2023-04-13 HPCSD Board of Education Meeting

001foreign thank you okay uh I like to open the April 13 2023 Hyde Park Central School District Board of Education meeting at this time can I get a motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing a personal matter leading to the appointment or employment of a particular person an employee promotional or disciplinary matter all those in favor opposed motion carried we're now in executive session okay thank you welcome tonight sorry uh we're a little late we had some extra topics to talk about um so at this time I'd like to return to open session um 3.1 do we have any agenda modifications okay we have none um 3.3 adopt tonight's agenda can I get a motion second all those in favor opposed motion carried okay if we could please rise for the Pledge

002of Allegiance to the flag of the United States thank you okay moving on to upcoming events so Friday April 14th a two-hour delay SPL I don't know what that means but all schools um Friday April 14th the Havilland Middle School Musical The Little Mermaid Junior and that'll be at Javelin at 7 pm Saturday April 15th Again The Little Mermaid Junior at Haviland at 2PM on Tuesday April 18th there will be a community chat at district office between 7 and 8. on Tuesday April 25th there will be a regular board meeting with the BOCES vote that will be at district office at 7 pm and on Wednesday April 26th we have the FDR Jazz Cabaret and that'll be in the FDR cafeteria at 7 pm and some reminders the board member petitions must be received by

003April 17th at 5 pm for a candidate's name to appear on the ballot at the May 16 2023 vote and that's that anything to add from a calendar standpoint from anyone okay moving on to Pride you want to start Lizzy so at Ralph R Smith uh yesterday they had 20 Marist football players spend most of the day at their building they spent a lot of time playing outside with students at recess and their owls really enjoyed spending time with some positive male role models in the community and then at Haviland they're participating in a school-wide kindness Spirit Week the week of April 17th through April 21st coinciding with their social emotional learning Second Step lessons around conflict resolution on Monday they have peace love and kindness day where they'll be wearing tie-dye Tuesday is score

004points with kindness where they'll be wearing sports apparel Wednesday is share the spirit of kindness they'll be wearing HMS apparel Thursday is workout problems with kindness they'll be wearing workouts comfy clothing and then Friday is say aloha to kindness where you can wear a Hawaiian or floral shirt HMS would also like to thank the board for supporting the 8th grade Washington DC trip they had a wonderful time in our nation's capital leading into spring break and they said that the cherry blossoms were amazing and for some FDR Pride will have Roman Pemberton playing the piano [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] so we do have some more Pride I see the Della

005notes back there and they're prepared to sing the national anthem for us [Music] [Applause] who's brought stripes and bright stars we were so gallantly streaming and the rockets bursting in air gave [Music] [Applause] thank you okay um I also wanted to add that we all had the opportunity to attend the French class Cafe at Haviland this week it was really lovely thank you to miss Lutz and Miss Welty it was a Haviland FDR um you know combined effort it was really nice to see um I believe that there is something on the agenda that you can just see for yourself when you look for Pride there's a photograph of the um 2023 Elementary and Haviland chamber orchestras the nisma music in our schools month Series so you can see that I don't know if it's

006up there or not but it's certainly in the agenda yeah there it is thank you and then of course we have formal private is there anything before that or 20 years um well Mike and I are gonna do it it's it's on the agenda prior to the FDR Pride but we can do it we're gonna do it at FDR Pride oh so okay any other Pride okay we'll move on to 7.1 the superintendent's report okay um prior to the budget presentation later on this evening I do want to share that the additions being discussed this evening are coming from needs that were recently expressed at building levels and that these increases do not increase tax levy from the previous budget presentations they utilize the fund balance so Miss Steinberg will be here to explain that

007in more detail but I I just wanted to add that and you'll see it as a separate slide just so it's clear for everyone but this is according to budget process we're still in the budget process and um we're looking at possible adoption tonight and then we have cabinet reports everyone is so polite no one wants to go first okay well um I just have a couple of updates that I'd like to give the board in the community the first is that on the 22nd of last month the instructional District leadership team met during that meeting we really had two main goals the first was to review our student performance data if you remember from previous updates we've looked at demographic data and perceptual data as part of our comprehensive needs assessment in preparation for

008next month's meeting where we'll be identifying draft District priority areas which we'll share with the board in June as we typically do the second part of the meeting had to do with our second meeting regarding the portrait of the Hyde Park educator or employee we're still determining how we're going to name that we looked at the different attributes just similar process to what we did when we looked at Portrait of The Graduate we looked at what types of attributes do we need to have as employees of the district in order to like deliver on the promises that we're making to our students and community so this was the second of two meetings and the third meeting will also be held on the 10th of next month where we'll seek to build consensus and we'll share

009a draft of that work with the board as that work completes but it's really designed to complement the work that was done with the previous portrait quick update for summer programming we're in the process right now of hiring summer school and Summer Bridge administrators that's both for our elementary middle and high school programs we have posted for staff as soon as we have administrators in place we'll be hiring our staff and by the end of the month we'll be sending out at least for the Elementary uh the elementary program the K-5 program will be sending out information to families on how they can register we're prepared and excited to offer a fun summer experience for all of our students K-12 and last year we served over 400 students and we're gearing up to do the

010same so quick thank you to the staff for all the hard work they're doing in preparing technology has been involved Food Services involved transportation is involved there's lots of people involved that make this run so just a quick update on where we are in that process thank you so um on Friday before break Melissa reader our director of guidance and I had the opportunity to tour CTI at Duchess BOCES to learn more about the programs that they offer we were able to see many of our students engaged in hand on Hands-On learning and I just wanted to thank Mr Millis the principal there along with the school counselors who hosted us and I promised them that I would mention that there is an expo this Saturday with a job fair for students and an art

011show that kicks off at 10 o'clock at Duchess BOCES um I'm happy to announce and thank Mr zagorski for bringing the youth and police initiative to our attention we were able to look into this program and we have had an opportunity to meet with the organization itself basically what the program does is it mentors students and helps build positive relationships between our youth and our police departments and um Mr ruella and officer pasentino are in the process of recommending to students for the upcoming event and that starts in late April and essentially the students every evening for a week will participate in a mentoring opportunity and it ends in a celebration on Saturday so two students are currently applying to be a part of that program we hope for it to grow over time so

012we're looking forward to participating more fully in that in the future a thought exchange was sent out to Violet Avenue staff and families today to gain information and insight into what qualities they're looking for in a new building leader and that is the first step in the process of the interview committee for hiring a new Violet Avenue principal so we are looking forward to the feedback we get from the community and we just encourage all community members at Violet Avenue to share their thoughts with us and we have 94 students currently registered for kindergarten and registration office and 93 applications for upk so we're off to a good start thank you so uh previously at a board meeting I had talked about State a state initiative or that's before the legislature right now to fully

013fund meals breakfast and lunch for students however there's also a proposal that may come from the USDA at the federal level to change the community eligibility Provisions for our free for free lunches right now if a district or a school has more than 40 percent of their students directly certified meaning they either qualify for Medicaid or for temporary assistance of any kind or supplemental nutrition assistance program that's the snap program they automatically qualify for free lunches so if we had more than 40 percent of our students qualify then we could offer a community program to our entire District meaning all students would qualify for free meals without having to fill out an application the consideration at the USDA level right now is to lower that threshold to 25 percent so we don't currently qualify under

014the 40 threshold but we would if that was brought down to 25 percent um there are some other considerations if that happens um our own State Child Nutrition department has advised school districts uh not to move forward with a community eligible program unless at least 60 percent of their students qualify and that's because even though the students wouldn't have to pay for their food the district still has to pay all of the costs like buying the food paying the payroll and other expenses that they have so we're hoping that if this provision does come through it might come through with some other funding too so that we would qualify without having 60 of our students eligible and um also as many people may know the state budget did not pass it was not met by

015at the April 1st deadline so right now the governor had put through an extender for the budget so they can pay their uh bills at the state level for this next week I'm hoping that we could see a budget pass soon but because of that the budget presentation that we have tonight and the budget that we're asking the board to adopt only has the proposal from the governor it's not the final legislative budget for state aid so um from my understanding the negotiations at the state level are not held up for any education uh funding reasons but for taxes overall bail reform and even housing issues so because those issues are holding up the budget that we're at a standstill also with our education state aid budget and finally on tonight's agenda there's a request

