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

001Good evening and welcome to the Draco special meeting and work session of the board of education. I'd like to call this meeting to order at 6:09 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. 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, with liberty and justice for all business. Okay, some good news. Uh, we heard from New York State in regards to our energy performance contract. um they are interested or uh ready to start in June. Uh we will be replacing a boiler at uh RAM Avenue. We'll be insulating the different buildings and we'll be improving the lighting in all our classroom environments. Uh they gave us an assurance that they will be done

002uh by the end of August. So start of next school year, we'll have new lighting. We'll have better uh controls on our heat and uh Ray Avenue will have have the boiler. And this is our energy performance contract. Um, and uh, yeah, so we heard from the state and we're getting ready for that. So, uh, that's good news for the community. Great. Moving on, we have a special meeting agenda tonight. In addition to the recommendation of personal personnel scheduling, we will appoint John Leair as interimm director of facilities while Mr. Jim Daly is out on medical leave. Uh consent ag create and accept uh be it hereby resolved that the board of education create and accept a consent agenda with the following items. Recommendation of superintendent personnel scheduling items A 3A through G. Other items

0034 A through B. Budget transfers 5 A. Can I have a motion to accept the consent agenda? Motion. Second. All in favor? I review the minutes of the following minute. You have to then accept Oh, I consent agenda. Accept. I accept the consent agenda. [Music] Yes. Regular board ad board of uh board meeting minutes on March 11, 2025. Special meeting minutes on March 14th, 2025. Are there any questions in regards to the m to the minutes of the March 4th, March 11th, and March 14th meetings? No questions for No questions. We will have a special meeting on April 22nd to adopt the budget in addition to the regular board meeting scheduled for April 23rd, 2025. Are there any questions regarding the agenda items for the next board meeting on Tuesday, April 22nd and Wednesday, April

00423rd? No. No. Is it good? Um, now at this time, I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Van Wart for budget session presentation. Before we do that, can we just take a minute to uh guess the regular board members for this uh review of minutes from the following meetings, work session and special meeting minutes on March 4th, 2025. Motion second. All in favor? I work. Thank you. Guess while Mr. Van Wart is uh getting set for the presentation uh tonight we'll have uh Mr. Murray director uh I mean assistant uh superintendent for curriculum instruction Mr. Healey and Mr. Gary Gregory who will be uh assisting Mr. Van Wart in their presentation. Just a reminder uh this is a a budget presentation and um if there are questions you could reach out to

005Mr. Van Ward at his office or me at any time. So without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Van Ward. Thank you, Mr. De Samaso. So today, tonight is our third budget work session uh for the 2526 budget cycle. This is the last budget work session before the board uh contemplates adopting the budget. Um there will be a budget hearing in May. I'll talk about that in a little bit. Tonight we're going to talk a little bit about um where the legislature we believe is going with the state budget um which is overdue at this point. Um but we do have a legislative update. The one house budgets were passed in March. Uh I'll talk about where I'm expecting the expenditure budget to be for 2526. Not to bury the lead

006on that, but there's not much changed since last um budget presentation. Then we're going to get into our department uh our final department um budget proposed budget overviews. So we're going to have Mr. Gregory speak about athletics, fizz ed, and health. Um Mr. Healey will speak about the special ed and PPS department budget. And then Mr. Murray will round us out uh by going through the curriculum and instruction budget for 2526. I'll come back. I'll talk about the three-part budget, which is a required step as part of the budget cycle for public schools in New York State. Um and then we'll talk about how we're going to we're planning on funding the budget for 2526 and any use of restricted reserves. So without further ado, so first week of March, shortly after our last budget

007session, um the legislature, both the assembly and the state senate passed their one house budget, which is a very good indicator where the final budget um contemplating the governor's proposals is going end up. Um so we're at what April 8th right now. The budget was due April 1st. We're a week overdue at this point. Um the legislature does extenders when we're overdue to ensure that uh New York State employees continue to be paid and all the various departments that New York State supports um continue to operate continuously until the budget is finally passed. Um all indications are the budget should be passing within the next week or so. We just don't know at this point. So, as it relates to us for funding our for uh proposing our budget, we likely have to move forward

008with um the state aid numbers that were in the governor's executive budget proposal, which are from our perspective are going to be pretty close to final um what passes through the one house budgets from the states. It's pretty consistent with the state senate and the assembly uh budgets. But just to highlight a couple things that came out of those two uh budgets, foundation aid increases, there's a floor in both of those budgets, 3% or 2.9%. That's pretty consistent with the governor's initial proposal. She had 2%. Doesn't really impact us because the initial state aid runs. Um for foundation aid, we had a higher percentage increase than 3%. Both the assembly and the state senate uh proposed funding universal school meals for all schools. So that's another indicator that that'll end up in the final budget

009which means we may be able to offer free uh lunch for all of our students for 2526. Um both of the houses passed a budget with a increase in the sustainable salary cap. If that goes through that would be uh increased aid back to the school district for any Bose salary uh coasters. Both houses passed increased funding for prek per pupil. Um, no additional seats were in the were in the budget proposals, but additional funding per seat was in it, which gives us the ability to um potentially uh seek additional um CBOS, which become more viable for them financially to be able to uh offer pre-k services to our students. Uh the both budgets also included an allocation of $19 million to pay down what is known as prior year state aid claims. So, in

010New York State, there are deadlines on when certain claims have to be submitted by school districts to receive aid in a subsequent year. If those deadlines are missed, um, or there are adjustments made to the initial claims that were submitted, basically, they put you at the back of a queue and that aid doesn't get paid out until the budget the legislature appropriates additional funding. They froze that funding for the past couple year. This year, they're proposing to start allocating additional funding to it. So, we don't have that much money in the prior year. state aid claim queue. Um but it's good to see that they are the state is now looking to fund that that that um revenue stream moving forward because in a couple years we may start to see more money coming through.

011And last but not least uh the state both of the budgets are requesting to are including an increase in the retiree income earning cap waiver. for retirees that are continuing to work in school districts. Right now, there's a cap of $35,000 that they can make before their pensions impacted, which is a significant barrier for recruiting um former um employees or retirees to come back and fill um positions that are hard to to fill. Uh there both of the houses are proposing to double that earnings cap um which will help schools across the state. So, as I mentioned, our proposed 2526 expenditure budget hasn't changed since our last presentation in March. Um, there were a couple of open items in our last presentation, non-public transportation being the biggest one, staffing, and um where we're going to

012end up with our debt service. I'm I'm pleased to say that based upon the deadline that passed for non-public transportation, we're not expecting a significant increase in what we initially budgeted for transportation staffing. There still are some uh things we're working through for um IEPs for next year which may result in additional FTE, but at this point we feel comfortable moving forward with the budget as we proposed in March. Um taking into consideration some of the contingencies that we've already built into it as part of the initial budget process. So um 46.971 million um is what we're proposing for 2526, which is an increase of $1.68 million budget to budget. 3.72 budget-to budget increase. Our tax caps for 2526 was 3.04 as I mentioned in the last budget presentation and the portion of the school

013budget for next year that we would propose um to fund with the tax levy would be an increase of 1.95%. So well under the the tax cap and the amount that we're allowed to raise the levy up to. Um so we feel it's fiscally responsible um and a good budget for next year. Um, Mr. Gregory is doing double time right now. He's at tip off at the high school. So, we're just waiting for him to get back here. So, we're going to skip over his department presentation and come back to it. I'm just going to ask him if you don't mind. Of course, another special presentation first. Um so I'll start off by saying uh you know you can see by the presentation we have some some really wonderful photos to share with you all.

