001Good evening everyone and welcome to this monthly work session of the East Rockaway Board of Education. Um at this time, can we please stand for the pledge of allegiance? 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, liberty and justice for all. Yeah, >> I didn't say we started the meeting at 607. >> Um, all right. First up is old business, Mr. D. Tomaso. >> Yes, I didn't put anything on the agenda, but um I'd be remiss not to mention that uh this year's 90th anniversary of Rock Rivalry was outstanding. Uh the kids had a great time. The talent was great. Um, and I'd like to specifically thank um, Alicia Faren Krug and Amanda Tuni for all the
002things that they did to make it a special night for the community and the kids. And uh, yeah, I've been in it 30 years and I can't remember a better rap rivalry. It was really that good. >> I agree. It was impressive. It >> really was incredible. >> I'd really like to thank everybody involved >> and uh, Karen Liry and Scott uh, Gerkin as well. So, really appreciate it and uh I hope you enjoyed it. >> That's it for all business. >> All right. Thank you. It's great. Um All right. Next up, um are there any questions uh from the minutes from the regular board meeting and special education meeting? Um from March 17th. No, >> tonight's March 17. >> Sorry. >> Did I? All right. Is there any questions about >> February 10th? >>
003Uh no. Ah, there it is. Okay. For February 10th, any questions? >> No. Okay. Um, uh, how about questions on the next week's board meeting, March 24th? >> No. >> Okay. All right. So, at this time, we have budget work session two. Mr. McN here. No, no, it's all right. >> So, budget work session number two of a total of three budget work sessions we have scheduled commission budget cycle. Our next budget work session will be on April 21st. Um, and we will also be adopting the board of education will be to adopt budget on that night as well. Um, tonight I'm going to cover quick update on state aid. Um, because right around this time is when the projected numbers that we report back in September through the ST3 state reporting process is converted
004over to actual data based upon all the state reporting we do on what's called beds day which is the third Wednesday in October. So all the final student enrollment numbers, special ed student enrollment numbers, L's, etc. We report all that to the state based on a a day in October. Um give an update on the final tax levy cap amount at the original budget work session. We have a projection. We were still missing some pieces of information to get a final uh amount on that. But now we have that information. I'll talk a little bit about some of the proposed capital projects for the upcoming year 2627. Miss McClullen is here from our technology department to give a brief overview of the technology department proposed budget for this year. And then we'll come back to
005myself cover facilities and transportation building level and other spending areas of the budget. Um and then a projected tax levy increase as of today. And we still have a little bit of work to do to finalize that. But I give the community and the board of education an update on where we feel we are as of today. So this is what the budget development cycle looks like. So, it's really a six-month process. Started in November. We're in March now. And where we are is we just filed the tax levy limit calculation with the office of state controller. That was March 1st. Um the preliminary budget as of today was provided to the board of education. We're in the work session number two right now. Um the next steps are the final decision on any voter
006propositions that are going to go on the ballot beyond just the school budget. And really where we are now is finalizing staffing needs for the upcoming year. Um, so all of our projections to date are based upon existing staffing model. Um, we're really starting to crystallize now what we feel we may need to meet things like special ed mandates, etc. Um, in March and April, the budget hearing notices are going to go out into the local papers. The budget will be adopted after the work session on April 21st and the budget hearing is scheduled for May 5th. All culminates in the budget vote scheduled for Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Just a quick update on state 8. So since our last um work session, like I mentioned, the database is converted over to actual enrollment data.
007So the net impact for East Rockaway based upon the governor's executive proposal and the formula that that's proposed by the governor is a difference in nine totalable total adable foundation units. So that is the total number of um aidable students um that goes into the foundation aid uh state aid category. So um in January based on the old database it was projected to be 1399. based off of the new database which is the actual data. It's um projected to be 1392 which is a difference of seven uh aidable units based on our calculated um foundation aid per pupil which fluctuates based upon the wealth of the district and a variety of other factors slight decrease in what's being projected in the from the actual data about $10 per pupil. The total net impact of that,
008what we're expecting when the state aid runs are finalized, when the budget is adopted, assuming no changes to the governor's proposal, would be a net decrease of about $49,000 in foundation aid. Um, but the legislature will be throughout the next month be um, you know, negotiating this. There is a possibility that this could change. Again, you know, usually things tend to go up as you get closer to the end of the um budget cycle, but um you know, we we're waiting with data breath to see where it ends up. So, for the 26 2.7 tax cap, so my last uh presentation, we were projecting it was going to be 2.88% for participant year 27. Um now that we have all the data that goes into that calculation, I can say that it's going to be
0092.94. Uh so the tax levy cap the 26 27 is 2.94 which equates to about a $1.001 01 million um levy increase if we were to go to the cap last year. To give you some context, our levy increase was 1.95%. That's actual increase, not the cap number. Cap number last year was over 3%, I believe. Um that translates to about $651,000. Now the cap number fluctuates year-over-year based upon things like the tax rate uh growth base factor which is a measurement from the OC's office of the ability of the tax base um to uh have the levy be increased as well as exclusions the main exclusion being the capital exclusion. So for 2627 we completed a number of um of the bond work and uh filed final cost reports for those. So what happens
010is we um when we bring debt onto the books and then we have revenue coming in that also gets factored into this calculation and it becomes an exclusion. That's why you hear 2% tax cap it actually can fluctuate year-over-year based upon both exclusions and things like the tax growth base factor. Um so for this year our tax base growth factor actually decreased from the prior year. Last year it was about 1.08%. Uh this year it's um.15% increase, but because of all the capital exclusion increases that we experienced year-over-year, that's why our cap number is a little bit higher this year. So for um projected proposed projects for the upcoming year 2026 2027, we have a number of projects that we are contemplating. I'll highlight a couple of them. So, at the high school, we have
011in our middle school wing. Uh there's a slate roof that's on top of that portion of the building. It's over 30 years old. You can see it in this picture here. Maybe not too well, but it is deteriorating. We've experienced more and more leaks year-over-year. It's really due for uh complete renovation. Um if you actually look at that section of the building and look directly adjacent to it, there's a slip roof comparable to it. You can see the difference between the two. So speaking with our architect, that was a project that we prioritized for the upcoming year. Um along with that roof replacement, the work we currently have ongoing right now on the high school Koopa. When that roof gets replaced, there's the fashcia that's right at the bottom of the uh of the roof
012area and across the entire front. One of the projects we'd like to complete this upcoming year is to is to restore that as well. So we have a brand new coupoopa. The fos is nice in the front of the building and the roof is completely renovated on the middle school wing. Um, in addition to that, we are looking at some HVAC upgrades in the high school athletic complex wing of the building. So, adding some additional heating units, uh, creating some weatherization in our boiler room to prevent, uh, heat loss out of the buildings. There's some old vents from the old, uh, heating units that were in there that we want to put some dampers on and, um, some weatherization steps to ensure that this small gym in our high school is, um, is properly insulated.
