As per Public Officers Law, Article 7, § 103-a (Videoconferencing by public bodies) although board members Amanda Wolkowitz, Geena Kuriakose, George Winn, Heba Nassef-Gore, Laurel Gyimesi, Maria Casale, Mark Harmon-Vaught and Rose Kerr are not present in-person for this meeting, they are attending via videoconference from locations posted on the public meeting notice/agenda and open to the public; they are therefore considered to be in attendance for purposes of quorum and are permitted to vote. QUORUM IS MET FOR THIS MEETING.

L. Gyimesi addressed the board members to say that this emergency meeting was called because of recent events concerning bank failures and the volatile bank crisis; fortunately E.D. Tim Castanza had his eye on the situation and he made a directive to move school funds from Signature Bank to another bank; the Finance Committee met to discuss what was happening and what to do about the money and that will be a continuing conversation. At this point we are transferring the funds to Northfield Savings Bank, but since that is also a small bank, we don't feel comfortable leaving a large amount of funds there in one account. In order to protect the funds against further risk, we would like to create 4 accounts in top tier banks. Those banks require a letter of authority signed by the Board President, L. Gyimesi on behalf of the Board of Trustees to allow Executive Director Tim Castanza to open accounts in 4 different banks: Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. We believe it is appropriate to move the funds into places with less risk, large banking and investment groups to make sure our money is diversified and protected in FDIC insured accounts during this banking crisis. 

The purpose of tonight's meeting is to obtain approval from the board to allow L. Gyimesi to sign the letters of authority. 

She then opened the floor to any questions.

M. Harmon-Vaught asked if it is our intention to maintain these accounts at levels at or below the threshold for FDIC insurance ($250,000 or less). L. Gyimesi said yes, that is the intention; these large banks have methods like laddering that would spread out the funds at different levels under different accounts, all of which would be under the FDIC insurance threshold. We are leaving some funds at Signature Bank to cover payroll and checks that have already been written against that account, but we not have any open accounts at Signature Bank over the FDIC threshold. G. Winn said that many local businesses are moving money to the larger banks; we already had a goal of establishing a relationship with one of the larger banks for a while, and this has expedited the movement to do that; the ability to have many different accounts, will take a little time to accomplish as we move some funds out of Northfield Bank; Chase Bank will have our operating accounts and we will have a high level of service from Chase; the head of non-profit banking for Staten Island is our representative at Chase and both Tim Castanza and Josh Moreau of BoostEd had good conversations with our Chase representative. The payroll is ready to be run and we have enough funds in our Northfield account to cover payroll and the outstanding wires and checks. So we are OK to just keep going while we move funds around and he expects that by next week we will be up and running with Chase. Tonight we need to approve the letter of authorization from our board president to allow the executive director to open these accounts. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley offer vehicles for cash management and can ladder CDs in $250,000 increments; we can spread them out over time to maximize returns and keep the funds under FDIC insurance thresholds. We will work with BoostEd to figure out what those accounts should be

L. Gyimesi added that we need to act in due haste because of the volatile situation that the markets are in right now. Our funds will not immediately be covered by FDIC insurance, not until we can move the funds into smaller accounts to protect them at these 4 banks; right now the funds at Northfield Bank are more than the FDIC insurance threshold at least for a few days. She wants to give credit to E.D. T. Castanza for reading the bank failure situation before it blew up.

R. Kerr asked who will be co-signers of the accounts, other than T. Castanza. L. Gyimesi responded that she will be a co-signer with T. Castanza at this time, and G. Kuriakose has agreed to be a signatory at a later point but for now just 2 co-signers make the transfers easier. After the funds are transferred and moved into different accounts, additional signatories can be added.