ERCSD - BOE Meeting 03-18-25 @ Chestnut Ridge MS

001e e e friend okay good evening everyone i' would like to bring this meeting to order please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all on the [Music] wo woo w he the I can't hear anything I'm nervous that very low after very [Applause] loud uh I'm going to make a very quick announcement in Spanish uh regarding the interpreting services for the parents who are going to be staying for the tonight's meeting in so what I just announced is any parent who's staying who needs the interpreting Services they can raise their hand we'll bring them the system if they're not staying and uh they got equipment they should give them back

002before they leave but if they are going to stay for the meeting we can gladly give out the system so they can hear the interpreting from English to Spanish of the entire uh meeting tonight thank you you're welcome gracias again good evening everyone that was a very exciting opening I thank you all for your patience um they were great a wonderful Applause for our band for our leaders thank you for all you do and our community thank you so much so tonight we are going to start with a series of presentations as you can see we have a a number of students here tonight from Lon kilman you'll get a understanding of why they're here we have a presentation um for another student at Lon Kim for a tremendous award that she's receiving and then

003we're going to start off with award that goes to Lime Kim So Board of Education community members I have the pleasure of introducing Tammy um berer she is a board member at Clark toown she serves uh the New York State School boards Association Tammy told me believe it or not okay she taught here many many years ago at Pomona middle school so she has a true love for East Ramapo um she's thrilled to be here tonight and she'll tell you a little bit about why she she's here and then we'll do a presentation to L kill Tammy I couldn't be more thrilled to be here tonight uh superintendent Dar Carlo members of the Board of Education administrators teachers and most important our wonderful students this really touched my heart tonight I sat I sat here

004and I honestly have to tell you that I had tears in my eyes because I was a former music teacher and nothing Thrills your heart and of course I have heard your wonderful famous band play before but being right in this room with them brings feelings that you need to know how wonderful music is and of course I did my thesis in music on what music does for the left brain development in left to right movement and in right brain in playing with memory and what dancing does for the right brain so as you think about this vote you need to be very careful this is such an important program that many schools we in Clarkstown do not have so as I say that excuse me for taking a step sideways to to do that

005but I'm here tonight to talk about your wonderful program that um was brought to our attention because you applied and sent in in a uh report on what the program was to the New York State Awards committee which I am a member of and then members from all over the state vote your submission was a unanimous vote give yourself a round of [Applause] applause this is a phenomenal program and as I stand here I couldn't be prouder for you you have a program that has actually taken first place in the unit United States that's a phenomenal phenomenal award and your students participated in a mathematical game at lionil in first in math and your students were the youngsters who developed the motivation and earned that first place you should should be so proud of this

006school you should be so proud in your district and you should be very proud of your math department in East ripo so as you celebrate tonight I want to celebrate with you and I just want you to know that across all of um district 10 which is all of the Hudson lower Hudson Valley we celebrate with you because this is the area that I represent but we also celebrate in New York for the wonderful wonderful job that you have done and you'll see the banner here champions for change what the committee does is it evaluates programs for their ability to show what has been developed in a in a district and then make it applicable to other districts so not only will you benefit from this the rest of New York will also benefit from

007this and maybe even the United States my goodness give yourself another round of applause thank you so much Tammy thank you for all you do on this wonderful honor at this point in time I'm I'm going to bring up the leader who made this happen at Lon kilm and that's principal doson who's going to talk a little bit about the program and we're going to recognize some of her teachers and some of her students yeah yeah yeah yeah come down yeah you're good it's right up it's coming right up the slides there you go I'm going to ask all my lime kill winners please join me where are my winners all of you my students those those are the winners come on guys let's go let everyone see who we are come on come on

008beautiful [Music] come you ready John come over near me Johna the first one yeah you want them to face this way guys we're going to face there guys come here where this isn't everybody some of us are being bashful guys let's face the forward there face the board so they could see you come [Applause] good evening thank you for this honor I don't know where the young woman first in math has taught lime Kil how to be winners how to be winners cuz once you get a taste for winning you want to continue to win first in math has greatly influenced our math lives First in Math lives in US breathes in us our school alone lime Kil Elementary School this school year and it's only March has completed almost 18 million math [Applause] equations

009so first in math gives students the opportunity to play games and earn stickers and the games get progressively harder so no matter where you start you're always being pushed one very special thing that first in math does for us is our language learn Learners start First in Math on day one we have children reaching incredible goals after just arriving and sitting here for one week so we are so proud of our community and our students and I'm going to have some of the students just tell you what they like about First in Math John what I like about first and Math is that it teaches you new things itach teaches how to do the new things how to solve equations and it even helps you get better at math want to say something look this

010way ready yes speak what what I like about firstest is like do you know the base effects addition subtraction multiplication and division and they're also pushing you with a timer so like kids who like uh if it doesn't have a timer that means that some kids won't like do the work that they're supposed to do and I like how it has a timer so it could push students forward ready thank you good job good Anderson you want to say something okay go ahead just when not just going [Music] okay okay thank you all [Applause] right what I like about first in math is that it's competitive and fun at the same time and it pushes you to become first place or a second but as much as you can get and it's fun and competitive

011at the same time thank you so lime was first in the nation last school year but if we go to the next slide this is where we're sitting right now this school year and this is first in the nation [Music] so we're going to honor some of our students one student from each grade level now our top fourth grade player who happens to be in first place in the nation of all fourth grade students using this program so please join me right here oh you gave mucho oh listen man knows it's him he y Manuel [Music] platel that was great he he wasn't letting anyone else take that award okay and our first place in New York state in first in math in the fifth grade we're going to call up Johanna where you love

012Johanna tenaka Lima she's a little bashful now she spoke before but you know that was her little debut okay Johanna she's [Applause] coming and next we have our Math Master he actually spoke at our ceremony last year John delpi who is third in New York state right now the sixth grade competition is tough but we're working he will he will finish first because he is a winner already he is a winner [Applause] already that's yours you have the best so we're going to honor our top classes we have a fourth grade class and a fifth grade class and a sixth grade class and some staff who lead those classes but I'm just going to let miss kardi our fourth grade leader say a couple of words because they are first place in the fourth grade

013competition it might be a mistake to give me a microphone um so the kids have shared what they like about first in math and I'm going to share what I love so there are two things as both a teacher and as a parent we know that we compete with screens if our children are going to be having screen time at least let them be increasing their math IQ the second thing and this for me is the bigger thing if you think back to when you were a child and all of you you are children there are a lot of things that can make a kid cool right right sometimes you're really good at sports sometimes you have great fashion sense or you're good at music or you're a great dancer but we have made being

014First in Math being a grand champion and a double grand champion and a triple Grand Champion we've made that cool so at lime Kil being strong in math and working toward your math goals is cool and to me that's what I love about first and Math thank you thank you Miss cardi and here's the award for your class there you go I'd be wrong if I didn't say thank you to Mrs Dobson for all of her support every morning she's on the loudspeaker after announcements encouraging the kids to meet their goals to set their goals she really puts the time in to watch the data and get involved recognize the kids who are working hard even if it's just quickly passing them in the hall and saying I I see what you're doing I saw

015you you made it to double grand you made it to Triple Grand it means a lot that you're watching it means a lot to the kids that you're watching thank [Applause] you so for fifth grade we have to honor Miss Garcia's class will someone please accept this award from Miss Garcia's class yes and she does teach a bilingual class great job thank you winner thank you now Mr valeno is taking this to a different level he has stats he has done the math his class knows what's going on anyone who walks into my building who walks into Mr valano class knows the deal his children speak math I think they dream math and I'd like to give them their award they're they're always in competition with another class I know for first in the nation

016but they are first in sixth grade we are first in the in the oh they're first right now they're first right now in the nation for all sixth grade [Applause] also so this updates daily so they are first first first in the whole nation out of every class in the whole nation that's [Music] right now you have this a winner okay okay so as I said earlier winning is contagious we apply to everything every little essay contest that comes into line kill we dog it we apply we get our kids out there and believing in themselves because we believe in all of them so recently we had a winner who was invited to go upstate to Saratoga Springs because in New York state she won a fourth grade essay contest and I met her family

017Upstate for a lovely lunch in Valentina where are you cuz she's up here already congratulations go in front there so they could see you too darling go go go in front so they could see you there [Applause] did so this isn't the last of lime K we will continue to apply ourselves we will continue to win we will continue to set our sights very high because we're winners and our hard work will pay off thank you for having us thank you very much we're honored and and boys and girls terrific job we are so very proud of you and Tammy again thank you for coming and sharing from nisba about this great honor so thank you thank you all very much thank you okay last but not least we have our last award recipient tonight

018I'm going to call up Mr cook and I'm going to call up our Honore for track and field and that is herica lvus we're going to talk a little bit about this incredible student athlete so they get me talk that want to talk a little I was fortunate I'm Sorry by the way the the people that just went to fourth grade class that's a tough act to follow congratulations to all of you um I'm Ed cook I'm the assistant athletic direct at RPO high school and I was fortunate up to last week to tra travel down to Staten Island at Ocean Breeze and see one of my student athletes run in the intersectional relay I've been doing this for 18 years and this is my first state medalist so it's quite an [Applause] honor her

019her ran a blistering 200 met um we are running fourth on the final lap our final leg she ran a mile if I'm correct right and she was in fourth place and I thought we were going to settle for a third or fourth place finish but the girl on hercus team they they had four different schools individuals racing on one team she kicked in the high gear went past third finished second and here she is with her gold medal I'm sorry silver medal silver medal I'm sorry silver medal [Applause] she also competed in Nationals this past weekend um at the Armory uh she's still waiting for her results there's so many girls that run that race that her results haven't been compiled yet and come back yet so we're hoping she finished well there also

020but she represented our district proudly and I I I couldn't be proud of her tonight for coming here she's a little bit shy so say a couple words so would you say a couple words uh I would like to thank my coaches John Jazz Nick for their endless support my friends and family Sabrina Sabrina Sabrina Sabrina for her endless support uh and that's it that's it we also have one more season left I'm a senior so they making this one count so are you planning to go anywhere you're not okay so she's going to let us know later on because right now she's uncommitted but she'll let us know where she's going to be attending school and we'll celebrate that and this is for you just a little thank you and an honor for we're

021so proud for what you've done congratulations thank you thank you Mr thank you back over to you president Rose thank you Mr the Caro congratulations to all the students and dedicated staff and principal for such an amazing accomplishment of being first to math congratulations to the first state medalist and to all the great students thank you that was amazing okay um fire exits are located in the sides of 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 common orderly fashion to the nearest exit I will now make a motion to open the floor for public speaking do I have a second second by Mr C all those in favor say I anyone oppos abstain motion carries second that

022wase speee [Music] okay speaker number one can I go I yet that's okay no I was waiting we're good um so I know they left but I just want to ask the band parents to stand up so I know a lot of them left because it's really late for them and we all had a long day but we're here and our kids are here to stay in the sense that are fighting for for their education for the extra curriculums and which is amazing um I know that three seniors are going to see this video again we have three seniors in marching band they're going to graduate this year they're amazing children they work hard for a very long time I know one of them has been here since fifth grade and that's a that's six