014Um couple of photos from cafe 217 at the high school as well as the foundation's fashion show with a few of our students um and uh down syndrome awareness day which uh kind of played a large role in um our social work. um to talk about the special education department as a whole. Uh generally our philosophy is that we want to give the kids exactly what they need in order to be successful. Um you never want to overs serve a kid um with services uh and create sort of a learned helplessness. Our goal is to give them the right amount of support so that they can be successful in the classroom and ultimately in life. Um so in our elementary schools we have Raymond Center. The majority of our special ed services are housed at

015RAM. We do have a few students um with IEPs at center um but the the vast majority is at RAM. That's where our special uh education self-contained classes are. That's where our code talk classes are um and so uh that's where the majority of the services take place at the elementary level. At the high school we have ICT, we have special classes, and then we have our skills and achievement class which is our smallest ratio. Um those students benefit from uh vocational training out in the community. So, we have a variety of businesses that we work with, as well as Cafe 217, which is our in-house cafe that serves our staff. Um, coffee, tea, and snacks uh on a regular basis on Fridays. We've also had mobile cafes that have gone down to the elementary

016school, gone out to the community, to the senior center, um so on and so forth. So, I just want to call attention this this comic uh when Miss Freudenberg presented, she actually referenced this from her new teacher training. You can see there's a there's a bunch of kids waiting to get into a school building where the steps and the ramp are covered in snow. Um I share this comic with all the new teachers regardless of their special ed general ed at the beginning as a way to demonstrate that special ed services or special ed co-eing uh or any kind of uh specialized service that you provide is generally beneficial to everyone. Um, so in this case, you have the gentleman's uh the the kids are saying, "Can you just shovel the ramp so we can

017get in?" And uh he's saying, "Well, all the other kids aside from the child in the wheelchair are waiting for the stairs. I'm going to shovel the stairs first." And this and the child in the wheelchair counters, "Well, if you shovel the ramp, we can all get it." So just a way of of illustrating this. Uh some of our budget highlights. Uh, so we added our 612 classroom to Rama Avenue this past year. It is our smallest classroom in two ways. It's our smallest ratio of students to to teachers, but it's also our smallest kids. Um, and it is an absolute delight. Uh, it's not without its challenges. Our staff works very hard. Um but uh if you've visited the classroom which which all of us have at this point uh meaning administration uh you'll

018see the benefit that it's had for our students. The fact that they're able to stay in district interact with their with their more neurotypical peers. It's really been a wonderful experience for those kids, for the staff, for everybody as well. We've also added some additional staff um including a speech and language teacher. Last year around budget time, we had talked about adding a part-time speech and language teacher over the summer uh with new students entering the district and with CSE's wrapping up those speech uh needs increased. So, we wound up adding um a full-time teacher in addition to the part-time teacher. Um that has been beneficial in a number of ways. The way we uh provide speech services in the district is a programmatic approach where students get their pullout services but then the teacher

019is also consulting and pushing into the classroom to make sure that those skills that are taught in the pullout services transfer to the students work in the classroom. So it's a really effective model something we're very proud of. We have a really wonderful speech uh teaching staff. This is also uh the first full year with our indistrict BCBA. We brought the district BCBA position into the district last spring. Um this year we have a new provider in the role, Miss Bologano. She's done exceptional work across all three buildings. She's really settled into the role and um we've seen the benefit for our students across the board. Um we also added uh the role of the special education chairperson at the high school which had the added benefit of a part-time psychologist to help spread out

020Dr. Pazina's uh case load at the high school. Um that's Dr. Spore had previously been at Center Avenue School. She's done an amazing job just uh helping with leading the department and she's also provided uh those psych psychological services whether it be testing or um chairing meetings uh to the high school staff. And then uh this was also the first year first full year of our indist occupational therapist. Occupational therapists are getting harder and harder to find. Every district used to use the model of contracting out or almost every district used to contract the services out including us. It's no longer uh benefit to us to contract the services out. It's hard to find providers and so we uh we welcomed in our first provider at Ray Avenue, Miss Mendelia. Um she's done exceptional work

021for us throughout the year, including working with our 612 kids and again we're seeing the benefits to our kids. Um so there are a couple of notable changes in the proposed budget. Uh you'll notice that there's a reduction in the OTPT sped uh consultant code. That is because we move the money that we would have spent for consult uh consultation for uh contracting out the OT services has been moved to our staffing code. Um so there's no longer need to have that money in that code. That's where that reduction comes from. And then uh you'll notice an increase in both private school tuition tuition. Uh we had private school student move into the district um in addition to increased costs with tuition and uh for our students who are residential uh for what's called maintenance

022or room and board. Um and then for Boseies that's the cost of about two students um two students who uh you know either moved into the district uh already placed out of district uh or who we didn't anticipate would be placed out of district at the at the start of the year. So, you know, with the with the increase of those costs, I just feel uh like it's important to emphasize that an out of district placement is always absolutely the last resort when we've exhausted all other options. That is not just our own personal philosophy. That is also the law under IDA. Um you cannot place a child in an unnecessarily restrictive environment. And so, we have to really try everything within district to help that child before the determination is made to place the

023child at district. that determination is made by the cse. That being said, we have a number of kids placed out of districts who we um for all of our kids placed out of district, we're constantly monitoring um their progress to see if we can possibly bring them back. Uh we are returning at least one child to district so far with this CSSE season. So, we're we're excited about that. We're excited to welcome in him into East Rockway. He was actually um he never went to school here. He was placed out of district by a previous district, then moved in. and so we can serve him and meet his needs. Okay. Uh and then just uh some of the highlights for this upcoming year. Uh we've increased uh the amount of money allocated to professional development.

024That's done very intentionally uh with the goal of improving our co-eing uh partnerships, making those partnerships more effective with the number of students and co-eing classrooms. And our goal is to provide those teachers with the tools they need to be even more effective than they already are. Um, we would also like to completely bring uh occupational therapy services into the district by hiring a part-time occupational therapist. We've actually been advertising the position for some time. We think we might have some leads and so we're excited uh at the prospect of having all of our OT provided in district. Um we're going to uh maintain our current uh speech staffing which uh you know is necessary to meet the mandates of the IEP um and to provide those robust services that I mentioned earlier. And then

025know we're always looking for opportunities to expand the scope of our pro of our program so that we can keep as many kids in district as possible because you know the better we can serve our kids the closer they can stay to home the more involved they can be in our schools in our community the better it is for everyone. And so with that um turn things back. Thank you Stephen. Thank you. We're just going to double back to the um uh the physical education, health, and athletics department budget overview. Mr. Gregory's here now. Thank you, Mr. R. You're running over here from the high school. Thank you, Council. Uh just right here, right? I apologize. I was uh actually scheduled to go last board session and then I had pip off night tonight. So,

026that's over there. So, I'm trying to get this going. All right. So, um, for Bizad Health and Athletics, um, for our teams, we have over 47 teams. Um, we have five of them that are currently merged with Melbourne. Um, it's the boys and girls uh, lacrosse teams, soccer teams, and girls tennis. Um, we have intramural programs that we have brought in now. We have the challenge teams that we have brought in, and we have over 40 coaches and coordinators now. So, for a small school district, that's quite a bit of teams and coaches. Um, for our fizzed, we have five full-time teachers, staff members. We have a full-time teaching assistant, and we are currently utilizing an elementary teacher that is pushing in to do our health program down at the elementary school. So, for our

027highlights over here, we're 2425. One of the big concerns was the field and the viewing of the baseball and softball uh games. So the challenge was how do we provide this for the community without trying to get those big bleachers which we really couldn't fit on the field. So uh one of the problems we had were the current benches were very very heavy for our u facilities department. So, what I worked on was got these three benches that are uh longer than one of our current benches. And when you put them together, they're also lighter. So, it's a home run for our facilities department. We utilize them in the spring for our baseball team for the parents of you. And those are the benches that are brought onto the field where the teams utilize for

028flag football and lacrosse. the old benches that we have, which are the very heavy ones, we place them in the softball area because they're going to be more stationary. The one that's in the home box on the third base side, that one will be moved slightly because of the track meet because we have the high jump mat over there. So, we want to make sure that we have no injuries when it comes to that. But that was one of the big highlights that we did for this year. So, thank you to Mr. Van Wart for helping out with that. Um, I'm gonna continue with the refresh of our gymnasium and our hall of fame. So, for those that didn't know, our all of our retired numbers were in the small gym. Nobody really frequents the

029small gym, so nobody really sees that. So, I work with coach Lores, who's in charge of all that, and he said it was a great idea. I met with the teachers and it was a home run. So, we started bringing that into the big gym as well. So, we started refreshing all the banners last year. We put the scholar athletes on there as well, the teams, and now we have our retired um jerseys and numbers in there as well. Um we are looking to get uh two volleyball courts installed in the big gym. So, one of the ideas we came up with is to make more space with the space that we have. So, we have the capability now um right around Memorial Day, we'll be having this installed. So now we can have two

030teams practicing at the same time. So for instance, if we have the girls JV volleyball, the girls varsity volleyball, they could do that. In the winter time where space is a premium, we can have both boys and girls. All we got to do is pull the curtain. Uh middle school teams performing at the same time, practicing, and then we also have the small gym available. We can start throwing the JV teams in there. And then once we're done in the big gym, we open it back up to a full court for our varsity teams to use. So, that's something that we're excited to get. Um, we incorporate our new middle school boys soccer team. First time in school history. Um, and we're doing our refresh of uniforms. So, our uniforms, we typically go anywhere between

