001United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Good evening everybody. Um, I just want to say that Alexis Pace and Doc Bryant said they regret that they could not be here this evening. Um, welcome everybody. We're looking forward to the next couple weeks coming up with all of the concerts and festivities before the holidays. So, I want to at this point just wish everybody a happy holiday this year and I'm going to turn the meeting over to the superintendent. >> Thank you. Um, tonight for our student showcase, we have members of our high school business department like to share some thoughts with us. All right. Good evening everybody. How are we? Nice and toasty. Okay. Uh my name is
002Kurt Allen. I'm a high school business teacher and with me tonight I have some of my students from my class and my club. We'll touch the names in a couple. But um we're so thankful that uh we are here tonight so we can talk to you a little bit about what we've been doing, what we've been up to. And I got to tell you, I'm super thankful to the board of education, Dr. D, everybody for approving this kind of class. Uh it's what a great opportunity. I've had a lot of parents that actually want to sign up for this class, too. So, uh >> Oh, yeah. So, um, you know, investing has been a passion of mine for many years and it's one of these things that I always talk about financial literacy and to
003come up with a way to pass it along to the kids these days to prepare them for the future. There's a lot going on out there and I got to tell you, these kids are hitting it out of the park. So, not to set the bar too high for their presentation tonight, but I think you're going to like. So, what we're doing, um, with the investing program, we're focusing in on a lot of different things. Not just stocks, not just bonds, but really just educating them about retirement, talking about 401k plans, 403bs, you name it, we're discussing it. And more knowledge that they have, I think they're going to be better prepared financially. What are some of the benefits? We're talking about building real world financial literacy. So, you're going to hear tonight, many of
004these students know a lot of the terminology, things that some of you may or may not be familiar with, but it's something that is going to prepare them for their businesses. I've even had some feedback, some of my students right now who graduated years ago. They're starting to major in investing. They're going into uh public accounting. Um, so many of different areas. Okay. Now, um the class itself is an elective, which means that uh it is something that the students have to choose to want to enroll in. And I'm thrilled that it's a half year class, but we focus in on a lot of different things. There's a lot of hands-on. So, it's not simply just something that you're going to learn from a textbook. Sorry, I'm talking a little too much. What I want
005to do right now is I want to bring up one of my students who done a fantastic job. We have something called the stock market game. And I'm not going to steal his thunder. So I'm going to turn it over to John Weber, but he's going to tell you a little bit about what he's learned and what he's done. John. >> Thank you, Mr. Allen. My name is John Weber and I am in Mr. Allen's stock market investing class. I'm going to be taking advanced investing with him next uh next semester, I should say. So the stock market game is basically this game across at least nation world. But the whole point of it is that you're given $100,000 to play with. It's not real money, but it works as if it was real money,
006and you're able to invest that into various funds, stocks, etc. It's a bit limited, but you are able to invest into a sizeable portion of things available on the New York Stock Exchange. So, here is my portfolio. As you can see, I'm 98% invested into stocks at 2% in cash. And the reason for that is because when we started this class, we were really focused on our stock portfolio and diversifying our portfolio. So, I really wanted to like hammer that home when I was playing a stock market game. And I am in a group of three people, but I would say most of the trades here were done by me with the main exception being MRVL down there was Marbell Technologies. That was an incredible trade made by one of my partners and I've since
007bought more of them. So, this first major increase here came from a stock that I researched into for a company called DigenX, which if you heard anything about them in October, they ended up rising 400%. So, I made quite a bit of money from where I bought them at. And one of the big things that I ended up learning from this, a little learning experience I had was not to hold out for too long and wait for something to rise even more because you never know when something could fall. Right after that, it went to $27,000 was my highest value and then it went from about $41 a share and it started dropping and I sold it at 36, not wanting to lose anymore. So I still well doubled my profit since I had bought
008it at around $16 a share. After that, I kind of played around a bit. Stayed in the ballpark of around 118,000 value on the portfolio. And right now, I'm worth a little over 14,000 profit. So, I like to talk about, you know, how did I get to this position? Well, I did a lot of investing into technology companies which were on the rise. If you take a look, some of them, you might recognize MU is Micron, which is a chip company. Uh, Intel Corp is inc. AMD does chips and processors. All very strong hitters in the technology company. And a lot of these stocks ended up making me a lot of money. As you can see, all the ones listed here only had a gain on them. I had at the time this was taken
009only one loss on my whole portfolio, which was only $200 loss. And as you can see here, I am the number 10th team on Long Island right now. >> Yeah, that's out of over about 700 teams. >> Wow. >> So, I would now like to pass it on to the president of the Young Investors Club, Brianna Franco. >> Hi, I'm Brianna Franco. I'm president of the Young Investor Society. This is >> I'm Thomas Jacobi and I'm vice president of the Young Investor Society. >> I am Mafia. I'm the secretary of Society. The Young Investor Society is open to anyone who enjoys investing or just wants to wants to learn more about financial literacy and investing into various different stocks, securities, bonds, even crypto. We learn about too. And students, we all basically collaborate together and
010we learn about what we find interesting in order to improve our knowledge. and FPN. And our goal is really just to have a fun place where we can invest and learn. I'll bring it to um as of right now, we're meeting every other week, but we do have some exciting stuff coming up. Right now, we're really looking forward to the global stock competition, which is similar to the stock market game, which Sean was talking about, except instead of being just Long Island or New York or America, it's global. So, we have the opportunity to compete internationally. Um, which is just going to enhance our best skills. And now we are very we're very much looking forward to seeing the opening bell of the stock exchange. If you if you have ever heard about the opening