016to approve a vendor it's RBT CPAs they're a group that I met with with our district Treasurer because we had previously discussed finding a mentor for our new Treasurer but I learned that she had already been through a few mentoring programs through the State Association of school business officials and was asking perhaps to find an organization that can help around some of the technical work that treasurers do so the proposal that RBT submitted to us is to help the treasurer find some efficiencies in the treasury reports and and perhaps even change the formatting of that the treasurer reports that are submitted now are based on a format that's more than 15 years old so I really think it is time that we look at that to see if there's a better way that we report

017information to the board of education and they would also help her come up with a process for preparing for year-end and the audit and then also preparing the st3 which is this financial reports that are due to the state at the end of the summer if we do use RBT Services it's only a it's kind of a one and done thing we would have them come in and train her on each thing and not use them again so it's not something that we're looking to have continually that's all I have so thank you okay thank you and and for the record the youth initiative came from a community chat so we do take that feedback that you guys come to these Community chats that and I were there and we passed that along to Administration

018and you know luckily it sounds like it's going to work out so good thank you all right you're done with superintendent okay moving on to presentations I think we have the the FDR presentation okay thank you so this is um really one of the most exciting things that we get to do every year is come to FDR for the presentation and pride and also top 20 certificates so we are going to you can see the names right there we are going to stop start with our um top 20 with 20. and we're going to work together to hand out the certificate so you can come up and what we've done in the past which is nice it's just sort of like line up like this for photo ops so when your name is called and

019you get your certificate just come stand in front of all the families and then when you're all standing together there'll be more photos Amelia Sanford Alejandra Pabon [Applause] Olivia Forman foreign o [Applause] [Music] Jack sazi Emma rasco Madison relier [Applause] Brianna Perez quiros [Applause] Gabriella femiya [Applause] Natalie Burton Andrea iaccino Douglas Leach [Applause] Brianna Curcio [Applause] Kiro iwaka [Applause] [Music] Catherine heslin [Applause] Elizabeth jurkowski Caitlin Amaral [Applause] and Noah bovee [Applause] get out of the way I'm gonna wait till every camera's down that's it yeah um got it yeah congratulations top 20 is always super busy so we love that you made it here tonight thank you so much all your hard work [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen so first and foremost I'd like to start off by saying it's an honor and a

020privilege to serve as the principal of FDR High School um I'd like to thank the dell and Oates I'd like to thank Mr Pemberton for an excellent performance this evening I'd also like to congratulate the top 20 for just all the hard work and your commitment to making this an outstanding District um you know the this is truly the hard work over the course of 12 years is coming to the fruition right now and we know that you're going to go on to do fantastic things so enjoy the next couple of months um and and just thank you for all that you do I would say um probably be a long evening I don't want to bore you with my speech so if you do want to head out now now's the opportunity uh don't

021feel like you have to stay so I'd like to thank the board Mrs Kafka Dr Brown Miss Lawson Ms Steinberg along with all the District employees that work so hard to allow our buildings to open on a daily basis and support everything we do here at FDR High School I'd like to thank my administrative team my assistant principals uh Mr Cowan Miss Moy and Miss green I can say uh this building would not operate without their support day in and day out um every single day they come here they devote themselves to the staff they devote themselves to the students and I would tell you that I wouldn't be where I am today unless it's for their support so I'd like to thank them publicly and Mr Cowan he is responsible for our Junior and

022our freshman class Miss Moy is responsible for our senior and our sophomore class and Miss green has taken on the role of ensuring that every single student attends FDR every single day for attendance and also SOS sources of strength and PBIS I'd also like to thank our PTSA they do an outstanding job supporting we're going to pick that up they do an outstanding job supporting our students our staff and the FDR community so we truly appreciate all that they do for us and thank you with that being said up on the screen we have our district Mission our building Mission and uh our long-standing goal of graduate more students and we like to think graduating more students is really all about allowing those students to grow and prepare themselves for the next journey of their

023life After High School so our slide right here is uh FDA Roosevelt's demographics over the past four years you can see we've stayed fairly consistent we've run uh approximately 1130 to 1150 over the past four years there was a slight dip five years ago in attendance but it's nice that it has leveled off um around again 11 40 11 you know around that that uh population I would note that there has been a change in our demographics slightly our white uh demographic has decreased to 54.1 percent and our Hispanic population has grown to 23.3 percent uh you can see on our presentation we have four percent of our population is English language Learners we have 20 percent of our populations are students with disabilities and 45 of our population is economically disadvantaged and these numbers

024were pulled from March 31st this year so this slide speaks to our administrative goals and our building leadership team goals and our first goal up here is maintain or increase the four-year cohort graduation rate as compared to the previous four years and how do we really obtain this goal this is a goal that comes from Individual goals from the administrative team so for example um Miss Moy she works specifically with our senior class and her goal is to focus on ensuring that those students aren't falling behind in their senior year she's meeting with the students that possibly are struggling on Regents exams or struggling to meet credits or just some students that you know have senioritis and and felt that their last government course isn't that important but still a requirement for class she meets

025with them she meets with their parents she meets with their counselors and their teachers to ensure that they're staying on the right path so they achieve the goals for graduation uh Mr Cowan he works specifically with again the freshman and the junior class and he's following and tracking their credits he's looking at their grades over the course of the year he's creating action plans with their parents again with their counselors and their teachers to ensure that they're not falling behind in terms of credits and again miss green as I had mentioned before 4 has taken on the goal of improving attendance across the board for all four grades and then utilizing sources of strength and PBIS for improving the overall atmosphere of the building making those students want to come into the building so you

026take those three goals my goal relates to the building leadership team goals and I'll go over them in a second but you smash them together and that's how we get maintained or increase to four-year cohort graduation rate as compared to the previous four years our second goal up there is Foster an environment that improves instructional practices and promotes Student Success this is a joint goal by our administrative team which we you know want to ensure that we are modeling the appropriate environment for instructional practices that second goal is an umbrella that kind of covers both of our BLT goals and Dr Brown had already spoken a little bit about uh continuous School Improvement framework so our BLT what they've worked on this year and our first goal up there has been to utilize that framework

027model what the DLT is working with and in doing so we've analyzed our perceptual data we've analyzed our demographic data and we've analyzed our student learning data in doing that each time we move through that process we aggregated implications we identified one problem based off of our aggregated implications we came up with 20 hypotheses centered around that that problem and then from there we identified additional questions and additional data that we need to seek out to try and answer that question or improve that situation I would say most recently at our superintendent conference day this whole building had the opportunity to follow that process for our demographic data and our BLT now we'll meet within a few days and review that again merge it all together to um identify professional development opportunities for the following

028year we'll be able to bring that to the DLT compare our goals and align it so that we are working in conjunction with the district as a whole our last goal up there is to promote and increase reading and writing across disciplines as a means to support 21st century learning skills this really ties into our SPL work that we've done on the four prior days and Mr zagorski had mentioned that we have one coming up tomorrow as well so what we've done thus far on those days is we have reviewed literature centered around reading and writing in the classroom we've had discussions in content area groups and what we came to identify is that we really need to establish goals for our classroom setting centered around writing and reading those goals we developed for the

029courses we then developed them for the Department we took the department goals and we've merged them into a vision of uh for writing for FDR and not finished yet but what we have thus far is FDR students will use writing skills to communicate effectively and analyze and utilize writing for real world applications and what we'll do tomorrow is we're going to come back we're going to again meet as a staff we're going to uh you know get feedback from the staff and revamp that if need be our next slide speaks to our graduation rates as reported by the New York State uh report card as you can see over the past six years we've maintained a graduation rate at 80 percent or above um it looks like the cohort 2018 class of 2022 was cut

030off there that should read 80 percent um looks like our pictures had cut that off but again we've maintained a graduation rate at above 80 percent for the past 60 uh for the past six years what we've continued to do or what we're continuing to do is dive deeper into the graduation rates we are looking at subgroups and what we've identified is we need to work in uh specifically subgroups dealing with L's economically disadvantaged and special education we think if we start to find ways and improve instructional practices and assist those demographics in those areas then we're going to start to see graduation rates north of 85 percent which we hope to see in the future uh from this point forth on the slide you're going to note that we will see pictures of really

031what it's all about our students um you know day in and day out events of FDR and we have uh graduation last year again the culminating day of the hard work of uh you know 12 years and what this District does uh day in and day out so our next slide deals with uh cohort regions data for the last five years or what I should say um well yeah last five years and you'll note we have there's a gap here the 2019-20 2000 2021 years I've taken out simply because those two years you had cancellation of the Regents exams and you had exemptions that were put in due to covid um two years prior to this year it wasn't mandatory for students to sit so when you look at those numbers it's really apples to

