2025-04-10: HPCSD Board Of Education Meeting

001Uh today is April 10th, 2025. Welcome to tonight's Hide Park Central School District Board of Education. I'd like to open tonight's meeting. Uh and I'd also like to get a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purpose of discussing tenures, discipline, suspension, dismissal, or removal of a particular person or persons and privileged information with council. So move Tibbitz. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. We're now in executive session. Okay. Good evening everyone. At this time, I'd like to return to open session. And if we can please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. I don't think we have any

002modifications or tonight, right? All right. 4.3. Can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda? So move tibbitz. Second Margaret. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. 5.1. Upcoming events on Monday, April 14th through Monday, April 21st. Spring recess. No school. All schools. Uh office is closed. 4:18 only. You have to work. Monday, April 21st, uh new board member petitions due by 5:00 pm um on that day. Applications for absentee or early mail vote ballots are accepted starting on the 21st and applications have to be or petitions have to be there at district office 11 Boyce Road in Hyde Park. um and their special hours of for that day will be 8 am to 5:00 pm. And then on Tuesday, April 22nd um is a regular board meeting along with the Boseies

003vote. So that'll be a Tuesday meeting um at district office and open session begins at 7 p.m. Any other events? Okay, moving on to 6.1. Pride. Hello everybody. Um so just to begin with some pride at North Park we had fourth grade students um who hosted uh Ridgefield Playhouse and to see a live theatrical performance of Charlotte's Web after they had read Charlotte's Web. Um, they also received treats from Stu uh Leonards. Also, Principal Delesandro would like to thank the fourth grade team of teachers in the Ridgefield Playhouse for their gen generosity and hospitality, as well as the parents and guardians who chaperon the trip. The students represented North Park and the HBCSD in such a positive way, and she's really beyond proud of them. Um at Netherwood students participated in a career fair with

004their school counselor. Um Miss Binaso coordinated and there was 14 parents and members of the community and that shared their careers with their stu with the students and it was an opportunity for the students to ask questions and get a better understanding of various career opportunities from nursing to engineering to photography and executive chefs. It was a great opportunity for the kids to really um you know get an idea of careers. So here we have um some pictures from Ralph Rar Smith. Um and from Violet Avenue um at Ralph Rar Smith there was a monthly PBIS assembly. There was also third grade students who shared some ideas and talents with the whole school. Um, in the pictures you can see students in Miss uh Mix and Miss Auri and Stevens classes that are wrapping up

005their National Reading Month in the library with a trip to the library cafe. They're exploring um genres by sampling several different genre tables during their library class and offering um like mystery, fantasy, fairy tale retelling, and realistic fiction. So those are just some pictures um in on the bottom from Ralph R. Smith of those students. Ralph R. Smith is also participating in the spring spirit week. And then at Violet Avenue um in the p top pictures you can see some of our own FDR NHS members who participated in um their community project. They visited Miss Miss Silva's second grade class and Miss Kelly's third grade class. And during their visit, they read the giving tree and discussed the significance of being a part of NHS. They also talked about the concepts of kindness, integrity, and

006empathy. So, just to see a little bit of how our community gets involved and how our schools kind of all end up mixing up. Um, also the third grade classes had their red trunk gallery walk this past Wednesday. The students uh have learned so much about Wajaka Mexico. During the gallery walk, they displayed an artifact from their own home culture along with some writing that they did on the artifacts um representing as well as how it was similar and different from the Wajaka culture. There was also VAS fifth grade classes who completed their spring community service project with the help of VAS parents, students, and staff. And fifth graders were o able to stuff over 300 Easter goodie bags and over 300 plastic eggs with toys and candies for the recipants of the Sparrow's Nest

007501c uh charity organization. The organization supports families facing cancer diagnosis and the VAS fifth grade would like to thank everyone for their support. Also at Violet Avenue, Miss Ellis's ENL students finished their March writing challenge. Those that read for March Madness and completed their writing challenge received a coupon for fairy uh for a free Dairy Queen ice cream. So, thank you to our High Park Dairy Queen for donating the coupons. Um, classroom teachers were also given one to hand out to one of their March Madness readers as well. So, that's just what's happening at the elementary schools right now at Havlin. I myself did not get to see the play, but I know a couple of my friends did. Um, but I hear that it was a great show. Um, from the moment that the

008curtain curtain rose, students lit up the stage with their acting, dancing, and singing, and each moment meant more delightful than the last. Um, Principal Shaw would like to um just express how there was so much passion and hard work and end to every detail. And a huge shout out to the amazing stage crew and the seamless behind the scenes magic that made everything run so beautifully. And also a great thank to the wonderful parents and families. Thank you for your unwavering support of the theater program. Your encouragement helps create experiences for the students that will cherish that they will cherish forever. And of course, the standing ovation for Miss Bodec and the visionary drama club director and Miss Miss Gordana whose musical direction brought everything to life. Your dedication and creativity and love for the

009arts inspires all. So, it's a great way to see how our staff and our teachers and everybody in um is here to support the kids in, you know, in every event that they host. And then finally, at FDR, um Miss Mr. Rueella would like to give a shout out to the senior class for hosting a great Mr. President show. As you all know, I mentioned um Mr. president last time and um just to see, you know, how great our class really was able to pull off that show in such a short time. And now our auditorium is is a little is gone. But um and then he would also like to give a shout out to the junior class for a fantastic junior prom. And that's all for Pride. Oh, and then here's some pictures

010from prom if you missed it. And that's all. Thank you. Thanks, Liz. I think who's next? Jessica. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Um, we're excited to once again celebrate our students and employee members of our community at large who exemplify our attributes of our portrait of a learner and portrait of an employee which include being a confident learner, responsible citizen, critical thinker, thinker, adaptable innovator, effective commu and effective communicator. Tonight we are honoring two individuals and I asked principal Ruela to share some details. Thank you very much. So we're going to start off just with a portrait of our again our high park learner and I'm going to ask uh Tavoris Pill, can you come on up? So Tavoris Pearl Rosier exhibits several attributes of our portrait of a learner. He currently serves as

011the vice president of the triam music honor society and has demonstrated outstanding leadership as the section leader for the cello section throughout all four years of his high school career. Tavororus has played a key role in several notable performances including performing the national anthem at our opening day events and at FDR basketball games. He has also spread holiday cheer by playing Christmas carols in the lobby before winter break and has been a dedicated performer at the Black History Month celebration for the past two years. He is a beacon of positivity, consistently arriving each day with a smile and often lightening the atmosphere with a humorous joke. His leadership and collabor collaborative spirit are evident in everything he does. His passion for music is infectious, inspiring those around him through his performances. Whether helping others within

012this his section or guiding his peers through challenging music passages, D'voris approaches each situation with encouragement and enthusiasm. always eager to take on new challenges. He is just as excited to play with fellow musicians for the joy of of it as he is to excel in more formal settings. [Applause] And now we're going to move on to our portrait of a High Park employee. Mr. Curtio, can you join us? So, Mr. Kurtio is an exceptional individual that goes above and beyond for his students and the FDR community. He consistently demonstrates the ability to effectively communicate not only by calling home, but by listening to the needs of his students and supporting in their supporting them in their academic adventure. He embodies the characteristics of a responsible citizen through his honesty and his integrity. He seeks

013to instill confidence in his students and provide them with the critical thinking and confidence that they need to be responsible citizens themselves. Mr. Kurtio consistently shows the FDR community that he is an asset not only through his academic instruction but as a moral compass for those that enter the doors each and every day. And and I could just say knowing Mr. Curtio for some time. He's just an exceptional individual. And I also have to congratulate Mrs. Kurtio as well. Come in the front and take a picture. Is it a little bit more? Good. Thank you. Do we have any more pride? All right. So, I just wanted to add just a couple things. Um, first of all, I was very impressed with the world language posters. I thought that that was something that was very

014innovative and I thought the students got a lot out of it. If you haven't seen those, they're on the website. Um, the junior prom was excellent. It was wellrun. I can I speak as a parent uh for our daughter and so forth. So, she had a great time. She hasn't she really hasn't shut up about it. She said how much fun she's had and that was fantastic. And of course, it's probably going to be mentioned later, but this is National Assistant Principles Week. So, we wanted to thank our assistant principles. Um, you see in the house tonight is Mr. Cowan and Miss Moy. Um, it's a 247 job. We have a lot of assistant principles in the district besides those two, but they're exemplary. Um, this year I've been filling in as an assistant principal

015after I retired and so forth. And, uh, I I it gave me a new reflection on how involved the job is. It's 24/7 and it's drop anything you're doing and just make sure you're helping students. So again, uh thank you and and congratulations on National Assistant Principles Week. Could I add something? I was waiting to hear about it, but since Liz does Pride and she had something pretty monumental happen this week, I wanted to talk about I don't know if anybody else was going to do it, but um I had the privilege of going to the seal of biiteracy presentations earlier in the week. Um it was just amazing and Liz presented for the first time in my life. If I sat in a room and listened to students and I had no idea what

016they were saying because it was another language that I don't speak. It was so impressive that um there was a panel of judges and each FDR student who was pursuing this honor uh did a presentation all in another language. The panel then asked them questions. The judges asked questions in that language and the students had to respond and I kept trying to catch little words here and there and figure out what they were saying and it it was it was amazing. I mean most of us struggle with one language and the fact that you were able to um master two languages is so impressive. Um your presentation was beautiful. It was emotional. I could understand the feelings of it. Um, so it was just really great and I uh congratulations to you and to all

017the other seniors who presented. Um, and Monica Contreres did a great job organizing it. It just was it was really special. So, thank you and congratulations Liz. You did a great job. Okay, any more pride? Okay, moving on to 7.1 uh our superintendent report. So, good evening everyone. Uh I actually uh was going to speak to the uh assistant principal national assistant principal week. Um I'll continue to do that. Uh Mr. Mr. Spence uh start beat me to it. Um so I have a couple of words that I want to share uh because this is such a critical role in our district. Uh we're sending a big dose of appreciation for this week to celebrate our amazing assistant principles. It's uh National Assistant Principal Week and we want to take a moment to recognize Mrs.