011bell, it is a very prestigious event to attend and we look forward to that. We plan on going to that in January as long as there is no IPO or initial public offering if we're wondering. And then we once we go there we'll learn a lot about how basically the inner workings of the stock market and the stock exchange and we should really improve our knowledge of investing and the world and the financial world today. >> We're also excited about a potential opportunity to attend the global youth investment summit. So it would be an opportunity for us to not only like talk to people in the region or like just talk to actual professionals who do this as their job. We'd be able to network, be able to like it just great opportunity. Our future
012goals for the club is to like expand our enrollment in the club and to see more people join the club and participate in the club. Along with that, we would like to grow our our competition involvement and join other competitions like the global one that we last along with community partnerships with places like banks bank in our area. We also like to enhance our digital tools that we're using to look at stocks like the Bloomberg terminal. >> Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to share just why we think this is so important and why we are so passionate about investing. I'm going to pass this off to Thank you guys. >> Thank you very much. Thanks very much to the board of education and the public. Um so as just mentioned, one
013of the ideas that we've been kicking around the high school for a while is the idea of a Bloomberg financial lab. Um my background for teaching was in debt sales, so fixed income sales um to large institutions. So this was sort of ubiquitous. Anybody in finance um used a glory term and still does. And now it's permeated really into the educational space um because of the capabilities that it has. And um this past May or June, a couple of colleagues and I went to Bloomberg for symposium for academics. Mr. Harvey was there and he just brought something. He just said something. It's almost like rich. Bloomberg is AI before there's AI. And what Bloomberg continues to do is just develop and enhance all these algorithms that make it completely user friendly to people who might
014not understand what you're doing or what they're exploring. So um this is not AI. This is a little thing I put together. Um what it really is. All right. So it's a cornerstone tool in finance that's used globally. Um not just finance. Uh it provides economic, political, government, now crypto, commodities, futures, anything you can put your hands on, Bloomberg will investigate. It's a 24-hour financial services system. Uh, I'm sure we've all heard of Bloomberg radio and you're here on Long Island, Bloomberg television. Uh, Michael Bloomberg is obviously a billionaire. Uh, the product sells and the product is very widespread. It allows access into every single business related product. So, I'll just go to um investments. For instance, you got fixed income, debt, equities, mortgages, interest rates, uh foreign exchange, commodities, futures, anything that you can
015pick up that has a QIP or has an identification tool in the world, municipal bonds. Um you can run the terminal and you can run myriad of functionalities on it. You just if you're not even sure what you're doing, you just hit help out twice and they'll tell you exactly how to achieve what you're looking to do. um extremely impressive. Um it integrates multimedia content, gives access to premier information, worldrenowned journalists as well. So um anybody that subscribes to this has access to all of this information. Um uh the capabilities honestly the capabilities are boundless. Um it takes finance, financial theory, economic theory and will really bring it to life. So at the high school level, the term will be used to strengthen students understandings of the dynamics, business operations, global economic systems, anything that's
016happening is going to shape the markets or it could be political turmoil that'll obviously shape markets as well. Um and run tech skills through that. Uh there's multiple discip multiple multiple disciplinary support as well. So it's available to look at things in math, science, ESG, uh sports management, uh supply chain man, supply chain management, sustainable development, healthcare, any sector that exists in the world, the terminal Bloomberg supports. Um students will learn how to navigate and access anything historical real time forecasted data um what they think might happen uh or extrapolate ideas on the terminal uh look into a company's balance sheet for instance financial statements 10ks research calls analyst calls um talk to equity fixed income holders they could look at who's long position short position contract so it could really really go wide and
017deep uh why at the high school um We believe that it would have the power to give students more hands-on financial learning. So, it's going to prepare students for a lifetime of informed financial decision making, which is now something New York State has mandated as well that students are educated in career financial literacy. Um, it aligns with our district commitment to prepare students with 20 21st century skills and global financial literacy. Uh, and it integrates with a lot of our curriculums as well. So for instance just in the in the business department with the business classes IV business management levels uh investing in the stock market advanced investing IV economics accounting and it could be used as I said for other courses as well once they access the terminal. Um and I think by bringing
018the external world and the financial markets into the classroom uh it allows for classroom theory to really be real world practice. Um, and I know it's hard to without seeing the terminal and running it, it is hard to really appreciate it, but it's it's transformational. Um, a lot of the schools, a lot of universities, I spoke to a rep today just to kind of get my arms around how many universities are really using it. You're at around 1300, he said. Uh, and now that's become more and more high schools and secondary schools are doing that because they feel like they want to get the students ready when they're off in college that they understand how to work the terminal. uh some of the functionalities and be more prepared for it. Um this wasn't really around
01920 years ago in colleges and high schools, but it's starting to really take off especially locally. >> Um it gives us performance based learning opportunities for students. Um of course there's active learning and curriculum uh club benefits. You've got your national business honor society invested society deck. Um and that's not to say other clubs couldn't use it if they wanted to um because of the capabilities that it has. Uh as mentioned before a lot of the public and private colleges and universities have these terminals on campuses and as I'm going around looking at colleges uh with my oldest you just see it everywhere you go and um now chi schools are using it schools are using it um which I was impressed to see as well. Uh Bloomberg has over over 5,000 original news stories
