001Everybody, I'm Phil, president of the board of education. Please stand for the pledge to the flag to the flag of America and justice for all. >> Thank you. >> All right, just a quick Florida vote announcement. We do have a lot of people here this evening. Hopefully turnout of an emergency. Please be aware of your rear exit and your exit to your left and to your right. you can see was 29.9 million. The new state awarded is 30.1 million. That's the difference between the January 20th state run state aid run and the May 18th state aid run. Earlier through this process, we have proposed removing 2002 2,212,000 from reserves. Based on this update in state aid, the new proposal is 2,20,000 from state reserves. Kind of a recap on where we've been and the scenarios
002that are in front of us. The 2.85% tax increase proposal. Obviously that budget failed. So tonight the board will be discussing basically two options and then a third option um contingency hopefully not at a 2.22% levy increase which is the allowable levy increase. You can see the proposed budget would be 105 million approximately 800,000. The tax levity would be 70 million and change. That's a budget to budget increase of 3.29%. To get to that point this evening through the board's discussions, they have to make just about $433,000 of reductions. Another possibility is a 1.82% tax levy increase. You can read across and see that it would be a proposed budget of 105.5 million tax levy increase of just below 70 million budget to budget increase of 3.02%. You can also see that the reductions the
003board would have to make this evening would also be approximately $433,000. The reason for that is because in the proposed budget there was a $275,000 transfer to capital which was intended to reconstruct the greenhouse. That transfer to capital is excluded from the tax cap calculations. So whether the community or the board decides to continue with the greenhouse project or some other options that were presented this evening or not, the reductions that are required this evening are still $432,896. And you'll see this a couple times through the presentation. Regardless of whichever budget the board adopts this evening, if it fails on June 19th, by law, the district goes to a contingency budget, and that means the cuts would have to be 1.9 million. Some information for taxpayers on what the estimated increase in your taxes would
004look like with each of these options. So across the top, if you use uh the 2.22 tax levy increase, your estimated annual increase in your taxes would be approximately $25 or $17 a month. If the board chooses to remove that transfer to capital and chooses not to do the greenhouse or some of the other options that we'll present shortly, the annual tax increase would be approximately $168 or $14 per month. If the budget fails and there's a contingency budget, there would be no increase in taxes because the tax levy does not increase. You've seen this slide several times. Third column from the right was the proposal that was the 2.85% budget increase. Second column from the right shows the adjustment after returning 181,000 approximately back to those reserves or taking out 191,000 less. These are
005the items that are for discussion for the board this evening. This is information that's been sent to the board in several different forms over the last several weeks. On the left side, two left columns shows programs from which the board can choose to close this $433,000 gap. and the four columns to the right some options regarding personnel the board can choose from I think we'll come back to this slide for some questions and explanations I'll continue with some information one of the items on here uh on the left third from the bottom is athletics $52,000 of reductions people were asking you know what is some of the detail what is that $52,000 mean Mr. Spascio will come up and speak about this uh not at this moment but uh when when the time is right
006uh to answer questions from the community or the board regarding these options as I said earlier for a tax levy increase that would be 1.8 82%. We still have to close the same $433,000 gap. So the items that you see on the program side and on the personnel side of this chart are identical to the 2.22 options. The difference here is that the greenhouse will not be completed. The $275,000 allocated for that project is removed. The project allowed for a capital exclusion in a tax limit calculation. Thus, the levy without the greenhouse in it is 1.82. So, if I could take a moment to explain the difference, $275,000 that we would have spent to reconstruct the greenhouse is in a budget line called transfer to capital. and that would be a $275,000 expense. Because that
007$275,000 expense is excluded or exempt from the tax cap calculation, it enables the tax cap to go up to 2.22. If you remove this $275,000 from the expense side of your budget, you also lose the revenue. So your tax cap is 1.82 82. When you go from a 2.22 tax levy increase to a 1.82 tax levy increase, the difference is exactly $275,000. So that's the reason that closing the gap would be exactly the same. Uh we've heard from many community members that uh why we need a greenhouse, who would use it, and so it seemed to be an option that's not popular, not so we offered some of these suggestions. Many of you know we just um installed a brand new playground at Wing Elementary School. That playground is for students that are aged 5
008to 12. We also have a playground at Wing Elementary School that's for students aged uh two to five. There's pretty strict laws, it turns out, on ages and playgrounds and who can use which age can use which playground. And it's based on the spacing between the rungs and the size of the holes that students will climb through and the the height platforms etc. Uh while the older playground at Wing uh the equipment is in good shape, the uh rubber material, flooring material uh is is peeling off and breaking apart. So, if the board or the community were inclined to keep these capital projects in the budget and substitute a greenhouse for these projects, the community could have um two playgrounds at Wing that are in relatively good shape, one brand new. Um and could continue
009with the work we've been doing in regard to outdoor classrooms. There's already one at Sherwood and we've been working at Wing and Press Elementary School and you see some things in there. um abatement of type ination, asbestous abatement and abatement of asbestous floor tiles. Well, nobody really gets excited about asbestous abatement projects. Those are included in lists like this because if you do projects that are inside buildings at the same time that you do projects that are outside buildings, you can get state aid on the entire project. And our state aid for capital uh state aid rate for capital projects is approximately 66 or 67%. So for every $100,000 we spend on capital project, we would get 66 or $67,000 returned uh in the form of state aid. It doesn't come to us in one
010month. Some comes over 15 or 18 years of payments, but it's still proven to include projects like that capital. So what would a contingency budget mean? Just to review a little bit, that 2.2 2 tax levy increase. The transfer of capital remains in the budget. The levy stays at 2.22. The board and the community can choose a greenhouse or some of those other options. We still have to close a gap of approximately $433,000. And if the board and the community desire a 1.82 tax levy increase, the transfer to capital is removed. still have to close a $433,000 gap, but there's no option this coming year for a greenhouse or playground for the classroom. Continuing with the contingency budget, if the budget fails, again, as I said earlier, automatically on a contingency budget. With the contingency
011budget, there's a large portion of decisions that are largely out of the school district's hands. State law would dictate what much of the reductions would have to be. If we had to go this route, we would have to reduce an additional 1.5 million on top of the 433,000. So, if we follow the numbers across, whether it's 2.22 or 1.82, need to. We've already conceivably reduced $433,000 approximately. We would have to reduce an additional 1.5 million for a total of just over 1.9 million because it's a contingency budget. $967,000 would be out of our control and would automatically be reduced from the budget. Then the board would be tasked with identifying another 554,000 reductions. So these would be additional options if we were forced to contingency budget. And in the box to the right, uh you
012can see the expenses that we would have no control over. So that's the $967,000 that would automatically be taken out of the budget. No capital construction projects, not allowed to purchase any districtwide equipment, and there'd be no salary increases for certain employees. So, Mr. Den, this is the point where we'll have some question and answer discussion, but would the board prefer to have um Mr. Brasio or Dr. Garo speak about some of those options? Yeah, I think it's really important that we go back and revisit those slides and touch on the why are some why you know why are some of these programs to the left on there and why they taken off. So that's just so understand. Okay, starting with summer enrichment. Um some of you may have had some of your children at
013the elementary program that we have that runs over the summer um for our elementary students at elementary. Um this program currently we started the registration. We have 220 seats built for this summer. Um there are two sessions runs over four weeks. Uh it's enrichment um courses that we provide over the summer uh through our own teachers. This has been done over the past three years. Um, and we did cut this out $37,000 budget. Um, like I said before, um, we do, um, we do have over 200 students already who have enrolled in this these programs over the summer. There'll be five courses over two sessions this summer starting in July. As for the summer reads review, that's for our students who take the longest regions. You know, regions, we provide review prior to that regions.
014It's over a twoe period. We provide that review preparation for them to retake the regions in August. If this was not provided by our district, uh our students would have to go to a neighboring district. suffer closely does not have the schools who will be providing the summer school services yet but we anticipate Bayshore as we spoke to them today as well as Sable offering similar courses for um our children to attend it would come at a cost for our students uh depending on what they would take whether it's a full summer uh school course we do not provide that here but we do provide the read classes we typically run about $140 and our recent exams. Uh if they're only going for that, uh we usually run for plus for the summer curriculum writing.
015We typically do some of our curriculum writing over the summer. We take that out of the budget. That is something that we would have to school year finding opportunities to make up the work that we would not do this summer. field trips. These are online to curriculum usually reducing the costs for our students. Um majority of it is transportation. Then we reduce those costs. So if that was the case where we pulled that out of the budget, it would either have to do some fundraising or find other ways to some of the cost of our field trips that we have that take place throughout the school year. I already um we were we would be keeping the benchmark that we have but it's the my path which is aligned to the benchmark. What it does
016is it looks at the results of the students uh gives them lessons that they work on and it's adaptive as In other words, that as a kid or a child goes through these lessons, as they progress and they continue to do better, it gives them more challenging help along the way. We've seen in years past lack of engagement from our students. I've heard from community members as well. This would be something that would be removed. The benchmark would remain as us to utilize the data in how to better service our students. the 40,000 would be the reduction was pulled in my path of the lessons that are aligned with that X schedules are clubs. We have some clubs that did not run. We had one that was doubled on the list. As a result of
017that, uh we would reduce uh clubs that have very low attendance uh from our elementary schools all the way to our high school. And we actually went through all the attendees looking at them. We found one to $26,000 as a result of that. And Koyo Kino is a coding program that we have throughout the district. It's a K through2 program. Um speaking with Dr. ball state. One of the things that we can do in order to keep the hackathon, which is a a competition our kids go through as a result of the coding that they do throughout the year, is buying small packages that could be like a club uh run um program with kiddo which would still allow them and give them the opportunities or groups of students uh to go to these competitions.
018Um we we feel like we can reduce the cost of kid OO and save $50,000 on our budget as a result of that. Um it would not be provided for all of our students but could be a club or something at the school that we run uh for our kids. So those ones who are still really interested in that and have that as an offering. Uh also talking with Dr. Wall team, we could find opportunities for some free online uh coding for our students uh to also have those opportunities with the coding. Kido, if anyone knows what it is, it's the luxury of a program for coding for kids. Um we have that K through 12 those packages. Just to be clear, uh it would not be for Wing Elementary. Um it would be two
019and up. Wing Elementary doesn't use it as much uh at that age level. And we have color coding that we do with uh in our STEM program down there that our kids more to I guess their age. Uh good evening and thank you uh for giving me the opportunity just to go over how I had to come up with basically a $52,000 savings in the athletic budget code. Uh so first obviously looking at the budget going through every line of the budget all the different codes. Uh, one of the easy ones was looking at the JB tennis program and the JB tennis coach. The past two seasons, we haven't had enough student athletes to run a JB tennis program. So, what we've been doing is repurposing that coach to our middle school track program where
020we have, you know, 40 plus kids on each one of those programs. And currently, we have one coach for each of those programs, really servicing over 80 kids. So, we were repurposing that coach uh utilizing him with the um with the uh middle school uh track teams in the spring. However, one of the things I also thought about with the uh with that JB tennis coach was also our varsity uh tennis team. Uh I not my varsity cheerleading team. Our competitive cheer in the winter team uh winter is really gaining a lot of traction. The team is very very competitive. Uh it's one of the only programs that only have a one coach in that being of all the different stunting and acrobatics that they do. Uh one of the things that I was going
021to ask uh the uh superintendent was that if we can take that JB tennis coach position, reallocate those funds to an assistant varsity cheerleading coach where we're desperately needed. Um if that's not the case, you know, we make it work. as far as uh you know when you look at the coach if we're removing the coach and we're moving that particular program which really isn't having any any negative effect on any of those student athletes because what we're doing currently if we we're only have maybe five or six student athletes that would be on that JB tennis program those student athletes are going to the varsity they're getting work with the varsity teams and they're also getting matched up uh during the varsity contest we can't run a team with only five or six student
022athletes uh the minimum might be 10 for a JV program so even from section 11 standpoint, we can't run a team without a few student athletes. So obviously what goes along with that the transportation cost. So if they have 8 to 10 JV tennis matches, we can extrapolate out the uh the cost for the transportation. So we can pull that out of our transportation line for um for JB tennis because we wouldn't need the bus to take them some to take them to an away competition. The next number you see there is $234. That's our section 11 dues. For every team we have in section 11 and we have 63 programs. All those teams you have to pay dues into section 11. Section 11 is the governing body of athletics for uh Suffach County. So
023each team pays $234 and we have to pay that for each team that we have. So obviously that $234 will get extrapolated out of our section 11 dues. Our equipment code uh we decreased that by $2,000. One of the things would happen there, uh, we, as you know, we combine our, uh, gymnastics program as well as our field hockey program as well as our girls wrestling program at Beayshore. Uh, we were supposed to help Beayshore purchase new uneven bars for cheer uh, for gymnastics this year. Uh, I found out that Beayshore was able to make that purchase without needing any funds from us. So therefore, the portion of money that we would have helped pay a shore pay for those uneven bars, um, we can obviously extrapolate that now out of the equipment code. The
024reconditioning code, I I took $2,000, removed it from, uh, from the reconditioning code. Uh, reconditioning is a code that we have to utilize because all of our equipment, spec, specifically football helmets, shoulder pads, have to be sent out every year. Uh, they have to be reertified every year for safety. They have to meet what's called the Nazi standards. uh that's the national organization for blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I don't know the whole entire acronym by memory however uh those those items have to go out what we include in that reconditioning budget as well is every year uh certain pieces of equipment either age out or they're rec rejected we can't reuse them so we have to have money to repurpose them or repurchase them so we have enough for
025the following year so part of that money uh in the reconditioning code is to replace some of the items that are rejected um you know moving forward into the 26 27 school year I think we have roughly it might be 26 to 28 football helmets that actually aged out you're looking at close to $500 a helmet or you have to purchase new helmets right so then again that's what in my office we keep track of all that to make sure that every year we're purchasing enough helmets so that we don't we have enough for our student athletes um so being able to pull that money out of the code we should still be hopefully okay um and hopefully we can purchase some of those helmets this year as we go into next year. Our entry
026fee code, that's your entry fees and dues code. That's pretty much all of the tournaments that teams go into. Uh whether it's your wrestling tournaments, basketball tournaments, volleyball tournaments, that's all winter track. If anyone has any track student athletes in here or children on the track team, obviously, you know, in winter track, they don't really have a dual meet season like you would see in the spring. All of their meets are invitationals. um which are either at the Armory uh in Manhattan or in Ocean Breeze in Staten Island or in U Suffet Community College or St. An. So what we're going to do in that code I'm going to have to really manage it very very carefully and so we're just going to have to reduce some of those events that they're going to go
027into. It's you know they're still going to get what they need but they might not get everything that they want. And again, we want to try to do that. We want all of our student athletes to have, you know, uh, every chance and every opportunity they can to try to get to the next level to the state championships. I'm going to get to the supply code in a minute. I'm going to skip over that. Away scrimmages, uh, roughly we do about 20 away scrimmages. Uh, I guess annually, uh, last year it was 20. Uh, you see that 20 times 562. The 562 is the cost of the bus. So that's what it cost for us to charter those buses to get the team from ISIL high school to wherever they're going. So if we just
028limit to all home scrimmages um hopefully that will suffice and we'll just do all that here. We could save roughly $11,240 in transportation cost. So that that line goes down there. Then you'll see um wait room for the fall, wait room for the winter, wait room for the spring at 2811. Those are stipen positions within the uh within the contract. Um, again trying to keep furthest away from trying to take anything away from our student athletes as far as like competitions or programs. Um, the fall, winter, and spring weight room usually it's right after school from 2 to 3:00 and it usually helps to facilitate the students that aren't on athletic teams um, and some that are as well. Um, so again, try to keep things furthest from the core of the onion. Um, that
029was one of the things I thought might be okay. Uh, we're fortunate enough that a lot of our, uh, our coaches here in Icelift, um, they truly care about what they do in each and every one of their student athletes and they do go above and beyond uh, the call and many of them have the weight rooms open at night after school uh, or you know, or in the off season. And um not that I'm banking on that, but many of them do that. And uh so we'll still have opportunities for the wait room to be available for our student athletes. Uh next thing, moving down the line, you'll see announcer except for senior nights. So at all of our varsity games, we try to have announcers. It just it just makes for the event.
