001What? Okay, I'll welcome everybody. I'm Philip Deny, president of the board of education. Would everyone please stand for the pledge to the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Uh just a quick fire code announcement. In the event of emergency, be aware of your rear exits and your exits to your left and to your right. Um going to start tonight's board meeting off with our I surprise presentation. And the first uh item will be item A, which will be our budget workshop, programs, enrollment, class sizes, and staffing. And we'll turn that over to Mr. Z. And then Dr. You going to go first? Yep. Dr. How will go first? Well, good
002evening everyone. Thank you for coming to our meeting this evening and thank you for being here for our another one of our budget presentations. I'm going to start the evening and then hand it off to Mr. Zedterberg, our assistant superintendent for business and then Dr. Getto, our assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction, will also uh help with sharing information this evening and then certainly at the conclusion we'll take questions from the board of education first and then any uh audience members. Uh so I thought it would be helpful to start with our vision and mission statement. You've heard me say over and over again, students first uh pure intentions, best effort. Uh the mission statement of the ISO uh board of education in partnership with the community will empower all students to achieve excellence and reach
003their full potential, learn focused instruction will provide the whole child with the opportunity required the skills necessary to become a productive and successful member of society. Uh you'll see throughout the presentation uh lots of evidence of great things happening in all of our schools throughout the district. Just a reminder on March 5th, the first presentation was um state aid and tax levy. Uh March 26th was um the proposed program expenditures. This evening, I'm going to provide a brief review for you on the actual budget process. Uh we'll talk about enrollment trends, some staffing, and uh then we'll go into some detail regarding some of the programs and supports that we have in place in the school district. Uh April 22nd will be uh the final budget proposal and that will be the evening that we'll
004be asking the board to adopt the budget. May 7th will be the public hearing on the budget and then we hope you all uh join us on May 20th to uh register your vote. So um when creating a budget, we always have certain goals in mind. First is to maintain and improve upon our welcoming, safe, supportive, and inclusive school community. We want to focus on students academic, mental and social well-being, improve our instructional programs, expand curricular and extracurricular opportunities, provide high quality instruction for all students, enhancing technology, uh, and of course ongoing research-based professional development for our faculty and staff. And we want to continue with our long long-term plan for the district's educational programs and initiatives while at the same time maintaining safety and security needs for everyone who uh enters our buildings whether
005it be students, faculty, staff or visitors. We want to identify uh and continue with repairs, improvements, and upgrades to our facilities. And of course, we need to effectively manage our reserve funds so that we maintain the security of the district uh not only in the present time but in the future as well. Okay. So, I just uh I thought maybe it'd be helpful if we took people through kind of how this budget process works. I feel like many times we just think of it as a short and intense period when in reality it's really u it's really a circle that really has no break in it. So, it's a continuous cycle. Um hard to say where it really begins, but let's just start with July and August. Uh that's the summertime. People think that it's
006a slow time in a school district. In reality, if you're running a business office like Mr. Zedberg does, it's actually quite busy. Um, that's where there's audits of programs uh and and uh fiscal areas of the district. That's where we begin to implement the approved budget. So, that means that there's hundreds and hundreds of purchase orders being generated. We're closing out the books. We're closing out purchase orders. There's just a tremendous amount of work to do in July and August. you're at the same time closing out the school year as budget that just ended on June 30th and you're opening up uh the brand new budget in September and October. There's um lots of state reporting to be done and there's lots of evaluation of um the budget that just closed and also how the
007new budget is already unfolding. In November and December, it's time to review uh and start preliminary planning and start to actually build the budget. January and February state need projections begin to come in. They don't often come in as uh timely as we would like. Um but again, we continue with starting uh early versions of the budget. What what do our uh what might our state aid projections be? And uh what what things uh may our administrators and teachers be recommending or asking for? Um gather that's gathering expenditure data. February, March, April, you've actually been experiencing that with us. You see our presentations. We continue to build and refine the budget. Um we're we're beginning to collect information on federal, state, aid, local allocations. Uh we hold the budget meetings. Tonight is an example of
008that. We begin to finalize the spending plan and adopt uh a carefully prepared budget that we can present to the board and to the community. uh May uh like I showed on the last uh slide will be the budget hearing. Uh there'll be notices that that go out. Uh the law requires us to send the notice 6 days in advance uh to the community. And then of course every May uh everybody remembers there's a budget vote. In June, we begin the year-end review uh close out of the current budget and preparation, believe it or not, to implement the budget that hopefully was passed a few weeks earlier. And then in July, the process begins all over again. And you can see from this description that there's really no break in the cycle. Um sound fiscal
009management of the district's resources is obviously very important. So um we do everything we can to operate oper uh operate with transparency. Uh we have we do routine analysis of budget codes for efficiency. We monitor for New York state and federal funding. We access innovative and cost-saving solutions. Uh we're looking for new revenue streams wherever they may be. Uh and we we are either establishing or recommending the establishment of reserves and thinking about uh how to use them efficiently and appropriately. And of course um uh we want to make sure that all of our audits come back to code. You've seen this uh kind of information before, but just a brief review. on the left hand side is where does the money come from that we get to use for the benefit of our students
010and the community at ISIL. So there's only four places where money can come from to run the school district every year. It's state aid, it's local revenues, fund balance, and tax levy. Okay. Um and then what can the budget be spent on? general support, instruction, transportation, benefits, and debt service. And uh with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Zer. Thank you and good evening. Now the next part of tonight's uh presentation will focus on some of the financial aspects of the budget development process specifically on the revenue side. So during the budget uh development process, we first start to look for state aid and one of the milestones that we get is the executive budget proposal which typically comes out in mid January and that's what the governor is proposing in terms
011of a budget and with the state a proponent and that's usually the bottom line during the course of negotiations in January, February and March the state eventually comes out with their enacted budget. um by the end of their fiscal year which is March 31st. So all districts anxiously await the enacted budget in order to finalize their budgets or at least the funding plan for their budgets. Uh unfortunately this year the legislature and the governor have um sorry have not come to an agreement on a state budget for uh the next fiscal year. Um, not surprising because this is the fourth year in a row that they haven't had an on-time budget. What they have been doing is having some negotiations and passing uh short-term budget extenders. The current one expires April 9th and that's the
012third one that they passed since uh April 1st which is the the first day of their fiscal year. the discussions, negotiations, the impass center to be centered around bills uh delays caused by negotiations on the crime bill, uh school cell phone ban bill, mask ban bill, and funding uh for the MTA capital plan. There was a lot of expectation that this would all be settled by the week of April 14th, which is the Passover Easter break for many of the schools. and Auburn is scheduled or is scheduled to take their break during that time, too. So, they'd want to wrap it up so they could go um go home on vacation, enjoy their break. It hasn't come yet. There's still some optimism. Um the expectation remains that there will be no negative impact on educational
013funding. Funds have been identified, just a matter of getting them to the districts. And again, the expectation is that there will be additional funding for school districts in the form of state aid coming out of the enacted budget. So, we continue to develop our revenue budget here to support the the spending plan. Um, we provided some updates here on our estimates to support the 2025 26 U budget. The state aid um which is our second largest category is unchanged as we are still working with the governor's proposal and we await the enactment budget. The tax levy which is our largest funding source is calculated based on the allowable tax levy limit law and remains in place. So where we were spo focusing a lot of attention was what what do we have control over where
