001Guard District Club. I'll be opening the public session. Um, please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I alian flagis. [Music] Um, we're going to start off this evening by giving our two new board members, Miss Walsh and Mr. Thompson, the um, oath of Oh, you can leave the lights on. The oath of allegiance. Um, Minion of [Music] Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Shauna Walsh, I, Shauna Walsh, do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York of the Constitution of the State of New York. And I will faithfully perform the duties of And I will faithfully perform the duties of
002the office of trustee the office of trustee of the board of education of the board of education. Senator Riches Union Free School District of the Center Riches Union Free School District Pro Suff County New York Suff County New York best of my ability to the best of my ability. Congratulations. Thank you. [Applause] All right. Right now, repeat after me. I, John Thomas, I, John Thompson, do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York and the Constitution of the State of New York. And I will faithfully perform the duties of And I will faithfully perform the duties of the office of trustee the office of trustee of the board of education
003of the board of education the center emergency union free school district of the center union free school district capital Brook Haven town of Brook Haven Suff County New York Suff County New York best of my ability to the best of my ability congratulations [Applause] I, Clarence, I clar do hereby solemnly swear hereby swear that I will support the Constitution of I will support the Constitution of the United States of America. New York and the Constitution of the State of New York. Constitution of the state of New York. And I will faithfully perform the duties of perform the office of student exeicio member the office of student of the board of education the center union free school district town of proaven suffer county New York to the best of my ability. Congratulations. [Applause] What you want
004to do? You did a really good job though. Right. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Ricardo, I, Ricardo, do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of That I will support the Constitution of the United States of America. United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York and and the Constitution of the State of New York. And I will faithfully perform the duties of And I faithfully perform the duties of the Office of Superintendent of Schools the Office of Superintendent of Schools. of the Center Riches Union Free School District. of the Center Free School District, County of Brook Haven, County of Brook Haven, Suffach County, New York, Suffach County, New York. To the best of my ability. To the best of
005my ability. [Applause] We proceed in the agenda with the nomination and election of president of the board of education for the 2526 school year. Um I I'm making a solicitation for nominations of the office of president. of what will be taken until a majority is reached for one nominee. Am I can I hear a nominee from the board? Um um uh so we have a motion. Does anybody want to second the motion for Brian Kennedy? I'll second that. Okay. So Mr. Toms is seconding a motion. Um, does anybody have any other names they want to put forward for a nomination for president? Okay, so we can um we have a motion. We have a second. Um, all in favor of Mr. Kennedy for president. Yes. Yes. We have five guesses. Unanimous. Congratulations, Mr. Kennedy. You
006are a new president. [Applause] Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Brian Kennedy, I, Brian Kennedy, do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of I will support the Constitution of the United States of America United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York and the Constitution Constitution of the State of New York and I will faithfully perform the duties of and I will faithfully perform the duties of the office of president the office of president of the board of education of the board of education the center of Riches Union Free School District the center of Riches Union Free School District County South New York to the best of my ability. Congratulations. [Applause] It's going to be okay. to do with them. So,
007next on the agenda is nomination, election of vice president to the board of education for the 25 to 26 school year. Do I have any nominations? Do I have a second? Do I have any other nominations? Do I have a second? and then take a vote. All in favor memorizing. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I Thomas Harrow. I Thomas Arrow. Do hereby solemnly swear I do solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solely swear that I will support the Constitution of I will support the Constitution of the United States of America the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York the Constitution of the State of New York and I will faithfully perform the duties of And I will faithfully perform the duties of the
008office of vice president the office of vice president of the board of education board of education of the senator Rich's Unique Free School District. Rich's Unique Free School District. Town of Brook. Town of Brook. Southern County, New York. Southern County, New York. To the best of my ability. To the best of my ability. Congratulations. [Applause] So, our next is the consent agenda approval. Um consent agenda items are approved via single vote unless they removed from the consent item prior to the vote. Our adopted approvals of the current procedure is to provide a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Most of the items listed under the consent agenda have gone through board review and recommendation. Documentation concerning these items has been provided to all board members and the
009public in advance to ensure an extensive and thorough review. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at request of any board member. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items? Motion. Second. Second. We got to get the rhythm here without everyone agree. Yes. Yes. I, Jane Bar, I, Jane Bar, do hereby solemnly swear do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America. United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York. and and the Constitution of the State of New York. And I will faithfully perform the duties of And I will faithfully perform the duties of the Office of District Clerk. The Office of District Clerk of the Board of Education of the Board of Education of the Center Merches Union
