001[Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Okay, thank you. Good evening everyone. Fire exits are located at the sides in the room in the front and back. In the event of a fire, you will hear a fire alarm at that time. Please move in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest exit. Before we move on to public speaking, we'll have a presentation by our superintendent to outstanding athletes. And Mr. Carlo is going to take it from here. on. There we go. Okay, great. Thank you very much, President Rose. So, um, we have another exciting night tonight to honor a couple of our student athletes here at East Ramapo. And, um, I'm going to call up at this point in time our um, student scholar, athlete, and uh, the winner that we're going
002to talk about tonight, presentation for track, and that's Markinson Genty. if he could come up. Markinson along with your coach, Coach Delva, can you please come up? So, coach is going to tell you a little bit about this um student athlete, a little bit about his accomplishments if you don't mind. Good evening. Um this afternoon um we we're acknowledging Marcus Genty, uh one of our star athletes here at Spring Valley High School for track and field. Marcus this past season for the winter season was an all league, all section, all county athlete who also made to the state meet for the 300 meter dash, ran with the interactive relay team. Uh Marcus Marcus has been a a four-year varsity athlete for us at Spring Valley. one of the hardest working young man that I've ever
003had the privilege of coaching and very modest and shy but he's a outstanding worker and every year he's improved and we're very grateful to have him here at Spring Valley High School. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. Marcus is a as he said to me is a he's a student athlete a few words but you know I just want to talk a little bit about the kind of dedication that goes into any sport but es especially track and field um you know it's a it's where you have to really be dedicated to yourself also to the team but the amount of hours in conditioning and running both you know when the seasons are on both you know in the winter and then we get of course to spring track and I'm pretty confident that when we
004get to June, there going to be a lot more awards that we're going to see from our our track programs at at the high schools. But, you know, I just want to thank Mark and I want to thank your family for all their dedication because behind every great scholar and student athlete is a family who's there continually wanting you to do the best you can. And as coach mentioned, you do us very, very proud. And we're just honored to give you the certificate. And it says certificate of recognition presented at Marinson Genty in appreciation for your exceptional performance and victory in the 2425 all league, all section and all county championships. Your dedication, strength, and sportsmanship has made our district extremely proud. Awarded the 8th of April, 2025 at the East Ramapo Central School District
005board meeting. Congratulations [Applause] Great job. Okay. Um, as we are Great job. As we are waiting for our next recipient, I just while I'm up here, I just want to talk to you a little bit about um two shows that I saw over the last um two weeks. The first one was at Spring Valley High School. It was their production of Once on This Island and that took place March 27th, 28th, and 29th. It was a great great performance by our our thespians at Spring Valley High School. And what's really interesting about this is that it's not just about the actors on the stage. It's about all of our students behind the scenes working on wardrobe, working on staging, working on curtains, working on lighting, working on audio. And then it's our our our band,
006our pit band m which are made up of students who are playing of course in the pit playing music of course to accompany um the show and what's going on and um great performance. I want to thank all those who were involved at Spring Valley High School um on once on this island. I thank the directors uh and everybody behind the scenes who makes it happen. And then this past weekend on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Ramapo High School um presented Little Shop of Horrors um at Ramapo High School uh and again an outstanding production um uh the students um you know both behind the scenes on stage in the pit band. What's interesting about Little Shop of Horror is as you know I it's it's all about um what happens with uh you know Audrey
007too which is the the plant and if you've ever seen Little Shopahara is you know they they did a great job with it and the you know the plant was actually on stage and the kids did an absolutely awesome job. So I want to again congratulate both Ramipo and Spring Valley for all their hard work and dedication in that. Also, just a quick reminder that coming up on Wednesday, April 30th at 6:30 p.m. Yeah. at the Yeshiva Girls at 142 Grand View Avenue, Muny, New York, we'll be doing a budget um presentation um at the Yeshiva Girls School. So, we um we encourage people to come out, get a bit better understanding of the budget overview um as we u get ready for our budget vote on May 20th. Um, and even though sometimes, and
008it's important, we know that people's lives are are difficult. There's a lot of things that are going on. Um, these are streamed live. Um, and so people, although you might not be able to get to the locations that were at, um, you can please make sure that you get on and kind of get an overview of myself and what Mr. Stark are doing and taking part in. That would be really, really important. Um, so I'm going to I guess we'll continue on. I guess we can go with public comment and then I'll have to come back up and we can do the awarding from there. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mrs. A Carlo. Um I guess we'll start with the public speaking and then when the athlete arrives, we'll move back to the presentation. Um
009I'll now make a motion to open the floor of public speaking. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Miss Charles. All those in favor say I. And oppose of state. Motion carries. Speaker number one. Hello everyone. Um, as the picture you guys saw at the very beginning, um, I guess this is crunch time for graduation and I'm very happy and looking forward to see all the kids that really did their all being in this district and having what they have and they're still going to be a success story coming out of this district. It's amazing the moment that you see these kids graduate because seeing how their school years have been um just having the minimal compared to other districts. But thankfully due to amazing teachers they get to that point. Um due to
010this I've been seeing I stay on top of other districts and what they're doing to help their students prepare themselves for college throughout the the time that they're in high school. Um, I would like for the district to assemble more activities that involve colleges, college prep. What can I do? Things that they can go after school so they doesn't take out of the school their education during the day. That would be amazing. Like fast, how to fill it, what scholarships we have out there. Not all kids are very educa um educational driven. So, what talents do they have? How can we highlight those talents to see where they could go? Um, we need to be pushing in order to them um for them to know about all these colleges that are amazing. Um, and they're
011safe for them out there. Um, also I would like to also mention that I would like to um make sure that the district admins and board are actually looking at why our teachers leaving our district that are amazing. I know a lot that have have to get out of the district because of the situation in their schools being too toxic because if they talk up for their um their students, they're being pushed out of the district, which is unfair. I know about a situation and I can't speak about the specific situation, but I know that teachers are amazing, the ones that are being um pushed out of the district. It's very unfair when there is not an investigation and there is not an investigation that is being let known to the public of reason why
012their teacher is no longer in their child's classroom and how their children coming home crying because they don't know where their teacher are because they didn't get the opportunity to even say goodbye. Teachers become an auntie figure to these kids. They take out of their money to be able to supply things for their children is very unfair for treatment like this to happen. Um, also we really need to address with the food situation. We've been saying a couple of years my kids are very concerned about the food. So hopefully you guys actually pay attention to what the kids eat. Um because as a mother getting um home and my kids are very upset because their stomach hurts and taking time to take them to urgent care and stuff, it takes away from me and my
013children's happiness. Thank you. Thank you. Um before we move on to you know what let's do speaker number two and afterwards we'll go on to the presentation Hi Hi my name is Madison Mera and I'm here to talk about the field trips third grade only has the field trips and I would like all grades to have field trips. That's it. [Applause] Thank you. Okay, before we move on to speaker number three, we're going to have a presentation by Mr. Zakaro. Thank you, President Rose. So, at this time, I'm going to ask for Coach Perinello, our athletic director, Mr. Russo, our assistant athletic director to please come on up. Josiah, if you would please come up here, would we be honored? I want to talk a little bit about this young man and his ex outstanding
014accomplishment. So, I'm going to have Coach Pinella come up and talk a little bit about this student athlete, his wonderful accomplishment, and then we're going to present him with a number of awards. Coach Pinelloo, thank you. Good evening. First off, I want to say uh Josiah is a four-year varsity player. Um he's accomplished a lot this year that a lot of people didn't expect him to. So, just to start off at the beginning of the season at the Niag tournament, he was the most valuable player. Um as we go on through the season, we went down, he finished the he on and against Clark South, I'm sorry. He hit a record that a lot of people his size are not able to do. He accomplished a thousand point mark which he finishes his um he
015finished his career at Spring Valley with 1,218 points. He's also won a lot of uh MVP awards. He was the MVP of our season this year at Spring Valley High School. I can't take all the credit as a first year coach. I want to also congratulate coach Wooten and coach Worsley because they had three years prior to me coming on this year. He made my job a lot easier this year. We got a kid that can score the ball. But the biggest thing I'm going to say is we accomplish this right now together. I'm happy for him. My next goal is to see what is next in the next chapter for Joe outside of high school, you know. So that's that's that's for me. All right. Thank you. Say you're welcome. So before Before you
016say a couple of words, we would like to present you with a couple of milestones. So, this is actually the basketball that you got your thousand points with. All right. So, the ball is here and it says Josiah Bishan 10,000 career points. January 23rd, 2025, Spring Valley High School. Okay. Clarkstown South and Spring Valley High School. So, here you go. That's the actual ball. Congratulations. We're not done. This is another award Josiah got this year. This is from the Lowhud Basketball Coach Association. He was all conference one, first team. Um he was also all section second team. Um they don't give plaques for that, but I was told that at the dinner this year. So that's a big accomplishment for this young man. Congratulations. Our athletic director, Mr. Russo is going to come up and
017and also share some other great accomplishments. In addition to all his other accomplishments, Josiah was also all league this year in in section one. So, congratulations to you. Also, Josiah is going to be getting a banner that's going to be at Spring Valley High School. It's going to be in the rafters forever for everybody to see. It's not here right now, but we do have a picture of it that he's going to take home with it so that this way he can always have it with near him. [Applause] And then last but not least, this was not easy everybody. They trying to track this down to get this done is not an easy thing, but we're able to do it. So this is a basketball in your honor and board. I'll show you what it
018looks like. We can't hear you. Basically, what it has, it's a photograph of Josiah. Number three, class of 2025. 1,218 points. January 23rd, 2025. He played from 2021 to 2025. Spring Valley High School, 1,000 points. Congratulations on that. [Applause] Nice. You got it. That's a good thing. First off, I just want to thank everybody. Um, I really appreciate this. I want to thank our superintendent, Mr. D. Carlo, um, for just supporting me and help me helping me throughout this process. I want to thank Sylvia, thank Mr. Russo. Um, I just want to also thank my coaches throughout the years. Coach Justin, Coach Joe, Coach Tony, Coach Wores. Your belief in me as make your belief in me as your main guy has been invaluable and I'm so thankful for the freedom you gave me to
019put the ball in the basket as often as I could. A huge shout out to all my teammates who have who have supported me along the way. Your trust in me to lead and take those tough shots has meant the world. And a special thanks to Miss Sherry McIll, she's not here today, for your unwavering support and dedication to our community. You always check on me and the love we share is truly special. I want to thank Sabrina for showcasing um our games, giving us recognition that we deserve. And to my family, Dad, Mama, Armani, and Elijah, people behind me, your belief in me is something special. You guys are the ultimate support system. You guys are always there for the tough times, and that's been my rock. You stood still by me when I
020face challenges and I can't thank you enough for that. I also want to I also want to express my gratit gratitude to God for this opportunity for keeping me healthy and for allowing me to remain true to myself through all of it. I appreciate the community and my peers for both for both their praise and also their doubts. It's all part of the journey and I'm grateful for every moment. I also always believe is bigger than me. I strive to set an example for those who come up after me. To the next ones up, just keep working and do what's best for you. And lastly, I want to thank myself. It's crazy to say that, but I just want to thank myself for staying the course. Challenges I faced as a young student athlete was
021tough and I hope no one else has experienced that. had my share of naysayers and there were times when unfortunately I lost every game but I just kept going. People but people that doubted me ability people that doubted my ability to lead even those close to me but I refuse to give up. I place my trust in God and focus on what I can control. So with that being said this accomplish this accomplishment is just the beginning of Joab. Thank you. Great job again. I'm so proud of you. You're welcome. [Applause] Thank you, President Rose. Great. Congratulations, Josiah. Here's to many more successful years playing basketball. Okay. Um, we will now. Yeah. Good. I think we need to bring wheelbarrow, bring all the trophies home. Okay. Um, speaker number three. Hello everyone. You know what's
022so annoying? It's the school food. Like seriously, it's not good enough and I'm so over it. I'm 12 and I'm tired of being frustrated all the time because I can't get decent food. It's like every day, single day, it's the same old boring stuff. And don't even get me started on the cafeteria food. It's like they're trying to torture us or something. I'm just so over with it. I want some real food, you know, something that's actually edible. But no, all we get is this bland, boring stuff that's supposed to be healthy or whatever. But news flash, just because it got some vegetables in there, doesn't mean it's good. I'm tired of being hungry all the time in school, I just want to have some good food. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it
023is because every time I try to get decent food, it's like pulling teeth. I'm tired of being treated like a kid who doesn't know what they want. I know what I want, and it's not this mediocre food. I want something that's actually good, and that something is going to make me full and satisfied. But until then, I'm stuck with this sabar food that is just disgusting. Can you please get us some good food that will give us energy? Thank you. So, Destiny, thank you. Destiny, come back up. So, what I would very much like you to do is the following. So, we are bringing in a food consultant and I would love for you to speak with the consultant. And the second thing is we we are repurposing both high school cafeterias for next year,
024making them a more user friendly. But the food consultant is going to be working with Mr. Stark um who is our assistant superintendent for business because we clearly have listened to what you and others have said. So I'm going to make sure when she gets comes in and gets hired um that she comes and speaks to you and you can give her some insights because you're right. We're looking to change everything up. Okay. Thank you, sir. You're welcome, Destiny. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker number four. Good evening. Not one for me. Hope it's better for you. Um the Shirro's event was very beautiful. Very nice. We had this place packed. Sad part is is um certain board members weren't there. I mean it it's okay. I was on it. I I thank East Ramapo for
