001e e e good evening everyone uh welcome to tonight's side Park Central School District Board of Education meeting today is March 13 2025 I'd like to call today's uh meeting to order and at this time can I get a motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing tenure discipline suspension dismissal or removal of a particular person or persons so move tibits second Margaret all those in favor I opposed motion carried we're now on Executive session e e e all right good evening everyone i' like to return to uh Open Session 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 all
002right I don't think we have any there's no no uh amendments right to the agenda all right can I get a motion to adopt tonight's agenda so moved Margaret second Carl maret yeah Margaret car all those in favor I opposed motion carried 5.1 upcoming events Friday March 14th no school superintendent conference day all schools Wednesday March 19th hide Park Education Foundation meeting HDE Park Elementary 6: p.m. Friday March 21st K through 12 early release half day parent teacher conferences all schools and a time is check with the school Tuesday March 25th College information night at FDR at 6m and then our next board meeting is March 27th at district office at 7M any other events anyone okay moving on to uh 6.1 Pride so starting off with Netherwood they would like to thank the their
003transportation department specifically um their bus drivers for participating and supporting their PBIS initiative they also had two students from bus 35 earned rewards last last week for being responsible and safe while riding the bus so that's another one at North Park they're very excited to share that the building has another real world example of kindness and generosity as well as gratitude Laura Collins uh one of the kindergarten teachers is spe heading a campaign to collect 99 birthday cards from our staff and the classes for a local Renown High Park veterans birthday so that's happening at uh North Park at Ralph for Smith they have their um monthly PB assembly last week uh where students celebrated with several Awards and recognitions that related to their story Behavior expectations attendance and achievement they also had several fourth
004grade students showcase talents and U Mr darling will also like to thank their PTA for organizing the book fair and book and a books and bingo events for students and their families at Violet Avenue the students celebrated heart month in February with the kids heart challenge in their physical education classes students learned heart healthy habits practice jump rope tricks help people with special Hearts also um Violet Avenue students were True Heart Heroes and they raised over $4,000 for the American Heart Association um Miss Ellis's fourth grade uh attended extended day students have been traveling to trash island and learning about how garbage and specifically plastic can affect the ocean so far they made boat logs to document their Journey uh they also did an experiment experiment to see how trash collects and can form Islands
005they created a human ocean web and are now building Nets to catch and clear some of the garbage um Joanna Lopez and um Adriana Atkins two fifth graders at Violet Avenue also participated in the all count chorus concert on Saturday March 8th um Adriana Atkins another fifth graders fifth grade student was also named musician of the month for the district so um VI Avenue wants to congratulate all students at havlin uh there was a hosted grade level assemblies from box out bullying this past Tuesday where all students were able to participate the goal of the assemblies was to have students identify causes of bullying and provide them with the skills and understanding to stand up for stand up to bullying when they see it or experience it the assembly worked on strengthening their social like
006social emotional programming further at havin at FDR Mr Rella would like to give a big shout out to all the performers in Big Fish and everyone in the production that help put on the great four shows um so we're really really proud of that also upcoming next week is the senior Mr President show March 21st at I believe 6:00 p.m. um and that's all we want to continue with the so if you take a look at some of the slides here uh we want to commend uh Mrs Coburn's class for their outstanding speech presentations uh they were giving persuasive uh speeches uh a couple of weeks ago and they did an amazing job standing on that stage facing a large group and so uh we had an opportunity to participate in that so kudos to
007Mrs Coburn and and the rest of the the teachers that were involved as well as our students we also want to recognize uh March is music in our schools month uh we want to recognize all of the amazing students that participated in the musical big fish if you didn't get a chance to see it you missed out on an amazing performance the students performed very well the casting crew the vocals I mean it it was amazing and so um the these are some of the pictures that highlighted some of the moments um of that particular um play we also want to recognize um our district Orchestra as well as um we have uh Elementary uh students that participated in all County uh musicians along with their teachers and uh our district was well represented and
008so we appreciate all of the musical Geniuses that we have in our district that gets to uh showcase their amazing talents we also want to recognize uh Melissa Rosario Melissa Lawson uh for coordinating the second uh Saturday Academy through our community schools efforts uh we had an amazing turnout uh we want to continue to encourage more and more families to come out um but students had an opportunity to read um some amazing books participated in Hands-On activities as well as create their own puppets and so these are just some of the pictures there our next Saturday Academy is going to be held April 5th and the topic is going to be stem so if you have a chance uh we welcome you to participate that's going to be at North Park uh Elementary Community Schools
009um our community schools uh effort continued with a Unity Fest uh it was fun for the family um once again we had a nice turnout um celebrating the diversity that we have in our district um as we aim to continue to bring our fam staff students together um to uh ensure that they they feel uh included and have a sense of belonging in our district and so we had some talents we had some amazing foods from different cultures and countries and some some amazing dances at this this time I'm going to pass it over to our Deputy superintendent Jessica Turner good evening um we have the honor again to present one of our fabulous monthly events where we celebrate our portrait of a learner and portrait of a employee so principal Wilbur is is here
010to help me honor the student and employee who's been selected this month that exemplify the characteristics in our seal thank you so for our student uh portrait of a learner uh I have recognized Aiden Hazard Aiden Hazard consistently exemplifies what it means to be a responsible and respectful student Aiden if you want to come up you can join us ready whether it's putting forth his best effort on an assignment working to reach a goal or simply being a reliable and supportive classmate he consistently demonstrates a strong sense of responsibility and positivity Aiden is someone who can always be counted on to do his best he approaches every task with diligence and a positive attitude for example Aiden started the year with a personal reading goal that was really important to him as a student in
011Mrs Gambino's class with a lot of hard work and determination he is exceeding his goal in making growth as a reader it has been a pleasure to see how his determination and hard work have made him a more confident learner Beyond academics Aiden also demonstrates responsibility and his interactions with others he is respectful considerate and always willing to lend a helping hand Aiden understands the importance of being a a good citizen and a responsible member of our school Community he's often seen and heard greeting others with a hello or good morning and it's always with a huge smile his positive nature not only benefits him personally but it also creates a positive and supportive environment for everyone around him please join me in congratulating a Aiden Hazard for being an outstanding example of a responsible
012and respectful student congratulations you get to sh Shake everyone's [Applause] for our recipient for a portrait of an employee it is actually a complete surprise to this person um and I would like to acknowledge and ask Walter Williams to come up to the podium we are very fortunate that we uh were able to sneak Walter's family in at the last minute we kind of did a little like I'm gonna take him this way we'll bring him in this way so I want to take a moment to recognize someone who plays a vital yet often unseen role in our school Community our custodian Walter Williams [Music] Walter as you can see is the heart and soul of our school and personifies several of the portrait of an employee attributes he is the one who ensures our
013classrooms are clean our hallways are safe and our building is a welcoming place for all of us Walter is such an integral part of our school community and a big part of the positive day-to-day experience for our students and our staff he is often the first one here in the morning and the last one to leave at night he works tirelessly behind the scenes ensuring that our school is a clean and safe environment for students teachers and staff alike and thanks to his family because I'm sure they miss him often when he's here at the skull Walter is more than just a custodian he's part of our school family he's always willing to lend a helping hand whether it's fixing a broken hand soap dispenser making sure classrooms are sparkling participating in and our PBIS
014videos supporting our safety drills even if he accidentally initiates the fire alarm or simply offering a friendly smile and kind words I've witnessed Walter taking the time to talk to students staff and visitors to make them feel welcome and offer support when they need it I remember how welcome Walter made me feel personally on my first day here at Netherwood his dedication to our school goes beyond simply doing a job he takes pride in his work and is a true asset tour School Community let's take a moment to show our appreciation for Walter Williams thank you you're welcome congratulations and then you go Shake everyone's hand and then we take a [Applause] picture e he [Applause] hey Walter all right moving on to 7.1 superintendent report let's give them both one more round of [Applause]
015applause there was actually a pride that uh Dr Roman has to continue on before we move on so just want to mention uh with regards to um our March in music slide I just want to point something out here we had um pictured here you have the district y Orchestra who was invited to play at the capital in Albany so we want to congratulate all of our district Orchestra students and teachers Mrs McCain Mrs Lang and Mrs elely for representing Us in the New York state capital building for music and school arts or excuse me schools month uh so congratulations to all of them we really appreciate everything that they're doing for our students let's give them a round of applause Applause pleas now now we're on 7.1 one more Pride if possible oh sure
016so I got here a little early and I had to say that uh Miss Colbert I got to meet the uh let me run group uh out there and they've been talking about how they've been running in the snow they've been running in the rain now they had a nice sunny day so everybody was very excited and uh the kids said to me please thank the board for for making this happen I think it was either M curn or Walter let me in so uh great job go president so I was very impressed so uh just a few um items to report out um it was already mentioned tomorrow superintendent conference day so no school our educators will be involved in a number of professional development opportunities um so unfortunately our staff do have to
017report to work tomorrow um um we also want to recognize Natalie Ellis uh she is one of our uh enl teachers over at Violet and um she spearheads this sparrows Nest dress down day which is to help fund um and help feed people with cancer and this year across the district she ran a program and they've collected $4,000 to this cause so I want to congratulate her on her efforts and our entire staff that have participated um in in that in that effort um and I already mentioned about the big fish again if you missed it um it was it was an amazing um it was amazing show um students brought the story to life with Unforgettable performances amazing vocals heartfelt storytelling we're so proud of the hard work that they displayed and their Crea
018creativity and those things can't happen without family supporting without our teachers uh and support staff helping students um share their talents their musical talents and so just want to uh say thank you on behalf of the board to to the amazing uh crew and uh cast for that outstanding performance and that concludes my items okay moving on to 7.2 our Netherwood update with Josephina wlur thank you guys have a good night thank you for coming all right good evening everyone and welcome we're here tonight for an important opportunity to share the wonderful experiences our students and staff are a part of in their daily experience here at Netherwood to highlight all of the important work that has been happening and to provide updates on data specific to our building before we We Begin I would