030It's it's a really nice, you know, you know, it's nice as you're a parent in the region to hear your child's name called out. uh you know whether it's scoring a touchdown or kicking a goal or making a great strikeout, whatever it might be. Um so again, you're looking at contractually, you know, it's a it's 38 34 per hour for uh to have those announcers and scorekeepers and things like that. This is just announces specifically. So and again, your average event is about two and a half hours. Some can be three, some are two, but again, we work on averages for all the information that we have in our office. So, you're looking at about $95 or $96. Uh, and we we had about 50 games where we actually have announcers. So, again, you're looking
031at about a $4,800 savings there. I did put accept senior nights because it really is nice. It's a nice thing. I don't want to take that away from our seniors. They work hard. The families work really hard. Uh, since their children are, you know, five, six years old. Um, and it's really nice to be able to have that and provide that. I think it really makes for a special a special evening and a special event. So, um, you know, I chose to keep that in there for the senior nights. If it's something you want to take out, we just do the math and we can figure out what that reduction would be. Uh, you'll see filming for football, boys lacrosse, and girls lacrosse. So, uh, what that is is each of those varsity programs, uh,
032they belong to like a consortium of teams. So, what happens is let's we'll use girls lacrosse. So all the girls across in in our conference um we have someone come and film the games for them and then all those films are shared throughout the county for the teams that you play. So instead of sending a coach out to go or coaches out to go scout games and you have people all over the place with technology now it kind of makes it nice and simple and uh they end up swapping those films right over the computer however they do it now and through some a program called huddle and they have those options to be able to see all that. So for us and that's the same thing for football and boys lacrosse it works all
033the same way. So what you know again looking at this again trying to build furthest from the uh furthest from the core of the onion um one of the things you know we could do some fundraising hopefully be able to do that we do have our own huddle camera systems so obviously we have our films um but we just may not be uh we may not have the other films from the other schools if we don't belong to those that that consortium with you know boys crossing girls across football it's mandatory they have to um they have to share the films um with football we also do separate filming because the filming is much better if you ever watch a huddle video or a huddle on TV. It's very it's zoomed out. It's not real
034spec, you know, it's really not tight to what they really need to really prep for the following week. Um, but could we make it work? Yes. You know, uh, is it ideal? No. But we can make it work. As I said, we have a great staff of people here and a great staff of coaches and we'll figure it out. The other thing could be, like I said, we could do some fundraising. Uh I don't want to speak for the booster club, but maybe it's something where the coaches could uh you know look to see if they can uh get subsidized a little bit maybe by uh by the booster club if that's possible. But again, those are areas that we could figure out. So again, trying to keep you know least least uh again uh
035from the core and the heart of of the programs going up to the uh supply code line. Uh, basically I had to come up with $6,76 uh in additional cuts and I just said, "You know, we'll just take it out of supplies and I'll figure it out. Everything goes up. You guys shop, you go to the supermarket, you go to the gas station, you go to Dick Sporting Goods, you're buying your kids equipment, whatever it might be. Everything is expensive." Um, and we do, everything is on cooperative bidding. So everything we get, you know, we're supposed to be getting the the cheapest price for everything that we get. Uh and and those costs are really like your consumable cost in our supply code. Every year we make it work. Like we don't like we don't
036have we don't have the ability to squirrel. You know, I always say like you know we have like for a rainy day that think you got your own house in your own budget. You try to put some money away. If that boiler breaks or the roof gets a leak, you have a couple bucks that you don't have to, you know, put yourself in hop to kind of fix something, right? So it's the same kind of concept. You know, you like to try to have an extra extra softballs, extra soccer balls, an extra couple of uniforms here and there. Um, you know, we just don't have that luxury. Uh, be honest, I haven't had that luxury uh here in uh however many years I'm here, nine years, whatever it is going on, 10, but we make
037it work. You know, we make it work. The coaches make it work. And, uh, you know, it's just I have to figure it out and they'll figure it out. And, uh, you know, we'll make that work. It's not ideal, but if it means not getting a team that's up in the lineup for a new set of uniforms, usually it's about every five to six years, we try to get teams uh, new uniforms. If it means we have to go an additional year, then we go an additional year. It's not the end of the world. Um, the sports programs, they really have nice stuff. I try to buy them high quality stuff so it lasts. So, we're not buying stuff every three years. I mean, again, think about when you do your own shopping, you know,
038the better quality you buy, the longer it lasts, more life you get out of it. It's the same concept. It's no different. Um, any questions I guess from the board of ed? Anybody else questions? Harris go over I know you know social media there's been a lot of things about you know a little topheavy and deans came up a lot right so there was question you know these you know personnel that's up there >> would it be okay if I asked register school. Speak. Good evening. First, I'd like to say to the board, thank you very much for the opportunity to take your questions. Thank you. So, one of the things that we wanted to share is that we understand that um when we look at numbers over the last 10 to 15 years that
039student enrollment may be decreasing. One of the factors though that we see frequently are a shift in the needs of our population of students. So several things have occurred in the last 10 years and specifically in the last five years that may have not been as present or even present at all um 10 15 20 years ago when I first started here. So so one of one of those things is the advent of technology. So, one of the things that we're seeing a lot of even with this year with the New York State cell phone ban is is to handle those situations. Um, those that come about with social media, those that come about with onetoone devices, those that come about with all the things that used to deal with in the schoolhouse that have
040now extended beyond the schoolhouse due to social media and new communications. So that creates a significant need uh for additional staff and additional support in helping to navigate those situations. So while we may have fewer numbers, our number of behavior incidents, events um has certainly not decreased um since that time and in some cases and in some years has actually gone up because we are facing new and different challenges. One of the biggest challenges that we're also facing are the um since since the postco era are social emotional needs of students and our deans help support this significantly working with our social workers, working with our support staff to do mediations uh with the with the intent of being proactive with students to help address many of these issues preemptively um and to focus on
041learning from these experiences. the this staff is incredibly incredibly helpful um in helping students to understand uh what uh they need to regarding interactions with peers whether it be on social media, whether it be um beyond the scope of the classroom um and and within the halls itself. So while we may see a change in numbers, we're we're not seeing a a decrease in in need for student support. In fact, we're seeing an increase in the needs for student support in a lot of those areas and our deans do provide a lot of that support. Um, in addition to the uh discipline aspect, our deans provide uh other sports in building as well. So if I could offer a couple of concrete examples at the high school, we saw a dramatic increase in the number
042of cell phone related infractions from 102 last school year to 753 at the time that the report was run to prepare for this presentation. So every cell phone, every earbud, we are trying so in such a concerted way to impress upon our young people how interfering these devices are, knowing full well that especially for our older students, it was a a challenge to put those devices in a place where they would not have easy access. So every cell phone confiscated, every earbud and so forth can result in a conversation. There's certainly reporting that takes place per state guidelines. So I offer that as just an example. Discipline, whether it's a cell phone infraction to a much more serious matter, can be very timeconsuming. And in order to get to the root cause, it could take
043a number of administrators, the dean of students, working collaboratively with support staff, possibly our school social workers. These are the kinds of things that we are doing that our deans of students are doing on a daily basis to prepare our students for success. So, Dr. O'Hara asked us to clarify the differences in the roles of administrators. The difference of perhaps an assistant principal versus a dean. So there while there is some overlap, uh the deans primarily deal with a couple of different areas, but uh they'll deal with morning um attendance parties, which is I know another major focus of of the high school. They'll deal with um ID infections. We know how important safety and security is to the community. uh is very important to us as well. And uh the uh both middle school
044and the high school uh would be I'm going to make a pun here with the move to uh address um our uh our identification systems making our buildings more secure. That is also a labor intensive process to ensure that everyone has one every day to make sure that they are using them that they're wearing them. Um so that is another role that our deans take on. So they they do a lot of the daytoday little pieces so that our assistant principles can focus on testing and on programming um which is a very very different role where they do intercept is in a lot of the uh investigations that we look into as Dr. was saying when we have a social media incident or whe there's something with to do with the cell phone it t
045it's a very labor intensive process to make sure that we are aware of all the facets and all of these people who are involved to make sure that we are working with our parents with our community members um to truly address and get to the root cause of the issue. So while an assistant principal is working on um on building programs and on testing uh and that is the the deep role of the dean are making sure that our day-to-day operations um with attendance and supporting tenants supporting uh grades following through on programs through um our SE periods at the high school following through with uh um lunchtime support at the middle school. That is the goal of the dean. Additionally, um our deans at at the middle school also work a lot with um
046our giving student voice with our buccaneer round table looking for opportunities in working with students um to to help them find their their own voice um and their own power within the building. Um and our assistant principal does as well, but they work on very specific different programs. So should the board uh elect to eliminate the two dean positions, can you just provide some context for how that would shift your responsibilities as a building principal, your assistant principles, and how responsibilities within the building change so we can have some context for our own decision making. Thank you. Um, so we'll as Mr. Frau said, we'll make it work. It's it's what we do and and we'll do it to the best of our ability to not have uh not have sacrifices um to to the
047students. However, it's you're taking uh the the role at at the middle school of three three full-time people and you're shifting it to two full-time people. So, some things will have to get. um we'll do our best to mitigate that. Um but what what we might what would certainly be a challenge is um the number uh you know we we have a you know our our meetings to give a concrete example but the round table has expanded significantly this year um and he's making sure to have the time for those student voice opportunities. We'll try our that won't go away. But I I'm not sure if we'll have the time during the day to meet as frequently to have as many of those chances um to empower our students throughout the day if if we
048have one fewer person. Um we also try there are a number of other programs that we've started this year with students. Again, that would certainly be a challenge. So, um, our morning, um, our morning announcements has expanded to students giving news updates and news briefs on our social media page. So, some of those opportunities are possible because we have great full-time people to work with those students. Um, again, I'm not saying that they would go away. I just don't know if it would be possible for us to continue at the same frequency with what some of those things are are. Um, so that filters some of the areas that that you might see um in the background and um it's it's going to be a challenge to to keep up with everything. I would quote
049it to to be as thorough and to be as proactive as we are. A lot of the things that we're seeing is is because we have um our deans are in the cafeteria. They are they are in the cafeterias. They are out at recess. They are up on top of one fewer and they're seeing these events before they depart. Hey, I don't like the way that these two people are interacting with each other. I'm going to meet with them and pull them out. It's one person less to have eyes and ears or that kind of thing. Um, and again, we'll do what we need to. We are we are the as the principal and as the assistant principles, we are very present. We are active as we can, but with one fewer set of eyes,
050you know, it's always more of a challenge. I don't know if the high school principal two assistants at one school principal at the other >> and and both buildings have had deans in some capacities for over the past 25 years whether it's full-time whether it's part-time um at sometimes those types were called student services advisors um sometimes those positions were parttime time in teachers union with a teacher and a couple periods for those positions have existed in some capacity for quite some time. >> Dr. Thank you so much for your information. I know that you had mentioned that there was quite an increase in um things that needed to be handled as far as cell phone usage. Can you tell me is there any additional data that you can supply us with other things maybe
051that they can work on besides those fractions? >> I can speak to that. Mrs. Roaki at the high school this year. There were thus far 2,712 incidents reported. That is more than double last year. The preponderance of that increase is related to the electronics prohibition passed by New York State adopted by the board of education last July. However, predictively we see that there are a number of related to cell phones and social media bullying, harassment allegations that are thoroughly investigated when brought to our attention. There are a number of roles. I like to think of our dean of students as really a dean of student success. So when I'm thinking about the impact that our dean of students has made this year in being both responsive and proactive that many of these reported incidents or
052issues or things that came to our attention whether it was um badge ID badge related again electronics related it could be an issue between classmates All of these things we know that in the last 5 years as Mrs. Stern said that adult behavior we see it has changed. Certainly our students are grappling with uh changing norms. They need our support and our approach to get them to be as successful as we know that they can be is to invest the time and to look for what are the root causes, what are the impediments, why is the student coming late to school and then getting to the bottom and having the parent communication and being able to uh revisit to give to give context of numbers from the middle school as well. Um what we uh
053typically something um that we would call just inappropriate conduct. Uh it's a more encompassing term, but it typically has to do with things that would uh be the precursors to to bullying, harassment, that kind of um behavior. We're seeing at the middle school um approximately 10 more um we have we had 178 incidents uh this year that were a result of that. That's about 10 more than we had labeled as an inappropriate conduct 10 years ago. So numbers might be changing but I think again uh postco we're dealing a lot with these uh social interactive pieces that really need um a deeper dive into it and and help with our students in understanding how to how to interact with each other and how to respond to each other. Um so the the the numbers may
054change but the uh the need has also changed. >> I know you said that the de the deans have been around for 20 or so years but I also know that we've added other support systems for our students. Could anybody list those to us? psychologists, counselors, social workers because I know that we've added support there as well. Uh we over the um in for for September added a social worker to the middle school and a social worker to the high school. We increased by one half of a psychologist districtwide and um we added half of a school counselor to the middle school and two school counselors at the elementary level. So each elementary building has one school counselor, also a social worker and school psychologist. The high school has four school counselors, two social workers,
055and the middle school has three school counselors and two social workers and one psychologist. >> Thank you. I was just curious about what other support systems we do have in place other than just the deans. In speaking to that, um, can you explain to us like what kind do we have an MTSS system in place at the secondary level yet? >> Yeah, it's in progress, >> but that would be a viable source of support for students who are speaking of late and and you know, not just one fraction here or there that seem to be trending. >> Yes. Yes. I could speak to that, Mrs. Piney, but our uh deans of students both at the middle and high school have been those uh this year most deeply involved in the MTSS training. So with the
056high school um it's still very nent. We did administer a universal screener in the fall uh to begin to roll out a more robust MTSS at the secondary. But along those MTSS is multi-tiered systems of supports. I would like to add in terms of the attendance if we think about student success. I think we all agree in this in this auditorium that we want our students to be present to maximize their education. The dean of students at the high school has been actively involved in implementing to the letter the board of education's revised policy this school year. We have been more communicative I believe than in previous years about students absences. We have uh enhanced our procedures for both the reporting and the sharing out and the communication and holding our students responsible for missed
057uh days of school. We have a supportive ed, we call it SE, that is built into the program here. And our dean of students has singlehandedly pulled 70 students, approximately 70 students from a pre-eriod lunch and matched them with our teachers, hopefully in that area. a science teacher if the academic need is science, although not always the case, but our dean of students has made incredible strides in that in that department. So, MTSS, not exactly perhaps what what you had in mind, but I do believe that we have made um impressive progress this school year in giving the academic supports, call it the tier 2 supports or even in some cases the tier three supports that some of our students require. We are tackling the absences. that she has our dean of students has set
058up uh new protocols so that students understand that they can and will be denied credit. She has conducted many many meetings and has offered kids the opportunity per the board policy to appeal those decisions. Thank you. >> I'm sorry, one last question only because it sounds like a lot of the work that's being done is in students free time. You know, like you said, you could touch upon a student who seems to be struggling. Can you tell me um who else is in who else supervises the cafeteria? Like who is assigned? Is it teacher assistant? Is it a duty period for teachers at at the high school? >> At the secondary level, yes, >> we have guards present. We have cafeteria monitors. And depending on the student population, we definitely would have some aids or
059some teaching assistance available. That's at the high school. At the middle school, we have uh between three and four monitors in our dining rooms. And we also have, again, similar to what Dr. said, depending on the needs of the students, there are often oneto ones. Um our dean is frequently down um between both dining rooms. Uh security is is is back and forth between them as well. >> And the monitors, that's their that's their role, correct? They're not teachers or anything outside of >> Correct. the in and the in the middle school dining room, we have a part-time staff whose whose job it is to monitor the dining spaces. >> Thank you. >> I want to speak briefly about um our LPNs that are in our district. Um we currently have we have six LPNs
060altogether. We have five uh LPNs that are one in each one of our uh buildings. And I have an additional LPN that is actually working with a student who has a medical need. She has a feeding tube and um so that PM for that student. Um if the decision was to be made that um we need to remove our LPNs. Um, looking at the two LPNs that are up there, the scenario would be that we would have one LPN at the elementary level that would have to rotate between the three elementary schools, Wing, Sherwood, and Coleman Road. And then, so again, I'll repeat that we have five LPNs currently, one in each of our school buildings with our RNs. Then we have an additional LPN that is with a student that has a medical need.
