Uh and typically uh what we did is we did a 5-year lease purchase on our buses uh annual payments in advance, which meant that we would uh pay the first year upon delivery of the bus uh and then finance the other four years. So, you're really financing only four of the five years. Uh and uh it uh it made the most sense because we would uh start uh turning our buses over usually at uh 8 years old, 9 years old uh when they uh and they still had some residual value at that point uh for trade in. >> Any additional questions? Yeah, superintendent. >> Um, Rich, you talked about 10 passenger vans and maybe my assumption might be those might be like the Ford Transit vans, some type of scenario in that. Um, what's the availability of actually purchasing those? It's my understanding Amazon's buying all of them and they're pretty tough to do and and could you just talk about that and also um I I got what you said that you don't really change things for busing as because of support and kind of talking about the two-tier thing but um have you have any experience with districts doing three tiers like some many places will do three runs if that was to happen would there be a potential cost savings as well?
Uh not a good necessarily a good practice to split elementary tier time uh because you could have a tier for the high school you could have a tier for the middle school but it's the elementary school's loading that drives the number of buses that you that you you have and and you need. And just going back and is there a availability of those 10 passenger vans on the market? Post COVID you couldn't buy a 10 passenger van in this country uh if uh regardless how much you wanted to pay uh but today uh they're available. Uh it's about a a 6 to to 8 month delivery time ordering new uh but I've seen enough of them sitting around in in parking lots uh and yes they're Ford uh Ford Transit vans. Uh they're not cheap uh compared to a a Voyager or a uh you know some of the other seven passenger vans.
Martin Luther King program at our church. The band was fabulous. The jazz band just showed showed showed out. And the people are still asking me are we going to have them back next year? And I said, I can't answer that because, you know, the pastor makes the decision as who puts that program together. But I just want to personally thank uh the band director and the jazz director and they brought like I think it was 18 or 20 young people and they were really nice and respectable and they enjoyed themselves. We feed them before the program, and they act just like they were at home. So, I really want to thank the band director and the bus company, Kelly, for making a connection with me and making sure cuz we had that canceled in January because of the weather, and just making sure that the kids uh arrived at our church and and arrived back home at the particular time that they need to be back home.
So appreciate that. Thank you for >> Thank you. >> putting I know that takes a lot of work to make complex simple. So appreciate the effort. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. I'm a I like doing graphic design, so I actually was really admiring all the all the new upgrades you did. That was really fun. I have a couple of questions for you. Um I've recently visited Summerdale and I'm happy that you mentioned the storage for the portables. Um the teacher showed me their classroom and I was like, "Oh yeah, it's kind of a lot in here." And I'm I'm just curious. Um I was trying to look through the um timelines, but I wasn't sure if you had a timeline kind of set for um that project specifically. I know it's out to bid right now, but do you have like an estimate? >> If we're out to bid now, our goal is probably to be by the beginning of next school year.
So I'm not going to read all of them, but I do want to highlight a couple things. Um, we are a district that is declining in enrollment. We're in our second year of decline, and as we look at our cohorts going forward, that is continuing. So, we're looking at a decrease of about 131 kids um next year, and then about 160 after that. Um, we do right now have cola estimates for next year. There's still two more data points um that we'll need for the 2026-2027 year, um which we'll get in May to know exactly what that cola will be for next year. Right now, it's 2.41%. Um, we always do take into account savings for staff. We realize that our very seasoned tenured staff cost more than typically than when we hire newer staff. So, we do take that into account. Um, we do have an expansion of two additional special ed classes next year.
The school signed off. You were student standing and all those things. Yeah. An employer you had to wait. Yep. >> You still have to sign if somebody wants to build a house. >> I still do. Yep. Here in Clinton County. >> You do? >> Yep. If somebody wants to build I probably signed I don't know five or six. >> Really? >> Yep. In my couple years here. >> So you can say no. I don't know. But I guess I'm like, I don't like the color of your house. I'm like, nope, not until you change it. You know, >> we see that kitchen layout again. >> It's it's not a architecture. It's just a plot plan that they're going to build it here. I mean, I and I don't remember there was like I asked one day, >> I don't know, there's four or five different signatures they had to have.
