001Welcome to the Wattsburg Area School District where we are student centered and future focused for a world-class education. I will now call to order the Monday, June 9th work session of the Wattsburg Area School District Board of Directors. Uh would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. May I have a roll call, please? Mr. Blazer, present. Mr. Burmagen, present. Mrs. Berlingham here. Mrs. Heatherington here. Mrs. Lee. Mr. Morve, here. Dr. Pushchek here. Mr. Williams here. Mr. Young present. First on our agenda this evening, uh, to set our agenda for next week's regular board meeting, uh, Dr. Berlin, will we have a school report?
002I do not believe we're going to have a school report. Uh, Mr. Angler, did you hear any talk from the principles? I I'm basing that guess on how fast the students uh loaded the buses on Thursday. So, thank you, Dr. Berlin. Uh, we now turn to guest and citizen comments. Do we have anyone signed up to speak this evening? No, we do not. Moving along for superintendent report. Dr. Berlin, will we have a superintendent report for next week? I I don't have a report planned. Did you also load the bus quickly? I I watched and directed and waved. Thank you, Dr. Berlin. Uh we now turn to the business administrators report and recognize Mrs. Vicky Bendig. Oh, yes. Uh before we leave the superintendent report, um Mr. Angler reminded me that uh we were going
003to use a little bit of this time this evening uh to talk about a proposed policy uh for using artificial intelligence as that's becoming uh a force to be reckoned with uh across all industries and in education. Um, so we want to get out in front of that and uh start to uh set out some guidelines and train our folks um faculty and students uh best practices and keep everyone everyone's data safe. So Mr. Angler, I'll turn things over to you. Yes. So there's a couple of things on the agenda tonight that deal with uh AI technology. Um, and so I just wanted to to sort of let you know that that we are looking at this at sort of a comprehensive plan that we are trying to be proactive rather than reactive when it
004comes to this. Um, and so, you know, to kind of set the stage here, I think we can all look back and and think about some of the technology that's come out of the past several decades and the way that it's influenced the workplace and influenced uh education. um you know, calculators, internet, computers, you know, and I can hear and and and remember some of this stuff and and hear the teachers saying, "Oh, students are going to lose their ability to think critically. Uh they're going to lose their basic skills. Oh, it's going to provide them more methods to cheat." You know, and yet today, I think that probably none of us can imagine a workplace or an educational environment that doesn't utilize these tools. Um and I think that AI represents sort of that
005next kind of frontier. It's that next piece of technology. And so uh again like when we look at the way that education has changed and I don't want to knock you over with statistics uh but since co you know we know it's a different educational and working landscape you know to the point that you know in in a three-year period after co we saw 8.6 million Americans make an occupational shift meaning leave one field for a completely another field. We saw millions of Americans that never went back to work. And one of the results of that is that now we've got one of the lowest unemployment rates that we've ever seen in this country. Um, and in many sectors we've got labor shortages. And I believe when you compound that with the reality that the
006last of the baby boomer generation is is getting set to retire about 60 years old right now. Um, when we look by 2030, projections are that one in four Americans will be of retirement age, right? And so I think that's going to leave us with this vacuum of employers that are looking for employees that don't exist. Um, and by some projections, you know, we're looking at 30% of working hours right now could be filled by generative AI. And I think it's going to become a necessity. And so therefore, it becomes our responsibility to to make sure that our kids come out of this institution able to utilize those tools. Um, I saw a survey today when I was doing some of this research that that talked to,300 prospective employers and 73% of them said that
007the number one skill that they're looking for in their new employees are AI skills. It's that important already and I think it's going to get more and more important. On the flip side, and I use college statistics here because it's been studied more at the collegiate level, but even these statistics are almost a year and a half old. When we look at college students from a year and a half ago, about half of them were using AI, right? More than half of them said that AI had helped them to get better grades, but yet their faculty is not adopting it at the same rate, right? So only 14% of college faculty surveyed around the country in 2023 said that they could utilize it effectively in the classroom. And so we're seeing this widening gap between
008the adoption of the technology at the student level and the adoption of the technology at a faculty level. Um, and the goal of some of these things that you're going to take a look at tonight and vote on next week, uh, is to kind of close that gap in meaningful ways. And so, again, I want to I want you to understand we're being proactive here. This is something we've been planning, um, the tech integrators, myself, uh, for several months. Um, and so it involves first an AI board policy, which I'll explain a little bit more in a minute, adopting a an educational platform across the district, training our teachers to appropriately use that tool, and then using universal language through the adoption of a universal AI assignment guidelines. So, we'll start with the policy. Um,
009basically, you know, AI is kind of the wild wild west right now. Um, and once information goes into AI, you don't know where it goes. uh and so we have a responsibility legally and ethically to protect the personal information of our students and so that this policy sort of aims to make sure that we do that responsibly. Um the second part of that is it it also says that we will inform parents and I think it's important that that parents are part of this equation. Um because again if they're not adopting technology or don't understand the technology that their kids do um that presents a danger. so we can protect them here. Um, but we also want to make sure that we're protecting them at home. And so like sort of just guiding parents on
010on questions to ask and how to start conversations so they kind of keep up with their kids as they start using this. Um, the second is the adoption of a platform. I mean, I think we're all familiar with chat GPT and some of the other tools that are out there. Um, but a few months ago, I tasked our six tech integrators uh with taking a look at several uh, well, two really AI platforms. Uh, and I give them a lot of credit because one of those platforms, Magic School, they were very familiar with and many of them have been using those tools. Um, and so it would have been easy to just say, "Hey, yeah, we want to go with this because it is familiar." Um, but instead they took a hard look at both
