CUFSD BOE MEETING 03/23/2022

001always for any nick they named batteries after us okay good evening everyone welcome tonight's meeting of march 23 2022 of the chester union free school district if we could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we'll need a motion 1.4 to adopt tonight's agenda so moved second is there any discussion all in favor all right any opposed i'll need a motion 1.5 to approve the board meeting minutes of march 9th 2022. i'll make that motion a second is there any discussion or any issue with the draft no i had none hearing none all in favor any opposed and that'll bring us to tonight's presentations

002for the first i'll turn it over to mr petrola thank you mr sambets we have several presentations on the agenda for tonight our first presentation is regarding two important projects that the district has been planning for for some time and those projects include for the elementary school hvac upgrades and the other project is here at the academy and that that includes makerspace so making the presentation tonight um i'll call them up to the podium in a few minutes is uh russell davidson who's president of kg and d uh architects a firm that we've been working with so just to give you some background about kg d and i know russ will will speak about his firm when when he starts but as the board knows the chester academy maker space has been a district goal

003for this year and earlier in the year we reached out to kg and d after learning about their work with maker spaces in a number of other districts in the area a number of the board members had visited some some of those schools and were very impressed with the work so when we uh ventured into our work to design the maker space for the academy we reached out to kg and d and have been working with them since the fall or just about uh earlier than that time as i said russ and his team have worked on a number of very impressive maker space projects in our area and when we got to the point of moving forward with our hvac uh project since we were working with kg and d already we asked if

004they would be able to assist us with that and they agreed so they are assisting with the hvac project that we have so this evening russ is going to give some background information about his firm uh he will present his vision for or our vision for the hvac and the makerspace project proposals um assistant superintendent uh miss o'hara will assist with uh the maker space portion of that presentation in terms of uh explaining the significance of of the makerspace and and why we need it here at the academy and and that will be the uh the second part of the uh of the presentation the maker space so i just want to give a little preface about the elementary school hvac system and why we are focused on that right now so as you may

005know hvac systems and specifically ventilation became a very important issue in public buildings during covid and the recommendation of experts was that public spaces used mirv 13 or greater filtration in in buildings and at the chester academy we already had merv 13 in place so we were in a good position but the elementary school was not fully outfitted for merv 13. so we had to take other measures to improve ventilation at the elementary school and those measures included increasing the amount of outside air that was introduced into the ventilation and then also using merv 13 filters in units that were not specifically designed for merv 13. so using those filters in those systems was a good and is a good temporary measure but it does come with some costs associated with it and one of

006the costs is that it puts a high demand on the system and uh for a system that we've had for some time to begin with that high demand uh puts a lot of stress on the units and you'll hear a little bit more about that from rus and because they're not operating at their peak efficiency they're also more expensive to operate so for all of those reasons and then in addition to that the federal stimulus fund set that became available about a year ago put us in the position of realizing that we have an opportunity right now to use federal funds to make significant upgrades to the ventilation system at the elementary school and that we could do so with no additional cost to the taxpayers by leveraging the federal funds and state aid so

007we move forward with our rh vac project and rus as i said we'll go over the the vision for that tonight so about the presentation about russ's presentation tonight i would like for the public to uh to note that tonight's presentation is for informational purposes only and what that means is that the board may ask questions but we are not taking questions from the public regarding this presentation tonight however members of the public will have an opportunity next week at a special board meeting to ask questions or if you're not able to attend to send questions or comments in for that regarding this project so there will be a special board meeting next wednesday night that will be march march 30th 7 pm here and the purpose of that meeting the meeting will be dedicated

008to these projects so what will happen at that meeting is there'll be a similar presentation to the one you you'll see momentarily there'll be an opportunity for public comment and then the board will be presented with two resolutions related to the project specifically putting it or giving the board the option to put it on the may 17 vote for a public referendum so that gives you some of the background and uh at this point i'm going to ask russ davidson to come up to the podium and uh tell you more about himself and the project good evening good evening i think you did the whole presentation i'm it's a it's great to be here russ davidson i'm president of kg and d architects i've been um planning and designing schools for uh 37 years um

009so uh our firm is located in northern westchester we're uh very active in the hudson valley um we have six principals nine licensed architects um i noticed when i put this slide up there today that i wore the same suit so you can tell who i am that's really me and sue davidson is our interior designer and sarah dersa is one of our project architects and it's really the three of us who conceived the stem lab project we i felt obligated to have a slogan for our firm at one point or an elevator speech and we do low-rise buildings so it had to be very short so it's listen imagine build but that's really the culture of our firm we really pride ourselves in listening to our clients we know a lot about how to

010lead design but every stem lab every makerspace is different so we we really focus on active listening and then we actively imagine we we purposefully develop options so that you can see the range of possibilities and then we always do that with a mind towards building responsibly sustainably and cost effectively we are pretty active in the region i was recalling on my way over i passed the warwick exit where i did a church about 35 years ago and a project in goshen 20 years ago but more recently we've done all the recent work at middletown school this is middletown high school this is a presentation room on the lower left which you'll hear a little bit more about when your own stem lab is presentation areas but that's where they do their capstone presentations in

011middletown high school that's the sort of design and collaboration space on the upper right and the info booth is where the youngest students help everybody fix their laptops and uh this was over in westchester this is conversion of a two-story gym into an informal learning area um and uh the principal said that he wanted a place that was a little more serious than the cafeteria and a little less serious than the library and it's become a very popular place for students to work socialize and eat and in the lower left we converted their former auto shop into a maker space so that central area is sort of the design and make area or the clean make area and there's a room on one end that you can see there that has the wood tools in

012it with dust collection and on the other side is where the laser cutters and 3d printers are so it's uh it's not unlike some of the things we're looking at for you and this is in putnam county again another presentation area another sort of design area and on the upper left you'll see small breakout rooms which in this case has movable walls so you can make it into one big breakout room but one of the biggest changes in school design which you are also leading in here is project-based learning and you need smaller spaces less than classroom size for students to work privately but visibly so they're not behind closed doors so that's just a sampling of our work we we do we we build almost 25 million dollars worth of educational facilities a year

013so there's a lot more but we don't need to go through all of it the elementary school hvac upgrades uh come to us from a study you had done uh and i would say this is this is a very typical type of project for a building of this age you have a building from 1972 with electric resistant baseboard heaters and rooftop units that don't talk to each other so you literally have 47 baseboard heaters with their own thermostat and then you have 16 rooftop units for their own thermostat and none of them not a single one knows what the other one is doing um so this results in a lot of discomfort and a lot of maintenance and a lot of inability to control the comfort of the environment in that school especially because it's

014somewhat open it's really a difficult problem and also you know we we have learned a lot about uh fresh air and ventilation and covet but i would say that most schools in the new york state have been dealing with ventilation issues pre-covered and this just accelerated because the ventilation rates that were in place in 1972 are probably a third of what current code requires and older buildings are only required to meet the code at the time they were constructed so your 1972 building wasn't out of code but it really didn't meet today's expectations so it sounds like you jacked up the ventilation rates during coven and stuck in merv 13 filters which was a great measure to do but it does stress the equipment but i would also uh point out that most that equipment

015it doesn't owe you anything it was not new it was original from 1972 and so it was way beyond its expected useful life in the first place so what it what's the proposal get rid of the electric baseboard and put a hot water system in much more efficient replace the rooftop units so they'll have three different features energy recovery direct expansion cooling and gas heating so energy recovery is a great technology that uses the heat or coolness of the air you're exhausting to preheat or pre-cool the air you're bringing in it doesn't transfer it there's actually a membrane between them but it's a much more efficient way to do ventilation but in order to do that you do have to modify some ductwork and the new units can have merv 13 filters so energy recovery

016with merv 13 filters add a lot of efficiency to those units and the other element here is to add variable air volume boxes so they're called vav boxes and they're they go in line in the duct work and basically they uh can change the amount of air that goes to one area or another area so it basically takes the 16 zones of the rooftop unit and makes it into 40 zones so that way you get a lot more control in each individual area so the plan is to reuse as much ductwork as we can and then modify it and then the real key to the whole approach is you tie everything with a direct digital control system or a ddc system so this way everything talks to everything and you can actually monitor it on

017a pc um or if uh if if you're smart you'll you'll you'll give uh matt an app on his cell phone and he can run every school building from his cell phone which i'm sure he'll love to do the um but it's a it's a it's a comprehensive redesign and this first step of the process um is to get the whole design done um the new systems will provide more fresh filtered air to learning spaces and it's interesting to know that i was always hoping that it was great architecture that raised grades in schools the only two studies that they've ever done about facilities and student performance is more daylight better student performance and better air quality better student performance so it really can make a big difference to get that amount of filtered fresh

018air in the rooms and it'll obviously improve comfort control and energy efficiency it is a big project and this initial step will get everything prioritized and designed and as much built as you can for this 1.9 number so that this proposal is tax neutral um and then you'll do the rest as you can with funding because it's important to know that nothing's not working there this is a this is an upgrade that can be done incrementally and then we're going to talk about the stem lab and i think we're going to start with the program goals and instructional approach to the podium so i don't have to look that way and speak this way um so when we talk about better student performance instructional program right that's the priority number one in terms of our