010Free School District of the Center Union Free School District Town of Brook Haven County Suffach County, New York. Suffach County, New York. To the best of my ability. To the best of my ability. Thank you. [Applause] Mr. I, Jamie Botcher, do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New York and I will faithfully perform the duties of I will faithfully the office of Deputy District Clerk the office of deputy district of the board of education the Senator Rich's Union Free School District, Town of Brook Haven, Suffach County, New York. To the best of my ability, [Applause] I believe that is all that I have to a couple more. Thank you. So, we're going to
011move from New York uh meeting to a regular meeting. But before we do that, um are we taking our picture first or after? We can do that. We can do that. Okay, perfect. So, we're going to move from New York meeting to our regular meeting. Uh do I have a motion? Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? The motions of like the motion in the seconds are kind of fun. Like this is a new vibe. Usually it's Marcus and I stare at each other. You got it. All right. So, we're going to go call to public session to order. Regular meeting directly from RER meeting. motion to open. So this time we have a safety plan here. 256 plan. So for those that don't know uh Mr. Singer is the interim assistant superintendent of business. We're
012excited to have him uh join us here in St. Riches. So, he's taking on a safety plan hearing for us um at this time. Thank you very much. So, this is the districtwide safety plan presentation to the board of education. Each school will develop their own safety plan. The building individual building level plans is to develop emergency response in the event of this framework for an emergency and the protocols that will be developed on the building level plan that will uh are confidential and not shared with public the risk we said Thank you. There's risk reduction and prevention and intervention with developing these steps both on a districtwide and a building level. Next. Thanks. These are the necessity drills. There are lockown drills, evacuation drills, and tabletop exercises to be done coordinated with heat of
013the school buildings. Next, please. Early detection of potentially viable behaviors results in eliminating up to 85% of potential crisis. Death of personal involvement students have received training on warning signs and symptoms of suicide and violent behavior. The protective action of options has clerical character of disaster and emergencies and extent of advanced warning. There are several different plans of action to ensure health and safety students, staff and visitors being covered in detail and the building level emergency response plans. This is for everyone to think safety first. The district-wide safety plan will be available on the district's website. The comments up through August 1st and the final plan presented to the board of education at the August 40th. That moves district. So we're on to the super questions. Um yes. So the safety plan I won't be
014able to answer them because you're So, um I guess in addressing the superintendent, um I just want to make sure when we have this in place, do we are we doing an audit of all of the um potential issues that we have with our safety related to our doors, windows, um compliance that we have to go through, um what security is doing. So, we're checking to make sure that we're following that. Are we looking at all of our um current practices? Um when when have we looked at what and our security um committee is going to be running in relation to this. I just wanted to get some more clarity. I'm just curious to say so detail. So right now on tonight's agenda is the safety plan proposal. It's the draft that will be available
015to the community for community comment uh by August 15th. The action plan itself will be presented to the board for adoption at the August 20th meeting. We are looking at quite doing quite a few things over the summer. I've been in touch with Sean Spiller who's in the back right now. Uh we've been in contact with the Suffach County Sheriff's Department to see if they can come in and do a risk assessment of all our buildings which will include uh the doors uh how easy it is for an intruder to access the buildings, the windows. We are planning on doing that. We were trying to get it done last year, but unfortunately we were not part of the timing wise we couldn't get on the dock. So we do have some techniques um to happen
016either this summer or first thing in the fall and that is going to give us a good understanding as to what are our you know um temporary like jeopardy points things that we have to harness things that we have to look at things that we may have to invest in. We also looked at the possibility of putting door jaw belongs across the entire district. That is something that we looked at even I believe you and I were part of that committee back in 2015 when we looked at the smart schools improvement um bond. Unfortunately at the time it was formid as to everything we wanted to do because we had limited funding. So we are looking at the possibility of doing that again and that would be uh tuned to our security alarm system. So
017meaning if the doors are jawed at any point during the day, there's a signal that can go directly to our oops in each building uh for our security guards to address it to determine whether or not it's an issue and to address closing the door and a opportunity in a quick fashion. Yeah. No, I was just concerned because I know when we do the audits, we want to make sure that we do them several times during the year at different times as well to just kind of mimic that like an emergency can happen at any in the summer. Nobody's really here. So, um just wanted to get some more clarity on that too. Find that out for for the for the previous year we and previous more um it's been brought up about this situation
018and you know this year what we can try to do is build it into our committees with an actual vote for that committee so that that committee can then work towards checking this out. Um and we can put random people assigned to it potentially. Maybe they'll just make a note was locked. without a punitive look but for health and safety look and making sure that we are doing the best we can to ensure the safety of everybody that enters the buildings. So that can definitely be like a nice mini goal that has been probably on the the agenda for a few years because it was prior to well I know that there's some portions of this that are maybe we're not to see or the public can't see due to some things we can see
