Dugan and Brown to Lead Scarsdale Board of Education

Jim Dugan is the new President of the Scarsdale School BoardWhile Scarsdale students may have just officially started their summer vacations earlier in the week, the Board of Education has already held their first meeting of the 2025-2026 school year! Though the meeting, held on the morning of July 1st, included usual business matters such as member and cabinet updates, perhaps some of the most noteworthy moments took place during the annual Organizational Meeting and the swearing in of new members.

New Leadership

In exciting news the Board elected Jim Dugan as President and Colleen Brown as Vice President for the 2025-2026 school year. In nominating Dugan for President, Brown shared, “Jim Dugan has been an integral member of the Board for the past four years. His ability to bring thoughtful and insightful perspective to every Board discussion has been invaluable in helping us advance our district strategic plan.” And in Brown’s nomination, BOE member Amber Yusef related, “Colleen Brown uses her experience in training as an educator to advance the initiatives the Scarsdale School District in support of our students…Colleen consistently focuses on the needs of our students and our district and Board will be well served by her leadership.”

In addition to these elections, the Board also welcomed its newest Board members starting with Laura Liu who is embarking on her first term. The Board also welcomed its two, new ex officio student Board members Anish Mehta and Lucy Eisenberg. Though having student members of the BOE is a newly adopted policy, Mehta, a rising senior at SHS and Eisenberg, a rising junior, proved in their first meeting that they will contribute an important and valuable perspective.Colleen Brown is the Vice President of the Scarsdale School Board

New Hires

In related news, during her Personnel Report, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, Meghan Troy introduced new faculty appointments including:

Christa Canfield who will be teaching 4th grade at Greenacres Elementary School.

Tamara Barbour will be joining us as an elementary PE teacher at Heathcote School.

Lauren Smith will join Edgewood as a 4th grade classroom teacher.

Matthew Suffern as a music teacher at the elementary level. Mr. Suffern will primarily be an orchestra teacher but will also provide instruction for our band students. He will be assigned to Fox Meadow, Greenacres, and Heathcote Elementary Schools.

Deborah Zides will be joining Scarsdale Middle School as a school psychologist.

Michael Berkowitz will be joining Scarsdale Middle School as a special education teacher.

Katherine Constan will be joining Scarsdale High School as a special education teacher.

Madeline Hyde, will be joining Quaker Ridge as a kindergarten teacher.

Bradley Magnusson as a leave replacement in the area of special education. He will be assigned to Scarsdale Middle School.

Nick Ferraro as the new Director of Facilities.

Congratulations to the Grads

Other highlights of the meeting included a heartfelt congratulations to this year’s graduating students. New BOE President Jim Dugan shared, “Class of 2025 you really deserve all the accolades that came to you and that will come to you. You've worked so hard, grown so much as people and as lifelong learners from your time here at Scarsdale and you are now well prepared to take the next step in your lives and to succeed as you move forward towards your life goals, whatever they may be, even if you're still trying to figure that out, whatever you do next. We wish you all the very best, and congratulations to all our fifth and eighth grade students who have moved up.”

Among other endearing sentiments, Dr. Patrick added, “And I also want to add my congratulations to the 2025, Scarsdale High School graduates and recognize the work and dedication of the high school faculty, staff and administration for really providing an amazing graduation experience for our students.”

To read more about the graduation ceremonies see here.

Girl Scout Gold Award

In her update, BOE member Suzie Hahn celebrated Samantha Levine, a Scarsdale High School senior, who was recently awarded the “Girl Scout Gold Award” the highest award in Girl Scouting that acknowledges the scout’s time, effort, leadership and creativity in designing and completing a sustainable service project that fulfills a need within the community, creates change and continues forward. Hahn reported that at the ceremony, “Dr. Patrick congratulated the young women who achieved this distinction and presented Samantha Levine with a certificate of recognition of her Gold Star achievement for her project called “Simply Cooking with Sam.” Levine’s project created recipes in English and Spanish to support Food Pantry recipients who receive free food but do not know how to make simple, healthy, fast meals with the ingredients found in food pantries.”

