001okay we're live i call this meeting to order i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] [Applause] [Music] me training yes [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] great good evening to everyone and congratulations and welcome to our new board members and our returning board members and the first uh item tonight is to do the oath of office so when i call on you i will read the oath if you can re read it back and follow along with me i would appreciate that so we'll start with uh mark berkowitz i'm ready great so i mark berkowitz i'm mark berkowitz do solemnly affirm you follow me affirm that i will support the constitution of
002the united states i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of the east ramapo central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities thank you mark thank you okay uh sabrina charles pierre yes i sabrina charles pierre hi sabrina charles pierre do solemnly swear do some we swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of
003the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of the east rampal central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability thank you harry potter harry gerson all right i harry grossman i harry grossman do solemnly affirm do solemnly affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo
004central school district trustee of the east ramapos central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability thank you ashley lavelle hey kathy hey i ashley lavelle i ashley laveau do solemnly swear do you finally swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of the eastern potential school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities thank you ashley thank you sherry
005mcgill i'm here hi hi i sherry mcgill i sherry mcgill do solemnly swear you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapov central school district trustee of the east ramaphose central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability thank you sherry thank you shimon rose [Music] amia hi i shaman rose hi shimon rose do solemnly affirm soundly affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of
006the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of that will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of the east ramapos central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability thank you uh yoshi weiss yes hi hi i yoshi weiss i you'll see do you solemnly affirm do solemnly affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states but i'll support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and i will faithfully discharge the duties
007of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of the east trampolin central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability thank you uh e from weiss mandel yes hi kathy i i do solemnly affirm do something affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramapo central school district trustee of east rampos central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability thank you thank you and yehuda weiss mandel
008good evening kathy how are you good evening i'm good thank you i yehuda weiss mandel aye who device [Music] that i will support the constitution of the united states and i will support the constitution of the united states constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that will faithfully discharge the duties of trustee of the east ramaphose central school district university of these travel central school district board of education board of education according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities thank you thank you thank you everyone uh board members i'd like to just say welcome to all our new colleagues mr miss mcgill mr rose and mr weiss welcome thank you thank you very much and for the board members
009you uh need to come and sign the of office book within the next 30 days [Music] if the board members think it would be helpful i'm willing to go in early tomorrow morning and and park in the driveway you could just come in and sign the book and be on your way if that's something what time would you do that okay i would i would go as early as seven if that works for people anytime after it would be very convenient well i will sit out there until 9 15 or so for everyone who can come if you would like that way we'll do just like we did on the bond vote you don't have to get out your vehicle just parked next to me and i'll pass you the book to sign i'll be
010there okay great i'll be there little after eight thank you okay all right so for anyone who hasn't come before i will be parked in what's called the custodian driveway it's between the two main entrances of the building between the main entrance and the central registration and just pull up next to me and i'll pass the book over if if that doesn't work for you tomorrow morning then just call me later on and we can schedule a time to get together to do that signing but it's very important it's done in the next 30 days thank you everyone and welcome to the board the next i know of business is to elect a board president this will be board president until the end of june in july we'll have a reorganization meeting and do the
011election of officers again so the nominations are open for president of the board are there any nominations if you can say your name when you kathy harry here hi i'd like to nominate you to wise mandel for president okay do we have a seconder sherman rose i would like to nominate you who the wise mandel for president okay he's already nominated would you like to second that motion second and i'm sorry it's first time that's okay that's my uh my job all right are there any other nominations for president of the board any other nominations for president of the board okay there being no other nominations for the president of the board i will call a roll call for people to vote i or nay uh mark berkowitz mr woods yes yes okay miss charles
012pierre hi and mr grossman mr gerson yes okay miss lavelle no okay miss mcgill nay mr rose yes mr weiss yes mr e weiss mandel yes and mr y weiss mandel yes so mr y weissmandel is the president of the board with a vote of seven eyes and two nays thank you very much kathy i guess i take the meeting at this point uh just before you do that i i need to do the oath with you for president the position of president so we're going to do it all over again i yehuda weiss mendel are you who do i smendel do solemnly affirm do you solemnly affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states that will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new
013york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of that i'll faithfully discharge the duties of president of the board of education president of the board of education of the east ramaco central school district of the east rampos central school district according to the best of my ability okay so you'll take over for uh nominating and voting on a vice president and after that i will do an oath with the person who is elected i guess this i'll sign this tomorrow morning as well yes thank you very much kathy appreciate all your hard work um i will now move on to our next item on the agenda and open up for a nomination and hopefully a vote for the vice president of the board this is
014mark i'd like for the third year in a row to nominate sabrina charles pierre for vice president demon rose i second this is the first and the second is there any other nominations for the vice president of the board is there any other nominations hearing none how long i'll ask the clerk to do a roll a roll call vote please okay yes mr brookwoods yes miss charles pierre hi mr grossman yes miss lavelle no miss mcgill no mr rose yes mr weiss yes mr e y spandel this is for who i didn't i missed the name this is for sabrina sabrina for vice president sure yes and mr y weiss mendel yes russian carries 72. um kathy can you please uh yes please okay i sabrina charles pierre hi sabrina charles pierre do you solemnly
015swear disonly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new york and the constitution of the state of new york and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of and that i will faithfully discharge the duties of vice president of the board of education vice president of the board of education of the east ramapo central school district of the east ramford central school district according to the best of my ability congratulations thank you moving on to um committees um kathy if you have an andeo you do um i would recommend being a mid-year here that you if you could go through the committees tell us who is serving and so long as whoever is on
016there would like to continue serving on this role and if the new members want to join certain committees i think that'll be a prudent way to go through this list so just take the lead here i'd appreciate it yeah so the first committee is the district athletic committee um previously we had mr e weiss mandel and miss charles pierre were on this committee okay um mr weissmandel and miss charles pierre are you willing to continue in this role yes okay is there anybody else any other members that want to do um just sign on and join in a leadership in this particular committee i would be interested sherry mcgill sure okay anyone anyone else um kathy do we do individual motions on this or we just it is one motion we we do all the
017committees with one motion so we have mr e weiss mandel miss charles pierre and mr mcgill on the district athletics committee audit committee who to be at the audit committee is automatically the uh president of the board so that would be you okay and i believe the board as the whole serves as the audience committee yes i was just going to say it's it's a committee of the whole so every other board member is a member of that committee this curriculum committee mr berkowitz miss lavalle are currently on that mr berkowitz ms slavell are you uh willing ready and able to continue serving in this role yes thank you is there anyone else that would like to join this particular committee hearing none i'll move on to district facilities committee kathy currently it's uh miss
018charles pierre is on that committee okay miss charles pierre are you going to continue serving on this committee yes thank you and is there anyone else that would like to join in the district facilities committee i would join you wise mandel he was okay excuse me we might uh want to let the new people on the board know what's involved and maybe more than would want to join up yeah that's what i i was one of the committees i was actually interested in joining but i wasn't sure what it entailed so if i could get some more details that would be great mr berkowitz being that you've so graciously volunteered i don't know all the other curriculum committee sits down once once a month we meet with the superintendent and the cap and some members
019of the cabinet we go over different ideas that the the superintendent and his uh cabinet have come up with we speak back and forth we are not there to to be judges we are part of the committee it's one committee so it's the no one in charge anyone that runs it is the superintendent it's just that it's just a pool that had more people involved in the pooling of ideas that would be the benefit to our children i believe it's really as an advisory role correct uh mr brookwoods right it's a combination of an advisory role and it gives the board the ability to be more closely involved and included in the goings-on the district it splits us up as a group and we go out and join committees and bring back information to the
020board and share and hopefully it enables us to know what's happening and to pay you know more attention and be more involved and the goings-on around the district as far as time because time involvement it varies by committee and by committee person their willingness and ability to contribute and and be involved in any particular committee so different committees of different structures as far as when they meet how often they meet and different committee persons have different uh commitments and different different ways of giving time and involvement to the to the various committees and uh dr gio martino i believe you said you were looking at changing some of the committees instead of monthly to quarterly kind of some of the previous board members that expressed that we didn't need to meet quite so often but
021that would be a thing for the committee to agree i think that's the committee to committing a decision on a committee of a committee basis cathy can we move on to i believe we're a district wellness committee now correct uh mr e weissmandel is currently on that committee anyone else mr weiss mendel excuse me again but what does that committee do what does that committee do wellness dr gia martino can you speak to that sure um so the wellness committee actually uh meets on a regular basis to go over in particular uh healthy school lunch choices um we also uh if need be engage mr tombs relative to health and wellness oftentimes he's appreciatively embedded that type of information into the athletic committee but it's really focusing on health wellness healthy choices um as well
022as reports on the um food distribution that have been that has been taking place uh since the start of colvin i would like to join ms slavell did you express the interest in this wellness committee would it still be possible to join a previous committee that we spoke about because absolutely i think when we get through the list we'll we'll do one more more roll call if anybody else wants to join any but if you want at any time was there one that you're having about the athletic committee okay so i would like to join that cathy can we um add mr rose to that list to that yep done thank you medicaid compliance i'm sorry no sherry mcgill i was just saying can you also add me to the district curriculum committee certainly thank
023you medicaid compliance committee kathy uh that is mr y smandel right now okay i guess i'll continue serving this role anyone else wants to join this committee door is wide open district policy you always later on joined the committees or yes yes we've had people join later on during the year okay okay district policy committee uh currently uh mr grossman is charles pierno yes okay mr gross miss charles pierre are you gonna continue serving your roles in this committee yes please yep thank you thank you anyone else would like to be involved and take part of the district policy committee district technology committee that is uh mr grossman miss charles pierre and miss lavelle okay mr grossman charles pierre miss lavelle will you be willing to con continue serving on this committee yes now i'm
