001welcome to the February 25th 2025 regular session the Board of Education this is Arthur Jano vice president of the Board of Education speaking thanking for attending in person or through Zoom please rise for the pledge due notice of this meeting has been provided to the public and each member of the Board of Education as required by law Tina will you please take attendance pres pres present present present we have a motion to accept the agenda for February 25th 2025 regular session as presented so move second all in favor I those opposed none we'll like to move to our student recognition portion of the meeting Dr senah thank you Mr Neco so we have um we have our students that uh won the prize for or they received the leadership award prize and we would like
002to acknowledge them tonight and uh and welcome them here this evening and they they were awarded the adelfi university prize for leadership and this award recognized is not only students commitment to their studies but also to community service and I had the opportunity to stop by at the dinner with our students and their parents and um you know some of the um some of the community service that our students are involved in are so impressive and my hope for our students is that they will continue to embody community service not just uh while they're here in Garden City but well beyond uh Garden City because it is that important so as I call your names up please uh please come up um Sarah finny Kay attorney Thea Samuel Daniel Curley Isabella fores petu and Sarah
003Tiani yang e that was wonderful congratulations again I would like now to ask if there are any reports oh if I we have one more item that like to share so we have Miss Amanda Hower our coordinator for music and Fine Arts here this evening along with some of our students and they're going to share with you the their experience with the trip that they have taken to Disney remember last year I think we had that trip after a long time in our district where our Coral group attended and this year it was our Orchestra group and what was so special about um this year's trip was I think I heard from several of our students and parents really talking about their experience the not only did they perform at a very large venue with
004other districts but there were other very important uh aspects of their of this experience that was so helpful particularly around building some new friendships and working with students um you know students that they had never uh really worked with before so I'm going to turn it over to miss Hower she'll talk about the trip and our students will share some additional um their experience with you sure good evening I'm excited to share the amazing trip that our high school orchestra students took to Disney World with 86 students and nine chaperons this was an amazing weekend filled with music camaraderie and Unforgettable memories our trip began bright and early well actually it was dark and early it was 3:15 in the morning and we gathered at Garden City High School and we departed for AFK and
005the students were filled with excitement and the adults we were definitely filled with a lot of caffeine and throughout the trip we had the opportunity to go to Animal Kingdom Epcot Hollywood Studios Magic Kingdom the highlight of the trip was of course our performance at Disney Springs which we will show you shortly and it was so amazing to see so many of our families fly down to support our children it was a true Testament to the strong community that stands behind our program and so beyond the performance our students also took part in Disney imagination campus Workshop where they had the special opportunity to work with professional musicians and sound engineers in a Disney recording studio and created a soundtrack for a Disney trailer and just as impressive as their performance was the sense of
006teamwork and camaraderie that developed throughout the trip the orchestra evolved from small clusters of three or four students into large dynamic groups of 10 to 15 walking through Disney as a unified Ensemble socially and musically and to me that was the most magical part of all when students form strong social bonds it profoundly impacts their ability to connect musically the trust communication and a sense of belonging they developed on this trip translates seamlessly into their playing allowing them to perform with greater cohesion and shared artistic expression of course none of this would have been possible without the incredible chaperons who went above and beyond to ensure a safe and smooth trip and it's I have a heartfelt thank you to Mr Del Monica Mrs f Mr Mila Mrs scaller Dr Slater and Mr Berg a
007special thank you to Connor con our assistant principal at the high school who not only joined us on the trip but also played a key role in facilitating Logistics and finally an enormous thank you to The Mastermind behind the trip Mr Andrew albani I don't know why he's hiding in the back come forward his dedication to our students his meticulous planning and his leadership made this experience Unforgettable and so tonight you will hear from four of our outstanding musicians Sarah tuani yangang Janiah price Philip Corina and Lauren Marino who will share their personal perspectives on the trip thank you for your continued support of the Arts and Garden City and now I'd like to welcome Sarah anang to the microphone hi I'm Sarah I'm a Junior and I play the cello in the orchestra so
008we performed on the second day of our trip at Disney Springs before the performance we were brought to Disney's imagination campus where we got to tune our instruments and prepare for a performance the Disney staff was so organized and helpful throughout the whole process performing iconic Disney music at Disney world was such a special experience and a memory I'll never forget the stage was right at Disney Springs was right in front of a lake there was a volcano in it and it was right across from the biggest store the biggest Disney Store store in the world so tons of Disney guests heard our performance who weren't just our usual audience I saw people recording us who weren't just our friends and family and they stopped their shopping just to listen to us play there was
009even a live audio engineer who mixed our sound on the spot and we got we were treated like professional musicians and got a glimpse into what a performance career could look like now and now janah is going to talk a bit about about the workshop good evening good evening everyone I'm Jania and I'm going to be speaking about the workshop under the teaching and conducting of Miss Suzanne the workshop consisted of a site reading many new Disney pieces for the first time from a range of different difficulty levels we got Insight on what it's like to be a professional musician and we also learned different tactics that can help en enhance our musical abilities for one piece in particular we played the lion King and got to mix our sound into into the background track