019and some things we can't so the committee can't see the building um safety plans because of the safety issues that obviously we don't want the long individual seeing it and jeopardizing the safety of our clients. So, but if there's any sorts of committees that the um board can attend, um I have a fully flexible schedule and work from home. So, I can attend at any time during the workday that maybe some others may not know because I think should be have some representation. Absolutely. for all districtwide committees of board committees. So we have representation from I think you know from the board at every committee that we have remember districtwide committees or board of education committees. We do have uh occasionally building level committees, but they're generally districtwide board of education committees. This summer during
020the day so the teachers need any other comments or questions from any other board members. Okay, we are now on the superintendent report. All right. Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Um congratulations to everyone that was elected today. Uh welcome to Charlotte Walsh and John Charms and of course um Clarks, our student um ex official board member. So we had a very busy last week. I think everyone knows in the community that we had two moving up ceremonies. We had graduation this past Saturday. It seems like it's a lifetime ago, but it was only about a week ago. So, I want to really give uh my thanks and credit to all of the individuals that were responsible for making the moving up ceremony successful. Uh I want to thank also the community for being flexible, especially with
021the fifth grade moving up ceremony because we had it originally scheduled for outdoors and that was the Tuesday that we had 96° uh temperatures. So, we moved it into the auditorium at the high school and I think everyone was appreciative of that. I I think it was a little hot in there, but it was much better than being outside. I want to thank Miss Jackson, our assistant principal of the elementary for running the event in the principal's absence. I think she did a great job. I think everyone involved in the event did a great job as well as the following day on Wednesday at 400 p.m. we had our eighth grade moving up that I have to say I believe that Dr. right here always does a fantastic job and all the speakers did a
022great job and everyone involved from the music department, from security, from our custodial staff, they all did a wonderful job. And then Saturday brings us to our high school graduation which I think was from my perspective, I've been in the district for about 21 years. I've attended every single graduation since I arrived in celebrations back in 2004. It was by far one of the best graduation ceremonies I think I've experienced. It was I I think the speakers all spelt very well. Students were wonderful. I I have to give a lot of credit to our custodial staff, our school crew leader, Chris Herell, who really did a nice job prepping for the event. We had, the community may not realize this, but we had some AC issues and the days before the event, he literally purchased
023two large compressors and installed them for us just to make sure that we had AC. So, I I give him Miss Manonia did an amazing job. And it was one of what I think one of the things that a lot of people appreciated is the fact that I don't think everyone realized it but it was only 90 minutes which is a shock. I guess some people didn't realize that uh usually we try to get it within like 2 hours um maybe 2:15 but this was 90 minutes and we didn't rush it. We didn't feel the need to kind of rush through the speeches or rush through the event. it just naturally flowed very very well. There was no hiccups in the event and I think that was really due to the preparation, due to the
024planning, due to the organization of everyone involved. So I want to thank everyone and I'm pretty sure that future events will be that successful. So tonight we have quite a few things. Uh I do have a presentation that I'm going to I'll just Yeah. I forgot I'm just sitt All right. So, one of the things we we talked about myself and the board of education and even staff is that we wanted to provide the community and the board with a sort of recap of the things we've done for the 202425 school year because it's good to kind of reflect on what you've done to look towards the future. So, this presentation is going to do two things. One is going to reflect on what we've done actually three things. One is going to also look
025at some of the administrative changes we made over the summer over the last few months and what that means to the community. And the third thing that it's going to do, it's going to look at some of projects that we have planned for this year. So the first thing, and I apologize for the size of the font, hopefully some of you can see this. This is our yearly review and what I did is that I took it into four different quarters. So from the mentality of of school district, we go each quarter is about 10 weeks. So I was looking at what did we do from actually this goes back to August. What did we do from August to let's say midocctober. So some of the things we we did was we looked at all
026of the programs that we were running throughout the district and we um analyzed them to determine whether or not they had truly an impact on student performance. How did it really impact kids? And what we found is that some of the programs that we were running, they weren't necessarily we weren't getting the bang for their buck. And I apologize for that. Uh we weren't getting the bang for the buck in terms of the amount of investment that we were putting into the uh the program versus the amount of impact it was having on kids. So we did decide early on in August and some of them even early September to kind of discontinue some of the programs. And I'll give you just I'll give the board and the committee one example. We used to have
027what was called the council app. And the council app it was an opportunity for students and adults po professionals to dial in to gain assistance in mental health. So what we did is that we looked at the amount of individuals utilizing the program and it was very very small. It was roughly about seven individuals for almost the whole calendar year. So in in in that particular program, we decided to discontinue it because it was costing us about $40,000. So that was just one example. We did uh we looked at other programs as well, but I just wanted to give that one. So with that being said, our support staff in our district does a tremendous job. So it's it's not that we looked at it and said this is not worth the value. We just
