Board of Education - Work Session - April 14th

001Very relaxed. Done. >> Done. >> Good evening. Welcome to the April 14th, 2026 work and special session of the board of education. This is Joe Silio, president of the board of education speaking. Thank you for attending in person and through Zoom. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Due notice of the meeting has been provided to all members of the public and board of education as required by law. Tina, will you please take attendance? >> Present. Present. >> Present. >> At this time, may I have a motion to accept the agenda for April 14, 2026 work session as presented. Second. >> All in favor? I. This time I'll hand it to Dr. Singha for the student achievement. >> Thank you, Mr. Silio. So, um, this evening we have our middle school students, our sixth grade

002students and, uh, Miss Wangner and Mr. Dvola. He's here somewhere. There he is. And, um, and we don't have Miss Shabelli here because she's home with her little baby. Um, but I will ask both of you to come up and introduce our students and really talk about the hackathon process and to recognize and I really want to mention that this hackathon it's only in its second year. Last year we placed I think we came in third and this year second place. It is pretty impressive and the amount of work that it takes and they'll speak about the hard work leading up to the hackathon experience. I think it was in where was was it in Sioset this year? He was it Huntington? Okay. And they'll talk about and the way they it's so much more

003than just coding for these kids. It's about learning to work together, problem solve together, think together, and I'm just so beyond proud of you all. So, would you come up and just kind of help facilitate their work? >> Oh my, this is much tall. I'm just going to leave it. >> Um, hi, I'm Mrs. Went Aden Wanger. I'm one of the coaches. Um, Mr. Dvola, he was >> I was around consultant. >> He was a consultant. Um and we had Miss Shabelli who like Dr. Sinhan just said actually had a baby last week. So uh she was our coach um as well. So um this is our sixth grade hackathon team and like Dr. Sinha said this is only our second year competing in the competition. Um our students use a platform called KDOYo to

004do um it's mostly blockbased coding but there is some other coding languages involved. Um some of it is also Python which we had during our competition as well. Um we also have an art component which is students can generate their own images pixel art. Uh we call them sprites. So our team had came together in November of this year and they have been working together ever since. Um and our competition was on the the 20 the 23rd. See, they remember better than I do. Um, of March. So, um, and this year we came in second place overall, but we actually got first place in a project that we needed to submit beforehand, which was a very big achievement for us. Um, so that's pretty much our >> and it would be great if we can

005introduce all of our students as well. >> Um, okay. So, do you guys want to say your names? Do you want me to Do you want to pass it along? >> Come on. We can do it. >> You can do it. Yeah. Y >> Hi, I'm Kylie Chen. Um I'm Ethan Chen. >> I'm Ben Collins. >> I'm Panther Graphos. >> I'm Henry Shin. I'm about Tao. >> I'm Christian Leon. So, I have to say that I'm very proud of you guys because I did not coach the whole time. That was Miss Wanger, Miss Cabelli. I was kind of in the last moments of time the prep, the coach to help get us to where we needed to be. But it was such an amazing thing to see you guys work as a team, especially in

006that last week. You did so much collaboration. And do you guys want to talk about it? Could I have maybe Ben? Do you want to start us >> down or should stand up? >> Sit up. >> Okay. Um, so in the last week of the competition, we were focusing on the theme which was ancient Egypt. We made a bunch of sprites to use ahead to use for the competition. We worked on the capital defense project which we all collaborated for and we really enhanced our teamwork skills. Thank you, Ben. >> Yes, >> there you go. >> So, the games we did for like the project, they were mostly made with um Hatch, which is like block coding where we put blocks together and they like run a program. Um, but sometimes we would use art

007for challenges and all the games to make the capital defense patch or capital display, whatever you want to call it. Um, were like all put into one computer event and we would make it into a giant game and that's basically how we got second place. Well, thank you. >> Okay. Um during the competition we there was a live map and we had to submit projects for territory. Some projects were blocked coding like Panty said. Um some were Python which was typing coding and one of them and one of them was pixel art and our main pixel art contributor was Kylie. So she can tell you a little bit about that. There you go. >> That was good, Ben. >> That is our cat. >> Um, when I created Spry, um, pixel art, um, Mr. Dola

008helped me um find out what all the tools were used for and I created most of the sprites in the sprite library which we used for the hackathon. Um yeah >> awesome. >> That was great. >> And that artwork was pretty big in your competition. So that was really wonderful that you put together. Uh she's definitely being very modest. Um we are scored by territories and in the map and um Kylie's we won five territories overall, but Kylie's art won us two of those five categories. So um it really is a tremendous amount of work. Does somebody want to explain how your projects are graded the day of and how you win the point and that process? Lau, you want to go? Um, thanks Ben. >> We click on so there's a live map and

009we click on a territory. We get a description of the territory and then we go to the like the platform that was in the ter like that we have to make it on. We make the game and then we submit it to a panel of judges and the judges throughout the competition judge all different types of games and then when they judge your game you get some feedback. So then we can use that feedback to make our projects better. >> Yeah. Um, so there were also features um in the competition like the capital defense display project like we just said and um autogates which are pro pro riddles and problems that we had to solve to get access to the territories or get an extra point. The main person who worked on the autogates was

010Labau. So we can tell you a little about a little bit about what they were like. >> So uh am I supposed to say >> um there were the first autogate which is allows us to access the map wasn't that bad and most of us worked together on it. But the second one I got pretty much no help and took me about an hourish to solve. >> Yeah. >> Did it point and that was so >> So those autogates are computational thinking skills broken down into a challenge. It could be a mathematical challenge. It could be debugging a problem in a code or it could be just trivia as well that can't be solved all the time with like AI. So that's a very interesting topic because you know it's computers and AI kind of

011is allowed too as long as you site your work. But um a lot of the problems can't be solved that way. They have to be solved as a team and that's what you guys did really well at. You guys are such a great team together and I'm excited for you guys because I hope it moves on in the future. >> Well, thank you so much. U you know, I have to tell you the um what you just described and all the work that you've put into this that we are beyond proud and I can't wait to see what next year holds. And I know Miss Maguire is going to talk about the hackathon team for possibly we're going to take it up to upper grade levels so you guys can continue. So, we're really really

012proud of you and and thank you to your teachers because your teachers really helped you take you through this and I know the last couple of uh weeks right prior to the hackathon you guys were coming in and really working every second that you could on this. So, really really proud of you. Why don't you get a picture? >> Mr. Dol, Miss W, you don't Yeah, you guys should go sign. >> Yeah, there you go. >> Yeah, hold it around so we can Take a picture. >> Oh, we're going to go. You got to face it. >> Yeah. Miss Wanger, why don't you come in? >> Yeah. Mr. Dola, >> come on. >> Mr. Deola, come on. Yay. Yes. So, I know that this is a long night. I'm sure you have some work to

013do at home. So, if you guys want to go home, you guys can go home. Okay. So, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. All right. The next item on our agenda is is uh to review the demographic study that was uh conducted by Boseies. So, I'd like to introduce I want to make sure I got the name right, Christina Veganis. So, thank you for being here and if you could take us through the demographic study. Thank you. >> Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yes. Okay. Good evening. Thank you for having me. At the request of the Garden City Union Free School District, the Western Suffach Bosey's Office of School Planning and Research conducted the study to assess recent demographic factors and enrollment trends to prepare projections to the 2035 2036 school year. Since

0141985, we've completed more than 1,500 studies for districts through New York State. We help districts plan for the future by preparing comprehensive long range planning studies. These reports research, review, and analyze demographic trends and historical enrollment patterns to develop student enrollment projections for the district. Studies have been completed for districts in Duchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnham, Rockland, Suffach, Westchester, and other New York State counties. Here we see the key components typically involved in a study. It's divided into two main sections: demographics and enrollment. The demographic section focuses on various factors including birth rates, housing data, population statistics, and the enrollment figures for non-public and charter schools. These elements are essential in understanding the broader context and background of the population being studied. The enrollment section focuses on the trends observed over the past 10 years, the

015patterns of student migration from one grade to the next, and analysis of birth persistence. These aspects are crucial in tracking and predicting changes in student enrollment over time. By analyzing both components, we then calculated projected enrollment for the next 10 years by district, school, and even grade. In order to ensure we're using the most accurate and up-to-date data, these are just some of the many research sources we use. This chart shows accuracy of the 2023 20224 Western SUFFK Bosey's enrollment projections for the 202425 school year. The projection the projected K through2 enrollment was 3,963 students while the actual enrollment was 3,931 resulting in a difference of 32 students and an accuracy rate of8%. This chart shows accuracy of the 2023 20224 enrollment projections for the 2526 school year. The projected K through2 enrollment was 3,995