010of the movie clip our playing was recorded while we got to use headphones to listen to the movie clip while we played this was overall a cool experience because it's not something that you can do during an average Orchestra class and it also gave insight to what some people's jobs are like working in the music and Performing industry yes hi I'm Phillip I'm a senior I play bass in the Shing Ensemble and I'm going to tell you about the experience about uh from the parks so the first day we went to Animal Kingdom and then we had a great time we went like on all the rides right and then we went to epot that was a great time but the most notable thing was when we went to uh Hollywood Studios and the Garden
011City Orchestra was able to enter before everybody else and we were able to go on the Millennium Falcon ride which is like pretty new and we got to skip all the lines you know we were all there first and you know it was a great time because it was just like six people working together to get that ship to safety you know so that was fun uh you know one of the the kids that was there it was his first time going there his first time ever even flying anywhere so when he walked into the Star Wars area he was so happy he started squealing you know and then he spent like $80 on some Helmet or something so what's that uh so like there was some like organized thing like there was a couple
012times we like check in just so like you know everybody was alive right and then um at the end of the day we would like stay we watch fireworks for the first couple of nights we all got together and watched the fireworks but then after that you didn't really have to go with anyone to watch the fireworks that was great so and then when you got back to the rooms there was like time to socialize there's like a food court at the uh at the hotel motel I guess and um you got to socialize for like an hour just you could hang out with whoever you wanted and then like at night you when the you were uh tucked in I guess so to speak uh uh you got to just like hang out like
013there was a TV you could watch movies you know there was like uh you know you to share a bed with somebody that's not too bad um yeah so it was just a great time overall like people that like I would never thought that I would like make friends with I mean like I know so much about them that I would never have learned any other way so like I recommend this like experience so much for any future Orchestra classes I have a couple of questions about the helmet about the helmet was it a Boba Fett helmet or helmet no it was I don't know then if it was worth 80 bucks it was an X-Wing Fighter helmet oh all right had like a visor though you like drop down the yeah so okay um
014hi my name is Lauren I'm a senior and I'm a violinist in the Garden City Orchestra so as Philip said and as the teacher said um truly the bonds that we created on this trip were unmatched um as uh Philip said people that I wouldn't have thought speaking to at the beginning of the trip were ended up kind of being my best friends towards the end um so this year uh we actually split our Orchestra into two um two groups it was um concert Orchestra which is mainly for the younger kids and the string Ensemble which is for the older kids and on this trip um we really got to mingle with everyone like everyone um and the Freshman that I never knew I got to hang out with them and towards the end of
015the trip we were all uh waiting on the lines together that was super cool and even friends that I had from last year's orchestra that aren't in the string Ensemble um I got to see them again so it was really great to reform these bonds and make new friends um so that was extremely cool and um and what was also extremely cool was that um this experience was so unmatched that no no one was no one was on their phones we were all talking to each other we really all got to make great friendships and great connections um I remember Philip was uh really great at heads up on the lines uh for Pandora which was about two hours long but um it was really great and you really get to know uh more about
016people while on these trips and um nobody even needs to be on their phones because um it was just so cool we were experiencing that we didn't want to waste a second of it so that was extremely cool and um like Philip said before um the trip was extremely organized but we also had a lot of freedom so every night after the fireworks um we'd all go to the food court for a late night snack and um we would all just like talk about our day we would talk about the performance um the cool Workshop that we did so it was just extremely cool to have that sort of freedom but also um I want to thank again um thank again the um chaperons who did such an amazing job and um they really made
017this trip feel like the honestly one of the best experiences of my life as I say so um I'm really thankful to them and um thank you so much so um we're actually going to show a clip um that encompasses uh all the fun that we had uh throughout this journey thank you e e e I'm gonna embarrass my son Mrs how so I when I found to be here tonight I texted my son Aiden who's a sophomore in college and and he said I loved her she was my favorite teacher through high school um so as parents he was our only singer all my other children have my musical ability um but but for parents who went through it um we very thankful that that of you of you being around him period he
018just to this day I don't think any of my other kids know any of their High School teachers other than Aiden and he and that's what he said those are exact words so although he didn't go to he went to Washington DC they didn't go to Disney so he's a little upset with that but but I I know the parents here know it but I as a parent who had one child go through it thank you very much I just want to Echo that sentiment from uh the chorus last year they made the trip and um both of my daughters went and they had a blast you know I wanted to know Mr albani how was your experience um you know taking our students and uh leading our students in the performance there so I'll
019just say you know a trip like this is is intimidating when you're thinking about getting 86 students with instruments on a plane at very early in the morning in a very busy airport and taking them down um you know to another state it's a lot of mental preparation Miss Hower and I went through every detail of every day um while they seemed like they may have had some freedom I guarantee you it was very structured I just want to make sure that's very clear um but you know that the point was to give them an opportunity and to have an experience that they will never forget um but I will say having such incredible students makes a trip like this that much easier because I knew that when you know when I told them this
020is the check-in time that was the check-in time they checked in so things like that made it the easiest trip uh while we were there because I knew I could depend on them to do what they needed to do uh when they needed to do it so I'm very grateful to my students for also making the trip as successful as it was because I'm just one person that you know can tell them you know here's what you need to do here's when you need to do it but it's it's up to them to make sure that that actually happen and they all did every single time every single day so I couldn't be more proud of them so thank should see if we can get a clip and then put it on like GC Trojan