019improved student performance and i'm going to speak to the instructional program with regard to the consideration of the makerspace at the academy so that's our stem program which began in 2015 and i will say in terms of the maker space and when schools design these innovative spaces some districts decide that they're going to first design the space and this is going to be a well-planned innovative wow factor space and then they determine what instruction will take place in that space we are the opposite which i would hope most districts are in that we have the instructional program already in place and this is the space that's going to reflect the learning that's already happening for our students so our vision statement which i'll read because it's reflective of not only our stem program but the

020educational philosophy and how we teach students across all disciplines the chester school district develops global leaders by providing students with learning opportunities that foster critical thinking creativity collaboration and communication students engage in authentic applications that support inquiry and innovation through partnerships with their community local businesses and higher education this vision statement was developed with a group of stakeholders inclusive of teachers local businesses higher education and those on the school board as well program components and when we say graduates of the chester school district when we start from now pre-kindergarten through grade 12 what do we want our graduates to be masters of academic content that's a given but can they art can they be articulate and confident communicators both in writing and actually presenting strategic users of technology which is always changing and then this

021piece which is the opposite of that traditional means of education where you just deliver and a student repeats innovative effective collaborators ethical citizens and self-directed learners so when we talk about the standards we have the science and engineering practices which are reflected in the next generation science standards i'll highlight obtaining evaluating and communicating information constructing explanations and designing solutions this is students creativity and innovation and applying thinking to learning and it's those soft skills that are reflective of careers that we don't necessarily that don't necessarily exist today but what are we preparing our students for so again that creativity communication collaboration and critical thinking so the four themes in the stem program reflected in this space are engineering design process program programming and robotics projects project based learning and business partnerships and those are consistent

022with the themes in the elementary school so we have a space and we're actually one of the few districts that begin the makerspace at the elementary level so it is reflective of the engineering design process where we have a design space plan a design a create and then a present our phase two of the makerspace has just been completed which houses the programming and robotics next year we will bring in our green screen technology so when i talk about the academy grades six through twelve it's the same things same themes engineering and design programming and robotics project-based learning and business partnerships so with regard to the middle school again what is the instructional program that this space is going to be used for in sixth grade we have our tech infused program design and technology

023in seventh grade design and engineering in eighth grade and intro to mech tech as well this presentation uh component of this presentation was presented months ago at a board meeting when we presented the stem program i'm just going to focus on the middle school and high school so in grade six this is years ago we brought in we focused on prosthetic design and we're bringing in when i say business partnerships it's inclusive of when we expose students to certain learning applications or designs we're bringing in those business experts to talk about it in fourth grade when they're learning about tectonic engineering we brought in the business uh excuse me the business representative and i meant to say geotechnical engineering and we brought in the business called tectonic engineering and they talked to students about really

024how that applies outside of school we had our first outdoor garden that is still in place and expands to this day we also had our first outdoor learning classroom which the students designed presented to the school board and is now in place and it also continues to expand uh seventh grade this was an example of a catapult system that the students designed eighth grade this is a quick example of windmill that was designed with a laser cutter so when we talk about the high school program in ninth grade we have design and drawing for production cad and sim which is computer aided drawing and computer integrated manufacturing engineering graphics and technical illustration is new this year and that's actually a suny oswego college credit course mechatronics and robotics in 11th grade civil engineering and architecture

025and progressing to what you saw in the middletown piece where they're doing capstone projects that is where we're going to be progressing to for our students another example for ninth grade design and drawing for production again these are some photos representative of those courses that i just shared with you so when you talk about why a maker space all of these instructional programs are in place but we are we don't have the space to use it we had in one year a class that had designed a golf course a mini golf course and that was happening here in the auditorium and they were using the aisles and on the stage so i'll show you a few examples this is our students working on vinyl cutting and if you walk through the library you can see

026those displayed up in the windows when you walk out so this is an example of students working on that this one student is actually using the laser cutter as a workplace a workspace to work on if you'll notice over by the window that's our current ventilation system a hose out the window so we're making it work and we're doing the best with what we have this is the reasoning for the makerspace here's another example you have this is in the library the student uh working on cad and in the corner uh students are collaborating and trying to use every space possible to work on the vinyl cutting you got students having the pieces on their lap and doing the best they can with the space that we currently have this is an example of a

027cad class where students are using 2d images and designing into 3d and you can see this is within the library right now the number of workstations that we're trying to cram in to a very limited space but we're making it happen and what they're actually doing product wise what these students are learning is it's truly impressive so you can see off to the left those boxes those are 3d printers again every corner of the space of this library inclusive of books is used so we get to programming and robotics this student kevin haran actually is designing beginning to design one of the vex robots you'll notice i'm going to expand out on the space for a minute but all these students are working in teams right so they're collaborating on a countertop area over over

028top of their heads are the cabinets that houses the equipment for each of the components in their design whether it be wheels gears whatever they need it's all in one space but it's a very limited work area you can you know you're having to reach over it it's self-explanatory right so this is a 12 foot by 12 foot uh competitive area for the rex vex robotics and actually they just did a challenge i was speaking to mr rodman i think it was called king of the hill so they had to design a robot to climb if you can see they sort of looks like uh stairs there they had to design a robot uh that climbed up the st that was the fastest and most efficient in getting up those stairs and it would compete

029against another design and typically in the pairs you'd have one person actually doing the design excuse me the design and programming and another person doing the build and they're having conversations because it's one robot against next and are they gonna go for simply speed get to that location quickest and climb up those stairs are they going for torque as well or power or are they going to take out the robot first that they're competing against and then climb up the stairs um in terms again of space and why we need a maker space there's actually only three feet so the pictures i showed you the of the students building and designing that's right behind that area there's three feet it's like a three foot perimeter around that unit that they're working in but they're doing

030it and they're doing amazing things but once again all of these instructional programs are in place and we're looking to have that innovative space reflect what we're already doing and allow us to expand the program so that brings us to the stem lab challenges and design it looks like an awesome program and you're absolutely right most maker some of the earlier maker spaces we did they didn't have a program and uh it's really great to see all the things that you're doing um and similar to what uh you know we're talking about it we'll do the best we can with the space we have uh but we're not putting additions on the building so this is about a better design of what of space that you have i'm not going to spend a lot of

031time on existing conditions because i think kathy handled it pretty well but you're pretty jammed in there you do have a lot of books in your library stack areas and you do everything in there and i remember when i was first invited here to look at the stem lab i walked up to the building and i saw hoses out the window and i said i think i know where we're going and it turned out to be correct so this is our early concept so these are the areas that we ended up looking at this is an existing floor plan of your library what was called your computer room that work room is where the hoses are out the window and you have a little storage closet and a little reading room i think it's used

032for counseling now off the card or on the uh on the left side there the um on the right side above the library you have a computer classrooms that is where the robotics program is now and that has that overlooks the library down below and we started looking at a ways of reorganizing your space uh with the design study after listening to the needs and this is the floor plan that you came up with which is if you start from left to right is move that wall out to make a quiet space in that corner so you still have one sort of quiet steady space or quiet work space in the library and a couple of those collaboration rooms we call them co-labs with glass fronts so those are nice spaces where students can go

033and work on projects but they can be clearly seen from the open library area and then basically peeling back some of the book stacks it will still have a library space but the big change is in the large open area with lots of flexible furniture mobile white boards a soft seating area and the big move here is to create what's called a learning stair or a presentation sort of stadium seating in the library and a stair that connects you to the computer room up above and underneath the mezzanine to that stair they'll actually be another little collaboration space so if you go over on the right you'll see on the upper level you'll have one side of that room will be sort of for the noisier production equipment and another side of the room for

034your quiet production equipment and i think right now the plan is to move the robotics downstairs to where the wood shop area is so you actually are expanding the footprint of this program in the building and re recapturing some underutilized space but i know everybody's not so great with 2d plans neither am i so we we uh like your students work in three dimensions so uh this is just a white box model everything's not going to be this color it's just a very conceptual phase but this shows that stair in the corner of your library that will connect to that upper level it'll create this really sort of dynamic three-dimensional space where kids can study on their laptops or read on the learning stairs or you can get a whole grade level in there on

035the stairs and on the wall on the left will be large 90 inch monitors so you can do a presentation you could show a video or a movie and it's just going to be a really dynamic space that sort of matches your program then you can see where the the two long narrow windows that's that other collaboration room that'll be under the mezzanine and up on top of the mezzanine there's actually some seating and an area for students to work up there as well so you'll see all the different features um we're you know looking forward to developing this further and some of the things that have come up is you need a lot of storage so we're looking at ways to have those learning stairs open so that you can store stuff in them

036and have drawers in the front so you can store materials and student work in them um as well and this is another view looking from above so now you're on that mezzanine and you can see the off to the right are the quiet and noisy production areas you can see the screens on the wall and how the flexible furniture down below can be moved around so you can create different collaboration areas and you'll still have the connection to outside we're not blocking any of the windows in that space we're working around them and this is another view that you can see that it really is going to change that space from a traditional library into a an exciting learning area for many different disciplines there is a projected reduction of books in a reasonable number