013Now the the proposal for 2627 is to fund these projects here which are all aidable projects. These are the capital reserves that we have available to us. The capital reserves are money that was left over from previous years um that can be used to support capital projects that go through SED approval. So state the SCB actually has to approve these projects for us to be able to extend that at the capital reserve and we get aid back on um any money we expend for these projects. Um based on our calculation of what we think this would cost, we're we're our architect is recommending going out with a um a a not to exceed the resolution on the voter ballot of $1.6 million. Now if we don't actually need $1.6 6 million for this work. It's
014usually there's a 10% to 15% allowance built into this just in case prices increase significantly for when the voters authorize the money to when we actually bid out for the projects. Uh that money goes back into the capital reserves. What I always like to remind the community and the board of education when we use capital reserve money doesn't impact tax levy for the upcoming years. So it's it's money that's already reserved for capital projects that we're just asking the voters to authorize to move forward with it. So what the voters are really authorizing is the scope of the projects and the amount that we can expend to complete those projects. So that's capital reserve piece. The second piece is um we have a line item in our in our budget every year. It's called transfer
015to capital. It's usually used for smaller type of projects, more maintenance type of projects. Last year we did a a whole renovation project in the hallways with painting and the lockers to transfer to capital. Um this year we would like to do phase two of that project to complete the stairwells which we were unable to do with the money that we had in that budget line item last year as well as complete some of the center avenue um stairwells that haven't been touched yet with the painting that they've been doing in that building. In addition, our high school art room has a dark room in the back. Um if the if the voters were to support the budget this year, the money that would um be in the transfer of capital line item would also
016be used to upgrade that dark room to a modern digital photography student work workspace. And last but not least, believe there's a number of um classrooms and offices throughout the bu throughout the district, namely center avenue and the junior senior high school that are some of the floors really need to be replaced there. So any leftover money between those two first two projects uh would be used to support the uh renovation of those spaces. Going to turn it over to Bonnie and then I'll be right back after the technology consult. Okay. So Bonnie Mlen, I'm the director of technology. I always like to start out by saying as as a former teacher who never shied away from technology and now as a director of technology I believe that technology is best when it brings people
017together and I'm most proud of the technology that we use here at East Rockway that does just that. Our parent square which is our homeschool communication when students their devices to collaborate on projects when they're able to uh make virtual calls to experts all all around the world technology is the best. I'm sure we can agree when it brings people together and what encompasses my department is infrastructure and devices that includes all student devices, teacher devices, instructional workstations, admin workstations, interactive boards, access points, everything like that. All all of our backend firing that's all infrastructure devices, software and applications. This is a screenshot of our class link which is our software software management. These are all of the software tools that teachers and students have access to. I'm in charge of getting all of that
018set up, the rostering and making sure students and teachers and staff, everyone has access to the programs for teaching and learning that they need. Support and training. The support my uh technicians, my lead technician, my help desk technician are responsible for repairs and responding to all of the help desk help tickets around the district training. Uh I can do I do superintendent conference days. I go to faculty meetings. I work with teachers in the classrooms uh one-on-one and as a group and department meetings whenever there is need for technology trainings so forth there and always like technology is changing every day innovation and future planning there's always an ongoing conversation about what's coming next and what's the next refresh cycle of devices and what tools are coming next and how are things changing how we
019best support our teachers and students. So just a little budget recap and highlights. Uh with the support of board of education and community, we were able to acquire incident IQ this year. Incident IQ is a ticketing and asset management system. The asset management piece came as a direct result as a suggestion from our auditors. We needed to have a more streamlined inventory of all of the assets in house and Incident IQ does a great job of that. It keeps it all in one place. It's able to show us where everything is across the district, warranties and shelf life and everything like that so we can make better informed decisions. Also, the best part that we enjoy is the ticketing piece because teachers are now able to go to this central uh this central platform, submit
020their requests, submit their questions for repairs. It goes directly to the technology department and they can respond quickly and keep the classrooms running without interruptions. Like I said, it tracks and protects our district devices. It helps us keep track exactly where these laptops and Chromebooks and and boards where they all live. And there's better planning with real data. How we plan for purchases in the future. This is just a screenshot. I show you here. I have our help help tickets link is right on the home website access. And I also created a hello tutorial for them because it was a new system. They were used to just sending an email. I need help with such and such. So this was just to show them how the process is handled. And we've gotten good reviews about
021>> I was going to ask how are they adapting to uh to the new system? >> They like it. They like it. It it's you know what when you when it first opens it does give you a lot of different features with different specifics. Is it this? Is it your Chromebook? because of what it can always go to issue not listed. >> Okay, >> which I found and speaking to the company, they found that a large percentage of users always go to issue not listed and then they just type in what the what the problem is and that's just as easy as sending an email. But for us on the technology end, it's a nice way of keeping track of all of the tickets, which ones have yet to be resolved, which ones still need
022to be resolved, things like that. >> Do you find a quicker response time? >> Yes. >> Okay, great. Yeah, we do because this because they're able to go directly to internet IQ to get uh to see one two three and I'm able to access it as well to see what still needs to be done. >> Okay, >> this also is for loaners in the libraries where right right behind when students come with their Chromebooks and they need something repaired and they need to get a loaner in in return. This tracks that by quick scan. This one went in, this one went out. It goes right to technology. This Chromebook at Center Avenue needs to be repaired and here's the issue. >> So everything's automated. >> Yes, everything's automated. It's great. >> Thank you. Two things.
