The Roslyn Board of Education (BOE) held its last meeting of the fiscal year on June 27. The meeting began with President Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy thanking the board members for their dedication and hard work this school year.
“Thank you to everyone for a wonderful school year and for everything you’ve done to make it as successful as it was,” said Ben-Levy. “We have built an incredible organization and everybody that is part of it should feel as proud as I do.”
Allison Brown superintendent of schools, said, “I would just like to thank the board of education for directing us about what needs to be done and on behalf of all the administrators and teachers, thank you, because this is where it starts.”
Also briefly discussed was the fund balance, according to members of the board, this year ended with a surplus of revenues for the amount of approximately $6.9 million. This surplus will allow the district to fully fund its capital reserve funds, one for $2 million and one for $3 million, as well as set aside money for the teachers retirement reserve, the pension reserve fund and the workers compensation fund if necessary.
A college admissions report was then given by the director of guidance, Greg Wasserman. According to the presentation, Roslyn’s SAT and ACT scores have been above the national average for the past several years. Roslyn also out performs the national average for acceptances to many ivy-league schools. For example, the 2019 average acceptance rate for SUNY Binghamton is 40 percent, compared to 76 percent at Roslyn. Out of 130 students who applied, 99 were accepted. This data was compared with a neighboring school district. The results found that comparatively, Roslyn had a better acceptance rate with 24 ivy-league schools and the neighboring school had a better acceptance rate with seven schools.
Wasserman also went over initiatives that the guidance department hopes to implement for the upcoming 2019-20 school year. Some of the initiatives discussed were offering a mock admissions program by partnering with college representatives, early college and career programming at Roslyn Middle school to get the children thinking about their future career path and what they are interested in, as well as having all juniors complete the Common Application prior to the end of the school year.
Further information about the college admissions report can be viewed at www.roslynschools.org under the “counseling center” tab.
The meeting then concluded with a re-evaluation of the proposals for the new playgrounds at the Harbor Hill and the Heights Schools. During the last meeting, some members of the board had concerns regarding the heights on some of the playground equipment. BBS Architects, the company working to create the new equipment, provided new renderings with the heights of each piece of equipment, as well as photos of playground sets that currently exist.
A copy of the cost estimate and renderings for the playground equipment can also be found on the Roslyn school website under “capital projects” at the bottom of the web page.
The next board of education meeting will be on Sept. 5 at 8 p.m. at Roslyn High School.