031five to seven years. Um, depending on how well we keep them. So, this year we bought the, um, boys home jerseys. We're purchasing visors for the girls softball team. So, we're trying to make it equitable for each team. Um, additionally, so in the bottom you'll see the picture. Um, we always get new things coming up with athletics and one of the things for this year was it was mandated that we have shot clocks for lacrosse. So that was one of the big purchases that we budgeted for. I knew it in advance. Um, when I was prepping last year with Mr. Van War, I told him this is an absolute necessity that we need. So we had to buy a pair of shot clocks. Um and we share them with Malvin and then we bring them

032down back here when we host our games um our lacrosse games at East Rockway High School. Um and one of the big things that we did was I worked with Mr. Van Ward to get our lacrosse and soccer teams to Melbourne on time. What was happening was our bus drivers because they had to make more and more runs, they were getting back to the school at 3:45 or later. So by the time they got up to Malver, it was close to four o'clock already. So this has been a huge increase to the amount of practice time. Malver has been ecstatic about it. Our kids and our families have been happy about it. So we use a one-way shuttle to Malver with Independent and then typically Joe, our bus driver, sometimes with Jimmy, they'll do the

033return um shuttle back home. Uh for Fizzad and Health, uh we had the Fizzad teaching assistant. Uh we worked on professional development and uh some of the big things we worked on is we have the software for fitness gram. So I'm working with my staff to input that data. So what's great about that is now that we're putting that in, we could start tracking students as early as kindergarten through their career here at East Rockway. So we could see the trends where we need to work on when it comes to fitness. And lastly, um, uh, our supplies. A big thing for us was our unified PE class. We need to make sure that we had equipment that is adaptable and modifiable for them to use. Okay? So, just a regular basketball may not be appropriate

034for everyone in that class. So, we want to make sure that we had equipment for them. Okay. um what we're looking to do for next year. So, one of the things I pride myself on is I'm very fiscally responsible. Um I think Mrs. Malar, it's her favorite time when I say, "Pull down the shade. Let's get the books out." Um and we start hitting everything that we're looking at and we're doing that financial audit. Uh so, one of the things I actually worked on with Coach Pager is um our football helmets. For those that aren't familiar, our football helmets have a 10-year lifespan. Whether they're used or not, it's 10 years. They can be defective in between that time depending on any type of a hit, but at the 10-year mark, they are rejected. We

035cannot we can no longer use them. So, the trend that we're having now is our enrollment's going down. So, there's no need to have over a 100 helmets for the program. So what we're looking at is phasing out 10 helmets per year approximately depending on how many were bought for that year and we're going to reallocate that money. So one of the big things that they were looking for is if you look at the picture there is that endzone camera. So that's something that they've been uh requesting for a couple years now. Um it is it does cost money but the offset is fantastic for us. So, we're able to purchase that with no problems. We're just relocating reallocating the money in the lines. Um, one of the big things that we really need to

036refurbish in that big gym is our keypads for the basketball hoops. They're all on one single key. The keys are breaking inside of the cylinder. Some of the cylinders are broken, so they turn all the way around. So sometimes we can't get the basketball hoops down. By digitizing them, we're able to get it where we can just hit the buttons. We can control which basket comes down. We could do a court. So if we do court one, which are the main court, boom, you hit the button, both of them are coming down at the same exact time. We don't have to use that old key system and go to each single slot to get each basket up. We can just go from one area and get two to four baskets up at a time. That's

037one of the big things we're looking for. Uh we're going to phase in the away jerseys for baseball. Softball is going to get their second jersey. I'm assuming it's going to be the away jersey. That's going to be up to coach Les. He saw them decide if it's white or black, but we'll get to that. Um and the new pole system for volleyball. As I mentioned, we're getting the um poles and the sleeves put in this year, but we'll be able to purchase that system for the poles and nets to be used and um our storage racks for baseball and softball. So, this was something that wasn't thought of when they um implemented the dugouts. So, there's not a lot of storage in the dugouts. So, when you walk in, they have their the teams

038have their bags all over the place, their equipment. So, we're looking to get cubbies, shelves, and hooks and put it up on the wall. This way, it's a lot more organized, a lot more neat, and this is something that the coach coaches have been asking for. So, those are the big things that we're looking to do for the upcoming school year. In fis and health, um there were a couple things. Center Avenue, Mr. Smiley requested a portable storeboard, which is not out of the realm, but it's it it would take up his whole entire budget. So, I was able to put a little additional money in there. Um, and for our fitness classes, um, the teachers in the high school really wanted to update some of the equipment there. So, again, that's in addition to

039their typical budget because this is additional items that they want for their unit. And then in um, Ray Avenue, uh, because we're having more needs for our students, um, our nurse down there needs storage space. So this is something that she needs for whatever it may be medications or whatever it is that it that she requires. So those are the big things that we're looking for um for the upcoming budget. Are there any questions on this? Yes. Uh as far as the I love everything that you've said so far, the storage facility for the baseball. Um, is that something you think you can organize through the school like maybe shop where they make it and and do it or do you think it has to be something that's custom done? I trying to incorporate kids

040in I would for my for for safety reasons I would like it to be where we have the company do it. this way we have if there's any liability it's not on us it's on the manufacturer so there are um other school districts that have used these companies in particular if you go right down to Melbourne we're using the same they have the same type of setup same exact thing so that was something I noticed we didn't have right away when I saw that and then the the next not the first year the second year Mr. Hickey had a scrimmage over there he's like took a picture Mr. we need this. I was like I was like, "All right, let me find the price." I'm like, "Oh, okay." So, we have to work that in.

041So, um I really think that this is going to be a home run for them. Okay, perfect. And then, um as far as everything that you've said, I'd love to come take a look. I'm Everybody knows I like to see things. Um I know we had met about the bleachers. Um I would love to just come take a look and see everything. Sure. So, yep. So, I know it's hard to see because it's kind of small. It's a picture up there. No, I know. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So, basically, so when you walk up to the baseball field, what we did is we made a secondary box. So, if you know the pole system that we have and then that So, we made it on one full length away from each other. Um, so we

042have the three benches on each one and I bought the ones with a shelf on it as well. So, if parents wanted to lean on it or they want to put their bag on there, they could do that as well. Um the other thing that we're doing now is if the away team doesn't have spectators, we've been allowing um the East Rockaway to move over so more people can sit down. Okay, great. So then and then again, if there's like one or two parents, we would just move one or two of the benches over to the side to still allow for overflow. And then on the softball side, we still have the one box on the first base side. It's the same exact thing, but we have the big heavy bench is there. Uh that's

043for the away team. On the home side, we have it on a Thursday side. We had to make it thinner and you'll see when when we take a walk. Uh because we have the high jump area, so we didn't understand. Yeah. So, but we did make it longer. Okay. But just just for Thank you. Y I have a question while we're there. So, the benches are okay for the turf, right? Yes. Okay. And then the helmets. So, I remember a couple of years ago there was a big thing about all new helmets being needed for football, right? Yes. Correct. So, those are the ones that we had. They're all still good, but you're not going to be replacing them or if you do have to in a lower amount. Yes. So, right now we have

044more than enough to cover what we have. So, a few years, I think it was my first year here, it was right around COVID is where we had a massive amount of students that came out. We actually received a donation from Huelet and th those helmets were still good and they still are in our system. They're painted orange now so they're okay. But um for now the helmets so each year so what you want to do if you're planning appropriately what you would like to do for football helmets is budget enough for each years because if you buy in one big bulk that's that's a huge hit to the budget. Yeah. And then they all go at the same time. Correct. So that that's what we're looking at. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you.