018Moy, uh Mr. Cowan, Mrs. Weise, and also Mr. Paul Faziola who's in uh one of our elementary schools at North Park. Uh so much of their fantastic work happens behind the scenes, making sure our daily operations run smooth to offer invaluable support to our principles, our students, our staff. uh they are truly essential in contributing to the overall uh success of our schools and in fostering a positive and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. And so I want to congratulate those individuals and also would be remiss to uh not include our high or middle school principles uh Mrs. Una Miller and Mrs. Walton Henry as well. So congratulations uh to you all. You guys all deserve recognition for the work you guys do each and every day. Uh in terms of academic um supports uh

019or academic achievements, excuse me, I do want to recognize um our top 20 uh or excuse me, our top 20 uh class of 2025 students here uh at FDR. Um so I do want to apologize. uh they're typically here joining us uh during this event and so unfortunately there was some miscommunication but we are going to take a moment to recognize each of the individuals and we're also going to be inviting them to receive their recognition and their flowers that they've earned uh at our subsequent uh board meeting. So I do want to recognize the following students. Um a as you know these students are the top 20 which means they have achieved some remarkable uh milestones. Um we're talking um about acade academic achievement across the board. So, I want to start off with

020Julian Pritchard, uh, Jason Yang, Thomas Hurley, Isabella Breen, Tony Hoe, Colton Palmir, Tegan Riata, Chase Figuora, uh, Hannah Senagle, Jake Floren, Jesse Sosi, Amir Sah, uh, Ashlin Wilk, uh, Ireland Fitzgerald, Tyler Nolan, Alexander Jakar, Alice Chen, Jaylen Neves, Maya Malcarnney, and Elijah Hokabin Leon. Uh so congratulations to them all. Let's give them a round of applause. And uh that concludes uh my items for this evening. Thank you. Okay, moving on to our FDR update with Mr. Rubella. So, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to first start by saying it's an honor and privilege to serve as the principal of FDR High School. Thank you to the board, Dr. Roman, Miss Turner, Mrs. Lawson, and Miss Steinberg, along with all of the district employees that work so hard to allow our buildings to open on

021a daily basis and support everything we do here at FDR day in and day out. Uh, with your commitment and with your dedication, it allows us to come in and do what we do each day here. I have we've already had recognition, but I I have to do it myself. I have to say thank you to our assistant principles here at FDR High School, Mr. Cowan, Miss Moy, and Miss Weiss. Um, for certain, I wouldn't be able to operate without their support. Um, they are just a great group of individuals that that truly care about each and every uh individual, student, staff member in this building. Um, just just all around. Again, I wouldn't be able to do what they uh anything without them really. Uh, also I have to give a huge shout out

022to our PTSA. We have an outstanding PTSA that supports our students and our staff. Uh, I can't say enough about how much they do. You'll hear a little bit more about some things that our PTSA is organizing in the upcoming uh, month or two. Um, you know, so I'll leave that a little bit for later. So, I'd like to start off by acknowledging two programs that we have here at FDR. Uh, the first program that you'll hear about is new to us. uh we ran a pilot program last year and uh this year we have entered year one of implementation and our second program has been around for several years and has proven to be extremely valuable uh to our students and staff. So with that being said, I would like to invite Maya Villa,

023one of the founders of AIMH High here at FDR, Immran KMA, and then we also have Francis Seyama, Shade James, and Gable Bennett also with them along with uh Mr. Sherman Browns and Miss Myra Fantazzy. So I'll ask Imran and Maya come on up guys. Hello everyone. Good evening. My name is Maya Villa. Um I'm one of the founders of AIMH High. AIMH High is a program um for um college readiness um to help students better their education and it's also um a leadership program to help kids with their um leadership skills. Um, Aim High started because there was a um, Big Brothers club last year and um, my friends and I were like, why isn't there one for the girls? Um, we brought that idea to Mr. Ruelella and he introduced us to Mr.

024Sherman Brown. Um, and then that's how it started and I don't know, AIMH High means a lot to me. Um, now Iron's going to speak. Um he's more of like the leader of like the boy side. Um I don't know now you're going to hear him speak. Thank you. Aim high. Good evening board members and respected educators. My name is Arman Kumba and I'm in 10th grade. AIM High is a community where it brings together alumni, alumni, uh, industry professionals and staff to help educate students and bring them together in a more inclusive environment. AMH High to me is all about unity. As soon as I came here, I didn't know what to expect. It's been a positive experience for me where I was able to grow on a deeper level and I could see

025that my leadership skills has grown with the time that I've been with them. Something I've learned is that if I have a goal that I have to fight for it. So I want to become an aerospace engineer. And I spoke that to Sherman Brown. He said, "What what have I done so far to achieve that goal?" I told him, "So far, nothing." He told me he he gave me steps that I should take to reach my goal. Right now, I've reached out to around 10 college students in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering, and I've learned a lot of valuable lessons. Aim High teaches men to Aim High teaches men to have ambitions, inspirations, and motivations that their attitudes and actions can transform our nation. Aim high builds competence, confidence, and character. Allows allowing us to

026walk with integrity and return with honor. Showing us how to how to be engaged, educated, and empowered pe people. making sure people know we live life by distinction, moving forward together with nobody left behind. Thank you. So, we just want to thank High Park for allowing AIM High to be in this setting and these young people that you see here are the spark that's going to ignite the fire. We're looking forward to having great results, indulging ourselves greater with the school community, and as you see them, know that they will forever aim high. Aim high. Aim high. Aim high. All [Applause] right. Thank you very much. So again, I just like to thank all of our members of of AIM High. Uh outstanding job and we really truly do just expect great things from the

027program. um you know this year it's already done great things but we're we're just expecting a lot out of the program and and we're excited to have it here and we're excited for it to continue uh to be a part of FDR. Um at this time I would like to welcome uh Miranda Lopez and Anthony Neesat to the podium to speak about our AVID program. Come on up guys. Hello everyone. My name is Miranda Lopez and my name is Anthony Neshawat. And we've both we've both been AVIDS since sixth grade and now we will both also be graduating early from high school. To me, the AVID program has granted students the opportunity to reach for higher goals and also hopefully accomplish them in the future with continuous encouragement and also developing skills with the help

028of our teachers and counselor as well as the our principal. Um, AVID has been very useful throughout my high school year as well as my middle school year. um granting me the opportunity to reach for higher goals. Um the AVID program is a class that prepares students for college. You focus on college readiness, studying skills, organization, and it offers help with your classes. You do a lot of college related skills that will help you out in the future like note-taking and leadership skills. We also do public speaking a lot of um activities um like presentations talking about what college we want to go to. Um so public speaking has also been a great part like a huge part of AVID. All right. Um AVID has supported me and other students this year by keeping us

029organized, staying on time, keeping college and keeping me college ready. AVID has put me in a good spot in terms of college by helping me apply to colleges, writing my college essay, and applying to scholarships. I also found visiting colleges has helped me a lot. And being able to see college campuses, what it's like, how much certain classes matter, and what it feels like to be on a college campus campus has changed my perspective a lot over the years. From the six years I've been in AVID, we have learned how to take good college level notes to help us understand the topics in our classes more in depth. We also have learned how to execute TRFs which also helps us understand topics in which we are confused in um making the subject more um efficient

030to um tackle. Um, public speaking like like I said before has been a big part of AVID, making students get um get ready for the real world and also hopefully use these skills for their future careers. So, the skills that I've learned um they apply to me for like everyday use in school and out of school. Once again, AVID teaches us like note-taking skills, organization, leadership, communication, and how to set an example for others. Overall, I've seen a lot of improvement over the last few years, and I'd like to say AVID played a huge role in my growth as a student and as a person. I have come to use these useful skills in my honors, AP, and college level courses, making my work, projects, and activities easier to complete more diligently. Um, AVID has