024going to take myself off that committee okay so ms lavelle's coming off it's ms charles pierre mr grossman i would like to continue mr grossman can you address mr i believe mr weiss wants more information on this particular committee who do i'm sorry mr rose i'm sorry mr rose wanted to repeat the question yeah so what does it entail the technology committee the district technology committee so it's talking about in which basically you meet with um the superintendent um director of i.t and some other individuals as well uh in determining the direction the district should take in technology incorporating technology in education um what you can bring into the classroom um the sky is the limit the only thing that holds you back obviously is dollars but there are many ways you can move forward
025obviously the whole summiting win right now and the remote learning it was a huge uh a huge change so mr rosie up to the channel okay sign me up district transportation committee just before we go on i didn't hear if miss charles pierre said she wanted to stay on i believe i did miss charles pierre yes please yes thank you thank you transportation currently is mr grossman and ms charles pierre mr grossman charles pierre are you still on board yes please thank you pun intended long night already anyone else would like to get involved in this very exciting committee what's so exciting about it well we are the second largest transporter in the state of new york after the city of new york so there's lots of buses lots and lots of um lots of
026action it's actually one of the one of the items one of the only items that we provide services to the private school as well as the public schools so it's a very it's a very active line item on the board i'll join in your business mr weiss thank you welcome thank you um kathy who do we have as representative on the teacher center policy board we have mr berkowitz as the representative and miss lavelle is the alternate okay mr berkowitz miss lavelle i'll keep meeting there i still stay tuned thank you and thank you um representative to the rocking county school bus association is that ms charles pierre uh mr grossman is the representative and miss charles pierre is the alternate oh mr grossman will you uh hold on to that uh that job title
027if thank you mr charles beer yes thank you thank you all right so i will um before we wrap this up is there anyone else that wanted to hop on to any of these um committees going once going twice hearing none clarify what mr weiss asked before we'll be able to join at a later date if we choose to for sure okay thank you and i'll also bring to your attention that this is a very short term because the beginning of july we're gonna have a new york meeting we'll be doing this again so we're actually coming in a very very unique um opportunity where you have a short a short tenure till the end of june and then in july we'll be redoing the new york meeting so you'll have plenty opportunity to to
028join and give your time as as as available and possible i'll make sure i just i'm sorry i just have a quick suggestion um kathy keavey uh moving forward can we provide a brief uh description for each committee um moving forward um dr g can you provide a brief description for us to give to the board of course thank you thank you you're welcome kathy i'd like to add um actually to this um committee i'd like to bring back an old committee we had a committee in the past of visiting buildings um it's actually one of the requirements as board members that we as a whole visit at least i believe it's once a year all the buildings in the district we took that committee off in the past because our previous superintendent used to
029do monday walk-throughs and she wanted our visits incorporated into that i believe the current uh dr g does things a little differently on his on his on his some cabinet meetings i think it's important and required from us so i'm gonna suggest then ask who would like to um get on this committee to kind of uh in the past we also had adopt a building and i suggested even last year i would really like to take elmwood and and hempstead is buildings that i would adopt to be able to go in there regularly and this way you can really see how things grow in the building and i would encourage others to maybe take a building that they adopt mr berkowitz um with suggestions like that i will suggest that you join this committee and
030bring some kind of recommendation to the board a little a little bit of a little bit of the the fear that we've had in the past um with board members building is just understanding the nuances and the lines that we have to create between being involved as a board member or getting too involved in the building's well-being so i think if you have an idea like that i think you should join the committee put forth the proposal run it through council and it sounds like a very interesting idea but i'd love to hear more about it so we did it i'm gonna make sure that every building was that every building was visited and there was someone that they could you know connect to volunteers about absolutely suggest and nominate you to join this committee
031can i mr berkowitz sure thank you anyone else would like i would join i would join e wise man though i would like to join you i would join cherie yes i would like to join as well ash steelville mr president is there a limit for that you can't have more than as long as it all show up at the same time we don't have a quorum right i believe we uh shouldn't have a quorum on the committee either probably not how many people do you have down i have uh one two three four right now all right sabrina i'm gonna have to find something else to do um i do want to i know i spoke to dr jay martino about this to see if we can add a diversity equity and inclusion committee
032okay how old a second i'd love to hear about that if we could just i'm gonna you have those names kathy for that committee yes for the uh buildings visitation committee yes yes okay sabrina i'm sorry would you like to elaborate on that explain what you have in mind um yes dr j martin i don't know if you want to um if you've decided if that would be good i'm being part of the new york state school board diversity equity and inclusion i think that it would be something that's really needed in our district um dr g martino oh yes a number of school districts have actually adopted or initiated a uh diversity and equity and inclusion committee a committee that is really has cross representation oftentimes uh representatives of the board representatives of the
033community representatives of the uh even student uh leadership so it is something that uh that the board um or that the district um can consider and it's something that is pretty consistent uh across many school districts sounds very interesting miss charles pierre would like to be involved in setting up this committee yes please thank you okay i would agree i think it would be imprudent um if you could get a little more information share with the board over the next few weeks so that we're a little more a better understanding of what what the what the role of this board is and this committee is and what what its goals and and uh objectives are i'd be very interested in that well though not a problem thank you thank you i appreciate that i'll make
034the motion to uh moving all these committees as uh selected and gone to um kathy yep we don't have to roll call this right no we just need a seconder okay is there a second one of the committees hey i just have a quick question like just a random question real quick can parents join these committees excuse me i'm sorry we should finish the motion and then have some discussion all right no problem any discussion on the motion miss lavell parents can't join these committees can they or this is just strictly just for board right i don't believe so various committees have different setups different makeups i think it's a committee by committee um that's my understanding i don't think it has any specific rules um okay mr wiseman so maybe perhaps that's something that
035we could visit where if it's if it's not really a rule you're saying that maybe we could possibly you know um include a parent or two um i i believe and i'm not sure i believe somebody's um like for example this the district policy committee at least some of these committees actually do have teachers and other other members from different parts of the district and parents and pta members but definitely i'm all all in favor absolutely the more we can get the community and the parents involved the better off the district is thank you so there's a motion on the table with a second all in favor say aye aye uh uh a public speaking request for me to read we need a motion for that i will make a motion to have public speaking
036at this point of the agenda is there a second second sherry second is sherry mcgill all the favor say aye aye aye all right i want to pose you're staying motion carries cathy what do we have okay uh we have a letter i'm going to read my name is susan larosso i'm the president of the east ramapo teachers association and a proud 25-year veteran teacher in the east ramacho central school district these past two years have challenged us in ways we could never have imagined i'm so proud of the work and dedication of the teachers of east ramapo we have built relationships with our students and their families and created safe spaces for kids so negatively affected by the kova 19 pandemic our classrooms offer some normalcy during these extraordinary times and we are committed
037to continuing to do what is best for our students it is that pride in our teachers and concern for our students that has led me to reach out to you this evening the east ramapo teachers association is profoundly disappointed in the district's proposed plan to make cuts directly from the classroom it is devastating that such a large number of teachers will lose their jobs mid-year which will directly result in students and families suffering as well making these cuts in the middle of the school year will disrupt the relationships that have been built between teachers and students over the past five months and will add additional social and emotional strain to students and families already suffering from disruptions caused by covert 19. classes will have to be collapsed creating a ripple effect that negatively impacts far
038more than the classes of the teachers whose jobs are lost many students will be forced to change their classes and or teachers mid-year hundreds of students families and teachers will be impacted by these cuts in some fashion whatever conditions and circumstances led the district to this financial crisis we all know teachers students and families are not to blame these groups are in no way responsible for the dire circumstances the district is in and yet we will be the ones to pay the price that tragic reality can be avoided in a year that has been more challenging and devastating for children than any we've ever seen teachers should finish the school year with their students we urge the district to maintain the stability teachers have created and do what is best for kids no cuts should
039come directly from the classroom thank you thank you anything else anyone else that was the only uh public speaking request gary none um i see we have a resolution of respect i'm sorry i missed it earlier um i'm going to uh actually hold this off to the end of the meeting and we'll close in honor of this [Music] this resolution uh mr weissmandel i suggest we not wait to the end of the meeting because a lot of uh the people who join our meeting don't come back after the executive session we're having executive sessions yeah okay so i'm going to ask kathy that you read the resolution now please actually dr g uh normally reads them dr g europe uh first i'd like to welcome and congratulate each of our new board members and our
040re-elected board members i'd also like to congratulate mr weiss mandel on his presidency and uh ms charles pierre on the vice presidency so thank you i look forward to working with you we're continuing to work with you uh mr president members of the board madam vice president uh resolution resolution of respect for mr dan zodder the board of education and interim superintendent of the east ramaphose central school district submit this resolution of respect be it known to all mr dan zotter was a beloved member of the security department at east ramapo central school district for 25 years and whereas mr zodder served with unwavering dedication passion and enthusiasm as a football and track and field coach for more than two decades and whereas mr zotter was highly respected and adored by students and staff members
041and worked tirelessly with students to win the 2007 2008 and 2009 all-american state champions and whereas the east ramapo family including the ramako high school staff and coaches and mr zotter's many friends will remember his devotion to all he endeavored to do and whereas mr zotter is survived by his beloved parents and siblings now therefore the board of education resolves as follows one mr dan zotter is recognized for his significant contributions in the east ramaphose central school district community and the district will miss him immensely in lawrence's passing with regret and two this resolution will be read and a moment of silence will be held during the public board of education meeting on march 2nd 2021 in recognition of mr zodder and three a copy of this resolution will be given to his family from
042the east ramaphose central school district and a copy will be retained in the archives submitted the second day of march 2021 respectfully dr ray g martino jr interim superintendent of schools mr president thank you dr g i'd like to have a moment of silence in his memory thank you thank you moving on superintendents report prior to that i also wrote a letter mr singer we're not hearing you i'm sorry oh i apologize i also wrote a letter to the board of education which i would like to be read as part of the public comments to the board and we also have special guests in attendance at this meeting to assist the board with the financial crisis mr singer we we put your letter under letters to the board and uh i believe dr g said