014can we identify additional revenue sources and really for us it's two areas it's local revenues which is use of money use of profit charges for service so since the last budget workshop presentation our local revenues have gone up um to approximately $1.7 million and we've also allocated or identified monies in the current operating budget both on the revenue side and the expenditure side to allocate towards appropriated fund balance. So our estimated revenues continue to go up um and allows us to to work towards meeting the expenditure side and identify for us what we have to spend on programs instructional programs general support etc. Um so the next part of tonight's presentation will focus on what are those programs, what are the needs of the districts on the instructional side and Michael Gio will take over
015from me here and uh provide you with those updates. Good evening. Okay, start with our uh class size and enrollment. Uh as you uh can see up there, the the smallest section and and where we'll react to the kindergarten 100 students that we currently have in our kindergarten classes here. Um everything else is is pretty uh pretty much flat moving forward. Um we have a lower number in our second grade. I'll show that later with how that impacts elementary as well. Uh so next year uh the only change you'll see it at ring is uh in the number of sections is the eight that would result in our first grade classrooms. Uh that would put us at 22 to 23 per class. Uh that's due to the low enrollment of 180 students that we currently
016have in our uh kindergarten class this year. Um it's been pretty consistent of around 20 uh to 22 uh class sizes uh over the past few years. just happened to be that this year our numbers are of the lowest across all our elementary uh levels. Um the estimate I'll go back is uh for kindergarten is 180. Obviously we won't know the actual number as we get closer to uh the start of school as uh people are still registering all the way up to and including the first month of school. Um here at Crest uh we have a smaller class or a number of sections in our second grade classroom. We will jump up to five the following year because we'll have over uh 115 students in there. Exactly 115. Uh but we will have four
017sections in our third grade. Uh because that's what's falling forward from our uh second grade classes. And you can see here that it's a range of 22 to 24 uh per class sizes which is uh identical to the year before. Moving on to uh Sherwood, uh you have a 20 to 23 uh class sizes within there. We're flat across the board and you can tell by our numbers we range from uh anywhere from 80 uh one to 93 student uh students per grade level uh for the next upcoming school year. So now showcasing some of our school programs. Uh this will be a little long, but we're going to showcase some of the things that we've been working on in the past few years. Uh starting with our investments in our elementary education. Um what
018I want to start with here is our uh professional learning communities that exist across all of our elementary buildings where they meet once a week. Uh teachers have opportunities to work with one another. Uh whether it is analyzing data, working with our staff develop uh our coaches, um our curriculum leaders coming in at those times as well. Uh it's a great opportunity for our collaboration and to um continue to work on serving all of our students throughout our elementary buildings. Steam classes exist K through five. We have our steam steam teachers in both Sherwood and Comarmac Road. We have a steam teacher uh in uh wing as well working with our K1 um classes as well. Uh you when you go in there you can see some of the pictures in here. Hopefully they share.
019Well, don't see. But anyway, from engineering where the kids are working, uh whether it's kiddo and the coding that's taking place, um I think it's great that we're getting our kids involved with the engineering side, the math side, the art side, um and the technology side within our elementaryaries and building this program from the ground up. Uh this has been going on for a few years now, and we're continuing that looking forward. Um I can't talk enough about our literacy and math coaches. Um the amount of work that they do alongside our teachers Um when you when you go into a building and you see them providing resources, you see them modeling lessons, you see them working alongside teachers. Um I'll hit this later as well. Um we originally sent all our coaches to Harvard
020Education uh uh school of education uh to learn how to be an instructional coach. They actually earned their certificate in that. Um, the reason for that was to get them prepared so they can be within their classrooms and working alongside our teachers and understand the different positions that you lead from. So, it's allowing the teachers to take the lead role or whether you're working alongside them or maybe you're taking the lead role within that classroom. Uh, I can't speak highly enough uh in regards to that and how the teachers have embraced them uh throughout our elementary buildings. Uh, another important piece to that is our staff development. Uh, used to be like a oneandone. It's not that way with our our coaches. uh we're following through over the next few weeks uh until that staff
021developer comes up again and we're following through with the things that we're uh seeing in our classrooms and I give a lot of credit to our teachers and the hard work that we're putting in especially with our uh literacy staff developers that we have within that building or our buildings I should say. Um creating of an outdoor classroom uh and curriculum integration with that uh Sherwood took the lead. Uh you had seen some of the pictures um we brought some curriculum over the summer. We have Sherwood uh sorry we have Comic Road as well as Ling following suit in the years to come. Um I think these are great opportunities for hands-on experiences and creating these interactive these outdoor settings for kids to work and learn in. Um we have our seal and ruler. We're
022looking to expand that to all of our elementary buildings. It is a process as we go through. Um and it's not a it takes some time in order to learn and to implement within your building. Wing took the lead of that a few years ago with their team. Uh ruler uh stands for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions. Uh we teach about mood meters, about kids recognizing how to self-regulate, things of that nature. Um I think it's a great program uh that is now expanding to our other uh elementary buildings as well. Uh Sherwood I think is going into their second year uh while uh Crest is looking to bring it upon next year. Uh development of our self-regulation, social emotional skills. We we have some uh things working over at Wing uh where
023we have people where kids are learning how to breathe uh taking part in mindfulness exercises uh to a point where I think the kid the other day said decided I really needed that. This is a six-year-old who left and they talked a little about the uh uh exchange that took place between themselves and their mom before they left for school that day. Um so I I I think these are important things to help with our uh with our students um and learning about emotional intelligence and and working on that and about self regulating and bringing that to our kids throughout the school year. Um we have the expansion of our uh three PE classes. We had that for a few years now. Uh but we are getting the mandate as we move forward strengthening our
024literacy and interventions. Uh we have before and after school programs with our interventions called jumpstart. Uh we believe in reaching kids early in the asset school district. Uh it originated at wing. Uh it has expanded into Sherwood as well as com road as well. Uh we have kids coming in the morning. It's time in the morning where we we have those opportunities for some interventions in order to help our kids uh with with reading uh and and providing a literacy intervention before school even begins. Um we have increase in our reading interventions as you can see up here. Back in 2023, we had zero Oregon in Gillingham certified uh teachers. We are expecting at the start of our next school year to have four. Uh there are three currently in the program as we speak.
025Um they have to pass and go through. One is actually working with uh a fellow um where everything has to be approved and we're we're looking to September, October, maybe November by the time that they all meet and they judge and and determine whether uh this person will be receive their certification. uh Wilson reading system back in 2023 to get two certified teachers. Um we sent some teachers for uh and we're expecting at the beginning of September to have four uh throughout our school district. Have to give a lot of credit to our reading uh and our as department and these teachers are willing to put in the time the effort. um the one who's going for our Horton Gillingham and doing both the up to the associates level and the classroom educating level all
026in one year has has to put an extensive amount of time outside of work just to accomplish the task that we need to do in order to become certified and uh very excited about what what will come at the beginning of our next school year. As a result of that uh with the science of reading and aligning our producing programs to that we have uh purchased a number of collections of Dakota books uh looking even at the new um books from Lost Flower uh the fantasy books and the high interest that we believe that we can provide for our kids moving forward. Uh we're purchasing our first set in the next two weeks or so uh to see the impact that it has. It's it's supposed to be of more high interest than we have.
