001I will do. Yeah, I'll do it. Good evening. Welcome to the May 13, 2025 work and special sessions of the board of education. This is Joe Silio, president of the board of education speaking. Thank you for attending uh in person or through Zoom. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Due notice that the meeting has been provided to the public and each member of the board of education pursuant to the requirements of law. Tina, will you please take attendance? Present. At this time, we're going to do some student recognition. We have members of the middle school hackathon team here. Dr. Sa, would you like to introduce
002the team? Sure. I guess we'll do the budget hearing after our student recognition. Okay. All right. So, this is actually very exciting. I think I've seen our students at least how many times? I think at least this is the third time because we're so excited about celebrating hackathon. They're going to explain to you what that is. But what is really exciting for us is the fact that this is the first time we participated and we placed third. That is pretty huge. Huge here. Huge here. It is. And you made us so proud. And did you like when you guys won and they announced I think everybody was screaming that oh my goodness how did this happen? Because students that were participating in this hackathon they've been doing it for a long time first time and
003look at what you did. So you made us so so proud. So what I'd like to do is really and and our teachers who are involved with this hackathon, Miss Shabelli, Miss Wangner and Mr. Davola. Okay. and lots and lots of work behind this but I'll tell you one thing when you hear about this you'll be like ah I need to learn more and more and be part of this hackathon so I want to if you can explain exactly how this year we started this process and introduce yourselves when you speak okay let's get the question my name is Leam Mutica and how a hackathon works is so you start off like in You have eight chairs. You're in one table. And so what you do is you load into the map. Our map was
004like a bayou. And when we load into the map, we had to get through these gates to unlock all the other territories. So once we unlocked our first gate, we got a territory, but then we lost it. And basically you the whole point of a hackathon is to take as much territories as possible and whoever has the most points wins. And at the last 10 minutes you have a capital defense project and you submit the capital defense project and see if it's better than other capital defense projects. And if it's not then you lose. If you get if it is then you get the other players capital defense project. Well, you don't get it, but you steal it. And it's the same thing as territories, but you could do that the whole time. Thank you.
005You did a good job stealing. All right. What What else do you guys want to share about your experience? So, personally, um, from Al Share your name. Oh, I'm Marco. And personally for me the um experience is actually very exciting and very thrilling cuz like from like the very start from like the very start cuz like we never really did this from since we never really did this before we didn't really know what to expect. Then when we came when we went into the competition it was very exciting. We were able to do really good and like we all worked together and it was amazing. So you really did a good job working. You had to work together. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. What did you all do to like practice and prepare for this kind of
006competition? Uh, hi, I'm Michael. Um, to prepare, we had to make like a big project that like what Liam said was the capital defense project. Each team had a capital and your capital defense project was basically defending your capital or you can attack other capitals with it. So, you really you need a like a good project. So, we worked really hard on that. We made a few of them like for like a good strategy and like we also made a lot of like sprites so we that we can use in our gs day of like things that we could use like we made like turtles, snakes, we made the whole food web. So that's like what really Oh yeah, we like shared like all the stuff we made through a Google doc so we all
007like knew what we were like what we had and that's like basically what we did before the What program did you use to do this? So, we use a program called Kido and there's like many different like apps in it like kind of there's Hatch which is like the block coding like the blocks. I know. I know. Yes. Right. And then there's like sprite editor with like the pixel art where you make like the sprites and you can like we got where's Brave? He was he was really good that good at that. And um we also use Python who Liam specialized in that. It's B that's basically like um just normal coding. Yeah. Whatever he said. I have to tell you when I was watching what you were doing that it seemed pretty hard to
008me. So, one of the things that I heard about was that since you said we've never been there before and there were other teams who had been there before and they knew like all the tricks and they they had like strategy that we wouldn't have because we weren't there before. One of the things that I heard that you guys did really really well was that you were flexible and you adapted and you like sort of pivoted and figured it out super fast. So, can anybody talk about because that had to be like kind of crazy. So, how did you manage that, right? Because you that's what you guys did. That's how you came in third. So, who's something to say about that? I feel like we managed it because like in like the heat of
009the moment like we all like we all like we all really wanted to win. So, like we we all like we all were trying really hard and then like we all we also helped each other through it. like if we ever need like help like with solving like any because there were a couple of quizzes like we we'd walk around the table we'd help each other with the project somebody need help coding we we do that and that really helped us like adjust and helped us get through the process a lot easier what did you do in that last round because that's where you guys really came together um in the last round oh my name My name is Rockco Speclia and um so basically in the last round, the last 10 minutes, five, whatever.