016while the actual enrollment was 3,82 students resulting in a difference of 113 students and still an accuracy rate of 2.9%. The figure above shows that births in Nassau County totaled 15,626 in 2004 and then declined by 14.7% to a 20-year low of 13,331 in 2020. Although there was a 6.5% increase in births following the COVID pandemic, births then declined by 4.7% to 13,525 in 2024. This chart illustrates the number of births from the district from 20 2010 to 2023 as reported by the New York State Department of Health. Over this period, the number of births ranged from a low of 184 in 2016 and 2019 to a peak of two 220 in 2012. The latest available data shows 185 births in the district in 2023. District resident population shows a 3.1% increase from 21,47 residents

017in 2000 to 22,139 residents in 2010, followed by an additional 5.1% increase to 23,272 residents in 2020. The age structure of the resident population in the Garden City School District has shifted slightly between 2000 and 2020. The proportion of the population age 65 and over increased from 16.8 to to 18.9%. While the proportion of residents aed 19 years and under decreased slightly from 29.5 to 27.9%. The median age in the district also decreased slightly from 42.2 2 years in 2010 to 41.8 years in 2020. This is similar to Nassau County's median age of 41.9 years. Housing turnover in the district was at the highest level of the historical period in 2021 when 296 units were sold. A total of 179 units were sold in 2024. Simultaneously, there was a change in the median home sales

018price in the school district. Home sales prices were at the low in 2014 with the median price of 810,000. There was a there has been a significant increase since then, most notably in the past 5 years. In 2024, the median home sale price reached a high of 1.35 million. This is an increase of 10.2%. This slide illustrates the trend in student enrollment in Nassau County school districts over a 10-year period. Enrollment remains relatively stable from 2015 to 2019, followed by a noticeable decline beginning in 2020. Overall, enrollment has decreased across the 10-year period with the most significant drop reflected in the preliminary 2025 data. This chart depicts the historical and projected K- through2 student enrollment from 2015 to 2035. Enrollment and remained relatively stable from 2015 to 2025, which is the first half, fluctuating between

0193,822 and 3,939 students with an overall increase of 36 students. However, declines are expected in eight of the next 10 years as smaller elementary cohorts move through the system. The forecasted enrollment in 2035 of 3,592 students represents a decrease of 290 students when compared to the current enrollment. This chart shows a historical and projected enrollment for grades K through 1 from 2015 to 2035. The historical enrollment data indicates a slight overall decrease of seven students. Small declines are projected in six of the next 10 years where projected enrollment of 517 students in 2035. This represents another small decrease of 11 students when compared to the current enrollment. The chart displays the enrollment trends for grades 2 through 5 from 2015 to 2035. The historical enrollment data shows an overall increase of 68 students. The projected

020enrollment suggests declines in eight of the next 10 years. leading to forecasted enrollment of 1,118 students. This represents a decrease of 99 students when compared to the current enrollment. This chart displays the enrollment trends for grades 6 through 8 from 2015 to 2035. The historical enrollment data shows an overall increase of 43 students. Declines are projected in eight of the next 10 years. The projected 2035 enrollment of 878 students represents a decrease of 166 students when compared to the current enrollment. This chart shows the enrollment trends for grades 9 through 12 from 2015 to 2035. The historical enrollment shows declines in six of the 10 years resulting in an overall decrease of 70 students. The projected enrollment shows gains in each of the next four years leading to the projected period um peak enrollment of

0211,256 students in 2029. Subsequently, declines are anticipated in each of the following six years resulting in the 2035 forecasted enrollment of 179 students representing an overall decrease of 14 students compared to the current enrollment. This summary highlights the key enrollment changes over time. First, overall district enrollment has remained relatively stable for the past 10 years with year-to-year changes of 1.7% or less. The kindergarten enrolled at least 275 students in seven of the last 10 years, but only 257 and 259 students in the past two years. Projections indicate that enrollment will that kindergarten will enroll 264 students next year and 268 students in 2027. Kindergarten enrollment is projected to range from 251 to 258 students per year through 2035. When we compare incoming kindergarten classes to exited 12th grade classes, we consistently see fewer students entering

022than leaving. The incoming kindergarten class was smaller than the exiting 12th grade class of the previous year and seven of the last 10 years, which is a negative um displacement ranging from 2 to 48 students per year. Finally, migration data shows normal year-to-year movement across grades. While the district generally gains or retains students transitioning to middle and high school, we do see an average decline in nth grade. Thank you. Um, do you have any questions? >> Thank you so much. >> You do have any questions? You can reach out. So why don't we move to our next portion of our presentations which is on instruction part two. Last time we presented instruction part one and part two comprises of um technology, special education and athletics. So um and you'll see in the presentations just this

023okay you know and again you know we always talk about the mission and vision. You'll notice again this evening the presentation really aligns with our mission and vision of our school district. Um we just talked about this. You'll get a a brief overview technology people personnel services athletics. Miss McLaclin will go over staffing and you'll see with the demographic study. We'll talk about sections also for next year and then uh Mr. Capio will go over the instructional codes and then we'll go over what's on the on the ballot. These numbers are exactly the same as you saw during our first budget presentation where our proposed budget for next school year is 142 million385,17 a budget-to-budget increase of 3.36% and we and our budget is within the projected tax levy increase and the maximum allowable tax

024levy at 2.98%. Um, so this portion, instructional part one and part two, comprises the largest part of our budget, which is at 75.51%. And that's where you'd like you'd want to see it because those funds touch kids. So um, so you'll hear about that in a little bit. And, uh, these are those percentages in numbers. So you could see the amount that we have budgeted for in the administrative, program, and capital uh, portions of the budget. And the middle portion is uh which we'll be discussing this evening which is at uh the 107,518,566. And I'm going to turn it over to Miss Maguire who's going to go through the um technology budget proposed budget for next year. >> Good evening. I always like to start off with a slide that kind of talks about the

025intersection of instructional technology and information technology because realistically the majority of our role in the technology department and the bulk of resources in our department is about the IT side of things because basically without that that's part of the infrastructure of the district these days. It's not just about these walls. It's really about supporting all the technology. Not even talking about the student piece, talking about the technology that runs the buildings, the network that supports everything from our cameras, security cameras that rest on there to our building management system to basic email to our accounts to our finance manager to our student information systems. And every year that piece of this grows and grows as we keep adding things to this internet of things out there. So, our department is five, we have five technicians

026in the fields, a network manager, and they're working very hard. One of them is here tonight. Pat's out in the audience as well, our network manager. And they are kind of jack of all trades doing everything from repairing a Chromebook to cyber security and protecting their our network and our students. Okay. So, taking a look at last year's information technology. So, we're going to start with that, the IT part of things. Um, these were our tech our priorities from last year. So, we'll take a look at some of the ones that we've completed. And I'm going to do this a little bit out of order because I want to start with an one of the big projects which was also a financially large project which was the enhanced firewall. So, firewalls are a very expensive

027proposition. It's their first line of defense in any network. And this was something that we had submitted to the federal government for an -ate project. -ate projects allow us when accepted to frontload it. You pay for them these projects upfront and they wind up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but you do in the following year once it's completed, you get return on your money. I think we're at about a 40% return on that. So, it helps you to continue to invest in your networks and it's for very specific items. So, we did that. Once that was complete, we had planned to do a a penetration test, a cyber security penetration test, but we're moving that to this summer because we wanted to make sure all of that with the firewall was finished. We

028just ran out of time. What we did do was we conducted, and this was with all central office admins and my staff was a tabletop exercise. And that is really something where you run through different cyber security scenarios and you look at your instant response plans to make sure that everybody knows what their role is. It's really an important exercise to do. We kind of um we did this internally. We have done it with support from outside consultants in the past, but this year we felt that we were in a good position to do it. And we learn a lot from those exercises because a lot of questions that you might not anticipate do get answered. Um something that seems insignificant but in fact was 20 years um was our phone system. Um sounds like

029it was the last time this phone system was put in was about 20 years ago. Um, and we thought that was new and we've and they've lasted, but it's not just about replacing the phone handsets and things. It's actually the bigger piece. It's the software in the background that integrates everything. Um, so we had put in for that as well. That was a big and we're still doing it. There's a lot of programming on the back end. It's not just picking up the phone and making phone calls. It's also tied into our announcement systems, our PAs, our actually 911 system. everything like that has to work and has to be tested and you know with more software that gets layered on every year and cloud-based. So we're always kind of tweaking that but we're excited

030to say our building is just about finished. We've been test running it in admin before we roll it out into the school buildings in the next few weeks and that is several hundred desktops and uh classroom phones. It's it's quite quite a big undertaking. Um we finished up some interactive boards in the primary buildings. They had been well over a decade, probably more than that in the primaries. So, we're just refreshing those. We only have a handful of those left moving forward into next year. Um, we deployed some new teacher mobile devices. We had changed over and had done some uh studies last year with students and staff members and decided to pivot and move to iPad in grades six and 10 last year, which by all accounts seemed to be pretty successful for a

