ERCSD - BOE Meeting 03-04-25

001for e for okayy good evening everyone we'd like to call this meeting to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all the [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay good evening everyone 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 l time please move in a calm and orderly fashion to the nearest exit before we begin public speaking I believe our superintendent has a presentation to make so we'll begin with that and oh thank you president Rose um Board of um education trustees I have the great honor tonight

002of um celebrating one of our our student athletes in wrestling his name is Anthony Ortiz and I'm going to call him up Anthony if you would can come my coming up with your coaches so what I'm going to do is um just read you a little bit about um Anthony and his accomplishment and then I'll turn it over to his coaches so this is truly the what we epitomize as a student athlete here at East ripo so Anthony despite facing a knee injury early in the season Anthony finished with a 20 and8 record he took third place at the counties second place in divisionals and a bronze third medal at the sectionals he beat five um student athlete wrestlers ranked ahead of him four in a row to finish third which is absolutely remarkable he

003represented our team well throughout the season especially the postseason and he will be greatly missed as he's a senior next year we want to thank him for all he's done for our program and we wish him all the best so I turn it over to coach [Applause] Chon thank you so much Mr Dar Carlo so um like Mr Dar Carlo said Anthony had a rough setback early in the year but he really turned that adversity around and um you know he worked his tail off and he really made a big push at the end of the season and he set the bar very high coach and I already spoke about it for our future um wrestlers including those coming up from the Middle School I currently work at Chestnut Ridge and a lot of them

004have seen his accomplishments as well so you really Set uh the the bar very high and a lot of our future generations of um young men and women wrestlers are looking up to you so we appreciate you very much so Anthony here we go certificate of recognition is present presented to Anthony Ortiz in appreciation of your accessible performance and victory at the 2425 Section 1 sectional championships your dedication strength and sportsmanship have made our district so very proud awarded to you Anthony Ortiz the 4th of March 2024 at East rero Central School District board meeting Anthony congratulations here you go [Applause] pal uh I just like to say thank you to first and foremost my teammates and my coaches they've been there from the start uh they've been pushing me the whole season the support

005system at my school my teachers and my uh friends just supporting me and believing in me my mother and my girlfriend for you know they're people I hold very dear in my heart and just uh supporting me too and the district for their readily available Transportation thank you everyone this is certificate for you this is a for you and all the [Applause] best okay I'll now make a motion to open the floor for public speaking do I have a second second second but vice president Mill all those in favor say I I andone oppos obain motion carries speaker number one bu that I to [Applause] say for for for [Applause] for for [Applause] speaker number two hello okay good evening members of the board there's a story at large betraying our District in a negative

006light black and brown students are not receiving the resources they so desperately need each year that I have spent in East ripo the only thing I've known is how little we have I understand we don't have much I've seen it whether I'm looking at a pile of papers holding up a desk as old as the first graduating class of ripo high school or when I see the nurse's office half complete with a gigantic hole in the wall I begin to question what's going on here I just recently learned learned that there are over 80 vacant teaching positions in East ripo we are told to be patient about the process but we have been patient enough we have spent the last 10 years staring at our district fall apart as administrators teachers and students make the

007best of the situation classrooms get extremely cold in the winter having to double up in a puffer jacket or to complete the opp or the complete opposite where the heat intensifies in our classroom where the voices of our teachers only serve as back noise as your body is trying to fight off the heat the weird part is that we have asked for changes we have looked around our situation and seeing the problems we have I am aware there is no FastTrack process that to this that has to a problem that has been occurring for the last 10 years but is there no way to create a better environment to be constantly put under a spotlight as people around you tell you that you are suffer suffering and you are hyper aware of your own suffering

008but they won't do anything to help thousands of stations and news articles on the conditions of our school but not a single Outreach from a group or persons to help our community I understand that it is the hole we have dug for ourselves but is it the fault of the four-year-old child that who cannot get their required specialized education because they have autism or the child who came from another country and cannot speak the language and cannot got and cannot get any help due to to the fact that we have run out of space or the fact that we aren't allowed to use the resources because we cannot afford to use them each consequence becoming bigger than the next unable to find ourselves out of the situation so as you hear me up here talking

009about this situation we are in what are you going to do about it what do we the people do about it what do we as an entire Community do about it if we have not done it yet we have fought so hard to get the best and the greatest education for our students emphasizing that not a single student should give up but thousands of students have given up and it is not the fault of Any teacher or administrator it is the fault of the environment we have been put in constantly bringing us down and reminding us that we do not have enough who wants to work hard when we do not have enough when people tell you that you don't have enough there are students in this District who don't know if they will be

010here the next day there are students who are being whose families are being ripped apart there are students in the this District who cannot catch a single break as the board continues to discuss the budget for the next year I call on this board to take action the students you serve need you to provide an adequate budget to fund their education a district where so many students drop out should never have unfilled teaching positions or unspent budget dollars every dollar should go to the classrooms as I at to the classrooms as I mentioned earlier English language Learners do not have the support they need this board can address this problem by making sure that every every student has access to a great teacher who speaks their language and is trained and supervised properly these are

011just two ways that the budget can address issues impacting our school Community we are asking for you to prioritize our students and give us a budget that our school district needs and deserves injustices anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere thank you thank you speaker number [Applause] three um good morning to everyone my name is Angel Eduardo roas I am a ninth grader at Spring Valley High School I would first like to thank our super get a little bit closer to the mic oh sorry thank you my name is good evening to everyone my name is Angel Eduardo roas I am a ninth grader at string Valley High School I would first like to thank our superintendent Mr De Carlo for improving our for improving our school's condition ition in such an amazing way I'm

012speaking on behalf of the student body as a team member of the track and soccer team we really need to update our sports equipment like jersey shorts and all the gear that has been ignored for such long for such a long time on behalf of the student body we definitely need more custodians because the bathrooms are unhygienic it's disgusting but some students have to deal with there and the food it can be better the quality and VAR and variety are so bad that a lot of students just skip eating and end up hungry this has to change to improve our nutrition and change overall the schools around us thank [Applause] you speaker number four good evening my name is Alexander I am a sophomore from Spring Valley High School and thank you to Mr Dar

013Carlo for setting up our superintendent meetings which us students have been able to talk about problems in our school to make sure we get them to make sure we get them fixed and one issue I wanted to bring up is about our courses and especially for our AP and honor classes which honestly we don't have enough and since colleges first look at grades and how well we're able to handle since we don't have enough classes to handle it makes us seem like we're not capable and especially as me as a Hispanic male it makes it seem like I don't have have the energy or I guess not be able to handle it and and and and especially for my future which obviously every student wants a good future I it makes it seem like I

014don't want a future and also most students obviously maybe some students but most students want to learn and not giving them the right classes and education makes them not have the energy to go to school every day and for me I would honestly love if there was an AP music theory class but there isn't and I would love that class because it would make me focus more into other classes and enjoy much and that is all I have to say for today thank you thank you speaker number five good evening I'm thrilled to see the new safety measures in our elementary schools especially at Kaka I feel so much safer now a few weeks ago we had a scary in incident where strangers would walk up to students and even teachers asking to play their

015our instruments it was horrifying but now thanks to the offenses we can practice without worrying about strangers approaching us as a member of the marching band I'm grateful for this safe environment I want to thank our administrators for listening to our concerns and talking taking action it took a year plus but thank you also to Mr Ellis I hope you're watching and hope you V come visit soon you made our school a more secure place and I appreciate it thank you thank you speaker number six hola School thank you speaker number seven good evening first I'd like to commend all the students for coming up and talking we need more of them to come up and more of them to speak out you failed not one child of mine as this young student is waiting

016anxiously to get what he needs to go to college my daughter left Spring Valley in 12th grade and wasn't ready for college and had that struggle she made it with a 3.5 GPA but left Spring Valley with a 2 point something GPA 12 great 3.5 GPA in college cuz she struggled but she made it she did it and got good grades this is all these students want I have one going into Spring Valley High School I want her to be better I don't need her to lack because is Ropo decides to lack on the children now I'm not understanding and I'm going to listen to what's happening here with the funding but I got to tell you $200 million worth of repairs let's think about what we still need the uniforms that they need oh

017yeah and it doesn't go just to Spring Valley it goes to all of them Chestnut Ridge Middle School High School it goes to everybody all right students need to go out there feeling good in new uniforms not looking like clowns underrepresenting when they're going out there with pride as this young gentleman did his job as a wrestler and did a good job at it we need you to learn to understand that these students are going back 10 years students I'd like to inform you go back a couple of decades this fight has been continuous all the time the food the bathroom the maintenance the workers the lack of money and now there's money so whoever is responsible for doing all that money and miscalculating and miscoding you need to fire them that's all I got

018to say about that this cannot continue to happen and if anybody dece decides that they want to fight the tax increase Let It Be 5.38% we still need money we still need repairs you're talking about 10 years of not passing a budget because people want something for free it's time for us to be a community together it's time for all of this Malarkey to stop and start thinking about all the children's future all the children's education in both public and private school it's time to get on the ball it's time to do things correctly and think about these children's future thank [Applause] you speaker number eight [Music] whoa sorry um hello everyone good evening I stand before you today to address a very pressing concern that has been waiting in our community recently a significant

019amount of money has been discovered because it wasn't used I keep getting information from different ends because we did the district didn't hire um staff members or yada y but the thing the point is that we're throwing blame back and forth but why can't we identify the people that have done this great mistake as someone said someone that makes something like this is a criminal and should face consequences I'm an alumni I was here 12 years ago and it's in horrifying to know that this District where I set in those classes are frozen in time we have no updates to technology like other schools even though we have cosmetic updates which are great for example the rampo gym which is amazing I cried when I saw it okay because I went there I'm a a

020proud alumni Griffin um but it shouldn't be until now that I'm an adult and have a child in there see how beautiful it is it should have been done before now I also want to address that there's a mandated Community Circle That was supposed to be done by the monitors um I don't know if it was done or not but I wasn't invited I want that to happen um that is bilingual also I offer myself to translate if there's some issue um also I would like a superintendent circle with the community but also the superintendent when you go to the schools I would like to have a group with Hispanic children that don't speak English um I've met a lot of them during the alumni um day that and a lot of them said it's

021not fair when something is not offered in my language and I want to speak about it but if I don't have the opportunity who do I go to and then also about college I've met a lot of kids are in 11th and 12th grade they had no idea how to get scholarships I just started naming some did you know that you can get scholarships because your first generation do you know through Sports I never knew that that's what I got and it's so sad I myself graduated with a full ride to nanotechnology because I looked for the research I looked for stuff but not a lot of kids had have that push I had to because I was one of the oldest one out of nine children I had to be the future for my

022family and it's not fair for these kids to lose an opportunities these are our future and then to the community that says oh there's a lot of money but where have you been for the past almost 12 years not paying taxes you should have saved that money and now what you're a criminal because you're trying to invade taxes that increase that we just had it's reasonable because of the lack and Corruption for multiple Years thank you speaker number nine good evening I'm Natalie Lopez a junior in Spring Valley High School first of all I would like to extend my gratitude to Mr Dar Carlo for all the positive changes he has implemented as our superintendent his effort his efforts have truly made a difference in our school Community however I would like to address a