010Sorry, I forgot my throat. Um we had we have to Okay, so the night before or in the last Okay, so one week before the competition, there released the theme and the theme I'm sorry. Um the theme for this hackathon was a bayou. It's basically like a French swamp. There's probably more to it. I just don't remember. Okay. And so we would have to make a bunch of these things called capital defense projects and they're basically like the big projects that like get you in and so bas and and we made a but we made multiple of them and and to get in we submitted one and we had the others like just in storage and on the day of the competition we we did all our stuff but in the last five 10 whatever
011minutes we submitted we submitted all those extra capital defense projects to take over other teams territories and their their their ships cuz like in the on the map everyone every team was represented by like a little boat. So you could use your capital defense projects to try and beat the capital defense projects of the other teams and if your capital defense project won you would get like their boat and and we and we won third place by get by getting um cat in the middle capturing multiple ships and by and and with help from Liam's project with which somehow stood throughout like the entire competition cuz he was constantly updating it. Good job, Liam. You know what I really like with the way you're all speaking? You're giving each other, you know, recognizing each other's
012strengths. That really makes me proud. really you've worked so well together. You have more questions. How can other kids get involved in this might inspire some others to want to do this too? How did they get involved? Well, my how I started coding was a long story. I started coding a year ago because there's this kid in my school who made like really cool name uh games and I was like can I make games that are better than that and I challenged myself to try making other games. Soon enough I became like I loved animating. I loved doing all that stuff. Soon enough like I released these games that like took me like 12 hours like 13 hours to make. I I loved making them because well I for some reason I just love animating
013like during my free time I go to coding school which is a summer in Rosen sometimes I speak I speak uh I go to there and I try making intros better with my coach and sometimes they suggest like maybe try using my blocks or trying to beat these levels like badges because if you reach level three, you get uh the cloud variable. And my goal was trying to get the car variable until I stopped doing it and I went back to animating like intros because lots of my friends wanted intros and when I uh was I'm not even close to finishing the list by the way and and I go to coding school on Thursdays and all I'm probably I want to say to people who want to get into this or want to try
014it is to make a project and Think of every idea you can make it better or or uh think of every idea to get more badges. That's what I tried doing but it didn't work out. But I believe in you. I believe in you out yet, right? Okay. So you asked how can other people like get involved with hackathon, right? Yes. Oh, coding. Coding. Okay. So, mainly for coding, um, one of the easiest ways to start out is like, um, like watch a tutorial to like make something simple. Like, for example, Griff Patch, that guy's really good. Um, you can watch like one of his tutorials and then you can you can think about it and like and think, I can expand on this. I can make it more. Like, say you made a maze
015game. Now you can make Now you can make a player character, multiple levels, like stuff like that. Stuff like this, like that. stuff speak sorry stuff like that. Um, and you can do a bunch of cool stuff like start creating your own projects like without any tutorials like once you once you've got some of the basics down you can just go in blind and say hm I'm going to make cookie clicker or something like that and then and then you get coding away. Um, but for getting involved in hackathon it's actually pretty simple. You press the sign up button that's kind of it. project. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that too. Yeah, but it's mostly just press the sign up button. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Bravo. So, you know, um if we could
016just briefly talk about how this came about for uh for this year for our students. Anyone of you guys, you want to speak to it? Hello. Hi, my name is Mr. Davola or Mike Dvola, one of the technology staff developers. Um, we've been using KDOYO on and off for a very long time. It's a badging platform and it allows students to this concept of failing forward. So, Rocco, you were just talking about getting badges. Liam, also everyone gets these badges and it's kind of like an incentive, but it's an intrinsic. So, you do this by putting a challenge together and you submit the challenge and you will most likely not get it right on your first try. That's like a video game, right? you if you just play a video game and you try and
017then fall off the ledge, are you going to just stop playing? No. Right. No. Yeah. So, that teaches you this skill called failing forward or perseverance. And by doing this over and over and over again, you get better and you learn that it's not a bad thing to fail. So, our amazing teachers here in the middle school, Danielle and um they have been so good at getting these kids together and meeting all the time and it's a lot of work because you don't know what's coming and we didn't know what was coming. But the it was I'm so proud of you guys that you all worked together as a team, collaborated, and were super super creative. to just collaborate on something that is so new and kind of scary, but you failed forward through it.