031lot of reasons. We did do a student survey of the 10th graders to see what they thought of them because we felt for them it we most of the sixth graders seemed pretty happy with it. Um and the 10th graders seemed fine with it. They seemed actually more device agnostic. It didn't seem to matter for many of them whether it was a Chromebook or an iPad. Um I did have some complaints about they called it like a smooshy keyboard. So we'll have to look at that for the next round of things. Um, but honestly, we, if you look at it in terms of just device repairs alone, the middle school this year has had over 100 Chromebooks, just the middle school gone out for repair. We have had exactly five iPads go out districtwide. So,

032it's been a significant savings in that in that arena. Um, we also started doing some we bought these towers. You'll see one over there by one of the pods. It's lit up over there in green and blue. these self-service towers and we've had success with it last year at the middle school and we're doing it again this year at the high school. This just came in. Uh basically it allows students, we were really concerned about losing classroom time when students had some kind of a repair and having to track somebody down or try to get a you know Chromebook from the library. So, what this allows them to do is go up to the iPad on the kiosk, key in their student ID number, tell about the repair, it pops open a bin, they put

033this in, it pops open a new bin, they take out a fresh one, and they get on their way. So, it's really a timesaver. Um, so that's been very successful. We've really had a lot of success with that. So, this should be up and going in the next week or so here. And it also for us, the other piece of this is tracking and asset management. So what that does is it ties into our management system and creates a ticket for it. So we always know where these devices are because that's definitely a concern as well. Um this year we actually started there was a new data we data privacy and ed 2D and safety and security has been a is always in the forefront. There's a new platform because what we have to do

034every time we purchase a new software program we have to get paperwork signed. It's an a parent bill of rights and uh an edlaw 2D and it's a lot of paperwork to track down from these vendors and everybody wants something different and then they want to send back to you what they want. Basically, there was the state is now participating in and we opted into this to participate in where we can it's a database of all of these things. So, if they signed a New York State rider in any public school district in New York State, we're able to piggyback on that and request it through this system and it's just streamlined the whole process. That way, we can make sure if we do things like a pilot, it's not weeks waiting back and forth

035for lawyers to take a look at things, we know that they are compliant with our EDLAW 2D policies as um you know stated by New York State. We've also been providing a lot of support for the MOM project, construction project, because that's really coming to fruition now. That's been exciting to um help support some of the platforms and some of the devices and some of the the new technology for the Bloomberg lab for the physics labs. It's but it's a lot of walkthroughs and measurements and seeing what the feasibility is. And so we've been doing a lot of support that way. And we also did some digital signage at if you noticed it in the lobby of the high school here, a nice big um digital signage screen that I think the high school's been

036pretty happy with. Um I know Mr. Cohen has been enjoying uh what they he put the buses in the order and uh the afternoons, but just really kind of promoting communication within the buildings and we've purchased some for the middle school as well and we're hoping to roll those out into expand them a little bit into the rest of the district. Oh, next slide. So, moving forward to this coming school year because we're always our network, our infrastructure is always under construction. There's never a year where you're like, "Everything's good. Everything's fine." It's time to start looking at some pieces of the wireless and start doing some upgrades there. So, this is the next undertaking. We'll be starting with that hopefully over the summer. Once we finish this foam project, we'll take a breather and

037get started on that. Um, cyber security pentest will be scheduled for the summer. We are going to use an outside company that we have used in the past, their cyber security consultant. um and we've had a lot of success with them. We did a full pen test and um gap analysis with them about three years ago. We're be planning a student device refresh again for iPads for grades six and 10. We've made some changes in terms of onetoone devices in the lower grades and the decision has been made to in K1 to collect all the iPads out of the classrooms, go back to shared carts and have those available. We'll update those because it'll be a smaller quantity and we have carts left over from previous years worth of, you know, when we had carts

038a few years ago. We'll rewire those and we'll have those available because we know that things are there are special projects and then this can be something that's utilized by the classes. We'll have enough devices that there will always be at least a half class available at any time. So, we'll do um K those K1 devices. Desktop refresh is always ongoing in classrooms and offices districtwide. Um we're trying to get ahead of things a little bit this year because we've been told by our vendors that there's increases in costs due to tariffs due to chip shortages, lots of lead time issues. So we're really trying to get ahead of some of those and order what we can now and be have be ready to put those in place. We're also supporting some continuing to support

039the bond project. Um there's a lot of technology in that athletic center that we didn't really anticipate, but everything from, you know, any call buttons, anything that's the point of sales service. Um all of those things require our department to be participating in. We'll be expanding some of the digital signage and we'll finish up the last few smartboards that need some refreshing at the primary buildings. >> Lauren, I just want to touch base. What about the 25 um elementary with the computers up with the cards. >> Well, we haven't made any formal decisions on that yet. So, right now it's just staying as is, but they'll still stay in the classrooms. And I think we were kind of in discussions with how to how to manage that at this point. All right, back to instruction.

040So, instruction being the part of things where it can be anything that touches students or involves the students. So, one of the things was the New York State instructional technology plan which we submitted to New York State and have already been approved which was exciting. We received that over the spring break. So, that was we had a lot of input from we asked input from the PTA exec board. We met with high school students. We meet with them in our technology advisory group and we had input from them. Uh they have a lot to say and uh we took a lot of that. We gave them some ideas behind the goals. The majority of this plan is just kind of paperwork and data collection that we normally have. But there are three area goal areas

041that we ask for um participation in. We involve the admins. We invite the teachers. So we wanted to have input from all stakeholders on that and that's been completed. Um continuing to we met been meeting with our tech advisory group. We have another meeting next week with them. They've really had a lot of conversations about AI. We've talked about New York State technology plan. We've talked about just general technology use and what their thinking is on all of these things. We usually try to have some kind of activity to do with them to get some feedback when we meet with them. >> We've been really I have to give Mike Dvola here some wherever he is back there. He has really kept up with this professional learning that is stellar and it has so many

042districts are so eager to find out more about it. A lot of it is done during the school day, but there's also a lot of it that's done at night. And we really shifted gear. So, I hate to con continue to call him a technology staff developer because I think he's an instructional staff developer. I think one of the things that we did really well this year was shift the focus from tools that we're using. So, where we used to do a lot of professional development around new tools, we shifted gears and thought about it from the instructional standpoint. So when he does something in tech bites, which might be during the school day, the high school loves that where there's some cookies or pretzels involved and they come in on their free periods or

043they come to pajama PD. I know Thursday night he had to close it closed out. He had to open it up because we have over a hundred people signed up for the pajama PD at night at 7 o'clock. We opened it up because we had so many people interested. And the topic is projectbased learning. So it's not about the you know we we've done a lot of things on assessment we've shifted the focus of it to be about what are good instructional practices and then yeah maybe there are some tools that we have available to us that help support that >> so a lot of credit to Mr. for keeping that >> best professional. >> It really is. It really is. Uh we do have people from other districts who ask to participate and jump

044on. >> Um we're going to continue to expand and align our curriculum to support the computer science digital fluency standards. We are actually looking at a product that will help to provide some cyber security and safety um lesson planning and some activities for the students for next year and kind of exploring different options surrounding the student devices which Dr. Sim was talking about really having some good discussions about technology use in the classrooms and shifting that focus especially in those younger grades and like being very purposeful in our needs and what we're how how we're talking about technology and really being mindful of uh the screen time which I'll get to in a moment and we want to continue partnership with the PTA. Um I know Mr. has done quite a bit of work with

045the middle school in providing some support at their PTA meetings on a variety of topics. Um we've participated in some great conferences this year as staff. We were invited to um San Diego in all expenses paid. Um in January for ISTD and ASCD had a small conference, a leadership conference. There were less than 300 participants um in the country and actually outlying areas as well. And it was really surrounding conversations around AI and not just hey everybody it's really about how are you using it what should we do how do we communicate this information out how do we handle it as a K12 institution really good conversations and a lot of information that we took away from that um we did some AI policy updates last summer um we did our new website which we

046already had forgotten about but our new website has been tied in and the purpose of that was to tie it in with parent square so that it's one seamless kind of communication platform. Um excited about the drone club that this year really formulated and took off took off, no pun intended, at the middle school. Um and they really actually that was I think a PTA grant that supported those drones. Um and we also had uh one of our tech seven teachers who used some uh participate with Boseies. They supported us with some other drones for a drone project. So, those kids have been out there flying. There's a picture of them there. There's our hackathon team, which we're so excited about them as well. And we're happy to look into future because they got second

