BOE Work Session, Budget Work Session #3 and Special Meeting for Budget Adoption

001Call to order. Good evening and welcome to the East Rockaway Board Budget Work Session and Special Meeting. I'd like to call this meeting to order at 6:03 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. >> [clears throat] >> 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. Salute. Mr. Superintendent, do we have any old business? Yes, I would like to start by thanking the community for coming out to the presentation Thursday. And just as an update, as we promised, we will have an F facts and answers to the questions that we didn't get to. And what we had an opportunity is to kind of summarize the questions and

002categorize them. So, look for it being put out at the end of the week or early next week. I think that will be helpful to answer some of the questions that you did ask. So, that's coming down the road. And more information about that to follow. And that's it. Okay, thank you. Today, we will hold a a work session and a budget work session number three, followed by a special meeting during which we will adopt the budget for the upcoming school year. Work session items for discussions. Item A and B, review of meeting minutes. Are there any questions from the board regarding the meeting minutes draft for the regular board meeting on March 24th and special meeting on March 31st? No. No. Questions on the next board meeting on April 28th, 2026? No. No. Are

003there any questions from the board regarding next week's board meeting on April 28th? No. No. Mr. Van Wort will present a budget work session presentation number three. I think I added an extra word in there. Thank you, Ms. Doyle. [laughter] All right. So, so tonight we're going to this is work session number three. It's our last work session for the fiscal year 27 budget. I'm going to cover a little bit give a little bit of updates to the Board of Education where the state budget stands right now. I think that's a status update on that. Then I'm going to turn over to Mr. Gary Gregory, our athletic director, to take us through the athletics, phys ed, and health department proposed budgets for 27. And then Mr. Kealey, Mr. Vinnie Kealey, our superintendent for personnel and

004special education will speak towards the special education and student service department proposed budget with Mr. Kenneth Robert Kennedy, who's also here with us tonight. And then we'll finalize the department budget presentations with Mr. Sean Murray, our assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction presenting the proposed budget for the curriculum and instruction department. Then they'll turn it back over to me. I'll come recap budget for the 27 year. I'll talk through the budget revenue use of reserves to fund the budget. And we will adjourn for the 27 budget cycle until the budget hearing scheduled for May 5th here at Center Avenue. So, real quickly, so the budget from the state perspective has still not been approved at this point. Statutory deadline for the state budget to be approved is April 1st. Three weeks past that right now,

005so three weeks overdue. So, what the state does, the legislature legislature does when the budget goes past April 1st is they they pass these extenders, these short-term extenders, so that they have time to continue negotiations, make sure that the state employees continue to be paid. So, yesterday they actually passed their fifth budget extender, which takes us through tomorrow to resolve any outstanding issues. At this point, all indications are the education specific negotiations have completed, but they are still working through some non-financial budgetary items, namely car insurance, um with immigration, and some of the emission standards that currently exist in New York State that the governor is proposing to extend to later statutory deadline. But, we do have passed what what are called one-house budgets. So, the state Senate and the Assembly both passes their individual

006budgets. And then what they try to do is just basically come to agreement on the individual budgets along with the executive proposal as a final budget. But, these are good indicators of where the ultimate final education budget will end up. So, let's just kind of recap couple of the items that I think are noteworthy from a fiscal year 27 budget perspective. The state Senate, their budget they passed included a minimum foundation aid increase of 2%. That's higher than what the governor proposed, which was 1%. The Assembly also passed the same exact foundation aid increase in their budget. So, usually when both houses have passed the exact same um initiative, usually that ends up in the final budget. So, it would be very probable that that will end up in the final budget. Really doesn't impact

007East Rockaway from what we were expecting, just because this is really something that impacts districts that are what we call hold harmless, which means their foundation aid can't drop below previous year based on enrollment decreases or a decrease in things like the people needs index. So, doesn't really help us for this year, but it is good for the districts in the state that the foundation increasing by 2% versus 1% in the governor's initial proposal. One area that will be beneficial to us if it does end up in the final passed legislation is both houses have proposed to increase the waiting for students that are either homeless or in foster care, and students who are classified as ELLs. So, the state Senate is proposing an increase for homeless to a 0.12 factor, and ELLs waiting from

0080.53 to 0.60. But, that would result in an increase in foundation aid for East Rockaway. The Assembly is actually increasing a much higher percentage increase for homeless and foster care students of 0.65. If that's something that did come to fruition, that would have a substantial impact on our foundation aid number based on what was in the governor's proposal. The state Senate has included a resolution that they expressed their support for what we call faith 22 funding. That just is a special education students who are 21 years old or under are aidable by the state. Any special education student that is 22 is not aidable. So, the cost falls entirely on the school district. The state Senate, their resolutions expressing support for extending the eligibility for aid from 21 years to 22, so that would be

009a positive for us. The house budget has proposal in there, and that state Senate have a proposal in there to increase the UPK funding to $2.10,000 per student. That was in the governor's initial proposal. So, the fact that the governor has that in their proposal and two houses have that in their proposals is a very high indicator that that will ultimately end up in the final budget, which is good. And last but not least, both houses are proposing to increase the prior state claim queue funding for the prior year state aid claim queue. They do this every year. Basically, what that means is um when state aid is finalized, sometimes they go back and make adjustments to it from prior year. They make an adjustment to a prior year state aid amount to a district.

010It's basically first in, first out. So, it's not funded until the legislature steps in in future years to provide funding. And then districts that were in earliest years that received adjustments would get paid out first until the current years. So, there's about a $326 million queue on that. So, the Assembly budget is actually to fund the whole queue for us, which is about $200,000 worth of state aid. If that was to come to fruition, but not optimistic that it will 100% fund all of that prior year state aid claim queue. They've always put this into the budget, and then when the budget is finalized, it tends to kind of fall off. Um So, that's the that's the update for the state perspective. I'm just going to turn it over to Mr. Gregory to go through

011the athletics, phys ed, and health department budget. We'll do the special ed budget and the curriculum instruction budget, and then I will come back and talk about revenue and the part budget. Mr. Gregory, thank you. Okay. So, I guess this is the best place to stand right here. Okay. So, I just want to go over our athletics, phys ed, and health budget. Um As you can see over here, we have our new Rocks Championship Belt that I'm sure the board members are going to want to wear when they take their pictures in July. Um but, this is part of what we're going to talk about as we move forward. One of the things that we're looking to is change up our awards ceremony. So, just to give you guys an overview, we do have 45

012overall teams for this current school year. We have five teams merged with Malverne. That's going to decrease to four because we are phasing out girls tennis with them. We did merge this year with JV football. And last minute, again, for our spring, we did merge with the Valley Stream School District for girls middle school lacrosse. The need is growing for us to start to merge because we're getting less students into our programs. So, we're trying to give them those opportunities as well. We have one intramural program. We have the two Challenger teams. The second team for Challenger track is just about to get started in the next couple of weeks. And we have about 48 overall funded staff for for our coaches and coordinators. On the teaching side, we do have five full-time members that

013are teachers. We do have one teaching assistant. Um I have been working with the building principals, uh Mr. Kennedy. Um that that full-time teaching assistant will now be fully at the elementary shared 50% at each building for next school year. Um and we do have a staff member that we use part-time to teach the elementary health classes. Okay, so um what we did in 2025-2026 school year, uh one of the big purchases was for our football program, the end zone camera. Um we were behind a lot of school programs because we did not have that. It's just another extra advantage for our coaches to get the different angles that they needed in order to prep and prepare. Um another big um ticket item that we did was we were working with our volleyball coaches. They've