028looked at it from a number standpoint and truly believe in the staff that are in this building to help connect with our kids. and and if we looked at it from a data standpoint, it was it wasn't really calling for a lot for us, but we did not in any way want to take away from the the seven, but we also had to look at it from what is most effective for our kids. Yeah. So, thank you for that, Mrs. Dunny. And with that, sometimes we do have to make hard decisions in terms of especially when it comes to the taxpayers funding. What is going to really have the most bang for our buck? I mean, if it was up to us, we would have an assortment of mental health, academic supports that would be
029available to our students, even to our staff. But sometimes you just can't can't afford it. You just can't. So, but with that, we are looking at we did look at how can that be supported by our our internal mental health and and it was so it wasn't really a dire need for us. Uh the other piece was we started looking at systems gaps in terms of security in terms of other in terms of facilities and what we found in the beginning was that we had huge difficulties in the areas of facility and the areas of cleanliness and facility maintenance. The other thing we decided to do, we we went through um a transformation in terms of using parent square, which is our communication software to to be used throughout the entire district to communicate with
030parents and communicate with the community. It's an easy uh system to use that is linked to our website, which I'm going to speak to in a moment. Then we also did what we also have a common letter head. When we when we began last year, every building had a different letter. Every building had a different look. So we we're trying our best to brand ourselves in such a way that when you see something coming from Santa Richies, you know exactly where it's coming from because we have a common visual look of everything that we're doing. Uh we also did the same thing with events. So when you go to honor societies, when you go to concerts, I think some of you may have seen that a lot of the events are very common now because
031we're using the same template. We're using the same format. So now that takes you to second quarter, we So the second quarter, we're looking at more like December, January into February. Back to what I said a moment ago about the facilities, the difficulties we were having with the facilities. We decided to um hire what is called a facilities consultant. someone that has years of experience working in different uh school districts and different uh me municipalities in the area of facilities. And what he did for us, he came in and he provided us with a way to improve our systems, our processes, uh the way to improve even staffing in terms of reviewing staffing, giving them protocols to follow when they're cleaning the buildings, uh making repairs of the building. So, we also uh incorporated a
032maintenance software where we could now log all of the maintenance issues that we have, the repair time and the resolution time and even the cost factor. The next thing we did, we launched a new website. So, as of January 15th, and I have to give Mr. Noy a lot of credit cuz him and I, we are we have a lot of hands in the website. Like, there's really two people that can kind of manipulate the website. myself, Bill Nof and actually actually our communication firm. But we worked really hard to look at different websites to see what was their design, what was available because one of the things we saw was that when we had our previous website is that it wasn't very userfriendly. You would have to go into five different tabs just to
033get the information that you're looking for. So what we did is that we worked with um Smart Sites which is a parent um organization from parent square that designs websites and we designed it myself, Bill of course the board of education administrators, other um community members that were engaged in that process to develop a website. We it was launched January 15th which was great. We also at the same time two weeks later we contracted with a new communications firm called ZE communications which we felt that they would be more aligned with the things that we were trying to accomplish in the district. Uh we also at the same time that was actually a busy month for us um the same time in January we also converted back to our internal secure I mean um internal
034controls of our security firm. So, prior to I want to say the previous year, we did contract with an outside agency to manage all of the security of the district. So, they were in charge of not just scheduling the staff members, they were in charge of employing them. They were on their payroll. So, when I began to look at the cost of it, it was astronomically more than what we were paying. So, in conversations with the board of education and and others within our district, we decided to ship internal controls of our security back to the district, saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a result of that, uh so now you shift to the third quarter. We wanted more of a um supervision of our facilities. So we hire what is called the
035staff crew leader uh who I I mentioned earlier when I was talking about the graduation Chris Herell who came in he is what is called the mechanic for so when you go to civil service there's five levels of mechanics that you can get he's a mechanic for he could do electricity uh plumbing carpentry he does hback he was a a great find for us he's doing an amazing job we also hired a third maintenance mechanic at At the same time, what we found is that we had for years we only employed two maintenance mechanics in the entire district, believe it or not. So every all the repairs you see were done by two individuals. We hired a third person and what we did is that we shifted the hours to the afternoon and evening when
036the person could work in the buildings uninterrupted without uh having students or staff members present. So, if you walk through the elementary, he's done a lot of work over the last few months in patching um some of the walls. He's done a lot of repairs throughout the district. He is a very skilled mechanic as well. So, we we did that this year. We also purchased a a specific maintenance software to do the same thing that I said a moment ago. And in March, we also adopted for the uh for the elementary the literacy program, a new literacy program called Magnetic Reader. We also adopted the new elementary report card. Now take us to the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter which goes from about April to June. We had I think the committee knows we had
