We would love I know they would love and and the teachers have requested so many of them. Can you please come to our classroom? We simply don't have that capacity to do that. So we had to make some decisions. And the the good news is they really want the support. The leaders want the support, but we can't. Uh, and then look at the secondary, please. Next slide. Again, enormous. There's just not enough staff. But despite that, we continue to see gains, um, stretch growth. We're seeing gap closing growth that's going to help us move the district forward. Um, I I just want to thank everybody back there who's in attendance for all the hard work, the extra hours, the weekends, everything that you do. our schools are better because of you all and in essence really appreciate it.
And so we kind of had a double whammy for a few months there because he was not able to come and do his things. Terry, you really helped us out there. So, that's much appreciated. We get every kind of kid that comes in there. We got some kids that are are good good students. We get some kids that we had one a few years back, fourth grade, and couldn't write their name. Uh, they wrote an X. And so, um, these are parents who are looking for something different for their kids, and that's something we can provide. That student, by the way, uh will be going to Riverbold next year as a sixth seven, excuse me, a seventh grader and is reading and writing and doing great things. So, and it's just a it's a unique atmosphere for kids and it's only for those people who want their kids to have that kind of atmosphere, but it's very successful.
Any questions? Oops. Just one quick question on the uh warehouse uh replacement. So it's only it's being partially funded by measure U right we're getting money from the insurance for for correct just wanted to clarify that. So thank you. Any more questions comments from the board? None. Thank you. Thank you very much for the excellent updates. We shall continue then. Item number 11 is the superintendence report. Dr. Poentes, thank you. Um, just a few reminders. First, uh, openhouse season has begun. So, Lane View has already kicked it off for us by hosting their open house a week ago, and tomorrow there'll be several uh, elementary sites that will have their open houses, and we'll have several others uh, coming up. So, please uh, just take time to review your schedule. if you're able to attend any of those events. I know the community appreciates um that and it's a good opportunity to see how much the students have accomplished and certainly um give gratitude to all of our staff and and greet our parents um and thank them for all the work they do with our kids every day.
We have a motion. I'll make the motion. Second. If there's no discussion, we'll call for all those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Next up, we have the classified resignation of custodian Gonzalez. Mr. President, members of board, Axel Wonalis has submitted his resignation as a custodian to the custodial service manager and superintendent. Recommend the resignation of Axel Gonzalez as a custodian for schools. We have a motion on that. I'll make the motion. I will second it. If there's no discussion, call those in favor say I. I.
they're not getting necessarily the communications from the district itself. You have about 36 total right direction, about 39 total wrong direction. This is down from 49% which we saw in 2020. Um this is not unique to Combmes though I will say. Uh what we're actually seeing is this is a statewide trend that pretty much every district has seen a drop by about 10 points over the last four or five years over the direction. And whether that's attributed to to co to the national media discussion or to any number of factors, this is pretty consistent across the board. Biggest challenge here you'll note is that 50 to 64 range. Again, only 29% of those folks think that the K12 education in general is headed in the right direction. Little bit more optimism among among the 65 and older, but certainly you have about 25% of folks who are being honest.
the um schoolworks evaluators as well as the feedback they received from the teachers um during the feedback sessions really provided evidence that that is a practice that although it is at it at the beginning that it is starting to make traction and making sense. Um one of the things in our staffing plan as you know is that we also are making the shift from non-certified interventionist to certified interventionist. That was another area that came up in the plan. Just quickly, some of the areas that we need to work on in regards to how we're using wind time is making sure that we support our teachers in understanding the um how to implement explicit instruction over reliance on computer-based programs. And then also we need to continue to expand tier 2 interventions and get feedback from our stakeholder groups regarding the current um tier 2 services that we have to support our students both on the academic and behavioral services and then even when we get to more intense services as we look at those tier three supports.