037which will still function as a library but it's a matter of calling it out and you know the concept budget for this is for the total project is just under a million dollars most of that money is in renovation it includes an allowance for furniture construction contingency and a project cost to pay for design and permitting and testing and uh you know we so we look forward to you uh getting approval for funding and then we'll continue to refine the design uh with everybody here at uh the academy and we'll submit it to sed ultimately and a bid and award the project and commence construction and that's it okay so as i said earlier tonight's presentation is informational for the public board members are welcome to ask any questions that russ at this time and

038we will make uh be making this presentation again next week and there will be an opportunity for public comment questions etc at next week's meeting mr davidson will be back at that time so uh are there any questions from the board sam uh yeah what is the expected length of time for each component of the two aspects of construction i think the stem lab is probably a four to five month of construction it's not that much area but you've heard a lot about supply chain disruptions and how long it takes to get things so that's more of the concern and what about doing the upgrades to the hvac i think the plan for that is to get your funding approval and really focus this year on design and get started in construction next summer and

039i think you can get a lot done in one summer with the amount of funding that you have undoubtedly some of the control work will go into the fall and hvac systems always take a while to get properly commissioned so when they're brand new they don't work very well you probably i see you smiling you probably experienced this at your home but it takes probably one heating and one cooling season to get them tuned up with the efficiencies that you have with the hvac do you see a payback period on the investment into the system i i don't think it's going to have a direct payback given for a couple of reasons the systems are much more efficient but you're also bringing in a lot more unconditioned air so this is one of the uh

040sort of difficult things when you upgrade things is you're going to be heating and cooling a lot more unconditioned air because you have a healthier building and you know back in the first gas crisis when we had jimmy carter as a president when when i was everyone turned off their outside air intakes and they saved a lot of energy we don't do that anymore so that's why new systems tend to be neutral or they'll probably be a lower utility cost but it's not going to be enough to pay for the improvement hey russ my question was about the openness of the elementary because you know when it was designed it was semi-open concept how does that affect in this planning of that same issue that the breathing of the building and the air circulation well

041this should do a lot better because one of the problems you had with your elementary was with very few zones it could be cool in the middle of a space and hot or even really cold at the edge of a space because it was impossible to zone it and when you add all the variable air volume boxes you'll literally be able to heat the edge and cool the middle uh which is sometimes what you need so it's going to work a lot better and you know 1972 i think was in that building was designed was not our brightest time in mechanical and electrical design so this should be a big improvement especially in an open space and my other question about here and the lamp up here uh i think the concept of stairs that

042that space up there would have been wasted you know the old computer lab so i think that design is incredible um as we kept looking at it and looking at the different ways of that room it's beautiful but that open space was really wasted space without that yeah i mean putting in that staircase really you're taking up some floor space but you're gaining it you're actually just moving the floor space up and you're getting more because you get a second level under the mezzanine and i have to say i know a number of people i think dennis you thought of connecting these the ideas well before we came here but i remember walking in and sort of turning around and go what's that space up there um and also for the program that kathy describes

043to have sort of design production presentation uh that can be sequential or can overlap it just creates a sort of energy um that uh you know some some people call it accidental inspiration but i think that the connection will be uh really complement your program i just want to compliment you on the middletown project we got to spend a lot of time up there uh the labs you feel like you're on a college campus uh or better thank you you know you feel like you're in a corporate setting or a hospital setting in some of those glass encased labs it's really stunning and we got to see it in action with the students in it and the interaction of the students in on those workstations it's really you you guys really did an incredible job

044there oh thank you well we continue to work with middletown and we're actually uh back working with orange ulster boces we did the arden hill project for them several years yeah converting a hospital to a school which was a heavy lift are there any other questions for us i really look forward to seeing your work yeah well great to meet you all and we'll see you again next week yes sir thank you thank you russ and i just want to point out uh two well one important fact uh that russ mentioned which is that the project is planned to be tax neutral in other words we plan to use capital reserve funds uh to fund a portion of the project and then uh put it out uh put the remainder of the uh the cost

045out to bond um and then eventually we will be eligible for state aid for approximately 67 of the of the project 65 and a half 65 and a half will be reimbursed so uh tax neutral so okay all right our next presentation i believe is mr aguilar good evening mr sandwich good evening members of the board of education good evening mr petrolak i have to be honest with you that's kind of tough to follow up it's very exciting i'm all about the technology and uh if you have the opportunity which i know you have just through what our our kids vision has been able to do uh if you saw in the poster right out in the main of the academy the giant letters that was made here something like that cost thirty thousand dollars

046as i got a quote down in manhattan and when they said that we could do it in plastic it's thirty thousand um in foam we can do 15 uh i will tell you we were able to do it here for under 300 dollars by our kids so mr rod um his hair you know again this whole thing where we're looking to go i'm just very excited so thank you again this is uh phenomenal um you received my report uh i'm gonna try and be brief i just have like three things i just want to make sure that i share with you uh first of all uh congratulations to our head coaches as they were recognized for coach of the year that is amazing and just to you know remind everyone uh since i've been here

047with mr petrolak eight years we've had eight coaches that received coach of the year john marsilio lindsey rock the great pete riccard mike becker ron stover lindy trapani d o'connor and mike doucette i mean they've all had those opportunities here to work with our kids and i'm just blown away so congratulations uh of course to them uh again fantastic season from our winter sports um you know the last time and i like to recognize the girls program the last time that we were playing for a section nine championship at the point guard was our own current kindergarten teacher amanda amadover so i spoke to her the other day and it was just you know we had a good time reminiscing i also want to share with you under our blue and orange notes with uh

048the combined partnership with florida i was able to meet shannon lucas joseph james and garnett and they are thrilled they are so happy that they are here uh that they have these opportunities uh you know i was able to reach out to their parents and just welcome them and they are so excited uh what one of the stories i want to share with you is that earlier today uh before the meeting uh two of our students came into my office uh aguilar we need your help what's wrong uh we need handball water right away uh sorry we're waiting for the next shipment we need water right now like why what's wrong he goes our new friends from florida need water and we're going to give it to them so that's a home run right there

049so i'm very happy to share that with you and i received the email earlier this evening from one gentleman from ss stewart that who's very interested about possibly playing football next year so that and i just reached out back to him and just said keep in touch we'll fold your name and and you know stay uh stay focused with us so again i just want to thank the board again for your support mr petrolak uh and everyone in the community and again uh you received my report and i gave you a basic summary of uh what's going on in the local camps and the various sports that we have now right now we're at 151 students that have signed up for full sports uh excuse me for win for spring sports and we're very excited

050about that excellent are there any questions for mr aguilar i had none your report was very comprehensive thank you and great job to all those teams very exciting thank you sir mr sambitts i wanted to point out for the board that i did ask the directors to keep their reports a little shorter tonight uh since we have three additional presentations that are on our agenda tonight so uh normally you'll you'll hear more tonight we ask them to condense mr derosa with your condensed version of your presentation um i can make things short um all right so you have my report um i just wanted to highlight a couple things for the community uh specifically maple avenue so um we started a drainage project out there uh it's halfway completed we will be complete weather permitting

051um early next week and i honestly think this is going to i want to stop short of saying solve but greatly improve the conditions of the girls varsity softball field so they opened up a trench and the amount of water that we've captured so far is unbelievable i i'm actually kind of shocked at how much water we've diverted away from that field already and the other thing i wanted to highlight was the nets at maple avenue i know that's not in my report but if you drive by you'll see that they're not even and not all of them are up over the winter due to some weather high wind conditions uh the pulleys on some of them broke so we have a contractor with a bucket truck he's going to come in and fix that

052the nets will not remain that way and the anticipation is tomorrow however we are supposed to get a lot of rain so as soon as the weather permits we will fix those nets and they will be up and uh and fully functional um those are the big things i wanted to highlight um uh there will be a presentation on on an energy plan next uh meeting but if you guys have any questions i'll i'll stop there and move the meeting along my only question was on the cameras installed they're all up and running i got your report right yes all the cameras are operational um at the elementary school um so it's they have provided a lot of coverage that we we didn't previously have i actually do want to touch on one more thing

053if i if i have a second wanted to just touch base on what you had asked about the open concept in the elementary school so the current design right now if you imagine one large trunk dumping down into a space and then two registers off each side one going into a classroom on a window and one going into an interior classroom and that's the way the hva system is throughout the whole building what happens is there's one thermostat so it discharges a constant temperature 70 degrees the people next to the window will be freezing the people in the interior space will be comfortable and it reverses in in the winter and summer but um this upgrade potentially will absolutely increase the ability for teachers to control the air and temperature in their classrooms we get

054flooded every day all day long with it's too hot it's too cold they have windows open they have windows closed it's it's um there's a tremendous need for an upgrade on our hvac systems and i'm really uh really looking forward to this project excellent are there any questions for mr derosa thank you appreciate it thank you and miss lofts hi rachel good evening thank you for the opportunity to present this evening i too will be brief um we're currently in the throes of annual review season so that takes up most of our time right now in the special education office the special education teachers related service providers and all staff attending meetings and filling out additional updated information thank you i just want to say that uh it's helping us to hold all of our

055just about 300 annual reviews for uh 504 and ieps for students in our buildings and to best make a plan to support them for the 22-23 school year so we're well underway and everyone's doing what they need to do and it's really appreciated in my report i talked a little bit about the philosophical end of a positive behavior intervention system that we had previously implemented at the elementary school otherwise known as pbis so i want to share with you and with the community just a little bit about the practical components of that just so that you know what it entails this is something that we had very actively happening in our building and um it really added like a buzz to our everyday um functioning within the building and unfortunately due to covid there were