037a very big PR campaign for the auditorium and for the budget which I thank the committee again for passing both. Uh we also um had the highest proposition approval and budget in the last 5 years. The proposition, the capital reserve proposition passed by 77%. The budget passed by 66%. The highest it's been in the last five years in both. Uh we have new administrators that joined us last few months. I think you just saw Dr. Jamie Botcha, our new assistant superintendent for curriculum data management. And we are now in the process of finalizing the SE sed, which is state education department plan for the renovation of the auditorium. All right. So, I'm just going to kind of bleed through this really quickly. This is a recap of some of the buildings and grounds things that
038we did over the last school year. Uh, once again, as I said a moment ago, this was because of concerns identified in previous years because of the cleanliness of the buildings and lack of maintenance. So we as a board, the board of education created a goal last year for the 2425 school year and the items that you have on the right list the items that were completed at the elementary school and those that were completed at the secondary. So at the elementary school we have boiler room repairs, brick removal and lint repair right here at the I still call it the washi. It's not no longer the washi but the washi entrance. uh ceiling replacements in a classroom. We replaced the three ex exterior doors. We had some HVAC replacements, new dry well and as
039patchwork, power washing of restrooms at the elementary school. Second floor girls bathroom was redone, the upgraded plumbing, and we actually removed the tree that was here at the at close to um the white building that we purchased last year. Okay. At the secondary complex, we have the asphalt patches that were done, floor replacement by the cafeteria. For those of you who came to graduation, you saw the new floor right outside the uh bathrooms there. We had the HVAC gym compressors that were replaced. I just mentioned that. And we had the middle school bathroom repairs. That was the plumbing because we had some issues at the beginning of the school year with excessive plumbing issues at the middle school. So, we did find that there was an issue regarding the plumbing. We since fixed it and
040hopefully knocking away. Hopefully we don't have any future issues. Uh we have painting of both cafeterias and locker rooms. So the middle school was uh cafeteria was painted as well as the high school as well as the restrooms. And we have the roof repairs and painting of I have that try. I'm sorry. Painting the cafeters and lock. Yes. So, one of the biggest things that we try we're trying to make sure people understand is that we are building within our budget, just as previous people have done um and boards and administrators, all the repairs that we can possibly do within the budget year through the budget, right? We're not going to get through everything, right? If we go through a house, all our budgets don't sustain our own houses, right? So, what we're trying to
041do is do the best we can to be as transparent as we can, but also going back to what Dr. So I said we even have an interal form that allows us to keep track of the day-to-day through the teacher lens that we can then look back and say okay did we get to this did we not get to this some stuff is minor some stuff is larger um you know so often a common theme that we're trying to really debunk is that stuff is not getting done throughout the year and it is um and by adding in a mechanic four what that does for the district saves tremendous amounts of money because we don't have to use a subcontractor to come in here and do that work by bringing the security in house tremendous
042amount of effort goes inhouse which also then keeps it linked to the community which is working out nice for everybody as well. So, you know, when we look at this, you know, the auditorium was a big push and the auditorium was used on the capital reserve that was created in 2022, I believe that was. Now, that was a smart move by the board of ed. Why? Well, because at the end of the day, they started the savings for us to be able to put that to both, right? Okay. So, we took the money from the previous year, banked it, and I can't say we because I was not a part of it, but individuals that were a part of it um did a very nice thing because at the end of the day, last year
043we were able to do that without any increase to the taxpayers, right? Yes. Is it still taxpayer money? Yes. But is there an increase? No, because we saved it, right? So, these are the ways that we're trying to get creative throughout the process to really hone in on what needs to be done. But as you can see, there's a lot that we still have to tackle and those conversations will go on through our committees and then the board conversations and then Mr. also help us with that as well. All right, I almost bypassed um like an important slide that took me some time to develop and I apologize for the font again, but it is so we've had some significant administrative changes over the last two months. We've had about four or five individuals leave
044us in the last I want to say about four uh about five months in terms of declaring their resignation. So with them we had the director of special education. We had the interim um director of special education leave us to another district that I'm going to be honest with the community offered her a higher salary and better benefits agreement. The other one we had the assistant superintendent for business. We talked about that in previous meetings. We had the elementary principal leave us to become an assistant um superintendent in another district. So I wish him all the best. We had the assistant superintendent for curriculum leave us as well. And the high school assistant principal left us to go to a neighboring district close to a home. I believe it's like 4 minutes from a home