I feel like after the cow is the best time for extra community input at our meetings. I I don't see a problem with the way we have it structured. Right. This does reference Mrs. Harman to the the committee of the whole meetings. So that's that would be my suggestion that if that's what we're thinking that that we move it after discussion. Hold on. I'm literally And then in other otherwise 2150 sounds like it's going to go to later in the day because Katherine may have a rewrite proposal. Is that what I was getting from that? Okay. Look, not in a bad way. Just you have suggestions. It's it's it's complicated. It's very complicated. It's not okay. But what we're discussing this very second is the line the bullet point on the uh third to last page one of three. After quote after board discussion of an agenda item community audience comments are encouraged.
They might be teaching differently but I we walked in and was like okay we knew right what they were focused on in reading or what they were focused on in writing. So you started to see that like you're saying that horizontal connection regardless of what school we were in because they're functioning off of the same curriculum map. Great. Right. And so that keeps them roughly it's like a pacing guide for them. Yeah. Um and then our instructional coaches have been supporting them in their planning time as well to make sure um that they're on pace because that was part of the curriculum map was how many days roughly is this supposed to take to teach? Right. And that's universal now across the district. Awesome. So, we are headed in the right direction, but like anything would change, it takes time. Takes time. Absolutely. Can I say a couple things about reading before you move over to math?
It was this time last year we had a dream of a behavior coach, and here I am one year later. So, I'm really excited. So, our goal being student centered and supporting positive behavior is to implement a sustainable and proactive support program that's grounded in TBRI in Boytown. So overall, our goal is to reduce office level referrals by 30%. And reduce the amount of students that are coming out of class and not able to return. We want at least 85% of our students who become disregulated to have a safe place to regulate and then return to class for learning. So what is the restart program? Well, that's something that we've created as a school. It's meant to be a relationship centered restorative behavioral system that is designed to give students a fresh start. We want them to we want to redirect them. We want to reconnect with them and we want to rebuild the system around.
It's it's having a full-time uh director while having the special ed coordinator position. It's the model we had six years ago. Um and you know, we we gave this a go, but we feel this is the right time again to to switch back. Uh you've heard me say if we had space uh it'd be great to have the prek attached to another building most likely a warren where the principle of that building uh becomes the principle of the prek as well. So, u it's it's it's part of we we're acknowledging $75,000 within the operating budget and the other 25 would come from the revolving account from tuition paying students. Mendes, we just talked about this full-time band teacher. And I don't want to blavorver the point, but the folks in Ashlin, you get your money's worth. I mean, that's the bottom line. We're at $16,239 uh per pupil.
So, if I may clarify, uh, this is where if we could go to the chart. Sure. Because when you look and see, we we have this planned out for two years for FY25 and into FY26. When you look at the funds that are available out of those accounts that you listed, those are the primary revolving accounts that we have available to us. We are reducing our available balance of all those funds by 27%. Okay, starting. So yes, there it is the balance that every organization, a school district, municipality has to do. It's no different than hearing what the mayor is saying about the fact that as she released her budget book, they are not using stabilization or free cash for FY26. We are using planning to use for FY26 $2.2 million of of reserves already available to us. We're reducing the funds we have available to us in neighbor 27% from what we're starting 25 with to what it is that we're projecting to use for FY26.
Is that over? What happened? Oh, for the kids lip. Yeah. No, we're grinding those kids right away. It's wonderful. Um, yeah, we So, they're toughing it out. No. So, what we listen um they would have gotten absolutely destroyed if we sent them to the competition in January. So, what we said is like, listen, we're going to we're going to build you up over the course of a year. And they've been coming. They're meeting with us once a week, and we're just setting them on on tasks. We had a set of book clubs. We rotated that around for six weeks. uh Ron uh Jackie Reutder and myself, Ron DeFazio, Jackie Reutder, fifth grade ELA teacher and myself um put together a Google classroom. We got a whole list of fables, fairy tales, um and nursery rhymes because there, you know, they I mean when they talk like lit quiz, it's everything.
So that's that accounts for the discrepancy of those. Anyone else have any questions or comments about this bid waiver? All those in favor of the motion say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? Abstaining. All right, on to the fiscal year 25 board of bid budget commitment to the finance committee for towards the fiscal year 2026 budget. Um I believe we mentioned earlier that we are suggesting 150. So, I guess could we have a motion to commit $150,000 to the finance committee from the fiscical year 25 budget savings toward the fiscal year 26 budget, please?