019like to welcome the members of our school board and our district administrators including but not limited to Dr Pedra Roman Jessica Turner Melissa law and Linda Steinberg your presence demonstrates your commitment to our students and our schools I want to thank and welcome members of our community and families who are here to learn Advocate and support our initiatives and finally I need to give a welcome and a profound thank you to the faculty and staff members who are present each and every day these are the people who work tirelessly to ensure our children receive the best possible education and who are committed to the growth and success of our school I'm very fortunate to work alongside such a wonderful supportive staff they have been patient and supportive of me during these first few few months
020as I learn and build positive relationships so that we can continue to best support our students and families every day I am more impressed by the amazing work and learning that happens within our school Community for the first portion of our time this evening I'm excited for you to hear about some of the amazing work before I introduce our students and staff who are going to highlight some of the things they've been working on I would like to take a moment to thank our unbelievable tech department they are so often behind the scenes in the work they do in a moment you'll be able to see in the work the work of Michael Davis who's a member of the tech team he worked with our third and fifth grade students to create a video that
021they're going to share with you this evening without further Ado please welcome two of our teachers Miss Mrs Miller and Mrs Cullen as well or Mrs curn sorry as well as their students they're going to share some of the impactful and Lasting opportunities that they provide for our [Applause] students good evening everyone um it's nice to see some familiar faces um my name is Jo Miller and I teach third grade at Netherwood and this is Colleen curn and she is one of our wonderful fifth grade teachers so before we begin we want you to just take a minute just to imagine imagine a world where our children's voices are not only heard but also cherished a world where our ideas where their ideas stories and opinions are shared confident ly and eloquently this is the
022world we strive to create at Netherwood and tonight we're thrilled to share our journey in teaching our students the art of writing we are also very excited to highlight a few of our Young Writers they will share their thoughts on writing and showcase some of the hard work they've been doing their dedication and creativity are truly inspiring and we're eager for you to hear from them so we wanted to talk a little bit about our teaching model here at Netherwood as far as writing goes to start we would like to give you a bit of background at n yes in grades 3 through five we've adopted a team teaching approach this means that while one teacher specializes in math another focuses on writing Colleen and I are privileged to be the writing teachers for our
023respective grade levels this model allows us to channel our passion refine our teaching methods and concentrate on best practices to teach children how to write effectively for various purposes part of our philosophy we strongly believe is it takes a village to help students to VI to find and develop their unique voices one way we do this is by connecting our current students with alumni I to inspire and motivate them um the slideshow just click so if you notice on our slideshow there is a student his name is Braden Hall he is a former Netherwood student a former hi High Park student who is now in college but he generously comes back EV um yearly to share a baby memory that he wrote in third grade he talks about how he went through the writing process
024of listening to a family story taking notes and turning it into an engaging narrative filled with action dialogue and descriptive language this interaction excites our third graders who see Braden as a writing role model igniting their enthusiasm and belief in their own storytelling abilities right there and then with the help of Braden we have our writers hooked so sure and also he would have been here tonight but guess what he's doing he's currently tutoring fellow college students at Duchess in the area in the area of writing so we're very proud of him um here are a few slides um showing um our students after they went through the whole process of going home and listening to a baby story um and they love to share those stories going through that process of writing and sharing
025the story of Our Lives which um we all value each other's stories so that's very important to us as writers another key part of our writing initiative is the Buddy writing program which pairs third grade and fifth grade students and if you notice the slide up there you can see some of our third and fifth grade buddies working together this collaboration Fosters teamwork it enhances communication skills and creates a fun engaging environment for all of our students fifth graders become the mentors guiding their younger peers building friendships and developing leadership skills through the writing process um this this peer-to-peer interaction encourages constructive feedback allowing students to learn from each other and improve their writing through collaborative discussions we have a special video as Fina said um created by Michael uh he came into the classroom
026and captured a little snapshot um the video you're going to see is our fifth graders listening to our third grade stories um and they're offering them glows and grows so you'll see some of the kids holding these papers which are the glows and glows of a good quality writing a narrative now how do I just play that one more time 53 5 43 21 2025 have you ever had a proud moment my proud moment story of 2024 have you ever felt like you were going to explode because you because you were so excited have you ever been on a cool ride that has B him fast in 20 24 I tried something new by going on a four wheeel carts it all started at [Music] hallow hi my name is Sammy and I you might
027be wondering what glows and grows are and like grows they're like to make you like to make your writing like go bigger and Beyond like to reach the Stars even more and glows are just like um compliments about your rting I think glow and girls are about inspiring kids to do better and trying to make their work as good as they can and trying to get to the Limit that they think that they can get to and try their best and to make sure that they like their story the best it can be hi I'm Joan Miller Mrs Miller I teach third grade at Netherwood Elementary School and I've been here for 31 years I'm Colleen Coburn I'm a fifth grade teacher at Netherwood Elementary I've been here since 2019 um but taught prior to
028that and I love working with Joan because just like how our fifth graders Mentor our third graders you've been a mentor to me so um we're here to talk about um what we're very something we're very proud of and that's our um third grade fifth grade buddy writing so we have done some projects together where the third graders have listened to fifth grade writing as a example and they are the fifth graders are like Role Models um and we've also done it where third graders have read their writing to the fifth graders and the fifth graders give them glows and grows glows and grows is a protocol that both of us use in our classrooms every day about um writing where you share what the writer did well um being as specific as you can
029and also give them a little push or suggestion um which is how they learn from each other yeah yes she Y come on this is it I yelled after that I realized friends are important to everyone the end I did it there was nothing to be afraid of I just needed some confidence the end I love it thank you when we start a unit um for example um say we're teaching narrative writing usually Colleen has already taught that unit to the fifth graders they are they have applied that unit they've practiced um and then I am introducing it to our third graders so I'm introducing all of those skills and qualities what that make a good narrative blows and grows can help me because they can I can like have ideas of what somebody should
030add to their writing and it can help them because they can make their writing better and they could be better at uh writing stories um example when you said felt like I was going to jump out of my skin my favorite part was when you got the solo and you went into your room then screen but then came out and just said cool what was your favorite part that yeah you like that too okay the fifth graders bring in their stories say for example a narrative if we're on a narrative unit and they're reading those stories our students our third graders are holding a narrative writing checklist they're listening to their buddies they're looking for those good qualities and and it's also very engaging and motivating I also like how you added suddenly for a
031transition word and I like to use a simol shaking like a tree in the wind so it's it's paying it forward um and that's the most gratifying thing as a teacher and a and a writing teacher to see um oh kids are actually continuing on with their writing and they're changing the world because that's what we that's what we try to instill that writing can change the [Music] [Applause] world okay so speaking of how writing can change the world and we must be the change we wish to see in the world um we believe in writing for change so this was one example of that where we did our voices matter um and our speechwriting competition which importantly we had wonderful guests there the third grade buddies um we learned and we learned we're ready
032to write our speeches because we were very motivated to see our fifth grade students doing the same um a couple of other things we wanted to share as far as other units we have done um where we're teaching children to find their voices um the third graders do a biography research project and they get to choose a person that they would like to learn about a world changer and they research that person they do the reading so if you see the slides um they start the research and we can't as we said it takes a village um we can't thank our technology department enough because the tech technology that we're able to use now for writing is extremely motivating for our students one program in uh specifically that we love is epic books um that
033allows our students to have lots of access to books they may never um get their hands on they get those books digitally um we did a lot of our biography research through that so children who might have wanted a certain person and we didn't have that book we were able to access it through books so we love our technology department um we also uh use a lot of trade books and order books that um kids people that kids can relate to and speak to them so we have a lot of variety of different people and um this is also another digital platform we are now starting to use and it's really taking off um this is our digital platform called Book Creator and we can't can't thank U Mr our librarian um Mr re Reb
034holes um and he assists Us in that technology um and Library collaboration third grade collaborates with um The Librarian every um cycle and he teaches the children the technology piece so they all learned while they were learning this um informational how to write an informational book they were learning how to do it digitally and you can see an example of one students book how she was able to um turn it into chapters add a table of contents photos and it really was Dynamic and very very engaging um to go through that process so we love our technology this is part of Book Creator every student book who um student who decided to do it digitally it goes in the digital library and all of the students have access to read each other's books which was
035very motivating um for them they were very eager to read their peers books and it's all about the process to the product and um the process is most important but this is the end product of our world changer biography presentation um each student got to dress up as that person come as that person and they presented um their book from Book Creator so you can see we have a variety of activists pacemakers caregivers uh Harriet Tubman from Harriet Tubman to Malala to Clara Barton Anne Frank um scientists Albert Einstein May emson um musicians and artists and entrepreneurs um to our many many athletes we had a lot of interest in learning about our athletes uh so these were our very very eager students and um there was not one student who bulked at this assignment
036they were so engaged and so motivated to go through the entire ire process uh and there's our Anne Franks and then you can see them presenting our free to col and you can see the book on the Book Creator in the screen and that's that how they taught um their peers about their person and fifth graders also did this project a couple years ago so that's how we kicked it off and introduced it and of course our third grade students started right away um just a side note um in a couple of weeks talking about uh former alumni coming back we have a very special visit from one of our own um High perk students who has recently become a published author is that am I speaking too loudly I probably don't need the microphone
037um this is Miranda kogan she reached out to me a couple of months ago and told me that she wrote a children's book and it could not be more gratifying for a teacher to learn that we have students coming back but also um continuing that craft of writing she will be visiting us and you're all invited to come um and she will be um sharing our book and thank you to the PTA who is um going to provide one of her books to all of our students and um I have to say it because Joan's too humble but the uh book is inspired by Mrs Miller because when Miranda was in third grade she moved around a lot and Mrs Miller was really the first teacher to really make her feel welcome and clearly inspired