032oranges when you're comparing them so if we follow me along the bottom when we look at Ela if you look at 2016-2017 all students you'll see a pass rate of 84 percent jump to 2017 and 18 82 percent for all students 18 19 85 percent and then when you get into the 21-22 uh school year last year you're going to notice there's a little section two numbers it says uh without appeals and with appeals and I'm going to read you the language from the state of what those uh what qualifies you for a special appeal for the Regents exam so the student must have taken the Regents exam during the June 2022 August 2022 January 23 June 23 and August 23 test Administration periods the students must have scored of uh a 50 to a

03364 on the Region's examinations that is subject of the appeal and was taken during one of the above administrations the student has attained a course average in the course that meets or exceeds the required passing grade by the school and is recorded on the student's official transcript with the grades achieved by the student in each quarter of the school year and again those are the regulations per the state for that special appeal and so for all of our students last year in ela uh 82 percent received a passing score 65 percent of above you see a score of 93 percent with this special appeal and then you can follow that across uh the for the Gen ad 16 17 90 1780 88 percent gen Ed for 18 1994 and then you look at gen Ed

034for last year you have 89 percent without an appeal 98 passing with a special appeal U.S history um we don't have data for last year because that exam wasn't administered um not due to covet or anything like that but um issues in terms of of State being able to provide it to the schools if you follow Global across the board again starting with all students in 1617 you'll notice uh upward Trends 77 percent 77 for 17 18 81 for 18 19 83 and then 92 again with a special appeal and then if you look at the Gen Ed uh last year you're seeing a 91 passing rate and a 98 passing rate with the special appeal when we look at two-year math and two-year science we Encompass those because we look at the cohort data

035so that takes into consideration the students uh that took that examination that were um also at in eighth grade and then it also takes into consideration for math students that take that exam when they're into 10th grade because uh year prior is they were in pre-algebra so if you follow those numbers across the board you'll notice that we have a little bit of work to do I would highlight that in last year we had a 97 percent passing rate again with the special appeal in science and then if we take a look at math you can see for all students trending 88 85 84 and then 56 and 81 with an appeal and I'll note some changes later on that we have implemented this year hopefully to assist our algebra one students for this year

036so honor roll statistics uh last one for this one that top one top picture right there I know it's a little small but that is our college fair that we had we had 20 plus students 20 plus colleges uh in this room right here back in the fall we were able to have students come down throughout the day get as much information as they can from those colleges that's put on by our guidance Department specifically Miss Fuller a big shout out to her because she does a lot of work uh reaching out to those colleges and asking them to come in for us next slide is Honor Roll statistics so I kept this slide from last year and the year prior um because I I do think it's important to take a look at it

037so the one thing that came from the pandemic is we didn't have those Regents exams to analyze so um what we needed to do is we needed to find other data points to see where we were trending and what we needed to do if we if things that we were working on uh during those two years were working and if not so if you look at this slide you really want to compare 1920 to 22 23 and you'll see that we are within a percent of Honor Roll stats comparing those two years I would say honor roll a are 90 and above and then honorable B is 85 to 89 percent and the pictures on the bottom there is our um pep rally on the left and that's our senior class a big shout out

038to sgo for all the work that they do to put on the pep rally we have two students in the middle that participated in our college application week we had students come down into the library over the course of that week they applied to college and in celebration uh they created signs at the end indicating that they had applied um and and was really great to post up on the website just celebrating their hard work and our last picture up there is our Avid students and their field trip to Bard College and DCC our next slide speaks to our academic supports so here at FDR we really want to make sure that we're providing programs that span all of our students as a whole I mentioned before it's important that when students graduate you know

039we want them to be prepared for the next stage of their Journey whatever that might be perhaps it's College perhaps it's the workforce perhaps it's a trade school so we want to provide them all the opportunities Within These Walls to get them ready for that and I think this slide speaks to that first you'll see our AP and our college credit courses that we have we offer 18 AP classes five DCC four Marist and one Bard and then students have the capability of earning up to 18 RIT credits within our pltw courses next you see 148 students attending uh Duchess BOCES CTI that is a big increase from years prior that's more relevant to I would say about six or seven years ago it's right around where we were at 150 students for BOCES CTI

040it declined a little bit but then we've seen upward trends and that's continued into this year where we've seen additional requests for both ccti and I just want to thank the board for your continued support of that program and the support of those students next we have our at-risk protocol and procedures and students first um this was a program that we've implemented over the past couple of years we've increased the opportunities in students first and you could see the courses listed these are our own teachers staying after school to provide support to students that are struggling in these courses we have one of our own instructors Mr Napoli that's overseeing students first and he has taken on 195 requests and a request can come from a staff member a school counselor and an assistant principal

041for a student to be added to the student's first roster now that's not to say that we have 195 students staying after every day but what we can say is that's 195 students that we are encouraging to stay after that's 195 families we're calling 195 courses that we're looking at specifically to provide support for those students in hopes that they will stay after and take advantage of that time AIS academic intervention services so I mentioned before about some supports that we put in for algebra you know we identified that we wanted to try uh looked at improving those math scores and we worked with our incoming freshman class and the haviland's uh middle school counselor down there miss mountain and we were able to schedule 65 students incoming freshmen for math AIS or math support

042specifically geared towards the algebra exam Regents prep another big support that we have um at you know first day of Regents prep kicked off for U.S history today additional days after school for Regions perhaps going to come in the up and coming weeks but we started U.S history today because that exam is going to be administered on June 1st so we wanted to get as many opportunities for our students to stay after and work with Miss Thomas to get him ready for that exam and then last but not least our summer school and Mr Brown already spoke to where we're at in terms of that preparing for this next year something's going to happen I'll work with Dr Brown in the upcoming days just to identify you know projected numbers for our up-and-coming summer school

043so academic and programmatic initiatives so you know we look at this and you can see we up there we have the four C's and and really that encompasses those 21st century learning skills uh our DLT is is working on um you know portrait of of a learner a portrait of an educator all of those Encompass the C's and the four C's critical thinking collaboration creativity and communication um that right there really speaks to the work that we've done on the SPL days and that focus on reading and writing um for improved 21st century skills uh avid a fantastic program advancement via individual determination the district continues to support us continues to support the staff seeking professional development and commitments to training in Avid summer Institute you know we have uh 10 or 11 individual staff

044members that are going to be attending that this summer what we see in terms of avid is it's a focus on really that critical thinking component in terms of our instruction and then something that I think has been tremendous and a tremendous asset to our staff over the past couple of years really was relational capacity and it's the ability to build relational capacity not just with students but to build relational capacity among students within the classroom to bring that community and that family feeling to to that classroom is what we want because if kids are comfortable kids are going to learn our daily agenda um you know I used to say you walk into every single classroom and you're going to see the date standard objective and all that written on a board that kind

045of has has morphed into um from covid and from the pandemic that's morphed into um being posted in the Google Classroom which is really a fantastic thing um we do have some staff that still do keep it on the board but we do have a lot of staff that actually have an own designated area in their Google Classroom where they can actually go back and students can go back and look two three four weeks ago and see the objective of that day really great um Innovative way for our staff to keep that going through our instructional time I had spoken already to FDR vision of writing which we have been working on through the SPL days uh sources of strength and PBIS so there's been an addition of 60 students in our sources of strength

046program regrowing that after the pandemic and those 60 students we focused on freshmen and sophomores to bring them in and grow that program program over time our Scythe program so students with interrupted formal education so that program is up and running what we've seen in Dutchess County what we've seen in High Park is an influx in our um you know Refugee population that program currently houses 15 students seven have been with us since the first semester nine have joined us since the start of the second semester speaking to the staff they really do like the training that that program provides to them our safe instructor is definitely helping those students and the new challenge for that program is what we're looking at is the um entering and exiting of students that program has seen 23

047students enter and exit since last year so but still a fantastic program that supports those students coming into our district and then also too supports them as they shift out and move on to the next stage mindfulness in schools projects so this is our social emotional learning program required through the state currently we have 49 of our staff members participating in that training that's been going on for the past year we have our brother at program that Mr Cowan overseas and works directly with that year is in our pilot program we have 34 students that are working in that Mr Collins been working with individuals from Brothers at to really hone in and Target um systems approaches that will help those students and help that program and help those students be successful we have the