023>> Sure. >> So um previously when there would be an incident or something that needs help desk support the posties first and then get it signed back to us was kind of inefficient. So this this cleaves up that process goes directly to our staff that are supporting our technology now. And then number two is the tool also gives us the ability to um assign specific technology assets to an individual. So when you submit a ticket, it knows your individual computer where it needs to be serviced as well. It has history of if there's history of issues with a particular device. That's all as well >> because everything is tagged to the user like a new line board is tagged to Mrs. Smith as well as her Chromebook as well as her workstation. So when you
024log in, you're able to see these are all of the assets that are assigned to me and I need help with this one. >> Perfect. And it's easier to track everything and to keep everything. >> Yes. Yes. That's the best part, the organization of it all. >> Okay. Uh something else uh with the support of board of ed community that we're able we were able to acquire is the cyber security services partnership with Boseies. They like acronyms over there. This is the Sock system. SOCK stands for security operations center. So with this, in addition to our in-house technicians that constantly monitor emails and networking, we have a dedicated cyber security analysis that monitors the network 7 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. If there is anything suspicious overnight, that particular account will get locked until the next
025day. If someone inside the district accesses a potential threatening site, this has been this has happened. If we can't catch it on our own, the analyst catches it and sends us an email right away and say, "Hey, uh, Mr. Smith was accessed this site, it looks potentially dangerous. Should he be usually students, should he be accessing the site?" And then either we reach out to the teacher or we say yes, it's okay or no, they shouldn't. And automatically it gets locked. They do periodic assessments of our network. They review the firewalls. They're full handling of responding to incidents. Um, again, it's full handling, but it's in addition. So, it's not they're they're not doing everything. We still have our own protocols inhouse, but this is that added layer of support overhead. And most recently, which
026was really great, over the break, our conditional access policies were reviewed. And what those are, there's uh specific conditions for each user before allowing them to log into our system. And the team was able to review those policies and make sure they were clean and place. So that's the sock team. All right, the moment we've all been waiting for, the technology proposed budget for 2627. Okay, so if you notice on here, I'm just going to grab this because it's so small. You noticed uh the largest line item in technology is essential data processing and fies and what that encompasses is infinite canvas IP direct parent square all of those bigger bigger ticket items including our our Microsoft Microsoft consortium and Azure fees and all of our technicians. So you'll see a bit of a difference,
027a little bit of an increase this year and that is because of the salary benefit increases for our senior technician two help desk technician and also all of the engineering support from Boseies where the cyber security is a sock team that the engineering support is the knock team that's the network operations center and that's called so that's where a little bit of an increase is there and also for our Microsoft consortium licensing and Azure fees And that's a really fancy term for our accounts. Our staff and teacher accounts is a Microsoft consortium. Azure fees. Uh I like to explain that uh like a phone bill. You pay for what you use. It's a storage. It's our cloud service. It's a the servers, backups, storage. That's all the ad fees. So those fees fluctuate a little
028bit. >> I do have a question. The amount on the top the 33. >> Yes. That is an increase to salary. >> It is an increase uh it encompasses this whole thing salary and benefit increases for the technicians for the engineering support over at Boseies and also for the Microsoft uh licensing and Azure fees >> and that is through Boseies the increase or they came up with that number that's the number that we came up with. How did we come up? No, it's it's the salaries through both sees and it's not all it's not only the salaries. It's it's it's that's just one small piece that increased it there. >> Okay. >> We don't come up with those salaries. Those are the contract. So, so that so 1680 is um a function code based on
029the New York State system of accounts that's supposed to capture all your central data processing expenses which includes your networking servers, any of your technology support teams that are managing those servers and networks. Um things like our student management system in campus, IEP direct, all the service subscription fees associated with that. um if if you want we can provide actually the the actual services that are that make up those that that number right there. But in terms of like what's driving the increase um year to year, most of that is due to our on-site technician, senior technician, our on-site help desk technician, the support person we have back at HQ at Boseies that handles a lot of our networking >> and his whole team. >> Yep. And his whole team. Uh so that so salary
030benefit so basically the way it works is we have two options we could hire somebody on our own income of our payroll or we could go through a Bose service where Boseies provides person they're on site and our technician our senior technician has been this year for >> over 20 years um but we pay Boseis for his basically kind of acts like a tester entity and that gives us the ability to get aid back on that back on that. >> Should we get a back on that? Yeah, probably get about um 40 to 50% back of the salary benefits for those line items. Every coaster is a little every co business coaster is a little different. Some stuff is um >> that number is just standing out to me because I look at that number
031and I'm like >> yeah, >> that kind of hurts me a little bit. >> Yeah. Um actually the the increase that we're which we we've made our call with uh with Boseies about this exact topic the salary and benefits associated with our uh technology team that is um sourced through Boseies and actually our rate increase this year on those coasters is reasonable as compared to previous years about three or 4%. 34% a big number. So yeah. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Then down here I want to point out the software purchases from the curriculum. So before I say that so down here by the software purchases all teaching and learning and so forth that's increased by 13,000 and the explanation for that is Mr. Van Ward had moved some of the purchases from