038her to be a writer so that's another example of the lifelong learner and impact World changer of uh Mrs nur's awesome work she um but Miranda is um she's paying it forward and it's so gratifying but without further Ado we have some young auth auth we want to highlight Right Here and Now possibly future authors that are coming to come back one day I doubt if I'll be here but um okay so let's celebrate our authors we're going to start with Sammy [Applause] first hello my name is Sammy I in third grade in Mrs Miller's class I like writing and use the power of the pen to express my feelings and tell my and and tell other people about my life I will I will read a part of my narrative that that expresses something
039I am proud of suddenly someone chose me to go in my butterflies kept on adding when I walked in the room I didn't see my aunt I didn't think I could do it but I worked so hard I had to so I walked in there and did a lyrical dance and it was by JoJo Sia the song was get back to that girl my whole body was flowing like the waves in the ocean my face was smiling as big as a slice of watermelon I was hurting a lot I was thinking to myself Sammy you can do this Sammy you can do this before I knew it the song was over and the teachers were clapping as loud as an engine and running suddenly I ran out of the room almost screaming I did it
040I felt I felt so proud I could [Applause] scream our next author is Tori hello my name is Tori van steenberg I am in third grade in Miss Collins class I like writing because it feels like we are on on a TV show because we are saying things out loud like a star always remember to reach for the stars I used the power of the pen to share my thoughts and feelings I will read a part of my narrative about when I show for someone but but suddenly I stopped running oh and saw a girl playing without anyone and just sitting on a bench so I walked up to her and said hi Hannah why are you just sitting and not playing anything I wondered because no one wants to play with me she sobbed
041in my face I felt like a towel when someone saw showered and so soaked the towel are you okay I said really quietly no I'm not okay why I wondered because my dog died she sobbed do you want to play with me and my friends I said yes she yelled our next author is Audrey Petty hello my name is Audrey Petty I am in third grade in Miss Miller's class I like writing because I get to expand my feelings and have fun I also make a better I also get to make me a better writer I use the power of the pen to explain things I am learning into to te teach others I will read the conclusion of my biography an Frank that uses a quote I took from an Frank to remind others
042to be kind conclusion am was a very brave child and went through a hard life her diary helps people understand how terrible the Nazis treated different people in spite of everything I still believe people are really good at heart and Frank oh our next author is Luke Paul hello my name is Luke Paul I am in third grade in Miss cins class I use the power of the pen I like rainning because you can use many Strat strategies like your figurative language I like expressing my feelings and reading stories out loud I like writing multiple paragraphs I will share a part of my story that shows figurative language suddenly suddenly we both jumped in the car and we raced to the mall like a swimmer in the Olympics our next author is Zoe Mau from
043fifth [Applause] grade hello my name is Zoe Mau I am in fifth grade in Mrs Coburn's class I like writing because it expresses my thoughts and feelings and states it in many ways another reason I like writing is that there is no wrong way of writing that is just a couple of reasons how I use the power of the pen I use the power of the pen to share my opinions and persuade others to change the world I'm going to read a part of my speech on how kids shouldn't eat social media social media is something everyone uses and loves but not everyone knows the bad side of social media do you know there's a study showing people in real life are nicer than on screen you cannot see them they don't know who you
044are if kids weren't on social media they would find the courage to tell them in person and have real life conversations this can help you in the future by speaking to get a job my reasons today is social media is bad for health not good for school workor and people can get Cyber Bullied do you want to hear shocking news a 13-year-old girl would rather not eat for a week than have her phone taking away would you want your kid or friend to react like that girl you can introduce yourself hello my name is Stella laning I am in third grade in Mr Dole and Miss bot's class I like writing because I can really Express who I am in poetry personal narratives and fiction I can express feelings and emotions that I was going
045through that moment I can show the world who I truly am on the inside it's like painting a picture with words I am proud of my third grade writing Bounder because it showed the growth I made from the beginning to the end of third grade I'm proud that my third grade writing binder is used to help third grade students learn what makes a quality narrative Mrs Miller uses my stories to model great writing for her class I love [Applause] helping hello my name is Wesley Turner I am in fifth grade in Miss Coburn's class I like writing because you can express your thoughts and tell stories you can write something that is important to you writing is also fun because you can have creativity I am proud that my third grade writing binder is used
046to help third grade students learn how to write informational books about different countries the informational book I wrote was on Argentina and Miss Miller uses it as a mentor text so the third graders can study it [Applause] hello my name is Gavin Gomez Mendoza I'm in fifth grade and in Mr Do's class I enjoy working with third grade my third grade buddy by giving glows and grows because it helps my buddy improve and thank you for um listening to our authors thank you authors for sharing your wonderful work and that's the end of our [Applause] presentation so before we transition this is a great opportunity to actually exit if you're here with your families because we know uh you don't have school tomorrow but I'm sure you have to get to bed at a decent
047time thank you so much for bringing that thank you great than you thank you thanks so much great job all right it's really hard to follow that it's honestly such a pleasure um and rewarding to see what what our students are really experiencing every day when they're here at Netherwood you know you get get the opportunities to walk into the classroom um you know and you see little Snippets but really when you see the culminating uh you know projects that they're working on and the ways that they're engaging with each other it's it's it's very uh you know uplifting and and and motivates us so um I'm going to start off with talking about some of our building goals uh we have three goals here at Netherwood uh the first one and probably first and
048foremost is creating a positive and inclusive School environment leading to improved behavior and a sense of belonging um I think that Mrs Miller really demonstrated uh you know how we're doing that within you know the the products of the classroom um the other goal that we have uh is connected to also our district goal which is to improve attendance attendance and then we're also uh trying to maximize student achievement in literacy um that really comes out of some of the data you'll see here um and over the last uh couple of years so some of the action steps that we're taking um to reach those goals for our positive and inclusive School environment uh we took some time to kind of enhance and refine our PBIS initiative last year they were working on some building
049PBIS goals this year we kind of transitioned a little bit for students to um receive more individual praise um in order to improve uh you know behaviors and making sure that students are following the rules of the school um we are also ensuring that students see themselves in class materials and curriculum um and activities within the classroom we have spent some time um you know even at our last faculty meeting doing a little bit of an audit within our spaces and our lessons to make sure that our students are being um kind of seen and represented in in their backgrounds and cultures um are happening within uh you know the instruction that they're receiving each day within within the classroom whether that's the music that they're singing in music class or uh you know the
050the lesson that's being presented up on the on the TV within the classroom we're also providing uh tiered support for our students and be with behavioral challenges through counsel in and behavior intervention plans and collaboration I really have to give a you know big shout out and kudos to our counseling staff um having the addition of a school counselor um in conjunction with our social worker and our school psychologist has really kind of created a really strong team approach and how we can support students um especially if they're having challenging behaviors or a difficult day um so they are really integral to the work that we're doing there um we're also providing lessons on managing emotions and building relationships and making responsible decisions using our mtss model uh our school counselor has been really really
051important in that piece she's pushing into classrooms and doing some instruction and really working well and teaming with our classroom teachers um you know to work on social emotional pieces within the classroom uh as far as attendance uh We Are structuring Family engagement nights outside of the school day I really have to give a huge shout out and thank you to our p ta ta um they are really a huge part in helping us to build those family engagement nights last night we had a Lego night and uh it was packed in here we had uh parents building students building siblings building Legos uh we even had a firew walk uh where students were walking on the Legos with with bare feet um I was a little worried with all the little Lego pieces that
052it was kind of like glitter it might be in here forever um we are also for attendance we formulated um and implemented an attendance team that meets regularly to look at attendance and how we can support families right a lot of um you know the attendance pieces you know students being absent aren't just you know sick maybe there's some support that the family needs um maybe it's connecting them to Community Schools so we take time as an attendance team to sit down and go through the students um who are listed as chronically absent you know some might be you know students that we've already identified and have some medical needs um that we know that we don't have to reach out to every you know so often but then there are other families that we're
053reaching out to and offering support not as a gotcha but you know to kind of lend an ear and have conversations and and find ways that we can help our families to get students here at school um we also created within that team um a a document to support that communication and make sure we're keeping track of of attendance and Improvement um and then we're providing time and support for staff you know we hear that often as administrators um even for ourselves you know having time to be able to work on initiatives um so we're creating space within you know our faculty meetings uh so teachers can have some time to reach out to families whether that's as positive feedback or um to reach out and say listen we didn't see you know your son
054today is there anything we can help you with um so we're you giving them the time and providing them the space and opportunity to be able to do that and then for our last goal for maximizing literacy achievement we are working with um with our other Elementary principles and and directors um and taking time to provide opportunities for our staff to review uh student data and set um some goals during our SPL time uh and during Elementary department meetings we also work closely with um Jen kryer Amy to implement youly at the K through 5 level which we've seen some huge gains and improvements in our students in the area of reading and phonics um it really it's pretty amazing to see I was in recently in one of our 812 classrooms um and I
055was so impressed by the work that they were doing in there with the uly um with the efly program and and really seeing them read words and so kudos to our our teachers for really um doing that in an authentic and positive way um and then the last piece of our literacy um initiative is to refine our student data team process to make sure we're um consistent in that process and in our data team process we are using that to help um you know make best decisions uh to provide supports for students so when we meet as a data team um we can you know if we can get those team the way that that team is set up um refined and get those meetings through and happening quickly the sooner we have those meetings
056the more we can talk and kind of get our eyes on a student um the sooner they can get the supports that they need Within in the classroom so that that data team process um is really important to getting the support and help that our students need daily um so here we have some Ela data from our uh 2004 so last year's uh State testing data we um as a building are there in the orange we have third fourth and fifth grade the Orange is um our proficiency rates so students scoring at a three level three or four on our New York State assessments um if you see their fourth grade uh really kind of stands out as being um you know above above um average within our district but also meeting um similar standards
057to students across the state um you know clearly there's a little bit of work and we identified that and and that's part of where our literacy goal came from is making sure that we're um working on improving our Ela scores um one of the challenges you know with the state testing you could see here with our students with their writing a lot of it is you know creative writing informational writing it's a little bit different from what they're going to see on the state test um you know so the teacher is really finding a balance between you know what's important for the state exam but then what also is making a a full rounded um you know good learning student uh within the writing and Ela process um for our math uh you can see