025it. I thank Carol and the other 14 people that were Shirro. Thank you, too. But it'd be nice if certain community board members would kind of come to these type of events. Thank you, Sabrina. Thanks, Sher McIll. But um and and and and you too, Mr. D Carlo, because you've been showing up props, but the rest of the board members haven't. So, if we're supposed to be a community being together, then the board members need to get it together and support this community and support the children like it should be done. I'm sorry. I am sick and tired of seeing this no show. Thank you for standing up for the students. Congratulations to the students because they deserve that. They work hard for it. But if you want to work together as a community, you
026must act like you're part of the community. Okay? Or bye. There's the door. I always say that all the time. Mr. D. Carlo, the young lady's right about the food. It stinks. It's atrocious. My child is even hungry and comes home starving. I have to have food and be home to make sure that there's food for her to eat. She is not using the bathroom because the bathrooms are disgusting and you can't wash your hands in some of the bathrooms. And this is just not in one school. It's in a whole bunch of schools. Now, let's get to the fact about the state comproller and its surplus of $25 million. when teachers were fighting and striking and students and and were losing everything and people wanted raises for four years and couldn't and this is
027over four years and the money was there. All of these problems, all of these situations and yes, I can't turn back time but it could have been prevented if you had hired competent workers. So yeah, East Ramapo is to blame. Where are the programs? Where is the updated books? Where are the new uniforms for all the schools? It's time to make change. And I come up here and I fight all the time and I beg and I ask for the change and it never happens. But Mr. D Carlo, it started happening when you came. I wonder why. I hope you stay. Okay. As far as the budget is concerned, there should be an increase. the community. Certain people in the community are mad because of the 5.38%. But let's bring it into perspective that we
028have not passed the budget over 10 years and there's time for a change and it needs to start happening. I'm glad the commissioner is doing what she's doing and I'm glad that she's standing her ground and I hope that somebody else says no, we need an increase. And as far as the teachers leaving, this has to stop cuz my daughter doesn't have a math teacher either. How many teachers in the school district? And FYI, on social media, people were saying, "What's the security for East Ramo? Why should we go to East Rampo and work for East Rampo? It has a bad reputation. What's the pay? What makes them think that I would be able to stay? It's time to remove the bad mark and start having a good reputation." Thank you. Speaker number five. Whentos
029Um, chon Um, McDonald chicken nuggets. Perfecto. Facebook opinion is negative. [Music] Um, recommend [Applause] Thank you. That concludes public speaking. I'll now give it over to Mr. D. Carlo we with the superintendent report. Yeah. So, um, in my report, a lot of questions that just came up, we're going to talk about when it comes to this budget, um, for this year, um, that will address some of what was just brought up. And I think it's important because you're right, there's a lot of things that we can be doing better. And I think that, as I mentioned over the last month, I think this budget um, as we have given to the board of education is a responsible budget. And what does what does Mr. D. Carlo mean by responsible? I think in the work that
030we've done this year in creating this budget which is zerobased meaning we asked everybody of what their needs are. We didn't roll over a budget which has been done here in the past. We we talked to all of our departments. You saw the last month and a half. They came up. They explained to the board what their needs are and the why behind it and the impact that it has on instruction. Um and you know we believe that it's a sound budget. Yes, it is at zero. Um, and we're also cognizant of the fact that it was mentioned that we have some of these monies that we didn't have before. And you'll hear tonight in some ways it's good that we do have this because of a lot of things that are happening with the
031federal government and we're trying to make sure that we're in a good situation moving forward. So, as we put this budget together, just a quick overview, we really focused on excellence in education, how data is important for what we do and how we allocate our resources based on how our students are performing or not performing. And we'll talk about that in a second and what that focus on improvement looks like, not just for next year, but for many years to come. And then how we support our learners. You know, part of the problem, everybody, and I'm I'm going to be really honest. This district was not ready to receive the amount of students that it got to meet their academic needs. They weren't. I'm being honest. And in this budget at 0%, we are looking
032at finally doing that. We are looking at bringing in a program that's good for all learners, especially our Larners. We're looking for support in our classrooms for our kids, especially in grades K to three because we all know and the state has said this, the research shows that if we can get kids to be at grade level in reading and writing and math, by the time they end third grade, they're going to be successful in school and in life. So, you will see in this budget exactly what we're looking to do. Now, you saw this slide before. This is our slide on our test scores. And you can see they are not acceptable. They're not near what the state averages are. But like I just mentioned to you, we weren't prepared for our students to
033be as successful as they should be. And you will see in some of the positions that we're going to, and you know, this was mentioned and and and I would be remissant if I did not say this. Although we're looking at this coming school year 25 and 26, we have to look at the last decade. Many of these positions that we're asking to put back in the budget were actually here 10 years ago when there were 7,000 students. Now we have 10,200 students. And that's an important piece to know at 0%. We're not asking for extra money. We're asking for it to be done at 0%. So let's continue to go on please and then you can take a look at our our results in our regions. Again not acceptable part of the reason why
034is our kids are not ready coming from elementary middle to high to perform at the level that we know they should be capable of performing and we need to better support our students. We have to take a look at chronic absenteeism which we're going to talk about. We have to take a look at people being able to support our teachers K to 12. We have to look at other things. So let's talk about instructional coaches. We are looking for coaches across the K12 continuum. Okay, these are job embedded professional people who will help our teachers with professional development, align our instruction because it shouldn't matter whether you're at one elementary school or another or at one middle in another middle school. Everybody should be learning the same thing over the course of the year. It
035should not be depending on what building you're at. And then we have to look at the data and talk about how our kids are performing and not performing. Not just on state assessments, but on assessments that we give throughout the year. How do we close those achievement gaps? How do we improve teacher instructional capacity? And then of course, how do we improve our literacy and math scores? Now, in order to do this, you're going to see over the next couple of slides, we're looking at people at certain levels to help our assistant superintendents do the kind of work that needs to be done. So, we're looking at department directors. Years ago, if you remember, East Ramo had department chairs, but they were significantly s they were specifically geared towards your high schools. We're looking to
036create department directors that are across K12 that work together with each one of our buildings so that we have that continuity of instruction. We have that core across all that we're can doing. So, we're talking about aligning our curriculum, making sure our strategies continue to grow upon each other, making sure that these directors help lead the data and PLC conversations and work closely with our executive team when it comes to professional development. And then by hopefully having these positioned in the budget, we will continue to have that seamless instruction across grade levels, across buildings, and of course across the district. And then of course improving our teacher collaboration, our planning of instruction and assessments. We look at discipline and we look at what's happening in our district. And we're going to see in a second
037that we're looking for deans of students. The deans of students would be placed in each one of our middle schools and our two high schools. And these deans of students of course would be um responsible for discipline and also our chronic absenteeism. Why is that important? Many of our assistant principles are spending time dealing all day with discipline issues. They can't get into the classroom. They can't be looking at instruction. They're not doing data walks. They're not doing learning walks because they're dealing with that. So, in order to look at effectuating change, we want to be able to free up so that our principles and assistant principles can go in and do the quality of instructional work that they need to do. And then these deans would be responsible for that discipline that happens on
038a day-to-day issue as well as overseeing attendance. And then we look at some of our our our specific areas, departments, human resources, guidance, and and multicultural. So, you know, it was brought up before by one of the speakers about our guidance department. No question. I'm not arguing about it. We need an executive director of guidance in this district. We should have this. We don't have it. And it it it it plays an issue. And this executive guidance director will be working across the district, but really focusing on our high schools, as you mentioned, college and career ready, getting our kids involved with programs, getting our kids more understanding of what college life is about, having people come in, going out, doing college fairs, really, really working on what it says, guiding our students through K
039to 12 and what their journey looks like. human resources. Miss Rusco can speak to this. Um, basically the work that she's done over the last almost two years is incredible because she inherited an HR department that quite frankly everybody really was nowhere near the needs of what this district should have. And in order to continue the work, she needs to have somebody to come in and work with her really recruiting and retaining highquality staff. Now, let me share some good news with you. And I don't disagree about what's happened in this district about not being able to attract teachers. But here's why. When over the last decade, we're we're either close to contingency or in contingency, we don't know whether we can hire people or not. So when we look to hire people, it's at
040the end of the cycle, everybody's gotten jobs. Second issue, and you're correct. Who wants to come to East Ramapo if you don't know from one year to the next if we're going to be open? Now, let's talk about what happened last year, right? And we're going to talk about it later on, but it's important. February of last year, this board of education was told that there was no money, we couldn't pay bills, we couldn't have cash flow, and there were literally months and months of discussion on what are we going to do? But guess what? Because of the work of Mr. Stark and this team and knowing how to formulate a budget, we came to understand that guess what? What you were told last year is not true. There's money there. Everybody community, this is
041a good thing. We haven't had it before. So, this budget allows us to take some of those monies that we haven't had before to create a budget that we believe is fiscally responsible and put the programs and the people in positions to take this district where it needs to go. I use this word. Guess what? It's about time that East Ramapo goes into a renaissance period and gets back to what really is important. So when we go through these things, you'll see that you're right. This weekend, Saturday, in this very room, we had a job fair. We had over 250 people in this very room looking for jobs across the board. custodians, monitors, teacher assistants, aids, teachers, um, administrators. Okay, that didn't happen here before because guess what? The word is getting out. We're trying
042to change. We're trying to rebuild. And people do want to come here. They see they see what's happening. They see we're working together. Yeah, there are times when we come up and there's there's discussions back and forth. But let's remember something. This year is masor and pados. You know what went on here at board meetings over the last number of years and it's because myself, this team and this board along with the monitors are working together for what's best for kids. That's what this is about and that's what this budget is about. We can go on. And so when we look at these positions, right, we talk about new roles and responsibilities. We're talking about aligning our instruction for all learners K to 12. We're talking about really looking at staffing that will lead us
043to measurable improvements and future success and making an investment as we move forward. That's really important. So now I'm going to go over to Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark, one more. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. The priorities and I we kind of talked about this resource allocation. Um, we talked about professional development, the materials that we need, talked about new positions. This is really important and you're going to see a slide coming up. Okay, remember something. We can't bond money. Okay, we have a junk bond rating. You are going to see what I think is deplorable parking lots in this district that have to be fixed. And in this budget, if it passes at zero, is $5.5 million. Some of which will go towards fixing the parking lots in all our buildings, right? And that's important to
044understand. So this is why, look, here we go. Miraa, look at this. You talk about health and safety, that's deplorable. Absolutely deplorable. that those are the conditions. Every single school, there were a couple that were just redone. I think Summit was and another one under our current ARPA money. And we'll talk about OPRA in a second. But that's what I'm talking about. Okay, that's health and safety clearly. And a part of this budget, we can do that kind of work. And then again, the job fairs, as I mentioned to you, working not only here, going out, working with colleges and universities, recruiting new students who are graduating to come in. So we had one this past Saturday. We have one tomorrow. Mñana Aki again here from 4 to 6. And then we have another one
045on uh on May 8th again here uh 4 to 6. I want to thank uh Mr. William Roland from the HR department for all his hard work and making it happen. I want to thank my team, teachers, principles for coming here Saturday and really doing an outstanding job on the job fair. And now over to you, Mr. Stark. Thank you. Um just one other little point that that I I think you might have uh just glossed over is that in one of the other issues in terms of having people come here has been uh in the past that we did not offer competitive salaries, right? Um during this current school year, we have settled uh a number of contracts with um the bargaining units here uh including the teachers, the administrators. We currently are in
046the process of working through finalizing two additional ones. And in those contract settlements, we have brought our um our pay scales up to market uh prior to to those contracts being settled. The um the pay that we had to offer was below market for other school districts in Rockland County. So, it makes it very difficult um to get somebody to come here when they can um earn earn a higher wage in a in a neighboring district. In fact, we would we would also have situations where we would have teachers start the year here and then get a job in another district and leave right in the middle of the school year because because of that and we've been working on correcting that as well. Yeah. And I want to thank you, Erica, but I also
047want to thank this board because you clearly understood in our conversations because remember everybody, the board has to ratify a contract. So the board, I want to thank you because you really tr truly understood the importance of this moving forward because there was no contract for the last two and a half years and that's a big stepping stone. So I want to thank the board for your support on that because that really has helped out tremendously. So thank you. Okay, so moving on. Um this is uh just a a quick uh we're going to go over a lot of information that we've that we've discussed in uh the past three or four board meetings. This is um a a quick um look at our uh draft revenue budget for the the coming school year 2425.