061Um so in looking at the LPN's the scenario would be to again share one LPN among the three elementary buildings and then have an LPN remain at middle school, one LPN remain at the high school. um you know some of the roles and responsibilities of our LPNs of course is the health and safety of our students assisting our um our school nurses. Um they also cover field trips. Um any student in our district that has general education or special education that may have medical needs, they will um attend field trips. Um they also cover um for each other. So if I have a nurse that is out either on vacation or on a sick day or personal day, our LPNs do rotate and cover. Uh and this way we don't have to rely on an
062agency, a nursing agency, which is quite costly. They help assist our school nurses with sports physicals and any kind of administrative work. Um and of course emergencies. So, um, it would be a great loss. I have to say I oversee all the nurses and the LPN in this district. Um, their work is very valuable. But, um, if we did have to go down two LPNs, again, we could share one LPN above all the elementary buildings and try to maintain one at the middle school and one at the high school. How many RNs are in each building? >> We have one in each building. So we have five RNs all together. >> Any other questions? >> Okay. And then of course regarding custodial art, you know these people are the backbone of any school district. I
063think it's everybody knows the work that they do. If you come to our buildings, they look fantastic. Clerical does all the work behind the scenes and keeps everything running. I will say uh the word clerical position on the list there. U there is a possibility that reduction could be due to attrition, but it's not certain whether or not there there would be a retirement. There's been some inquiry, but we don't know if that would come to fruition or not. So, if that's on the list, it would initially be a reduction and then if uh if there was some news that the person did choose to retire, it would be congratulations for the retiring and it would be good news for the person who's the newest person into the district that We're gonna go to the
064next one question. >> I I um I wasn't sure if we had to wait to ask the questions because as it's popping up, I just um put the LPN's um the question I had was I know you said that there were five LPNs and sometimes they will accommodate on field trips and things of this nature. Um I um I have a a child who is type one diabetic and he's required to have. So that's part of his IP. I'm sure there's lots of parents who have that type of an issue um for lack of better word. So I was just wondering if that's also included in there when you mentioned field trips and things of that nature. I mean if it's in a child's IP, it doesn't necessarily come out of this budget though. Correct.
065>> Uh just repeat the last part of your question. >> Sure. So if a child such as my child has an IEP and there are certain requirements on the IEP, does that come out of this budget as well? >> Because I thought that that you know if it's if it's a law, >> correct? So understand what you're saying. So, if you have if there's a child that has a medical need and perhaps going on a field trip, >> correct? >> Right. Um, an LPN would we would have either an LPN or one of our school nurses attend that attend that field trip. They they can interchange. They can rotate. Um, but yes, it still would affect >> it still would come out of that correct budget. So if these two LPNs were taken out and
066there were three left, one among three, one of those >> would go on the field trip, >> one of those would then be taken and in the event that there was a child like the one-on-one also would be an IEP. The child >> that child is medically required by law to have that aid or LPN. >> That's correct. So if these were taken out of the equation, those other students would still need that. >> Yes. But that's you're talking about a field specific. >> Well, I mean, you had mentioned the child with the feeding tube, >> correct? Yeah. >> So that regardless of how many LPNs get taken out or work in the district, that child still needs that, >> right? So that's so that's a good example. So, uh, when that child needs a
067feeding, right, the LPN would go in, um, and then the LPN will be used in other ways throughout that building. Um, but time would be, um, used a little bit more efficiently, let's say. Um, and we'd have to be very very creative with our schedule. >> Okay. If there's a student that say for another example has diabetes is going on a field trip or needs to come down to the health office right to receive their medication um again we have five nurses um each one will be staying in each one of their buildings and it's the LPNs that are being rotated so the students will be attended to uh for all their health and safety needs um even minus the two LPNs um scheduling would be you know more of a task for us to
068handle and be a little bit more we'll have to be very efficient with that. Um >> and um just for clarification, the child I know this is not my child, but if I had a child with feeding tube, I would assume that the one-on-one would would be with my child the entire day, >> right? Just just for clarification, um I don't know anyone else who might not have that kind of knowledge with a child who has a one-on-one. Regardless of that, that child that still needs to be in place, >> correct? >> So, okay. I just wanted to make sure that that was crystal clear. >> Yeah. And that situation, >> right, >> that child would that would be in place for them or not. Correct. >> Okay. Thanks. >> You're welcome. uh to piggy
069back when you were discussing about dean of students and in the cafeteria and Miss Prey said it in the cafeteria there are security guard and monitors present and they can intervene in a situation if the situation were to occur but they cannot issue discipline correct that has to be for an administrator or a dean of students. >> Yeah, that's correct. So, you're showing a need. You're showing a very high need, especially at the high school when you have 2,712 incidents as reported. And I know with the state, they have the new rule, but no cell phones. And that's a high increase right there. You're showing a need for dean of students. I would say in both secondary schools, is there other alternatives that could be looked into? Because I do see how high they are.
070Um well these are these are the alternatives based on everything we've gone through with the budget. This is where we are this evening. >> So if >> you're asking in in addition to what's here >> uh in addition to what's here and just basically like is there any way to save those two spots themed students >> showing that you have a need for it? >> I think that would be part of the discussion in a few minutes. profession why this is up because it's regarding this. Um you have two deans up there and then after Miss Gonzalez spoke um they talk about what their deans rules are. You did not offer up we have two assistant principles at the high school and they both made more than the dean. So why couldn't we eliminate one
071of those? >> Does your personal relationship with certain people play into this? Uh, no. >> No. So why can't we put up an assistant principal? >> Well, this list was made in conjunction with a lot of people and we made recommendations that we thought were in the best interest of solving the problem. >> What you were saying the dean does something different than an assistant principal. One is solving a problem one person who does the same job. >> This is this is the list we have these the recommendations. So be I would be looking that could be part of the discussion in the next few minutes. >> Okay. Um you also say that there will be no salary increases for certain employees. What employees? >> Yeah. So that's um that's in a contingency budget and
072that's dictated by law. So it's employees that are not in bargaining units. So um in this district we refer to them as bluebacks. I don't know the C thing. I'm not sure exactly which individuals are being, but it could it could include central office administrators. >> My followup to you would be then you're saying that some people will not get salary increases. However, a administrator at the central administration building had a $50,000 increase over the past three years. How is that allowed or justified? >> Um I I don't I don't think we had administrator that had $50,000. >> I I looked it up. Our contracts are at 2% increases. So, I'm not sure what position that would be. You would have to tell me. >> Uh, the Browers position and if you go back from
0732022 to 2025, there's a $50,000 difference. >> Yeah. I don't I don't I don't think Can you explain that? I don't remember exactly. You want to come to the microphone? Okay. So, in 2022, I was hired as an interim super uh assistant superintendent and I was paid at a predeem rate. So that is why in in 2021 rather I was here from 2021 to 2022 on a predium rate with no benefits and paid at a predium rate per day. >> I just think our superintendent would know those things. >> Sure. >> Okay. And then also it's weird tonight because you and I Dr. power slope for the opening and I voiced my concerns about behavior at the high school and you told me there was no behavioral issues at the high school, but then Mrs.
074Gonzalez comes off and says that there are behavioral issues and we do need these. So, it's a little confusing. >> I'm sorry. I I think it's just important that we're on the record. I I was a high school principal for 13 years >> and I've spent the last 30 years in secondary schools. I would never say to anyone there are no behavior problems in a high school. You and I spoke about vaping and what I said to you was >> I walked around the bathrooms at the high school last week and while I was there I went to each bathroom and no one was vaping at that time. >> What I said to you was almost every time that I go into the building, I walk into the boys bathrooms and I passed by. I
075personally have not walked in on people. And what I went on to say, I have walked in and seen boys having their cell phones out. >> Okay. >> And we also shouldn't be paying someone over $100,000 a year to monitor cell phones. That's insane. >> I think they just gave an explanation that that's not the only work that they do, >> right? They also did like mental health, which could also go back to a social worker that we're paying for. >> Yeah. There's as many things that you can go instead of pulling things from students. You can start with again assistant principles that make more and different routes you can go and I think you should definitely circle back to it and come up with some things that are better than taking away from the
076kids whether it be anything there or sports or anything. >> Okay. >> Thanks. You're good Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to speak. Um, I guess my question is I don't understand why you always go for the kids. You always go to take things from the kids. Yet, this district has four assistant superintendent. Nationwide, districts of the same size have zero to one. Why do we have four each making very high salaries with ver with benefits and perks and retirement and all that good thing? Reasonable is to have one assistant superintendent. Having four is ridiculous. >> So, first of all, I just want to hold secret here. Thank you. Just some first of all, we're going to do a little housekeeping room. There's going to be decorum here. I know everyone's tensions
077might be a little bit high. So, I'm really going to stress that when you do come up to speak here, we speak not in a high tone or upsetting tone. Everything we're we're all adults here. I know everyone has opinions. everyone who might feel truly strong way one way, strongly another way. So what I'm going to start doing right now is what I was just going to say after this presentation we had right now. There's three scenarios. One, originally we had that the 2.82 got voted down. So the community spoke, they didn't like that 2.82. So the original was the 2.22. And now if we back out the greenhouse and put that back into the other reserve, if that drops our levy now to 1.82. So regardless of what happens if that 375,000 goes back
078in, we still have to find 433,000. So no one, and I've said this before on the board, we all want to see students succeed. Nobody wants to take anything away from students. So I want that to be clear up here when that was when he was saying that to me taking away from students that's not hold let me finish I have the floor >> so what I'm just saying is so now as a board as again I've presented these scenarios to everyone entertain the public comment cards we're going to get feedback from everyone get the sense of what the community is here what they're saying and then as a board in public. We are going to now start looking at some of these suggestions here and see what we could do to close that $433,000.
079That's what we need to do this even that that's what has to be done. So either we're going to come at the 2.2 or the 1.82. Regardless, we still have to find $433,000. Worst case scenario is a contingency budget. And I don't think anyone here sitting in this room tonight wants that because that really will hurt the students. So, we're going to be mindful for that. I mean, that I can't stress that the most. Um, please, I would hate to see this budget fail. But right now, what we're going to do is decide whether we want to do 1.8 or the 2.2. >> But why haven't you even suggested uh you want to get rid of the deans, you know, lower level people? Why not some of the high level? Why does this district need
080four assistant superintendent? >> Well, and you know, so you have an assistant superintendent for curriculum. >> Everybody knows everybody knows the bigger the title, the bigger the salary. >> so, so you're saying districts do not have an assistant superintendent for curriculum. They don't have an assistant superintendent for you. >> Four is ridiculous. One is one is reasonable. Sir, which one? >> But is it reasonable to have four assistant superintendents in a district with only 2500 kids? >> Well, we've So, we've had these same assistant superintendents. >> I don't care how long they've been here. That's irrelevant. They're making ridiculously high salaries. You're looking to get rid of people who make barely make anything who are directly affecting the students. So if we got rid of the assistant superintendent curriculum, who does curriculum? >> One of
081the other two. >> So then Okay. Well, thank you. >> A lot of people do extra at work. A lot of people work more than 9 to three. >> Mr. Um perhaps Dr. Har provide some context for the roles that each of the assistant superintendent provide. for our community and the roles that they have in order to ensure our district operates at capacity. I I mean I think I it would help if I begin by saying that the complement of assistant princip assistant superintendent in this district is is pretty much the same as it is across almost every school district all in Maryland. the the uh the the work is immense. Um if you're talking about special education, Dr. Callahan does homeless students, McKinto students, she she has, you know, I'm not sure how many
082of the counties special education students in the district, the the task is enormous. Um and and the students needs are immense. Um and we want them all to to have every support that they need. um the assistant superintendent for HR. We have over 600 employees. So, it's civil service roles, it's certified employees, it's on boarding, it's interviewing, it's it's um issues with discipline. Um she happened to take on the role recently of being our hearing officer when there's uh student discipline issues. curriculum instruction is supervising instruction, supervising our teachers, supervising our administrators, and of course, it's a $16 million corporation. We have an assistant superintendent of business who also supervises transportation, who also supervises buildings and grounds, and these titles are very very common uh and needed across. >> Thank you. >> Hi. I think
083what's just very confusing to people is like 20 years ago there was one superintendent and one assistant superintendent and enrollment has gone down and now there's four and it's not different in any other district. I agree but I'm not sure exactly what changed so much that um I think that's what people are having a hard time understanding that we need for so you know the administration to be so top hand heavy. So if you could explain that I think maybe that would help. One thing for context is I'm I'm in my 35th year of my career and for 28 I've been an administrator and I can't recall being in a district where these positions didn't exist. So that's that's my experience and that's going back 30 years. Um, and I can tell you what's changed
084a lot from 20 years ago is graduation requirements are different, student behavior is different, state mandates are different, um, student populations are different, poverty, poverty levels are different. The challenges have increased and increased and increased. Unfunded mandates have increased, which requires a bigger burden on administrators and people facilitating all the things that happen in the district. Um, you know, regarding regarding our uh five central office people, we are not atypical. And regarding our assistant principles and deans, there are some school districts that have a ratio of, you know, middle school or high school student to administrator, that's a little bit higher than ours, and there are some that are a little bit lower than ours. So, we try to make recommendations that we think will get us where we need to be. thinking about the
085things that will have the least direct impact on the students needs. >> I just have a question of clarification. I filled out a u comments card in front and uh when are you going to start um asking people to to speak? I I see people coming up. I see people coming up without any uh without any intro and you're entertaining their uh their questions. I I'd like to know when uh when the the comment card people are going to have their turn >> so we'll take it and I didn't want to be rude to you because I was going to ask you please I have public comment cards that I need to get to. So there you notice it and again again I don't want to make it sound make it sound like we're trying
086to shut people down, right? That's not what we're looking for and people took the time to fill these cards out. So need to respect the process and that's why we do it. So we do have the public comment cards and I do have And thank you. >> Hey, Rob Leen. I'm the president of the teachers association. So, full disclosure, I just wanted to comment out what Justice said. Someone said 20 years ago, we had one in one. I've been here for 27 years. We actually had two assist we had two assistant superintendents for curriculum. ISIL actually cut one of them. We had one for elementary and we had one for secondary. So, I just think that's very important. Everyone is entitled to their own decisions and your point of views. However, we need to be
087factual. We had five assistant superintendent. We lost one many years ago, long before I think anybody was sitting up here. So, I just want to make sure that's clear that we have removed superintendent over the years in Iceland. Dr. Tim Harney was the secondary level and Dr. Seville was the elementary level. Then he combined five >> six total. It's just a This is where I get >> I spent 50 years in finance as a CFO and I would just like to know how you do a bucket. When you take in 1.6 6 million and you spend a 4.7. >> I'm sorry I missed it in the end. I'm sorry. >> I said I've been in finance 50 years and I don't understand how you can create a budget where you take in 1.6 million and
088you spend 4.7 and then you tell the public it's out of your control. >> I'm going to defer that to our business. Well, I I mean, I think the context of the comment was that some of the large majorities of that 4.7 million increase was beyond our control. So, for example, transportation went up by $680,000. >> Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. >> You did a budget and you had a contract with the bus company. Had it go up by more than you thought. >> No, it it didn't go up by more than we thought. We we had to account for that when we tried to build the budget. >> But the budget passed with 1.6 million coming in. Why didn't you tell the public you were spending more when you knew beforehand? >> Well,