020daily from 150 news waters and bureaus which we would have access to uh across 72 countries. They have a Bloomberg global trading challenge which is at 42 different countries with over 10,000 students involved in the in the trading challenge and they also offer certificate courses to our students. So students would want to distinguish themselves and take these Bloomberg financial courses. They have one in uh ESG environmental social and governance. They have a Bloomberg market concepts course and they also have a Bloomberg finance fundamentals course that would be available to us. So, it's um it's a very impressive system. Um some people know, some people don't, but a lot of couple of local high schools have been kicking the tires on it. Some have definitely done it. Um and as I said, a lot of local
021uh universities and colleges. So, I just thought it was a great opportunity to bring up and I appreciate the time. That's something I've definitely believe in and I think we really take our business department and the high school to another level. >> Thank you. ANY questions for Mr. M? >> Yes. >> Um, first of all, I always say this with kids come, you guys are the highlight. We love hearing from you. We love hearing your voices. We love hearing the excitement you bring about what you're learning in school. So really, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules. I know you guys are very busy all day for coming here to explaining this world to us. I was amazed to look at your portfolio and I'm sure if I had
022seen the other portfolios I would also have been just as amazed. My question is like you need a lot of prerequisite knowledge to know how to do re to know how to do the research and to know which stocks to invest in. So how do you go about doing that and ensuring the students are comfortable in researching the stocks? Um have you guys done any of this more on your own because you're so interested in learning about stocks? you research a lot on your phone or do you wait for class? And what other classes do you feel have really helped you in this class at the best? >> I know there's a lot of questions on the >> That's okay. Um I guess I can start it and maybe some other students can jump in
023on this. Um you're right. At the beginning of the school year, many of the students might come in. I have a mix. So it's since this is open to grades 9 through 12, I'll have students that have done research on their own or actually been very curious about stocks. A great example is two years ago I had a student who came in and from day one he's talking to me about options trading and I'm looking at him like oh my god how do you know all this goes Mr. Allen I've been doing this since eighth grade watching YouTube >> so who knew I'm just waiting for the Tik Tok channel to come out with something like this because it's going to happen. >> Um but as far as research it's something that we talk about
024in class. and talk about not putting all your eggs in one basket and how are you going to really diversify? What does that mean? What does that mean for your future? And I don't want to speak for everybody here, but go ahead, Thomas. >> So, I went into I took Mr. Allen's um just the stock and market investing class last year and I went into the class with some prerequisite knowledge of investing because I was interested in it beforehand. But when you're learning by yourself, even if you learn a lot of things, if you're not if you don't have a disciplined schedule, like you're not going to learn as much as if you had a teacher. So when I went into Mr. Allen's class, I really focus on stuff that I wouldn't have found interesting
025or thought to learn about outside of class like retirement. I never really thought about like like looking into like how like 401ks >> like 401ks and um different retirement funds IAS work. But going into Mr. Allen's best I realized that everything's connected like investing the stock market also connects to IAS and like the S&P 500 you want to diversify into like ETFs and etc. And Mr. Allen really Mr. Allen really helped me like get a real foundation and like broaden what I already knew about investing. >> That's wonderful. You you also mentioned Bianca you mentioned the global youth investment summit and you said that that would really give you a lot of good connections and I thought that was very clever of you because it will if you guys I don't know when it is
026um I don't know if it's during school Dr. together. But when you do investing and in financing and you are preparing the students for college and for the real world, she's already telling you she knows it's part of the relationship making. So few students can go and if they're still interested I networking I think I I think you really you really guide you into what you know what else is out there, what are our opportunities, what are who's doing what. So I I thought that was very good on your part. Um I I have to tell you listening to you speak wow you know I am very impressed Mr. Alan thank you so much because you made like a subject that could be boring extremely exciting and you had you connected it to their real
027life world. So I I really thank you for that and I really look forward to hearing more about your investments. Great job too. >> And if you hear anything really No insider training was going on. >> Um few things. >> Um there's no doubt that you your group researched Barbell across the street and it was just a good look, right? >> No. So what happened? >> It's one of those impulse >> and this bothers me actually. It's funny you mentioned that. What happened is my teammate did so little research that he thought he was investing in Marvel Studios. who has not been public for like 20 years. >> But as far as the rest of the stocks that I've traded, to go a bit off of what Thomas said, you know, Mr. Allen has been
028a great help. But one thing because you know, uh, Miss Conway asked, you know, how do you research these stocks? How do you know what to look into? One thing that I've noticed has been really helpful for me and has been where all my winners come from is to kind of go into the subjects and topics as far as businesses are concerned that you are interested in and you know about you know about things in that field like a lot of people might have not known about AMD as a company but I'm really into computer specs and I know AMD is such a big processor and chip maker whereas another company DigenX was, you know, they were a smaller also, I believe, chip company, I can't remember exactly that were on the rise and they