021Nation or something oh there clip there like clip of you guys like a good clip for from you guys were playing up on that stage I think I think we should do that and we can also give it to Amelia you can also post it on the our website as well that'll be nice you know one thing that Miss Hower was sharing with with me after they came back from the trip is that music piece because the students didn't see the the you know the film that we saw with the music they were just listen creating the music I thought it was that to me was like a you know when the students saw the piece I'm sure that must have been amazing they were they just were playing and she was offering feedback and
022giving them um you know her EXP experience and how to make the piece better but they thought they were playing Disney music and learning how to be a better Ensemble and then in the back they had the audio Engineers cutting and putting it all together and then it wasn't until the very end when they put it with that trailer that they realized they made this incredible soundtrack yeah that that I thought was um very very impressive can we put that up on our website that piece or we can't we can't yeah so I have to like I said before um you know I think our music program and thank you Miss Hower for leading our department and Mr albani you guys are amazing amazing and there's a lot of heart in this program that we
023have and I think uh it speaks to the number of students that are I think at the high school we have to we have uh we have to split now because there's so many students in our Orchestra we're getting bigger and bigger but that's a great problem to have right it's a great problem to have because we have students interested and it's really thanks to all of you and and you guys did a great job thank you thank you Amelia will get yeah something thank you again you know as we were talking about music um I just also want to talk about our fifth grade musicals at both Stewart and at uh Stratford amazing amazing it was like Broadway yes with Moana Jr and we also had Annie Jor unbelievable was phenomenal both and then
024we have our High School Musical coming up midm March so 13th 14th and 15th that'll be another exciting uh again showcasing the talent in our in our schools uh also we will um I was discussing with Dr Sinha and we will place the performance that was shared here tonight that will be on the website along with u trusty gaffney's wonderful idea about uh uh Trojan Nation okay um all right the report section I would like to now ask if there are any reports for the Board of Education Dana oh Dana will you please provide the treasures report certainly hi this is the treasures report for December 2024 we had a cash balance at the beginning of the month of 84 m2727 we had receipts in December total 1,739 55 we had dispersements of 13,484 23
025leaving us with a closing balance of 71 m959 242 thank you thank you uh Dr Sena could you please provide the report uh for the superintendent of schools sure thank you I also want to first of all thank we have many of our colleagues here from our middle school thank you all for being here it's nice to see faces that I don't get to see very often so thank you for being here there we go all right so so um I have a few things to share uh we have our valid Victorian salutatorian we're happy to announce this year's valid Victorian is Jeffrey Lee and salutatorian is Hunter Maguire and uh we're very proud they'll be here yes and we will be inviting them on next month so at the board meeting so we can
026really honor their remarkable achievements I think you'll be blown away by what they have accomplished uh at their time uh here in in our high school and our wait in fact I shouldn't just say High School K through 12 um and some additional Student News both Amy Xiao and Simone aater were selected to apply for the US Presidential Scholars Program we're proud of both of them and we look forward to seeing as they follow through with their application process and uh Audrey prir has been invited to attend the all Eastern Conference in Hartford Connecticut and only the most musically talented high school students in the Eastern region of the United States are selected to perform it's it's actually a very very high achievement for this uh for Audrey and we're again very very proud of
027her achievement and we look forward to see her I don't know if you've she's been in our performances at the high school in the past um we look forward to seeing her perform more for us today was an um actually one of the best uh events that we hold in our school Hoops for hope it is unbelievable how uh our school Community comes together for this one event and I think uh you know um seeing our young students our older students our staff members and our families um it's an incredible event that Katherine ohanlan you may recall her siblings have uh coordinated this in the past she did a remarkable job uh you know coordinating this uh for today and uh this annual event um celebrates our Challenger basketball players and also raises funds for
028the I am not done yet foundation and the foundation was created in honor of Bobby men's a high school student who lost to Pediatric cancer so we are very uh fortunate that we have this every year after year and we actually keep uh the student our high school student um you know in our um in our thoughts every single year so it's it's a nice event um we also on uh March 9th we have 30 students from across our district who will be exhibiting their artwork at the 21st annual allc County art exhibition and there will be a special ceremony um that morning to recognize a senior scholar art artist award recipient Caitlyn cook for winning this honor and uh we want to congratulate Caitlyn and and the other 29 participants so congratulations Caitlyn um
029I also wanted to um mentioned that we had our winter enrichment uh program through scope that Mr Dan side uh really under his Direction he does an amazing job with uh running all of these programs whether it's the enrichment program the summer program um and it gets better and better every year this was the first time we offered this program uh at this time of the year and again uh we had 120 students uh that were enrolled in the morning session and 60 in the afternoon a variety of uh learning experiences for our students and then with our Athletics many of our student athletes will be competing in the New York state championships from swimming and Diving boys and girls track and field wrestling and we also have uh the upcoming boys and girls basketball
030teams they'll be competing next week and I know I hope everybody follows troan Nation it's all on there there'll be on our website as well um the schedule uh agenda items we have several um you know on just some highlights uh we have uh we have we're appointing there's some positions there that we're appointing uh bus drivers um a leave replacement we also o have consultant agreements for our musical at the high school and for nisma the budget notice that's also on the agenda as well as some Transportation uh contracts and uh let's see tomorrow night is our elementary literacy and Mathematics family fund night that will be held at Stratford from 5: to 6 so we want to ask uh we hope that our Stuart and Stratford families uh join us for that and