014been asking us for 4 years to get this done. So, we did install new floor plates. So, basically, we created space where we have no space. So, in our big gym, um we had the one regular-size volleyball court, but we made two additional volleyball courts there. What this does for them, which they were so excited about, is it gives them the opportunity to have a regular tryouts together instead of splitting girls up from gym to gym and running back and forth. They also have the opportunity to practice together at the same time. Um they can mix and match different um practice techniques. So, if they're working on defense on one court, they can work on offense, serving, whatever may be on the second court. And the big thing, working with the PE teachers and the

015basketball coaches, is we wanted to make sure that it was very flush and didn't take away from our current uh floor. So, not to knock any other school districts, but for example, if you looked at our places' gymnasium, it's full of lines. Whereas here, we made it look very sleek, and a lot of people don't even notice that we have the floor plates and lines on on our court. Um we added boys volleyball. It was a great success. We have Coach Malesky doing that, so she had a great time. Um we do have the new virtual Hall of Fame. Um I did put a link in there, so if the board members want to look at it, they can. Um I have a little sample at the bottom. Uh I'm working on that uh with

016Coach Loris. I'm doing a lot of the updates with it, so it's going um pretty smooth. What's nice about this is touchscreen, so people that are passing by the red benches, they could go on there, and they could start looking. It's still a work in progress. There's a whole bunch of things that I've added into it. Um but what's nice about it is it's linked on the athletics website. So, if grandma, grandpa are down in Florida, they can go click on it, and they can look at it. Okay? And then every time I can do an update, it gets refreshed, that link, and people can uh view it from easier at home. Um So, I am trained in first aid and CPR um to teach it. Um but because of Dasha's Law, we needed extra

017personnel to do that. So, we were able to get Mr. Wren to get certified to do that. So, he's been helping with certifying additional staff members as well as coaches. And um our new awards ceremony that we're going to have for our varsity athletic awards, June 1st, um we do have a special surprise, so hopefully you'll show up. But uh that championship belt, this was derived from the coaches. They wanted to make a team of the year award. So, part of that award is that championship belt, so they'll get to defend it um at every home match next year. So, they get to take pictures with it and so forth. Uh it'll be used for other things as well. Uh for phys ed and health, again, I worked closely with Mr. Kennedy and the uh

018and Mr. Madden and the elementary uh principals. I'm very excited to say, again, thank you to Mr. DiTomasso, we will be offering adaptive physical education in the next school year. Um this is a need that we've had, and now we're literally going to be programming it. So, we're in the process now of doing the assessments. Uh we've been training staff. We're going to be continuing to train staff as we move forward, and as we get new entrants that meet the need, they'll be assessed, and they'll be programmed as such. So, we're excited about that. Now, [clears throat] for um the new school year for the budget, um so, last year we we were very minimal in our increase. Uh this year we did have to go a little bit um higher, but what I always

019try to do is I try to be fiscally responsible. I try to make sure that we move money where we don't need it, so where we do need it first before we ask for more. But uh some of the things that we're looking at, um so, again, we're we're split with Malverne um 50/50 when it comes to any type of uniforms or equipment. So, the girls soccer program and the boys soccer program needed all the uniforms, both varsity and JV. And again, that's two sets, home and away. So, they took on the boys, so four sets of uniforms there, and we're taking on the girls, so that's a sample of one of the jerseys there. Um we're going to uh continue our phasing of our uniforms. Um we have certain uniforms that have been here

020since uh Mr. Volpe has been around. Um it's amazing that they lasted that long. Um we have uniforms that have been around since uh Mr. Bart when he first got here. So, they're well past their time. Um and there there's just no way to get the same exact uh uniform items to match them. So, we're looking, and that's where our biggest increase is going to be is for those uniforms. Um we are going to be combining with West Hempstead for varsity football as well. So, we are actually going to save money on the back end with the football program as we um split the fees with that. Um the net pole system, so as we showed in that last uh picture with the volleyball team, we do have one system in there, um but the

021system that we have at Rain Avenue is obsolete now. It's broken. So, what we did was we transferred um the one from the small gym down to Rain Avenue. We took the old set from the big gym, put it in the small gym. So, we're going to have to get another set to put into the big gym. Um so, this was a big big ask from the community. A lot of parents wanted the use of Rolling River rather than all the teams going down to Bay Park. So, I was able to meet with them. Um Mr. Madden came with me. Mr. Daley came with us as well. So, we tried to map out something, and plus we have a connection with them anyway. Um so, we tried to do that, and we were able to

022allocate time, which we're doing right now for the spring season. So, we do have our junior high school boys and girls splitting the turf field down there for practices only. It's not a game site. Um they are still going to play their games down at Bay Park, and parents are aware of that. Um Huddle, uh that's our sorry, live streaming portion for the community. That's that part, but then the actual tactical side that the coaches use, that actually has a huge increase this year. Um unfortunately, I wasn't able to plan for it um because our budget process starts a lot earlier, so I did the typical 2%. Um but they increased it 50%. So, um but we'll be able to save again with our football program with um uh Malverne. Oh, no, I'm sorry, West

023Hempstead. So, I'm not worried about that. And I was worried about 50%. I'm like, you know, we keep getting hit with the big ones with uh that and the fields. So, Um and then there's a big one. So, if you look in the pictures over there, um the AEDs, so when I first got here, I spoke to Ms. Fiore, and I let her know that our AEDs are extremely old. And I found out the following year that they're basically obsolete. Um they're discontinued, but they still have shelf life on them. So, we we budgeted in to put three in every single year. Well, I just got the notice this year that they're going to be offline, out of service, starting uh the end of 2027 or beginning of 2028 school year. So, um I have

024another three budgeted in for this year. Uh following next school [clears throat] year, we'll probably have to bump that up a little bit because I'll have three budgeted, so we'll need an additional eight more. On top of that, because I mentioned it before, Dasha's Law, uh we've been working together with the schools. We are going to need AEDs in the buildings for trips and so forth. So, that's something that we're working on. We're looking to see if we need additional ones in the elementary schools in particular. We are covered in the high school, but there's only one in each elementary school. So, we'll be looking at that. I've been speaking with Mr. Van Wart. There's a whole new process with the bidding system, so we're working on that aspect there. Um and then for phys

025ed and health, the main thing is going to be on the phys ed side, adaptive physical education equipment. So, that's where the focus is going to be. They're still going to replenish whatever items that the phys ed teachers need, and or if there's a new need for a unit uh in particular, that's going to be a need because we're going to have adaptive PE in all three buildings now. So, Center Avenue is going to have one class. We're going to have one at Rain and ice skating. So, this way enough for the teachers will have only money for their regular needs, but for these two classes. Okay, so this is what I was talking about about trying to be fiscally responsible. Um in this side, this is more of the curriculum, the nursing and driver's

026ed, trying to move the money around to where we actually need it. Um the $5,800 as the big one, that's not really a change. It was just basically um economizing here for phys ed and health. I had two separate lines, so it's more appropriate instead of having one combined. Um but overall we look at everything we're negative about um $1,000, which I rolled over into um the supplies and everything like that, which I'll show you. Um this is pretty much where we're at. Driver's ed is pretty much been uh continuous. We really have be with the gas, but the gas increases, uh so hopefully that will stay uh the same. We shouldn't have any issues with that. So, this is where we're going to see some of differences. Um so, equipment as I said we're

027purchasing another set of the volleyball uh poles, that that's a whole entire thing. It comes with the nets, comes with the uh standards of pads and so forth. Um with that, we're looking to get a second batting cage netting down at Rain Avenue. We were only able to purchase one this year. Um and that's a custom setup because Rain Avenue gym is a little bit smaller than the small gym at the high school. Um uh the actual console for the scoreboard in the big gym is pretty much on its last leg. Uh we had a lot of issues with it this year, so we have to purchase a new one for that. Um and that's pretty much where the equipment line has gone up for that. Um the contractual line, most of that is going