We have in my opinion way more split homes than we used to. And so knowing from teacher um if we see certain things out of a student that they were you know with dad that weekend or with mom that weekend and that's not their normal environment. I think that that's a normal um a thing that that we do every day now. um just knowing those indicators and those behaviors and knowing we might see a different version of Johnny or Sally today because of what their environment was the weekend before. So just very complex. I also think there's a lot of things that happen outside of school that then we see the ramifications of inside the school day um or are expected to handle um or friends are mad at each other because of something that happened you know during sports or at the park or wherever and we have to deal with um you know what happens then at school or be on standby on watch to see if that's going to escalate again.
Right. So, Mark to your point, you know, the the 13 um 0.2 positions that are that will be reduced no matter what in any budget scenario we have. These 13.2 positions will be reduced and eliminated from the actual public schools budget. What I'm saying to this community is listen, we looked at our entire budget and said we can make some adjustments. And what we're truly asking you for that 2.75 is an operational override is critically important to fixing the structural deficit moving forward. That's what I'm trying to do here. I'm not trying to I'm not asking this community to give us $2.75 million more over my budget to add things. There's no adding. It's all eliminating even with a $2.75 million override. Okay? I can't emphasize that enough. And I'll just say my party line and you have 10% of on grant funding which we know could be at risk since we had a $100,000 position just taken away from that grant funding this week.
>> Let me go back to the the first question first. Um, you know, it typically when you when you uh look at at at purchasing vehicles, uh uh the idea is uh to uh uh take the bumps out of the road in your budget from year to year. Uh and lease purchasing allows you to to do that. Uh with regard to multi-ter systems, we we do those kinds of studies a lot. Uh people ask us, does it make sense to to go from a three- tier system to a two-tier system? uh uh in your case uh if you went to a uh a three- tier system, you would end up having some of your elementary schools on a different tier than your than all of the elementarymentaries. Uh not a good necessarily a good practice to split elementary tier time. Uh because you could have a tier for the high school, you could have a tier for the middle school, but it's the elementary school's loading that drives the number of buses that you that you you have and and you need.
Uh but they're built on a on a truck frame as opposed to a car frame. They'll run 10 years uh relatively easy uh and we look around at Vanpool uh Vanpool is using them almost exclusively now in terms of how they're replacing their fleet. Uh and uh they have a they have good reliability. This wasn't something that we asked you to look at in this study but it is something that I know residents might be curious about. What's the deal with electric buses and the potential for that? I I know I hear you Matt. I'm not necessarily asking this because I am gung-ho about the idea but I I would be remiss if I didn't raise the question. Um you know I I have seen in other larger more compact districts um that they can be really like they can be done well um and that they can be a useful useful tool and because sustainability is something that is important to the larger Greenfield community, I feel like I must ask.
And I want to thank our superintendent for helping making the arrangements for the band to come. They have been coming, I think, for the last 10 or 12 years, and they donate that bus to us, and we really appreciate it. And I want to thank our associate superintendent, that's not here tonight, for also attending. And we had wall-to-wall people at that affair. And again, thank you. Lastly, I want to thank the uh NEA and the um racial ethnic committee of the NAA for presenting me with a beautiful plaque and a dinner on uh February February the 26th, and it was beautiful. And I want to thank them for taking time out, recognizing me, and giving me the honor. And I just loved it. Thank you. Thank you, Gladys. Minnie? Yes, so I did get a chance to go to a few schools, and some of them just were canceled because of the snow.
>> Beginning of next school year. Okay, sounds good. And also the um construction was also really cool to Thank you for the photos. That was really, really fun to see. >> All right, any other questions or comments? All right, thank you always for the great presentation. All right, so we're going to go back to um 10D, Measure U, Independent Citizens Bond Oversight Committee annual report from Frank. >> Good evening, Madame President and Board of Trustees, Dr. apprenticees and staff and a citizen of Beressa. My name is Franken Sulla. I'm the current chair. I know this a little bit different but I'm I have a little bit Oh, thank you. Just going to do a little introduction so that uh for the people that might not know. Uh again, my name is Frank Canel. I'm the current chair of the citizen bond of oversight committee for the measure U.
I believe both will be at the junior high. Um, and then we also have the commitment to move the elementary counselors um from a grant fund um over to district LCAP, and you heard this evening with our Ed Services team how important those counselors are. Um, so they'll now be in district LCAP. The other piece is cash. Um, you always have to have cash in the bank to pay the bills, right? So, very similar pattern year over year. Um, obviously November is always our low month. December, we get property taxes. That spikes it back up. Um, you'll notice the red dotted line um which is the projection for the current year. June dips a little bit. So, one of the um budget savings, if you will, that the governor pushed through was instead of paying our junior payment in June, we'll just pay it in July.