089that's part of the process. We told the public before the budget was proposed what the new expenses were and what the new revenue was and we tried to close that gap. >> Well, then if you didn't close it, where did you get the money? >> Well, we got the money came from reducing expenses and the money came from tax levy increase. The money came from the state aid increase and the money came from reserves. What do you do when you run out of reserves? >> No, you can't. It's a It's not a sustainable uh practice, right? So, we're aware of that. So, we have to try to keep controlling spending as we go forward. But the problem with school districts across New York State is that the expenses are rising at a faster rate than
090the revenue is. The tax cap is contributing to that. The economy is contributing to that. So, it's not a challenge that you need to isolate. Yeah, I realize that. But here you're looking to say $400,000 would go for nothing if you end up spending more or do you take it again? >> I I want to just clarify something to make sure I understand what you're saying. We clear that the increase in transportation is for next year's budget, not that we overspent it this year. Is that what I'm hearing? >> Yeah. So, we we we have a budget that takes us through June of 2030. And what we're talking about is the budget that begins July 1st, 2026 and will take us to June 30, 2027. And as we started this process, in was in the
091presentation earlier, we learned in January that we were having $136,000 increase in state aid and we also knew that our tax levy increase would be approximately 1.5 million. So we knew that the revenue was increasing by 1.6 million. But as other figures were coming in, we also calculated that our health insurance costs were increasing by 1.1 million and our costs to attend to the needs of special education students were increasing by approximately a million. And we had to put an RFP out for a request for proposals for a new contract with a bus company. We had one company respond. And so we we had an estimate that those costs were going to go up 10%. That's roughly $680,000. So these aren't things that we overspent. These were things we were taking into account when we
092were trying to plan the budget moving forward and we we can't directly control how much it costs for special education students because they may move to the district. Their needs change. We can't directly control actually can't control at all what the costs are to provide health insurance to the employees. So those costs went up 1.1 or 1.2 million, I don't remember exactly. So those examples added up to 4.7 million. >> But my point is you're going to reach a level that the district goes broke. But what you're telling me is you get in money, you have a budget, and you spend more than you take in. If I did that in my company, we'd be broke. So how can you get away with it? >> Right? I understand the question and this is the challenge
093that I and all my colleagues are facing. So that's not an answer couple years ago. >> The answer is you got a cut. >> Well, we did cut many cuts this year. We we eliminated nine positions. We're talking about eliminating some more this evening. And so we're we're we want to maintain all the supports and programs we can and keep controlling the expenses to the best of our >> Let me ask you this. 2.2 levy increase. How much of that is you going to go? How much have you put away in the back of your mind that you know this isn't enough? >> Oh, well the the the plan is to spend to the budget that we have, right? >> But you didn't do that last year. We had the goal. Last year you spent
094more almost triple what you took in. about the fun. >> You never have any left over. You keep taking reserves. >> No, that's that's not true. Part of the fund balance that we use every year to fund the next year's budget is money that was underspent in the current year's budget. That's also a very difficult practice. So for example, if you have a budget that's $und00 million and when you close your books, you confirm that you spent $97 million in this district and it's a common practice. We use part of that money to fund next year's budget in lie of increasing taxes. >> We understand that in private industry we call that a surplus. >> Yes. >> But you didn't do that last year. >> We we did use 1.6 1.6 6 million surplus last
095year toward this year's budget. >> Exactly. >> So you spend more than you took in. And what makes me think you won't do it again? >> We used the surplus to this year's budget that the challenge with stopping. >> Wait a minute. If you take 1.6, you spend 1 4.7. >> Dr. Howard, maybe it's prudent for you to review the slides related to the reserves so the community has an accurate um depiction of the way that the district has been consistent in maintaining those. Okay, so this this chart shows two different types of reserves. Um the Maybe it helps. Let me just go back to this. Okay. So, in the left hand column, these are some restricted reserve accounts that we have. The the top uh one is is employee benefits approved liability. So, we
096keep money in those reserves to pay for benefits employees have approved over their time uh employed in the district. So, an example of that is um in uh different bargaining contracts, people get paid for unused sick days when they retire. Some are allowed to be paid out for unused vacation days in their last year when they retire. Uh that reserve can only be used for that purpose. Uh we have um I'm not sure if the general public understands this, but as the employer, the school district has to pay to the teachers retirement system and the employee public employee retirement system. So the teachers retirement system includes administrators and teachers. The employee retirement system referred to as ERS includes custodial clerical types of employees. So um if you are a certified employee a teacher or administrator
097presently we have to pay u what is it 9 what pay nine 9.5% of an employes salary the district has to pay to the teachers retirement system. So if a teacher earns $100,000, we have to pay $9,500 to that retirement system. That's what that second and third reserve is for to control spikes in those costs. Right? So most often we have those payments that we anticipate in the budget. Sometimes we don't have enough money in the budget. So we have to go to these savings accounts. Okay? So that's an example of restricted reserves. If I go back to this chart here, the the two columns on the left side of this chart are the the total balances of the restricted reserves ending in those years shown. So in June of 2021, we had approximately 9.3
098million in total. You can see over the last couple of years because we had surplus when our year finished, we were able to put money into our reserves. You can see in June of 2025, our reserves went down almost $2 million that year. But I think it's important to note that that year we removed $1 million to do um the playground at Wing and some other projects. and we were planning to do the greenhouse project out of that money. We took another $250,000 out of of a repair reserve which we had established the capital um capital reserve fund and the repair reserve both in June of 2022. We funded those with 1.25 million and we took that 1.25 million out in June of 2025. Um there was also another uh was it Mr. Well, we
099had insurance reserve we removed 50,000 of because we had um a child victim's act case unfortunately. Right. So those reserves are restricted and you can see that in the last two years we've used money from those reserves to meet some of the demands uh some of our expenses. Another type of reserve that people need to consider is the unassigned unappropriate uh unappropriated reserve. Those are for things that uh there's no restrictions on them. It's for unbudgeted expenses, unexpected expenses, or unusual expenses. So, examples are uh there's a storm and a roof blows off the building. Can't plan for that, but we have money in that reserve. Another example is we could have a year where a large number of students with special needs move into the district. We can't anticipate that. We need to dip
100into this reserve to attend to those needs. Um you can see that since June of 2021 that reserve has actually gone up slightly the p um the law doesn't allow you to keep in that account more than 4% of the next year's budget. So for example if our budget was $und00 million the law would not allow us to maintain more than four million in that reserve. You can see the percentages that we've had of the next year's budget to the right. While the money amount has been going up slightly, the percentage has also been going down. But that's because our budget's been going up and we haven't quite been able to keep pace keeping it at 4%. Right? So, it's typical for us to have surplus and use that surplus as a revenue source for
101the next year's budget. Because if we don't use 1.5 million of surplus now for the 202627 budget, then we have to cut 1.5 million of services and things for children or we have to go to the taxpayers and say we need another 1.5 million of of uh revenue. So that's a typical practice for a school district. But as far as your question about the 1.6 6 revenue increase and the 4.7 million expenses increase. We didn't spend 4.6 million and only had 1.6 million. Going forward, we anticipated 1.6 million in increased income. At the same time, we anticipated 4.7 million in increased expenses, and that contributed to our challenge this year. But that's not how you explained it in the letter to the public. >> You said you had $4.7 million of unexpected expenses that increased.
102My point is how did that happen? Well, it happens because um our employees belong to New York State Health Insurance Plan. We don't set the premier rates. So we have we estimate things but the cost to provide health insurance uh depending on the bargaining unit you're in the employee pays anywhere from uh say 19% to 25% of the premium the district pays the difference. So those the Nisha increased their premiums. So for us that was about one 1.1 $1.1 million increase. So increases in health insurance premiums aren't unexpected, but that was a big jump. It went up like 12 or 13%. >> How much had you thought it would go up? >> So that that's um it's a challenge to budget for because we're paying um for six months out of the year. we're paying
103from January to June where we know um I'm sorry from July one through December that we are able to know what the rate is because it goes on a calendar year. However, we get the rates in December from December uh from January to June it's a different rate that can increase at any rate. So we, you know, try to as best we can estimate what that increase is, but sometimes it's so large that we can't fully um accurately budget for that. One year it was so high that they cut the rate in July. Um once they put that new rate out, we got so many phone calls. People didn't understand that we do not set the premium rates and they were calling our office to ask us why the premium rates were so large. >>
104I know about that. It was United Healthcare, >> right? And then in July, we saw for the first time ever the rate went down. They did a midyear rate decrease, which was very unusual. So that's a really difficult um it's a challenge for all of us with that. >> I guess my main point is I'm quality in the budgeting process and not estimating. >> Well, I mean some things we can estimate because we know what the contracts are. So we can move forward everybody's pay scale and we can give a really accurate estimate of that. and we estimate increases for health insurance. Um the thing is though, even if we estimated it correctly, we didn't estimate it incorrectly, but even if we knew the exact number, we still have to pay the bill. It goes
105up beyond our control. We don't have the ability to impact the health insurance premium. The one item that we have a little bit of influence over is when we negotiate contracts and uh it's evident to everybody in the community that our employees are really committed. and they stepped up to offer concessions which is you know if that's not a testament to their commitment and their dedication to ISIL I don't know what else could be and also at the negotiating table over the last five years we've had really collaborative processes and as evidence of that for this current contract our salaries are going up 1.1 million and in the last two years they were 1.8 8 or 1.9 million increase. And so we've done collective bargaining that's that's been good for the employees but also also
106trending for the longer term health of the school district. So the things that we have a little bit of control over I think we've done well. Um you know things like um here's another example. Uh I explained about the TRS and ERS. those costs went up $538,000 and and that that is um another another cost that's provided to us if we make some estimates and often often we're not far off but we still have to pay. So that's part of the challenge. And another challenge of building a budget in the school district is we found out on May 20th what our final state aid number is. And we had to the governor and the legislators were supposed to adopt a budget by April 1st. We had a deadline to adopt our budget and they're telling
107us the state aid weeks after we're required to adopt our budget. >> Luckily it's higher. >> Excuse me. >> Luckily it's higher >> a little bit. Yes. >> Okay. Thank you question. Thank you. Because I have to pick up a fourth grader from the springfest. It takes a village. Um so, um recently, oops, I can't stand still. I've been sitting for a while. Um this week um we all um parents and guardians received a parent square memo indicating that there were going to be two massive curriculum shifts to K through five and potentially six mathematics as well as wing literacy. Um in terms of the math it will be the third curriculum change in five years that my fourth grader has seen. um is there any possibility that we can put a pause on that
108kind of expenditure um in order to keep things that are impacting kids? Like I can personally tell you so many stories about how our middle school dean has so positively impacted my special need sixth grader and to lose him my it would be a nightmare for my son. Um I'm gonna ask Dr. G cutter to give you a little detail on that, but I could just give you one example about um one of the curricular enhancements we're working on. Um there there was a certain cost and Dr. Ga would remember it exactly for this particular program and he worked with the company and negotiated instead of having to pay it all once up front um they've agreed to allow us to pay it over I forget if it's four or five years but four three
109years. So maybe you want to give us the details. >> Okay. So in regards to the math pilot, uh this year we've piloted the vision math program. Uh it's currently what um had K1 uh building. prior to that which was I believe five over five years ago we had go math >> go math stopped with the New York state standards we had to remove that so so that was the shift that we had uh we had about six years ago at that point in time they had sist sorry vision K1 uh and through two through five they had red Um, we did a pilot this year with two teachers from grades two through five. Um, each grade level. >> I know cuz my daughter was a part of that pilot class as was Mrs. Rusty
110son there in the state class. >> And so I guess you'd be happy that she's going to get a vision again. >> Um, debatable. >> It it's it's very and I know you and I have had this conversation earlier in the year that it is very dense language. I'm sitting there as an educator of 23 years with a master's degree at 75 credits above said master's degree sitting here having to decipher this for a nine 10 year old um you know that there's better ways to teach math than envision. >> I I I will tell you overwhelmingly the teachers coaches and administrators in the district uh they decided to shift to envision did open it up to the public and the community. Um we did have a night where we were >> which was my
111daughter's 10th birthday >> and I would gladly sit down with anyone if they would like for me to go over some of the data and what we looked at um and the differences between the two programs. Um I tell you our our teachers and I'll I'll speak on behalf of them are extremely excited about this shift. I think the resources and materials that go along with it are going to benefit our kids from for for from now until years to come. Uh if it was overwhelmingly in support of this new program we have as we look at the numbers uh costwise on an annual basis we're actually saving money uh by moving to this program uh over the next five years. Um and that's the the current contract that we have. Um, sometimes it's frontloaded,
112but if you look at it an annual basis, it's actually less expensive for us to move to the Envision program. It was, >> but is it really that beneficial for children? If highly educated parents in your district are struggling, I can't imagine what parents who are working two, three jobs, single parents trying to help their children with this math at home. Uh it's can't we just teach math and not change programs every two years? >> It's been again five to six years since we changed the program. Um and I will tell you the impact of regime math um has been extremely has not been impactful. We truly believe that this is a good shift for our kids. I will gladly sit down with anyone and if I need to have another community meeting, we can
113bring in uh the teachers who have experienced it and worked with it throughout the year um for us to uh shed some light on some of the differences they see and the benefits that they see for forthcoming for our students. And then the one other question budget-wise, and excuse me if I sound uneducated um because I'm trying to understand it. Um from I was kind of looking at um the proposed budgets from what is on the website from I think to now. um our curriculum special projects line in particular when my sixth grader was in kindergarten in the 201920 school year it was a $30,000 line. Um this year it's $114,000 and it was estim. Um can you speak to what that particular line um funds and why the rapid increase over seven years? >>
114Yeah, Dr. G is going to hit some info for you right now. >> Thank you. I know I have to pick up said fourth grader. Oh, >> I appreciate it. And I also look forward to my final request about curriculum changes being fulfilled. So through these special projects, uh there's a number of different things in I'll hit some of the uh components that have increased. Uh one, our is teacher mentors for our new teachers, our med with in there, our uh SEAL biiteracy is in there. Our AP Italian support program um we have regions prep uh in there as well. Uh we have our full Italian pole festival uh cosmetology that we pay for the weekends. Uh there's a number of different things in there that are special projects that we've had have over the
115last few years and that's the reason why these are all everything within there are projects that are directly tied to our kids in this district. >> That's understandable. >> So that's why you saw some of those increases and they and most of those things that I mentioned didn't exist uh quite a few years ago. So that's why you might see a >> increase. That makes sense. Thank you and thank you for your time. >> Yeah, just >> that's okay. Just by way of introduction, um my name is Dr. Sess. I'm a retired uh research engineer. Uh that was my first career. Uh but my second career is uh more pertinent to uh to this meeting. I was a uh science teacher for uh 23 years. Um and have taught uh courses from um AP physics
116the uh calculusbased uh physics course uh through physics to chemistry and uh uh physical science. Uh I also uh uh co-started uh my school's robotics team and we took uh uh Long Island Regional in uh in 2007. So uh I say all of this because uh I really have uh two dogs to hunt in uh this particular situation. I'm uh both a taxpayer uh and a teacher and and love students and I still mentor um a robotics team up in the uh Huntington area. So uh I drive quite a ways uh to uh to do that. So the comments I I want to make and I I want to speak very uh simplistically because that's the way I taught my students to think. Go right to the uh go right to the basics and and
117the basics are that that only five school districts on Long Island chose to uh to break the cap. And and I think you have to uh I think you have to deal with that and I think that you have to recognize that overhead uh has gotten out of control. If you look at the uh student teacher ratios as published in uh US world report um the overheads are are too high in this district. You just have to you just have to face it and and whether whether you want to put up a list of of things that people love and and don't want to don't want to cut. And I, you know, I've been to I've been to budget meetings like this before. You know, the the list you put up are are things that