011platforms, Magic School and School AI, and they came back and suggested to me that school AI was the more robust platform, that there were more tools, that it worked better. Uh, and so really, I do give them credit for the the open mind that they took to this. Now, I'll let them answer any questions that you have about the tool, but I'll go into a couple of different things that it can do. Um, there's something like I think there's close to a hundred tools on this platform. Everything from helping to align lesson plans to state standards to uh a chatbot in there similar to something like chat GBT, but that allows uh teachers to sort of put parameters on how that chatbot is used. And so, I'll just give you just a couple of examples
012here really briefly about what I've seen them so far do with that. So, here uh are are a couple of of assignments that were handed out. One in a fourth grade classroom by Terresa Bricker and the other in a high school classroom by Steve O'Donnell. Um and each of these instances, they sort of set up a classroom, we'll say a virtual classroom with a chatbot assistant and they they set perimeters for that chatbot to do certain things. So, in the fourth grade grade classroom, this chatbot was set to act as if it had participated in the Revolutionary War. and students interacted with that chatbot asking it questions. Um, and you can set the parameters to do whatever you want. So, I think it's it's simple to think of it like if you were a math
013teacher uh and and working with students with algebraic equations, you wouldn't want the chatbot to just give the student the answers right now. If they're working with chat GBT, it's going to do that. No one's setting parameters on that AI. But if you're utilizing in a classroom like this, you can set those parameters. So, you could say, hey, you know, if a student is struggling or asking for an answer, give them hints. give them help but don't give them the answer. Right? So simple parameter that you can think of that you could put up on something like this, right? But you can see how it can be used at any level, right? From kindergarten all the way up through high school. And by the way, uh as these teachers are talking to their students, I
014mean fourth graders, I I don't remember the numbers they gave me, but they're already using it. I mean, pretty pretty extensively. So um this one, and I don't know if you can read the small writing, I blacked out the student names. Um, but this is a snapshot that a teacher in the classroom could see as students are interacting with those chat bots. And so in an instant and in real time, the teacher can see every student what they're doing, whether they're trying to like game the system to just try to get answers, whether they're sticking to the speed of the assignment, if they're struggling based upon the questions that they're asking, if they're joking around, you know, and so really quite quickly, you could see where you need to redirect someone who's not focusing on
015the assignment. You can see where someone is struggling and needs extra attention. Um, and so it's it's like having a true assistant in the classroom. All right. And so again, this is just scratching the surface of what the tool can do. Um, and if you've got questions, you know, the tech integrators are here to kind of answer some of those questions. Now, I don't think we could do this without the six tech integrators that we have. Uh, and I just want to let you know, I I we are very blessed to have these six teachers. Uh in fact I attended uh PTNC which is a statewide educational conference with them a few months ago and they truly are setting the standard not just in our region but in the state. Uh they were presenting on
016things you know some of the best presentations that I saw at that conference were coming from our people and and I don't just say that because they're our teachers. I mean it is truly truly impressive. And so they've been kind of pushing the envelope now for several years. Uh, and because of that, I think our staff is probably ahead of where a lot of other places are. Um, and so I feel comfortable going with a program that they recommend because I know that we've got the in-house capability to train our staff appropriately. Um, and so we started this um, you know, they've been working on this for a while, but there was a focus put on this for our ed camp that we had back in March. Uh, ed camp is where we utilize our
017own staff and they come up with topics that they want to to talk to their their colleagues about. um everything from classroom management tools or new tools that they're seeing in education, things they've learned in professional development. Uh and these six did a great job presenting on AI tools and how they could be used and they've been doing this kind of along the way. So this has been started already. We introduced some of the direction that we might be headed at that ed camp. Uh and the idea is to have a really heavy push at the opening in service to make sure that you know we can give teachers the greatest tools in the world, but if they don't know how to use them, it's worthless. Um, and I think that that with these six
018kind of leading that push, we've got a really good design or what that would look like for training our teachers. And lastly, just utilizing common language, right? So, one of the big concerns is, well, students are going to cheat. And and the reality is we got to rethink the way we teach. You know, assigning an essay for homework is not what it once was because, yeah, it's really easy to go and use these tools online. Um, and so I think we've got to re rethink the way that we do some of these things. uh and this common language this sort of guidelines is part of that process. So, we can implement language like this K through 12. Uh, it's very simple, color-coded, five levels, meaning that red level one means there's no AI, right? So,
019if you think like if we're teaching students to do writing prompts to prepare for keystones or PSSAs, we don't want them using any AI tools, right? A yellow level AI supported means, you know, generate ideas through AI. This is good part of the process learning to use tools appropriately. Um, but the final product should be unique and distinct. And then finally, level five, you know, as we're preparing kids to go out in the workforce, you know, they need to use AI for what it is, a tool to to complete a job more efficiently. And so that's kind of free reign as long as we're appropriately citing uh and using AI responsibly. Um, so that's basically it. You know, I I think just as as my final thoughts on this, you know, if I'm being honest,
020AI is it's intimidating to me. You know, um, it's it's changing very rapidly. I don't think this is something that comes naturally to me. Um, but I think we've got a professional responsibility. We talk all the time and open every board meeting with student centered and future focused and and this is the future. Um, I'm proud of some of the decisions we've made over the past several years where other districts are now looking at things that we're doing and mimicking what we're doing. I think there's a lot of group think and education. Um, and because of, you know, the tech integrators who, by the way, on their first day of summer break, you know, are here on a Monday night should really show their passion and their desire to see this success. Um, and why