048As you can see, it's highlighted there. We're looking at the same property tax levy. Um and one of the reasons that we're able to do that, which is very important, the second line, you'll see that we have an increase of over $16 million in aid from the state of New York. Um, and that's really a big key. We're also using um, uh, less of an appropriation from fund balance and then all of the other revenues are relatively flat uh, within about 800,000. So, uh, we we've shown you this before as well. We have a graphic rep representation of this, Bob. And um so the the important thing to note here um the the budget for the 2526 year is on the left and you can see that if you go all the way to the
049right just three years ago property tax made up 60.2% of our revenue budget and state aid was only 36.9%. We have seen significant increases in state aid from the state of New York over the past three budget cycles, which has led to the um the current year on the left, where property tax is no longer the biggest piece of this um pie or donut as we have in in the graph there. So, state aid is now 48.1% whereas property tax is only 46.7%. So this signifies and shows that the state has really done a good job in understanding the the the needs. They've made some changes to the formulas that they use for the formula based aids and our our aid has increased substantially and that is a really good thing for the school district.
050Um the expenditure budget um you have in front of you, we've presented this as well. Um you can see that um we have some increases in in several areas. Central services is is the part of the budget that has our buildings and grounds in it. There are significant increases there. Um it's important for me to note that um the budget that uh was done for the current school year had a lot of different um coding errors in it that had coded a lot of our multilingual education um expenditures within the general ed and special ed areas. So those have been corrected. So that's why you see here that you have a $5 million decrease um in the general ed area and uh uh almost $3 million decrease in special ed where you have an 8
051million $8.3 million increase in multilingual education. Mr. Can I just make quick note if we're going to be presenting this in our card in our budget card if this sheet is essential services should be added as well. It's building repairs because essential services is Yeah. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, yeah, there'll be there'll be uh there'll be some notes on that. Thank you. Um and then uh another important piece to note is that um there's been a lot of conversation um about the the fund balance and so on and that transportation our transportation area has been overbudgeted. We have corrected that and and there's a decrease there of uh no please stay there uh of of about 10 million. So what the one thing that I want to highlight before moving forward on this slide is
052that um if you take into consideration the decrease in transportation services and the overall increase in the budget of 9.6 million, we are able to increase our expenditures on the educational program for our students by approximately $20 million. and doing all of that being supported by state aid and not having to increase the tax levy by $1. So that is a very important uh piece of of this proposal and presentation. Mr. Stark moment on slide number um 22 on slide the draft revenue budget. Yes, you're missing a number three for the 3 million for the 348 million. I I I'm sorry. Sorry, I didn't hear what you were saying. On slide number 22, second column, second column, it says 48 instead of 340. Instead of 348, it's a typo. The bottom line. Oh, the Yeah,
053that's probably covered up in the Yeah, that's a 348. I would have supported the 348. I would have really supported. It's it's probably the way that it's um there it's overlapping. Apologize for that. We'll we'll have it corrected so that it shows up correctly on on uh on the website. In fact, as I'm looking at it right here, if you look at if you look at the attachment in in board docs, it shows it's just it's the way that it's formatted. So, it's it's covering up that three. There you go. when when you closed it, it showed it that way. Yeah, thank you. PowerPoint. Um and then so uh after after that uh going back we have uh a three-part budget that is something that is required in terms of presenting your budget um by
054the state which is where you break it into three components. Can you go there please Bobin? Uh there you go. You have an administrative budget, a capital budget, and a program budget. So the program is most of the educational items. Administrative is the the part of the budget that has to do with um the the central office and uh buildings and grounds. Well, part of buildings and grounds, the people part of it, the buildings part of it is in the capital area as well as um the uh the borrowings for the district. Um this is the expenditure chart that everybody's seen as well. Um we don't have to spend a lot of time on that. It's been there. The important part to note here, excuse me, is that as in as it is the case
055in many school districts, your employee benefits, general education, and special education make up usually the three largest pieces of the budget. In our particular district, we have two areas that um have substantially larger pieces than than are uh common in other districts. Those are transportation as we transport a large number of non-public students and our multilingual education area is much larger than it is in many other uh school districts because of the the student population that we have. So um on the agenda this evening is uh is an item for adopting the budget. This is uh the very quick summary that you have um revenue budget that equals your expenditure budget which obviously you must have. Um so again just to highlight uh one more time we're looking at an overall increase in our budget
056of just under $10 million. But we are looking to do that where u we are taking the tax levy that was issued last year, not changing that um and not increasing it by by $1. Um so that is what we're putting forward and um we hope that the board will consider that if we are getting ahead if we are getting 16 million more from the state and we are only adding 10. Yes. Where is the other six? The other six is if you go back to the um the original piece on the uh the the revenue budget um we have take we have reduced um by about 7 million you see there the um the draw from fund balance. So that's where that other that's where the other difference is. And what's the amount of
057cash we have on hand after the last three years surplus? So, at the at the beginning of this school year, it was in the area of $70 million. Um, and there will be additional surplus added at the end of this year. So, you're going to have a balance of close to $100 million. Where I think it'll be a little bit less than that, somewhere in the area 90 to 95 million. What are we doing with that? That's going to be a part of fund balance. And um as I'm going to explain in a moment, there are going to be it's it's again uh as Mr. D. Carlo said, it's a good problem to have. Um and we have recently learned of some uh some rather disturbing news that has come out of the US Department
058of Education. um they have declared that they are not going to reimburse. Um some of the um expenditures that they had um asked states to um apply for in terms of what what was called a late liquidation of the ESSER program. So the ESSER program was one of the uh postcoid programs that the federal government provided to states. New York State then provided that to school districts. Um, East Ramapo had a very nice um portion of that. Um, in terms of what has currently happened, um, we submitted a late liquidation request to the state of New York. The state of New York put all of those together and sent those to um the federal government for its approval. And the federal government approved and mass the um the requests from all the New York State
059school districts that wanted to take advantage of this late liquidation request. We were approved. We started doing work. We did a lot of work. We have actually completed to date $23 million of work. $9.6 million of that work was applied for for reimbursement and was approved and at that point um it was we we were told um we're now not going to pay those claims any longer. So there is um a little bit of a state of flux now in terms of the federal programs. Um we've been asked uh this is something that's been been known um and there have been some notifications to the board between um our fiscal monitor Mr. Farre and myself about this. We've been asked to provide a little bit more information. Unfortunately, we don't have uh a ton of
060information because this is these are decisions that are being made at the federal level, but we have to assume that at least right now there is some uncertainty about the future of the other federal title funds that that exist. So we have uh title one, two, several others. Um and also the uncertainty about the future of the uh IDA. So we are we are working on all of those. Um uh our monitor Mr. Farre is working and having conversations with uh different groups at the state level. Um I have uh a regional meeting with the business officials um in Rockland County tomorrow. I think um there's a similar uh super regional meeting of the sup superintendents. I know that this will be on their agenda on Friday, I believe. Um and it's it's a big
061topic. Um we are all trying to get a better understanding of what they're going to do, the legality of it. Um they've said that they're doing it. There probably going to be lawsuits from the states and so on. Um but as uh in in order to give you a uh a better more thorough uh answer on that, we just need a little bit more time. That is my our report for tonight. Thank you, President Rose. If I may ask just for a second, sorry. Um the last part of the presentation was like three parts of the uh budget which included about 25 almost 26 million of uh capital. Is that capital improvement? And no. So that that that is not No, that's that's the portion of the budget that's assigned to the capital component. Okay.
062So there's there's three different components. Administrative programmatic, which is mainly, you know, everything goes into the education of the children. And then capital is it can be capital improvements, but it's also um gasoline, electricity, um all of the pieces that uh are about our buildings and grounds that are that are in the budget in different in different codes. And it also can include the portion of um the 9,000 codes that is interest on on bonds and the and the repayment of principal and things like that. Is that that 0% is above the voters's approved 1% or is it above the commission's override? That that's that's based on the the um the property tax levy that was put in place by the board which included what was uh so it's on 5.38 of the commission. What
063part of special education is reimbured? I'm sorry. What part of special education is reimbured? There are diff there are different aid ratios for different aspects of that. I don't have that with me. I don't know if um Oh, she just she's not here. Um we can I can I can get you that breakdown by email. When when we write state uh could we break it down as to what we get for transportation, what we get for teaching and stuff because you put everything together as one big bunch. My understanding is transportation is being reimbursed somewhere between 60 70%. So, so there there are different aid ratios for different expenditures. Um and there are also different there there are basically two different categories of state aid. There are formula based aids which is the biggest piece
064and that the formula based aids um is the biggest one of those is foundation aid. Um the uh most of the other aids are called expense driven aids. So they are based upon the expenditures that you put uh in your ST3 in the prior year. So essentially on your expense driven aids, you're getting paid uh the aid on those on a two-year lab because right now we're getting a projection for next year that was based on last year's reported numbers from the um from the audited report. So um and the the percentage is based upon what is allowable. So not all of the expenditures that we spend on transporting students are allowable because the um the rules in terms of uh reimbursement are based on a on a maximum amount of mileage. So um we
065we get our aid ratio for transportation is 70% but it's not 70% of the complete uh expenditure that we have. Is there any way to break it down? Because what I'm trying to figure out is I understand we always say transportation is 90% of our budget but in the other end transportation is not something that's being since the budget I'll step back a second I'll start a little earlier the budget as you explained has what we get from tax levy and what we get from state aid um part why we didn't get that much state aid till now is part is the state and part is our previous administration's um lack of I don't I don't know exactly word to use the way they they did a budget the last few years run by the
066previous monitor that all he did was hysteria and a big part of our issues is directly due to his hysteria. We couldn't hire people because he was here screaming that we don't have money. We have a surplus for three years already and he knew it that we have a surplus. The first year he tried to hide it. 15 million out of 30 he just put into ARPA out of sight. Nobody sees. Then he was sitting here the whole winter screaming, I don't have any money. I don't have any money. Your budget is going to go up with $30 million. I don't have money. You have to take out a foundation. It wasn't out of fund balance. It was not a fund balance. It was where he wanted to hide the other half of his surplus
067to say that we're going to need it. And in fact, we didn't need it one year. We didn't need it the second year. And we're not needing it for the third year. So besides what we had a fund balance before which I believe is somewhere 40 million from previous before 23. Yes, there was a fund balance before from 40 million at at June 30th of 2024. Yes, that is sorry June 30th 2023. That is correct. What did we have at June 30th of 2022? Uh I believe at that point the number was 4 million but that was the fund that but it was it was very low. That was fun or that was or that was just um the total fund balance. So basically a half of our problems were created among the administration. what
068has nothing to do con we we as a board are supposed to oversee that but we only get information that we get and now the things that we kn we already realized this year by having a finally a decent administration not a decent a great administration to be exact we finally found out that pro part of the problem for our failing students has nothing to do with money was not an issue it was only because the district. The administration didn't do what what they were supposed to do. Our district changed from a um Creole uh district to a Spanish district in a span of six, seven years. But nothing in the curriculum has changed because nobody cared about it. The only thing they cared is to blame a board. That's all they had to do.