031uh Miss Kaufman and Miss Cardella along with uh many other people who've been involved it's uh and I looked at the offerings It's a Wonderful opportunity for our parents to participate in and learn and see what their children are engaged in in our schools and uh and then what I said earlier we have the High School Musical coming up okay thank you so much are there any other reports from the administration this evening oh oh more if uh Dr Bowman if you could report on the upk so we um we sent out the responses the offers of the seats to all of the families uh based on the results of the lottery and ask that people either accept or decline or ask to be put on the weit list if they preferred a different uh
032location from the location that was offered to them um that Google form closes tomorrow tomorrow once the Google Forum closes what we will do is we will see if there are in fact any seats that are open as a result of having given families the opportunity to accept or decline or to defer to the wait list um from that point we will start with the wait list originally we had um I think there were four families or 10 10 families apologies who were on the wait list and so those 10 families will be the first to be offered any vacant spots that opened up from declinations and then uh families who declined but ask to be put on the wait list based on the time stamp of when they responded to the Google form asking
033to be put on the weight list we will offer spots to them as well um we anticipate hosting almost a full house if not a full house we have 174 slots open we had 184 students who were interested in being there and so we're excited about that I was actually at Harvard this morning um looking around and the children told me they were very excited because even though it's winter it feels like spring and they were going to be able to go outside um and you can see already the evidence of all of the learning that's gone on they you know we were there in time to see one of the classes do the Pledge of Allegiance and they know it they work so fast um and it was a really it was a really
034good experience and so our kids are getting prepared for kindergarten um and we are getting ready for our next group of upk students for next year thank you thank you thank you Dr Bowman are there any reports from members of the board yes I have a legislative report it's tough to follow all the performances and all the honors with the legislative report but this will be as exciting as possible so the first thing is about zero emission buses so New York state has mandated that all school districts get to um electric buses and they've given us a deadline of 2027 I believe and um obviously that is a challenge to move over the fleet of buses and all and we're in the same boat as all the other districts so we have been uh meeting
035and discussing with our legislators about um legislative Representatives about ways to work with the state to push that deadline back and maybe have like a you know a slower roll out and not have just such a quick deadline because the logistics and the cost really of moving over all the buses to Electric would be quite formidable um the other piece that the legislative committee discussed was um a priority of ours is getting voting out of our schools because um obviously some schools of ours are more better situated than others to handle the influx of voting and so ultimately we would like to be able to move voting out of our schools and so we have also been addressing that with our Representatives um and our another topic that we discussed um is we just met
036on Monday and so we've been discussing the recent executive orders and then the orders and the guidance coming down from the Department of Education that is coming down from um president Trump's executive orders and just the different um how you know it's very much in flux and we will be monitoring what the situation is to ensure that we are in compliance thank you TR gy um actually I'd like to share something as well uh just regarding uh casda uh we discussed last meeting how casda was approached um the selection process by which kazda was selected followed the same stringent process that we followed for foreign language and Mathematics the approval for kazda is set for 227 which is in uh two days and they will begin working the next day at this point public documents
037such as public meetings uh curricular information posted on the website have been shared with them and as soon as kazda is approved some information such as but not limited to will be shared as item skills analysis on prior and current state exams including extended response the writing portion multiple choice and their corresponding standards subgroup breakdown classroom data nwe data observation and staff evaluations and access to our Google Drive uh last week Dr senha president cilio and I met with the executive director for some time we reiterated the importance of their evaluation not being a rubber stamp this will be a full review from top to bottom we are concerned with an interdisiplinary approach and we want all areas that embrace the literacy lens true truly evaluated vertical horizontal and whole school studies will be conducted
038staff students families and the community overall will be asked for their input on the process please watch for that information we also stress the importance of including the literacy Committee in um in everything that is transpiring and I think ultimately and probably the most important point is as a reminder there was a deep scope of all of this work on our website in fact there will be a page dedicated specifically for the casda review and at this time I would like to go back to Dr senha and Miss excuse me and Danna uh to please go ahead with the budget preview okay I just wait till um till it comes up but as the you know this um I'll start start um with our this is our first of I would uh four four additional
039work session one of four actually work session um Board of Education meetings that is uh really um to go over our budget and different aspects of the budget and um and then what will be followed by adoption of the the budget the budget hearing and then the uh the vote in May uh May 20th so you know before I get started in uh talking about the budget what I wanted to share was the you know our budget process and you know we have the budget vote in may we really start discussing budget again in uh over the summer and we start that because we start the planning process the budget process never really ends you end one you start one and um and it gets pretty significant probably around I would say um mid-fall starting
