This week, the Board passed the revised budget for 2026. In all my years in office, both in this role and on the Eastchester Board of Education, I don't remember a time when the budget presented such a challenge. We were asked to weigh competing needs, protect core services, and keep taxpayers in mind while navigating economic pressures created by outside forces. Even with those challenges, I am proud to share that we worked together to bring the proposed tax levy down from 5.27% to 3.7%. While still not ideal, it is a reduction of more than 1.5% from where we started, and it reflects days and nights of negotiation, analysis, and genuine collaboration among the Board, the Executive office, and the dedicated staff who worked to find responsible ways to do more with less. We also fought to restore some funding to many of our private partners – community-based and non-profit organizations. The original proposed budget would have cut 70% from those programs. We were to bring ba...