069We had monitors the entire time here. Nobody mentioned a word about that. It's only the first year that we finally realized that the problems were within not money. And what's even more shocking, we were, as we mentioned before, that we actually settled with the teachers. We gave them a raise, but the proud is the raise was in this year's budget and we still stayed with 25 million above the raise that we gave the teachers. It's not that was a lack of money or a lack of of the the all the money was here. It just wasn't used right because people in the administration didn't do what they were supposed to do. We hired people to do their job and they never did their job. M he the he our ratings went the dumbs because he
070said there's no money and we can't budget passing a budget is one thing and not having money is something else. Everything was bunched together as one big issue. We don't have money because you don't pass a B budget. Part of not having money is because we didn't code stuff right from the state. So, we were able to get more. We should have been able to get more money from the state. We just didn't ask it the right way. We didn't code stuff right. So, we would have gotten it. The state got away with a with the our the formula, which is an separate issue, which wasn't corrected. Most of the money we got this year is not because of the formula just because we know how we finally realized how we need to budget stuff
071with codes. That was a big part of what we got money some of it. Yes. It's not that the foundation they they still do not use our current um kids. They're using still a census from 20. They still they didn't update a census of yet. No. Well, so part part of the part of the increase in the current year has to do with the changing of the census from um wealth ratios from 2000 were updated to 2022. So that was a big part of of this year plus um our coding of the students that we have into the proper coding for for what type of learners they are. So what what happened in this district for a while is that the what they tried to do is to take the district the people of the
072district and suck as much money out of them as possible. They didn't ask from the state more. The state was would because of coding and other issues using senses of way way back that the this community has changed probably 10 times since 2020 in size and a gi and the the people that live in the district everything has changed but nobody nobody was even caring about these things. The only thing that we heard there all the last three years that I'm here, raise the tax, raise the tax, raise the tax. Nobody mentioned about education if it works or not. None all the speeches that we hear are food, busing, and raising taxes. That's most of it. Oh, and and contract for the teachers, which we did. And this didn't change much yet of the rates
073of what we're getting for the for what the kids know or don't know. So, in my opinion, I would believe that we should go back at least with the levy. I would the 348 I don't have a problem. We need the money, but we have enough money in this district at this moment that we should go back to the unfair increase that we had last year. All built on lies and deceiving facts that we were that were we were told the entire year that there's no money. And then the mother came and wrote the letter that the reason why her kid is failing is because there's no money. So the commissioner went and added $5 million to the budget, which the levy went up with $5 million and we actually have a surplus of $25
074million. So the right thing would be to go back to the levy where it was before the 438 in my opinion. I would like to correct you um Mr. Gruber. It's not unfair. It was illegal. I just want to make a correction too. Um, as a product of East Ramo, I know you said we went from Haitians to now Spanish. Um, we were a very diverse district. Um, where we had Haitians, uh, Chinese, Indian, whites. So, I just want to make it clear that when you when you say it, 70% of the district was Haitian in 2010 probably. That's not true. What was the number? I don't know the number, but it was okay. So, but what I mean to say I'm not going to maybe maybe in the community, but in our district it
075like we weren't we weren't we weren't 70% Hispanic. I think what Mr. Gruber is saying is that what currently the majority is Hispanic and our staff never pivoted to start focusing towards ELA from Spanish to I think that's his point that he that's what I meant. Um, we obviously have a diver, we still have a diverse. I don't know what the geographics were. It was Haitian Indians, white. Now we have 70% Hispanic or more. And 6 years ago, 7 years ago, it wasn't even close to that. And nobody went, they saw that the entire district changed. Nobody sat down and said, "Well, we need to change our curriculum. What worked 10 years ago is not going to work today." It wasn't done until this year. So our failing grades is a big part of it
076because of that. It had nothing to do with money. It had nothing to do with teachers. The only thing was that we didn't change our focus to teach the kids that we have now in the district versus the kids that we had 10 years ago. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gruber. We will now move on to Kathy. I'm going to skip this D and we're going to do that after. Uh, you know, let's go to the office of the state controller report. Um, Mr. Stark, I believe we touched on most of the matters, but if we can uh Yeah. So, the um the controllers's office was um in to do a review. This wasn't an audit. was a review of the creation of the current year's budget. Okay? So, it was a it was a review
077of the budget for the 2425 school year. Um, and as as you know, um, I brought up early on in my tenure here that that it appeared that there were there was a lack of documentation as to where many of the numbers came from. um they came in, they did a report. Um they've issued some findings in that report and and they've they seem to have found very similar um things that uh there's not a great deal of documentation that's uh been able to be found in either paper files or electronic files as to where many of the numbers that exist in the budget that was adopted and um and put in place for the school year. Uh again, um I'll say a good problem to have is that the budget that was adopted and
078uh and put in place um has more dollars in it than we we will actually be expending during the year. Um where they put those dollars in the different codes uh can't really make sense of or understand what the um what why some of the things were put in certain categories. Um but what we have done um as uh and what our goal was was to you know moving forward make sure that everything was fully transparent. Um one of the things that currently has been supplied to the board you have on board docs is um a detailed budget that shows that has a a description of what is with within each code in your budget. That is not a public document yet. Once the board adopts its budget, it will become a public document that
079anybody will be able to see. It'll be posted on the website. That document for the $348 million is 118 pages long. Details every single code in the budget. Um, for example, if it is a uh teaching code at Limekill Elementary School, it will say in the code um I'm I'm making up numbers now. I don't have it in front of me. 6.0 zero FTE uh kindergarten teachers. That's probably the wrong type of school, but um so it will outline exactly what is budgeted for in each code. Um we are moving forward trying to um improve upon uh the transparency which you know from everything that we hear we weren't here. Um it doesn't seem like it was great. Uh we want to make it great. We want to make it so that um everybody can
080have trust in the board and trust in the community, trust in the administration. We want everybody to be able to uh be able to rely on one another. Um and that was the goal in in uh creating what we did. Um, again, I I I've thanked at other board meetings, the whole team, um, our superintendent, the board, um, our monitors, we've all been working together to try and, uh, make this process cleaner, uh, more transparent, and better for all of those that are involved. Um, in terms of the review of the current years, um, it it it pointed out that there were issues and, um, that everybody could have done a better job. Um, and we know that and that's really what we're trying to do. We're trying to move forward and do a better
081job. I'm I'm hoping that you all think that we have. Um, because we think that we have. Um, I think the monitors uh would also agree. I think that um, from what I've heard of the previous monitors, I think our monitors are doing a much better job as well. Thank you as well. Um, but you know, it's been a learning experience for everyone. Um, and it continues to be. Um, but in terms of that report, it it it it said a lot of the things that we thought it would say that it was it was not done very well in the past. So, I'll just echo what uh and I I go to you in a second, President Rose, but if you remember 3 months ago, um it's very difficult to understand what happened if
082you don't speak to the people who put the budget together. It's concerning because it's always going to be out there. Why did this happen? How did it happen? You know, why weren't these things done the way they should have be done? I I can't answer that. We can only move forward. Again, you know, the controller's office has certain powers. Where do they use those powers or not to speak with those individuals? It's it's it's difficult. And I get it. You know, Trustee Gruber, you said it very well. You said you were told specific information. You were not given the correct information. And it's very difficult to have closure on it unless you understand why things were done the way they were. And we may not ever understand that. And we just have to accept it
083for what it is and move forward and make sure it doesn't happen again. President Rose, over to you. Thank you very much, Mr. Zakalo and Mr. Stark. And yes, we are much more satisfied than last year and the way it was presented and you know your work on this. Um, okay. Um Kathy is going to talk about budget vote and trustee election. Kathy, take it away. Uh just before I do that, a board member had asked us why we don't give discounts to youth groups for facilities. Maybe we should wait until that board member's here. Just be one one second. So just wanted to note that that policy was debated at great length over actually a number of years and we had two readings at two board meetings and the primary driver of that decision
084is if the board offered discounts to those groups then they would be unable to rent to any groups if the budget was under austerity. So that is why we did it and um why the policy is the way it is. Mr. Stark, did you have anything to add? No. Um that was exactly the point that uh we had we had uh presented. Um when you are under a contingent budget, there are several rules and things that a school district is not allowed to do when under a contingent budget. And this district has been under one and there's, you know, is always a chance that it can be under it again. One of those things is the use of facilities um by outside groups. Um again, whenever you do that, it has to follow policy. But
085if you do not do that where you recapture at a minimum all of the costs that the district has in terms of being able to use those facilities, electricity, the staff that has to work um on the weekends plus their overtime and so on and so forth. So um Mr. Dr. Tindle and myself had worked out a new schedule uh to ensure uh using the the top um pay scales in in all the different areas where people would be working to create uh rates that would cover all of the expenditures no matter who wound up working. Usually uh in in the union contracts you are are offering those those hours to the most senior people anyhow which are uh some of the some of some some of the most expensive. So we have now a
086policy and a rate schedule in place that um does cover all of those. So in the event that we are under a contingent budget, we would be able to continue the outside use. So that was the reason for it. Um and that's you know it it would be my recommendation to to maintain what the board um looked at and then and then um actually you um you know you adopted it um at I think in the November board meeting. Great. Thank you. And Kathy, the budget, I'm sorry, the budget vote on trustee election. I just wanted to remind folks that um you can find everything about the budget vote under the ercd.org/budget vote25. And a reminder for those interested in running for trustee positions on the board for awards 1 2 6 and 9. The
087deadline to file your petitions is Monday, April 21st at 5:00 p.m. You must bring the petitions to the district clerk's office. You cannot uh email them, text them, or any other way. So just a reminder for folks who are interested. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Yeah, because we have a vacant seat also because Mr. Young left. We always have three every year. Just three every year. And then plus we have a vacant seat. So we urge everyone who'd like to fill the seat to please, you know, submit the petitions and to the district clerical office. Okay. Moving on to consent and agenda items. Do I have a motion for consent and agenda and agenda items 1 through 11? I'm sorry. Are we going to do board member reports? Can we do that after the vote?
088Sure. Yeah. Just get that. Um, I'm sorry. Can we get a motion for consent and agenda items 1 through 11? Moved by Mr. Cth, second by Mr. Moses Cth. And we'll open it up for discussion. Hearing no further discussion. All those in favor say sorry Feder want something. Can we have clarity on the ARPA fund if we're allowed to use it or not? Sorry, which item? We're not voting on it. Uh what is it? G9. Sorry. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Anyone opposes abstain. Motions carry. Moving on to action items 1 through 17. Do I have uh motion for items one through action items 1 through 17? Moved by Mr. Gruber. I have a second. Second by Mr. Weissman. We'll open up for discussion. Mr.
089Feder. uh G10 and 11 I believe F F10 and 11 if we can get clarity from the monitor on the ARPA funds if it's if we're allowed to use it or not if we're allowed to vote on it. The change orders on Yeah. So these are change orders that are from original work. This has nothing to do with the late liquidation requests um that was actually brought up um by the monitor um in conversations and Matt discussed all of those issues. These are for um pieces that go way back um in terms of things like the uh the water fountains and other other items that have already been completed. This is to to make uh the payments to the vendors. Um correct? I don't know if Matt if you want to add anything to that.
090Yeah, it was just uh we needed board approval outside of original scope of work. Um this is work we asked them to do uh as part of the project just to make sure the water fountains were functioning. Um and this is kind of just getting our paperwork in line to do the payouts to the contractors for work that was complete. Why is it only coming up now if it was done way back? because uh during the process there's a haggling of fees to make sure they're billing to the right fee schedule based on the original contract. So it has to go to the construction manager and the architects and then there's some back and forth before the final numbers are worked out. Uh the way the proposal the way we worked it out was it's
091a not to exceed cost. So we created our overall budget to add those water fountains. So we're still within our not to exceed cost that was approved previously. But when we're doing the final billing, we want you to have the most accurate numbers to know where we're at. How much how much later of finishing a job or anything uh do we bill? Say again. How much after we finish work do we uh invoice the uh where on the final pay apps? These we're we're right now in the retainage piece. Almost everything's been build out. These change orders will get added to the final pay app with the plus the retainage. So, this is just so they can bill out. I believe one of them is $2,000. Uh, one of them is another uh few thousand.
092So, this is just going to be in their final pay apps to close out the project. So, we're not sure if we're going to get reimbursed or are we sure the re that uh that's that's a larger question. Now the reimbursement for this is part of the original application. It has the the issue on what was frozen is from the late liquidation piece which was separate and apart from the original ESSER grant. By the way, where are we up to with the fountains? Do all the buildings have already their own fountains or we still have buildings that don't? Uh yes, they're they're they're all installed. Um we are having obvious issues uh where the one might go down here and there. um not from the installation, but from the usage from the students. We're finding
093out now with the heavy use of them that some may have a leak, so we'll have to fix it, but we're addressing issues as they pop up. But they were all installed um and the tested from the Department of Health standards. So, we don't have the water coolers anymore. It's all uh built in. We took most of them away. We did leave them in a few spots. uh some uh some areas like uh conference areas uh break areas because we didn't add uh drinking and nursing areas. We left them in in in those type of areas. So, but we have greatly reduced the amount we had by 90%. So, for now we have all the buildings have drinking uh good drinking water. Yes, I believe the final total is 87 uh lead-free drinking fountains. Okay.