031been a big part of my life because of how much it has helped me. Um, supported me. Um, I definitely gained a lot of support from this pro program, especially when it came to my decision to want to graduate early. Um, to further go off of that, um, Avid teachers have, you know, they're very supportive. They help you a lot um with college related things. So, you'll focus you they help you focus on um what you're doing in class and in college. And to go off of what Mendy said, uh TRFs uh it's an assignment you do in class in a group. And it's where you you and your group, you find something that you're having uh trouble with in class. And you and your group work together to help you solve the problem without

032directly answering it. And in it helps you with like critical thinking skills, communication, and I think it was it helped me a lot during my time in AVID. And I think that's helped me develop more academically. And I think that it was very useful. Do you guys have any questions for us? Thank you. I I I don't have a question, but I I do have a comment for you and you all that spoke. I I work at a major corporation um with professionals, and I a lot of people I work with can't do what you just did. get up in a room and do that. So, you did a great job. Um, and it is does prepare you for the future. So, so good job with you guys. When I spoke to him early, I

033told it was going to be a tough act to follow and and I said I I probably should have went first. Um, but I also have to give a shout out to Miss Jarvis and also Mr. Pelky, too, as our part of our avid elective teachers. and and I think they were a little too humble to say it, but our average cohort this year um has a 100% acceptance rate into college and they earned merit scholarships uh between$ 1.5 and $2 million among the class. So just exceptional all around. So great job. So with that being said, unfortunately everybody, you're stuck with me for the rest of uh the presentation. Um so we're going to move on to graduation rates. So um just to speak a little bit about this slide, what we have here

034is um eight years of graduation rates which you can see have all been above 80% uh for again for the past eight years here at FDR High School. Um you can see last year's graduation rate was 81%. Now, to give you a little bit of perspective, New York State's graduation rate as a whole was uh on average 86%. Within Duchess County, it was an average of 86%. Uh it ranged though from 55% to up to 95% again within Duchess County. Um so, just to give you a little sense of of what that 81 means, uh little bit of a dip from last year. I'll talk about that in a second. Give you the reasoning behind that. Um, I would like to note though that our 5-year graduation rate. So, you know, we focus, this is

035our four-year graduation rate. Um, and that's predominantly what the state does look at. But for us here at FDR, we still focus on our 5year and our six-year. You know, even if we don't make it within that four years, we move on and we say, "Okay, we're going to get them in August. We're going to get them in uh January and the following June." Uh, last year or the 5-year graduation rate was at 89%. So typically you see a 1% 2% increase. Um you know we were upwards of 89 so 3% increase from last year. Um so the question of why did it dip a little bit. So when you think about uh our cohort and how they calculate it, uh 10 students essentially impacted is roughly 4%. Overall and you know last year we

036had three students earn skills and achievement commencement credentials. Um so those are students that are not on track when they enter high school to receive a region's diploma. Um they receive this credential and they do impact your graduation rate. The last time that that happened in terms of three individuals, roughly 1% was 200 and um well six years ago. Um we had two students that transferred into High Park um the past two years that never entered the building. They they registered, we created schedules, we started to work with them, but they never they never made it through the doors. You know, we continued to try and work with them and work with them, but we never got them into the building. Um, in addition, we had two students that enrolled from outside of the district

037uh that were seniors but were not on track to graduate. So, when they enrolled, they were behind grade level also. And then lastly, we had three students that um re-entered from out of district placements that were also behind grade level within this cohort. So, that's 10 students right there and that's roughly about 4% that impacts the graduation rate. Um but again those are the things that we deal with on a yearly basis and those are the things that we navigate uh day in and day out. So moving on uh this slide talks about what makes FDR a family. I apologize a little bit of the formatting is is off on that. Um, but it's broken into three columns and it's clubs and activities, staff guidance and PTSA supports and events and then fine and performing

038arts, athletics, students and staff recognition. Um, by far if there's one thing that I take away, it's these pictures up here that that that that's what makes FDR a great place to be, great place to work, great place to attend high school. Um starting in our our left column just clubs and organizations events that we have. So we have 20 clubs. All right. Um and those 20 clubs have just under 500 students that they touch with. That's the roster. Okay. So a lot of opportunities for kids to get involved and and nearly 500 students in FDR take advantage of being part of those clubs. What you see pictured up there is our pep rally and our homecoming dance that's organized by um our student government. You know, they they work through everything. They organize it,

039they run it. Um and they do a phenomenal job at it. Uh talk a little bit about some of our other clubs that we have. Sources of strength, you know, just around 60 students involved in that. They run campaigns all year just to make people feel welcomed here at FDR. September they focused on suicide prevention. Um they organized a game day and healthy activities. In December they did a campaign called uh snowing strength. Uh they brought in a photo booth. Uh they were able to write down what their strengths were, post them um around the building or in the main lobby. Uh they created a video about kids not reaching that breaking point with respect to mental health struggles and substance abuse. Um just yesterday they had a mindful walk uh where students gathered and

040they were able to walk the track after school and just focus on healthy activities. Uh next month coming up we have uh chalk the walk. So sources of strength students are going to go out and they're going to write positive messages on the sidewalks as students will read over a couple weeks as they they come into the building. Uh other great organizations multicultural club step team they work together jointly for our annual Black History Month uh celebration. uh varsity club um you know represented by Miss Goodman and our PTSA and student government. They work together to organize a formal dress uh wear event other clubs academic uh worldquest uh FDR live sad ski club all things that come together to just make students feel uh at home and involved. Moving to our middle column we

041have uh staff guidance and PTSA supports. So that first picture is um we we organized or we miss uh our um music program organized a veterans day assembly and we were able to invite veterans uh in from the community, family members that were veterans. We were able to celebrate veterans within our own staff um where our band orchestra and our choir got together and were able to perform for them and uh Mr. Voy Voytech uh former service member was able to get up and just speak a little bit about what's it mean to be a veteran. Um algebra 2 honors classes visited all the elementary schools and read fourth and fifth grade books. Uh our steam fair organized by Miss Nisel, that's a district-wide event, uh happens right in this room. We had 56 student

042volunteers from FDR come and support younger kids coming in and getting them involved in science. College Application Week. Um you see pictured up in the middle there, uh four students applying towards college application week. We had 203 students participate in that week and over 90 students were accepted into DCC instantaneously. They they set up camp in the library. Our counselors set up camp in the library. They invite students in over the course of the week. They go through filling out college applications and a lot of times there is instant admissions that happen right there. So, a great event that they organized. They also organized the college information night, FASA. We had a college fair with over 20 colleges come directly into this room the day before Thanksgiving break. They set up and we allow our

043students to come down, walk around the room, talk with college reps, uh, and have conversations with them. And then we also had our countywide skilled trades fair. Um, you know, we're able to do that again this year. Again, another great event that brings the community into FDR. Something that we like and we hope to continue to do. trying to make uh this building and FDR the the the hub of of that event. Uh we had 50 vendors for that. So again, just a great component. PTSA, that's our last flyer up there and I'm going to put a plug in for our PTSA members. If you're not a member, always always think about joining. Um they partnered with the Winter Circle Project, right? And the Winter Circle Project, we've they've also created a club, a new

044automotive club. um they're coming together and they're organizing uh a car show for May 17th. Going to be happening right here at FDR. Again, it's going to be another great event. We encourage everybody to come out and just see what that program's been doing. Um see what the cars look like and and again, we're inviting other cars obviously in for that evening as well. Moving over to the right, we have fine and performing arts. Um first, what we have in person, all artwork displayed from Mr. Brazy's class. Our students come together. It's just something we love to bring it down and highlight it uh for them. So, you know, we get to do that every year and it's something we're going to continue to do because you can see we have exceptional artists here at

045FDR. Um our first picture that we have up there is our fall drama highlighting that and also we have our spring musical. So, fall drama was Puffs. 44 students involved in that production. Our spring musical Big Fish, 87 students involved in that production. Uh we had 21 students attend the New York State Theater Education Association conference. 14 music students selected to perform at area all state. Jason Yang was selected to represent FDR at the New York at the NISMA allstate conference. We had four gold key awards, two silver key scholastic winners. And then moving on to our scholar uh athlete teams. So to be a scholar athlete team, you have to have 75% of the team roster with a GPA higher than 90%. So, who' we have? We had boys and girls cross country, boys

046and girls varsity soccer, boys and girls swim, boys golf, girls tennis, girls volleyball, girls and boys bowling, boys and girls winter track, girls basketball. And then we're going to jump back because I never get to highlight the spring sports. Last year's spring sports 2024, we had uh girls golf, baseball, softball, and girls and boys track, and also girls lacrosse. So again, um when you take our fine and performing arts program, you take our um athletic program, you take all of our clubs and activities, we're trying to target and and make FDR a community that hits and gives opportunities for every student that walks through the door. Um another shout out to our girls 4x4. So Marina Scott, Leila Rubin, Kendall Moer, Casey Delesandro, uh earned medals at the Nike Indoor Nationals in New York City.

