Brian Moritz - Fairport BOE

TONIGHT! It's our last meeting/workshop of the school year! Here's your three things:
1. We’ll be reflecting on the work the district has done to prepare for next year’s consolidation and time change.

2. At our workshop, we’ll be getting an update on the latest building condition survey and on the district’s long-term facilities plans.

3. Since it's the last board meeting of the school year, we’ll be celebrating our honor graduates, our spring scholar athletes and more.

Join us at FHS or online! Workshop at 5 p.m., meeting at 7 p.m.

Last month, New York State (finally) passed its budget! Here's what it means for schools like Fairport:

1. An increase in Foundation Aid (minimum of 2%).
2. Tweaks to the Foundation Aid formula to give districts more support for English language learner students (ELL), among others.
3. A huge increase in funding for UPK programs.
4. A five-year delay on the Zero-Emission Bus Mandate.

These are all HUGE wins for schools! Thank you to the work of New York State School Boards Association and the Monroe County School Boards Association (shout out Karen Hatch), and to Jen Lunsford and Senator Samra Brouk for being such incredible supporters of public education.

And thank YOU for voting for school boards and lawmakers who support public education!

Happy Pride, Fairport!

As we head into the first weekend in June, we wish our community a happy Pride month! 😎 🌞

Absolutely one of the best nights of the year in Fairport. Thank you Fairport-Perinton Dollars for Scholars for raising so much money to support our students, and congrats to all of our amazing grads-to-be!

Meeting and workshop TONIGHT! Join us at 5 p.m. for the workshop, 7 p.m. for the business meeting. We're at FHS or on YouTube.

Three things on the agendas:
1. We're getting an update from our school improvement team, and will learn about collaborative work our administrators and teachers are doing to improve grading and homework policies.

2. We're learning where things are with construction at the high school, how things are going on the new track (with a potential big upgrade), and construction plans moving forward for our middle and elementary schools.

3. We are voting on and welcoming a rising sophomore who will be one of our two student ex-officio members next year.

Questions? Ask away! I'll do my best to direct you to the people who can answer.

BIG NEWS FROM ALBANY!

The education portion of the state budget has passed. There's a 2% increase in Foundation Aid, an increase in funding for UPK programs, and a five-year extension on the zero-emission bus mandate.

More to come, but thanks to Jen Lunsford and Senator Samra Brouk for being incredible supporters of public education and our schools!

Today we passed the ELFA bill, which primarily focuses on education and housing funding. As always, I am going to give you updates but I am going to try to sort it by topic rather than bill, as we have a fair number of issues combined with others across various bills. The Education budget this year fully funds the Foundation Aid formula, plus a 2% hold harmless ensuring that every district receives a minimum of a 2% increase. It also includes a boost within the formula for per pupil funding relating to numbers of English Language Learners and Homeless students. There is also a substantial increase in Universal Pre-K funding to $10,000 per student (or your foundation aid rate, whichever is higher), which will allow us to roll out UPK across every district by 2028.

There has also been a delay to the zero-emission bus mandate, which was scheduled to go into full effect next year. Under this delay, schools will have an additional 5 years to plan for the transition, and we, at the state and local levels, will be able to better build out the grid infrastructure we need to support the onboarding of bus charging stations. A major issue in the adoption of this policy was the availability of the buses themselves. The manufacturing pipeline for EV buses has been backlogged due to supply chain issues that have never caught up to demand. Federal changes in rebates and renewable energy policy have also contributed to the challenges associated with the adoption of this policy. We hope that the coming years will provide us with more opportunity to address these challenges.

And just like we did with the Science of Reading, we are directing the State Education Department to establish back to basics best practices for elementary school math. There are many other items in this bill which I will highlight in other posts.

Once again, Fairport SHOWED UP! The budget passed with wonderful community support, and we are lucky to have Erica Belois-Pacer, Lisa Christensen and Peter Forsgren on the Board of Education for three years. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!