costs um that's why we see a slight increase of 0.39 percent in this budgetary line all right so
036just to bring it back to how this presentation began we're all incredibly fortunate to work with such amazing people across all disciplines this number compares the two budgeted amounts for last year and this year mrs rodriguez will present in her budget that the total budget amount of 188 million seven 766 ninety six the salary i know sorry i totally stole your thunder number i know i did it last year too i swear i looked at the tape um the combined budget that's just about of the salary and fringe benefits are about seventy seven percent of the overall budget but one of the things that you saw when this presentation first started was the saying we are monroe-woodbury so i just want to end it with kind of showing you some examples of of who we
037are here at monroe-woodbury so we are administrators and leaders [Applause] we are our food service staff and our teachers we are monitors and and administrative staff and teachers for our grounds crew custodians i had no other pictures of bus drivers and there are so many other people who who go into making this district who we are big thank you and that's the overall budget for personnel considerations any questions any questions no i don't think so thank you matt thank you next we will have a presentation by superintendent rodriguez in regards to the recommend her recommendations for the budget do you have the clicker how much of the budget did matt present just now uh 76.88 no question 77 not one question so next year the goal is to ask at least three questions of mr
038kravitz that's okay we've saved them all for you it should be it should be prorated by by percentage point i think at least 76 questions so i'll can i have this i have comments but no question i'll save that for the end i want to begin by saying thank you to the board of education for the opportunity to present the 2021-2022 school budget and to department chairs district coordinators and administrative council members for their input into developing a budget that maintains programs and is fiscally responsible to our taxpayers [Applause] this picture represents the people we serve our students we are a district that serves five towns seven instructional buildings sixty seven hundred students and thirty seven thousand residents we are a diverse community that is a microcosm of our country we've earned an a rating
039by niche.com for academics teachers clubs and activities college prep diversity and health and safety niche ranks 100 000 schools and districts based on statistics and millions of opinions from students and parents additionally niche rated monroe woodbury in the top one percent best school districts for athletes in new york uh top 12 percent best places to teach in new york and top 13 percent best school district in new york state the school report card of the 2018-2019 school year which is the most recent data available indicates our graduation rate is at 94 percent the report card ranks college career and civic readiness this is an indication of how well the school district or district has prepared its students for life beyond high school and measures school quality and student success monroe woodbury earned the highest possible
040ranking of four our current ninth grade students have the opportunity to earn up to 57 ap credits and 44 college credits while attending high school new this year we have established an association with st thomas aquinas college to offer three college credits for ap physics one we have one national merit scholarship winner this year named to be released in may monroe woodbury was named nice nisfa school of distinction this means a hundred percent of our varsity teams were recognized by the state as scholar athlete teams we've established a partnership with local live which lives allows us to not only stream events but gets our students involved in all aspects of broadcast media monroe woodbury has had a long history with special olympics dana shakman at the middle school who's retiring this year and i want
041to say a big thank you to her she was instrumental in bringing these programs to our district and county-wide although the special olympics was canceled this spring due to the pandemic monroe woodbury will hold their oat will hold their own competition for our hard-working elementary and secondary students on june 12 2021. we were the first district to join section 9 unified basketball program which is now in its fourth season and has expanded to two teams in december of 2020 our credit rating was increased from an aa3 to an aa2 as a result of the district's prudent reserve planning and proactive budget practices according to moody's investor services for the 10th year in a row monroe woodbury was named best community for music education our middle school student abilene gaines won the new york state pta
042award of excellence in photography in 2018 we launched mw cares whose purpose was the social emotional well-being of our students and staff we continue this mission with the district's collaboration with eye-opening enterprises the objective the objective is to provide support and coping message mechanisms through a series of events and workshops for staff as well as students and families and to ensure that everyone within our school community feels valued and respected this is our district mission statement this message behind the district's mission statement has taken on an even an even deeper meaning during this long-standing pandemic we remain wholeheartedly committed to doing everything we can to ensure our students get the best education possible in a safe environment this slide represents our budget development calendar work began in early january and continues throughout the winter and
043spring on april 22nd the board of education will vote on the proposed budget presented this evening the public hearing is scheduled for may 5th district residents wishing to speak may contact district clerk donna vittucci the budget vote will take place in person on tuesday may 18th at central valley elementary school from 6 a.m to 9 00 pm in order to facilitate this remote instruction will take place for all central valley staff and students that day to ensure everyone remains safe and cv families and staff will receive more information from the building principle these are our budget priorities our first is to maintain our instructional programs and instructional staffing level levels the second is expand and enhance summer school learning opportunities to mitigate potential learning loss one thing to note is that you will not see
044the cost of these programs in the general fund budget the monies used for mitigating learning loss will come from the american rescue plan grant this grant will extend over several years and will allow the district to expand program offerings for students and target any learning loss due to covid lessons learned from remote instruction there has been a lot to learn from teaching and learning during a pandemic although we were forced to go online there are students who have been very successful with remote instruction we will continue to look at and capitalize on what we've learned during the pandemic balancing a budget first we reduce appropriations every year we look at the previous year's expenditures to determine where we can be more fiscally prudent with our existing resources maximizing state aid and reimbursement we've initiated procedures
045to manage state aid claims and reimbursements in a more consistent manner utilize american rescue plan funds as i mentioned in the previous slide we will be using those funds to support our summer programs and programs throughout the year to help mitigate any learning laws lastly monitor and assess programs for the 2021-2022 school year we evaluate programs and we measure student success within those programs is that the budget triangle [Laughter] okay so uh what i wanted to do is just kind of run through where the uh the tax cap stands and our and our proposed levy increase so this is the schedule that um we reviewed at uh one of our first budget meetings and the the schedule has not changed other than the the two bottom lines there with the proposed tax levy at 126.6
046million approximately and the proposed tax levy increase of 1.5 percent um you know just in terms of the the tax cap the only thing i would mention for this year is the growth factor which we had talked about is the two percent it's the lesser of two percent or the uh cpi and for this year it's 1.23 so it's less than two and going through that computation we computed our maximum allowable levy increase at 1.88 percent and in january when we first presented the budget we assumed a lot's changed since january obviously in terms of state aid and things we assumed we would need to levy at the maximum at the limit the maximum allowable levy fortunately based on what's happened at the state level with state aid to uh to public education we're proposing