040of fall to just about now where we are sharing this proposed budget numerous meetings are held um you know and I would like to thank our uh principes assistant principls directors and our coordinators all of our administrators our faculty and staff who are involved in this process and of course my colleagues here miss mclaughin Dr Bowman and of course um Mr capua for their hard work on this budget um and so with that let's see where my clicker is here we go and what I do want to say this is that this budget really focuses on the academic Excellence Excellence that we have in our district while ensuring that we're fiscally being responsible with our proposed budget we always start with our mission and vision statement our mission statement has been here for many years
041I think it's maybe even close to 20 if not longer and this mission statement was strong then and it is strong today um and we really our goal is again what it states here and responsibility is to help each student develop an enthusiasm for learning a respect for S and others and the skills to become a creative independent thinker and Problem Solver and our vision for teaching and learning is to inspire and challenge our students to accomplish their personal best and our hope is that when our children leave our district that they are curious for learning through act well beyond uh you know their time here in Garden City so some things we'll be discussing with you uh obviously we'll be giving you what our budget proposal is what it looks like um overview of
042the big at the state level and then also what it looks like for Garden City some information about our districts our priorities how we construct the budget and um you know Mr Capia will go over the tax cap calculation the revenue and reserves so our total proposed budget is m410 1845 with a tax cap Levy of 2.42% that's within the allowable limit and again what I said earlier is our goal is that to ensure that this budget again it has high quality education we take care of our facilities that we have the proper resources while being again uh fiscally responsible uh uh to our community and it is it's uh you know taking a look at how do we balance between some of the challenges that we have and what we offer and again prioritizing
043resources for our for our students academic success safety and the operational efficiencies which is our buildings with um school buildings that we have here so here's the big picture about um the state budget and this is again at a very high level for New York State the governor's proposal you can see here that um you know the state budget that the governor proposed is a uh one point close to 1.7 billion dollar which is a 4.8% increase in total school aid and um and the increase if you take the upk out it's 1.55 billion dollar or four 4.5% increase of of that this is really important because the found Foundation Aid is the largest Aid that we get in our districts it's very important for us what that number is so for again for at
044the state level of that is $1.46 billion dollar or 5.9% increase from last year to this year is in Foundation Aid so all districts they're guaranteed either U they the the formula the foundation Aid has a formula and if that formula isn't advantageous to the district then what you have is this remember the hold harmless from last year that that was something that the uh the governor was saying that might be eliminated it wasn't eliminated and we fell in that category so our you know there's a 2% increase but it's important for us to think about that because if that wasn't uh if that we didn't get that it would impact Us by U uh it's $1.5 million and I think Mr Capia had included that in the memo to the board around the um
045you know the foundation Aid and again she'll go through the through it more specifically uh as as it relates to Garden City and then the other items that I think would be would be interesting for our community and our board would was um you know the governor included remember last year that there was a the Rockefeller Institute they did a study on the foundation Aid and that was there was a lot of that was in the press and it was also there were several webinars around that there were two Rec recommendations that the governor did include in her budget which is the poverty estimate and the free and reduced lunch and there's a formula that they use to calculate that and that um that is part of the calculation of the other AIDS um for
046the state and then the two other items that she has included in the budget is the state mandate on distraction free learning which means the the you know this is around the cell phone um during the day and if this did go into effect it would be starting August of this year okay and the other one is a universal free meals so if you recall right after covid that year where um we had the free meals didn't M matter whe whether you qualified or not but but you had access to those free meals uh at that time but this you know again we have to follow this and see because that would have an impact on on us as well and the funding for that so this gives you a little bit of a snapshot
047about our district district our involvement right now is 3,935 students in District we have about 26 students or 26 students out of District these are are really special needs students that are placed in different uh schools and um 107 upk students which is really nice because we had we started out um with 40 then 36 and now we're up to 107 and hopefully we'll have all of our students enroll in our upk program we're excited to have that and if you recall last year there was a lot of work done with the grant thank you to miss mlin you put a lot of time into that getting the Grant and um we're fortunate to have that and in terms of our employees we have close to 690 full-time employees and then and a total of
048900 employees which are our part-time or and substitute teachers or casual employees and in our schools we have seven school buildings an administration building and a bus garage we're also fortunate we have our own Fleet of uh Transportation our buses and we also have contract buses we have two cafeterias at the two secondary buildings and our lunch and U note program and and you know what's wonderful uh with the our fiscal management the AAA Bond rating we're one of very few districts that had that in New York state we've had that for the past several years and uh in terms of our priorities this is our priorities have remained pretty much the same um and you know every year after year and it's really around you know what's good for our students that we really
049prioritize you know their the whole child their learning their social emotional learning we want to make sure that their well-being their is is at the heart of what we do um our space we look at how we're utilizing our fa facilities and making sure it's effective for Learning and activities we create a lot of those spaces within our buildings um the Future Ready of schools this is an area for with technology we've invested quite a bit and if you recall the last few years especially around cyber security there has been a lot of investment in our in our you know through our budget and then facilities our facilities it's like a home all nine of our buildings you have to take care of it and ensure that it is uh again energy efficient that it's