047That's one of the middle pictures up there. Um, also some other athletes that I just I have to mention them. Natalyia Caneros Tahada, Luke Dhakin, Troy Spear, Marina Scott, Ike Rothman, all recognized for excellence in their respective sports. We had Moses Sakitawa was named defensive player uh of the year and appointed to the all state football team. So again, just all exceptional students that do a fantastic job. some of our staff recognition that we have. I'd like to acknowledge Miss Moore was named uh New York State Master Counselor. That's one of 52 in the state. We had Miss Vicolo and Miss Kurtio receive collaboration uh collaborators of excellence award um that was presented by the New York State English Council. So, not only do are our students doing great things, but our staff's doing great

048things as well. And then lastly up here on our our last picture is the 2024 College Board National Recognition. So we have Adam Birwood, Alice Chen, Thomas Hurley, Roman Petron, Tagen Riata, and Jason Yang all being recognized at the College Board level. Um, and I had already spoken before about our AVID program. So um, again, all things that are just fantastic that's happening here at FDR. Next we have regions examination passing rates. So, probably the most exciting slide going to not the most exciting slide. Um, 2017 and 2019. So, we're going to start on the left and we'll make our way across the the chart up here. Um, what can you see about those examination scores? So, we had steady and consistent improvement uh with all students and Jed students for those years. it skips

049from 2019 to 2021 because um regent examinations were cancelled or you were able to earn exemptions um and that was per New York State and that was because of of our shutdown. Um two things I also want to note. You'll see a two-year math and a two-year science up there as well. So this is a cohort data for those examinations. So they specifically speak to algebra and living environment. So that takes into consideration some students that take that examination that are in eighth grade, but also some students that take that examination that are in 10th grade as well. So we model it as a a cohort model just to keep it consistent with our other three, global US history and ELA. And again, all five of these are required for uh New York State graduation.

050Um next just to explain a little bit you have in 2021 2022 and then 22 and 23 you have two numbers in each one of those boxes. Those are without appeals and then with appeals. So the without appeals that is your base score. These are 65% or higher on the examinations. And then with appeals, you had again per New York State regulations, students that earned um a passing score in the class and then scored between a 50 and a 64. So that's why you'll see two numbers in those columns. What I want to specifically highlight though is again last year's exams. So I first start off just talking about global and ELA. you see passing rates of 82% for all students, 85 for gened students, 82% for ELA, and 85 for gen or 93 for

051gened students. So again, on track, even a little higher than what we were seeing um years prior even with the um you know, without the appeals. So a comparable number that's just straight off of the 65% passing rate. Um some areas that we have to focus on US history. There's an asterk next to US history because that was a new examination last year. Um years prior we was only had one administration of the old examination in 2122 that school year that examination was canceled completely by the state. So no one had an opportunity to take that exam. come back the following year, they take now what would be the older examination and last year was the first administration statewide and you'll see the 73 and 76%. So what are we doing to address that and

052get those numbers up? Um our directors, you know, they have an item analysis of each one of those examinations. They're bringing them into their director's meetings. They're meeting with the staff. the staff's able to go through and excuse me and look and analyze each one of the the questions, see where their strengths are, where their areas of improvement need to be, and then refine and refocus their instruction to target uh what that examination is looking for through the state. two other areas where we want to see improvement over the next uh couple of years. Uh you know, we have living environment that's at 64% and we have um algebra that's at 40%. So what are we doing to address those right now? So Miss Nisel um is working with the math department. She's brought in

053a program called Magma Math. That's a a a program that gives students instantaneous feedback. And so they're working and they're integrating that into the curriculum. Um they've been doing that over the course of this year. Um so again, more instructional support not only for the students instantaneously, but instructional support for the staff as well so they could work more efficiently. Uh another component that uh myself, Miss Turner, Mr. Cowan, and Miss Nisel looked at was an Einstein program. This was a virtual learning program that we were able to bring in um starting in the beginning of the year focused on regions prep targeting um you know the students from last year. We got them into that program right away. We wanted to focus on working with a smaller cohort uh upfront and we've been providing

054them support through the Einstein program over the course of the year and that's going to continue into June. some additional things that we did and and I think one of the most important things is we were able to increase the number of regions prep uh uh programs and and offerings after school. So typically in a year we would re uh offer six um regions prep sessions for each one of these exams and other exams. For these five exams right now we've upped that to 12 sessions. Um, it's been going on for, you know, a little over a month right now. And I can tell tell you that our in-person algebra one regions prep moving forward, we're looking at a bigger room because we have a lot of kids going to that getting uh support and

055looking to improve uh their scores overall. Our next slide, uh, three areas of opportunity. So what you see on this slide, it talks about mastery levels, it talks about attendance and it talks about uh discipline or number of suspensions uh all again geared at FDR. So mastery, when you look at this, you break it down, you'll see the two columns. Algebra one, it starts off with and it runs through ELA and that's a mastery level of five. So what is mastery? Per New York State, it's an 85 uh% or higher. And then you have the one right below it, mastery level four. Again, same thing, 85% or higher. It's just that living environment, earth science, chemistry, and physics. Uh those exams are still working off of older exams, and they just haven't caught up with

056the level five and and actually living environment and earth science will be getting caught up this year because there's new administrations coming up. So, essentially, what do we want to see? We want to focus on improving our mastery level. When we focus on improving our mastery level, we're going to see an improvement on the slide prior. You you focus and target and get students to perform at 85% or higher, you're hitting those key instructional programs that you need and that's going to bring the whole entire program up. That's my belief. That's why focusing at mastery is is a very important thing for me. And you can see our ranges 3% to 37%. Um that 3% was US history. So again something that we had a graduate or we had a um a passing rate of

057you know mid70s in that exam for for all students but only 3% at mastery. So that's an area that every one of our US history teachers is looking at and saying they they they want improvement in that area and when they hit that it's going to bring that score up uh drastically I believe. Uh and then a range of 12 to 29% for living environment, earth science, chemistry, and physics. Moving down to daily attendance, something that we've talked about probably at every single board meeting. We've talked about it at admin meetings. We consistently speak about it at our um you know, FDR admin meetings, debriefs that we have weekly. Miss Weiss has been working uh predominantly with attendance. And what you can see on the slide up here, last year it runs through 0 to

0584%, 5 to 9%, and then 10%. So 10% is your chronically absent students. That's missing 10% of the school year or more, 18 days. Where were we last year? At the end of the year, we're at 28%. 28.8. All right. So that's a red flag for us. That's not an area that we want to be in. So we said, we have to target this. We have to focus on it. and it became a district goal but also a building goal that our BLT was looking at. So I'll speak a little bit more about what we've been doing with attendance. I'll just give you some of the numbers you know right now. Um where we're at based off of this year like within two weeks ago there is has been an improvement. Obviously, we always want

059to push and see more improvement, but right now we're looking at 52% of our students thus far um between zero and 4% fif um about roughly 23 24% of our students are between 5 and 9%. So that's the trending uh area. Uh and then 24% is uh coronically absent. So now is there an ability to reduce that number of 24%? Yes, there is. We still have some time left. Um, we've made some we we've looked at the data continuously. We've had to make some adjustments to make sure that our data is accurate. Um, and we also, um, you know, are just continuing to have meetings and meetings and I'm getting into actually the goals that we looked at before. So, I'm going to pause and I'll save that for a little bit. Um, but where

060we're at is roughly 24% for chronic absenteem thus far this year. And again, I'm hoping we finish out the year either below that or at that as our peak. Lastly, we have um a decrease in the number of suspensions. So, we've had a decrease from last year, but we still want to see a decrease moving forward. So, 3.3% of our students account for nearly 70% of our suspensions, and that's in school suspension and out of school suspension. So, what's that mean? It's 38 students that we are working with and the APS are working it with myself, the counselors, social workers, school psychologists are working with um really to support them to find programs to find connections for them in this building um to really improve that social emotional well-being for those students. What I take

061away from that that last mark is 3.3% 38 students 69% of our suspensions when you take the numbers as a total 91.7% of our students haven't had an issue. You know that that doesn't reach that level. So so nearly 92% of our students walk through the doors every single day and just have no problem. They're model citizens. they handle their business. They they come here to learn. They come here to promote positivity across the board. Um, and obviously we want to see that number go up. But again, I just have to highlight 92% of our students day in and day out are are doing great things. So goal implementation. So this goal right here, it's uh goal one for us. It's under priority area one. plan and analyze scheduling options for collaboration between educators and

062create expectations for successful collaboration. So, this is one of the three goals that our BLT identified to work on for this year. Um, this speaks to it was last year's goal as well. Uh, this came from the continuous uh school improvement framework that we've been working on for a few years now. All of our goals have come from that. Um, that work started two years ago with Dr. Dr. Burnernhard and Dr. G. And what did FDR identify? It identified that we don't have any collaboration time in the district uh within FDR. So, we needed to focus on collaboration time. So, last year we met with Dr. Reic and Dr. Reic really explained to us, walked our BLT through it, walked our staff through it, and said, "If you're going to want to implement collaboration time,