047an increase of one and a half percent and it's largely driven by our increase in foundation aid i talked a little bit about that at a previous meeting we're going to talk about it a bit more with the next slide um the other thing i just would point out is this would be the second year in a row that we've levied below the tax cap so last year at this time uh the uh the tax cap was 2.07 percent we levied that one approximately 1.5 1.51 just again based on everything that was going on to do that we had to dip into our reserves we doubled our assigned fund balance fortunately this year we don't have to do those things just based on largely based on the increase in state aid we were able to
048balance the budget and we eliminated the revenue shortfall that i had mentioned you know in the initial meeting and were able to come in a little bit below the the tax cut so this is the state aid update and if you recall initially i had discussed the executive budget proposal to state aid and we had compared that to the current year budget so budget to budget comparison which is appropriate what we're showing here now is in the first column here is the the new york state final budget the enacted budget and the state aid associated with that and we're comparing that to uh the governor's proposal in january and and so the most notable difference is the first line the foundation aid the change in foundation aid so in january it looked as though we
049were going to get about 31.2 million in foundation aid so with the enacted budget that number has jumped up to approximately 35 million that's a 3.79 million dollar increase or about 12 percent little over 12 percent um you know the other on the right hand side here we have some bullet points about the final budget and what happened we talked about some of the proposals that the governor was putting forward the the local district funding adjustment cut that was a cut to state aid that we had talked about in our case it was about 6.2 million so the governor was proposing a cut and then a restoration using federal monies that cut has gone away no new services aid that was the consolidation of 11 expenditure-based and categorical aids and i talked about that being
050detrimental to school districts and boces generally uh didn't happen so that's good news the increase the foundation aid i mentioned that already but but the other piece of that which is important is um a three-year phase-in of the the formula for foundation aid and that is good news really good news especially for our district because we will see increases and i say purportedly or we say purportedly uh phased in over three years because anything can happen but right now that's the plan and that's good news that at least the intent is to phase this in and run the formula the way it was designed so so that's good news not only next year but if the plan rolls out the way the legislature and the governor have put it out there that would be good
051news for the next few years for us as well and it affects if you think about it it affects different districts in a different way it may not be uh as big of a deal for some districts if they were they were receiving in some cases more than they should with the enactment of the uh the formula so in any case that's the foundation story the other piece was additional upk funding it's a new line on the state aid runs for our district 2.66 million annually if we were to serve uh 462 pupils which is you know and it's a full day i believe there's a lot of there's a lot of things which uh unanswered questions associated with the program i think we were excited when we first heard that you know that this
052was a possibility but i think as we continue to look into it to develop a really robust and good pre-k program will take the district about six months so at this point it's not going to be possible for us to open up universal pre-k but we are going to keep it as an item that we will look at and you know we've questioned whether this money will come to us again next year right and and i believe that with the enacted budget it was it was going to be funding this additional funding for two years now that could be renewed or extended um but again it's there's no guarantee and we wouldn't want to have something that begins heavy lift and then there's no funding and either ends or it has to become an expense
053to the general fund and part of receiving that money is the district would have to also put in uh money from the general budget that's that's you have to allocate money to the general budget as well right there's there's a maintenance of effort requirement what what typically happens is um there are certain expenses which are not part of the grant they would have to go to the the general fund and that can that can grow over time that can shift over time so you have to um you have to be cautious i'll say that with these programs but we are we are very grateful to have received this funding because i think you know had we known before time we could have created something for the coming year because i do think the community would
054like you know this would be good for our community would be good for our schools because students would be you know going into kindergarten and having an opportunity to get these programs that would be developed by the school district themselves so for this year we don't think that we can put together a viable and robust program but we do think that we will look at we will be discussing this again come the next couple of months to see if we can potentially do it for the following year right and and there's you know there's still a lot of unanswered questions because it is new it's not a new program but this funding is new how it's going to roll out is new if it will continue you know all those things um there i was
055on a tele conference or meeting today and for new york state association of business officials in two weeks they have a meeting with sed specifically about the upk program what it means what are i don't say strings but what are the compliance issues right uh you know the the program's a little different than regular school i think the certification of the instructors is different the number of students in a class is different there's limits so and and space and space right that's right to be bring in 462 additional students there is going to be a you know we have to uh contemplate where where we would place these students right i mean that's a school right 462 kids is another school so um a lot to look into there so uh you know the final
056bullet i had there was no increase to fund balance limits so so we mentioned this where the the legislature was contemplating contemplating going from four percent to six percent allowing districts to hold more unassigned fund balance and or four to eight percent so that didn't come about um you know just in terms of state aid returning to that so we talked about foundation aid uh the you see here in the executive budget proposal we had this services aid uh that has gone away the other thing i'd point out finally is the the building aid line at the near the bottom there so that increased by 451 000 um and interesting think about this concept for a minute that's from january to april there was this big swing and that had to do with uh the
057us the district filing a final cost report on our turf field and chiller project here at the high school so so we were able to file that final cost report by the end of the calendar year and that gets into the system that the database that the governor pulls to do their state aid runs uh didn't include that and uh once we had that in when they pulled that database again uh for the for the april one run it included it and boom our building aid jumps up by you know almost half a million dollars so that's why i've said this before some of these aids the expenditure aids um you know the categorical aids they're not set in stone they're projections and and that's why we're really happy about the foundation aid because that's
058the one aid program that doesn't have that variation it has some but uh you know it's it's not a projection based on what we think we're going to spend this year which affects our state aid for next year so you can really hang your hat on that one uh and then the final line was just the the state aid adjustment that that's a a number that we have enacted and it's roughly 10 of our transportation aid we've noticed a trend where the projection for some of these aids particularly transportation has been overstated and the actual tends to come in a little bit less so bottom line 57.6 million is our projection for next year for state aid that's an increase from 53.3 which was the executive at the time of the executive budget proposal in