023seven years of being in the March band which is great dedication also from their fam's dedicating time it's not easy to be a parent of a kid that has a sport a after school activity a marching band it takes a lot um this year I am the President of the association of the marching band parents and this year my job is to make sure all parents are united through music to be here all the time I know a lot of them said this is my first time well we are not usually here so hopefully next time we can have it at Spring Valley High School um which is probably less hot as it is right now but it's more economical for people that are financially can't afford a taxi all the way here um closer

024they'll charge you $10 further away is up to $25 if you live on the other end of East rampo so I just want to put that in mind um also I would like for you guys you're welcome um to make sure that uh the policy of consequences also behavior in school is let known um because it was a little bit difficult to go into each school and find a way like the consequences when behavior issues happen within schools um and I remember you Mr De Carlo speaking of chain of command if we can do a video of how to explain hey this is how we do it a lot of parents that we have in our community are not educated as we are okay so it's very important to Mellow it down that my seventh

025yearold can understand it to an adult can understand it we all have a lot of different backgrounds and please please be cautious of how you approach certain things because I've encountered and heard about different events that people are very rude of how they address people when they're not natively speaking their language and and that destroys what we are trying to build of a sense of community a sense of safety and also I would like to recommend when we have police officers inside when we do the board meetings I would like maybe you can talk to rampo if they can look like civilians instead of police officers because I'm a victim of domestic violence I'm a Survivor and parents here are still in survival mode and it's very unfair for them to be afraid okay thank

026you thank you speaker number two excuse me did you say three it's two yep okay thank you uh this is going to be very very brief I would like to we had quite a few parents here today and it's very important that next week Thursday the 27th at 6:15 we're going to have a reception for the uh Regent Judith Johnson shuros for 2025 this is our fourth year and every year it has gotten better and better and I do believe that this year it's going to be fantastic we have children and the children participated and doing the videos and they were wonderful we are honoring 14 women and these 14 women have contributed so much to make East ramoo better three of the chiros of former students in East ripo and what they have accomplished

027is phenomenal so we need the support we need you to come out to support the parent I mean the uh the shirros and also the kids thank you thank you speaker number three there's been a lot of beautiful things that happened here tonight with the athlete the wonderful marching band and lime celm students I didn't appreciate the fact that the teacher didn't encourage the parents to stay so they can learn but lime Kel did a good job and them children are doing a good job but that's one school out of 14 without low SCH scores can we question what's going on can we question how is it that all the other schools have lower grades can we question the unsatisfactory education that a child is getting congratulations but that small 1% doesn't account for the

02899% % of the school doesn't account for the students getting left behind doesn't account for the lack there of services education and what's needed for the children we're tired of this 90 something, that's going to go by the end of this this school year look at look at them seats broken look at the paint peeling how many other schools have the same condition that we're not worried about it where's the AC in this room do you not care about what's happening in this District to these children let's talk about the food now because it's coming out my pocket my daughter's coming home hungry every damn day Mommy I I'm I'm tired in Jim oh my God I don't think I can make it maso's hierarchy says you need to meet the needs of the children

029you're not even meeting the needs of mine or anybody else's maybe a few children need nourishing food throughout the day in order to be productive in order to cognitively learn and develop and you're not doing that and children constantly come to these board meetings and tell you this the food stinks they're hungry that's called neglect that's not called creating a safe healthy and well environment for a child sometimes it's time for you to drop down your egos drop down your pride drop down who you are step into the child's shoes and learn to understand what the needs and wants are for a child to become successful without doing that we cannot work together as a community we cannot be on the same page as a community it takes a village to raise children East rmao

030board you are that Village but you're not raising these children appropriately speaker number four good evening I'd like to speak about school bus safety and this is like my second notice on this subject on a daily basis many full-size school buses can be seen driving on local roads at high speeds higher speed then posted limits this is done very often with no regard to the safety of the students on the buses who are often seen standing in the buses at any speed nor the safety of the general public this is not seen taking place in other districts or I have to say with any of the Chestnut Ridge Transportation buses whose drivers actually drive at or slightly low posted speed limits on other buses students can be seen from side to side being thrown or

031up and down if they're seated almost reaching the roof of some of the buses as the buses fall into potholes I consider them craters and catch basins on the side of the road in a panic stop students that are standing will be thrown through the windshield Shield or get seriously injured why isn't this taken why isn't this being taken seriously when we have seen and heard of numerous accidents taking place here are we going to wait for others to happen before acting the drivers of the buses where are they getting their license from who's approving them to actually drive buses cannot be driven like race cars on public roads caring students endangering the rest of the public if this is allowed to continue on public roads which lead to many of our schools then there

032will be more injured students or dead students please let the bus companies all of them know that this is a very serious problem the state of New York I believe we'll be looking at into this real fast because our safety is at risk both the public and the students that's all I have to say thanks thank you speaker number six I'm sorry speaker number and what number are you you five yes number five good afternoon my name is chamila Amano I'm in 10th Grade currently attending Spring Valley High School unfortunately we have been put through unfairness throughout all these years class after class saying there's going to be change that will eventually receive the same opportunities that other schools are provided with although with the first year having Mr T Carlo as our superintendent we

033have seen changes actually take place we thank you for actually hearing us out after being set aside for so long the district has been put through so many Downs in the past then we can say UPS can you do me a favor I'm sorry just slow down a little bit so we can can hear you and they can translate I'm sorry thank you a topic I feel the strongest about is the lack of teachers within the district we are in need of more teachers to fill in the missing vacancies so we could have the chance to face a variety of new things that could help us in the real world speaking from Spring Valley High School specifically for our elective there's a limited range a few variety of classes for certain career Pathways which was

034very disappointing to see for example for healthcare Majors there isn't basic classes like anatomy and so forth most of us want to have a good future just like anybody else out of this District so why should we be the only ones to face difficulty after difficulty we are limited to our resources to help us achieve that goal of a bright future we need change to happen this should be the beginning of our district finally improving not just our current classes in high school but also for the younger students whose Futures are also in the line that is all thank you thank you now speak of six I'm sorry mhm yeah meeting so [Music] [Applause] food for la thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you speaker number seven uh hi good evening everyone my name

035is Sergio brosio I am a summer at Spring balet High School I came here to talk about the lack of resources for for classes and sports as students we always expect to get good and fair education but yet our expectations have not been meet at all we've been using very all and damage equipment for sports also the uniforms are not in good conditions at all making students not being able to feel confident and not being able to show all their potential which is unfair because it's not it's not their fault that they don't have the enough resources or the enough equipment like it's not it's not their fault that other schools make fun of the conditions of the equipment and and uniforms of our school we also we had also have have lesson push push

036away just because there are not enough resources like books this affects their students academically making them not wanting to participate in sports or in class another issue is lack of communication as a community we should be able to communicate very well but when it comes to students the lack of communication is very extreme for example most of this the clubs and sports that are being offered that don't receive enough interest because they are not well promoted to students if there is a solution to this problems we need to take action because we need this lack of resources and in communication to go away to be able to succeed as students we should be aware of any situation program or sports that's being offered in the school for those who are who are interested and we

037should get the same education as others but we understand why this hasn't improved and is and is because students student voice has not been loud enough but now we are ready to speak out for our own education thank you speaker number eight uh good evening my name is Bruce aruma and I'm a 10th grader student at Spring Valley High School a major topic I would really like to bring up that's already been addressed as well is uh the school food and specifically about the quality and uh mainly about how sometimes it's unappetizing you know uh food shouldn't have even have to be an issue in my opinion having to come into a board meeting and talking about it but still it's an issue that's been going on for quite some time now and from the

038entire life that I've been in the district here School food has always been a major issue here and uh most of the time students are blamed for not doing so well in their school activities or in their school classes but you got to realize most of that comes from the environment that they are in and the environment that they are seated in given the food and they don't have anything to go off of and in my opinion that's a major problem because these kids are your future they're the future of the of the ecosystem of the economy everything and just to get a perspective from uh rmao side I have Al Lima and Ariana and they have something to say too cuz this is not just from my side um hello my name hello my

039name is Ariana and I'm the rmo player stage manager hi my name is is Al limaa and I am the ram upo players crew chief we first would like to thank you all for the support in this year's production for the spring musical The Little Shop of Horrors for which the plant arrived today we spent time unpacking it and it was definitely a sight to see so for that we are grateful we feel that that continued long-term support and reinvestments in equipment such as our lights soundboards and props would allow us to be more sustainable as there is a lot of money that goes into merely renting these items every year if the budget were to pass we would be able to cut back on these cost and improve our shows as longtime crew members

040with leadership positions we know the ins and outs of every prediction of production and all the work that goes into every detail of what you see for our upcoming musical our students have worked even harder than before to put on a great show and it would mean a lot if the families of our community and if all our board members were able to come support the student actors crew and pit musicians so please come see our show on April 4th 5th and 6th thank you and have a good night wooo thank you and that concludes public speaking so um before yeah before I get to the superintendent report there's a couple of things that we need to have an honest conversation about okay I clearly understand your upsetment about the academics I clearly understand your

041upsetment about facilities I clearly understand your upsetment about cafeterias I I understand all that and you're right it sads me to say that we're here we have to have this conversation but I I need to let everybody understand if you saw the first budget presentation and you see tonight we are looking to put things the way they should be we're looking to do the programs that are going to meet the needs of our Learners we're looking at bringing back staff to help support our students St we're looking about we are looking and and and I I need everybody to understand this okay because I have this conversation with the board remember I wasn't here in the past I'm here now and I'm going to tell you something that you may not like to hear there's

042been times when this board has not been aware of some of the things that have been going on we've tried myself and my team to be transparent about the needs of this District I agree with you I don't know why it's the way it is I do know why it's the way it is cuz nobody paid attention and we're working hard to change it you're going to see I agree with you we are actually working on redoing every single secondary Middle School and High School cafeterias redoing them new seating new Arrangements making it look better so you're actually sitting in a place that's not disusing looking that's not dirty looking but that's appetizing at a place you want to go and have lunch okay we talk about facilities if this budget passes right more or

043less am I correct Mr um Stark and and Mr Tindle we're looking at having about $5 million that's a lot of money to finally go back to fixing up the things that should have been fixed a long time ago so it's important for you to understand that we are we get it we understand you're upset and you're going to see tonight um the little bit of the operational side one of our students mentioned about faculty you're going to hear about the work we're doing get to get people here to get Support Services in to get people to help out in all of our schools as you said we want more teachers to be involved with our students we want our scores to go up and you're going to see what that looks like but please

044I don't want anybody to think that we don't understand what you're saying you're right I can't give you back the past loano mucho I can't but I can work on the future and I believe tonight when you see our operational budget and you see the final budget that we're going to present to the board and the community it allows us to do all the things you need us to do and I think it's very fiscally responsible and like of all the stuff that's gone on so if we can continue on now with our report I think first up if I am correct um we talked about this investing in our future students you said it parents you said it it's urgent we need to do what we need to do for our students now we