043uh part of what you're discussing will be covered under dr g's report is that correct dr g um we will share with the members of the board of education and community uh the specifics associated with uh working in tandem with bond council and our finance support personnel that is immediately following mr singer's report mr single we'll get to your letter shortly yeah i'd like to turn to the thank you i'd like to turn to dr g for interim superintendent's report dr gio latino thank you mr president uh members of the board mr president madam vice president we would like to uh provide opportunity for uh some partners to walk us through really some uh salient options associated with addressing the current uh budget needs of the district and uh i will introduce a couple of
044of members that we worked with over the past couple of days in particular i will immediately defer uh to um i believe mr bill jackson bill will you be starting us off or um sure i'm sorry i didn't see dan there dan thank you very much for joining us um good to be here i'll defer to bill okay dr jim excuse me dr jim martino i would like to read the letter's introduction so the board has an understanding of our esteemed guess okay okay thank you very much just just to lay the foundation understood thank you thank you for your time there's a letter wrote to the board of education members of the board of education from myself bruce singer and denise lowe regarding east ramapo fiscal crisis we write with important information to help
045you understand and address the dire fiscal situation that jefferson jeopardizes the viability of east rampo instructional program now and going forward for the past month interim superintendent dr ray giomartino has kept you informed of the fiscal crisis looming at east ramapo specifically dr g montano has addressed the severity of the fiscal situation at recent board meetings and through various other communications we have a strong relationship with dr jim martin i've been working with him to develop a financial plan for the remainder of the 2021 school year dr g martino is working variously to correct the impact of multiple years of contingent budgets and to address school-age changes necessitated by covet 19 pandemic well gio martino has already made numerous staffing and contractual consultant reductions these cuts are not sufficient to fully address the projected june
04630th 2021 fund balance based on the latest information provided by the easter egg business office the negative projected fund balance is between 25 and 30 million dollars a negative balance of this magnitude will of course have a significant impact on the instructional program of greatest concern the 2021 school year budget is severely under-budgeted many budgetary staffing lines do not reconcile with actual levels of staffing the 2021 personnel budget was not aligned with actual staff positions during budget development the 2021 school year budget does not account for state aid changes enacted in 2021 budget which reduced the state aid support by 22.25 million dollars in federal coroner virus 8 relief and economic security the cares act allocation of which 15.8 million must be used to provide equitable services to non-public school students and is thus not
047available to support services in the public school this information was known last year yet no expenditure reductions or other adjustments were made to offset this loss of revenue since federal funds reimbursement will take very many months payment might not be received until after june 30th 2021 however the initial 20 percent should be received upon state education approval of east ramapo karazak plan which is now overdue and yet to be submitted to department the magistrate judge and the national association for the advancement of people naacp lawsuit has recommended the district pay 4.3 million in attorney fees while judge cybele has not yet issued a final order order on this matter district has not accounted for the potential 4.3 million dollar payment if either of the following executive budget proposals are included in 2122 in the active
048state budget they will negatively impact each round vote next year and in future years expense aid reductions the executive budget proposes to consolidate 11 existing aid categories into new category 8 called services aid these aids include transportation ocs textbook software hardware library materials special services high tax supplemental public cost and charter school transition funding in these for these aides and 21 22 school year and future years is reduced the impact of these recurring reductions and the loss of reimbursement based on actual expenditures will leave east ramapo with an ongoing unreimbursed expenses that will not be able to be covered in future years with one-time federal stimulus funding the star reduction executive budget proposes to impose a local district funding adjustment via a reduction to stock payments in 2122 school year and thereafter this would eliminate
049state support for star exemption with eight million dollar recurring reduction that will not be able to be covered with a one-time federal stimulus funding in future years the executive budget proposal would also provide east ramapo with a 66 point million dollar federal cares act funding for next school year this funding has no equitable participation requirement if the district manages these funds wisely can assist in remedying some of the short and intermediate fiscal issues the district is now facing it would not have ever addressed the longer term fiscal issues that will result from the enactment of the expense based aid and star reductions east rampo does not have sufficient redux to current to cover the current cash shortfall absent additional revenue the district by late spring will be unable to make payroll without draconian reductions and
050staffing if that occurs a revenue anticipation no borrowing would be necessary this is nearly unprecedented step to take during a school year it only occurs when there's a complete breakdown budget development and oversight dr g martino and his team are com completing the required cash flow to justify the borrower upon completion district staff should submit this analysis to capital markets the district's financial advisors hawkins delafield wood district bond council the legal review due to these significant budgetary we recommend the new york state controller's office perform an audit of the district finances as soon as possible the already dire situation will deteriorate even further without immediate and significant reductions that's the end of my note joining us to assist the board is bill jackson and dan birmingham attorneys with hawkins delafield wood and rich detour and
051alex kerr of capital markets financial advisors to help and assist preparing the cash flow that we can sell in the in the near future to get us by this year and to help with long-term funding for the school district so i turn it over to bill and dan first and they can explain the legal position for the board great thank you bruce thank you to the board and superintendent for having us tonight my name is bill jackson i'm an attorney with hawkins delafield and wood we're a law firm that specializes in in assisting school districts in meeting their borrowing needs not only for capital projects but also for their uh cash flow uh cash flow needs we've had some discussions and email correspondence with the district dr g assembled his team with us yesterday and
052we outlined for for the team some of the information that we would need to be able to make legal determinations as to which types of borrowings the district may want to pursue the local finance law which is the primary body of law that governs the types of borrowings that school districts in new york state can undertake has various options that may be available to the district however before any determinations can be made or recommendations from the district's financial advisor we need to have additional additional facts so some of the items that we discussed yesterday on our call really relate to the very impressive and extensive memo that was prepared by by mr singer um outlining you know some of the issues uh that the district is facing um you know first and foremost i think
053we want to have the district provide for us a budget to actual uh analysis a deep dive if you will into the current year's budget and how much of that budget has been expended and what are the projections for the balance of the year so we can truly understand which budget lines if you know or have been have been overexpended or expected to be overexpended by uh june 30th of this year the other thing that we have requested is a detailed cash flow for the current fiscal year so that would be actual results through uh january or february and then projected financial uh cash flow result cash flows for the balance of this fiscal year in addition we've asked the district to provide us with uh projected cash flows for next year as well this
054would be something that would also be required for investors if the district does move forward with a short-term cash flow borrowing uh in anticipation say of state aid or real property taxes or in the event is determined that the budget has been overspent or certain revenues that were originally estimated to be received by the district are not received so um those two i think pieces are pretty critical at this point um we have agreed to meet with the district again next week to kind of get an update as to where um you know kind of where things stand with respect to those two immediate projects um we also talked about the potential financing of um the judgment that has been rendered in um in the in the court case that is referenced in mr mr
055singer's uh memo to the board um as bond counsel we do not provide financial advice to the district our advice is strictly related to the legal options available to the district for its cash flow borrowings under the local finance law we do work very closely with your financial advisor who will make recommendations on the type of borrowings the terms of those borrowings the method of sale and they will also assist you in the marketing um and with that i would like to turn it over to alex kerr and richard tortora very good thank you bill um with the board's permission dr g martino can i just jump right in yes please very good thank you uh good evening everyone i'm richard tortora i'm the president of capital markets advisors we are an independent registered municipal
056advisor registered with both the united states securities exchange commission and the municipal securities rule making board our role for the district is the same role that we perform for approximately 180 other school districts across new york state we assist you to plan structure market sell and close on financings to either meet cash flow needs or capital needs in this instance our engagement would involve us assisting you in accessing the market in conjunction with your cash flow needs as illuminated via a cash flow statement that mr singer sent to us a couple of weeks ago um so over the next couple of weeks we'll determine uh exactly what the district needs to um finish the current fiscal year and get through this bit of cash flow difficulty there are several different instruments that can be used
057the most common to meet a cash flow need would be either a tax anticipation note which is a short-term debt instrument issued in anticipation of the collection of real property taxes or more likely in this case a revenue anticipation note again a short-term debt instrument issued in anticipation of your receipt of revenues in this case state aid other tools at our disposal are budget notes in the event that a line in the budget was underfunded and we need to fill in that void we could indeed issue a budget note or perhaps we could consider issuing a deficiency note which is a relatively uh new uh financing technique that we can avail ourselves of and that is a short-term note issued in anticipation of monies that were thought to be um received by the jurisdiction so
058uh say state aid that you thought you were going to receive then during the course of the fiscal year you found out that indeed that money was not coming in that would have us issue a a deficiency note so again our role assist with putting together the financing documents working closely with your business office with your bond council to make sure you access the market to get the uh the lowest interest rates available and the funding you need when you need it thank you thank you very much are there any questions uh mr president or um again this was just a point of clarification to to provide a status of options based on our current state dr jim martino and mr white's panel just for a point of order um just the letter was sent
059to the board last week but the letter is from both the fiscal monitors mr singer obviously this level of expertise has taken the lead on it and that's why he read it which just so that the for a point of order the letter was sent last week to the board but it's now being read publicly from both excuse me excuse me can anyone i know has been been listening very carefully to local radio and uh they have the our newly elected officials on there uh every week and it was just mentioned today i believe that there's there's something going on where they're trying they fix they said something i believe about having some kind of answer by the end of this week regarding uh legislation they're trying to bring to make sure that the uh
060that the uh governor's office doesn't deduct money from us that you know that we're going to get from the feds let's say the i don't know the exact numbers but let's say the state was going to give us 10 million and we got 30 million dollars from the feds again these are low numbers that well because we got 30 we're not going to get the 10 from the state there's something where they're trying to make sure that we get that money is that one of the things we're going to do that's the cure that's the cures act funding this to work with yes they shouldn't be in touch but i think they're very involved in it i think we should have them uh they sounded very much interested i think i think someone up in
061stony point started this ball rolling already thank you mr singer uh yes ma'am i just have a quick question you just said this is the status of different options right is all this free that's correct that's that there are there are multiple options that mr tortora outlined um once the um once bond council and mr tortora's team have finalized numbers uh they can then provide a level of advisement um obviously the board would then make a determination based on uh really the best fit um okay for uh for this decision okay thank you dr gia are these individuals that have joined us tonight are they unconscious currently with the district um the only thing that uh the district had to pay for was an advisory a small advisory fee to get the options a lot