048bright program as well that program is the bridge for resilient youth in transition so essentially what this is is if you see a student in an IDT placement uh in a um you know having to to go to a medical placement um having a student come back in and jump right into eight periods out of the day would probably be like jumping into an ice bath so this program helps them transition back into it period by period it's it's tailored specifically to those individual students we have Miss Lieberman and Miss Fierro working uh with that program and those students specifically there's been 20 referrals over the course of this year happy to say that eight students have completed the um or transitioned in and out of the bright program successfully eight are still in it

049um you know one student actually did move towards homeschooling and then three students needed a higher level of service but was identified through bright so fantastic program to assist those students I had already mentioned our eff work and then also the expansion of our final performing arts and our technology and business department where you know hopefully by next year we're going to be adding several classes to both of those programs again to meet the needs of our students next we have FDR um you know as a community as a family so 17 clubs and activities I'm grateful that this building and our staff has the ability to to work through and provide 17 different clubs and activities for our students to be a part of again we have sources of strength we have student government

050that you see throughout our freshman sophomore Junior and senior class Miss Curcio does a fantastic job overseeing student government and you know what do they work with specifically you see them work with homecoming pep rally class Wars spirit week it was a creation of a winter spirit week and the executive council elections so again phenomenal student government uh FDR county-wide skilled trades fair so we were able to work with Senator cerino's office at the time to host a skilled trades fair that was county-wide you know a fantastic turnout we had over 50 vendors that came in a lot of students from FDR a lot of students from neighboring schools that came in which was really great to see again just bringing it back to that community and making FDR the the hub for that component

051spoke about our PTSA before so we've seen increased memberships in our PTSA our PTSA sponsored to hang up and drive assembly in the spring that our Juniors were able to attend it was a phenomenal assembly really really hit home for several of our students they were really moved by that presentation and then also I I know you know a lot of people saw that Harlem Wizards game phenomenal game with a thousand plus people probably here at FDR just a few weeks ago they did a tremendous job just with the logistics of that and again that's something that just shows that um they're here to support us and they're here to support our students we had our fine and Performing Arts organ assembly and then again just a slew of of events that happen here at

052FDR prom Junior ball booster clubs uh I have to mention officer pazantino which has been an exceptional addition to our staff this year as our school resource officer he's out building relationships with students and he's doing a great job he's an asset for our building and provides a fantastic connection between us and the community uh lastly FDR accomplishments so you know I mentioned Avid before so Avid has a 100 acceptance rate into college so far and these year this year's senior class they have a four-year combined merit scholarship of 2.8 million dollars so that means that those students have applied for scholarships and those colleges have awarded them that money if they attend um so it's just extremely impressive that's the hard work of our Avid teachers and our Avid students that move through that

053program um again I mentioned sources of strength we have something coming up that we're super excited about sources of strength uh week that's going to be hosting individual events each day that our students will be able to participate in our sgo team um filled out Valentine's Day cards for our senior citizens in uh local uh homes a slew of students that have done fantastic things Marina Scott qualified for New York state track and field championships Emma Yeager qualified for New York State Gymnastics Troy Speer qualified for New York State swim you know you have Jordan Jones and Aviana gray selected for um the New York State I don't have it on here I had to write it down New York State art Teachers Association we had 48 entries into Scholastic uh the Scholastic art uh

054competition 17 Awards including 17 Silver Keys two Golds and so on our very own Mr Pemberton again uh playing at the DC mea uh All County Orchestra students performing at D.C Chamber of Commerce breakfast again just a number of things that our students do day in and day out that should make this community proud I know they make our staff proud I know they make uh you know me proud I know they make our administrative team proud so um it's really again it brings it back to all about them and uh you can see that they are paying it back to the community tenfold with that being said I'll take any questions thank you Micah yes there is an awful lot to be proud of I agree the one thing I do want to talk

055about just for a minute is graduation race and I and I know that the four-year graduation rate is sort of the typical metric with this but but I'm particularly interested in sort of the five-year graduation rate and more specifically are there programs and processes that help those students who fall a little short that fourth year to ultimately get the degree and do you have numbers on the five-year graduation right I don't have the numbers off the top of my head but I can provide them so what I'd say is absolutely we still have um so we run a cohort model with our AP so they follow them through so you know what we have right now is was Mr frado now it's Mr Cowan so he will still work with our fifth year seniors and

056the goal is if you're not making that June graduation um then the next goal is August after that January and then June following year and when we sit down and we create plans um we take that into consideration Miss Moy has already sat down with students and identified okay we've fell short after the first marking period we're not going to make it to the June graduation so what's our action plan moving forward are we able to achieve credits through summer school if so all right let's let's have that plan of action if not maybe we need a full uh semester course next year let's think about the scheduling for that because what we found is you have a student that has only a half a year course that they might need or let's say they

057need two courses and they end up in a second period and an eighth period they're not common for five study halls in between so we try and actually work with the schedule to get it so they can either have late arrival early release um our at-risk protocol Dives deep into trying those detailed plans for those individuals so so you've got the Staffing you need to sort of a really individualized efforts with these teams I'm sorry you have the staff and you need to have really individualized plans and efforts with these students is that what I'm hearing our staff works extremely hard and and it is it's it's interesting because when you run that cohort model and I'll speak from my perspective you know being an assistant principal here for a while when you get done

058with the senior year it's kind of like um oh thank God I'm over I'm done with that year because it's just so much chasing um and it's so much uh working with those students and those families day in and day out um and it's high stakes you know because that's the last opportunity not the last opportunity but that's you feel like that's the last opportunity so it's high stakes granted fast forward and say that you're the assistant principal for the ninth grade course or ninth grade class at the end of that year you go oh thank God you know they've matured and we're moving on to the next one so our staff works extremely hard to make sure that we're doing every single thing that we can I'm just curious when you're mentioning the the

059interventions and for the students at risk has that always been the way things have been done because of the dip in the rate so it has been that way for uh it was five six years a little bit I think Mr Cowan and I sat down when we were assistant principals under the uh leadership of Mr party and that's when we established those at-risk protocols there's been additional things additional like we've increased summer school offerings we've increased students first offerings we started looking at the honor roll stats uh so instead of just looking at the negative spin we wanted to look at a positive component as well too um so we have modified slightly it is again the additional programs like brothers at mindfulness um those programs bright that we've brought in to assist at-risk

060as well when we look at those 20 students that went into the bright program um those are 20 students that work closely with our clinical staff and our assistant principals too so it's programs like that that we've brought in in addition um to the original I would say at-risk components so are you thinking are you thinking that because we're at 80 which is kind of discouraging with all of the supports that are in place right so are you thinking that that's going to improve as as we see the results of bright and some of the newer initiatives or there's things that you think are lacking so I would say I do believe that it's going to improve when we look at it there are new programs Brothers new program bright First full year implementation where

061you know we we're feeling comfortable in it I do think that we will see an improvement from there I will be honest I think we're going to see an improvement as we move um through more years away from the shutdown so I think we will see improvement from that but I also will say you know I think the work that we do through the eff that data work I think the work that we do through um sorry I'm drawing a Brank but the the eff that'll work I think the work that we do with reading and writing in the SPL days I think that is going to help us improve at one point is have we looked at the way that we're offering like in terms of demographics have changed needs have changed so the

062scles is one piece but have we looked at possible evening classes because some you know do we know what the barriers are is it that students are working and have to work to provide for their families or so I'm just like I guess I go on and dig a Little Deeper to find out are there needs that we're not addressing so that's the work that we're looking at through our BLT through through the student performance data the perceptual data those are the questions that we're looking at the problems that we're identifying their attendance has been one of those things that's been coming up and so we're working on systems approaches to improving attendance um you know across the board we improve attendance we put kids in front of our staff we know they're going to

063do well um so it's all of those things that we're working on that are in there but I would say the Crux of that is coming from our BLT work and our DLT work with the analysis of our perceptual demographic and student learning data and my hope is that as time goes on we're gonna identify the problems this year Implement procedures and policies for next year but then we're redoing the cycle and it's going to change year to year and I think that's a nice cycle that I think across the district particularly this building I think is definitely going to support and like because you you can you can stand behind it because it's it's the whole staff doing the work and it's the whole staff buying into it so I think we're going to

064start to identify really specific problems have we identified them all no absolutely not but that works gonna identify specific areas that we'll be able to Target and hopefully you know provide answers for those anything else from anyone okay thanks Mike thank you Linda I think you're up next you have the next two topics okay so we're all here so uh good evening tonight uh we're talking about our fiscal stimulus grants it's our uh periodic update on how we're spending the money and what our plan is uh going forward um so listed here is the timeline that we had put together a while ago this is our fourth uh like our formal presentation on the fiscal stimulus grants we do expect to provide another presentation to the board in June uh on our status then there