094Thank you. When you say the heavy usage, was the grade of the um fountains is it institutional grade or just the cheapest grade? I don't know what you mean by grade. The grade of the uh piece of equipment if it's they are stainless steel vandal resistant water fountains. Don't get much tougher than that. Um just a quick question for uh item number nine for the secondary cafeterias. Um when when would that project start? Once we that once the purchase orders are issued, we can work that timeline and we'll be in communication with the buildings. Um the it it's really about the material lead time. This isn't like a construction renovation. This is really all we're doing is purchasing a material and supplies. So, uh the the graphics and things you see in there, which I
095thought they did a great job, are really just decals that get slapped on. The rest is paint. The window decals are just that's all they are. We're not actually knocking anything down. We're just Okay. Fa It's a facelift. Now, um I know Khaki has middle school. Any plans to um upgrade their cafeteria? Kakiak got new tables as part of the ARPA project. We are touching the schools that got nothing in their cafeterias. Okay. Okay. And then I think my second question has to do with the instructional calendar. Um I didn't get a chance to see the calendars for all the other districts, but I wanted to know if this calendar is pretty much aligned with uh the other districts in the county. Yes, we had a lengthy conversation around it and yes, it is pretty
096much in line. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second for items 1 through 17. All those in favor say I. I. Anyone oppose abstain. Motion carries. Moving on to item G. Adopt the 2526 budget. We've had the discussions. Kathy, we're going to do a roll call. I'm sorry. One second. Let's Let's open the motion. Could call Mr. C. Um, do I have a motion for item G adopt 2526 budget? G1. G1. I don't know which it's different numbers over here. Uh, who Mr. Uh Simoth moved. I will second. We any further discussion on the matter? Um I would like to know exactly what we're voting tonight on the budget. Is it for the total amount or is it for the revenue? the the board the board adopts um the expenditure
097budget. Um prior to the tax levy um the uh revenue budget was often done in the summer and there was no there was no law around what could happen with the tax levy. That is all a part of what we do now because of the the property tax cap um legislation. The revenue budget has to be considered in creating the expenditure budget but you're actually adopting the expenditure budget which is what's voted on by the public to understand correct. So what we adopting today is the 348. We are not adopting the amount of levy. You you are you are not but that is what is considered in creating the budget. So if we want to change that then we cannot vote for the budget. Well, the the the the tax levy uh is now a
098part of the property tax report card that we have to file after the budget is adopted. Um and that is also a a part of what is on the ballot. So, yes, it is a piece of it. I'm sorry, I didn't hear his question. What is it that you wanted to know if we can change? He was ask He was asking if after you adopt the budget, when you're adopting this budget that has the the tax levy and and the revenue pieces spelled out, if those can be changed. Um and uh when they're adopted, um all of that information is a part of the property tax report card that is a part of what is submitted to the state and it's a part of what's on uh the ballot. So you you cannot um in
099effect um adopt an expenditure budget um any longer and then make changes to what the uh the tax levy would be because it has to follow along with the tax uh the maximum has to be under the maximum allowable tax levy. The reason for that is that if it's a it's above that you have to have a 60% vote in order to pass which we're not anywhere near. Um but uh yes, all of the information is a part of of uh what shows up on the ballot. Just for a second, when you said the 60% I guess that's like a super majority. Say that again. The 60% that has to approve the super majority. When you said the 60% of what? That's only if you are exceeding the maximum allowable tax levy. That was 3.15%.
100Just curious how the 60 just curious how the 60% is being figured from the total voters of this year or the total it's the total voters that year when when you're voting. Yeah. M. So I believe after hearing from our attorney at a time when the when the um when the commissioner asked we should adopt the budget with 4.38 above what the voter approved. Our attorney said that's illegal. That was his opinion. I don't think I can support tonight anything that with additional 4.38% from last year's budget which didn't pass voter approval. And I guess this year's budget and I guess this year's budget does include that 4.38%. Correct. Yes, it does. I I I my personal feeling is the same thing that it was unfair to take it. It was on a stadia built
101on lies. You said on fear. You said on fear. The the attorney said it's illegal. It it was built on the on lies and facts that were totally wrong. Was built this whole increase that we didn't have enough money. Our budget was inflated way above what it was was supposed to be. Especially transportation when we were trying to get from Janette. Why? She thought that transportation would increase with 15 million. She was never able because this is what I believe gas gas didn't go up and as we see the transportation was actually the actual cost is 15 million almost 50 million less than what what we budgeted for the transportation this year actually was less than the transportation that we what we approved the year before and based on this the commissioner came down with
102an increase to be able to fund the necessary stuff that we were supposed to do which we now als will see that we had the money for it. So, I don't I believe it's it's unfair to stay with that tax levy that was added that that way. So, I I I know I've said this before. Um what the commissioner asks us as a board to do uh came from the commissioner and should be taken up with the commissioner. We should not be taken away from our students because of that. Not only that too, we have we have to We have we have to remember that for over 10 15 plus years we have not been re we have not been receiving the amount that we should have been receiving for our students. So if we're
103talking about what's good for kids. Yes, I understand what you're saying. But at the same time too that doesn't mean that that does that does not mean that we take away from our students both public and non-public. We are we we are here for we are here for students. So, at the end of the day, I think that, you know, us as a board um needs to really look into what our interim what our interim superintendent put together with his cabinet, which I think is a great um budget, especially as a board member who's been here for over 10 years, who's been on the board for 10 years, and I've seen how, you know, we've been steered in positions where we had to um take away. So, the fact that we're able to add even
104more with the budget we had last year, uh, this school year, I think that we should really consider once again what's best for kids. I don't think I don't I don't think I don't think anybody on the board wants to take away from the students and I'm supportive of the budget on a total 348. We all approve a budget, an expenditure budget from 348. The only thing that we don't approve is the tax levy part of it. And because we failed to get the money from the state for 15 years, it's not fair to take it from the taxpayers. That's my point. It was taken away because there was a a a wrong narrative driven by the previous monitor that we don't have enough money. And this is why the commissioner came down and increased
105our tax levy at something that was wrong from the beginning. And it's still wrong that we keep that number on the tax levy. I absolutely approve a budget from 348 million. Our students need it and we have the money for it. We have it. Last year we took 19 millions out of reserve. All I ask this year is take the 5 million, not 19 that we and last year we thought we only have 40 in reserve. We now know we have close to 100 in reserve. The money was taken out wrong from our taxpayers and I don't believe that our taxpayers should have to pay this year again that money. Basically taxpayers are paying that $5 million that was wrong last year and they're paying it again this year because this is what our base
106is. No, we should go back to the base that was here pre prior to that uh to that increase against the will of our of our constituents. So basically what you're saying to my understanding the tax levy for this year is it's at 0%. The the tax levy this year is 162 million. That includes the tax levy from last year. The the levy before that was 157. We added a 1. We increase the voters approved a 1% increase that made it 158. Then came the commissioner and added 4.38 above that. I want and that was unfair because we had the money. We were lied to that we don't have the money. We had the money. We ran two year to through two prior years. We ran with a surplus of close to $30 million. We
107had $70 million in the bank before that increase. We had $70 million cash on hand before that 438 increase which which generated a little more than $5 million. I'm asking why can't we just keep the 348 million and decrease the tax levy and take this take the balance from the reserve. That's exactly what I'm asking for. I'm asking we should the tax levy should go back down 158. Take the balance from the reserve. We need the money. Let's take it out from fund. We have 100 million. Let's take five from there. For clarity purposes, uh Mr. Stark, what is the tax levy for this year for ne for the next school school year budget? Please repeat what exactly what your question is for clarification purposes. Um what is the tax levy for the 2025 2026
108school year budget? The the the proposed levy and what we've put forth is the same levy that was put forth for the current year which is the um 801. Bobin could you go back to that to the revenue slide please? So that's it right there. 162,81 802. That includes the 438 that the commissioner forced us to adopt. I'm I'm I'm even okay to adopt the budget with a tax levy of 162 as long it goes in front of the voter approval for the 4.38%. My understanding last year from our attorney was that this 4.38 was not legal and that's why it should not be in this year's budget as a as a revenue. So we're saying it's deceiving when you put the 0% which is not really zero. It's from the approved budget of 1%.
109It's a 4.38 increase. So, if you want to put it out that way for the approved budget increase on the from the voter, then it's something that's really not something that I have the ability to do the the the law in terms of the property tax cap is based upon the current year's levy. The current year's levy was put in place by the board. I I know that there were issues in the way that some of you believe that that was done, but that was done. It was approved by this board. That is the baseline. Um, property tax levy that we have. So that is what we use for all the calculations. And when we say that there's there's not an increase, that's because just to recall that was adopted by the board. Just to
110recall, we all approved the last year's budget on the protest. But in August of this year, this board approved that tax levy. Correct. On the protest, each and every one was a roll call. It wasn't under pro protest, but that was what was approved by the board. Oh, we we are not allowed to drop the tax levy because we once approved it. We can't drop it anymore. Is that what you just said? I did. No, I didn't. I said what I said. But I didn't understand level the base level is what was adopted by the board. If we cannot if we can if we cannot put out a a language for the voters that the increase is with 4.38% I cannot support it. If we cannot put out a language for the voters to approve
111a revenue a tax the tax levy should be with the 4.38% additional from last year based on what Mr. Stark has said because kind of the board adopted the last year's bud bud uh tax revenue of 162 million then I cannot support this budget. What Mr. What Mr. That's a conversation for the attorney. I and I wouldn't say I cannot support this budget. I'm supporting this budget. I'm not supporting this tax revenue. I'm supporting exactly at the same thing as Mr. C as Simon Cart is saying. I'm supporting the 348. But to write that this is no change last year in May when the people voted Easter residents voted for a budget. They voted for a budget that had a tax levy of 157 million. I So when they go now and they vote for
112the 162 in order to do something differently than what we have here I would have to have a How about we just add one line? How about we add a line of using the reserves from last year? Yeah. I mean you have over here this uh report ends up to 348 million. 19 million 19 million. This year I have 11 million but we want to keep it for the 11 million. Um, instead of appropriate fund balance and property tax levy, we use surplus money and we and we decrease the tax levy. What are you planning to do with $100 million if we're not using it up? I have no problem with I mean the 348 budget matches. It's only from where we take it. We take it from the surplus from the reserves or we
113take it from the tax levy from the property taxes. So can we add that line? We can do that. You can I would have to have a conversation with Douglas isn't here this evening. I just want to know again it's not a legal question. It's a line item that you need to add to the budget um to use the reserves the the whatever percentage the 4.38% which will equal to 348 million. I I I believe that that is that that is something that the board could adopt. It's not what it's not what the superintendent is proposing. So I I just want to know um what our monitors, Miss Jallow and Mr. Fur um have to say based on what you heard from the board members here tonight. Currently the the budget as presented the monitors
114are required by the monitor legislation to submit an analysis and recommendation to the commissioner. Uh and u based on this budget we are willing to support this budget. We we think it's fiscally sound. We think it's academically sound. It needs a little we we're still trying to work with administration to get a little more narrative behind the budget like what what are kind of baseline expectation goals more heft as we look at improving academic outcomes. Um but overall we support the budget. Now, if um the budget were to uh have a reduction in uh in the property tax rate for next year, um I think that would be uh problematic for us uh a as monitors uh for the the fiscal stability of the district. Um there was a slide earlier tonight about uncertainty with
115federal funding. Certainly with the uh ESSER funding exposure right now the district's looking at exposure of $23 million and uh currently as of last week the US Department of Education um also is is taking some actions towards what might be reductions or um restrictions on title money going forward for for all districts across the country. not not just east Ramapo or the districts in New York. Um so when you ask what you know what what would happen with reserves is it could be that those reserves may be necessary to weather uh begin to weather or make transition to whatever transitions are are going to occur between the federal governments and the states as regarding funding uh public education. So, um, we, you know, I mean, not not going to say we don't, but but we
116be strongly concerned with, uh, any reduction in the property tax rate. Okay. Thank you. Um, Kathy, that's I don't I don't think as much as I agree with the monitor that uh it's educational sound, it might even be physical sound, but doing doing something illegal once. I don't think that's the right thing to do it twice. It was wrong last year and it's wrong doing it this year as well. Whatever. Find a way to uh fund this extra money. It wasn't legal last year. That's the That's the guidance that we got from our attorney. It was clearly said in court. It was clearly said here in the public and it was illegal last year and it's illegal this year. That's my understanding. But if I could, when you say your attorney, who are you referring