021I I believe in them so heavily. Um, but we're uniquely positioned to kind of lead the way, I think, in Erie County. I mean, these six were talking the other day about leading an AI summit on the common inservice day for schools around the county. I mean, they're that serious about it. Um, and so I'm proud of the vision that we have. Uh, and hopefully we can implement something like this that that really benefits our kids. Thanks. Yeah. Anybody else? I don't have to be first. Um, you want to say something? You can go ahead, Craig. I'll go. Um, two things. First off, can't agree more. Um, it is almost stupid how fast this is changing. I can put your tax return into my computer and in three seconds I can know if you missed
022a deduction. you know, from a PDF form. I don't got to enter anything. You know, I can do the same thing with your trust. I can do the same thing with your will. I can create your trusted will and have an online attorney sign it in a matter of minutes. Um, I just hired a recent graduate from Ganon, uh, dual major accounting and finance, and I have an intern, a fa finance and econ major, and their staff didn't touch AI with them. And there's conversations right now about whether or not investment planning will be taken over by AI uh altogether. AI is as good as it's prompt. But anyway, so completely agree. I think it's awesome that we're at the forefront of it. Two questions on it. If you can go back to your rubric,
023uh Mr. Engler. Um, speaking of AI and all the different things that we can do with it, do we have AI capability to safeguard in the instances where we don't want AI to use? You know, we have the software to I can scan all your signatures and I can know which one you used 5 years ago in my office, right? We can scan anything and and we know it. So, do we have safeguards in place where they're not supposed to use AI where we can say, "Hey, look, you cheated." You know, can we use AI to catch the AI cheaters? Um, and secondly, do we remember, it wasn't that long, was it February when Google had the AI issue with George Washington? Does anybody remember that big conflict that came up? Uh, and and did
024an African-American George Washington? What safeguards do we have in that was from Google, right? The top tech giant. What safeguards do we have in place to make sure that since we're not in the textbook anymore that the data, you know, is accurate? Yeah. So, I think Oh, sorry. Pick me. Pick me. I pick Steve. Go ahead, Steve. You can come. You can come up to the mic. Come to a microphone. Go ahead. I think this is so important that we are it is something you're going to train your staff on because the truth is you can't safeguard it when it comes to what what you give it and what it pushes out sometimes you know it's going to make up the response. So what we what we need to do is teach our staff how
025to teach our students how to think critically about the evidence they get whether it's really evidence from the prompt. So I think That's why it's so important. Now, if you have well educated education professionals in the room with students and they're doing exercises, like one of my favorite things to do if I use AI is to have them reflect on the response and find the errors in the response. You know, it's just making them realize that it's not just because you gave it to you. In the same way that we went through the generation of thinking everything we got from Google or if it was on a website was true, you know, or the elder people that believe everything on Facebook. Um our students believe anything that there's the little chatbot on Snapchat tells them
026if they come into class thinking that's got to be true and that is their genuine source. So um by using some of the tools in which we've taught the staff um we purposefully choose things like um everyone chat but like we all like to use which is a chatbot that gives you the sources that it comes from. So you should look downream and that's one of the things I my students you got to look downream from the response you get from the chatbot. So yes this tells you this but let's look at the sources that it's getting it from. Okay. when these sources legit source others coming from a Reddit. So we're going to ignore the that's not legitimate. Always ignore Reddit. Yeah. And no, thank you. And I'll say, you know, and Eric, I
027I apologize if I'm butchering the details to this, but but Erica Fox when she was piloting school AI had done an assignment with her fourth grade class, and they were talking to characters out of the book that they had just read. um and some of the information they were being fed back as they were having these interactions was inaccurate and and you know fourth graders real quick to point that out and excited about pointing it out. And so to your point, I think it's important that we're starting young when they're excited about that experience to to to drive home the point that Steve's making that you're making that, you know, just because it's written doesn't mean it's real, you know, and and I think these tools allow us I've often compared education to having training
028wheels on your bike, right? will um allow us some training wheels as we teach kids to use AI um before we just unleash them with the the myriad of tools that are out there. This pl this platform was called what again? School AI. AI. So I work in the predictive modeling side of AI quite heavily and you know we are big on the garbage in garbage out theories that go along with those uh predictive models. Obviously with generative models, you know, we're working with a plethora of information that's available from any open- source uh across the web. Um it may be a an obvious question or an obvious answer, but in using a generative model in our school systems, what protections are in place uh within this platform for content? Um want to make sure
029what the children are exposed to and where those models could potentially lead from a generative perspective. We obviously know there's lots of inaccurate information. Yes, we can deal with that. Uh but also the sensitivity of information, the subject matter, and what's appropriate for the age of the student in which we're engaging. What what does that platform have in place? Yeah. So, you know, again, going along with not only protecting their personal information, but the idea that this is strictly targeted toward education, like that's that's part of the conversation they're having. I will tell you this part of this the the I don't know scary is the word but like the the unknown piece is that all of these companies are really still startups. So like magic school to me was like the the standard you
030know like they were the ones that have been out there forever. Well forever is two years you know um and and you know the money that's being poured into this. So, like even School AI, you know, when I did my research on that company, you're talking about a company that's still um a startup really, you know, they're still they're raising funds. They've just completed their second round of fundraising. They have 11 employees. This is a multi-million dollar company with 11 employees. And so, the risk of this platform in particular, you know, the safeguards seem to be there, right? Um uh but the customer support is probably what I would say is more the risk. Now, I feel I still feel comfortable out of what they have are a lot of training videos that are really