050safe um you know one of the things I do want to mention we have put a lot in our district year after year around safety and uh right now all of our buildings we have a you know a security or safety personnel in each of our buildings we also have put uh you know lots of cameras internal and external even this summer we did quite a bit of work in that area we have a you know we have now uh um security Personnel that starts at the high school at 4:00 and then you know is to support the high school we're in the process of getting a weekend Personnel so we've invested and we continue to invest invest in areas that are you know some years it's more in one area than the other but
051all of these aspects we look at when we prioritize for the budget this that you see here this is what encompasses our budget from our contracts to our mandates to um you know uh any type of requirements that we may have of our local assessed values so there's a lot and this so imagine when the budget is being developed this has to be kept in mind at all times okay and with that as you're keeping that in mind as we start developing the budget we're looking at we're analyzing what we have done this year and what are we going to carry over into the next year and um and you know this again requires we have meetings upon meetings to look at review our current program see where we can there's some efficiencies we would
052look at electives we would look at enrollment um any new mandates that have come up um we also look at um you know if they're looking at programming for new programs for the following school year we not only look at Staffing but we look at what materials will we need what are the costs for Long Haul so we are constantly going through that process and then the second part of the budget is the revenue which um you know which Dana will go over in a little bit but it's a matter of taking what our expenses are and what we get in terms of Revenue and really balancing the budget and that takes quite a bit of time because you're you're take you're if you're reducing anything you want to make sure you're not reducing anything
053that touches our children so um so this process is I think that till the last minute uh it's it's being worked on over and over again to ensure that we propose a budget that again is fiscally responsible but a balanced budget um I'm going to turn it over to Mr capio oh wait let me go over this before I turn it over to you um so our proposed budget for next year again it's 137 m410 1845 it's a budget to- budget increase of 2.56% or little over 3 .4 million and again our tax cap is within the limit which is at 2.42 per. thank you thank you Dr Sina uh good evening everybody I'm Dana DEC capio assistant superintendent for business and finance uh the rest of the presentation I'm going to talk a little
054bit about the property tax cap and then through the revenue side of the budget so this is just a visual display of our tax cap calculation we talk about that it's an eight-step formula it's a little complicated because so many factors go into it including uh CPI a growth factor which is individualized for each district allowable exclusions and so on but um that is the formula as it's published by the state and we include it in there just to give a view of that uh this is the tax cap Levy of how it imp how it was impacted for Garden City itself so these are the specific items that make up the changes for Garden City and starting at the top of the formula it starts with the current year's tax levy and that is
055Multiplied times a tax-based growth factor for us this year was that 0.0077 that's an amount that's given to us from the nasso county assessor's office it's different for each district so just because your majoring district has one um that's it's just different for each set it talks about this is relative to the brick and mortar uh construction the changes the enhancements that have being done within the District of Garden City so this is what that is supposed to be considered it's an evaluation that's done by the assessor's office and it changes annually we all wait on pins and needles it came on a little bit on the early side this year which was nice as we were working through the cap so once you get to that number the next thing we do is add
056in the um the the last year's pilots and then um we go on to talk and then we take out the prior years's Capital exclusions working our way down we then multiply it times CPI so CPI is capped at 2% so it's the CPI or 2% whichever is lower for us this year because CPI was about 2.9 uh we are at two and that represents a uh 2 .2 million of an increase on the cap and that's really where we see the biggest increase um the next step in the cap after we've done that is we subtract out the current Year's Pilots so what we're talking about there is the difference between the current last year's pilot and this year's pilot that was a deduct because we're projecting our Pilots to go up so it's
057a deduct to the cap and that was net of a negative 313,000 we have four pilots in Garden City some districts have none some have much more than we do we have four our largest one is Lipa it sits at about $4 million so that's the one that does change each year uh there's a lot in law and the confusion with the liop pilot has to do with the fact that the agreement in law with Lipa is that their pilot operates on an annual basis so January to December whereas our County um bills on a fiscal basis and that's why the billing changes each year we had a very big difference this year because of the way of the billing and that's just something we need to work through with it but Lia is the
058gift that keeps giving for us on that end uh the last step is that we do um after that's done we do add in the current Year's uh Capital Levy so that's all of our debt service and now all of our intended Capital expenses it includes Capital expenses on the transportation side as well net of state aid so that's the number um it's it's quite similar to what it was last year you can see it was slightly higher which is a negative to the cap of 77,000 so all of those factors equal the allowable increase of 2.7 million or the 2.42 um here we just show it's it's just a good picture of what CPI has been I think this is probably 10 or 12 years of it um you can see there is that
059even in years where CPI can be as as high as 4.7 or 8% we're still capped at the 2% um but if it's under two it gets um you know the CPI increases for the tax cap formula is at that amount that's where it's kept so this is the 2% tax cap that when it was introduced a lot of people think it's a straight 2% but it's really just one place in the levy calculation that that comes into play so as Dron has started to talk about is that we we spend the majority of our time with all of our conversations and administrators and central office and we meet with everyone and we're going through mostly is the expense budget but at the same time I'm working on the revenue side because the revenue and
060the expense budgets have to match so we have to present a revenue budget uh for budgeting purposes that would match the expenses and that's where comes the um you know the just the going back and forth to that if there's a gap between revenue and expenses we have to work on it at that point so this is a just an overview of where our revenues are this is this is the major categories so you have state aid and local s sources um our largest category is going to be in property taxes because we aren't eligible for a lot of aid but you'll see that as we go through so these become a little bit of an eye chart but I'll I'll walk through them but you can see that these are the same major categories