045cannot wait any longer and then we talked about our domains about turnaround leadership Talent Development instructional transformation and cultural shift we've talked about these themes and we talked about and here's what's important tonight we're presenting a budget that's not just for this year but for years to come it's a plan of action okay but we have to start as year one and then move forward so this an important piece and now we'll go on to I believe First up is our Fine Arts um as I said to you today you're going to see in numbers that are incredible uh Mr Michael Smith over to you thank you so this first chart here uh is nissman this was New York State School Music Association and back in in 2015 uh 2014 we had only 35 students

046in the whole school district participating why that's important these are students that are taken band back then we had cut music and art in in the elementary schools and so so therefore we we had 35 students back then between music um between the music solos n solos and N Majors we had uh we were to 63 sex last year um and one of the reasons when you see the marching man there that's one of the reasons we have a lot more students coming out but here's another problem we ran into a lot of our students didn't have instruments and it's getting those instruments uh a good example when you saw the marching man you saw for2 we have eight tuba players and we just got this we need to get new uniforms a lot of

047that is is directly related to nisma which is is part of the curriculum um go to the next SL can I see so we support the curriculum and instruction of the Arts with increased resources and help students meet New York state standards of the Arts assessment Improvement of the Arts environments such as stages curtains and specialized classrooms to ensure adequate preparation for Student Success in the Arts and I love the fact that we're we announced the little sharper hars and our stages our secondary stages have have haven't had the upgrade at all for years from lights um curtains and we that's part of the budget for next year and our students we we've had students go on the Broadway they need to have a Broadway experience here and and and uh the the budget supports

048that building communic also another thing our visual art our Visual Arts uh uh classes you know we have we're looking to get kilms we have sculpture classes without kilms up in the high up in high schools uh and our our art our visual art have had uh much more resources to support the instruction that we have in classroom build a Community Connection funding for student participation in the Arts through co-curricular activities like fo dramers spring musicals show choir March man winter percussion winter Color Guard Jazz Ensemble and N Sol major Ensemble festivals resources for virtual art shows concerts and participation of community and Conference competitions ensuring a well-rounded Arts education you know many of our students participate in in um a lot of all County uh which this supports this year is the first year

049in 10 years that we a student from rampo high school me Hernandez uh was in all state and this is this is the direction we're going in again the the marching band is a wonderful experience for our children but it's the flagship of a robust arts department um professional learning and growth Talent Development support for ongoing professional development through workshops and Rockland Center of the Arts all our art teachers this year participated at Rockland Center for the Arts and to not just learn new ways to uh to instruct our students but we had many field trips this year and we want to sustain that for our students in in ter terms of offering Arts instruction um and the last one we have enhancing student instruction um acquisition of additional supplies for all Visual Arts and

050general music classes expansion of the EAS from Watchman with addition of new instruments repairs contributing to growth from 60 to 150 students and improving mus music education um you saw some students today in the drums in drum section for instance they didn't have drums well we Ed them we're getting the equipment uh we have new uniforms by the way this week the the March man will be on Sunday will be the uh uh uh the St Patty's Day Parade in Pro River and will be the biggest marching band there so if you get a chance to check them out uh it' be unveiling the and that's it but it's it's enough it thank you can you go back please so no to the the cost at the bottom the next one so this is what

051I need you to understand it's a decade of cuts and cuts and cuts to find on parts so you see that number that the public you need to see this from0 to $930,000 that's getting caught up for all the years that we had the cuts and cuts that has to do with what Mr um Smith was saying bringing back programs doing things that were cut so I need everybody to understand we're listening and you can see the investment that we're making in Fine Arts this coming year and in years in the future so thank you Mr Smith thank you we're now going to go to Athletics Mr Gonzalez y Mr Smith is a tremendous advocate for the fin and Performing Art so I I kudos to you I know a lot of the growth is

052due to your leadership Michael so thank you um in terms of Athletics this was an interesting year in that we saw a huge increase in the number of students that were participating in our Athletics programs in 2023 24 there were a total of 931 students participating in all of our Sports programs that includes modified freshman JV and varsity across all of the seasons and for this year we saw an increase of 305 students participating so we had more than 1,200 students participating across the sports for the 2425 school year um that's a tremendous uh uh increase in the number of participants the chart on your right symbolizes the number of staff that have decided to coach one of our our teams that are already in District um those are important facts because we definitely want

053teachers and staff members that are part of the district that have developed relationships with their students in the classroom in the hallways in the cafeterias and on campus to be with them in the afternoon so as you can see from 2223 school year to the 2425 school year there's been an increase of 20% uh 27% uh staff that have become coaches so um kudos to the to the staff that are taking on those roles it has become increasingly difficult to find coaches um this is you know it's a job you either love or you don't do this is this is not something they they do for the for the glory it's really for the betterment of our student athletes uh what happened during the fall and winter season so far of this school year is

054we have had 32 all League recipients in our Athletics programs seven all section and three state qualifiers that those are those are tremendous numbers uh moving on to how the athletics department is impacting leadership culture talent development and quality instruction just a couple of things to highlight is we are working with Matt Tindle team to finalize a new dance studio at Spring Valley High School the dance studio will now be located where the old weight room was and the old weight room is being moved into a new weight room so uh you we expect to see see that translate directly to um increase in numbers of student athletes participating in athletics as well as um representing us at League sectional State uh tournaments and championships uh we are also working to finalize the installation of

055bleachers in the upper gym at Spring Valley High School so uh part of the budget is going towards making sure that our Spectators can enjoy those events um I've also had a number of conversations with the principal at Spring Valley High School about how he will make use of those bleachers in other ways not just for the athletic events in the afternoons um in terms of talent development um to the young man that that got up and spoke earlier about equipment and and uniforms we are making an investment in replenishing our equipment for all of our teams as well as uniforms in the 2526 budget and uh in terms of quality instruction uh it's not just about the purchasing of weight room equipment and uh information that you see there it's also about supporting any

056staff member that wants to attend a professional development session we do partner with um in particular our physical education and health teachers partner with other schools throughout Rockland County and New York state to attend their professional development um and so what you see here in uh in terms of an increase from 2425 to 2526 is about $350,000 additional in investment representing a 33% change in the overall budget going to our Athletic program so we we do expect to see our students uh the numbers increasing in terms of participation as well as um how they're how they perform on and off the field so uh be before we move on to the next slide uh first off I would like to say that I did get a sneak uh peek at the new weight room at

057swing Valley High School um it is looking good and I know our students at swing Valley High School are excited um to see and be able to be in our new weight room at SM Valley High School also um I'm happy to see that we have the installation of bleachers for the upper gym at Spring Valley High School um even though I didn't go to Spring Valley I know that's something we did have at Spring Valley High School that I've been advocating for three years so once again you know thank you for looking into that and making sure that's um in the budget for for next year and lastly um if I remember correctly we purchased new uniforms for every sport I want to say less than 5 years ago so the only thing I

058would recommend is that we have a system in place where our coaches um are maintaining what we do have making sure that students return uh the uniform so that we're not doing this every year every two years every three years um because like because like I said I know uh uniforms were purchased um less than 5 years and you know we need to be able to maintain what we do have thank you could you explain about the way through was the waight room done already or we are going to do it it's in the process of yeah so so part of it was already in the last year's budget I understand could you elaborate of what's where sorry yes uh part of that was uh some of the extra tax funds that we uh presented

059to the board that we were going to use uh for the it was the weight room conversion the dance studio and uh I can't oh the baseball fields and the softball fields it was part of the investment in athletics that we presented with the uh tax levy increase so could you give a you don't need to give an exact number of what we already paid and what we still need so from a contractor side the what um Dr Gonzalez is talking about for the weight room Investments for the budget is increased equipment so that's up updating the equipment piece what we're doing right now is installing the existing equipment which I would say is quite dated um so that's that's what the athletic budget will include is the updated equipment for that space a dollar

060amount of what we spend already and what we are doing now about the dollar amount for the weight room uh I believe the total was $133,000 CU all it was was demo and flooring and we're doing the rest in-house so painting the space fixing it up that's all being done right now by the maintenance mechanic staff uh just a quick question with Athletics where are we with um the baseball and softball field with the work that we're doing there so the baseball stadium the fence is up uh the ground stat has been working diligently we ordered new clay we uh have gotten the fields just about ready at Ramapo the fencing right now at soft the softball field is going up all the posts were put in but the grounds crew today was working on

061getting the infield all up um getting the clay put down um we have brand new batting cages built at Spring Valley and at Ropo high school so uh they're coming out really beautiful um we still have some more work that we want to add on on but you know we're we're trying to plan it out we want to make sure the first home game that we have at both sites even the visiting teams impressed so that's that's what we that's what we want to present thank you we have to share miks just really quick I think it's a it's great all the um new things that we're doing for our student athletes and for the students in general um just really quick I noticed that you have begun with the fencing for the baseball and

062softball I don't know um U Mr Dar Carlo but as I'm leaving home on the side of the fence on the outside of the fence I'm not sure if it's our responsibility or the Village um but it is really I'm sorry yes it's a lot of garbage a lot it looks really bad I know we're we're trying to do all the uplifting for our students and I think it's awesome but I just I have to mention the fact that there's a lot of garbage there so so it's yes there is we actually spent an extensive amount of time with our ground staff clearing Kennedy Drive yes the very next day the boxes were back the garbage was back so we worked uh Mr Dar Carlo met with the student group the student circles one of

063the student groups uh at Spring Valley High School actually volunteered to help us pick up the trash we would provide the glov the trash bag so we're kind of coordinating a trash cleanup along Kennedy Drive there's also a significant amount of uh tree removal and trimming that we have to do along Kennedy Drive the issue becomes how close they are to utilities so we will have to probably bring in a company for certain areas and certain things um just the nature of how when you have a fence and things start growing through it we can cut it it'll stay there for a bit before we can remove it it has to dry out or else we have to just rip the whole fence Out and because there's a lot of lot of shrubs growing through

064the fence to make it look nice I mean I've been here 11 months and so there's every day there's something more it's always just added to the list you drive to a school you sit there and mental checklist everything so we we we do know Kennedy Drive is not the best looking uh I have a crew getting ready for this uh upcoming weekend um we had the grounds crew at Spring Valley probably for entire week if you go look at the track area right now it looks like it hasn't looked in a decade so we are focusing and trying to spend a significant amount of time at each school because each School needs it it's not just Spring Valley all the schools need it so we we do know we're trying to plan it out

065um you know you're it it's weighing your your people and yeah they'll work overtime but they get burned out too so if I may if we can whenever you're out there and you need some help I will volunteer Absolutely I'll um I'll let uh Kathy know whenever we're going to set and she can share it with the board uh I just wanted that it's also a community effort um because I think a a lot of the times too what it is is that um it could be very windy outside and it's picking up garbage from other places too so as a community if we can all come together and pitch in and try to help out with that um that would be very helpful also what I've noticed is that in in front of some