065will be some changes between now and when we present in June because we are awaiting from our uh our financial advisor the long range plan which includes some of the items that are in the fiscal stimulus grants that we wish to move into the general fund in a couple of years when those grants expire so we'll have that information tied to the actual presentation that we give at that time and also we just finished going through the review process for the State education department we had expected that after that review process we would have some corrective action plans they told us to expect that but we actually didn't have any so we're really happy about that we did we were asked to change some language on our purchase orders to comply with some federal regulations

066we did that and we also changed the policy but there are no corrective action plans from that state review uh so as people may remember we actually received uh three different sources of funding uh through the fiscal stimulus grants the first one is the known as the cares act it's the corona coronavirus Aid relief and Economic Security Act uh next we were awarded funds to Carissa which is Coronavirus response and relief supplemental Appropriations act and our largest source of funding came from the American Rescue plan or the ARP Act everything listed on here are the items that the U.S Department of Education had suggested that schools use the funding for and many of the items that we added to the fiscal stimulus grants uh comply with these suggestions um this is a slide that we

067have in all of our presentations so um unless the board would like to go through the items I'm not gonna I'm not going to go through it line by line okay so for the cares act uh like I said that was the first funding that we received from fiscal stimulus funds this is the funding that we received uh in the first uh school year when we closed down um you may remember that the federal or the state government was threatening to cut Aid by 20 percent because they were losing out on revenues too so when they when the State education department received this funding from the federal government the state used it to kind of uh tide us over um in the 20 that they cut from us so it wasn't additional money it was

068money that had done in the original budget for the school district for the 2021 school year and then we also learned that we had to share some of the funds about 37 000 of the total um 800 and uh well 830 000 was for the school district and about 37 000 was for private schools uh this uh funding string ended last school year um Hyde Park School Districts but all of the funds allocated to it it was the 830 000 and our private schools didn't spend quite all of their their money um they left a couple of hundred dollars on the table that the school district cannot claim because it wasn't allocated for us but that fund stream is now closed uh we received all of the aid we closed uh or filed all of

069the reports that were necessary for New York state for that funding stream uh the next source of income that we received was the Carissa act overall Hyde Park was awarded 3.2 million uh this funding stream ends uh this fall September 30th 2023. um the Carissa funding is split between Esser and gear uh gear is the government the governor's educational emergency relief fund and us there is another acronym I'm not really sure I don't remember exactly what it stands for but we did receive both funding sources and we'll have that money spent by the end of the summer yeah so this slide just shows how we spent spent the Carissa money between the gear and the Esser so the First Column shows what we actually spent in the first year that we had expenditures 2122 uh

070what we have spent so far uh through March 31st 2023 in this school year what's remaining in our budget for this school year and then some monies that we have left over that we'll spend this summer most of the money that's left over from this grant for the summer will be spent on the student supplies we had that initiative last year and we expect to do the same thing for next school year and the other expenditures are related to summer school there's some salaries for summer school and transportation that will spend this coming summer and our biggest funding stream is the American Rescue plan act we received a 5.8 million or we will receive that as we spend the money this funding stream is open and available to the school district until September 30th 2024.

071and this is a chart very similar to the Carissa Grant chart the First Column shows what we spent last school year in 2021-22 what we spent so far this year through March 31st what we expect to spend through the rest of the school year and then what we have budgeted for the next two school years right hi so I'm just going to speak briefly about our survey results this slide represents our first survey we had 232 responses and the slide represents kind of a recap of the things that are already included in the 2223 budget or being funded by the grants that Linda was referring to so an increase in teachers to decrease class size an increase in kindergarten teaching assistance mid-year we pivoted and now we have a kindergarten TA in every kindergarten classroom

072a bcba a board certified behavior analyst to support students and social emotional learning special education supplies that have been purchased Elementary extended day enrichment program which is going on now Middle School foundations and their extended day program the students first program that Mike talked talked about here at FDR and it increased the tutoring pay rate so all of these items again are in progress as a result of some of this survey feedback so this next slide is our current survey results we just had a survey go out we had 157 respondents and the biggest shift in the last survey was really around food providing free food throughout the school year summer and after school programs Linda spoke to that we're hoping to see a shift in the threshold that would really support Hyde Park in

073our food service program some additional items include paying for AP and college courses the purchase of school supplies that she talked about continuing again more respondents for continued funding to decrease class size and continue those extended day and summer programs and then really the biggest shift in this current survey was around increased mental health supports for students and around increased Security in our school buildings and on buses I think you're going to see it in Linda's budget presentation that's upcoming we are already working on some of those items through our regular grant our regular budget and the general budget things like the vestibules at all the buildings and increased in security Staffing and then some additional items include Community Schools field trip opportunities and Dei diversity equity and inclusion supports and before I turn it

074over to Greg to go over next steps I just want to thank Linda Jen and I recently have have been able to help her and this is you know as a math person myself too this is really difficult and really confusing and she won't mention we were very proud to have no corrective action um and one of the very few that got no correctly let me just say that like never happens yeah and I I honestly think they are hired to find things yeah yeah I think she's getting some phone calls so Hyde Park might be being mentioned as an Exemplar um because she's recently had some phone calls after our submission was approved with no corrective action so it is a lot of extra work it's welcome work because of the additional funding but

075it's it's tremendous so thank you Linda I don't know what to say Kim that's what I was going to say no I'm just kidding no it's really a team effort but um as we all know Linda is uh very talented at her work um and from the very beginning of our application process the work that we put together was used uh both by the business officials organization as their Exemplar and now again after the formal review period so Linda thank you um on this slide I just wanted to share a little bit of our current budget and spending uh you know through the end of last month so if you think back to the couple of slides that Kim just shared we've asked the community on four different occasions prior to now how do you

076prioritize the needs as you see them in the moment and our response to that as it's reflected to the amount of spending and by the way if you've been reading the newspaper or any Publications around this you're starting to see and you've been seeing for the last six months or so articles that say States and schools are having trouble spending their stimulus funds fast enough and that there was real concern about you know building projects Etc taking too long and the funding streams running out before you could actually expense the funds we're on track to do that so again thank you Linda the things that you see on here are both in our current budget spending and in the grant you saw many of these in Mr ruella's presentation the brothers at program we were

077able to take bright from something that was going to be pile in one school we were able to accelerate our work in that area and Implement across all six buildings in the first year instead of where we would be right now which would have been two and then three and then four different buildings so we use those funds to accelerate that work we've used Ed leader 21 to help us with revisioning our portrait of a graduate and portrait of a learner so we were able to use these funds to kind of catapult ourselves forward in our thinking and looking at our visioning beyond the pandemic funding we've used this to really jump start our ien and you've seen a presentation previously you're going to get another presentation around the instructional Equity Network you've heard from

078some of the teachers and the action research projects that they're doing really seeking to make a difference in different Spotlight groups across our district graduation rate included would be one of those outcomes you've seen Melissa reader or director of guidance who's been on staff now for this year we've seen academic intervention Tas added speech and language Pathologists increased services and special ed covid coordinators Federal stimulus coordinators many of these things you'll see we've got a prioritized list that we've been working with our team here and we've presented to the board about things that we want to continue beyond the federal stimulios funds but there are things that you see in here that are stimulus fund expenditures only we've had permanent daily subs to counteract the sub shortage that we've seen nationally that's been successful we've

079upped our speech OTP con contracts to provide compensatory services to any student who didn't receive their services due to the covid-19 pandemic so we've made sure that we've caught all students up in regards to the the obligations that we have to our students in in terms of their services that happens with our special education supplies and evaluations also those are very expensive we were able to upgrade our evaluation tools through this we've had our extended day program which serves almost 400 kids after school four days a week with Transportation our Summer music programs I know that's a very popular program we're excited to extend that again this year and then really providing transportation and food and supplies with all of our programs both during the summer and after school what's not listed up here but

080I think is worth mentioning is the board and the district's commitment to providing transportation to our upk students we had our meeting for our quality assurance evaluation this year for today for this year the opening meeting and again Jason Gish our reviewer and member of the office of early learning commended us on our commitment and uses Hyde Park as an Exemplar across the state on how to fund and supply and support through transportation and food our Universal Pre-K programs so the cares act funding I'm not going to go into because that's been spent and done you know for over a year now and you've seen that on every slide so looking beyond the stimulus period we're looking to work with and you've seen an initial presentation by our long-term financial planner who's taken some of