018So that's what really makes it exciting for me. So thank you guys and Miss Winganger. Okay. Um hi, I'm Mrs. Winganger. I'm Naen Winganger. Um so the hackathon was something that we have been interested in like we do um Kado in in classes specifically like Miss Shabelli is one of the Kado teachers. Um so we had talked about wanting to do a hackathon. Miss Shabelli and I went and we saw a different grade level hackathon um a few years ago and then we both went on maternity leave and then when we came back we said we want to like we we would love to give this a try. So, um, this year we said if, you know, we can make it happen that we would love to. So, this was our first go at it
019and we, you know, we did the best that we could. We talked to a coach from a different school who had done this and they'd kind of given us some pointers, but like they'll tell you, you don't really know until the day of like what you're fully getting involved in. Um, and so they did a phenomenal job. I they came together in ways that we, you know, we knew that they could. Um, and the day of they all really just, you know, like they were all saying, they they came together as a group. They worked. They helped each other. They they really did an incredible job. Um, so we facilitated, but this is really like this is all them. Hi, I'm Danielle Shabelli. I teach technology at the middle school and I do focus in
020sixth grade on Kadoyo. So a all of these students actually had me in the fall or now they have me in the spring semester. So we had them all apply. We had every kid that was interested apply to see who has made games before on the coding platform and who was really interested to do it. Um and like Miss Wanger just said, they really did an awesome job. They all came together. Um and the coolest thing was on the bus on the way home and I forget which student said this. Oh, maybe Michael. Thank you. Um, and he said, you know, we really couldn't have gotten third place without anyone not being here because it was Liam's territory that held the spot and then it was Michael as the captain and Marco who helped him
021out as almost like a co- captain and then Connor Sprites and Rocco and Lux and Le and and Braves, everyone's capital defense projects that when they said that it was what I was thinking all along, but for them to realize it as students I thought was really cool. So, congratulations to them. They did all the work, but they did great. Um, so when we heard the third we got third place, let's just say everyone went up screaming and screaming. Yeah. And it what we couldn't even hear who was announced for second place and and then right after every everything was announced um the the hot pog one at if you know because they had like a really well done strategy where they work on projects for like more than the whole thing and then submit
022it in the last like 20 minutes. That's what they did and they got most of the territories. If they didn't get the territory, I would work on it more and that's how they won. But basically the hackathon is as Michael de uh the uh heavola Mr. Dvola said as Mr. Dev said um it's like failing forward um because yeah and well cuz I submitted a bunch of things and the one as Roco said like my project stayed in it got taken like two times but I tried making it better and uh that's how I uh got it and as Rocket says stay for the whole game. And yeah, that's all I have to say. All right. Thank you so much. You know what would be nice? Let's get you all up here and maybe get
023a picture of you all with your teachers. Come on up here. Oh, Mr. Silia, do you want to go up there with them? Miss, there you go. Yeah. Maybe right here. Yeah. You guys are going to put your backs to us. Face out. Face that way. Oh, yeah. There you go. How about Mr. Dola? Mr. Dola. Yeah. Why don't you go Congratulations. Amazing. You don't have to you don't have to stay for the rest unless you want to hear about budgets. Okay. Prepare to be excited. Uh you you can go. I I You're welcome. I would take the opportunity to go. Thank you. Thank you. He was excited to stay. We had one taker in the front like I'll stay like they are you want to stay for the budget I was like oh okay
024since since this won't this is this is more procedurals may have a motion to close the public session and open the budget hearing all in favor I Dr. SA, can you please uh start the budget hearing? Sure. You actually will pass it to Mrs. DiCapua first. And we don't need the We've seen the mission and vision I think 10,000 times in my life. So don't do it for me. Hi everybody. So I'm going to start the um the budget hearing. Um, as we do each time, we talk about that the budget is is rooted in our mission and vision, which is laid out here. And we're going to talk about the priorities, the design of the budget, uh, the actual 2526 budget, go over a couple of highlights, the contingency, and then what's on the
025ballot. So our priorities we set out at our very first meeting and we always look to student first in the budget. We look to student uh successes, prioritizing their needs, looking at uh we go and we talk with all of the um stakeholders in the uh process. So we talk with the principles, we talk with our um staff, we get student input from our staff and our teachers and principles. We have community engagement that we have many presentations that are done here. We look to have safe and supportive schools and to um make sure that we're continuing our clean and efficient uh buildings and our schools are are ready and our infrastructure is in place. So our we make sure that our budget uh aligns with our district priorities. We always look to make sure