027Anyone who's been a teacher in years past, the code books are probably one of some of the more boring books that you can bring for a kid. Uh, but we see the importance of it and to bring in high interest ones I think are extremely important for us and for our kids to be successful in reading. Um, and we continue to have ongoing PD align with our new programs and our strategies. Uh, Kido uh spoke a little bit about the coding and technology as we expand our steam innovation programs. Uh we have student competitions. Um I believe they just recently went they're top 10 uh Sherwood and Crest I believe. Um so we're not there yet, but we're working on it. Uh kids even our K1 uh building love kido and the coding uh side
028of things. Uh and we do send them to competitions where we just recently had them there. Lego robotics. I want to thank uh Mr. and Mrs. Crackour. They were the ones with the uh brick and mirrors, if I'm saying it correctly, um who actually brought this to us last year in collaboration with them. Uh this is the first year we have first Lego robotics program in our elementary buildings. They're very excited about what's to come in the years. Uh eventually leading up to our high school and having our robotics program bolster that up here in our um high school. Continuing with our one-in-one device, onetoone device initiative. uh and once again our our outdoor classrooms and support with steam tech secondary schools and our growing opportunities RBT courses uh for secondary teachers and our secondyear
029teachers um when you look at um the RBT courses it's about enhancing practices uh that focus on things such as engagement effectiveness the quality of instruction um so we are focusing on our secondary teachers as well as year 2 teachers who have been going to that over the last few years. Um, and with that, we've also teamed up, and I'll bring this up later, where ATSR program that's aligned with our observation feedback that we're giving to to our teachers that are aligned to the skillful teacher or the RPT courses that we see up there. Um, we're increasing some challenging courses such as our seventh grade algebra class that we have this year. I will tell you two years ago uh Max Gelson who came to me and asked to sit for the algebra test without
030us providing any instruction to him um who then went on with a few other kids who sat for the algebra exam with no instruction from the school district and they all did extremely well on that algebra exam leading them to taking geometry at the high school level in nth grade. We are now at a point where we're creating a small class or looking to create smaller class than we have this year for our seventh grade algebra. Um we're we're anticipating the results to be uh for kids to do very well. Uh so we can move on to an eighth grade geometry course that will take place in the middle school for the 25 26 school year. Uh we have 820 uh scheduled AP exams this year. That's up from 4 uh 454 sorry uh from
031the year before or from 2022 sorry. Uh our registration fees are all paid the AP exams and our juniors receive one ACT exam that comes from our general uh budget. Uh we have increase in ENL support. We have a seal by literacy uh students. I don't know if you come to that if you ever came to that night but uh we have kids who are leaving here receiving that seal as well as the seal of civic civic readiness uh to learn about our government government and their um civicness uh in in our communities. Uh expanding our CT programs at our high school uh club opportunities. We have new leadership clubs this year. uh students have driven some of those choices for us has come to some of our administrators and asked for uh certain clubs
032to be available for them after school uh which we have complied. College trips and college fairs uh we just recently went to Yale and Yukon. Um we uh we planned a number of trips for our kids to have the experiences to be able to speak with counselors and and and even some of our past graduates at some of these schools to get a better understanding of what it's like there. uh give them a glimpse of of college and and what some of those opportunities are outside of Iceland. We have uh greenhouse project that we're working on with local politicians here at the high school and bolstering that and uh high school data team uh that works on instruction and learning trends uh that they see within their building. I would tell you there's also data
033teams that are uh you'll see in our elementary buildings as well working with teachers uh discussing some of the growth discussing some of uh areas of uh maybe uh that are challenging and things that we can do differently moving forward fine arts enrichment and additional support uh musicals great job this year we had uh a new crew led by um Mr. Levian who had put on flute this year. Uh we had people from around the district from elementary buildings uh and all the way up that that participating and putting up a a great production. Uh we increased our elementary music program in the purchase of new useful instruments over the years. Uh we have four and a half school clubs districtwide. We tried to add in every one of our elementary schools get at least
034five. We actually create a grant uh are able to uh produce another the multicultural club within those buildings as well. Uh we have additional academic support even at our middle school and high schools on top of uh the jump start that I talked earlier. Uh we'll have our regist review, our AP review uh providing additional support for our kids so they can be more successful on these upcoming exams. Um we are uh meeting weekly PE mandates in Orlando elementary schools and new athletic teams from competitive cheer to field hockey, JV, boys tennis, middle school, track and field and unified bowling and unified basketball. Uh we've also added assisting coaches for uh safety reasons especially with our uh track which sometimes uh spreads our coaches a little too thin. Uh fine arts continued and initial support.
035We have our event itself course at the high school. Uh we have uh anticipate two sections that are every other day here at the high school. Uh and they seem to be uh full this part-time moving up into our uh 25 26 school year. We have uh increased mental health support that's was funded originally with our co money that continues throughout all of our buildings. uh the One Love Foundation from here, increasing FTEES from art, music, uh family and consumer science, uh expanded elective offerings, uh the universal quick game program. We we've been uh lucky enough to have 13 up to 135 students over the past two years. Uh we're anticipating waiting for the money to come from the uh state. Anticipating to have another 135 students. We have roughly about 135 students. We're waiting
036to hear whether they'll be in the program next year. So, we're excited about that. 90 of those students are housed at the wing uh while the remaining are at the Southshore Academy. Our eight, we also added ACT and SAT prep courses uh project lead the way dealing with engineering here and courses uh that were provided for our teachers uh to better serve our students. Uh we have defined extra help sessions available at both the middle school and our high school. We have integrated co-eing in all elementary schools because some of you may remember they were broken up into the different buildings. Uh they are we have we now have a full continuum of services in all of our buildings connecting our schools teacher prep program. Some of you might be aware we have some of
037our uh high school students who come to our elementary building to work alongside of our kids. Buccaneer University, you'll see them interacting with uh different buildings as well. English Iron Society uh just started with our PT events. I think they were at the wing uh where they provided an opportunity for I won't call babysitting but working alongside some of the young kids trying to increase the number of attendees for our PTA event especially at wing. Um the honor society loves working with our young kids even spends time uh coming to the building in order to uh read to some of our students. um collaboration between high school and elementary schools and encouraging some of their student experience that I just talked about. Uh we have technology students uh recently I believe went to wing for
038their outdoor classroom in order to prepare and take a look at some of the things that maybe they could make in order to give to Wing Elementary for their outdoor classroom whether it's benches. Uh I will tell you in years past when they went there their ideas were a whole lot better than the adults in this district. Uh they wanted to build stuff around trees up trees and clubouses. I mean, they went a little too far, but for the most part, uh, they've come up with great ideas, uh, that they can broaden, and hopefully that is still taking place. Uh, and they're they just recently did that for, um, in preparation for wings outdoor classroom. uh Isa handles hunger uh blessings in a backpack which we have uh running and our commitment to professional growth
039from our literacy and math coaching staff developers for uh literacy our PD align with our new initiative our new mentor program for our new teachers the first year we're running it um every new teacher is lined up with a mentor we had training over the summer for all of our men mentors uh in order to give uh suggest suggestions on ways in order to help them. Uh I've met with them uh once already this year. We're looking to meet with them again uh get some feedback, bolster the program since the beginning stages of the of this program. So we continue to work with our new teachers to make sure we provide them everything they need so they can be successful. Uh talked a little bit before about the Harvard Graduate School of Education. That was