023couple of concerns that I believe could further help our academic standing firstly our district needs to implement our After School academic Improvement programs early in the year also it currently lacks SAT and ACT prep courses providing this would greatly benefit students helping them perform better the better on these exams additionally our district does not have any testing sites for the SAT or act as a result students are forced to travel locations such as Sofer or Clark town south to take this test this poses a significant challenge for many students who do not have the means to travel ultimately limiting their opportunities establishing testing sites within our district would ensure that all students have equal access to this college at admissions exams thank you thank you speaker number [Applause] 10 ESP bral Wii [Applause] this the

024super um social workers [Applause] for forood STS no sir it's time to wrap it up thank you I don't give a [Applause] damn WP thank [Applause] you that concludes public speaking we will now move on to the superintendent search update from mcferson and Jacobson our two consultant who going to give a few brief words thank you good evening members of the board Mr Dar Carlo State Monitor jallow and of course the public um my name is Dr Karen deino Dr Barbara pinac is with me we're going to keep this very brief in the interest of the business that's on the agenda for the evening um we are from mcferson and Jacobson we've been here for the last couple of days uh holding stakeholder input sessions so for the last two days we've had the privilege

025of meeting with students um both at um Spring Valley High School as well as Ramapo high school they were probably the highlights for a Dr pinac and I um we've had the opportunity to meet with Union heads some non-public representation members of the NAACP our Haitian Community preo Faro some uh PTA members um we've also had some open Community sessions have met with cabinet members and also uh folks who work here in this building so we've really had a nice opportunity in speaking with all of you um pardon my back the reason that we meet with so many stakeholders is to try to elicit input so that we can provide reports to the board uh it's very very important to us to do that Dr Ferry mentioned on the first slide as the lead consultant

026um he has been um reaching out via Zoom to some of the people who are up here on the uh deis has interest is of course to meet with board members our um State monitors and of course our interim superintendent Mr Dar Carlo to find out how we best proceed here in East ripo to find an outstanding superintendent for uh community and for the children who are so deserving very quickly on the next steps um we are in the middle of we'll compile and summarize all of the stakeholder input data we finished this evening over two days I'm happy to report that we had lots and lots of community uh input so we are grateful for the involvement um just a reminder there is an online survey that will be open until March 15th So

027for anybody who did not get to come to a meeting please go to the online survey it's very very very easy to get to if you just go on the um East Ramapo uh Central School District website under superintendent survey um and then the stakeholder input survey information um will be presented to the board and to the uh State monitors just a reminder the posting closes for the superintendent applicants on March 20th we are happy to report that people have already started applying for the position so that makes us pleased um however it doesn't close until the 20th so once we get to the closing date um the Consultants myself Dr pinac and Dr Ferry will screen the applicants and then we will present applicants to the board and to the state monitors that will

028occur toward the end of March once we receive applications um and then hopefully if fall things ress well the board will begin interviewing applicants uh sometime in April um so that is our update again we are really proud to be a part of U mcferson and Jacobson and helping the East Ramapo Central School District I just wanted to say everybody has been tremendous from uh District employees to uh Kathy kie to our our students the community everybody has been very very welcoming of the firm we really do appreciate that our cabinet was welcoming today we really do want to make sure that we can assist you uh in the best way that we can to help you find um an outstanding candidate thank [Applause] you thank you we now have Mr Thomas Smith our external

029auditor who is joining us via Zoom to go over some of the findings that our superintendent and his team brought up by board member Mr guber um was presented at last meeting um Mr Smith good evening good good evening how you doing so essentially the board and the public as I'm sure you heard are extremely perplexed at how we got here to this point um based off what we presented last week it seems like over the the past 3 years our budget was we over budgeted over the past three years by $30 million um we'd like to know how much do we project at the end of this year to have as unrestricted fund balance going into the 25 26 school year I believe some other board members have a lot of questions so if

030you can please um fill us in on what you found and review what we discussed in November and uh I'll turn it over to you now absolutely uh just to preface everything you mention projecting out your fund balance into the next year that's not something that I can do because as an external auditor what we do is just give me one second B can you turn them up please thank you Mr Tom can you go closer to your microphone I'm sorry can you repeat that Mr Smith if you could also speak a little closer to your microphone as some people having trouble here we're having a little trouble hearing you here so just give us one second we're going to turn up your volume and if you could try to speak as close to your

031mic as possible I appreciate it thank you sure just I'll let you know when you can start did we turn it up Mr Smith can you speak for a second go ahead yes can you hear me yes we hear you okay great so essentially there's three driving forces to why the fund balance got to the level that did uh the first item has to do with Staffing there's a significant amount of unfilled positions over the past couple of years as those aren't filled we save a significant amount in both salaries and employee benefits the SEC the second item has to do with some of the new federal funding that was available over the past few years now that money essentially is going to be used up in this fiscal year uh for example last year

032the district spent 63 million that was fully reimbursed from those federal funds so if we don't have those 63 million plus some items that leaked into the prior years that fund balance is essentially all gone now with that being said that those funds have to be used in 2425 there is not going to be any new federal funds to replace those so as you get into 26 27 28 you're going to see a lot of those expenses that are not kept in the general fund but but those are are going to have to come back to the general fund it's going to essentially decrease that fund balance very quickly and the third item is New York state aid over the past five years has jumped significantly comparing last year to five years ago you have

033a 70% increase in state aid and that's also equates of $56 million additional funding that you got in 24 when compared to 20 19 now I can't say what the state's going to be providing in future years but that's significant of an increase just it can't be relied on to continue but so you were saying about $60 million that was that was on the federal funding that's not going to be reimbursable for next year the number we heard in the past on this number was closer to around $5 to $16 million so what what is the real number of of non of re items that we're getting reimbursed to now that it's not going to be reimbursable going forward so you did spend 63 Million last year and you had 48 million available at June

03430th 24 so there there is a decent amount still sitting there as you enter this fiscal year but those have to be spent this year and even even you just compare those two numbers that's uh approximately $14 million difference between what you spent last year and what you have available for this year so Mr Smith All right so I'm just trying to figure this all out um is it the case that there is a surplus first they said it was a surplus of 30 million then it's now a surplus of 90 million so we need clarification in terms of because in the previous last year we were in a deficit of $20 million so we're given misinformation that needs to be clarified because it looks like we're not being transparent so I need you I

035don't know how we can figure this out but we need I know that it's on the agenda to do a forensic yeah all right but I just need you to explain exactly how we went from a deficit to this Surplus is it true that there's a surplus of 90 million I hear 30 million based on the following three correct like the Staffing you also mentioned the new federal funding you also mentioned the New York state aid has jumped like a 70% increase so this the three items that you just presented that totals about how much um I don't have the personnel number in front of me but the federal funding would have saved the district 63 Million last year and the state aid was 137 million last year and when you say Federal funding you're

036referring to the arpa funds correct I'm sorry when you um mentioned the federal funding you're referring to the arpa funds correct yes all the co money so we have 63 million left to spend you're saying you have 48 million left to spend you spent 63 Million last year okay so what's the total amount of unrestricted fund balance will we projected to have at the end of this year cuz we were money in the bank Surplus a rough number doesn't have to be exact I mean we know what we had in the past few years I mean we over budgeted by 30 million so we're up to close to 60 already from what was presented last week so unless I'm getting I mean just so I know Sher brought it up but we do have just

037for the public to know we are putting up on the agenda tonight to do a forensic order of the district um to go through exactly and see um but let's uh continue Mr Smith can you give us an idea of where you got to end up I mean perhaps it's a question for Mr stock I mean I I I don't know who who I'm supposed to direct this to but you know so if VI could just interject uh the the auditor um and our independent auditing firm has done an audit through June 30th of 2024 they have not been in to see any of the numbers for the current year what I gave you were projections that were done from the business office he has not looked at that yet that's work that they will

038do so I guess we'll save those question star the spring and moving through the summer so they had that for it would not be possible for Mr Smith um just spur the moment to um project what um fund Bal will be June 30th of 2025 I'd be better equipped to do that um and in in um the superintendent report later I'll be discussing a little bit about okay fund balance so does any other board members have questions how of how often do the Auditors come into the office I'm sorry what was how often do the Auditors come in and not what access do they have oh the the Auditors the Auditors the the independent audit of the school district is done at the end of each school year so they they begin their work generally

039in the spring to start work papers um they do most of the the work um starting in the summer because the the the fiscal year ends on June 30th so that during the during the early part of the school year um into the middle of the year they're not really um working in District very much at all so they don't get a chance to get involved at all in creating the budget it's it's not really typical no we were not allowed to do anything with your budget it would be an independence issue we can't do the audit if we're involved in anything match related can you repeat I'm sorry Tom could you repeat that statement uh for I think I heard if we could assist with the budget but that's something we can't do we

040can't do any management functions or we're no longer independent as Auditors what what was the unrestricted fund balance in 2022 I'm sorry I I couldn't hear that question what was the unrestricted fund balance 2022 in 22 correct uh unrestricted fund balance in 22 in the general fund was 4.4 million 2023 what was that2 okay what about in 2023 what was the unrestricted fund balance in 23 the unrestricted fund balance and the general fund was $18 million did that include the 4 million from the previous sir I ask you please not to disturb the meeting you had the chance to speak earlier did 8 million include the 4 million from the previous year yes yes how much was transferred the same year into restricted funds I'm I'm having a little trouble hearing I'm sorry how much

041was transferred the same year in 2023 how much was transferred into restricted funds that's not a figure I have uh we didn't do the 23 audit I just had the financial statements up we did do that but not figure I'd have available right at this point I think they did the same firm I I think it was the same firm sure um so going into 2024 when [Music] um how much was the how much was the UN restricted fund balance at that time unrestricted fund balance in 24 in the general fund is 31.3 million what's the reason the 18 m is there anyone who can enlight us what's the reason the 80 million was taken out of the general fund I know it was placed into the general into the expenditure for the upcoming school

042year but was what was the rationale behind it was it in other words when when when your firm did the did the audit report did they know at the time that the 80 million was into the fund balance was transferred into the fund balance unnecessarily not needing it Mr Smith I I can't hear the question repeat sorry Mr cop I believe at the time when the when the fund balance was 31 million the 18 million was not included in that 31 is that correct it's it's sorry it's too muffled I can't hear I'm sorry for some for some reason Simon's audio is very garbled we can we can hear you fine shim but for some reason the a audio from um Simon's um m Is Not Great Is it is it better now no it

043it's like you're underwater almost we can hear Sher okay can you hear me now better yes sorry thank you uh my question is when in 2024 was in the 31 million was the 80 million included in that unrestricted fund balance uh which 18 million are you referring to so if we started up the year the prior year with 80 million and the next year you said we had an unrestricted fund balance with 31 million I believe it wasn't 18 plus to Total 31 it was the 18 was removed from the F balance is that correct yes that prior 18 million is included in there so any increases in overall fund balance will get added to unrestricted and then there there's also if you're increasing or decreasing restrictions that's going to have a direct effect on

044it so the 31 million includes the 18 million from the prior year correct I believe in your report it stated differently Mr K you have the report I I don't have in front of me but I think it's on page 72 of the of your report uh that we adopt the draft that we adopted November can we pull up page 72 can we get some clarity on that yeah the the fire statements are only 67 pages so I'm not sure which I was reading out of 108 I think that we were we had we had a PDF of 108 pages uh in November yeah yeah I'm I'm not positive which wasn't wasn't 0 million removed from the fund balance transfer from the unrestricted fund balance transferred into the expenditures for 2024 I'm trying to see