061and the total equals the 137 m410 that Dr Sin had talked about the increase on the budgets is the 3.4 million or 2.56% um I will talk a little bit about state aid here which is that although we did see an increase in the foundation Aid which is that top formula so our our total Aid is about 10.6 million projected for next year it's down about 168,000 from the current year and I want to point that out because when these things get published um first of all they have uh they have upk that's included in the numbers that are published from the state but those are not accounted for in general fund that's all done out of special Aid fund and it has nothing to do with general fund both the expenses and the revenue
062are budgeted in the funds how we get grants so that's why you would not see that in this conversation so these are the AIDS that come towards general fund a little you know a little more than half of that comes from Foundation Aid and all while we did see the increase in the 2% minimum to the hold harmless we did also see at the same time decreases in building transportation and Bose's Aid specifically tied to that those wealth factors that go into those AIDS so as the district appears more wealthy as compared to the state the state aid factors will be reduced and we saw decreases for building Transportation osies special education those formulas are where they are and not expected to change so you can see that number is relatively flat and the textbook
063computers library and Hardware are tied to a specific dollar amount per student those are numbers driven from your enrollment nothing else and that's why those are also relatively flat so it's really the foundation Aid and those building Transportation osees where we get reimbursement for expenses so those are expense driven AIDS the others are more enrollment driven AIDS so just to make that point so the overall decrease from year to year in in state aid is about 168,000 not to uh the next portion of it is um local sources so this is where you see stuff like um continuing ed fees and other things really the biggest increases here are in health services and tuitions what that represents is that the school district is responsible to provide both health services and special education services to the
064uh private schools that are within our boundaries so you have St Paul's I'm sorry St Joe's St an's and Waldorf that is the money that we charge back to other districts for getting those services so they do come with expenses we um charge back really um we we itemize those and the dollar per dollar is what we charge back to those districts um and that's what's represented there those numbers have been increasing so we did increase those projections um to to follow what we're seeing in the actuals so we have um both health services and tuition services but the tuitions really represent those special Edge Services those fall under uh that other category in there um interest charges for facilities rentals all of those are just in line with what we anticipate getting and we
065are projecting a little bit higher in miscellaneous uh the last items here are on um of our revenues are on some property related taxes uh expenses or projections as well as reserves um you could see there that we are appropriating a little bit more out of our ERS Reserve um we do have to be careful with that over years but we um the budget as it's been operating concern handle that and that's so that um to offset any tax levy implications plus you'll see that there's an interfund transfer for Capital fund that will show up in the fund balance allocation when it comes down to the accounting of it this current school year we received money back um from a a grant project that we did through erate we are we got back about $100,000
066and that's for some technology uh programs or project objects that qualify for E rate so those that are you know WiFi or expansions and that such qualify for that kind of reimbursement we got that back this year and we will be allocating you'll see when we talk about Capital expenditures that same 100,000 will go towards a future technology project so um they they look to do these because they know we'll budget back out for them and they're always working on their um infrastructure um at the bottom those all of those total that I just went to in in detail total the 13741 845 which will follow through on the expense side as we go through there and I am going to hand it back to Dr CA thank you Mr capua so on the ballot
067we will have there will be two proposition one is the School District budget and election of two Board of Education trustees and our calendar today was our first um session next one will be on uh March 11th and that'll focus on all non-instructional administrative and capital components followed by instructional component or part one which will be on March 25th this is where you'll hear from our building principles about the budget uh in terms of the the um the bu at the at the building level and part two will be on April 8th that is the we have special education technology and Athletics on that day along with Staffing we discuss and Then followed by the adoption of the budget April 23rd budget hearing on May 13th and then the budget vote and election on the
06820th that's it thank you okay thank you so much Dr senar and thank you for all of the work Mr Capia that you put into the uh presentation next on the agenda is the question and comment ments portion of the meeting first are there any questions or comments from the board okay thank you um recently we have noticed a number of questions uh that were posed in uh past weeks that were similar to Nature so to make better use of the community's time we will listen to all of the questions and then address them as best as possible next is the citizens questions or comments at this time period designated for public to address the board on action items on the agenda or topics concerning the school district questions or comments are limited um to
069three minutes per person a maximum of 30 minutes will be set aside for public comment this will allow the board to complete the agenda which often has Personnel or time sensitive matters please come up to the microphone and state your name and address if you have any questions or comments hi ston Chapman 7 Willow um not to take away from the budget but I wanted to go back to the music stuff I just wanted to say a few things first of all um my son did the chorus trip with your daughters last year absolutely loved it I think it was 98 girls four boys really loved it he lost his luggage but he didn't complain um so they had a blast I think it taught the kids so much I don't think that anybody should