059january so that's about 4.3 million or 8 percent so a big swing from january to april good good thank you thank you patrick and here is i'll take my math club and here is um the proposed budget the total proposed budget is 188.7 million dollars which you've already heard from mr kravitz an increase from the prior year's budget of 2.59 percent the tax levy is 126.6 million which is which is a one point five percent increase over the prior years levy which is below the monroe woodbury tax cap which is 1.88 which patrick wanted me to make sure that i reminded you that the tax the maximum tax levy was 1.88 and we're largely able to do this because of an increase in foundation aid when the voters go to vote on may 18th you're
060going to see two propositions the first proposition will be for the total general fund budget and the second proposition will be for our bus and vehicle purchase which we've done every year and we're we're planning on replacing four big buses and seven bands for a total cost of one million 48 367 000 any questions um i just have a couple from the last from the last slide with the state aid so the my first one was can you just clarify because i know we've had discussions in the past about the the transportation component how did that end up we were we've been chatting about how it would impact our budget from last year because we technically did not have physical students in the building so how did that impact with the budget well uh good
061question stacey what what that largely is doing is impacting our state aid for the current year okay because what what we're really talking about is the closure from march 13th right to the end of the year and and the takeaway was the the the state agreed that from the point of the closure until early may which i think it was about may 8th during that time frame any expenses we incurred would be fully aidable they picked may 8th because it was the point of closure to the point where the governor said nobody's coming back to school which was early may after that i think there is going to i don't know how they're going to do it exactly but those expenses would be partially aidable and and we've talked about that if you were if
062you're incurring expenses when you're delivering chromebooks meals right food uh all those kinds of things uh that piece would be aidable but the some of the other components wouldn't be so it's it's a partial victory shall we say with that um so we'll see what happens we we don't know i i talked to somebody who who said they felt like state aid was trying to find a way because you know the laws enacted then you know the the agencies come up with policy or you know procedures to regulation to enact that they're trying to come up with a way to you know to give school districts the aid that they they need and they they felt like they were entitled to um so we'll see what happens yes better it's better than what we expected
063to okay and then i have one more just in regards to i know you had said that you've you've asked the question in regards to the universal pre-k as to whether or not the monies that they're giving us this year even though we were not going forward with it for this school year september 2021 2022. so have you received an answer as to whether or not we expect that these monies would continue if we start the program for the following school year so we i contacted so the so senator schuffas was um really behind this this legislation this this um push for this uh state aid and so i've asked um i know he just had a baby so he hasn't gone back to me but we'll get a response because that that's been our
064question if we don't take this money this year what will the impact be the following year or is this this amount of money is the same money that we're going to get every year for at least the next couple of years okay and the number that you have here for the 462 students that would be the minimum number of students that we would have to enroll maximum maximum okay thank you okay and if we enrolled fewer we would get less money right understood it's an allocation i was looking at it from a building standpoint because even if you only put 20 children it's like 23 classes i was just kind of thinking where we're putting them but that can be a future discussion that's that's that's the big question that's what i was saying um
065any other questions no okay thank you both so much all right i stay here by myself okay that's right we have an update from mrs rodriguez regarding our reopening plan we do let me just get myself together here so i want to speak a little bit about the document that was released late friday night by the department the new york state department of health at approximately eight o'clock on friday night i received a a forward of a forward meaning that this document had been released and it was 24 pages and so at that time we meaning the cabinet and i needed to make some decisions right because one of the things that was a big takeaway for us was that at five o'clock when we left school we were mandated by the new york department
066of health to have barriers in order in order to bring our k-5 students and then at night that requirement was no longer required but they also recommended that we not use them i have to tell you that was a little daunting to know that we had expended quite a bit of funds and used our had our custodians take the time to put this together and and and the premise behind that was that we wanted to make sure that whatever the doh was going to come out with that we would be prepared it's no it's i was not prepared for that response and and i will tell you that we were excited the school was the the administration was excited everybody in the community was really excited about us bringing back our k-5 students so at
067that time i felt that the most prudent thing along with speaking with the cabinet that we would move forward and we would bring the students our k5 students back we would review the data we would review the document and then we would also ca call our council because i think that all superintendents when we receive this we're wondering what do we do so our council was very good in telling us that just because a document was released on friday night it gives the district at least a week to review that document and just to sort of give you an idea of what it was like on august 1st the new york state department of health released their reopening document that was four weeks before we opened school so to release a document on friday evening
068on the weekend before we have to return to school was daunting so the decision was made to move forward so i think one of the big takeaways for us was what do we do with the barriers so i've i've met with the building principles and we've decided that we will do it building by building and i'll explain why we're doing that because some of the configurations in our k1 classes are students facing each other and we do need the barrier they're still three feet apart but the barrier really provides in our opinion an extra layer of protection in some instances we will remove the barriers but that will be class by class building by building class by class and it will involve you know any kind of feedback that we get from our parents some
069of our parents have shared that they do not like the barriers and what i've shared with the families in the in the district is that we will take a look at that and we will be making some decisions throughout the week i want to reiterate something we are not not in compliance with our k-5 schools we are 100 percent in compliance the barriers are recommended that we don't use them but it doesn't say that we are mandated not to have them and unfortunately uh we have learned that there are recommendations and there are mandates the second um item that's it's an important takeaway is uh the cdc decided that they were going to adopt two points of indicators for determining levels of transmission and i'm going to move to the next slide so that you