066of the schools um we have leaves um so if that can be taken care of too that would be also be great we also have an uh rather large amount of oak trees um population on all our property the leaves we do have a leaf vacuum it it fills up in a heartbeat like the amount of Leaves we have we we like have to F we got all the leaves off the track go check the track out but the front of the building we haven't gotten to okay they uh if you look at Spring Valley Spring Valley maret Chestnut Ridge there are hundreds of trees it is it is a bear to keep up with it a lot of times we just blow it and put it on one side of the fence a lot

067and when we can clean up and suck it uh and vacuum it out and then we got to transport it back to the Northern end on our property and where we have our uh debris uh leaf and debris dump it it's just time consuming so like an entire eight hours they can spend and clean just a parking lot so uh so I know um with I want to say Hemstead um what we did I believe last year and the year before um the community came together the parents came together the Stu and the students and on a Saturday they help cleaned up so you know that's another option we could look into as well I know it's a lot for you guys well no when we look at the budget you'll see I we'll we'll

068highlight some of the items because when you see the line by line you're going to see grounds equipment increase okay ground supplies increase the reason why is this year we did add grounds workers positions it's not presented in the budget as uh uh Personnel increase because we did that this year we still have a few vacancies we are filling but the applications are in so we are interviewing candidates it's vehicle increases I right now have a staff that has more staff than Vehicles so I I have I'm I'm there with the people but when you start seeing my line by line You'll see equipment you'll see more uh weed whackers you'll see trimmers you'll see that I broke it out on all of it so you're going to see those and that's that's how we're

069going to be able to do that thank you we'll go right to facilities since yeah that'll work okay so here's an overview of the department um we're responsible for 22 buildings uh 1.2 million square ft of building space and over 300 acres of land and we do that with 101 employees on average uh right now in Rockland County we have the highest amount of square footage per facility staff member and we're at almost one employee to 15,000 square feet of building in comparison Clarkstown which is a similar square footage spaces us does it with a little over 10,000 square ft per facility staff member they do it with 140 employees and we're doing it with 101 so uh we we also do you know we transported the band equipment here we do a lot of

070extracurriculars like uh the truste who came up here and uh for Clarkstown said we don't have a fine arts program so they're not even supporting that and we do that as well so here's a little brief look at our workload uh last calendar year 2024 we had 1,700 a little over 1,700 work orders averaged about five a day right now we're on Pace at 8 a day so we are increasing our capacity as we go and when you see our supply line justifications and things like that it's to support what these buildings are requesting we're we're trying we're trying to meet the needs we have you know we have a very talented maintenance staff and we're adding more talent to that pool and it's starting to reflect in the amount of work orders we have

071so our overall plan planning is we're prioritizing um identified items in our building's condition survey we're required to do a buildings condition survey I think ours is up again in two years that we have to do another one uh and we're going to focus a lot on our health and safety items we the the capital work that that $5 million in capital work that's really what we're going to address failed Heating and ventilation system safety issues um so we're that's what we're really going to look at when we're we're spending these dollars um so that's our highlights again we're going to do the boiler Replacements at lime kill and El Dorado those schools were built in the 50s and they still have their original boilers so it's only a matter of time before they get

072it they give out and we can't fix them we've luckily been able to fix them as we uh have gone along but we really want to bring those boiler systems up our our Chiller repairs at uh Chestnut Ridge Spring Valley but we're also looking at in this budget to expand AC in the classrooms um I have two of my electricians in the corner who tell you it takes time it takes supplies and they're fully capable of making things happen but we have to give those two guys in the back the tools to make it happen so we're also going to look at District wide Wide Paving cuz I'm sure you drove in here I don't have to explain that too much right um and rep replacing the repairs and drainage around the district uh we're

073also looking at custodial support we we have we've added some more talented custodians from other districts that piece that uh uh Anna's been talking about salaries increasing salaries and attracting more Talent well it's kind of working on our custodial side of the house uh we have brought in some more talented people um and what you'll see in the custodial supplies and equipment lines you'll see large percentage increases because like the students who come up here and say the buildings are dirty well their buildings are dirty cuz the custodians had mops and buckets and pushed around dirty water so we need to give them the tools that it it takes to bring the staff to the cleanliness that it uh needs to be and they we did purchase a lot of custodial equipment uh with some

074of the arpa monies we want to add to that because it wasn't uniform across the buildings this was equipment that was purchased before I got here um it wasn't uniform as to what buildings got what um so we're trying to make that that way and we have a we have great vendors who come in and do the professional development with that as well and you know we did spend a lot of money on playground maintenance um because they were not in a great shape we want to we want to keep supporting those repairs as they happen because those playgrounds get a lot of wear in those spring months and the fall so uh we want to keep it safe all year round and it obviously requires money and we'll move all all our snow removal

075services inhouse with this budget right now we contract out with two companies and us so it's three entities basically who do the snow removal in the district could we get of some sort I understand the last survey we did on our buildings was before we did all the repairs with arpa could we get up some sort of a better survey you said that the next survey is up in 2 years as to to what we accomplished with the close to $200 million that we got from arpa to see what we're going to be left with in the end so like this when we looking for Budget what we should do in the next few years how much will really help us out if we could get those numbers what is still outstanding absolutely the 200

076million was not in construction 90 million was so there was a lot of things you say you said that we got maintenance stuff also y 90 was construction so if we could get some sort of a breakdown as what of the old survey was repaired with the money we got and what we still outstanding absolutely I have charts of what was failed or at the end of life and what specifically we addressed in arpa I can I can I can share that with the board absolutely I I think Mr guber might be saying the same thing I was going to ask but just for clarification so let me just start with the arpa funds we were given an extension correct yes now till what date is that over the extension is only to liquidate the

077extension so everything we obligated we just had to obligate it before what was that time frame October September 30 September 30th of 2024 and then we got the extension to liquidate so doing the punch list items and stuff to be able to still pay to do that that'll Carry On To December okay and if possible I know that um once the arera projects are completed can we get like a report in terms of other repairs that are needed as well or do we have other funds designated for repairs the repair funds are are capital funds um and really that's typic typically the way it would go is we would go out to bond to address these items in the BCS so the BCS comes out we pass a proposition we have no borrowing ability to

078do that so basically we're taking we're able to take the fund balance and address some of the things that we would have done in a proposition but overall you know they said what was the the number was like 240 million that we needed to fix the schools it's you know it's obviously All Guest without doing any of the leg work um but you know I think I think we can address things that may not have cost as much as they originally intended and I think we're going to try to do that and maximize that 5 million because uh one of the one of the speakers came up and said about this Auditorium this Auditorium would cost 5 million by itself right so if I wanted to do that I'm affecting one school but with the

0795 million that we're presenting we're going to affect a lot of schools so we're trying to maximize how many students and address health and safety issues so that's what we're it it it's kind of tough to give you what still needs to be addressed in a dollar figure it really would be tough to do that I can show you the items from the last BCS that we addressed off arpa and what we're going to address with the 5 million I can break that out that would be great it would just kind of be would that be suitable for the board that' be great but we again I cannot stress this this only happens if the budget passes if the budget does not pass Mr Stark that $5.5 million there is not available am I correct

080that's correct so under a contingent budget um you are not permitted to um use funds for Capital because all capital expenditures oh is it not on oh is that better all capital expenditures must be approved by the voters so it has to be through an approved budget vote if you have budgets go down um and you are in a contingent budget you are not permitted to use um fund balanc dollars to do Capital work so so I just wanted um clarification about the lighting I know we've spoken about um specifically Pomona middle school and Spring Valley High School where um during the fall and winter when the time changes and sports is over by the football field at Spring Valley High School and when you're coming out of the gym at Pomona Middle School there's

081no lighting um is that included in this work in this project what we're going to address first is the failed Lighting systems so if you drive right up up the road to Fleetwood Elementary right now go drive around that parking lot right you might hit the curb it there are systems that have collapsed and are nonfunctioning so our priority would be to address the nonfunctioning systems okay um because when you look at the buildings condition surveys nonfunctioning health and safety systems automatically get you a failure on the BCS so when they say your building failed it doesn't mean it's crumbling it means there's one item or two items or few items overall it could be something simple like we failed most of our buildings failed because the drinking water was turned off that's that's why

082the buildings failed in the buildings condition survey and Spring Valley uh it was also the lift that was broken corre so there there are specific items in a building's condition survey the moment it hits nonfunctioning it's an automatic failure for the whole building whether you have good air or everything else it could look great one of those items fails you on a BCS I just have one last thing so the I know one of the students at the last meeting mentioned about the holes in the wall in the nurse's office was that I believe that was addressed a long time ago uh because what we had to do it was an access panel um our plumber went and fixed the drain it was it was disconnected during the construction uh our Plum I just said

083Rob go grow there so you know he went and took care of it thank you next up we have transportation Miss Gibbons doesn't sound like it underneath towards her okay thank you Matt I'm sorry just turn it in okay is that better all right so um the current slides are with regards to the transportation data currently we are transporting um I'm going to have to look here uh we're transporting 10,323 public school students and 32320 we are predicting that the uh non-public will go up to 33,824 public will be at 10,500 in the 2526 school year we are also predicting that the budget that we are proposing is 67,68 148 last year it was 77,4 3 77 M 23,4 57 I bet you wish it was that and um the um we can go to

084the next slide the proposed budget is designed to elevate our transportation department by focusing on four key areas leadership culture Talent Development improving the quality and safety of our services a quarterstone of this plan is the ongoing implementation and expansion of our transportation management system this initiative will require continuous professional development to ensure our team is fully equipped to manage emerging Technologies by upgrading this system we aim to enhance our data capabilities enabling us to connect more effectively with our community and deliver more reliable timely transportation services the further support these e to further support these efforts we are committed to expanding our Workforce we plan to hire two route safety inspectors to ensure safety and compliance across our transportation Network four additional clerical staff members to streamline administrative processes and two coordinators to improve

085coordination and efficiency these new roles will help address Staffing shortages enhance Service delivery and prepare us for future growth allowing us to maintain efficient and reliable transportation services as we expand additionally we are dedicated to strengthening Community Relationships by improving communication with parents and schools this will ensure that bus schedules delays and safety updates are communicated promptly and clearly our investment in professional development will will Empower our staff to effectively integrate new technologies ensuring student safety minimizing disruptions and optimizing the overall efficiency of our operations finally it's important to note that a significant portion of our budget is allocated to Transportation contracts which support our critical student busing Services ensuring safe and reliable transportation from home to school and back thank you thank you I know the gentleman left but notice where says reorganization to

086full-time route safety inspectors if you remember the be in the fall I talked about the fact that we are second in transporting students to New York City yet our transportation department by no means has the capability to do what we need to do with the amount of students we transport I know the gentleman left but it's important we are listening and there you'll see as a part of that getting more bodies on the road to do those safety type of checks on a daily basis so how many route safety inspectors do we have right now currently currently we have one route safety inspection so we're adding an additional two that is correct last year didn't we we had budgeted for another two as well no I did we not La last year we had budgeted