026that we are fiscally responsible and we do report on that. Uh bringing in the budget at the tax cap is uh just respective of that. We utilize our reserves and our appropriated fund balance as we do each year. and we utilize our um analysis to make sure we do a lot of work um Miss McGlaughlin and I on analyzing staffing needs and making sure that we have the right people and the enough people to put in the classrooms and to support our programs. One of the other things that we do very closely is we look to control costs where we can. We utilize state contracts consortium where it is. We have a recycling program that we do with technology. Um we move uh items from the lower levels up to the higher levels on technology.
027As we do those refreshes, we participate in many consortia for purchasing including textbooks, transportation, insuranceances. I I can go on and on there. We have our partners in the community which are all of our community groups, our friends of uh TMA, uh the PTA, SEPTA and all of that. And we do look to also share some of our transportation expenses both where we can uh bring other school students uh from neighboring districts to if we're going to an out of district school or vice versa. We look to do this with our um neighboring districts because it does often save us money than going out to um a bid on those. So that's another thing and we do have one of each this year. So those things are always put in place. So our proposed budget
028for the 2526 school year is 137,760,845. It's a budget tobudget increase of just under 3.8 million or 2.82%. 82% our projected tax levy and our maximum allowable tax levy is both at 2.42. This is uh the budget and its total and we are required to say present the budget in a three-part capital administration and program. We're always proud to show that more than 75% of our budget is in the program portion of that and uh this shows it here and these are those same the 137 million broken down into those major components of administrative program and capital. We presented this at our last few budgets. Um our budget hasn't really changed all that much from the first time that we promote uh presented. We did increase it by 350,000 for a change that was happening
029on our insuranceances. Uh we are not sure exactly where that would come in, but we were um notified from our insurance companies because of the increase in the value of our buildings that we are going to see an increase there. Uh they did do an estimate of what that increase would have been this year. So I did incorporate there. uh we are allocating additional uh reserves to cover that expense as we let that whole portion play out and we'll incorporate that further into the budget next year. But this is the budget um and the increases of the major functional components. Again, we've had this same slide on many of the budgets. So, if you go back into the presentation archives, you'll see this um in each of those. our proposed budget. It complies with the
030cap. It expands our instructional programs. Um it recognizes really across the board a lot of wonderful things on it. Uh specifically on the capital side, we do have our budget transfer our um to our capital fund of 2.3 million. And we went over earlier presentations that we're going to be doing a new field of the main field here at the high school and the high school netting and doing that replacement. So that would be a project for not the 20 not this summer but we would expect that to be the following summer. We are replacing the library air conditioning as that is uh really at its last uh leg there. So we are looking to do that next year. We have technology infrastructure and servers on our list of capital. We have boiler controls uh
031throughout the district. So, that's going to be done. And we're going to continue our painting, masonry, and concrete. So, all of that is in there. On the um on the regular classroom side, again, we have our one-toone initiative that we're continuing to support. all our co-curricular, extracurricular, we have uh stipens for Disney trip and all of those. The morning math support and the writing supports at the high school and middle middle school are still ongoing. We have an allocation for the science kits and supplies to support grades two through five. All the math resources that we've incorporated in in the last few years is included in here. We have monies for professional development, assessments, writing. We have an increase of about five FTE to cover those additional uh increases uh much of which is at
032the middle school and the high school. Uh we are seeing an increases in those buildings as the elementarymentaries are and the primaries are leveling off. We are seeing uh the increase and that bubble start to go from the middle school and it will head into further into the high school in the next few years. So all of that is incorporated. We're very proud of how much is in this budget and what we've been able to do within the tax cap. Uh we will talk that if the budget fails, uh the board of education has uh three options. One is to present the same budget, the same proposal up for a revote. The other would be to send us back and to present a modified budget or to go straight into a contingency budget. If we