058that our math scores are um a little bit higher than our Ela scores this is one of our strengths as a building um I you know think that that's really due to the consistency of our math program and the implementation of our Eureka program um we're you can see we're pretty consistent across the board with the state um and we have given like really strong professional development to our teachers and for our staff members uh with that math program so I think that's really helping to support and build those uh those math scores s um you can see here it's an area we're going to need to work on a little bit um in full transparency however there was a shift in the State Testing um last year for science so it was a new
059format for the for the test um our fifth graders um took this this test for the first time it was typically given in fourth and eth grade um so there was a little bit of shift last year so I expect you know this this year that our scores will go up the teachers know a little bit about more what to expect our students um are then prepared in a little bit of a better way um so despite the fact that it is a little bit lower than what we would like to see I'm confident that um you know our our teachers are really working towards um improving now that we know what to expect with the uh state exam for science um in paying attention to other board uh meetings I did want to put
060up a little bit of data here that I know that the board members have asked for um in the previous meetings um so I put some of the cohort data so you can see some of the um you know how a student has progressed or our students have progressed over the last couple of years so these are the New York State Ela scores for 2023 and 20124 so if you look at the um two circles that are there um those would be our current fifth grade students so it's how our students our fifth grade students scored on the ELA state exam in third grade and then how they scored in fourth grade um so you can see there's a little bit of a dip there for for from 2023 to 2024 for ELA um however
061if you look at what is our current sixth grade so for the 2023 2023 ELA test where it says grade four that's our current sixth grade group so you can see how they performed in fourth grade and then to the right in fifth grade so there was a little bit slight Improvement there um but I know that that's some a question that you've asked and I and I thought that would be helpful to make sure that I include in um my presentation and then on the next slide I do have the math data for the same thing so the students that are there in the that are circled are current fifth grade students and how they scored on the math uh state exam in 2023 and then again in 2024 so it's staying pretty steady
062um you know in the upper 50% um and then our sixth grade again staying fairly steady with a little bit of a of an improvement from 2023 to 2024 so we're seeing good things which is which is what we want to see um our nwea data is really positive um we are uh have improved from the winter of 2023 to the winter of 2024 um our students are scoring in the 50th percentile which means they are scoring better than 50% of other students students um in the same grade who took the same exact test um and then we also have great scores for our math uh we improved a little bit into the 53rd percentile for our math scores on our nwea assessments so it's it goes to you know our teachers who are really
063working hard um to help support our students and then one of the last pieces of data I have here is our absenteeism data um I was a little discouraged because we have been working really hard um on improving attendance and I was seeing our number go up a little bit so I was getting a a little bit nervous um but it is falling we have had a lot of uh student illnesses and some some illnesses that are putting students out for for long stretches of time if they have covid or the flu we've had you know a student who had pneumonia um but I really started to kind of dive down into the um into the data a little bit and what I realized and what I noticed in looking in the data is that
064our kindergarten group actually um has more students absent than any other group um and then as you go through the grades it does become a little bit less um so I know that you know our kindergarteners are all being exposed to germs some of them for the very first time um so that you know could explain a little bit of that and why you know our kindergarten students are absent a little bit more than some of the other grades um but then I also recognized and identified that you know there are some f there's some Family Outreach that we can can also do within our building to help support um families and and you know kind of digging down deep to the rout of how we can help to get their students here more often
065um so I I only foresee this number actually going down um especially now that a lot of the illnesses seem to have kind of dwindled a little bit we were hit with the neuro virus pretty hard I think even actually this week we still had yeah so I want to say thank you again to my staff cuz as you can see we have a good group here that even comes and and shares and in in our glory and and sometimes in our struggles but they really are a family and and I really appreciate them for all the hard work that they [Applause] do any comments questions I know you have know I always did sorry um first of all I love that you talked about the balance between testing and making them learn ERS in
066the real world um I I just appreciate that because accountability in schools we have to look at test scores but we need remember that's not the whole picture um so I just appreciate that you're looking at we want these to be lifelong Learners and I think the presentation tonight really clearly showed that um that students are being taught to express themselves and and that's at the end of the day that's what we really want so that was great thank um and as far as absenteeism I know we've been talking about that but I just want to be clear and I think everybody agrees with us that sickness is different flu season like we're that's not why we're trying that's not the group we're going after right if if somebody's kid is sick they need to
067stay home I think I'm hoping we learned that from Co we don't want to bring our germs into school so you know during the winter I would expect absentee rates to go down right it's those chronic we forget it's the chronically absent students who aren't coming to school for whatever is going on at home um that addressing so I'm not worried about that absenteeism rate um and the question I had really was just you're new to Netherwood so I'm curious what would you say is the greatest strength here at Netherwood and what's your greatest need you know we're going into budget season so I'm just curious what the what the needs are thank you sure I would say the greatest strength is really it comes to a testament to the staff because I know there's
068been a lot of turnover in the admin position here um and the fact that the the building and has run in such a really great way is a testament to everybody else who works here you know it's not just the administrator that standing up here you know or guiding or helping you know it's it's everybody that works within the building to help it make it run um and and and I think that they really work really well as a team um and lift each other up and you know like getting little notes in you know on your desk is is really uplifting um and unexpected sometimes right so um I think that that is the biggest strength is the group that that works here and works together every day um the need oh that's a
069really good question um I think no no no it's okay I think I think really just um taking the time to listen to the staff and what they need and I know that um you know the literacy piece they they work really really hard um and as you can see even with the the writing side of ela right um but I think just making sure that we're pulling together a strong program and looking at um some you know some of the upcoming things that we you know we're looking at a reading program right for the future and I think really making sure that we do that in a very uh conscientious way um so that way that the teachers have the best tools that they need in order to support the Learners in their room
070yeah you're welcome thank you Josephine for that for the presentation I think I heard you say when you were talking about the ELA scores that in some ways perhaps the state tests aren't actually addressing the things that you guys have decided are really crucial important to you and and I accept that and I and I believe that and um you know there's lots of debate over where the state is actually measuring that that we think is valuable but if you think there are other things that are valuable and you're focusing on it do you or have you ever considered having some sort of I don't know internal assessment so that you can you can convince yourself that the things that you think are important and that you're working on are actually having having an impact
071as well because I think that kind of assessment would be really really valuable for you and your team yeah sure um yeah and like I said I think it's a balance right we we know um you know we have the state standards and we have the expectations um of those State exams right and and making sure that we're really tying all of it together so I think assessing and looking at what's working and maybe what we need to refine is is essential yeah you can't we can't get away from the state exams we have to know how we're doing right but but I'm just thinking for for your own benefit if you've decided that that these things that the state exam isn't really addressing is something that's important to you and you're focusing on having
072some sort of internal measurement so that you guys know that the things that you think are important are actually working yeah yeah that's that's a valid valid point and something we can certainly take a look at um especially as an admin team you know we can can look at what can HP Help and happen here within our building but then even across the district right we're not a standalone um and that's one thing we've really worked hard on as a as a especially as an elementary principal group um and each building has its own you know little niches but I think yeah to making taking time to refine and and assess what what is important to us and how we can work on that sure it's a great suggestion thank you so I thought it
073was a great presentation um you know to Mike's question and so forth as you said that's why the sharing in the indw data is so valuable you know all schools have to obviously follow the New York State curriculum and then they have a choice to pick a local assessment which could be an NWA it could be an I ready it could be a variety of nine different tests and so forth so seeing that data year to year is very helpful because that's another metric sure not just the state one which is not an Adaptive test so you can really gauge that another way so I think that's valuable thank you yeah thank you I I just have a comment I'm very impressed with the students that were up here not only their writing capabilities but
074their presentation skills for third graders is very impressive so kudos to the staff to prepare those kids for that I was I was very impressive it's truly hard as an adult right to get up and and speak in front of other people and they they did it seamlessly I mean you wouldn't they're in third grade they're in third grade yeah yeah yeah it's like I said it's very it's really awesome to walk through the building and see all of the the fun and positive things that are happening um so I'm glad they were able to highlight that for you guys I know it took a little longer than than probably typically but I think I think that what you see there is really what is important um and what really highlights the strengths of this
075building that's the fun stuff not a boring budget presentation yeah sorry l [Laughter] thank you thank you all right moving on to 7.3 our decip update with Jessica Turner you could you could leave it there yeah thank you good evening president zagorski vice president Tibbits fellow trustees Dr Roman fellow cabinet members I have the honor to stand before you tonight and provide an update on our District's comprehensive Improvement plan for the 2425 school year which was developed under the leadership and guidance of Dr Roman Dr Greg B Brown fellow District leaders and the teachers um and presented to you by Dr Greg Brown on August 8th so I think before I get into it I just wanted to celebrate that this is the work that we're going to discuss tonight is a collective effort of
076the entire District so we always begin with uh centering ourselves on that this work uh is strategically aligned to our vision for innovating learning environments and empowering all of our Learners to be successful in a dynamic Society so here we have our identification process which was presented again to you on August 8th our district is currently identified as a targeted District um oh uh uh currently identified as a targeted district and Ralph arith is a targeted support dis uh School in need of improvement the identification is a result of the assessment performance from the 2324 school year with the plan being developed and implemented across this school year and you may recall Mr darling providing an update on his school plan and his fall presentation so the district plan serves two purposes one is to