087for one additional one one additional so did we get that's actually in this year's budget and going how many total is it going to be I'm sorry if we fill all the positions how many total we have three together oh okay so it's okay so we're adding one we're adding one to the budget we hopefully be two actual bodies okay great how how many how many staff is there I see another four clerical staff is that including the coordinators that is an addition to the coordinators want to talk yeah so um right now we have an assistant coordinator and uh we are planning to um increase that to by one other assistant coordinator and one coordinator so we'll have a a total of three coordinators one being coordinator two being assistants okay what what's the

088current staff level in the transportation office total I'm I'm sorry eight the total number there currently of the staff eight we currently so we currently have um one um uh trying to think uh one clerical staff that is the secretary in this in the department um we currently have um four clerical staffs that to maintain other paperwork and the transportation software and creating bus passes and other implementation for our both public and nonpublic students um we currently have a um assistant director of transportation and one assistant as um Anna said uh one assisant coordin so so the and and how many were there last year Well you weren't here last year I wasn't here last year but I believe it's the say I believe that we have last we had like two or three but

089I believe that uh we have increased by one assistant director um myself overseeing transportation and um I don't think we increased by clerical I don't think we increased any clal staff so with a with a district our size how many um staff members should we have in that the department and I know we're adding a few but how how many more staff members would we need in transportation department it you know what it's it's a good question and it's hard to measure because there are very few districts like ours so um you know like we're uh transporting 32,000 kids nonp publicly and 10,000 publicly uh no other District in the area is like that really so uh we have been estimating you know we we've taken a look at the functionality of the department and

090we have estimated that these is this is the right number of clerical additional support staff that we need in order to be efficient um and then we'll assess it you know to see if it's enough we also believe for sure that we need uh additional coordination this will be routing information communicating with parents um making sure that the information is efficient within the office itself so we we think that to assistant coordinators and one coordinator should really improve our functionality there and then we really uh feel that we need um a bit more of the clerical staff that's why we want to increase it by so many would we need the clerical staff for the whole year or only for registration because four people could do a lot the question is do we need them

091for 12 months a year I think that we should try and see um you know we always have to assess so we bring them in we train we see how efficient we are uh and and then we can make a decision if we are one too many or two too many we can always reduce staff and we can always increase temporarily so redu reduces harder I guess then maybe we start with maybe per de or something not so easy not so easy not so easy very hard to fill position yeah and and also if I may add we are currently moving to a new transportation software system that is going to require extra clerical staff in order to maintain and and the data so that the data stays enter you mean to enter the data

092but maintain not this is my point my point is if they'll be there it will it's going to be a lot harder to switch their job if they have a job so this is my question if we should rather get people temporarily more than to put them in put four more people while we are spending for a new a whole new system which supposedly should be a lot easier to deal with so fortunately in the district we need a lot of clerical staff and I don't foresee that that that clerical staff would be a difficult move from one Department to another um and it seems that we are short staffed anyway with regards to most of our clerical staff including in our athletics department as well so so I have a question when it comes

093to um training do we train our staff um are all of our staff trained to know and learn the same thing or do we have it to where we have maybe a team focus on public and another team focus on non-public so that's a very good question um right at this moment because I don't have the staff um I can't really answer the direction that we're going to go with that um I do know that there are challenges in the department with regards to communication and we're trying to make sure that the communication is on par with with the community needs one of the difficulties that we find in the department is is that answering the phones all year long correct does not seem to be keeping up with the needs of both sides of

094the district I mean I hate to say it that way but non-public we are showing it as public and non-public and um the communication to improve that would require that clerical staff have the training so that they can communicate to to the community in a way that they understand what the community's needs are as well as understand um uh the procedures and processes that are in the department as well and that takes time to build correct that as well um once that is built my prediction is is that that staff will be utilized um on a consistent basis and that's not only for phone calls but also emails correct correct so we I wish I could get you the numbers but I know that the emails that I get in a a day can range

095from a thousand emails so that is a very large amount of emails to be able to um Monitor and maintain and you know the transportation department sometimes I'm not sure we are also supporting many um uh phone calls from early morning to late at night what that means is that the staff has to be split into hours so that we can support the hours that is required for us to um maintain the communication from 6:30 in the morning until sometimes 8 to 8:30 at night depending on how many students have been left um uh without possibly finding their way home so we kind of might need to look into like a call center type and that's exactly why I'm increasing clerical staff is because the clerical staff I'm looking to put in place would be

096to set it up as a call center basis I've already implemented part of that and I would foresee that um that type of situation would help with the communication between um incoming calls incoming emails and possibly um visits that we also get because we're not only just receiving um information via technology or technical methods we get an onslaught of uh personal visits as well that are walk-ins and that removes that individual from the Department which means that individual no longer can represent the phone system or the emails at that point in time um you know I'm so glad that the cabinet um you mentioned the fact about communication because that has been a huge problem in terms of Transportation like when kids you know they're supposed to be home at a certain time and then

097they they're not there and we're talking about like Elementary School students so to hear that you know if we get this additional we'll be able to communicate more with the parents so that they have no worries about their children when they're not arriving at the time they're supposed to I was going to ask a question but you you answered it and I think that's great thank you Sher uh thank U I'm sorry yeah I mean first of all uh I mean I it's great we're going to increase the communication and I I do want to point out something now this is not something that can be budgeted for um and this is I'm talking specifically about the transportation I'm talking about other departments I think it's very important that the office who the clerical staff

098and all the staff obviously the teachers and but I'm talking about the staff with that deal with the parents primarily um I personally have received complaints from parents about the way they've been treated in the offices the lack of compassion um being people being rude to them Etc um I really really hope that those things change and that parents are treated with respect and compassion and to understand the issue and try the best that we can help you know this all parents of children and they want to do the best for their kids um so I really hope that we budget that into this year's budget yes thank you and we will work with that and part of the professional development is included in that type of uh situation and addressing that great okay next

099technology sorry I think Mr feda had something I'm sorry I couldn't see your hand don't have don't we have enough two people people already in transportation to take care of compliance and safety I can't understand I'm sorry we have one safety um route safety inspector right now not two um so the extra two individuals would be able to we we have over 400 buses and um I forget what that's not my question I'm sorry maybe I misunderstood there are two people over there David and Mark what are their positions we have one safety inspector and one assistant supervisor David is the assistant supervisor and Mark is our safety inspector and we are looking to add two additional saf safety inspectors thank you you're up yeah good evening everyone good evening board superintend Carlo Mr De

100Carlo so technology department is committed to improving student learning reliable technology and strong infrastructure uh currently every classroom is equipped equipped with uh interactive boards to enhance teaching and learning experiences making lessons more uh engaging and dynamic additionally every teacher and student has access to Chromebook ensuring equal access to technology and digital resources to uh support model learning to support uh flexibility and efficiency um all district administrators building administrators and support staff are equipped with laptops um with secure remote access they can work safely from anywhere maintaining uh productivity and communication beyond the school buildings district has also invested in strong and reliable Network systems uh with fiber connection uh redundancy internet access remain stable across multiple sites uh Cloud Server hosting remote backup systems U that we have that prevent data loss and keep

101operations uh running smoothly additionally ongoing cyber security practices keep student and safe um student and staff data safe while ensuring compliance with privacy regulation like atlaw 2D um supporting 21st Century Learning environments to prepare students for the future District manage and support over 40 instructional digital resources and platforms providing well-rounded learning experiences dedicated technical support staff uh um keep uh student and staff devices functional um minimizing disruptions and providing equable Equitable access to technology just a quick update uh about next year 25 26 school year um the district will continue improving technology Wireless platform upgrades will provide faster and secure internet providing easy access to digital tools upgrading wireless access points in all um buildings including uh district office and all the school buildings will provide secure internet uh providing easy access to digital tools

102that our students and our staff use upgrading wireless access point and migrating to a centralized Cloud platform for wireless will allow for better vendor support ensuring new wireless Hardware is fully supported by by the vendor and additionally rewiring of it closets uh will improve Network performance minimize downtime increase safety support future projects and provide reliable power management um and new Chromebooks and classroom Hardware replacement will keep devices up to date supporting teachers and students in learning and um teaching and learning so the district will continue to invest in technology with an increase in technology department budget reflecting 2.6% um in growth in the 25 26 school year this investment will definitely help maintain and improve our technical infrastructure and system to support teaching and learning in the next year thank you thank you bobin just

103uh real quick um that's the amount that's in the budget if you could also just quickly touch on um what we get from eate that is in addition to what we Fund in the local budget because I think that's an important thing to note as well so um for next year um we do have $1.4 million in E rate um which we're only responsible for the 15% of the total funds um so our allocation is 15% and the vendors uh we pick they actually go to U usack the federal government directly to get for reimbursement so again that's a big project that we just talked about um including Wireless uh infrastructure upgrade replacing all access points we have about over 700 access points districtwide and um also rewiring All Our IT classes but they haven't

104been uh uh to be honest with you they haven't been uh organized in such a long time so that will also take care of that thank you okay so I'm sorry um just one quick question I know during covid we had uh I believe parted with T-Mobile with the hotpots is that in ongoing program that we have now or have we looked into other resources uh for Hotspots for our students so we do uh we have looked into other carriers as well but T-Mobile uh gives us the best price right so um and we they kept the same um monthly allow uh amount so they haven't really increased our amount yet so we still have, 1500 hotspots and we're working with Dr Shanahan funded programs to increase our quantity of hotspots as well for next

105year so and Mr Dar Carlo I want to say thank you because there were students remember that were having problems um accessing the internet and your cabinets so thank you for that making sure that they were able to get on their Chromebooks thank you very much so um now as I mentioned a couple weeks ago we talked about presenting um the academic side of the budget tonight we did the operational side I before I turn over to Eric and he updates numbers and the community will see you know what the superintendent final budget number is to the public and to the board I just want to take this opportunity to thank my cabinet um I I I we listened we listened to the community we listened to the monitors we listened to the state about

106making our presentation as transparent and as userfriendly as possible I think and I'm sorry I forgot my S my fault I'm sorry it's been a long night I before I do that that I got to go back to HR thank you for for doing that I apologize HR I'll go back to be continued HR he forgot about me okay so we wanted to focus this part of the presentation on the hiring initiative we we kind of discussed it last time we informed you that we had over 200 vacancies to fill which is really quite the challenge so what we wanted to do is just break it down into the major categories um a large number of people that we need to or or positions we need to fill are teaching positions um maybe 45 or

107so of them are enl or bilingual teachers as you know we're considered to be an L District so this is really hard to fill positions um but we are going to do our best and on the next slide we'll give you some of our strategies that's one area of of high focus for us the other is content Area Teachers this year we have quite a few cont Area Teachers these would be teachers at the secondary level so they're teaching the 7th through 12th graders in math English social study science so that's another uh area that is a a big uh area of vacancy the next area of focus for us in our hiring is instructional leadership support and I think that Mr Carlo wanted to speak about that yeah back to me so if you