063you really have to take a look at the um master schedule." It was a joint effort from BLT and the uh overall staff, the whole staff here at FDR and we wanted to shift and move towards a community lunch. So what that model would look like would be an eight period day but after period 4 we would freeze. Everybody would have lunch together. After lunch we would shift back into um again period 5 through period 8. You're going to get a lot more than just collaboration time out of that model. Um, I I think it's going to help in terms of discipline. It's going to help in terms of instructional practice. Um, you know, it's just talking about the concept of free play and and what research is saying, what kids need and stuff like

064that. It's an opportunity for students to interact with one another um as a whole. Um, so it it it you get a lot out of it. I had a lofty goal and I said, "All right, I'm definitely we want to implement this not this year, but the following year." What I quickly learned is when you move into something like this, it it impacts just a lot more than the classroom. So, what we had to do this year is we've been working with food services, we've been working with facilities and operations, we've been working with um its impact on on the budget, identifying, okay, where would we need support, if we would need new staff for this, um what would actually happen when we actually put all of this on paper and look at it. And

065quickly we realized, okay, this is a daunting task that we truly really have to take a a deeper dive into. Um, and really the the big impact really is with food service and just the the structure of our kitchen right now. And that's what we identified. And so that's what we're working through. Um, also what the BLT did because that was a lot of that work was done uh among the administrators. So what our BLT did to keep them moving forward with this goal was once we establish uh collaborative times what's that collaboration look like? So our BLT was charged with setting a set of a standard of norms not only for um teachers but for the administrators as well. We wanted to have everything mapped out so when we move in this direction it

066can be a smooth transition. Um so where are we at right now? We just had um meetings, you know, uh I sat down with Dr. Roman food services and we had discussions about that. Sat down with facilities and said, "Okay, what's this look like? What would next steps be like? How do we try and um move in this direction? We do know it's going to take some time, but we're not going to lose sight of this goal." And so, what's going to come next is just additional conversations with food services, additional conversations with the business department to say, "Okay, how do we make this work?" Our next goal, this focuses on uh attendance. So, you know, what do we want to do? We, you saw the numbers before, okay, we saw uh a decrease. We

067went from 28% to roughly 24% in terms of chronically absent. So, where did we start? We started last year with analyzing our policy, analyzing other policies around the county. And we wanted to shift into what's the practice at FDR. So getting a set of of again norms and establishing a system for um communication across the board with attendance respectively. So we started out really focusing on what's communication look like and how are we communicating when are we communicating um who's communicating and again Miss Weiss has been leading the charge with that. She's been doing an exceptional job. Um, in addition, she's holding weekly attendance meetings. Um, the idea there is to look at analyze our attendance weekly, identify if students come off of our chronic absenteeism list, if they're they're students that are trending towards

068it, and then work with the counselors, work with the support staff that we have to implement plans for those students to try and get them um so they're not trending and moving towards um uh chronic absenteeism. So again, the big part of the beginning of this year was about communication. If we had an assembly, you heard about attendance. Parent squares went out district-wide about attendance. A lot of communication from staff, a lot of communication through our attendance office. Um, what did we learn? Okay, we were it was improving slightly, but we said, okay, we have to shift. We have to pivot a little bit. So, we wanted to pivot more towards a positive approach. And we wanted to start looking at how do we highlight students, you know, that 0 to 4% that are at

06995% attendance and above. How do we highlight them? How do we celebrate them? Um, you know, North Park has been doing a fantastic job of that. So, Miss Weiss went down there, spoke to Mr. Aleandro and said, "Okay, what are you doing?" Walked around, said, "What's going on?" Um, brought that back to us. We talked about it. We said, "How do we shift and model this at a high school setting? How can we target 9 through 12 in this model? Um, do we have all the details ironed out and is it perfect yet? No, it's not. We're still working towards it. Um, this is going to be again another goal that that you're going to continue to see at FDR. It's kind of like steering that cruise ship. It's going to take us a while.

070Um, but we're going to keep working towards it. who's been leading the charge again through that positive message has been our PBIS uh group and you know so they're going in the classrooms they're highlighting uh classrooms that do have um exceptional attendance um you know Miss Weiss is highlighting students with exceptional attendance but we're really trying to figure out how do we celebrate everybody without saying okay we're going to do a pizza party for 600 kids. Um, so that's that's where we're at right now because it's 600 that are are, you know, here day in and day out. And so how do we celebrate them really is kind of the the what we're wrapping our brains around. Next we have um our third goal, interpret and analyze data utilizing the continuous school improvement framework to

071inform decision- making with respect to instructional practices. So this is our anal an analysis and reflection goal. Um this uses our EFF model. um you know it it focuses in on what we're doing on those SPL days um and then how does that connecting to our faculty meetings how's it connecting to uh again BLT kind of like the what I would say the the the backbone of all right this is what we're doing but how do we know what we're doing is working um this is kind of that framework that that we use so some of the things that we've done and we've brought back to BLT to look at is first uh EAB attendance framework Um, that was during our first SPL day. So, we brought all of our staff in together. It was

072really all about, okay, who do we have in our building student wise, the staff going through the entire roster and saying, who do we have strong relationships with? Who do we know? And there was a a framework that we followed and what what did we find? you know, seniors, good portion of the seniors, a lot of our staff absolutely had them in class, had positive relationships with them, can talk to them. Saw, you know, a little less with juniors, little less with sophomores. Not atypical to see. Um, with our freshmen, it was so early in the year, large list of freshmen that we just didn't know yet. But what it provided us was a starting point to say, "These are the groups of students that we have to focus on." And by focusing on them,

073we were hoping to build positive relationships and drawing a connection um you know, a community so to speak here in the building. Next, we went and we used our our true framework and in December and we looked at our perceptual data. We went through we analyzed it. We looked at what the community thought, the staff thought um and what the students thought. um you know we found common trends uh over the last two years within that day and that analysis. Um our next two days our days in February and April we looked at instructional practices that we had had professional development on before. So we looked at wicker which is through our AVID program writing inquiry collaboration organization and reading. We revisited that. We revisited what AI looks like in the classroom. Um, you know,

074um, Miss Moy brought in having a silent, uh, uh, conversation. I got that right, silent conversation. Um, having a silent conversation and what that would look like in the classroom. Um, QFTs. Um, so spent a day just going over all of that stuff and pulling that PD that we had in the past back to the forefront uh, for us and just revitalizing it. And then our last day, we looked at our social emotional learning program. we learned about second step. Second step is something that we have, you know, K8 when we went to um implement um Second Step and it was chosen. They didn't have a high school model. Um they do have a high school model now. We've looked at that high school model and we look to implement that next year. So we

075spent some time working with the website, getting uh staff signed up on an experimental trial so they can navigate the website, looking at the lesson plans, and just getting used to the language uh around second step. Um, within this goal, we pivoted a little because of the legislation, conversations around cell phones and what's that look like at New York State. Um, you know, so nothing official yet. You know, we're all kind of guessing a little bit. You know, we're suspecting, okay, we're looking at maybe potentially a cell phone ban. So, what does that look like? So the BLT, we read the the book Anxious Generation um by Jonathan Hat. Uh fantastic book, just eye opening. So we educated ourselves on that and we started looking at uh other policies uh within other districts and what

076they look like. Um we're having discussions around that to hope that we can bring that back to um our all admin meetings and have discussions so we can have a plan put together in the event that it does come down and we're required to to uh move forward with some form of of cell phone ban so to speak. Lastly, um it's just a review of goal one, two, and three. And what I want to highlight is what is actually highlighted on the screen. So for goal one, we're going to continue to meet with food services and the business office and facilities to say, "Okay, how are we moving forward with this goal?" When we look at goal two, school culture and climate, um we want to still identify ways to celebrate positive attendance. And then

077we want to continue to analyze and review our data. And then lastly, three, we're going to still continue to talk about goals um for next year, what that looks like. um how do we modify these goals to to bring them forward and move them to the next level and then also uh finish out our book study, finish out reviewing every model that we can for that again so we can educate ourselves um and I can bring that information back to our all admin team. With that being said, any questions? I a question on the the math score that it dropped so dramatically. Maybe I missed it, but did did was there a reason for the drop so dramatically? So we were across the state and the nation we're seeing drops in math scores across the

078board, but within New York State um the drop we believe was just the it was the change in the examination. So the average dropped drastically across the state. Um yeah, there's no excuse. It shouldn't be where it is. you know, that's something that again we're looking to improve. And how did that compare to like state averages? 60% was the state average. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. And that's why we're implementing we're looking at a couple of different things. We obviously we quickly said, "All right, what we're doing is not working. We got to look at something else. We got to implement new things to to get those scores up." Um, I have a question. Mhm. So for the attendance, have we seen improvement? Like if if you look at it, have we seen improvement? Yeah. So