031really good and they're short videos um that I think are succinct and good. Our teachers will utilize them. Um I wouldn't feel comfortable going with this platform if we didn't have people that were good at the technology. Yeah. So, it it is geared towards education and they have these particular parameters in there to prevent inappropriate content from being given to the students. example he showed a picture of um one of in one of your slides he showed my screenshot from when I did that assignment about the um report. Yeah. Go back one. So one of my students um he's he's a colorful one. Um he wanted the assignments to be over. He was he was in the mood but also I told him to try to break the chatbot because I wanted to see like
032what what's it going to do? And you can see in there one of the it gives a warning um at the top student chat issue detected by our moderation system. That was from a student who said to the chatbot I want to kill myself. He was doing it intentionally to to see if he could break it and it immediately notified me but then it had tried to have the conversation with the student about it seems as though you're having an issue. Um I've notified your teacher to like come and talk to you. um do you want to talk to me about that any further? And so he wasn't willing to to start like you know saying to the student it was identified it as an issue but so that's just one example. Um but it's
033definitely in terms of risk. I mean certainly I I suppose there could be a risk there, but also you can view every chat the student has. So I get the warning here in this general headline to give me a sense of how that conversation's going, but I can drill in and open up the entire conversation and I can read it and then I had a conversation with that particular student. Um he's like try to break it. That's not what I meant. But so I would Whether you have the school AI or you want another one of these ones like Magic School, they have safeguards they're working in place that are effective. also setame working together and I said let's just ask what he had for dinner I can't remember what I did yesterday but what
034more would you like to know about Right. But this is also why it's important to have a policy. So like you guys know approval policy. Teachers need that support. Administrators need that support to know that there's a policy to fall back on to say your kids using AI inappropriately. We we train them what inappropriate looks like and if there's a consequence involved, we can have that that policy fall back on. Go ahead, Britney. No, I was just going to say I also agree with with Greg that I also love the idea because when we talk about, you know, evolving and adapting to what society looks like today, I think it is really important that we're moving with what's happening, critical thinking can look like so many different things. Like, so if we are teaching our
035kids to change their way of thinking, they're still utilizing critical thinking all the time. And I like how you mentioned then teachers also are going to have to change the way they teach. We have to all adapt with the whole process and what's changing. There are days when I look at my kids and I was just like they are just way smarter than me and we already know it. So as parents we might as well just get on board and try to figure out how we can enhance our critical thinking and think differently to help our kids be successful in the inevitable. Like it's coming. But I love I love the idea and I think it's going to be super beneficial for our kids in the future as well that we're starting now. So that's
036all I had. This policy is us. Any others? Um, hearing no others, I just first of all want to say thank you uh to not just you three but the six in total on the committee. Um, thank you Mr. Angler for the presentation. Um, and this is why we're here. uh this board is responsible for policy level uh decision- making and and with your input uh steering the course of the future for our students and this is absolutely wonderful. This is why I'm here. So, thank you very much for everything you brought to the table this evening. We'll we'll applaud back to you. How's that? All right. Chair will now recognize Miss Vic Vicky Bendig for her business administrator's report. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh for this evening, I have the treasures reports. Uh general
037fund as of the end of May, May 31st, uh cash in those accounts, $9,571,77.13. There is $1722 in the capital projects funds and the cafeteria at the end of May had $779,959.81. Um the student activities balance at the end of the um at the end of May there was a total of $76,434.606 in those collective accounts. Um, I will mention that uh I last month we had talked about the cafeteria walk-in cooler at Whams. Um, I had submitted it to the state for their approval for our capital expenditure. They came back and said, "We will approve the expenditure for the cooler and the coil, but nothing else." So, out of the $150,000 project, they're willing to cover allow us to cover 56,000 out of the food service fund, but the rest would be on us
038because they deem it as construction. So, cutting a hole in the wall to connect the cooler to the building is construction. But, you know, if we just plopped it out in the parking lot and made them walk down the steps and go out and use it, well, then by all means, go for it, right? So um plus uh the whole pro the project as a whole because it's federal funds it we had source everything through co-stars which is legit for general fund usage but for food service it's above the threshold for a micro purchase which means you have to have an RFP. So, if we have $96,000 out of our general fund that we want to put toward the project, um, we can move forward and get an RFP and have an engineer come up
039with specs and do all of that fun stuff. Um, but that's kind of where we're at at the moment for that. Um, and definitely probably won't with the whole getting specs, advertising it for three weeks, having a period for them to come in with bids. It's definitely not going to happen this summer. So, I think we have some time to think about it if if we want to do it, maybe have some done in the fall or wait until next spring. So, I mean, I think the cooler is beneficial. I think it's only a matter of time before some of the standalone piece refrigeration pieces that the middle school is using to keep milk and produce and I think there's only a matter of time before some of that faults and we end up with
040spoiled food, spoiled milk, you know, like I really think that the walk-in cooler is a is a good solution. Um, but we're going to have to cough up $96,000. So, um that's where we're at with that. Uh moving on to the bill lists. Um checks written between the last board meeting and the work session this evening. General fund $93,795.40. There were no crop capital projects um checks and cafeteria had $51.76. I will have the uh year-to- date budget versus actual and the cafeteria profit and loss and the other check reports uh for next week. And that is all I have. Does anyone have any other questions for Mrs. Bendig? I do want to say thank you very much for all of your work and attempting to find a solution for the middle school and the
041cold storage. And I have confidence that maybe there's even another path that we haven't thought of yet. But we'll keep chugging forward. Uh any other questions? Hearing none, we'll see those move over along with the updates to next week's agenda. Uh under legal advisement, uh we have two uh that we're would like to add to the agenda for next week. Uh it's the appointment of the school district solicitor uh for the 2526 fiscal year. And this would be to appoint appoint uh the firm of Knox McLaclin Gornall and Senate uh with attorney Jennifer Gornall as our district solicitor for the 2526 fiscal year and also the appointment of school district labor council for 2526 fiscal year. Um and that would be to appoint the firm of McDonald league uh with attorney Mark Kuhar as the