028to be even though there's a negative, it's being rolled into the actual supply lines. Uh Mr. Van Wart asked me to move We originally had the Malverne supplies in the contractual, but he wanted to put it into the supplies, so that's why there's a big chunk there moving down into the supplies. Uh the tees the the team fees and permits, that's that's the use of Rolling River. So, that price is it's actually is higher than Bay Park, but being that it's so close to convenience, it it it is a win-win for the parents and the student athletes. Um so now right now the only middle school team going down there for practices and games is the middle school baseball team along with uh varsity flag football. Uh middle school uh softball's at Rain Avenue. So,

029we are using where at capacity everywhere where at. Um the next big one. So, the athletics laundry at Jump Up. So, as Mr. Kennedy can attest, we've been working with our life skills classes to have them launder the uh uniforms. Unfortunately, the seasons typically end right around the same time. We get massive amounts of laundry. They really can't handle the volume. So, what we're doing is we're going to reduce that. We're going to give the middle school uniforms because they have four seasons and it's a little bit more routine for them. So, we're going to get that to the um life skills and we're going to use the the uh uh laundry company to do the rest of the cleaning. So, that's where the increase there is. Professional development, we added lines for our coaches

030because they came to me and that was a request. So, um for everybody's knowledge, the basketball coaches did go to the boys basketball coaches did go to um PD this year. Um so, I'm trying to get the coaches to to feel that they had the opportunity to do that. Um again, so the biggest increase that you're going to see is the supplies and materials. And again, almost all of that is geared towards uniforms. Um the Malverne uniforms alone are $5,500. Um to be um the the track the the basketball uniforms, they're about $3,500 each for boys and girls. So, it does cost a lot of money to get this done, but they do last um a long time. So, that's the really the big increase from there. Everything else again, I try to I try

031to rotate our needs as much as we can as easy as possible. Uh the athletics bonuses those fees and our the medical supplies, that's just the typical increases that that occur. Now again, the bonuses part right down there, that does not include that 50% I talked about earlier. So, I would have to be transferring money from our football line into that because like I said, we're going to be splitting costs with um West Hempstead on that. So, I'm not I'm not too concerned um about um any overage there. Um that's it on my end. So, are there any questions? Yes. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. So, you were saying um for the teachers and the um teaching assistant, we have five full-time teachers, so that's one at each elementary school and three at

032the high school. And the teaching assistant will be 50% at Rain, 50% at Center and what's the teaching assistant at the high school as well? Yes. So, what are we replacing that with? So, basically what we did was we had for some reason prior to me being here, they had moved um part of the middle school health down to the elementary. Um that does not meet the state regs. It's supposed to be at 7th or 8th grade. So, I was able to for 1 year, we were able to get that back up here where it's taught health was taught in 7th and 8th grade. Mhm. So, that's why that need for the uh teaching assistant was up here because that teacher was teaching health. Now, they're free from that 7th grade health sorry, 8th grade

033health. They're teaching 7th grade. That allows them to pick up more of the PE classes and now we can move that person down to better serve the elementary school. And how many PE classes can that the Hills teacher take now that they'll be freed up from Let's see, they had he was periods two and eight. So, I believe it was approximately a point four. It'd be a point three seven five is around a point four. Okay. And the next question is the Huddle. Is that the only um provider of that service or It's it's the main provider that all school districts use. So, they do it's called a film share and so forth. So, all the schools they pull into that one thing, so this way they can all share that service in order to

034um analyze all the different games and tactics and so forth. So, they're able to break it down and so for instance, on on Mondays football, they go in and they do their film sessions and so forth. The basketball we use it and so forth. They'll break it down all stats. So, free throws, misses, this that and the other thing. Okay, thank you. And we also use it on our our side, we use it for our live streaming events as well. So, I don't only just use it for the games for like when we have Rock Rivalry and Sports Night, I'm able to stream it. Stream it and it's okay. Thank you very much. Just a few questions. Uh nice presentation. Um as far as the supervision when we are going either to Melbourne, Valley Stream

035or West Hempstead, is the supervision as far as security being like between the two districts and which school is the home school? Sure. So, right now Malverne is they're the home school for West Hempstead. Um we are the home school the home school. And right now this year for Valley Stream because it was last minute, we're the home school. So, we we work in so for instance, JV wise with Malverne, what we do there is we're in charge of all the supervision over there. They have their security. When it comes to the varsity games, we supply usually one just so that that they're aware, you know, cuz we know our parents, they know theirs. Uh with West Hempstead, that's what we're working on as well. So, we're asking I think JV at I can't remember

036exactly on the contract, but I think JV we want school supervisors and then um on the varsity we're asking for three, but when we go there, we're going to we'll flip it. We're going to send two more of the host cuz they're going to host one football game for varsity and one for JV. This year they didn't host anything cuz it was a last minute. And this year for our girls lacrosse right now, um they're bussing over here. They're going to be sending supervisors to any of the games. We send supervisors as well. And Valley Stream will be sending how many? Uh we typically send at least uh two to three. We usually have one doing the book. We have usually one or two doing um the crowd control and they'll send they'll send a

037minimum of one. So, they're only sending over one Valley Stream when we're supplying three different um supervisors. Yeah. So, for the yeah, for this year. Again, this year with the Valley Stream, it was it was really no cost difference because we wouldn't have fielded a team at all and at that point, we didn't know what the numbers were. So, uh when we were doing this, we were stuck at seven. Yeah, I think it was seven girls. Um and then finally when we matched it, we were going to merge, that's when we finally got um the poll. So, we're up to exactly 12. So going forward, will we be able to get more supervisions from Valley Stream to come this way? Well, we're going to see if this is something that we want to continue. It'll

038be all great. It's going to be a one-year deal to see if, you know, and then we don't even know if we would be able to host one or two if if this continued. Um so we have to see how things work out. It's the same thing how we reevaluated with West Hempstead. We all said it was going to be a one-year thing. We'll see how it works. And then we literally sat down, so um I started speaking with the uh West Hempstead athletic director head site, then myself, uh Mr. Pager, their head coach, and us before we sat down, we hammered everything out, brought everything back with Mr. Van Wart, any questions, we went through it. We came up with a contract, sent it over to them, they asked for this, and that's pretty

039much how it works out. Okay. And then just um another question as far as um Rolling River goes, the cost difference between Bay Park and Rolling River? Uh I really don't know that off the top of my head. I can get that to you. It's 2,500. It's 2,500 difference? >> said, 15,000 and 17,500. Uh are you talking about the actual like hour, how much it is per hour? Well, I know you said I know you said that Bay Park is less expensive and Rolling River which is more convenient. Um I just wanted to know is it something that's beneficial to do if we cuz I know Rolling River is Yes, it's great. It's right here. It is a very small area. Is it beneficial to maybe consider maybe going back to Bay Park even though

040it's I'd have to go on a bus and go over there. They don't They don't take bus to They don't. Which is a problem. Yeah. And we're still And we still have one other team that we're looking at as well because right now we have baseball down there and flag football down at Bay Park. Um and then right now we have the two lacrosse here at um Rolling River. If we move them back here, now we have two three teams down there again. And now we don't have a spot for flag football, so then if we move flag football there, then we're there for one team. And I don't know if they'll let us paint that many lines for flag football. And just a question off the top of my head, I know Mitchel Park

041is right here and they have great fields. Is it something that maybe we can consider looking We've tried. That's Yeah, it's it's uh It's turf artificial turf. Is that This is a true turf. >> [laughter] >> We've tried. We've We've tried so many places. We actually tried um >> John uh John Street. Um it just they have an infield turf for baseball which is uh Little League size and then we we're trying to get in the outfield. It just the configuration just doesn't work. So we're trying as best as we can uh trying seeing if we can do something with the fields at uh Center and Rain. You know, I was thinking if we can possibly uh reconfigure the softball field at Center and get rid of the softball field at Rain, then we can

042open up that for uh field use. Um yeah, it's just it's it's hard with what little we have. Okay. I would Most of our games are So we're fully booked on fields cuz we have practices and then games right after and then a lot of times um we have the community right after that using the field, but if there's a double header, we might we're going to like 9:00, 10:00 at night on the fields, so it's it is difficult. And then we're utilizing both fields at the high school. So the softball fields It It's Well, it's all it's Yeah, we have we have both baseball teams, we have three track teams, we have um the softball team, so we have at least anywhere from six or more teams on there practicing at the same time.