077support the Improvement efforts of our identified school and two to support Improvement efforts collectively across the district we are currently identified low performing for literacy English language arts and specific subgroup are students with disabilities at ralar Smith I want to orientate ourselves to this year's plan Priority One focuses on consistent Equitable accessible learning environments with a main focus this year on professional development specific to the science of reading also co- teing to support the special ed model that we have inside of Ralph arith and uh specific instructional goals with a focus on R tier one scope and sequence St documents priority area two focuses on M mutually accountable learning environments with a through line of our goals focusing on social emotional needs of our students and families and priority area three focuses on data driven
078decisionmaking to increase student outcomes with a major through line of goals of the goal of enhancing our goal setting process Focus fusing on data visuals and progress monitoring now we're going to go into the specifics of each priority area where we'll go over what the goal was our current uh progress and what our next steps are so while we uh I didn't think the slide would be so far away so I'm just going to do my best to read it from here so priority area one we talked about focused on Prof professional development you can see that we identified uh a a subgroup of our teaching population to engage in the science of reading training specific with the letters we currently have 19 teachers participating in that training and we've already worked with Bose for
079the next school year uh 25 26 to have 31 teachers continue engaging and and deepening their learning you'll see 11 teachers in volume two and then 20 in volume 1 and I think like my glasses work really well right so authentic performance tax development we have 21 teachers engaged in this process this is really exciting because we have teachers engaged in creating Pro um project-based learning and authentic assessments not just in high school but all the way down to even kindergarten so those uh Educators on May 22nd will be sharing the results of that and we'll be uh examining the impact on student out comes to see what the next steps will be uh in regards to that we are also developing a coaching model you know we and thank you to the board for
080your support we have implemented two literacy coaches this year in addition to our two math coaches and alongside our directors for um science and math and Humanities they are working to develop a coaching model and the next step would be developing a coaching Playbook we also have the co- teing coaching happening um I can't read the number that far away but um they are engaging with the GNR group cgn 45 teachers yeah thank you and we have already identified that this is successful and want to continue it for next year and continue to deepen the Partnerships of those co- teing uh groups and then I this year with a focus on tier one we developed scope and sequence documents for all of our uh content including pacing guides implemented uly and then to Mr tibet's
081point we are our next step is to create common informative assessments that are local so we can examine how our students are doing based on what we've prioritized in our in our standards and learning priority area two focuses on social emotional learning you can see that we had professional development in the fall uh around uplifting all of our students and tomorrow at superintendent conference day we have a major focus on supporting our multilingual Learners we also implemented this year the Desa screener in grades K through 8 and we are um introducing it in grade nine that's a social emotional screener that is researched evidence-based that will help us identify our students uh social emotional needs and put interventions into place and then um we have administrative training and restorative practices we have engaged in family
082evening events and um We are continuing all of those efforts moving forward specifically with the restorative practices we are sending 12 teachers to training this spring so they can become turn key teachers next next year and we can multiply those efforts across our system and priority area three is our data for our continuous improvement process this year we are working on creating a platform and integrating all of our data into a platform that will help leverage data at make it more accessible to our entire system including the board and the public with a public facing dashboard uh we hope to have that ready for June and July we are enhancing and deepening our work around our data protocols we just met with our team today and reviewed that process and uh we are going to
083continue our development of our district comprehensive Improvement plan and school plan uh through this school year so I wanted to remind ourselves around the accountability indicator ERS for this school year because one of the things we are sharing in this presentation is our identification this year so currently right now the weighted uh we are identified using weighted average achievement core subject performance English English language learner proficiency and chronic absenteeism based on last year's assessments results so we are continuing with being being a targeted District in need of improvement um with Ralph arith continuing as a targeted a dist a school for targeted support and Improvement that is an identification that is coming up again because our students with disabilities performed in the lowest quartile in English and math and we are also identified pre TSI
084for our black students and Hispanic students as we conclude tonight's briefing on our deip wanted to share that the state has made some revisions because they like to changeed things mid year so some notable revisions include that in the previous slide where we're identified this year subgroups were set at 30 the state is decreasing that number to 10 they will continue with the core subject performance but they have reintroduced this year's Assessments in science will count for next year's identification in elementary this year's social studies will be reintroduced into high school and account for next year's identification indicators graduation rate will stay the same College and Career Readiness college career Civic Readiness will be reintroduced as an indicator for our high schools and attendance is going to have a new calculation and they're renaming the
085attendance and replacing chronic absenteeism they are also adding in growth for elementary so it won't be just performance and achievement they're also adding in a growth indicator so year over year growth will be included in our identification process and being proactive we reviewed these new indicators with our administrative team today and we'll continue to use them as we gauge our work throughout the upcoming months oops any [Music] questions thank you Jessica um I'm I'm looking at uh this is slide number five your priority area one details and um I appreciate that that you've giving us numbers of teachers and and um you know 117 sounds like a lot to me but but honestly I don't know how many teachers we have in total that this would be relevant so so what percentage of teachers would
086would actually be more informative to me than than just a hard number okay yeah so that that 117 was a goal I think over three years yeah over three years and and so ultimately is that 100% of the teachers that would make it sense to or that that's really the question I'm asking you don't have to give me that number now I'm just that that that that I would find that more useful for me than just a hard number okay for future thank you so thank you for the information um just in regards to the New York State new calculation of attendance I know there's been a lot of questions about this at our recent board meetings and Margaret talked about chronic attendance so my understanding now it's going to an index between one two
087three or four um what some parents have asked as me again is the whole issue about you know the kids who had medically excused you know our Violet Avenue nurse spoke when we were there last saying that really it's kind of an un unfair nomenclature to call it chronically absent when you have doctor's notes so I don't know could you speak a little bit more about this attendance how they're going to calculate it from what you know so far I uh would have to get back to you on that what I do know is that is going from calculating the 10day window with a student being enrolled for 10 days and then one day the 10day window enrolled one day within 10 days is going to 30 days so it's giving us a longer window
088but I haven't looked deeply into the calculation process I do know that medically excused for home tutoring does not count against but I don't know specific if you have a sick note sure that' be great to get an update it is I agree with people that's that's really really unfair to label them if they have a doctor's note so forth thank [Music] you any I just had a question on the on slide 10 when you talked about the end sizee decreasing from 30 to 20 how would that affect our status right now like is that going to do you see that making a difference I'm not sure what the what the numbers are um I don't think it's going to make a difference for us right now I'd have to look deeper into our smaller
089subpopulations but we have indicators for all of our populations in our report card okay so I don't think it's going to impact us but we'd have to do a deeper study and we will be doing that because we'll be doing that in our deip meeting on Tuesday we'll be taking a look at how these indicators might impact us we'll be taking a look at our current performance in the areas where that will be added back into and what that indicator might look like next year thanks any other questions all right thank you thank you m on to 7.4 our 2526 budget update with Dr Roman and Miss Steinberg good evening everyone uh so this evening this is budget uh session I believe four now um so we're continuing to share with our board our community
090um this evening we're going to be paying specific attention to our tax cap and our tax levy increase uh but want a ground um our discussion around the four key drivers that have remained consistent throughout our presentations that's first and foremost number one to preserve our programs and services for students number two is improving efficiency and Effectiveness three is whatever we try to do um at in this upcoming budget that we're keeping in mind Financial stability sustainability and the impact on our tax uh payers everything continues to be aligned with our strategic plan which was created last year focusing on student experience well-being Safety and Security Finance facilities family engagement and highly qualified staff so at this particular moment we're currently uh pass the uh analyzing of programs and collecting other data to prioritize budget
091changes we're going to be um at this point um in the process of getting to uh a a pre a preliminary uh final preliminary budget which includes uh my recommendations to the board so we probably have another meeting or two before we're we're at that stage and then subsequent to that adopting the proposed budget and then our vote of course May 20th good evening good evening everyone so uh thank you for staying for the very exciting budget presentation um so the reason that we don't have a final budget presentation or proposal yet for the board is that there are still some things that are outstanding uh we don't plan to make any major changes to the uh budget that we are showing now um but we are waiting for a few things to come in
092um tonight we're going to talk to the board about the tax cap and the actual tax levy um and then also the uh New York state budget isn't due until April 1 if there is a budget in place before we have to have our our budget adopted by the board there may be changes uh based on changes in state aid and then also we're still working on our uh Bose service request we do have all the information uh we're fairly certain that we know everything that will be in the service request we just have to make sure that we uh have a good understanding of the actual rates for next year not just for Duchess bosies but also for olster Bose which we buy a lot of services to them uh because of the Mid
093Hudson Regional information uh Center thank you so we did talk about the tax cap calculation last time uh this uh sheet here just shows the actual uh uh maximum allowable tax levy that the district could go to which would be a 2.43% increase or $1.7 million um in the first the 24 25 column we're showing the calculation for the current year I will uh remind everyone that when we set the budget for this year we did go out to the maximum amount of the 3.61% uh tax levy increase um there are a number of factors that caused uh next year's uh T maximum amount to go down a little bit uh most specifically um is the tax-based growth factor uh that's the factor that considered the actual quanti quantitative change in um properties in our
094district uh for the current year when we were building the budget last year it was a a change of 1.44% but it's less than 1% for next year 82 and then another big change is the fact that we had two uh Pilots that started of this year uh one of the pilots is for the saki Brewery and the other one that just started was for the bellfield hotel so that brought our p from about 88,000 up to over 700,000 I think that's good in terms of what we're proposing uh just keeping in mind these key uh decision drivers so this year uh we are confident that we will be able to achieve the key drivers that we just um reviewed and uh recommending that we despite the fact that our tax cap is at 2.43%
095we're recommending that we come below the T the tax cap that we are able to continue to sustain our programs enhance some of our programs continue to be efficient in our expenditures and still be able to um uh comp uh sustain the programs that we currently have and so what we're recommending is a 2% um tax levy increase now this this is interesting uh it's it's it's it's coincidence that this 2% uh is exactly at 2% uh versus the tax cap which in the past this 2% notion uh really is in a 2% cap uh it's based on the calculation that that um Linda had described um but nevertheless what we're what we're saying is we we want to come below the um the maximum tax uh Levy increase uh at 2% compared to 2.43%