042labor relations solicitor uh for that period. Are there any questions on those two items? I I would just add um that when we approve Jennifer Gornel as the solicitor, you're generally approving the law firm which gives us access to all their different specialties. Um which is very advantageous. But Jennifer would is the lead uh person when it comes to um providing uh an overall final legal opinion towards whatever might be in front of the board. Um but that's going to sit on all types of consultation that and and uh specialty lawyers that she has access to. Um so she's extremely busy because she's very good. So we we don't see her very often. Um but Knox does make sure that we have access at uh at voting meetings uh to like attorney attorney Kennedy for
043example. I don't know if there's a question uh about some immediate business. They can help us that way. So it's it's more than just one person I guess is the point. Absolutely. Any other questions or comments? Hearing none. Those will move over for next week's agenda. The chair will now recognize Dr. Andrew Pushjack for finance. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, June is traditionally a busy month for finance. We have 10 items to consider uh at our regular board meeting next week. The first item are the standard month monthly budgetary transfers from budget to actual. The second item is the sponsor to sponsor agreement. Uh, as you can see as listed there. The third item is the designation of the depository uh which will be uh as recommended there. And then the remaining items are with
044regard to uh approving and adopting the final general fund budget. And just to remind the board and the public that this is our financial plan for the district that we adopt in resolution D, all of the remaining resolutions under finance is how we then fund that budget. So letter D is the adoption of the final general fund budget in the amount as you can see 32,96,229 and then we get into how do we fund it. The first item is the real property tax resolution which is listed as 7E and you can see the increase in the millillage there. 7G, I'm sorry, 7F is the per capita tax resolution as provided on the agenda. 7G is the act 511 per capita tax resolution. And then we have 7H, which is the EIT, the earned income tax
045uh wage resolution. 7 I is realtor transfer tax resolution. 7J is the local services tax resolution and then uh the final item under finance 7K is the act one homestead and farmstead exclusion. So those are all the ways that we're going to fund the budget in addition to the federal and state appropriations that we will receive. So, um, all items under finance, all 10 items listed as 7A through K for next week's budget, next week's meeting. Thank you, Dr. Pushjack. Are there any questions or comments on those 10 items? I just wanted to inform the board that I knew we had a finance committee um in April prior to the adoption of the preliminary um or the proposed final budget. Um just to recall that that budget was 32,111, 2017. So, this final budget is
046$14,788 less than the proposed final. Um on May 1st, uh all districts receive their allocations for um the property property tax resolution that we get money from the state for reduction for the homestead farmstead and they tell us what our total assessed value for the district is. Our total assessed value in as of May 1st was over $825,000 less than what it was in November. So we always assume that the month the number we have in November is going to go up in May. People are going to build more. They're going to have uh build a home. They're going to have additions. they're going to have larger properties. Um, so those $825,000 in reduction to our assessed value came from exclusions for veterans. So there are there is a new I think it was in
0472022 where veterans can apply and get um an ex uh an exemption where they don't have to pay property tax. So that was a reduction of over $120,000 in revenue um to the school district that is um staying with the taxpayer. So that was one of the portions that was like uh okay, so now we've got to find something to cut out of the budget. Uh but thankfully the state property tax reduction uh this year was an increase of $106,000. So that made up a lot of it. um in in the as of the bottom line and then um just kind of massage some of the expenditures. We had a couple increases to salaries, decrease to benefits. Um I had missed adding the Oh, we also got our insurance renewal costs. So thankfully our insurance
048renewal was I think a net uh about $4,000 up from last year. So overall it was a modest increase. So I think we're still at an act one in increase. Actually the act one increase is 5.4%. It is 5.395% because I'm not willing to have that little bit of percentage make a millage make it round up to the something that's not right. So 3.9 or 5 5.395%. So um that's where we're at and it was a reduction of $14,788. I just wanted to point that out. Thank you Mrs. Bendic for the clarification. So um if a veteran applies for this new grant or whatever. Okay. So their property is just not counted in the value when they evaluate the district. They just correct don't count it at all. Yes. Just like churches or state game
049lands or um nonprofit agencies that own they are exempt exempt from tax. So it's just taken off the assessed value before we calculate tax. Yes. School tax. Just school tax. All taxes. Yes. I would add that it's not all veterans. uh the there there's quite a list um of qualifications. They have to be permanently disabled, be under a certain income threshold. Um you know, so these are these are veterans that are in need. Um it's not just they've gone through the process and had Yeah. And they had to have served in a major conflict as declared by the government. Mr. Browen. Um, two things in regards to the finance. Uh, or we can talk about a board correspondence. Whatever you whichever one is more appropriate. I apologize. Um, real property tax resolution. You know what
050we talk about our millage rate towards 1,00 broken record as you know. Um, I learned today that General Mlan had LEAR, which I didn't know they had. From a Go Erie article dated August 15th of 2024 with the LERA extensions, uh, Eerie, $320 million in commercial residential development within the city limits, includes more than 50 million in residential property investments. They're attributing to their LERA tax uh, exemptions. uh with my breakdown as of the 2024 um millage rates, we had a 7.2% increase. Um and I looked at all our neighbors, you know, on a $100,000 home. That's a $23,000 60 20 $2,300 $66.7 for us. Waterford, you potentially could be neighbors. The mailbox next door, right? You could have that same $100,000 home. Their tax is uh 39% less, $1,423. Union City, 49% less. You