070can see what they're talking about what they've said is they have total new cases so if you look on your left you'll see that that's an indicator the first is the total new cases per 100 000 persons in the past seven days total percentage of gnats which is a nuclei acid amplification test a type of viral diagnostic test for covid and then the second is the percentage of the percentage of uh total cases per 100 000 i'm sorry i'm i'm reading that incorrectly so the first is the nat which is how many people are positive over the last seven days and then the number of cases so those are the two new indicators that they're using they're adopting what the cdc has put together and then if you look across we have four levels of
071transmission based on this data so low transmission is blue moderate transition is yellow substantial transmission is orange and then red is high transmission and so that's the information we were presented on friday night and my biggest question and it continues to be a question is how do we determine the district's level of community transmission and the answer to that question will drive on next steps so i haven't come out with a letter explaining what we're doing next because i need to have clarity on where we land on this chart and i do have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with the district superintendent there has been a conversation with dr gellman who is the orange county health commissioner and a conversation with mr newhouse and we will get more information i will have some information or
072response by friday morning friday afternoon but i just want to share with the community that the reason that i haven't said anything is because i'm not clear on the direction and unless i have clear concrete answers to the questions i don't want to present anything to the community um did you want to talk about today's meeting it has particular implications at the secondary level i think that that's correct right now we we already have the elementary schools in five days but the the the implications and the breakdown of requirements based upon the level that you fall in has significant impact at the secondary level which is the reason why we're monitoring it right thank you yes that's correct can you explain why well it it it involves whether we have the ability to be able
073to adopt three feet versus six feet and social distancing and things like that so at the elementary level because the students are cohorted we have the ability to be able to implement our plan the way that it exists if you don't have the ability to be able to cohort students at the secondary level it has to be so there are depending upon the category that you fall in there's a number of different implications specific to middle school and high school right so that's what we're trying to do secondary it's very difficult to cohort it is very difficult to cohort and at this point we're in april so to to actually redo the schedule to possibly at the middle school um will be very difficult and and again i think i just want to show everyone
074that um when you look at the blue the yellow and the orange you still can go to three feet but when you're in the red you're unable to do that unless you're cohorting and that's the big question and and another another piece of this is the frequency that you can move between right levels that you know if it's weekly or bi-weekly if you bring kids back and then you find out in x number of weeks that your level has changed and now you need to adopt different um different uh forms of social distancing or whatever we don't want to be in the business of bringing kids in to having kids out bringing kids in having kids out so we need this clarification in place to make sure that i mean again at the elementary level
075because they're cohorted because we have the ability to be able to set up the classes the way that we do the regulations are different at the elementary level than the secondary and i just want to say this is very disappointing to us you know um i heard elsie i just can you just clarify because a lot of questions are coming up about it's not obviously the fact that the the primary students are less transmissionable it's that the cohort exists right they're they're in a class that's right they're less likely so the movement is less right so when you're a first grade teacher you stay with your class when you're in middle school in high school you are you know you're everywhere you can't cohort a class at the high school because students move to different
076classes so that really is the problem biggest questions that a lot of people have come up with that and if you're having this meeting tomorrow is and again i'm certainly not a doctor so i would you know refer to you to ask the professionals but but i'm not a doctor either i know that's not but i don't even understanding that from everything that we've been told the the students are not transmitting the virus when they're in school with a mask on so whether they're being cohorted or not cohorted i i think that's a big question in the community as to why it is that we're concerned that i'm not sure that's entirely true okay yes good having a doctor on the board i think that the transmission is transmission it doesn't really matter whether you're
077a child or an adult children are a lot more asymptomatic that is true but if you look at the rates of transmission some data coming out of england that will show you that they transmit as much as anybody else the implications of that transmission is different in children adults obviously so this is this is going to be very difficult i mean based on the color of that slide it can change the recommendations from three feet to six feet in a matter of days which creates a logistical nightmare but i think we haven't but i don't think that we've had we know that for sure so so as i said before i think there's certain questions so how will this chart be used well if you have four different categories that means that there are four
078different recommendations otherwise why do you have four different categories but i think that to further clarify the the elementary versus the secondary piece i don't think that it's it's a a physical difference between the kids i think it's the number of people that the kids are exposed to in a day well that's what i just wanted you to declare at the elementary level because because of the cohorting they only come in contact maybe a few dozen kids or whatever throughout the day versus at the secondary level it could potentially be hundreds of kids per day so i think right and i think that's why they say that if you have the ability to be able to cohort at the secondary level but how can any high school have the ability to cohort it depends on
079the size of the high school correct if you if you are a small yes like 30 years small school district a very very very small school district then you can potentially do that right because you don't have all of the changes look at how many options our students have when they're at the high school there's a myriad of classes that they can take so that means that it's there's they can move anywhere in within the building whereas if you're a small school district and you don't have all those options then you can just you can you can cohort it's it's very very difficult i don't even think that it exists for a high school our size or even a middle school artist or even a high school in new york state and if high school
080yeah and if at all it would be something that would have to be implemented at least in our case certainly at the beginning of the school year right because it would involve a complete overhaul of the entire master schedule my understanding of the statistics that you presented i think last time is that the high school uh uh survey showed that only about 50 percent of students are willing to come back fifty-four percent of before 446. and then on the k5 level you're talking mid to low 80s versus right mid-teens so maybe that will in some way accommodate for some of these difficulties well but at the middle school we have about 75 i think it's about 75 of our parents did want to bring their and that's one of the things that we're doing right
081now is an analysis by class of if in the event that we have to continue to maintain six feet of social distancing what's the maximum occupancy at six feet of each of the classrooms and even though the high school is at 56 percent of the kids that are going to be in person what's our capacity you know how how how many kids can we fit if there were to be five days ago don't you have to go class by class yes you have to go and not even class by classes period by period meaning a classroom one period may have 15 kids which may be able to fit in that classroom another period maybe 23 kids and that class may not be able to divisional class has to be analyzed every class every period yes