096that we can go up to and so this this graph just shows over the years um and I just want to highlight two things here so back in 20 2019 2020 we actually came just below the uh tax cap in terms of the tax levy increase since then as as you can see we've gone to the tax uh Levy limit or the tax cap limit and then this upcoming year we're proposing to go just below uh the tax cap this is just another view of that and one of the things that you'll you'll notice um is that right in 2019 2020 again the the tax levy increase here uh is indicated by the yellow bar um so once again just coming below what the tax cap uh was at that particular time that's the max
097amount that we can collect from our taxpayers we're we're replicating that same um request uh and I think one of the things to keep in mind is that the tax cap um is probably the second lowest um in the past six years so last year was 3.61 as Linda had mentioned this year is going to be 2.43 and again we're we're going to be recommending that we come uh below the tax cap want to add anything to the the next chart so I just wanted to uh point out here on this chart that uh if we do set the tax levy at 2% the only thing that we're changing in the budget is on the revenue side we would be collecting uh less in tax revenues than we would be able to at the tax
098cap and we would be funding that with fund balance so we would be adding $37,000 697 to the appropriated fund balance um at the top of the screen you can see that the actual budget um and the uh increase for that would remain the same we we're still looking at a a 4.9 million or 4.13% increase in the overall budget so we did analyze um because that one of the concerns um that we had looked into was the impact of utilizing this amount of fund balance to uh fund balance appropriation to balance the budget but what what we came across and and again this is I I I want to emphasize this is a testament to the board of education's vision uh on making sure that we have a financially sound uh District as well
099as the leadership uh of Linda and her team team so when we look at and I know this is really really tiny uh but I do want to just point out we went back almost uh almost a little less than two decades but one of the things that we looked at was how much online six how much fund balance appropriation did we use over the past 10 years and despite the fact that we needed to appropriate that amount whatever that amount was to balance the budget we have not needed to use that fund balance so that just goes back into our our reserves and so um one of the things that we know to be true is despite the fact that we we allocate certain positions we budget for certain positions there's always um an
100issue perhaps either filling that position immediately upon um posting that position for whatever reason um there's also other uh efficiencies throughout the district whether it's fuel costs that go up go down um and and and other savings um and so we feel confident that going at the 2% will still be able to achieve the key drivers that have helped us make the decisions which um is continuing to enhance our programs continuing to preserve the programs that we currently have that we know are are uh helping to improve our our academic achievements and supporting our students social emotional uh well-being anything you want to add to this um I'll just mention that the reason that we do have the fund balance appropriation that's really a budget item the budget revenues have to match the budget expenditures
101every year so when we come up with what we expect the revenues to be what we would expect the expenditures to be if um Everybody uh stayed in the positions they were in nobody left us um we would spend to that full amount usually or pretty close to it um we would if that were to happen we would need that fund balance appropriation but in uh many years we haven't used any of the fund bounds appropriation it's really just been the budget item so we feel that adding the $37,000 to the appropriation so we could bring down the tax levy a little bit would really have uh very little impact on our budget overall again th this goes back to our drivers um and that is making sure that we achieve one through three but
102with the Mind mindset and being mindful of the impact on our taxpayers and so we want to continue providing the best quality education to our students um making sure that we're evaluating our programs making sure that we keeping the things that are working things that are that may not be yielding the the impact that we want uh to see those are things that have to be valate it on whether or not we continue them uh or not so uh this slide just shows that before before we move on can I because I'm I'm a little confused I'm sure it all makes sense I just need you to walk me through it a little bit um in the past one of the reasons we've always said we were going to go to the tax cap yeah
103was because there were long-term financial implications that if we don't go to the tax cap that means later on down the road we've been giving up giving up money what I what what what's confusing me here is is the fund balance part of the calculation for the tax cap if so it can't be based on what I'm seeing here right okay and so and so because we have this fund balance there are not long-term financial implications is that what I'm hearing well uh because there're because we would set the levy below the ma the tax cap uh we would have it would affect the tax levy in the future so next so for next year planning for 2026 27 budget if we were to set the levy at 2% our Base number that the number
104we start for the tax uh calculation would be the 72.2 million rather than the 72.5 million if we were at the cap okay so so it so it does carry forward in that way but because in the past we've always said we don't we don't want to potentially hamstring ourselves that way and but you're assuring us there's yeah there's a few things that have happened in the last few years um we not this coming year but the last three years we had really large increases in Foundation Aid so we got to a higher level of foundation Aid and that did cause us for a few years to um actually have uh larger surpluses at the end of the year and that is in the in the chart that's really tiny well you would see if
105you look at line four for like 2022 and uh 23 and 2324 our Surplus one year was 5.3 million and the next year was 6.4 million so uh we really didn't need to allocate the fund balance that we did for those years that's why those lines were were zero so we are uh trying to be mindful of the impact on the on the taxpayers but we are confident that we can still uh preserve the programs that we have and that's great because I I do want to be very mindful of the tax pay as we said but I don't want to put us in a position in the future where where we regret this right so uh this slide shows the the revenues there's a few more lines than I would normally show um but
106I wanted to break out the portion of the revenues that are related to Debt Service uh just because we'll see on the uh expenditure side that The Debt Service expenditure is going up quite a bit about a million dollars but on this slide here you could see um from the second to bottom line the in fund revenues from Debt Service and also the line rate above it building Aid and Transportation uh aid for bus purchases uh those add up to uh over a million dollars so those actually um help offset the increase in The Debt Service that we'll see on the um on the next page but here uh this this chart here assumes that we would set the tax levy at 2% so that's why the tax amount is increasing by 2% uh we
107do have a line for other revenues which are really items that aren't state aid or taxes uh that would include interest income and then also charges to other school districts uh we do charge other school districts when we have um when we have students from other districts attending our schools and then OB obviously to the uh fund balance appropriation is on that last line right and this slide here shows our expenditures these are the categories that we always do show our expenditures in uh the salaries is on the first line uh benefits on the last line um and then everything in between uh we are expecting an increase in uh both these expenditures uh but we are offsetting that with uh decreases to our equipment and um some uh contractual costs so we did find
108uh some savings by moving expenditures in theosis and there was also some uction in the equipment overall and also I'll say a difference from the last meeting that we had is in the employee benefits line um before uh or the last presentation the Assumption and benefits was that the health insurance cost would increase by 7.98% uh but deck which is The Duchess educational health insurance Consortium met last week and they set the rates at a uh overall like a blended rate of 6% so that U has been decreased and reflected here here another item that we tend to add to our uh budgets every year um is a capital outlay project um we are allowed to have a $100,000 uh Capital outlay project every year uh we don't know yet what the that project will
109be but we expect to have more information about that at the next meeting um but I just wanted to show here how beneficial it could be to the district when we have a capital outlay project we're eligible to receive all of the aid in the year following the completion of the project um other capital projects we get the aid over 15 years so if we were to spend the full amount the full $100,000 we would get back in aid about $66,000 and the total cost of that project would be around 30 33,600 uh we are required to show the budget in the three components the program admin Capital um if any of the budget amounts change this will change slightly too but here we're showing that the uh program budget is about 76.2% of the
110total budget the administrative costs are 9.95% and capital is 13.78% all right so everything that we just talked about was a proposition one which is the general fund budget but we do have two other propositions for the ballot good for a minute ago okay so um we actually um have on this we will have on this year's ballot two uh propositions for buses there're two separate propositions um I just want to point out that we will uh we're expecting that people will vote on both uh this isn't a situation where if one uh passes the other one fails um if both of these propositions pass we're going to buy all of these buses so the first uh proposition two is for seven G uh gasoline and Diesel powered buses these are the buses that Nicole
111artetta listed in her presentation to the board uh these are Replacements of buses that uh she and our head mechanic had identified uh are really getting to the point where they're too costly to maintain and should be traded in um before the EV bus mandate came along we were uh buying anywhere from about 6 to 9 buses a year so this would be in line with that uh normal spending um to buy all of these buses the proposition would actually be for the gross amount which is $975,000 75 uh we do qualify for state of 58.4% so after receiving state aid uh those seven buses would cost 4 5,631 the next proposition or proposition three would be for nine uh EV buses so we did have the vote just in uh November where we asked
112the voters to approve the purchase of 17 EV buses uh the reason we had that vote is we had been awarded 17 EPA grants but we were also awarded uh nine additional uh nisip grants through nerta um as you may remember we're trying to stack those grants um that that proposition failed uh but we still have the ability to use the nerta grants uh one thing that we learned recently is that New York state will provide Aid on those buses um before we apply the nisip grants so um because the aid would be applied on the total gross amount of the buses the 4.5 billion for those buses um in the end these buses wouldn't cost anything to the taxpayers we would have to upfront the amount of 2.2 million we would expect to take
113that from capital reserve we're not asking to borrow that and then we would get back in Aid uh over 8 years the 2.2 million for a total net cost after Aid of 0 I think the one thing that we wanted to mention on this um on this particular side is that voters would need to vote for both propositions so for proposition number two and for proposition number three these were just uh we kept these slides in there uh for the board and the community just to uh see the request that did come in uh that we applied um a prioritization uh process and then uh the fact that we were able to leverage a lot of our grant funds to be able to support some of the requests that did come in and so those
114particular slides are still there we won't go through that um at this at this time um we're going to switch over to actually the last slide which is there it is so uh this is the calendar I'll say there is a mistake on it I realized this evening that we had the adoption of propositions on the next meeting but that's obviously on tonight agenda uh the board will be adopting the bus propositions and also there's a a proposition for the general fund as it is without the dollar amount um that gets added in when you adopt the property tax report card in April so uh at the next meeting we'll have another budget presentation and there's even one more after that before we have to ask the board to adopt the budget and that concludes
115uh our presentation any any questions just quick question um just in regard to the bus propositions could you just clarify what did you mean they have to vote on both they're two separate propositions in the past we would have all of our buses in one proposition uh we uh decided to separate the EV buses out from the uh Diesel and gasoline powered buses um we don't want people to think it's like a one or the other so if both of these propositions pass we're going to buy all of the buses so you can't vote yes no or no yes people could but if if one fails and the other passes we'll just buy the buses for the proposition that passes but if both pass we would buy all of the buses okay yeah the proposition