029signed a deal with, I think it was Intel, who's obviously a huge name. So, it was kind of like go into the fields you're familiar with, invest into businesses you believe in, and that's what has turned me the best results. >> It's awesome. If you keep up with your top 10 of that group, you're gonna have a lot of capital gains to pay, so be careful. Um, and also importantly, I just I I found it pretty interesting. So, a lot of times when a lot of parents who don't pay attention to the district, they like, "Oh, how's the schools and stuff? How these parent stu students learn about like balance and checkbooks and all this stuff? Where's the financial literacy?" And every time I point them over to the high school, I'm like, >> "Hold
030on. This is a Long Beach school district doing all this financial literacy." They think it's not even existing. And then you come in here and you guys show up like this. It's you're up there. You're running. You're running with the bulls and the bears. looks like. So, it's going to be really it's really impressive. Keep up the good work and you know, don't go too hard. Okay. >> All right. >> Just one more thing I want to end with. But again, thank you so much for coming here tonight. This is so impressive. I wish I had that little bit of knowledge when I was in high school. I don't even have it now, truth be told. And the other thing that I think is going to be impressive is I know how difficult it is
031to get into a college as a business major. And I just feel like this is really giving you a foot forward and and will help you and assist you when you're applying to colleges if you want to be a business major because I know how difficult it is not only to get into school as a business major but even to try to transfer into a business school after you've been accepted to college. So I think that you guys have a very bright future ahead of you. Thanks so much for coming here tonight. >> Thank you so much. We don't want to ignore you either. I we um but the Bloomberg lab mentioned with so many important important topics to it. I just have a question. You mentioned there would be open to other clubs. So
032one of the other students who aren't into investing, who aren't into marketing, how could they access the Bloomberg club? How will the Bloomberg club help them or would it? No, I think it would um like I said the amount of things that it has like there is a lot of information on legal um science uh math algorithms. So if students want to come in and use it and you know it should go in after school um as far as I'm concerned all the time to any clubs that can get in there research too right a lot of research >> a lot of research >> the only because not everybody is into you know investing you have right >> people are into you know so many other topics so how could we would like lab to
033be accessible to all learn from it because just like just like missy said it's such an important skill to have is to know how to invest, know how to use your money properly, to be financially literate, >> right? And and I would be you wouldn't want it to pigeon hole into this is just for investing finance >> um because there's there's a lot more that the the terminal the company offers. So we use that for any other space. Absolutely. Absolutely. >> Well, thank you. >> No, no problem. Thank you. >> No, I just wanted to mention too, you know, there's certifications that are available. We've talked a lot in the past few years about giving students the opportunity to earn micro credentials and all of those things help them not only to get into college
034but to have jobs to help work their way through college um and really put something together that helps them along their career path. And this is another addition to that tool. Well, when mentioned um the networking, she's I I started thinking about internships because it is such a competitive field. So to make your connections now would only be beneficial to you later on. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> Awesome. Now, you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting, but if you'd like to go more away in the winter, >> thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> And now, Mr. Devito um give a brief presentation just to kind of set the stage for our upcoming budget. >> Thank you. So tonight from talking about the business classes and
035what we have at the high school talking about our preliminary budget for 20 26 27 it's amazing time goes by so fast. Just at the last board meeting we were talking about the external audit of the 2520 excuse me the 2425. Here we're in 25 26 and now we're beginning to talk about 26 27. So always you know just working through the different cycles and finishing one actually operating in another and planning for the next. So what we have here are categories and it's the same categories that we talk about in terms of how we break out the budget by subject right in terms of employee compensation equipment vendor services which are any services that we purchase from an outside vendor as opposed to the services we provide to our students from our in-house staff.
036materials and supplies, the debt service that we have, outstanding principal and interest, employee benefits, and inter fund transfers. This is the preliminary budget. You know, sometimes we'll start talking about this in December, sometimes we wait until January, but this year, uh, we're starting in December, but there's limited amount of information that we have because we haven't met with the different directors and principles and all of the different meetings that we have. We'll start convening those shortly. But there are some things we can talk about so that we get a little bit of a head start in the budget process this year. So I'd first like to um talk about the employee compensation. The employee compensation is based on our current staff, right? We don't know yet who's retiring, right? We'll get that information next month
037and then it trickles in throughout the spring um in terms of who's going to stay, who's going to leave in terms of those who are eligible to retire or any new program staff that we may we wanted to bring our board in. We meet with our different schools and departments and talk about the program for next year. So, as we just go back to that for a second, you see just as a starting point, we have about a 2% increase. This is the current year budget. This is what was approved by our community last last May for the current year and this is what we're preliminarily proposing in terms of 2627. So about a 2% increase and we have some contracts that are in existence. So we already know what those rates are going to
038be for next year. We just move all of our employees down a step if they're eligible to go down a step. The next is equipment. We have that the same again because we haven't had those meetings yet. Um, venture services, we kept the same supplies for the same reasons, right? Because we haven't had all the meetings that we're going to have over the past couple of months. And that's what that text says. Until we meet with them, we learn about what their needs are, then we'll be able to update these numbers. In addition, we are waiting to hear from Boseies about what their cost projections are going to be so that we can add that in because we have a lot of our students who go to Bosey's programs. So, we're waiting on that information.