033adopted a contingency budget, we are looking at just under $5 million. 4.9 would have to come out of the budget because we would have to this increase. We could not have more than the same tax levy that is in the current school year. Plus, other items have to come out like the transfer to capital, any non-emergent uh work on our facilities um and and a few other items would have to and all the equipment and so on. So, that would all have to come out of there. I will just let you know that any contractual expenses or obligations, debt service, all of that. So any increases to salaries and things like that that is part of contracts stay in. So the expenditure decreases would have to come from those non-contingent lines. Uh on the ballot
034we have two items. We have the school district budget and we do have the election of two board of education trustees. So that will be on the ballot. This is as we work our way down our calendar. So, we're almost at that very bottom one, which will take place next Tuesday. Uh, so on May 20th, the polls are open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. It's a fun day. We're in super early. And, um, we're looking forward to it. So, please remember to vote, come out, and uh, we have another great thank you picture. I'm always I make them go to the end. So, thank you. And there's any questions. Thank you. Uh, Mrs. Dicappy, I don't have any questions on the presentation. I just wanted to make one quick statement on all the materials
035you've been providing over the weeks. I know there's a lot of things that are posted online, uh, statements, facts that maybe are inconsistent with my understanding and maybe some of the board members understanding of the budget presentations we went through. And I would just encourage anybody if they have any questions or thoughts, they should refer to the materials on our website. I think they're the most accurate um and consistent with the budget plan and everything you've outlined over the last few weeks. So, I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that because I do think there's been some inconsistent things that I've seen that I don't think jive with what you've presented. They're right on the front page of the website and there in case you didn't hear that, Dr. Sa said they're
036right on the front page of the website. So, you can use those as a reference for any questions you might have. Does that provide an update on the state aid? Yeah, that would be very helpful. Okay. So, um our budget was adopted in uh the second meeting in April and um the the state budget which is normally set to be adopted April 1st had not been adopted at that time. um we used the best numbers that we had available to us which was the governor's proposal and over the last few weeks um and as the uh the state was negotiating their budget we we do follow very closely how those processes are going and at that time every indication seemed to think that they were going to come in with a budget that was similar
037to what the governor's proposal was because it was it was robust Um there are and when the budget when we presented and we talked about state aid, we talked about that there are two different uh things that districts are faced with. There are districts on formula and there are districts on save harmless and the save harmless is what garden cities on. And in the governor's proposal, there was a minimum increase of 2% on foundation aid on in the proposal. that is what was adopted. So the final adopted and that is what we had heard throughout the districts that are on formula they in some ways some of them have gotten increases some of them gotten decreases from the governor's proposal. One of the biggest differences for them is that they did change the uh poverty
038and what they used to use the free and reduced price lunch and now they're using a different property poverty uh in yeah indicator and they also um CPI as what it was uh proposed or projected in the governor's proposal was different when the legislative budget was adopted. So those districts would have seen increases or decreases based on these things. We did not. We got exactly what was in the governor's proposal, which is what we used. It was very spot-on. We do see a very small decrease in in the legislative the final budget to our building aid, but I I haven't really analy it's not significant. It's about a $60,000 difference. Um, I have to go through this, but I am expecting at least one more project to close. So, I'm hoping we'll have that for
039next year anyway, but we are very, very spot on with our numbers. Um, I think that we did the best job that we could. And I think today we would have taken, you know, even after everything said and done, we would have left that exactly where it is. Just one statement, we don't choose which bucket we fall into. It's kind of dictated. So, everybody should be aware of that. There's no election here. Um in News Day it was reported that uh Garden City is getting a large increase. The increase that they are projecting is the difference. It's it has nothing to do about what they gave us last year and what we are getting on what they're giving us this year. It that whole increase has to do with universal prek money. The universal prek