116it's totally separate it's I I've seen some school districts and we actually talked about it doing it last year where we would have a proposition saying like if proposition two fails would we have the approval to move forward we're not doing that yeah so so at Spence is you know going to come in and vote he's going to see proposition number two he votes yes for proposition two looks at proposition three on the ballot votes yes and now we have two yeses so we would purchase the buses um and then we would move forward with uh making sure that we uh leverage the grants that we received to move forward with the purchase of the electric buses which as you know will take some time but we'll eventually get that th those that uh set
117number of buses onto our Fleet which will also be considered as part of our replacement plan which you know you know every so often we we're going to need to replace the the buses that we have does that make sense I I think so so in other words if the majority of the it's a simple majority for proposition two or proposition three right so if most voters say yes to three or yes to two and the other one is majority say no yes would be that option correct okay that's all I was asking thank you my only question is um anticipating some potential confusion like this can we switch the order can we make proposition two the EV and proposition three because I worry that someone would say oh I voted for these buses I'm
118just going to skip proposition three and I would like to place the EV buses at the head of it is that possible I'm not sure because I'm not sure about that because the buses are on the bus propositions are on tonight's agenda and I don't know if they're listed as two and three or if they're just listed as bus propositions so would that take a an agenda Amendment or would we have to table it yeah we would have to do that yeah I don't think you can table it because I think we need but we could amend we could amend the agenda tonight so I could make a motion for example Mr President that we change the numbering of these propositions before we vote on them such that proposition two is the electric powered buses
119and proposition three is gasoline and Diesel powered buses what what is the rationale My worry is about potential confusion that people would think that oh if I voted for the proposition too then I could ignore more proposition 3 and the number of votes for proposition three would be much lower the number of total votes either yes or no but but you're not fixing the problem you're just making people vote for one or the other right but in that case they would vote for the EV buses which would be my personal preference right free buses as opposed to $45,600 basically what you want to do right oh you're trading what I'm saying if if we're going to make a mistake let's make a mistake on the end where we where cost us nothing I have a
120concern about sorry I have a concern about that a little bit because of the earlier vote where it was no for Ev buses I would be concerned that they might vote no and then no again so changing the order might not help if someone's determined to say no for Ev but I do like buses I think that's good I mean that that's exactly what I'm thinking if they go no and walk away then we're going to get nothing approved right that's that's the problem because the EV is you know more likely to get to know and then if and to your to your worry that if they just vote on the first one and walk away right but it wouldn't be it would be it would just be a smaller number of people voting on
121the bottom one right so it's not none it's just a smaller number does that make sense you sure yeah yeah yeah yeah okay I mean it's it's unfortunate that for some reason EV buses have become political when it shouldn't be but but there it is yeah all right so I think we you have a motion to change the agenda to switch the proposition is there a second okay any uh any discussion I think we had some discussion already any more discussion I would just say I really it doesn't matter to me whether which one is first or second as long as it's clear to people it's either or or both so I think it's the communication that's the important thing that people have the choice I don't care if one's proposition one and points proposition
12272 as long as people know they can vote for one two or both but they should vote on both of the proposition I agree entirely that that there the language ought to be very very clear but knowing human nature there will be some confusion yeah could any other discussion so all those in favor of switching the propositions opposed motion carried I think did you I I didn't I didn't see your hands what did you do yes I opposed Ed opposed and um Katie opposed and then every everybody else approved okay so all right so we have okay oppos um so you changed your vote to oppose the the motion switch I am opposed to switching the order okay so then it went yeah so then Christine opposed so now it's 43 in opposition so stays
123the the it stays the same we don't have to amend the agenda so okay so um well you guys any any more questions for Dr Roman and Linda um I just had kind of in line with Mike said I mean I remember when I first joined we had our long-term financial planner come in and painted this you know fire and brimstone Outlook of the district and we had to do things a certain way and throughout the years I I have not seen that that in fact I've seen pretty good fiscal health for us you know to the point where it looks like now we could you know come under the tax cap right we've always had the mentality of let's you know let's do the tax cap the state you know says this is what
124you should raise the taxes by um and we've always done that for for many years I know back in 09 or whatever we didn't but um for many years we've done that so I mean on the one hand it's good that we're able to do that and and lower the tax levy but you know I always have that that Workshop that we did years ago um in the back of my mind that you know was that just based on some assumptions that the assumptions didn't come true and we're in better shape now so you know maybe we need another workshop with a longterm financial plan I guess right so part of our the in the blueprint we do have that we're updating the uh the plan the long range plan they're actually working on it
125for us this year but I had told them that we would want a presentation next year but we could change that if needed um the assumptions that the financial advisers provided they always assumed the tax cap would be 2% and there were years where it was over that um they also their assumptions are taken to like minimal increases in state aid and we had pretty large increases over the last two years and also they they assumed that what we plan for in the budget is how the how the expenditures and the revenues will come through too so it doesn't account for things like the the breakage for when we have um vacancies that go unfilled for a few months so I think this is good news for like taxpayers and you know maybe we you
126know if we have a financial long-term financial plan maybe this could be you know a trend where we're not always doing this um you know up to the tax Gap and we can kind of monitor it Year bye but I think it's a it's the right step in in the right direction um for for you know not lowering taxes but lower than we could raise them I you know should say which is a good thing right and and I just want to amplify the point I made earlier about the board's decision to in the past years to go up to the tax cap to build those reserves and just in terms of the leadership of Linda and her team to be able to keep us in this financial uh footing that we're we're currently in
127and and as you can see over the past decade we have not had you know the need to use the appropriated fund balance that was applied so and in the fund balance is still good at the four under 4% yes okay yep we had one year a few years ago where we missed a revenue so we went over 4% I'm not sure if you remember that y um but what we do every year we make recommendations for the reserves so uh for example last year the voters approved a second capital reserve up to 10 million we haven't funded that at all yet but I expect that at the end of this year we'll be making recommendations to add uh some fund balance into that Reserve okay I noticed in 9 10 the fund that percentage
128was moving on to 8.1 can I get a motion to open public participation so moved Katie K all those in favor I opposed motion carried the board reminds speakers that the public comment portion of our meeting is is only one item in 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 3 minutes we expect individuals participating in public comment to speak respectfully and courteously ciously modeling proper Civility and decorum for our students would anyone like to address the board and just so you know I I won't cut you right off at three but I'll kind of wave my hand fantastic thank you good evening my name is Bryce Holland and I am seeking
129your consideration for election to The Duchess Bose's Board of Trustees I attended Arlington Central School District and I recently graduated from the University of Virginia having done a self-designed major I titled Cradle to Career Education something that I was inspired by the famous Harlem children's Z on March 5th I was nominated by the kipy City School District Board of Education for the Bose's Board of Trustees which I have the honor of serving the uh pipy City School District and my employment at the collective impact nonprofit organization the pipy children's cabinet if you haven't heard of us when I was in college I was Soulful and sentimental I knew I wanted to study education uh to help children having been born into poverty in the city of pipy I felt I had something to owe to
130the kids who were just like me who may not get to go to college as I did during college I avidly searched for a a silver bullet the answer in education so that all children no matter their backgrounds can grow up to have successful careers and I was constantly thinking about this powerful statistic that 80% of a child's waking hours in a year are spent outside of school I say all that to express firstly that I am a proud native of the city of pipy and resident of dues County secondly it was to explain my personal commitment and belief in the power of Bose's programs such as Career Technical adult education resilience Academy and special education to eliminate opportunity gaps across the county bosei serves a vital role in helping students with diverse learning needs
131to achieve their goals and ultimately realize this dream of socioeconomic Mobility for all of our children emphasis on all so for me to be home on a mission to eliminate opportunity gaps is both very purposeful and personal to me in this polarized age where fear and crises are normalized no solution has ever made more sense to me than the importance of local work like education uniting communities together with the understanding that for our children as well as our democracy neighbors must work hand inand against adversity I believe Duchess County can be a model of that so that they can Inspire others to do the same in America where place-based cultures Thrive where each and every person is passionately doing their part in their communities I think would be a much Kinder America one better prepared
132to face the challenges of our time so to that end I hope you will consider me for your nomination and vote for the Bose's Board of trusties I'm deeply thankful for my education and its opportunities that led me to my passion in education and local advocacy so it would be my honor to be of service to all of you on the Bose board if you haven't already received my resume and cover letter please let me know but with that thank you very much thank you anyone else I forgot to say when you go up state your name and address when you go to the podium so my name is Mark fower I'm 146 Rin Cliff Road Rybeck um I'm also a Bose's candidate um and I'm running because I'm excited about the future of bosis
133um and you also have a letter in I believe in your packet um hes have made great strides over the past few years with new programs and the completion of their building project I am uh completing my 19th year of board service on the Rybeck School Board I've served as vice president and president of the Rybeck board and served on the on many of the Committees I represent Rybeck at the duess county school boards Association and I've also been president and vice president of that organization I'm a great believer in collaboration Bose is a prime example of collaborative service and I believe in the importance of programs for students who may not be College Bound such as CTI I uh am an it uh technician so I know a lot about cyber security and I
134feel there's a great need for cyber security in education and that beds can be a leader in providing those Services um thank you for your time and I hope you'll consider nominating me for the bis board and vote for me in April thank you thank you anyone else good evening Mr President superintendent trustees Gully Stanford 181 one Marshall Road just welcome to my neighborhood a proud High Park resident uh and determined regardless of how you number them to vote in favor of all three of your propositions in May uh but I'm also here because I'm also running for um election to the Bose's board it's been my honor to serve there now for five years thank you for your confidence in me the last time around would greatly appreciate your nomination uh and on April