045And so for the proposed budget this year, as I said, you'll probably see a lot of numbers high and low. Again, that was because Ari and I were working on looking at where we can move um a lot of the money. So if you take away um the nursing right there, a lot of the stuff is just moving back and forth. One of the big things you'll see is the curriculum items. That is not additional money that is being requested. That was uh Mr. Murray and myself, we were talking about just re allocating where that line is. So, it's the same exact money. It's just in my area instead of the curriculum and instruction area. Um the nursing. So, that is a big increase because of the needs that we have now. Uh in particular,

046we have students uh that require an RN uh that come in early. So we have to get a nurse for early time. We try to we try to offer for our current nurses extra time in the morning or in the afternoon. It's very far and few between when we can get it. There are a couple times in the afternoon like there's one club down at RA where the nurse stays. For instance, we had nurse Smith. Um I think it was might have been sports night where she was there so she covered. Um but typically we'll have some students that need to have an RN that go after school to sporting events or after school activities. So this has increased that line. Um that's why you're going to see that big increase right there. Okay. Any

047questions on that? So the nursing has been something that it's a requirement. So that's something we have to work on and and Mr. Vard knows always asking them for money for for that line. Okay. So the big one over here. So if you look again at the numbers, you're going to see a lot of big numbers here and there. If you take away um the big one, uh the athletic Boseies, the 4,300, the that one in particular will always go up. That's something that's contractual with Boseies. We were told a minimum of 3.5% increase because they're renegotiating the contracts for all the officials. So that's something that um I can't budget for within. I'm always trying to look to move reallocate money and you'll see that here. If you total everything up aside from that

048line, you're looking at I think it was like $475 or $500 increase. Um and the other one is the dues line. I I was able to use a lot of the money that I have in my alliance to cover that. But the dukes is another thing from section 8 and New York State Public High School athletic associates association that continues to go up. So that's something where um it it will fluctuate from time to time. But um if you notice, you'll see I'm going to come on this side. Um the helmet uh reconditioning right there. That's the 6,000 that we were talking about with the football helmets. and we just started moving that money around. So those are so you'll see the give and take in certain lines and there's always a method to the

049madness with that because we're looking to see what's appropriate for the school this current year. So next school year we may need to keep that 6,000 back in reconditioning because we may need those helmets. So that's something Mr. Per and I will reassess year to year and we'll go from there. Any questions on your slide? I do have a question. Go ahead. You No, it's enough. I do have a question. Have you had to turn away anybody for any new clubs because we didn't have the budget or clubs as far as like any inter mural sport or anything like that? Um, not so much. It's just we don't typically have enough students that want to do something. So, I know girls swimming was something that had a lot of the parents that were requesting it.

050When I put it out to the students for surveys and then meetings, we just really didn't have that number. So, it's it's a give and take. I know that there's some kids that say they're interested in hockey, but then when I tell them when the season is and what times, they're like, "Oh, we're not going to do that." Oh, I want to do basketball. So, a lot of times they don't realize, you know, what it is that they want. But the one good thing is the boys middle school volleyball is something that has been just growing each year and it's time for the team. So, I'm excited to see that that kickoff. We also don't have a boys team in winter 2. So, I think it makes it even because girls basketball is in winter

0512. So, now we'll have a a male sport in there in middle school. In middle school. Correct. So, winter twos in middle school. Good. Winter one's so you got winter season which is high school, winter one, winter two is junior high school. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Right. And I think that's it. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. Y Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Murray. The curriculum instruction. Thank you, Mort. Um so ultimately what schools do is teach and learn. Um and so the curriculum instruction office is primarily responsible for the teaching and learning that takes place in our school system. Um and if you break that down, it's really three major responsibilities of um and budget spending that comes out of the curriculum instruction office. Uh, one of them would be professional

052development for our staff. Making sure that our teachers and other staff are appropriately prepared um with the most current best practices or um you know regulations, standards that they're ready for that. Um, another piece would be curriculum and instruction design. So making sure that we are bringing in the kinds of programs and doing the kind of work with our teacher teams to make sure that what is being taught is what the state is requiring and what best practices tell us should be taught. And then finally um surprise materials to make sure that the students have in front of them um the right books, the right software, the right um subscriptions and things like that so they can do their best learning. So those would be the the main categories that fall under the budget that

053I developed with uh with Mr. Van Ward. Um so if you break that down into a little bit of a more granular fashion, these are really the key responsibilities of the curriculum and and uh instruction office. We have 13 years with our students to make sure that they're ready for um the real world, so to speak. um and whatever their post-secary options may be whether it's career, college or uh you know what you know military whatever choice they make after graduation um we have 13 years in which to prepare them for that choice and so um we start with early literacy and numeracy instruction make sure that our youngest learners are getting ready to do that. Um we look at content area instruction across all of our grade levels. Um assessment is obviously part of

054that. Making sure that we are taking um sort of a dipstick of how our students are doing along the way. Aligning our curriculum to the standards and as the standards change, making sure that what's being taught in our classroom changes along with them. Um I already spoke before about teacher professional development and making sure that all of our teachers are using the most appropriate and current best practices in teaching and learning. Um, part of what we do is review and adopt new resources as they become necessary. Um, and when students ask me, you know, what is your job? What do you do? Um, I think the easiest way for me to explain that to them is that I'm responsible for all the learning of all the students and all the adults in East Rockaway and

055to make sure that we remain a learning organization. So, this year we did a lot of really wonderful things with our budget. Um these are just some some pictures that um help see what we've done in the curriculum and instructional office. Uh we will be having our first ever AP capstone diploma graduates. That's something that we're really proud of. Um, we don't have the exact number yet because the exact number is going to depend on this May's exams, but um, we anticipate having at least five and potentially as many as 10 students graduating with the AP capsule diploma. I know that's something that Mr. Damaso um, was most proud of because it was a multi-year plan to make that happen. Um, in order to earn that diploma, students need to take AP Seminar. They need

056to then take AP research. They need to do well in both of those courses, both of those tests, and they need to score well on a minimum number of other AP exams. So, this is a a really um wonderful way for our students who know that they're heading off to college after high school to be very well prepared for that. um we have increased exponentially the number of students who are earning the seal of biiteracy and the seal of civic readiness. We've done that in multiple ways. Uh one way is just um through a commitment of the staff. Um but also by offering advanced level language classes. Um, we're allowing more of our students for whom Spanish is a second language. And actually last year we had Italian and Chinese um, uh, languages earn seals

057by literacy. Um, so we're having more of our students who are learning Spanish get sealed by literacy, but our commitment through our ENL teachers to make sure that our native Spanish speaking families and students are doing as well in English as they do in Spanish. We're having students whose first language is Spanish earn the seal of biiteracy by demonstrating competence and uh, mastery of English, which is wonderful. Um, we've been talking about PBL here for a couple of years, but we're in year two of that implementation and that's something that's going very well. We spoke about that at a previous board meeting. Uh, I Ready, again, we're in year two of our I Ready implementation and, um, it is really inspiring our teachers to use data more purposefully in the classrooms and it's really getting

058our students excited about their own progress and growth and they're checking it and monitoring themselves. uh the geodess up there, those are special resources that we've brought into our uh primary classrooms. They're what are called decodable texts. In other words, um they're books in which every word in the book, students should be able to read them independently. But what's different about geodess is that instead of it being, you know, the old, you know, Dick and Jane stories, they are all informational or non-fiction texts. So students are reading books they can read that they can do without teacher support and while they're doing that they're learning new things. So it actually advances one of the most important aspects of uh the science of reading which is background knowledge. And the more background knowledge you have the

059stronger read you are. So we're building that background knowledge right from kindergarten. Um up in the corner the uh cross cutting practices and core ideas that is our New York State science uh learning standards which are based off the next generation science standards. So, uh, Miss Forbes has been working with our high school teams to change all of the instruction in our high school classes to align with the new approach to learning where science is really more hands-on, experiential, problem based. Rather than just memorizing facts, they're working their way through problems. Um and then down the bottom we've added um or expanded the use of read 180 Edward and Gillingham to support our students who struggle to learn to read. You know most of our kids are able to learn to read in the classroom

060but we do have a subset of students who need more support than that and we willingham are two different programs that we're able to use to catch those students up. So that's all this year that we've been able to do. And um as we look into next year um we're mostly flat. If you if you look at the overall increase in the curriculum instruction codes um that $12,000 increase is mostly accounted for through um just inflation and the increases in cost with some of the contracts for programs and services we're already using. Uh, one thing that we're very excited about adding for next year, we actually are running a pilot of it right now in our schools, is what's called magic school AI. Um, artificial intelligence is something that we must we have really a

061an ethical obligation to make sure that our students graduate into a world that will be AIdriven prepared for that. So, um, this year we are working with Magis School AI to train our teachers up and once our teachers are trained up, we'll be able to bring our students into that environment. This is a artificial intelligence system that is Edwood 2D compliant. So, no student data goes anywhere. It's it's self-contained within there. So, we don't have to worry about privacy needs. And what's really great is it's actually designed for schools. Just as a parent, um I've used Chat GBT and Magic School AI with my own child children at home. Um helping them with different things and Magic School AI really changes what it provides to be very focused on learning and education. So, we're really