045with additional um pay attached to that position as well. So, it really caused us to really reflect on our current situation and try to really attract and retain qualified people. That's what we're trying to do. So, as Mr. Tenny alluded to, we're trying to build upon something, not just the maintenance piece, but the administrative piece. When you have frequent turnover, it sort of stops the pro of the progress of a district because you have to now stop to reaclimate people into a district. You have to now almost build fresh acclimating people to the environment, getting them to know the community, getting to know the staff. So, it does sort of impede the progress to some degree. So what we did, what you see in front of you is a chart that identifies all of the
046administrative changes and the cost associated with those administrative changes that we made over the first uh over the 2425 school year. So the first one is the elementary principal. The previous principal would have been uh as of July 1st of this year 149650. I can't believe I'm actually saying that. Uh we hired someone recently at 157 which is a difference about $7,000. Uh the person came to us with a doctorate. The person came to us with some experience. She was a city elementary principal and I we we believe at the time that the 7000 was for a worker. Now, when we transferred positions, when I transferred positions from assistant superintendent for personnel, student um services and instructor technology to superintendent, we decided at the time to not replace the position with an assistant superintendent. We
047decided to replace the position with a director of special education. That was a savings of the to the district of $45,000. The difference in salary. Then we moved to when we decided to um have the person act as a director of special education. We also had a chairperson. We had a full-time special education chairperson. We decided not to backfill that position which was a savings of $170,000 in terms of salary and benefits. So salary is what they would make in terms of the salary longevity. benefits for the teachers are roughly at 15% of their contribution. So, it cost the district about $34,000. That's what benefits normally cost us in terms when I say benefits, I mean health insurance. I apologize. Sometimes I use acronyms and I I forget my audience. I apologize. Um the assistant
048superintendent for curriculum, we did go a little higher. We had the previous assistant superintendent of curriculum scheduled to make about $167,000. We did increase that salary to $195,000 which is a difference about $28,000. Uh we then when we when we look at the assistant superintendent for business, we decided it was a very difficult process. We put the position out, we posted the position on two separate occasions. The first occasion I believe we received 12 applicants and I have to say the applicants were not individuals that came to us with a wealth of experience. Not someone that could kind of step in and take over the job and take over the responsibilities of managing a $54 million budget. So the so we we posted the position again. I spoke to a lot, we all spoke to
049a lot of different individuals we know in the field of education to see if anyone would be willing to come to Senator Riches. Unfortunately, we could not find a qualified candidate. So, we we did find thankfully Bruce Singa who is a very experienced business official. He was the assistant superintendent for business for Sichum for 19 years and then after leaving Sichum after retiring, he became an order for New York State. So he comes to us with a wealth of knowledge, experience, and I believe he's going to help us balance some of the things that we need balance. So we decided to enter into a contract with Mr. Singa. His daily rate is $1,200, which when you look at that, it is three days a week because Bruce and I had many conversations and so did
050myself and the board as to how many days a week do we really need a business official to kind of manage the books and to ensure that we remain in compliance with state ed and other financial things that we have to remain in compliance with. We spoke, he said maybe three days a week. He believes that um he could do it for three days a week. I believe he can as well because of his vast uh level of experience and expertise. So looking at his salary, the previous assistant superintendent for business was scheduled to make this year $230,000. That's worth her salary. She received a $10,000 buyback and five days of of buyback in terms of selling back days. So it's a grand total of $230,000. Uh we if if Mr. Ser comes in three
051days a week, it is going to cost the district $162,000. That's including the summer. That's 45 weeks. It is a savings of about $68,000. If he comes in 4 days a week, which his contract allows for, which I don't really I spoke to him today. I don't think you're going to come in four days a week, right? No. Uh just just establishing that it'll be 216,000 still a savings to the district of 14,000. So with that being said, we we are benefiting from the state waiver system right now. The state is allowing experienced administrators to come back into the workforce without speaking to themselves. It is a great thing for us because we can gain experience rather than putting somebody in there that doesn't have the experience. But it's also a great way for us
052to take our time, find someone meaningful that can do the position but then also have someone that can roll that person into the position with the experience they have because they're already in house. So we're not looking for a short game, we're looking for our long game. And at the end of the day, that's that's the big picture. So that's why you'll see some school districts are using that waiver system to their advantage. Um and and as Dr. Sto alluded to, you know, if the cate pool was not strong, we don't have to settle. And in this case, we were able to not have to settle. very and and the reason the state and thank you for bringing that up. Uh the reason the state is employing this waiver system, it's a two-year waiver system
053is for the simple fact that it's very difficult we they're seeing that it's very difficult for district to really find qualified administrators and even sometimes qualified teachers. So the waiver stands for teachers as well. So to bring someone who has that wealth of experience, it's honestly from our perspective, it's a breath of fresh air. It's one less area that I have to focus on that we have to worry about. So, um that so Mr. Singer is part of that two-year waiver system, which I think is it's great and we appreciate the state acknowledging that in the beginning of this in of this process in trying to find a business official, there are 22 vacant business official positions on Long Island. 22 of the 154 districts. So, it is a area that it's really hard to