Reveal Math

New Vice President of the BOE Colleen Brown also shared an update about the Reveal Math Coffee Morning. As she related, “This event was thoughtfully designed to address concerns raised by our community regarding the Reveal Math program, while also providing insight into the curriculum and collecting additional feedback to help move the program forward in a way that supports all of our students' mathematical learning needs. The session began with the hands-on learning stations led by our own teachers. These stations allowed us to engage directly with the curriculum, experiencing firsthand what our students encounter in the classroom. It also provided the opportunity to hear from teachers across all five elementary schools about their experiences with Reveal Math. Following stations, there was a brief presentation highlighting the specific concerns voiced by the community and outlining the District's plan to address them. This includes targeted summer work, fluency assessments, and supplemental material to strengthen the current curriculum. The event concluded with an interactive, feedback session where parents met in small groups with District staff, Board of Education members, Math Department coordinators and teachers. These small group discussions created space for honest, candid feedback that will be used to guide the District summer work and ensure we are meeting the needs of all learners, helping them grow and thrive in the field of mathematics. I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Edgar and his math team for organizing this thoughtful event. I'd also like to thank the District Cabinet members and all the teachers who took time out of their busy day to help deepen our understanding of this curriculum. It is clear that this coffee demonstrated the District's commitment to transparency and strong partnerships with our community. Together, we can continue to support our students as they learn, grow and thrive.”

Later in the meeting when the Board discussed Action Items, Dr. Patrick added his own description of Reveal Math when he provided background information and a proposal for renewing the contract with McGraw-Hill’s Reveal Math for three years. Patrick explained, “Reveal Math was chosen for its balanced approach to conceptual understanding, procedural fluency and problem solving, which supports the evolving needs of our students and aligns with the Next Gen math standards. In choosing to use Reveal tools, we're part of a diverse network of international educators, from Dover, Massachusetts to the International Community School in Singapore and many, many school districts, public and private across the world. This recommendation is the result of careful evaluation of both Reveal Math strength and areas that they need to improve, as well as a commitment to using these insights to guide ongoing professional development, curriculum adjustments, and targeted supplements from non Reveal materials.”

Patrick went on to say, “We're going to continue to use other select resources and publishers beyond Reveal, as we've discussed, and to make Scarsdale specific revisions as necessary. In fact, our elementary math coordinators and elementary teachers have already met once this summer to begin work toward the Fact Fluency benchmarking that we discussed both at the Coffee and at our last meeting. So our goal is to ensure that our instructional materials remain effective and adaptable, helping all of our students develop math fact fluency skills, confidence, and joy in learning math. We really do value the feedback we've received over the course of this year from educators, families, administrators, students, Board members and through various assessments of student learning. We've also shared direct feedback with McGraw Hill about concerns about some of their materials. Some of that feedback has led to immediate changes in their digital resources, (obviously, those move faster than the print in terms of making changes), while other suggestions are being considered for future print updates. By extending our partnership with Reveal Math, we will continue to offer engaging, rigorous math experiences and emphasize essential content, foster deeper conceptual understanding and promote real world applications. We remain dedicated to being responsive using evidence based approaches and informed by research and input from our community, and we welcome ongoing feedback as we work to meet the needs of each of our learners.”

In an update about Safety, Security, and Emergency Management, Mr. Eric Rauschenbach reported that this summer, the District will commence work on the “Door Ajar Sensors” and will be able to put in at least some of the priority doors in each of our schools across the district.

Tax Credits for EV Buses in Question

Assistant Superintendent for Business, Andrew Lennon, also provided an update having to do with the purchase of three new EV buses and his concerns about the EPA grant funding. He related, “The purchase for those buses was using EPA grant funding, District budget resources, as well as the presumption that we would be eligible for some federal tax credits. Given the current market environment, [My team] has concerns about whether we can rely on the federal tax rebates in order to continue to move forward with the program of electrification of our fleet. We've released a purchase order for two of the three busses, which keep us within our budget threshold, and we are continuing to investigate whether or not the federal tax rebates will make its way through the big, beautiful bill that is on debate at the Capitol at the moment, if that bill does lead us to believe that we will be eligible for those credits, we will continue with the third purchase and make sure that we have that third bus in the in the current year budget. If it does not, we will have to update the port on our status of the four total buses that we have EPA funding for.”

Lennon further shared, “Also included in the budget was the eight year lease approval for the EV bus charging infrastructure lease agreement. I am continuing to negotiate with Highland Electric Fleets regarding the terms and conditions of that, as well as fine tune the presumed design information so that we understand both if this agreement continues to make business sense for us, and if it provides us the flexibility we need to be responsive to either the changing landscape of EV buses or our District's ability to go it alone and continue to roll out the EV buses, but not having to partner with outside groups.”

While there were no Public Comments made at this first meeting of the 2025-2026 school year, there was a lot of other information discussed and shared. Watch the meeting in its entirety here.