081the priority items of the board and projected them out it was really a positive report from the financial planner then and that picture has only gotten more positive with the increase in Foundation Aid which you're going to see kind of a parallel between this presentation and the Woodland is going to do next so we've got a list of things as of September that we wanted that we've built in and one thing I just wanted to highlight is that our ICT originally that increase in ICT going from part-time to full-time wherever possible and having those programs we had a hiring I believe of eight special education teachers to increase the services to our students and that happened late August so it started already this year so this didn't make our previous presentation and well that's going

082to get moved to our general fund budget it's currently being funded out of the grant for this year some of the other things that we're considering are moving our Summer music programs into the general fund at the conclusion of this and our academic intervention services teaching assistance which we've increased those services and again Mr ruella alluded to some of those Services as they pertain to the high school but that's really K-12 I guess in terms of next steps we're looking to prioritize our survey results so we do that every time we're going to explore the additional supports and as the Community Voices to us their change in need over time and then that's going to be something that we use in response to this survey so as we look at our spending versus our estimate

083and our actuals if there's money left over at the end of the year that will immediately go to those priority areas and then those priority areas will be used as we put together the package for next year that Linda alluded to we'll then apply the funding to those prioritized survey items and then we're going to submit all the paperwork for amendments to the current Grant to make sure that those funds can get approved for these other uses as the communities identified so we've provided some resources for the board these are active links they're active links for the community as well if you want to dig a little bit deeper into what each of these funding streams are and how they work and what the responsibilities of schools are this is all the primary source documents

084that you could do to learn a little bit more about that so at this point we'll take questions from the board I yeah I have a question it's it's difficult to I see the survey results but it's difficult to understand without the questions like what was asked so is there any way in the future that when we have the results we can also get the questions yeah of course there's I can give you a quick synopsis if we go back all the way to the beginning here there were areas that New York state required um and really promoted us to use the funds for so there's actually eight different areas with descriptions in that survey and it asks families and community members and you know staff to rate on a scale of one to five

085the area of priority and what I can tell you is in all cases in all surveys thus far all eight things are high priority so what we do with that is we say okay so they're about equal priority right all on the high end it's moved from like mostly fours and fives to threes and fours with some fives but all high priority what you see in our prioritized list here are the things that are coming to the surface that are in the free response what are the additional supports that you need that you believe would make our schools better and our students more successful so this is an opportunity where people can list as many things as they want in terms of the items that they think would really make a difference so what we

086do is we go through and we do some classification of that and we say all right what are the items that are repeated over and over and we have to do a little bit of of like summarizing in that right because it might say summer programs and then another one might say Summer Bridge or another one might say extended summer learning or something like that so we kind of code them and then these are the ones that are repeated the most times during that free response I'd be happy to share the the blank survey with you and the board and I think it might still be posted you just can't answer it any longer so thank you I do have a question so um I'm very data driven and I see the list of everything

087that we spent money on and I see a couple of charts where we talk about what's going to be moved in to the general fund but I don't have a clear sense of really what that picture looks like and I know you have the data but we talk about it like for for example you know on that one chart where you mention oh the cares act that's over but in there there were four kindergarten teachers what happened to them right are they now in the general fund so if I can get we can get a list of everything that's part of the stimulus and then what was one time shot and what what's already in we've approved to be in a general fund and what's proposed to be in a general fund um it should

088it should be of clear one pager to show us that view yeah we have that information because we shared that with our financial advisors to do the long range plan and and I will say the cares act fund was actually recorded in the general fund because it wasn't extra money so for the uh most of the expenditures in there were expenses that we had budgeted in the general fund and we just allocated the funding source differently because we had a reduction in Foundation Aid sure but yeah to see that would be perfect right I mean you know and I know some stuff is already in there some stuff we're got in this budget and some stuff is in the future so if we can see that I I would appreciate that because I don't have

089a sense of you know how big this thing is overall as a summary and how much we're absorbing in the general fund and how much are we not doing anymore thank you sorry Linda and I know it's been mentioned before but I can't recall some those some of the positions that we talked about that are no longer of need like the nurses the amount of nurses during covid or the covid coordinator what is the plan for that I can't remember we have in the budget next year that LPNs uh through the fiscal stimulus grants and the uh the fiscal covered coordinators are in the grant then um those would those will end when the arpa funds end um in September 2025. uh we did have the part-time custodians that we're paying for this year in

090the grant but those uh positions are will be eliminated at the end of the school year um we've already met with CSEA our HR director and the facilities director met with all of the part-time custodians let them know those positions wouldn't be available next year explain to them how they can apply for full-time positions or get on our sub list some did apply for full-time positions and were hired and some others have other jobs so they were interested in that but many of them are going to stay on the Southwest that's exactly my point right the the you know I know we throughout the years we've hired a lot we've did a lot of good stuff I just don't have a sense of what's staying and what's not and whatever staying you know what's the

091justification for it staying right that's that's what we don't have a picture of we can do that thank you thank you okay are we ready for the budget presentation go ahead uh so uh tonight's uh budget presentation is actually the final uh presentation before the board hopefully adopts the budget um there will be presentations um with the adopted budget after tonight uh but really tonight is the the night that we're asking the board to adopt the budget as we're proposing it here uh normally uh when we're here on the night of adoption the budget hasn't changed from the from the previous presentation but we did Identify some needs from our last board meeting there is a slide in the additions area later on in the presentation that shows what we added specifically from the last

092uh budget presentation until now um in total from the last presentation we increased the budget of 522 349. we are asking uh to pay for that through appropriation of fund balance we're not expecting to increase our tax levy for the additions that we made like I said there is a slide on that later on but overall our proposed or budget for 2023-24 is 115.2 million dollars that's at 9.4 million dollar increase uh which is also 8.97 increase over the current year uh that is a large budget to budget increase but we're also expecting more state aid uh in the coming year than we've ever received at one time and most of the increase in the budget will be funded from the state aid increase our tax levy is at the maximum amount that we can

093Levy under the tax cap law uh which is 68.3 million dollars it's a 2.4 million dollar increase or 3.7 percent uh there is a calculation that we have showing um how we arrived at that at that number but I'll just show here the two major taxicab factors can I just point out yeah back to the other slide that that 3.7 isn't what people can expect in a tax increase that's just our increase year to year for the levy and I did go out of my comfort zone and do an estimate on taxes which I'll show I have thank you later so the the 3.7 is made up of the two major tax cap factors we have the tax-based growth factor which is the part of the tax cap calculation that's associated with the actual physical

094change and properties in the school district so this doesn't represent just an increase in assessments it's when we actually have new properties on the tax rolls 1.72 percent is actually a really large increase for the tax-based growth factor in recent years our tax-based growth factor has been less than one percent I I believe that most of that tax-based growth factor is attributed to the big project in the Town of Poughkeepsie that's in our school district Hudson Heritage that's where the new uh ShopRite Center is and some other uh some other commercial properties are there too and then the other part of the tax cap factor that has a real um impact on the tax cap calculation is the allowable growth factor allowable Levy growth factor this is the part of the tax cap calculation that's

095associated with the with inflation so school districts are allowed to increase the tax cap based on the change in the Consumer Price Index for the year before however New York State limits us to two percent so like years like now our CPI change for 2022 is eight percent we're not allowed to raise taxes by eight percent we have to stay at that two percent level so basically we're increasing taxes for existing Properties by the two percent and the 1.7 percent that gets us to the 3.7 can really be attributed to the new properties that are on our tax roll uh this here is just the calculation I've gone through it before and unless any board member would like to I won't go through the detail on this but it shows the two factors I just

096talked about and also the considerations for the capital uh tax levy which is mostly Debt Service and the pilots which right now most of our Pilots are all the solar Pilots that the board approved a few years ago uh this is the calculation uh for the estimated tax rates there's a lot of assumptions in this because we don't have the tentative tax rolls yet those aren't due by the county until May 1st so once the tentative tax rolls come out I do another calculation to determine where I really think we'll be with our upcoming tax levy for the tax rates uh the assumptions that I made were that there would be an increase overall in the taxable assessed values for all towns except for Hyde Park in Pleasant Valley based on median home sales in

097Dutchess County I found information from a few realtor sites and also from New York State and I think I put a link in here to a Dutchess County report I can't read the link so I'm not sure which report I referred to but they all had shown that between March 2022 in March 2023 in Dutchess County a homes that sold sold about five percent uh more than they were assessed the year before so I was using that as an assumption I didn't assume that Hyde Park or Pleasant Valley had increases in their assessed values because both of those towns currently have an equalization rate that's less than one that means that their properties were deemed to be undervalued by New York State last year historically uh Pleasant Valley and some other towns will be under