062in alignment direct alignment with the district's funding stream so they that was my question my question was if they ever been selected and approved by the board to provide services for the district um historically or lovely excuse me if i could jump in it's it's uh kathy uh they were approved at the july meeting okay right live 2020. perfect this is this is the firmware you currently work with for bonding who was um dr g um yes so if we could just take this to the next level at this point it seems like there's a lot of unanswered questions as far as which funding we are aren't getting and there will still be a presentation to the board of what our shortfall is or isn't and what the options for getting us through the year
063is correct uh yes there will be additional updates provided um thanks for putting that forward equally we do know that we haven't had the opportunity to obtain any level of the cares funding we know that that's something that the district had planned on and um you know to your earlier referendum um the lack of the distribution of those funds um because the district had initially planned on those funds has contributed to the shortfall so thanks for just want to clarify for myself and for many people that have asked this question to date there has been no votes or approvals or actually cut any staff in the programs is that correct that is correct thank you you're welcome mr singer are you still there i'm sorry yes sir mr singer question uh i'm reading your memo
064i read it actually when we got a few days ago and thank you very much i'm just uh trying to understand that a couple of questions one um you refer to um you imply some of the staffing doesn't align with the budget items are you saying that what is happening right now this is different than the budget that was presented to the public voted on approved by the board reviewed by the matters approved by the commissioner and the actual what's happening right now the district is different than that budget is that what you're saying correct okay dr g can you jump in and tell us why that is and how we're going about um correcting that so what ended up happening was the district brought forth a uh budget in may as as you and
065the community know uh what ended up happening was the thing yes budget the budget ended up not passing uh the district then had to fall back to a contingent budget during that time uh the the district did not uh conduct a true up meaning a staffing true up in may june which i know you're very familiar with um just in in terms of of tightening up personnel and the other piece to that is that what ended up occurring was that there were a number of um contracts that sought to be that were sought to be brought forward that were not brought forward and again to that point or to your earlier point the um monies that were planned on being having been received for uh through cares um had been essentially pre-obligated as a result
066the budget was not adjusted to reflect the uh not both the non-receipt of the cares and unfortunately the true up did not occur uh early on got it dr geo martino this is sherry so that i'm i'm clear with everything that you're saying so basically you're saying that adjustments should have been made um to reflect the contingency budget correct so generally yes they're they're made immediately following um and there were some adjustments that just didn't occur and and that's including obviously the true up for staffing um especially in in certain areas where um you know you just can't have in it for an example you can't have eight students or nine or ten students uh in a section what the team did do uh mr president and members of the board and community um what
067the leadership team did do over the past few weeks you'll be appreciative to know that they worked tirelessly to really reduce and provide an assurance that those reductions stayed as far away from the classroom as possible um and that's embedded in in my uh presentation mr singer another question um so back to your your memo what i'm trying to understand so i'm looking at what you're laying out and it's very clear the cures act is pretty clean cut and here's that what's called cures act one and kirsak ii i'm just wondering if there's any recommendations that you have at this point of things we should be doing and additional items we should be looking at to confront this let's call it crisis and i'd also like to understand um i see you invited the comptroller
068to come audit these trampo's books is there an area of concern that you have that you were trying to protect us from that can you bring it to our attention um an audit is usually um something that is done to uh make sure things are being done properly i'm just trying to understand your thinking if you could share with myself and the board and the public of course i seem to be missing from your memo what is your concern obviously it's a financial concern which we all share but um asking the comptroller to come look at the books of this ramp or is there something in the way these books are running that has you worried okay i'll answer the first question that you asked so the state deducted the 22 million dollars in anticipation
069that would be backfilled by the federal government that never happened so if the federal government in proper timing you would have received a piece in the fall and the peace in the spring so that's the cash flow crisis which necessitates what the gentleman were talking about the borrowing to get us through to next year so that funding has been delayed and we see in the governor's proposal east ramaphosa supposed to get the 66 million dollars if that occurred this year there would have been no crisis there would have been sufficient monies to for the non-public schools to balance it out exactly so when preparing a budget there are techniques as the attorneys mentioned that didn't occur this year um the district borrowed a tax anticipation note when the heart when the board hired these two
070firms in the july reorg was 18 million dollars so maybe to better protect itself it should have could have borrowed 38 million dollars with the unknown when the timing of the federal stimulus package and even as of last week what was in the news the federal government approved 1.2 trillion dollar stimulus too we don't know how much new york state is getting so the new york state legislature could even give more money to the school districts including the east drama public so that's on the good side the specifics about asking the state controller this is highly unusual in a lot of money 30 million shortfall in the middle of the year i don't have the staff or or the scope to go into a budget like this now hopefully they'll come in and say this
071was a one-time issue and it's because of unique population in east ramapo most of the school districts the cares funding is a few hundred thousand dollars as we spoke last time the general fund would loan the federal fund they pay the bill and then the services are rendered each ramapo doesn't have reserves to that magnitude to the general fund to loan the federal fund so hopefully they'll come in they'll say you took appropriate action whatever the debt instrument will be and when it's restored next year everything is back the way it should be the problem as you're reading in the memo we are not going to get stimulus money in 22 23 24 which is going to create up another financial hold for us that we put this money in a savings account or reserves
072so we protect ourselves that we don't face this crisis again in two or three years that's right basically it that's very helpful thank you what's your finger i'm sorry yes just a quick question um one thing that just stood out to me out of all the things um you said a district instructional program this will impact the district's instructional programs are you saying that as a whole do you have like any idea as to what programs this will affect us impact as dr g martino said we're hoping to avert that we're hoping to avoid that but that so when we met with the attorneys yesterday as bill jackson and dan birmingham said they're waiting for the exact cash flow for the district to know what budget codes are underfunded what is the totality of this
073of the shortfall and maybe we could backfill it and the impact on instructional staff would be minimal i think i speak for the whole board our salaries are good to go i have a quick question it seems to me a major component of this is that we had budgeted for revenue the 22 million dollars in the karazak funding which the state then uh took for its own needs and reduced foundation or reduced foundation aid by like amount would you say that budgeting for that 22 millions was correct or incorrect and part b to that is that when do you think the mistake was not taking corrective action when the states said that they were going to uh reduce foundation aid by the like amount where do you believe the the issue lied harry that's a
074good point so last april legislature approved a budget east ramapo as many other school districts use the legislative state-approved budget subsequent to that a month later six weeks later governor cuomo said we don't have the money to give you we're gonna come up with this cares act and reduce the amount of state aid that was known in july no no remediation no action was taken we discussed this point that this is significant because of the unique population in east ramapo it wasn't a little bit of money was a lot of money probably at that time to your point instead of borrowing 18 million dollar tax anticipation though to protect ourselves we probably should have borrowed 38 million dollars not knowing the impact of this and remember we have hindsight is 2020. we know better today
075but the federal government did not help us out in the fall they helped us out after the election we have better clarity today about how much money new york state is getting how much money schools are getting that only occurred recently this was unknown to us and to all school districts a few months ago so when you have a huge uncertainty like that you borrow money to protect it now if the federal government would have gave us earlier you pay off the 10 or you pay off the tax anticipated no earlier and you minimize the interest expense that didn't occur but again it's hindsight and the thinking was there would have been special legislation or or or something to occur and this year it's actually occurring next year this no other school districts getting 66
076million dollar increase in state aid so that that it's really a good issue it seems to me that yehuda was what it was alluding to is we did make a budget last year the budget based on what we were expecting to get was a decent budget though though dr martino did notice that there were so there was some tweaking necessary to see that we didn't have these small classes and that when they when the groupings were made or what other other ways that we could have had even a you know a tighter budget we didn't no one really expected this to happen it happened and what we've been presenting to the public seems to me is a worst case scenario and that's what's hitting the papers that's what's hitting that's what's hitting the the the
077news the news broadcasts and it's putting a lot of fear in people it's uh this was a this is a worse case scenario that we've been presenting now is talking we're saying well now it looks like well we know that we should have had 60 million dollars we thought we're going to get a big chunk of it this year it's not going to happen till next year what we should have done is borrowed more but this is something we couldn't have foreseen i don't think that much and it's since it all happened over the summer what do you want the budget was passed back in in may so i i just think i just i i not understand we're in i know that we have to have help in trying to figure out how to
078how to work our way out of it but i think that the that the perception out there has been so negative against us and i don't think it's i don't think that's deserving of it part of what you're saying right is not totally accurate governor clinton is pretty accurate governor cuomo announced the state date cuts to all school districts it was an opportunity to borrow the 10 which occurs after the budget vote so that short-term borrowing which rich the torah mentioned in in anticipation of tax and taxes would have better protected the district that was known early on so that's what that's where that's where we made the next the mistake you're saying correct and if i but the budget itself but the budget itself was approved by by us it was approved by the
079modders it was approved by the by the commissioner i believe mr berkowitz um we can go in circles here but to mr singer's point it's actually 100 correct members of the board including myself reached out to the administration and i believe i asked in public meetings from a finance department saying the secures act that's the governor is saying he's making cuts how are we addressing it and we kept on being told that the the the district's being told by albany that they're going to make an amendment as a matter of fact our local assemblyman put forth legislation at the end of the year trying to get an adjustment for that amount of money and up until past and over the hump of the new year we were under the impression and hopeful that we would
080get that um get that funding and now after when we got into january it became very obvious when mr dr ji and mr singer kept the saying we have to deal with this we have to address it and we're addressing it now so it's not about finger pointing i don't believe what we should have mr white commando excuse me i'm not pointing any fingers i just again this you've just clarified it even more that's what i wanted to hear i want to hear that that the whole story is out there well certainly a lot that we couldn't that we couldn't have done until then some that we could a lot was not our own fault and the money is there someplace if we don't have it this year it's there next year and therefore you're
081correct mr singer i guess we should have anticipated taking a larger loan it's just i don't want that negative vibe out there it happened mr weiss mandel you're completing two separate issues that i just want to clarify one was the 22 million dollars carries funding which our foundation aid was cut by like a man second part is the 16 million dollars that the federal government after the fact said needed to be provided to the non-public schools which since the state took the 22 million dollars would have come out of our general fund in order to finance that so that was honestly mr grossman i'll correct you actually it was actually a little different the federal government allocated the first round of the kirazaki 22 million 16 to the private schools and the rest were allocated