032the curriculum and instruction budget over to the technology budget because a lot of the uh costs were co-mingled. >> Yeah, we had a couple of uh both these codes um shared between the curriculum and instruction office and technology office. One of the things we wanted to do this year was align the underlying expenditures and posters to the person that's responsible for ensuring the department that's responsible for ensuring that we're getting the service we need. We're getting build correctly. So when we do the presentation for construction, you'll see on that side the postings code there will have reduction in expense by about around 40 grand. So more than offsets that increase that you're just seeing on the slide right here. >> And it just it it it cleans it up. It just makes better sense to
033keep because Sean and I were always speaking. Is this your code or is this my code? Is this it? So I cleaned it up for us and it just it makes better sense this way. Um happily you'll see though on the tech hardware Bosey's code is down and I'll explain that into the next few slides. So each year there is new hardware that needs to be purchased for student devices or whether staff and teacher devices. They work on a refresh cycle. So I'll explain a little bit about that on the next few slides. Okay. So uh workstation replacements. So in doing an audit overall workstation. So when I say workst admin workstations this is everybody the best way to explain this is everyone that sits at a desk. So these aren't teachers. admin workstations could
034be central administration, building administration, EPS office, uh, guidance office, >> clerical, business office, anyone that sits at a desk. Those workstations, there are about 68 of them that probably could be replaced, but after doing a harder look and a detailed needs assessment, we got that number down to 25. So, all of the workstations do get updates up until 2029, the current ones we have. So there is no security risk on them. But we got it down to 25 for power users. People that have multiple files, multiple things that need to be on their computers, need to stay there. They need more storage because uh they need to maintain peak operational efficiency. So we're only going to replace 25 of those. And when 25 of those get retired, they're going to be securely wiped and repurposed
035into a backup loan or pool to have basically will be new. If anyone needs more after that, you can utilize those. So, we're very happy to be able to get those down 68 to 25. And like I said, there's no risk with not replacing them because they do have their security updates. And this I'm most excited about. Uh we're proposing a modernized onetoone refresh cycle for the student Chromebooks. So what this means so we we have a onetoone device system here at East Rockway. That means in K to2 every we have enough devices Chromebook devices in K to2 for every student. Currently our K to2 students don't take Chromebooks home. There's no need to take them home, but they have full class sets in each of their classes. If the teacher needed to do a
036full class lesson with a Chromebook, there is one for them. Up until now, we've been doing new devices in third grade and eighth grade, which is a fiveyear cycle. Dell, the Dell devices have a four-year warranty. So, it really didn't make sense because in the four-year warranty, each each of those four years, they get one free repair on accidental damage. that fifth year when it was out of warranty, we were repairing them inhouse. They were still say they were still secure. They still get their security updates, but in case they broke, we were fixing them in house. So, in order to make more sense of this cycle, we're going to be moving eventually into it's going to take a few years, if you know how the refresh cycle, it's just start pushing things along. It's
037going to take a few years to get ideally where we want to be, but we want to be at a fifth grade and ninth grade new device, which gives them four years. >> I So what's the added cost instead of doing four years instead of fiveish? >> Added co No, it actually will be a reduced cost because the first two years, so next year, so 26 and 27 and 27 and 28, we are not purchasing, we're only purchasing one grade. for purchasing eighth eighth grade. It's a little it's a little tricky and if we can't get through it in this board session, I'll be happy to talk to you after because it takes a little while. I need to show you a spreadsheet. But the first the first two years we're only purchasing for eighth
038grade. Third, for the first year, third grade will get repurposed devices. When the seniors graduate, those are coming down. The seventh grades that turn them in, those are coming down. >> So each grade say is a hundred kids. So instead, it's always a hundred new Chromebooks every year. >> Uh it's usually a bit more than that. >> Usually, yeah, it's a bit more. It's usually >> theoretically. >> Last year, I think we did we did 167 last year. >> So, we always >> younger grades. >> No, last year >> older grades >> for third Well, up until now, it was third grade and to eighth grade. We want to push it to fifth and ninth. So, it's going to take us a couple of years to get there. So, >> but once we get there,
039it stabilizes replacements. I see a high year and then a low year. So, >> and it doesn't make sense to have it out of warranty, >> right? >> If you can. >> So, for this year, for this year, it's a reduction in total >> for the next the next two years. >> Next two years, it's a reduction in the number of Chromebooks that we are just to get us on the new cycle, >> get us on track. So, what's going to happen? I was I was explaining to Claire right right before she works with the kids and their computers. the third third next year third grade everyone's going to have Chromebooks all that that's the great thing all the students are going to have access to a device next year third graders will get those
040repurposed ones to fill the class sets and we do have enough to give the full class set and extras so in case something breaks in a pinch oh we have another one for you not even going to be taking them home like currently the third graders now have new devices they take them home I know there's been a lot of talk about you know screen time in students third graders don't don't have to take them home anymore. It's up to the teacher discretion. If the teacher assigns something digitally and she or he wants them to bring them home, they can, but they don't have to. >> New stuff home. Give them the old ones. >> The following year, uh, again, we'll only be purchasing for eighth, but fourth grade will get those repurposed. So, ultimately,
041it will be a K to four repurposed devices and do on from there. It could have just we're optimizing the cycle to be >> I got it. >> Efficient. Yep. >> So, this this just explains it a little bit further. Our in-house technology team, the ones that are out of warranty, maintain the older units in the K to 4 ft at zero additional hardware cost. They're able to use parts. So, yeah. And that just explains it a little bit more a little bit more detail. >> Okay. >> Maybe maybe just mention um the challenge we ran into at Dell with with the hardware just so the port's aware of that um and how we're kind of moving forward >> the the workstation increase. >> Yeah. So information. >> Yeah. So uh all hardware is really