108remember tonight there was a big discussion about grades and how we're not performing well and and what can we do to address this so what we're looking at doing with the work from our our cni department Dr Gonzalez our ml Department um M Morales and special education um we need to have instructional coaches in our buildings to really help facilitate the work that needs to be done with our teachers that's coaching and mentoring with our teachers that's modeling best practices that's co- teing and co-planning with our teachers as well as instru structional support these are really important to work with our teachers and to really give the support that our kids truly need working on interpreting data what the data looks like when we get the data and you know we're working on developing a

109really robust assessment process from the time that school starts in September to the time the kids end in June progress monitoring working with our teachers to support them and looking at data and how to use summative informative data curriculum alignment we talked about this making sure alignment is across grade levels both horizontally and vertically um helping facilitate our plc's then of course family and Community connections so um that's a really important part of the work that we want to do with our coaches K to2 and then with our directors and Department chairs so here's what's really interesting and I know some of the board understands this and the public um some of these positions we have had back 10 years ago when we had 8,000 students now we have 10,000 almost I you saw 500

110students next years's and so we're actually looking to bring back these positions that we know can really impact student performance and help our our our students out um whether they are directors K to2 whether they're Department chairs we're working on that um and what that will look like but we really understand the importance of these positions again in um in helping to uh really do the kind of work that we need to do on a on a k to2 level um and then now I'm going to turn it back to um to miss rusco who's going to talk about the fact that um we really want to be out doing that kind of hiring now which we haven't done here in years so Mr rusco we'll turn it over to you to permanent subs and

111talk about some of the work that we're doing moving forward thank you so yes one of the areas of focus is to hire permanent building Subs in each building this is a a difficult um areas to fill historically and in the area in the whole region but we're going to try we um are offering a nice salary and we're offering basic benefits um so a permanent building sub would be somebody who's committed to coming every single day to the same building and offering not long-term leave Replacements this is a per DM they they would change their assignment each day as needed so they really become a member of the building uh they really become an employee um and you know it helps a lot right now we're having a lot of difficulty feeling the day-to-day

112teacher vacancies uh in in add I understand the importance of the question is if you put a substitute that subtitute has to know every subject of every grade that person or how do you divide it sure so what happens with permanent building Subs by the way these types of positions have been around in education for years like 30 40 years so um what they do is firstly they do become very familiar with the building um and secondly um principls have um systems in place so that teachers have to leave um uh work for substitutes that substitutes are able to just pick up and and um offer to the students and and supervise in this day and age we have a lot of ability to use a combination of more traditional um teaching assignments Left Behind

113as well as virtual programs that they use so um that that's how it's done so not expected to be an expert this is not a long-term leave replacement this is a daily you know one day of teachers out here or one period there someone should sit in front of the class basically H someone to sit at the front of the class well I've seen some really good substitutes so we're trying to hire um certified teachers okay so they they have a good educational background in addition to that we have clerical support so you heard a little bit about that here in the transportation department here's what I think I want you to know we are short and clerical support throughout the entire District um all of our schools all of our departments HR uh Transportation

114as you've heard uh special education I mean really short so short that um it makes it hard to just do B basic functioning in some cases it's particularly true right now at the high schools for guidance so each high school will be getting some guidance clerical support um a little bit more in HR the special education department is going to really um need much more um clerical just to make sure that the IEP um students IEPs are in compliance and um the whole special education regulations are in compliance so we're going to be working hard on that and then our final big bucket for hiring your paraprofessional so these are the teaching assistants um and most of these will be to support kindergarten classes that's really best practices as well as bilingual classes some will

115also be for um special ed so we wanted to just let you know these are the big areas that we're focusing on um and in our next slide uh we're going to talk a little bit about our plan for filling all of these positions uh we have a multi-pronged approach uh our first um our first area of focus will be job fairs we discussed this last time uh we are going to be hosting three ourselves um in um uh on Madison Avenue central office one will be on April 5th uh that's a Saturday 10: to 3 and we have two um afternoon early evening one will be on Wednesday April 9th and the other is Thursday May 8th um and those will be from 4: to 6 so we're looking forward to those we're hoping

116to attract local community folks um we've got as we've mentioned clerical positions teaching assistant positions teaching positions um and so we're hoping that that we can really uh attract some of our local folks there we're also participating in um uh College um College fairs um sponsored fairs so it's not just fairs that our district is hosting uh in addition to that we have established College uh relationships with uh local colleges but we're going to strengthen those relationships what we're hoping to do is deepening our connections with them that we can develop a pipeline of folks for example um if we have teachers people who are studying to be teachers some of them may want to study at night some of them want to study online um so those teachers might be good candidates to fill

117our substitute positions um and also they might be good candidates for the future once they uh reach graduation which happens three times a year December May and August um if we have good connections with these colleges then we could um develop um ways of communicating our openings with these folks who are about to graduate and either they can do some student teaching for us they can do some substitute work for us and get to know us we get to know them a little bit so we're working on developing and strengthening those relationships we are also as you'll see on the agenda in our action items we're establishing hiring committees and hiring temporary assistants you had mentioned temporary help before so we want to hire temporary assistants to help us with these hiring ing committees now

118as we mentioned last time we have over 240 vacancies that we are trying to hire that is a huge undertaking for any District so uh we absolutely do not have the um staff in house to address that volume of hiring so uh we have uh thought about it we've been pretty thoughtful we want to bring in some people in the outside that have spec specific skills and we want to establish ongoing committees that will be working throughout the spring through the end of the summer and probably even into um September to try to fill as many of these positions as we can we'll be giving you updates as we move along uh in that process what what would the um I I understand the hiring committees would that consist of I know you have two

119here but I would hope it also would consist of maybe I don't know but I know Dr Gonzalez that consists of some of our sure cabinet members to be part of that hiring process or part of that hiring committee yep so the people that we have that we want to hire those are to assist us they're not necessarily the hiring committee okay okay they may help us hire some like clerical or teaching assistants but hiring teachers and educational leaders that's going to be a cabinet is going to be involved in all of that state monitors are involved everybody yeah teachers parents uh so we have a whole system of hiring committees that we developed um and we'll be following those protocols but for some of the other positions some of these folks will help these

120folks are really going to help organize paperwork uh bringing down all of the applications um uh scheduling all of these people for interview remember if we hire one person we may interview five and and for some folks that's two or three interviews so it's two or three interviews to hire one so that's a lot of of of hiring I have another question sure with the uh job fairs because I do remember um when I first started out um I attended job fairs so just really quick with the job fairs that we're going to give a either April 5th 9th or the may or may 8th um during that job fair will there be someone there like an assistant superintendent on Deck ready to interview that individual that screen we're going to screen um because interview

121really is more in-depth so what we do is We've ran one last year too so what we do is we uh have folks from the different departments represented there we'll have tables set up right with signage Bagels coffee and then um folks will be coming in We'll be asking them you know what are you interested in what is your certification area or are you interested in the civil service position for example right and then we direct them to the appropriate uh folks who will be the different tables so you're going to have a table for special ed a table for elementary a table for clerical you know all the different areas looking for bilingual enl and so then we would um you know we would be uh um directing them to the appropriate areas then

122they will be screened so there will be administrators there who will be screening taking resumés writing down notes and then anybody who they feel they should uh invite back will be invited back for full interviews okay that way we can process a lot of people if we actually stop to interview that could be a 45 minute process for a you know so okay do we have an um updated flyer with all three dates now I know I believe so M Dr rone is was working on that okay okay um and we also are putting signs out in the community uh that um well they don't have the dates on them they just have the contact information and letting you know that we're having the fairs okay and maybe um if if we have a contact

123list for um maybe starting with the local colleges uh to send this out to them as well so that their students are aware of what we're doing you're saying that um are we in communication with them correct yes we will in community we we've we have contact lists we've already established contact with the local colleges and we will be continuing that throughout this entire process okay they'll have the flyer we'll give them the flyer for sure we we're just finishing changing it because of the new date so uh but we will certainly we're going to put that flyer everywhere so uh so anyway we're excited but we know it's a huge challenge it's a huge undertaking we thank you in advance for your support we're going to probably come back with the you know asking

124for more support as we continue the process um it it it's going to be pretty interesting but we are hopeful um and then the last thing that we are going to try to do one of one of the other strategies we have is we're going to be reaching out to the two high schools and we're going to be talking to our seniors because we're going to have some seniors that may not be going to college fulltime and you know they may be going at night or working online or maybe they're not ready for college they might be ready to be a teaching assistant um or a clerical or or or an aid so we're going to be reaching out to the uh the two principles and asking them for um any suggestions uh regarding their

125um graduating class reaching out to some of the the students and speaking with them as well so that's that's our basic plan for now we will continue monitoring and we'll tweak it as we move along thank you Anna so that leades me to Eric and I just wanted like I say just thank everybody um hopefully the public this was transparent userfriendly provided information to the public in the board and now we're to the point where Eric is going to give the updated numbers and then we will um proceed back with our agenda item so Mr Stark thank you you so um oh mic uh before I start same thing I just wanted to thank um the entire team those that presented at the last meeting um those that presented tonight thank you everybody um this

126has been a um truly collaborative effort uh between um the administrators um and you know down to our building level administrators as well um and it couldn't be done without um Everybody working together so thank you everyone the the first slide here I am not going to spend a tremendous amount of time on this is the final maximum allowable tax levy calculation it's a little different than what was discussed earlier I had mentioned in previous meetings that there were errors in the um Pilots that were included in that in in Prior years um that was all corrected um so uh when you go through the whole thing at this point it actually increased the the maximum allowable number slightly to 3.1 5% I think at the last meeting we showed 2.97 um now that's not

127what you want to hear I know but it's okay so we're going to move to the next slide quickly quickly so this is the one that you want to see okay so um we have continued to develop the budget we've made some modifications um and uh we have now put together the uh entire budget um where we are able to fund the revenue side with keeping the tax levy flat so not increasing the tax levy from the prior year um I will come back to the revenue slide in a minute if we could jump forward uh two slides I think so this um here shows all of the changes in the expenditure budget so let me change that on mine so I can see it um we we had a number of uh additional positions

128that were in some of the federal grants that uh we have moved back into the budget um 3.5 uh administrators in the M multilingual area and you see the amounts attached to each um there was a bilingual Mentor that was just a portion of someone's salary we moved also back in an executive director of HR that was not included in our original slide a number of clerical that you see there and all of the numbers are attached and it shows you the the uh the FTE FTE is short for full-time equivalent so where you see 1.0 that means one full-time worker uh for for the school year um then there were a number of changes in the negative so the negatives are in red um and when when we first look at our medical insurance

129and the cost for that during the year we use our most conservative projections as we get closer and closer to see um what uh the spending is and then also get the new rates that are um available and then have the projections on the number of employees that we're going to have I was able to reduce that line by nearly a million dollars um medical I'm sorry dental insurance uh had to be increased slightly but uh Vision uh dropped by 50,000 and then um as you know we have a lot of vacancies in this budget so there were three areas that were built into the budget which I have always built into all of my budgets in certain areas that you see at the bottom here one is an mle contingency and what we mean