056aspects that just couldn't take place but under mary kate bosh's excellent leadership she has started the revival of the program and so she and i are working together to bring it back so i just wanted to talk a little bit about it pbis brings in a common language throughout the school building so that if a student is in their classroom they're going to hear the same words as in when they're out in recess or in the cafeteria or if they walk into the main office and need to speak with the principal so they're going to hear all of the same language throughout every space in the building at chester elementary we had four main rules if you will and then we described what those rules looked like in every single space so those rules were

057respectful responsible ready and safe and then matrices were posted in every single space the bathrooms the hallway the cafeteria and what those things four ideals looked like in all of those spaces were visible and so adults could reinforce them and children could hear the same language in all those spaces it's always positive so you're not going to say don't run to a student you're going to say please walk so you're it's it seems like a simple change but it can really be impactful when a student's hearing that positive throughout the school day all faculty and staff were trained this includes teachers instructional aides recess monitors food service workers bus drivers security every adult who interacts with a child in the building was trained and the custodian could positively reinforce a student as you know they

058passed in the hallway which was really a big deal when we held a recent uh when we held a recent revival uh meeting at the elementary school caitlin moran had said you know you would have a child who previously would have maybe scurried by the gym and she'd see them kind of like walking and looking for that positive reinforcement so it really did make a difference for our students we used a chip system for positive reinforcement so we would give chips as a physical symbol that the child was doing the right thing and those chips were tallied we held monthly assemblies where rules were reinforced successes were celebrated and it really showed school spirit at its max so we're looking forward to bringing it back and i'll look forward to you know once it's up

059and running sharing some of that with you we our goal is to bring it back in september it's not a simple system to put in place so we're really looking to put it in place the right way with several trainings as well as we've asked for some feedback from the staff that did it in the past so that we can make improvements that make it better for our students and better for our staff and i will stop talking soon i just want to say thank you to mrs bosh first of all but also the pbis team they were asked to do extra work this year to come back and help us bring this back to life and they happily are doing it so i'm so grateful elaine lynch audra cutler emma mckay caitlin moran rebecca

060davis and especially lisa ringle who does a lot of work for pbis i just want to say thank you to all of them and we're looking forward to having it back in action starting in september so that is everything i have for you this evening but i will say we look forward to that because i i know it was successful i know the chip program was very successful and it was working and it was another thing that until you said that i was thinking that oh yeah so much the obvious stuff got wiped out by all the covert phone calls but it wasn't until you said that that i'm like wow there's real tangible stuff that we stopped even thinking about because of coping and that's one of them yeah and and being able to

061assemble again i we can't wait for that the kids miss it the teachers miss it not only are the students reinforce but also staff give shoutouts to each other and the staff are recognized at those assemblies and it's really i was a staff member on the receiving end of that a number of years ago and it's it really makes a difference in your day and in your week um to receive that kind of positive feedback so excellent yeah we look definitely look forward to that thank you congratulations on your review from state ed oh yes so on your audit nice job nicely done mr spence good evening good to see you everyone how are you so i would just echo very briefly what my director or colleague said it's just very exciting a presentation like

062this and just saying again how we continue to increase in the use of technology you know when i came here back in 2011 you know back in the day we didn't even have wireless in the building we didn't have any laptops and it's been a process working with our teachers administrators so continues to be very exciting and you know the tech team is up to the challenge to continue to support the technology to make sure that the the instructional items are fulfilled and we're helping people with training and support so it's just a very exciting time so happy spring spring is a time of easter bunnies and robins and of course spring assessments so we are very excited to be offering the computer-based testing for the sixth or eighth graders next week for the ela

063and then at the end of april we'll be doing the same for the math followed by that in may we'll be doing the nwas k through eight for english and math followed by the scanning and processing of the june regents so we submitted all our paperwork or all our documents to make sure that you know our data is correct that we get our tests and and we can give them whether it's paper-based or computer-based and process this to finish the year and in the middle we're working on our nicest slots and miss loftus is helping out with the ultimate assessments in something called the kite system so testing testing testing it's the time of spring it's very very exciting also um one other note an update in regards to the website so where we are

064with the website and i will have a presentation in the future i don't want to take up your time right now is that we have picked a template called cascade i mentioned in the past and we did purchase the template that's been processed currently i just actually received word that ulster boces processed the po the other day so we're in the process of scheduling a configuration call our committee then will work um myself mr laster our webmaster and so forth to incorporate the data in a test site we will look at it together as a committee we will show it to the board of course and take some feedback in the future during the spring and during the summer with a potential go live date hopefully late summer or fall of 2022. so things are

065on track and we appreciate everybody's feedback on the committee and the only thing i would mention also on my report is just we are keeping in tune with all that's going on in the world unfortunately in asia and so forth in the ukraine and russia in the area of possible cyber attacks we are very vigilant with that i attended a cyber seminar that was hosted by our local rick in new pulse for all the tech directors with updated information we have our cisco system which we're monitoring on a daily basis as i've said in the past so we are hyper vigilant about that we are using our training tool for the fishing and we are reminding people the importance not only here in the workplace but at home with your home computers and your home

066personal information to be ever vigilant as america's now with these things going on around the world so those are a couple things i wanted to touch upon you have my report i just want to see if there's anything else possibly you'd like me to explain no but i just wanted to touch on i know the 20 was in your report right that we're on schedule for the i know mr patrick was probably going to ask that question about our uh turnaround for one-fifth of our equipment correct yes and i think it's important you know mr petra and i were talking about it you know you remember we made an investment last year and a significant number of chromebooks especially for the elementary school the ones that had been outdated so we looked at the tickets

067how many chromebook tickets did we had last year chromebook repair tickets versus this year so far after that investment and it was uh pretty significant we had chromebook specific tickets last year and now following the purchase and the renewal of those chromebooks especially at the elementary school we've only had 89 so far this year so you have to keep up that investment cycle and that's what we have an eye on and you'll see that in my budget request yep okay all right i had nothing further any questions from the board and ed i just wanted to thank you and your team you're involved in everything going on from stem to all your reports that come out this time here and uh the testing testing testing which i always write because i said it i wrote

068it before you said it because that is this time of year and we cannot thank you enough it's a lot of work and we know it so sure it's a team effort thank you very much you have a great team thank you thank you thank you i believe we are up to mr brennan well actually uh our next presentation is our budget presentation which is a team effort here and i will start as soon as we have the projection connected okay super uh so as mr spence pointed out spring means testing testing testing and it also means the budget season so our budget season is currently underway and uh we're a little behind schedule in terms of our public presentations our first presentation first major presentation was scheduled for march 9th and uh winter interceded

069on that particular day and as a result we went to a remote meeting and mr brennan was unable to participate in that presentation because he lost power during that storm so uh we decided to postpone that presentation so we'll start with our march 9th presentation this evening so we always start out by talking about our goals for our budget and once again our goal is to be fiscally the needs of the district address the concerns of the public and ensure continued improvement in district as a whole and i i would hope that you would agree after seeing tonight's presentation that we are indeed moving in a very positive direction of improvement so uh the first section of this presentation talks about our educational priorities and how our budget will support our educational mission so at

070this point i'll ask miss o'hara to talk a little bit about our instructional goals and priorities for next year thank you um so with the first goals respective of uh supporting and promoting college and career readiness via student success achievement innovation and creativity to which i recently spoke to in regard to the first bullet point on the new york next generation learning standards we are currently planning to pilot a math and social studies program pre-k through grade 5 reflective of the new york next gen standards teachers recently participated on the 18th in professional development on a particular program called envisions and that was specific to math we will through the leadership of mrs bosch expand the wilson foundations literacy program pre-k it's already pre-k kindergarten and first grade and will be expanded to grade two

071next year initiating a hudson valley writing project this was uh also presented on a professional development day on the 18th and that is a philosophy of how we instruct our students in writing we actually as a result of the professional development schedule scheduled on the 1830 had 10 staff members district-wide looking to collaborate in progressing this initiative through a professional learning community right or a plc enhanced educational support services that's inclusive of areas of special education academic instructional services or ais as well as our ell services to support our english language learners and lastly to continue to implement evidence-based academic and behavioral approaches at all levels of instruction to support academic success and a behavioral example would be the pbis to which mrs loftis just spoke to a district stem program i just read verbatim

072our vision statement which is again noted here and much of the area here was also reflected in my presentation specific to the makerspace but district-wide continuing to expand program programming and robotics applications and that's pre-k through 12th grade expanding problem-based learning opportunities in business partnerships problem-based learning is in opposition to a traditional education format to where you would pose a problem to a class or a group of students and they are arriving at a solution together that is reflective of the standards but the process in which the instruction takes place is often involves real world application and is much more meaningful than just deliverable instruction and spinning back information enhanced design challenges reflective of content standards in the engineering design process which i just shared so next gen engineering and design processes implement green screen