040money that they're giving us $3 million that we cannot use is not accounted for in general fund. It's accounted for in the special aid fund. And for whatever reason, they report it on the state aid run. It has nothing to do with the budget that we've been presenting on. It has nothing to do with the revenue for the budget we've been presenting on. It is completely different from there and it's confusing to people. And this is the second this is the second year in a row. This is the same issue last year. It looks like we have funds for more multiple uses from the state, but that's not what it is to people. But rest assured, we the the proposal that we're giving the $10 million plus that we have there. That is what is
041applicable to the general fund. The rest of those monies, the other $3 million that they're showing on there is universal prek. It cannot be used for any other reason for that. It is not accounted for in general fund and it has nothing to do with this. It's the same misconception we had last year where people were suggesting that we weren't using funds available. And the other thing was is the the governor's budget came out super late this year, right? Am I normally we have that in advance of the meetings that took place. So maybe there was some people who don't follow some of the stuff as closely would would not understand the process a little bit. You know, again, our run for right what we're seeing now with the legislative budget as compared to the
042governor's proposal is very similar. Um, as we've proposed, as we've uh said, we have decreases in other places because of the wealth factors and how they are. Those are impacting other um state aid codes. So specifically, our special ed, our transportation, and our um and our building aid were significantly decreased from last year's from the current year based on the proposal. All of that was taken into effect. Net net, we're having a loss of state aid. The fact that it shows that we have an increase because of the universal prek is it's confusing and I of which money we can't fully use. So, it's this is the game the state seems to want to continue to play, at least with some districts where they're giving you something you can't use, knowing that it's a it's
043essentially a give back, right? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. That that was helpful in clarifying. At this time, are there any uh questions uh from questions or comments on the budget presentation uh from the community? If so, I just want to remind everybody, please step up to the microphone. Please give your name and address. Um, please be reminded this is only for the budget presentation and you have three minutes to ask your ask your questions and answer. We please ask that you stick to that 3minut time frame and you ask questions uh during that period. So if you'd like to ask questions on the budget, please come forward now. Sorry, the microphone's over there on the Yeah. and and and just if you could just ask all your questions and then we can have a
044response if that's helpful. That would be helpful for us. You can move it wherever. Yeah. Whatever is best for you so we can see you. Good evening everyone. Robert Hurst 111 Cherry Valley Avenue. As I've brought up before, the school district's financial results have been deteriorating as total expenditures exceed total revenues on a fund accounting basis for all funds in the last fiscal year. by 1.6 million. This means that the school district ran a deficit. I find it striking that the deficit incurred was incurred last year as the district recorded surpluses in each of the prior five years and these surpluses averaged $3.7 million per year. However, of even greater importance, the budget deficit is projected to grow to $4.7 million for this year. Now, that's only for the general fund. Um, that's all that
045that information that I have available and it is expected to grow to $5.4 million in the new fiscal year. The school district is using reserves accumulated in prior years and also its fund balance to cover these shortfalls. I would like to know what what actions the board of education plans to take to remedy this unsustainable situation. For example, in the village's final budget meeting, three of five new positions were rejected by the board of trustees of the village, while over $3 million of proposed capital improvements for the library were pushed out to an undefined future year. Um, I have not seen similar restraint restraint by the board of education during these budget meetings. I also wanted to have um the comments that I received when I brought up contract um transportation at one of the
046meetings um addressed in a more wholesome manner because in the five years that end in 2026 contract transportation is expected to grow to by 126% to $1.8 8 million. And in the prior meeting, the answer that I received was that there were old contracts at lower rates that came up for renewal. However, I find it hard to believe that that accounted for the whole difference. I would suspect there's also a large volume of students that are going out of district. So, it consists of both a price component and a volume component. I'd like to hear about the volume component. Um and then the last thing that I was curious about um was what GCTA and benefits trust what that is and it's projected to grow by 41% in the next two years. Um and I
047did look at the information provided by New York State. I looked at the actual budget um in terms of the foundation aid and all of the other things and the amount is um and I knew that the amount for universal prek, you know, goes outside of the general fund. So it it um and the amount is very close to what um Miss DiCapria included in the budget. It really is immaterial in terms of the final number versus what the governor is going to be giving us. So that was what I was curious about. Thank you. So I I mean I could address some things on the on the deficits as you were saying. Um in the 23 24 school year I think what you're looking at is all funds as you said. Correct. So what