062excited about that tool. Um and the the price was right. it really was not a significant investment by the school district. You can see here that um it's under $8,000 for all of our teachers to have access to that and it's just really exciting. Um if we move on to what we're really going to focus on next year and where our money will be going next year, um we're going to continue that focus in our elementary schools on the science of reading. As a matter of fact, on September 1st, a attestation from the school district is going to be due to New York State. Um, we have to do a curriculum audit and review of all of our literacy practices K to3 and demonstrate to the state that those practices are aligned with the science

063of reading. That's a new state law that went into effect last summer. And this September 1st is when those attestations are due. So, I'll be working on that with our literacy coach and our elementary principles. Um, but we've been moving in that direction. So, we're really not concerned about being able to demonstrate to the state that we're doing the right thing. But next year, our our focus of professional development at the elementary schools will really be more on the science of reading. And you can see that Scar Bro's rope is just a great illustration of that. Um, another thing that we'll be adding in is program called Morphe Magic. Um, our youngest students, we've had some really good programs for them for a long time, including foundations for several years, in the last year or

064two, but our older students haven't had a similar program for expanding their reading skills around phonics and word study. There aren't a lot out there. And so, something that Danielle Schneider and I focused on this year was um researching, reaching out to other colleagues, seeing what's out there. Um, and there's a program called Morphe Magic that we're going to bring in. And morph themes, to put it really simply, is just how words are constructed, the parts of words. So, if you look at a word like um uh thinking of the uh atmosphere, you've got sphere is part of the word and atmos. And they all they both have meanings. And the sphere we all know is round and atmos root to that. But you if you know what atmosphere is, you can figure out thermosphere.

065You can figure out spherical. If you know what ICL at the end of a word means. So that's the kind of work that more magic will do with our older students so that they'll be able to uh decode more complex words much more easily and become better readers that way. Um we're really excited about adding virtual enterprise up at the high school. This is a program that really teaches entrepreneurialship uh business design. So students in the VE program will create a business from scratch. They will then participate with schools from all around the island at trade fairs um where they basically try to sell their product kind of shark tank it um and there are awards for the best programs for the best marketing plan for the best um you know various parts of a

066business model. So that's something that we're really excited about to be able to add that um elective up at the high school. Um we also you can see a picture here. It's not the exact same thing that's going into our tech rooms, but we have a CNC router. And so next year, our um design courses in the tech program are going to have updated and more modern equipment for our students to be able to work on the kinds of equipment they'd be working on if they go off into um the design and trades after school um after high school. So they'll have the same kind of equipment they'd be using in the shops they'd be working in. So we're really excited about that. I know uh that Mr. Howard and Miss Mia are excited to

067um change what they're teaching so our students can take advantage of some of that new equipment. Um and then this year um we did run out of COVID federal funds for our summer program that we had run for several years. Um but this year we worked into the budget um a new program for the elementary schools that we're calling Boost. Um, and we're going to have a uh sort of a brief accelerated program for our students who are still a little bit behind in reading and math um to make sure that they stay caught up and that when they hit September um they are as caught up as they can be. So that's really where we're going in curriculum instruction. So I don't if you want to ask questions now or at the end. I

068have a question. Sure. The printer is it like a 3D printer and what what type of Well, it's it's a CNC router. So, it's not We do have 3D printers in the Czech. Um and so 3D printers do exactly that. They they use a filament to create objects that are threedimensional. Um and so, uh our students do use those for some of their design courses. Um a CNC router is more of a large platform device where students program in um a design and then that router can route that design into all different materials. So you can etch glass, you can um burn wood, you can um depending on the machine that you get, you can do etching in metal as well. So you can really design a lot of different products and the CNC router

069does it perfectly as opposed to the old days where you were dragging a thing around. Oh, I missed it. I got to start over. Um, this is programmed and I've even seen we did some visits to some other schools and um, you know, the machine the actually even the the name plate you have in front of you right here. Yeah. Yeah, those were done with a smaller scale CN CNC type router. Um, we visited Minnola and they have a large platform CNC router and they actually have the students creating things for the district as part of their program. Um, so it's a re it's a real true hands-on working experience that we can give to our students um once our tech department really, you know, gets a handle on what the the all the possible

070uses of that device, which we don't even know the whole I'm just happy you said, you know, this because that's exactly what I thought it it did. I thought it did do all those programs. I just wanted to clarify the multiple materials and larger formats. Okay. Thank you. We should mention that um the Ed Foundation uh sponsored a grant to partial a partial grant for us uh in terms of budgeting. So they gave us seed money but so we were able to purchase that and now our kids are going to uh you know my anticipations are going to run wild with this and uh I know Mr. Howard is very enthusiastic about it. So as to your point before about potentially making things for the school uh this is a good avenue to do that.

071Great. I have a question too. Yes. So on the curriculum and instruction, you know, there's probably a hundred line items in the official budget and you picked 20, right? I look at this building level codes. So yeah, that's why I'm just asking like why are these are these all related to the programs you were talking about the I Ready and the that stuff? No. the these are really more the districtwide codes. So we we sort of highlighted the district-wide codes. There are a lot of other codes that are um more building level that we didn't but just in this presentation the line item. So I'm just asking so because it's the meat and potatoes of the district of of school, you know, it's learning. So when you have the teachers, the um the cert certified

072staff um and you have the increasing and decreasing of those numbers, do you ever talk about those or do we just match what the staff like? I know I'm babbling and we're going to So are you talking about payrolls or are you talking about materials? I'm talking about, you know, we have talking about rolling over the codes year after year. Is that what you're saying? I'm talking about Yeah, I'm talking staffing levels. Okay, go ahead. So, so staffing levels are not in this slide. So, this slide is just resources, materials, professional learning, not salaries. Go ahead with your question. So, so my question is is when we're planning and um more so on the the grammar school level than the high school level is the number of teachers and aids and reading specialists and math

073specialists because you know I'm harping on that a lot. Yes. And um so like I think we have a reading specialist in RAM and center and we actually have three reading specialists at RAM and two at center and the division of that mount is is based on the the number of students and and needs of the students. So, and you know, I'm pushing because I'd like to see math specialists. And we have math specialists, one in each building. One in each building. Teachers. And then in addition to the teachers, we have um teaching assistants, which we we call them interventionists. Um so their their title is teaching assistant. So we have additional teaching assistants in both RAM and in center. um one of whom in each building specializes in math and the other which specializes

074in reading. So um we have at least two uh staff supporting math intervention and at least three uh staff supporting reading interventions in each building. Okay. So one math and one reading in each building and then one extra reading it seems like. Yes. And then, you know, I don't I don't know if we want or need more. Um, and that's just what that's the question I was asking. I I can say that when we're building the budget, while it's not in my presentation here, certainly cabinet discusses staff basically starting in November, right? Um, and if I thought that we needed additional FTEES to meet our students needs, that is absolutely a conversation I would have had. Um, at this point, I do not believe so. I have already warned Mr. Van Ward that we probably

075will need to add an ENL teacher within the next year or so if our numbers keep going up at the rate that they're going. We added an ENL teacher this year. Um, and there's a very good chance we'll have to add at least partial uh ENL teacher in another year or so. This year we're good, but in another year we may not be. And ENL is ENL is English as a new language. So for the students who come in not speaking English or not not native English speakers, right? So what happens if we get some child that speaks not Spanish? Well, that's the thing. That's the beauty of ENL. Um, ENL is not about Spanish. It is not bilingual. So, um, in some districts, depending on the number of students you have per grade level,

076there's actually a state requirement that if you have at least 20 students who speak the same language on a grade level in a district, you have to open up a bilingual program, in which case that teacher would be teaching in whatever the language is, Spanish, okay, creole and English. We don't have that. So, our students have all different languages. And ENL teachers are not teaching Spanish to English. They're teaching English using different methods that work by connecting English to whatever language a child speaks. In fact, ENL teachers do not need to speak Spanish. They um they need to have some background in another language, but it does not have to be Spanish. And then we won't go into it in depth here, but I do think like do we have a matching program for the