043And then everybody's got to get off. The game start at 5:00, so they're typically off the field at 4:30. Um once the game starts at 5:00, everybody's got to get off. And then not to do anything with budget, but I know um a few parents were questioning. Just want to make sure the high school is the home field for softball. Yeah, so we whenever there's a conflict, they do get bumped to um Rain Avenue. Uh we try as much as possible not to have that happen. That's why we do end up doing double headers, but there's just sometimes where there's just no choice where they're two of them, they're the and they're the only team that can get bumped because we do have an additional field for softball. They can't play at um Bay Park

044because the mound is it's not in the ground, it's painted, so they can't use that. Um and we typically don't move baseball down there because we have to move everything back up here instead, so Okay. Thank you very Yeah, no problem. I have one quick question. >> Yes. So CPR, Mhm. you're you're having a assist a second person CPR trained now, so now you can train other staff members to be CPR certification. Do we offer it to any students at all? Yeah, so the high school it's mandated that they have to have hands-on CPR anyway to graduate. Okay. If you're talking just in general, we don't have general classes for them. It is something that we're talking about. One of the things that we were discussing was possibly we'd have to get additional training for

045it is doing a a babysitters um certification. So students that are interested in doing that they can get certified. >> And also the community, you know, nurses have to be certified all the time. Oh, yes. All right. Again, every different type of level of certification is a different course we have to take. We'll We'll just take this. We'll move. To piggyback on Maureen's question, do we reach out to any of the local hospitals like Saint Francis or anything like that? I know Saint Francis offers free services for um everything but for being trained? Mhm. Uh we haven't done that yet. We we can Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thanks. All right, at this point I'll present Mr. Healey. Thank you, Mr. Healey. Yeah, so I'm done. I'm all set. This is all good. I

046think we should do an agenda review on the electronics. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you for your time. I'm good. Thanks. Okay. Um Hello. Uh So I'm Vincent Healey. I'm the assistant uh superintendent uh special education personnel. Um so I'm just going to go through uh the special education landscape and the budget for the upcoming year. In special education, we're seeing uh continued trends not just in our district, but uh across the county, the state, and the nation of just an increase of number of students identified as needing uh specialized services and being in an IEP. Um what that's meant for our district is the expansion of our program year over year. Um when Mr. Kennedy and I uh started our roles as director and assistant director, um you know, the program served uh very similar

047uh numbers uh not number of students, but uh sort of configuration of students, the way the program was laid out. Um but since we've taken over our roles, uh we've seen uh the inclusion of a more specialized self-contained class at the elementary level. That's the biggest addition that we've made, um but we've sort of added around fringes with bringing occupational therapy services, behavior services in house. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about how those additions have gone in addition to what we plan to do for the future. Uh So as it stands now, um and the way it's been for some time is that the majority of our elementary special ed services take place at Rain Avenue. Rain Avenue has ICT on every grade level. Um it has self-contained classes in the

04812:1:2 configuration, which is 12 students, one teacher, two aides. And then we added initially a 6:1:2, six students, one teacher, two aides, and is now an 8:1:3, eight students, one teacher, three aides. Um that program has gone extraordinarily well. Um I think coming in, um you know, we we saw the need for it. We saw that we had a cohort of students um all of the similar need, more intensive need than we were uh typically serving in our elementary school. And we said, you know, rather than try to find individual placements for all of these students, we thought we could do it better ourselves. Um what I'll say is uh we inherited a really wonderful staff. I think we added um really quality professionals to that staff, and to this day I think we have

049the best special education staff anywhere. That being said, the 8:1:3 went very well. Um so we've been, you know, also adding around the fringes like I said with occupational therapy, we brought in a full-time occupational therapist two years ago. Um and the reason we did that was we had been using agency model. Um and we were having trouble finding a consistent provider, so every year we would have a new OT, uh full-time OT, and part-time OT servicing our district. And there were periods of time where we either couldn't find a full-time person or a part-time person, and children were without services for a number of months that we had then had to make up with compensatory services. Um since we've added the full-time OT, uh we've not had that problem, and so we brought our

050part-time OT on board uh last year, and that has been similarly successful. It's just brought us stability. We don't have any missed services, um and it's someone who's part of our school community, who knows our kids, who knows building, knows teachers, and I think it's been pretty seamless. Uh we had a similar issue with behavior services where we were we had kind of a revolving door of agency people who would come in, um and they'd either leave their agency or they just decide they didn't want to work in behavior anymore. And so there was no stability, there was no consistency. And since bringing our BCBA in house, we've had that consistency which Mr. Kennedy will be able to speak to in a minute. Getting back to our sort of layout, Center Avenue has some special

051education services. We have one special education teacher who's allocated to this building. He does primarily resource room pull out services, but also consultant teacher services where they work either directly or indirectly with students providing sort of like a less restrictive level of service. We're going to be adding special education services to Center Avenue next school year. And that will be a second one through class. I'll talk more about that later in the meeting. At the high school, we have the full continuum of services. We have ICT, we have self-contained in a in a more departmentalized setting that's specialized by subject. And then we also have our skills and include our life skills program which is a phenomenal program. We've talked rather at length, but I just can't sing the praises enough. The teachers who work

052in that program and the aides who work in that program are just the best around. And every year for our extended school year program, we have that at Rain. We have extended school year services for our most intensive special education students. And we all go all the way up to the high school. Everybody's in one building at Rain. It's really wonderful program and you know, we we get the kids not just the services they need in house, but we get experiences like Surfers Way. Which we showed on our district website is at the start of my presentation. Mr. Kennedy. Thank you for having me here tonight. One of the great challenges but in a good way of running a special education program is that every single year we we take a look at how our

053program served our students and what we can do to make our program better. And that is always the goal every single year is to make our program better. And we focused on developing a true continuum of support for all of our students in district who require and receive special education services. All students have the ability to receive ICT which is inclusion co-taught classrooms if that's required on their IEP as well as a resource room program or possible self-contained program or consultant teacher services. We've ensured that all our students have access all our special education students have access to all special education services. And that was one of our original goals when we took over the department. The second thing that we really focused on and as Mr. Healy touched upon it was ensuring that that

054we bring all of our services in house and the the the most important reason for that is to allow all our providers who are providing our services for our students to really know our students. Anybody who goes to East Rockaway, who's graduated from East Rockaway, who's gone through East Rockaway programs said the greatest thing about East Rockaway is how everybody knows everybody has a trusted adult. Everybody feels like it's small town community and goes through a program where they feel like they are getting the best support. Bringing those services in house allows that to happen. So Mr. Healy talked about having an additional occupational therapist which we brought in house. All our related services are now are able to be provided. So we still have a little bit of PT that we're working on, but