051could be neighbors have the exact same house. $1,197 is the tax on that house. Uh and I you can go on. Cory, Northeast, Harbor Creek, Mil Creek. Harbor Creek apparently what Mr. Williams said in their expansion with all their subdivisions, which is the other end of the spectrum, uh they're increasing their taxes quite regular. uh 2023 we actually closed the gap on Harbor Creek but then we increased the gap on Harbor Creek again in 2024. If you look at median sales prices and one of the reasons I keep doing this is a we gota we our well is only so deep right we're not seeing the municipality growth that our neighbors are seeing and eventually my fear is the gap gets so wide you know uh it's at a breaking point right if I look
052at the trend I think at 2023 it closed a little bit to a couple of our neighbors 2024 it expanded Again, for instance, in 2022, the difference between Harbor Creek and us was really only 12%. 2023, it went down to 11. And now this year, it's up to 14. They're 14% cheaper than we are uh on that same neighboring $100,000 property. If you extrapolate it out though to the a the median sales price, which we just got done getting a lesson on that, you know, $295,000 a $295,000 home in Wattsburg is $6,900 in in prop in school tax. Union City 3500. You can be neighbors, could be the same house. If you go to new construction, the average new construction price is $518,000. Watsburg school tax $12,000 a year. Fort Labuff seven. It's a big
053deal. And again, you know, if we can figure out how to be the tip of the spear and bring our municipalities together, I I think we can come up with some very good data that could um hopefully drive some uh districtwide um policies with even within our within our municipalities. Um I had another one somewhere. Oh, the term reenacts. All these are none of these are new. Correct. These have all been on the books last year. There's nothing that was taken off that we're putting back on. I just want to double check that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bagan. Any questions or comments? Mr. President, just to follow up on some Mr. Bumagin's comments, which I appreciate his diligence to present us with some numbers, but the bottom line is a mill is different in
054every district. Each district can generate more money, correct, from a mill. Um and I I think that needs to be clearly stated. And then in addition, um Harbor Creek is the prime example that you increase the growth of homes and the amount of taxes generated from that home does not keep up with the expense of a per pupil. So the ideal situation would be either businesses to build in our community who have no children or large $500,000 homes of people who have no children because then that is the ideal situation. Um I I think by encouraging um growth is positive but the type of growth that we want to encourage I don't know if it's a fit for the community. And then just my parting comment is um we would all love to have a
055bigger tax base but with a bigger tax base with children comes more expense to the district. So thank you. Thank you Dr. Pang. If I can rebuttal um thank you for at least continuing dialogue. Right. Tonight's a work session. We're supposed to work. So I appreciate that. However, it's been stated, I think, at least two other times, but it's inaccurate to say that a millage is not comparable to a taxpayer. You're right. When we charge a mill on a $10 million assessed value, it generates different revenue than somebody who has a 20, you know, million dollar assessed value. It's a different number. But mill per $100,000 residential property is completely comparable to your neighbor. So a $100,000 because it's the because it's the tax. So you're taking the mill and you're multiplying it by 100,000.
056Correct. A mill is $1,000,000 assessed value. Sure. Assessed. It's not based upon that home. This home's assessed value. It goes back to the home's assessed value. So, we can go and and we've gone through this before. It also includes all of the commercial assessed values, which is much greater than homes. Correct. So, if a district has a greater percentage of commercial versus residential, their millage will be less. Correct. because the total assessed value in that district is much higher. Completely agree. That's not what I'm stating. So, I don't know where we're we're blurring the lines at all. But, you know, our our dwellings are taxed higher than our neighbors dwellings when it comes to residential. I completely agree. The preferred is commercial. I'm not discounting that, right? In fact, if you look at Harbor Creeks
057off of their website, they have three designated areas in the township, you know, uh, and again, not the school board township level. The Lerta district is commercial and industrial, right, where they are trying to focus on what you just stated. I'm not I agree, we don't have great access to highways and commercial districts, but I'm agreeing with you. I'm just stating that, you know, what our neighbors pay is higher. We keep going to the well and we need to keep going to the well. We need to improve our the competitive salaries and stuff. We just had a a meeting on it. I'm not arguing any of that. Our well is only so deep and we are at the top when it comes to what we are charging to build a house in this district and
058the gap is widening compared to our neighbors and if it widens too much then what happens because we're still going to have to increase revenue. Mr. President, yes Dr. one final comment I just want to thank Mr. Brumagen and his understanding that this is where we need to have these discussions. It's the work sessions. So if there's an item that comes up that needs discussed, now's the time. So I'm glad that we had this conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Pushch. Any others hearing? None. Those 10 will move over for next week. And that's all I have for finances. Thank you, President Jack. The chair will now recognize Mr. Jeremy Glazer for buildings and grounds. Thank you, Mr. President. We have uh two items to add to the agenda for next week. Uh the first
059is A is toward the bid for our campus paving and crack ceiling project and B is to award the bid for our installation of concrete ballard project. Are there any questions on those two items? Hearing none, those will move over for next week. Thank you, Mr. Blazer. Thank you, Mr. President. Chair will now recognize Mr. Jesse Williams who will present our personnel items for this evening. Thank you, Mr. President. Mrs. Lee will have next year uh next week eight different items. The first one is A the superintendent annual performance evaluation. B the business administrator employment agreement. C administrator and staff uh reimbursement for attendance at meetings page here. Uh D the flexible spending arrangement agreement. E, job descriptions, F, appointments, G, resignations, and H, leave requests. That's all I have, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr.
060Williams. Are there any questions on those eight items, Mr. President? Yes, Dr. Bush. Is there any updates from the administration regarding the filling of positions or anticipated filling of positions? Thank you, Dr. Bush. Yes. Uh so as far as the elementary teacher is concerned, we believe that we have our candidate. We're just waiting on paperwork. Um the social studies teacher at the high school, uh we started the first round interviews today and we'll finish first round interviews tomorrow. Uh and then um Mr. Hudnull anticipates Thursday or Friday to do second rounds to have that recommendation available for next week. Um and the school counselor at Wake, I believe those interviews start on Wednesday. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Angler. Any other questions on those eight items? Hearing none, they will move over for next week.