118that people really don't don't want to see don't want to see done. you know that is typical but but I think what you have to really look at is is is the whole picture. Um my my old school district has a uh student teacher ratio of uh of 12 to one and here uh it's more like according to US uh world report 10 to one and every one of those percentage points given uh the number of uh families that that are in this district and the uh average uh salaries ies and benefits really corresponds to $500 per year per per family. So 12 to one uh is is very much better for our budget than uh uh than 10 to one. and and you know I I I hear I hear the uh comments about
119uh four superintendants versus five uh superintendent or assistant superintendent and and I think that's that's really that's really not the issue. The issue is you want the functions to happen but maybe you have to maybe you have to do some things like uh change titles around and instead of having a lot of superintendent you have uh directors of uh uh curriculum development and directors of of finance at uh at lower salaries. And maybe you have to look at class sizes and and maybe make some hard decisions about uh uh either about class sizes or hard decisions about courses that that maybe uh you're not going to offer because uh times have changed. Uh and I've seen that uh I've seen that in the district that uh uh that I was part of. So just a
120couple of comments and appreciate uh your uh listening to me. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you. I appreciate So, I wrote down respect because I think this is finally giving the community the respect that we deserve in breaking things down and showing us the budget process. I hope moving forward in future budgets, we talk about this kind of information and you show us these options and what we might have or lose going forward. my opinion, I'm okay with either one, honestly. Capital project or no capital project, I don't think we need a greenhouse. I'd rather see the upkeep of the other things on there. That's for the board's decision. My few questions that I do have, Dr. Jado, when you're talking about field trips, are you talking about like all field trips? Are you
121talking about like specific ones? I just want to hear like the true like impact of like what those words mean. So, we have money that's allocated within the budget by buildings and there are field trips that can tell you exactly what they offer next year, but there it's uh budgeted for uh to utilize transportation within to to offset some of the costs on some of the more expensive trips. Uh they are not curriculum related. In other words, if they are, we it is our responsibility to pay for them. for example, um things like um be uh we we that's part of the trip that we we have to fund in order to be part of that program that we have within there. So, it's outside of those things. It's the additional ones for some of
122the field trips that we may be running that we utilize that money to offset uh for the for the students. >> So, no opportunities are lost from the students. >> No opportunities are lost from the students? >> No. when I when we spoke about the possibility of cutting that um my opinion I'd say no um is that um we can possibly fund raise or find other ways to offset some of those costs if necessary. >> And as far as the clubs are concerned, you basically just went through and got rid of the low attendance clubs. Other clubs are saying just poor attendance clubs are going. >> Not only that, but I believe there is five to six of them on there as well that didn't even run this this current school year. Um just out
123of curiosity with the kiddo I I'm almost done with you. I got more questions. Um with kiddo did we even was it even being used outside of the clubs? it was. So what we have is we have um they were utilizing not as much as we would like and that's that's one of the reasons why I think it's it' be a good idea for for us to take that different pathway with the packages is that it was being used at uh not on a regular basis within the buildings and >> it's just something else that teachers >> the um so so with that I think the packages will be more than enough especially for the kids who would really be interested in being part of that program Okay. Um, was any other programming like poorly
124attended electives or other courses at the high school also cut from mention? >> Well, well, we shifted we did if if we did not have enough students within courses and sections, we do cut that. >> So, is that are we looking at that for next year since scheduling at the high school level has already been done >> already? Yes, we already have. So, we have the requests for certain courses. We've gone through it and we've we've chosen and we're looking to max out those sections as much as possible. >> I I have more curriculum questions. My next questions really are for the administrators as far as talking about the I agree that our building level is topheavy. When I did some statistics and I looked at NISAD and I looked at different schools and I
125went on all their different district websites, schools has one administrator for 300 students. We have one for 200 in the secondary level. Now, I think the reason why I chose Brunwood is because we have very different needs in those two school districts. I could not agree more that the needs of students and the social emotional welfare and all those things have truly increased over the past several years. precoid. Listen, all of our kids learned how to do this when they were at a young age, sadly, but we're paying the price for that and we're learning about that now. And I also know how much computer um social media comes into the schools and becomes a part of the school's problem. My question really it comes down to if we're getting rid of a dean and
126I graduated from ISIS High School in 2000. We had a principal and we had a dean. And the numbers right now at Isaac High School are exactly what they were in 2000. So granted, you take needs of students and the evolution of time of why you would need an AP and a dean because not long after I left, I surprised numbers went up. They had both of those. Mr. Young Piss was the assistant principal for my siblings who were there after me. Why do we need why get rid of a dean and have two assistant principles if you're saying their roles are so dramatically different? Are you shifting the role of a dean to an assistant principal? Because then why are we having a overpaid assistant principal? >> Um I don't think shifting it would
127make that pain. I think the four administrators in the building in high school about three administrators in the building in middle school. I think their work is extremely collaborative. I think there's lots of overlap and I think you heard from the two principles tonight that they will have to pick up the pieces that are missing if it goes that way. >> No, I I understand that and I understand it. Mr. Bonner, you're I think you're great. He calls me He calls me for good things. He calls me and ask me how I am and I ask him my question back is how am I? And he'll tell me good things. I have nothing personal or poor to say about these people. It is strictly about the need of the district. So my question is if
128this woman here I'm sorry I don't know your name is holding so much weight in that high school and doing so much work. What is the assist two assistant principles? What is the job description and the separation of two of them that makes her expendable and not one of the assistant principles? I think maybe I could ask one of the principles to come up and give the detail on that, but I I can tell you that they I don't know if interchangeable is the perfect word, but I can tell you that they are working so closely together that they're all picking up pieces for each other while they're doing this part of it, that part of it, that part of it. >> So why not save more money and access one assistant principle and keep
129the need? >> Yeah, that's been mentioned. >> I'm just it's that's what where I'm going with this. Um, does our VA report, I don't even know if it's still called the VA report. I've done it to the state with our statistics, our behavior, our social emotional, our data. Does it support the need for all those administrators that you created those positions? >> You're saying I created them? >> No. That the district decided on having the amount of administrators we have. Does our beta report our reports to the state support that? >> You know what? I don't know. I would have to I don't know if it's supported on the beta report, but I also know that every incident that they attend to is not on the beta report. Correct. So that I don't know if
130that's a I don't know if that would be an objective indicator or or reliable. >> I think it would be a piece of puzzle. >> Um the LC hands we have so I know that the middle school has not replaced the RN yet, but hopefully next year there will be an RN middle school. Right. Dr. Yes. >> So now why wouldn't we just keep why would we keep LPNs in the elementary schools and have a floating in the secondary just because the elementary schools have frequent flyers and all the boooos in them? Excuse me. I have a frequent flyer. I've just curious as far as when we're looking at the staffing and the allocation and when I'm looking at do we have any other additional revenue ideas moving into next year? Are have you have
131we gotten anything solid yet? Yeah. Also, before Dr. Alan opens up, I'll I'll say that um you know, we've been working on some things that could could total somewhere between 300,000 and $420,000 in additional revenue. But >> there's no contract sign yet. There's no like Yes. >> No, but as a matter of fact, we had uh in executive session, we discussed two of those contracts this evening. So, we're making progress, but I'm I'm I think you understand I'm not able to commit until they're there. But I can tell you that that we have um probably four viable possibilities in in in the area of that amount. and and um it's possible that one of them could be uh a certain number this year uh for 26 27 and could be uh increased by 50 to
13270,000 the following year after some startup cost are taken care of um but trust me I wish I could tell that we had something concrete but we are working on it and that these things take time because it's requires both sides legal reviewing other considerations as we work through >> and I'm sorry not for coming just when we're talking about are we still getting are we still doing it the welcome program? >> Well, we're still working on it but we've we've um the startup cost we think have come way down on that because um we think they're going to be able to weld outside and we we're pretty sure we're going to be able to use generally I this might be a stupid question to some. How are they welding outside? Like where are they
133going to be that with weather conditions and we do have four seasons. So I'm like I really was curious. >> Yeah. Um I was actually curious about the same thing because I've never had any experience welding but our teacher made his living welding says that they weld in snow, they weld in the cold. And so obviously if it's freezing temperatures our students will be welding on those days and they will be outside. on those days of the week doing other activities in the classroom of course but >> we remember this winter right >> okay uh the programs and other cuts that you stated in the prior budget presentation like the college tours and the paying for the exams all that is still out of the budget for next year correct >> yeah there was never
134really a cost for the college tours and so they're going to continue u I should correct myself sorry uh we've had the tours going for five years, right? So, for the first four, there was no cost. This current school year, we put $50,000 into the budget to offset the cost of transportation because that's the most expensive part of the trip. And we used I'm going to say 27 something. I I forget, but um and so yes, we took that money out of the budget and we removed from the budget fees for AP exams. >> Okay. And the last thing I want to talk about is and Dr. Colin, I'm good on the LPN. I just wanted to make a quick statement but thank you. You know the thing that came down to and Phil you
135said it talked about decorum and respect and I I do not think we have too many central office administrators knowing the ins and the outs of the way a school district works and what is required of them. I still will go back to that building level and they will still talk about compliment. It's nothing personal. But I also want to when we hold the community responsible for respect and decorum, I also think that the board should also be holding our districts employees the same way. I'm going to leave here with the fact that last time I stood up here, I was told that there was a slide named after me. And now one board member called me to apologize on behalf of the district for that comment. And again, it's personal and it was sarcastic.
136And I'm also going to say this today. I have come up here several times to speak. Many of those times Dr. Har has sat there and looked down and would not even would not even look at me. Today I got up here and I started speaking and he's looking at his phone. So we all need to hold each other to the same standards. I respect this. I appreciate this and I hope moving forward we see more of this. So thank you >> as far as >> I didn't you know what he can say about the slide. I wasn't I didn't think that it was you know I I know he wanted to um maybe maybe it was I was hoping I was hoping it wasn't taken that way and and you know I'm sorry that
137>> when I sat here and I said that was very very personal very sarcastic and then I had my phone and my email and everything blew up with people feeling the same exact way I did. I knew that I wasn't overreacting in my feeling the situation. It is not it is not unknown that Dr. hard. I have disagreed on things sitting up here as I've disagreed with many of you, but I've always made sure to do it in a respectful manner. >> Yeah, that's good. Thank you. And and again, when he had said that, you know, because he he stressed the point that he he wanted to make sure that he had that for you. So, you know, you know, that slide. So, I'm sorry that it was like, but and thank you for all
138your comments. Thank you for bringing everything here. We really appreciate it. Ma ma'am, um you the comment was offensive to you and I apologize. I did not intend it that way. I created the slide and attempted to be responsive to some things you had asked for and so you have my sincere apology that it was offensive. I'm sorry. >> Thank you. >> And uh just regarding my cell phone this evening, it hasn't come out of my pocket since you've been speaking. I just reg Cruz. Okay, she left Samantha. Say that correctly. >> Okay. Um Erin Cox back to follow. >> Um, hi. So, I know I mentioned something about the earlier, but um, and I'm actually going to look at my phone because I took a picture of my question so I wouldn't forget. >>
139I could put it up if you need. >> Um, no, no, no, that's okay. Um, thank you though. I um I guess I have a few things in addition to what I was asking. I do want to address and start from the top up. Um I know you mentioned that um this is I guess with the board and Dr. O'Hara that you mentioned you've never seen a district or worked for a district in all your years where there have been this many uh where there haven't been this many assistant superintendent. And um I just want you to know, you know, I I my family and I moved to Iceland because it's small. My husband and I went to state. I graduated with almost 1300 kids. He kind of similar. So we moved to a very
140small district. He taught here etc. I met him by teaching here. And I'm bringing that up because I have brought up Sichum Levittown where I work and hop. But I'm using these because I know you have some roots in CM and you did some service um in hot pog and none of them have the same amount of assistant superintendent or um administration as is who is very very small. >> I just think it's one distinction is very important. So um I don't I don't know but I was the superintendent of I know the complex superintendent and central office people yet. Um I you know I don't know what they might have now but I can tell you what it was when I worked here. Um and also um in our district although Dr. O' Callahan's
141title is assistant superintendent her title used to be director and so she received a title change with no increase in salary. Uh she was already part of the board meetings already part of executive session already part of the cabinet. So perhaps if her title never changed, people would believe we had three assistant superintendents and not four. But you know that that work still has to be done and it was a title change. >> Okay. Um I understand that it just seems that Iceland is a very very small district and even we're looking at Sichum which is tremendous in size comparatively and another gentleman had said well maybe we need a couple of title changes things of that nature it's just something to consider knowing that Icelip is a smaller district. Yeah, I I I appreciate
142that and I respect that perspective. And um I think you know I'm also a Sichuan graduate of my my four sons. They are all Section graduates and I'm still a resident of the S school district. >> Yes. >> And um I I want to make sure you understand this comes from my heart when I say this to you because I I for a long time a black and gold. Um, but I will say that we aspire to have really great results here and do great things. And I would say to you, knowing the experience my own children had and the experience that children are having here, in a heartbeat, I would put my child in this school district with the support that we have. And so sometimes when you're just comparing positions or titles, it
143it's sometimes helpful, I think, to do it in the context of the progress that we're making. And um everybody plays a role in that. And so while context is helpful, I'm hoping we're aspiring to really do bigger and better and greater things. and we have the people here in positions that I think will help the students get there. >> I I I understand what you're saying. I also think it's all relevant though with the type of students that ISIL has versus Sich and community and things like that. And I I I do understand that. I mean, even there's not a co-eing model in every single elementary school. I know I did that fight years ago. Um but regardless, I I don't want to sit here and repeat that. Um, and then when we were looking
144at even high school administration wise, um, it's been brought up several times that the need for two assistant superintendent and the dean, etc. And it just made me think, this isn't part of my questioning on the card, but I was being reflective here thinking, well, if the number of complaints, and I don't know if I'm using the wording correctly, but if it's more than doubled and there's over 2,000, um, and correct me if I'm wrong with that with that number, it's over 2,000, but how, and I know it's based on need, and every year is different, and things have changed tremendously in the past few years with technology. But how has it gotten that big knowing that there's a principal, two assistant principles, a dean, security guards, all of these bodies, humans, adults, and yet
145that's still happening. You know, it leaves me kind of sick to be honest with you, knowing that my kids are going there next year and I have, you know, my kids not going, they've never got in trouble. So, um, they kind of keep to their own and they have a small little kid yo-yo group there. But it just seems so preposterous. >> I I think um you know maybe Mr. Stern or Dr. Gonzalez can give a more detailed answer, but I think in general part of that issue is that that people are attending to things that would otherwise not be attended to and they're keeping records on every interaction and and working on making progress on those things. And so instead of letting little things fall through the cracks that it's kind of like broken
146window theory. >> Can you just give me an example of that? Sorry to interrupt big versus little thing that things were kind of brushed over or >> it's not for example what's included in that data is this is the first year first year with ID cards for everybody this is the first year where we have the move in the whole building every child has to have our ID card with them scanned in and so sometimes they forget them sometimes they come without them on purpose but every time they attend to one of those that's one of the incidents that I've listed every time they attended somebody who has a you know cell phone and they're not supposed to those things. So, they're they're attending to things that are trying to be proactive, build relationships, and