048our budget is the general fund, right? Um, and we have our our financials are in excellent excellent shape. In the 2324 school year, we had a pretty large transfer to our capital reserve. Yes. And those expenses. So, if you look on the the revenue or the money's in on there is done under a transfer and you're not going to see that in the revenues. So, that's going to account for about 8 million of the difference of that. Um, if you if you look at that, if you look at the Because the budget, if you take into account the transfer, it actually had a budget surplus of a bit over a million dollars last year. Capital expenditures last year were about $6 million greater than they were over the prior five years. I'm not looking at
049the transfers. I just But that is what accounts for. Yes, I Yes. So I I agree with the answer for last year, but then we have the new year where the budget deficit is even larger. The new year that's the the amounts that you're that you're talking about are the amounts that we're appropriating in our reserves and our in our fund balance. That is not that's our appropriated fund balance. We have been appropriating that same amount since I'm here. uh that which is the amount and we talk about it when you talk about our revenues that we account for about 2.6 million in appropriated fund balance that we use from one year and we are projecting that we will have that to appropriate into the next year. So that is an offset to the tax
050levy because we would we would expect that that would be there for the following year. The reason it's going from 2.6 6 million to 2.7 million is because we had some uh -ate money that came in for capital work from uh some technology projects that we're appropriating into next year, which is why we've also offset that with an increase to our transfer to capital by the same 100,000. And we did talk about that during that same presentation. We are appropriating a bit more in the capital reserve, I'm sorry, out of the other reserves. Some of it is to um offset tax levy, but some of it is also as I had said has to do with that um increase on the insurance which came in very very late in the process handling it this way
051and we will incorporate we'll see where this ends up because we're still negotiating those rates and we'll incorporate that further into the budget in the following year. Yeah. And Mr. Mr. Hers, I know you come up and ask very good questions, very detailed questions. if you have any follow-ups or or um things you'd like to lay out in email, that'd be super helpful for the board. And Mrs. Dappa, we can respond in in writing and just uh to make sure we're getting all your questions answered. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and did you have could you just explain to me what the what was it? Benefits trust, whatever the thing was. I said what? Oh, GCTA benefits. GCTA because I'm not familiar with what that is. benefit trust is um other benefits that are
052uh that are we pay for or we transfer they uh the GCTA which is our teachers union uh self-insures for some of their other benefits and we contribute towards that. Thank you. Does anybody else have any questions on the budget? Budget only. Hi, Deborah Dangler, 142 Kildair Road. During the previous budget meeting, Dr. Bowman referenced the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Portrait of Graduate. She said, "These bring with them changes that will make different the high school experience of our students and more importantly will make different the preK to 12 experience." What specifically is changing next year in the high school and the rest of the grades? Can you just ask all your questions and then we'll we'll respond? Is that your only question? Um, well, my follow-up question was going to be how is
053the district leveraging AI tools to enhance student centered learning and operational efficiency? And my third question was going to be if Daily Jim is going to remain an elective in the middle school next year. Um I guess Dr. Sa said she can follow up or have Dr. Bowman follow up and with an email on all these unless you have quick answers to give you a quick anything that's not overly y detailed. Yep. Uh so I'll start from the bottom and work my way up. Uh daily PE will not be running next year. Um we are always learning and growing uh with regard to how we're using AI to be more efficient and effective in our practices, but that would be something that I'd be happy to um share more information with you via email. And
054um immediate changes for next year, the blue ribbon um commission's recommendations in the portrait of a graduate are overtime and so immediate changes next year aren't going to take place because the cohorts that are in the high school right now don't have changes to the requirements for them to graduate. Is there a specific reason why daily gyms being removed as an elective since it's been in place for so many years? The first reason is staffing. Um, and the second reason is because the other offerings in the building are more in alignment with what the Portrait of a Graduate and and the Blue Ribbon Commission are recommending to have as experiences for our students as they travel up through the K12 continuum. Thank you. Thank you. How how much PE time will they have for Miami?