098one for a few years and then they'll have an assessment and and be fully assessed in their Equalization rate will be one Hyde Park has not had a reassessment since 1994 so their Equalization rate has been less than one percent since then or and I expect that it's going to fall even farther last year we were at 0.4475 for Hyde Park the equalization rates actually don't come out until the summer when it's time to calculate the tech the tax rates but it is based on level of assessment and there's a current report on New York State website that shows that in Hyde Park the level of assessment is less than 38 so that's quite that would be quite a big decrease if that's the actual Equalization right so the Assumption here is that the equalization

099rates would be the same next year if that were the case and the five percent increase in values was accurate the tax rate increase would be about 1.98 for all towns um because I really feel that for Hyde Park that the equalization rate is going to fall from where it is now I believe that Hyde Park's tax rate will be higher than 1.98 and the other towns will have a lower rate change from the 1.98 and might even have a decrease in their tax rate so like I said this is all assumptions um it there is no tentative tax roll yet to go by and we don't have the equalization rate so it's just an assumption that I've I've made based on information that I found on the website from Dutchess County right uh this

100slide shows what we budgeted for state aid this is the governor's proposal normally by now we show what uh was actually enacted by the state legislature but as I said earlier their budget hasn't passed yet so we don't have a final budget from this state we only have the information from the state the governor's proposal to include in the budget I not sure if this will change at all I don't think it will change much if it does because it's my understanding that the items that are holding up the budget at the state level are not related to education I believe from what I read there's other issues that is holding up the budget in general so we are expecting to receive a 4.9 million dollars more in Foundation Aid that would bring our foundation

101Aid level from 23.2 million to 28.175 million that's a 21 increase and the largest that uh Hyde Park will have ever experienced in the history of Nation Aid and that will also get us to a new base level so the 28 million will be our new level for foundation Aid after this year most of the other items here are based on cost or expenses the more we spend like on BOCES and special ed students for hardware and Technology software transportation and Capital Improvements Are all uh all affect how much Aid that we get for those items so overall based on assumptions that we have for our budget we're expecting that our state aid will increase by 6.7 million dollars next year and like I said this is based on the governor's proposal the only thing

102that I changed from the governor's proposal was the building Aid assumption for next year and that's actually based on information from our financial advisor they calculate how much we pay in debt every year and that directly affects what we get an aid and the state doesn't know what we're planning to spend for debt next year so their numbers are usually not as accurate as the numbers that we get from our financial advisor yeah on that one with this budget not being passed is there any risk to these numbers I I believe so because there there isn't any uh there's anything really controversial that's in the governor's proposal that the state legislature or the uh would want to remove from the budget other than the fact that they might not require us to spend the high-packed

103uh with high impact but you mentioned one of the holdups was just high taxes in general yeah like state income taxes funding of the foundation Aid so that's not one of the points yes that's not uh that's not in issue there are no education related items that are at issue right now but if they need to solve something else they wouldn't take from this I don't believe so okay because we probably would be in deep pool if they did right um if if that happened and we had this budget passed then we would either have to appropriate more fund balance to cover it or during the school year next year we would have to cut back on some of our spending I don't believe it'll be an issue usually year to year we receive more

104Aid than we were predicted to receive by the state thanks so this slide shows the total uh budget to budget revenues so again you can see the total for the preliminary budget for next year of 115.2 million uh that's what we're expecting to spend um we do use the fund balance amount which is the last line to kind of fill in the budget because our expense budget of 115.2 million has to match this Revenue budget of 115.2 million so we already know what our tax levy is based on the maximum amount we can Levy we're using the governor's state aid projection for our state aid number the other revenues includes mostly Billings to other districts we also have in there some interest income and that's increasing next year based on current interest rates and then

105like I said before the fund balance is just the plug number to get us to the 115.2 million dollars and here we show the different expenses expenditure categories uh the salaries are on the first line and employee benefits on the last line those are our two biggest expense categories and they make up I believe in this budget just under 75 percent of the total expenses we usually show all of our expenses in these categories I did add near the bottom the least expenditure category we've always had leases mostly through BOCES and that would be uh either classified in the BOCES line if it was from BOCES or contractual if there are leases that we had outside of that but were required now by the governmental Accounting Standards Board to account for leases separately so I

106just added it in as a separate line item here and again you can see the total budget that we're requesting is the 115.2 million uh the 8.97 increase and 9.4 million dollar increase in the current year also we're required to show the budget and the uh in the three components that are listed here it's program administrative and capital um for next year and this proposed budget our program uh portion of the budget is 77.4 of the total uh administrative costs are 9.96 of the total and our Capital expenditures are 12.58 of the total also required to be uh separated in the presentations and the information that we provide to the public are any transfers that we have to the capital projects fund um next year we're asking for one transfer for a capital project uh

107for a wheel or really a platform left at Netherwood we are allowed to have one Capital project each year for a hundred thousand dollars for which we use cash to pay for we can't borrow for it if we stay under that hundred thousand dollars we will get back uh that all of the aid and the year after the project is completed all other capital projects are aided over 15 years so in order to take advantage of this we have to find projects every year that are less than a hundred thousand dollars oh the project that was approved last year was for a platform left at North Park um and we did identify the need for that at Netherwood too so that's what we're asking the voters to approve now it's not a separate proposition if

108the general fund budget gets approved this gets approved too but it's also important to note that we're on a four-year plan so even though we're seeking approval for this project now we won't spend the money next year next year we'll be spent designing the project sending out bids and then we would have the expenses the actual work done 425 but currently our state aid building Aid ratio is 70 so like I said when we spend a hundred thousand dollars we get seventy thousand dollars back okay so the next few slides show all of the additions and the Savings in the budget these are items that are actually new uh to the budget or that we're actually removing it doesn't just necessarily it doesn't just represent uh changes in costs so for next year uh we're

109requesting to add an assistant JV football coach that's really based on need and participation we're asking for a full-time student records assistant for the student registration office again that's really based on need we are asking uh here on this slide you'll see there's the request for five full-time school security monitors uh one for each elementary school and once we're here at the high school in some of the additions that I talked about earlier you'll see that we're also making a request for Haviland to have some more security monitors but I wanted to keep that request separate since it was new so that's on a different page we're also asking for here at FDR to have a 10-month full-time microcomputer technician to help manage the Chromebooks for the students oh we're seeking to have add to

110our budget three full-time special education teachers a four and a half special education teaching assistants a full-time behaviorist that would serve the whole District a full-time psychologist that would serve the whole District a full-time school counselor for all of the elementary schools it would be one counselor that would serve all four elementary schools and a full-time Tech Teacher here at FDR uh part of that the 0.6 FTE would be for the Winner's Circle Pro program uh continuing with what we're requesting to add to the budget is a a budget for an enrollment study this is something that's not in the budget every year but we do have to have an enrollment study done every five years according to our board policy and next year's the year to have that done we're also asking for two

111facilities dogs one for North Park and one for Netherwood the costs that are here are really just for their training like the initial startup costs and the training for the dogs the persons that take responsibility for those those dogs are responsible for all the other expenses like the food and and that care and everything else that's necessary for the dogs so it's a big obligation on the part of the employee too we budgeted uh a hundred thousand dollars in non-payroll costs for the Winner's Circle program we did uh separate out from our foundation Aid 494 000 for high impact tutoring this was in the governor's proposal we're not sure if we'll be required to spend the money on that but right now that's what we have from the governor's state aid proposal excuse me we're

112also increasing our CTI seats by 35 so the total cost of that is 455 000. we are looking to increase our special ed tuition and contract costs by just over a million uh we have a charter school that we have students attending now so I added 75 000 to the budget for that there's an increase based on Need for Chromebooks 247 000 we would like to buy some playground equipment and sun shades for outdoor classrooms that's 300 000. a district-wide radio system is 140 000 I am moving some of the benefits and transportation costs that we had originally budgeted for in the fiscal stimulus grants back to the general fund of the totals 1.9 million and we added 225 000 to the budget to cover tuition for college courses for students at Duchess mariston RIT