047place overall moving into next year. Let's move on to expand that to become a club as well and have that club move into grades maybe a seven, eight team. because of the way the hackathon is structured, you kind of have like lower elementary and it's not specific to the grade. They can be multi-grade groups. So, we're looking into doing that for next year. Um, really thinking a lot about AI literacy, especially when we're talking about our high schoolers because, you know, we've had a lot of conversations with Mr. Stein Grubner and Miss Colmo from the library, Mr. Dbola about how to prepare our our kids going out into college. Like, how do they know when's an appropriate use of it? there whether or not we like it. How do we prepare them to ethically use

048it? um and and really thinking about it from that standpoint and it becomes another type of literacy looking more at it as a framework and that was some a big takeaway from the San Diego um conference was looking at when you were vetting these tools now every tool that shows up shows up with some kind of AI component and how are we evaluating those and what that supports and what do we need and what do we not need based on what um and really how do you vet them, what are the protocols in place, what are acceptable use for students, having them come up and generate some ideas behind that. And really continuing something that I think was another thing that we've done well for the last few years, which is building educator literacy around

049AI and helping our staff understand it. continuing to strengthen the digital citizenship having students understand what digital citizenship actually is and how that is they're there have access to it for the most part and how do they ethically use it how do they use it safely and what that means also tying that into well-being when's when to put down the phone when to put down the iPad when to put down the computer uh working on with the schools for phone free schools giving some alternate activities to use critical media litery which has always been something especially here at the high school we've worked through and very purposeful screen time use that's a big discussion with our bu our educators I talked about already the shift to shared devices continuing with our excellent uh professional development

050um thank you again Mr. And I have to give a lot of shout outs to the some of the principles and teachers in the district who have jumped on and been co-presenters on a lot of these depending on what they felt they were comfortable with helping out with. Um so it's not just them just sitting back and listening. It's them actually participating and co-presenting. Um really looking to amplify student voice. I think that that was something that Mike and I have talked a lot about continuing to listen to our high school students exploring maybe expanding that down into the middle school or lower and really f having a focus on when we're doing purposeful technology time making it about creation making it about what's the audience that this is for and really just having very

051student centered initiatives. We're want to expand the drones if possible next year and expanding our hackathon and really just focus on products and not just consumption of information and you know practice quizzes and things like that but really thinking about very meaningful uses for projects and how to support instruction and that >> yeah before um we go on to PP pupil personnel services. I also wanted to um you know the technology department has um you know the responsibilities have really increased within the department and I really want to point out particularly in the area of cyber security that is uh something that I know uh Mr. Galano really oversees with uh Miss Maguire along with outside vendors that we have that really monitor our network system and that work has expanded. I think every year

052it gets larger and larger and I really wanted to point that out and I think we have done a very good job of ensuring the um you know that our network is safe and that work has to continue. >> Yes. >> All right. So with that um do you want to move forward with the next presentation and ask questions at the end or would you want to ask questions of Miss Magguire now? Do it at the end. Is that better? Um I'm just just gonna make a comment. >> Sure. >> I think um technology is uh one of those things that we really do need to continually reflect on as educators. >> Agreed. Um, I know that there is the talk of like embracing AI, but I also think that we have to be careful

053that when our children are in those like formative years where they're they need to build the critical thinking skills and um, some of those foundational skills that we're not introducing AI as a way to replace any of those um, experiences and skills. I think that um I know as an adult now that I've had all of those experiences, I can integrate AI into my life, but I can also um look at it in a different way because I'm I am still adding a critical lens to that. So I think we have to be really careful with our children that we are not introducing it into our classrooms um so that it replaces the critical thinking and the foundational skills that our children need to do um as they're as they're learning. So but I'm sure

054it sounds like those are conversations that our teachers are having um I would like to be more involved in some of those conversations or as if the board can be more involved in some of those conversations. I'd love to see some of the conversations that our educators are having around that. Um, >> absolutely. I think the other thing to speak to before um just about the AI piece is it's not something that we have a readily available to the students. You know, it's not something where we have any of that really open. We have one tool that we use with students really. Um, and that is actually something that's not available to them at will. It's something that the teachers have to purposely plan for and open these rooms. it's magic school and so they

055have to open these rooms with a purpose for why they're using it. So it's not something that's available otherwise all the other tools because we feel the same way we don't feel like everybody number one that they should all have access period because I think it takes a lot of the creativity away as well. So you know like I was saying that's why it's important for us to also look at all the softwares we're buying now because that was the new thing. So every software vendor said hey we'll put an AI piece in. So, it's really being mindful of that as well of well, maybe this isn't the product for us because now they're going so heavy in that direction. So, we do really assess all of that. Um, and we we agree. >> So,

056yes, but definitely I think it's an ongoing conversation. >> It is. We're always having to kind of >> as new things get introduced, we all are having to kind of adapt and >> Absolutely. You know, I was thinking of our students at the high school uh what they were saying around AI. They're they're I think they're such critical consumers in a really good way and they um they actually shared with us they appreciate that there is a platform where they can learn how to use it safely before they go out you know leaving our high school. That's something that um that you know I appreciate that hearing that from our students but couldn't agree with you more. We have to be really really mindful of the use of that >> and how the um not

057having the uh device the um personal devices how that roll out has been going well in our middle school and our high schools as far as the children not having access to their personal devices. I mean they've as far I mean I'm not really monitoring that to that's really the building levels but yeah I mean from all from all we are hearing yes that seems to be the case I think it's off and away throughout the day >> and then I think that's the balance of like if you don't have your cell phone or your watch or whatever that you sometimes then what I think children at some of the middle school I can speak maybe to like more of the middle school level because I don't have a children a child in a high

058school yet but sometimes then the device that they have on their desk >> then sometimes like replaces the personal device that they don't have and sometimes they may like be accessing you know a game or this that or whatever struggle >> so that's always something to battle so I think as teachers we have to think about like is it important to have that chrome is that iPad open right >> or should like it be closed for the instructional work where you're going to be listening to what your teacher is teaching you >> so that you're not um you you know, multitasking, which is something that we actually don't do, listen and type at the same time, though. >> It's and it's definitely a struggle. And we do have even tools available for the teachers. We've

059done them to that support them being able to close tabs and things like that. But I think it's as simple as don't open it after you're really ready to use it, right? And we're going to be typing this, let's just say, and keep it closed until the that time. >> So, I think it's just good practices, good teaching practices at that point. Yeah, I agree. So, we'll move on to pupil personnel services. Miss Austin, thank um evening. Uh thank you for the opportunity to present the latest data, highlight our achievements in pupil personnel services over the past year, and review our key priorities for the 2627 school year. As we move through tonight's presentation, um you will see familiar slides from last year that continue to highlight our ongoing work, reflect our progress, and underscore

060our continued commitment to supporting all students. Um this first slide depicts the three committees that PPS oversees as well as the number of students we are responsible for who attend three public schools, St. An's, St. Joseph's and the Waldorf school which are located in Garden City. Garden City is the district of location for these three schools and thus responsible for the entire process of services from evaluations to eligibility to yearly programs and services. There are 116 classified students of which eight are garden city residents. So alto together um this chart shows that there's over a thousand students who have documents to support their learning that the office of PPS is responsible for. As you take a look at this chart, our number of CPSC students have decreased, but this does not necessarily reduce overall need

061as students transition into school age services. In addition, this can be a reflection of our expanded UPK program as it as it impacts our students learning. We're seeing a slight increase in cse classifications um a total of 551 students which we'll go into more detail in the following slides. And finally, section 504 plans. They continue to reflect the need for accommodations in the general education. So, first up is CPSC to CSSE. Um, we continue to monitor the movement from CPSC to CSSE to ensure continuity of services. This year we have 94 preschoolers with a disability. 57 of them are aging out of preschool services as they are set to turn five years old by December 1. Out of the 57 of the preschool services of those students, 23 are in Nassau County provided programs. So,

062they'll be attending um Nassau County provided programs such as their integrated programs that are special classes um and receiving supports or receiving supports of a special education teacher in a local community program including our own UPK. This decrease will be monitored as it may indicate the positive impact of our expanded UPK programs and the targeted child fine work led by Dr. AR, our CPSC chairperson. And finally, an area of focus is ensuring all transition meetings are held in a timely manner to support kindergarten readiness. The final column shares the number of students who are deemed eligible as they transition to school age services. This number, as you can see, has been quite consistent over time. Students with 504 plans 504 plans provide access to curriculum through accommodations provided within the general education classroom. Looking at

063the data here at the middle school and high school levels where students are navigating increased independence and academic expectations, 504 plans are on the rise. This highlights the need for targeted support, including extended time, organizational strategies, and classroom accommodations. We can see a steady increase in the need as students get older where the academic rigor and demands increase classified cse students. Looking at the data, you can see our classification rate has increased to just over 14%. Reflecting both student needs and improved identification processes and extensive evaluation practices. We are seeing growth particularly at the middle school and high school levels. We as a district remain focused on providing services in the least restrictive environment and ensuring that programs meet the individual needs of our students. Now to dig a bit deeper, this slide breaks down

064our students with disabilities by classification. The cse has 13 classifications. The largest categories continue to be other health impaired, learning disabled and speech impairment with a noted dip in students meeting eligibility under speech and language impaired. This could be attributed to two things. Our MTSS wintime program um as well as students as they get older they shift in eligibility classroom uh classification from speech impaired to learning disabled as it would better reflect their area of need. OI on the other hand has increased. OI other health impaired is a catch-all for medical diagnoses made by medical practitioners or outside providers like ADHD and anxiety to name a few. We also see a steady increase in students identified with autism. Noteworthy is that we have expanded our assessment tools to include those that identify students with autism.