117to? I only have one attorney. The district only has one attorney. And who is that? I believe it's Doug. Doug Ghart. That's correct. I I do not believe he said it was illegal. He was in court. Uh well, the commissioner, we filed an appeal with the commissioner. We didn't get an answer for that. And he said in court that it's illegal. And he said, uh I don't recall him ever saying that. Um and and in fact, um since the court the lawsuit was withdrawn, it was never determined to be illegal. It was never it was never litigated. If it's if if it wasn't in court doesn't mean that it's still illegal. But I was listening to the court arguments and he clearly said it that it's illegal. That his opinion is illegal. Well, I I
118Okay. So, I I as a superintendent, I'd like to make a statement. You're 100% correct. It should have went to court. It would have been resolved and we were able to be moved on. and we're sitting here based on information that was erroneously given to you as a board and to the commissioner and because of that decision, okay, we're sitting with this issue. That's really the reality of the matter, right? it had had it gone to court because there was an original group outside who was going to sue it saddens me that they pulled it cuz it would have we would have had the answer and we would have been able to move forward just let me finish please because that's part of this the whole discussion right because at the end of the day
119let's be honest and you've all said it it's not about the number the number is fine it's political it's the upset on the community with what the commissioner did and what you were told last year. This is not about the number. If this did not happen last year and this board was presented with a zero budget, this would not even be an issue. That's really what it is. And however it fetss itself out, it does. But let's say what it is, cuz that's truly what happened. It saddens me that we're having this conversation about a zero tax levy number because of what happened over the last course of the year because of what was done last year and not being forthright with really what was and this board and the commissioner based it on faulty
120information. You're all correct, but at the end of the day, this is what this is about. It's a no vote not about what's best for kids. It's a no vote about politics and and we're still waiting for the commissioner to answer on our petition. Not I I don't think it was a petition or whatever. Um our attorney appealed to the commissioner. Okay. I'm sorry. Uh this question is probably for the monitors. Is there currently are we currently waiting on response from the commissioner about the tax levy that was increased last year? That's a taxp I um the the lawsuit that was filed was withdrawn and so everything No, we're not talking about the lawsuit. We're talking about the commissioner's appeal. She didn't officially rule. She issued a stay on it. She didn't rule. So, technically,
121we are still waiting for a ruling. Well, that's where it stays. Yeah, that that's that's where it's at. Yeah. There was a temporary stay on a complaint that was given. So she temporarily did it. She was supposed to follow up letters to the what we wrote there. We appeal to the commissioner for understanding for this 4.38. We didn't get an answer. It was illegal last year and it's illegal this year. Okay, Kathy, we're going to do a roll call vote, please. Okay. Is this a final budget or we could still adjust the levy part? Because last year on the last night, I think we adjusted numbers. I think the question when the budget is adopted, it can be readdopted. But uh if it is adopted and then not readopted then it is final. What do
122you mean by readopted by the next meeting? Say that again. What do you mean by readopting? So if the board takes action to adopt this budget, it is adopted. Um what would happen at that point is we would start putting materials together for the public and so on and so forth. The deadline for that happening is the the next meeting. It must be done by the 22nd. um uh after that there's not enough time legally for the legal requirements and the legal notices and the ads in the newspaper and so on and so forth. So um it could be readdopted with alterations at the next meeting. After that there would not be another opportunity to do that within the time frames allowable by law. So we can I can I mean we can vote tonight
123subject to that it will be relooked uh looked into it uh to keep the budget amount of 348 and decrease the levy and use the reserves. Can I ask a question Kathy? Is our attorney I know Douglas isn't here. Is our attorney on? He is not. So we have no attorney? Not tonight? I thought I thought Chris was I thought Chris was filling in. Oh, I'm taking him back. I thought I understood that Douglas couldn't be here, but I thought in hisstead that you know Chris Honeywell was going to be on because here's my question. So, let's now have the question as was just mentioned by by the monitor this conversation. Now, the monitors are going to present this to the commissioner, right? Based on what what uh monitor far just said, he believes that
124this is a fair number. So that goes to the commissioner, correct? The commissioner then makes a decision. If the commissioner feels that zero is a fair number, does that number then stay or does we have to then go back and look at taking what we need to do to, as was said by the rest of the board, reimburse that back? That's a big important question. It's April 8th. We have the holiday coming over. We have Passover. Nobody's working. So, you know, we need to have a better understanding what's going on. And I gotta be honest with you, I wish we would have been given a heads up about this. I really do. This was presented almost 3 weeks ago, what we said. And we come to the night of doing it and now we we
125don't know which way is up or again like you said. So, we need to get as far as I go as a superintendent, I need to have some clarification. I need to understand that if the monitors present this to the commissioner, which I believe they have to in a day or two, and the commissioner rules that it stays the way it is at zero, does it then stay at zero and there is no further conversation or can the board therefore say to myself and to Mr. Farre that you need to go back and create something that now gives the money back? We need to know that answer and not having attorney on is problematic and it has nothing to do with Douglas. I thought there was somebody on so in case questions like this came
126up. We'll have to find out about it tomorrow and we'll have to get back and and move forward from there. Monitor Far, Monitor Jallow, can you speak to that because I think this is really important as we move forward. As you speak to it too, maybe if you can answer this question. I know in the past we've had to submit the budget to the commissioner. Um, when is that due? Actually, it was already Yeah, it actually the date has already passed, but we've been asked to present something within the next day or two after tonight, depending on the decision of the board. Yeah, we the the monitors make a u present an analysis and present certain recommendations in the budget. Um, we don't speak for the commissioner. then it's up to the commissioner to to
127digest what would that what is presented to her and then how she wants to respond to that. So we we're not able to predict what her response would be. Um but it it will happen in short order because um as Mr. Stark stated that u we're here dealing with a budget resolution tonight. The last opportunity is April 22nd board meeting um to to pass a budget uh to provide to provide the time to meet all the the uh legal deadlines as far as notification to the public for the the May 20th vote. I I again I'm sorry I would point and I guess we have to take two parallel tracks. One would be that it stays at zero. Another one is if it doesn't go that way, then Mr. Stark and myself have to then
128decide what that looks like and then we'd have to present that back. Can I to the board? Can I make a recommend? Sure. The board specifically in writing state and direct you as to what they want to see done differently with the budget. So, it's written, it's not conversation. It's clear exactly what you want administration to do differently about the budget in writing. So when they go back to administration, they know exactly what it is they need to do. I would recommend to find the language for the public to approve the 4.38%. No, we need language about Yeah. I'm I'm not an attorney. I'm not an attorney to give language. I'm just saying my thoughts, what I think needs to be done. Whoever has language, should it be the attorney? Should it be superintendent, the
129clerk, whoever? I don't know. should find language for the public to approve the 4.38%. I'm approving the budget. I'm approving a tax levy of 1.6 uh uh 162 million as well, but the tax levy needs to be the increase needs to be in front of the public to approve an increase which it didn't approve originally. And again, if it wasn't legal last year, it's not legal this year. was still waiting for the commissioner to respond. She didn't respond. What is the board's direction to administration? Well, the board didn't put up the vote yet. So, uh, excuse me. Can can we vote on the budget without the revenue? Say, what did he say? No, we vote on the budget as this whole the vote on the vote on the budget this evening would be as it
130was proposed with the revenue and the expenditures as prop as proposed that's the superintendent's budget that has been proposed to the board Anthony so if just for clarification so if this is voted down today then what happens then we would be bringing forth a new recommendation uh for the board. It and I'm not telling you what that is. It could be the same. It could be different. It could it could be um it could be changed. Uh that would be something that would happen. uh where the the superintendent and and and the cabinet would would generally um in my experience work with the president and vice president of the board to determine what um what should go up for uh a vote at the next meeting. May May I just interrupt? Douglas is available to
131join us in a few minutes. And Kathy, if you'll send him the link, please. So, um, if there were to be changes, um, that would be presented to us at the April 22nd meeting and we would have to vote on it right then and there. Correct. Correct. And that and that is that's the last date that would be available in terms of the uh the the timelines that are set forth for properly um advertising and so on and so forth. There are legal notices that have to go in the in the local in the district newspapers and so on and so forth. We have to mail out information to uh all of the the families in the district. So the last date that we're able to do that would be April 22nd. Just excuse me
132for one minute. They just want to let you know they're going to turn Zoom on if Douglas is joining. Just so you're aware, we'll have a Zoom session going. So, just a clarification before Douglas comes on. So, this has to take go to a vote, which I agree there's got to be a roll call vote. If the roll call vote is not to proceed, then we need to know from the board what that number is so we can work on that because we have literally have to take you know both two pathways whether the commissioner decides to do what she needs to do based on the recommendation from the you know monitors and if that can stay right we use the word stay that that's winds up being the number or the other way that
133as as you trustee cot said they want the you know the board if that's the rule of the board the majority of the board wants that difference to go back to the taxpayer that's what we have to that's what we have to come to closure with at because we have to have our what we need to do moving forward I do think there's legislation currently in Albany from our assemblymen about uh giving back the the tax um and I agree with Sabrina I think it's I mean the state has made it clear that they're not going to support um such such a budget where we give back. Uh unfortunately the state is not going to support it and I think the commissioner has to reverse the ruling but I'm saying from our end um I
134support the superintendent's budget. Um we can uh put it up for a vote and we'll take it from there. Uh President the thing is like this that if we are adding 438 this year we could only add 3.1. If we look at it in a fair way, it's I agree with you. You're giving back money. Understand you're giving back for 2425, but you're taking it in 25 26, right? But I'm saying it's if the state is not going to support it and by the fact means that the commissioner is not going to support it and it's going to be vetoed. So we don't really have a choice. So what are we going what are we going to put out to vote? We have to unless East Ramp was going to become a district that's run
135by the commissioner, not by the voters. The the law of the state now at the moment is that the voters vote for a budget. And I don't if the if she doesn't she wants to fight again this year, she could do that. She did last year. So that's why we put it up for a vote for the budget for the public to vote and we will do it and we will put it up this year as well to vote then. But you're you are dictating what budget to vote. You added to the budget 438 more than the voters approved last year. Last year the voters approved 157. She's she made her 162 totally wrongfully because the money was here. It was a hoax. The whole thing as we all realized already that the budget wasn't
136built on anything. It was built on numbers that doesn't exist. Transportation was over budget with 15 million just to show that the community is taking money from the the private schools are taking money from the public school. The whole reason of that budget was the commissioner again. It was the commissioner with Bruce Singer working on on optics headlines transportation 19%, transportation wasn't 19%, transportation was maybe 15%. But the goal was um transportation is 21%. Wages is 90% uh transportation is 21%. The whole budget was built on this and it wasn't it was built wrong to begin with. Giving back the money is one thing. Not taking it again this year is a second thing. We are we are increasing the budget with 4.38%. It says zero. But from what the voters approved last year, which
137was 157 to approving 162 is an increase of 4.38% more than they approved. This year we are only allowed to add 3.1. We are not even we have 1.28% more than we are allowed to add this year. The appropriated fund balance, what is that? Is that the from the reserve? I just want to comment on on on that last piece. So the formula the formula that is used um uses uh something called carryover because we went to the cap with the formula last year. Our starting point was at that point. So you are correct then there was no carryover in our formula this year. Had we gone and used the the 1% the carryover in the formula would have made our maximum allowable tax levy this year something in the neighborhood of 7 and a
138half 8%. So the there would have been differences in the way that that calculation would just want to point that out. Even if we approve it tonight um it's it's just going to be a recipe for the community to defeat it. the appropriated fund balance is that if you want to go over the contingency budget then let's let's approve it. The last line on the budget budget and revenue status report appropriated fund balance you have an 11,800,000 in what is that? That's from the reserve that you're going to use. That that's that's money that would be balancing the revenue budget using the the fund balance and reserves. Yes. So why can't we just increase that and lower the 162 million? You you can, but it's not the recommendation of the superintendent are our our first
139of all, I I will tell you that when I first came and I saw the amount that was in um the the revenue budget for the current year. Um it was one of the things that snapped my head back. Uh that is it's a it's a very large percentage of the budget for you to be relying on over and over again. The reason for that um is is relatively um simple in that you you can't or it's not good practice to use fund balance to balance your revenue budget for expenditures that are recurring. the best use of fund balance is to do things that are uh a one-time use of funds because they won't necessarily repeat in the in the current year budget which is why I separated out in our report this year that
140we were using basically uh from savings um only about 6 something million and that 5.5 million of that 5.25 million of that was being used for um capital projects. Capital projects are something that you do. We could choose to do it again next year, but if we didn't, it's not a part of the budget. Correct. So, the way that I I I tried to explain this on Family University when we did this. And by the way, we'll be doing Family University again for those of you that are still watching um in two weeks, two weeks from tomorrow. However, um if you have a household budget, right, and let's just let's use um round numbers. You have a household budget of $100,000 and then you have income of $100,000. No problem. You are going to have