055What's required? Sorry. Yes. So, FISET is required. Um, and on the secondary, it's every other day as the requirement. It's every other day. Thanks. Are there any other questions on the budget? Okay. At this time, may I have a motion to close the budget hearing and reopen the public work session? So, moved. Second. All in favor? Hi. Um, sorry, we're in the public works session. We may have a motion uh that the special session be opened and that all board members of the board of education are in attendance that were required. So moved. Second. All in favor? I have a motion to accept the agenda for May 13, 2025 special session as presented. All in favor? I we have we have any uh questions from the board of education on any of the uh agenda
056items? None. Any at this time any citizens questions or comments regarding any of the agenda items? Yeah, it's this is not the budget time. So, this now your time to shine. Time to shine. Okay. Deb Kapani, 28 Brixton Road. I just wanted to commend the students and teachers that did the hackathon and um and I was very impressed with the way the boys spoke um with being goal focused, strategy based, uh the the ability to explain a process. All of these things show the whole child and the experiences that our kids are having. Um but here's the other thing I noticed. It was all boys. Now we we have a girls who code program in Garden City and I was wondering if that was uh active. Anyone know at this time with the you know
057girls who code especially at the middle school this is something uh with the hackathon it's new but it's certainly something that we would you know consider for the future. What we did do a couple of years ago, we open opened up the pathway for the computer science so more girls could have access to that at the high school level. We did that about four years ago. Oh, so it's it's not active now. That that class still continues at the high school. Yeah, that's also we also have a robotics team at the high school. And um I I don't remember if it was last year or the year before we had a team go to national. It was an allgirl team. But this is open to everybody, right? Okay. Okay. So, there's this is the stuff
058our community needs to know. This is You know what? That's actually a good point that um that team we were so impressed because they were all girls and they ended up going to Nashville. So, we are uh you know we do have some pathways for girls to to you know to take on these uh fields especially with computer science and fantastic robotics and coding. Yeah, I bet those girls are going to get scholarships. That's very good news. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions on the agenda? Okay. To make efficient use of the meeting time, the board of education authorizes the use of the consent agenda. As as a consent agenda allows for one motion to approve multiple items and such items are identified in the agenda. I'll ask for a motion to
059approve the consent agenda and if anybody wishes to have any items pulled out or clarified or voted individually, they can uh ask to do so. Following the discussion, the board will then vote on the consent agenda motion. At this time, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda, which includes personnel matters E1, business office matters F1 through F4? All in favor? I. Does the administration have any new business? No. Does the board have any additional business? I'm hearing none. future board of education meeting is Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 regular session here at 8:15 the Garden City High School. Uh just to reiterate what Mrs. Dicapio said, we'd appreciate everybody gets out to vote for uh the budget and the two uh trustee positions that are up. So, please make sure you uh vote
060on May 20th. Uh and you can follow up by coming to the board of education meeting at 8:15. At this time, may I have a motion that there be no further business to come before the board that the meeting is adjourned. All in favor? I