077parents at night? I don't know, but that's separate. Um, so I just want to make sure that our reading and math interventions that are necessary, we have enough staff for I believe that we are appropriately staffed for our students needs at this time. Okay. I have a question about the magic school. Yeah. Um, can we just a little bit more information? I know it was a new program that's coming in and is it a program similar to what we're doing now with I Ready? Um, no. No. So, so trying to put it in in in a nutshell, um, I Ready is a dual program that assesses students in reading and math and uses that assessment data to provide um a personalized learning pathway where students are learning at the level they're at to improve their

078reading, to improve their math. So, students who are struggling, it's a little bit easier. students who are excelling, they're getting enriched. So that's a great program for differentiating. Now, is there some AI algorithm that I is using to create those pathways? Probably, but that's not what we're using. That's not on our end. That's on the back end. Magic school AI is more like a chat GBT. It's generative AI. So what that does is teachers and eventually students again we're not using with students yet. Um teachers can put in a prompt. So um if you're if you have any familiarity with or if you've been reading anything about AI um the most important part of using AI well is the prompt engineer. So creating a font that you feed into the AI um engine whether it's

079chat GPT or Gemini or in our case magic school AI basically telling the um generative AI what you want to produce. So I'll give you a perfect example. Um I send out what I call Mr. Murray's tip of the week um approximately weekly and a lot of the time I take an article that I've read and I'll summarize it briefly and then put a link to the article for teachers if they want to read anything beyond my summary. Um recently there was an interview that I read and the interview was fantastic um and it was long and I thought to myself it's going to take me two hours to try to summarize this interview because it was about a 10-page interview. Um so let let me see what what AI can do to help me

080with this. So um I was able to upload the entire interview. I explained what I wanted which was to take that interview and summarize it in approximately um 8 to 10 sentences for an audience of professional educators in a K to2 school system. So the more information you put into the prompt, the better output you get from the prompt. Um, and it was it was I made some changes. So, it was my voice. I made some adjustments where I thought it missed a few things here or it put stuff there that I didn't think was important, but it took about 15 minutes instead of two hours. So, for teachers, I think the biggest benefit our teachers will see with um at Magic School AI is in meeting the needs of the diverse learners in their

081classroom. So, let's say I'm teaching a lesson on um the Revolutionary War in fourth grade and I want them to read this particular article, but I've got students whose reading levels go from here to here. So a teacher can put into Magic School AI the article and then tell Magic School AI, can you please create this article on these four different Lexile levels? For each Lexile level, please give me a different set of multiple choice questions on the same Lexile level. And with these lower Lexiles, only three choices. For the upper Lexiles, I actually don't want a multiple choice. I want them to be open response. And a task that might have taken a teacher half of a Sunday afternoon might take them 20 minutes of a really good prompt. Which means now instead of

082spending all of that time and getting one good lesson in that same amount of time, they can have days worth of lessons at that same level of quality meeting all of those kids needs. Something that's very difficult to do without that generative AI engine. So that's what we're looking forward to. Um we have yet to see what the students are going to be able to do with it. We're excited about that. Few questions about that. Y how do we monitor um that um we're giving teachers this tool and it's AI. How do we monitor the teachers and make sure that I'm not saying the teachers are going to do this, but just like anything that's AI um it's always a shortcut like you've said it's it's a way of minimizing the amount of time that

083you have to put into the to getting the information that you need. um how do we make sure that the teachers are doing exactly what they need and that the rest of their day isn't just all through this magic. So I actually I don't see it as a shortcut. I see it as a tool to augment um it's almost like a a a built-in personal assistance. So I think it augments what teachers do. So teachers can't use this to skirt their responsibilities because they still need to know their students. They need to have and analyze the data to put in to figure out what those different levels are. But what they're able to do is they're able to get out of that um generative AI engine resources they'd never be able to find anywhere else

084because these are novel resources. So instead of trying to find something that doesn't exist, this will create it and personalize it for the class. So it's not really shortcutting so much as it's augmenting um how teachers can respond to the needs of the students in front of them. And then if we're giving out different, like you said, different um ways of students learning, which I'm all for, but if we're giving out different exams, how are we teaching our students to study and to do better if we're keeping them at that same grade level? Well, I I wasn't thinking of this for exams. Um when I made that example, it was really more classwork. So those teachers could work with students at the appropriate level. Um part of the the job of the teacher is to

085get students from wherever they are to that grade level expectation. So that is part of the work that teachers need to do. Um but sometimes you do that through scaffolding. So you take them there in smaller chunks or smaller steps. But yes, they are expected and they need to be able to get there. So this would not eliminate that. We would not keep students low. We're just using this as a another tool we have like I Ready to bring students up um in in a more accelerated fashion. How how are we going to go forward monitor once we put this program in place? How are we going to monitor it to make sure that our teachers are where they're supposed to be, our students are where they're supposed to be, and we're not just doing

086all of this through um this magic program. That's my That's my concern. I'm not sure. I I guess I don't I'm not sure what you're asking. What you What you think isn't going to be happening if we are I just want to make sure that it's not a program that's going to be abused and and not do anything else. I want to make sure that we're still doing everything else that we're supposed to be doing and not have somebody that's going to use the program for only doing this. I I think I Do you understand what I'm trying to say? I think I know what she's trying to say, but I want to then wrap that in with a question. I think what she's trying to say is we're not we're not going to the

087teacher's not going to go in and press a button and the kids are going to be taught by a computer all day. No, no, that's that's that's not what I mean. I meant I mean like how do we monitor that the that the teacher isn't just doing this for her class that there's other things that are going on kinds of things. I I guess I'm not sure. So like like you said how we're going to take this and let's say they're going to read something but then ask them questions at the end and we're going to put it into different sections to make sure that everybody in the class understands. Right. Right. That was an example. But an example. But if you take that example and if that's done all day long and that's the

088only thing that this teacher is giving out to her students that he's giving out to his students. That wouldn't the case. I want maybe I could clarify a little bit. I want you to you think of AI as a think partner and a resource. So if I needed to get resources in this library and I needed to look through all these books, I have it at my fingertips seconds. So I could really design instruction to really differentiate and meet individual needs quicker. Now in the industry in the real the real world what what AI has done and this is an example is if you're an attorney they have attorneys who look up information right and they those were jobs that they had the parallegals I'm sorry Jenny what ends up happening is now instead so

089now basically if it's a think partner I have more information at my fingertips and I could craft my lessons to these kids. Now, in terms of checks, they still have to turn in lesson plans. They still have to grade exams. They still have to do all the things they have to do. And as Mr. Murray mentioned, the scaffolding approach I mean I I might need smaller steps to eventually get there. And you may need one step, but that's what it'll do for you. So, it'll it's it's almost to save time to do more work. And I give you a few more hopefully peace of mind. Um, a one of the other benefits of Magic School AI in addition to the fact that it's at law 2D compliant and meets privacy standards is we as a

090district own it. So, we as a district can go in and monitor every user's use of it. Good. Um, that's a b. training we're giving to teachers which we've already started is specific to proper use of the tool. So teachers are being taught what how is this tool going to improve and augment the instruction you're giving students and that's the specific kind of learning we're doing two questions for that one I just want to make sure that we're not taking away old school learning and that everything is done by this that's my biggest concern well define old school learning I'm I'm an old school person I still like you said when you come into the library. I want kids to know if they don't have this technology in front of them that they need to

091go and how to look up something. I want to make sure that we have the background to I have one thing that kind of compares it that I additional tool not a replacement. I just want to make sure that we're adding this and not taking stuff away. Think of it as a tool where when Microsoft Excel came out, it it helped you, you know, do one problem and could drag everything down, but you still needed to know what the math equation. And that's what I want to make sure because I use AI and work sometimes that will not disappear the skill. That's what I want to make sure. It actually requires more thoughtful learning and instruction especially around language um and critical thinking because you know they they say an expression about data is garbage

092in garbage out and with prompt engineering it even more so if you don't craft a very strong clear prompt for AI what you get out of it will not correct her So, so we're actually going to have to teach our kids even more discreet and articulate language skills in order to be able to use this tool appropriately. Um, and the basics still are the basics. Like again, this what we do. It's not replacing what we do, right? It's like a calculator, right? Okay. And then as far as teaching the um the teachers, giving them instruction, is that done during the day when they're at work or is that something I just want to make sure that we're not removing teachers to teach them programs? I want to make sure that the teachers are there teaching

093our kids and we're not losing any instructional time. Right now, right now the the initial um training we're doing now is on teachers professional periods. So or their prep period. So right now it's during the school day. So we're not asking teachers to work beyond the day, but it's during time they would not have student contact. Perfect. Thank you. So I'm going to go back on that a little bit. Y um mostly so I ready, you know, I love I Ready. Um one because it monitors it assesses the kids and their progress when a lot of kids opt out. Um that's probably the number one reason why I love High Ready. Um, and I know that it helps it creates programs for the kids to help them with their weaknesses because it learns about the