147prevent problems down the road. And I think that's all part of that data. >> I understand that. But that number, that 2000 number, if it were based on kids forgetting their ID, I feel like that should be crystal clear as a kid's being written up if he or she is forgetting >> his ID. I mean, that that's one of the >> we have the data. The principal has the data. So I'm not sure this is the appropriate forum to go over all the detail of that data, but we can certainly arrange time for for more detail on that. >> Okay. And it it just seems like if that is what you're focusing on, >> I don't think that's the focus. I think it's part of everything that they do. I think that was the foc
148help help students and get things running. You know, it takes a lot and you know, I was a principal for 13 years, an assistant principal, and I can tell you when you don't understand things, you don't hit them in the bud, sometimes they snowball into bigger things, right? And so, they're trying to work on quality of life things. They're trying to work on bigger things. There's a lot that happens. You have teenagers, you know, I know one of my sons. I will I will say to you though with um I think what sometimes people who cite is that not every teenager who comes to our high school and middle school comes from a family like yours. They don't all have the support. Sometimes they come hungry. They come they come from you know extreme poverty
149and and um you know your teenager might need one conversation and they might tell you about the conversation and you will correct it because you have standards expectations and and the the ability to to address it and be present and not everybody has that kind of support and those things take more work a lot of effort and kind of reminds me of the the blueberry ice cream story which is a to along with essentially, you know, we take every blueberry. Uh and and so everybody who comes through the door is our student and and we're trying to attend to the multitude of needs and the different levels of support at home and different abilities. And so it's it's not um it's not always black and white. It takes a lot. Um, I'm just gonna bring
150up my second. Um, another question that I had was about, um, can you go back to the the slide prior to this with all the different breakdowns? Yeah. Enrollment. So, um, my other question was about the summer enrollment, excuse me, the summer enrichment. So, I see that that's being um an option to be taken out, but I you know when we talked at the diner for quite some time. Um you told me that the teachers, the administrators, I think you actually said Mrs. Wagner, Miss Wagner was teaching that along with someone else and for free. >> No, that's not the same program. um that the context of our conversation was about the the concession that that particular bargaining unit made >> and that's the uh ISIL curriculum leaders association. And so what I I tried
151to explain is that um they were scheduled starting July to be paid for seven days of work over the summer as part of their collective bargaining agreement. >> Okay. and they said that the concession they would make to contribute to solving the problem was they would work their seven days and pay that's not related to the summer enrichment program. So the program that they were doing for the seven days >> is not that it's not well first of all they their seven work days is not just a program the seven days of work curriculum work closing out of school >> right we were specifically talking about enrichment >> I was or you were sorry >> we were that night we were talking about enrichment because I had a really strong I was really concerned about
152all the EP push and things of that nature and then we went over all the budget all the bullets there It wasn't this pro. It wasn't this program that I was referring to. >> It was a different um this uh not this past summer, but two summers ago they had their first um uh AP inst AP summer institute and um this past summer we weren't able to and having this AP summer institute this coming summer was among the work that they're doing during those seven days. And so that's what I was referring to when I said that they would be working without bed. >> Okay. Okay. Um and then the summer regions review. I do have notes that I was I just wanted to address some of these really quickly, but the summer regions review
153um I know that doesn't seem like a lot, the $26,000, but um if a child fails the regions, isn't there some way that they could get put into maybe an AIS review or something like that so that it's not done over the summer? >> Yeah, sure. They they could um children so students can um they could do summer school to make up for a force they fail or as we know they could repeat a course the following year. Obviously it's advisable to try summer school because you're still on your other credits and requirements to to achieve. Um students could also retake the regent exam if they fail it in in uh June. They could retake it in August which is what this is typically geared to. They could also retake it in January. And with
154this opportunity, families could take their children to likely Salem or Beayshore and the difference would be they would have to incur, you know, a cost now whereas this program is a place they don't. >> Okay. Thank you. Um and I ready you had mentioned or I wasn't sure if it was >> ask Dr. J take this question. >> Dr. J. Um the $40,000 is that specifically for the pathway or the lessons that the teachers incorporate? >> Well, it's the pathway. So >> for every single student? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> So it's the pathway that aligns to their benchmark and what what the benchmark reveals as their needs. It takes them down a pathway and adapt them to their success as they go through each lesson. So if that were eliminated, the I read would
155be the benchmark three times a year still the diagnostic >> but no nothing that's like that's just one of the multi multimeasures. >> Yes. So we still have the benchmark we be able to utilize the data will be another data point for us but we will not have that my path or that pathway or those lessons that are aligned to it. >> So what would be replacing that? So for ma math we have a program called magma math that is online and we would have to work uh we don't have anything else online for life uh so we have to work on uh devising different things that could do that we have enough within our program I feel uh that we can create like small center work or or things like that if we need
156to put in some of that work uh prior to the school meet I would gladly make sure that we do that uh so that's really this the magma is already I'm seeing the shift in the classrooms away from that uh my path um with the net side of things and I think the the other side uh with the ELA would be something we can work on and provide teachers and give teachers other options uh to do in the classroom and indoor park. Um I don't I don't know if you've heard from from some students but actually we did a project uh with our new teacher uh they actually looked and surveyed uh staff um students and families. Um and some of the things that kept coming up was the engagement of our students with those
157lessons. Um it was um they they they felt that way a little bit before they went in. um not to claim that there was any sort of bias when they were doing their research, but it uh a lot of the surveys that came back was a lack of engagement. Uh there's also some things in the news recently. >> I have I read in my district I I'm an irony and I really wish I wasn't because I'm not a fan of it, but I'm I'm very familiar with with what you're saying. So I I I think uh in my my opinion looking at that it could be a viable option if we had to move away from it but things >> it just I know my my kids have worked so hard on it based on
158their pathway and etc and they're really invested in making in having their diagnostic score and the percentage go up. So I'm not really sure what um how kids who have worked so hard on that if they would just if it's being moved to the pathway then kind of just >> Yes. So one of the things that we see uh really good instruction in the classroom regardless of whether they keep those lessons ready um they are successful um you do see that growth and we're going to focus on the instruction and the capacity of our teachers and continue to build upon that. I think that's where we'll start seeing the growth of our students on benchmarks and things of that nature. We've seen it on New York State assessments as well. Um, and as we continue
159to work against the great work of our teachers and what they're doing with our kids in the classroom, uh, we can continue to align that to our needs of of our students um, and making sure that we do continue on the pathway of those benchmarks things. Thank you. And you know, I just on a personal note, I know I've already thanked you for this, but you are a very good communicator. Um, and I just felt like I need to say that again because you answer questions so clearly and accurately and precisely, and I really appreciate that. >> Thanks for having us come up here. This is great. >> No, it's it's compliment. So, thank you. >> I'm short of compliments at home, too. Thank you. >> The next Christine. >> Hi there. Um, you guys
160have some really hard decisions to make. So, thank you so much for letting the community have their input. Um, the first thing you have to do, I assume, is decide between the 2.2 and the 1.85. Correct. Can you explain the implications of coming in at the 1.85 to future budgets to the community because I'm not 100% sure. >> Yeah, I mean I'll do I'll do the best I can. So, um it seems there's a couple of things about budgeting in New York State these days that's a little bit counterintuitive, right? Uh one is um one is debt service. Um, so, uh, in 2010 or 11, the district did a big bond. I think that's the bond we put the football field in and the concession stand, etc. We're still paying off home, right? In two
161or three years, it's due to be paid off. In in your home budget, you know, if you buy a new car and you could spend $50 a month extra for the payment, you think to yourself, well, this is great. Maybe I can pay it off a year early and save some interest and more room in my budget. Right? in school budgeting when you pay that loan off that debt service. Actually, I'm going to try to give you an example. Okay, so these are examples of of um exclusions or exemptions, right? So, uh the top line is the debt service. So, that's would that be interest on on bond project, right? So this this example happens to be about the greenhouse. Okay. If you look on the left hand side, it says transfer to capital at
162$275,000. And when you now I'm just going to go back one slide. I don't expect you to be able to read this, but this is the whole worksheet that Mrs. Brower and probably every one of her colleagues in New York State does. And you see the red circle in the bottom right. Okay, I've enlarged that portion for you. So when the 27 $275,000 is missing, you can see what happens to the tax levy. It goes down and you can see uh that it's you can see the difference between 70 million and 698 and you can see the difference between 2.22 and 1.82. So, um, the Bay Bluepoint School District had a negative tax levy this year because they paid off debt service and so they were actually going into the next year with lower tax
163revenue. So, so what's counterintuitive is it makes sense for school districts to plan for a new project and time it when the current debt you're paying is going to be paid off. That's that's one example. The other example is that the very first um the very top line and again I know this is small it wasn't intended for you to read it but the very top line you may recall from budget presentations last year earlier this year that Mrs. per hour showed the formula for how the tax account and I've said it's a ninestep process right so this is it you're looking at it the very top line is the current year's tax levy okay so if your tax levy is 70 million and we can get a 2% increase in the tax levy then
164our tax levy would increase by 1.4 4 million. Okay. Um with that, right? Got it so far. So now if the if the tax levy is 68 million, you'd be getting 2% on 68. So whatever the difference is on $2 million, right? So in this case, the difference is is um $275,000. So 2% of 275,000. It would be great to have a little bit more money, but that's not a dollar amount that I will have an impact on future years in terms of tax money. It would if it's a million or 500,000 or something like that, but not at this money. You can take as an estimate 2% of 275,000. That's what you would leave behind if you leave that out of the budget. >> Mr. President, you also asking the um the increase from
165the 2.2 2 and the 1.85 what are the differences? So if we went I think it's a $3 increase at the 2.2 factor. >> Oh, is that what you're asking? >> No, no, I wasn't. I I >> I answered the question you were asking >> kind of. So if we go in at 1.82, it does not bring down our allowable tax levy for next year. >> It does, but it would be you could do that%. >> So if it brought it down for next year, wouldn't that be worse for us next year? >> Yes. Yes. >> So, it would be there to go in at the 1.28 is what I'm saying. I mean, it would be less beneficial for us to go in at the 1.82. >> It's going to actually come in less each
166year as well on the total budget, >> right? So, >> yeah, it's Mr. President, the difference. It's about $5,500 less in tax levy increase. We could experience >> 4728 if you left the 275 out of 26 27. >> Correct. So, negative impacts for future budget. Yeah, that's the counterintuitive part, right? Because the the truth is that the higher your tax level is, the more revenue you can get going forward. It really it really is not good in the long term for the districts to fill in a little bit cap year to year. And since we're already borrowing from reserves and we're already trying to fill gaps that we don't have, it would probably be I mean my input if you're asking for my opinion for the board would be to go in at the 2.2
167too because we want to keep as much revenue as we can going into next year because we still have to find this isn't really about $400,000. This is really about $3 million that we have to fill a gap for. So moving forward, we still have work to do and going in at the 2.2 will give us at least a little bit more of a cushion each year year to year. Correct. >> That I mean yeah that is the correct way. >> Can you also explain to Dr. How are the um what's it the 100 move back into that reserve fund? Oh well, okay. So um uh let me try to show you this uh >> because we the resolution. >> Okay, so we had this up earlier. Um if you look at 2025 um the
168double asterisk at the bottom there's a little key. Um you may recall that that year you voted um you voted for the board of trustees. You voted yes or no for the budget. And you also had another proposition which was voting yes or no to remove a million dollars from the capital reserve fund to build uh to a new playground wing and to reconstruct the greenhouse. Right. And uh we've explained I think we tried to explain that Mrs. Brower and I we established that capital reserve fund in 2022. We didn't list the word greenhouse and unfortunately we couldn't spend the money because it wasn't on the establishment of proposition. Right? So bad news is we run out of a greenhouse soon. But the good news is approximately $300,000. It's kind of like we took a
169million dollars out and we wrote a check for the playground. We wrote a check for the asbestous date and wrote a check for retaining wall. We did not write a check for the greenhouse. So that could be 250 to 300,000. I don't know because after we you know close all the other projects that will go back into the capital reserve fund >> right so but the greenhouse taking the green taking the greenhouse out brought back brought down the allowable tax levy so which was an incentive to keep it in correct >> well for us it was >> right >> yes >> right or something else >> there was there was yeah two reasons for it number one we were trying to move forward on a project that we promised and believe it's good the children
170and it gave us that little off tax. >> Correct. Correct. Okay. And I'm I'm not against a greenhouse. I I just feel like it it will benefit some of our kids and just like music things benefit them or sports, you know, these kids need, you know, there's a a population of kids that would benefit from that as well. So, whatever decision, you know, I just wanted the community to know that >> in 1.82 2 would be >> one of the things and I'm going to turn it over to you Mr. Oman. One of the things we need to decide this evening again we're going to be after 2.2 or the 82 and if we go into 2.2 um I guess we don't necessarily have to do the greenhouse. We have the other capital project considerations
171and the greenhouse can now turn it over and see this is this good with greenhouse we can do it for next year. There's different ways that we can go about uh keeping the 275 in this year's budget and maintaining the 2.2 yeah 2.22. Um there's a list of options of other capital expenditures that we can do. One is the excuse me, the repair of the uh playground and wing and rubber is really rotting out. Uh there's other whole list of uh things that we can do that come under capital expenditures. That will keep the 275 in and it will keep us at 2.22. As far as the greenhouse that was voted by the public to be taken out of the capital reserve of the 275,000 when we went to do it the language was not
172in that reserve to explicitly say greenhouse. So, we could have a proposition on this vote that we're going to do for this budget, putting that language into that capital reserve, specifically greenhouse. And if that passes next May, we could vote again to take the 275 out of the capital reserve as the public overwhelmingly voted the last time for. And people have voiced an opinion saying that that's where the money should come from, not from the budget. um we could put that onto the bud the the budget next year in May and we could feasibly have a greenhouse by September of 27 from a capital reserve that people overwhelmingly originally voted for. So there's a way around it to keep the 2.22 have other things that we need done and have the greenhouse one year later.
173And um just provide some context, regardless of the levy that the board chooses to adopt this evening, the reductions are still the same. So regardless of that, the reductions are still over $400,000. Also to add to the uh not the absolute need, but the need for a greenhouse is there. If you saw on the curriculum, we have four horiculture classes that are currently being taught. um conversations with science teachers, they telling me, "Do I know how hard it is to teach a horiculture class in the classroom on the lights?" Uh yes, I do because I took horiculture in college and high school. So, I'm very well aware of the problems that they have. Um and there's other classes in the high school that would have a severe interest in going into that greenhouse and experiencing
174it. Yes, it's it's it's for kids. It's not it's not a frivolous expense. >> Next is J. I'll throw in just one comment. If we would have done this from the beginning, this is a true go through the budget line by line to see what we need and what we don't need. If we would have never ever been here. >> Quint, we'll take it. And just going forward, there are all new processes in place for next year. >> Can't wait. I love seeing slides that work from 25 years ago. Um Kaylee was wondering if there are specific people or places or moments in time that have gotten us to this place with the money from reserves, not having the revenue, things like that. I'm going to post it back up because it wasn't my question.
175>> Yeah, I I believe I think Dr. a lot of those questions were asked. especially from the first general Mr. >> I think. >> No, I think she means like um a specific mismanagement of funds somewhere through someone like that's I think what a lot of people want to know about this like can we pinpoint why this happened? >> All right. So she say mismanagement. I don't I mean I'm concerned there's been no mismanagement of funds. I mean we could point back to that our revenue increased by 1.6 million and our expenses increased by 4.7 million all at the same time. Um and we have uh explained that we had some codes this year that were under budgeted. Uh we gave column transfers as an example and we gave um special ed as an example.