079right now we're we're at a 4% improvement rate from last year. Um I don't want to say that's where we'll be at the end because last year's rate is based off of 180 days. This rate's based off of aboutund I want to say 17 I think is when I extracted the numbers. Maybe 100 a little higher maybe. Um so you know again we have seen improvement uh a little bit 4% at this point. Yeah cuz I remember we had like different strategies of working towards getting like attendance higher like at one point in the beginning of the year we tried more of like when people came in but I'm just curious if we're focusing like directly on people who are more missing class and multiple days rather than a couple minutes. Like I know like

080some people like run really late especially seniors like and they miss a couple class like class time and minutes because say like a class is all the way in the back of the of the school. So I'm just curious like if we're focusing a little bit more on people who are like not really here like multiple days rather than like those couple minutes that you know you wake up late or something. Absolutely. And we have to focus on all of it because if by focusing on all of it it's a cultural shift. Okay. Um, so what are we doing? Yes, we're absolutely focusing on the students that that would be chronically absent. Majority of the students that are walking through the door a few minutes late are not chronically absent, but they got to be

081on time. So, we are going to focus on that. What are we doing with students that are chronically absent? We're we're really trying to tailor it to individual plans for those students. Um, you know, sometimes it's just, you know, phone conversations with the family to say, "What's happening? What's going on? How can we support you?" Sometimes it's extensive as a home visit. Okay. Um, what I would say, I didn't mention it before, um, the communication piece is is pivotal in this. And, you know, when you look at chronic absenteeism, it's a focus on excess uh, unexcused absences and excused absences. Um so you know excused absences per board policy it's what we can grant you know of our excused of our chronically absent students again that 24% 70 families so nearly 6% of that have

082communicated with us and said these are the reasons why we're going to be out um you know but we still have to count it as absent because they're not in the building even though it's excused. Thank you. And I also do think that like the positive reinforcement does work because I know a lot of like our like classmates are like, "Oh, we get candy today cuz we actually have attendance." So, I do think that does work. Um, but yeah, no, I would I would definitely even myself, I would think of something else like to encourage people more to come cuz the candy does work even for like older kids. Thank you. So, thank you. Any other questions? Um, I appre I I'm looking at slide four. That's the one that I'm I'm still struggling with

083the graduation rates. And I had a lot of questions and you answered a lot of them. So, thank you. Um, you know, and you said I think you said like 92% of our of the kids in this building are coming to school and doing what they need to do, which I love that we're focusing on what they're doing, but we're still at 81%. And I I mean I'm stating the obvious, but I what and it's clear that you're looking at all the data and the reasons. I'm worried about that 19% over time. You explained like 10 of the students. What do you see? What do we do? I mean, we're still 81%. I was well, I was happy that we were 86 last the year before and to go down that far is a little

084discouraging looking at all the efforts that are going in. So, are you seeing you said you contact families, you get information. Are you seeing I I mean, it's probably hard to to pinpoint, but I just How do we get that 81 moving in the opposite direction? So, I would say it goes it goes to the the triangle on the right, right, to like an MTSS component. So, when we were talking about it's multiple factors. So, what do we do each year? Um, you know, we look at the number of students again that didn't graduate and it's one thing to look at the statistics on and a and a slide or or you know that get reported, but we have to go through and we have to look at the individual names and we look at

085each individual student and we say what happened and and where did we fall short? Some of the components again were we struggled with attendance and we weren't getting them in and and the plans that we were putting in place just weren't working and you know we kept shifting it but we just lost them over time. Some of them um you know get attendance some of them last year it did boil down to either one or two examinations that they didn't um pass so we're focusing on getting them to pass those examinations. They're in the fiveyear. Yes, they're in the five year. Their numbers are in the fiveyear. And and then, you know, lastly, well, not lastly, it's it's more than that, but I'd say three of the big ones is again then we look at

086credits and how we're scheduling them and saying, okay, how are we either trying to get them back on track after their freshman year or what else can we do to make sure that they're at their cohort level with credits? Um and and again I spoke about the the our goal number one with the community lunch. It actually that's a big priority of it because a lot of our students actually elect not to take a lunch. And so with having that one lunch in there, we truly have a full eight period day to schedule students. Um, and so our hope is that when we shift towards that, we're able to recoup students the following year. And then not just in summer school. We want to recoup as much as possible in summer school, but also try

087and get that extra credit back uh through that extra period that we have during the day. See, now I would think that with the extra period because the students I know that that opt not to have a lunch, it's because they want to take an elect there. It doesn't fit in their schedule. And if you have a student who is short on credits, does that community lunch take away a period for an opportunity? No, it adds a period because it does. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm not understand. I can't when a student comes in and even if they're behind and they say, "Well, I I want to take a lunch." We're not going to tell them, "No, you can't take a lunch." You know, you have to have you we're going to put a lunch in

088their schedule. So now we're operating on a seven period day. Okay? So when we move to this model, we'd be operating on a true eight period day. Okay? And then you couple that again with if it's sophomore uh junior year and then senior year, you're adding three total credits that you could possibly regain over time. Okay. All right. Theoretically, so I know it's kind of early. You mentioned summer school. Are there any kind of tentative plans for summer school about what we're doing this summer? Yeah. Um we are working um you know towards a summer school program. Um you know looking to hire uh staff for that. Um we have projections right now. It's still a little early to to put anything in stone, but yeah, we definitely are looking at what we can do.

089Back to graduation rates for a minute. Um, I think I think I've said it in in this group before that I know we have to look at the four-year graduation rate. That's sort of the the standard thing to do, but but I I'm really most interested in the ultimate graduation rate. And I know that we keep track of them in years five and six. I also know that there's no specific sort of GED program in the high school, but there is at at Duchess. And maybe this is asking a lot, but I wonder do we ever follow students past that sixy year and give them some sort of support and encouragement? You know, I'm thinking about there the I think you said it was like 90 something% after six years. The Yeah, we're we were

090at 89% after five years last year. So after the six years is is definitely and there and there are certain fraction of students for whom life circumstances just make it, you know, very very difficult. It's not it's not them, it's not you, it's it's life circumstances. And so that's why I I constantly think about the post sixyear and I don't know that if it's even fair to to ask to to keep a track of them. That's what I'm thinking. What I would say is have we had students depending upon age, you know, but um you know over the course of the 15 years that I've been in district, I can think of yeah, one or two students that have been here. Um you know, it's again it's not common. Um, but it is something that

091no matter what, we're going to try and really figure out what's next for them. And, and you know, I will be honest, sometimes we do look at and we do have conversations with families and say, "Okay, maybe an HSSE is what's best for you right now given your circumstances." knowing that that is putting you on a better platform possibly in a couple of years to go back and earn you know through night classes or through CCC or something like that. Um again it goes back to looking at each individual student and you know that's something that again the the all three assistant principles and their and the counselors do um a lot. It's it's sometimes we have to make decisions to say okay what's best for the student in the time might not be you

092know add it might not increase our numbers on on the screen but it's what's best for the the student best for the family and we'll discuss it and we'll make those decisions and we'll say okay let's let's move forward with this because knowing that it's going to put them on the right path. Welcome. Um, I just want to chime in and uh just address a little bit of that question because Mike is being modest, but him and his team have really been working and I want to commend them at finding individual interventions and being proactive with students who are struggling like you're talking about. So through attendance we've come up with some unique ways of supporting students through our home tutoring and just recently Mike and I worked with our Boseies on the virtual learning

093academy for students who are really struggling that we know they are academically able to achieve these goals but are having life impacting um circumstances that are preventing them from coming into school. So they are really working on being proactive and thinking out of the box so we can increase those numbers in that four-year goal. So thanks team. Thank you. All right. Anything else? Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moving on to 7.3, our budget update with Dr. Roman and Miss Steinberg. Good evening uh members of the board uh our community. So today we're going to be once again going over the budget uh process. As we began our previous presentations, we rooted and underpin our budget um drive our drivers uh with our strategic plan and these are the areas that we had uh

094highlighted in previous presentations. Uh currently um we are one meeting away from having the the final recommendation to the board and the board adopting uh the budget for the 2526 school year. Once that's completed, uh we will be preparing for the May 20th uh vote uh at Havlin Middle School from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Uh currently we are still uh waiting for finalized budget. There have been a number of extensions um at the legislative level uh for the budget. Um so we are waiting um anxiously to find out what those those numbers are. So uh just today the legislature extended the budget again through April 15th which is um just one week before we would ask the board to adopt the property tax report card which is also the way of the board adopting

095the budget. So at this point I would say it's less likely every day that there'll be a budget passed before uh we have to pass our budget. So, so what happens with that? Like, so we have in our bud, this has happened to us in in other years, too. Uh, we have in our budget the governor's proposal uh for state aid. Um, we if we were to receive more state aid in the legislaturator's uh budget, then we would actually have more revenues than we're accounting for, and it would be reflected in fund balance at the end of next year. and vice versa too. If there was a less state aid um in the u actual legislated budget, then we would have uh less fund balance than we would otherwise at the end of June. So,