094kid. Um, and I thought that was great because instead of a kid playing a video game, maybe they'll play, you know, an alphabet game. Strengths, by the way. Um, weaknesses and strengths. But I I've also heard that that the parents are being told that the kids need to spend a lot of ready time. They need to log in I Ready time. Um I don't I don't see a kid being on I Ready for four hours a week. No. Accomplishing it? No, not at all. The actual the the research um and I Ready Curriculum Associates is the parent company of I Ready. Yeah. Um the research that they've done years of the the optimum amount of time students should be spending on I Ready is between 30 and 40 minutes a week. So we're talking 10ish

095minutes a day is the optimum amount of time um for students to meet growth. Now in some areas that would be exactly that 10 15 minutes a day. Um, in some areas like the middle school, it might be 20 or 30 minutes once a week instead because it works better for the teacher schedule. So, that varies, but the the optimum time is in that range. So, why are the parents being told to get their kids on I Ready at night at home as a homework. They're they're just they're they're supplementing it, but they're not expected to do it for hours at all. Okay. If that's if that's what parents are that's what they're hearing, then we need to make sure that their message what they're hearing and that it's being pushed by the board of

096ed. I just want to be clear that I'm not sure whoever that I don't know what I will say this though and and you'll hear it at the um April 23rd board meeting when the students present. I don't want to give away anything but they like it. Yeah. No, I they like it. So, it's a it's a learning tool that they like. So, um you know, they're gravitating towards it and they're using it a lot. And you'll hear them say that and you know, I'm a pro of it. I just don't think that it should be like, you know, a treadmill. It sounds like a miscommunication that we'll try to clean up. We can clean out. I've heard the same thing though. And uh as far as uh making sure that every kid has the

097tools at home to go on I Ready, I think that's another thing we have to discuss. Well, for third grade and up, they do because they go with their What about the younger lo? The younger kids don't have Chromebooks that they can log in though through their home computer. But there are kids that don't have home computers and I think that's something that we as a board have to discuss going forward. Well, we do we do have an obligation annually to do a connectivity survey. Um, Miss McColl's not here to give the exact details, but we can work. I recall there's no family that has told us they have no connectivity at home. If they do, we'll I know my neighbor logs in for first grader and on the state requires us to monitor exactly

098what you're saying. Okay, good. I just want to make sure we're not missing anybody that kids aren't falling behind because that's what we're all here for. That's great. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Um so New York State rules and regulations require uh school districts to present the um proposed budget in three components. Administrative, program, and capital. So every line item that's in the school budget is categorized in um one of these three components. This is what this is what we're proposing for 2526. 5.7 million administrative category, 35.4 4 million in the program category and $5.7 million in the capital category. So 75.5% of the school budget proposed for 2526 is in that program category. the um the administrative component of the three-part budget that covers expenses such as the board of education, um our district and

099our building administrator salaries and benefits, our support staff in our offices, um the entire infrastructure from a technology perspective across the district, all the support services like our business office, our legal counsel who's here with us today, um any auditing service fees, uh our district clerk, all the stuff that is kind of the overhead of the district, not directly related to the instruction and curriculum going on within the classroom, but necessary to support the constru the instruction going on within the classroom. Um, so the major cost driver in this category for 2526 is the um salaries and benefited cost increases associated with those support staff um in our administrative and our support teams. program component of three-part budget. You could view this as everything that kind of directly correlates with student support, um instructional staff,

100social workers, our mental health staff, um our instructional materials, transportation to get our kids from point A to point B, our athletic programs, and our co-curricular activities. And this is where you see the biggest um cost increase year-over-year in our proposed budget for 2526, $1.3 million increase. Um the major cost drivers in this category for 2526 is the special education PPS FTA increases that Mr. Healey so eloquently spoke about before some of the added district placement costs that have increased year-over-year and then the instructional salary and fringe benefit cost increases for associated with um some of the contract negotiations going through right now. We're negotiating with the teachers new contract 20 starting in 2526 as well as some of the contracts that we settled over the past year. Um the capital component of the three-part

101budget covers um a lot of the expenses to run a building. Uh security, custodial maintenance staff, our operations and maintenance of the facilities, any of our debt service. Um so when we go out and get bonds to support some capital improvements and any capital projects that we have going on. Um so it's $167,000 increase in proposed budget for 2526. And again, major cost driver there is your custodial salary and fringe benefits. Uh so just to recap, so this is how a school district funds um its budget. It's predominantly through tax levy, state aid that we receive from New York State. Um and then local sources, those are our revenue sources. So things like interest revenue, um non resident tuition, facilities usage, those are those are those are sources of revenue that we generate as a

102district. State aid um comes through two different categories. foundation aid, which is formula driven, and then expend driven aid, which is aid that's calculated based upon prior year spending. In East Rockaway, the tax levy um supports about 75% of the school budget. 20% of the school budget uh is funded through state aid. Um and uh local sources and other financial resources, which is the district savings, supports the other 5% of our school budget. So for 2526, this is what we're proposing to fund the budget from a revenue perspective. Um state aid we're projecting is going to increase by about $900,000 year budget to budget. Um this year we're also expecting that we're going to be receiving additional state aid um above and beyond what's in the state aid runs for non-resident homeless um uh classified

103students. Um, so we put in a fairly conservative number into the budget this year of about $150,000. I'm optimistic based upon what our projections are for next year that we actually may get a little bit more than that amount. Um, but for for the purposes of funding the budget for this year, we try to keep a conservative approach to funding to to projecting out our revenue. Pilots are relatively set flat for this year. So that's your payments in le of taxes. Um, so these are commercial um commercial entities that have negotiated with NASA county um to receive a reduction in their taxes um not tied to an assessment value uh to incentivize them to open up businesses. We have a number of pilots in East Rockway um and they pay an accumulative projected amount of

1049 698,000. We're projecting for 25 26. We generate some interest on our um cash balances. We're expecting that to go up a little bit next year. I'm projecting about $250,000 in interest revenue to support the general operating budget. That's um that's before the interest we also generate on our restricted reserve balances. So that's not included in here because it doesn't support the 2526 um budget, but we do generate interest on any of the restricted reserves, basically our savings account. Um the other big categories is uh for for next year we are projecting non-resident tuition to increase slightly. We do tuition in quite a few kids in our life skills program. Um each one of those kids that comes in we get a state um per pupil amount generated. So that supports a large portion of

105our budget. And I talked about this in previous budget sessions, but one of the goals we have as a district is to reduce our reliance on the appropriated fund balance, which is effectively money that was a surplus in previous years that we applied to the next year's budget. Um, our goal from a financial perspective is to get that number as close to zero and take away our reliance on that. And for the purposes of funding contingencies in the next budget, use restricted reserves. Uh, and the goal is we build a budget and we build in contingencies for the stuff that we we just can't anticipate are going to happen. Things like we have a new student coming into the district requires special education services or or placement at an out of district location. Those could

106be significant costs year-over-year. So, we build into our budget contingencies for those unforable events. Um, and we and we support it in the on the revenue side by using our savings account. If those contingencies are not necessary, then we put the money in at the end of the school year back into those restricted reserves for the next upcoming year to support any future unforeseen um expenses. So for 2526, we are looking to res reduce our appropriated fund balance by about $150,000. This is the um amount we're proposing from a restrictive reserve perspective to fund the 25 26 budget, which is the retirement contribution reserve that the district has. I'll talk about why we're um proposing that usage. This is just a summary of what our restricted reserves look like right now. So, we have about

107$80,000 in unemployment insurance reserve which has to be used for expenses in unemployment. We have a TRS reserve which is used for TRS contributions the district pays a percentage of all of our TRS employees, teachers, administrators based upon a rate that's set by New York State actuaries uh year-over-year. We have $1.4 $4 million in that reserve. Uh we have an EBR employee benefit act acred liability reserve which is only allowed to be used for paying out postretirement benefits. And then we have the ERS um reserve which is for our civil service employees their contributions to the pension system. So as you can see here the ERS reserve is the most um robustly funded. we have enough money in this reserve for eight years of ERS expenditures based upon our projections on the current year's um