054find because to find a really qualified business official that really knows um the nuances of being a business official who knows state, there's a lot of state reporting that you have to do. It's it's hard. It's very difficult. There's a huge burnout rate in terms of people um going into the field and not being successful in the field. So finding someone with his years of experience has been a a true breath of fresh air and a load of relief for me. So thank you Bruce because it was a little stressful at no point. Um so the other piece that we did is that we had a very similar experience when we put out uh when we posted for our high school assistant principal position. So we posted we had a lot more applicants. We had,
055I think, 112 at the time, maybe 119. And we pulled people in and unfortunately we weren't really h happy with the turnout. We had a couple candidates. I interviewed a uh I think one candidate that the committee puts put forward to me as the fine new interview process and it wasn't it wasn't someone that I really felt can provide the level of support and and guidance that we need at our secondary complex at our high school. So, we had a very I had a very novel idea that I approached the board on and thankfully they supported it. Uh we are going to employ someone who recently retired from the Santa Merch School District. A gentleman that has worked for the district for 25 years. A gentleman by the name of Michael Kazinski, the math teacher
056at the high school. Knows the high school very very well. Has a respect of the staff, knows the students, lives in the community, knows the community, and he is going to qualify for the two-year waiver as well. So, on tonight's agenda, we have his employment agreement, and we are going to employ him for $130,000, which is going to save the district $12,000 just on salary and benefits. But also what it's going to do which is even better for us is that when I when we decided to do this I had an opportunity to look at the high school schedule with our high school principal and looking at the math department it turns out that we only need really a6 of a teacher. So 6 is um 60% of a teacher. So we don't need 100%
057of a math teacher. So we we're going to employ someone for 60% which is about $37,000 without benefits. So we saved the $34,000 and we saved the difference on his salary which he was at 148. So it's a difference of $110,000 plus uh plus the 34. So about $145,000 we're going to save with that one decision that I'm hoping the board will support tonight. So with that on the bottom you see the total savings and I did break it up into two different um categories. One is if Mr. Singer comes in three days a week we are saving the district $390,000 and 170 uh 390170 and if we he comes in four days a week we're saving $336,170. Okay. So, I think it's it was a good move on on the board's part and our
058part looking at things a little bit outside the box, looking at things a little more creatively as to how we can save the community some money. Now, I'm sorry. Any questions regarding board regarding that one slide? I know I it was kind of impactful. Any questions? No. Okay. Uh these are some of the summer projects that we have. We are going to Chris Herel and his team are going to internally paint this room which I think it really needs it. There's a hole in the wall. There's holes all over. So, we're going to patch it up. We're going to make this room a lot more presentable for presentations and for board meetings. We also right out uh adjacent of this room. There's a decking that is in disrepair that really needs to be replaced. The
059foundation needs to be replaced. Uh at the elementary, we had some boiler repairs that we need to do. We have the bus loop asport repairs here that we're going to do as well. Outdoor playground. We're going to add a camera. The camera we currently have is really antiquated. You can see it, but you can't really make out the faces. So, we're going to change that. The parking lot walkway. I think you can see it. We actually poured the concrete today, which is which is great. Uh we have the painting of four classrooms. We have plaster repairs in the building. We uh we just received the SED approval for the two bathrooms on the second floor of of no on the first floor, excuse me, of the elementary school. We have replacement of expansion tanks which
060are in the boiler room. We're replacing four of them. That is really needed. We're resealing the gymnasiums and restriping the parking lots. Uh at the secondary complex, we are doing some asphalt repairs, auditorium renovation. Hopefully, we will start in the summer. the gym wall repair replacement. If you go to the high school, there's a wall that separates the two areas of the gym that is completely unusable. So, we have to come up with some kind of repair. Either we're going to replace the wall, we're going to put a curtain, but that is the cost factor associated with that. We're replacing the lights, we're repairing the lights in the gym. There's some lights that are not working. Uh we're painting eight classrooms at the secondary complex. We have three new exterior doors being replaced as well.
061We have a card reader which is our ID opens up all of the doors in the entire um school district. We also have the recealing of the gymnasiums and we are restriping of the parking lots at the secondary complex. All right. Uh any questions from the board? Questions from the board? No, just that security audit might want to take precedence over some of these projects and like would like to get that done as soon as possible, but I know that these are summer happening, but before any other projects happen after like get that done as soon as possible. So, would it be possible just to get a rundown of all doors issues and windows? Are all exterior doors card enabled or um I'm trying to think the secondary not all the ones by the gym
062or not. the one leading into the locker room is uh all of the other exterior doors are with the exception of the door that leads to the east side of the secondary complex by the middle school. Uh we have one at the main lobby of course we have one at the we don't have one at the music that's the one we don't have as well. And what's nice with this with uh Stephan's on the board she can give us a lens of how the safety of our school feels um and she can kind of meet kids along with our admin or teachers to really have these internal dialogues that maybe they'll feel more comfortable with bringing that information to you the adults might want to keep some things a secret. No. Any other questions? No.