082based based on enrollment correct but actually it was the governor who turned around and made the cotton the state aid right what i'm saying it what i'm saying is the state aid was actually cut before the federal government the doe clarified the way the distribution had to be made that's all i'm saying okay and yes assemblyman zabrowski and senator carlucci last year this year assemblyman zebrasky and uh uh elijah uh um everybody calls him elijah um i have uh submitted uh some similar legislation this year so for which we are extremely grateful for them doing that so right now with the help of my mother's and the leadership of dr g here we are and i guess we stand by waiting for uh some insight direction and options and the board will evaluate and do
083what we have to do to move this district forward mr singh was there anything else you want us to add on this matter oh no thank you for the opportunity rich detour wanted to say something rich you're mute me a moment thank you yeah but the comment i wanted to add was um when we did the cash flow financing in july um we're required to produce for investors a cash flow statement which was provided by the district and at that time the appropriate amount to borrow was indeed the 18 million dollars that we borrowed and obviously a lot changed in the short period of time between when your budget was done when you did your cash flow financing as now in hindsight the facts were different the cash flow probably should have been presented differently
084which would have justified a a larger borrowing um we did get four bids on that cash flow borrowing and we borrowed that just under one percent at .91 base uh 91 basis points um so the market did receive the paper well but in hindsight it should have been a larger issue but but the point i wanted to make was the amount we did borrow was the amount we were authorized to borrow as per that cash flow that was provided thank you very much mr singer if i can just summarize some of this conversation with the with the summary and correct me if i'm wrong from where we stand today from what we know um we have a real cash flow issue in getting through the year but realistically speaking as we look down the down
085the road we have more of a balancing act than a real deficit at the moment we're very hopeful that the 66 million will come through and that'll not only allow us to balance this deficit but it'll allow us to plan ahead for the next couple years and hopefully get through the other road bumps ahead as we see with the changes so well outlined in your memo is there any area of concern that we should be aware of that you have seen or know of that is coming up down the pike and is there any shifts that we should be paying attention to in the whole cares act that should that would change the trajectory from a balancing to a real deficit i think you're 100 accurate as it plays out as information comes to us
086we'll keep the board informed um as business office updates to cash flow and we know exactly which type of borrowing is permissible and then we work ourselves through this till the end of the school year with the goal is to minimize any layoffs nobody wants to see anybody unemployed especially if we could make ourselves work ourselves out through june 30th and then next year we'll get the additional funding and hopefully the state legislature will give us more than the 66 million and we put some away for the future so we don't have to repeat this type of issue again you hit it on the head you're a thousand percent correct so on that note i will i will say to the public that i believe at this moment i think we we keep our optimism
087up and it's fair to project and believe that there will be no mid-year cuts or reduction in staffing or programs is that correct that dr jim martino has to answer that specifically we just hunted to you thank you i appreciate it so actually mr president i appreciate that uh punt and i'll receive it um the so to answer your question what i'm going to do is is jump forward a couple of slides because what we were able to do is uh really and we're gonna we're gonna go through the slides expeditiously because i want to um bobbin and missy i want to get to the slide uh that's specific to what mr weiss mandel had had asked about regarding positions and position uh reductions because what we ended up doing continuing to really focus very
088focusing very specifically on our goals was to make sure to your exact point uh that we keep reductions as far away from the classroom as possible what we ended up finding was that we really needed to initially make uh over 50 classroom reductions we then brought that down well i have to finish we we then brought that down to 30. i'm sorry if you took the five out and you left the zero i'm good very we we would agree um so continue to move forward um so the uh the team ended up being able to move a number of positions around and increase the efficiencies um yep you need to continue to to get to the slide that i'm looking for and what we ended up what we ended up finding was that we could
089actually through the use of cares funding through the use of title reallocations we ended up if you go to the next slide we ended up removing or reducing seven positions from central office and that's something that that in order to meet this this budget and the adjustments it's compulsory um and we went from from the 33 positions to three um that's again with looking at every single penny that we can we can redistribute in this district um there's no there's no more to squeeze um you know going from 33 to 3 and taking the largest hit at central office with seven position uh reductions was quite significant i'm not going to tell you that it's not going to have an impact on the ability to provide timely services to schools by by reducing seven but
090we wanted to keep those reductions as far away from the classroom as possible but this is also only a worst case scenario correct that this is the worst case scenario was 66. we then got it down to the 33. the the seven positions and the three positions are the current reality does the 30 the 33 position does that include the possible 4.3 lawsuit um reduction slash layoffs that you outlined previously or is that separate no so you know we we don't know when uh the 4.3 million will be compelled to be paid so what we did was backed positions out covered positions with reallocating title funding um you know obviously we're counting on the cares funding so the seven positions at central office and the three positions that are building based uh programmatic efficiencies are
091very very real we can't squeeze any more this is already accounting for the 4.3 so so this is this is we're kind of holding that 4.3 in abeyance because we don't know mr president if that's going to be something that we have to pay next year we don't know we haven't been given a timeline could these three these three be rolled into a traditional retirement or uh we've already done that for next year's planning um that's a that's a great thought if we had three people retire this week we'd be we'd be in better shape although dr g just for a little clarification um had those changes already been made i guess um because you know how we do have you know we do have certain staff members who always want to know exactly what's
092going on what's going on so i just want to know have these changes been made already in regards to moving teachers out the classroom or should we still be expecting that so that would that would be stage two um we've already looked at where the the chess pieces need to be but the the position moves or the adjustments haven't been haven't been executed miss white mr handel's point if we had three retirements um you know we we'd be we wouldn't there would be essentially zero uh zero impact on on personnel uh losing a position what is our timeline on this technology uh well if we we have to make some decisions tonight because the intent also is that um and i know the community knows this i know our members of the board of education
093know this um you know we have been receiving appropriate feedback by the way um and i know that a couple of board members have inquired specifically to me about really looking at a transition plan back in person rotating students back in person most of our neighbors if not all of our neighbors have have framed that plan and our neighboring school districts and other districts in the lower hudson region uh are continuing to to transition students back in person on a rotational basis in a much more robust manner that we have and that's something that we have to really uh do within the next few weeks as well um because the year the school year is fleeting and our kids really need to get back into school dr gio martino this is sherry mcgill just a
094quick question how i'm i know you got it down from 66 to 33 now you're saying to three um positions how are you going to determine who those three positions would be the the positions are based on seniority based on seniority but to miss mcgill's question how do you change based on a program based tonight yep so they're yup they're you're right they're based on a programmatic efficiencies once you're on the programmatic efficiencies you then make a determination where your overages are and making a determination as to where those overages are let's say you have one special edu or one you wouldn't obviously reduce special education you have one elementary teacher you have one uh art teacher and one english teacher so miss mcgill that that point is well taken in terms of really looking
095at the efficiencies by position by school um absolutely and that that occurred in collaboration with our principal leadership team dr g wouldn't it be true that with the current setting of the remote learning there are certain positions that are not being utilized at the moment so that's that's a great um a great reference um the intent you would you would think um unfortunately the way the uh teaching association contract is written is that even if students are on the books and and they and they are not attending um the the teachers are paid a stipend and an overage as a result those costs have been rather exorbitant by virtue of sometimes students inability to show up whether in a remote fashion or otherwise and that's part of the reason why we also really need to
096transition back in person because ultimately getting our kids back getting our kids in front of teachers will provide uh increased uh exposure for our students but also provide us a better opportunity um for more more clear head counts as well so now that you've gotten it down this tight have we reached out to the union to see if there's any shifting they could do they'll enable us to keep the positions in place perhaps so so we did we did meet with union leadership but the expectation was that the district would uh provide the resolution um because as uh ms larosa indicated in her letter to the board um you know they've indicated that they did not create the issue so the resolution is not there not beholden to a resolution is there another alternative mr
097president um if there was if there were another alternative i can assure you we've gone through when i say appreciatively i've kept executive cabinet members until 11 11 30 a couple of us until 2 33 in the morning multiple evenings to really make sure that we're as tight as possible um we would present such to you and the board um this is we we can't get anything else from any that the proverbial blood from a stone is uh we we've squeezed that stone as hard as we can what is it what is the figure what are the dollars these three positions i'm sorry what is the dollars of these three positions what are we talking about um if we look at if we look at three positions with um with benefits um you know we
098can we can say 120 000 a piece this is mid years you wouldn't get to 120 that's correct yep so you can you can even cut that by a quarter so we're talking about 250 that's how that's how literally that's how tight it is i have a question um the order had presented to us that we had 60 million dollars in the fund balance i know uh we spoke about it at one of our board meetings where um it was we were told that we had 13 million left um with what you discovered where do we stand with the fund balance so um as mr turtle and his team uh had referenced you know we're we're really looking at it at the cash flow and the fund balance um what we what we discovered was
099that we we have to really look at that a little more more tightly and a little more explicitly so i would contend that right now based on the information that we have that that really isn't uh isn't a whole number dr g um not a fan of this approach at all but i will ask the question of course in light of the balancing that seems to be seems to going to be falling into place um is there a reserve option i appreciate you uh you mentioning that as well mr president um the the reserve option and i know you're not talking about reserves but an alternate option per se um i am talking about reserves oh um so so not really um what we what we didn't want to do and we really um weren't
100looking to do is to bleed the reserves to the extent that uh you know that we couldn't couldn't replenish them um again the reserves look a little different than uh had been originally indicated um the the reframing of of the positions the reframing of looking explicitly literally course by course section by section building by building uh occurred and and you're right this is this is nothing anyone in education ever wants to do um but it's it's where we currently are i know but i think there's so many unknowns at this point and and it's it's a mid-year it's a mid-year move during a pandemic and there's so much uncertainty the children are are faced and dealing with so much hardship and so much pressure and anxiety and great what we're talking about bringing them back
101to schools to bring them back under the cloud of of of the teachers being worried about not being able to finish the year with the programs and positions that are currently in place i'm reluctantly in favor of taking drastic measures in a different direction just so we could tell our children look we're not out of the woods we have challenges ahead but we made a commitment to this year we're going to finish this year the way we started it and we'll deal with our problems next year i'm very opposed to rolling the barrel down the road but we have to balance that with telling the children we've committed to something we're going to make it happen and we'll figure out the rest as we move along as more information comes our way if we were