045uh Tom it's page page 14 of the the uh 20 June 30th 24 audit report the supplementary schedule at at the end okay and the mdna management discussion analysis well no but the supplementary well yeah could be MDA um is the looking at the distribution of the fund balances yes I think what Mr cth is referring to is U there's the assigned um that was appropriated so the 18 million that I think that's what he's referring to okay yeah um so essentially the total increase in fund balance originally go will go to un assigned and then the board has discretion over moving some of those funds to different restrictions but that1 million in particular is the amount that's appropriated into the 25 adopted budget so it was not in the general it was not in

046the unrestricted fund balance of 31 no that $ 18 million is separate but that's essentially generated by the revenue in excess of expenditures in 24 was that removed from the unrestricted fund balance yes that would come out of unrestricted so it should be 31 million plus 18 Tech essentially that 18 million is set aside for to balance a budget but if you didn't balance a budget with that 18 million it would be closer to 49 million balance a budget for 25 20 um for 2425 for this that would be for the 2425 budget correct so if we add all these numbers and if we have a projection from um Mr Stark that this year we will end up with additional I believe $42 million in Surplus how much would that be in total hey if

047you add 32 million you $4 million of general fund fund balance 7 I'm sorry if you add $32 million to your general fund fund balance you'll have 104 million of overall fund balance at June 30th 25 when when you did the when your firm did the uh audit report in June 30 was there any indication that this 18 million that was transferred out in that was transferred into the expenditure for 2425 was there any indication that was not uh un necessarily needed or was it done for for for a specific reason or it was um was there any ill attention was that done any um by good intention or you don't have any indication on that you don't know that number is what was in the adopted budget already so that that number was already

048set and finalized before we even start the audit but as far far as I can tell I don't see how that it wouldn't indicate any bad intention because seeing now that we have for this year do Mr Stark is projecting a $42 million uh Surplus looks like that 80 million was transferred for I don't know what was the reason it was taken out of the General on on the undried unrestricted fund balance that that would not be a question I could answer that would have to be for management so Mr K me and Mr Smith you agree based of the numbers we just spoke about we're looking at about and based of Mr stocks numbers we're looking at at about $92 million I I I believe 20 is in restricted funds so let's see 31222

04990 about about 22 I believe was transferred into restricted funds B back in 2023 so around 72 million is that correct looking back the 23 financials you have yes north of point million moved into restrictions thank you can I make a comment so this is really important for everybody to understand a couple of things okay we're trying to make a decision based on information that was presented to this board by previous Administration and we're trying to chase the dog's tail to find out what happened so let me just read you what the state controller is in the process of doing this came to us on January 7th Dear Mr Dar Carlo and members of the Board of Education the division of local government and school accountability of the Office of the State Controller has selected

050the East Ramapo Central School District for an examination of your budget this exam examination will F let me finish this examination will focus on the evaluation of the district's adopted 2425 budget including historical budget estimates and prior operating results we will be contacting you soon to schedule a start date so the state controller's office has been here they met with myself and they met with Mr Stark here's the problem and I'm sure that um you know our ordor could speak to this you're trying to get information on things that were not there so when questions are being asked of how did this happen what happened the individuals that told this board and you know and then we wonder why we can't hire people this board was told last year at this time there's no money

051okay so we can't hire so we got to be fair to this board because it was presented to the let me finish please it was presented to the board that we had no money I don't know how that came about why that was presented to the board Mr Stark has said right that there were we started from Ground Zero because Mr Stark had nothing to go by so as far as I'm concern until you speak with those people to find out why they presented what they did we're we're doing a Fool's errand we're trying to find out why what was done was done but this board was presented with information that they were told we can't meet payroll we don't have money you can't hire people so now you can understand why the board is

052saying we're perplexed because last year we were told this now we're told come this school year that there's monies that they didn't know was available okay but let's understand something the state controller has still not come back with what that report is that hopefully will guide us a little bit about their findings and what they're looking at so it is important for the public to understand that the state controller's office is saying what we're all saying what happened okay so at the end of the day that's an important piece to know second piece to this and I'll go back to the board cuz I don't want to take time away everybody this is a good thing right we're we're we're we have now and you will see in the next two weeks us presenting as

053the student mentioned as as parent mentioned what we need to do for what's best for our kids right so I turn it back over for other questions to our auditor but I need to make sure everybody understands that this is being looked into by the State Controllers office we was told last year by the state just to follow up thank you you know by the state monitors last year how we're not going to make payroll in July you know and they presented us a list of cuts that we should do and the board United as one said we're not cutting any student facing Services even with a facing potential $20 million deficit we said we'll do what it takes we'll take out from reserves whatever we need to make sure that we don't cut any

054teachers and you know we budgeted for all these vacancies and we hope to fill them as a matter of fact I don't remember one resolution of any hiring of Any teacher for any vacancies that the board has opposed just the opposite we budgeted for all these vacancies and we hope to continue to fill the vacancies and we hope to hire the right teachers to service our children um and that's you know that's what we're trying to accomplish um so just to be exact to um looking back at um letters that was sent especially to uh our commissioner from our fiscal State monitor back in February where there was conversations with um the fiscal adviser that we had Capital markets and Hawkins Bond Council where it was mentioned that based on the most recent cash flow

055statement provided the district would would be in need of a cash flow financing at the start of the next fiscal year commencing July 1st 2024 we were informed that the current cash FL statement projects that the district will have positive year and results for the year of 2324 but it's projected to start 2425 with operating deficits in July 2024 August 2024 and at the end of the year of 2425 school year um and then you know it went on to talk about the financial stress and how under current market conditions how it was projected that the interest rate of the notes would be over uh 4% um and how um it could be sold in mid May 2024 to close for 2024 and that's when the conversation also took place about how the only way

056we can resolve this is by making reductions and cuts um in certain areas so this is going as far back as like you said you know us having this conversation back in February with our physical monitor who is here who was here to oversee um you know our budget so the fact that we once again like I like I've said this before we are in this situation where no one has clear answers and I'm not talking about the current administration of what's going on is an issue because a lot of us asked questions last year and I think one of the questions that you know many of us asked was well if we have so many vacancies how is it that we're going to be in a deficit and we were given different stories and

057um you know no one was ever a no one took the chance to say let me look into it before actually saying you know giving us a response and I always think that if we have receipts if we keep records of our financials um there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to go back to the books and find out what's going on and the fact that they w't able to do that then I think it's an issue because now we're in a situation where we now have more questions and we have no one to answer them because of the fact that everyone who was here then made sure they resigned or retired prior to the school year so that right there is a red flag and we need answers okay do we have any

058more questions for Mr Smith Mr Smith thank you very much for joining and I hope you have a great rest of evening thank you you too have a good night okay we will now move on we will continue this conversation with the superintendent report Mr Dar Carlo thank you very much president Rose um as you aware over the past couple of weeks uh myself and my team and the Board of Education have begun working together to present a budget to the East Ramapo community that will be fiscally responsible and sound and meet the needs of of all of our Learners it's important to understand that tonight on the 14th we'll be presenting to you our department budgets you will see some of the things that were talked about tonight that have been neglected over the

059years whether it's AP classes whether it's facilities um whether it's literacy a variety of different things that we need from professional development to materials to individuals um to give us the best and to give our students the highest quality education that we can give here at East Ramapo uh and it's important to understand this is a process the superintendent's budget is presented over a series of meetings as you know the last couple of meetings we talked about the revenue side and the expenditure side tonight we're going to get a presentation from Dr Gonzalez uh Miss Marcone um and Miss Morales with regards to the academic piece for next year's 25 2526 budget you'll see what our needs are and what those costs are on the 18th we'll be doing the same with our operational budget

060that'll be Athletics that'll be facilities that'll be fine arts and that'll be Transportation after those two presentations as a part of the superintendent's budget before it goes to the board because remember the board makes that final decision we will be presenting what that revised number is and then I'm sure the Board of Education uh and and my team will look at those numbers through April and then as you know I think the date is Kathy April 22nd that there has to be what that budget number will be so it is a process I I ask that the public and both the board um you know over the next two meetings sees what we have with regards to the budget that we think is prudent and is solid but I want to just spend a couple

061of seconds everybody understanding something okay it's clear that over the C last couple of years things that we think should have been done weren't done I can't give you back the past I can only move forward and I will let you know that I am confident in myself and my team that we we present a budget that is not skimping that meets the needs of our kids and not just for this year that is so important for you to understand this is not where we're doing it next year and we're going to be back to the same thing that we've done the past decade you know part of the struggle ladies and gentlemen is that yeah we struggle hiring people but when East Ramapo was in the paper every other day for 10 years right

062we don't have a we didn't have a contract for two and a half years right people are not going to leave other districts to come want to work here because they don't know if the place is going to be solvent or not and that's not going to happen overnight I wish I can tell you ohc that we can have all of our we can fill all these vacancies we're working hard and you're going to see that we want to go out and be proactive hiring people if you're trying to hire people everybody in September and October then you wonder why last year not this school year the year before you had students at each high school waiting a month and a half to get into a classroom that's deplorable that didn't happen this year but

063we have a lot of work to do and we're going to work hunos together to make it happen but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's going to happen overnight we have to work together and you're going to see over the next two weeks presentations what we're doing why we're doing we're going to talk about program we're going to talk about Staffing because you know and I know we've been cut to the Bone over the last 10 years because there hasn't been the money that's why I say to you we have the money let's use it let's use it effectively and let's give our kids what they need and not all kids right because their needs are not just for public they're also for non-public in some areas and that needs

064to be important somebody mentioned it let's finally work together for what's best for all and I really feel everybody that this really is the beginning of a new beginning and we're going to transform what our kids need moving forward and collectively we're going to work together so that's an important piece moving forward um with that being said now I'm going to turn it over to our assistant superintendent to give the an overview of what's happening with our academic piece so Dr Gonzalez I'll turn it over to you Katherine's going to begin good evening so investing in our future our primary goal is to provide sound education therefore it is crucial that we focus our attention on the most important aspect of Education instruction for students so we Face an important decision that will shape the

065future of our children our community and our schools the outline academic approach which includes what we support financially is a is a reflection of where we prioritize our resources we believe that in the face of these challenges there is a clear path forward one that prior izes the holistic development of our students and sets them on a path to success academically and in life over the next few slides you will see both demographic and performance data these data snapshots while not exhaustive do represent the urgency by which we should be planning and operating often times when people see data they view it to confirm their prior beliefs what they already know what we want our listeners and our audience to do is to know that these numbers represent children they represent students so use an

066asset-based mindset of the future please listen for and see the Hope in our district and how we are working to instill hope for our students the following stacked bar graph shows how various groups contribute to a whole as you can see the yellow subb bar represents the district's general education students who are not El's the green subar represents our English language Learners the blue subar represents our students with disabilities the total enrollment has steadily increased from 8,174 in 2014 to 10,235 in 2025 indicating a POS postive Trend in student numbers the total enrollment increased by 25.2% this indicates a consistent upward Trend the general category none else which is the yellow section has steadily declined from 4,360 in 2014 to 2,624 in 2025 the El's category which is the green section has shown significant growth