135the 22nd um your vote it's really been the privilege of my life to have served as a trustee uh there at the bosis and I come with good news if you haven't seen it uh already in the headlines but um the uh Board of Trustees has appointed Dr jod delua to be our district superintendent we believe she's the first woman superintendent in the history of duess bosies and this being women's History Month we're happy to celebrate that we'll be having I believe you'll be receiving through the clerk an invitation uh to a meet and greet on April the 23rd we hope as many of you uh as can can come and join us to uh welcome uh uh uh Jodie um and um I think somebody came on a tour earlier this week um good
136I'm very glad you took advantage of that we are doing tours for trustees uh I think the next one is on the 20 5th of um March so please do take um uh take advantage of that it's very exciting times in the bosis the um the resilience Academy um the Alternative High School has now about 180 students it's double what we had uh in recent years uh we're very excited because it's next door to Career Technical so despite their special needs and their unusual needs the students there are beginning to expose to trades which will prepare them for postsecondary uh success and the CER Technical Institute now is up over 800 you of course are our best customers and we greatly appreciate that was nice to take a look at your budget there and see
137your continued confidence and I I hope we um are living up uh to your expectations and just in closing it's such a privilege to um serve on the um advocacy Board of the dutes County School Board Association uh which is chaired of course by Mr Spence and um maybe those musicians of yours played a vital role in securing for all of us the positive and uh uh hopeful recommendations of the one house bill uh so that in fact our school districts will uh be uh given the support that you need to get on with the job so finally thank you for your confidence in me these many years and your friendship and I do hope um that I would be very grateful for an opportunity to serve another term thank you thank you would anyone
138else like to address the board okay Britney Decker for sure would lean um I just wanted to say I work parttime at FDR and um I don't know how many of you are going to be attending the conference tomorrow but they worked very hard to prepare all your breakfast so just make sure you thank them they all of us worked very hard today Craig and Donna as well the supervisor so enjoy your conference tomorrow thank you thank you thank you anyone else okay at this time we'll close uh public participation and thank you for uh preparing some refreshments for the these guys tomorrow he he he needs it and thank you guys for coming here and uh giv your pitch for a nomination appreciate it anyone else any comments all right moving on to 9.1
139board board subcommittee reports um so audit met and we talked about our internal um audit Focus areas for this year um I don't know if we heard back from them here we're going to wait until we hear back from him to see before we publicize it so we had a couple of topics that we put forward to see if the auditor can do something in that area um we also are going to put out an RFP for um our external auditing firm so we do that every three years five years um five years we do this five years is up so we'll put out an RFP to see you know who comes back we we typically change those um every five years um or at least put out the RFP and then lastly we um
140looked at our claims audit process um trying to do a couple of things see if there's a firm that we can put an RFP out for um them actually being our claims auditor a CPA firm or maybe the RFP would um train our internal claims Auditors um you know there so Linda is going to put out a couple of rfps and in that area as well so stay tuned anything else Carl got all right uh D Duchess County School boards Association met on 36 Ed so um you know as Mike said we want to welcome our Representatives here two of my colleagues are here from Dutchess County Schools Boards of course Mark and goly two excellent um individuals who've dedicated their life to education so we're we're very happy to see you here so it's
141G Gully stole some of my th but as he mentioned there's a couple events that are coming up as he already talked about um don't forget also if you're um considering running for your local board to contact your local board clerk I'm looking at the official notes and whether you want to attend the uh the tour of the uh uh posies itself whether you want to um possibly attend the training for new board members or whether you want to um attend any of these events that I've been emailing you know that is supposed to go through the board Clerk and so forth so just contact your local board CLK at our last meeting what we talked about is mostly we had a round table we talked about uh cell phones and schools and um it
142kind of runs the gamut about what people are doing across the county and across the regions some people have partial bands some people are trying full bands some people are having um the teacher handle it in their classroom some people are trying more of a district policy with something called pouches and so forth so it really really um runs the gamut the most important thing we all agreed upon is to get out in front of it you know with again the governor talking about this pending decision in the fall and kind of educate your faculty and staff educate your community about options and things you're thinking about that's the most helpful thing we also talked about budgets in general um um no no uh District in dges county is proposing to go over the 2%
143so-called 2% tax cap we talked about ebs's hide Park is has that as a proposition for the voters at this point in time I believe we said that no other district has that as a proposition for this coming year um and um we went on to just kind of share ideas about what other the people are doing in general across the region at this meeting um the one other note was weebit is looking to collect data on child care options across the county and they'll be reaching out to all the different District clerks to try to collect some data about what people are doing to be creative in that regard so goalie Mark you can tell me if I missed anything thank you thanks Ed uh Zev what is that zero admission oh zero admission
144vehicle met on 37 yes we met talk about the microphone we meant to talk about that's right now I recall to talk to finalize it was our second conversation about these propositions what we would bring to the to the to the board tonight and so you have seen the result result of that meeting good any other committee reports the the tech committee met on 35 with Richard work and they discussed um um a survey that he conducted through the faculty and he summarized the survey and he also um came up with a list of items that were priorities in technology and he has specified that he's going to try to go to each School in the next few months I guess or before the end of the school year and also suggested a kind of
145inservice which was a um a training program for CH or for teachers that are interested in different programs such as K Kami cahoot cyber security AI Quizlet and I think was mentioned today in the presentation Book Creator and EP so that was something that was sort of floated as an idea I think time is the issue though when would they have the time to do such a thing it sounded like a great idea and um I think Melissa Lawson addressed the committee about a grant for Lego robotics and they certainly supported that idea okay good any other committee reports code of conduct Matt and just continuing the work um it's kind of hard to explain because there's a lot of work happening on understanding how we're going to meet the needs of of of our
146students um so I think next meeting it sounds like I'll have a little more to report on but it's code of conduct okay and it's um we do have student Representatives still so um it's nice to be hearing their voice and they're and they're very um vocal and they're sharing their opinions um some teachers staff so okay thank you any other committee reports all right moving on to 9.2 board discussion including consent agenda items so I I had one discussion item for you isz how how are we coming along on the um the whole looking at the process to you know elect you know nominate and elect the the school board member at the school um so I I know I think we met um a couple weeks ago and I think we finalized that
147it would be more open to other students and wouldn't just be based off nominations but rather um submitting an application I brought it up to the student government and they kind of agreed and thought it was a better way for to make it available for other students so we were able to finalize that so we're a it's open to more more upcoming seniors rather than it being a nomination okay it does it require any change to our existing policies from the board um no I don't think so I think the only difference that we did so it wouldn't be too complicated is that if the if the elected board member um wasn't aable to make it rather than bringing in like a like a backup or somebody like that it would just be someone who's
148already part of the student government so they're already involved in everything so it wouldn't be confusing and and I assume it's been communicated to the eligible student body MH and those elections are generally in in April late late may I believe okay so yes good good work thank you was there was there discussion about who would review those applications would it be the student government or combination of staff and students um yes I we I think we agreed that we would have a member of each class so the Freshman um sophomore junior and previous board member uh board representative would be part of that Community uh Committee just to kind of have a student input of those who are already part of student government okay any other board discussion consent agenda items want okay moving
149on to 10.1 can I get a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda so moved Carl second Margaret Carl Margaret all those in favor I I opposed motion carried moving on to 11.1 so this is for our Duchess County Bose board candidate nominations so um let's see let me read here be it resolved the H High Park Central School District nominates the following candidates to run for Duchess County V board at their April 22nd 2024 five Bose's annual meeting further the board authorized the district clerk to certify that a board resolution was adopted and will complete the 2025 nomination form on behalf of the Hy Park Central School District Board of Education and submit said form to Duchess County bosis before the deadline of March 21st the board's nominations will reflect that the board has or
150or will reflect that the board has no recommendations so it looks like we get to nominate as many as we can or want to right so we could nominate none or all three or anywhere in between so either should we if somebody wants to make a motion or do we want to do it individually or do we want to do it all at once or how do we want to do it I I would I would move that we uh nominate all three of okay so we got a motion to nominate all three second second second so Mike is Tibbits and then I think Margaret you are second okay any discussion no I just I appreciate that you're here and that you all spoke there's a a range of experience um and we wish you
151all well but thank you so much for coming and Shar sharing your thoughts with us I Echo that sentiment thank you for coming I think we have three very good candidates here who are passionate about education so um any other discussion all right all those in favor I I opposed motion carried congratulations you guys are have our nomination all right 11.2 proposition one estimated expenditures of the district for the 2526 school year the budget so moved Carl second tibits any discussion I just like to say good job to you and uh Linda on getting this ready I think think it was a very very efficient process and um I think also kudos to the staff for not overwhelming you again with uh requests so I think last year they were trying to initiate you and
152uh I think this year everybody you know was was a little more uh responsible in the requests so I thank everybody who participated any other discussion all those in favor I opposed motion carried uh 11.3 proposition two uh purchase of school buses uh the bus replacement plan can I get a motion and this is for the proposition two will be the gas powered uh buses gas and Diesel so moved Katie Katie and Ed any discussion all those in favor I I opposed motion carried 114 four up I'm okay uh prop 114 proposition three purchase of electric school buses uh part of the bus replacement plan um can I get a motion some moved Carl second Carl Carl and TI any discussion I just want to say Kudos again for identifying nine buses for free right
153I mean you know next time I go car shopping I'm going to bring you along I was going to say and I also appreciate that we're giving voters a choice um that that a lot of work went into looking at you know not just being financially sound but that um we're giving voters a choice good any other discussion all those in favor favor I I opposed motion carried 11.5 uh legal notice for the 2526 budget vote in board member election followed by the annual meeting of the district can I get so move tibits tibits and Carl any discussion all those in favor I opposed motion carried moving on to 12.1 uh second public participation can I get a motion second Margaret car Margaret okay any discussion all those in favor I opposed motion carried would
154anyone like to address the board same rules apply as the first one except only 12 minutes total all right at that's time we'll close public participation uh 13.1 any other matters deemed necessary by the board all right uh we don't need a second executive session so at this time can I get a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting second Katie Katie all those in favor I opposed motion carried meeting adjourned e