061Thank you, Mr. Williams. Chair will now recognize Mrs. Britney Burlingham for policy. Thank you, Mr. President. I only have I will have only one item underneath policy next week, which is to approve the first reading of the policies as outlined and attached below. There any questions on the policies? Hearing? None. Those will move over for next week. Thank you, Mrs. Berlingham. Chair will now recognize Mr. Steven Warbe for curriculum. Mr. President, there are currently two items on the agenda for next week under curriculum. Uh the first one is 11A, which is the transition center operating agreement between the Erie County Technical School and Wattsburg Area School District for the upcoming school year per the attachment. And the second item is uh we've uh touched on it briefly earlier this earlier today the uh uh AI
062powered education platform which was uh presented to us today. Uh and that would be part of the curriculum going forward for next year. Those are the two items I have. Mr. President, thank you very much. Mr. Morvy, are there any questions on those two items? I will say once again, thank you Mr. Angler uh and your team uh for the presentation. Uh that was excellent. Good job. great to be able to see uh policy coming into play for our review um and subsequent vote that has such thorough vetting and a great team of our educators behind it uh with you know boots on the ground investment. So we really appreciate it. Thank you. Any other hearing? None. Those two will move over for next week. Uh the chair will now recognize Mr. Jesse Williams for
063technology. Thank you, Mr. President. I have one thing on the agenda for next week and that is the time clock plus but I have no idea what that is so maybe someone could tell me what that would be. I would be happy to share. So um prior to 2014 our which I know is 11 years ago but um our support staff used paper time sheets. So there was an implementation of an electronic time clock and the software that runs those times clock is called time clock plus. Uh they they are biometric time clocks. So they run off of a fingerprint. Um where employees come in, they use their fingerprint, they put their ID number in, it verifies it's them, they clock in, they clock out for breaks, clock in and out for lunch, and then
064out at the end of the day. So um the software that we currently have is um hosted on site and they are no longer supporting non-cloud hosted because when it's in the cloud they can make upgrades and tweaks and it just happens on their end and we deal with it. Right? So now it's oh can we get into your system and update this and oh now there's a bug and it doesn't work and there's a glitch and a so it has not been updated in quite some time and we are several versions behind. They want us to go to the cloud and there are a lot of benefits to having the cloud hosted service. Um there will there'll be an app that can be used as long as you're connected to district Wi-Fi to be
065able to use it. um not that we're expecting people to do that, but um there are options um as well as electronic leave balances um at the clock and through the app. So um that's the recommendation is to move forward to cloud hosting and then for them to implement the new upgraded software that goes with that. Thank you, Mrs. Bending, for your clarification. Uh any other questions for Mrs. Bendig on that one? because you are a time clock plus cloud-based expert this evening. So, thank you for that. All right. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Hearing no other questions or comments, that one will move over for next week. Uh, the chair will now recognize Mr. Greg Breumin for transportation. Mr. President, I have one item for next week and you wouldn't necessarily expect a transportation request,
066but there is one on there to approve the transportation request and replication since f uh field of field trip since last meeting as attached. Thank you, Mr. Brimagen. Any questions on that one? Hearing none, that we'll move over for next week as well. The chair will now recognize Mrs. Leah Heatherington for athletic and extracurricular. Thank you, Mr. President. On next week's agenda, I will have four items starting with athletic appointments um which can be read on the attachment. Uh B would be extracurricular appointments also in an attachment. Um C is the volunteer list editions as listed below. and D is game help list additions also as listed below. Thank you, Mr. Heatherington. Are there any questions on those three or four, pardon me? Mr. President, does uh in the uh fall athletic positions uh athletic
067appointments at 14A. Does that cover our complete roster then? Do we have all fall sports covered then at this point? Can we hire new? Uh there any that are still open? I'm sorry. Yeah, I I can speak to that. Yeah. Uh, so we are currently in the process of interviewing volleyball coaches. Okay. There's not an assistant soccer high school soccer coach either. Boys. Okay. Yeah. Having one or Yeah. And I don't know where Okay. where Steve Carter is with that. Okay. So just for the board's um knowledge, typically uh we approve fall sports at the June meeting and we approve what we know at the time and then as others are added um there could be a meeting scheduled in July to add to appoint others then some will be appointed in August. The fall
068is done in June and then the winter and springfall sports are typically approved in August and then any openings that happen between now and then or after then they're it's kind of a onesie but we try to get the bulk of them approved at one time. Okay. So I I heard volleyball's being um uh interviewed now. There may be an assistant soccer coach that's upcoming as well or depending on if the position is open from what I hear and uh then it seems like most everyone is is full. Okay, good. Thank you. Are coaches have to be approved every year then? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, coaches are approved one year at a time. I I would just piggyback on what Mrs. Bendig had mentioned about a possible meeting in July. We have tried for years to
069give the board a break in July, but it just seems in the hiring environment we're in, that's becoming trickier. So, I it I I guess I just want to put that on everyone's radar. we may have to hold a special meeting um for the purpose of approving hires depending on you know what transpires and if there's any um unexpected resignations or openings. Um right now though we look better than we have in many many years and I can tell you the the the faculty very happy about the the board's work with them and the contract. Um, so I know a lot of teachers are are very reinvigorated and um really appreciative and they want to stay and I think now they'll have the means uh to be able to afford uh to stay and work