042going up astronomically cost cost of hardware due to AI and doing a buying up storage and and different and things like that. And it's it's very difficult to manage. If we get a quote now like we're talking about we're talking about budgeting. Hey we we need uh 25 workstations. We need 50 workstations. Can you provide a quote? Here we are in March. They're going to provide us a quote. two weeks from now, months from now, the core will go through work just because we're not purchasing that. We're purchasing with next year's funds. So that happened. We planned on uh say how much would 68 workstations cost? We provided a quote and then we said, "Okay, now we're doing more detailed budgeting. Could you refresh that quote for us just to see where we are?" It
043increased exponentially. >> You could say it. >> It increased 110%. >> 100. You would and we were talking oh my gonna go up maybe 20% maybe 30 be a lot >> how long of a time it was >> Jan yeah from January >> this is a confluence of variety of factors but so there was state contracting issue so that lap so the rate went up because of that um on the old state I mean it's not exactly 110% because on the old state contract one of the caveats was you got to buy the you got to buy the PC plus a monitor you're not going through this the contract track you just buying the PC. So if we had to buy the PC and the monitor, it would have been 110%. But we have monitors
044on site that are functioning pretty well. But it was still a very sizable increase and we are considering in the future is that the right option for us if they continue to be on state contract. >> Yeah. So that that caused us to look a little bit deeper and say, "Okay, so which ones are >> prioritize, which we did and the technology team worked alongside of us and I think we did a really good job getting it down." >> Still doesn't follow state contract. >> Um they were on a contract that was that we were able to access through through Boseies and then the the contracts are usually for annual cycles. Uh the other the other factor that we didn't mention kind of was alluding to it is right now in the industry the open
045AIs the the Googles they're buying up all the chips that are available to help performance of their artificial intelligence models which is resulting in a shortage in chips for things like Dell's and personal computers >> which also has raising prices. So between those two, between the state contract issue plus the I guess the macroeconomics of the industry, it's we're not alone. Every district's experiencing kind of the same thing right now. So, >> and we had I had a feeling this was coming. They were talking about it in my NASDAQ group. Be careful. You know, the prices are going up. But some, you know, there's really not much that can be done. We can't purchase them now. So, we do have to wait until the time is right. You kind of know when NASA POSI sends
046out a memo >> alluding to the fact there might be price increases that you >> you may want to be flexible in your amounts and you may want to be flexible in your uh >> so in a few years you won't even have an AI group. >> Happily though the the Chromebooks we we thought the Chromebooks were going to go up much higher but they right now not they did not go up that much. So, so we're in a good place, but if we needed to cut there, we would find a way as well. >> Okay. Any questions about anything else? >> Thank you. >> And I'm always available if you need me to explain the refresh cycle again, I will. It It took me a little bit myself. >> Thank you, >> honey. >>
047Thank you. >> So, pivot to So, now we'll talk about facilities and transportation and the proposed budgets for these areas. So just a quick overview facilities um this is our custodials our operate our maintenance our bus drivers uh everything that supports the physical plant of the district or in the facilities budget um we have 18 custodial maintenance groundkeeper staff um in East Rockway across our three buildings um transportation so in East Rockway we have a hybrid model where we provide some in district transportation using Um it's our staff and our buses. Uh but the vast majority of our transportation costs are contracted for our private and parochial school uh residents who students who attend um private and parochial schools. We also provide transportation for BoseCTE programs, Bose special ed placements, um field trips and after
048school athletic transportation uh for this past year. Uh when I was doing this budget presentation last year for the 2526 proposed budget, one of the things we had highlighted that was a cost increase year-over-year was transportation. Um and we highlighted some of the challenges we had with some of our routes too, namely the Bose CCTE routes. What we did >> uh after the budget was passed last year was uh we took a deep d a deep look at can we do this a better way using our own drivers. So last year we hired an additional bus driver and we basically brought the Boseis CTE route inhouse um and be serviced by our one of our one of our more seasoned bus drivers. Um last year there were a lot of a lot of mixed feedback
049on um mostly providing that transportation through contracted transportation vendors. Um and I'm happy to say that now that we've brought that route back in house, it's been relatively smooth this year. So I think it was a positive impact and actually the cost we were paying for that contracted service last year with the Bosey's 30% fee increase that we experienced in one year um versus what we're paying for doing this in house. It's actually cost effective too. Um but just to give a highlight kind of on on what are what we contract transportation for. We do currently 16 private and parochial schools. Listen, I'm out here. The stuff that's in orange, um, those are schools that were, uh, we're providing transport for now that we historically haven't, at least they weren't budgeted for with the 2526
050when the 2526 budget um, was adopted. There's an April 1 deadline for non-RA public transportation requests that exists and that deadline is in place for a reason so that we can budget for what the cost is going to be for providing transport for non-public uh school attendees. These these schools that I highlighted in orange here, these were either student these mostly students that moved into the district after that deadline, which gives you 30 days basically to request transportation. Um, if you're a resident of the district and you miss the deadline and if and um the transportation you're requesting uh results in an increased cost to the district, the district's not required by law to provide that transport until the following year. But if you move to the to the district from out of district, you
051have the 30-day window to prove residency and you would be eligible for transportation. We also provide transport for two charter schools for this past year and um the seven mostly special education schools. We tra we contract for transportation on that as well. Currently the district has uh five vendors that we use. So we have independent coach, guardian bus, ret transansport for student and we contract through boseies for our special education uh students that are placed at Bose schools. Um we always try to partner with our neighboring school districts um to share routes so that we can reduce costs where we can. So our two biggest partners right now are Lindbrook and Melvin. We have good partnership with both those school districts. Um we're always in communication with each other to see where um we can