065These trends guide our staffing, programming, and professional development decisions. Graduation data. Our students with disabilities continue to successfully earn regions diplomas, including advanced designation. Last year's data shows that out of 286 students who completed four years at the high school, 32 were classified, 22 graduated on time, 10 with regents with advanced designation, 10 with regions diplomas, two with local, and 10 students who continue to require programming in order to meet their educational goals. These students are typically those in our out of district placements or within our life skills programs at the high school. Our goal is to ensure all students graduate with meaningful postsecary options. Um projected program locations. So this is a new slide that we added last year. We're continuing to refi refine and realign program locations to better meet student needs. This

066contin this includes expanding indist opportunities and strengthening program continuity across grade levels. We are creating a life skills program at the middle school next year. As you can see highlighted in orange, I think it's orange. Um our kindergarten ICT and special class 1211 programs will be at Hemla. This will allow for movement between programs as students adjust to school age expectations. First grade ICT will be at Homestead, which is currently where which currently houses our kindergarten ICT class. There will also be a cohort of students from our special class 811 at Locus that will be moving up to Steuart next year. Student well-being. Student mental health remains a top priority. Our partnership with Northwell has provided direct support to 24 students this year thus far, 20 of which were family initiated. It is great to

067see our families access the supports directly. Overall, we are seeing needs related to anxiety, depression, and school voidance. EPS priorities. Our work is grounded in four key principles. inclusion, professional development, family communication, and student well-being. These were the four priorities established by the special education advisory committee and continue to drive our focus. These priorities guide both our current work and future planning. First one being inclusion and programming. Um, we expanded inclusion opportunities and strengthened our life skills and vocational programming through collaborative lessons at the high school and increased cross-building experiences at the elementary and middle school levels as well as new partnerships with both Adelfi and Life's Work. We also aligned several um services at the middle school to better support students in least restrictive environments. And moving forward, we will continue to build a

068cohesive K12 continuum by strengthening middle school programming with the addition of a structured life skills program. We will ensure all new staff and administrators are well oriented in Garden City's continuum of services and special ed processes. And we will continue to strengthen resource room programming through ongoing progress monitoring and targeted groupings. professional development. We focused on improving IEP writing, transitioning, data collection practices, and understanding of diverse learning needs, including dyslexia. Staff also received training in proactive behavior strategies and inclusive practices. Next year, we will deepen this work, particularly in the areas of integrated co-eing, progress monitoring, IEP goal writing, and proactive behavioral strategies for the classroom. We will also look to work collaboratively with Miss Rean, our coordinator of music and the arts to expand music and art opportunities through professional development to ensure instruction

069is both standard aligned and inclusive of enriching whole child experiences. This is especially important as we have a cohort of our media students transitioning to Stuart next year. family communication. We prioritize transparency and collaboration with families through meetings, Q&A sessions, and parent training and counseling workshops. We strengthen part partnerships with SEPTA and PTA to support parent understanding. This year, we specifically targeted dyslexia and its impact on student learning. Next year, we will expand such outreach, expand outreach on topics of interest for workshops, and introduce a middle school liaison position to enhance communication and coordination between families, staff, and administration. This individual will serve as a central point of contact for special education at the middle school to ensure timely information sharing, support families in navigating services, and help coordinate student supports. Additionally, the liaison will

070work to build strong relationships within the school community and promote a cohesive student centered approach to meeting student needs. Finally, student well-being. We strengthened our partnership with Northwell and expanded access to mental health providers within our community. We hosted workshops to engage families as partners on a variety of topics. Looking ahead, we plan to increase awareness and expand available supports and programming. Our goal is to balance increased student needs with high quality inclusive programming. We are committed to supporting the whole child academically, socially, and emotionally. This budget reflects both responsiveness to current needs and thoughtful planning for the future. Thank you. >> Thank you, Michelle. questions. >> Yeah, sorry. >> Thank you for going through the data and information with us. I was just wondering um if you could just talk a little bit more

071about um the life skills opportunities at the middle school and what that might look like. Um how many students we could uh project being enrolled in it. Um, is it grades K through eight? I was just curious about it and and what that might look like uh in the next couple of years. >> Sure. So, our u we have a cohort of students currently at the middle school. There's three students that we're looking to create a program very similar to what we have um at the high school. Not necessarily one where the time will be spent so much out in the community, but really building those pre um prevocational skills, working on functional academics um across the board um and just providing opportunities for experiences throughout our district just like that of our high school.

072Um, Miss Mankey has um made amazing uh things happen with our high school students throughout our entire district and we're hoping to create this program that will also provide these these students an opportunity uh very similar to that cohort of students will then transition next the following year up to the high school um and then help bridge um with Miss Mankeyy's class up there. Um and and obviously if there's a need going forward for if there are students who are going in that direction or require a life skills class in the middle school after these three students leave the middle school and they go to the high school the program will come back or are we anticipating more students will need it in coming years too? >> Yes. So the program is is going to

073be built, this is my plan, is that within the following year, there will be a cohort that then moves up to Steuart to the middle school. That teacher will rotate back down. Those students will go up to Miss Mankey and then we will have established a really nice flow of program. Again, building continuum where need is. We never had that need for a while here in Garden City because our students are pretty much aging out. I think we have two to three students remaining at the high school. Um We'll have this cohort of three that we're building here. >> And I was just wondering last thing about the middle school liaison. Uh if you could I mean that sounds that sounds great. Anyone who can bridge a gap between parents and school especially when students

074may have u a different academic need. So if you could just maybe talk a little bit more to that. >> Sure. Um, so within the middle school, we actually have more identified students receiving services than we do at the high school. And the level of support there um for families to be able to have those connections um is just not there. So, we were really looking to build that connection. It's kind of like a go-to. This person will help with organizing of schedules, just all the logistics behind the scenes, but then also provide some additional um hopefully benefits along the way where If the successful candidate is that of a school psychologist, they'll be able to help with some evaluations. They'll help chair some meetings. So, it it'll be a broad stroke, but then at

075the same time, the focus really will be um supporting our teachers at the middle school, supporting um our students and our families um and really kind of just pulling it all together and having that organizational piece. that would be a new position that we would have committee for >> and you know I just wanted to make that clear it is a new position but that position there was a position we did not fill so that's how this position is being filled all right Mr. Ramirez. >> No, he likes Oh, that one. >> Sorry, I couldn't figure that one out. Uh, thank you everyone for allowing me to present the fizzed health, education, and athletic budget. The three areas that I'll be presenting tonight. So, we start with physical education. And when developing the budget and

076looking to improve on our programs, we start with our standards in mind. So there are six New York State standards. The first three are uh developing uh an understanding of uh concepts, philosophy, strategies, uh knowledge and skills to lead to lead an active uh life. Uh standard four talks to developing the social skills, the personal skills, working in groups, uh teamwork in a uh fitness or wellness setting. And the last two standards five and six uh is getting students to one value uh fitness, value wellness and an understanding of where they can tap into community resources so they can extend their participation in those activities when they leave our programs. Uh overall we look to uh expose students to learning that promotes and instills knowledge and skills necessary for students to live a healthy and

077active lifestyle and I should add hopefully a long uh life. All right. So why physical education matters to our students? One, it improves uh health and fitness uh enhances mental well-being and reduces stress. uh especially in a in a district high performing like this where our students are uh uh under a lot of stress to perform in a lot of different areas. It's good for them to release that that energy and uh just an outlet for uh stress relief. Supports academic performance through focus and behavior. Encourages lifelong habits and exposes students to lifelong activities and a lifestyle that'll hopefully be one uh through fitness and wellness. uh develop uh professional development for our teachers and our staff. Uh they engage in several conferences uh through New York State Association as well as the NASA zone