096we use fund balance to adjust any differences in Okay. Yeah. Just to reiterate the key drivers, uh we're with this particular budget, we're preserving our programs and services for students and enhancing our programs, continuing to look at efficiencies and how to be more effective in the work that we're doing uh in the budget proposal. How do we ensure that this is financially stable and the least impact um on our taxpayers? And so that leads us to this next slide which um I will highlight that our tax levy uh increase from the previous year uh was at 3.61%. And this um the uh subsequent um tax levy increase is uh 2.43. I'll let uh Linda speak to some of the uh specifics on this slide. Sure. Thank you. So the 2.43% is actually the maximum allowable

097tax levy. That's the amount that we can uh increase the levy by. Uh the reason we show both years on this slide is that the beginning part the first step in the tax cap calculation is the prior year's tax levy. So if you look at the first column for 2425 um near the bottom you'll see the allowable tax levy of 70.8 million. Uh that was last year's maximum amount. Well for the current year, excuse me. We did go to the maximum this year. So, our tax levy starting point for 2526 calculation is the same amount. You'll see that in the first line at the top of the 2526 column. Um, to calculate the actual allowable increase, there are a number of factors that go into the calculation. The first one shown here is our taxbased

098growth factor. Uh, this is a factor that's unique for every school district. It's dependent. It's actually reflective of the change in real property tax or real properties in this school district. It doesn't reflect change in assessments but actually changes in property. So as new properties are added to our tax roles or if there are um renovate or adjustments to the actual uh property itself, it may be uh reflected here. Um we also get to uh or we should uh reduce the tax levy by the amount of the uh pilots that we expect to receive in the next year. Um you'll notice on this chart that there is quite a change between uh last year and this year's calculation. That's because we now have two new pilots. Those are payments in lie of taxes that started

099uh this year. The IDA has agreements with their standard pilot agreements with the Belloffield Hotel um which is across the street from the CIA and also the Saki Brewery which is in the old um supermarket in High Park. So those two pilots started this year um and that cause that's the cause for the increase. Uh we can't also collect taxes on those properties. So we also can't increase our tax levy uh amount by that by for those properties and that's why there's adjustment here. And then every year we do get uh an exclusion for the capital portion of our tax levy. Um quite a few years ago the board agreed to uh set the capital tax levy about $1.8 million every year. You'll see that at the bottom of the 2526 column. Um last year

100it was a little bit higher because we did have uh capital levies that came to us through or capital exclusions that came to us through the Bosey's budget. So that's uh how we get to our increase uh for next year allowable tax levy increase of 1.7 million or 2.43%. You want me to talk? Yeah. So uh this slide here actually compares the maximum allowable tax cap of 2.43% to what we're actually proposing in the budget. Um after going through all of the information, uh we realized that we do have some fund balance that we could utilize to balance the budget. Um and so the decision was to uh make a recommendation that our tax levy be set below the tax cap at 2%. So if we do set the tax levy at just 2% um

101the difference between the maximum tax levy and the amount that we would actually levy is $37,697. Um in order to have a balanced budget, we would increase the amount of the fund balance appropriation from uh the 2.9 million to 3.2 million. So we feel very strongly that we can achieve the key drivers that we had um indicated earlier which is preserving enhancing our programs and still keeping in mind the impact on our taxpayers. That's why we are actually coming below the tax cap um or excuse me the maxim maximum allowable tax levy um below the 2.43 43 and uh moving forward with a 2% um for the 2526 school year. This just highlights the past five years. We've gone all the way to the tax cap uh each and every year uh other than the

1022019 2020 school year which we also came below uh the tax cap uh during during that particular year. All right. So uh this is the third uh presentation to the board where the uh budget h the proposed budget hasn't changed. So I won't spend a lot of time on the next two slides. But overall our uh preliminary uh proposed budget would be $125.9 million. That's a $4.9 million increase or 4.13%. Um you could notice on the top line that the tax increase would be 2% because uh we would make the recommendation that we're below the tax uh levy increase. Um also shown here are the other revenues which really includes interest income uh charges to other school districts and also the Bosei surplus refund that we have. Um our state aid is broken out into

103uh the state aid and the building aid and transportation aid for bus purchases. I broke those two amounts out this year just because the building aid and transportation aid on bus purchases is uh related to the capital tax levy and I wanted to show how that appeared in our budget. And again the uh expenditure budget is the same as the revenues. We are required to have a balanced budget and that's what that means. The expenses have to match the revenues. Um yep thank you. So uh here we have the categories that we normally show the budget um the the budget expenses in the total again the 125.9 million which is a 4.13% increase. So, uh, the board had requested some additional information around the, uh, capital outlay. The capital outlay, um, project, uh, allows New

104York State allows us to go out each year with a $100,000, uh, project. Um in this particular um recommendation, what we're um looking to do is have a comprehensive audit of our entire uh school system in terms of the security cameras. Uh so having an outside uh perspective on where are are sort of uh deficiencies if any um using the data to then design where we need to increase the number of cameras. Uh where where do we need to perhaps reallocate or or um move cameras in certain locations to ensure that all of our schools are are are covered. Um then there will be a phase implementation and then lastly is ongoing monitoring and making sure that the system is being leveraged uh to ensure that we're keeping all of our schools safe. So this

105project would be encompassing of of this um of this project uh here for the uh 25 26 school year capital um outlay project. Thank you. Uh the budget um must be shown in the budget components listed here. This is a New York state rule. Uh so we have the budget broken down into the program, administrative and capital portions. Um typically our admin portion of the budget um is around 10%. Um and the program is usually uh just right where it is the 75 to 76%. uh capital the capital portion of the budget actually uh does vary. Uh capital includes capital projects the c uh the facilities costs and also of those capital outlay projects. Um because we're showing the percentage in the aggregate it the capital uh variances actually do affect how the admin and

106the program uh percentages come through. But again we are required to show the uh budget broken down as this. After the board adopts the budget, we release the line by line budget. And the line by line budget shows which each account code which uh area it belongs to if it's program admin or capital. Um so, uh new for us this year, we actually have two bus propositions. They would be bus uh proposition two and proposition three. Um everything we just talked about was the general fund budget. That's proposition one. So, we do have these two bus propositions. We're asking the voters to vote on both of them. Um this is not a situation where uh one uh we're it would be either or. Uh if both propositions pass, we would buy all of the buses

107listed here. Um if just one proposition passed, we would buy the buses listed in that proposition. So proposition two are the buses that were recommended for replacement by our transportation department. We do have a bus replacement plan that is monitored by our head mechanic and also the transportation supervisor. Um in order for smooth operations, um it is time to trade in seven buses. Uh the total cost of those buses uh that are both are gasoline or diesel powered is the $975,75. Uh Hide Park currently receives 58.4% state aid on bus purchases. So after receiving state 8, the total cost would be $45,631. The proposition three is for electric powered buses. Um when we had our vote in November for the 17 EV buses, uh we were planning to use uh 17 EPA grants and nine

108NAERTA grants to uh fund the majority of that project. Uh the EPA grants aren't available to us right now, but the nine uh NAERTA grants are still um available to the school district. Uh we also learned a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago now that the state is uh providing state aid to school districts that use uh state grants on the total gross cost of the buses. So if we were to purchase these nine buses, the gross cost is 4.5 million. uh the total of the grants uh from NAERTA is 2.3 million. Our bus sales company would actually subtract that from the price that we would pay them. They would be the recipient of the grant and the district would have to upfront $2.2 million. We would plan to do that with

109capital reserve funds that we already have. We would not ask to borrow for that. Um, after we uh buy those buses, we would file for state aid and uh we would receive state aid like I said uh just a little while ago on the full amount, the 4 a.5 million at the 58.4%. Um, as you can see in the calculation, um, that would actually generate aid more than what uh our our actual upfront cost would be. Of course, the state isn't going to pay us to buy buses, so they would uh aid us at the $2.2 million amount. And after receiving the state aid and the grants, the cost for these nine buses would be nothing to the taxpayers. These were just the uh items that were presented by each of our administrators. And this

110uh details the requests, what's being funded uh through the general fund, what's being funded through the stronger connections grant. And um this is just a available so that um anyone is able to to reference the items that were presented. Um if you recall, we went through a whole um process to prioritize and and evaluate each of the items. And so this outlines um those items. And then in addition to that, toward the bottom half of this chart, you have items that would normally go uh for uh for next year's budget. However, we do have some equipment um funds that we will be purchasing these items uh through uh this year's current budget. All right. Thank you. So, uh the next board of ed meeting is on a Tuesday night. It's April 22nd. Uh the reason

111you're meeting on Tuesday is that's the night that all of the school districts in Duchess County will vote on the Bosey's budget. Um we also have the uh adoption of the property tax report card um on that agenda. That's basically when the board is accepting the superintendent's recommendation for the budget and after that the budget will be set. Um we are required to hold a budget hearing after the board adopts the budget and that's scheduled for May 8th. Um that would be at district office before the regular board meeting at 6 pm. And the school budget vote is scheduled for May 20th uh at Havlin Middle School from 6:00 to 8 p 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. I do want to share that we have uh one budget video that we just uh featured on