039But what I would like to talk about is debt service, right? Material supplies is supplies the same thing. So, I have a a spreadsheet here that I just want to go through. It's really a good way for understanding how we're thinking about our upcoming district-wide capital plan and how it impacts the budget. Let's take a look at 202526 for a moment. That's this column all the way on the right hand side. So in terms of our debt service, it's broken up into principal and interest. Right? They have different categories. We have A9711 is the principal, 600 is the principal, 700 object codes are the interest. The A9711 is from the May 2009 capital plan. The A9789 is from the 2016 energy performance contract. We did some borrow for that. And then what's going to be
040planned out in terms of projects, cash flow, terms of the financing is the one that was just voted on by the community in October of 2025. So if you take a look here, May 2020, uh 2009 capital plan, this is where you find the line by line budget. It's the serial bonds. We had two different borrowings after the community approved that capital plan in May of 2009. We borrowed in 2011 certain sum then we borrowed another sum in 2013. So the borrowing from 2011 as you can see here the difference about $5 million is getting fully paid. Right? So all of those serial bonds we had to be financed um in the past but still the maturity date in the current year is the last payment that we're going to make on those bonds. I've
041been talking about these ideas conceptually over the past couple of years and why the new capital plan this October 2025 capital plan the timing is right now right because as this debt service drops off this is what's left to pay from the serial bonds from the 2013 borrowing it drops down about $5 million and allows for room for the new debt service for what we're going to need to pay for the project starting in the summer of 2026. So, I really wanted that visual for you all to see why I've been saying since we started talking about this bond that there's no tax impact. It's the same, right? The principle, the interest that we have these two categories here, principal and interest, zero dollar change, 0% change in terms of what we have currently in
042the current year, 2025 26. and what's in the preliminary budget for 2026 27. So let me go back to the detail for a minute. This energy contract, as you see here, we have a several more years paying here. That's going to pretty much remain the same in terms of the total amount, and it just flip-flops between as the years go on, we pay a little bit more in principle, and there's a little bit less that we have to pay in interest. And this shows that, right? 139 drops to 123 and the 1,25,000 goes up to 1,41,000. That annual payment stays the same over the next several years. It's just a proportion of what's principal and what interest changes. So you see here we have a placeholder of about $5.2 million for the October plan in
043terms of principal and about 239,000 for interest zero because we of course have nothing in this year's budget for principal or interest. And it's that shift as those 2011 borrowing paid off in principle and interest. There's room here and there's no intention of increasing those budget lines. They're going to remain flat. Our benefits are projected to increase approximately 5% for the 2026 2027 school year based on an offsetting of a couple of different factors that we already have the information for. So, we already know about the health insurance increases. We just got the information on the January 2026 health insurance premium increase, and it is a significant increase um mostly over 8% in terms of where the rates are increasing across the board. Um the ERS employer contribution amount is also an increase, but it's
044offset by a decrease in the TRS employee contribution rate. So that helps, right? So the fact that TRS employer contribution rate is decreasing for next year, it's offsetting significant increase in the health insurance premium cost and a slight increase in the ERS amount. And let me just go back to that total for a minute. And this is where we are here. Employee benefits about $1.8 million that we don't need to put in the budget for next year based on the benefits. So our starting point, we're talking about $3.4 $4 million that we're going to need to add into next year's budget. We're just about a 2% budget to budget where we are right now. And that's without having the meetings, but it's also without knowing about requirements that are going to offset some of these
045costs where we don't necessarily change programs, but we do achieve some savings in some of those requirements. So, this is where we are living, right? Um, we know we're going to have some increases. We know that our debt service, whatever we end up doing next year, whether it's a short-term borrowing or a anticipatory note, um what we pay back, we know we have about $5.4 million to use towards those costs towards that borrowing. Um and no tax impact. The last slide here just talks about the staff meetings that we're going to have, the board meetings that we will have over the next couple of months. to present all of the detail and all of these codes to the board to the public for comment. And um we have our budget adoption on April 14th. So
046we're about four months out. It's a four-month process of the intense budget development. The budget hearing is the week before the vote. Vote this year is May 19th and um we've officially started our 2026 27 budget cycle. Any questions? >> No, I Well, I don't really have questions really. I I just really want to thank you because what you do by presenting to us and to the public about the budget starting in December. You really are showing all of us the sequence that you have to follow, the protocols that you are following. you're being completely transparent with where the money is going, where you think the money is going to go or where you're not sure yet. And I think what by doing that, you're really helping to lay a wonderful foundation for our budget
047year. So, I I thank you for that transparency. Um, I know health insurance is always been like that little prickly thing. Are you sure it's the 5% or could it be more? I remember one year it was 9%. another year was like 2%. So, >> so that's a really good question. So, when I talk about the 5% um that's the total benefits, right? So, that's everything in that in that category, right? So, it's about 5% employee benefits includes health insurance includes the retirement includes every all the benefit costs that the district bears. Um we know the health insurance rates for January. So we know what the first six months of 2026 27 are going to be because that works on a calendar year. >> We just got those rates. So we know what it is
048for the second half of the year we're in now and the first half of next year. What we don't know is the increase for next January, which is the second six months of the next budget year. And you know, we do our best to make projections. I will tell you that our forecast for the current year is like almost exactly and it doesn't always happen that way almost exactly what we budgeted um you know in terms of just we we hit it we hit it right in the current year but as you know some years we have a lot extra in that code because maybe we faced in a 9% increase and it was flat right so we will talk more about that in terms of you know how we want to approach it. Right