067increasing from 2,198 in 2014 to 2 to um my apologies to 6,29 in 2025 showing an increased demand for language support services in 2014 Els made up 26.9% of total enrollment by 2025 El's account for 60.6% of total enrollment more than tripling over the period this student with disability category which is the blue section has remained relatively stable fluctuating between 1,480 to 1,786 students suggesting a consistent population of students requiring special education services students with disabilities make up 13.7% of total enrollment a 74.7% in free and reduced lunch rate um that's nearly 3/4 of our students a 16.2% homeless rate means that more than one in six students lack stable housing now projections for 2026 and Beyond if the El's Trend continues they may represent over 65% of students by 2026 the students with disabilities

068enrollment is expected to remain stable so what are the implications increased demand for L programs bilingual Educators and language support services need for additional funding and resources for L and special education services sorry just so I get it the year previous from 2023 to 2024 let's go back a bit 2022 to 2023 there was an increase in 400 almost 400 students in enrollment 23 was increase of another 400 and then 23 to 24 it's like another almost 3 to 400 and then to 24 to 25 is only 40 is that correct so it's a 40 so corre looks like the student are you talking en I'm so sorry are you referring to the El's or to I'm just talking about total enrollment on the numbers on top oh total enrollment yes that is that is

069correct okay so okay is there any data on absentees I believe we're presenting chronic you want to repeat is there any data on absentees chronic absentees and there will be chronic absent correct yes there will be a slide on that um information shortly so I know the um data that we're looking at is up to February 24 2025 um I know in the past we used to be told that we are registering about 100 students a month how is that looking like now yeah so currently it it has an increase compared to previous year it's about the same we have registered approximately 400 students for kindergarten so far for the following for the 25 26 school year that is correct did the homeless increase I believe last year we had 14% now we're 16.2 I

070will have to get the data for last year I don't have it with me right now okay so the New York State English as a second language achievement test which is the NCIS lad is a yearly test that assesses the English language skills of English language Learners in New York state the test is given to all Els in grades K to 12 I would like to highlight the following observations so there is an increase in entering students in lower grades for example our Kinder guarding intering students increased from 33% to 42% grades two to C to grade six saw a slight increase in the entering category suggesting incoming students with lower English proficiency more newcomer students are entering the system requiring additional language acquisition supporting early grades a steady progression of students moving from entering

071to emerging shows a successful language intervention system but also highlights the need for continual L instruction our transitioning students Hold Steady some grades such as grade five saw an increase from 21% to 28% and grade 12 from 31% to 34% while some students are making progress Others May stall at the trans transitioning level requiring more targeted academic language development our expanding and commanding students shows some gains while students are advancing fewer are fully exit in L Services meaning that they still need language support recommendations need for more support in early grades that means kindergarten to grade two we need targeted support for transitioning students um the low percentage of students reaching commanding suggest a need for more academic language integration in subject areas increase teacher training on L strategies and expand after school language programs

072this slide represents the grades 3 through eight assessment data for both Ela and math uh there are two ways to interpret the chart that's before you uh this is the chart that was shared back in October so the first way to interpret the chart is is to look straight down the column from 2023 and 2024 by grade to see how those grade bands are performing so you'll you'll note that in 2023 third graders performed at a rate of 12% and in 2024 third graders performed at a rate of 11.87% the second way to review this data is a cascading view so what you can look at is in 2023 the Third graders performed at a rate of 12% and in 2024 those are now fourth graders they increased their academic performance to a rate of

07317.2% and so what you'll notice is if you look at the cascading view that there is an increase from year to year across all of our of our elementary school grades and then a precipitous drop at our middle Year's grades so for example in fifth grade 2023 the students performed at a rate of 18% proficiency and in sixth grade 18.7% effic uh proficiency but if you look at grade six in 2023 they performed at a rate of 28% proficiency and in 2024 those are now the seventh graders performed at a rate of 18.18 proficiency so on average the East rmo Central school district grades 3 through 8 Ela performance for 2024 is 18.9 9% that's less than 19% of our students testing proficient whereas the state average for 2024 is 46% uh the math chart

074represents similar data and I won't read through all of those numbers but what I have done is I've prepared for you a table that shows our subgroup these are our three largest subgroups subgroups are identified by the New York State education department when you have 30 or more students that fit that subgroup so when you look at the students with disabilities performance for both 2023 and 2024 in English language arts they're at 7 and 6% respectively our English language Learners are performing at a rate of 3% and our economically disadvantaged students at 20 and 177% respectively in ela uh the numbers are very similar in math um I'll just highlight the subgroup data which shows that our students with disabilities are performing at a rate of 6 and 8% respectively for 23 and 24 English

075language Learners 4 and 7% and the economically disadvantaged students at 17 and 19% respectively do you mind I mean because I mean both of these scores are are bad that I mean but I I do see in math there was some kind of improvement at least we see a minimal upward Trend in 23 24 as opposed to in the ELA we see a downward Trend would you mind you know perhaps filling Us in why do you so and also if you can talk a bit about why you feel like that the Middle grades are where the issue is yeah that that's a a a great acknowledgement president Rose so two things one is uh math is widely known as a universal language so it is a little bit easier for students to grasp Concepts um

076we do still see a language barrier not just represented in the data but when we are in classrooms uh our teams from all of our assistant superintendent uh offices have been visiting schools in an official capacity conducting learning walks and so what we also see inside the classrooms is a um certainly a shift in how math instruction is being delivered uh but there are significant language barriers that continue to exist for for students in both Ela and math um what we are going to do about it we'll we'll get to that in just a few slides but but um you know there there are a lot of factors that impact this in terms of the the Middle grades um this is not simply an East ripo Central School District issue um that is usually the

077grade level when uh what's called bright flight happens so parents will remove their children and send them to a uh a private institution a private school for Middle grades up through high school um it's my understanding that over the last few years some data has been prepared that shows the significant impact that our teachers from our district have when students stay in district grades 4 through 12 uh but those are just some of the uh preliminary findings that we have identified so far so if I remember correctly um I think another issue too I don't know if it's still issue now or if we even have the numbers from 23 24 is that a lot of parents were opting their Stu their kids out of taking the exam um do we know what the numbers

078were for 23 24 of students opting out and the more students I would think would help our numbers as opposed to hurt us so what are we going to do moving forward to make sure that our students are prepared to take this these exams and for our parents to understand um the importance of having their child or children take this exam that's a great observation trusty Charles Pierre so um the first thing is that uh the community needs to understand that they certainly have a right to hold their children out of testing um but I I'm I I'd be remiss if I didn't share how damaging that is to the school and to the district uh first of all typically um and this is anecdotally what we hear is the students that are being held

079out are usually the more informed students the higher performing students so that certainly skews the data in in one way um what you should know is since our executive director of uh assessment and Innovation Mr leoen has come on board we've actually reached out to the State education department to see if an appeal could be filed in terms of what we have found in terms of discrepancies for how students were counted there are two specific ways schools are rated uh in terms of uh 3 through eight testing it's participation rate are you testing all of your students and then performance so this data is only the performance I will certainly prepare some information for you on our participation rates uh what we have found is we there's some systems and structures internally that we can

080change that would help to offset that uh but it is it is absolutely crucial that families uh have a clear understanding how that impacts that negatively impacts a school when students Do not sit for the exams and has it gone 100% to uh students taking these exams online or is it still um handr yeah good question so um depends on the assessment grades three through eight are all CBT which are computer-based testing uh we we just had a discussion today about our um English language Learners that are entitled to a PBT a paper based test um so we are working with schools right now to to balance between both of those um because we are a onetoone district and uh the the Tim team under Mr Gandhi's leadership uh make sure that every student has

081a device we also have a few extra ra devices at schools so we are well prepared for both the CBT and the paper based test this year and is there any way to maybe um see how maybe effective it is for students who are doing paper based versus computer based yeah that's a that's a question we haven't figured out yet right so so um Mr Dar Carlo brought up today these you know these computer-based tests are they really testing aptitude of technology or are they testing aptitude in the Contex area um what we here's what we do know is up until February of 2020 all of the research said that we were not using technology enough and then February of 2021 the research started showing that we're using technology too much um and at a

082at a much faster rate so this is part of us sort of keeping up with the the the way that public education is moving so it's it's certainly necessary to have students on devices so that they can learn how to manipulate and and uh you know be successful on the assessments you know what too Dr Gonzalez you know even as an educator you know we see these numbers and I I was trying to think back like what's happening um keep in mind too and I think you would agree with me that um we went through the co years where a lot of students wasn't receiving that onetoone instruction so I think too we're slowly surely getting it back where we're back to um pencil to paper so keep in mind I think everyone should keep

083in mind because I had to remind myself I'm like well why are the numbers so low but remember that we did go through a time where where we had uh covid you know where students wasn't receiving that instructional piece that is really necessary to be successful yeah yes agreed thank you so moving on to sharing just a a snapshot of our high school data uh here's what's important to know that what's the the green represents the uh East Ramapo Central School District so that's both of our high schools graduation performance uh and the graduation performance for the 2020 cohort that's what's before you is any student that entered High School anywhere on the planet in 2020 they should have graduated four years later uh the overall District average is just below 80% the New York

084State average for this year this cohort year is 86% uh what we do also know is that each of our high schools are performing at a a significantly different pace for example Ramapo High School their graduation rate was 81.6 5% for this cohort year and Spring Valley High School's graduation rate was 54.0 n% for this year so we have some work to do in terms of making sure that we're creating access and equity for students at both of our high schools to uh have a a more clear path towards graduation um and in the subsequent slides you'll see a little bit about how we're looking to redesign and innovate our approach to the high schools uh the chart on the right is represents the chronic absenteeism so chronic absenteeism is categorized by any student with

085less than 90% attendance so if a student is absent our students attend school for 180 days so 10% of that is 18 days so if a student is absent 18 days for the entire year they're considered chronically absent and that stays with them for the entirety of the year so even if they miss the first 18 days and then have perfect attendance they are still marked as chronically absent um of the students enrolled in our two high schools more than 49% are listed as chronically absent so you'll you'll see later how we're going to pour some efforts into helping to offset that so um in the past we've had an attend I think task force it was called um is that something that is still in place where we have a team that goes um

086more so door too to find out why students are missing school and also with the um notion with the 18 days does that include if it's what if it's a medical reason so there are codes to uh to entering attendance and we can certainly work with the State education department within the codes that they have to to offset that but an absence is an absence so if they're not physically in school it is considered an absence unless of course the medical is uh uh inclusive of instruction while they're either under the care of a physician in a medical facility or at some other some other facility to address your your first question uh superintendent D Carlo has issued a um a directive and Mike Smith is working with our School principles to not only evaluate

087and review the the measures that they that each school has in place to address chronic absenteeism but is also reporting back to central office so that we can support it from our level as well what is the national average for chronic absentees I don't know but that's a great question I will look that up so you're telling me that um there's about 4,000 students in the district that are chronically absent yes is anybody looking after that or so we as I just mentioned Mr Dar Carlo our superintendent just uh launched a an Initiative for us to really track that and actually it was on the heels of one of our remote learning days that uh we realized that we actually had more students logging in than we may have anticipated in the first place um

088so when as we sort of walk through the rest of the the slides and share the budget information with you the implications of what uh what What's built into to the instructional side of the budget uh that that's one of the options that we're exploring when somebody logs in do you know who LS in I'm sorry somebody logs in remotely do you know who logs in we do have we track that yes are those students or strangers oh no students we track the students that are logging in on remote learning days yes we so out of the 10,000 over 10,000 children that are enrolled in this schools he saying four close to 4,000 are chronically not coming to school that's correct just that our high schools alone almost 50% of the students are uh now