055aside from that OT and our speech services are all provided in house. You know, with the challenges of having an agency is that even if you you don't always get the best support staff available. Even when you do, they're only working in your district part time. They don't get to know your students. And that's what we pride ourselves on is everybody who works with our students knows them as well as they can know them. Our teachers, we've trained many staff members in additional services such as Orton-Gillingham which is which is an evidence-based reading support service. We started that at the elementary level and had multiple teachers trained. And we found that that gave us the ability to really hone in on specific student needs when warranted. And we've we saw such success with that model

056that we've we've grown that throughout our entire program. So we have teachers trained K through 12 in our district in different um reading support programs so that when we have students in those grade levels who require it, we're not worried about how that's going to be provided every year. We're not thinking about who we need to contract. We know that our our teachers have the ability to provide those supports. We've [clears throat] worked with outside agencies such as Hempstead Public Works that we brought in to work with our students to support some of our graduating seniors with getting outside vocational support. Students have the ability to work during the school day and learn trades and then work gain internships to work either at in the afternoons after school or in on weekends and they're they're

057able to transfer that to summer work and employment after yeah after they do graduate. And it also allows for opportunities for different credentials allowed by New York State diploma requirements. One of the biggest things that we've worked on this year is developing our multi-tiered system of support for all of our students. We've worked on that academically, we worked on that behaviorally, and we've worked on that social-emotionally. Multi-tiered systems of support is tier one, two, and three services for our students. Tier one are supports that all students receive to be successful academically, behaviorally, or social-emotionally. Tier two are more moderate supports that certain students need to kind of close some gaps in those different areas. And tier three are those really intensive supports that certain students may need to be successful. This is beyond the area

058of special education. This is for all students in our district. Our tier one academic supports uses universal screenings, targeted interventions, clear entry and exit criteria, progress monitoring to ensure students are receiving supports as they throughout the the year. Our teachers meet with with our administration and review data that happens throughout the course of the year, determines when they need more intensive tier two or tier three supports. We meet to make sure that they get less intensive tier two or back to tier one supports when we see the growth that we need. And we have also met with teachers to ensure that the tier two and tier three supports are adjusted when when our data indicates that the type of of instruction that needs to be given to the to the students needs to be adjusted

059so that they close those gaps. Behaviorally, as Mr. Healy noted, we brought our BCBA in house. A BCBA is a behavior consultant. And we have now have tier one, tier two, and tier three behavior services across all three buildings in our district. Tier one might be the behaviorist working with classroom teachers to help them institute strategies into their classrooms when there are certain needs. Tier two is a little more intensive supports based on specific students and parents always notified in advance of those tier supports being provided. And tier three are generally more special education type supports that include behavior intervention plans to support those students. And social-emotionally, we have partnered with our social workers to really implement a robust tier two small group intervention system without eliminating any tier one supports for our students in

060our elementary buildings. These tier two supports are in the form of grade level grade level lunch bunches, other types of small group instructions like banana splits. And just gives all our students who need that kind of social-emotional support that extra support that they need. And again, that's without reducing any of our tier one supports. I have a question for you. Sure. Not a question, more of a an ask is you know, I've been all over this tiered supports thing. I would like to see more updated data through the year on how many kids are in a grade or in tier one, two, three and how they're moving and updated reports. Make sure the parents are very involved. And um you know, I'm I'm thinking of forewarning you. This is going to be like something I'm

061all over next school year. Absolutely. Okay. Thanks. The 813 class that you're talking about over at Center Avenue, that's going to be a new program? Yes. Can I actually you don't mind? I have two more slides and I'll be able to answer that. Cuz I'm thinking of what I'm going to do with that. Maybe. Maybe. You got your slide. You never You never know what I might say. Two more slides. There. So I'm just going to I'm not going to go line by line, but I do want to talk about a few items that I think are of note. The OT PT consultant code. There's a difference of a deduction of $38,000. That's the Basically what happened was because we brought the part-time OT in house that we no longer need that consultant the money

062in the consultant code. So that's really more of shifting money from one code to another. We did uh we did see a deduction in our private school code. And so when I say private school for special education, I'm not talking about like a parochial school. What I'm talking about is a state approved private special education school which is typically specialized based on a disability category. For example, the Anderson Center for Autism. The school specialized for students with Um We saw a decrease in that code because we had a student who was Vape 22 eligible meaning the student is eligible to go until the day before their second birthday. That student exited and transitioned to adult services in the fall. And so that's the prorated tuition number for that student. Um we did see an increase

063in our tuition code for BOCES. That's our most significant increase. Um the reason for that is because the majority of our students who do um leave the district for out-of-district placement are typically able to find success in a BOCES program. BOCES does have a wide variety of programs to meet a large number of needs. And so the majority of our kids are in BOCES programs. I will note that we we are bringing two students back into district from BOCES programs at the start of next school year. Those the tuition for that for those students are not accounted for in that number. But in addition to the typical year-over-year increases we see for BOCES cost of tuition and services and because we you know, it's sort of a fluid situation with out-of-district placements. A student could

064be placed out of district midyear because we're not able to meet their needs. A student could move into the district at any point who's already been placed in an out-of-district placement and it takes time to either assess whether that student can come back or that student may need time in that placement before they're able to come back. So the BOCES code is a little bit fluid. The increase is due to just additional students being placed out of district. But we're always working as I said to bring those students back. That's the story. >> include the BOCES for you know, welding and hair cutting and >> not. Okay. That's a different number. >> Exactly. This is specifically for special education programs. Okay. Um the only other notable increase or decrease just for professional development there is

065pretty sizable decrease. We've had been a little bit more ambitious last year with trying to find professional development. We used a lot of that money to you know, find specialized programs in the district that we talked about before. We don't anticipate needing as much next year and so that that was a decrease. But also some of our professional development needs are met through the principal's office. We work very closely with with Miss Gamary when we have a teacher who may also be able to serve general education students by attending a professional development. And so we're able to use that funding as well. So next year we are So similar to 2 years ago, we have a an incoming cohort of kindergarten students who have intensive special needs. And again rather than try to find individual

066programs for each of those students and have to say that finding such programs not only is it a significant cost to the district but the students are not in their home school. They're riding a bus for hours a day. And in some cases there are you know, we hear from other districts where they have students on wait list for half the year who are just sitting at home waiting for a program to offer them a seat. Um so it's not it's not a great option. And we've we're seeing more and more of our colleagues from other districts who are opening programs similar to our 813 program just because we figured out that we can do it too and we can do it I think better. Um so for next year we are going to be

067opening another 813 class to meet the needs of the incoming cohort. When we talked about where that class should go, we felt that Center Avenue benefit from having an 813 section. I know Principal Kelly was ecstatic with the with the opposition of it. And from what I'm what I'm hearing from my conversations from teachers, this building is is energized by the by the idea. Um and so we feel like based on our success with our with our previous cohort 2 years ago, like we feel very confident that opening this program and opening someone in this building is going to be a success. In addition to that, we are adding an additional special education teacher at the high school. Part of that is due to the needs of students specifically in our ICT section. So when

068ICT has a hard cap of 12 students, you can't exceed 12 students. Um but even even with that, if you only have 20 students in the class, it's always 50%. So if you have 20 students in the class, you can't exceed 10. If you have you know eight, you can't exceed four. Um but even if you had 26 students in the class, you still can't exceed 12. That being said, some of our ICT sections were on the larger side and we thought it was in the best interest of our students to hire an additional staff member to make those sections serviceable for our students. And so we we are adding one additional special education teacher at the high school. And then you know, the rest of our budget is really just meant to maintain and