049now, I have a placeholder for that second six months of 8.5%. Just the health insurance portion of it. Um, we could make an argument that that maybe we want to bring that down a little bit. you know, just because of if we want to use a fiveyear average. You know, we're still debating it internally about where we want to go because as you may remember when we talked about that conceptually last year, the year before, if we had used a fiveyear average for our budget for two and three years ago, we wouldn't have had enough, right? So on the other hand, we don't want to put in too much and then you have a large surplus of you just for that code. Even though we know that we do have an operating surplus be put
050into our reserve funds. So we have a little bit of a discussion with the board and with the superintendent and superintendent's cabinet about where exactly we want to be on health insurance. Right now it's that 8.5% I have as a placeholder for that second six months. But I am open to discussion about whether we want to uh vary off of that or not, whether we want to deviate off of that percentage or not. So, we've been talking internally in my office, >> right, >> about that. Um, and there are pros and cons. You know, I think comfortably if the board is comfortable with this, I'd like to stick with the 8.5% because it's a more conservative number, right? Um, knowing that if we do have an operating surplus, let's say the rates don't come as
051high as we think, then we always use it to put into capital reserve. Um, so we have money for projects in the future or to offset debt service payments. Um, this year, like I said, we came in pretty much flat just at our target, but that rarely happens. It's usually one way or the other. >> Thank you so much, Mr. >> Thank you. >> I just want to also thank you for all the hard work that you do in presenting this to us and to the public. I know for me you really step by step break it down for us to make it really much easier to understand. As hard as it is for me understand you you really do walk us through this and um as a beginning this is a great place to
052start. So thank you for your hard work. >> Thank you. >> Okay. I hope this is your hardest presentation. Anybody here from student organization? >> Questions and comments from the public on tonight's agenda only, please. tonight's agenda. >> Um hello, good evening. Um thank you for the presentation, Mr. Deito. Um out of the 85 million, how much of the bond was about 85 million? How much have we borrowed already? >> Yeah. Or anything? >> Nothing. >> By the by the end of this fiscal year, how much you think we'll have borrowed? Nothing. >> Okay. >> Yes. So, what we're gonna do, and it's actually, if you don't mind me just going really quickly through the process. >> Um, we just got the vote October 28th. We are feverishly preparing plans for the items that we
053think can get a quick approval at the state education department so we can begin work this summer. Um, for first and foremost, the playgrounds, right? That's a high priority for us. So I've had already uh two committee meetings, one at East School and one at West School to discuss items and things that they want in their playgrounds. On December 15th, we have a meeting at the administration building. We have three vendors going to do presentations to our elementary building representatives, which is going to be by the principal or assistant principal and a parent that's going to listen to all of this and we're going to make our decisions in terms of what prototype should look like. We should begin construction if all goes well in July. So that those payments are in the next fiscal
054year. So there's nothing that we have to pay for 2526. The placeholders that I showed you for 26 27 is let's say we borrow and receive the money. Let's say July um next fiscal year, we'll probably do short-term borrowing called a bond anticipatory note. um whatever our cash flow is. It could be 5 million, it could be 7 million. We know we have room to pay 5.4 million with having no tax impact. Um so we can either pay it all off short-term borrowing or we can pay off 5.4 million of it and maybe we have another million or maybe two million that gets rolled over into the future. But still great news because um we have that capacity to pay for the immediate cost which would be the first summer. Um so we're really in
055a great position. So no borrowing in this fiscal year, no construction in this also going to start. >> Thank you for that explanation. That makes that makes sense. and that um for the uh um the placeholder number that we had for and what's our you have an estimate what's our fund balance right now? >> Well, it depends on what you mean by fund balance. If you mean just the unassigned fund balance we have just shy um of what 4% um so I think that's about $6.5 million. Um, and that's in our assigned in terms of our overall fund balance, which includes all of our designated reserve funds like the capital reserve fund and the employee benefits improved liability reserve fund and the workers comp. Um, I would have to get back to you on what
056that number is. Um, but we're just shy of the 4% as we close the 2024 25 this year. >> 4%. And um my next set of questions is about the uh proposed code of conduct. Um I would uh just like to inquire on um how was the new code of conduct uh revised? How was it uh um essentially how did it come together with the the changes that were made? >> Sure. So, the policy committee meets regularly, the board policy committee. Um, and actually, as a result of one of your earlier meeting questions, we decided to pull that code of conduct just to see if there was any language that we thought might be objectionable or contrary to law. Um, we really didn't find anything, but we did clean some language up in there, especially
057the names of um coordinators and people who had no longer worked for the district. made some minor um uh grammatical error uh edits and just you know changed things that maybe were outdated >> and that's pretty much how all policies are adjusted you know we go through policies right >> right I I was I was wondering more if there was a a u as I had commented um a few months ago about a full review of changes since 2013 since the dear dear colleague letter regarding school discipline and looking up how we've implemented restorative justice practices and removing those from >> Sure. So, we have done full reviews of the code of conduct for sure since 2013. I would have to look at the policy. I don't know off the top of my head what
058those units were um where we pulled in the schools and the um you know again the principles and the deans and and had some conversation about that. I don't believe that we're in conflict with the dear colleague. I don't think that our language your colleague letter as far as I read it refers to restorative justice as a DEI measure. That's not how it's referred to. So I don't think we're in violation and as you know schools are governed by state law anyway. Anybody else? >> Treasures report. >> No action needed. Approval of minutes for executive session regular meeting of November 18th, 2025. Motion. >> I'll make a second. >> Any discussion? >> Miss Conway? >> Yes. >> Mr. Pinto? >> Yes. >> And I vote yes. presentation to the superintendent and ask the board to
059consider item one personel motion second. Any discussion? M Conway? >> Yes. >> Mr. Hinto, >> yes. >> And I vote yes. >> Item two, non certificate personnel. >> I'll make a motion. >> Second. Any discussion? Miss Conway? >> Yes. >> Mr. Pinto, >> yes. >> Can I vote? Yes. >> Items three and four require no action and second readings of revised policies. And I guess we would consider items 5 through 10 together. >> I'll make that I'll make a motion. >> Second. Okay. Um I just would like to um say a big thank you for the donation for the 40 sweatshirts by Mr. Brian Murphy for our Long Beach varsity football team. And I I feel like past three meetings we have had such generosity from our community members. So >> they left the board.