052continue to share our resources. This is the uh this is the facilities proposed budget for 26 27. Um pretty consistent year-over-year. I mean the real big differences that you'd see is you know reduction propo uh projected reduction in our water bill surprisingly for this year. So based on this year's usage um I project I put a little bit of allowance in. Um we're projecting to be about $8,000 less than um than we were in in the previous year. Uh I think part of that has to do with the fact that we uncovered quite a few um issues with our we had an issue with a drain pipe that we identified a leak on that I think was maybe potentially inflating the previous year um expense number. Um and it looks like once we fixed that
053issue at the high school that our water bill decreased significantly. Um, our utility bills for heating are pretty much we're projecting to be pretty flat year-over-year. Um, predominantly that's because we just finished CPC which incorporate a lot of additional weatherization and heat loss um initiatives into our into our buildings. On the electrical side, a little bit of a projection projected increase there about $20,000. But overall, our utility costs we're projecting are going to be about a two 2.2% increase year-over-year. And if you just look at what last year's projections were, we were projecting increases of about 11.7%. That's not related to utility costs slowing down in terms of their increases. They are pretty consistently increasing. That's just usage. So, we're definitely seeing some positive impacts from the um energy efficiency upgrades that we put in
054place with the EPC last year. I would expect moving into next year we should see even more of a slowdown in terms of the increase to the electrical side because a lot of those um uh upgrades that they put as part of EPC didn't happen until after the end of the summer when that's the highest time for electric use on on the uh 1621 section of facilities budget. Really the only significant cost increase we're projecting out for next year uh in this area of the budget is we at the athletic complex at the high school we have football field goal posts that are up there. Historically we're keeping those out all year. Uh this past year we decided with the baseball and the softball fields being used. the field goal post were presenting a little
055bit of safety risk as well as impacting the ability of um play for specifically down the right field line of our baseball field. So, we're now looking to take that down at the end of the fall season every year and then put back up before the football season. So, that's really the main driver there. Um the supplies line item for the maintenance is up a little bit just because of cost increases, but um every other budget code I reviewed in detail. We're pretty comfortable that we have a a reasonable budget and didn't feel the need to increase any of those other line items for transportation. So, this is kind of what I was highlighting before. Um, in under New York State pupil transportation rules, regulations, if you have a contract in place, you could be
056attracted a bus prov uh transportation provider, you're allowed to extend those contracts up to 10 years if both parties agree to do so. uh you can extend at what the state basically gives us which is the transportation CPI uh rate. So it's it's it's effectively just increasing it by infla an inflationary number every year. Um so we budget about a 4% increase year-over-year for that number for the contracts that we know we're going to be able to extend. We send out letters to our transportation vendor before the budget cycle every year just to determine whether they would be interested in extending or not. For any vendors that we feel that decide they don't want to extend with us or we think we can maybe get a better price if we do another competitive bid uh
057we factor in just a 10% there. Um as I mentioned before the BOCCT routes are now managed inhouse. So that we did see a little bit of reduction uh in terms of the contracted line items for those for that those specific routes. Uh but unfortunately we did have a lot of unanticipated routes added last year for some of the students moving in for those uh those five private and parochial schools that I mentioned on the previous slide. One positive for next year is we do think one route will definitely be uh will definitely be no longer necessary with we have a a senior the only student attending particularly charter school that will be graduating. Um so that we believe that route at this point will will be taken out of the budget. We'll find out
058after April 1st once the deadline's passed. And the other thing I just wanted to mention too is uh we do provide transportation in accordance with federal and state law for students that qualify for McKinto status which is temporary housing. Students displaced from East Rockaway outside of the community um to get transportation to come back to the community. This past year we did experience a couple of unanticipated uh routes that we had to add to address some of those students that were displaced out of the community. So, um, the budget right now it seems that those students will continue to have that McKenna Hector status and will require transportation in the upcoming year. Overall, across all of our transportation contracted codes, we're expecting about $122,000 increase. >> I have a question. >> Is field trips going
059up or down? Because this math doesn't add up. This is contracted field trips. But now that we have an additional bus driver on staff, they can also pick up trans field trip transportation routes. So it actually reduces the contracted cost because so in the past we didn't have bus drivers available uh on our staff do. We would have to contract that with like the independent coaches of the world charge us and it would come through on a 400 budget code. But now that we have an additional driver, we can do more of the field trip transportation inhouse. >> Okay. >> Which reduces cost. >> Yeah. But the number's wrong. That's I'm sorry. >> 264. >> Oh, >> that's what I was saying. I didn't know if it was going up or down. >> I was
060anticipating your question that you didn't ask. >> Yes, that's wrong. I fix that. I apologize. >> Okay. So, there's a couple other areas. So, I did talk about salaries and fringe benefit um projections in our in our last work session. Uh but this shows you the um the the salary projection increases for our existing staff. So if our staffing model does not change from where we are today, like I mentioned before, we are contemplating if we have additional needs for next year still. So salaries for our existing staff, $1.1 million increase year-over-year. Uh fringe benefits about another $300,000 increase there. ERS contributions. So that's our civil service employees. the main driver along with health insurance on the benefit side of the house between those two categories about a $430,000 projected increase year-over-year but offset partially