102talking about 66 positions and a huge gaping hole we'd be having a very different conversation in your words we've closed the gap we've narrowed the chasm we're talking about a few hundred thousand dollars there's got to be another way but each of the sixty thousand registered voters donate ten dollars and we're clean maybe we should have a committee of board members wrong substitute doc um i definitely agree with what mr weiss randall has said as well um it is really unfortunate however i just have to say you know the reality of it is i feel that those who didn't make the proper adjustments to reflect what was going on in our district i hope that they are held accountable because this is absolutely neglectful this is also a crime against education especially to our kids
103in east rampo and i am not happy about it at all so i hope that those are held accountable all of them because there is a blame somewhere there is a blame i know that like we don't want to you know blame anyone but there is a blame somewhere so i hope that those are held extremely accountable for it understood president weiss mandel this is cheryl can i just say something to dr gio martino please just a question thank you thank you so much dr gmrt i'm just sitting here thinking um we we're in a financial crisis um and you know you bill jackson capital financial advisors they came on i know you i heard you say that there's a small advisory fee um but should we be spending money on lawyers again um is
104there a way where because i know we're in a fight financial crisis so is there a way where because i i know this company basically will they'll check the class the i'm sorry the cash flow um as well as like long-term they're looking at um capital needs um can't we can't the i'm just looking at the letter from uh mr uh bruce singer and denise lau but can't can't even um can't the state will the state do this for free um we are in a crisis and i know president um wise mandel and i to agree that you know we don't even wanna um during this during the mid-year of the school year um we don't wanna get rid of we want it to be zero and i agree with him we don't want that
105three there we want zero um because you know at the end of the day our children have have um been faced with enough especially during this the covet 19 um trust me as an educator it's not easy it's not easy for our students it's not easy for our teachers and here it is you know due to some neglect you know we're they're being responsible for all this so is there a way i don't know it's just a question um president wiseman on the board and and to dr gio martino is there a way where you know like we said we're financially strapped um do we necessarily have to because we're going to have to i know you said a small advisory fee what might that small advisory fee b wherever we could say wherever we
106could save money we we need to save if we could save those three teachers with those with that type of money let's save it miss mcgill i'm just gonna jump in and just tell you sure when it comes to the bond market it's a specialty market and you won't get lenders to look at you without you know having these this area of expertise coming along with it so i appreciate the sentiment but having been down haven't been to this party before unfortunately you won't even get them to look at us to have conversations with us without bringing extensive back information and reporting from from firms such as these presented to us tonight and that is where we always have to keep them on on our on our on our payroll would be good if we
107never get through the year without a tan and unfortunately this still looks it would be the way we were in it's the nature of the beast how much what is the small advisory fee that that you know we that they get the advisory fee was minimal um at a it was at jim 2500 yeah 2500 20 2500 miss mcgill um the twenty five hundred dollars probably has been some of the the best and and most prudent twenty five hundred dollars we've spent um as a number of people know uh president weiss mandel included when i came i reduced supplemental consultant contracts uh by upwards of 1.2 to 1.8 million dollars i discovered another contract i discovered another agreement this past uh just this this week where um the district had spent a hundred thousand dollars
108not under my watch but a hundred thousand dollars um and another consultant um with zero measurable uh outcomes or or objectives um so um to your point we have to be prudent um if anyone will tell you i tend to be a shrewd negotiator um i tried to get the doors off the hinges of mr weiss mandel's office um and uh quite frankly the the 2500 has has been quite quite well spent miss mcgill maybe okay further as president manuel mentioned we would not be able to borrow this magnitude without bound counsel the other firm capital markets prepares an official statement which explains in detail to the bondholders who'll be purchasing these bonds the need we do not have that type of sophistication on staff to write these official statements are 50 60 pages of
109the history of the board you'll get to see it when you vote on this borrowing which the board has to formally do but this is extensive work and as rich satoru and bill jackson said they are uniquely qualified and have been retained by the district for these type of borrowings a local attorney are not familiar with the bond as president suggested bond market and wall street you need somebody with specialized legal background and financial background thank you dr g was there anything else in your presentation um we'll you know we'll we'll continue from this page um because i do want to mention that we have to effectively plan for the future um one of the things that i've also been conducting is really looking um explicitly mr president and members of the board and community
110explicitly in our buildings the district has the district ran a a facilities uh monetization project a number of years ago what we discovered in um uh bringing in a new engineering firm recently in conducting building-based walk-throughs was that there are there are still gaps as a matter of fact um discovering a discovered a gap just yesterday with some external buildings some outbuildings if you will or proverbial sheds um that uh were supposed to be repaired upwards of four or more years ago um so we're going to also have to really look long-term at how we're planning not only from an instructional basis and an instructional lens but really looking explicitly at the district's long-range plan for um for building uh facilities modernization um i'm not talking about by the way i'm not talking about putting
111on um wonderful additions that look like uh you know airline hangars or museums i'm i'm referencing uh the simple nature of of providing our students and and faculty staff and administrators and assurance that uh you know we we're able to effectively uh repair a roof leak at spring valley high school's gymnasium so these are these are some long-term pieces that we also uh have to uh focus on as we as we frame our budget um very briefly i just wanted to go over the budget timeline because we're in the process of framing continuing to frame the 21-22 budget and we won't go over won't go over the numbers necessarily this evening we'll save those once they're once they're tighter but obviously we we are at the point where we have the outline i can provide
112that outline this evening but we can look at the preliminary budget on the 23rd or even sooner than that mr weissmandel and team i'm obviously submitting the proposed budget uh to the commissioner on the 26th looking at a budget adoption in april so there there are going to be a lot of moving parts knowing uh the explicit needs of the district and knowing where we currently are um i'll pause there mr president and and follow your lead i would just like to um i would have liked to see it a few days uh earlier which gives us time to get feedback because i understand we need to get it to the commissioner in time to get it out to our voters once we get to that point we're on a clock yeah i'd like to
113see a little a little more time a lot if possible to the board sure what we can do this was this was the um calendar that was adopted earlier in the year uh that was that was uh presented by finance what we can do is um we can still flex and get that to the board a little early for for there at least a week earlier the week of the 14th um so the board has time to respond and on the 23rd you could kind of take a second cut at it so we could all give it our blessing and move it on to the to the next level to the commission monitor if if we have the right uh the right support we can we can give that timeline a shot now miss mcgills
114is as has joined the committee that'll volunteer any night of the week you need extra help does it go out to vote inducted dr g oop sorry taking i'm taking notes uh kath um go out to the vote kath we have uh excuse me sorry the budget vote is may 11. [Music] okay have we have we have we worked dr g have we worked up a calendar as in the past for for forums for the community different settings to present can you repeat that mr president in the past we've had forums and hearings and different groups that are not going to do it this year on the zoom we'd have to set it up differently but we gotta stand out and get feedback from the community on on these budgets we we absolutely are going
115to be doing the community forums as well okay and and you're right zoom is gonna going to look different but we have um i believe previously there were four community forums slated and we're going to replicate them okay quick question do we know how we're going to be um conducting this two years on vote why'd you vote is it still mail hi right right now the governor's not issued any um guidance or direction so as i understand it we fall back to what was normal if i can use that term before kovitz started so that would be in-person voting that's what uh dr g and i have been planning for but keeping in the back of her mind that if the governor issues guidance and directs us to do absentee ballot we'll have to shift
116gears at whatever point the governor would issue that well with today's shift in albany i think would be the legislator i think he's lost his powers well no my place to comment politically perhaps dr g yes moving along yep we can we can uh just provide some brief updates on meal distributions as we have continued to provide explicit meal site access you'll see that um the meal distributions continue and continue at a pretty good rate um we do have some sites that uh in particular you know don't receive the same amount of um of uh foot traffic is is um compared to other sites um but we're continuing and and we're assessing really the the effectiveness of those sites to make sure that you know if we only have two or three or four meals
117being distributed then we'll increase our efficiencies there we just wanted to provide a very brief uh update on the migration of our from group wise to gmail i think uh that uh one of our colleagues mr grossman will be excited about that um and uh that migration uh the tentative launch date is march 13th so we're we've been on track um hopefully with no glitches we'll we'll get that continued to be moving uh we're also pretty excited um uh bavin and uh his team along with um dr madison uh were able to access an additional 500 hot spots uh from at t and connected nation um for in a one year unlimited plan so we'll have uh even more hot spots for more families for more students i'm continuing to cr to close that digital
118divide um we're going to have very briefly um the world famous mike smith an attendance task force update thank you dr gigio martino and good evening members of the board of education state monitors the attendance task force has been working hard to address absence with the understanding that a regular attendance can be a better predictor or whether students will drop out before graduation and test scores in developing a balanced scorecard of lead and lag indicators that would help us systemically support our building leadership we've identified the components that are essential to our balanced scorecard teams culture and professional practice in building our attendance team comprised of assistant superintendent principal assistant principals teachers and frcs we have weekly meetings to update and brainstorm these strategies along with our monthly collegial meeting we work collaboratively to think
119tanks to address attendance issues and developing a culture of positive messaging school assemblies parent meetings and social media outreach have been emphasized being in attendance and actively engaged has been the goal at present we are developing web hub designed to create and message more information to the long lasting benefits in coming to school and thirdly our professional practice the creation of high quality media materials which support attendance since january the team has begun many home visits in reaching out and having successful contact with students and families as we call this the attendance task force the job of attendance was all of our concerns as evidenced by not just members of the team but home visits from assistant superintendents melissa barros tamara walker and others our core goals and objectives are in support of increased attendance
120thank you thank you mr smith sorry i have a question um i know i've been asking since october for the data do we have an update on that yet we do um we have uh what we've been focusing on very explicitly is uh average daily attendance the the district-wide average daily attendance year to date is uh at a solid eighty percent um that's inclusive of students who are on site and those are limited numbers of students obviously as well as uh the attendance being taken for those students uh who are working in a remote fashion it's based explicitly on our um e-school data and teacher daily attendance entry okay thank you and are we finding that that the home outreach and visits um are helping our students be more engaged in instruction learning um the