176it was um you know in personnel it was under budgeted and then also after um between July and I don't know that it was right month but we had students move into the district that necessitated the hiring of uh somewhere between 10 and 12 teacher assistants you know so we got hit with some circumstances and I can tell you that in the budget that we're talking about this evening those lines are budgeted much more appropriately and um We believe we'll be willing. >> Yeah, we really Yeah, another question because we really have to start drilling down on getting this budget. So, I don't believe where the points, but it's probably going to last. Um, I appreciate this obviously and a bunch of people have said this and to piggy back off what Christina said, like
177this is this is it. This is a budget workshop. This is what we meant by can we please go line by line. There were things that presented tonight that were in the budget that now are being removed that weren't even going to be accessed next year. Clubs that weren't attended last year. Why were they in the budget in the first place? the JV tennis team. If that's not impacting kids, why was that staying in the budget in the first place? So, you know, going through line by line like this, there were things that weren't covered along the way that maybe could have been cut out of that original budget to begin with. So, that's this is like perfect. This is what some of us did in our free time over the last few weeks. So,
178it's nice to have it up here in purple and gold instead of in my black and white and highlighter. Um, so thank you for that. The other thing um is I'm kind of all over the place. I'm sorry. Um as far as the administration piece, I do I'm uncomfortable talking about anyone being cut. It's not at all what people want. There's again nothing personal. Um I have to say with my two kids that have gone through the middle school and now one in the high school, in the middle school especially, the contact I have had is with the dean, the prior dean and this dean. and Mr. Bodner stepped in and I have to say Mrs. Wright like I have a kid that could have fallen through the cracks and it's the dean at the
179middle school level that kept my kids plural and the social worker and the counseling center. So those are the supports that I think Miss Presy had mentioned earlier. There are supports in place for that role. So that dean, especially on the middle school level, I just can't imagine not having that position for that connection for kids that really truly need more than just discipline. Um, I think it serves a dual role. So listening and knowing in the high school, I'm sure it's the same. And listening to the descriptions of the APs, it sounds like there's a lot of overlap between curriculum directors and coordinators, curriculum coaches. Um, I don't know. It just feels like the AP feels more of a redundant role to me than the dean. The dean feels very unique. I'm listening to
180about IDs and that feels like something that could be monitored by a par professional or a monitor. We're paying an AP to handle discipline for IDs and that was basically the doubling of the you know and cell phone infractions. I don't know. It just feels like a very highpaying monitoring kind of job where deans are like making the phone calls. I hear from the dean positive and negative, you know. I don't know. It's just I had to say that publicly and it's not anything I don't want anyone to be cut, but we're in this situation and here we are and you are going to be faced with this and I just feel like it has to be said again that the dean is just so crucial, especially in the middle school. Those kids are fragile.
181We're talking about mental health. We're talking about the phone, the social media, all of that. That all felt like even in the descriptions we heard earlier falls on the team, the communication, the eyes and ears. So, that is something that I would like, you know, hopefully has been already considered and maybe there's very good reasons why we're keeping the AP positions, multiple AP positions, um, as opposed to the deans. But I just felt like I wanted to say that. Um, my last question was about the reserves. So I know and I'm sorry I'm looking at a picture here too. Um the 2.2 or a little less than that now 2 million20 that's coming out of reserves. When you have this slide up about the reserve balances in the in the specific restricted reserves there is
182a balance for June of 2027. On the unassigned fund balance it's to be decided. So, I'm wondering the 2.02 million, is that already out of these restricted reserves or some of that still going to be coming out of the to be decided unassigned fund balance? >> No, they're not they're not connected. You have to think of them like two different savings accounts, >> right? So, where is the 2.020 coming from? >> Okay. So >> the the first two columns that are on the left in this slide um it says year ending and it says restricted reserves, >> right? >> Okay. So that 2.2 million is coming from these restricted reserves. So you can see uh proposing $860,000 from the employee retirement system, from the teachers retirement system. So every year we budget to pay the
183teachers retirement system that's in the budget and some years said we should go to the reserve to make that number uh whole. Right? >> So that's what's happening here. The numbers that were 3.99 3.75 on the right side of that chart are a separate savings account from these. So, is anything coming out of that unallocated reserve fund for this budget that's being presented right now? >> It's not the plan, but it's a possibility. >> Okay. But that 2 point that 2 million is already allocated for out of those restricted reserves. And right now, as of now, that unallocated reserve is not being touched. It will stay at that to be determined number at the end of this school year. >> Yeah. What happens with that is those numbers are determined across Long Island between mid-occtober
184and mid November when every school district closes their costs. >> Right. But Right. So the 2 million is already allocated for out of that reserve those restricted reserves. >> Yes. >> So that number that other side the unallocated is not being touched by this 2 million. >> Yeah. Because what happens with that side of it is when you close the books, you you take the example I gave earlier, we had a hund00 million budget, we spent 97 million. Then the board determines that we want to some of that surplus that 3 million, we'll will go forward to next year's budget. And that's the fund balancing that show, right? >> And if in the 3 million example, if we put one 1.5 million toward next year's budget, that reduces the tax levy or having to collect
185more taxes. there's a there's 1.5 million left over. We might say put 5 million into the uh unappropriated reserve. We might say put 500,000 into this. But I want to be clear because we had some codes that we talked about that were under budgeted when we closed the books this year. We may have to go into that uh four people refer to as 4%. >> Right. Right. >> So right now we don't want to. >> Right. >> But it depends on how things end. But it isn't affected by the budget that's being presented, >> right? Yes, I think I'm sorry. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Hi. Um, I'm Megan. Uh, because I know I just have two quick comments. Um, I thank you all for your service because I know this is
186not an easy feat to both the administrators and all of you on board. So, I appreciate that. Um, I'm in full support of the budget. I have children that go to the district. I appreciate everything that everyone does. Um my concern about putting up the 2.2% versus the 18.84 is it's not that much of a month difference in terms of the cost for families when you're looking at it. The 220 versus the 210. I have I have the numbers. Thank you. >> It's $3 a month difference going from >> Well, this Yeah. So yeah, and correct. I'm saying from what we proposed previously at the 2.8. So I guess my concern would be because of it's not that much of a drop. My concern would be that if we went at the 2.22, would it
187get voted down and then we would have a contingency budget which would be horrendous to the district. Um, one thing that did come up on social media because I know that was a discussion in terms of administrators and I'm not going to bring that point up at all. Um, and I know it may not be for this budget cycle, but it was an increased expense and um, it was both pros and cons people were discussing was transportation um, and our distance and allocation to our different buildings. And I think we do need to really take a strong look at that. I understand that typically needs a separate line item in terms of budget discretion on increasing mileage. So right now obviously we have all K1 students receive busing.3 for our second through 8 and 1.3
188for our high school. That is not the norm um on Long Island. So I think that is something that we definitely have to look at with those increasing costs continuing. Um, I'm on the elementary level with both of my children. And one thing that I will say, while I think the summer enrichment programs are phenomenal, I think the club programs are phenomenal, the hard part at the elementary level is they're restricted on numbers. So I find a lot of families get upset because of on the first day a lot of times those programs close. Um, so it is not expansive to all students in the district. So, I think that just in terms of from the budget perspective, something to keep in mind. While it's wonderful, it's not it's whoever gets to it first. It's
189not like a selection process or anything like that. Um, so you might have families in our district that are lower income that can't check or they might not have access for their hours that they're working and they check a little bit too late and now they're locked out of it. So, I think that is just something that we have to look at from all different view standpoints and people's schedules. Um, and then in terms of I appreciate everyone looking at the things we weren't using and using. Um, my one son, and I just actually had a call with some of his teachers today, is one of those students that in I Ready, he wants to get to the brain break. So, he's not using it the way it should be used. So, I appreciate that
190it works for some students and it doesn't work for others. My fifth grader, yes, my second grader, no. and I truly believe our teachers are amazing and they we want to leave the instruction to them. There's obviously a lot of schools moving away from different technologies. While I think it's important to be utilizing technology, I don't think it should be every form of our teaching. So, I appreciate all of those components being helped. So, those are my comments. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I promise it'll be the last one. I just have a quick question. Um Dr. Dr. Harry, you and I were emailing about RBT training and you had mentioned that there are approximately 36 teachers left on the secondary level who still need to complete the training. Um it's going to be
191done by in-house whether it's through the um curriculum leaders or through the administrators. And you had mentioned that if it's through the administrators, it's at a rate of $100 an hour. And if it's from the curriculum leaders, it's at $46 an hour. Has that already been budgeted for? Is that already a line item in this budget? >> Yeah. We have a PD budget code. >> Okay. So, can you go to the slide where you're showing concessions that everybody is making? So, yes, this one. So where it says return of concessions, does that mean the money that all the different marketing units are giving back to the budget? >> No. What that means is um so if if you uh are our administrators, so those principles, assistant principles, and the deans, >> right? So is that
192money that they're giving they're giving back to the budget or that we're not taking concessions? I'm confused about the wording. >> Yeah. So, um, so that each one of those rows represents the money that each of those groups uh made as a concession to the district to help reduce our expenditures. >> So, we have $86,000 that each of those groups or collectively are giving back to the district. >> Yes. However, >> okay, >> go ahead. >> Um, how much is in the line item for RBT training or PD? Does anybody know? I tried to look through the individual budget line item, but I didn't see it. >> So, there's a few places where we can um utilize money for PD. One of them would be grant money. Uh we will not know about that until
193over the summer, sometimes later. Um there is uh title grant money that allows us to use for PD and professional learning. um or um there are other ones within there um within the budget. One of them being I believe uh close to 60 to $70,000 off the top of my head. Uh that's really meant for PE across uh the entire district. >> Okay. >> Uh so there there is money available for that uh by by either one of those vehicles, I guess, is what I'm getting at. >> Okay. So on top of the dollar amount for the trainers for the RBT, you had also said in your email that um teachers were not taken out of the classroom for six days that they were using uh superintendent conference days and summer days. So how are
194teachers being required because it's a six- day program. How are teachers being asked or required to participate in that over the summer? Because there's only I believe three three or four superintendent conference days. Um, >> so are they being paid to commit on this honor or are they being >> No, are they contracted? How's that happening? >> The um contract uh Mr. Levine could help me. Is it the first three years until a teacher is um tenur in our district, they have to teach reduction and that lasts. So they're required to come in three days over the summer and work as part of the contractual application. So there are three days over the summer and then all three of their superintendent conference days are used for this training. >> No, >> I already know the
195answer to this question. >> You know the answer? >> I do know the answer. >> Okay. >> I know that they're not. >> I know that they're being taken out of the classroom for a certain amount of days. So the actual expense is much more than >> the trainers because you're paying like subs and >> I we I gave you an email every single down to the penny expenses, >> right? And does that include >> It includes everything. The substitute cover the 36 people who still need to take it. >> Well, no. We haven't They haven't taken it yet. So, >> you ask what did we spend? >> Right. So, my point is if there's 60 to $70,000 a line item in the budget for PD and we're asking for $86,000 in give backs from
196our staff, especially the staff who's making the least amount of money. Don't you think for staff morale and for keeping our teachers and everybody the way we want them in this district, don't you think that taking the line item out for PD is a better use fiscally than asking all the staff in the district to give back money, especially people in the ITAA union that are just making minimum wage custodial. >> I I think it might help if we clarify what some of these give backs represent. Okay. >> So for the IASA that that um >> what what is IASA? >> That's the ad um it's I isolate Association of School Administrators. So that's the principal, assistant principles, deans. >> Okay. >> Um their contract requires us to pay them $2,200 a year for them
197to go to professional development. >> Okay. >> So they said to help out we'll we'll forgo that. So, we actually did cut $30,800 of development funds. Um, for the ITAA, that $9,300 doesn't impact anybody's paycheck. It is all uniforms for security. >> So, in the in the IT uh in the ITAA is um teaching assistants uh special education and security. And so when we spoke to the group, we said would would your men and women forego their new uniforms for a year to help us out and they said yes. Okay. >> So what we would have had to expend for well I'm saying uniforms I don't remember exactly it's winter jacket but that's etc. So that's not the actual paychecks are being impacted. >> So in those two examples nobody's actually in all of this
198nobody's paycheck was being impacted at all. Okay. The custodial unit >> not am I wrong? Oh, teachers, forgive me. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Um, for for the casterial unit, uh, the 18,200 was um some laundry money. So, it I guess technically it's a paycheck, but it it would have been a result of $120 a year, >> okay, >> that person would get for laundry money and and it was the same thing. They would they would go one year without new uniforms. >> Okay. And did you say the teachers were not doing that? >> The the teachers? No. >> No, they are. I'm sorry. >> No, no, no, no. The teachers certainly are. Forgive me. I don't think it's clear. >> It's not. I'm sorry. It's very Give me a moment to explain. I can tell
199you what it is. Okay. Right. >> Th this this box that says uh return of concessions. The idea behind the conversation with the concessions was can your unit help? Are are you inclined to help? If you are and we could reach our number from every unit, then your people nobody will lose a position from your unit. >> Okay, that makes sense. >> If the if decisions are made tonight that impact some of the people uh or the positions that are on this chart, then the concession goes away. So, for example, if if you talk about an LPN that earns $60,000, I'm rounding up, right? Um, the LPN's are in the ITAA. So, you can't say you're saving 59,000. You have to say you're saving 50 because that $9,000 is going to go like the unit
200is not going to do the concession because it's not reasonable >> to say concessions and we're still going to. >> Okay. So, that I was very unclear about because when I saw it, I was like, what? To me, I I was very upset when I thought people were being asked to get back part of their salary or raises or any kind of benefits. >> May I correct one thing that I said because it's hard to be up here to remember every single thing. Um, >> Mian, thank you for reminding me. The teachers are taking the biggest wallop by foregoing column transfers for a year. So now technically every teacher will come to school in July and he or she will have an increase in salary because the contract goes up one and a quarter%. So
201they all get that raise and every teacher will think for most if they're not most if they're not stepped out or you know they will get a step increase. >> Okay. >> So they will all see an increase in salary. the unfortunate part and we're again we're grateful to them because they're obviously the most expensive group because outside of administrators they're the highest salaries and also they're the largest number. Um so they're foregoing column transfers for one year. So um that doesn't impact every teacher in the unit because many are >> but it's going to impact the youngest and lowest paid teachers. Yeah, there's no teachers. I know you're asking about the givebacks, but there's no teachers being considered for any reductions here. >> No, I No, I understand that. I understand that. I'm just
202I'm When I look at that, I I'm a first year teacher myself. So, when if someone were to tell me I can't move over a column when I just got my master's degree yesterday, I would be really upset about it. Chances are it's not looking for a new job. So that's that that's kind of my point is can we make up some of that money with the PD lineup? >> Well, here's the I mean >> we can I think I think that's something we should look at before we ask >> because you're not asking with teachers who have been here for 25 years and have their masters and have their profession. >> I just want to we did a lot of research on the ITA president. That's not actually true. We pulled out all of
203our percentages of all of our members from the top all the way down to the bottom. >> Okay. every single area. We have teachers that have been here 25 years that have never taken a course ever or or they're at 30 and they just want to go to 45. So, it is affecting a large majority of our our teachers. Um I'm not disagreeing. It's proportionately more towards the the lower end. However, it was very interesting because the amount of people that weren't at top at the top step, the people who were lower, younger are getting their credits faster. So they're actually outpacing some of us that have been here 20 25 years. So we did make sure we took that into account. So we were as >> well you're saying it because I this is
204something we come with our concessions to do as equin maintaining and just getting the needs of our community. We're also agreeing to not replace one of our teachers that a different way and Just so you know, it does affect a large majority of the justice. >> Thank you. Like that was the that was the kind of the response I was looking for. I got a lot and I appreciated you responding to me, but I got a page of information about RBT training that I personally did not need to read. I really wanted to know the numbers and can we cut this? because I know a lot of teachers I do not know a lot who would tell me they got a lot out of that training. >> I will I will tell you that the