070think like you know they had a blast they had so much fun but they worked so hard they really really you know wanted to make sure they represent Garden City and do it right and my daughter hopefully for all of our sake will go next year with the band so um I also wanted to say um last week I got to visit SEPTA as a representative of SEPTA and as a parent um Stratford and I got to see the sorry and I got to see the program for the music the integrated musical therapy um I've never seen something so incredible in my life I'm begging you guys to please make sure it's in the budget because friends and music and sea both gave eight weeks each it was Unreal please go visit it it was
071incredible to see the jenet kids with the 812 kids amazing my daughter had the time of her life please go see it please make sure it goes into other schools and St you thank you okay to make more efficient use of meeting time the Board of Education authorized sure come on up good evening everyone Robert hers um I would like to bring up the issue which I've discussed in the past about the oped liability for the district most of this relates to post-employment health care that is provided to employees the current liability is $248 million that's 17 times what our bonded debt is our bonded debt is 14 million at the end of last June and the residents of the village get to vote on the bonded debt whenever there's a debt that's being issued
072however there's no voting for other post-employment benefits um now in my opinion this benefit needs to be contained and I think it would be important at some point for the board to discuss this um I have never heard this topic other than when I bring it up at any of these meetings and um I did find it rather noteworthy that in the latest financial statements it's it's mentioned in the financial highlights section before that it's never been mentioned and these exact amounts are spelled out in there I think it's on page four um now I've mentioned in the past at some of these meetings that some other other public entities have been working to contain this liability for example over a year ago Nassau County changed the vesting requirements for the Civil Service employees union
073that's their largest Union and that's also a rather large Union for the school district it's not governed by the same work unit as Nassau County and they extended the requirement from 10 years um of requirement to work to get Healthcare and retirement to 20 years the village the district's requirement is currently 10 years for every one accept an administrator for an administrator it's five years and you know um so I think that some of those things need to be addressed and also one school district in um suffi County started to restrict benefits to 10 years in retirement so when you're fully vested you only get 10 years of healthcare and retirement instead of for an employee that retires from Garden City if they retire at 55 their life expect is 25 years based on the
074Social Security tables so they work for 10 years and they get 25 years of retirement I think most people would feel that that's an unequal bargain between the school district and the employees um so and if you think about the private sector this benefit was largely eliminated 30 years ago when the accounting rules changed when this benefit needed to be booked on balance sheet this benefit this thing did not change for the public sector until about seven years ago but nothing has really changed yet for most plans and 80% of the population works for private companies they do not work for the public sector so I encourage you to you know work on that I had one other question that relates to this and it has to do with the ongoing health care costs for
075the district they're 16 and a half perent of the budgeted expenditures for the fiscal year that will end this June um and they've grown at at 47% over the last five years that will be through this June which is 8% per year which is a rather unsustainable rate and um there are many options that can be examined to work on this and I don't know if you have an answer to this now but per if you don't you can answer me in the future for the New Year Health costs are estimated to decline by 2% in your budget which is well below the historical Trend rate um and most of the estimates that I've seen for healthc care trend is about 7% a year so um that trend is rather Divergent I don't know the
076last time it's dropped in the district I have not seen it drop in the financial statements that I've looked at thank you thank you okay moving to the consent agenda portion to make more efficient use of meeting time the Board of Education authorizes the use of consent agenda as part of the meeting agenda a consent agenda allows for one motion to approve multiple items excuse me and such items are identified as such on the agenda the president of the board will ask for a motion to approve the consent agenda and will ask the board member members ask if the board members wish to have discussion Andor clarification on specific items contained within the consent agenda following the discussion the board will then vote on the consent agenda Motion in addition a board member May request
077to have an item removed from the consent agenda in order to vote on the motion separately may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes business of the board items I i1 through I2 Personnel matters J1 through J5 business office matters K1 through k14 special and special education matters items L1 through L2 so all in favor I next on the agenda is new business any new business from the board thank you any new business from the administration yes there's one item that we didn't mention in the earlier report and Dr Bowman if you can give because I know we made some uh changes with the testing dates if we can give that information please in reviewing the calendar of our um upcoming 3 to eight assessment dates we realize the window for
078computer-based testing opens on April 7th and and closes on May 16th um in order to provide our students and teachers with the most amount of instructional time we have decided that we are going to um change those dates for the administration that are in the printed calendar for this year so for our grades three through five for the ELA assessments we will be administering on April 29th and 30th um originally they were scheduled for April 9th and 10th so that gives us seven more days of instruction um for grades 6 to 8 we will be moving to May 5th and 6th originally we had those stes um April 7th and 8th so that gives us 11 more days of instructional time for our students and teachers prior to those administrations thank you we'll update our
079um C the digital camera uh calendar on our website thank you is that uh Dr Senna that's the the only way that we're going to notify families or no they will also be receiving a a letter from their buildings perfect perfect thank you so much any other business from the admin wonderful finally announcements future board of education meetings on Tuesday March 11 2025 Board of Education Public Work session and special session will begin at 8:15 pm. here at the high school the next meeting Tuesday March 25th 20124 the Board of Education regular session will take place at 8:15 here at the high school as well may have a motion that uh that being no further business is to come before the board that the meeting be adjourned all mve all in favor