040for our instructional leadership certificate. uh the creating uh learning organization. We have up to six administrators uh who may be pursuing advanced degrees into doctoral programs. Uh we have teacher-led research assignments, our new teachers, that's one of the projects they're doing. Uh very interesting enough, we have anything from attendance uh to kids looking at texts of books in small groups uh and the impact it has on their success. Uh so they one of the things we're trying to do is create that place where uh risk takingaking is okay where our teachers feel comfortable off to actually try different things to learn from them to see what works and what works best for our students. Um and our uh AASA national superintendent certific c certification program uh continuing bill this is a lot longer than I
041thought um sustained investment inclus uh growth mindset principles embedded throughout the district. This is something we've been working on for quite a few years now. um extremely important as we we look at uh even even a lot of current articles and what we're hearing uh even outside of ISEL for some of our kids who are struggling with perseverance self-regulation uh things of that nature. So growth mindset providing that opportunity for us to continue let kids know that you know hard work is what really drives and allow you to be successful in the things that we do and we don't know it just maybe not we may not know something but we just don't know it yet. I'm just going to continue to work at those sort of things. Um expansion of academic programs and extracurricular
042offerings. Um advanced placement summer academy is a first year. We had um our curriculum leaders actually take some kids in those coming up from our middle school. um where gave them the opportunity to get an idea of what an AP class was like and the some work that was required was some of the things that they worked on on that time, but also gave them a good idea of what to expect when they went into these AP classes that we were offering here at the high school. Um strong coordination between all of between our grade levels and buildings. Um commitment to uh reaching and inspiring every student. Removed from we were removed from our New York State target support list. That was last year. Um, uh, two national merit uh, commended students and the college
043board silver award with access. Um, I think that was handed out to roughly 11% of the schools. Uh, very proud of the success and comes down to the three or better in the number of students who were successful on our AP exams. uh and not only that they were successful but from the diverse groups of individuals who actually took those exams as well which was a big part of that goals I have to go to my other sheet because I can't read yellow seconds okay uh strengthening multi-tered systems some one of our goals for mixture more consistency in the things that we're doing in our interventions as well as some of the um uh data that we'll be utilizing in order to determine the interventions that are appropriately placed. Uh also uh planning around screen
044time ensuring balanced and beneficial use of technology for all students. Uh we worry about screen time for kids and we want to start to have deep conversations about the importance of what that looks like and and what the expectations should be for our kids. Um there's a uh good book out there of the anxious generation. Uh we we are looking to provide some PD for that next year as well. Uh we have some uh actually administrator will be going to the Boseies uh book talk in regards to that bring some of that back to all of our colleagues here. Um the integration of AI in instruction and programs to enhance learning and engagement. a lot of the software and you may see it a lot of the AI that's out there from the softwares that
045we're looking to purchase that helps with uh the differentiation instructional strategies uh in order to help support our kids at all different levels expanding professional learning opportunities to to meet the uh evolving needs and interests of staff and students. uh recently did a survey with our uh staff and our administrative um to find out some of the things that are working well with our professional learning and what what is not. Uh we will look at that data with our committee here um and our PD committee will will take a look at what some of our goals are moving forward to best suit our needs for our teachers and more importantly for our students. Introduction of a new cyber security course. Uh very excited about this. These credentials that students can earn over time uh could
046lead to a job right out of high school. Um these are certificates that are recognized by uh professionals in the field and industry recognized credentials. Uh so we're we're excited about trying to get that started uh our upcoming school year looking to build that class implementing a pilot program designed to identify uh develop and improve support for students. Next year we're looking at different uh math programs that we're going to pilot. We are looking for uh looking at a phonics program uh at the early uh grades as well uh in order for people to pilot as well as util doing as well. One of the phonics programs we're looking at is uh called uh it's it's based out of the University of Florida. Uh some of the other districts uh and other people across the
047nation have been using it. uh we're looking at the comparison of that to our current program, most foundations. Uh we're looking uh to see if that may be a better suited for the needs of our district and our students. Uh and development of a site program uh or when there's interruption in education for students, you know, what does that look like and how can we help them better? um I believe the meetings this week if not tomorrow if I correctly some from New York State in order to better serve some of the students who uh come to our district from outside of our district who maybe have major interruption in education and to better suit them just to put them in the classroom amongst others because of their age level. I'm hoping that's it because
048I'm I'm running out of speed and I am. So thank you very much. [Applause] So the next part of the presentation will be focused on more financial aspects of the budget development process but on the expenditure side. So a lot of the focus during the development process is on both the instructional component of the budget and the general support. So you can see from these last several pages of the presentation uh and the quantity and volume of offerings, opportunities, programs um this is what goes into the instructional component and this is where a lot of time and effort is spent on planning and evaluation um to meet the needs of students and staff um and development. Um this this is an ongoing process. the evaluation. We look to expand and identify what resources we need
049both financially, both uh staffing wise and also to meet the needs um with our facilities for certain programs. Um and then lastly in technology is a major component of supporting the techn the instructional programs as well. on the general support. We spent a lot of time um identifying the needs of support programs um to support the operations that keep the district uh going operational whether they be accounting software they be our insurance protection programs risk management programs and as well as the technology and cyber security that we want to protect the the district's assets. So it's an ongoing process and we look all administrators within the district and staff what's the most effective, cost effective, most efficient way of offering all these opportunities and services. Um to expand a little bit more on facilities, we
050can meet certain operate um needs and addressing facility needs through the operating budget, but that's typically small and things that we have to address immediately high priority. But we expand those discussions to address capital projects. That's a way of getting more costly projects, more larger projects done at one time, but spreading the cost out over the life of a bond. the um and generate aid at the same time to offset the costs. So, a couple initiatives that the district is working on right now is an energy performance contract will allow us to address facilities needs through energy savings, putting that back into energy conservation measures, whether they be in our boilers, rooftop units, HVAC, window replacement, solar power. Um very cost effective, saves money as well as generates building aid. We are starting the initial
051steps on the next bond that the district will need to adjust larger scale um programs and enhancements to buildings to certain rooms whether they be labs for offering instructional programs uh and other needs. again spread the cost out over multiple years, generating building aid um and allow more cost-effective way of securing vendors through highly competitive bidding process. And then lastly, um another initiative that we're working on is use of funds that are currently in a capital reserve. There'll be a proposition on the May ballot for to for the community to authorize the withdrawal of a million approximately a million dollars out of the capital reserve to address some very pressing needs around the district including upgrades to the playground at Wing Elementary School, some interior work over there and programs over here at the high
052school. specifically the renovation of the greenhouse which has been in more need of an upgrade and tied in with some of the programs that were here earlier. Again, the money's available cost effective way of doing it and it removes it from the operating budget allowing us to hold down the overall expenses in this budget that we're looking to develop. So, where are we now? Um currently our expenditures as mentioned on the previous side uh for all those areas $ 102 million uh this is down considerably from where we were at the March 26 budget workshop number two we were about $2.8 million um was the gap we got it down now to 1.2 too. We have two weeks to go where we're going to be working on closing that. So, we're bringing down expenditures and