069make slight improvements to current program which we feel has really [snorts] become robust over the years. So with all of that being said answer your questions. Oh, so now that we're going to be opening the 813 over at Center, will some of the students that are over at Green be coming to Center? You mean who are currently in the 813? Uh yes. So within self-contained classes a 3-year age band. Um so to sort of balance out the sections, we talked about moving one or two students who may be zoned for Center to the Center Avenue group if their age works with the group. So that would relieve a little bit [clears throat] a little bit I mean a hair. A hair. But you know, the the motivation is more so just to balance those groups

070and make them appropriate for the kids in the groups. More so than the bigger picture of balancing it all. And you're not going to up grow the kid if it's going to upset them. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. >> [snorts] >> Any other questions to move forward? No, I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. I'll turn things over to Mr. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm telling you I have a great song. Great song. So a lot of girls. Huh? A lot of girls. A lot of girls. Thank you. Thank you. See you later. Stop it. Sorry about that. Just kidding. It's okay. Speaking of staff, I'm Shawn Murray. As all of you here know, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. And I'm here to just go over the highlights of the department budget just for

071the public to know. The main expenditures that come out of the curriculum and instruction budget are around professional development, materials and programs for students and for teachers, things such as software, assessments, textbooks, workbooks, classroom supplies and things like So our primary goal really here is to make sure that every single student that goes through our system is prepared for life. Um this is a non-exhaustive list of the priorities of the curriculum and instruction department, but we start with our youngest learners in making sure that they have early literacy and literacy instruction that prepares them to go into the upper grades. Content area instruction, math, science, world languages. At the high school we have business, family and consumer sciences, technology. We also make sure that students are making progress through various assessment systems. We to make

072sure that the curriculum that we're providing in the classrooms align to New York State standards and best practices. We continually work with our teachers to make them better teachers through various forms of professional development. And one of the other big things that happens on sort of a cyclical basis is to review the materials that are in our classrooms and I'll get to that a little bit later on. And make sure that the materials in our classrooms are best to meet the students' Um so you know, simply put when when students ask me oh, what's your job? Because it's kind of a big long name for my title. And and I say that I'm responsible to make sure that everyone in the school system is learning. Every student, every adult. We're a learning organization and the

073curriculum and instruction office is responsible for making sure that that learning is happening. Um so here are just a few of the many things that have been going on in the district and some of the new ones that I'll talk about later on. We have our science next generation standards in math, next generation standards in literacy. We have the New York State literacy initiative which is focused on early literacy. We have different programs like Read 180 to support our struggling readers. The Geodes texts are helping our youngest readers become strong readers. We've really expanded our AP Capstone program which is a seminar course and a research course and we have more graduates earning the capstone diploma this year, which we're excited about. And over the last several years, we've continued to increase the numbers of

074our students who are receiving the seals of biliteracy and seals of civic pride. These are just a few of the many programs that have gone on in the past year and will continue going on into the next year. Um, here's the kind of a line by line the curriculum budget for next year is actually down ever so slightly. Um, and the way that I was able to do that with um with Mr. Van Wart and with the schools is to really examine the usage of the programs that we have. And there were a number of software programs that were having um minimal to no usage that had been sort of legacy products. Um, so I made sure that teachers didn't need them first, obviously, but um when the teachers agreed that that was not a

075program that was beneficial to them anymore and they weren't using, those came out of the budget. Um, we were able then to increase our PD a little bit. We were able to increase our textbooks a little bit so that the real important things that are valuing our children um remained in the budget. Now, you'll see one big line here uh a $42,000 increase in the home tutoring line, which is really the biggest bump in this budget year over year. And that's sort of a a combination of um a special education and curriculum and instruction shared cost. So, as Mr. uh Healey was talking about earlier, sometimes students have more significant needs than we're able to provide for in our classrooms, in our schools. And those students need to go to some sort of out of

076district placement, whether it's a BOCES or a private setting or whatever it might be. Unfortunately, as Mr. uh Healey said, sometimes those seats aren't available immediately. But those students really still can't be in the school buildings because of the severity of their needs. So, over the last few years, the um waiting time to get into those programs has caused us to have to spend more on providing home instruction and tutoring for those students cuz we're obligated to make sure that they continue learning even though they're um still pending that placement in the appropriate setting. Um, so that budget line has gone up pretty dramatically just because of the waiting times for some of those programs. Um, and you'll see another big drop here. You'll see a $40,000 decrease in software. Um, we didn't actually spend

077that much less. I like I said, I I did cut a number of programs that teachers were no longer using, but that drop is actually reflected in an increase in the technology budget that uh um was spoken about a couple of weeks ago, and it's really just a more of better coding for that software. So, the software that had been in the curriculum instruction budget made more sense in the technology budget. So, that that's what that reflects. Um, and I really want to just talk about some of the things I'm really excited about for next year that we've been able to put into our budget through through smart financing. Um This year, our world language department at the high school piloted a program called Reporteros. It's a new approach to teaching Spanish in the high

078school that is really focused on communication rather than just memorizing lists of words, which is kind of like the old way any of us who learned Spanish, um you know, few decades ago learned it. This is really about uh active communication, engagement, cultural understanding. And so, this year we piloted that program and it was very successful. And so, next year the budget is going to support a full adoption of that across our Spanish classes. Um I'm very excited. We had a committee this year of elementary classroom teachers, math specialists, principals, as well as a um a pair of teachers from the high school who worked with us to examine new math programs. The current math program that we're using uh is well over a decade old, and it was no longer fully aligned with the

079New York State learning standards, and we needed to find something better for our students. So, after a year-long process where we looked at um five or six different programs, uh the teachers decided that Eureka Math Square would be the best program for our students. So, the budget supports a new adoption of that program, including the professional development that's going to be required to make sure our teachers are um competent and uh able and confident in teaching that program. We're actually going to start some of that professional development at the end of this year, so teachers can spend the summer planning and not have to wait until uh September to even learn about the new program. That's something else that the committee really was um uh said was a priority to make sure teachers know the

080program before they even go away for the summer break. Uh so, we're very excited we were able to make that happen. And uh this program will also be K-6. So, the current elementary math program was K-5 when it was adopted many years ago. And the sixth grade teachers have been doing their best to bring in resources in different places. By having a K-6 curriculum, there'll be real continuity um and the vertical articulation from K all the way until the kids go to the middle school, there'll be a single program that all of those students will know going from year to year, and it it will really help with the learning. Um, you'll also see the writing revolution up here. So, the writing revolution is a a approach to writing instruction. It's not a program, but

081it is an approach to writing instruction, um also known as the Hochman method, and it helps students become better writers from the sentence level up. So, it starts with what makes a good sentence, including, you know, nouns and verbs and and, you know, punctuation and things like that. And then, how do I make that sentence longer and more detailed? Um, by adding details to it, by saying if this happened, it led to that, you know, they they use uh they call the and but so ways to expand sentences. Then you take those expanded sentences and make them into strong paragraphs. And once you have a strong paragraph, you put together multiple paragraphs, and then you have an essay. Um, so the professional development committee was looking at that program this that approach to writing this

082year, actually did some visits to other schools that are using it. Um, and the teachers on that committee said, "This is for us." And so, next year, we're going to bring in staff development on the writing revolution. In all likelihood, um the committee thought the best approach would be to start from the middle and work our way out. So, in all likelihood, we're going to start with our fifth through eighth or ninth grade teachers, very similar to how we approached project-based learning, where we started in the middle and made our way out. Um, so the teachers are very excited about that. The principals are excited about that. Um, I think our math chairperson might be most excited about that because she had learned about how this can help math instruction by having students be able