078conferences. So those are open to them and they participate in those. We have our uh regularly scheduled department meetings that allow for direction uh professional development growth as well as some uh meaningful dialogue. Uh they use their prep periods for collaborative sessions where they share ideas, lessons, uh things that go well, things that are challenging. Um which is something that's very uh beneficial to them to be able to have that discussion with people not only in the building but other buildings and compare. Uh and one that's a growing area growing area professional social media platforms. Uh we no longer need the uh encyclopedias. You can go on any uh social media platform and find what you need. So there's a lot of uh fizzed and health uh social media pages that our teachers go to

079uh to see not only in New York but other areas of the country uh good ideas, lessons uh concepts that they can use in their classrooms and collaborative learning through school-based site visits. We recently did this with Mr. Bolson here at the high school who's one of our health teachers and uh also does a lot of our fitness classes. He went and visited uh Siosid High School, spent the day there to see how they use their fitness center um to improve their instruction so that we can mirror some of those ideas and concepts when we are finished completing our fitness center. Um we wanted to very similar in uh the development of that center. So we want to use some of their ideas and that was uh he brought that back to our teachers and

080we're working on that hopefully for next year with health education. Uh these are the pillars that the CDC uh basically states are the fundamentals of any good health program. So personal health and wellness, a safe and healthy environment, health and literacy and being able to assess uh accessing information, uh decision- making and goal setting, communication and relationship skills, substance use and prevention, and advocacy and health promotion. All right. When we break these down in our health curriculum, these are the units that our teachers uh use and teach throughout the course of a school year. So, self-management, relationship management, stress management, communication, decision- making, uh planning and goal setting, nutrition, drugs and alcohol and tobacco, family life and sexual uh maturation, health functions, uh injury prevention, stress management, violence prevention, decision- making. So, explore health topics.

081What we want to do is explore health topics uh that address the needs of our students in our community and the everchanging world. And every community is different. So we uh have a lot of discussions throughout the course of the year in terms of trends within our community and our local area and what we need to address for our students. Some of those are rip tide education. We have a lot of students that uh frequent beaches over the summer travel. It's important for them to, you know, be knowledgeable and understand the effects and the uh the dangers involved with rip tide and how they can uh participate in activities at the beach uh and remain safe. So, our middle school teachers do a very good job of starting that discussion and those presentations at the

082middle school level, which is usually when students start to uh wander off from parents uh when they're at the beach uh to be with friends. uh underage gambling which is a national pandemic and continues to grow. Uh so we discuss this not only in health classes but fizzed classes and through our athletic program uh to get students to understand that engaging in these activities at a young age uh can lead to um some bad habits over the course of their life and some uh addictions that they really shouldn't need want or want to deal with. um and nutrition because it is important again um a lot of our students again are involved in a lot of things throughout the course of the day. So it's important that they know how to fuel their body uh

083the right way with the right things. So those are the big topics within our garden city schools. Uh some priorities uh focusing on athletics. We continue the ongoing evaluation and assessment uh of our programs every year. Uh we have those discussions what we need to do to improve uh areas that we can improve things that are working things that may not be working. Uh evaluating, recruiting, hiring and the retention of coaches. We want the best coaches. Uh so we recruit the best coaches. We want to develop coaches to make them the best coaches. And one area that often gets forgotten is to retain those good coaches. Um so if we put the time in to develop them and give them the opportunities, we want to make sure we retain them here for our students. Uh

084we continue to ensure that all our coaches uh meet New York State certification requirements. Uh we do that through a web-based program called final form that allows us to not only track uh but all our uh building administration and our upper administration can log on and see where those certifications are held uh and what is needed. Uh continue to work on uh supporting our programs, coaches, and student needs uh with replacement of equipment and uniforms. This year specifically, we'll be replacing a scores table here at the high school. Uh we continue to uh brand items and we'll be uh replacing some of the panels in the gym. Uh in terms of uniforms this year, uh will be boys volleyball, girls volleyball. Uh middle school will have soccer, girls volleyball, and girls lacrosse uniforms replaced. Uh

085and we're looking to add three coaches, uh two assistants, one for boys volleyball, one for girls volleyball, and one for the JV uh baseball team. Uh we always look to promote our programs uh the good things that are going on, the accomplishments of not only the teams but individual athletes and coaches. Uh and as always looking to increase communication and maintain open lines of communication with our community, our parents uh with regard to information uh in our athletic programs. Okay, there we go. All right. So when any initiatives that we take on, they really fall into three categories for me. Those are student pride, developing that communication and community engagement. So, some of the initiatives that we've completed over the last couple of years, uh we've redone our state championship banners in the gymnasium and

086we've given our we've done a lot to the outside of the school. We tried to do the same in in the gymnasium for those uh that visit there and compete in those areas. So, we redid our state championship banners in the gym. The display cases were done. Uh we continue to promote uh the accomplishments of athletic and academic uh successes from our students through the college commitment ceremony in the fall and we offer a smaller one in the spring. Um and we continue to nurture the culture of winning while self-improving and and reflection. Um communication, we use our athletic website, our social media platforms to communicate to our alumni base, to our current uh student population and our parents. Um and the other thing that we do is we're very good about as a program

087communicating expectations. Uh we have parent meetings, we have student meetings, uh we have leadership uh meetings with our captains, we send them out to workshops uh so that the communication is about what we expect as a program and what we want to exemplify and build on. And community engagement, again, I'm big on the branding of the facilities. Uh if you notice in the gymnasiums here and at the middle school, we've wrapped the doors. Um and it's it's a nice look, but more importantly is the message within those doors. If you look at it, they're they're the core concepts that we want our programs to represent. They talk about academics, um character, leadership, legacy, tradition, uh perseverance, all those qualities that we hope our students are gaining through participating in our programs. But sometimes when they

088see it, they're like, "Oh, wow. That that makes sense." Um the other uh area that we continued to work on for community engagement, uh we tried the podcast for a little bit that worked. Uh we've transitioned over to now coffee talk on Instagram and basically that's a 20 minute interview of our student athletes to gain their perspective having come through our program uh what that experience has been like. So I enjoy doing that. I enjoy hearing them talk about their experiences. um that that so it's a great way for them to be able to communicate but also for alumni base to stay t in touch with what we're doing in our program. So, and then the last thing that um I joke with my wife or my wife jokes with me, I have uh four

089kids, my my young my oldest Tamara Ed Junior, my youngest Jocelyn and Trojan Nation. Uh those will be my four legacies. Um so, we we'll always continue to build on that and what we can do through that. And we use it not only to promote uh and highlight but also provide some education to both uh students and community. uh status over the last three years. Uh as I said, we've implemented a uniform replacement schedule. So all our varsity teams over the uh every four years will have their set of uniforms replaced. So every um student athlete will experience wearing a new uniform while they're here. Um the uniforms that the varsity had then go down to JV. So the life of our uniforms are eight years, but we cycle through every four years, and that

090seems to uh work. We've replaced outdated equipment this year. We're replacing the uh track uh jump pits and the high high jump and long jump pits. Um we've replaced wrestling mat sled shoots and training uh the trainers golf cart over the last few years. Uh we've assisted with the revitalization of the GC boosters. Uh they've done a great job. They're a huge uh help to our program. Uh so we've worked very close with them. It's created a positive experience for our students, for our parents, and our coaches. Uh we initiated a tracking system for coaching certifications as I said through final forms. Uh we've also introduced a digital coaching evaluation and online system that allows me to uh evaluate coaches, communicate with them even when they're not in the building and it also share that

091with again our building administration up administration and keep track of those records over a long period of time. It's all web- based things that we'll need to uh focus on and keep in mind as we move forward in the next couple of years. Uh the last two years I've put girls flag football on the uh presentation and I think uh 2728 is probably the year that we'll look to put that into our program. It is the fastest growing uh sport in New York State. Um, and I do think that obviously here we could we it would be a benefit to our uh female students. What's that? We'd be good. We'd be good. Uh, we do have to balance out and see how that affects some of the other programs. Um, and one of the programs

092that right now, not just here, but uh, countywide is struggling in terms of participation in softball. Uh, this spring 21 teams dropped in Nassau County. So, it is a challenge. Uh, some of that can be attributed to flag football, but not all of it. Some of it is weather, northeast. um it's just not a a a growing sport in this area. So, we want to be able to introduce flag football, but also still maintain uh the program with softball. Uh we want to monitor GC uh middle school fall and winter one seasons, which I'll talk about in a slide here. The numbers have gone up and down and I can explain, but something definitely we want to look at. Uh for the middle school, uh we've started discussions with Mr. Tulo about exploring middle school