061by the TRS employee uh employer contribution rate dropping over a percentage this year which translated to about $225,000 decrease in projected expense for the district. Um a couple other categories we also pay for the dental and vision insurance. small increase projected there, workers comp insurance as well. And then we pay FICA, social security tax on um the employer portion on all of our employees salaries. So employee salaries are going up, my should. Um the one thing I just wanted to mention to to the board and to the community is we did negotiate with the teachers union this past year a retirement incentive. Um, so there's a deadline for um eligible members of the teachers union to to let the district know their intent to retire. So that compensated absence line item there may change if
062we have additional retirees for the 2627 school year. We do have a restricted reserve. It's called the employee benefits li acred liability reserve which is in place to basically pay for things like retirement incentives. So if there's a um there's an incentive tied to acred leave that restricted reserve can be used which relieves the burden on the overall school budget. Uh just to recap kind of on the Boseies side of the house. So this is our projected Bosey's expenditures from last year to this year. It's actually a slight decrease, $30,000 decrease. This is excluding special ed Bosey's tuition cost. We will cover that as part of our special ed uh budget in the April work session. And um last year I reported that our our projected bosses aid ratio was 59.8%. It's gone up to
06360.6% this year as the district's combined wealth ratio has decreased slightly. So that's kind of tied. Combined wealth ratio which is a measure of the wealth of the community increases aid ratio typically increases. So for every dollar made of all services we paid for through proceeds uh we get about 60 cents back. This next slide here is just a summary of the building level budgets. So um we this is the these budgets are actually I give the total number to the principles for developing their budget based on projections for enrollment. So look at the enrollment projections for all three buildings. There's a per pupil amount that we allocate to the building. I make an adjustment to that every year based upon inflation. So, um, in this upcoming year, the overall Center Avenue budget is seeing
064a modest increase of about $6,000. That's because our projections for Center Avenue is that the enrollment numbers will be up a little higher than in the past. Green Avenue, a slight increase there, and then the high school has a slight decrease, and that's because the 12th grade cohort graduating uh is bigger than the cohort that's coming into seventh grade. Can I ask a question? >> Yep. >> So you're saying that is this per pupil? >> Yep. >> So center revenue is spending 55 and RAM is spending 70 and that's because of the sped services I'm sure. >> Uh so the the the total budget is based upon the enrollment of the of the school. Spra Avenue has a higher enrollment of all students as compared to Center Avenue. I think there's like a 50 or
06560 student 100. >> It's 90 to 100. >> 90 to 100, I'm sorry. Okay. So, yeah, there's 90 to 100 more students at R Avenue than 7 hour center avenue. >> Economy of scale by the dozen type thing. Okay. >> Can I ask Mike? >> Yeah. >> That was to change and we were to let's say bring more students from the center, would that change the amount? So that you would expect the Rain Avenue building budget would go down and the Center Avenue one would go up. >> Okay. >> Yeah. The reason why we do it by per people is for um there's a there's a federal law called Every Student Succeeds Act which is intended to ensure that there's uh fair participation of financial resources for individual schools in the school district. So to
066ensure that um we're putting equal and fair amount of money financial resources on each of the buildings we do per people basis >> but it would level out even if it was changed so it would all be the same number >> in theory if if Raymond center had the same enrollment their their building level budget would be exactly the same exact I mean where they're spending their money that's discretion of the principal but do that's part of their budget submission. Uh so some maybe one year of principal may may need to invest more into equipment versus materials and supplies but total number >> is always would be the same. >> Thank you. >> U just couple other areas we want to highlight very quickly. These are some of the other significant areas of the budget
067um that have a couple of increases or decreases. So legal expenses we're projecting a 10% incre $10,000 increase there. auditing services, $3,000 increase that covers our internal or external and our claim auditor services. Our liability insurance, this is nicer. This this our property casualty insurance, executive liability insurance, etc. Um, we actually I know this is a big number, 50 $41,000, but we're actually one of the few districts on in Nassau County on Long Island seeing a projected increase less than 10%. I think we're around like 8.5%. Um and that's because our loss ratio which is reports which is a measurement of how um how much we are claiming from the insurance company very low compared to other districts in the area. I mean just all of the Lion schools are just getting killed with insurance
068increases because of our proximity to the ocean as well as um the child victims act cases have continued to um result in significant payouts for insurance cover uh prek support. So with the governor's proposal to increase the per pupil allocation of prek funding for this year, we can reduce our uh financial support that we were providing um for prek down to zero. So basically the governor's proposal was to increase our allocation from 5400 per student to 10,000 per student. So with that we it basically it gives us the ability to um take this out of the uh operating budget moving forward and we can rely on the on the grant money coming in entirely. non-public health services. This is this is the expenditures we have for students that are attending private parochial schools and um
069health services are provided by the district of residents for where that non-public school district is and then they bill us for those services. Uh based on our projections, we think we're going to be pretty consistent year-over-year about $140,000. Non-public textbooks. So any of our students that are res any resident students that are attending a non-public tech uh school are eligible for textbooks from the district. We've been seeing a downward trend in terms of uh the cost associated with that. A lot of that is due to the fact that a lot of the nonpublic schools are moving towards more digital um solutions, but it's also the enrollment numbers on our nonpubliclix are slowly going down as well. Uh tax transfer. So, we have a number of properties in the East Rockway School District that uh the