053bringing up our our revenues. Um, we're hopeful to get more state aid to support the increase in the revenues. We're going to look at continue to look at local revenues and funding balances, bringing that up. uh and then look at ways of uh improving um more cost effectively offering programs um benefits etc general support services on the expenditure side and that's the work in progress as we uh we get towards during the budget development process. Um so where do we go from here? The next steps um focus will be on reviewing expenditures, identify areas for reductions, review revenue opportunities, um compare this gap, then close it. And our target is when we're back here in two weeks to have a budget where both these spending and the funding plans match. And we have a budget
054that um will present to the board of education for adoption. Uh any questions uh for the board of education? Mr. You were saying with the state aid um that they might be an opportunity to get more money. Is there any rumors out there any projections what they think that you know a percentage what it is currently right now what they might be discussing? Both houses have said that they have there's millions that they want to put towards it and they've identified funding because there's a budget surplus um that was identified at the conclusion of the prior year's um state fiscal year and that they want to put that into basically two areas healthcare Medicaid as well as uh schools. Um, in one of the earlier slides, I believe it was slide 12 where you reviewed
055the estimated revenue of the district, um, you had shared that there was an increase in the local revenue column. Can you um, just explain to the community that increase? Sure. Local revenues are a wide variety of opportunities that we have for uh, for categorizing monies that come into the district. everything ranging from use of our assets, whether it's be uh use of facilities, interest income on on our bank accounts, uh charges for certain services. Um we've seen we've been very fortunate that we've received some number of surpluses um and refunds from both for monies that they've collected that have come back to us. Uh tuitions, a number of things. And then we also have the fund balance. um fund balance we are able to generate through two sources unexpected revenues that were on budget and
056we are getting some of those in the form of state aid from from this payments that are greater than what were originally shared with us in terms of state aid funds as well as monies identified that are available in the expenditure budget so unspent balances so the two of those contribute to our fund balance allowing us to appropriate more thank Any questions from the community? Great. Thank you. Thank you. See you in two weeks. [Music] Please. Okay. I just want to uh thank Dr. O'Hara um Dr. Jetto on the presentation this evening as you can see education is always evolving and um here at Isab we're doing a lot of good things and we're always focused on doing more so thank you for everyone and uh we really appreciate it. Okay um next under our
057prior presentations will be our policy reading that will be the second reading now Mr. Pine. Thank you Mr. Janine. Um this policy was reviewed by um the policy committee members in addition to district central administration. Um the policy is being amended to reflect the change in time in which a student can um decide to remove or change a course. Um I don't have the policy in front of me, but I believe it's 5 days before the second quarter comes to an end. I'm sorry. I don't have a policy. Hang on. I have Mrs. Carr is pointing out it's a the first week sorry following the progress report of the second marking quarter. So it's approximately 15 weeks into the school year. Yes. So it's policy number 5154. Um, other than that, there aren't too many
058changes that were made to the policy and does cover courses in which a student is enrolled from 182 regions. Um, and there are other considerations that are taken into account if a student needs to change their course selection. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Green. Okay, that concludes our isop presentations. We're now going to move on to item number four, which will be our gender items. Are there any questions from the board of education on any of the we voting on this evening? Are there any questions from the public on any of the agenda items that we'll be voting on this evening? All right. Uh with that then I'd like to get a motion for consent items 5A through 5F. Can I get a motion? That was Mrs. Flora and the second was Mr. All those
059in favor. I opposed abstain and they will all carry. Mr. Brown, would you roll over the person, please? Sure, Miss Tony. This evening on the A3, we have requests for leave of absence from school counselor at Sherwood, a school counselor at Wayne, an elementary teacher at Wayne, and a speech teacher districtwide. On the A4, we have coaching appointments for unified basketball as well as a volunteer coach for baseball. On the A7 this evening, we are happy to recommend um one of our incredible social workers, Karen Vigiano, who's here with us this evening for tenure. Karen pretty delighted to have her with us tonight and we will be having a formal tenure recognition celebration. Thank you. At a later date. Thank you. On the 813 uh we have additional duties for regions review for living environment
060and on the B1 we have an appointment of a custodial worker one um within our middle school. On the B2, we have a resignation from a school monitor and a resignation from a substitute custodian, as well as two retirements here this evening. Um, one for a senior office assistant for Sherwood and one for one of our office assistants for Karmac Road. On the B3, we have a request for an extension of a leave of absence from a school teacher. That will do it for me this evening. Uh, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, we're going to now move on to item number six, which are our public questions. And a few public comment cards here. I'll start off with Darus Toranski. Tardowski. Toranski. You want me to just restate my statement question? Please. My understanding is
061that there was a presidential request that DEI removed from New York State schools and New York State. She smells my dog. I feel honored. I feel honored. Um I'm very proud that New York State replied the way that they did. Um and my kids have been out of school for some time. So, I was just wondering, I noticed the uh artwork outside of the windows about inclusion, and I was just wondering, are there any formal types of the classes or curriculum or is it woven into the existing curriculum? And I guess Dr. G, you would be the person to really talk to me about that. Answer that. Yeah. um you I'll kick it off in the further detailing. We we don't have a DEI policy and we don't have a specific uh course or curriculum
062in DEI. Um but everything we do is aimed at being as inclusive as possible and meeting everybody's needs and supporting all of our students. And we have um a multitude of programs that address the needs of all our students. And we do have a very diverse school district. And so we do a lot to address that diversity and make sure of that diversity. I do I can show you later if you don't mind, but I have it here this evening. Yeah, I might be able to get a few right now. in regards to inclusion. I just I bet I'm very proud of New York State for their response. Halfway. Um this this information is for the high school but it it mimics closely the district. Um so the enrollment in the high school is 891
063students. Uh roughly 48.5% of those students are white. Uh almost 37% are Hispanic. Almost 7% are African-American. uh almost 5% Asian uh 2% multi-racial and uh 34% I'm chuckling because I'm an 34% of a person but um American Indian or Alaskan Alaskan Native and um in the high school uh almost 39% of the students are economically disadvantaged almost 39% just under 39% Um and uh just over 14% of the high school students are students with disabilities and 6% of the students in high school are English language learners. You said disabled 14% just over 14% students with disabilities. So you could see it's a pretty diverse student. What's the definition of disadvantaged? Economically disadvantaged. Um, yeah, it's a it's a poverty level indicator, but I off the top of my head don't remember the exact income.
064You're welcome. Thank you, Dr. Those questions. Uh, the next public comment card is Todd and Christy Wallace. Thank you. Uh, we recently the board's attention. Thank you for acknowledging received. Um, and the purpose of our attendance here tonight is to respectfully request the district to consider a decision to not allow our son to apply for NASA schools. Um if as a member of the board of central office you have an opportunity to see the letter that we submitted. We feel that you made very logical uh common sense suggestions and your points but nowhere in the letter we actually ask you to reconsider your decision. So one of our reasons for being here is to do that publicly. Another reason is to ourselves to the board office. If there are any questions that you may have
065this time or moving forward, please don't hesitate to reach out to us with respect to our request. Um throughout the entire budget presentation, there are comments and and philosophies of the school district such as students first. Thank you. Great. Great. Thank you, Mr. Wallace. We um we certainly read your correspondence and we'll be in touch because you you had asked for some information and so we're collecting some of that for you and we'll be back in touch. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, uh Tony Max. How are you? So, my question is about digital literacy and what does digital literacy look like in our district? Is there curriculum? Is there a teacher that has it? Is it the building 12? Right. So um Okay. So what part did you look like?