093bowling and middle school badmint because we have the uh space for that and those are growing. uh interest in our community. Uh for those our high school badminton team has about 70 to 90 students right now. So it is an a sport that's um obviously there's some interest and looking to maximize our new facilities. We have the turf fields, we have the fitness center coming um how we can use those to improve on instruction in our programs not only in athletics but fizz. Uh so status uh in terms of life as a Trojan. I mean what it what it's like to be a student athlete at Garden City. It's not bad. It's not bad. Uh obviously some some championships, some national recognition, state recognition, local recognition. Uh we do very well in terms of the

094balance between athletics and academics. This past fall we had 34 students who are participating in college commitment who will be extending their athletic careers uh to play at college. and we have I think another about five or six more that'll be that have signed that we'll be honoring this this spring. So, it's a it's a very large number and it's a good number. So, I'm big on curb appeal and and you know when people come into our schools uh whether as a parent or as a visitor uh not only what they see, what it looks like, but the message that they get. We try uh very hard to celebrate the past accomplishments and the past uh the legacy and the tradition of Garden City athletics and also recognizing and balancing with today's students and what

095they're able to accomplish. We do that through our display cases, through our banners, through our digital uh hall of fame. Uh as I said, we wrapped uh the doors, which you can see down there with uh messaging about what our core concepts are, as well as out on the field. Right now, you can't see them because of the construction, but we have wind screens with uh characteristics such as uh you know, tradition, legacy, work ethic, things that we want our student athletes to see visually when they walk out onto the athletic fields every day to be reminded and hopefully reinforced. All right. Uh so, best judge of the job that we're doing is really to talk to your clientele. Uh so I ask every year our student athletes to give me two words of what

096their experience here at Garden City has been like. Um this year we have uh four senior male, four senior females and pretty much uh some of them are you know similar but they all are positive and they not easy. They talk about challenging which is a good thing. We want them to be challenged. We want them to uh Matt Yodo who I think is on here. We've talked about his his story um and that through struggle comes true growth. Uh so some of that speak you know they speak to that here. Uh but I I think overall their experience is uh positive. Um it's a learning experience. Um more importantly they learn about themselves and who they are and what they can do and can't do. These are uh numbers that reflect the opportunities that

097we have for our students in terms of uh teams uh broken down by high school, varsity and JV uh and middle school uh female and male. And the one thing some things that I'll point out 96 is an insane number. Um we offer more opportunities than any other school on Long Island uh both at the high school and the middle school. Uh and in terms of title nine, you'll see that we offer uh five more teams for our females than we do our males. Um so this is this is great. This is allows them to stay engaged in the school, feel a part of something. Um the challenge is that again at Garden City, we have so many kids that uh come out for teams that as as many as we have, we still, you

098know, obviously we can't always accommodate everyone, but we do a good job of trying to get as much as we can. our particip our participation numbers um at first glance look like they've dropped. Um and I want to thank Dr. Sinho for pointing this out to me because uh we we had a discussion about it and I went back and looked at it and I think um I have a slide later on with an analysis uh but it really would be unfair to compare it to last year because we had that increased participation uh increased enrollment at the middle school which drove our participation numbers on up. But if you compare this year's numbers to 23 24, you see they're pretty much very steady. They're off by five or six one way or the other.

099Um so I have another slide that'll show that. Um we're about anywhere from 55 to 60% participation in terms of uh how many students are in our athletic programs, whether one season, two season. That's a great number. So middle school this year was down 44 from last year. Um but that's attributed to as I said the enrollment numbers when you compare it to the year before it's only 27. Uh high school we were down 17 in the winter again only down six from two years ago. Middle school 31 in winter 2. Uh so that again if you look at it two years ago it's 27. That is a little bit down. Um, what we need to do is, uh, I want to monitor the the sport that we're really took a drastic drop in is

100girls basketball, which is odd because we've had a lot of success the last couple of years. Uh, but it could just be a cycle. Uh, our numbers in girls volleyball, which is in the winter, is up tremendously. So, it could just be a shift in what they're going out for. But, we'll continue to monitor that. Uh, middle school spring was down 109, uh, but 15 from two years ago. So, I'm not too concerned about that. And we did speak about the trend with softball. Our softball numbers at the middle school are also down. Uh this pigraph just really the one thing to take away from it is probably about 70% of what we put into our budget goes into equipment and supplies and things that help our student athletes on a daily basis. So, you

101know, the budget is really there to support them. uh we have a huge program so it does um you know it's it's necessary and it it goes right to the students. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> I just want to take a minute to u you know really um Ed in the last couple of years what you've done with our athletic team and the Trojan pride as we call it. It is. It's been unbelievable from our facilities and just what you talked about interior inside of our building and the outside and just um you you hear from our students that tremendous pride they have in our athletic program. So really want to thank you >> and I just want to jump in on something. Uh, Trojan Nation is I I'm a ninth grader this year

102and I was trying to get to as many sports games as I could for football and soccer and my husband and I I think it was the boys soccer team. We were not we did not travel for it but we were standing in our kitchen watching it. I don't know what you had it live streaming on, but there were like 600 other people also watching it. And the two of us stood there and we were like, "This is what a sense of community." Even standing in our kitchen watching our our tiny little phones to see the boys play. There were hundreds of other people doing the same thing. So that's really a tremendous thank you to you for for it was multiple games. I don't even know which one it was where we just stood

103there watching and we were like, "This is amazing. So many other people are turning to that resource to cheer on their community." and that's really wonderful. So, thank you. >> Okay, Miss McLaclin, staffing. >> Okay. Uh, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak uh about our staffing this evening. So, I only have two slides, but they tell us a lot. Uh, yeah. Okay. So, this is K5 class size history. Uh, starting with the 2223 school year. Uh, and you can see the last column is projected for next year as of today. I want to tell you that this is updated every Friday. It's it's a very big item. Um, and the K5 principles all have a link to my spreadsheet and if I miss a kid, they call me. So we you know

104this is something that we are watching very very closely and you can see that um you know there are places where we're watching even a little more closely. We are lucky enough to have three contingent positions in our budget. So as we watch these numbers week by week if we see something that's concerning obviously Dr. will share it with the board and and decisions will can be made. Um so I'm so appreciative of the extra uh contingent position. Um and that was based on you know the numbers two months ago where we said third grade we want to maybe watch third grade and um you know we like I so like I said we watch it every week but overall I think we're in excellent shape so we wanted to share that with everyone and

105again the projected numbers will they get updated every Friday and the next slide tells you a lot. So the first box is the are the 20 2526 changes. Everything on this slide was enrollment driven. So you can see that we were down a special class and we had some overages in special ed. Uh we were up a half of a parah and down a.7 nurse. And then we have all the 26 27 changes. We will be down a section of science in the middle school. We're down three elementary sections. We're down 1.7 o FTE of overages in the middle school because the bubbles going to the high school. Um you can see we've added an OT of PT uh special class in the middle school and in the and now the bubbles going to the

106high school. So we made sure thank you to the high school and and to the board Dr. on the board support to make sure that the high school is very well prepared for this bubble and they are. So, uh the high school's up a position in science. Um they're it's a 6 in studies but they had a point4 last year. So the point4 plus the 6 equals a human in social studies in English in world language and then as I said uh we're up a contingent position. So overall, it's a 2.3 FTE addition and and again having those three contingent positions is it's so amazing because basically we're prepared for anything that happens and we're watching it very closely. So um you know the high school is very very ready for our eighth graders to

107go into ninth grade and um they're also prepared as you saw from the demographer um the next couple of years they'll be increasing uh minus a little overage here or there the high school's prepared for that now so we're in really good shape. >> Yes. Thank you. You're gonna go over the code. >> Okay. Almost done. Okay. So, um this has not changed since we first presented the budget. This is the full budget broken down into its major uh functional components. Uh the budget budget increase that we said from the beginning is the 3.36 with next year's budget at 142,385,117. In the instruction two budget, we're starting with the 2250 codes. So 2250 is the direct instruction of students with special needs attending both the public and the private schools. Miss Austin uh spoke about

108that earlier. So it covers not just what we have to uh that who we support in our garden city schools but also those outside that either attend outside or our nonpubliclix that we service. Uh this includes all the salaries for teachers, teaching assistance, teacher aids, uh tuition costs, contractual costs uh for services, equipment, supplies, materials. Uh that was all covered there. The increases here are due to uh salary increases and tuitions. The 2280 codes is our career and teched. These are expenses for those programs operated through NASA Boseis. Boseies bills the districts using a three-year enrollment average. Uh the increase here is due to the three-year trend. Um we are seeing a a big uptick in um in enrollments. Uh believe it or not, it's really still under 15 kids. So it's not tremendous but