073technology at the ces makerspace so that's reflective of phase two that second location at the elementary school which is currently in place and is used for robotics green screens technology will be implemented next year so it'll be pretty exciting to see our little ones possibly doing a news show or having something in the background that's reflective of a writing piece supporting that communication skill set that i talked about earlier expanding computer integrated manufacturing and computer-aided design cad and other technolo technological applications and engineering courses at the chester academy and that's reflective of the courses i had mentioned earlier and lastly to which the presentation again earlier constructing a maker space which is that multi-purpose design fabrication and presentation area in regard to social emotional learning continuing to edit to implement evidence-based programs at all levels

074mrs loftis has been instrumental in implementing the choose love program district-wide inclusive of pre-k through grade five at the elementary school and grades obviously six through 12 at the middle school and academy positive behavioral interventions and supports is that program that was just referenced pbis in pre-k through grade five and uh i took part in those assemblies myself and the energy and that you know students are coming up and spinning the wheel it's it's not only does it support positive behavior but it is the culture of the elementary school building that it brings which is true it's it's something to be seen for sure and the safe school ambassadors uh program in grade six through twelve in addition increasing student support through school counselors social workers and psychologists and that is uh one component of

075that is increasing a part-time school social worker to full-time okay uh the next section of our presentation addresses uh how the budget will address facilities needs so we do plan to continue with covid19 cleaning and disinfecting protocols so that means increased cleaning and staffing secondly we are continuing to implement preventative maintenance on our equipment to get the most efficiency out of the equipment that we do have and uh next we are integrating energy savings uh upgrades and this does not specifically reference the hvac project that we looked at earlier but rather several other changes and improvements that uh that we make on an ongoing basis to improve efficiencies and and finally on this slide continuing an additional daytime cleaning support person uh regarding covid19 so during covid and because of uh the need for different

076safety procedures we brought on an additional cleaner and we are planning to keep uh that person in place uh for for the the near future at the very least uh next slide where addresses school safety we do have an sro or school resource officer that's been working with our schools for several years and we will continue that partnership with the town police department i'll talk a little bit more about the sro when we get to a later presentation on district goals and we also plan to continue working with other first responder agencies specifically the fire departments uh for and and other local law enforcement agencies to coordinate uh their support uh of our safety and security programs well thank you i'll jump in from here because we get to talk now about the challenges that

077we face in this budget development we discussed a number of priorities that have to be included within the budget this year we are facing a new challenge and that is the tax levy growth for school districts is capped at two percent i know that we often hear of that referred to as the two percent cap that is just one piece of it but it is a very important piece if the formula were not capped that same measure of inflation would show a year-to-year increase of 4.7 so the 2 cap is quite a bit less than the current state of inflation health insurance technology utilities these are all increasing uh certain things that are increasing we don't at this point know how much they would be increasing specifically transportation our staffing costs and any material costs

078both in how quickly they can be delivered and at what cost so i talked about the tax cap being referred to as the two percent two percent is the limit in the rate of consumer spending so that two percent for the 22 23 year will add 378 thousand dollars to support our programs there are other parts of this formula one of them is the tax-based growth factor that is a figure that's given to us by new york state as a measure of the sales within a community so when homes sell they're reported to the state office of real property they come out with a a measure that says if the values in your school district are increasing more than the average then you can raise a little bit more of the tax levy because it

079will be shared among a higher tax base so that increase or 0.76 percent will increase the tax levy by 143 000 the real big piece this year that's unusual not a lot of school districts have the number of payment in lieu of taxes properties that chester does those are ida programs that are in the industrial park and they pay a negotiated increase each year but at the end of that year that pilot payment which we get a separate check for goes away so we have a very large we would what we received 139 000 for this year is not going to be a separate check next year so because we're losing that separate revenue this formula lets us regain that within the tax levy calculation but the good news is that that prop property will

080now be back on the tax rolls so they will be paying the full amount of their assessed value and will actually wipe out that increase plus some the capital levy is simply in offset for prior budget prior approved projects that voters have voted on and approved and this covers the debt service for the building minus any state aid that's associated with that building so that becomes a offset to the tax cap and you'll see that in the calculation shortly new york state aid for education the the governor's proposal is all we have to work with right now because the legislature is is still ironing out the last details and i know we've heard some news in the last couple of days where they may not be seeing eye to eye with the governor on every

081piece of the budget but her proposal has restored foundation aid for chester which is driving new aid into the district and again that along with the tax cap helps to offset the cost of our programs and the transportation and all of the other things that that we do so here's a little bit the tax levy increase would be 3.53 and as i mentioned that's going to be paid for in a great deal by the satin fine food property that is coming off of the pilots back onto the tax rolls so this i know is going to be very difficult to see in the back but what this is is the entire and i'm going to put air quotes around 2 tax cap because although it's been known by that its whole life it's only one

082piece and you'll see that right in the middle so we we start with the current year's tax levy we add that tax base growth factor that i mentioned we then add back all of the payment in lieu of taxes the pilot payments that we received the current year and then that gets added to subtracted from that is the capital levy from the current year so that's in the books that's already done now we add the two percent because we're capped this year we also then add back the pilot payments because those have to be included there and you'll see that that's gone from 599 000 down to 440 and in quotes here that is simply the loss of one pilot agreement and then we add back the current tax levy which you'll see your capital

083levy excuse me what you'll see is about three thousand dollars different than the current year that fluctuates by sometimes up to five thousand dollars but we're required to have leveled that service over the length of a borrowing so although it does fluctuate a little bit it's generally the same year to year so here are some of the highlights the budget that we're going to be discussing here two presentations tonight and through the end of the month for vote in may keeps the spending within the budget cap we are looking to increase staffing in the areas of social and emotional support instructional support specialists and continuing the universal pre-k program for next year as mr petrolak mentioned we are continuing our full-time police presence and also continuing our proactive building maintenance system so this presentation as

084well as all of the others will be available tomorrow morning on our website under the budget section at that time you can review any of the small print that maybe you got missed or fashion any questions that you may have for for us either this evening or in future presentations and again a reminder we'll have two board of education seats a budget vote and now i'm going to have to update future slides to include also a capital proposition all for may 17th any questions on the opening presentation are there any questions on part one i just want to apologize for the the timing we've spent two years honing our ability to do remote technological meetings and then i couldn't do it with a lack of internet and power the one time i've had to to

085make that happen i'm gonna say that there were some others of us who were hoping the power went out just so yeah but we understood your dilemma so [Applause] we appreciate putting these two together because that was the only option we had so that was fine well thank you and i'm going to then open the next presentation go right into the second one i'm going to okay see and there it goes so we have a lot of support areas to cover and as we talked about the brevity request for reports i will try to do this rather quickly and just focus on those things that are i guess new and exciting this year and that is the transportation program transportation costs have been increasing everywhere between fuel staffing it's been a very difficult year it's

086going to be even more difficult next year because our rfp for transportation ends at the end of this year and we were actually asked by a contractor that not to renew for next year because the law does allow that we can renew on a year-to-year basis with the same contractor but fortunately in our contract we had a deadline that wasn't made so we will be able to extend it districts that are out in the open market have seen tremendous increases in their costs that's why at the beginning of the last proposal i'd mentioned that there were pieces of this budget that are truly budget right now that we don't have known costs for and transportation is our biggest one we're not expecting any additional routes or services next year we're hoping to maintain the level

087of service we had become accustomed to prior to the pandemic and hopefully we can at least get that back can you just clarify about the missed deadline um sure the our contract was a five-year contract and that's a pretty pretty long span it also had a kind of a safety net for the district built into the specifications that called for the contractor to inform us by a certain date if they did not wish to renew we were informed that they did not wish to renew well after that deadline and we wouldn't really have had the time to put a proper rfp together in that span so luckily we had that protection built into the original rfp and that worked to our benefit yes okay thank you so we did talk about our big bus routes

088we also continue our arrangement with orange alster boces to provide specialty runs for long distance uh special education and other outside of the county settings and that we expect to continue they're currently in the rfp process now so if we look at the numbers you'll see that this is probably one of the biggest areas of increase we're expecting up to a seven percent increase in that contract and i don't like to say it this way but i think we're in a good place at that rate rather than being in the open market debt service we did a refinancing a number of years ago and it still continues to save approximately two hundred thousand dollars each year and what you'll see on this is very similar to the amortization schedule on a home mortgage or on

089a car loan that your first payments are primarily interest whereas your last payments are primarily principal we have the same structure here so you'll see that we're increasing our principal payment fifty five thousand dollars and we're decreasing our interest payment almost the same amount but fifty two thousand two fifty so it does fluctuate slightly but that's what the base amount consistency that's required by law will give you i talk about central services those are all the things that we can't identify to any one program so i can't say that the cost of mail would be for the english class or the cost of a copy machine goes to a math class so those are all grouped together in the areas called central services that includes printing and mailing data processing also special items such as

090insurance and boces administrative costs again they aren't something that we can point to and say gee that belongs in the special ed section or that belongs in the instructional technology that's why the comptroller's chart of accounts gives us an area called central services to gather all of those pieces the numbers here we've been able to maintain because we are renewing our copier and and maintenance agreements with the mail machines as well as the equipment we've been able to keep that steady for a number of years and that again is coordinated through orange l-sterbosies we are expecting some increases in the boces administrative and capital costs as well as insurance and dues buildings and grounds you heard from mr derosa earlier what he doesn't hit on is that 200 000 square feet of building 40 acres