083to explain their thinking better. So, um we're excited about bringing those two programs in next year. Um, and then the other big thing that's changing for next year is coming down from the state, um one of its many unfunded mandates, but changes to the personal finance um learning objectives. So, starting next year, students in grades five through 12 are going to be required to have instruction in personal finance as a part of their graduation requirements. Uh the following year, that uh personal finance instruction will be added for grades K to four. There are no programs out there, so the costs involved in this adoption are really going to be around um curriculum writing, training of teachers, and um at the um as we progress towards June, um a combination of our business department, math department,

084social studies department will be working together to see where those personal finance learning objectives best fit in our various curricula. So, that's work that is very important for our students, um and one of the initiatives that we'll be talking more about next year. Um, and then I pass it back over to Mr. Van Wart. Oh, yes. Sorry. Just a couple questions. Are the um Wait, where am I? So many notes here. Um, how long till everyone gets the writing program? Um That's partially going to be a budgetary thing. If I can reallocate more resources toward professional development, we'll be able to [clears throat] get more teachers trained more quickly. Um, but that three-year rollout for PBL worked very well. Um, the other thing about that program is once teachers feel um comfortable with that program,

085we can actually do a lot of turnkey training, where we don't necessarily have to have an outside developer do it. Um, but teachers can start working with each other, and that might be able to help it expand in a more viral manner than having to wait for a staff developer to come in. Okay. And then just one other question. Um, as far as the new Spanish program that you have, um are the teachers using it right now? And is it something that they they like as opposed to the other way of teaching the class. Yeah, so the teachers are using right now, they've been using it this year. Our chairperson was able to work out with the company a free pilot. So, we we got it for free for a year to try it out.

086Um, and the teachers said we need to keep it. So, this was a a grassroots um, raised by the teachers that they said that this program makes their instruction and their ability to teach the students much better and they wanted to keep it. Okay, and then so now that you just said that, I have an additional question. >> Sure. As far as that pilot that they were able to get for a free year, are we able to do that with any of the new programs that we have going forward? Uh, no. Um, the the company that we were using that we were able to get the free pilot for for um, Repertorio's is a fairly new company stateside. Um, they're a European company. I think they were just trying to kind of get their claws

087into the market. Was it free? >> being very generous. Um, whereas the um, Eureka Squared, they've been around for a while. So, they don't need to give it away for free. >> [laughter] >> And then and the writing program is not >> Um, the writing program, honestly, the only cost of the program, and again, I I I shouldn't use the word program. It's really an approach to writing. The only direct cost is the textbook for teachers that goes with it, which is about $40 a teacher. The real cost for that are the staff development professional development to help teachers apply the learning from that textbook into their classrooms. There's no supplies for students. There are no um, you know, fees or anything like that because it's an approach to writing. Okay, thank you. I'll ask

088>> Yes, just a another statement. Um, the finance thing being required by New York State is a long overdue. Mhm. I Um, and other states have been implemented. So, it's not like we're reinventing the wheel. Correct. Um, so I just want to make sure we, you know, look at Florida and Well, um, actually, fortunately, New York State had laid out these requirements over a year ago um, with literally zero guidance framework. We didn't even know what the what needed to be taught was going to be. Um, they just released that information about a month ago. I've actually been to two workshops with BOCES and NYSED in that time. Um, and so there are resources coming down from Albany to help make that um, work better, but it's going to mostly be taking what Albany's sending

089down and working with teams of teachers and chairpersons to figure out where that fits in our curriculum to make sure that our students are getting that instruction. I think just to add to that, um, at my superintendent's cabinet meeting today, we got information that on July 1st, BOCES will be releasing uh, a curriculum guides for us that we can take a look at to see uh, how they can match our needs. So, Yes, they're hoping to be able to sell that in the summer. Um, yeah, that that's an ambitious timeline based on what I got at my last meeting. Um, but they are they are looking to have curriculum available like it was able to purchase. Yeah. I Any other questions? >> Be hopeful. >> [laughter] >> All right, thank you. >> Thank you, Mr.

090Thank you, Mr. Lombardi. I realize I skipped over one very important slide. Uh, so No, back to here. All right, and then we'll go back to the uh, to the remainder of the presentation. So, the proposed uh, expenditure budget for 2026-2027 is $49.2 million, which would be a $2.2 million dollar increase budget to budget. That's a 4.84% increase. So, 1% of that 4.84% budget increase is attributable to all that debt service that I alluded to in our previous budget presentation that we're assuming on our books this year for the energy performance contract and for the last remaining projects from the bond referendum 2019, which was updated in 2021. Um, but I I just want to make sure I highlight that that 1% increase in the expenditure side is almost totally offset on the revenue side

091with new building aid that's coming into the district. So, we we phased the reporting of our final cost reports, which allows the state aid to flow through to the district with the year that we brought the debt service onto the books so that there it's it's it's not totally offsetting it, but it's it's predominantly offsetting it so that there's a minimal impact to the taxpayer. Um, so the 2026 tax cap number for East Rockaway was 2.94%. Uh, in my previous work session presentation, we were projecting a 2.69% increase in the tax levy and that is where we we've ended up as we've completed our budget development cycle. Um, so it's 2.69% increase year over year. One of the requirements we have in presenting the budget is to put it into what the state calls a

092three-part budget. Um, so it's splitting up the expenditures between three different categories, capital, program, and administrative expenses. I'll uh, very briefly go about what makes up each of those categories. But this is what the budget, the $49.24 million dollar budget for 2026 2027 looks like when broken out into those three categories. 13.3% of the budget is capital. Look a little bit of increase year over year and that's again attributable to that debt service increase about a half a million dollars that's new on the on the budget for this year for the next year. 12.5% administrative expenses and the the vast majority of our budget expenses are in the program category, 74.17%. The administrative component, this covers our administrative expenses, our board of education expenses, our district and building administrator salaries and benefits, clerical support staff

093throughout the district, our technical technology infrastructure, and any support services for our business office operations, accounts payable, payroll, um, our insurance, our liability insurance, our student accident insurance, internal audit, external audit expenses, legal expenses, district clerk expenses. So, um, for for 2026-2027, projecting a 420 420,000 dollar difference there. Uh, that's attributable to increases in salaries and benefits and then um, insurance premium increases that we're we're expecting projecting for next year for our liability insurance. So, we as I mentioned in a previous budget presentation, uh, our liability insurance is projected to go up next year by about 9 and 1/2%. So, the program component, this covers all of our instructional costs, our social workers and psychological services costs, health services, our instructional materials in the classroom, uh, transport student pupil transportation, athletics and co-curricular activities. Uh,

094so this year, the proposed budget in the program component, $36.5 million, a $1.04 million dollar increase year over year. Uh, the main cost driver in this category is two new special education teachers uh, that Mr. Healey discussed earlier. Um, just our existing staff salary and fringe benefit cost increases and then increased cost for transportation I talked about in the previous budget presentation. Last but not least, in the capital component, so this is our custodial maintenance staff expenses, our security staff expenses, uh, the costs associated with maintaining our buildings and our operations, debt service, uh, and then in capital projects. So, $6.55 million for 2026-2027 in the proposed budget, an increase of about $811,000. About half a million of that is attributable to the additional debt service for the bond in the 2025 [clears throat] bond

095and the 2025 A bond supporting the bond referendum for 2019-2021 and the energy performance contract. Uh, and then the balance would be our custodial security salary fringe benefit cost increases. How do we fund the proposed budget for 2026-2027? So, East Rockaway budget is funded 75% of it through our property tax levy. Uh, 20% of our budget is funded through state aid, either through foundation aid, which is a formula driven um, a revenue stream at or expense driven aid from the state, which is based upon prior year expenses. So, uh, we get money back from the state for things like transportation costs, for special education costs, for um, students that are high cost. Um, we get um, building aid back as I've mentioned before. That makes up about that 20%. And then the rest of the