082class but then the problem is hallways right kids crossing right against each other it is so are you maybe you can also ask them to give some guidance or at least start looking at guidance on if the students are vaccinated because um with middle school they can't be vaccinated right but at the high school they can be or they they're about you know the program's opening up so we would want to at least get an understanding of how that would impact things if the students are vaccinated isn't the vaccine at 16 right now i mean yeah they're looking at 12. they're looking at but then we're going to be in may i mean it would be nice to know who had it i mean the testing is really easy to do and if parents can
083do that then it will give you a lot of information is how many kids already have the covet right how many of them have antibodies and that can help you stratify the risks i mean you can't ask people to do that but it would definitely be very helpful i would think agreed i i just think that as i said before when you when you present this there's a lot of detail that has to go into making making decisions any other questions i don't think so anybody else thank you thank you for the presentation and it's okay i'm gonna take five minutes okay we're just gonna take a quick five minute break please thank you okay okay good evening we're back again after a short break and no board business was conducted during the break so
084we're moving on to item number nine on the agenda which is an adoption of the revised 2020 2021 student calendar um elsa do you want to just mention what what that's in reference to um yes so we are adding an additional day of uh uh school closure i don't have my page oh yes so i believe it is for the friday before memorial day so i believe the date is the 20 may 26th i believe may 28th may 28th i think that's friday friday may 28 schools will be closed captioning not available okay great any questions okay may i have a motion to adopt motion motion okay a second all those in favor all right approval of textbooks to dr hassler any any comments for this no we're asking for board approval of uh two
085sets of textbooks the first is american history by houghton mifflin for our u.s history class up at the high school and the second is the science research associate series in corrective reading corrective math and language for learning thinking and writing by mcgraw-hill for our 8-1-2 and 12-1-2 programs in the school district okay any questions may i have a motion motion second second all those in favor i may have a motion to approve the minutes of the regular board of education meeting from april 14th 2021 motion second all those in favor aye committee reports reports by board of education committees um i'll start with dawn for uh visitation well i think it was you know a combination of the welcoming our students back at the k5 level we attended both sapphire and pine tree this week
086and you know it was great to welcome our students back and that was part of our our plan as the visitation schedule so we will hopefully join the secondary school next week yes let's hope thank you don is there any update for audit and facilities no no we didn't have any meetings okay patrick has any additional data facilities i mean the only thing i would say in terms of facilities is there's an agreement on the agenda under business financial to approve uh lan associates for the building condition survey so that would happen this summer with reports to come thereafter and then the other thing i'd mention is we have a budget transfer uh and and it's largely about the expense associated with erecting the tents so we have we have tents at six of our
087buildings and um we're doing it the right way obviously we always do where we literally need a plan from by an architect and that has to be submitted to the new york state ed department for the tent and then approved by new york state ed department so they've assured me they will do that quickly um but there's expense involved and red tape involved and and you know so that's the only other thing that that associated with the facilities but it's it's beneficial we have an additional space and an outdoor space so yes absolutely hopefully that'll help us for next week okay thank you i'll update for policy we did have a meeting with the policy committee we discussed our upcoming work and progress on the equity policy that we are currently working on we have
088been reviewing what some other school districts currently have in place we're fortunate right now that we are not under a time constraint because this policy is not being mandated yet by new york state so we are taking our time to go through it we are hopeful that by june we should have something in place that we will put up for adoption but we are working alongside eye opening enterprises we have um information out now for our attorneys to look at and we will be having a future meeting coming up i don't know elsie if you want to add anything else to that no we did and we met with i met with the social racial justice group um prior to meeting with the board to give them to give the group an understanding of what
089policy is and and the implications of policy and so i gave them an opportunity over the spring break to look through the policy make recommendations so then we as a as a committee sat down and went through their recommendations and so now we're sending it next as stacy said um to the attorneys and then we're going to meet with our implementations our equity task force to go through that as well we're trying to get as many people to give us feedback on the policy and we're fortunate right now that we're being proactive with this policy i did mention the other day in a meeting that we recently just received guidance this week from sed that it is going to at some point be a mandatory policy that schools will have to have so at this
090point we are ahead of the game so we're fortunate for that so we're going to continue work on that um coming up in the next month or so report by student representative emily well i'm sorry i just wanted to say a correction those minutes that you approved were actually from march 24th oh i apologize i just wanted to but i know that's you yes thank you i'm sorry i was reading today's date i just wanted to put it up i'm sorry thank you so much okay emily all right so before i get into my student report um just really briefly want to mention that for essential prep new applications are finalized and i'm just waiting for them to be sent out to the juniors um i forward them to mrs rodriguez and she forwarded it
091to mr cassidy so hopefully that gets taken care of soon um deadlines are next week this allows for us to have an interview process where we get to actually see who's like the best fit for the program and everything so it will be sometime next week when the applications are due and i just really encourage any junior who's interested to be a member of essential prep to apply for my main point i want to touch on social school run events i recently talked to a junior who's fully remote she told me that she felt like there was no chance for her to interact with her peers in response to the mother who shared her experiences and concerns about her son today even though it's not much help i just want to assure her that she
092is certainly not alone and neither is her son because of online school the motivation and excitement to go to school has definitely been at an all-time low even i struggle to find the motivation sometimes to complete the simplest assignments and i see my friends being drained after sitting at a computer all day and i just don't see people in my classes participating like they used to even though this is all from my point of view and i'm certainly not the most reliable source it's evident on the faces of my teachers that things are just simply hard right now as a high schooler i can safely say that social events were the core of what i defined as my social life and this is especially true for the younger grade levels as well when i reflect
093upon my best memories here consists of the special interactions i had with my teachers and friends and i sincerely believe that as we end the end of this as we near the end of the school year very few students are truly motivated anymore mental health should not should be the forefront mental health should be the forefront of what the district focuses on if it wants to see changes in student participation and performance and this doesn't just apply to schooling during covet it's the new reality that we have to face for our generation in general this junior told me that she was wished her grade had some socially distance events run by the school to gain a chance to socialize i think she was referencing the senior events that the school has been hosting even though