121the engage we haven't assessed or evaluated engagement per se but uh we have uh noted that the home outreach has increased uh students re-engaging in school so it's increased their attendance okay we don't know about their classroom you know we don't know what they're doing in their classrooms okay thank you you're welcome missy is going to walk us through um the return to school increased uh in-person learning model excuse me dr g this is bill jackson um i just wanted to check in if you'd like us to stay on or or if we could just uh be in touch with you tomorrow regarding our upcoming meeting to go through the additional um you know cash flow needs and and and other and other things we're happy to stay on but but um and answer any
122additional questions understandable mr president um do we need uh do we need our partners uh to remain on or um are they they're good i believe they're good to go for now thanks mr great thank you very much everybody thank you all thank you thanks dan dr g does that wrap up your presentation almost i'm sorry i appreciate the prompt missy waha is going to walk us through the uh increased in-person learning options dr g martino so we wanted to take this opportunity why are you coming in very far oh can you hear me better now yes okay thank you no problem so we wanted to take this opportunity to let our community um know that we are increasing in person learning by re collapsing the cohort so right now we currently have three major
123cohorts cohort a b and c and beginning march 15th there will be two cohorts cohort a and b so what does that mean that means right now currently we have three week rotations so cohort a comes one week followed by cohort b the second week and cohort c the third week beginning march 15th there will be two cohorts meaning that there will be a two week rotation of a cohort a and cohort b we will still have cohort d which is where parents have uh stated their preference for remote only so we'll have a call beginning march 15th we'll have a cohort a a cohort b and a cohort d so what that means is parents should expect to have mailings of parent letters beginning mailings will go out beginning march 8th and these mailings
124would be for our general those receiving general education service um programming uh it will be monday through friday you'll see your on the if you look at the little square on the bottom you'll see that on the left side you'll see that it states the student school grade and cohort so it will let any changes to your child's cohort will be on this letter so if your child was a cohort c you'll let them know if they are now a or b similarly for our students receiving special in special classes the cohort aa and bb will no longer be every other week we're working towards it being every single day okay so please parents expect to see uh mailings of your child's cohort and reminders of your child's cohort with the dates beginning march 8th
125and the start date for this increase in person learning is march 15th i'm sorry i have a question approximately how many students are in cohort a b and d that will be returning in person and do we have a breakdown of that number by school i can we can provide that for you but it's based on cohorts court a b and c which will be collapsed to a cohort a and b and then cohort d is remote only so right now i do not have that data in front of me but what i can do is we can work towards providing that dr g we we absolutely can um and um one of the things i i think i want to uh make sure we're clear um madam vice president one of the things you're
126probably seeking clarity on is is providing an assurance of safe social distancing and that is something that's been taken into consideration um so uh i can assure you that that has been uh has been assessed and reviewed and something that um the team has taken into consideration in collaboration with the um school principals as well okay and this is um the cohort a and b is based on the students that are already um on the hybrid schedule are students that are remote if they wanted to be a part of this group do are they allowed to or are we sticking with the are they do they have to stick with the remote 100 remote no i if i may ask for clarification what i'm what i think i'm hearing you ask is if students want
127to return from remote will they have the option to do so and the answer is yes they're not compelled to remain remote for the remainder of the school year we've actually had parents reaching out to schools to central office to my office really asking especially over the past week plus you know can we get back to school um because they're they're just really wanting to make sure that that their kids are getting the same opportunities as any other kids so answer your question yes thank you you're welcome i i think um we're going to just have um dr west uh provide some some wonderful news regarding um the rockland uh the rocklin community um college black achievement awards dr west thank you dr gia martino good evening members good evening members of the community on
128wednesday february 25th rocklin community college recognized 118 of our scholars from nine schools sixth graders from el dorado elmwood hempstead khakia and lime kiln elementary as well as 8th graders from khakiat middle chestnut ridge and pomona in addition to our 10th and 12th graders from rappel and spring valley high schools were applauded for their academic excellence once again proving that in east rampo central school district our students are really working to achieve their academics and going all the way up we applaud you students next year we would like to see that number double or triple so keep working hard keep reaching we're so proud of you thank you dr g thank you very much dr west uh we're going to close on that mr president and turn turn the proverbial gavel uh over back to
129you um and the board for uh resolutions and uh again thank you for the indulgence thank you very much dr g moving on i'm sorry um i'm sorry i just have a quick question if you can just go back to the superintendent's um um i know this wasn't covered in the report but i know that we are approved for athletics at the last board meeting and i wanted to know i know we had a conversation about this but if there was any update on the turf at both spring valley and rama high school knowing that they're supposed to start practice this weekend i believe games possibly next week um for cleared and also uh live streaming um will parents have we figured out a way to live stream the games for parents um you know
130students students and teachers spectators to to watch the games got it yep um as a matter of fact i do recall that conversation um during the athletics uh uh subcommittee meeting with mr tombs and and he indicated that he'd have some information mr toombs good evening board good evening uh good evening community um so we with the live streaming we're looking at options to get uh the proper hardware at the game so we can stream onto a school youtube page and we're also trying to work with um both of our web pages uh the high school web pages to bring those back to life so community members can just access the stream right through the school websites so spring valley athletics website and around pro athletics website so that's right now is it work in
131progress and then the question about the snow removal is it it's not such an easy answer um because the facility the the turf actually has um a warranty on it and the if we take action outside of the warranty we could damage the field or we could void the warranty so what we're asking at this point is that we don't plow the field that we don't bring a vehicle on it um that we don't have anybody go out there with a shovel and try to shovel it and uh we're looking with the coaches exploring options uh that wouldn't avoid any issues or wouldn't create any issues with the the turf fields and we're also we're fingers crossed for some some good weather and some sunshine uh to help okay because i know i know as
132we we spoke about this but um you know also worried about the student safety um if it's not plowed well clearly can be powder shoveled i know we're not we're we don't want to damage the turf um but we also have to think about you know are we allowing the students to still practice um on the field you know um you know today being a very cold day um that can easily turn into ice so i think we that's something that needs to be thought about and the fact that we're also going to have um possible games at our turf as well so we don't want to put anybody in danger yeah it's well said our first job as with everybody uh every teacher every coach is always around student safety um and that's something
133we don't take uh lightly in athletics um we would not put the kids out in the field if we thought it was an unsafe situation right what we what we have talked about the coaches is the process of bringing the teams out there and you you kind of trample the snow down by uh moving on in a very predictable manner no sharp cuts no high speeds and it's not a practice right it's just a process of flattening the snow so the sun can take over and and speed up the um the melting process the other end of it too and i have to say this in any community members that are listening someone uh went onto our fields and shoveled portions of the fields uh snow blurred or shoveled it we can't tell but again
134to my original point yes i understand it's in good intent you want to get the turf freed up for activity but what you do and what you can see if you look at these these snow piles that were created by whoever displaced these about 20 yard by 20 yard area all the black pellets that live down underneath in the turf thread they've been lifted not all but a portion they've been lifted and displaced and what happens is you lose the buoyancy and the the compact ability of the field so if a knee or an elbow or a head or a helmet hits it now it lost its safety so i get it whoever took it upon themselves to go out there you can't you can't do that because now we have a you know a
135quote unquote flat spot on the turf right so we have to be really careful we do things properly that we just don't go out there and take it upon ourselves to push and move the snow um because with that you know you have you have a certain point in terp and also without warning an athlete running down the field transitions and could uh potentially hurt themselves with that with that that sort of flat dead area so we will work on solutions for sure okay thank you thank you dr g thank you mr president you report consent agenda items is there a motion for consent agenda items excuse me mr president um for tonight only the information reports from the board is coming before consent agenda items dr fowler and dr gray are going to give
136us an update on the search for a permanent superintendent and then there's a discussion item on non-public school transportation following that got it thank you kathy you're welcome dr fowler you're up all right i thank you and uh dr gray is here with me and we congratulate all the board members who were elected the new officers um obviously from your discussion this evening you have a lot of work ahead of you and we wish you the very best we've had a good experience in the search process and i thought particularly for the new board members it might be helpful just to review where we've been this will be very very quick we began in november during the months of november and december we started with a planning meeting on november 10th and then we met
137with 14 focus groups that consisted of parents and students staff on december 8 december 9 december 14 we asked for their input to bring back to the board on the kind of background and skill set that would best work for the new superintendent in east ramapo uh in addition to these focus groups uh there was an online survey offered in four languages that could be accessed through the district's website and to get additional uh support then we came back to the board and on january 5th based on the input you heard from people in the community you approved six specifications to be used in recruiting and evaluating candidates for the superintendent position this is the first of the six focusing on communication experience as a superintendent and someone who has worked and provide leadership in
138a diverse high expectation school community second one dealt with getting community-wide support and successfully addressing the kinds of issues you were addressing as a board this evening third was someone who had in his or her current work the respect of the people with whom he or she worked was seen by them as visible and transparent as the leader and had strong experience as a classroom teacher and a building administrator in addition to any district-wide leadership uh the fourth a visionary who had demonstrated success in bringing together all parts of a very diverse community so that they can work together to benefit the school children of that community someone with good administrative skills proven success in addressing complex problems of planning organization instruction and developing the support that the school system needs from its community and
139then lastly a leader who whose style of leadership is approachable uh one who uses uses a collaborative style on capitalizing and using the best judgments of staff and students and community and that work so with those uh six specifications in mind then we began the recruitment and vetting process the letter was sent to organizations and individuals nationally emphasis on the new york state area saying this is what the east ramapo district is like these are the qualities that israeli seeking in its new superintendent the job announcement was placed in education week which is the most widely read education journal in the united states by school leaders each of the state association superintendents the national association of superintendents in the journal of the national urban league the association of latino administrators and the national association of
140black school educators and then we made outreach uh to a variety of people in our own networks again using your specifications and saying this is what this district is looking for who should we be speaking with and then reached out and spoke with those uh individuals in february we screened and vetted what turned out to be 40 online applications more than half of the applications are from experienced superintendents and that we were able to reduce down to 14 candidates who we met with last thursday and friday and again in our meeting with them prior to the meeting we vetted them against your specifications and then in our own interview with them we also use those specifications and ask the candidates to give us specific examples of what they had accomplished what they'd actually done that