141$100,000 going in, $100,000 coming out. Now, let's say that in a particular year, you're going to have to um you want to increase your your family's budget to $110,000, but you only got uh a raise at work for 5%. So, now you have $105,000, but you want to spend $110,000. Well, you have $5,000 in your savings account. So, you can do that, right? So, you can take that $5,000 from your savings account. That's what our reserves are. Now, you have $105,000 in income and you have $105,000 in expenditures. That's fine until next year. Because now to do the same thing next year without changing anything, you're now going to have $100,000 $105,000 in expenses. You're going to have $100,000 in income and you don't have any savings left. Correct? That's why if you wanted to
142do that because you wanted to redo your roof and you're not going to have to redo the roof next year, it's okay. But it's not something that you want to use for hiring people that you want us to keep on. That's understood that the thing is only the last three years we were we were left with surpluses and we didn't use the entire budget. So by and and last year's budget was increased um with the disapproval of the voters. So we got to think we got to either we we don't want to cut by the back the budget but we do have the money in surplus and we are in three years in a row in a surplus. We should be able to live within the additional I understand where where you're coming from. uh
143what we have proposed um is what we believe is the most prudent use of fund balance and we don't think that it should exceed that. Excuse me for a second. Uh Douglas has joined us on Zoom if you want to ask him a question. Hi Doug, Doug. Kathy, he's not he's not on Zoom right now. He's probably on the executive session Zoom. Just just just check with him, Kathy. He's not on Z uh he's not on the link right now. We don't see him. He's probably on the executive session link, I'm thinking. Okay. Well, I sent him I sent him this session. Hang on. Mr. Stark, by the way, the our budgets, what was the actual cost for this year in the end? Yes. more about to I anticipate that uh we will we will
144be spending anywhere between 20 and $25 million less than what the expenditure budget has in it. So well our expenditure budget was 338 and you believe we're going to spend about 305 308 somewhere somewhere in that neighborhood. Yes. So, we are actually adding $40 million to the budget. Close to 40 between 35 and 40 million we are adding to the budget. Uh not necessarily a lot of those a lot a lot of that was was in there that are vacant positions that that I understand we of course we want to fill based based on on the budget to on the actual on the actual cost we're adding about 40 million. You believe that every year this is going to happen? No, no, I don't. I believe that we have I think I believe that we
145have put forth a plan for the the district to be staffed correctly. We we hope that we're able to uh achieve that. Although we do understand that um there will likely be some gaps in that which is why we are using some of the fund balance um in order to balance the revenue side. But to do more than that, I think would be would be taking a bit too much of a risk. This year, did we gain students net or we lost net students? I will defer to others on that. I'm not sure where we are right now. The the student count, did it go up or down in total this year? I've asked. Yeah, I can speak to it. We we it there's an there's an eb and flow. I think at the maybe
146a couple of hundred that were down. It's not like a thousand or something like that. I think it's about two or 300 because of what's happening and what's gone on. Yeah. So, we're we're we're not we're not at the same level. What I'm trying to understand is um I'm looking ahead as Mr. Stark explained that if we're going to go every year with 15 million out of funds after 5 years, we're going to run out. What I'm trying to see is if we do gradual if the we don't anticipate the school to jump at the at least for the next four years what we had the last four years. We're not going from 7,000 to 10 to 10 and a half thousand in the next four years. So basic so basically we're going to have
147a flat if it's going to fluctuate about the same. So on a normal base, we're going to have about the same budget. This year we put in close to six million, I think, in building repairs, which is something that we should keep on doing as long as we have the money to do it to repair the building should be up to par. After the ARPA, we have built the buildings a lot. We have come up the our buildings have gotten a lot better than it was. Most of the air conditions, windows, and stuff like that. That's what we were explained. I we were told. I hope that that part is true. So I'm trying to see in the future. So if we um if we are going to keep about the budget for it will
148go up because inflation goes up. It goes up but doesn't go up that much. Eventually it will we won't need that much from from fund bounds and we still be able to run with the budget. So I'm contemplating maybe we should be able to for one year higher the fund balance and next year increase tax with the point which which a point or point something we were able to get from the constituents which now most of the constituents the question every time I go are we getting back money is the tax going back down that's the question that everybody and as soon as they'll see that the tax didn't go down they won't look at the zero because the zero is a num is a is a number that we put on but this number
149is not what they wanted to see. So I would I'm thinking we should try to get a budget that we pass rather than a budget that fails and go for conting or for a replacement budget or contingent and this is one thing that I didn't see. Do we have a if this budget fails? Usually we were getting like two budgets. One if it fails you have an option to put up another budget. I just interrupt again. Douglas says he's really there with us this time. Okay. Have we say hi Doug? Can you hear me? Hi. Good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me? Doc, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Muted. Oh, you you're muted. Can you hear me? Douglas, he's trying to speak. He's going from mute to unmute. But well, I
150think when I unmute, I I cross I cross over on what everybody's saying. So, I'm muting to hear what you guys are saying and then I'll unmute to answer. In front of the board, there's tonight a budget for 20 2526 plus an revenue of 162 million approximately 162 million which includes the 4.38% which the voter didn't approve last year. Is there any language that you can think of we can add for the voter to approve the 4.38 for this year for the coming upcoming year uh 25? I mean, I'm not I'm I apologize. I can't hear you very well. I don't know if it's your mic or my end, but I'm hearing kind of every other word. In front of the board tonight, there's a budget of 348 million, which includes 162 revenue from taxpayers,
151which was not approved last year. the which include the 4.38 which was not approved last year through the voters. Is there any language you could think of? The budgets should still stay the same 348 million. The revenue should still say the same 162 taxpayers. The only difference is the language should be that the voters approved the 4.38 increase that was not originally approved. I'm I'm so sorry. I can someone else try to just repeat what was said? Maybe it's something I I know we had this issue a week or two ago where your mic was kind of um not clear. It was a little garbled. I was really having a tough time hearing what you were saying. I'm I'm I heard a little bit about the 4.3% but I I just couldn't make out everything
152that you were asking. I'm sorry. I'll I'll try once more. Can you hear me good now? Okay. My question is in front of the board tonight there is a budget proposed budget 2526 which is a total of 348 million approximately which includes a revenue tax uh tax levy of 162 million which includes 4.38% increase of last year's budget that was not approved through the voters. Is there any language you could think of that the same budget 348 million should be in front of the voters with a tax levy 62 million but it should somehow state that the voters approved the 4.38. It should specify that this is an increase of 4.38% which was not approved last year by the voters. I understand I think I understand what you're asking. Um I'm not sure that that's
153so much illegal as it is a practical question. Um, so it in other words, if I understand correctly, is there a way to adopt a budget that would essentially remove the 4.3% increase from the overall budget for next year reflecting a in the amount that was increased by the commissioner? Is that essentially it? No. What I believe Mr. Cth is saying is that due that the voters did not approve last year's increase of 4.38% and this year in this proposed budget there is the same amount as the same tax levy as last year including the commissioner's additional 4.38%. Can the budget be proposed as being that we the voters never approved that 4.38%. Um so this year's 4.38% increase which stays the same as last year but still is a 4.38% increase of what the
154voters approved can be put on as a 4.38% increase in the budget in the tax I'm sorry in the tax levy as opposed to 0%. Mr. cough. Am I correct? Correct. Some somehow it should say correct some somehow it should state that there is a change of 4.38% instead of a zero and and and as I said I'm willing to adopt a budget of 348 million approximately with a tax levy of 162 million but the voters should note that this is a change the language should specify and it should be highlighted doesn't have to be highlighted but should be in front of the voters that this is a change of 4.38% which they are approving which they didn't approve last year yeah I now I understand what you're saying um well that would be tax
155the issue I see is that you know the board needs to be accurate and and and all the communications that out from the school district to the public on the budget have to be accurate and factual and not um deemed advoc advocating for one a vote one way or the other. And you know if you if we can assure that that is happening then you know that's okay. uh to point that out might be a suggest someone might suggest that that's encouraging the vote one way or the other even though it's factually accurate. But the other point I think it brings up is you've got a you've got the budget you have for 2425 right now. It's the 1% the voters approved before the additional 4.38 that the commissioner added. That's the budget you're working
156off for the coming year. So I mean I get we want to highlight that the budget that we're that we're putting forward this year again reflects that overall increase that was that was made in the current year. Is that right? Aaron, I mean I I don't know. I've never really seen that done. Like, you know, it's like support the budget of the 0% increase. And keep in mind, this is also, you know, this is founded upon a budget that was 4.38% higher than what the voters approved last year. Sort of a reminder that there was an additional increase proposed by the commissioner. So, right. I I imagine that there could be a footnote in in the materials that go out that explain that, but the board did. Again, we've gone over this a few times
157before you joined us. The board voted to issue the tax levy of 162, 801, 802. Many of them did that under duress and stated that but they did vote that in and that is the tax levy and therefore that is the baseline that we have to move forward with and and what we have to present. So we present 162 162 with zero. Could there be a footnote added to the materials that state that that 162 801 802 includes an amount that was um requested to be added by the commissioner. that that's where I said I I can't answer that question. I we needed to talk to you, right? And I don't know if I I let me re let me be really clear. I can't answer that question emphatically because what the commissioner did last
158year is unprecedented. It's never been done before. The last time it was done was, I believe, in 1926, maybe 1924. So, um, in very different circumstances. So, it's not like there's any legal precedent for that. If the footnote goes in that says what you're describing, it is on the one hand factually accurate. So you could easily say we're just reminding voters of that. We're not advocating for the budget or against it. We're simply providing information to the voters. An alternative interpretation of that could be that the footnote is potentially a discouragement to vote for the budget because it's a another reminder to the voters that the budget you're looking at and being asked to vote on is actually based upon a budget that you didn't completely vote on last year. So those are the two
159sides of it. And I'm not sure I could even with a little bit of legal research point you to particular precedent that would say that it is or isn't permissible to do that. Um I would say this, it's unusual. Uh, I've never seen a school district budget indicate either in a footnote or or more prominently what occurred in the prior year when asking people to vote for the current year. um you know if a budget were or been cases where budgets have actually gone down year to year due to any number of circumstances the following year if there's an budget increase I've never seen the the the school district present that to the voters and say hey just remember your taxes actually went down last year I know they're going up this year but just
160remember they went down last year and that you know that has occurred so it would be unusual uh whether it is would be deemed legal or not legal Um that would be a decision actually that ultimately if it was challenged would go to the commissioner. So playing it out, the budget goes down, a voter could challenge the budget. They would they could attempt to argue that the defeated budget is because of that footnote. Very unlikely to do that. They would have to show that but for that footnote, the budget would have passed. That would be an almost impossible endeavor and the standard is very high to meet. So, we likely wouldn't meet that. Um, but that's sort of the legal analysis of that. I'm not I'm fairly confident telling the board tonight that there's no
161precedent for putting something like that in a budget or leaving it out. Mr. You mentioned previously that you would find it hard to support um decreasing the tax levy while maintaining the budget um as is. Do you mind explaining I mean do you you've seen the situation with with the commissioner's increase last year being unreasonable and not needed. we have the money. Why wouldn't you support it? Like based on like for what meaning? What are we supposed to tell the voters when they ask us why aren't you returning the money? Because the what my fellow board members are saying is this is what people are telling us on the streets. These are not just we came up, you know, people are upset, people are hurt, people are bleeding right now on the streets with the
162money. Um, and this was they approved the 1% increase and then they were, you know, they were imposed an additional 4.38%. So my question to you is, you're saying you're not going to support this if we decrease back the the tax levy to what it was pre the additional 4.38%. So my question to you is why? Yeah. So what's the reason? meeting. So what reason can we use to we we want a budget to pass, right? We don't want a budget to fail, right? So my question to you is you're saying you're not going to support it. Why the the um along with the budget uh for 2526 um we also have to submit um the uh district provides a five-year financial projection and this this was to the conversation that that board member Guber
163and Mr. Stark were talking about is how does that play out over time? the you the use of fund balance over time. And uh so what happens is as you project out five years, right? And you look at taking fund balance um there there's a lot of assumptions in there, but one of the assumptions is is that your budget 348 million is going to get expended and then over time you you have to kind you have to project out your revenues as being basically flat. So, like we can't budget in to say, well, the the property taxes are going to go up. That that's an unknown. So, you you keep property taxes flat as you project out. Um, state aid has gone up huge amounts over the last three four years. Um, and um, you