205the exit survey data we had have says differently. >> Was the exit survey anonymous? >> Yeah. Not not hosted by the district like or something. >> Not hosted by the district. It's done by the the group and we don't when we get the data it doesn't have names on it. >> So all right. >> All right. Thank you. Sorry. Okay, that closes the closes the public uh participation. Now it's the board discussion where we're actually going to few things we need to decide on this evening as a board. Um do we want to come in at the 1.82 or do we want to come in for 2.22? So this is just me speaking. I want to see the budget pass. I'm trying to figure out what's the pulse of the community out there. Would they
206tolerate a 2.2? And then if we did that, that would be either we go with the greenhouse. There was also a lot of chatter out there and people weren't a fan of the greenhouse. So there is a different menu that we can go if we do do the 2.2. Um, we could consider the other cap project which is the rubber playground replacement every other menus that we saw there. Or if we don't go to 2.2, we go the 1.82. Um, it's still the same as yet we said before the same 430 433,000 that we're going to have to come out with. So I think as a board right now what we really need to decide on before we move forward, do we want to go at the 1.82 82. What do we want to go
207with the 2.2 and what do we think how it's going to be received by the community and the taxpayers that will be paying the difference. So again, this is just me telling you and I'm very honest and I tell you like my thought processes on this. You know, I thought well you know if we did the 2.2 to um maybe there was push back on the greenhouse, maybe be a little bit more palatable if people saw the capital project that we were doing for something else for the playgrounds, you know, the rubber mats. Maybe more kids and then as Mr. Rosson said, you know, we can do a proposal and get the greenhouse in 2020 2027 as an option. So, would that fly? Or now we faced with nobody even really wants that. They just
208want to see a 1.82. They don't really care about the greenhouse and they don't really care about the rubber matting on the playgrounds out there. >> We risk at 2.22 that being so close to that line. >> Right. That's what I'm saying. I was thinking that over and again I I want to see this pass and I I I believe um and this is just me and I I I almost feel like maybe I should write it down because I don't want to influence any votes or you know you know I I I I think the 1.8 18 and then we that's just me and we can you know go down again this is public this is what we're doing here um it's an open discuss you know amongst the board so you're really going
209to get to see us how you know how and it's an unenvious position that we're in right now right nobody wants to be doing any of this you know um it's unfortunate and I you can't go back you know um if the budget passed everyone be home maybe watching their favorite show right now or out at a bar somewhere I have no idea uh or even in bed because it is getting kind of late. So this but I'm not here to make light of it. This is extremely important. Yeah. So um based on you know how close the 2.2 was to 2.8. Um and we can maybe do the capital project some other time. I I'm I'm leaning at the 1.8. I'm not leaning. I am 1.82. I would like to see a 2.22 for
210this reason. That was the original cap and we pier tried to pierce the cap and that was unsuccessful. I don't believe the public had a problem actually piercing the cap. I think they had the problem with the process of how we got there. Um I think if we had gone about it in a different way, the cap would have been pierced. So I don't see a problem with 2.22. I would like to see the capital reserve changed to the alternate and a proposition put on the ballot for the greenhouse language put into that reserve so we can put it on the ballot next year and let the public decide again whether they want the greenhouse or they don't feel the one 1.82 me too. Uh only because the the perception is out there that we
211we didn't do the budget properly and I think the perception is still out there and uh I think we could have done a better job. >> Mr. McCelvin, um to Mr. Austin's point regarding the proposition, can you just um go over the process for that to take place in a few weeks? >> Well, as I understand it, Mr. And speaking of uh amending your resolution for the creation of the capital reserve fund to include the ability to uh build the greenhouse you would expand upon the items that are included in there specifically greenhouse greenhouse windows ventilation things of that nature because you want to be specific in that resolution. the board would um adopt that resolution to put it on the uh put a proposition to expand the capital reserve fund definition and then the
212next time there's a vote presumably in May uh next May 2027 um the community could vote if there was a request by the board for an expenditure to uh spend money for the um the greenhouse. >> So then >> so it's two votes. So then does the board have to adopt the language of the proposition at this evening's board meeting or because the objective would be for the proposition to be on the ballot in two weeks. So what is that process? >> We we'd have to do the you'd have to put together with facilities what the resolution would look like because you don't want to miss something. So I will make sure that we put that together. I believe we're able to do that um at the public hearing. If that's not the case, I'll
213report back to the board. >> So, it's not too late to have that proposition on the ballot for the pledge to vote in two weeks. >> I need to double check that, but you wouldn't be able to do it tonight because you'd have to work with your facilities folks to put together a propos appropriately written proposition to include all of the items about what needs to be built. You need to be pretty specific. >> Okay. Thank one more. Um, the proposition is not contingent on a 2.22 22 or 1.82. We could still go in at 1.82 and still put the proposition off in the greenhouse and get the language changed and then put it to the vote in May of next year and have a greenhouse by September of 27. So for me, what makes
214the most sense is a 2.22. But my biggest concern is that besides the people who are sitting here or the people who have taken the time to listen on YouTube um to all of the discussions that took place today, I'm really concerned that the community is not going to understand the difference between the 1.82 and the 2.22. So I'm going to have all of you ask all of you to be ambassadors who believe in 2.2 to please get that out into the community. And um my choice is 2.22. I'm okay with a 1.82. I think um I'm I support all these capital projects. I think we can put them off for now and we can revisit them. We just need to get this right for the community this year. So, I'm a 1.82 >> for
215the reason similar to what Mr. Bu just said. I'm also a 1.82. I just want to make sure that we get this across and all these are wonderful projects. If we could get the proposition, that'd be even better. 1.82 Um so my preference would be the 2.2. Um for a myriad of reasons as Mr. Ross and Mr. Gaffy had shared the greenhouse was originally approved to be uh improved by the community last year. So I think the the desire for that improvement is there amongst the community and to Miss President's point earlier it does help improve our tax levy limit for the following years. It gives us more revenue. Um, so I think it would be beneficial for us to go at it at a 2.2. >> And one more thing again, um, we're facing
216a stark reality right now. Whether we go 2.22 or 1.82, either one of those budgets get voted down, we are in contingency. That is not a scare tactic. That is not fearing. That is reality now. There is no other choice. And when you go into contingency, the pens are taken out of our hands. the state mandates what has to be cut and we lose all the choices that we're going to have. So when you place your vote whether it's 182 or 2.22 remember contingency is a reality and you don't want it. So now what we're gonna do, >> what was the money difference from 1.82 to 2.2 per month? >> Okay. I'm just >> and and when before when we went from 2.2 to the 2.8 was $60. >> And I think part of the
217proc part of the issue I think Mr. Austin had referred to it was that there was amongst the community a a concern that this process was not transparent and because that has now hopefully changed and will be changed for the future there may be more of an appetite to adopt the 2.2 or improvement budget of 2.2 two which is again our initial allowable four.82 and 32 majority.2 2.82. Now the U again another position. How are we going to make up the $443,000 deficit? So on the slide you saw our summer enrichment all that. That's that's services for students and on the right is personnel and that's really our our big ticket items. So what we had on that we had two deans, two LPNs, a custodian and a clerical. We now have to decide which
218what we're going to do and if someone could and if if any of these have decided on the returns of concessions are going to have to come off of that. So we have a net amount coming off a total of 433,000. So would need to uh really get a uh per hour with somebody if they can get a a running total on this so we know exactly where we're at. Um but right now um the big thing is we have um two dean of students. Um, you know, I if I had if I had to choose, I would reluctantly, but you know, I would recommend um one B move. It's one or two. >> I'd rather move one right now. Look at other items before we start slashing that hard. So that's the end of
219the board. >> I agree with Mr. Austin. I'd like to perhaps start with the programming aspect of it prior to uh personnel. >> Well, it's not Matt. We're we're in that is that small, you know, regardless of that that that's not going to that's not going to close the 43,000. So, we could all I'm going to go down on the personnel. And so, now we're at the LPS. There's two there. I had it. And again, we can revisit this afterwards. If you had it, I would say one. I don't want to do all the talking. >> Dr. O'Hara, if we go to one dean, can that dean float between the middle school and the high school? I would say yes. I would I wouldn't want to lose two LPNs. Nurses in the buildings had one
220LPN. >> They seem to say they had covered two LPNs. You have five nurses and three ops. Is that correct? >> Five nurses and five LPNs. Currently, it would be five nurses and three LPNs remain. >> Right. So, as you guys pointed out, we have to make up $430,000. Right. So, we're not going to be like you said, we can't do it just it's I hope for both LPN to go just because >> Yes. on the 93 9300. All right. So, if we're going to do a a dean >> and then I know that this is very preliminary, but Dr. O'Hara, if you if you split a dean across the two buildings, would that be like two days a week in one building, three days a week? You wouldn't expect them to split or would
221you expect the day to be split? >> I know it's preliminary. Yeah, I would I would prefer to give an answer after, you know, because I would say there's probably merits to either way and and I would say that it it could start one way, it could evolve, it could be a combination, >> Dr. Harris, the custodial position, I don't think we touched on that's a retirement, correct? >> Uh, not not yet. Um, >> clerical. >> Well, with clerical, it's a potential retirement, but we haven't had a confirmation yet. So, there's a possibility it could turn into a retirement, which, as I said earlier, would be good news for the lowest person, newest person in. And, uh, a similar situation for custodial, but we wouldn't anticipate that retirement until December for custodial. So, if you
222if you wanted to try that that route, we would just have to calculate for you. Um, I would say the savings on the custodian would be about $50,000. Uh, >> yeah, assume that would include 50,000 would include returning the concession, I believe, and it would include um allowing that particular custo like keeping that particular custodian employed and then not replacing the retiree. And so I think the savings would be approximately 50,000. It could I'm sorry it could it could actually be a little more because we wouldn't replace the higher paid employee but I just don't have that figure this evening. >> I think that's what we calculated. Um custo um clerical could be very similar. the custodial retirement is uh more certain than the clerical I believe. >> Doesn't the clerical have to let us
223know like soon with this? I mean, this is kind of time sensitive, not >> Well, they're not under an obligation to let us know because of this. 78 and even so you you're netting 50. >> No. Well, well um one thing regarding the um concessions for the clerical if it's if it's an actual um elimination of the position you have to give back the concession. If it's through attrition, we would not. >> Yeah, we be conservative with the 42 and if there is a retirement, you would be a little bit ahead on that one. Okay. That's where everybody is. >> Mr. Janine, I'm gonna agree with Miss Prey with the elimination of the two LPS. >> Yeah, I'm fine with that. That's already is there even a way for me I don't know on the
224computer screening the number so the community board to see the position of program and what we have Is there If you do all of the >> I thought that would be more palatable. First of all, let's circle back because there seems to be >> Sorry. It's our discussion. >> So, where the dates are doing one or doing another if you want to read the list as soon as Mr. brows up and running, you can put it in there and then you can see what >> I feel like if we look at the column to the left, the 276,000. I don't think any of those things are truly crucial to programming, >> right? So, we start on the left. >> I didn't want I didn't want to hold when I heard there's 220 kids. want to
225take that kids program. >> I have zero. >> I'm sorry. We It's It's our time now. Mr. Wson, your your number without the two deans, is that everything else being depleted? >> Summer enrichment cutting two uh give back to give back and out of the 52,000 on the athletics was2,000. So run the numbers. So if we're gonna back off from 433, Christa, if you just give us a couple minutes, she's cranking out. >> That's also assuming that clerical is going to retire. Really? This is That's it. It's very I'm actually But we're going to be okay. Yeah. That's what I know. No, of course at that point. >> Oh yeah, guys. Guys, we can't talk until we get the slides. Whatever. I just wanted to see I'm not leaving. >> No, you're not. Interest. I
226hope I can say I got it. Oh, you are. I didn't know that. They're still here. Okay, we're going to walk through this now and if there's anything that doesn't look correct, Please let me know. I have two LPNs. I have summer enrichment, summer regions review, summer curriculum writing, field trips, I ready clubs, large instruments, athletics, kiddo, a custodial position, and a clerical position. Yeah. 42 5200 Okay. >> I can move it up. Okay, better. So the total is 512,821 with the concessions of 46200. Okay. So I took it out >> retirement. >> Can you guys say that again? >> Yeah. So, the um there's $28,000 of concessions from clerical. Um but if it's um if the position turns into a retirement, it's attrition, not the elimination of a position. So, we we would likely
227not have to return the concession. But the good news is it's there in case we have to. I know that summer enrichment only covered a couple, you know, 200 students or something, but in the interest of not touching anything that touches programs for nothing that directly affects children, do we have the room to put that back in >> the 37 now? You're right now. >> Okay. You're at 4:30. The 5,000 is is >> m Mr. Clarine asked a question. What's the 5,625 that's in the parenthesis at the bottom? We we were we were aiming for $433,000 in reductions and the things that you're on on your list total $438,521. So you have approximately $5,625,000 above the reductions you were targeting. It's good to have a little cushion in your a little cushion in your budget
228>> and we'll work it. It's going to go into reserves. In all honesty, you would be needing what I've been asking for. Obviously, you have to be fiscally responsible. Could I use an additional middle school track poster as a robocated that coach, we repurposed that person to be with two track teams because I have to the two program. Okay. So, here to in the back you're talking about summer enrichment, but summer enrichment is still in the budget as of right at this moment and we've the board has reached the target of 433,000. So, everything's good to go. The next question is about the track coach. Well, I guess they've left for another time. Yeah, that's that's the >> I agree with you. Yeah. >> What's the >> what is the coaching cycle? What's the contractual,
229>> right? >> Yes. So you you would you could have the track coach and we could take care of the cheer team. >> So say you have both. >> You would have both of this actually gains a coach >> roughly. Yes. questions. >> It's for really large instruments. So we would just we we have a cycle and we would put off a year buying the really big instruments. We we have them >> and we would just delay a year. >> All right. Is everyone here? >> All in favor of this line by line. So you make Okay. LPN. >> Yeah. Just so everyone is aware, um, due to the ratio size of the screen, in order for you to see the entire list, the font has to get smaller. Um, so this is the best
230we can do. Come on down. Come on down. >> Thanks, Thomas. >> Thank you. Okay. So, >> we're maintaining the summer program, >> correct? The summer readers review. >> That's actually the exact number. 432896. Can you explain 50,000? >> What's the number listed with with all benefits? 90 something thousand, right? >> 94. >> Okay. So, >> so we're expecting a retirement in December. And so we this position the newest custodian in would would maintain his position until December and then we would not replace um >> the retiree. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> And and so that savings that that's a very conservative estimate. It potentially will be more because the retiree is earning much the savings is based on the newest employee. Obviously the retiring employee is earning more. So that's a very conservative. And
231then >> what happens when the clerical says no, I'm not going to retire this year. >> Uh it would unfortunately cause uh the elimination of a clerical position and we and we accounted for the concession and like we said hopefully it would be uh congratulations to a retiree, you know, looking forward to great things and good news for the newest person. It was a retirement so your position doesn't have to be eliminated. It would be another attrition situation. >> 470. >> No, to the right. 432 896 because the the 37300 is concessions. You may have to give back because some positions were eliminated. >> It's possible. And like I said, the custodian savings is very conservative. >> That's the actual number. No,33. We're very concerned about Okay. So now it's going to be this is
232going to be item 6A which is the property tax report card. We have resolved that the board of education and the ISIL free school district adopts a budget and property tax report card for the 2026 20227 school year with a tax levy of 69,819 6 uh $657 and a total budget of 10536,18. and for the district revote to be held on June 16, 2026. Be it further resolved that the district clerk is directed to take all the prerequisite steps to notice and conduct the budget revote to be held on Tuesday, June 16, 2026. Can I get a motion? >> That was Mr. Can I get a second? Green. All those in favor? >> I >> opposed. >> Abstain. >> Okay. And that will carry. Okay. Um we're wrapping it up right now. Uh this is
233just going to bring us to um dates to remember. Our next board of ed meeting is going to be on 29th with executive session starting at 5:30 p.m. and public starting at 7:30 p.m. There will be a public hearing on proposed budget and board of education meeting here in the high school. Um thank you everyone for being here tonight. Um it's been a long evening but it's been extremely productive and um you know one of us is not as smart as all of us and so it's the collaboration of all that makes this um this exercise so great. So thank you for everyone for everybody's effort central administration. Let's likely let's spread the good word um and let's get this. Thank you everyone. Stay safe and safe next morning.