089remember that's chronically absent as as it relates to the definition used by the state is less than 10% uh more than 10% absence right is there another category that we can see how of know between 18 180 we can prepare reports that show uh slots like 90% or or more 80% or more uh what we do know is for the subsequent years for 25 2026 school year and moving forward the definition of CR chronic absenteeism and those uh state issued numbers will be changing a little bit so we'll have to make some adjustments moving forward uh but for the current data and the current school year we're operating under the 90% threshold I believe the board has requested for over a year already to get uh reports on those coron these I will prepare some

090reports just moving forward we might want to consider bringing back we used to have an individual like specifically for attendance and I know that you know with my kids if they were absent from school that individual would give a call to the parent to find out is everything okay or what's the reasoning you know so on and so forth so I think that one day we might need to consider bringing that back where you do have someone in charge of that to keep track and then that way we I don't think we would have such a high number we something to we have had that conversation and we will explore it further traditionally there's something like a true officer I believe other districts do have it right so I I can say that um I

091personally if my I do get calls so if my son misses a a period um I do get phone an automated phone call that um he did not show up to that class so I don't know if the issue now more so is with telephone numbers changing more constantly to where maybe parents are not getting the calls so we might have to look at another way um to make sure that parents are being notified when their child is not in school yes we we do use the automated system um I think among the Sation we've had which is what the the deis is sharing is there's also nothing like a personal touch in having someone Reach Out mhm just just for the board's information according to the school boards Association The Chronic absenteeism at elementary

092middle in the 2223 school year was 26.4% and at the high school level it was 34.1% but again that's 2223 so that would be a year before what this dat is showing yeah it it is a crisis that all public schools are facing can we get a I'm sorry can we get a breakdown what was the max day that maximum amount of days that a student was uh not a a single student amount of days for each student for each of those students I know it starts by 18 going up to what what was the max break down and a break down an amount of students that was 22 days amount of students that were 25 days and so forth we will work on that schools do have their own reports for students so they

093they do track the students on a daily basis uh to to make sure that they are attending schools um we'll prepare an aggregate number for uh for the board and I think we also have to make sure that um over the years that um we didn't miss the fact that there was a possibility that students may have left the district or um you know that just making sure that it was it was recorded properly absolutely um because I I know there are times that students still go to other districts or um you know there's there's never a followup so we don't know what happens to them you know out of that 30 or 49 uh% how many of them are actually returning back the following year so keeping that data and and knowing what's actually

094happening um could also help us yep attendance I will say that Miss Morales and her team upon registration because it really starts in kindergarten the importance of coming to school every day that's the foundation and you know what what in the role that she's doing she's explaining to parents as they are registering our fivey RS how important is to be in school every single day you can't learn if you're not here right so that's a you know if we can start to do that early on and set that that bar and tone it'll go a long way as you know in our high schools we have to be very honest a lot of our kids have to work they have to put bread and butter on the table for their families so you know that

095that that that that adds a lot now you're going to see where we're trying to be creative in the future to address some of that in the budget what we're looking at when it comes to you know credit recovery and other things but you're right it's a it's an issue that we have to address and um there needs to be as I think vice president um had said to us is we have to formalize this and and make sure it's across the schools and we're adhering to whatever those procedures and Protocols are I have a question the the testing the testing rates that we were shown before does that include students I mean I guess they're not getting tested if they're not at school or are they getting tested and that's why some of the

096scores are so low because they're not in school at all I mean so right as I mentioned there are two ways that the state monitors that it's through participation rate so if the student is absent then we don't receive credit for them having uh taken the test on participation rate and potentially if they are some of our high Achievers where they would have scored a little bit higher obviously we don't uh receive those credits as well because they didn't sit for the test so the the only thing I want to add to what Mr der Carlo said is that we also have to understand that a lot of our families don't have stable living conditions so they might be in a home today and tomorrow not know where they're going to be so um we

097also have to take all of that into consideration when we look at these numbers um with our students absolutely so at the most fundamental level the data that has been shared up to this point indicates that our district needs reform and transformation as a means to achieve whole District reform we will be using this research-based approach called the four domains for Rapid School Improvement as we share this evening you'll see how we are placing re uh resources human capital efforts time and of course money across our district through these four domains leading to transformation in total there is $16.5 million set aside to support new instructional initiatives and staff that are in the slides to follow so to improve our Ela and math scores graduation rates and chronic absenteeism we are implementing a multi-tiered system

098of support which is a systemic evidence-based framework that uses datadriven decision-making to address students academic behavioral social emotional and mental health needs within an mtss system a district would want to see 80% or more of their students responding to their core instruction tier one universal supports they would have about 10 to 15% of students requiring tier 2 interventions in small groups in addition to tier one supports and about 5% of students that would require tier three intensive supports in addition to Tier 1 and tier supports currently 80% of our students are performing below grade level resulting in an upside down inverted triangle where the majority of students require additional support to address our inverted triangle we are are redesigning our core instruction and tier one universal supports this redesign will embed both tier one and

099tier 2 interventions directly into the classroom environment ensuring students receive research-based curriculum and evidence-based interventions as part of their daily instruction additionally students identified as needing further support will receive targeted tier 2 and tier three interventions to meet their individual needs with regards to our student services our leadership strategy will Center on fostering close collaboration between district and school-based teams we will equip our leaders with the tools they need to address not only academic needs but also the social emotional and mental health needs of every student additionally we will ensure that principles are thoroughly trained in their roles with a strong FOC focus on equity and legal compliance so they are fully prepared to support every student effectively we will Foster a schoolwide culture of inclusion creating programs that respect linguistic and cultural diversity every

100student regardless of their background or ability will have equal access to academic social and emotional supports our efforts will also include strong Family Outreach and peer mentorship to strengthen the sense of of community and belonging our approach to Talent Development will include robust professional development opportunities for all student services staff we'll build collaborative networks and mentorship programs that not only enhance skills but also Foster seamless collaboration between General and special education teachers this unified approach will ensure stronger more effective supports for our students quality instru will go beyond academics we will Implement a multi-tiered system of support to address the diverse needs of our students Guided by ongoing data analysis and by empowering our instructional Leaders with Innovative evidence-based strategies we will drive continuous Improvement in teaching and learning across all departments this plan outlines

101a comprehensive approach to improving literacy and language acquisition here's the breakdown of the key elements and their impact leadership training in the new curriculum adoption promoting culturally responsive pedagogy encouraging collaboration between Specialists and classroom teachers supporting a language Rich environment learning environment and training school leaders on Universal Design for Learning strong leadership is essential for driving instructional change ensuring teachers are trained and monitoring student progress for timely interventions for culture creating an affirming Student Center environment that values linguistic and cultural diversity using visual aids and Hands-On activities to support comprehension encouraging students to use their first language to support their English language development incorporating assistive technology for students with disabilities a welcoming and inclusive culture improves engagement and language acquisition by making learning more relatable to students backgrounds for talent development dedicated collaboration time for

102teachers also known as plc's professional learning communities professional development in language acquisition differentiation and Scaffolding training Educators in individualized education plan alignment and literacy intervention for students with disabilities investing in teacher collaboration and professional growth enhances the ability to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of diverse Learners lastly quality instruction so a focus on the science of reading based instruction virtual learning options to expand access create supportive learning environments using visuals vocabulary strategies real world connections and providing home language support explicit system systematic phonics instruction with scaffolding and multi-sensory techniques integrating structured literacy approaches and interactive differentiated instruction ensures language growth for all student groups just a quick question um I know at the top for leadership it says training in the new curriculum adoption and this is for uh next next school year do

103we currently have curriculums in place I know I've heard complaints in the past where there is no ELA curriculum or math curriculum um do we have an update on that so there there is curricula in place uh for ELA and math um in fact one of the challenges that we have found is that schools have created their own Avenue to implement a curriculum and so there are a a number of curricula that are being implemented across the district uh so one of the uh directions that superintendent D Carlo has asked us to take is to create a funneled approach so that we're not asking schools to completely disregard curriculum that they've been trained in but we are creating a universal approach for example to the science of reading and uh phonics development um and so

104there there will be one curriculum that will be implemented across every school so that irrespective of where a student is enrolled and attends school they're receiving the same instruction but we are sort of asking the teachers to continue to hold on to that professional development that they've received materials that they've received that can be used as supplemental to the uh Core curriculum for implementation throughout the year okay and and not only that too having that Universal um curriculum also helps with teachers for whatever reason if they had to be moved from building to building yes yeah but you know with Dr Gonzalez we have to make sure too that even though we have two high schools we have to make sure we're all on the same page in terms of the curriculum because one high

105school is doing something other than what the other high school is doing so now when I think about the numbers for the graduation rate right I think you said 80 something per at Ramapo and then Spring Valley was lower so I think it's imperative that and I know Dr I know Mr Dar Carlo is going to make sure of that that the high school's curriculum basically they're following the same curriculum so if they do leave from one high school to the other just in case they'll still they won't be behind absolutely and the terminology that we're using is one high school on two campuses yes so perfect uh the New York State education department classifies schools that require support into one of these categories the further up you travel on the triangle the more intense

106the support needed as you can see there are four CSI schools or comprehensive School and Improvement comprehensive support and Improvement they are Fleetwood Elementary Summit Park Elementary El Dorado intermediate and Pomona Middle School these four schools were already identified as such in the current school year so for the 20242 current school year they were identified as CSI moving into the 2526 school year they will remain under that designation there is one atsi school that is additional targeted support and Improvement that is Spring Valley High School which also was already classified as an atsi school for the 20124 2025 school year there are three TSI schools or targeted support and Improvement these are all identified new into the 2025 2026 school year so if I'm hearing correctly you're saying that um all of our elementary schools

107I believe believe it was all of our elementary schools that were in good standing are now either CSI or t TSI kakiat Elementary is not listed is not listed but by and large R not listed correct so those are the only three in good standing that's correct and Hemstead and hemad that's correct interesting okay thank you so that sense of urgency that we did discussed earlier uh so identified schools will receive additional support in the form of added academic intervention services providers and instructional coach uh it is our goal to support these schools by adding an additional reading interventionists the data will guide these decisions of course and in the event that Staffing all of the positions presents challenges we will be working to fill these positions first materials and costs are only reflective of

108the operating budget each of the identified schools does receive supplemental funding through title one which of course is no guarantee but does provide opportunities for schools to offer supplemental support to students and staff via professional development among some highlighted areas of support we will be investing in leaders through coaching mentoring and access to professional development school le data teams will be put in place to help monitor student progress and all Learners including our English language Learners and students with disabilities will be provided it will be provided with the necessary interventions Dr Gonzalez I don't mean to keep interrupting you but I think it's just to give you some suggestions too maybe perhaps um looking at that with the identifi schools just a question do we have conversations deep conversations with administrations from each building in

109regards to all of this are we getting their input I think that's important so thank you uh vice president Mill the the short answer to that is yes we have begun conducting learning walks in fact with members of other schools in our district at each other schools so that we're using a specific lens to look at instruction uh we are also um shifting how we are handling our principal meetings and assistant principles meetings to provide them uh not just information but some professional development how to look at data how to track those uh students that can make a difference and built into the 2025 26 school year uh through the implementation of a master schedule that allows for PLC time as well as through investments in our budget you'll see that we are providing some