164know, that that that's just not sustainable by the state over time. So, that's going to be flat. So your revenues are kind of flat and your expenditures and as you um just take uh let's say 2% increase or 3% whatever the contractual increases in salaries and the increases in benefits that the health insurance and all these things and and just general inflation and you start tacking that on your deficit each year grows because your revenues or as this is a theoretical exercise as you project out your revenues are flat but your expenses are going up and the only way to to make up that difference is to increase the draw on fund balance each year. And that's that's what um you know what has been prepared so far. And it shows by year four you're
165out that $100 million or 90 million whatever the number is is you're out of that money quickly. Now the reality is things fluctuate, right? like you you you have a budget of 348 but you you don't spend it all so you have a surplus right so so you're not so but as you project out as you do this exercise that they're required to do and submit to us um it it basically shows that you're going to run out. So, so that's it's not just about 25 26. It's about over time and the financial sustainability recognizing that um you know, future tax increases um are are an unknown, right? In fact, you know, historically in this district, um tax increases are going to be a hard sell to the public. Well, the board first, but then
166uh ultimately the public. So, so that's really as I look at that and I look at uh you know f fiscal stability is uh it's one thing to to go forward with a zero increase which is what this budget is. Um it's another thing to to draw back on that from uh where we are. I understand all the the the angst and the up upset aspects of how we got to where we are, but um that is where we are. And I think that's what kind of Eric was saying earlier, that's where we're at. And so as we look for the future um you know coming out with a zero to say, okay, we understand what happened um and and the 1% and the additional 4.3% 8% So, let's not let's just level that out
167at at zero and roll forward. Ultimately, a district and is a a long-term proposition. So, that's really kind of part of of our assignment um that we have as monitors is is the long term of this district um each year 25 26, but also what is it going to look like four or five years down the road? um how do we improve the academic outcomes four or five years down the road because you don't improve academic outcomes in a year? You you start you want to start seeing um progress with the investment in resources and returns and re and every year you refocus those those resources to to try to get better improvement. So it's that kind of analysis is a long-term analysis. Now, for the person who's a taxpayer in this district right now
168and you're looking at what's my tax bill going to be next year, understand completely that's real, right? That's money out of, you know, they have to pay. It's money out of their pocket. Um they're not they're trying to get by right now. They're not looking necessarily long-term, but but our assignment is to really um look at this as long term. So that's that's how I, you know, come about to say it'd be very difficult to support going backwards, drawing more from fund balance, recognizing that that multiplies over over time and that the district would run out of money sooner. You know, basically that if they redid the calculation for for four or five year projection, you'd be running out earlier than than you would have. H how do we what do we do with I
169believe it's sections 1318 of the tax tax law that the district is not allowed to keep more than 4% of the unrestricted fund balance. How do you go I would like I would also like to keep the 100 million but right section 1318 does not allow the school district to keep that million. Um so nobody wants to go backwards but if we cannot find a way that the voters should approve this 4.38 then or we have to follow 1318 not to keep the only 4% of the unrestricted flow balance fund balance or the voter should approve the 4.38. Well the the 4% is on um unassigned fund balance. So there's kind of total total fund balance and there's all uh various funds that are assigned. If you look at the audit report, it has you
170know listing and then the unassigned. So so it's the unassigned which was I think as of June 30 24 was like 32 million 31 million $32 million which as as you point out is is above the the 4%. Um that was noted in the audit. Uh but one of the things the district hasn't done is that the district every year should be uh re-evaluating their uh assignment of reserves the levels the amounts that you have for and there um excuse me Sean I I apologize uh I'd really like to be with my family if I could if you have your question answered is that did I Douglas, I think we're good for now. I think you can go. Are we okay? Yeah. Oh, Douglas, I'm okay with you leaving right now. I understand. Sorry for
171your loss again. Uh be before you go, uh Mr. Gart, I do I do have just one quick question. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Um it was mentioned tonight that we are waiting on a response from the commissioner uh about the appeal that was filed. Um, do you have any update on that? No. And I'd be curious how you know that because typically the commissioner simply issues the the response. So, um, we there's never advanced notice when a response is um being provided. So, I'd be curious how you know that. Uh, I have no information about it. Um, I would say, you know, keep in mind that we've asked the commissioner to overrule herself, uh, which I think in fairness is probably an unlikely event, but I have no information about when that appeal
172decision will be issued. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Just finishing up. So, so the 4% is a valid issue. Um I think you have to look at it in context of um the the district hasn't uh re-evaluated its reserve levels for at least a couple years and that would come to the board each year. It usually would come in May. There's actually the district should have a fund balance policy which is actually in front of going to in front of the policy committee right now. But that policy then determines, you know, how what how you evaluate and in and what levels that you should be carrying. These are um levels that you carry for uh financial protection purposes. And um so if after you do that then you're still in excess of 4%. Um you know
173that that's that's a fair enough issue that you have. Yeah. So so we have an issue with going tax backwards. We have an issue with the 4% above the 4%. Um we have an issue with the voters didn't approve of the 4.38%. So whatever we do either or um we're doing wrong. So I would rather choose something that's for the community that the community likes to see and we're following law to keep our unrestricted f fund balance to 4%. Right now we didn't we didn't assigned any of these funds anywhere. I believe it's more than 30 million was last year. This year the 80 million wasn't the 90 million actually from last year wasn't used. So it's at least at 50 million or even more. So it only increased that unrestricted fund balance. So saying
174that we are uh projecting ahead uh for the upcoming 5 years. We are not allowed to keep this uh above the 4% either way. It has to be restricted funds. So that's not I I think that's not going to uh adjust anything for the upcoming 5 years. Okay, Kathy, let's do a roll call, please. Vote. Okay, Miss Charles Pierre. Yes, Mr. Federer. I I need an I or an A. I don't have any way to record a half and half. So, I can take that. I'll take that as an I. Thank you, Mr. Gruber. I would also like to see an amendment to it. I would approve the budget, but with amendment that uh levy should go back to where it was before the commissioner had it. We just heard that the state they're not
175going to support that. The state is not going to support that. So, what Okay. And the other one the voters won't support. So sorry. And the addition of the 43A the voters won't support. Listen, we have to propose a budget. The voters can vote as they please. So we propose and let the state do what they want to do. I support with I support the amount of the budget 348 but I want to amend the tax levy. I I need a I or an A on the budget. I I cannot do record a half and half vote. It's not a half and half. It's a vote based based on an amendment. Display the motion. Display the motion. So I So So maybe we make a motion for amendment. I need a vote to record. So
176it's just you have to say yes or no basically or I or you're asking I or make a motion for amendment to split the vote to split the motion. Could you make at the next meeting a motion to amend it? I think there would have to be a motion on the floor for the the mot the motion on the floor now is to adopt the budget as the draft budget as presented. Uh my understanding was before that we need the total budget we need but we the details maybe we could have meant until the 22nd. The the motion was called so we need to vote on this right now. Can we amend the motion to uh split? We're we're in the midst of taking the vote on this now. Mr. Gruber, can you I'll vote
177yes, but I won't be shocked if it if the budget will be voted on again and we'll go to contingency. Well, we could always put it back up. He said yes. He said yes. Thank you. I vote yes, but the way the budget is going to be presented, I'm not sure that the community will pass it. Okay, Mr. Moth. Uh, I vote yes on the budget because I believe it's critical to avoid a contingency situation and support the education of the children. However, I want it clear on the record that this zero increase is still based on last year's 5.38% override, not the 1% the public voted for. I strongly urge the administration to readt a revised version of this budget that reduces the tax levy to match the voter approved level from last year.
178We must restore trust with the public and respect their decision. Okay. Thank you for your comment, Mr. Escoffs. No, Mrs. McIll thinking long-term. Yes, Mr. Weissando. Vote yes. Thank you, Mr. Rose. Yes. Thank you. So, this motion passes with seven eyes. Six. Wait a second. Let me count again. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six. What eighth member right now? We have eight members here tonight and only one voted nay. Who was that? Who voted nay? Uh, Mr. Esr, I I believe Mr. Federer voted no, too. I recorded an I from you, Mr. Feder. He was a half half and but I can't do a half half. But we we could change was a no, right? No, I had took it as a as a yes and he he didn't say no. But we we
179could change that. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no. Okay. So then you you can't vote him as a yes. Okay, fine. I will change it. So the default is either no orain. The policy is a make or so. Yeah. Okay. Sorry if I misunderstood, Mr. Feder. Yeah. Okay. So that is six and that is enough for the motion to pass. Thank you everyone. Okay. Thank you Kathy. Um moving on to future meeting dates. Regular meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025 right here in the PLC room 7:30 August 22nd. A special meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025, beginning at 7:30 in the PLC room in the administration building 105 South Madlin Avenue. That will be mostly an executive session for personnel issues. Um, there will not be public speaking
180or anything like that. Am I correct, Kathy? Thank you. Moving on to written communication. Since the last board meeting, the board received a letter a letter in an order from the commissioner Rosa for the district to remediate its plan violations come into compliance with the plan the the plan the office of the state controller report of the east potential school district b review and an email from monitor far regarding US department of education revocation of er late liquidation extension approval. Now move it over to board reports. Uh yes, I'll start off with um just want to give a huge thank you to Miss Carol Anderson for organizing uh yet another fantastic Shirro presentation. Um I have attended every single one so far and I must say that this year the turnout was incredible. Um we
181went from having a few um attendees to this room being packed uh standing room only. um and it's all because of her hard work and dedication. I also like to say congratulations to all of our shirros and a special shout out to the committee and all the students who participated. Um next I had the privilege of attending the National School Board Association conference this past weekend in Atlanta. Um, this national event brings together education leaders from across the country, offering a unique opportunity to learn about best governance practices, gain insights into child development, and explore cutting edge programs and technology to enrich student learning. Um, I attended sessions on building bridges between the board and community, uh, revolutionizing school attendance, federal changes, and their impacts on local schools, elevating student voice on school boards, classrooms,
182not courtrooms. reversing the schoolto prison pipeline for minority youth just to name a few. Uh these sessions provided valuable insights into fostering stronger connections with communities, navigating navigating evolving federal policies and working to towards dismantling the schoolto prison pipeline. Um you know it's always a great opportunity to be able to attend these conferences and uh to be able to advocate for positive change in education. Thank you. Vice President. Yes. Um, first I'd like to um thank Miss Vicky Liner who is the director of East Rambo Teacher Center for always running a wellplanned, productive uh meeting. You know, I'm part of the teacher center policy committee and present at yesterday's meeting uh was myself, Dr. Gonzalez, Miss Theodor, a few administrators and teachers. And yesterday's focus was on ways to create collegial circle reviewing the book
183list for a PD through book studies. Um, we looked at inservice and graduate courses. We looked over contracts um we have such as the ELT language acquisition seminars, keeping nonredit workshops. We review comments made in regards to workshops given and made necessary adjustments if uh was necessary. Um I also would like to uh congratulate two of our seniors, Josiah Bashan and Anthony Mack, for making the allconerence senior all-star basketball team at Mount Vernon High School for which I was present for. And last but not least, um I would like to report um and say that the region Judith Johnson Shirou celebration which has been or was started by our very own Miss Carol Anderson who deserves a big round of applause because it was a job well done. She did a great fabulous job with
184her committee. The celebration was phenomenal. It was great seeing the regent Judith Johnson and Shiro's committee and district come together to put a program on which highlighted our wonderful students and 14 women. These women's contributions have helped to make er East Ramo schools the diversity of the women demonstrates that diversity is what makes East Ramapo. So again, fabulous job, wonderful job. What a great program and I I hope that we continue each and every year to um have the regent Judith Johnson Shirou celebration. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President Charles Pierre. You mean Vice President Sher McIll? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's late already. I know it's late. Pass. I apologize. I just want to let you know two of the athlete Josiah and I don't remember the other one's name. They gave you a
185shout out when you weren't here when we presented to them. Oh, so thank you for all your hard work that you put into athletics and, you know, showing up and being involved. It's much appreciated and the kids definitely appreciate it. So that's the the most important. So thank you all that you do. Vice President McIll, I got you. Moving on to motion. Uh I'll now make a motion to enter executive session Kathy to discuss uh the possible appointment of particular persons. We do not expect action following. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Vice President McIll. All those in favor say I. I. And on oppos. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, good evening everyone. I would like to call this meeting back to order. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting.
186Do I have a second? Second by Mr. Federal. All those in favor say I. Anyone in oppos? Motion carries. Thank you. Good night and happy Passover and happy holidays. Happy Easter to everyone.