066Um I mean it's very broad category. So really any of it like that's my open-ended question. How does it look? Yeah. In our school. Yeah. Common sense we we we work on even during weeks with our director of technology which is Dr. Austin uh who brings that into uh classrooms who are uh with our teachers. Um I believe few years ago as well. He utilized a um um utilized a whole week where we he was informing teachers about digital leadership uh citizenship, understanding responsibilities, online behaviors, things of that nature. We work with our students in regards to that uh how to respond to it. When you look at our literacy, we then start talking about some of the different things of critical thinking and looking at things that are online and determine determining what what
067is believable. I don't know if that's the right word that I'm using, but but but taking a look online and seeing what what things that are on there that are believable or not. Um so we have things within our literacy program that work on things like that while uh citizenship and uh different things within our sixth grade library uh libraries that work on that as well uh with our library. So is it primarily the teachers responsibility librarian not really specialist like whose role responsibility? The the licorice side is the teachers uh and then there's the other side with digital citizenship. um where we can run some of those things through our director of technology and some of our T3s uh within our uh buildings and and as well as some of the coursework where we
068can have that as part of our units. So there's I mean it's not really an isolation it's embedded into the curriculum that already exists. Well, when you think about information and literacy, right? So that that is embedded within our literacy program. So that's a part of the broad range of uh what about when it comes to technology? Okay. So now now you talk about digital. Okay. So now now it's more about digital citizenship, right? Where we're looking at those sort of things uh in which we have um things embedded uh through our teachers that has been taught about digital citizenship. Now I will tell you and I'll be honest, we need to bolster those things within our district. Uh but the literacy side of things is done through our teachers and theformational side. I think
069you know just as a from a parent perspective is the digital side the technology now and having critical thinkers and responses of technology um and kind of maybe moving into the direction of having a responsible educator you know with a designated time to do that is that down the pipeline has that been discussed or is that it has been it has been discussed uh and like I said before something in our district I think we need to work more on. I believe uh when Dr. Wstein actually did his presentation last year. uh was one of the things that hit on and when we speak about something also within our and that's more the dig digital citizenship side of things what you were asking but yes I do agree with that and along the lines of
070technology I know this discussion about Delta valve removal of cell phones um are you waiting for the state to make the recommendation or put in their guidelines or are we proactive um where's our stance on We are looking to be prepared for the upcoming school year of removing uh cell phones. I miss Dr. Martin's actually in the audience who's done a great job within our middle school. Um and child in one second. We in the middle school there's Dr. No cell phone policy. There's no policy, but they're still using them. So, I guess that's why like the actual removal where these don't have like said the boundary pouches where they could have them on them personally, but they're magnetically, you know, secure where they can't use them and take them out during the school day.
071Yeah. Because yes, we have the policy, but the reality is they're still on. I don't know. When I'm in the school, I don't I don't really see them, so I'm sure some students might sneak something past on occasion, but it's I think it's working pretty well. my observations are that it's a pretty effective policy. That's just a middle school. In the high school, uh they're not allowed to use them in the classroom, I believe, unless the teacher is using it for a lesson. Um um but if the state has a bell-to-bell policy, then obviously, you know, we'll adhere to that. But that's part of the hold up. But unless that's rolled down to you, you will not be, you know, your status quo, your policies will remain what they are right now unless something comes
072down. Well, no, that's not what I've said. We we have a I said we would adhere to a state policy. We have a we have a practice in the high school. We have a practice in the middle school. Um we're never status quo. So obviously we continue to revisit things. So I can't sit here tonight and say we'll never be this or we'll never be that. We would continue to evaluate things and you know work in the best interest of the students and like you said you know I understand that where they're in the class they should be utilizing it but through the hallways they're definitely still using it so it's still affecting their natural are you talking about the high school all schools it's not the case in the middle school is it it's
073not the case in middle school am I correct we have a procedure in middle school it's uh we have a three uh step procedure first step is that the teacher addresses a student with the cell phone. The second step is the teacher takes the cell phone, brings it down to the main office. The child gets it um at the end of the day. And the third would be a parent comes up and gets it. Our goal is to have uh we don't frisk students. We don't check pockets. We don't check pocketbooks. We ask students to have it out of sight, out of mind. We do ask them to keep it in their lockers, but at the same time, we don't check their belongings. That being said, they're not permitted to have them in the hallways,
074in the lunchrooms, or at recess. Do children um communicate either on uh the computer devices they have? They do have email. That does happen. Do they have uh watches? They do have watches. When we did the state testing today, we told students they couldn't have watches or cell phones. We haven't uh really pushed the the uh the digital watches because that gets into a really um personal situation. What's what's the digital watch for? What is what is the um how does it work without the cell phone so stick strictly to the cell phone but they are not um permitted to have again can they slip it can they have it do they text their parents when they shouldn't absolutely and that's when we ask the parents for their support when a child does reach out
075to them during the school day to acknowledge what we're trying to do um I can tell you that that's not always the case um parents do communicate with their children do communicate with their parents in bathrooms in uh outside to the side of the class. It does happen. I'm not going to say it doesn't, but we do ask for parent support. If a parent needs to get in touch with the child, we do ask them to contact the main office. We will get that student. If the child needs contact home, we ask them to go out to the main office. That being said, um when children, if a parent believes a child should have their phone for emergencies, we believe in a middle school, we shared it just as recently as this past week at
076our town halls for all grade levels. He said that if a child if there's an emergency at home, the child shouldn't hear from the parent in a classroom. They should hear from one of our specialists, a social worker or a guidance counselor, an administrator, somebody of an adult that can say, "Hey, there's a challenge at home." That's not something we want parents to tell children if they have crisis and we're not aware of it. So we do we do believe if there's an emergency the school personnel should know first so that we can bridge that gap provide the support to the children but yes uh our goal is not to have cell phones during the day and we do ask for everybody supported I mean the theory sounds great I just apparent like we just
077know what's really happening so um and then after your presentation I did have some more questions um and I think we're definitely moving in the right direction as far as our reading programs and your future goals. Um, what's the rational behind getting rid of the foundations? If you're acquiring Wilson and you're spending the funds and the resources to get your teachers trained in the Wilson reading system, why would you take away foundations? Because if they're they're both Wilson products, the terminology is the same. So, if a child's using that in first grade and then requires a Wilson reading system intervention in third grade they would have the language already. So I don't know if shifting that program is a good idea if you're trying to align your program. Sure. So some of the things that
078we want to look at right is uh the double and triple doses of foundations and the impact it has on our students. Right. So what you're suggesting is that because of the intervention right and it's also done in the classroom the language is the same but what we're what we're seeing is and we want to really take a close look at is um when we do that as a double dose for students and we utilize it also as an intervention is it just as impactful or should we be looking at something that has been more successful with kids um or have people have claimed it's been more successful with kids and have something that's a classroom um and still utilize Wilson reading system as an intervention utilizing that uh UFly as possibility of the classroom
079now uh classroom uh curriculum that we're utilizing. Now here there's a few things different between the two. One is the pace of uh UFY uh the spiraling that takes place that's more than what foundations does uh the quickness that it gets to uh CDC works. Uh um um so there there's a few things with it that when we look at it uh and we're currently utilizing it as an intervention uh what we see is that there's possibilities that that may be better suited for our classroom curriculum uh and still utilize our Wilson reading system as an intervention. Um and and we want to take a close look of what double doses and and sometimes triple doses of kids uh of what they're perceiving as interventions that are similar with the foundations program and Wilson reading