063All right. Thank you. Is that all? Yeah. So guys, as you can see, we're trying to lay everything out as best we can. We're trying to put it out there to say like, hey, this is where we're at. We are thinking outside the box. We are looking at fiscal responsibility. There's some items that people will will love, some people will scoff at, but at the end of the day, it is not something that we're looking at saying, oh, it's just spend money. No, we are looking at it from a lens of what equality can we offer also within the fiscal responsibilities that we have as um section four questions and comments regarding tonight's agenda only. The this is an opportunity for persons who wish to speak or who have written letters to the board regarding
064topics that are included on this agenda. Speakers are asked to sign in with the district clerk prior to approaching the board. Indicate your topic of comment. Keep comments brief and to speak no longer than three minutes. Members of the public will have the opportunity to speak about any topic at the end of the meeting. And the other thing that we would ask is that you would, if you're comfortable, stand up over by the podium so at least everyone can kind of hear you because we do have people from home that watch these meetings as well. Anybody any questions or comments? Mr. Uh, thank you Dr. Silver for the presentation. Uh couple uh requests. Can you post that front center of the website? Oh, absolutely. Thank you for that. Um for the community at large here,
065also folks watching home and watching later, where what is the best way to contact yourself or any other uh administrator if somebody in the community has a specific question about anything you are? I think the best way to contact us would be via email. Okay. We generally I we all generally would respond within 24 hours. U sometimes calling us would be fine as well, but we may not get the voicemail. So, sending me an email having exactly the detailed question that you have. I usually respond sometimes within the same hour if I'm available. That is the best way. Perfect. And my last question is when does the auditorium renovation start? Or what's the stat? Yes, good question. So we we did receive a little bit of sample in terms of getting the SED approvals because
066we are working with various vendors that they have to do their tracks. We hope to get SED uh we we hope to get the application to SND by mid July within the next week or two. At that time we are as we mentioned to the community at the beginning we are paying for the expedited process. So we're hoping that that will have maybe like a twoe turnaround. So, we're hoping to start everything August 1st, hoping if everything works out the way we have it planned. Uh, I don't believe that the auditorium will be available September, but we're hoping maybe November. Okay. What are the contingencies for expected student use that would happen in September? I know myself, they do that tour on a daily basis. So, we we're talking about a few possibilities. One is
067utilizing the south um section of the gym of the high school gym as the band setup. The other the other possibility is utilizing the LGI because it does uh give us the ability to lock up the LGI because they have concerns regarding the gym. So those are the two locations for the few months that the auditorium would not be available. Our hope is that it will be available for our holiday concerts in December. That's that's what we're hoping. But once again, once they start ripping up the floor, once they start taking up electricity, we don't really know what we're going to find. We're hoping that we're not going to find um too many complications that will result in delay of construction, but we're we will continuously update the committee in terms of um where we
068stand, the status of the project and and the expected timeline as to when it should be completed. And this presentation will be available to the committee on tomorrow. All right. Thank you. You're very welcome. Any other questions, comments from the public on this agenda. All right. So, we have athletic appointment uh personnel appointments. Um I will be abstaining from this one just because I am on as a volunteer in this. So, be resolved that upon the recommendation of the superintendent of schools, the board of education approve the following athletic appointments as stated on the board. Do I get a motion? Second. Yes. Yes. Zero nos and one abstain. Yes. So just uh quick little comment on this. What's really fun is what we're starting to look at is uh Mr. Thode and really brought forward
069through Mr. interestingly on in the community is they started to look at the the summer academy for athletics. Um which is kind of exciting because if you think about where the world of athletics is heading, it is vastly different than many of us when we were looking at colleges. So the goal is to obviously prepare uh students that want to be eligible for NCAA whether it's JCO or NCAA division 1, 2 or 3. Um so on this you actually see that there is uh some people that are approved for strength and conditioning training which is for all sports, right? Don't get fooled by the some of the coaches titles. This is for all sports that will be available and ready either in the morning or afternoon. That information will be coming out from Mr. Thwood
070uh shortly. I believe it's out already. So, this is this would be summer preparation. So, if you look around uh a lot of businesses, they're making a lot of money on speed and athletic training. this is a way for us to be able to help multiple kids at um no cost and allow them to have the same opportunity as someone else would potentially have over them if they didn't have that. So, it's going to be hopefully something that the kids buy into and then over years will take time. So, I know those guys are very excited about it. They've been meeting about it. So, it's a uh it's a fun fun time for the for that program. Uh consent agenda. So, we have consent agendas six through [Music] 7 A2B resolved that the board of
071education upon recommendation that the superintendent of schools accept the following financial reports consent agenda six agenda items are approved via single vote unless they're removed from being consent items like we just did with the athletics. Um so we have consent approval for consent agenda is six. Is that six motion to approve the motion to approve the consent agenda 78 12B by the motion? Motion second sorry I'm learning where the scripts are Mr. Can I say one thing? Yes. I just want to acknowledge a couple of new teachers that we have that are in the audience. Uh which is really great to see. Uh new staff members that are joining us that are coming for the appointment. So we have Joseph uh Deano, a probationary ENL teacher at the secondary complex. Welcome Joseph. [Applause] We have
072Victoria Bakey. not um definitely not new to the district, but she is going to be moving into probationary special education teacher at the at the middle school working with our middle school staff. So, welcome Victoria as [Applause] we have right next to Joseph, we have Spencer Malloy. He is going to be joining our social studies department at the high school. Welcome, Spencer. And the final person we have is Thomas B also joining the social studies department at the high school. So welcome Thomas. I want to make sure Stephen general public comment I have staple in one of my numbers. Uh general public comment u members of the public who desire to address or question the board on any topic related to the board are welcome to do so at this time. Speakers are requested to
073honor the same format as requested before. Make sure you come up state your name. Stand up at the podium and you have three minutes. Allow it to any comments. Any questions or board comments from the board? All right. Informational items. Next board of education meeting is Wednesday, August 20th. Time to be determined. The location is the district office boardroom. First date for students is Wednesday, September 3rd. The major. So I have a motion to adjurnn the meeting. Motion. Second. It all in favor? Yes. Yes. Board of Education. We're done. don't take your session.