096budget is supported through either local revenue, so interest, non-resident tuition that we get into the district, um, facilities usage rental fees as an example, and appropriated fund balance and restricted reserves, last but not least, that's how we uh, balance the budget. Those are you can view that as being the district savings. Um, so when we have money left over from a previous year budget, we can appropriate it to the next year's school budget to offset the to reduce the amount of tax levy we need to increase. We also have a number of reserves that we can use to support specific types of expenditures in subsequent budgets. This is our projection for revenue for next year. So, um, we're projecting our state aid should be going up in total by about a million dollars year over

097year. Which is great news. Um, we're projecting a small increase in our pilot revenue category. So, pilot is stands for payments in lieu of taxes. That's usually the industrial development agency negotiates with the small business to increase commercial activity in the community. Instead of paying a normal property tax amount. They come to a separate agreement not based upon the tax rate that other commercial businesses may pay. It's usually a long-term agreement. It's a separate category when it comes to revenue that we account for. So next year we're expecting that to go up by about $37,000. Interest we're projecting for next year to go down a little bit year-over-year and that's just because the Fed has been cutting interest rates year-over-year. So we're probably about 75 basis points lower than we were at this time last

098year. So we're expecting to see a little bit less in the interest for this year. Other local and state revenues are the main the main category here. The main driver in this category is our non-resident tuition that we receive. So these are students that attend East Rockaway that may come from a different district of origin. So they actually pay tuition to the district which helps support the rest of our our overall budget. Last but not least we have our appropriate fund balance category which is money that we put forward to next year's budget based upon money left over from this year's budget. We've been trying to reduce that year-over-year. We're again reducing that amount by $50,000 this year. And last but sorry last but not least this is last but not least. We are also

099looking to use our restricted reserve for retirement contributions for our ERS employees to offset some of the increased cost that we spoke about in the previous budget work session for pension system contributions. Okay. These are our restricted reserves. This is what the district has in its savings. I'll just talk about each of the categories. So we have an unemployment insurance reserve. So this is this can be used for the cost of unemployment insurance. We have a employee benefit accrued liability reserve EBALR reserve. That reserve is intended to be used for expenses related to leave accrual um payments. So many of our contracts have upon retirement some of our employees are entitled to a payout for sick balances. As an example this past year we negotiated with the teachers union an agreement for retirement incentive for

100eligible members of our teachers union. This is the type of reserve that we could use to pay for those expenses in the future. Capital reserve it's kind of self-explanatory but it's used for capital improvements to our buildings. We have $5.3 million in that. I spoke at the previous budget work session that we are planning to use about $1.6 million of that money to support a number of projects this year. I have another slide that will just recap that. We have a debt service reserve that's new for this year. Debt service reserve must be used to offset the cost of debt service. So as we took on the debt this year in future years we'll be able to use that money to reduce the expense that would otherwise have to be paid for either through revenue

101streams coming in from the state or through the property tax levy. And then we have our TRS and our ERS reserve which are used for offsetting the cost of pension contributions for our teacher retirement system employees and our employee retirement system employees. The reason why we're proposing to use ERS reserve to offset the cost of our expenses this year is because it's most well-funded reserve that we have. We have about 6 years of expenses covered through the ERS reserve. So it makes most sense to take money to offset this upcoming year's budget from that reserve. The unassigned fund balance this is this is in New York State we're permitted to have up to 4% of our savings in an unassigned fund balance which is unrestricted can be used for any expenses in the future. Our

102balance right now is about $1.6 million in that and that is a little bit below 4%. The reason why is because we actually use some of that money this past year to offset the cost of the Center Avenue underground oil tank that we removed from the ground and then have been conducting corrective action to address some of the residual leakages that were identified. Um So that money unassigned fund balance is really used for those types of emergency events so that you're not placing too much burden on the operational budget. This is a recap on our proposed capital improvements for 2026 27. So there will be a proposition on the ballot proposition number two which would seek authorization from the voters for an amount not to exceed $1.6 million for our middle school roof replacement project

103our junior senior high school exterior fascia restoration project and our junior senior high school athletic complex wing HVAC upgrades and weatherization enhancement project. The budget also includes a number of capital improvement projects in the transfer to capital line namely the high school art room upgrade to a modern digital photography student work space phase two of our repainting projects at both the high school and Center Avenue and district-wide instructional space office floor replacements. Oh before I go I always like to stress these are capital reserves no impact to the taxpayer has no impact on the tax levy moving forward. This is money that's already been put into a reserve that can be used for the specific purpose of building improvements. This just gives you the history of the district's um property tax levy increases since 2016

104and how inflation has looked at over that time period. We try to be as fiscally responsible as as possible to limit the burden that we're placing on the taxpayer. The 2026 proposed tax levy is going to be the fifth straight year the district has been below the allowable tax levy cap. And you can see the trend line here. We try to keep it as close to 2% as possible over the course of the last five or six years significantly lower than what inflation has looked like. What does this mean to the average taxpayer in East Rockaway? So this slide here shows you based upon the proposed tax levy increase at 2.69 what that translates into an average assessed value property in East Rockaway. So for 2027 fiscal year 27 the average taxable assessed value in

105the community is 409 which you when you take that and do the math against the proposed levy and what that translates into in terms of the tax rate that's about a $232 annual increase or $19 and 33 cents monthly for the average residential taxable assessed value. So just the little asterisk I'll put next to that is that's based upon an adjusted base proportion as of this current year. We don't get that updated information till September of the upcoming year. So what that effectively is how does the property tax levy get spread across class one class two class three and class four. Class one being residential homeowners class two three and four being commercial buildings um tax exempt properties the apartment condos etc. So that number would impact this but based upon what we currently know

106today for an average taxpayer that's what you're looking like. You want to look up on your on the Nassau County property look up website you can see what your assessed value is and see where you kind of fall into this table and get a rough estimate of what your taxes would look like for next year. And that concludes budget work session number three. So the next session we have is the actual hearing which is scheduled for May 15th here Center Avenue at 6:00 p.m. and then the budget and trustee election May 19th polls will be open all day at the high school from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. And I'll pause for questions. Thank you Mike. >> [clears throat] >> I'm good. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks for staying. Thank you. And now we're

107going to move on and to the budget adoption. Be it hereby resolved that the proposed budget of $49,244,884 for the East Rockaway Union Free School District of the Town of Hempstead County of Nassau State of New York for the fiscal year of 2026 to 2027 be adopted and that the amount of said budget be raised by tax upon the taxable property of the school district after first deducting the monies available from state aid and other sources. Are there any questions from the board? No. No. Can I have a motion to approve budget adoption item 4A? Motion. Motion by Ms. Salufo. Second. >> Second by Ms. Lanigan. All in favor? >> I. I. I. Motion approved. The real property tax report card. Be it hereby resolved that the Board of Education of the East Rockaway UFSD

108approve the real property tax report card prepared by the district's business office for the 2026 annual district meeting. And be it further resolved that a copy of said report card shall be submitted to the State Education Department by the end of the next business day following this approval. Are there any questions from the board? No. Can I have a motion to approve other items 4B? Motion. Motion by Ms. Lanigan. Second. >> Second by Ms. Salufo. All in favor? >> I. I. I. Motion approved. This concludes today's special meeting. Can I have a motion to adjourn this meeting at 7:32 p.m. and enter into executive session to discuss contract negotiation? Motion. Motion by Ms. Salufo. Second. Second by Ms. Lanigan. All All Motion approved. Thank you. Adjourn meeting. Adjourned. At 7:32. I said that. You did?

109Yeah, sorry. I was asleep. I was sleeping for a second.