094there aren't normally special events at all for the younger grade levels i think this is a really amazing idea i attended one of the senior events and although i went in a group of my typical friends it was really nice seeing different people from my grade and interacting with them there it almost felt like i was you know back at school again just seeing the faces of random people although it's not a solution i think hosting great specific and socially distant events for the lower grades is a really good opportunity to to boost morale among the students and promote social behavior again this isn't a solution and it might not be financially feasible at all but i just decided to bring it up today as something that came straight from a junior who reached out
095to me and and finally something i want to just add is just because a student is online doesn't mean they want to be i've mentioned this countless times during previous board meetings that despite restaurants and malls opening up some families still don't feel safe going back to how it normally was socioeconomic status is among one of the many factors that also goes into this decision to stay home and fully remote for this kid their opinions are 100 valid and these online students should not feel neglected by administration or staff once students go back to five days a week in person if we go back so thank you thank you emily um matt for personnel thank you very much i respectfully request approval for the items listed under personnel motion timing hi i'm patrick for business
096and financial uh i too respectfully request the approval of the items under the business financial section agenda emotion motion second second all those in favor all right um you may have a motion for to accept the recommendations on the committee for special education second second all those in favor aye aye aye and reports by borden central office sergei [Laughter] um thank you um i'd like to thank the cabinet and superintendent rodriguez for the tremendous amount of work that they've done with the budget and they continued to strive to open the schools in a safe and safe manner so we can continue educating children i'd like to congratulate graduating seniors and hope everybody has a wonderful week on yes thank you to uh superintendent rodriguez and the cabinet for all you work that you did for
097the budget uh like i mentioned earlier i was at sapphire and and pine tree to welcome all the students back um and i'd also like to say congratulations to our middle school and high school fbla chapters for their achievements at the leadership conference and a special shout out to the two students that were elected as state officers matthew edelstein and derek lee yeah i'm hoping that we are heading in the right direction for our secondary level as well because it was great to see the kids and and the staff interacting with our our students thank you don well it goes without saying getting back to school is probably the best news that most of us have heard in a very very long time and i appreciate the administration's work in making that a safe uh
098a safe return because i know it's very very complicated and it especially with all the rules that get pushed on us at 24 hours i'd also like to congratulate the administration and all the teachers for the excellent uh statistics that the school has earned for their academic music sports everything all of the achievements it's very you know at the end of the day uh we're getting back to a school that uh has extremely good statistics behind it that our students are learning thanks i'm sorry thank you can i just say one thing i i really wanted to mention um a special thank you to the two speakers especially mrs cardonis um for her her speaking to us today and i thought it was extremely um you know brave of her to come forward before this
099this podium and speak to us at such a personal level about something that was you know really bothering her so thank you for coming forward thank you suzanne yeah i'd like to echo what everyone else said thank you to the cabinet and mrs rodriguez for all the hard work on the budget i know how much time and energy goes into doing something like that and it's truly appreciated i'm glad to see the k to five kids back in school that thrilled i know my grandson is thrilled my daughter-in-law is even more thrilled but um yeah and hopefully we can continue to move in a positive direction but i'd also like to remind everyone this virus is not over so please please safety precautions and have a good night everyone thank you emily um yeah i
100just want to say just like everyone else thank you so much for making this happen we see at the lower grade levels people are going back to school and they're the kids are really happy and it's really amazing to see after meeting with them you know they were super bummed about being at home and it's really nice seeing them smile and look really happy so i just want to say thank you guys for that hopefully the high schoolers and the middle schoolers get to come back in as well i know teachers are also very super excited for the kids to come back so thank you donna um just a quick reminder if you're interested in running for the board petitions are due to me by 5 pm on monday april 19th if you're interested in
101absentee ballot application they will be available this is to vote on the 2018 budget vote they will be available probably tomorrow on our website or with me um if you have any questions as to whether or not you're registered to vote with the district please call me and i will have a link up hopefully early next week that you could check yourself but in the meantime if you have any questions or would like to register to vote please contact me as well and thank you to mrs rodriguez and the district for the extended memorial day weekend we appreciate it as employees and good night thank you off so one day we visited k5 buildings and and just to say the kids were excited it's an understatement it's just high firing the kids with each other
102looking at that one of the interesting comments i overheard in many buildings like oh i can't wait to put my chromebook away which is perfectly fine it's good i think it's important to to have the social interaction and not just the screen time all the time but again big kudos to our parents teachers support staff and administrators to make this happen thank you eric i'll go home and i'll have a few words with my kids about that comment um i was asked to give a quick update regarding state assessments the through eight testing and the regents exams um we sent home a few letters to parents regarding the upcoming grade three through eight ela math exams as well as to secondary parents regarding regent's exams and in those letters we indicated that the the state
103ed department has applied for a waiver to the u.s department of education not to have to administer those exams state announced last week that their waiver request was not approved by the u.s department of education which means that stata is going to move forward with some of their state assessments they're moving forward with session one of the grades three through eight ela and math exams they're only doing the written portion of the grade 4 and grade 8 science assessments and they will only be administering the regents exams that are required under the every student succeeds act the august regents exams are going to be canceled so the regions that they do plan on administering will only be in june of 2021 and there are four of them it's the english language arts regents algebra one
104earth science living the living environment slash and the living environment slash biology exams they'll also be administering the uh english as a second language achievement test and the new york state alternate assessments as well regarding the region's exams i've received questions about they also came out with information uh regarding exemptions for the regents exams so the four regions will be the english will be on june 17th the bio will be on june 22nd algebra will be on the 23rd june 23rd and earth science will be on the 24th all the other regions exams will not be administered geometry algebra ii global history us government chemistry and physics what the state has said is that all students regardless of whether an exam is being administered or not will be entitled to an exemption for those regents