080system and uh there could be a possibility that this is more successful and that's why we wanted to take a look at some of the data after we after we try something like this and what data so we will be looking at uh we have different types of assessments that we wind up looking at uh for our kids and especially the ones within our um um as program. Um so what are those? Yeah. Well, we we have quite a few different assessments that we wind up giving them. Uh UFly comes with its own. Uh Wilson provides its own as well. Uh and we can utilize those assessments in order order to take a look at that as well as some of our benchmarks and our success rate of our students as well as our FAPS
081that we utilize within uh the district. So uh I think it's I think it's worthwhile. Program embedded. What's that? The assessments are program embedded. um it wouldn't we have multiple types of assessments we can use uh it's not only the program embedded ones that we looking at and what what you're what I don't know I think that's what you're trying to say is that uh youth log we would only utilize their assessments or we'll soon determine that one program's better than another like what are you determining we really we do have a threeminut I mean your question was on digital literally and right but I think these are relevant questions that are very important for parents we have the you've asked the question it's been answered and it just seems to be going on a
082lot quicker what I would suggest is that you schedule appointment with Dr. and Dr. That's always your response to have another community needs to know and that's fine. These are questions. You submit a question on a card and I did and it was answered. But the point is and that's fine. The community needs to know these things. This is not a dialogue. It's not fine. That's fine. Thank you. All right. I have the last president. Hello. How's the call? Um, I'm coming up to follow up for the AP question that was brought up last time. I didn't fill out the card last time, so I was asked not to speak on it. So, now that you've had two weeks to gather your statistics, I was wondering if you found anything regarding um I saw that
083Dr. G's presentation showed that there was 434 AP test takers in 2022, right? And there's 820 slotted for this school year. But did you find the scores like about three, four? Yeah, I didn't know if anybody was coming back. So I called you I have some stuff that Okay. So, this is related to just the high school. Uh Oh, I didn't know where you went. Sorry. No, it's okay. You can stay. I didn't see you there, so I looked over there. Yeah. Okay. Um, so this is our uh, you know, demographics at just the high school. Like I said, I will say this is pretty consistent. It's close enough if you look at K12. I already read those numbers to you, right? Um, read this a moment ago. So, um, this I don't expect you
084to be able to read all of it. I don't know what it looks like uh, from your seats, but this was this was in New Day, June of 2023. Sometimes news day lists uh results from high schools. It might be regents. It might be three testing. In this case, it was advanced placement exams, right? So, um what I look at data three different ways, right? Some of it's empirical, some of it's anecdotal, and then some of it's comparative for me, right? So, empirical is pretty straightforward. This is what the numbers say. Anecdotal might be conversations with students, teachers, uh other people. How's it feeling for you? What was it like, etc. regarding uh anecdotal data. Um just uh maybe two weeks ago, we had our curriculum night and college fair and we had a panel
085of high school students, four different types of students, four different types of programs, and they spoke at length and answered a great deal of questions from audience members about why they chose certain classes, what their experience was like, what they got out of it, um even what their anxiety levels were like, and how they coped with that, etc. So, um, this is just how I tick things off, but if you see red up there, that means that school outperformed us. Okay? So, there's a there's a lot of red up there for me. That was 2023 based on May 2022 results. So, if you look to the right, uh, where I typed in some schools there, um, Babylon, Bayshore, Bayport, Booth Point, Connectquat, Deer Park, Hop, Seville, West Iceland. um those are schools that on this
086particular year and this particular type of data outperformed us. Um so um if you look at that little box there where it comes to test achievement for Suffach County schools in terms of what percentage of students score three and above we were uh 30 out of 55 schools. And if you look at test participation we were 35 out of 55 schools. And when I see things like this, the questions that I ask myself are um what is it about Beayshore that would enable those students to outperform Iceland students? What is it about Deer Park or Kekquat or Hap or West Iceland? Sometimes it's a socioeconomic issue. You know, Seville has different socioeconomics than we do as evidenced by the how many students we have that might be economically disadvantaged. But these are the kinds of
087things that spur questions and conversations among faculty and administrators. Um this is three uh going back to 202021 data. So on that chart you can see the number of students that started an AP class. Um and you can see the number of students that completed it, right? So um the first column in the green says enrolled and the second column in the green says completed. And if you look at the bottom you can you can see the difference and and it goes through uh 2022, 2023, and 2024. And you could look all the way to the right in the lavender color and see that we had 927 requests for AP exams. um not around this time but say by uh maybe or June leading up to this September. What's important to note with this particular
088chart is that the number of requests is not always the number of students who end up enrolling in the class because sometimes there's conflicts in their schedules and they can't take every class that they want to. Okay, this is a little bit um this chart here, I know it's hard to see from where you are, but this this shows you um it's the same exact chart that I just showed you. But what I'll tell you, it shows in the difference is that um in the color all the way to the right, the lavender, it shows you those who requested it. It shows you those who actually enrolled, and then it shows you those that we anticipate will take the exam in about a month's time. Okay? So you can see that number well you can't
089see it but you can take a word for it. It's approximately 820 students that will not excuse me let me correct that it's about 820 exams. It's not 820 students because some students are taking three AP classes or two AP classes etc. Okay. Um here's a simpler way to see it. So in 202122 in May of 2022 there were 434 AP exams written in this high school. In 2023, there were 538. In two 2024, there were 643. And if you look in the green color near the bottom left, there's 820 exams we anticipate will be written in about a month's time, right? Um this is this is just a blown up version of what was at the bottom of those chart with the multiple colors. So you can see um the number that enrolled across
090the top, the number that completed it across the bottom, and then in the yellow letters you can see the attrition rates. Okay. So in 2021, just shy of 8% of the students who enrolled in an AP class ended up changing their class uh you know by the semester or whatever they were allowed to change it by back then. 2021-22 was you know not a great year. I'm assuming that was related to pandemic issues. uh 22 23 you can see that um the attrition rate was you know roughly nine and a half and um you can see what it was in 2023 24 and when I made this originally um I didn't have the numbers uh uh sorry that should be a 2025 in the last column not a 24 forgive me for that error but
091it's 820 and the attrition rate is about 10 and a half% 10.47 47. Okay. Um, so then I had shared this information I think at a board meeting. I'm not sure where, but um I know there's a lot of numbers up there, but it's it's the year ending in uh 21 22 23. So those are results from those May of each of those years. And essentially, if you see a red circle, then that means our scores were a little bit dip from the year before. If you see a purple arrow, that means there was an improvement from the year before. And if you see yellow, it was uh almost exactly the same. Maybe it's off by hundth of a point or a tenth of a point. So that's a little bit of a question on
092how are the results, right? Um these are results that Dr. Gonzalez shared at a presentation I think sometime in September. So you can see by department what is percentage of test takers scoring three and above is. You could see what the New York State average is and you could see what the global average is. Uh now that's by department. Um so you could see you know our students are more students are taking exams, our students taking more exams and you can see that you know they're holding their own uh compared to the state and compared to the global average. This is another way to look at it. It's it's a um drills down a little bit deeper. So I don't expect you to commit all these to memory but basically if you see uh it
093highlighted in green then uh our scores exceeded the state mean score and the global mean score. So there's a lot highlighted in green. You'll notice that chemistry is not highlighted but you will notice that um our chemistry uh percentage score three and above exceeded the um uh global average. And you could see that the uh I'm sorry, the mean score exceeded the global average. And you can see that our percentage of students scoring three and above also exceeded the global average. We fell a little short of the state average. And then if you see classes that are not highlighted, uh those are ones where we did not uh meet or exceed the global or the state average, right? And you know, we've we've uh had some conversations and you know, we have some ideas as