It was the local school district, >> commissioner, >> superintendent, I don't remember. It was probably, I assume, like one of those old laws that have been in place forever. Like, >> you know, I don't know if you read >> sometimes you see them, it's like you can't ride your horse into the courthouse or, you know, things like that. I mean, like gooey laws that have been on the books forever and stuff. >> Or if we want be wine permit, we have to go to the, you know, the mayor. >> Yeah. Different people get them signed off on. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> All right.
Um so just very very complex. There's just lots more to think about and I'll leave like the social media and the emotional looking for emotional triggers and all that to to Jason because I think that is more of a high school thing, but we certainly see the impacts of that all the way down in elementary as well. >> Well, I'm dating myself here again, but this is my fourth decade working with kids. So in that time I I was telling Lee by this earlier today people have asked me through the years like do you think kids are different now than they were than they used to be? I really don't think kids are different. I think that our world is different, you know, the social aspect, the social media, the cell phones. In the 90s when I started, kids didn't have cell phones, you know, they were kids were still getting busted for grabbing cigarettes.
So, it's an unknown environment. Um and you know, that's a real reason to preserve one-time funding. Agreed. It's and Go ahead, Paul. And my concern with this slide is really talk talk about impact is that sped coordinator Yeah. can have a huge impact both to our students, to our families that that that sped coordinator is going to support Yeah. and to our budget should we not be able to support it. Uh the the the students and families so Yeah. Yeah. But So, just let me piggyback on Paul's comment. So, I'm glad you used the word impact because we've had that conversation I think in a lot of detail at different points in the conversation, but I think it's one that we just was have to come back to because we talk about a budget, we're talking about cuts in positions, right? But it's the impact of those cuts that I think is the most important part, right?
>> And just going back, is there availability of those 10 passenger vans on the market? >> Postcoid, you couldn't buy a 10 passenger van in this country uh if uh you regardless of how much you wanted to pay. Uh but today uh they're available. Uh it's about a uh a six to to eight month delivery time ordering new. Uh but I've seen enough of them sitting around in in parking lots. Uh and yes, they're Ford uh uh Ford Transit vans. Uh they're not cheap uh compared to a uh a Voyager or a uh you know, some of the other seven passenger vans. Uh but they're built on a uh on a truck frame as opposed to a car frame. They'll run 10 years uh relatively easily. Uh and we look around at Vanpool. Uh Vanpool is using them almost exclusively now in terms of how they're replacing their fleet.
Um so, I'm just curious, you know, this wasn't something we asked you to factor in, but what are your thoughts? What have you seen? We have We have three clients that are running electric buses. Uh and I've been with them over a number of years. Uh quite frankly, the cost of electric bus is 2 and 1/2 times the cost of a diesel bus. Uh the only way it makes sense for a municipality or school district to get into the electric bus business is with state and federal aid. Uh they they would bust your transportation budget at $400,000 a piece. Uh the other is that the battery life on the buses are warranted for 7 to 8 years. Uh even though the body may last 10 years. Uh and batteries have to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Uh and replacing the battery pack on a school bus is roughly almost half the cost of the bus.
I did make it to to today. We had I did go to Pembroke, and um King Street I could not make it. It was postponed. And it was just a joy to be there with the kids and to go back to schools. And I must say I did have um A student 10 students from A stop by to work with my kids at our center and they came in with books and projects and they left they just donated the books they brought in and that was so kind. We thought, yeah, this is good. Another thing I did have did want to talk about is we have the early childhood fair that's coming up on March 28th. It's a Saturday. That's an event that I organize for the town every year and we've had amazing turnout every year. It's at Rogers Park Middle School at the cafeteria and we have people who have attended the board always have a table.
And tonight, today I have the pleasure to present to you the 2024 2025 annual report of the Measure U Citizen Bond Oversight Committee covering the period of July 1st, 2024 through June 30th, 2025. The annual report is submitted to the Bereasa Ununa school district board of education and local district residents by the Beressa Ununa school district measure use citizen bond oversight committee in fulfillment of its role as specified by law. Primary duties of our committees are review bond expenditure to ensure that proceeds have been expended to the purpose of outline in measure U. inform the public concerning the district expenditures of bond proceeds. Pres present to the district governing board and annual report of the committee pro proceeding and activities of the previous year provide a statement indicating whether the district complies with the bond requirement. The annual report includes highlights and statutes updates of projects that will prolong the district facility life and improve of its students learning experience.