060>> It just shows you how our community members help our schools and it it means a lot. So I'd like to give him a big thank you for that. >> Thank you. >> I echo that. Um >> Okay. Yes. >> Yes. >> And I vote yes. >> Okay. >> New and old business. >> Yeah. I just have a few questions. Sure. Actually, Mr. Verona kind of took my question about the bond process because we've spoken about the bonds and if there's a lot of information about it. So, Mr. Dvito, you did give Mr. Veron and all of us a bit of a process already. So just to reiterate the first focus from the bond will be to fix our playgrounds and then what about the swimming pool? The swimming pool was in the other capital
061gate. >> Yes, correct. So the swimming pool um was part was part of the the last budget. Yes. Um, and you know that's already in the works in terms of we took the measurements over the summer when we had a drain. Um, and we're waiting for approval so that we could start in February. So it's about six month process to do what we need to do with the swimming pool in terms of the pool the pool deck the bleachers and also the gym bleaches. We really our goal is to have it up and ready for the September of 2026 >> school year to do everything with the pool diving board. You know, everything is really getting getting done. That's not part of the bond. That was part of what we used capital project from before
062which is great in the sense that we were able to start early on that we did have some money in our capital reserve fund to use for that and that's why that was feasible. You know, every year if we do have an operating surplus, we put a little bit in the capital reserve fund. that allows us to do things on a gradual basis. But then when you're talking about playgrounds, you're talking about HBAC systems. Yes, >> you know, those are big numbers and it's not something that we have in the capital reserve and that's why we had our large scale districtwide plan. So, we have playgrounds at first. We will do some elements inside the buildings as well. And we're going to do I think because in order to get building a you have to
063do a piece inside as well as outside. So, we're going to be doing pieces inside. Um, and the playgrounds. That's the first, let's call it phase one, we're calling it. >> What kind of pieces are you going to do inside? >> Um, I'm going to have to get back to like doors, windows, ceilings. If you want more specificity, I'd have to look at my notes, but it's it's more the basic maintenance things that we knew we needed to take care of. Um, phase one is that first summer, right? It's really eight weeks. >> Yeah. Coming up that we don't that really we have. We're going to try to do as much as we can because then we have to get ready for school to start. And then there are some longer term projects that we
064know are going to be a longer approval and that's then for phase two which would be the second summer. Um and then that will go on probably also through the school year. We'll have the time to get the approvals and then go out to take care of that. But in terms of the short time frame, considering we got the approval in October, um we're going to do those projects that we don't going to get a quick approval on and it started in the summer, finish it by the fall. >> When do you think what about the central air conditioning for the building? >> That's going to be phase two. >> That will be phase two >> because we have to those are longer plans to develop and it's a longer process to get approval. >>
065Okay. So, do you have an aim for that start phase? >> Phase two. Yeah, that'll be summer of 20 27. >> Okay, >> thank you. I appreciate that. Um, I just have one more question. Um, >> we our high school offers so many different pathways other than college. Dr. calendar. Um, do is there one place listed on our school website or is there one area of resource that parents can all go to to see alternate pathways after high school? >> So, so for our clearest articulation is our course offering booklet. And if you remember the CTE presentation from last time, there was a page I actually lifted right from the booklet and it shows the pathways for CTE programs, the four-year pathways. Um, and it kind of lays it out really clearly there. In addition
066to that, I know the guidance counselors meet with the students and taught especially if we're introducing a new program like barbering. Um, but the course offering booklet is the go-to place and it's really they've worked on it a lot. It's really very clear and that is posted on our website. Okay. Thank you. I I I know we offer a lot when I'm talking to parents and community members. They're like, "Yes, but where is all of this information?" You know, because some children want to go to college, but then there are other children who don't. So parents want to know what other choices they have, what's available, right? They want it to simple so they can find and say, "Oh, look, you you know, Johnny, you can go here, you can go there instead." >> Yep.
