As the temperatures start to cool, the Floral Park-Bellrose School District will hold a bond vote to address its failing heating system.

Lisa Ruiz, interim superintendent of the school district, discussed its necessary facility upgrades, such as the heating system, at the Board of Education meeting last Thursday. She said the system is old and has broken down several times throughout the years.

“We are spending a lot of money to repair and maintain this failing and aging infrastructure for our heating system,” Ruiz said, “so it’s something that needs our immediate attention.”

Ruiz said if the heating system fails one day and if it’s freezing in the schools, students will not be able to go to class. Thus, the school administration has been working with the Board of Education to start a heating conversion project.

Ruiz said some of the equipment in the heating system has reached the end of  its life and other parts are no longer produced. Some parts, she said, will eventually reach a point where the piping and the system itself are beyond repair.

“So the time has come to move forward with this bond,” Ruiz said.

The bond referendum planning timeline for the heating project starts in September and ends in January. Discussions on the details of the cost and what exactly the bond will cover will be revealed within the next few months.

Board of Education and our community and we hope that community members will join in person or on Zoom so that you can learn more about it,” Ruiz said. “Each month we have a schedule of presentations that we’ll be offering and the most important thing is we want you to come and ask questions because we want you to be an informed voter when this comes forward.”

In September, the district will form a facilities committee, open to any community member or parent, to gather input from the community on what’s gone wrong, the components of the aging system, and the plans for repairing and upgrading the system.

The board will adopt the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the first resolution required as part of the bond process, in October.

“It’s an environmental resolution that has to be passed by law as part of any bond process,” Ruiz said.

In November, the board will adopt the resolution for the bond referendum.

The bond vote is scheduled for Jan. 28, 2024.

“So we will be busy for the next five months, planning for this bond.”

This bond vote is a small part of a larger “five-year strategic plan” that the district announced on Sept. 12. This plan is a guiding document that clarifies the district’s goals, priorities, and desired outcomes from 2024 to 2029. It will also help the district set policies that align with community expectations and goals.

“It’s a process in determining what the district will look like in X number of years and in our case it’s a five-year plan,” Ruiz said.

A committee of about 30 people worked on this plan. The committee met with Battelle for Kids, a national not-for-profit organization focused on giving educators the tools needed to offer future-ready, deeper learning experiences. The organization conducted a review of the current state of the district based on various forms of data, such as performance, student achievement, student and community data, a staff retrospective and financial data.

“So we presented a summary report back in November of all this data for the committee to look at and that became at least the majority of the basis for forming the plan,” Ruiz said.

After meeting with the community six times from October to May at their Futures Collab event, the committee identified specific areas to prioritize in the plan. The committee came up with four main goals in their plan, which are fostering culture and communication; fostering success and opportunities for all; fostering exploration and innovation; and maximizing resources. Ruiz said these ideas became the anchor for the rest of the work.

This plan will be the cornerstone of the district’s budget development process each year and will be referenced when the Board of Education develops action plans. Each September, the administration will present its progress toward the strategic plan to the Board of Education and the community. To view the strategic plan, visit TinyURL.com/442esbcx.