109we are seeing more interest in our high school and that's reflected there. The 2330 codes is for continuing ed. Uh 2330 have expenses relating to those programs and these are relatively flat. Uh 2610 is our school libraries and media. In these codes we have the cost of operations of our school libraries. Uh expenses include salaries for the librarians, books, materials, data, uh database expenses, equipment, supplies, and other materials. The increase here is due to uh salaries. 2630 is uh what Miss Maguire presented on earlier tonight. In the 2630 codes, we have expenses related, God bless you, related to technology in our instructional program. uh during the admin presentation a few weeks back we presented on the 1680 code which is the part of the technology that is on the administrative side. So she talked about

110uh tech you know that's in the classrooms and the administration of the programs they're accounted for in different parts of the budget and uh different codes. 1680 is the uh support. 2630 is the classroom. And here we have expenses for hardware and co software used for instructional use. Staff are staff developer uh salaries, classroom supplies and materials. And the increases here are really due to software um increases and boseies. We get expensive we get changes on the software every year. And um Miss McGlaclin I mean Miss Maguire does a very good job. we actually list them in alphabetical order and go through them and figure out what we're using and what we're not. That's a big process of ours. Uh the 2810 10 codes are for our guidance. These are the codes that we have

111for our guidance council salaries, clerical support, staff, uh supplies and materials. And the increases here are due to salaries. In the 2815 codes, we have for our health services, health services cover um our nurses salaries, consulting physician salaries, and we are required to pay for health services for any garden city students attending school outside of Garden City and all of those expenses plus supplies and materials. The decrease here is what Miss McLaughlin was had presented on earlier is the reduction in nursing salaries. 2820 is our psychological services. In 2820 we cover uh we budget for psychologists salaries their supplies and materials and the increase here is due to salaries. 2825 is for our social workers and just like the other those include salaries, supplies and materials for our social workers also the increases due to

112salaries. 2850 is for our co-curricular. Uh here we budget for advisor stipens and co-curricular activities. Supervision for those special events including prom, homecoming, plays, performances, and much much more. Those increase here are in club stipens. And in our 2855 code is what Mr. Ramirez spoke about which is our intercolastic athletics. And here uh we budget for salaries for our coaching staff, intramural. Oops, sorry. Yes, thank you. Uh intramural activities, supervision, referee costs, supplies, uniforms, and the whole bit. Increases here are in a variety of codes, uh including salaries, equipment, repair, and supplies. Okay. So, um on our ballot for May 19th, there'll be four items. One is the budget that we just presented. um use of capital reserve which includes the reallocation of the unused capital funds that we had talked about a couple of

113presentations ago, establishing a new capital reserve and then the election of one board of education um trustee. So, um, next meeting, which will be next week on April 22nd, is the adoption of our district budget followed by a budget hearing and then the budget vote and election on May 19th. And so, you know, before um before we end, I really want to take a moment to first of all thank um Miss Maguire, Miss Austin, Mr. Ramirez, a very very thoughtful budget development really again centered around what our strong beliefs are around um doing what we can do best for our children. So thank you for that. I also want to thank our principles, our coordinators that are here and along with our assistant director of PPS. You have all have had a hand in developing

114this budget. So really want to thank all of you that it's been a very thoughtful process. Um and then again uh Mr. Capua, Miss McLaclin, and and Dr. Bowman, thank you all because I think the budget process, we start so early and we put a lot of thought into this and I'm really proud of this budget um with what it affords for our students and our community and uh and within the tax cap limit. >> Thank you. Uh at this time, are there any citizens questions or comments on the budget? Hearing none or seeing none, uh, may I have a motion that there's no further business come before the board and the work session be adjourned and the special session be opened? All in favor? I have a motion to accept the agenda for the

115April 14th, 2026 special session as presented. All in favor? I >> sure >> about the agenda. um is just that we have um several new appointments on the agenda and I do want to uh we have some of our folks that were being appointed this evening. Uh we have Michael Mstrea who's who will be our high school world language. He's back there. There we go. Molly Newman, a middle school special education. and uh Tara Coleman, middle school special education. >> I don't Yeah, that's what I was looking. Did we? >> No, we got you. Yeah, I think we're good. Thank you for being here and uh waiting patiently. We look we look forward to having you join us uh for next school year. >> Thank you. Um, assuming there are no questions and comments on

116the special session. >> Yes, that's a budget question. I spot special session. Yeah. >> Sorry, I'm nervous. Hi, I'm Mary Elena Burbage, 56 Garden Street. I wasn't planning to speak tonight, but um I was I have a my oldest son is in kindergarten and I'm super excited to hear that we will be moving away from the onetoone devices in K1. Um, it's really exciting. Definitely concern over screen time. I've been talking to more and more parents about it. I think it is a growing concern, especially for those with young kids, for everybody, everybody who has kids in the district. So, I hope for the two through five grades, you guys push to make the same decision because I think that's uh I think that's great. And I think the more we can get physical pen,

117paper, book into the hands of our kids, the deeper their learning is going to be when they approach the tests, even though they're on computers, they're going to have a deeper understanding of comprehension and reading comprehension. As somebody who's taken my most important tests of my life, my nursing boards, my NP boards on computer, it was that pen and paper first, that deeper understanding that allows you to come to a computer-based test more appropriately. Um, I hope we consider uh continue to look at how we use screens in general more critically. I think Mrs. Papathy said it really well about um you said purposeful screen time and I think that's exactly it. um considering what we are replacing when we're using screens. Even simple things like in the K1 the brain breaks that we do

118or movement breaks Danny go YouTube videos as opposed to like freeze dance Simon says like simple things like that that can be teacher or student le or in the um elementary schools the free choice Fridays that a lot of kids will grab their Chromebooks instead of maybe doing a game or an activity with a friend. Um so I just hope that's something we can keep looking at critically. And then one other note, I am a family nurse practitioner, so I see teenagers, I do their wellness checks. I always have them pull out their phones as part of their wellness check and show me their screen time usage. Um, they are always astounded. Their parents are astounded. I'm astounded. Six, seven, eight, 10 hours of screen time on their phones. So, um, I was hoping I

119saw the mental mental health, sorry, screen time and social media wasn't included on the health education spot. Um, beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's super important. We did. Yeah, we have like even even with the screen time like even getting um I think there was a session we did where we showed parents how to see that. Yeah. >> And those things are really make >> it's eye opening and the kids are often amazed. They see and they're like >> I think at the high school we did that too because I remember Mr. Stein Grouper talking about it with our students. >> It's really amazing to all the people in that room. Um and when I make them calculate it out like how much time is that in a week? That's a full day that

120you've spent on your phone by yourself. So, yeah. Thank you guys. I appreciate and thank you for the time. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Um, Miss Papis, I know there's an item on the agenda that maybe you can talk about before we go to the approval of the agenda. I know. >> Yes. >> Buses. Our favorite. >> Yeah. Zero mission buses. >> Zero mission bus. So, um, as a board, uh, we wanted to take a proactive step to request more flexibility with the state's zero emission school bus mandate. So, right now, this mandate requires all districts to switch to a fully electric bus fleet by 2035. Um, while we support being environmentally responsible, we also have to be realistic about the financial challenges that school districts are facing, especially as costs continue to rise

121faster than revenue. After reviewing the feasibility study that was shared with our community on March 10th, we believe this mandate as it stands would place a significant and unsustainable financial burden on our district. It could take funding away from important educational programs, services for our children, and needed facility improvements. Because of that, we'd like to move forward with sending a letter that we have written to Governor Hokll, Assemblyman Raw, and Senator Bo. And in that letter, we're asking for changes to the mandate that would give districts to the option to opt in or out so decisions can be made based on what's best for our students, our taxpayers, and the overall quality of education in our local community. >> Miss Papis is being nicer. I think you know this would bankrupt us or force us

122to cut busing. I mean, you can run the math however you want to run it, but the increase of cost, time, upgraded facilities. It's uh it's a dream of people who are not based in reality. This is just not something the district can afford to do unless we want to cut our teaching staff, which we obviously don't want to do. So, the letter is a first start, but I encourage anybody here or on the phone to uh call um Assemblyman Ra uh State Senator Bo and Miss and Governor Hokll and express uh your views on that because it will be something that will affect your kids if you're going to be here longer than the next five or six years. So, thank you for that, Miss Papis. Um at this time, we're going to go

123to a consent agenda. I think everybody here has heard me say it a bunch. So, I'll just say um at this time I have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes business of the board matters items E1 personnel matters F1 through F2 and business matters G1 through G2. >> So moved. >> All in favor? I there any new business from the board administration? Thank you. Uh as Dr. As said, our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 22nd here at the high school at 7:30. Uh at this time, may I have a motion that there no further business to come before the board that the meeting be adjourned? >> Some moved. >> All in favor? I