070borderline between the Lindbrook School District and the East Rockway School District actually dissects the property of the house and that the homeowner gets the opportunity to choose do they want to attend the Lind Brook schools or East Rockway schools for those individuals that choose to attend the Lindbrook schools. We receive the tax money from um for for the for their property taxes and then we pay it to Lindbrook. So, that's the projection for next year. It's about a $19,000 increase year-over-year. And last but not least, charter school tuition. Um, we're expecting a reduction for this year. In the past, we had three or four students attending charter schools who are residents of the district. Based on our projections today, we're expecting two. >> I have a question as far as the preschool. Um, and I
071know that we are going through an increase. Would it be beneficial for us to bring preschool into our own building? >> PreK. PreK. Sorry. >> The challenge is space. >> Space. That's >> a big deal. >> We could do it in our buildings. I don't think you'd find any resistance from anybody doing that. That's that the challenge always in space. >> So, if we were to find space, would that help us financially >> or do you think that? >> Well, what we previously had we had prek in Raymond Center avenue. It was still paid for through that grant uh to scope. scope basically used our space but it was a contracted service. Um the reason why we had to add additional support in the budget for prek was because the allocation that the state was
072giving the districts on Long Island was the same as the allocation they're giving districts upstate New York. Anybody who lives here knows that the cost of doing business here is a lot higher than in other parts of the state. I think the governor recognized that and that's why she's increased the per pupil allocation to a number that also would support school districts on Long Island to be able to be able to rely entirely on the on the state grant prek services um with that service. So I mentioned this in my in my first presentation as well. So this is our uh borrowing for bond projects uh and the energy performance contract. Since we completed the energy performance contract this year, we assume the debt associated with that, which is why you see an increase in
0732025 for interest as well as for principal. Now in the 2526 budget, we included we had a ban, which is a bond anticipation note. What a ban is is it's a short-term borrowing instrument supposed to be annual which can be renewed a couple times. But when you have a short-term debt instrument and then you convert it over to a long-term which would be a bond which is usually 15 to 25 to 30 years you assume the principle on your books as well. Um, so when we assume the principal for the long-term debt on the books, we sunset the interest on the bond anticipation note and there's a net impact on the expense side of the house of $500,000 in an increase. Sounds like a scary number, but you got to remember with that $500,000 increase,
074we also phased the um filing of what are called final cost reports, which is the trigger for the state to assign building aid for those capital projects at our building aid ratio to the district. So although it's a $500,000 increase on the expense side, it's also approximately I'm calculating here about $350,000 projected increase on the revenue side. So really like net impact to the to the budget is about $150,000. Um and then last but not least, um we have a couple line items for what are called interfund transfer. So that is money that is in the budget that gets transferred to a different um fund that we have. So we have a couple different funds. We have a school lunch fund which historically paid for our school lunch program. Uh in the past we always
075had a portion of the general operating budget subsidizing the school lunch fund and that was for uh students that were purchasing meals that they could um pay for 100% of the cost associated with those. With the universal free lunch school meals program in New York State, we no longer need to subsidize those meals because lunches are free, breakfast and lunches are free for all students. So that goes to zero. And then the interfund transfer to special aid fund that is a transfer to support the so uh summer school programs and extended school year are eligible for 80% funding by the state. Um the 20% difference is funded by the school district. So, this represents the 20% cost of us running our summer school ESY special education programs. Um, and uh it's pretty flat year-over-year. We're
076not expecting an increase there. All right. So, property tax levy increases historically here. You can see we've had modest uh increases since pretty much 2122 under 2%. Um, you can see the inflation side of the house there too. So after the pandemic settled, we saw in inflation spike. District tried to be as fiscally conservative as possible with when we were setting our budgets. Um we've tried to um do everything we could do inhouse to manage the increases on the property tax levy. As I was alluding to in our last budget presentation, it's very challenging for us to continue to do that with the cost increases that we're absorbing. As of today, we're projecting the property levy tax increase from last year of 2.69%. Which is below the 2.94% tax levy cap, but it's a little
077bit higher than we've had historically over the past couple years. A couple things that could change that number between now and when the budget gets adopted. those non transport non-totable transportation routes I was mentioning staffing changes if we have any emerging needs that need to be addressed with an an increase in FTE uh on the on the flip side we have that teacher retirement incentive that's out there so retirees uh for next year would offset some of the increased costs um if we have any new or any reduction in special education placements and then the million-dollar question is does the legislature adopt the budget as proposed by the governor or are there changes. So that would impact the revenue side of the house. And that completes presentation for today. So on April 21st, we're going
078to cover the athletic department um budget, curriculum instruction, special education, and we'll give a final update on staffing, go through three-part budget, which is one of the requirements of the budget cycle, and we'll do a final revenue, and I'll also do a final uh reserve presentation of the organization community. Um, just reminder, April 21st, 6 PM here. That'll be the last budget work session and the budget adoption. Our budget hearing will be scheduled here at 6 PM on May 5th. And then polls will be open at the East Rockway High School on May 19th from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. for the budget vote as well as the trustee election. Any questions? >> For me? No. >> Thank you. >> No, thank you very much. Thank you, Bonnie. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Bonnie. Let's
079see. Um, there anything else before I >> All right. At this time, can I have a motion to uh adjourn the meeting and enter into exact session to discuss contract negoti? >> Motion by Mrs. Doyle. Second by Mr. Lores. All in favor? >> Motion approved. Uh, I'd like to end this meeting at 7:08 p.m. Good night everyone. >> Good night. Thank you. >> Happy St. Patty's Day. Happy St. Patty's Day.