110professional development for that as well for those data teams so now on to innovating our high school experience um our high schools which are often seen as the flagship School within a district will be transformed through leadership support by focusing on College and Career Readiness enacting a comprehensive counseling plan and working to expand offerings in CTE that's Career and Technical education this will be done along uh this will be done alongside the streamlining of courses offered so that as the young man that spoke earlier uh mentioned we are providing access to more rigorous courses which include dual enrollment courses which means a student can receive both High School Credit and college credit at the same time for being enrolled uh as well as an expansion of the CTE uh programs when interim superintendent D Carlo

111does his student circles um almost every single time that comes up by the students is that they want to see U they want to have access to more rigorous coursework and they want to access to coursework that would help prepare them for the jobs they're doing now as well as the jobs of the future uh lastly we're also exploring virtual learning options for students this is a widely utilized approach across high schools not just in New York but across the country uh and especially in post High School world right so the postsecondary world is full of virtual learning options uh just to name a few of the ways that we want to innovate the high school exper experiences we would like to invest in uh Personnel expanding the administrative support to include Deans which would

112actually pick up a lot of the attendance issues uh in addition to the social emotional learning component that goes along with that um and then through the writing of curriculum so we do use Atlas Rubicon as a repository for our curriculum so we're looking at holding some stiens uh in place for teachers to continue to write and expand on the curriculum that that exists so that it can be uploaded into Atlas Rubicon so I know we're talking about the experience of high schools but I believe I heard there were talks about um possibly making our sixth grade now middle school as opposed to leaving it in elementary school is that something that we're looking into I can speak to that yes and when when I said to you it's not for this school year it's

113it's it's it's impossible to do but part of the plan moving forward is exactly that what we're learning is there for some kids there's so many different transitions right number one number two if you can go back to the K5 68 912 model that's the best way to go um but there's just so much that goes behind that um and I have to be honest with you starting this year and uncovering a lot but that's the goal we're going to we're going to we're stud once this cycle is over we're going to be studying it over the summer and next year and then look to the viability right because in order to do that we have to make sure we have the room number one which you know I know Matt is here and we're

114going to be looking at that and then if we're going to do it we want to let the public know next fall that it's something we're going to do that's transportation that we have to look at um because we think it makes a lot of educational sense moving forward so yes it is something that's been discussed um and down the road we're looking to go back to that traditional model yes okay and I think it would also align with um um the other districts in the county because I believe that's how they have it aligned yeah thank you yeah Dr Carlo just make sure to I think it's imperative to have that conversation when it's time with uh staff as well you know teachers and the administration as well so in closing we believe that

115this instructional plan is focused on academics invest in accountable skilled and passionate teachers builds leadership skills across all levels and includes the extra supports our students need and deserve our children deserve the best education possible and this is this can only happen when leadership prioritizes these outcomes and when our student and when our school fiscal resources are aligned to their needs in order to provide a learning experience filled with instructional rigor the necessary interventions Innovation and hope and so I'd like to leave you with a quote from one of my favorite authors and writers and civil rights activist James Baldwin where he says for these are all our children we will either profit by or pay for what they become thank you I have a question is there a budget or any money available for

116teachers for extra Learning Materials like gadgets for the kids to promote them because I've gotten several phone calls from different teachers in the district dist so is is the question around training they're not getting reimbursed for anything like it training and professional development to attend conferences is that is that what I'm hearing no not conferences um things that teachers need to system and promote basic supplies and materials there are absolutely funds set aside for supplies and materials at every school level in fact one of the uh key components to the process that Mr Stark used this year and helping principles create their own budgets was to help allocate and create a line for materials and supplies thank you thank you I'm thank you as was mentioned before we just go back to the original slide

117that I I had given to the community and the board a number of sessions ago you know we're looking to you know looking at long range plans the importance of um encouraging and as I mentioned before in the beginning of this a reallocation of resources to maximize student outcomes provide as you just mentioned trustee feder the materials and professional development to our faculty in order to prove literacy in our student population um we're going to be and we as you can see looking at Sal projections and all new positions over the course of the next couple of sessions and what's really important about this too is we are looking through and I said it's good to have some additional monies is as you know because of our our uh you know fiscal status we're looking

118with some of these monies and Mr stalk will talk to you about it and he did is to start some putting aside some money so we can do some of that Capital Project work um as we move forward not just this year and for years to come um and we've been working with um our assistant superintendent for funding uh Mr Shanahan and Mr Stark are really working very closely together to transfer some of what's been in our title Monies to the a fund to be very proactive um in regards to making sure we have these um funds available to us um you know as a a part of the regular routine of our a fund budget um and then as we talked about you know I mentioned to you part of you're seeing this Revenue

119increase is twofold it's because fing this district is getting the money it's been short changed for so long and as I mentioned to you back in the fall the importance about Foundation it and you'll see that in this run we did get substantially a lot more money for two reasons one because the the state finally did not go by the year 2000 poverty rate but came back to 2223 which had a big impact on our foundation Aid and the second piece again this is the work that's been done by assistant superintendent Morales and her team is properly coding our L students so those two issues had a a big um amount of monies that we were got gotten this year when regards to extra funding and Foundation 8 so um that is the report um

120I thank the board for listening and the interaction with your questions and now I'm going to turn over to Mr Stark um to PR quickly review some of the questions that had come up from our last board meeting with regards to monies and caps and where we're at Mr Stark thank you um and uh before I go there one of the things that I wanted to do was to to thank uh our team so um including our our leader yourself and everybody else that you just heard from um this would be the 18th budget in my career that I have been a part of um and there have been over that course of time um varying levels of collaboration um but this year in building this budget which we had to do really from scratch

121um this uh team was probably the most collaborative um in terms of uh our group and then reaching out to the principals and other um directors who are sitting in the audience um so I just want to thank everybody for all the work that they did because uh putting a budget of this size together takes a massive amount of work and um everybody chipped in and did a great job yeah and and just to Echo that because I think this is important because we're we don't want to be in the same situation I can let you know that Mr far our our state monitor for fiscal oversight and um Dr jallow for our academic oversight have been involved with us from the get-go in in presenting this budget so this is a collaboration I don't

122want to lose sight of what may have happened in the past um you know we're we we work together they understand what's in front of them they review it they have conversations with us they question us so this is definitely a partnership that I need the public to understand understand I understand your angst and your upsetment about might what have might have happened in the past and as I said I can't give you the pass back but I can tell you in working through this budget we are all working together there are no surprises so Mr Stark I just wanted to Echo that so thank you thank you and then um I'd also like to thank those of you that are still here and know you're the the survivors of of the long story this

123evening I know there are more people watching at home and we appreciate you all still being on um because we're trying to provide you with as much information as we possibly can so that an informed decision can be made when we uh have a vote in May um so just to review a few things that we did in terms of the financial side of the budget the tax cap which has been put in place um by um the legislature about 12 years ago requires us to do a maximum allowable tax levy the calculation which I reviewed in detail at the last meeting is in front of you again um and that maximum allowable increase in the tax levy um is 2.99% in the current um Revenue budget that we have uh put forth as a

124draft um is not asking for that it is uh merely asking for 1.49% and again this too is a draft there is we're listening to all of the conversation that we hear um from the board members from the community um and that's the purpose of having open board meetings about a budget so that we can get all of the feedback and make informed decisions to present the final budget to the board uh which they would then um adopt and send out for the vote so um the revenue budget that you see in front of you um has uh in it of course as I mentioned a 1.49% increase in the tax levy again for the third year in a row another important piece of what has been happening when we talk about fund balance is

125we received a very large increase in the state aid that we are receiving from the state of New York so you can see here on the third line our state aid is going up from 151 million to 167 million it's an increase of 16 million do and an increase of 10.7% there are not a lot of school districts in Rockland County or the state that are receiving that large of an increase in their state a this year a lot of that has there are several factors that H that that um attributed to that um one one important factor is that the state finally started to look at the wealth ratios that are used to to do some of the formula based AIDs that had been in place for years and years and years which were

126really hurting the East Ramapo Central School District because in the past it was a wealth community and needier districts tend to receive more Aid under the formulas so that has been corrected and over the past few years you have seen that our Aid has been increased um other things as I mentioned in our in our past meeting is that we're correcting some long-standing errors in both the revenue and um in the expenditure budgets so you will see this year a number of variances which are the the the numbers that are in the change Colum you'll see you have an 83% increase in Pilots a 94% decrease in tuitions an 86 uh% decrease in other income so we are trying to put things into the proper buckets and accurately Budget moving forward I am hopeful that

127when we show you this um next year it will have much more reasonable changes um from year to year ju just a quick comment about the previous slide I'm sorry just a quick comment about about the previous slide and you know this is what we're hearing out in the community um let's just review here for a second the past three years we all agree that we over budgeted by $30 million each year correct not you per se no no no I'm I I'm not taking it personally I'm we let's put it this way we spent less $30 million each year than what was budgeted yes that is correct now you're saying that we have how many vacancies do we have right now um the vacancies I think were approximately 120 or so so right so

128a big part was associated with with the vacancies um yes my recomend I mean you know as we discussed before we were told that we're facing major crisis um we approved the 1% increase the the voters approved the 1% increase and then we were the commissioner imposed a Draconian additional 4.38% increase on top of it so this year we're saying oh we're not going to spend even close to the 338 this year we're going to be spending 200 closer to 295 million we still have the 100 vacancies that we didn't fill um the enrollment is not increasing as much as it used to in the past um I don't understand how how why we can't go out to the community and you know and say let's let's keep the budget as it was projected this

129year let's fill the vacancies that we have first before we start adding another 70 vacancies another 70 positions when we can't fill over a 100 positions let's fill the current positions that we have now and let's see let's focus on that I mean even 100 is is is a big number to fill a one year so we're going to add another 70 vacancies and we're going to add when we when when we spent less 40 million that was budgeted and we're going to say okay you know what we're going to add another 20 million based on what H how can we explain that well I I it's a question but I think that um between today and the other meetings as we're moving forward we we will do our best in attempting to explain that

130one of the things that you saw in an earlier um presentation from our educational um side was our test results and the results of our students perhaps because of the hundred of vacancies that we have right now let's fill the vacancies that's I'm saying let's why can't we keep the current budget as is keep it the number that we the the initial number which is 331 not the 338 which is the additional um Levy impos but let's keep the budget as is let's fill the vacancies let's let's foree we have 100 right now let's fill the vacancies that we have first before we add more people so so what so we're going to add another 70 people so next year we'll have an additional $20 million that are that that's sitting unspent we have to

131fill the vacancies we heard what what the needs are we need to fill these vacancies first before we can start adding additional positions and add additional I mean we're ending up spending last year $295 million we're going to come into to the community and say oh we're going to spend this year $350 million well you know let's fill what we have okay I that that I mean that's that's that's that's what I'm hearing out there and that that's the way I look at it okay um I I completely understand what you're what you're saying um what we have done in building the budget is built a budget that has all of the positions in it that we believe are necessary to properly run the district in a way that will improve the results that we