091of outdoor space and a hundred thousand feet of pavement is all up to you sir that is staffed as you see on this screen by very few people again that's 200 000 square feet of building space and this is all he has to work with himself the head custodian the maintenance mechanic the assistant maintenance mechanic and two ground staff we talked a great deal about the modern systems unfortunately that isn't here yet so we continue to work there you'll see an increase in staffing costs these are projected at this point as employee contracts are set to expire at the end of the year and we have been working with those units to move forward with newer and succeeding contracts but that has not yet been completed and this area breaks down into operations which is

092your day-to-day cleaning utilities and also maintenance which is more the repairs upkeep pulleys and the like i mentioned boces a number of times that stands for the board of cooperative educational services most people that went to school understand the gee that's ctec well they do a whole lot more they provide us services in the business office they provide uh cross contracts with other boces in case the boces here in in goshen doesn't have that program and they charge for each service that we sign up for so if a program isn't used by chester it's not billed to chester one of the bigger areas is their boces support services for special education as from self-contained special education to [Music] so we've projected 40 students to be full-time outsourced in those classes and again this count may

093change as ms loftus has pointed out we're in the process of annual reviews and any program changes that are agreed to through that process will have to be reflected here as well and these students may also require additional services speech therapy nursing and other ctec which most people are probably most familiar with we are currently have 49 students slated for that program some of them of course are from greenwood lake that come from this building but boces charges greenwood lake school district separately for those students so we don't see that in the billing we just see those students in the second half of the day there are a number of educational services from science science kits to odyssey of the mind mock trial youth and government these are wonderful programs that as a small district

094we really don't have the mass to support and that's where a organization like boces is probably most helpful to the smaller districts in the area they provide us computer support as well as pupil services for nurse practitioner in the summer guidance software and other things of that nature and then i mentioned the central functions they help with policy updates state aid planning purchasing athletic coordination health and safety so they do our fire inspections and give us all the tips and tricks to keep us safe mr spence talked about his in his report it came up about the replacement of equipment and that was a question from the board yes we do have that included in this year's budget again and we also have the increased efforts for our cyber security unfortunately that is more uh

095probably a need today than it should be but we are certainly keeping on top of that so we have full-time network technician we have interns we have support from a network management service both from mr patel's company as well as others that help monitor our servers and ed i think you mentioned that that's done daily i think that's done every millisecond at this point with all of the electronic uh filtering and gadgets that we do have in place there's a small budget for software and that goes through the evaluation and approval process very much like textbooks used to and we find now that there's more use of software than there are physical books so that area of the budget increases while the others decrease and the numbers here are a little bit all over the

096place you'll see a decrease in equipment even though we did talk about the replacement schedule that large increase last year was brought on specifically to address that lack of take-home equipment at the younger grades so although it is an increase from our normal practice and a considerable increase it does show on this year's budget as a decrease because of the huge effort we put in last year this is a great day to do this one because we have all of the directors here so i think these numbers with the enrollment for the fall may be even a little low this this presentation we do have about two-thirds of our seven 12 population that participate in at least one sport and i don't know of any other district that could make a claim like that the

097program is part of chester it's what we expect it's what we do and luckily we do it very well there's a piece of the boces budget in the athletics as well they coordinate all the payment for uh referees and officials they also have dues and coordinate the scheduling and and how it is that we do that mr aguilar puts in budget requests each year for which team we need to outfit and we like to rotate that from season to season to make sure that everybody has something new um you'll see in the budget the total for that area is up about sixteen thousand dollars on a we've kept the line but still are preparing to outfit those students with what it is they need hopefully i didn't talk too fast or go through too many

098things without the required level of detail but once again this will be on our website tomorrow morning for more in-depth review and i will turn it over the board for any questions are there any questions my only comment if you could just repeat the um refine the refinance for people who were not aware and how that's saving us in excess of 200 000 a year well we uh we had an opportunity we refinanced when we built this building the bonding was for 28 years 10 years into that bonding the interest rates came down and the no call clause expired so we had an opportunity and we refinanced the debt on this saving quite a bit when we did that refinancing we were able to bring that no call term down from 10 years which is

099standard in the industry to seven years which meant at the time that interest rates hit in all time rock bottom we also hit that seven year window and we're able to refinance that saved us about two hundred thousand dollars in interest in principal payments each year since it was an excellent excellent opportunity that took advantage of it was a little bit lucky as well yep are there any questions from the board for mr brennan in that case i will do my technological unplugging and plugging in again thank you so much can you plug me good evening again everyone um just wanted to remind our families that are interested in the elementary school pre-k program for the 2022-23 school year registration closes next week so that's friday april 1st so please be sure to get your

100applications in if you are interested all applications will be entered into a lottery which is scheduled to be live streamed on april 11th at 12 o'clock and families will receive a link to view the process live we'll say i just i will add briefly that teachers and staff recently participated in a full day of professional development held on our superintendent's conference day this past friday the 18th the theme of the day was working together to impact positive change as a unified district team of educators and staff we had over seven in-person presenters with varied pd scheduled throughout the day incorporating activities that were collaborative district-wide as well as those targeted to specific grade level program or building needs given the additional presentations this evening i will report specifically further on each of the details of

101the day at the board of education meetings scheduled on april 6th thank you mr petrol asked me i see that you have a presentation yes our final presentation tonight is a presentation on our goals and uh providing the board with a mid-year update on where we are with our goals as you know earlier in the year we presented our district goals to the board of education and to the public they have been available they are available on our website for people to review and this particular slide i'm not going to read all the goals verbatim but you'll see that some of the terms and words are highlighted and that is an indication of what the focus is of of those particular uh goals so our in in some our goals are to promote college and

102career readiness uh diversity equity and inclusion to ensure that we have a highly qualified staff to provide our educational services to make sure that our facilities are operating efficiently and economically to make sure that our budget is responsible to our taxpayers to promote family involvement and community involvement and finally uh and always to improve and enhance safety and wellness so our first set of goals uh are focused on college and career readiness so i'll ask miss o'hara to speak to the first set of slides so the first goal i had just spoke to which was to plan and initiate a universal pre-k program at the elementary school currently in place we have 18 amazing students currently enrolled in the program next year we will expand to 20 students and that's going to be reflective of

103again our certified instructional teacher as well as two aides and i will again remind that the registration closes on the first i spoke earlier on the implementation of the next generation standards and i did mentioned earlier the focus on the pre-k through fifth grade math program that we're looking at social studies and the pk through 12 writing program reflective of the next generation standards and we're continuing to implement engineering practices as mentioned earlier reflecting the new york next generation standards specifically on engineering design practices and problem-based learning goal number c develop and outline the current scope and sequence of all curriculum areas uh pre-k through 12. so we do currently have an outline in place that is used to document the standards i spoke to it one of the earlier board presentations mentioning priority standards

104mentioning that the teachers are working on identifying those standards through what are those prerequisite skills that we expect our students to come in given the fact that the previous two years have been very different than pre-pandemic so what does that pre-assessment of those skills look like what are the materials that we use how are we differentiating instruction and specifically stating that within that outline and then how do we assess our students and then with each document in each content area and grade level what are the support needs in that instructional program that we need to reevaluate in an effort to improve at the elementary level again with regard to that we are looking to implement programs in support of the next gen standards goal number d or go letter d is a letter uh completing

105the media and robotics lab maker space at the elementary school and that is in place it is up and running thanks to the efforts of matt derosa and his team it is currently being used for robotics and as mentioned earlier next year targeting green screen technology letter e has been discussed several times this evening which is completing the chester academy maker space in terms of evaluating enhancing course offering course offerings at the high school level some of these were mentioned earlier new courses introduced this year include introduction to mechatronics and technology robotics computer-aided design computer integrated manufacturing engineering architecture and ap physics new high school courses proposals new high school course proposals for next year include dance exercise science today's students tomorrow's teachers and sports media and marketing and again i i just want to

106reiterate that the target area of instruction focuses on our efforts to bring in real world application learning to our students and innovative practices mrs bush has spoken on earlier meetings in regard to the program fundations which is a reading program currently in place pre-kindergarten kindergarten and first grade and it will be extended as mentioned earlier to second grade and then the choose love program which i had mentioned mrs loftis has trained the staff on it is in place at the elementary school weekly it is also in place at the high school and lastly mr spence spoke to this in terms of providing dedicated chromebooks for all students in grades k-12 mentioned in the budget presentation the expenditures last year were in an effort to give all students in grade levels pre-k and first grade to

107have access to their own chromebook or tablet in their classroom and then all students now in grades 2 through 12 have received a take-home chromebook moving forward our second district goal is to promote diversity equity and inclusion in our district and the first objective was to establish a district policy statement so as of right now we do not have a district policy statement but we are in the process of doing the foundational work behind that and what i mean by that is that we are engaged in doing an analysis of our current instructional practices as they relate to new york state's culturally responsive framework and this analysis will involve identifying areas of strength and areas of need and opportunity and based on what areas are are identified that will help to form what our district