108year expenditures. So this is naturally the place that we think would make the most sense. That's a that's a lot of money for a rainy day. We would need to have eight years of rainy days um to deplete this reserve. So we feel very um responsible by putting this towards this year's budget to reduce the burden on the tax levy for 2526. Um so from a capital improvement perspective, I talked about this in the last budget presentation uh but there will be a proposition on the ballot for 20 for this upcoming May vote which will ask basically the voters to support an increase in funding for our high school Koopa project. So, just to give you some background, in 2324 we put on the ballot a what they call a not to exceed resolution for

109$313,000 to renovate the high school Koopa. It took a year to for the plans um that our architect designed to be approved by New York State Ed. did a bid. Uh the bid came back, the lowest cost bid was significantly higher than $313,000 because of inflation and because some of the materials that we were putting in the bid specs um were priced higher than we were anticipating. We discussed this as a board and as an administrative team, uh do we want to rebid this with with lower quality materials or do we want to seek additional authorization from the voters? We decided let's do it right. um let's do it with the correct materials that are going to reduce the maintenance costs once the uh actual coupoopa is renovated. Um and so based upon the uh

110advice of our architect, we think at most we're going to need $250,000 of additional funding from our capital reserves. And I want to stress that this project would be paid for through a reserve. Um so this is savings that the district has in place. So there wouldn't be no impact on the tax levy for next year. Um so that would be on the ballot. the only proposition that will be on the ballot besides the proposition to either support or not support the school budget. I just give some context too. Um this is the property tax levy um increases that we've had historically going back probably about eight or nine years. We've tried to be as fiscally responsible as possible and not place as much of a burden as as uh as we can with the

111tax cap on the taxpayers. Over the past four years, we've been significantly lower than 2% even though uh inflation has been significantly higher than 2%. Um 1, two, three, four, five, six, seven out of the last 10 years we've been under 2% which I think is pretty remarkable. Um this is just a recap from my last presentation of what a 1.95% tax levy increase means dollars for an average taxpayer in East Rockway. It's $166 increase in your tax uh bill uh annually worth $13.85 a month. Just to give some context, um we have polling information from other districts throughout the the county and through the island. The average school district on uh Long Island is seeking an increase of 2.619% on their tax levy. Nassau County is at 2.553. Suffach County is at 2.686. We're

112proposing 1.95. um which I think is uh fiscally responsible but also weighing the considerations of taxpayer um and putting forth a good budget. And that concludes our budget work session number three. Um we mentioned it earlier, but we originally were planning on adopting the budget on April 23rd. We've moved that forward one day to April 22nd. The reason why we did that is there is a deadline on when the budget needs to be adopted for it to be printed for military ballots. Uh, so we have to actually move the day forward to be in compliance with the military ballot law, which is why the date changed. Um, but after the 22nd, the budget hearing, which is the formal opportunity for the public to ask questions about the school budget, will be on May 13th. That'll

113be here at 6 PM in the library. And then the school budget vote will be on May 20th um at and both will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. I just want that uh Mr. Van Ward myself uh will be giving an a bridged diversion uh bridged version of the budget at uh the PTA meetings in each building. So we already had an invitation from REM Avenue. Uh we'd be glad to speak for we promise it won't be two hours but we'll speak 15 to 20 minutes uh about the budget and uh you know we're waiting to hear from Center Avenue in the high school. We'd be glad to do that and that's also an opportunity or for the taxpayers to ask any questions or informally ask us questions about the budget. I

114have a question. Sure. Okay. So, we have the reserves, unemployment, the uh liability reserve, teachers retirement, employees retirement. Then we also have a capital reserve that you're not mentioning. Correct. Um that can't be used to support the school budget. That's why it's for capital improvements only. Understood. So the balance in in there. So that would only appear on propositions is what basically going at unless there was an emergency and the board approved the use to replace the water man that broke or something. The capital reserve is unique in that you can't you can't take money out of it unless the voter specifically authorized whereas these other reserves the board the board has the ability to authorize it. Okay. So I so since it's a budget meeting I don't want to take a long time on

115it but the capital reserve is there and um besides the copa this year there's nothing but I thought we needed new roofs we have so the upcoming work for this year will be the high school Koopa assuming that the proposition passes is supported by the voters um that would that work would start in likely July because we've already received state ed approval for the project and permits. It's just a matter of bidding out the project and awarding it to someone. Then we also have the energy performance contract which Mr. Damo can update um on. So that is expected to start in hopefully June um and carry through the end of the summer. There's some residual small residual work that'll go into September, but the majority and meat of that energy performance contract will be done

116by the end of the summer. And that's separate money that's and that's already put in that that pot. So then we have 3 millionish I think sitting in the capital reserves. 4 million and that 4 million and then um just kidding. So then we have roofs of the future I guess next year and roofs, windows, center avenue may need boilers um and then eventually that's something we're looking at also once the roof gets put up. I know you guys talk about these things and then you say okay we're going to have a proposition on that. I just I would like to be part of that conversation. We actually so so uh give you perspective architect comes in every five years and does what's called a building condition survey. That building condition survey has all of

117the recommendations of the basic blocking and tackling of running a facility, what needs to be updated that formulates the basis for what capital projects need to occur, okay, in the future. So we have that last year. That's what I'm using to build the five-year capital plan. um and identifying funding streams either be through transfer capital in the school budget, capital reserves or last resort would be financing. Okay. I I just think the board should report because those are the big those are big numbers when they do come in. Okay. And then just one question on the if they if they do free lunch for everybody, which I'm hoping they do, does that affect our budget at all? That the kids pay lunch. just kids not paying. That's all the separate lunch fund. Um, basically what

118happens right now is if a student has free or reduced lunch status, we get a reimbursement back from the federal government to New York State Ed who passes the money on to us to pay for basically the cost of the of providing that meal. Mhm. Uh students that don't have that status, um the cost of the meal, the cost that we we work with Armark on is supposed to pay for the entire cost of the the unit cost of the material. So in the future, the state would step in and make up the difference. Okay. And then the prek, if they do increase the money per seat, right now we're kicking in the taxpayers are paying more money per seat. So that would just reduce 65. So, if we get another we can get a

119hundred or $200,000 back. No, no, no. I mean, the general operating budget is supporting maybe like $24,000 of uh the prek expenditures. Okay. I thought it was 400 per kid. 400 time $400 per kid time 65. It's 26,000. 26,000. There you go. I know. I have a question about the lunch. Um just to it's not even a big question, but if um if everyone's getting free lunches, do parents still have to put money in for everything else that they want? Like if kids want snack and I know that there's always a situation with that. So alocart is not included in that. It's not. Yeah. This is this is a a traditional breakfast and lunch. Okay. Breakfast and lunch. So, like say if you want to order if you want to get u like I did

120when I was in high school, order three cookies, soft baked cookies and two snapples. That's that's not part of this program. Okay. And it'll be the same way where they just put the money in and they'll have to work from there. Okay. And do we are we able to because if everything is free, I'm assuming we're going to get more kids that are staying and more kids that are coming in for breakfast. Participation would definitely increase. We actually ran a um I was just going to ask Yeah, we actually ran a free breakfast promotion in partnership with um with Aramark the week coming back after winter recess because we're trying to increase breakfast our breakfast numbers could be a little higher. Uh so one of our goals was to try to increase participation, show off

121some of the menu items because there are some items on there that I think students would really appreciate if they actually tried it. Um, so free the free breakfast week, we basically made an investment by offsetting the cost associated with those meals out of our lunch fund where we had some extra funds available. Uh, and what we're seeing now is participation that week jumped up significantly. Okay. And it's coming down a little bit, but much higher than what before we did the breakfast promotion. It was free. We were right up there. Mhm. And is it mostly healthy options or are we sugaring these kids up before they go to school? I'm curious. They're strict requirements. Very strict. We can't in in fact the packages of snacks, if you look at them, they're actually different. Like

122the same Doritos is not the Doritos you can get in the store. They have nutrition different ingredients, different nutritional value because they have to meet a very strict guidelines. Guidelines. Well, if they're eating Doritos for breakfast, we have problem. No, I'm just I'm giving an example. They're not they're not the Doritos that they that you think they are. Thank you. Well, thank you. Just take a look here. Yeah, we did all this. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yep. Okay. Uh, can I get a motion to adjourn today's board of education special meeting, work and budget work session, and enter into exec session to discuss contract negotiations. Can I have a motion to adjourn this meeting at 7:48 p.m.? Motion. Second. All in favor? I I Thank you everyone. Enjoy and have a great spring break.