We appreciate you taking your time this evening and your ongoing collaboration with us. Um, so on behalf of uh Dr. Dr. Casemiro, I'm going to do the superintendent reports and update this evening and ask a few members of the cabinet team to uh support with that. Uh Dr. Casemiro is attending a conference in Washington DC for uh the bar grant that we received, which is why she's not here this evening. Uh the first item that I'd like to review for the superintendent's update is um a need to change one of our June board of education meetings. Um the meeting is scheduled for June 11th. It's a regular board of ed education meeting and we are asking that the board move that meeting to June 10th. Um the reason for that is um that now we are kind of beyond the snow day season. We are able [Music] Um, thank you.
So on that um if you have any questions we're happy to answer it. I have a question not a question but a comment um based on what Mark Gab is briefed on on the u math uh more words than word problems than just numbers. I think um it's something to think about for the future as you're talking about statistics or numbers to see in the progression of it. I would like to to see somewhere down the road what a transition between that instrument instructional in the classroom to where how well they do in SATs because when you take the SATs the math portion of it is is what you're teaching right now. That's exactly and I would like to see how transition into that and see if it is working. It's a great point. We'd love to share that when that time comes in a few years.
Again, our goal is to turn out good kids, responsible kids, kids who know that they matter. Um, our teacher was absolutely outstanding at doing that. She created such strong individuals that when they had to get the bad news, they really just leaned on each other. It was the counselor said, "I've never seen anything like this." Um, it's a magical place. It really is. And we'd like to continue operating. Um, because I know I was sitting where Michelle's sitting. You can't you can't solve every kid's problems and because of just the size of what you're working with when you got 13 you can really work on some issues for kids.
In addition, I just want to again uh say thank you to all of our parents and community members that supported our career days this past month. uh they were pretty phenomenal and we are also having a career day at the elementary level. I saw had the chance to attend Lane View's career day and so just appreciate um the volunteer time that our parents and community members have given to share uh their career paths with our students and a big shout out to our counselors um at the middle schools and our principles who um help coordinate those events along with their um PTAs that support breakfast and and lunchons and all of those good things. Um, and then also we have our upcoming spring break. This has been a very delayed spring break. It's a late one this year. So, our schools will be closed from Friday, April 18th through uh the 27th.
Any opposed? Motion carries four to zero. Next up, we have the classified resignation of school board. Mr. President, members of the board, Jesine has submitted her resignation as a school nurse to the principal and the superintendent. Recommend the resignation of Jesine as the school nurse for office schools. I will make a motion. And I point, you know, since she's been school nurse, the responses by the ambulance to the school have gone to zero. Before in previous years, we we were going to put a station here, right? That's how often we were here. So, she's really done a from what I can see a really good job, right? I mean, she's really done a good job. So, so losing her is is going to be a big deal for the I think for the school and to replace her. So, I'll have to vote to again if there's any further discussion and I will call for the vote.
You know, they didn't have kids at home. They didn't know and so they don't know. So there's an opportunity for improvement here about uh the way they think things are going, but it just does speak a little bit of about pessimism in the environment right now. So we then ask, in general, would you say the funding schools in your community or in your area receive is too low, too high, or just about right? 51% over half of respondents believe it's too low. Um only 22% think it's just about right. Only 7% think it's too high. And 19% don't know. the folks who have kids at home, and that's that bottom section there, 62% think it's too low. Those who do not have kids at home are slightly less inclined to believe it's too low. But overall, um, you can see in general, uh, it's down slightly from 57% in 2020, but the vast majority of the electorate still believes that schools remain underfunded.
Um the last finding I believe the last nope second to last um the other finding in this one is that we provide some enrichment opportunities for our accelerated learners. I know I've had board members have conversations with me as well as other um parents is that we right now don't do not have consistency in the way we're providing gifted education. Now I do want to take a time out and say we have amazing gifted education teachers in our building. We as a district have not given them clear expectations. The same conversation we had around classroom poor instruction is the same conversations that Miss Rivera has already been having with the gifted teachers about what does gifted programming look like across the district so we can make sure that we have equitable practices when we think about those students in that blue area of the diamond.