067>> Thank you. Thank you. Brooklyn and I just want to give a big shout out to Mr. Epstein for a wonderful sports awards night. The auditorium was packed with kids and parents. Everyone was excited. Um there was even a special award given to one of our students for sportsmanship. Not because another coach from another school had noticed it. And that really just goes to show how wonderful our sports our sports program is. How much hard work our coaches put into it. how much our hard work Mr. Epstein and of course our students and our families because they know sports isn't just about winning it's about showing good sportsmanship to all. So I thought that was a wonderful highlight and I am looking forward to all of the concerts that are coming up. So you're ready
068middle school and all the elementary schools it's a good time then the high school good time. All right well thank you. >> Nothing from it. Thank you. questions and comments from the public. >> Hello again. Uh I would just like to uh clarify and expand on some comments I made about code conduct their last meeting. And uh um when I use the term progressive discipline, progressive discipline can mean a lot of things. Um it can mean age appropriate discipline. It can mean uh incremental discipline in terms of you know the first time someone uh is uh you know the first graders running in the hallways not throwing out of school. Um and just to clarify my comments, I'm not opposed to that when I said I'm opposed to progressive discipline. I'm opposed to um discipline
069which is um similar to progressive prosecutions which is this pervasive idea that we are not going to put get kids in trouble that we are not going to enforce our code of conduct that we are not unless it's something serious we're going to let a lot of things fly and I think that that mentality which is pervasive in the school district I think we need to address that. I think the school discipline policy and the code of conduct need to be clearer that when a situation happens, it is documented. It is not just forgotten and ignored and that a there is real consequences to actions. Um because you can have the perfect code of conduct and I I do not believe that in its current iteration, the current proposed code of conduct is perfect. But
070um even if you had a perfect code of conduct, if you're not enforcing it and you are letting everything slide, then it's really no use. So I think that uh the code of conduct really we should spend more time reviewing it, uh more time discussing it and really looking at how we can uh properly enforce the rules. Um, I also think that uh a reading of the code of conduct, which was happening at the last board meeting and wasn't available until the next day, I think that that's uh wrong. I don't see the point of a reading and discussion of the proposed policies if it's not available to the public beforehand. And I think in general that they're documents that are being discussed. I get we don't want to put in the agenda. We don't
071need to print them out. But I think that those documents should be available to the public before the meeting. So like for example last week or two weeks ago we had the proposed audit um which then became the adopted audit and that um you know you could post that on the website so that people can see and ask questions about it. And I think that just kind of keeping things in the agenda, keeping things not publicly. I think that a lot of other not just school districts but local governments including the city of Long Beach uh posts the documents online before the discussion of that meeting and I think that is a practice the school board should consider. Thank you. >> Thank you. And I just have to not let go the comment that we
072let a lot of things slide through because that absolutely is not true. Mr. and with all due respect it's been a long time since you've been in the school district. Um, and I would really have to say that our administration teams and staff do practice progressive discipline in the positive sense that we're not going to suspend a kindergarter running in the hallway, but we certainly suspend for serious offenses and we certainly really work hard at holding students accountable for their behavior. So, I have to disagree with you on that. I >> appreciate that. I It's not to based on my personal experience, but I appreciate perspective. Anyone else? >> Jackie. Yes. >> Good evening. I'm Jackie Omar as everybody know me and I'm accompanied by Miss Marsha Gray. She's one of the persons on the
073MLK board. And Miss Sheena Kerry is the chairperson of the MLK board. As you notice, she's not with us tonight. She's out of town on business, but we would be remiss if we didn't come here tonight to tell the school board and you, Dr. Gallinger, what a beautiful job that you guys are doing to help us with our children in MLK. Annie, you're a dog. And I guess I was meant to be here because the young man before me, we're talking about discipline of children. We got a long ways to go. We're here. I'm always around. Everybody know me. And my heart is children. And it's a lot of things that we might miss that we have to do for our children. It's a long road. And I'm so glad and so happy that I
074can stand here tonight and thank you guys for coming in trying to help the MLK Center. And when you help the MLK Center, you help us. You help the parents. You help the children. just this short time I can stand here and tell you we see a different in the children that is in our after school. I thank you ever so much and I want to wish every one of you a beautiful and a happy holiday. >> Thank you so much. Anybody else? Long Beach Classroom Teachers Association. Thank you to Mr. Rogers, Mr. Allen and the students for the great presentation. Thank you, Mr. Devito. I can't believe we're talking about the budget already. I don't feel like that just ended. Um, and happy holidays to everybody. Have a great vacation and I will see
075you next year. >> Thank you. >> My thank you to Mr. Rogers for presenting and I reiterate it is a ongoing evergoing cycle of budget. Thanks for being the interpretation. I also wish everyone a very happy and safe uh more importantly healthy holiday break and happy new year. Thank you. >> Anybody here from group C? Okay. PTA nobody. Okay. Um I also would like to wish everybody a happy and a healthy holiday season. Happy New Year to everybody and I'm looking forward to all of the conference coming up. I'm sorry I wasn't sure I would see you all there. And um that's it. Motion to adjourn. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Happy holidays.