132have and make our students successful and the bottom line is is that right now that is not the case so we've built this budget uh in in a way that we believe is the correct way and when when I get to another little piece a little bit later I think some of it will maybe make a little bit more sense but um let me try and get there okay so um again here uh just in terms of the revenues one of the things that is added in there is a fund balance appropriation for capital projects um you see that at the bottom and that's an appropriation for approximately $5 million in work um and I think we outlined that also at the last board meeting so um an important part of the conversation is um

133with with the whole issue of what's been happening with the fund balance is where did the fund balance come from and the fund balance uh has come from over the past several years primarily an increase in in the aid from the state of New York so we we had shown a donut uh graph of the revenue projection for next year uh last week which is the one on the left in this slide this year at this meeting we've added the three previous years to show that what the state has done over the past few years has had a large effect on how the breakdown of the revenue budget has has moved so if you see in 2223 property tax made up 60% of the Budget moving forward to the projected budget for next year the

134revenue uh the portion of the of the of the revenue budget made that property tax makes up I can't speak for some reason is down to 47% conversely in 2223 state aid was less than 37% of the budget and in next year's budget it's 48% so that movement has been happening slowly as we've received these large increases in um state aid this is this is a breakdown of of our fund balance from the 20 thou 20145 school year through the 2023 24 school year so the ending with June of at at the at the end of the the previous school year not this current year but that ended with the audit report that um was presented presented to the board in June of uh 24 okay so um there I I put this in so

135that everybody has the opportunity to look at it I'm not going to try and go through these numbers they're very small um but there's a very um what happened to there was another slide oh there it is it's it's added in the bottom I thought it was on the next slide that's why I went to the next slide so on the bottom now you see um just a summary of the change that has happened over that 9-year period so over a 9-year period the property taxes in the district supporting the budget have gone up by 7% or $10 million so from $150 million to $161 million the state aid on the other hand has gone from 59 million to 137 million that's an increase of 131% over the same period of time so when we

136talk about the fact that this fund balance has grown yes that is true it's only really grown if you look at the at the numbers uh on on what's presented to you um when you look at um the year end fund balance uh you'll see that at the end of 21 it was negative at the end of 22 it was 4 million this is the full fund balance not restricted and unrestricted all together it went from 4 million to 38 I'm sorry 39 million at the end of 23 in June June of 23 and then in June of 24 it was at 72 million and yes we are projecting another Surplus this year but that Surplus has been built off of aid from the state of New York it has not been a burden that

137has been placed on the local taxpayer so we just wanted to make sure that everybody um was able to see this if I if I may ask does this go ahead if I may sorry go back to it no it's okay does the state aid um when when when you show any increase in state aid does that include any reimbursement for mandated uh Services yes but primarily the increases that we I'm sorry I'm not speaking at the mic primarily the increases that we have seen have been uh for the formula based AIDS um we do receive um the larger piece of what of the aid that we receive is is in Foundation Aid which is a Formula based Aid which is based on student population wealth ratios and various other factors as to what where

138the student population is classified within the different types of Learners um and then there are expense driven AIDS which are like Transportation Aid um Bose Aid um high cost special education student aid so those all go up and down based upon your usage in the previous years right we know that which is the primary primary Aid that we receive which is the largest chunk is based on a formula and that is the piece that the state has been working on correcting over the past three years and that's the area where we have seen the largest increase thank you going back to your uh presentation to your chart Revenue budget breakdown for uh the 20 Page the graphs correct page 37 um if I remember well well I don't know if it was 20 2022 2023

139I believe the arpa fund some of the arpa fund was removed from the general budget and it was not included in the in this balance is that correct is that for the year 2022 2023 no so this is the revenue budget this is not fund balance okay so this is the revenue budget not the expenditure budget this is the money that we bring in as opposed to the money that's going out when the adjustment was made made with the money for the arpa funds those were expenditures in the general fund that were moved out and reduce the expenditures for that year but that wasn't on the revenue side that was on the expenditure side okay so and that did increase the fund balance that year by the same amount because it didn't affect the revenues

140the revenues all came in and but we we um moved those expenditures into a federal fund which was going to expire so we were getting those monies before they expired which was you know a really good move for the district and I guess the next year the state picked up whatever the arpa didn't cover that we should still keep those services so the the the expenditures that were transferred into the arpa fund for 20324 school year are in the current Year's budget and being paid for out of the a fund thank you so uh just another another piece here on um the the taxes um what you'll see here this is this is a a graphic illustration of the full value tax rate history of Rockland County school districts over the past 25 years approximately

141starting with 2000 um what you see in this graph is that um East ripo is the is the dark red line um it began um right in the middle um it was uh the full value tax rate of the East Ramapo Central School District was midway amongst all of the districts in Rockland County um since that time as you can see that red line uh around 2014 is now below all of the other districts and getting down towards um 2024 um it is significantly lower than the next lowest District which I believe is Clarkstown this is a different representation of that which is looking at the full value tax rate of every other school district in Rockland County based upon East Ramapo being 100% so um you can see that in the Years uh up

142until 2011 there were other districts uh up until 2011 only Clarkstown was still below um but um when we first looked at this in 2000 um East Ramapo was right in the middle there were one two three four F four districts that were below and uh three districts that were above so rock East Ram is right in the middle moving forward to I'm sorry do you mind explaining what you mean by full value tax rate please I'm sorry do you mind explaining what you mean by full value tax rate so yes so full value tax rate means that the amount of tax that um a taxpayer pays on $1,000 worth of value on their home okay um and full value means that it's not based on what the town says your tax rate is because

143every town has different assessed values so the state has something called Equalization rates where they put um so that every town and district and Village can um understand what their rates are on equal fo okay so when we talk about the full value rate that means the one that has been equal equalized by uh the New York State Office of Real Property Services to put everyone on an even playing field okay so what what this is showing is that um for example with with Clarkstown in um in 2000 Clark Town's full value tax rate um so let's also pretend that East rapos was it was was $1 because we're we're using we're using this um example they paid um $1 on every $100 worth of value in taxes in Clarkstown they were only paying 76

144cents in North Rockland they were paying a120 and so on and so forth so that's the way that works moving forward to today in 2024 East ripo is is the Baseline so they're paying the dollar on that $100 worth of value Clarkstown is paying $160 Nanuet is paying $25 North Rockland's paying $217 and so forth across the page there there's a substantial difference in the amount of taxes that are being paid um by taxpayers in every other District that it's substantially greater in in all other districts in in Rockin County I believe East rampo is divided into three different towns CEST I'm sorry how many how many towns East ripo how many towns are we assessed through we have parts of three towns three towns can we get a breakdown the same dollar amount I

145guess this is an average can we get it the same breakdown through town of rampo and or compared to any other Town yeah see how that reflects to other districts yeah I can give you that I believe you mean the difference between say to the full tax value full tax value of of a home town of ripo versus the other Two Towns Clark and nor Ramapo versus other school districts or R Ramapo town of ripo versus the two two towns corre because Equalization different school districts in in in each town as opposed to just the districts I can provide you that yeah no no I'm I'm I'm okay with the same chart but east ripo should be divided into the three towns okay well no this we have three we have parts of three towns

146I believe they rate for town of ramp was pretty high I believe that the equalization rate for town of ramp was pretty high that's my understanding okay I I have I I don't have them with me but I'll I'll provide those to you sure thank you you're welcome uh so now moving um back just to review the expenditure budget um a lot of which you heard about the different pieces help to build that um again we uh we have built the budget um in such a way as to include all of the positions granted many of them are unfilled some of them are new requests um it also includes all of the um employee benefits for those additional positions um and that has brought us from a number of 338 648 um to 348 577

147an increase of $9.9 million um and you'll see also as I mentioned before that we have a lot of areas in the budget the overall general areas of the budget that have some large and um increases and decreases that also has come from um budget codes being um budgeted for in the wrong area primarily in in the U multilingual education area where we where you see that there is a huge increase um we've had a lot of teaching and teaching assistant positions and and other uh support positions that have been budgeted for under the general education and special education areas that have now been moved and of course we've we've all had um conversations prior uh about um some over budgeting in transportation services and you see a decrease um in that line of almost

148$10 million so um that is uh basically the the bird's eye view of of the larger groupings within the budget and as you know the um the expenditure budget has to be equal to the to the revenue budget and they are just that at 348 577 293 this is uh a breakdown of the expenditure budget so you can see the areas where they are um the uh primary areas of what a school district does because we're a service organization we're teaching children most of what we do most of our expenses are in salaries and benefits so if you add up uh General Ed special ed and multilingual Ed and our employee benefits it's making up um over two-thirds of the budget um we do have a very large um Transportation uh area in this District

149District um which is slightly unusual but um Mo most of the time in most districts you would see 75 to 80% of the of the uh budget being salaries and benefits here it's a little bit lower because we have that larger Transportation uh Department Ju Just understand I mean based on the amount of children that we have living in this District the percentage is Not Unusual it's just unusual by the fact that the children are not going to the public schools it's not un usual that we have that amount of transportation for 40,000 children that live in the district no so well maybe I didn't state that right it's it's it's unusual for for that piece of the budget to be as large of a slice of the pie that's because that's because we are

150transporting a number of students that we're not educating corre so that's why if we would be educating the additional 30,000 children then our operating budget obviously viously and the general level would be much much higher higher so essentially we're saving the district money the children that don't go to public schools are saving the district money by not taking those services from the district and uh then as we do at the end of every um presentation we we talk about uh the budget vote um we will have uh our uh budget hearing our official hearing after the budget is adopted on May 6th and then uh we encourage everybody to go out and vote on May 20th um and that's the end of tonight's presentation thank you other questions I'm going to send it back over

151to president Rose um any other board members have any questions no okay um thank you very much Mr Stark and Dr Gonzalez Miss Marone and Miss Morales appreciate you all um we will now move on to board committee vacancies Mr Stark I have you note that you'd like to talk about the audit committee sure we're looking for volunteers everybody raising their hands so essentially um one of the things that um has not been in place well I don't want to say it's not been in place that every school district is required to have an audit committee by law um when they don't have a separate committee it has to be done by the board as a whole okay from what I understood as I as I entered the district is that there wasn't a separate

152audit committee and that the board was doing it as a whole what that means is that the board should be um meeting with the Auditors um prior to the audit starting um for a pre- audit conversation um then reviewing the audit report before it goes to the full board and is presented to the board there there aren't it's it's not a committee that requires um monthly meetings it's focused more on a couple of different points during the year there's generally a meeting pre- audit um in um April May with the auditor then um probably a ress meeting uh in the middle of the summer and then looking at the audit report um prior to uh it being presented to the board it will also have the responsibility of looking at other audits so when you

153have a controller's audit um they would look at that before um it was presented to the full board um and any other any other audits that might happen if they were happening uh based on um so are you recommending creating a separate audit committee say that again so essentially you're recommending we create a separate audit committee besides the whole board it really is up to the board but uh for example one of the things that that uh that the audit committee is is supposed to do with the auditor um for the independent audit each year is to meet with them in executive session without any members of the district so that they can have a conversation about any that they might have concerns about without us being present um I don't know that that's ever

154been done it's generally easier to do and handle when you have a smaller group um and in most you know throughout my career I've always had a uh an audit committee that's had either two or three board members on it so if I if I remember correctly um it was always we were always told it was done as a whole for the committee and um I want to say in the past we've met maybe once and that was before the Auditors um would present at that board meeting I so um but I don't think it's been done the past two three four years if I remember correctly is it more than just an information gathering committee or they have any powers I'm sorry could you repeat that is it more just as an information gathering