112our um on our Facebook and also uh website. It's just budget 101. Uh the next one is currently being um recorded which will show the taxpayers and our community where the funds are being invested. And then the last one will be just outlining how um our community can can get engaged um in the uh budget process uh from how to locate the documents on the website to the voting to early voting. All that information will be provided on the third video. Um, I'd like to I'd like to mention too that we did release a a survey on the budget. It's a a very short survey. There's a link on the website. Uh, we also sent out a Parit and Square notification and posted it on Facebook. Um, we will have flower flyers around the district

113with a QR code. We're really encouraging our community, all of our staff and our families to participate in the survey. um it'll just give us an idea of how people would like to receive communication about the budget and what their feelings are about the uh budget information that we've presented so far. So, thank you. Just a question on communications like I know in the past we have a newsletter and the postcard that kind of had a little bit of a stumble I think last year maybe. Are we all on track with getting that out on time this year? We have a meeting. Say that again. the uh mailing of the newsletter. Yes. So, um last year we we were okay last year uh with the mailing. I think it was it was a couple of

114years ago. Was it the year I don't remember now, but I know we had something where there was a problem with the printing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We I I was informed about that. So, um we we are uh ahead of schedule. Um currently we have um Mr. Wart and his team. We have a plan. We have a backup plan. we have some contingencies uh in the event that we need to have a backup to the the printing uh printing process. Uh but currently we're working with uh Capital Region Bose or excuse me um Duchess Boseies uh to develop the the uh budget newsletter and that that's going to be forthcoming very soon. Okay. Thanks. Any other uh questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving on to 8.1. Um, can I get a

115motion to enter public participation, please? So, move Tibbitz. Second, Christine. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Okay. The board reminds speakers that the public comment portion of our meeting is only one item on a lengthy agenda. This segment of public participation will be limited to an overall time of 21 minutes. We ask that each speaker be concise and that remarks be limited to three minutes. We expect individuals participating in public comment to speak respectfully and courteously, modeling proper civility and decorum for our students. And when you come up, please provide your name and address when you reach the podium. Would anyone like to address the board? Okay, we will now close public participation. 9.1 board subcommittee reports. Um, let's see here. We have professional development, WPBA, students, smartphones and social media. Margaret, Katie,

116Ed, and Christine signed up. Did that happen yet or anyone get give a summary of that? Um, yeah. So, we um it was a webinar um really informative. They talked um I thought it was going to be more about cell phones and they did talk about cell phones but it was a lot about technology in classrooms um the use of technology the effect on students um and you know everybody's questioning as was discussed before um what we'll do if the state comes through with a cell phone ban. Um but a lot of it there was a lot more to it. a lot of the social impact for for students, how um how you support students and and that kind of thing. So, it was I thought it was good. Christine, do you want to add

117anything? Um yeah, and there was another piece that my takeaway was if you get rid of the cell phones, you still have these devices in front of every kid all day, every day. Um, so there was more talk about it was just technology in general and how it's impacting, you know, our kids now. Okay. Okay. All right. The next one was empowering education through technology. Did you go to that one, Ed? So I attended that with Jessica Turner. Uh, so we were there at Mount St. Mary's uh college, which is always nice to go back to. you know, they kind of highlighted um the importance of course of uh thinking outside the box in in regard to cyber security um and um just planning and understanding now that technology affects every single department and if

118you make a decision about technology, how it can have ramifications um on your district and then legal ramifications. I don't know if Jessica, you know, if there's anything else you want to add to that. Good job. All right. Then some committees that met were DT. Yes. Um Katie was at that as well. Um we actually what was interesting was um we watched a video write to read and was that the name of it? Yeah. Okay. and um a lot of conversations about barriers um for students and what do I want to add to that cross-section there were it's the first time we've met in a while the evening because there's instructional DT doing work during the day um so this was kind of a coming together getting input from stakeholders there were community members students

119um that all watched the movie and then we we we looked at um where we wanted to go from here based on what we were seeing in the video. Okay. And then uh Duchess County School Board Association. So Duchess County School Boards Association met on April 3rd. We had a presentation on the arts and education co-serve from Boseies from Maria DeWalt which was very enriching telling us about some of the services um offered through our local Boseies. We talked about student board reps and so forth. I think I shared a little bit about this in the email and what districts are doing. There are some districts in Dutch County who don't have student board reps which to me was kind of a little surprising. We've always been blessed with excellent student board reps, obviously like

120Elizabeth and so forth. It was kind of interesting in talking about student board reps that some districts like Dover, they actually have a number of board reps and they rotate. So when they have their board meetings at their elementary school or their middle school, they actually have reps from those levels. So that was kind of a little different. I hadn't heard about that. So it was interesting. Um we have a couple different meetings that are coming up that I think I shared with the board. On April 23rd, there's a a meeting with Senator Mayor of the 37th uh district. Uh he's the head of the ED committee. He's going to be meeting down in Rockland County. It's a free event. They're going to be talking about things like um cell phone policies, ebuses, tax caps,

121school funding, and um the new extreme heating um regulations and so forth. That's on April 23rd. Um, another thing that's coming up is just announced was shared by Gully was on April 21st. Um, uh, Lieutenant Governor Delgado is going to be speaking at Pipsy High School. So, I will share the link for registering if you're interested in that. So, a lot of things going on locally. Um, and just county school boards had a lively discussion as always. Thank you. Thanks. Any other committee reports? Um the special education committee met. Um the major discussion was just about the um making sure that kids are in the least restrictive environment and uh really the focus on strengthening the um ICT classroom and co-eing for our students. Okay. any other mentioned that um I met with four potential

122student board reps for next year. Um two males, two females. They're very enthusiastic. So, we'll I just kind of shared what the responsibilities are and um we'll see once they have their election here. Um but it was interesting. It was nice to meet you. When is the election? No, soon. In May. Okay. All right. Anything else? All right. Moving on to board discussion, including um consent agenda items. So, the the board member um the board has three seats open um this year. Uh petitions are available on the website or you can get those at district office and they are due back to district office um on April 25th April 21st by 5 uh p.m. Even though there's no school, the office is open. Even though there's no school, the office will be open for that.

123Any uh consent agenda discussion? All right. So, moving on to 10.1. Can I get a motion to accept tonight's mo uh consent agenda? Sorry. So, moved. Christine, second it. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Moving on to 11.1 capital bid award correction AMD construction corp 2022 phase 3B for Hyde Park Netherwood North Park and district office. So move to second Christine. Any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Capital project change order phase 2A multiple vendors. Can I get a motion? So move. Tibbitz. Got a second. Second. Christine. Any discussion? I do I do have a question on on this. So in the table there's change order allowance remaining and it starts at 18,000 you know and it subtracts but then halfway through it stops. Does that mean we're out of

124change order allowance or I it's I don't understand the the table here how we you know we're going down and then those two columns just are blank. Sorry to put you on the spot, but well, um, actually, uh, Tom and Matt and and Gregory are all here. They came in case there were questions about the change orders. I'm not sure if they understand the question. I could show you on the chart. I need him at the podium. [Music] Can you come to a microphone? Can Can you guys go to the Sorry. So that people at home can hear. There's there's still cont Sorry. There's still contract allowances left. Uh $8,89126. Uh but it's split between the general contractor and the electrical contractor. Uh the other allowance uh for the mechanical had been used and for

125the abatement contractor. So, not all dollars are used and we're processing the last couple of items uh in the next board meeting you'll see and we'll use all those allowance dollars or get a deduct change order for anything unused. So, so does that just suggest this table that we're looking at is not correct? No, no, no, it's correct. Well, how come the number I didn't create I didn't create that. So, I can't the number the number just dis Well, that's what I'm wondering if it's a mistake in the table. I I would have I would have to check what the what with the clerical person that does this, but the chart would show the contract allowance or the remaining allowance for each contractor. Okay? Because normally what we see is it's not like a running

126total like the running total of what's left as a change order is either positive or negative and it comes back. So, so we still have allowance left per contract. A little bit left. Okay. You definitely nothing to worry about, right? We're still Well, we're going to get we're going to go over it in the end. Uh there going to be a deduct on some contracts and an ads in addition to the contracts. Y um so we will we'll go over but we'll be well within our contingency. Okay. So we have our our project we have our allowances built into the project. That's what I'm wondering if we're already at contingency. No no no. Okay. Nope. We won't we won't exceed the contingency. No. Okay. All right. Any other discussion on this? Thank you. Um all

127right those in favor I opposed motion carried. Moving on to 11.3 um capital project change orders for phase three 2B just 2B um 35.7 million for Havlin and Ralph R. Can I get a motion in a second? Sure. So move to this. Second, Christine. All right. Any discussion on this one? I don't have any. All right. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Moving on to 12.1. Um, can I get a motion to enter our second public participation? So moved, Christine. And a second. Seconded. All right. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Same rules apply, but this one is limited to 12 minutes total. Would anyone like to address the board? All right. Well, we'll close public participation. Um, any other matters deemed necessary by the board? Okay. We don't need a

128second executive session. So, can I get a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting? So, moved. Second, Christine. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.