094what may have contributed to some of those things. I'll give you one example. Um, if you look at Italian, uh, we don't really have great results in, uh, on the AP exam in Italian, but we do not have an AP Italian course. So, that's a situation where a student uh, a teacher offers her time, she uh, does what she can outside of school to prep some students and any student who wants to challenge the exam walks in and takes the exam without having a course for a year for the year. Okay? and and some of those courses like LEAPS, it was the first time we offered it. So, you know, we had a little bit of a learning curve. Um, this is another crazy uh Dennis O'Hara, you know, doodling and and uh scribbling and
095news day, but this was uh I think in the fall. Um, this is schools on Long Island that earned either a platinum, a gold, a silver, or a bronze recognition uh on the AP honor roll. Our school earned silver uh with um oh gosh am I helping me out what's that term with participate it's not participation access thank you um so that means that um if you earn the the u award with access that means that you have a greater diversity of students more students that are economically disadvantaged gaining access to those AP classes uh than some other schools. Okay. So um uh so this is the second year in a row that we earned the silver uh silver award and you know we aspire to earn a gold award eventually and maybe even beyond
096that right um last uh week there was a comment or a question I think there's a misunderstanding that we don't have honors classes in our high school u that's not true yes we have removed some honors classes from the curriculum but this is a list of all the classes we have in the high that carry an honors designation. So there's roughly 20 uh 22 21 classes there. So it's um and maybe it would help if I clarify that you know some of the changes we recommended 3 years ago in terms of removing honors classes. In the ninth grade we had regents and honors English. In the 10th grade we had regents and honors English. In the 11th grade we had regents honors and advanced placement English. And in 12th grade, we had either college freshman
097English or advanced placement English. And the only thing we removed from that subject area was honors English in grade 11. We didn't touch the other grades. Uh and social studies. Um I think it was I don't have it in front of me, but we removed two honors classes if I remember correctly, but I'm not positive on that. Okay. So, I know from where you're sitting it's not crystal clear, but we dig into data and we have an idea of where we're going well and where we need to throw a little time and thought into it. Um, overall I think the students and the faculty are responding well and uh I think in the long run it's going to be to the benefit of the students. Thank you for sharing that. Feel like you kept it
098in your pocket until I asked about it but I appreciate that. My question though, just how long have you been do you see a trend change that you might reinstate an honors class? Like it looks like you took away some of the sciences and the sciences seem to be where the AP scores were made. You know, they weren't highlighted in green, let's say. So, how how many years you let that roll out before you re-evaluate? Yeah, if I if I remember correctly, um the only honors class in science that uh has changed since I've been here was in biology and and this uh I think it might have been last year was the first year we didn't have it and that was where the LEAPS class came in. So we don't you know we had
099one one year of of data and it was brand new for the teacher and the students obviously and I will say that um if you don't mind you know regarding these classes and choices right there's there's u thousands of of colleges uh across the country 4,000 something schools since 2009 I've been traveling with uh a hundred students at a time multiple times a year uh where I sit through admissions presentations with them and get uh campus tours with them and I hear the what the admissions officers say and I hear the questions the students ask and really you know what the colleges want if um I should pause and say that listen our goal here is to have every 12th grader ready for the plan that's perfect for him or her right so it could
100be military for one it could be Harvard for another it could be um a vocation for a third one right um but as far As far as advanced placement classes go and post-secary opportunities, um, you know, every college would love to see a student who started with eighth grade algebra and has, you know, high 90s and aces to find them exams and stays that way for four plus years of education, right? For some students, that's the way it is. Um, what they what they're not interested in is a student who starts out doing really well and goes the other direction, right? That's not a good sign for them. Um what they love is a kid who, you know, is kind of here and then finds his or her way and and really proves that they're
101on the right trajectory in terms of their academics. Um the advice that they give is you you should take uh uh the most rigorous courses you can handle and you should do the best you can in them, right? um if if you do not if you have a schedule that has um say 11 advanced placement exams by the time you're ready to graduate high school, that's a really good transcript and you prove that you know you're you're a top academic student perhaps. But you can have a transcript that has uh two AP classes, three AP classes, uh some honors classes, and even regions classes, and you can make your way to an outstanding university and do really well. Uh, one thing that we know is that even if students earn a one on the exam,
102uh, they do better down the road for having had the rigor and the the preparation that's necessary for the advanced placement process. Okay. So, that's anecdotal data though, that one, right? The last one. Yes. Uh, no, actually I I didn't bring it with me this evening, but I there is research on it. I'll take your word for it. Um, yeah. And um regarding it, kept it in my pocket. I was kind of hoping somebody would ask only because I know it's important to people, but it is important. I I didn't want to um My kids are in elementary school, but you know, this is where they're going. So, it's important for all of us, you know. Yeah. So, thank you. Yeah. I hope it helps. It does. I mean, you're going to Will you share
103this? This will be on board docs or because honestly, the color coding and some of the font, you know what? I didn't I didn't plan on sharing it on board docs board docs. And the the reason is that um there's some data in there that would make it make it possible to identify people. So I don't plan on sharing some of this publicly. All right. I just have one more question after if it's okay. It's an easy I think a quick one. Um regarding enrollment because I know that was like tonight's budget process. I saw that the kindergarten kinderg increase in class size. speed that a little bit. Uh what we did was there's 180 students uh moving from kindergarten to first grade. So we have it at um eight student uh sorry eight sections
104next year uh which puts us at 223 which is similar to what we have or have had over the 15 years um within that grade level. Uh that's the reason why we moved from the um because of the actual enrollment size which is currently at 180 students right but currently in kindergarten you have nine sections with a class size of 20. So you're cutting the section and increasing that current we are the kids who are used to having 20 are up 22 23 that's without getting any additional students over the summer. So I mean is there you're just saying because of past practice? No, not because of past practice. We we we did 22 to 23 in the class size. That's the typical class size that we have in first grade. That's what I'm saying
105is that and and we what happens with kindergarten is enrollment takes place throughout the first few months. Um to to remove a section at that point in time that would be detrimental for kids and and for our for ISO and the building as a whole. I would never or would never suggest uh for us to reduce a section after a month or two or while kids are already uh accustomed to their teacher at the beginning of the school year. So switching at the beginning of the school year in kindergarten is not something a practice that we are uh like to take part in. No, I I agree with that. I just I don't know. I mean it just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to drop it off. You're wrong. I'm sorry. I mean,
106you're just saying just because it's a typical five. No, I think it I don't mean to cut you off, but it's also related to budget. I was going to say I mean it's a money issue. Talking like a TV. Is that what it is? Yeah, it we I mean as we continue to we have a 1.2 million gap to close. So, as we continue to close that gap if we I mean we all prefer lower class sizes. Um so we at a minimum we we don't want to make anything worse than what people have been accustomed to. We would like to make it better. I I just can't promise anybody that we would have the resources to make that happen right now. Okay. Just to play devil's advocate, currently there are nine sections in the
107in the first rate. So next year dropping down to eight. So you're dropping one for the current kindergarters who are going through the first if you look at it that way. But then you're also dropping one who's as far as roll over first to first. if I would have to lay it out in front of me all the charts at the same time, but Michael, you can help me. If I remember correctly, our elementary FTEES are staying flat across the district with where the class sizes are changing and stuff. All right, thank you. Okay, that concludes our public comment on nothing reports and correspondence. Uh next will be updates. Remember our next board of event meeting will be on April 8th uh 5:30 the executive session. Sorry. Uh April 22nd 5:30 at 7 p.m. will
108be public here at the high school and we'll be also workshop presentation. Uh that concludes everything on tonight's board meeting. Everyone, thank you for attending and we'll see you at the next board [Music]