108policy statement will be in that area so objective b is to establish a committee and our plan is following this analysis that i just described we will be reaching out to the community to ask for volunteers from various stakeholder groups to form a diversity equity and inclusion or dei uh committee district goal number three is uh addressed towards uh our personnel our staff and objective a is to provide training and mentoring for administrators and teachers and all of our new teachers and our new administrator our new principal miss bosch are all working with mentors uh so we've met that objective and that is actually an ongoing objective uh objective b is to negotiate a fair and equitable contract with our chester teachers association and we are currently engaged in negotiations with the teachers association and

109without getting into any detail i would report that things are moving in a extremely favorable direction at this point our next objective is to negotiate a contract with our non-instructional employees that's the chester civil service employees association or the csea and we are also engaged in negotiations with the csea at that time and we're in a very good place with those negotiations as well objective d is to develop an early teacher development program so currently nationally we are experiencing a teacher shortage and that shortage is projected to continue and to to get worse in current years as there are less people that are in the teacher education pipeline so the idea behind an early teacher development program is to identify students at the high school level who may be good candidates to go into teaching

110as a career and to provide them with exposure to what it means to have an educational career in the hopes that they will go into education and eventually come back to chester and work here in the future so this is something that uh there is a program ms o'hara mentioned it earlier this evening today's students tomorrow's teachers uh this is a program that's in place elsewhere and it's one that we're reviewing currently uh potentially to bring in for next year district goal number four uh addresses facilities needs and uh the need for us to operate in efficient and economical economical manner and uh objective one is to upgrade our computer network infrastructure this is an ongoing process and the assessment is ongoing and the upgrades are ongoing um as mr spence mentioned uh cyber security

111is uh a priority for us and uh we're presently in the process of piloting new software that we may be able to bring in if we find that it meets our needs the next objective addresses the maple avenue school and the maple avenue school is a ongoing concern for the community and for the board of education the district is continuing to evaluate different options and these include proposals and suggestions from people that are within the school district and also people that are uh outside of the school district so you could expect to hear more from this in in the coming months this is uh something that covered the covid pandemic did somewhat sideline but it is as i said an important priority for the district and you'll be hearing more about it objective c in

112the facilities area is to develop an energy savings plan you may have heard mr derosa say earlier tonight that he will be presenting at the next meeting an energy savings plan we are in the process of working with nyserda right now on doing an assessment of our energy needs and identifying areas for efficiencies and cost savings so we're in the process of enrolling in a benchmarking uh program with them so that they can track our progress and uh you'll hear more as i said from mr derosa about this and his next presentation next month district goal number five addresses budget and you heard two budget presentations tonight that address this particular area but objective a uh addresses specifically the stimulus funds that were provided by the federal government and uh how we have been able

113to access and leverage those funds so when the allocations were made available to the district we had to identify areas where we could use those funds that fell within the requirements of of the funding source of the federal government we had to submit applications and we submitted our applications and we've received uh all of the necessary approvals to move forward those funds are being used for ppe for staffing instructional technology including providing chromebooks for all of the students in the district improving the network so that it can handle the increased instructional technology needs that we have and then finally as we discussed earlier tonight hvac upgrades objective b is to evaluate the usefulness of our current programs and shifting demographics so what does this mean this is an ongoing uh program and process of looking

114at the programs that we are currently offering and determining whether they meet our current needs and our future needs in terms of our enrollment enrollment projections indicate uh that there will be a slight decrease in enrollment moving forward however the data that we're looking at are reflective of our current enrollment grade by grade but anecdotally what we have observed locally recently is a lot of activity in the residential real estate market so although the data show a slight decrease anecdotally i suspect that we will see that we will maintain current levels or a slight increase in enrollment and i drive through surrey very often as uh as i'm on my way to the elementary school and there has been a lot of turnover in the real estate in surrey certainly that reflects things that are

115happening regionally and nationally so that that'll be interesting to to watch as we move on ms o'hara mentioned number of different courses that we are evaluating to run for next year and that is part of a process of looking at the courses that we offer and whether they're relevant for our students for you know today and and what they need to know today but more importantly for what they need to know in the future so our makerspace our project-based learning our engineering focus are all reflective of our vision for where we see education moving in the future objective c in the area of budget addresses uh our ability to communicate the property tax levy cap and mr brennan addressed that tonight and he did mention that one of the challenges is to deal with the

116tax cap but also deal with it while uh inflation is starting to make things more expensive so that is the challenge that that we have and you'll hear more about that through the budget process and then objective d is communication and communicating our budget and our budget needs to the public and we are currently utilizing our website our news uh a newsletter that will go out later to notify the public of the vote and social media to share information about our budget our next objective in the area of budget is to continue to implement and expand shared services with other districts so there are a number of areas that we collaborate with other districts to save cos to save costs and expense some of these areas include in the past we had a shared data

117clerk with the florida school district and the person that was in that position recently retired we had a discussion with the florida school district about finding a replacement that we could share their needs change so that's one area where we're not able to continue sharing with another district but another area of opportunity did present itself and this year we are partnering with we partnered with the goshen school district and are currently partnering with the florida school district on sports opportunities for students and this provides us with opportunities to have teams because of additional students from florida where otherwise we might not be able to have enough enough students to run a team another area where we collaborate with other districts is in the area of cooperative purchasing and yet in other areas in with our

118food service manager we do have a food service manager who works in this district and two other districts in in the county uh so that we're all able to have a quality full-time person but pay for uh only the parts of that person that we need the next area of our district goals is communication and you've heard a lot of talk about our district website and we realize the need for improving that website and mr spence spoke this evening about where we are in that particular process so just to summarize uh what mr spence presented we are in the process of shifting to a new format we are targeting the summer to pilot that new website and are targeting the fall and the beginning of the new school year to go live with a new

119website our second objective in communications is to continue streaming the board of education meetings and to eliminate technical difficulties we have been able to eliminate many of the technical difficulties that we've had in the past i'd like to thank rit department for focusing on that we've acquired hardwired equipment that has eliminated some of the issues and the next goal is to encourage participation of people that are watching via live stream or are watching the recorded version but particularly for people that are watching live the board has made a very uh conscientious effort to start meetings on time this year and for people that are not familiar with that oftentimes the board has an executive session which is a closed meeting start starting at 6 pm sometimes the agenda in that meeting extends beyond 7 pm

120and we know that people were waiting at home to watch the watch the board of education meeting and waiting and waiting so in discussing with the board of education uh encouraging people to watch at home we've made a strong effort to starting on time and for the most part i think we're doing very well we have a significant community of families whose first language is not english we refer to those as enl families or english as a new language families and oftentimes communication verbal and written communications can be a barrier to involving those people and having them participate in their their child's education so that's been a goal for us or an objective and we have been able to utilize translation software so that we can provide translations in 10 different languages for our school

121correspondences and this year we added a translation tool for our website which is right at the top of the website and the website can be translated into a approximately 100 different languages in addition to that we have access to live translation services that we use for eml families for parent-teacher conferences special education conferences etc district goal number seven deals with personal safety and wellness the first goal is one that you saw earlier in another area and that is to improve our network security so i will not repeat that the second goal is implementation of the choose love program to promote a positive school climate and miss o'hara did address choose love earlier this evening but just to summarize we have conducted our staff training for this program in the fall and lessons are currently in

122place at the elementary and at the academy objective c in safety and wellness is our school resource officer i'm going to move through this slide quickly so i have it in a number of different sections uh that kind of makes sense the first section is general things that i think most people would expect the school resource officer to do they include safety checks security checks assisting and also advising on traffic safety and then also working with administration on any other matters that include that involve safety security or any kind of potential violations of criminal or traffic law our sro assists with the coordination of special events including a mock dwi accident that we do on the day of the prom and more recently rsr sro coordinated a k-9 walkthrough during a lockdown drill that we

123had recently and we had approximately eight different police agencies from local towns and villages and the sheriff's department participate in that particular activity but in addition to that our sro goes into the classroom meets with special groups of students this year our sro spoke to students about tick tock challenges you may remember in the beginning of the year there were a number of tick tock challenges that were going on around the country that involved destructive behavior and vandalism and the sro spoke to students very frankly about that and explained that the consequences of participating in that can be long lasting for young people rsro has spoken with classes about the dangers of cannabis other classes he's presented on the bill of rights and how it implements itself in in our daily lives he has spoken

124with grades and classes about dwi and destructive decisions he was invited into a math class to talk about crime scene crime scene investigation and how math is used in investigations and for juniors that were interested in receiving a parking permit we asked our sro to put together a driver safety presentation that was mandatory for any juniors who wanted to apply for a parking permit and lastly our sro provides us with ongoing advice in the area of vaping prevention for those that are not familiar teenage vaping has become a very serious health concern and this is something that we are very proactively uh working on right now in fact on friday we had a presenter from the alcohol and drug abuse council of orange county come here and work with our staff we have presentations scheduled

125for students and for parents over the next month and finally our sro is an important member of our district safety committee so um i think we're getting close to the end thank you for indulging me our safety goals also include proactive programs for students to promote a positive school climate those include something called safe school ambassadors which is a program here at chester academy it involves approximately 50 students and staff who get specialized training and then participate in conflict resolution activities throughout the course of the year you've heard about some great information about pbis so pbis is ongoing and we are getting it back up and running after covid and on a number of occasions tonight you heard about choose love which is currently being implemented in both of our buildings and that's that gets