130by contingency is you put aside um a chunk of funding in order to deal with what M what could be new entrance um in in um PPS in special education it could be um students who were newly classified moved into the district um students that need to be um sent out of District at a high cost so it's a very common practice um for you to put contingency amounts in the budget for things that can happen during the school year because we have all of the vacancies that we do have um it seemed egregious to leave all of those contingencies in the budget so I have removed those so you'll see um the three lines there were Reserve salaries for PPS the PPS contingency and the mle contingency have removed all of those out of

131the budget so all of the pieces that you see here um when you add them all together and take out the the reductions it's actually a reduction of the overall budget by 288,000 okay so if I back up one slide please um this then gets us to back to the revenue budget and again I wanted to point out that um when we look at how the revenue has broken down over the past four budget Cycles you can see that um in the 2022 2023 Revenue budget property tax made up 60% of the budget and New York state aid um 36.9% the state has increased its funding to us in state aid um substantially over the past three budget Cycles to the point where when you look at that pie chart for the 2526 Revenue budget

132that we would be proposing um state aid is actually now the largest piece of the budget okay so in doing so then go back to the the breakdown back one more slide in the current year um I'm sorry for the 2526 um draft Revenue budget at this point we are able to put that budget together um you'll notice that there is an increase in New York state aid of $16 million so that is allowing us to uh increase the overall budget for the district with that budget as well ex this is an executive this is in the executive budget right now do we know about what we going to get after go through we we do not uh what I can tell you in um so this will be my 18th budget cycle um and

133in various different districts but there there has never been a budget cycle where the legislative budget has decreased the state aid not that it can't happen it can but in those 18 years the only changes that have happened from an executive budget to a legislative budget have been increases in Aid so at this point I I feel comfortable that that our Aid numbers will be good we have also tempered them down um because of our the the number that you see I think I explained this in our last meeting of the 167 is a little bit lower than what you see in the in the governor's projection because our enrollment has dropped a little bit from what was in the st3 so why do we have certain reimbursements like Medicaid and uh certain incomes uh

134I'm sorry say that again why do we have them why do we have them decreased why do we have them decrease okay so yeah there are a number of there are a number of items in in this Revenue budget um and I think I mentioned this at our last meeting as well where you're seeing substantial decreases um the reason for that is that what I am budgeting for you are what I believe to be the accurate amounts that we will be collecting they were over prior years and again we're we're talking about moving forward as opposed to looking back um a number of these items were rolled forward year after year after year after year so for example tuitions they had that number was the same in the revenue budget for at least four or

135five years as I'm looking back and what that would be would be um students from other districts um filling seats in some of our classes we do not have that happening right now um we have one tuition student in the district okay so I have reduced that number down to $100,000 from a million n and that's because we don't earn that income so I'm not going to keep it in our budget um conversely um we didn't have any interest income in the budget for the current year I don't know why because we have some of the highest interest rates that we've had um in the past 10 15 years years you actually can see interest on your bank statements which you couldn't do from where's the interest from all the money that's been hidden that

136well that's that's where it's being corrected here so it's we have the money it's it's but it's but if you look at the current years's Revenue budget statement it shows that you have over earned by every dollar that you've that you've earned which is right now somewhere in the uh in the $3 to4 million range and um you know it's a substantial amount I have tempered that down a little bit for the year moving forward with the expectation based on the elections and so on although who knows now with the tariffs um that interest rates might go down maybe I'm right maybe I'm wrong but there definitely want to be a little bit conservative when you're budgeting for interest because if rates go down then you you're not going to collect the funds is there

137a way to see the real revenues for last year is there a way to see them sure yeah I'll provide those I don't I don't have them I don't have them here but yeah I can show you all that um it's it's in um you you actually have them in in the the treasurers reports that we give you every month so um but I'll I'll provide a slide that that shows us our actual revenues at the next meeting for you okay Mr Starks just real quick um in terms of expenses will it change I know we're trying to hire right because we have over 240 vacancies and I know that when you hire then you have to pay medical and dental will our expenses change or did you incorporate that already so that that is

138all incorporated into the budget I when I go back to the expenses I'll show you that but yes all of that is all of that is considered all right thank you okay so then you know back to um the the revenue budget oh no right back um you know so you can see there that we're able to uh to to balance this out um the the 348 oh one one more there no in between there you go um we have increased um the overall Revenue budget by um almost $10 million it's 2.85% that's that'll be the same as the increase to the expenditure budget but of course the important piece to to see here is that um we have an increase in state aid of $16 million and we are leaving the tax levy flat

139okay now we can go forward to just just a quick question um when we talk about vacancies are we also or is it um or is this included um retirement uh staff members that may retire yes so you can see just a portion of that on this slide so that that's why I brought this one back up so if you notice um at the top we added a number of FTE right so as a result of that at the very bottom um this is just for what we've added in in this in this budget cycle I mean in this in the changes that we just made to this budget I've modified the employer contribution to ERS and that's increased by 175,000 for the positions that are not noted above I have increased TRS which is

140the the uh certified personnel's retirement system by 25,000 for the positions listed above and then social by 104,000 um and that so that is all included every time that we add or remove a position we recalculate the amounts that we pay to the Pension funds and in Social Security um and Medicare and and and so on and so forth okay so now how many total yeah how many total vacancy did we have this current school year and how many new positions beside the vacancies are we adding I believe we we reported 40 um it was around 140 and then 70 something um and then we have some additional ones that were added into tonight's slide so we we will give you a an updated listing of that um for the next meeting we can actually

141email that to everybody tomorrow proposing right now we have 170 you said I think the total we came up with was in the neighborhood of 240 250 no that's that's what that's for next year now next year right so maybe I misunderstood the question addal correct so moving forward 240 for the coming up with with the things that were added in today it's approximately 240 okay but also as a school year continues uh for this year we still have um people either resigning or retiring so that number is actually increasing yeah it will it's steady now because we're almost at the end of the year the retirees normally retire June 30th you know we we will have a few people leaving but we'll continue to hire too correct because um I also understand that we

142may have a few people who are interm where we will need to fill those positions permanently yes we do do do we even consider like there's teachers that can retire for other districts have we considered like I don't know if it's possible like give them a waiver because isn't it less expensive for them to be teachers sometimes yes um so you know we post and uh people have to apply so but to get a waiver um right now a waiver is not required the state has said that a waiver is not required year but it likely will be required starting July 1st at that point we have to um we have to show that there's a good reason for a waiver which means that we have to show that we have posted we have interviewed

143and that we don't have anybody qualified to take the position then they will be granting a waiver that's I'm going to ask a similar question that I asked last week last two weeks ago um we absolutely need to fill these vacancies my question is why are we adding more vacancies to be had before we fill up the current vacancies that we have I mean even a 100 vacancies to fill up in a year is a lot of vacancies 240 is even I mean so the it's a good question but the issue is that we have vacancies in different areas so for example um we really ought to have teaching assistance in bilingual classes um our student performance as you know is really not very low and very poor so having teaching assistant in kindergarten classrooms

144and in bilingual classrooms is uh an ongoing vacancy issue for us and we're going to really try to fill them now that's about 35 people right there see um other vacancies that we've identified ongoing 44 enl bilingual teachers that's been there all year long so and we're mandated by regulation to hire then the other piece that's that's that we're identifying now in order for us to move the needle on student performance we really need to fill some of these vacancies things that would provide instructional leadership for our principles our teachers we we're lacking in critical positions that all districts have whether they be chair people for the science department the math department you know people who have areas of expertise a degree of expertise Beyond just the regular teaching expertise and administrators that also have

145that expertise these are positions that were cut 10 12 years ago as a result of all these deep Cuts we're unable to successfully move the needle of student performance that's that's our biggest challenge so we're trying to we're trying to um we're trying to staff the district so that it reflects appropriate Staffing for a district of this size and of District facing the needs that we're facing and I just want to I'm going to bring up a bad topic so I apologize but I know that there have been conversations or comments that we didn't hire enough people for the current year and that's 100% true but there's a reason for that and part of that is the reason that you've brought up a number of times is that at this time last year there were

146people telling the board and the district that we were going broke and that there was wasn't any money and we weren't allowing we weren't allowing people to be hired so we are so far ahead of that process this year with what we're doing that we are very confident that we are going to be able to fill positions well but they were budgeted for this the previous budget was lies from the beginning to the end what the previous budget what we find out now were lies from the beginning to the end yeah and not only hurt the it it had a very terrible effect the entire way it was done and the publicity that we got was horrible yeah I mean I wouldn't want to work in a district with they saying that they not going

147to be able to pay teachers in July I understand that um but hopefully this year as you said we we're trying to to G get away from that perfect storm and create um a much better place and be able to to bring those people on board um and again with what you've seen presented uh to you from from Anna um is is just you know so much farther ahead of where we were were at this point last year and I wasn't here but I know because you weren't they were telling you can't hire anybody so you needed all these positions you budgeted for them and then you were telling people you couldn't hire them so it was you know it was a very bad situation is there a practice anywhere to have it audited by

148an outside auditor I'm sorry say again is there a practice anywhere to have the budget audited by an outside auditor not that I'm aware of it's not a part of the of of this process the timing of that I don't know how that would work um just in terms of what you were of what the the district did ask us to do we have issued an RFP for the review of the prior years but as much as we trust the current Administration uh we still have distrust of the way that it was orchestrated in the past years there's nothing that I can do to to to change that I can't I can only yeah I mean we we we'll we'll work to to change that view um and I think when you see everything that

149we provide to you um which I provided to you a lot of of documents that have uh very detailed notes that you can see everything that is in this budget and if you have questions about it I I I I want you to to let me know and um I can hopefully answer them for you but I can't I can't go backwards so um so this last slide has the um the breakdown of of the expenditure budget as it has been modified um in all the different areas as you recall from our last meeting I explained to you that um multilingual education was not necessarily um budgeted in the right uh section of the budget so we have uh you'll see that there's a large uh decrease in general education and special education and a

150very large increase in in multilingual education I would hope that special education is the same reason that it wasn't budgeted right because there was a lot of adjustments done in special education and the outcome is that all the parents are crying that the kids are not getting the services I know there were issues in the beginning of the year but the outcome of that is the kids are lacking horrible the kids are not getting Serv Services they need they're all crying every day parents are calling they don't know what to do I don't know if it was a money issue or other issues what we did this year is very bad it needs to get on the right track it's on a bad track so uh without me completely understanding exactly what those issues were

151what I can tell you is that the entire Administration here is new and we we knew coming in that there were lots of challenges that we had to deal with and I think we have been doing that and hopefully we've been uh doing things uh a little bit better than what you had seen in the past most of the things I really appreciate Act was going to commend for a lot of things that was done the special at became horrendous okay um including multilingual and yish speaking um that's that's part of the special head issue because special kids that go to the schools are MultiLing there's no udish speaking teachers at all they were taken pushed back and forth basically made the and what the president was saying before the communication was horrendous the parents