105exams just like they did last year when none of the regents exams were administered there are four categories that a student must fall into one of in order to be able to be considered for an exemption and those categories are if you are in a class that culminates in a region's exam and you earn credit by passing that class in june or august you will therefore be entitled to an exemption um or if you're in grade seven or grade eight enrolled in a course that culminates in a regents exam and you pass that course you're entitled to an exemption or you complete you you go to school for summer school you complete the class and earn credit by august of 2021 you can earn an exemption or if you previously took a class and you
106were slated to attempt the regents exam again and you passed the class but you had failed the regents previously you would be entitled to an exemption and what an exemption means is that you are not required to take the regents exam in order to graduate that graduation requirement is waived and you would receive an e for the regents exam for exemption on your transcript but you must pass the class something else that they released was that the exams are only going to be administered in the region's exams are only going to be administered in person they are going to be the traditional paper and pencil remote students are not required to come in for the exams however the exemption applies to all students whether they are remote or in person that exemption applies to kids
107whether they are the exams are being administered or not administered or if you are in person or if you are remote anybody can if you fall into one of those four categories qualify for that region's exemption okay thank you so if a student were to actually sit for the regents exam they will have an actual grade on their transcript they would get a grade for that exam however if they do not sit for the exam for example if you're a remote student you're an in-person student you do not sit for the exam but you fall into one of those four categories for example you are taking biology you pass biology that is what you need to do in order to be able to earn credit for that class and you would get an e on
108your transcript for exemption for the exam itself okay this is donnie houston dr hassler would a remote student have um be allowed to come in to take these yes um we haven't finalized exactly what our plans are going to be but the way that we the the ela exam starts next week and the way that we handle the the three through eight ela exam and the math exam is we send something home to parents basically saying if you're an in-person student and you plan on taking the exam the exams are going to be administered if you're a remote student and you would like to come in to take the exam we need to know in advance in order to be able to prepare for that so we'll basically be sending something home asking people for
109feedback on what their intentions are going to be so will you do something similar to for that for the region's example as as of right now that's what we're planning to do we haven't finalized the schedule yet but more communication is going to be coming out in terms of the the planning and preparation of who plans on taking the exam and what the exam schedule is going to look like and everything else we we sent the initial document out before we found out what was in store with regard to the waiver application just to say like here's the information that we've received thus far that they do plan on if the waiver was not granted that they plan on the state of department plans on administering these four exams however kids can qualify for an
110exemption now the next phase now that we're aware that the waiver has not been approved and the exams are going to be administered the next wave of communication is going to be okay we need to get feedback from people so that way we can start planning for who plans on taking the exam and who is not going to be taking the exam and dr house are not concerned that those numbers can come back and put us over our covert limits um that's one of the things that we have to plan for so one of the things that stated has come out and said is that on the days originally we we had an exam schedule that when the regents exams are administered um you you have an exam administration day it counts as a day
111of attendance so on the days that chemistry and physics and the other exams were originally being administered now has to be a day of school now we need to the reason why we need to send this information out is we need to determine how many people are going to test so that way we can put a plan into place in order to accommodate for whatever the numbers end up being and then we'll release what testing schedules will look like and things like that do we have any indication how the colleges are going to view this um we don't however it's it's in line with what they had what they did last year i mean it's exactly the same except the giving the exam this year so if if you've got an you know the way
112i look at it is right if i my thing has an e on it is the college going to rate me differently differently we have we haven't gotten any indication on that however you have to remember what state ed has come out and said they've said that first and foremost if you were a remote student for whatever reason that you are remote kind of going back to what emily said there's a lot of different factors for why people are choosing to be remote those students are not going to be required now that you know the state in the beginning of the school year required us to give a reminder opportunity that i would want i don't think that they can in any way negatively impact a student who is not required to come in to
113take the exam because of you know the college can do whatever they want this is very true right this is donahue i'd also like to add to that that we are the only state that gives risk this is also true so it would really have to be that you're planning on going to an in-state school but to the to your point and to emily's point earlier if it has the e on there they're not the college is not going to necessarily know why you were exempt correct it's just going to have the e on their correct that you met the criteria to qualify to not take correct it and that's the reason why the exemption opportunity is being given to all students right because it can't be only the remote kids were given the opportunity
114to be able to be exempt but all of the in-person kids were the the everybody needs to be given the same opportunities mrs talber's optimistic that she thought we were going to be over the numbers i'm thinking more the opposite way that once these kids find out they don't have to take it well well my follow-up question to that is if they don't take the exam for whatever reason i mean it's not a free day where they're off for school but they wouldn't come in if they don't take them well we haven't but there's still going to be something component at home correct we haven't we haven't finalized what that's going to look like yet we we don't know yet that could be the deciding factor i think that there's a there's a lot of
115there's a lot of different factors we haven't finalized and and again that's all of that is going to be sort of the next phase of communication is what is the testing schedule going to look like what's the environment gonna look like giving an opportunity to get feedback on okay who plans on coming in and taking the exams and that sort of thing so more more this is the next round of information and then more information to come after tonight and the same with the ap exams correct you're working on a plan for right i mean the plan for ap exams was something that was put into place earlier because the college board came out sooner with what their plan was where basically they are offering two platforms a a paper platform which can be administered
116locally in person and a an online component that can be done remotely but regis exam is is a little bit different though because there's no remote component to the region i understand that but i think i shared with you my concern being that can they pivot between the both options to take the ap exam in at home or in school if they had already committed for one way or the other because at the time of the survey they were in one place they might have been a remote student and now when the superintendent sends something out and says okay you can go you have the opportunity now to come back to school in the 19th now they're an in-person student does that change their ap i i don't know the answer to that question i