126us to the end of our district goals are there any questions from the board any questions for mr petra presentation i would just say that the administration as always there's a lot going on you just heard it tonight and how long that took but you could have taken the rest of the night to talk about it because i think it just shows that all the work that is going on all the positive work that's going on throughout the district and we appreciate all the hard work that's going goes into it every day cove it aside which is feels nice to finally say that we're back in the swing of a lot of the things that got clouded over the last uh 24 months any other questions mr patrack at all that'll bring us to our

127first public comment section of tonight's meeting does anyone who has any comments on tonight's agenda you can come down that'll bring us to round table i'm going to turn to brian quickly if he had anything for roundtable yeah really briefly we have a senior trip kids are signed up and money has been collected and there are meetings for further information the year trip is also coming up um this 11 day trip taking place at start to bring spring break and that's starting to ramp up and then finally finally promise i was starting up tickets are on sale starting april 4th uh sending out 75 a ticket that's all where is your prom going to be again this year brian uh i'm not sure it's it's uh ran by the juniors this year not seniors west

128hills oh west hills thank you brian yes any board member also have anything for roundtable mr patchersmith last week the executive board of orange county school boards association met we discussed the upcoming end of year business meeting in june programs still being put together along with guest speakers and a venue so as soon as i get that information i'll let you know in the meantime two weeks from tonight will be the april meeting of orange county school board association it will be virtual and everyone is welcome to tune in that's all i have we have a meeting and that would be the annual meeting your retirement annual meeting wouldn't it quite possibly [Laughter] for long service that's for sure all right anything else for roundtable mr petra just three quick things first i just want

129to remind everyone that next wednesday there will be a special meeting on the board of education and the purpose of that meeting will be to discuss uh the projects that we're working on in a capital project referendum for may 17th my second item is a reminder for our board members that the boces budget vote will be on april 21st and also a heads up for our members of the public normally we meet on wednesdays on our second meeting in april will be on the thursday night and that is to coincide with the county-wide vote on the boces budget so that night uh board members will be asked to vote on the boces budget on the boces and also on the uh boces board member election and uh also to our board members i want to

130remind you that uh o.u boces has offered uh for board members who are interested to attend a budget presentation on april 6th and if you're interested in attending please let me know by march 30th and i will rsvp for you and then my last item is that o.u boces is offering school board members a tour of the seatac facilities and that tour is scheduled for april 1st from 9 00 a.m to 12 p.m so if any of our board members are interested please let me know by the end of this week yeah i'll let you know tomorrow yep i just couldn't i i can't i'm not sure you were still looking into it right yeah yeah it's a morning it's 9 to 12. okay anything else for round table i think we'll go to consent

131agenda i'll need a motion i make a motion that the board adopts consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.6 is there any discussion all in favor any opposed and that will bring us to our second public comment section of tonight's meeting if there's anyone who has any comments or questions for the board how you doing okay all right good evening mr sandwich uh my name is chad clark um i have three kids at uh chester both in elementary and academy and i'll keep this brief there's a lot of great presentations tonight answered a lot of my questions that i had actually and it kind of um actually the gentleman from the architecture firm kind of provided a segway when he talked about one of the first things being listened and i know that there's been some

132discussions on like communication and everything so i just think it's going to be a lost opportunity about doing the website and i appreciate mr spence asking a couple questions uh answering a couple questions i had but the um you know the piece on listening and i'm wondering how we're going out um to get a website designed without getting some feedback from parents you know that's the one risk that i think i see in this process we're kind of picking a template already so we're kind of further down the road than i would imagine you know there's a lot of questions that we've talked about i joke that like a lot of the you know stuff you kind of hear on like facebook like there's a commercial and my wife yells something because we all know

133there's a facebook forums and everything else and rumors go out and things start to spiral and i'd imagine that wastes a lot of time when it's not you know managed if that makes sense so i just feel like it would be a lost opportunity to not find out what's the most important thing for parents to see in the website is it going to be mobile device friendly there's a lot of stuff like that that i think uh and ironically goshen just put out a number of surveys um it could be done relatively easily i feel like um we've got i think when i looked well over two-thirds of the population of the district in enrolled that you know either have friends or family on those forums so there's a lot of people that are engaged

134they're unfortunately not coming here they're not always participating but i know they have opinions and i think would make everybody's life easier if it was more collaborative on what what i know are a lot of shared goals so um and and some other topic i just want to touch on is the committees i heard that parents would be invited for some of these soon i think would be great i myself uh do facilities um so i know uh mr derosa's pain i'm uh i was a facility engineer for new york national guard's largest base we have uh 1500 acres over 20 buildings and 20 staff so the government the federal government is in the same boat it's very frustrating and nobody talks about the good things testing and balancing school i went to they uh

135consider success 80 satisfied customers so when you think about hvac you know i always tell my wife that too because her school's the same way everybody's always putting on sweaters complaining so um but i just think there's a lot of people in the community that um you know whether we have a meeting in a committee or as a board member's leading things that they are passionate about and they can get some other community members that are you know in those architect engineer fields or medical if it's safety or something or police and we have more collaborative instead of talking at each other like group session kind of stuff in our committees we could probably have some more productive you know dialogue so that's all i just wanted to say thank you thank you appreciate it

136was there anybody else can't see in the back hi good evening my name is allison delo i'm a chester resident of 15 years i have three kids in the district one in the new preschool program a third grader and a seventh grader the meeting that was streamed a few weeks ago i guess it was two weeks ago i listened to it and you spoke about the merger with florida and sports i think it's going to be very beneficial when there are opportunities for the students to play and there's not enough teams uh things of that nature i was surprised to hear that as of most recently this winter that there was a swimmer that was allowed to play excuse me swim for goshen because we do not have a swim team there was no team

137for this person to participate in and it caught me off guard because my son who entered the seventh grade this year there was no modified football team for him to play on mr aguilar and i have spoken at length about this um i wasn't aware in september that that was something that my son could do a goshen parent informed me and said hey maybe he can come play for goshen reached out to mr aguilar i reached out to the goshen athletic director it was very much a back and forth a back and forth back and forth i wasn't getting a straight answer i reached out to goshen directly and from my understanding he was the only seventh grade modified player interested in playing and i was told no that he was not able to so

138to hear in the meeting that now a swimmer was sent to goshen which is great for that person i don't know if it's modified versus varsity if there's a difference but that really was a little heartbreaking for me that my son missed this opportunity to continue football because of low enrollment not a team and i understand we've spoken about this that budget-wise only two teams are budgeted for chester jv and varsity i totally understand that but he could have had the opportunity to play and continue and once he reached ninth grade would have been ready to play with chester okay we'll find any i'll look into it thank you hello everybody how's it going i'm joe delaney um i i was a little surprised tonight with the kg and d presentation based on the board

139meeting on 3-9 i think it was articulated where it was going to be more of a open q a with the architectural firm getting them in so i was surprised that there's now going to be another meeting and when you think about it it's a it's a week away you know is a weak enough ample time for us to gather questions so i i just want to throw it out there that you know level setting expectations you know i was surprised to show up tonight and um i'm assuming we didn't decide tonight that there was going to be another meeting next week i just think it could have been communicated a little bit a little bit better i will say viewing the meeting viewing the presentation by the architectural firm i still i still question

140why looking at their core competency with the makerspaces they they make these um you know beautiful um beautiful stem areas for our students but why they're involved with in hvac upgrade i i didn't see on their website they list out you know a million different projects that they've worked on and the fact that we didn't put this out for competitive bids um is concerning to me when we're when we have a budget presentation about you know how with inflation rising cost of of goods and services that you know why aren't we putting out competitive bids if we are going to be strapped going into next year it's it doesn't seem like a balance it seems like we have you know money to to spend and then when it comes time to figure out the budget

141um you know we're we're hard pressed for money so i'm just trying to figure out which which one it is so i i do want to throw that out there that even reading our policy i know new york state it's not required to competitive bid by law but when i read our policy any expense for service over twenty thousand dollars the way i interpreted it was that we needed um we need a system in place to understand you know where that's coming from set up for architecture architectural is not included right exactly exactly but as per our policy the way i interpret it is you know it should be should be put out for um competitors that's an interpretation right and that's exactly what i said i know but it's not necessarily a correct interpretation

142right right and i i i will email for uh for clarity there and um regarding the district goals really appreciate that i know back in january i asked for updates with the community engagement um and with maple avenue school with the maple loving school glad you guys are taking some recommendations from my website about involving the community and what we should do there but i do want to point out even the um the mid-year report it we're a little over a week away from april there's only three months left in the in the academic year so it is a little late um it's always on our time dave okay and i don't your website i don't know you're referring to um i have a website i'm running for school board i have a lot of

143recommendations on there um i'd recommend you guys take a look and i wasn't aware of the end works so thank you for your time so i would also point out that the mid-year refers to the mid-academic year the first semester ends at the end of january and so the mid-year and the academic year is is in the february time frame okay anybody else all right with that i believe i'd like to thank the administration and people being here tonight um i know we always talk about uh reports and trying to truncate them and make but whatever you guys got is what the board needs so we always say that to you there was a lot tonight which was actually refreshing so we appreciate all of you being here and your thorough reports throughout the weeks

144and we appreciate that and with that there is a reminder of the meeting next wednesday and 7 p.m and i'll need a motion to adjourn all in favor