School Board Reviews Building Plans, Collective Bargaining and a New School Website

Collective bargaining, building plans and a new district website were all on the agenda at a study session at the October 7 meeting of the Scarsdale Board of Education.

Dr. Bernard Josefsberg, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, provided a brief summary of the negotiation framework and status of the 4 labor contracts covering over 700 district employees that will be up for renewal this academic year. The largest contract unit is the Scarsdale Teachers' Association (STA). Others labor groups include Principals, Middle Managers and Teachers' Aides. He stated that the STA contract generally sets the tone for the others and will likely be the first to be completed. Both the district and the STA are in the data gathering phases of the process and the first proposals will be exchanged no later than February 15, 2016. Face to face meetings will follow. Josefsberg noted that this process, by statute, is not intended to be transparent. Until an agreement is reached, the public will know "little more than good faith negotiations are continuing" balancing the issue of cost containment with compensation and benefit packages that allow Scarsdale to attract and retain the best teachers in the field.

Jerry Crisci, Director of Instructional Technology, provided an update on the roll out of the new district website. He discussed the processes used to develop the new site (user focus groups, studying other district sites) and some of the guiding principles behind the design (Maroon color scheme, Scarsdale seal, preference for a classic look with modern design). He showed a mock-up of the page that has been agreed upon to date. The new design allows for more categories of information accessible from the front page (such as quick links, upcoming events, headlines, popular links, calendars, etc.). He also discussed how the new page will be linked with social media accounts so that Facebook could draw more users to the website and the site could send information to Twitter. Many hundreds of pages of site content are also being updated as part of this roll out. The website design team is also looking at where information is located within the site and received a lot of feedback from the parent focus groups on how the information should be organized. Crisci would still like to receive feedback from the community on the design and to that end he will be posting a link on the district webpage with a screen shot of the latest version of new design and an area for comments. The current plan is to finalize the design this month and launch the site in the November/December timeframe. There will also be a mobile app launched in December.

Finally, Stuart Mattey, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Facilities, discussed the status of December 2014 bond projects and planning for future bond projects. As previously reported, the plans for the 2014 bond projects have been submitted to the State Education Department (SED) for approval as required. Unfortunately, SED is very backlogged and the latest update is that they are requiring 11 months on average to approve projects. The Board of Education intends to use all available avenues of advocacy to obtain approval as quickly as possible. However, there is a real possibility that the construction timeline will be delayed and that costs will increase as a result of inflation if the project is not approved until the spring when the district hoped to already be going to bid.

While the projects await SED approval, the construction committee is preparing for the bidding process and met on October 5 to review updated estimates to be used for the final bid plan. The bid plan estimates are currently $3 million more than initial cost estimates. Although it is not uncommon for the bid plan amount to exceed the original design estimate, Mattey said this variance was higher than expected. At this stage, the bid plan is still being fine-tuned by the architects and engineers. They are tightening estimates and will work on suggestions and options to decrease the variance amount. The next building committee meeting will convene in 4-6 weeks and updated information and estimates will be provided after that meeting. District spending on these projects is not allowed to exceed the original amount authorized by voters. Therefore, some items that may have been part of the original base bid plan may need to be shifted to a list of alternates.

Finally, Mattey discussed future bond projects. The District commenced planning for new projects based upon known and projected needs of aging facilities with a planned community bond vote in May 2017. There is a retirement of debt in 2019-20 that allows for the opportunity to borrow funds in support of a major district wide project. Current estimates show an amount up to $62.2 million could be financed to support major facilities work without additional tax property growth. Input for selecting projects will include the building condition surveys currently underway. It was also decided that a master plan for the fields be incorporated in the overall facilities needs assessment. Building level committees will be formed to provide input to decision making.

The recently reconvened Greenacres building committee will be working on recommendations for the Greenacres School. The planning timeline associated with this bond is highlighted above in a chart from Mattey's presentation. It shows the Board of Education receiving formal recommendations from building committees in May 2016 (earlier for Greenacres) at which time they will turn the process over to a District Wide Steering Committee to prioritize needs and make recommendations back to the Board at the end of 2016. There will be public forums with the first set planned for the January/February 2016 timeframe. Under this timeline, any construction financed by a voter approved bond issuance would commence in the summer of 2019.

The entire October 7 meeting can be viewed at the Scarsdale School's Video on Demand site. The next Board of Education meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 19.