113and uh this slide here shows all of the additions that we added since the last budget presentation so we're all of this is based on needs that were identified since the last board meeting we're asking to add an assistant principal for North Park Elementary School we are asking for a behavioral ta stipend here at FDR I don't even know if we told Mike about that yeah but we had um realize that Haviland had requested some behavioral Tas five for classrooms and one for the uh in school suspension room so we figured we should also offer that to FDR and then we're also adding security monitors for Haviland and a full-time social worker um just to clarify for the staff it's the behavior ta stipend so they're not new positions in the classrooms or the ISS

114yeah it's just the stipend to support the work that we really expect was which is to de-escalate students at times and that comes with training and a stipend as per the contract so the total cost for the stipends the cost that the employees receive 6 500 but the 7700 cost is the includes the pension cost and payroll taxes oh this slide was shown before it's what we're saving from the budget overall we're saving 185 000 because we have four teachers retiring um this is just the cost difference between the teachers that are retiring and the newer teachers that will replace them we removed the pandemic supplies budget from the facilities and operations budget we're reducing the door hardening budget typically we would budget 240 000 a year but we're just leaving a hundred thousand dollars

115in that budget line so overall um we are adding to the budget 6.3 million dollars like I said most of that is covered by the increase in the state aid this slide just explains what happens if the budget is approved by the board but not by the voters so if the board puts this budget before the voters and it's not approved the board will have a few choices you'll be able to either resubmit the budget just like it is to the voters or you could change it reduce the amount and submit that or you could go straight to a contingency budget if you go to a contingency budget we have to take some items out of the budget and we would have to reduce our tax levy by 2.4 million because we could have no

116tax levy increase and we would have to decrease expenses by 2.7 million and this is just the calculation for the contingency budget if we were to go to a contingency budget our budget would decrease for next year from 115.2 million to 112.4 million right so there are two other propositions on the ballot the first or it's actually proposition two is for the school bus replacement plan uh we're looking to purchase 366 passenger buses by 30 passenger vans our first electric bus which is 66 passenger an electric vehicle charger so the total would be 1.3 million there is state aid Associated or available for these purchases we would receive that over five years uh 843 000 so our total net cost after State a would be 457 a thousand dollars for those buses and then finally

117the third proposition is to give the board authority to have a school a student Board number so because we have a student board member we have to ask the voters to approve that every two years and then this chart just shows the uh the budget presentations and what's upcoming if the board adopts the budget tonight the next presentation on April 25th will be the BOCES budget and we'll ask the board to adopt that that's a Tuesday night all of the schools in Dutchess County are voting on The BOCES budget that night the budget hearing is scheduled for May 8th that would be at district office and it's a Monday There's a board meeting on May 11th so we would present the adopted budget then and the school budget vote and board member election is on

118May 16th at Haviland Middle School from 6 a.m to 9pm right so because we are asking the board to adopt the budget tonight I'd be happy to answer any questions I just have one actually um so in the additions you have Chromebooks increased by 250 000 um what is the total budget for Chromebooks and is that in line with with what we expected when we started the Chromebook you know one for one I believe the number that we're purchasing is mostly in line we we are experiencing some more uh breakage and the need to replace them a little bit faster but really the co the addition to the budget is driven up by the cost of the Chromebooks there they've really have escalated a lot in in the original pricing that we had I think

119when we were first buying Chromebooks we were paying just under 300 for a Chromebook I'm not really I don't remember how much we had budgeted at some point can we see that view of of the whole program that we started on and you know how it's tracking to what we expected yep yep I can get that from the technology department thank you the other um comment that I have and maybe a question in there is on the important dates can we add into the important dates when we're shipping out the newsletter and how are we doing on the newsletter that's supposed to be shipped out so all of the information is already at BOCES for printing I will let them know tomorrow if the board adopts the budget that they have and I'm sorry they

120don't print the newsletter they prepare it and send it back to us and we print it here so um once we know from BOCES after we talk to them tomorrow how long it'll take then we can figure out when it'll be ready to be mailed out it'll be in plenty of time for the yeah um whatever the yeah so budget hearing yeah well technically the the school budget notice which is in in the newsletter it has to be mailed out after the budget hearing so we're going to do two mailings this year we're going to mail the newsletter before the budget hearing and then we'll mail the school budget notice again after the hearing perfect thank you um hopefully be a postcard if we can make it fit on a postcard yeah yes yeah but

121as soon as I know when when we're gonna what our timeline is for that I'll add it here yep hopefully we'll know when we when we meet again on the 25th but the dates are for that any other questions for the budget all right all right thank you thank you okay at this time I would like to get a motion to open uh public participation all those in favor opposed motion carried so I have to note as a general rule public participation is limited to three minutes per speaker with the first public participation segment limited to 21 minutes the segment of time may be modified by the board as deemed appropriate the board requests that remarks be courteous and respectful of all would anybody like to address the board Bobby okay so we'll close public

122participation moving on to 9.1 board subcommittee reports any committees meet just uh you saw it in the budget proposal to purchase an electric bus I've got a committee working on the the preliminaries for that we're not making a full commitment but we're looking into the parameters with the infrastructure is going to be and we want to uh I think a lot of people school districts are waiting hoping that this thing is just going to blow up and the state's going to give up on it uh we are also hoping that but we're preparing for the worst that we have to be prepared for it's very preliminary right now but we have an ongoing discussions all right thanks the uh the DLT met and we had a presentation about Community Schools as I recall and this

123was new to me so correct me if I get this wrong I think the basic principle of Community Schools is it's where the district reaches out into the local community to create Partnerships with organizations and businesses that should be mutually beneficial to the school and those associations okay yeah that's really accurate and I'm just viewing that the school is already a hub in the community and and bringing more services in so it's like one stop you know shopping for families in addition we've scheduled a visit for anyone interested on the DLT there's going to be a presentation in City of Poughkeepsie because they have a more developed Community Schools program there that will actually be next week on the 19th we're meeting there our student here is going to be attending it's a presentation and

124then we also have an invitation to return on their Saturday program we can actually visit and see so there'll be an upcoming invitation to actually see you know one of their programs in action okay did you want to say anything about the superintendent search or are we good on that what's that okay okay all right no other subcommittee reports um what is the next uh board discussion so is there any board discussion so well go ahead and then I'll repeat this first I just I want to I want to publicly thank Jesse laguerre for organizing the board retreat and uh bringing someone in to talk to us about the certificate of Civic Readiness is it no no no not seal of Civic Readiness which was really interesting and sort of exciting so thank you okay

125okay so um this year two seats will be available at the May 16 2023 election Mike Tibbetts and Carl Thomas terms end on June 30th 2023. if anyone is interested in running for the board nomination packets are available on our website Hyde parkcentralschooldistrict.org under the Board of Education tab or can be picked up at the district office to have a candidate's name appear on the ballot the district clerk must receive their signed petition with 45 verifiable signatures no later than Monday April 17 2023 by 5 PM so if you're interested in running Bobby you can get a packet you'd have to quit your job and then you could be have this high-paying job up here the next Community chat I think I mentioned this will be Tuesday April 18th at district office um we already

126mentioned that any any consent agenda items that anybody wants to discuss okay um I do just really quickly I want to congratulate Deanna Gonzalez on her new position as an assistant superintendent in Dover um she's been an outstanding leader at Violet Avenue for 13 years and we will all miss her very much um also Tim Backus and Facilities department is retiring for after over 13 years with the district um congratulations to Tim okay thank you so um 10.1 can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda don't move Tibbetts second Margaret all those in favor opposed motion carried no worries um you want to be good okay okay moving on to new business um 11.1 the Seeker resolution for pla for platform lift at Netherwood Elementary School Capital outlay project can I get a

127motion all those in favor opposed any discussion motion carried I probably should do that first right yep so all right we'll get this one right Carl um so now this is the big one proposed Hyde Park Central School District 2324 budget proposition 1. any discussion no discussion okay can I get a motion okay can I get a motion okay all right any discussion all right all those in favor aye you do that we don't need a roll call right okay opposed motion carried school property tax report card 11.3 any discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion carried School District budget notice 11.4 make it a second all right any discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion carried 11.5 appoint election officials 5 16 23 budget vote in Board of Education member election any

128discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion carried 11.6 first consideration of policies code of conduct second Margaret any discussion all those in favor aye opposed motion carried now it's time to enter public participation number two can I get a motion all those in favor aye opposed motion carried so would anybody like to address the board same rules apply you get three minutes okay nobody we're gonna close public participation okay other matters deem necessary by the board no need for an executive session right we don't need a second one did you want one okay all right 15.1 could I get a um motion to adjourn the meeting all those in favor aye opposed motion carried thank you