141reflected the kind of qualities that you were looking for they have provided us with that we are now in the process of doing the final vetting which will lead us to need a meeting with you uh in early this month probably we'll be ready to go sometime in the early part of next week we need about two hours uh in that meeting with you we'll have available for you uh the materials of every candidate with whom uh who made an application for this position as well as tell you about the people we met and why we felt they best met your specifications what other people who have worked with them said about their uh work uh and at that meeting the board will also need to organize itself with our assistance for your interview uh
142process uh and then ultimately determine uh which candidates you wish to interview and how you will interview them questions developing questions for that interview process and at that point many or several of the people with whom we've met uh are in demand and so the quicker the board can move through the candidates uh and reach a final conclusion uh the better its choice of candidates is is going to be uh dr gray are both really very excited about the people with whom we've met and about what we've learned so far about uh their work and their service where they are we feel uh we will have a group for you that's very responsive to the specifications uh which you approved and gave to us so we'll work with kathy to get a meeting scheduled so
143that we can engage you in the process and you will be able to take the process from here on out dr gray anything you wanted to add you may have a muted microphone i know i saw her no i i don't see her anymore so whatever she would have been i'm there there you are i was muted all this time now it's a it's an executive session type meeting it's a you know we're giving you people's names and addresses and all of that stuff so it's a private it's a not a non-public meeting yes and that's important to mention confidentiality is critical um we've assured the candidates that only the members of the school board perhaps the district clerk will know uh of their interest in your position and their candidacy so that they can
144feel comfortable meeting with you in that preliminary semi-finalist interview and that's why our meeting with you needs to be an executive session as well as your interviews and that's kind of important because as it turns out there as you know there are a large number of school districts in rockland and westchester that are looking for superintendents so several of our superintendents are in several searches searches we can't avoid that if you pick good people that sometimes happens that is our report mr president and we look forward to meeting with the board very quickly thank you very much and you're being conscious kathy and she'll do what she does best she'll set up our meeting thank you thank you dr green as well thank you so much have a good night um moving along to uh
145consent agenda was there a motion because excuse me excuse me one more time mr president i'm sorry uh you've run out of excuse me uh dr g had wanted a discussion item on the non-public school transportation during this uh section of board reports and information i know it's an unusual sequence okay dr g oh yeah thank you mr president um we wanted to make sure that we provided an update on the uh request for bids and uh mr schweigler is going to provide just a very brief um kind of a very brief fyi relative to the bids that came in um and really a recommendation uh in light of the current state of the budget to make sure that ultimately the long-term affordability is there so mr schweigler is going to just provide a very
146brief uh very brief update thank you dr gio martino good evening board and community on january 19th we conducted a bid opening uh rfb er 16-21 for uh in and out of district private school transportation the contractors that submitted bids uh were recorded and the report on this bid opening is as follows uh currently our non-public transportation uh cost is approximately 17 million dollars uh based upon the and this was for a five-year bid based upon the uh bid submissions the first year uh of this um bid packages five-year bid would roughly be ten million five hundred thousand dollars more than current spacing out to year five taking into account an approximate five percent student increase year over year the fifth year would be roughly just for the non-public transportation 38 million five hundred thousand
147dollars uh obviously this is not a sustainable uh number uh for that reason my recommendation is to reject this bit uh and to immediately advertise and put this out to bid once again thank you dr g thank you mr schweiger thank you mr moving along um consent agendas cathy yes am i good to go you are good to go mr president thank you is there a motion for consent agenda mcgill is there any discussion from the board yes i have a discussion um unfortunately you know i just took oath this evening so um items h2 which were the prior minutes before i even took oath i i will not be able to vote on those minutes as well as item h5 i have no information on the cse recommendations which i understood because um as
148uh the conversation that i had with with miss kibby um i would not have um access to um so i just want to say um h2 you know because those were prime mins before i took oath um h5 i have no information as well as h6 um which is the sorry about that i stapled it um the cpse recommendations um as well as uh number eight h a which was the treasures or budget status report up as of december 31st 2020 all of this again that has taken place before i took oath and i'm just a little wary you know uh with the treasures and budget status report looking um over it it is um and then hearing like tonight with the state comptrollers to audit their recommendation to audit the district's finances so just
149not being a board member and just being sworn in tonight and i i understood that like um that as per ms kibby i would not have access like the rest of you um until i have been sworn in so which which does not allow me uh the time you know or to get the information that's needed on those particular items um but everything else was okay thank you president thank you any other discussion just a discussion on number just um just a discussion real quick on number eight you wanna speak up a little i missed the whole webinar just for the discussion on number eight if it could just briefly be explained again miss lavell's asking for a question about number eight yep so the treasurer normally provides a budget status report in this particular
150case um the this this report i do not have in front of me um i did see uh mr bear uh briefly today um but uh he didn't have any uh details for me um we can get some additional updates from him regarding uh the treasurer's report is there a specific question that you know is there a specific question it is an overview just exactly to um what this is this is just a report right this is a treasures report that we got every month yeah okay nothing specific like nothing like we have to just go through and nothing that we should be worried about just a regular report as board members look at it and understand it and ask questions and the basically just an update of the district's finance how money came in
151how it went out it gives you basically a dashboard of the current state of the union as far as finance is concerned president may just offer um the purpose of the treasury is to reconcile the district's records against the bank statements so independent of the business office which issues purchase orders and israel's spending monitors staffing and expenditures for supplies the treasurer monitors the cash in the bank okay he's the only one that has access to that so if the computer system says we spent 20 million he checks the bank records to make sure that 20 million is actually spent okay thank you okay we have a first and a second little favor say aye hi and i want to pose or well president wiseman no you're going to stay on which not on which on
152this yeah i explained to you already you're upstairs right not everything no um it was h2 h5 um h6 and h8 for now yeah thank you thank you is there a motion axe lines from an exercise on the superintendent [Music] is there emotion many of you are muted if you want to make a motion i need you to unlea yourselves and speak up or forever hold your peace i'll make the motion actually miss lavell makes the motion is there a second second mark secular mr berkowitz any discussion on the motion yes this is for one through seven martino can you explain number four please agreement with the public safety radio communications sure um the um rockland county um the sheriff's department other close municipal partners end up working with school districts to make sure that
153there are not any dead zones in our larger buildings in this particular case it's ramaco high school and what ends up happening uh this has occurred in other districts i've been in um and it's i confirmed that it also is taking place in other districts in rockland county what ends up happening is if your building is so large you know sometimes even with the construction steel inverters etc you can't um use your cell phone easily or even um your your walkie-talkies or radios for your safety and security team so what uh they have a grant that can essentially put an antenna and a repeater in our building uh that helps us and ultimately if there's an emergency on campus helps them as well thank you you're welcome dr g can you please explain um number
154seven for me please are you talking about the schools yeah so the district enters into consistent agreements with partner agencies and other schools for idea through the idea grant and provides services to students who are residents of the district in this particular case this is a series of agreements um so that way we are able to work with these schools or um agencies and provide services to students who would otherwise need idea specific programming okay thank you is this this is something that we like you say we've always been doing this right we've always been in um as a matter of fact every district should be doing this um and you should be updating it by the way it shouldn't it shouldn't be stagnant because uh oftentimes during the cse process you might have to
155add a school you might have to modify a school or an agency and as a result these these occur at minimum in my experience a couple times a year okay all right thank you you're welcome so we have a first and a second all in favor say hi hi hi all right to post there stay in motion carries future meeting dates kathy sorry about that the next regular board meeting is tuesday march 23rd 2021 at 7 30 p.m if the governor extends his executive orders permitting virtual meetings the meeting will be held electronically via online web conferencing technology instead of a public meeting that is open for the public to attend in person access instructions and the meeting location will be posted by tuesday march 23rd on the district website otherwise the meeting will be
156in the plcc uh room in the administration building at 105 south madison avenue spring valley new york and it will also be available live on youtube regardless of the location okay um executive session is there a motion just before we go there usually we do written communications first i know it's not first on the agenda um there was in addition to the letter from mr singer there was an email from mrs morales regarding a teacher's uh social media posts okay and then we can go to executive session it's their emotional cathy video to receive advice from council on pending litigation and for discussion and to receive advice on possible employment action involving a particular certified employee and to receive advice on a personal matter involving a particular civil service employee we anticipate it's possible we
157might have action following the executive session is there a motion wait what question are we reading the letter we're not reading the letter no we don't normally read the letters we just just state that we got the letter second to go second second was charles pearl in favor of ci i i will not go into executive session we will probably have some action items as we come out thank you for the new board members in your email you have a link to go to executive sessions so you can leave this meeting now and click on the new link in your email thank you thank you how many do we have that's my name okay patiently if you read the uh okay you ready actually i'm gonna i'm gonna make a i'm gonna ask for a
158motion for the um addendum to tonight's personnel report cathy can you share the addendum with us please okay so the motion would be to to approve the addendum personnel report item one is the resignation of walter apache the chief financial officer effective 321-21 and um and his title is a chief financial officer reason is personal number two is the appointment of an administrator linda masayas i'm not sure if i have that right as an interim school business official effective 3 3 21 at a salary of 146 000 prorated and her title would be interim school business official and she has a certification school district business leader the number three item is the appointment of a teacher for 20 20 21 suzanne sexton family and consumer science teacher effective 3 3 21 to 3 2 25
159with a tenure of 3325 the assignment pomona step and salary is 1 m thousand three hundred and eighty two dollars uh it's an existing position and says prorated less five percent per urda contract less than a full year in recent retirement of pamela anderson sorry kathy can you just repeat what was the resignation date for um mr apache for mr patchy 3 21 21. is that correct so he's raised he's resigning 3 21 21 but we're having linda start three three twenty one that's it that is in effect he's been out sick so he you you have to have the coverage and me immediately correct i just wanted to make sure i understand yep understood okay thank you it's their first and a second first mark move it mister thank you mr rose old favorite
160say hi hi anyone oppose their staying motion carries will not make a motion to which you're in tonight's meeting the white scandal second mr singer anyone interested in going back into executive session absolutely wait there for me i'll be there i know i'll wait i'll wait for you mr president all right congratulations hey i'm kathy we'll see you tomorrow morning in the drive-thru right bright and early i'll have my coffee without sugar well i was counting on you to bring coffee hi everybody congratulations thank you good night all