117would have to go back and look because i know i know that there were a number of different factors that we we used to determine there's different schedule there was if i remember correctly there are three different blocks of administrations of the ap exams and when we made the choice we intentionally staggered them so that we weren't sort of funneling the majority you know we have kids that are taking multiple ap exams so the days that we were doing paper and the days that we were doing computer were staggered in such a way so as not to you know choose session two for the bulk of our exams and the kids are being sort of funneled into that but i would have to go back and i would have to look and see if that
118option exists for kids what's that you know what i mean that if they already committed to the on the home version right if they knew that they were home and now all of a sudden you know there's an increase in input and again there are that's that's not the only factor that that students should be using in making that decision the format of paper versus computer is different one of the things for example that the college board has said regarding um ap exams on the computer is that you um you know you can't go back for example you don't have the ability to be able to go back where on on paper you have the ability to be able to go back and check your work and things like that where on the computer once
119you submit your answer you don't have that ability so there's different considerations where we even have students that are remote who actually have said you know what i do want to come in and take it on paper because that's the format that i feel most comfortable taking the exam but i would have to go back and see if they have the flexibility to be able to make those changes accordingly i don't know and i'd assume that teachers would communicate to the students in the different scenarios right yes i i mean i know we made sort of the collective decision but then that information was then pushed out to the kids with regards to paper versus pencil because ultimately that's a decision that the the students had to make i i think the the answer is
120probably going to be obvious but if a student takes if they pass the course they elect to take the regents exam and the region's exam they don't do well on it um can they elect to still get the e they're they're still there are a few nuances that we're still trying to get clarification on and and that's you know what happens what happens if you know they they take the exam and they the the state is updating a frequently asked questions section now once they release the guidance that's right we're sort of sifting through that on what happens if this what happens if that you know um right thank you okay thank you very much um patrick yeah so i just want to take a second to acknowledge and thank our custodial staff and andre
121rudiak for all the work they did and getting the buildings ready there was a lot of scrambling a lot of partitions were set up and moved a lot of furniture has been moved and uh and and i appreciate that and we couldn't have you know gotten kids back with without without them and their efforts so that's it have a good evening everyone thank you thank you matt i think so so parking lots are not usually something that you get overly excited to see but i have to tell you we were talking about this earlier driving on dunder on thunderberg looking at the high school lot it's so cool to see all those those spots painted so thank you to all those who who took part and organized it i spoke enough tonight have a wonderful
122night thank you michael uh great big thank you to the school staff and administration for getting the kids back in school i know they're very excited about it also all of the work on the budget it is a significant endeavor to pull that budget together appreciate that and i also want to thank our fellow board members because so many of them serve on multiple committees that and a lot of work is put in and i think it really needs to be said that it's appreciated the level of work put in and everyone have a great night thank you dan i'm just going to wish everybody a good night thank you wow that was quick um i too had the opportunity to visit the k5 buildings i have never seen so much joy in my life
123and it wasn't just the students it was the staff it was the administrators and i just want to say a very very big thank you to everyone who made this happen i want to again remind everyone that we have a national merit scholarship winner i cannot announce the person's name because it's official in may i also want to recognize a student by the name of rohan sonokai monroe woodbury high school sophomore new york state senator james schufes recently presented him with a new york state senate proclamation for his work as an active and dedicated participant and volunteer in his community rohan has committed many hours to aiding those in our local community as well as supporting those in need abroad you can read more about him on our website and these are the students that
124we are so proud of because we want them to be global citizens one more thing i'm surprised eric didn't talk about these things i mean i had a i had a list even beyond my regents update but i didn't i didn't expect it to go on that long so i just uh but thank you you're welcome and then the last thing is our odyssey of the mind team we have four mw odyssey of the mind teams move forward to world finals congratulations to them uh central valley team phillips pine tree team perrin and mandarino and monroe woodbury middle school team mcinerney and monroe monroe-woodbury middle school team icarino so congratulations to those teams and a big thank you to everyone and have a good night thank you i want to start by um saying thank
125you to the speakers that got up tonight um i do believe that that the one woman has left but hopefully she will hear this i know that we're appreciative of everybody who comes in here and gives their feedback it doesn't fall on deaf ears it's something that we definitely consider and we we talk about so i i just want to say that we appreciate you coming and speaking i'd also like to echo what everybody said about the first day back it was absolutely wonderful i apologize to the other elementary schools that i didn't get a chance to go to the other day but i am hoping that if not tomorrow friday maybe one day next week we will definitely get back there to see some of your kids it was fantastic and it took me
126a moment to realize that we were in one of the halls in pine tree and a little child wasn't lost but just didn't quite know where to go and i said it's been a while since you've been here right and he's like i've never been here so it's you forget that some of these children have never been in our buildings and it is april so i just want to thank everybody that's sitting up here because behind the scenes and i say this all the time people are working non-stop to make this happen and it is very frustrating to find out about guidance that comes out on a friday night when i know for a fact that we had buildings and grounds crew making trips to pick up the devices that we were told we needed
127to have installed into the buildings to bring our students back to now only find out that we don't really need them so it is beyond frustrating but it is something that we all know as a board that they have been working diligently to keep our children safe and bring them back in and as i sit here i can only just say that i pray that whatever our number is it is adequate enough that we can come back to school next week six through twelve because i know that so many of the parents and the students want to be in the building but the message that i will put out similar to what suzanne said is we have to do it safely i want nothing more than to have my kids in here next week but
128we will we will wait to hear what you have to say to us after your meetings tomorrow so all we can do is hope for the best there i also want to just go back to what matt had said when he presented i didn't necessarily have a question but i think the biggest message that we can take as a board is it's people we are in the business of people so a lot of times when we talk about the budget it's certain items but we are very fortunate here at monroe woodbury as mrs rodriguez pointed out in the beginning of her um speech in regards to all of the accolades that we have received and we would not be sitting here if it weren't for our wonderful students because they are wonderful but it also
129wouldn't be without the administrators the teachers and all of the staff that helped make it possible so i appreciate that so i just want to say thank you thank you very much for the presentation again i know that there's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes you field a lot of questions from a lot of people i know daily from me so thank you and um with that i say i wish everybody a great night and uh may i have a motion to adjourn emotion second thank you