070with their kids because that's what they like. So it's it's uh good good welcome news. I think if I could just make one comment. So, we also we've got more candidates than we've had since I've been here. Uh, and candidates, experienced teachers from school districts that I've never seen applications from. Uh, and in talking to the teachers, they're saying like it is it's not gone unnoticed. Like people are aware of the new contract. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Southernington. Any other questions? Hearing none, those will move for next week. Uh, the chair will now recognize Mr. Steven Morve. Will we have an Erie County Technical School report next? Mr. President. Yes, I will report on the May joint operating committee uh for our board meeting next week. Thank you, Mr. Mor. Chair
071will now recognize Dr. Andrew Pushchack for the Tri County Intermediate Unit. Yes, Mr. President. Brief report next week. Thank you. Thank you. And I did enjoy doing some reading on the uh report that you sent uh on the public funding of private institution court battles uh mainly in the state of Oklahoma. Uh but I think we'll probably see those arise in more states as we see the division in our federal courts and within our state courts. Uh it's now time for board correspondence and dialogue. I I want to kick off um myself because uh I got the the honor and the privilege to participate in the graduation ceremony. Um had the privilege of presenting diplomas to a couple of our board members uh students. It was absolutely awesome. um as a graduate of this institution
072and the blessing of being able to sit here and serve uh this institution, it was really really awesome. Um I think our staff did a great job. Uh hats off to the building uh administration at the high school. Uh our student speakers were spectacular. I think they did a really great job of rounding out what a high school experience looks like from multiple angles um and multiple student experiences. Um and Mr. Blazer, your daughter did a great job. She got me choked up. She didn't get choked up. Um, but I had a hard time when I I got up to speak because um, a lot of what she shared was very meaningful. So, I just want to thank from the superintendent, building administration down. Um, that was a great evening and a great rounding out.
073Mrs. Heatherington. Um, yeah, congratulations to the senior parents, myself included. We did a great job. I'd say 6040 us. Um, but I did actually have a question not involving graduation. A few weeks ago, I emailed Dr. Berlin about possibility for digital payment school providing like a Venmo or a cash, something that we could do instead of writing checks because that's old school now. And um, I would like to make a comment that at my daughter's graduation party, the only people that wrote checks were over 70 years old. So, And she did have like a QR code for scanning. She's like, "Do you think this is inappropriate?" I was like, "That is very Jenzy. It's fine." Wow. I still write checks. I'm feeling feeling real small here at the table. Go ahead, Dr. Anyways, I just
074wondered if there was any uh information or if you have got any ideas. We we did start looking at I know Vicki had talked to a couple other business managers. Um there are fees. I don't want to steal any thunder, but there are fees to consider. There's transaction fees and things. So, checks off. It It's a matter of finding the right fit if we can find one. Okay. I know that we already use school cafe for payments into student lunches. They do offer a platform under that umbrella. Same. It's still cool school cafe, but we could use that for activity fun activity. What other collections of fees that might have to go for field trips or that kind of thing? I don't know what the fees are yet. So, I have I I'm still It's
075going to take time. And I hate to have someone say, "Well, here's my $8 for my kid to go to the zoo and here's a $3 fee." Yeah. Right. I mean, that just doesn't If you can put $100 and it's a $3 fee, it's a little less painful, you know? And that's an option, too. like this is what you're going to need this much money for the year for your student all of your student your family activities and just put it in to begin with and then school can just draw from it. I don't know if that's a possibility. I know it doesn't sound fun. I just want to Venmo you. That's it. Yes. Yeah. I want to Venmo you for free. You can Venmo me personally. For free too. I think I also I
076mean everyone already said it, but I also wanted to congratulate Jeremy and Leah on your kids graduating. Um it was a great ceremony. Also, I don't even have a senior and yet I'm I'm running my kid to graduation parties like that. I'm already getting a taste of that. Like, good luck to that by the way. So, I'm looking forward to that on my own time. But yes, congratulations. It was a great I know we were stuck inside, but I still think it turned out really good. So my daughter told me that this 2025 like countrywide is the largest graduating class in the history of the United States. Wow. I'll have to double check. Yeah, double check that. I'll use and I will let you know. Any others? Mr. Bagan, uh last for me tonight would
077be uh summer sendoff. Uh again, such an awesome opportunity that the um Steve left. Um but what they do and what they accomplish through that and what the community does to support that, I think, you know, you see a you see a rural area starving for community and and coming together and even with the chance of weather this year, um it went well, supported. Um couple comments though as in any good thing, right? you're in anything that grows, you're going to come across it and into some hurdles. Um, it did appear that there was a lot more sheriffs than I remember ever on property, which I don't know if that's just because I noticed them differently this year, but there appeared to be a a a higher level of law enforcement, which I can appreciate,
078but I don't know that it's a law enforcement event. Not saying I don't want them there. I want them there. I think maybe there was one principal there, maybe one. I don't know that there was a lot of our principal leadership involved in I think it's more of an event where everybody's there. If we can get more involvement from our administrative team into that event because what's happening is I don't know that parents are there. I think it could be some drop off, right? And it kind of becomes a big giant recess. Um, these these are rumors, I'll say, but I heard there was a fight. I heard that the sheriff's had to stop adults from drinking. Um, now that is a sheriff thing. Um, but I don't know what's in the woods. If there's
079a portal in the woods back there where everybody just goes to, but the amount of kids that just disappear into the woods, then there is rumors of sexual behaviors in the woods. I would like to see a lot more of our leadership team helping safeguard that event because I would hate to see that event disappear. That's all. I think it's awesome. Any others? Okay. Hearing none, I will now entertain a motion to adjurnn. So move. Push check. Second. Biringham. All in favor, please say I. I. Oppose. Nay. Motion carries. We are adjourned. See you next week.