152were harrassed for asking basic stuff special ed needs huge repairs so I'm not going to get involved with Personnel issues in public if the board wants a further conversation with that and we can have um our PPS um you know assistant superintend come in and speak to about some of the issues um there's a lot more to it and I have had personal conversations with leaders of buildings and we've asked to be helpful and we're asking about moving forward so what we'll we I'm not going to talk about Personnel that's not appropriate we can have a further discussion in executive session maybe our April 8th meeting to further elaborate on what some of these concerns are thank you okay let's move on okay so um I mean oh Sabrina do you have a question no

153you can finish first I was going to say that I'm I'm going to be wrapping up passing it back to um Anthony so what's your question no well it's not it's not really a question but uh just for clarification purposes and more so to highlight and sum up everything that I'm hearing um so it sounds like there will be a 0% increase and that we will be keeping the same amount that we had this year in terms of um the budget amount with additional support in um providing more Staffing and being able to make repairs to a lot of our facilities and um you know addressing a lot of the concerns that the parents and students have brought to our attentions especially at these board meetings so if that's correct I want to make sure

154that we as a board um you know share that with our community and let them know that you know because I personally can say that we have tried 0% and with that 0% came um you know we were asked and told to make cuts and I'm not hearing that tonight so I just you're not so we're telling you that again an important piece of that Revenue budget was that we have received substantial increases in state aid over the past 3 years including an ADD additional $16 million for next year and that is allowing us to not increase the tax levy and still add all of these different things that we've been talking about over the past two meetings at the same time correct and like I said I wanted to make that clear so that

155we as a board also also shares that with the community so that um you know there's no push back at the end of the day you know we're here to support the kids all kids and I just want to make sure that when we present this to to our community and to our Wards and to whoever we have to share this with that um you know we have a outcome in May that is for all students so that is absolutely thank you cabinet for all the hard work that you guys do thank you for saying that um that's obviously the intention and leads right into our next slide which is a u I'm sorry this is a a pie chart and I think at 10:00 nobody cares about the pie chart so we'll go to

156the next slide um which is about our presentations and I'll turn back over to our superintendent yeah just quickly I don't I to leave this out because this was mentioned by one of the students and also in this budget and um Mr Tindle came over to tell me we have an actual food consultant Services we're looking to hire into an agreement with somebody who's going to come in and look at all our food services and what we're doing so we're going to look at that along with revamping and remodern ising our cafeterias and that's to your point that's all included in the budget as I said in the beginning of this process and I know we got to move forward I believe the work that's been done by this group of Administrators this team has

157presented a very responsible budget to the Board of Education as a part of the superintendent's budget I think it meets a lot of the needs of what we need to do to move this District forward in the right manner um and um you know I think hopefully we can have this as a a jumping off point not just for this year but in years to come so thank you board for listening over the last month and a half I appreciate it and back over to you uh president Rose Dr dala could we do something that Washington should change the menu what's allowed to give because we all know that a big part of the food issue has nothing to do with our control it's what the health administration tells us to give the kids and

158kids don't go for the food that they were told that they have to eat so even if we'll have a food service the menu is still the same and kids kids don't go for the whole whe bread and green milk and stuff like like that so so the uh food service consultant uh known for a very long time she's the northeast regional food service director of the year uh she is the former president of the school nutrition Association as part of her proposal she's doing a full menu review for compliance and we and she's going to do meet and greets with students and Community groups to get their input to redesign the menu we have done the meet and greets the problem is that the guidelines from USDA she'll meet all of that she she

159even uh is able to work in dependent on our uh our um our uh numbers that we the revenues we generate because it's a program that generates its own revenues and supposed to operate separately of the budget she has maximized that at every place she's ever worked and brought in some great she even did shuder boards at Newberg Free Academy and thank you for bringing this up because the community should know that the food has nothing to do with the board it's not a board function at all it's not the budget it's a separate thing and as not we don't control the only thing that we control is signing the vendor which there was a we did discuss at the beginning of the year when we did the when we we did when we did

160the contract we were we were discussing which vendors to use so it was basically that's the only thing that's our part I believe the wend that we use is probably one of largest food vendors in I don't know if it's the lowest responsible bidder is what we're using right now we are guided to use but that's that's the law so that's the law we have no choice just a comment on that when you talk about advocacy and and other things um there are many things that a school district or a government entity in New York state is allowed to do an RFP on rather than a low bid Food Services oddly enough is not one of those we're talking about the health and wellness of our children the state requires certain things in terms of

161Wellness but but we cannot treat that as a professional service um there has been one state recently over the past 2 years that has actually changed that and it's the state of Illinois um so if there are people out there um I have actually tried to have conversations with assembly men about that it's not something that's really high in anybody's radar but if um school districts in New York state were able to do rfps versus low bids it would be a much better situation for uh the food that children eating schools throughout the state well this is this is very important for the community to realize because we are being beaten up on that on every meeting and it really has nothing to do and she'll come and she'll do the board presentations and provide

162the updates to you as well so she'll do the reports and the board just want her to point her out to understand that it's not something that we neglect absolutely so I I just wanted to point out something that I noticed I think it was at Spring Valley High School I don't know if we do this at all of our schools but I noticed now we have Halal and kosher also included in our menu y everywhere yeah it's it's part of the Food Service bid as well okay we have requested it was part of the contract we made sure before when we approved the contract that they have they have Hal and koser food yeah okay let's are we superintendent are we done with this report thank you very much superintendent and his team really

163appreciate the way you presented the budget this year much clearer than previous years and thank you okay moving on to consent and agenda items we'll get to the board reports after consent and agenda and action items to have a motion for consent consent and agenda items 1 through n move by Mr feder do I have a second second by Mr Co Mr Moses cof any discussion we have a motion in a second all those in favor say I I and I oppose obain motion carries do I have a motion for Action items one through 25 president Rose before you we move forward on number 17 um item let's get the motion going and then we'll open it up for discussion I apologize just one second no problem who move Mr Weiss Mand moved it do

164I have a second second second by vice president Mill will open up for discussion Mr shanan if you would mind coming up item number 17 that quick update on qil thank you this actually just happened today so just a quick update quick item number 17 right so number 17 this contract was put on the board agenda um um earlier we got notice from the vendor that they wanted to add something after the board after it was put on the board agenda so we agreed they're they're agreeing to have the board approve it for tonight it's for services that begin um later this week and next week um and then then later on if they want to they'll be uh amending this contract so they want to put in a paragraph just about intellectual property is

165this the same vendor that we had it's West dead number 17 this is a different vendor that we had to issue for before no we've used them in the past right but they just wanted to make sure that there was some mention of intellectual property in the contract so they'll be amending that at a later time but everything else is fine Doug are you good with that yeah they they proposed this amendment today at 3:00 in the afternoon so that's why it's still on the agenda I think that if all they want to do is protect their intellectual property I honestly did not get a chance to look through the contract changes they wanted to make the one they identified for Daniel was related to intellectual property if that's the only substantive one there shouldn't

166be a problem but if this comes back with an amendment we just want the board to be aware approving this understanding there may be an amendment and you know on April 8th so that's why thank you DG item 16 we have disposal or obsolete outdated damaged stuff is that stuff that you cannot sell because you have everything bunched in one language is that things that we can auction off we can't it goes to the garbage what this what's the story with those computers yeah those are the damage Chromebooks as well included in there damage Chromebook books that kids have U broken and uh some of the hardware that's not out of warranty you can even update the software on them anymore so and you'll see some of the old monitors that we only replac with

167the new ones okay we have um I'm sorry I just have to with the I know we have two Consultants on our um agenda and I just want to make sure that um we've looked into them to make sure that they're reputable and that they're able to produce um whatever is written uh in the contract in agreement yep so we do have two people and I know there was a question because there's different um money being recommended for each one of them different prium rate and so one of them um is um experienced retired they're both retirees one of them is an experienced um uh Human Resources um administrator civil service not certificated but she has worked in a number of districts in um Westchester uh pretty much running most if not the entire HR

168department that's the higher rated one the higher um even though she's not certificated in Civil Service she has a lot of skill the other one is ran a um clerk um office for the courts she was the chief Clerk so she was um she's Adept at contracts uh running a staff um working with clerical um uh moving paperwork forward good thinker also retired so these two ladies are going to help um with the hiring organizing um the one that has the higher rate has more skill and knowledge about very specific things associated with hiring and with the Civil Service and this is with the purpose of hopefully being able to fill the vacancies that we have all the vacancies they're gonna help okay they're gonna help organize thank you okay we have a motion and

169a second for items 1 through 25 all those in favor say I I and no oppos abstain motion carries we will now move on to Future meeting dates regular meeting is scheduled for April 8th 2025 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the p CC room and administration building 105 South Madison Avenue Spring Valley New York um board reports um any board members I'll share something real quick um I just want to say uh congratulations to the kakat um for putting on a great show they did the High School Musical Junior um I also want to extend to our community and to you know our community and our district uh an invitation to go and see Once on This Island um at Spring Valley High School that's going to be March 27th and 28th at 7:30 and

170March 29th at 3:00 um I would like to make a recommendation um I've been trying to see if this is something we could do for years where we have this shared um K through 12 so that um our elementary students can also come and see and I think that's how when we talk about building the Arts how we get them interested in hopefully participating um in musicals and dramas once they get to to middle school and high school thank you vice president thank you first of all I just want to say thank you to Mr Dar Carlo as well as the cabinet um for allowing our students to use their voices um and really paying attention as to what they're Pres presenting and trying our best to make sure that we take care of their

171their concerns so thank you first for that and then I would like to also encourage qualified individuals because this is important um to attend our job fairs and again you have the dates up there but I want to mention it again Saturday April 5th I'm sorry April 3D I'm reading this wrong April 5th 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. right Wednesday April 9th 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. p.m. and also add it was May 8th that's that Thursday from 4: to 6:00 p.m. and one which and all this takes place at the plcc room at our administration building but I also want to do this and I think this is important as an educator I want to remind our seniors all seniors and their families to complete the fasta application which is the free application for

172federal student aid if you're planning on attending college please see your guidance counselors right away for more information about that because that's very very important and that ends my report thank you president thank you very much vice president as always um written communication since the last board meeting the board has not received written Communications Kathy I have a note to ask you about something for exec session oh I'm sorry so we will now I will now make a motion to the executive session to discuss uh matters regarding appointment of particular persons and to receive legal advice related to an arbitration decision we do not we anticipate motion after oh we may have action following great okay do I have a second second by Mr Charles Pierre all of in favor say I and oppos motion

173cares thank you and have a good night for e e e oh on mute okay says at this time I need a motion to adjourn no we have to vote no we're voting three four five yeah we need a motion let me I'll do this off the cuff make a Mr Gearhart are we GNA yes I think we have an action item yeah uh a motion to approve filing an appeal in Rockland Supreme Court uh to appeal the decision in um the arbitration case number a223 d332 under article 75 of the Civil practice law and rules motion made by wise Mandall second by grber all in favor I so carries any oppose so carries and at this time motion to adjourn yes motion made by guber second by WIS mando have a good night everyone

174thanks