155committee or they can they have any say or any powers um I I I don't know that they have any more power but it just like any other committee that the board has um they'll they'll do some of the work it's it the reason that boards in general have committees is to um help separate out some of the the more detailed work that is done so people you know we have a transportation committee that looks Det Transportation issues we have um other committees on the educational side where they do do that work and then you know they report back to the board the other option is that boards do do everything uh together um what I would say about that would be that you know the board it it's the board's committee it's the board's

156decision to make um if they want to do it as a whole um I would just recommend that there there would have to be a couple of other meetings that we would have to get in in order to um properly but we could always I mean Implement anything Transportation committee has I don't think has done much even though we met I don't think anything was implemented again that up to the board I mean is I mean what does the board I mean I'm I mean I essentially we can continue as like and if there's I mean we've done two meetings in one like part that's what like audit committee and then right Kathy I think remember we still so historically this district has done audit committee as a committee of a whole however um to

157my knowledge the board president and perhaps a selected board member some years not every single year has met with the auditor prior to the audit presentation to the board and the community as a whole we recently have been working on updating our policies to um the best practice as recommended by nisba nisba does recommend that there should be a smaller committee a committee of three so that you can take some time and look at it and if there are questions you can ask those questions of the auditor on behalf of the whole board as a way here I'm speculating just an opinion so that the board might not end up the way we are this year feeling kind of surprised and um by what the financials are showing us that's just a comment for me

158not a fact so when we pass the updated policy and uh uh the regul regulation associated with that on the audit committee it was is recommended to be three board members three members on that audit committee so Mr Stark uh had spoke with me that we wanted to see the board to be aware of this be sure you're aware of it and see if there are three board members with some background in finance would be helpful and an interest in doing that and it's helpful but not required helpful that's why I said helpful right so being that like there's a part of the board that's not here um I mean if we have we don't have to decide tonight we just wanted to bring it to your attention and with a view we could start

159taking volunteers now and if you decide to move on do we have any volunteers I would volunteer so we have vice president Migel I would volunteer as well we have trustee Sabrina Charles Pier anyone else Mr C you're good with the numbers no what what you can what board members can I would like to ask guber he's actually really good does anybody want to nominate Mr grou yes I just said that well that's up to him um and if I remember correctly me as the president I can join any committee meeting correct right yes so I I would nominate again I don't know how much time he has he's a busy man but I would love for Mr guber to uh um be on that committee as well but I guess we'll wait until he's

160here um okay great great points and let's let's continue on with that just uh one question I have so if if the board wanted to be a part of um that final report that the auditor uh presents um with the if the entire board wanted to be part of that uh I guess um presentation not the presentation before the the one before the public um would the board as a whole be able to do so or would it be that the just a committee you mean in terms of being presented with the report just the final report the final report is always presented to the full board but it will go to the committee first correct so we won't do it where it's the entire board yeah it will still every year here the entire

161board has been the the external auditor has provided enough copies to give re that the full board be presented with the final report and accept it which you do so what I guess what I'm saying is in the past it was presented I think I want to say it was presented to us prior to it being presented at the board meeting okay you know what oh the generally the the the pre-board meeting presentation in my experience has been to the committee then then the full report is presented um as part of your board packet prior to you voting on it um and you know it can always be if there's anything that a board member who is not on the committee has an issue with it can always that before it's accepted it could always

162be tabled and so on and so forth but generally that first go through has been with the committee and just speaking of vacancies there's also a vacancy on the policy committee with the resignation of truste young Mercer so if any board members want to think about it let me know if you have an interest in that it would would be good to have a second board member on the policy committee okay thank you we will now move on to so just follow if any board members want to volunteer for the policy committee Reach Out Cathy um moving on try to get a little wrap it up here it's getting late moving on to board member reports before we move on to the agenda um V president mcil yeah um just really quick um I just

163at the last board meeting I didn't get the opportunity to share how much um fun I had um I had I had I was able to read to our students at gr View Elementary and Margaret's Elementary School um the children were so engaged and demonstrated their love of reading um especially when especially when someone's reading to them so I thought that was great and they um great day at both buildings um and I I have to say that I want to um on that note I wanted I would like to thank our administrators and staff from both schools um for encouraging our students to read which will prepare them to be great communicators and writers so I wanted to mention that which I didn't get a chance to and then also and I know U

164Mr Dar Carlo I know that one day you're going to congrat congratulate this young man but I do want to say it right now um I want to congratulate one of our senior basketball players who attends Spring Valley High um he joined the 1,000 plus club and I know you know about that yes I I just want to mention it I'm a little ahead but Josiah Bashan known as JoJo um what a great achievement you know I want to say with hard work right determination and focus he did it so congratulations to him and his parents yeah thank you and one last thing that I did get some information about that I'd like to share there's a career seminar and it's called it says thriving together together wellness mentorship and discovering your path navigate your

165path to to success join us for a career development seminar that will shape your future this will take place in our community March 29th from 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at St Joseph's Church right there on 2:45 North Main Street in Spring Valley this is for grades middle school and higher so I do want to share this with you Mr Dar Carlo maybe we can get this to our students because it's imperative that they too can go to things that the community itself is providing for them so I I thought this was great and I believe that is it I'm going to look but thank you um president and um Mr T Carlo thank you very much vice president Migel just one question um was a one second we doing let's finish both reports Sabrina

166oh yes um so I just have a few things as well um just want to say congratulations to our Spring Valley varsity boys team who made it to the playoffs um you know it's a very big accomplish for them and even though they didn't make it to the end but you know we also want to recognize the team as a whole for their hard work uh they do have 11 seniors that are graduating so you know this this was pretty big for them so I just want to give them a shout out um also um kak kakiat will be having their um musical this Thursday and Friday they're doing High School Musical Junior um it's going to be Thursday and Friday March 6th March 7th at 7 p.m. tickets are $10 um and can be

167purchased at the door also uh there will be a youth Symposium at kakad steam Academy um this Saturday from 10: to 2:30 p.m. um it's going to be workshops with physical fitness mental health uh Financial education with the MNT Bank um there will be music there'll be Raffles there'll be food and this is in partnership with Sigma gamma R sority thank you Mich Char Pier oh I just want to bring to your attention I don't know there was a flyer put out about the job fears I believe that both of these days are not available to the community as a whole somebody can look into it yeah one of them I think Mr Fed was saying the job fear one of them is on Saturday which cuts off a big part of this community to

168be able to attend the job fear and one of them is the day before Passover so if if we're looking for local talent big Parts won't be able to come those two dates that you have the job Fe your on that's I think that was M Mr feder saying and I age with another one thank you for letting us know or perhaps we canjust some the dates yeah not not a worry so that's on Wednesday April 9th the day before Passover that's a day we will we will schedule another one that is an appropriate time hold on let me see when this Passover probably not on a Saturday I'm sorry preferably not on a Saturday no no no um it will be on a on a um a week night we did the same thing

169last year we had one on a Saturday and we had one on a week afternoon early evening we'll just make sure that it's uh a little bit further away from any holiday great thank you I'm sorry one one thing I'm sorry really quick um yes uh trusty Pier did mention the fact with Spring Valley team yes congratulations to them and you know I also want to congratulate the past coaches Mr Tony Wooten and Willie Worley as well as the newly Coach Joe perano team effort thank you okay moving on to consent just one more thing I'm sorry to interrupt president uh at the last uh regular meeting the board asked me to confirm about student voter registration that it was happening so I did talk to the county they actually completed that uh student voter

170registration at Ramapo High School last Friday great at Spring Valley High School they are still waiting for Spring Valley to give them a date that they're willing to let the county come in and do the voter registration and she said they have not heard anything back after Spring Valley said they uh couldn't give them a date so if we can give a date to the county they'd be happy to come in they're just waiting for the invite at Spring Valley okay so and she she asked me to let you know that just as I had said last time this is something they do every year they they don't actually come through the district office they go directly to the high schools all high schools and all districts in Rockland and do the voter registration and

171they have no intention of stopping sounds great thank you for the update Kathy I will now move on to consent an agenda items to have a motion for items 1 through n consent on agenda moved by Mr cth I will second the motion any discussion on the motion let me just see hearing no more discussion all those in favor say I I anyone oppos abstain motion carries we now move on to action items 1 through eight do I have a motion for Action items 1 through eight moved by Mr Weiss M was it do I have a second second by Mr feder um we're going to open it up for discussion one um notable item here as I said before the district will be going for a forensic audit um that's item number eight solicit

172some bids from potential firms um and hope to have a resolution to affirm shortly um any other discussion yes one one discussion really quick um action item number four just a quick question for Douglas um the it had to do with the budgetary transfer report I noticed that transfers that have been in this report are they allowable because I see a transfer um for example monies was allocated like for the hardware and Tech State AED and software aable now being transferred to textbooks and work books I just want to make sure for clarification that is allowable correct yeah I'll ask um Finance to explain why that is but I believe that those transfers are now permissible between those two budget codes there was a change in the in the law I think a couple years

173ago that permitted that otherwise they they had been siloed before okay so it is permissive Eric do you have a little detail on those you you it it's permissible to transfer in between the different aable categories that's correct so there there's library books there's textbooks and there's the computer hardware I think there there was a time when they were siloed where textbooks were in one category computers and other other types of electronic was were another and you couldn't transfer them and and the law was changed recognizing that those are very um fungible and changeable during the course of the Year thank you the the the the other part of that that is it it would it would always be legal to transfer the dollars it was that uh in the past if you transferred from

174one to the other you wouldn't necessarily receive the aid but now if you transfer from one of those aidable categories to the other you still receive the aid if you if you were to see a transfer that transferred uh an aidable category into just like supplies of materials you wouldn't receive Aid on that but in this case you still do all right thank you so I have a question about the um um internal audit so there are a few recommendations that um the district is being asked of um are we currently what is the status on that and also this might be a question from Miss kie um for the policies that they are recommending that um we put in place can we maybe move that up on our list we sure can okay all

175but one of them are done correct to make sure we're inance there's one I have to check I thought was done but I haven't had a moment to check all the other ones have been approved by the board and are on the website I believe I had mentioned a few months ago I was behind on updating approved policies to the website due to lack of resources so it appears to me that when the auditor looked they were not on the website but they were approved okay and the status on the other recommendations are being worked on or completed at this time or yeah we'll we'll provide you with a detailed report as to how everything has been dealt with okay thank you okay we have a motion and a second all those in favor say

176I I anyone opposes abstain motions carry moving on to advance planning future meeting dates please note we ask the public to please note a regular meeting the next meeting is going to be in a different location regular meeting is scheduled for March 18th 2025 beginning at 7:30 p.m. not here that's going to be in the auditorium at Chestnut Ridge Middle School 892 Route 45 AKA Chestnut Ridge Road Spring Valley New York 10977 so again it's not going to be here it's going to be at Chesnut Ridge Middle School so just one question for that I know ches has a very bad internet connection will we be able to still live stream okay thank you written communication since the last board meeting the board received written communication for commissioner Rosa it says commissioner Rose but Rosa

177regarding violations of 10 recommendations and long-term strategic and academic academic and fiscal plan there is no motion for executive session I'll will now make a motion to adjourn this meeting do I have a second second second by the board all those in favor say I anyone oppos stay motion carries good night everyone thank you it's a long run